The Legacy (18 page)

“I’ve been . . . keeping very busy,” Caroline said hesitantly, startled by the woman’s forwardness.

“As we all do, for sure,” Angie shrugged. “Kids’ll help, when they start coming. Nothing like a houseful of little ones to keep you distracted, I can tell you!” Caroline smiled, and blushed a little. She could hardly wait to have her first baby. She longed for a tiny child to cradle, for the softness of its skin, the wholeness of a new family. The permanence of roots put down.

“Corin wants to have five,” she said, smiling shyly.

“Five! My good Lord, you’ve got your work cut out for you, girl!” Angie exclaimed with a wide grin. “But—you’re young yet. Spread them out, that’s my advice. That way the older ones’ll be able to help you with the toddlers. Well, when you fall, be sure to let me know. You’ll want more help then, and advice from an old hand. Just remember where I am, and send word if you need anything.”

“That’s really very kind of you,” Caroline said, secretly sure she would need no such help. She knew, in her heart, that while her cooking refused to improve and her body would not harden to the housework, it was in motherhood that her calling lay.

When Angie left, an hour or so later, she did not set off in the direction of her home, but toward the corrals where some of the men were at work. Caroline tended not to venture there herself, feeling too shy of the men and too unsure of the nature of their work, despite Corin’s urgings that she learn the running of the ranch. What she had seen she had found brutal. Animals brought roughly to the ground, their horns sawn off, their heads pushed beneath stinking, stinging dip to kill parasites, the Massey Ranch emblem,
MR
, burned into their skins. She hated the way they rolled their eyes in terror, so white and vulnerable looking. But seeing Angie lead her horse calmly over to Hutch, who was overseeing the branding of new calves in the nearest corral, Caroline suddenly felt left out and left behind. She hurriedly removed her apron, grabbed her bonnet and walked quickly in the same direction.

Hutch had come over to the fence and was leaning upon it, continuing to watch the branding even as he talked to Angie. Wondering how to announce her presence, feeling high strung with nerves, Caroline heard her name spoken and stopped instead, stepping sideways so that the shadow of the bunkhouse engulfed her. The stink of burning hair and skin made her gag, and she put her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound.

“She’s none too friendly, is she?” Angie said, folding her arms. Hutch shrugged one shoulder.

“She’s trying her best, I reckon. Can’t be easy, with her brought up so soft. I don’t think she ever walked more than a quarter mile at a time before, and I hear from Corin that she surely never cooked before.”

“Shame he didn’t set up nearer town—she could have taught class or something. Made better use of those fine manners than she will out here,” Angie said, shaking her head as if in disapproval. “What do the boys make of her?”

“Hard to say, really. She doesn’t come out of the house much; she doesn’t ride out, sure as heck doesn’t bring us lemonade on a hot day,” Hutch grinned. “Feels the heat a bit strongly, I think.”

“What was Corin thinking, marrying such a green tenderfoot and leaving her out here by herself?”

“Well, I reckon he was thinking she was a fine-looking girl with a good head on her shoulders.”

“Hutchinson, one of these days I’ll hear you speak a hard word about someone or something and I will fall clean off my horse. Good head on her shoulders in the city maybe, but out here? Why, she’s even setting about the chores with corsets on so tight she can hardly breathe! Does that sound like good sense to you?” Angie exclaimed. Hutch said something that Caroline could not hear above the calves’ frightened bellows, and then he turned toward Angie. Fearing she would be seen, Caroline skirted the side of the bunkhouse and walked swiftly back to the house, angry tears smarting her eyes.

Later, at dinner, Caroline watched her husband as he ate the bland food she had given him without complaint. He had come in late from rounding up two stray beeves, arriving at the table ravenous and having performed no toilette but to splash his hands and face with water from the trough. In the lamplight he looked rough, older than he was. His hair stuck out at wild angles and there was prairie sand along his hairline. After a day outside he seemed to soak up the sun and then glow all night long, she thought. The sun loved him. It did not love her. It scorched her pale skin, burnt freckles into her cheeks and made her nose peel most unattractively. She watched him and felt a surge of love that was at once wonderful and somehow desperate. He was her husband, and yet she felt as though she might lose him. She had not known that she was failing until she met Angie Fosset and heard her verdict on Corin’s soft new wife. She swallowed her tears because she knew she would not be able to explain them to him.

