Together Apart (10 page)

The idea for the play that had come to me on the evening breeze rooted itself. Deep. I would put an end to the rumors, remove the smudge from Isaac's name, once and for all, help Hester and the others to see. And I would begin at once, painful as I feared the writing might be.

And I did begin, later that morning. Eliza had appeared, chipper and clear eyed, at precisely ten o'clock and sat down with the councilwomen. Not wanting to interrupt, I asked Dru to pass on a message that I'd be spending the rest of the day in my room.

Dru's bottom lip pretended a pout. "I'd hoped we might put our heads together today, come up with an idea for the play."

"I'm sorry, Dru, but the play is something I want, no, something I
need
to do by myself."

"You have an idea, then?"

"I do."

Dru's eyes danced. "Will there be a role for me, a very dramatic one? A tragic figure, like Shakespeare's Juliet, where I choose death if I cannot be with my truest love? Or a dastardly villain? Oh, yes, I've always wanted to play a villain!"

"There will be tragic and villainous figures enough to go around," I answered, then headed for my room.

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE
T
ULLEY SCARE, NEITHER
H
ANNAH
nor Eliza had shown their faces at breakfast. I'd waited in the kitchen as long as I'd dared, then locked myself up in the print shop only minutes before Dru arrived. Dru had rapped on the door and asked through the wood why neither Hannah nor Eliza were about. Before I could tell her I didn't know, a visitor arrived and I was left to wonder by my lonesome. I thought maybe they'd eaten some rancid food. But I'd eaten the same boiled tongue they'd eaten the night before. Then I thought maybe someone had broken into the main house and hurt them. I kicked myself for not having had the guts to go up to their rooms, whether they were still in their nightclothes or not.

I tried to keep my mind on my work, but that was like trying to keep my mind on fresh-baked bread while tromping through a barnyard of manure. The walls of the print shop squeezed closer, the ceiling lower, than ever before. Then I'd heard the sound of the mower moving back and forth. Rusty Farley! And the print shop shrank until it wasn't any bigger than the burrowed space at the center of a haystack.

I raced up to my room, where I spied on Rusty out the window. The morning sun threw a tall, manly shadow and shone on his tanned, muscle-thick arms. I felt about as small as Joey, who, with his sisters, happened just then to pass below the window.

I kicked at one of the legs of my cot, forgetting that I wasn't wearing shoes. I grabbed that foot to rub it, all the while hopping up and down on the other foot. All this rubbing and hopping caused me to get off kilter. I whacked my head on the corner of the cot on the way down and wrenched my shoulder when I hit the floor. I lay there, staring at the ceiling rafters, thinking how much they looked like the bars of a critter cage, then picked myself up and limped down to the stable.

Persephone snuffled. "Don't bother me," I growled, then headed for the rear cross-bucked doors. I listened for Rusty and his mower, reckoning his coming toward and going away. Then, when I guessed Rusty rounding the corner from back lawn to front, I shot through the doors and ran. Twenty paces, forty, like chasing a train, then a dive into the prairie grass. I lay there, my chest heaving, and stared up into the bluest sky. Blue and wide and deep like an ocean.

Hannah's make-believe was easy there in the grass. The earth against my back felt like the ribs of my boat. I fixed the clouds in place so it seemed like I was the one drifting, not them. I got so lost in the idea of it that I caught myself reaching for the oars.

Then I heard voices, and the clouds broke loose and started sailing across the sky again. I sat up and parted the grass just enough so I could see who it was but not enough so whoever it was could see me. Turned out to be Hannah and Hester, and Hannah looked fine, not sick or hurt. If my relief had been a tree, it would have pulled up its roots and danced a jig. But the jigging didn't last for long, because about then Rusty mowed himself back around the corner of the house. Seeing Hannah and Hester, he tipped his hat. Hannah nodded. After that, Rusty strutted like a rooster and the swath he cut in the grass was as crooked as a snake's.

I couldn't stomach looking at Rusty any more than I already had, so I turned my attention back to Hannah, and my earlier relief lost all its leaves. I couldn't make out what Hannah was saying, but the wild way she was flinging her hands told me she wasn't swapping recipes. Something was wrong. No doubt about it. And I was as trapped outside as I'd been in.

Not long after that, Hannah and Hester went back inside and I was left watching Rusty. Back and forth, stopping every now and again to wipe his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. I thought he'd never finish, and when he did the sun was noon-high and blistering. I'd left the stable without my cap, and the sun was singeing the tops of my ears, frying my nose, turning me the color of Russell Farley's hair.

