The Grass Widow (34 page)

“You might as well. Joss is in God’s hands.” She speared the liver of the chicken from a pan on the stove and mashed it with a fork, mixing in a spoonful of baked beans, the yolk of a hardboiled egg, and enough cream to make a smooth, soft paste of it; she added a dollop of spinach to the plate, chopping it until it, too, was a creamy paste. Over it all, she sprinkled a generous dusting of pecans that she had reduced nearly to powder. “Mind that oven gauge if you would, and prop the door on a piece of kindling if it gets too hot,” she said, knowing that the captain didn’t deserve her curtness visited upon him for the sins of his lover, but she was unable to keep it from her voice; she took the plate and a cup of corn tea to the bedroom

“I’m sorry, Malin,” she said gently, back from Joss’s care with an empty plate and the sheets she had replaced on the bed; she dropped the bedding into the washtub that had lived for the last week in a lightly-trafficked corner of the kitchen and put a pail to fill under the spigot in the sink. “I railed at you for something that’s not of your doing. Please forgive my rudeness.”

“There’s naught to forgive. We’re all tired, Aidan.” He traced a finger around the top of the shaving mug that was still on the table in front of him; he supposed he should use it, but he rather liked the look of the week’s growth of beard that had softened on his face.

He opened the tin of shaving soap and sniffed of it, and closed it again. “She ate well.”

“Yes, with much coaxing.”

“Did she speak?”

She started to lift the pail from the sink; he scrambled to his feet to do it for her. “How can she remember Levi and yet look at me as if I were a stranger to her? A welcome stranger—she looks at me with—I don’t know; it seems almost like adoration—but it seems she sees me as a stranger nonetheless.”

He poured icy water onto the sheets and set the pail under the tap again. “A head wound is a curious thing, Aidan. I’ve seen wounded men who knew me, but not their own wives or mothers, and men such as Levi, who comprehend everything said to them but can’t express their thoughts save with the greatest difficulty on their part and dedication on the part of the listener.” He leaned against the sink, feeling grubby in clothes that hadn’t seen but his back for eight days; maybe a shave would feel good after all. “When I was a young man, a fellow beat me senseless and left me for dead for having learned—through no doing of mine, might I add—that I preferred the company of men. He dealt me some fierce blows to the head. I spent several days not sure of who I was, let alone the people around me, but within the week I was myself again.” He grated some soap into the washtub and emptied the second pail over the sheets (he was accustomed by now to the smell, but still not certain how Aidan could so casually deal with the reality behind it), and put the washbasin in the sink, getting a dipper of hot water from the stove so Aidan could wash her hands, looking out the window at a noise in the yard. “Here’s Robert home.”

“Testify for me that she seems more alert without the laudanum. She seems in no pain, and I see no reason to drug her if she’s not.”

“Have you forgiven him?”

“No. What Judas is he, taking his pieces of silver for the year’s care of a family and then taking its sole survivor so lightly?”

“I don’t take her lightly.” Doc leaned on his forearms against

the doorjamb, looking wearier than the two of them together.

“Nor you, Aidan. And I’m no Judas.”

The afternoon’s anger boiled up in her again. “What would you call yourself, then? God? How could you even question if she should live?”

“I saw what hell he went through, and the hell he put others through! I stitched his wounds, and the wounds he gave others, I politicked the damage he did his family in the eyes of this town—”

“She’s not Ethan!”

He turned from the door; they heard the awful crunching thud of his fist meeting a post on the porch. “Jesus God in Heaven! Why did You call me? Why?”

She applied brown paper and vinegar because he believed in it, and ice water from the well because she believed in it; Malin held him while grief shook his broad shoulders. Flora Washburn had died in his arms three hours ago: Flora who had, with her long-dead husband, founded Washburn Station; Flora who had financed the medical education of a Newtonville boy on no more promise than that he would practice in her town; Flora who had worn trousers first that Joss Bodett might get away with it next; Flora who had earned the fear and the respect—and the curious affection—of a village she had ruled for sixty years with a velvet fist in an iron glove. That noon she had left Zeke to the making of his own dinner, saying she felt puny and wanted only a cup of tea that he might make for her, and for him to sit with her while she drank it; by the time Ezekiel understood that she needed Doc’s attention far more than his, it was too late.