“Evangeline Fosset came by here today,” she said, her voice a little constricted.

“Oh? That’s wonderful! She’s such a good neighbor, and always so friendly. Didn’t you find her so?” he asked. Caroline sipped from her water glass to forestall her reply. “If ever there was an example of how the West gives women freedoms that they’ve never had, and of how best a woman might make good on those freedoms, Angie is that example,” Corin went on.

“She didn’t leave a calling card before visiting. I wasn’t prepared for a guest,” Caroline said, hating the cold tone in her voice, but also hating to hear her husband praise another woman.

“No, well . . . when you’ve got to ride seven miles to say you’re going to call on a person, seems like sense to just go ahead and call on them once you get there, I suppose.”

“I heard her talking about me to Hutch. She called me tenderfoot. What does it mean?”

“Tenderfoot?” Corin smiled briefly, but stopped when he saw his wife’s tight expression, the glimmer in her eyes. “Oh, now, sweetheart—I’m sure she didn’t mean anything bad by it. Tenderfoot just means you’re not used to the West, that’s all. To the outdoor kind of life.”

“Well, how can I be used to it? Is it my fault, where I was born? Is that any reason to talk about a person, and use names? I’m
trying
to get along with life out here!”

“I know you are! I know.” Corin took Caroline’s hands and squeezed them. “Don’t fret about it. You’re doing great—”

“No, I’m not! I can’t cook! I can’t keep up with all the work! The plants aren’t growing . . . the house is full of sand!” she cried.

“You’re exaggerating—”

“Hutch knows I can’t cook, so you must have told him! I
heard
him say it!”

At this Corin paused, and a little color came into his cheeks. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have said it and I’m sorry that I did. But, my love, if you need some help just tell me, and we’ll find you some help!” he assured her, stroking her face where tears were wetting the skin.

“I need help,” she said, miserably; and as she admitted it she felt the weight of it lighten on her shoulders. Corin smiled.

“Then you shall have it,” he told her gently, and he murmured soft words to her until she smiled back at him and stopped her crying.

So Magpie was recruited to come into the house and share the housework, and although Caroline was not sure that she wanted the Ponca girl beside her all day long, Magpie came with a ready smile and an ease of doing things that came from being born to it. Happily, Caroline relinquished the cooking to her and watched as old bones and dried beans became thick, tasty soup; and bread dough rose willingly between damp cloths when left in the sun on the window sill; and handfuls of mysterious herbs picked from the prairie made sauces savoury and delicious. The washing took less than half the time it had previously taken, and came up cleaner; and Magpie did the heavier jobs, like fetching water and carrying the wet linens out to the line so that Caroline, for the first time since her arrival, found time in the day to sit and read, or to start some sewing. She never thought she would feel anything other than glad to have another person take on these tasks, but at the same time she envied the ease with which Magpie performed them. Magpie worked with good cheer, and she taught Caroline tactfully, never implying that she ought to know such things, and never making Caroline feel inadequate, so it was impossible to resent the girl.

But she did find it hard to concentrate with Magpie in the house. The girl drew the eye and she sang softly to herself as she worked—odd melodies like none Caroline had ever heard, as alien and eerie as the voices of the prairie wolves. And she moved softly, so softly that Caroline hardly heard her. She was sitting at her sewing one morning, stitching a tiny flower garland into the corner of a table runner, when she sensed a presence behind her and turned to find Magpie right by her shoulder, appraising the work.

“Very good, Mrs. Massey,” she smiled, nodding approvingly. “You stitch very well.”

