The Grass Widow (33 page)

0

from the Washburn Station Baptist Church so the Bodetts might have their worship at home.

She faded into the other-worldly landscape of dreams, and out of it, and into it again.

She was sitting on the porch smoking a cigarette, gazing over her fields, when Flora Washburn rode into the yard. “Looks like I’ll be dust ere you decide to batten this damn house,” she snapped. “I’m on my way to the boneyard. You comin’?”

“Got all the bones I need,” Joss grinned. “I’ll get right on that, Flora. Stop back by an’ have some tea with us. My cousin likes to hear you cuss.”

“She’ll be cussin’ you, you don’t get them laths nailed up. Come with me or get your ass up an’ runnin’, but don’t sit there playin’ polly-wolly-doodle all the day.”

It was dark save the golden glow of a lamp. At the foot of the bed was an angel, looking up at the picture on the wall—just that old painting of Jesus, she assured herself quickly, before the angel commanded her rapt attention.

She’d always figured angels would have a fairly momentous set of wings, but none showed on this gleaming being. There was the expected white robe, and a tumbling flow of golden hair, and the requisite halo—but no wings. Could angels be like birds? she wondered. Eagles had broad, powerful wings, but if you saw one sitting in a tree it was always a surprise when it took off, unfurling a magnificent span that had seemed but a part of its torso until it decided to fly. “Angel?” she asked cautiously, not sure how one might address an angel—or if one should address an angel at all. When the angel turned Joss saw that she was crying, and it so disconcerted her that she closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. She wasn’t sure she could fool an angel, but she was willing to try; it had never occurred to her that an angel might weep—even though Jesus had, in the Gospel according to John, just before he rose Lazarus back from the grave. “I love you, Joss,” the angel whispered, and the words infused her with such a depth of

knowing she could only whisper back: I love you, too. And she learned that the touch of an angel’s lips was real, and exquisitely gentle; she learned that angels did cry, and that their tears were as warm as human tears when an angel rested her face against a human woman’s naked belly for her sorrow. She discovered that an angel’s hair against her skin was softer than anything she had ever imagined, making her senses think of springtime and the brief, precious fragrance of lilacs. Hoping it was all right to dare to touch such a being, she let her fingers find that wondrous hair, but she was too weak to offer the comfort she had intended; shyly, she let her fingertips rest against that golden head, and wished there was more a mortal human might do to console a weeping angel.

It was bare and brown and brittle, slate-skied; nude tree branches chattered like teeth in the bone-biting cold. She was glad of the thin gray line of smoke rising straight up from the chimney as she looked toward the house, glad of that fire even as she knew that such a straight rise of smoke meant the cold was killing...and she was glad of the cold.

Levi emptied a box into the bed of the wagon and put it under the spout of the overflow pipe by the well. It was about half the size of the peach crate she had brought home filled with treasures from Leavenworth one day. Its sides were slightly flared, its seams sealed with pitch; it didn’t leak much as it filled with water so cold it seemed almost thick. There were a few dozen of the boxes lined up by the well; some of them, filled but moments ago, were already skimmed with a layer of ice: ice as thin as a Spode teacup, ice thin enough for a horse to cut a lip on. The ice was the color of breath in the air, the color of the sky and the smoke that dared into it.

She muscled the last of the solidly-frozen boxes to the back of the wagon and upended it, thumping a gloved fist against the bottom. The block of ice broke free and Levi wrestled it into position, tossing a handful of straw over it. The wagon was almost full, its load gleaming diamonds and gold in the deep

winter afternoon. She put the empty box beside the one that was filling and waited, studying the new log cabin in the elms behind the house, and pushed the box into place with her foot when it was time. When it was full she closed the valve and heard the overflow splash into the depth of the well.

Washburn Station Ice Company,
said the side board of the wagon.
J. Bodett, Prop.

“Joss...”

She looked up from a particularly gnarly burl of oak that had been resisting her best efforts to split it, studying the sound of the hot summer afternoon, wondering if she had heard her name or not.

“Joss, I need you in here...”

She picked at her sweat-saturated shirt, trying to unstick it from her skin, and leaned the axe against the chunk of wood and trudged to the house—and what she found was the angel, clad only in an expressively loosened chemise, coming to her with a look that removed any doubt of her intentions for the next hour.

