In Need of a Good Wife (11 page)

Baumann waved as Randall slipped past the blankets hanging over the doorway. “Don’t freeze your balls off out there. There’s no salve that can help you with that.”

As Randall crunched across the snow, he ruminated on Miss Bixby and her brides. He was uneasy about the entire venture. It wasn’t that he objected to the idea of more women in town—
that
they sorely needed—but Randall was afraid he hadn’t done a very good job describing Destination to Miss Bixby. Everything she knew came from that confounded newspaper article, which sought to sensationalize the town’s troubles purely for the entertainment of its readers. For one thing, Destination wasn’t completely bereft of women. Mrs. Healy, the widow who owned and ran the tavern, lived among them, though she had made it clear that at fifty years old, she wasn’t interested in marrying again. And some of the homesteaders ten or twenty miles out had wives, but they came to town only once a season.

It
was
true that Samuel and Terrance Young were drunks, and they
had
burned down Gerhard Gade’s barn. Those two had been causing trouble since the first day they arrived in town. But the sense of chaos those men were purported to represent just didn’t exist. The riff raff had moved west with the railroad. Most of the men who remained worked themselves half to death just to survive. Yes, they drank and played cards. Fights broke out on occasion, but the men of Destination weren’t unlike the men one might find in any town. Just a little more bored and lonely. There wasn’t much more to it than that. But Randall supposed the truth made a far less interesting article. He worried that Miss Bixby, and therefore her coterie of brides, expected pandemonium and perhaps had too inflated an idea of what they might need to do, how drastic a change they might have to make.

On the other hand, he also worried that these city women didn’t know what they were getting themselves into out here. It was hard to understand just how remote Destination was until you arrived. The town didn’t really even have a doctor, though Augustus Owen put the word after his name. Women brought with them all kinds of mysterious ailments Randall—and Owen—knew nothing about. They would be wanting the foods they were used to. They would be needing new dresses eventually, and those funny buckled shoes. Not to mention real beds and kitchens and dining tables, which few homes in this town could offer. How would Destination accommodate them?

Randall pulled his sled up onto the front porch of the tavern and leaned it against the wall. He unhooked his snowshoes and knocked the snow off his boots, then opened the door, letting Sergeant hobble through first, called to action by the smell of the kitchen. Word had spread about the shepherd’s pie, and the dinner crowd was unusually large. Dr. Owen was there, speak of the devil, sitting at a table with Wyndham Ross, who homesteaded on the other side of town, and Albert Wessendorff, the grocer with nothing green to sell.

Randall sat down at an empty table. Mrs. Healy waved to him from behind the bar and went into the kitchen to get him some food. Randall settled back in the chair and took off his hat. His thick hair was damp with sweat and melted snow. Just as he was beginning to relax, he realized that the man with his back turned at the next table was Jeremiah Drake. But it was too late to move.

“Mayor Cartwright!” Jeremiah said as he turned in his chair, a glass of ale in his hand.

Jeremiah was one of the few men in town who ever called him
Mayor
, and when he did he meant it as a taunt. When Randall had arrived in Destination, the town didn’t have a mayor. Jeremiah steamrolled the other men in every important town matter, doing whatever he pleased and whatever benefited his profits at the brewery. Randall had talked the rest of the men into giving him a chance to govern, promised that he would be an impartial representative and put the needs of the entire town first. This had resulted in the title and a small room in the town hall where he went to answer correspondence once or twice a month. Nothing else came of it. It was Randall’s fool need to be of use, asserting itself all over again, he knew, and in the end no one gained much of anything.

“Just the man I was looking for,” Jeremiah said.

“That so?” Randall tried to keep his irritation at bay. Mrs. Healy brought the pie over and set it down in front of Randall, along with a small empty dish. He spooned some of the meat into the dish and put it down on the floor by his ankle. Sergeant sighed with pleasure as he jammed his face into the bowl and moved it around in a circle on the floor. Randall couldn’t blame him—it smelled like heaven.

“Now, would you look at that sorry excuse for a dog?” Jeremiah said, pointing his hat at Sergeant. The dog’s one good ear perked up. “I can’t believe somebody hasn’t just gone and shot him.”

