The Snow Child: A Novel (24 page)

“As soon as he is well enough, I’ll schedule our travel,” she said. “And I know he will want you to have any of our tools and equipment, and of course the horse. We won’t be able to take any of it with us, I’m afraid.”

“Mabel?”

“We can’t stay here. You must see that.”

“You’re leaving the homestead? For good?”

“We were barely keeping it going as it was, George. And there’s just the two of us. It has been a fantastic adventure, coming here. But now it’s time we accepted our lot and went home.”

“You can’t just walk away. You’ve done so much work with the place. There’s got to be another way.”

George glanced toward the bedroom. “How long’s he been like this?”

“More than a week.”

“And how much had he gotten done on the fields before he got hurt?”

“He was still just preparing them.”

“Nothing’s been planted?”

Mabel shook her head.

“Goddamn—excuse the French. It’s just a helluva blow, isn’t it?”

“Yes, George. It truly is.”

He was unusually quiet as he mounted his horse.

“We’ll say goodbye before we go,” Mabel called to him from the cabin door. “Tell Esther thank you, for everything. You were truly the most wonderful neighbors we could have hoped for.”

George glanced back at her, shook his head, and rode off without a word. Mabel was certain his look was reproachful.

She was emptying the basin behind the cabin later that afternoon when she heard a wagon approaching on the dirt road. She hurried indoors and began to hide the linens and underwear she had been washing.

“Don’t do that on our account.” Mabel heard Esther’s laugh at the door.

“Oh, Esther!” She was surprised to find herself hugging her, then pressing her face into her friend’s shoulder and sobbing.

“Go on. Go on. You have yourself a cry.” Esther patted her on the back. “There you go.”

Mabel pulled away, smiled, and wiped her face. “Look at me. I’m a mess. What an awful way to greet a visitor.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else. Poor woman, here for days on your own caring for a banged-up man. Strong as they are, they’re like children with pain. No birthing to toughen them up, I say.” Esther looked Mabel straight in the eye when she said this, and there was no wince of regret or embarrassment. It was as if Esther knew exactly what memories she conjured, and Mabel understood—she had gone through labor, if only to deliver a dead child. She had survived that, hadn’t she? It was as if she had reached into her own pocket and discovered a small pebble, as hard as a diamond, that she had forgotten belonged to her.

“Where the hell am I supposed to put this?”

Garrett stood in the doorway, glaring over a heap of parcels in his arms.

“Watch your mouth. And put it wherever you can find room. Then go get the rest.”

“What is all this, Esther?”

“Supplies.”

“But we don’t… didn’t George tell you?”

“About your harebrained plan to ditch us? Oh, he told me all right. We finally get some interesting friends and you think we’re going let you go without a fight.”

“But we are leaving, so we don’t need any of this.” Mabel dropped her voice to nearly a whisper. “And honestly, Esther, we don’t have the money to pay for it.”

Garrett stomped by and dropped another armload onto the table. As the boy marched by, Esther pretended to slap him on the back of the head. Despite herself, Mabel smiled.

“Don’t worry about the money. Everybody heard about your predicament and threw some stuff together. Nothing fancy, but it’ll keep you for a while.”

“I don’t know what to say. It’s too much… too generous.”

“Well, we might not have a doctor around here, but we do have a few kind hearts among us,” and Esther winked over her shoulder as she began unloading boxes and sacks.

“Oh, I’m appalled at myself! I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just so frustrated.”

“No harm done. Old Man Palmer was too impressed by your riding skills to be offended. He said he’d never seen a lady gallop in such a gentlemanly way. Garrett, put those bedrolls over there, behind the woodstove. Keep them out of the way for now.”

“Bedrolls?”

“Didn’t I mention? We’re moving in. The boy and me. We might be a bossy, ill-tempered pair, but you can’t complain about free help.”

“Help? With Jack?”

“With Jack. With the planting. You’ve got us for the rest of the season, or until you get sick of us.”

“Esther—no, no. We can’t allow this.”

“Can’t allow it? I don’t think you understand who you’re up against here, dear heart. We’ll be planting those fields, Garrett and me. You can either help or get out of the way, but we’ll be doing it.”

Her voice was drowned out by the ruckus of Garrett dragging a horse trough through the cabin door. “Cripe’s sake, Ma. What the hell did we bring this for?”

“If you weren’t working your jaw, you’d be getting the job done. Bring it on over here, by the woodstove.”

“Don’t you think they’ve probably got a trough or two of their own?” He sarcastically rolled his eyes toward the barn.

“Not like this one.”

The horse trough was sparkling clean and took up most of the standing room by the woodstove. Mabel had the comic realization that she was watching her house being turned into a Benson home, quarrels and clutter and all.