Malin coaxed a sleepworthy dose of laudanum, thinly disguised in a cup of corn tea, down the doctor’s throat. It hit him like Marcus Jackson’s two-fingered fist; it took them longer to get his limp bulk to Seth’s old bed than it had taken for the drug to knock him out.

God damn you, talk to me! I’ll leave you, Joss, I swear I will, I
won’t go through this every time!

0

It was a desperate honesty screamed at her retreating back; she didn’t know why she was running, but she could feel a writhing, volatile maze of hurt and anger and fear in her heart and in her guts, that dangerous combination that always made her run; she felt it as physically as she felt the ground under her boots, the dust in her throat, the sun on her back. The threat stopped her like a curb-bitted horse. Anger lunged up over the hurt and fear, but when she turned to lash something back, what she saw made her choke on the venom: the one who had screamed at her was the angel, and she was suddenly terrified in the coldest pit of her belly: she was terrified that if an angel said God damn you, God would listen.

She had never seen this kind of light before. She’d seen the preternatural brightness that preceded a tornado, and the glowering gloom before a blizzard; she’d seen the peculiarity of the July sky the year they got snow on the Fourth, and had the good sense to be afraid of all of them. But she’d never seen the flickering, mobile oddity of such a light as this; it drifted and swirled like a visible wind, there and gone, and there again, and she was more than afraid.

Is this what the light looks like in the place where the damned go?

She looked for the picture of Jesus, needing the reassurance of it.His painted gaze paid no attention to the light. “Lord above,”

she murmured, and wasn’t entirely certain that those pensive brown eyes didn’t touch hers in question before they returned to their study of a corner of the ceiling. “I seen some mightily strange things lately.”

She had seen and dreamed, felt and sensed, until she didn’t know when she opened her eyes if she opened them to daydream or nightmare. Jesus had known Ethan; she had known an angel; she didn’t know, or dare to guess, what was right or wrong anymore.

She let her eyes roam the room. There was Jesus with His eyes that saw everything and nothing; there was the old and scratched armoire that lived in her earliest memories; there was

the lamp that wasn’t lit, and the window that showed the bluegreen day. There was someone sitting by the side of the bed, nodding an uneasy doze. “Hey,” she said; his eyelashes flickered.

“Hey. What guardian are you?”

“Hmm?” He started awake. “Joss?”

“Which gates are you guardin’?”

He ran a hand across his face, humanly weary; he scratched at his beard, but understood her. “The gates between your sleep and waking. I’m Malin Leonard. Do you remember me?”

She studied his face. It was familiar and kind, and brought a flicker of memory: the smoky, warm breath of moors and heaths.

“I think you was Jesus a while back.”

He smiled. “An interesting thought, to one who believes in reincarnation as I do. You seem much better, Joss. How do you feel? Are you in any pain?”

She tested that, and finally allowed, “Not so’s you’d notice.”

Her head ached, but it was tolerable. “Am I supposed to be?”

“Not if you aren’t.” He stood, stretching; she heard his shoulders pop. “Try to stay awake. I’ll see if your lunch is ready.”

She turned to watch him go, and a bolt of pain slammed into her head. “Oowww,” she protested, reaching to explore, and groaned in the misery of her own touch. She struggled to sit up and wished she hadn’t, but didn’t dare try to lie down again for fear of making it worse. She rested her face in her hands and waited for the thudding ache to subside, fighting with her stomach; it felt as if it was lurching into her throat, and if just sitting up had caused such an intensity of pain, she didn’t even want to think about vomiting. “That might be Jesus, Lord,” she whispered shakily, “but this sure ain’t my idea o’ Heaven.”

“Oh, my stars! Joss, what are you—”

Gentle arms offered support; when she didn’t have to fight for balance, the pain ebbed. She clung to the angel—she knew it was the angel by the scent of lilacs (and had a confusing memory of sweat and corn and more kinds of heat than she could comprehend)—until her stomach stopped its roiling and the sick prickle of cold sweat relented. “Don’t give me over to

this without lettin’ me even know my sin,” she whispered. “Please tell me what I did that you’d damn me.”

“I haven’t damned you.” Lips brushed her face; she didn’t know when she had ever felt such reassurance. “I’d never damn you, Joss.”

