The Grass Widow (36 page)

“Joss, for heaven’s sake! I merely meant that most first-time mothers are nervous in the last month. I wasn’t—”

“An’ the both o’ you always got a explanation for your hard words. What the hell happened between you? She won’t tell me.”Doc eyed her for a tense moment; finally he slumped back in his chair with a sigh. “I said something she rightly took exception to,” he said quietly, his fingertips rubbing at his forehead. “I don’t

blame her for being angry with me. I won’t blame her if she never forgives me. I’m ashamed of it, and hurt at losing her affection, and those things aren’t excuse enough for my roughness with her, but they’re all the excuse I have.”

“Well, best you get over your roughness before next month. Earlene’s due, too, an’ might not be able to tend to her an’ no matter what I dreamed. I always got sent off when Ma was birthin’, an’ don’t know no more about it except what the cow an’ sows do.”

“It’s all pretty much the same,” Doc smiled tiredly, and for a moment he sat rocking, his hand rubbing a slow comfort at the junction between his leg andhis prosthesis. “Perhaps the only way she’ll forgive me,” he said at last, “is if you can.”

She rocked, and wove, and listened to his halting admission of the words he had spoken that had turned Aidan’s heart against him. When he was done she opened the new bag of tobacco he had brought and rolled a cigarette; she lit it and smoked, looking out over her fields. The new crops were coming fresh and green as spring. “Mayhap it’s easier for me to understand,” she said at last, slowly, “knowin’ Ethan as I did, an’ my own wide streak o’ nonsense, but I can’t say it don’t pain me, Doc, to know you questioned me bein’ worth savin’.”

“That’s not what I meant by it. I don’t know how to explain what I meant, but all I felt for you was love, Joss—and fear. I know your strength of character—and your gentleness, no matter how Aidan thinks I don’t trust that in you—and I was terrified of you losing that. Of becoming the worst side of yourself. Neither you nor I can deny there’s a darkness in you.”

“Hell, Doc, there’s darkness in all of us. Mine just stands out in close quarters.” She held her basket at arm’s-length, squinting at it. “That look even to you?”

“It’s beautiful. You’re as good at it as your mother was.”

“Good teachin’.” She put the basket beside her chair and drew on her cigarette. “I ain’t mad at you,” she said quietly. “Don’t know if that’ll help Aidan none, but I ain’t mad at you.”

“She’s a good wife to you, Joss. She’s reacting from that quarter.”

“No. Yes, she’s reactin’ from somewhere like that, but she ain’t a wife to me.” She dunked her smoke in the pail of water and tossed the butt over the porch rail. “I don’t know the word for what she is to me, but wife ain’t it. That’d make me a husband, an’ I ain’t wearin’ that name.”

“I suppose not.” He scratched the backs of his fingers against a day’s growth of beard. “I hate to wake her if she’s resting, but I have news that’s for both of you, and sure to be welcome.”

“Time she was gettin’ up anyway. Just go in an’ make up the fire; she’ll think it’s me an’ come runnin’ to make sure I ain’t turnin’ a damn lick o’ anythin’ but what I can do in this chair.”

Doc rattled stove lids and Aidan came out yawning. “Oh. It’s you,” she grumbled.

“Joss asked me what was wrong between us.” He opened the dampers so that the sticks of cedar he had put on the coals might catch. “I told her.”

“Remarkably poor judgment, I’d say.”

“At least she allowed me to explain what was in my heart, and accepted that. Be that as it may, please do what you need to and come out to the porch. I’ve news you both want to hear.”

“Do you want tea?”

“If it’s no trouble.” He went back to the porch and leaned against a post, shaking his head slowly.

“I’ll talk to her,” Joss said gently. “Just remember how it takes time to turn an idea around in your head once it gets set there.”

Wryly, she smiled. “That’s how all this trouble started, by me not bein’ able to unthink somethin’ soon enough to keep me from bein’ all rash about it. Doubt’s a bad weed, Doc. That seed gets planted, the damn thing’ll grow anywhere.”

“True enough.”

“I wonder if it ain’t like pokeweed. The more you try an’ bust it up, the more it grows off’n its own parts. An’ if you try pullin’

it, it’s got a taproot worse’n alfalfa.”

Aidan handed teacups out the window over the sink; Doc held hers while she lowered her bulk to the rocker. She was carrying the baby high and forward, and a lot of it—or maybe, he mused,

it just looked like a lot of baby because she was so tiny. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Fat, awkward and ugly. Mostly ugly.”