“Oh . . . thank you, Magpie,” Caroline said breathlessly, startled by the girl’s sudden appearance. The sun, catching the long braid of the Ponca girl’s hair, showed no sign of red, or of brown. It was as black as a crow’s wing. Caroline noticed the thickness of it, and its inky sheen, and thought it coarse. With her round face and wide cheekbones, Magpie almost resembled the Celestial women Caroline had occasionally seen in New York, although Magpie’s skin was darker and redder. Caroline could not help shuddering slightly when their arms accidentally brushed. But she was fascinated by the girl, and caught herself watching her in whatever task she was performing. In the heat of the day, while sweat blistered Caroline’s brow and itched beneath her clothes, Magpie seemed unaffected. The sun had no power to discomfort her, and Caroline envied her this, too.

One suffocatingly hot day, when Caroline thought she would run mad if she had no relief from it, she went into the bedroom, shut the door, stripped off her blouse and corset and threw them to the floor. She sat still and felt the relative cool of the air in the room touch her sticky, stifling skin and, slowly, the light-headedness that had dogged her all that morning began to diminish. It was so humid, the air so thick, the sky so blindingly, glaringly bright that Caroline seemed to feel her blood thickening, simmering in her veins. When she dressed again, she left the corset off. Nobody seemed to notice, and indeed there was little
to
notice. The heat and her own cooking had reduced her appetite and the work had taken its toll. Beneath the rigors of her underclothes, Caroline had grown very thin.

Later that week it rained. It rained as though the sky were blackly furious with the ground and aimed to injure it. It rained in torrents, not in drops but in solid rods of water that lanced down from the glowering clouds and stirred the topsoil into a soup that ran away toward Toad Creek. That modest creek became an angry cascade. The horses stood stoically, nose to tail, with water streaming from their manes. Out on the pasture, the cows lay down and narrowed their eyes. Corin was in Woodward with Hutch, having driven seven hundred head of cattle to the stock pens, and Caroline lay on the bed in the early evening and prayed as hard as she could that the North Canadian would not flood, would not stay long in spate, would not prevent Corin’s return. She left the shutters open, listening to the rain hammer the roof above her, waiting, arms outflung, for the air creeping in through the window to feel cooler—for the water to wash the heat away.

There was a tentative knock at the door, and Magpie appeared.

“What’s wrong?” Caroline asked abruptly, sitting up with a start.

“Nothing wrong, Mrs. Massey. I have brought you something. Something to make you relieved,” the girl said. Caroline sighed, smoothing back her sweaty hair.

“Nothing can make me relieved,” she murmured.

“Come and try,” Magpie pressed. “It’s not good to lie down too much. You don’t grow used to things that way,” she insisted, and Caroline dragged herself to her feet, following the Ponca girl to the kitchen. “Watermelon. The first one of the summer! Try some.” Magpie passed Caroline a wide slice of the fruit: a bloody-colored crescent moon that stickied her fingers.

“Thank you, Magpie, but I’m really not very hungry . . .”

“Try some,” Magpie repeated, more firmly. Caroline glanced at her, met her bright black eyes and saw only goodwill there. She took the fruit and nibbled at it. “It’s good, yes?”

“Yes,” Caroline admitted, taking bigger bites. The melon was neither sweet nor sharp. It tasted mild and earthy, softly easing the parched, torn feeling at the back of her throat.

“And drink this.” Magpie passed her a cup of water. “Rainwater. Straight from the sky.”

“Well, there’s no shortage of that today!” Caroline joked.

“This is water from the land, this is water from the sky,” Magpie explained, pointing to the fruit and the cup. “To eat and drink these things, it makes you . . . it makes you balance with the land and the sky. Do you see? That way, you don’t feel so much like you are punished. You will feel like you are a part of this land and sky.”

“That would be good. Not to feel punished,” Caroline smiled slightly.

“Eat more, drink more!” Magpie encouraged her, smiling too. They sat together at the kitchen table, with the rain hissing down outside and their chins slick with melon juice; and soon Caroline felt a blessed cool begin to spread outward from inside her, sluicing the fevered burn from her skin.