She shivered, even though the room was hot and the body against her was warm. “I swear this is the mixedest-up I’ve ever been. I’ve got angels savin’ me an’ damnin’ me by turns, an’ Jesus in a sheepskin vest runnin’ off with Ethan an’ comin’ back alone wearin’ a uniform, an’ me flittin’ from hot to cold an’ back again—

an’ if I try thinkin’ on it I can’t even half the time remember what I’m tryin’ to think on. What scrambled my brains up so?”

“You hit your head. You’ve a bad concussion and a horrible wound, and Joss, you mustn’t even think to try to get out of bed. You lost an awful amount of blood, and you’re terribly weak. Give me your weight, now, and let me help you to lay down.”

Once she was supported by the pillows the pain receded; three fuzzy angels merged to become one. “Ain’t this how we started?” she asked; the words came seemingly independent of any conscious thought, and she wasn’t sure what she’d meant once they were said.

But the angel smiled. “It surely is, my darling, and I’d be pleased not to need do it again.”

“I wish I knew about anything,” Joss whispered. “I keep thinkin’ o’ you as an angel, ’cause it seems that’s what you are, but if that’s so, you’ve surely been hoverin’ over me for quite some time. An’ it seems... it seems I keep runnin’ to you, an’ from you, an’ stoppin’ midway sometimes for not knowin’ which way I’d ought to go.” She closed her eyes, drawing a thin breath. “I liked that part about the ice, though,” she murmured. “That was all clean an’ sensible. Lord, my head hurts awful.”

She heard the squeak of a cork being drawn from a bottle.

“Open your mouth—” She grimaced at the taste of the laudanum, but she swallowed. “Rest, Joss.” A gentle hand brushed her cheek.

“I’ll be here if you need me.”

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

It felt like quivering near-panic; it felt like helplessness and desperation and prayer, the kind of prayer sent with promises attached: God, please if you do this for me I swear I’ll never, or I’ll always; it felt like washing her mother’s body and putting silver dollars on her eyes and sewing up the shroud with tiny stitches blurred by a grief too barren to yield its tears. Names flickered at her in that fog of impotence, names with prayers attached: Doc, do something, please do something
(Aidan—)
Earlene, help her
(Aidan, stay with me—)
God, don’t let her die, I swear I’ll
(Aidan, stay with me! Please Aidan oh God no don’t take
her away from me—)

“Aidan!
Aidan please God oh God Doc do something please do something Aidan—”

“Joss! Joss, no, it’s all right, I’m here—” She had been asleep, some part of her aware of Joss’s restlessness in the bed beside her, but her utter weariness hadn’t allowed her to respond to it until Joss almost screamed her name. “Joss, it’s all right! I’m right here, darling. I’m here. Shhh—”

“I’ve got her.” Doc’s voice was low and calm in the darkness.

“I’ve got her, Aidan.” He held her, held her down, held her head; she fought him, but she was too weak to fight too much. “Light the lamp—Easy, Joss. Easy, girl. It’s all right.”

You talk to her like she’s your damned horse.
The thought flickered sourly through Aidan’s consciousness, but she didn’t say it; she found a match and lifted the chimney of the lamp. Light flared and she turned back the wick. “Joss, I’m here. Give me your hand—there,” she soothed, her heart still thudding hard.

“Tell me, darling. Tell me what’s wrong.”

It was Doc’s hand at her chin, stabilizing her head; it was Doc’s dark eyes she looked into. “She’s goin’ to have a hard time,”

she whispered. “Like Earlene with James that Ma said about. I seen it, Doc. Jesus, I was scared—let go o’ me, you big son of a snake! I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“You had a bad dream,” Doc said, gradually easing his hold on her until he knew she was done struggling. “Aidan’s fine,

Joss. The baby’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.” Joss had dreamed what she had dreamed, or seen what she’d seen; he’d had and heard dreams that had been more premonition than nightsweats. But Aidan’s eyes were huge with apprehension; he spoke more for her benefit than for Joss’s. “I’ve delivered hundreds of babies and only three breech births, and in all three cases, mother and child survived and thrived. She’ll be fine, Joss.”

“You take care o’ her, Doc. If I ain’t here—”

“You’ll be here.” He said it because he felt it; she was halfwild with the fear of what she’d dreamed, but she knew him, and knew Aidan; she was back in her mind, however much healing her body had yet to do. “I’ll take care of her. I won’t let anything happen to her.”