“But I can’t—you’re—”

“Would you deny me?”

“I—oh, Lord. But I’m all sweaty,” she protested weakly, as deft fingers defeated the buttons of her shirt.

“That’s how I want you. Wet”—small hands slipped under the shirt, seeking her back—“and slick”—palms indulged themselves in that hard wash of sweat, slipping from her waist to her shoulders, bringing her closer— “and here”—the touch of whispering lips at her throat was enough to convince her; that tongue tasting the slick saltiness of her neck, and the press of barely-clad breasts against her, left no time to spare—“and now. Right now, Joss. Right here.”

The kitchen table was clear save a basket of husked corn. When the angel wrapped her arms around Joss’s neck and her legs around her waist, the table was as far as they would get. By the time she led Joss’s hand to the corn, neither of them questioned what she wanted, and no one was near enough to hear

when she panted her desire and gasped her need and screamed her fulfillment into the heat of the day.

Lord above, did I do that to an angel? No, I couldn’t have, but—oh,
you’re going to Hell, Joss Bodett...if you ain’t already there. Something
feels awful desperate wrong here.

She peeked through her eyelashes for the picture of Jesus; it was there, and just Jesus, sunlight splashing across His pious, handsome face. She breathed a sigh of relief—surely no picture of Jesus would hang in Hell—and almost yelped at a deep and gentle male voice. “Well, Joss. Have you joined us at last?”

Uh-oh. First He’s sporting around with Ethan, and now He’s
talking to you. This ain’t looking so good for your earthly self, Josie.
She dared to open one eye.

If that was Jesus standing by the side of the bed, He was quite a lot shorter and slighter than she would have expected, and He didn’t have His long hair, or much of a beard, but she remembered her mother saying that she didn’t think the Good Lord would have put a lily-white baby down amongst all those dark people of Israel, no matter what the pictures of Him showed; maybe Jesus looked like what He had to so as to fit in with the appearance of His flock. She hadn’t expected that He’d wear a uniform
(you
didn’t expect Him in a plaid shirt and a sheepskin vest, either).
She didn’t know how to address Him any more than she’d known how to address the angel
(oh, that angel—what you done! Lord, I
hope You’re in a good mood—);
it seemed a bit presumptuous to say, ‘Howdy, Jesus, fancy meetin’ you here,’ especially given the likelihood of His disapproval of her recent behavior with the angel.

“This don’t none of it feel right nor real.” Her voice felt like molasses in her mouth.

“I shouldn’t think it would,” he said soberly. “It’s been a hellish week all around, my dear.”

His choice of words didn’t make her feel any better; He looked as if He were trying to decide what to do with her. “I didn’t hurt her,” she whispered. “Should I have denied her? She asked me—”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Tell me, Joss,” he said softly.

“That angel. She—I—” She felt the tears start, tears of utter helplessness and confusion. “I was just tryin’ to bust down that burl, an’ she—I didn’t mean but to try an’ please her! I had to answer, didn’t I? It ain’t my mortal place to try an’ outguess an angel! She asked me to, Jesus; wasn’t you watchin’? It was rough but I swear it wasn’t against her will, I ain’t no Sodomite—”

“All right, Joss. It’s all right—” His hand at her shoulder was gentle, but his voice had the sharpness of command. “Robert!”

Something thickly warm and bitter met her tongue. “Merciful Jesus,” she heard, as deep and warm and bitter as the drug. “Don’t do this to her.”

She struggled to focus on the ethereal beings at either side of the bed, or on the picture at the end of it. “No! No, she asked me—please! She asked—she—”

“We called him wild” —Doc’s voice was hoarse from sleeplessness; Aidan looked gaunt and hollow to Captain Leonard as he nursed the last of her bottle of Leavenworth brandy— “but what he was was periodically insane.” Quietly, he spoke of Ethan: of the uncontrollable, almost cyclic craziness that had come over him, spewing him out into the dark places where he could let his madness go; he spoke of the innate goodness of him, goodness not strong enough to overpower the surges of rage; in speaking of Ethan, he spoke of Joss. “There’s too much of that in her, and ever been thus. What she says when she wakes, Aidan—I don’t know if it comes from the blow she took, or if we’re hearing the part of the Blackstone blood you damn so often that lives in her. Ethan laughed at it—called it his mustang—but he knew his madness, as did she. I only wonder how much she knows of it in herself.”

