The High Divide (23 page)

As Gretta sipped a cup of the strongest coffee she'd ever had, she studied the tintype that Mrs. Powers slid across the table—a pair of soldiers posing in uniform, staring out from beneath their campaign hats, rifles propped on their shoulders, fists holding the steel barrels, the wooden stocks pointing up behind them toward a façade of Roman columns. The man on the left was Ulysses, looking much younger than when she first met him. Well shaven. Two ears clearly visible. Curly, dark hair.

Gretta pointed at the other one, blond and stocky, his eyes magnified by thick lenses. He looked like a young scholar. “Your husband?” she asked.

“Yes. Taken at Fort Dodge, I believe.”

“Kansas?”

“Yes, where the Seventh was encamped in the fall of sixty-eight. They were charged with punishing the Indians down there. The Cheyennes, Arapaho, and Comanches who were raiding the settlers.”

In the tintype, Ulysses looked strangely calm and boyish. Not like himself at all. Gretta recalled his story of losing an ear at the Battle of Nashville in sixty-five, not long before Grant and Lee met at Appomatox to end the war.

“Do you have any idea why your husband never said anything?” Mrs. Powers asked.

Gretta pushed the picture to the middle of the table, planted her shoes on the floor and pushed backward. The legs of her chair scraped against the wood. In the lamplight Mrs. Powers looked beautiful and frightening, and Gretta's impulse was to run upstairs and grab her son, escape this place. But where would they go? The only way ahead was
through
this woman, smiling there across the table. Or not smiling—it was hard to be sure.

“No,” Gretta said, “but I believe you're going to tell me.”

“I don't think that's my obligation.”

“It would be cruel not to, wouldn't it? Knowing as you do what I'm facing.”

“Isn't it up to
him
to decide what he wants you to know?”

“Put yourself in my place,” Gretta said.

“I'm not sure, in your place, that I'd want another woman interposing herself between my husband and myself.”

“You've already done that.”

Mrs. Powers shook her head. “I didn't ask him to come here. He arrived at my door uninvited.”

“How long did he stay?”

The woman looked down at the floor, her face rigid, and Gretta was reminded of a porcelain doll she was given as a child that she had kept on the dresser next to her bed, its face strangely assymetrical, one side of its smile turning up too far, giving the doll a devilish look that frightened Gretta at night.

“He stayed for a couple of days, looking through the odds and ends of Jim's possessions, what he left behind,” Mrs. Powers said.

“Looking for what?”

Mrs. Powers didn't answer.

“You must think that knowing things about my husband—things I don't know—gives you some claim to him.”

“Mrs. Pope, I didn't bring this on myself.”

“Tell me.”

“Can't you see? Telling a man's wife what he can't tell her himself?” She laughed without smiling. “That's a terrible betrayal.”

“You can't betray someone to whom you owe nothing. Someone who owes you nothing. What do you owe
him
?”

Mrs. Powers looked up for a moment into Gretta's face before sighing and turning away.

“Did he tell you to keep quiet?”

“Of course not. He had no idea you'd be coming here. But he did say this. He said he'd always meant to talk to you, that he wanted to—but you never liked to hear anything
upsetting
. His word. He said you'd had enough in your life that was troublesome, and he didn't blame you for not wanting any more of it.”

Gretta sat back, chastised.

Mrs. Powers rose from the table and went to the stove for the coffeepot, which she brought back to refill their cups. “You grew up where?” she asked, as if she'd been told but couldn't seem to remember.

“Denmark.”

“You probably drink more tea than coffee.”

“I drink both.” She lifted her cup from its saucer. It was made of delicate china, with a rose pattern painted on its side and gold around the rim.

“My husband purchased them from a salesman who claimed to have brought them back from Scandinavia,” Mrs. Powers said. “From Sweden, I believe. He's a pompous man, this drummer, with an accent that changes, year to year. By his own account he's lived in Paris and Rome and London.” She smiled to herself, looking away. “Jim was susceptible to that sort of persuasion. He liked to think of himself as a man of taste and good breeding. He liked to tell about his uncle, a professor of sorts, back in England—though of course Jim had no education himself. Once a year we took the train to Fargo, where he would buy a suit of clothes for himself and a new dress for me. He wanted to be seen as a man of the world. It was a weakness of his—but we all have weaknesses, don't you think? A weakness of mine is how much I miss him, and how alone I feel in this place.”