“Earlene says the same, and adds that hers seems to be trying to kick his way out—and with hobnailed boots.”

“Both parties were wearing skates when she was conceived; it feels as if she got them, too. How is Earlene?”

“Just waiting. She’s an old hand at this, six births later. Are you having any discomfort?”

“Less than yesterday, actually. I think she turned over and got her foot out of my lungs.”

“And your bowels?”

“Fine. You said you had news?”

Doc tasted his tea and chose not to mention that he preferred it with sugar; he knew Aidan knew that. “Lemuel Carpenter read Flora’s will today.”

“An’ now Daniel’s a rich man and goodbye, Washburn Station,” Joss said dryly.

“Yes he is—well over a hundred thousand dollars—and no doubt as good as gone. He was talking law school on his way out of Lem’s office. But she left Nat Day the pecan orchard.”

That surprised a laugh from Joss. “God love her! He earned them damn trees, Nat did, the way she abused his poor self over

’em last fall! Oh, that’s just grand.”

“It gets grander. She left Zeke Clark the farm proper—”

“No!”

“—with the provision that Ottis may never live there saving his complete infirmity.”

“Hooray, Flora,” Aidan murmured.

“Lord, that’s wonderful for Zeke! I’ll have to find another driver now, I guess! Oh, but ain’t that goin’ to stick an’ fester in Ott’s craw, his son a rich man an’ him barred from takin’ of it.”

“There were a number of things in that will that showed a sharp cross between her sense of humor and her work ethic. If Nat or Zeke choose to sell within ten years, they must sell back to her estate at a fixed price, which is pitifully low. They’ll have

to earn their winnings. But she knew a winning horse when she saw one. Nat, Zeke...” He smiled. “And you.”

Both women stared at him. “Huh?” Joss finally ventured, cautiously.

“She left you the branch section, Joss. All hundred and sixty acres—”

“Good Lord!”

“—free and clear. Sell it next week if you want to, for whatever you can get for it from whomever you can get it, but until you do, you’re one of the larger landowners in the Station, and that, my dear, is as good as money in the bank. Personally, I’d advise you to hold onto it. It needs clearing, but we can rally up a crew—”

“No,” she whispered. “No. I ain’t ever clearin’ that land. If you’re true an’ it’s really mine, it ain’t ever goin’ to get cleared while I live. Kansas got lots of fields, but she ain’t got many forests. If I got me one, I aim to keep it.”

“Then you have yourself a forest. I heard the will read.” He scratched his back against the post. “Aidan,” he said, grinning in spite of their difficulties. “While you weren’t directly mentioned, she left your little skater the very tidy sum of ten thousand dollars in trust—”

Aidan gasped.

“—to assure the receipt of any higher education the child chooses. Lem said he’d come over this week to explain the provisions of the trust to you.”

“And—oh, my,” Aidan said faintly; her teacup jittered against its saucer. “And her family didn’t contest this?”

Doc shook his head. “There’s hardly a family in the Station untouched by her generosity. She spread her wealth around this town like Joss spreads butter on hot bread.”

Aidan leaned her head against the back of the rocker, swallowing hard, her eyes closed. “Oh, Lord. Thank you, Flora,”

she whispered. “Thank you, you dear, rebellious old woman.”

However little sense it made on the surface, by virtue of being the bearer of such wondrous news, Doc’s stock went up

with Aidan. She invited him for supper as if she might truly enjoy his company, and indulged in a few sips of the brandy he had brought to celebrate; by the time the dishes were done they had even managed to laugh together. He risked offering her a hug on the porch when he said good-night, and she hesitated only a moment before accepting it. “I’ll stop by Jackson’s on the way home and tell Gid to bring a horse over tomorrow,” he said.

“Even if Earlene can’t serve as midwife, Joss can turn him out when it’s time, and the boys will know to find me. Joss won’t want to leave you—and she shouldn’t be riding anyway, until her balance returns.”

“Thank you, Doc.” And he waited, for it seemed to him that there was more she might say, but finally she turned. “Goodnight,” she said quietly. “It was a pleasant evening.”

Twenty-two

“Dead, but not dust, Flora,” Joss murmured at the pile of lath stacked beside the house a week later, and found the box of itty-bitty nails Flora had donated with the strips of wood so that the board portion of the house might be battened before the bad weather. “I’ve got enough axe handles for two or three years, an’

if I don’t get this done you’ll be hauntin’ me.”