Aidan looked at him. “Will she live?”

He averted his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “If she will, or if she should.”

Malin looked up.

“If this blow to the head were to exacerbate that streak of

lunacy in her—Good Lord, Aidan, she was talking about raping angels. I’d fear for your safety.”

Aidan jammed back the hot flare of her own Blackstone blood; she stood. “You’ve ever been so damned ready to believe she’d harm me! You treat her injury,” she said coldly. “I’ll treat her madness.”

“‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.’”

She started from the beginning. There was nowhere else to start.

“‘And there came two angels to Sodom at even, and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot, seeing them, rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; and he said, Behold, now, my lords—’”

“They get that all wrong, don’t they?”

“What?” Aidan looked up from her reading; it wasn’t the first time Joss had seemed to be asleep and surprised her with a comment, although this one didn’t make much more apparent sense than any of the others.

“They’d’ve took after them angels, an’ no regard for who they were or what might come o’ their rashness. Ain’t that it?”

She was talking about raping angels.
Aidan closed the Bible on her finger. “What, Joss?” Softly, she asked. “What are you saying?”

“Either they was sayin’ ‘Bring ’em out an’ let us molest ’em as if they was women,’ or they was sayin’ ‘Bring them foreigners out an’ let’s see what they got to say for ’emselves.’ Either way, they wasn’t showin’ no hospitality. They mistrusted ’em just ’cause they was different, like Thom an’ Effie damnin’ a free-stater. Sell the tea an’ never mind forcin’ yourself on people! Ain’t that what it was about? An’ I knowed I never hurt you.” Her fingers fisted around a handful of quilt. “I don’t know why you’re here,”

she whispered, “unless I’m fixin’ to cross, but—please, could you

read me about Ruth an’ Naomi? ‘Entreat me not to leave thee, for whither thou goest, I will go—’ Lord, those’re such pretty words.”

“Don’t be so hard against him, Aidan.” Malin Leonard sat at the kitchen table, brooding over the shaving mug and brush Aidan had given him, listening as she railed against Doc. “He doesn’t deserve your wrath.”

“And why not?” She banged a pan filled with pared potatoes onto the stove and slammed a lid onto it; Zeke Clark had arrived in the early afternoon to have a terse conversation with Doc out on the porch, about what she didn’t know; she only knew Doc was gone, and she could speak freely—and had to, before she exploded. “So she’s a Blackstone!” She lifted the lid to toss a palm’s-measure of salt in with the potatoes. “I’m one, too. If my birthing goes awry, will he advocate letting me die as if I were no more than Argus Slade—whom he treated as gently as if he were worth saving for no more than to hang! Would that he’d give Joss the same courtesy.”

“That’s unfair. He’s done everything he knows to do for her, Aidan.”

“To the exclusion of boring a hole in her skull, thank you very much.” She had nipped that suggestion in the bud—vehemently—

the day before. “Given his talk of madness, I’m not so sure he’s convinced she has swelling on the brain as much as he might give credence to that charlatan Dr. Rush’s belief that drilling a hole in the skull releases the demons.” The oven door screeched as she opened it to check on the chicken she had roasting there; she spooned its own fat onto it and drove the shelf in again. The door squawked shut; Malin gritted his teeth and made a mental note to find the oilcan. “You said there was something in her that healed you. Mayhap even madness can heal, by showing us what could be in ourselves, that we might be grateful it isn’t.”

She turned. “We don’t know her thoughts, Malin, or her dreams, to know if what she says makes sense to her but not to us—and how is she to make sense anyway, the way he keeps her dosed

with opiates? I only know she’s never hurt me, and I don’t believe she ever would, and for him to question the rightness of her survival—what sort of god does he think he is, to even entertain such a notion? He sounds like my father!”

Wearily, Malin smiled. “I’ll assume that’s a most despicable insult. Aidan, I was as stunned as you were to hear the words fall from his mouth. It sounded so little like the Robert I know, for I know he loves Joss—and you with her—as if you both were his own flesh and blood. But he’s desperately tired, and feels hamstrung at his inability to do more for her, and I wonder if perhaps that has clouded his thinking. But for Joss’s sake, I’d dose him with laudanum and force him to sleep.”