“What sort of work did he do?”

“He was a land surveyor. He also delivered coal. We saved our pennies.”

“Did you lie with with my husband?” Gretta asked.

Mrs. Powers winced, then looked up through narrowed eyes, her lips pursed.

“I have to know,” Gretta said.

“Of course you do. But it doesn't matter what I say, how I answer you. Can't you see? Because you're not interested in the right
thing.
It's like you're going to someone's grand house, but you've stumbled into the back door, or into the servants' quarters, and you're thinking,
This is it?
”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Gretta said.

Mrs. Powers laughed. “What am I going to tell you, Mrs. Pope? Think about it. I'm going to say,
Of course not. How could you accuse me of such a thing? What do you think I am?
And you won't believe me. You're sure that you know what's important, what matters, but in fact you don't. And if you asked me the right question, and I answered it, you wouldn't want to hear that either.”

“You don't know me.”

“Maybe I don't. But your husband does, and he's out there somewhere, afraid of damaging you.”

“Give me a chance, for God's sake. Who do you think you are? My judge?”

Mrs. Powers sipped her coffee. She'd turned to the side, staring into the darkened parlor, her eyes cold and bitter. From upstairs Danny called out in his sleep, something that sounded like
Here I am—let's eat.

“Is he all right?” Mrs. Powers asked. “Do you need to check on him?”

They both listened for a minute, but Danny didn't call out again. Outside, the wind had kicked up, and Gretta could hear it groaning in the trees that overhung the house. Through the kitchen window a thin smear of clouds was visible, half concealing the stars.

Mrs. Powers said, “Finish your coffee, there's something I have to show you,” and she got up from the table and lit a hurricane lamp that hung by the door. She handed Gretta a heavy woolen shawl. There was nothing to do but stand up and put it on.

The grass behind the house was ankle high and stiff with frost. After a dozen steps Gretta could feel the dampness through her stockings. She followed the woman onto a plank walkway through the chicken yard, all mud and shit to the henhouse, the lantern throwing yellow light against the walls whose shelves were covered with broodhens, clucking and blinking. A rooster flapped down from a corner perch and high-stepped in a circle about the floor like some kind of untested soldier trying to convince himself of his own courage. His eyes in the lantern light were bloody pearls, and Gretta couldn't help but think of the rooster Ulysses got rid of on the day he left home.

Mrs. Powers moved to the far wall, empty except for a hanging quilt, and raised her lantern to it. The green and yellow design made Gretta think of the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

“I made this for Jim, for our tenth wedding anniversary. For batting I used his wool blanket-coat, the one they issued him for the winter campaigns. See the pyramids? I made those out of the robe I had when we married.”

“It's lovely.”

“And do you wonder why it's hanging out here with the fowl?”

Gretta found herself holding her breath, shifting her weight from her heels to her toes. Mrs. Powers stepped forward and lifted the quilt from the hooks that held it, bunched it up and grasped it close to herself.

“It used to smell like him,” she said. “Not anymore. But look here.” She lifted the lantern close to the wall where the quilt was hanging. The wood was stained dark in a rushing pattern, like a bird in flight, a crow, its wings spread and legs trailing like strands of twine beneath it.

“What do you see?” Mrs. Powers asked.

“A bird?” Gretta said.

Mrs. Powers stood back and took a long look, as if trying to see it through Gretta's eyes. Her face was concentrated and dark. “No,” she said. “It's two eyes, staring. And a toothless mouth. And those long streams of tears. See them? He came out here on the most beautiful night of the spring. We'd had a rain, and then it cleared off. I was starting to think he'd put it all behind him. He was sleeping better, eating more, enjoying the food I made him. Gaining weight too. These were the things I saw. The people who knew him—they thought he was happy. When I heard it, though, I knew. I knew. It was about this time of night, and you can imagine the hens and how they were screaming. I had to come out here alone, with this lantern. Believe me when I say it would have been better for me if he'd gone off somewhere, without telling me, and done what he needed to do in order to put things right for himself. Please don't expect my sympathy, Mrs. Pope.”