“Garrett, have Mabel take you out to the field so you can take a look at the plow. See if it needs any fixing. Go on, Mabel. Some fresh air will do you good, and I’ll take care of things here.”

The boy was sullen and unresponsive on their walk, and Mabel soon left him in the field to work on the plow. Despite a niggling guilt, she took the long way back to the cabin. She inhaled the green scent of new leaves and studied the sharp line along the mountaintops where white snow met leafy
forest. Then she remembered she had missed Jack’s dose of laudanum.

“Back already? You should have stayed gone a bit. Your water’s not done yet.” Esther dipped a finger into a giant pot on the woodstove. She had propped open the cabin door to let the heat escape. Mabel hurried to the bedroom. Jack’s hair was damp and combed, and he smiled meekly up at her from the pillow.

“She gave me a bath,” he said.

“Esther did?”

He nodded as well as he could. Pillows and blankets propped him up in a peculiar position, with his knees bent and separated.

“Are you comfortable?”

He squinted self-consciously and then nodded. “Believe it or not.”

“I’m sorry I missed your dose of medicine.”

“Esther gave it to me, with a nip of something stronger.”

“Hurry on out here,” Esther called from the other room, “before the water gets cold or that adolescent son of mine comes back.” She was dumping the pot of steaming water into the horse trough.

“Usually it’d be the other way around, ladies first, but I wanted to get those wounds clean as possible. You’re getting some fresh water on top of that, though.”

Mabel wanted to refuse, to tell Esther she had done too much, but she stripped and climbed into the knee-deep hot water while Esther stood guard at the door.

“Take your time. It’s not every day you’re getting a bath like that.”

Beside the makeshift tub Esther had placed a chair that held a clean washcloth, a bar of milled soap, and a bottle of
lavender-scented shampoo. The water was almost unbearably hot, but Mabel let herself sink until even her head was submerged and her untied hair floated around her. Each time she started to get out of the tub, Esther ordered her back in, so she soaked until the water was tepid and the skin on her fingers and toes wrinkled. When she finally did get out, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains and left the perpetual twilight of a summer night. Esther wrapped her in a towel and fluffed her hair.

“There. Now we’re getting somewhere. Dinner will be ready soon. Get some comfortable clothes on. Nothing fancy. Just something to sleep in. I expect Garrett will be gone until late, looking at the fields. He’s not keen on bunking with two old women, but he’ll get tired eventually.”

With both of them wearing nightgowns, Esther served Mabel black bear stew hot from the stove and fresh biscuits. Then she spread out three bedrolls.

“I figured you’d been sleeping in a chair for days now. I know how it is when you’ve got a sick one tossing and turning in your bed. But these aren’t so bad. I even brought you a clean one. Come on now,” and she crawled beneath her covers and patted the bedroll beside her.

Mabel found it an unexpected relief to rest her head on a pillow, to be clean and fed and not alone.

“So, do you really think we can manage this?” she whispered from beneath her covers. “You and Garrett and me? Planting our whole farm?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think we could do something.”

“But what about your own place?”

“George’s got Bill and Michael there to help, and we’d
planned on hiring a couple of the youngsters from town to help with planting. We’ve got a good portion done already.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“We’re not there yet.”

The two women were silent a while, and then Esther spoke gently. “And what of your little girl?”

“She’s gone, Esther.”

She reached over and found Mabel’s hand and squeezed it once.

“Sweet Mabel,” she said. “I suppose now that you’re getting some sunshine and fresh air, she isn’t coming around anymore.”

Mabel didn’t answer, only stared at the ceiling for a long time. She thought Esther might have fallen asleep, and she had nearly dozed off herself when she began to laugh, quietly at first, but then louder.

“What’s tickled your funny bone?”

“You really gave Jack a bath? I can hardly believe it,” Mabel said. “His mother. Myself. I don’t think another woman has ever…”

“I’ve been married for thirty years and have three sons. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.”

The two women were giggling when Garrett walked in the door.

“What? What’s so funny?” he asked, but his stern face and blushing cheeks only made them laugh harder.

Voices rolled over Jack in waves that left him nauseous and confused, so he let himself sink back into the thick liquid of laudanum and moonshine. It was a warm, black place, without past or future or meaning. Later, when he woke to quiet shadows, his head was clear and thudding. He didn’t understand the
laughter he had heard before. Then he remembered Esther, helping him naked into a horse trough of hot water. Pain burned a hole through the center of his back and radiated up through his chest, and he sobbed. He stuffed a fist into his mouth to stifle it, and he sobbed and sobbed. Self-pity. That’s what this was. It wasn’t the searing nerves and muscle spasms that tore him apart. It was his life reduced to useless burden.