Randall paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth and turned to glare at him.

Jeremiah grinned and held out his hands. “Only kidding,” he said as he slapped the mayor on the back. “Listen, the boys and I here”—Jeremiah gestured to the porter, Stuart Moran, and the dim bulb Bill Albright, who worked for Drake at the brewery—“were just talking about these women we’ve got coming in the spring. Moran hasn’t yet asked for a likeness of his bride and I was telling him he is a fool.”

Stuart shifted in his chair. He was always the first to talk about another man’s business when he was out of earshot, but when the focus shifted to him, he squirmed. “I can tell from her letters that she is fair. She sounds coy. Only good-looking women can act that way.”

Jeremiah turned to Bill. “You got a good look at that letter. What do you think?”

Bill shrugged. “I can’t get past the fact that this embarrassment of a man called her his ‘prairie flower.’ ”

Jeremiah slapped the table and their dishes jumped. “God help you, man. She may turn out to be a prairie dog instead. This is why I made my demands known up front. I won’t settle for less than precisely what I want.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Randall said too quickly, challenge creeping into his tone. “Has anybody fallen in love with you yet?”

“Plenty have,” Jeremiah said, staring Randall down. “But I’ve yet to be impressed.”

“What about you, Cartwright?” Stuart asked. “You set all this up—”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Randall interrupted. “Miss Bixby wrote to me and asked if she could bring some brides west. You all said you wanted them. I’m just the messenger.”

“Fine, fine,” Jeremiah said. “But what he wants to know is who is coming for
you
? You must have saved the cream of the crop for yourself. I know I would have.”

Randall waved the comment away. “Oh, I’m too old for all that,” he said, knowing that he and Jeremiah were about the same age.

“Boys, some men’s blood runs hotter than others, if you know what I mean,” Jeremiah said. Randall knew exactly what he was getting at, and it took all his composure not to haul back right there at the table and break his nose. “I can’t go another winter without a woman. Maybe our mayor can.”

Bill and Stuart looked at Randall to see what he would do, but he ignored them. He scraped the last bite of his dinner into his mouth and looked over at the bar. Mrs. Healy was watching the exchange anxiously. She was hardly the sort of rough woman one expected to be running a tavern in the middle of nowhere. She dreaded the inevitable fighting, the drunks making a mess. Fate had dealt her a bad hand, to be sure, when her husband was killed on the train while they were en route to California. She found herself stranded in Nebraska, a place she’d probably never even thought to wonder about.

“Mrs. Healy,” Randall said, walking over to her and pulling some coins from his pocket. “Could you wrap up three more of these for me, please? My uncle sends his regards.”

“Be happy to,” she said. He nodded good day to the men, who seemed satisfied that they had won the little competition they had invented for themselves. Sergeant was waiting by the door when Mrs. Healy brought out the food.

Randall pulled the pies home on the sled with Sergeant lying curled around them like a kitchen towel, greedy for their warmth. If Drake was trying to get under Randall’s skin, he was doing a pretty good job. That slippery bastard cherished acting as ringleader to his little band of fools. “I thought maybe he was like this because of losing his wife last year,” Mrs. Healy had told Randall once. “But everybody says he’s always been this way. If that’s true, I’d say his wife is lucky to be in her grave.” Now Randall felt sorry for the unlucky young lady Miss Bixby would find to be Drake’s second wife. He felt responsible, but he wasn’t sure what there was to be done about it.

Back at the soddy Uncle Kellinger was hunched in an armchair next to the stove reading a newspaper. Sergeant dived straight for the horse blankets as Randall carried in the pies.

“Took you long enough,” his uncle said. Randall set one pie on the table and put the other two in the cupboard for tomorrow’s dinner. He put the coffeepot on the stove but didn’t wait for the water to boil. Let the old man fix his own cup for a change.

“I’ve got more work to do in the barn,” Randall said. What difference did it make lying about what he planned to do? His uncle wasn’t likely to come checking on him. Sergeant leapt up when he moved toward the door, but Randall shook his head and pointed toward the blankets.

“You’ve got to stay here this time.” He leaned down and lowered his voice. “And stay out of his way.”