The woman shook out the quilt, causing a stir among the hens, and then rehung it, covering up the stains. As much as Gretta would have liked to say something to ease Mrs. Powers's pain, no words formed in her mind.

Back inside, sitting in the parlor again, Mrs. Powers said, “There was no one your husband could talk to, not that talking would have been enough. But when he got here, at least he could do that. I didn't stop him. And if I gave him any comfort by listening, you have my permission to hold that against me.” She reached her fingers into the
V
at the top of her blouse and with a quick motion flipped out a round tag about the size of a dime, threaded on a gold chain. It was made of tin, a tobacco tag from a plug issued—Gretta knew—by the P. Lorillard Tobacco company, and stamped with a green turtle against a yellow background.

“That's my husband's!” Gretta said. “He wears it all the time. On a brass chain he got from his grandmother.”

“So he said.”

“He gave it to you? No, I don't believe that.”

“Of course you don't.”

“I don't understand—is he coming back
here?
Is that what he said? To you?”

“I believe he is. Yes.”

The woman sat there, half smiling, rubbing the green turtle between her thumb and forefinger. Gretta couldn't speak. So much was happening, so fast, that she couldn't keep hold of it all, the pressure inside her head like a fist squeezing down on her brain. She thought of her wedding night with Ulysses, and the green turtle dipping and dipping on its chain, each time touching her briefly on the soft skin of her breastbone, each time just the lightest, coolest touch. She didn't know what questions to ask anymore but understood at least that she was a damn fool for not knowing.

“What exactly could you tell me about the Seventh Cavalry?” Mrs. Powers asked, tucking the turtle back inside her blouse.

Gretta closed her eyes. She took a breath, trying to compose herself. She shook her head. She said, “The Little Big Horn, of course. And Custer.”

“But you must also know, if Danny talked to you, that our husbands mustered out long before that debacle. Thank God for small blessings.” She rose from her chair, knelt in front of the big secretary, and with a key she opened its long bottom drawer. Over her shoulder she said, “Have you ever heard of the Washita?”

“No,” Gretta told her.

“It's the bone that's caught in your husband's throat,” she said, and turned. She was holding a pair of small, beaded moccasins and an envelope. She put the envelope on the arm of her chair, sat back down and leaned into Gretta, the moccasins resting on her upturned palms. They were child-sized, and the familiar pattern of beads across the toes turned Gretta's stomach cold: a blue mountain beneath a yellow sun, same as the pattern on the buckskin pouch Ulysses had kept in his lockbox all these years.

“You don't want to hold them?”

Gretta made fists of her hands.

Mrs. Powers set the moccasins on the floor, removed a letter from the old envelope and handed it to Gretta. It was written on United States Cavalry stationery and dated February 12, 1869, a single paragraph commending Lieutenant James Powers “for bravery in a theatre of war, at the Battle of the Washita,” and signed by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

“I didn't show it to your sons. I didn't show them the moccasins either.”

“Thank you,” Gretta said.

“It might have helped if he hadn't been lauded for what he did. It might have made the difference. That's what I think sometimes. But I'm always one to imagine how things might have turned out differently. Anyway, I'll tell you now—if you still want to hear it—what Jim told me, and your husband kept to himself. And truth be told, it'll be a relief for me to give you a piece of it to carry.” She sighed and laughed, a dreadful smile on her face. “You see, I'm jealous of you for not knowing, not having to bear it like I have. And for thinking your husband loved you too much to let you hear it.”

“Please,” Gretta said. “Just get it over with.”

They stayed where they were, in the parlor, Mrs. Powers staring out the window as she talked, Gretta looking down at her own hands, accepting the story like the punishment she deserved, and when she finally went upstairs to bed, her body was numb, her mind dulled enough to achieve a fitful sleep. By morning she could see it was pointless to pursue her husband any further. She could go on to Miles City, of course, and implore him to come back home with her to Sloan's Crossing where they could make an effort to take up their old lives again. Or she could suggest they move somewhere else and start fresh. She wanted nothing more than to press her face into his chest, explain that what he'd done could not be helped, that he was a good man, that she loved him—except she wasn't sure about any of those things, not sure at all. His actions, damning as they'd been, were made even worse by his inability to speak of them. He hadn't been honest with her, not for a single day of their lives together, and the very idea of seeing him again frightened her. What else had he done that he hadn't told her about?