The Outsider (64 page)

He brushed past her and through the barn doors as if he couldn’t get out fast enough. Abram followed, pausing only long enough to say to her, “ ‘She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.’ ”

“And what of your deeds this night, our Abram, our Samuel?”
she shouted after them. “You, too, will be answering for them on Judgment Day!”

She turned to her brother Sol, who stood as if his body felt too weighted to move. The knuckles on his right hand were scraped and swollen.

“Sol,” she said, nearly choking over his name. Her cheeks felt stiff and cold, and she realized she was crying. “I know what you are. How could you have had a part in this?”

Sol lifted his big head and faced her squarely. “If we wish to destroy a weed we must pull it up by the roots,” he said. But when he left the barn, he walked like an old, ill man.

Of those Plain men who claimed to love her, only Noah remained. It was too hurtful to look at him, so she focused her gaze on the hanging lantern above his shoulder. “You will take yourself away from here, Noah Weaver, and you will never set foot in my house again.”

“He wanted you and so he took you,” Noah said, his voice bleak with the knowledge of a thing he could hardly bear to accept. “He took you, and you let him.”

“And that justifies what you’ve done?”

“If you couldn’t have spared a thought for me, what about Ben?” His big farmer’s hands were clenching and unclenching rhythmically, his powerful chest shook. “Did you imagine Ben up in heaven and watching the two of you doing . . . doing your lewd and disgusting perversions?”

She flinched a little, but she kept her head up. “Whatever perversion Ben saw on this day, was done by you and my brothers. To beat on a man with fists and boots, four against one, and with vengeance in your hearts—that has never been the Plain way.”

He lifted his hands, palms out, and took a single stumbling step toward her. She saw the silver glint of tears on his cheeks, in his beard. “You remember that night, Rachel,
the night of my Gertie’s death? You said I was dear to you. Those were your words, Rachel. You said, ‘You are so dear to me, my Noah.’ You led me to believe that if it wasn’t for Ben, you would have come to me that night, that you would have been mine. And now—”

“And now you have just torn my heart out at the roots. I never want to look into your face again.”

His arms fell to his sides, and something seemed to collapse inside of him, like a rotted tree. He walked away, his brogans scuffing through the straw. But he stopped at the door and, bracing his hand hard against the frame as if he needed it to hold himself upright, he turned to face her.

“And him, Rachel? An outsider and a man-killer? What can he give you, besides misery and eternal damnation?”

HE WAS SITTING IN
a chair in her kitchen. She knelt between his spread thighs, putting crowfoot salve on his cuts. When she had looked down on him kneeling in her barn, her thoughts had gone reeling back to that first day, when he’d come staggering across her hay meadow, bleeding unto death from a gunshot. There had been a wild terror in his eyes that day. There was no terror in his eyes tonight. They were flat and cold once again, like a pond reflecting a winter sky.

Together she and Benjo had helped him get back onto his feet. He’d had to lean on them a little walking back to the house. He’d said not a word to her, though, beyond shouting her name that once, to stop her from stabbing Noah in the back with a hay rake. She wondered if she would have actually done such a thing, to stab a man with a rake. The thought made her feel ill.

Yet she set about doctoring his hurts with calm efficiency. The crowfoot salve for his cuts. An elderflower infusion
for his swollen eye. She chanted
Mutter
Anna Mary’s
Brauche
prayers, even though she understood now that her faith would never be strong enough.

She tugged at his shirt.

He seized her hands. “Leave it be, Rachel.”

She didn’t say anything, only looked up at him, fierce in her anger with all men in that moment, with men and their violent ways, and he let go of her hands.

With tender care she eased the tails out of his broadfalls and pulled the ripped and blood-splattered shirt over his head. Her gaze fell to his belly, where a raw, purpling bruise spread like a blackberry stain over his flesh.

She sat back on her heels. “Benjo,” she said, slowly and carefully.

The boy had been hovering over by the cookstove, as if he needed it for warmth, even though it was a hot July night. He hadn’t once taken his eyes off Johnny Cain. He jumped when she said his name.

“Benjo, go rake out the barn.”

“Buh . . . but it’s n-night out.”

She swung around at the waist, pointing to the door. “Go!”

Choking over words of protest, her son ran from the house, slamming the door hard behind him.

Rachel straightened up until once again she was kneeling before the outsider. She slid her arms around him and pressed her open mouth to his bruised flesh.

His hand closed over her head, crinkling her prayer cap. “Aw, Rachel, Rachel. Don’t, darlin’. I’ve taken worse beatings—”

“I will not hear that!”

She couldn’t bear him being hurt any more. She simply could not bear it. She moved her lips over the terrible
bruise, kissing him again and again and again, as if she would imprint herself on him, deeper than the bruise and forever. The love she felt for him was so strong it burned with every breath.

She grew quiet after a while, although she didn’t raise her head. She remained kneeling between his thighs, with her face pressed against the warm skin of his belly. I know him, she thought; I have taken his weight, he has pushed himself inside me.

“I know you, Johnny Cain,” she said aloud, the words vibrating against the taut muscle of his stomach. “I know you, and so I love you.”

His hand tightened on her cap. “Rachel, what happened to your brother Rome?”

She raised her head. He was looking down at her with those empty eyes, but a muscle ticked in his cheek and she could see the pulse beating in his neck, fast and hard. “Your particular friend and good neighbor Deacon Noah, he told me I was to ask you what happened to Rome.”

She had a hard time talking around the knot in her throat, a knot made of tangled threads of fear, anger, and despair. “I told you what happened. He was banned from the church, shunned by his family, and he died.”

“How did he die?”

She sat back on her heels again. Her gaze fell to her lap, where she was gripping and releasing, gripping and releasing, small handfuls of her apron.