Back out in the snow once again, Randall strapped on the snowshoes and retraced his steps about halfway, to the western edge of town. It was well after three o’clock and the sky already seemed to be darkening toward evening. It was getting colder out, if that was even possible, Randall thought glumly.

As he knocked on the oak door of the only house in town nicer than Leo Schreier’s sturdy wood-frame home, Randall recalled the words from the New York paper’s article. “A house of mirth,” it had called this place. The phrase made him chuckle. He unhooked his snowshoes and stacked them on the porch.

A grandmotherly woman in a modest black gown opened the door. “Good afternoon,” she said.

“Hi, Jenny Lou.” Randall stepped inside and pulled his muffler down off his face.

“Mr. Cartwright—it’s you.” She hugged her arms and shivered. “Oh, it’s cold out there.

“You’d never know it from in here,” he said. He took off his coat and hat and hung them on the cast-iron tree next to the door. The house had a proper hearth, and an enormous fire blazed inside. Several pairs of slippers sat warming in a line on the stone floor in front of two overstuffed armchairs. Pairs of armchairs dotted the rest of the parlor, each one covered in a different pattern of silk or satin. No one knew who owned this house, though they hadn’t tried very hard to find out. If there was one thing everyone in Destination agreed on— except, perhaps, Reverend Crowley—it was that the ladies of the log house should be left alone to do as they pleased. Whatever man was behind the operation took good care of them. The furniture was new, the pantry well stocked, and a real doctor brought in on the train from Chicago whenever one of the ladies needed him.

“Would you like a whiskey?” Jenny Lou asked.

“No, but I thank you for the offer. Is Mariah about?”

Jenny Lou nodded. “Oh, yes. She is expecting you.”

Randall made his way down the hallway. The fourth door was ajar, the low light of a lamp casting its glow into the hallway. He knocked softly and Mariah called for him to come in. He closed the door behind him and laid the money on the table by the door.

“Hello, love,” Mariah said from where she sat on the bench in front of her vanity. Half of her thick, black hair—some of it false, Randall had suspected—was twisted and pinned on top of her head in a lush bundle dotted with silk roses. The rest trailed down her back in a braid with a pattern that reminded him of the scales on a fish.

“Is that a new dress?” he asked. It was blue silk molded to her tiny waist with a flutter of white around the neckline, square like a picture frame.

“Do you like it?” She stood up and came over to him, then took his hand and led him over to the bed. It was high and soft, three husk mattresses and a feather bed stacked on the bed frame. He nodded and sat down. The room was warm. On the stove in the corner a pan of water and cinnamon sticks simmered, giving off a spicy-sweet smell.

Mariah stood in front of him and he put his hands on her hips, pressing the soft flesh next to the bones in her pelvis with his thumbs. Randall had been coming to her for more than a year, since the first day he saw her get off the train at the depot and walk toward the log house clutching her small leather case. Mariah combed her fingers through his bushy hair and he closed his eyes. His hands looked so large against her tiny frame that he felt like a beast and a little ashamed of it. He moved them to the small of her back, over her rump, down the back of her thighs.

“You look tired,” Mariah said. “Is everything all right?” She kissed the top of his head and he opened his eyes. Her lips were full and red, her eyes bright. “I’ve missed this big wolfy beard,” she said, tugging playfully on it with her fingers, then bringing her breasts to his face. The hooks at the back of her dress were undone and he pulled it down easily while she untied the corset and stepped out of the plain cotton shift. She was naked except for the gold locket she always wore. He had asked her once what was inside but she would only shake her head. Her outline in the dim light made his heat rise; when she pressed her hand into his lap he moaned softly. Mariah giggled and shoved him down on the bed.

Randall wasn’t fool enough to think he loved her, or, even more naïve, that she loved him, but he didn’t mind that she was kind to him in addition to everything else he paid her for. After she had worn him out they lay in the bed together. She rested her cheek on his chest and he wondered whether she did this with everyone, afterward; he pushed the thought away. He had been in a dark mood all day, he realized. Randall visited Mariah because it made him feel good. He didn’t want it to become one more thing that depressed him.