It was easy work, as Flora had said it would be; the hardest part was that her eye-to-hand coordination was still variable, but the small nails didn’t need strong driving, so she didn’t have to swear too terribly when she missed a nail and hammered her thumb instead.

She worked a few hours before Aidan begged her to stop. “It sounds like a woodpecker on the outhouse door and me trapped inside. Please, if you need to be busy, mightn’t you make me a garden basket? Something quiet while I take a rest. I feel a little colicky. Don’t let me sleep past three. I’ve a chicken soaking for

supper and must get it into the oven.”

So she figured out a basket and carved a handle, and put it in the water tank of the stove to soak so she could bend it to shape, and got out her ash strips and pail, but when she got to the point of needing to insert the handle it was still too stiff to bend, and that brought her to a halt.

She paced, restless.

She went out to the pasture to talk to the horses: her own Charley and Fritz, and the jet-black Goblin, James Jackson’s handsome gelding. She wasn’t entirely pleased that it was James’s horse that had come, but it was the horse the Jacksons had felt they could spare, and she appreciated the signal more than she mistrusted the possibility of the omen. She noticed a fraying strap on his halter and took it off to repair it, and then had hell to pay catching him so she could put it back on, and that occupied her for an hour.

At three, she debated waking Aidan and decided against it; she readied the chicken and put it into the oven, and scrubbed potatoes to bake.

She wandered back outside, saw the neat stack of oak flooring scraps, and remembered her ice molds; she assembled sawhorses and handsaw, block plane and folding rule, and measured the tray in the icebox. By the third try she had it figured out and was in production.

She heard Aidan stirring in the house and waited to be scolded for letting her sleep. She was less concerned about the scolding than she was about how erratic Aidan’s sleep had become; she rarely got more than a few hours at a time before the little skater prodded her awake. Joss smiled a little. “That’s just preparin’ for after the birth,” she murmured, marking off a board for cutting,

“an’ the babe wantin’ feedin’ all hours o’ the night an’ day.”

“Joss—”

“Hi. Out on the porch.”

“Joss, something’s—oh, good Lord! What—? Joss! Joss, please, something’s wrong—”

She dropped her saw, bounced off the sawhorse, staggered

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through the kitchen door. “What—oh, Lord God, Aidan, your water’s broke. Let me—” She stepped into the mess and her feet went out from under her; she landed hard on her back, banging her head against the floor. “Ow! Shit, ain’t that just what I need!”

“Oh, Joss! Are you—let me—”

“Don’t lift at me, woman; Christ A’mighty!” She struggled to her feet. “I’m all right. Oh, shit. What do I—oh, God damn, I ain’t—God damned ears, quit ringin’!” She shook her head; it didn’t help, but she managed to focus on Aidan. “Did you have the show? That little bit o’ blood Doc said about?”

“Yes.” She held her belly with her hands, trying to support it; Doc could give all the instruction he wanted, but he couldn’t possibly have prepared her for what had happened in her body in the last fifteen minutes of the last two unusual hours. “I felt—

crampy, like diarrhea, but with nothing—oh, what an awful mess I’ve made!”

“Don’t worry about the mess. Just move careful away from it. What now? Lord, Doc give me a list, I put it somewhere—”

She riffed through the Baptist Hymnal three times before she found it. “Here.” Her heart was hammering in her chest. “Basins, binder, napkins, needles an’ thread, safety pins, olive oil—damn!

Effie never got that for me, the old bitch—old linen, all this stuff, I got all this stuff—hell, I’ve got to turn out Goblin an’ have Gid go for Doc—”

“We’ve got time,” Aidan soothed, calm by no means but calmer than Joss seemed to be. “He said from the time my water broke until the baby came might be as much as thirty-six hours. Maybe even more. It doesn’t hurt yet, Joss. Let’s get the bed ready.”

“Right. Get the bed—damn! You’re early by two weeks, Aidan, I ain’t ready—”

“I don’t think our readiness is of an issue here, my love. The baby is, and the bed must be. Let’s go.”

In the bedroom, trying to prepare things, her feet felt mired in molasses, but in the kitchen, zooming across the waxed oaken floor to get the things she or Doc or Earlene might need, she

twice hit the slick, wet patch of liquor amnii and ended up on her ass on the floor, trying not to hit her head, swearing when she did. She managed to stagger out to the paddock; Goblin laughed at her from the other end of it, and finally she cornered him and grabbed his newly-repaired halter in both hands and forced him to the gate. “Go home!” she screamed. “Go home, you worthless fucking hammerheaded black cayuse! Git! Go see James! Go!