“We wondered how he could do it, leave the church like he did, how he could just leave
us
like he did, just let his family go. We thought he was being so stubborn about it, but that he would relent someday. Relent and repent, because no one could actually
live
without the loving comfort
of family. It’s the same as what happens when a sheep leaves the fold.”

Her throat had been getting tighter and tighter, as if a hand had wrapped around her neck, choking her.

“How did he die, Rachel?” Cain asked, relentless.

“He hanged himself in our father’s barn with a halter rope.”

He didn’t move or make a sound, but she could feel something change in him. She looked up, into his eyes.

“What?” she cried. “What is it?”

He bent over and took her face in his hands, his thumbs lightly tracing the bones in her cheeks. “Before your brothers started in on walloping the bejesus out of me, I told them I would marry you.”

“Oh,” she said. She hadn’t imagined he would do such a thing, never such a thing. They had both been driven by hunger, but she thought the caring had all been on her side. Tears welled in her eyes. She covered his hand with hers, holding it in place, so that she could turn her head and press her lips into his palm.

“Be my wife, Rachel.”

She shook her head and the tears splattered. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to hold them back, hold them back. She hated tears, they made her feel weak and frightened, and she knew she had to be strong. Stronger than she’d ever had to be in her life.

“I love you, Johnny Cain. I will always love you. But a Plain woman must marry Plain, or she will be lost, shunned forever by her friends and family. Even the promise of life beyond death is denied to her. She will be lost.”

He still had her face cupped in his hands. He leaned closer now and brushed his mouth across hers, almost with
reverence. He started to pull away but she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him, and she laid her head on his shoulder, and he rested his chin on her head. It was awkward this way, with her half kneeling and him almost out of the chair, but neither of them noticed it.

She didn’t know how long they stayed that way. It was a commotion in the yard that pulled them apart. A commotion so late at night. Wagon wheels rattling over the corduroy bridge, MacDuff barking, and Benjo shouting a name—Mose.

Mose Weaver, who was supposed to be up on the mountain with their sheep.

She and Cain hurried out into the yard, snatching up lanterns on their way. Only something dire could have driven Mose to abandon the woollies.

Mose hauled sharply on the reins, and the light buckboard he was driving slewed to a stop, nearly running over Benjo and raising a whirlwind of dust. At first Rachel thought he was alone, but then she realized someone was lying hurt in the wagon bed. Even in the muted glint of the coal oil light she could see the red wash of blood on brown broadfalls. And a young, bony face beneath a thatch of leaf brown hair.

She hooked her lantern over the yard pump handle and ran toward the buckboard. “Levi! Oh, merciful heavens, Levi. What have you done?”

The boy struggled to sit up. “Aw, I’m all right, our Rachel. Don’t fuss.”

“He shot himself in the leg,” Mose said. “It’s not so bad anymore, now that he’s quit bleeding. I made a tourniquet with some rope and a stick. It worked slick,” he added, pride deepening his voice just a bit.

His face was pale and his grip on the reins shook a little, but his words as he told what had happened were calm
enough. Levi, doing the camp tending, had driven up that afternoon. He’d come across that coyote with the bum leg, the one who’d been feeding regularly off their sheep, along with her pups. Levi had grabbed for his rifle and somehow the thing had gone off before he could aim it and he’d shot himself in the thigh instead.

“I’m driving him directly to Doc Henry, but someone’s got to get back up there pronto to those sheep,” Mose said. “As it is, we’re going to have woollies scattered from hell to breakfast come morning. And then there’s that murdering coyote.” His gaze shifted over to Cain, his eyes widening slightly as he took in the man’s appearance. “I was wondering if you could, I mean, it’s going to take a dead shot to get that coyote. She’s wily and man-wise.”

Benjo jerked hard, and a harsh choking erupted from deep in his throat. He ran off, bumping against the outsider as he passed him. He ran so hard his hat flew off, but he left it lying there in the dust.

Rachel, shivering, gripped her elbows. Benjo’s fear of coyotes might be strong, but it wasn’t misplaced. Even leaving now, the soonest anyone could get there, riding under night conditions, would be dawn. In the murky light and purple shadows of dawn, coyotes were at their most dangerous to sheep. Whole herds had been known to be savaged by coyotes at dawn.

“Soon as I drop this clumsy
Schussel
off at Doc’s,” Mose said, with a nod and a wink for Levi, “this
Schussel
who hasn’t figured out yet which end of a rifle the bullet comes out of, then I’ll hurry on back to the woollies.”

Rachel summoned up a smile for Levi’s sake, who would surely blame himself for whatever disasters befell their sheep on this night. “In the meantime Mr. Cain’ll be on his way,” she said, “so don’t you boys worry none.”

Tugging at the reins, Mose began to turn the buckboard around. He tipped his hat at Rachel and flashed a sudden, cocky grin that reminded her strangely of Johnny Cain. “And don’t you go worrying too much about your Levi. He missed the real vital parts by a good six inches.”

Rachel stepped back and watched young Mose drive out of the yard. As they crossed back over the bridge she thought Levi might have raised his hand to her, and so she waved back. Maybe it was only the drama of the moment, but both boys had seemed different somehow. Especially Mose. There was a calm maturity about him that Rachel had never seen before. She thought how Noah would be proud of his son, and she was glad for him.

The wind whipped through the yard, tattering the cloud of dust stirred up by the wagon. Even without coyotes on the prowl, the sheep would be restless on a night like this. A night like this, they could stampede their woolly-headed selves over a cliff.

She felt the outsider come up close beside her. “When I first saw them,” she said, “when I first saw Levi lying all bloody like that in the wagon, I thought it was the Hunters who had done it. Another persecution for us to endure.”

“If you ask me, y’all could give the Hunter outfit lessons in persecution.”