Thinking the coast clear, I was about to race back to the stable when three women, trailed by a passel of young ones, marched out of the resting room. They settled in the shade of the walnut tree and commenced to eat their lunch.

The next person to show herself was Dru. She peeked behind the woodpile, knuckled the door of the outside necessary house, and shot upward glances into the trees. I uprooted a hank of prairie grass, shook some clods of dirt loose from the roots, and then lofted a clod in Dru's direction. The clod fell short. I lofted another and another until Dru jerked her head in the direction of my hiding place. She started toward me, but then one of the women under the tree said something, and Dru skedaddled it back to the resting room. And then I figured I was really sunk. Until Eliza showed up.

She strode from the stable door, pushing the wheelbarrow I always used, late at night, to dispose of Persephone's dung. The wheelbarrow was heaped high and covered by burlap feed sacks. After trading nods with the women under the tree, Eliza wheeled the barrow in a path the pitchfork handle, like an accusing finger, pointed out.

"Isaac?" she whispered.

I rustled a clump of grass.

"I won't ask why, that's your business, but I do think it best for all our sakes if you return to the house."

"You won't get an argument from me"

Eliza threw off the burlap sacks and forked, which stirred up the stink. Her nostrils curled, but she kept at it until the barrow was empty.

"Climb in," she said, holding one of the burlap sacks as a curtain between the women and me.

I didn't have to be told twice.

"Make yourself as flat as you can," Eliza said, covering me with the burlap. Eliza gave a not-so-girlish grunt when she heaved the handles up and set the barrow to rolling. "Lovely day," Eliza called out to the women on the lawn.

Under the burlap, I was gagging.

In the stable, I didn't waste any time getting out of the barrow. Eliza didn't waste any time, either. She picked up an oak bucket, dipped it in Persephone's water trough, and then dumped it over my head. "Don't move," she said, dipping again.

Eliza was about to douse me a third time when Dru showed up. "May I?" Dru asked.

Eliza handed Dru the bucket. "Be my guest."

"This is for the fright you gave me," Dru said, letting go.

Then Eliza said, "If you two will excuse me, I think I'll go for a stroll, air myself out a bit before returning to the resting room."

When she was gone, I turned to Dru. "I saw Hannah before, talking with Hester. Her hands were buzzing around like bumble bees, like she was mad or scared or something."

"She's gone up to her room."

"In the middle of the day! Now I know there's something wrong. If only I could get to her, see if there's something I can do to help."

"Go to her as a friend, right?"

"A friend, sure. One friend helping out another."

Dru grinned. "Then I have an idea that might work. Go change out of those putrid, sopping clothes."

Back in my room, I stripped down to my skin and then washed myself all over with the same basin water I'd used for a
spit
bath earlier that morning. I could've used a soak in Eliza's fancy bathing tub, but I couldn't get to that either.

I'd just finished toweling off when Dru banged on the door. "Are you decent?"

"No," I answered, wrapping the towel around my waist just in case Dru took a notion to barge in anyway. With Dru you never knew.

"Hide yourself behind the door then, and I'll slip this bundle inside. And I know what you're going to think when you see what I've brought, but it's the only way. I'll wait here on the landing, in case you need any help."

The door creaked open, a pile of clothing plopped to the floor, and then the door creaked shut. A gingham bonnet topped the pile. Under the bonnet was a worn-over pair of women's high-button shoes, and under the shoes was a raggedy brown dress. Dru had raided the Betterment Society castoff box her ma's friends had left in the resting room. Until that day, not one thing had ever left the box.

"You don't expect me to wear these ... these..."

"How badly do you want to see Hannah?" Dru asked from the other side of the closed door.

I didn't answer.

"They're just a fabric covering, not skin," Dru said. "You'll not change into a woman. I promise you that. For centuries men have taken the roles of women in the theater. Simply think of it as play-acting."

I held up the dress and tried to twist my mind around so I could see it the way Dru saw it. A covering, nothing more, nothing less. I put on a clean pair of trousers, then showed the mirror my backside and pulled the dress over my head. "Not skin," I said to myself as I reached around to do up the buttons. I did manage to fit one button into a hole but missed the mark and the button was two holes too high.

"I could use that help now," I said to the door.

Dru breezed in. "Having a little trouble with the buttons, are we?"

"Why do they sew them to the back?"

"Use your imagination. What if the buttons run down the front and one pulls open or pops, what might then be seen?"

"Oh."

"It's a good thing you're so skinny, else I'd have to cinch you into a corset."

"Oh."

Dru dragged the bonnet over my sunburned ears and tied a girlish bow under my chin. "Now for the shoes."

I sat on the cot and tried to shove my feet into the shoes, but my feet were too thick.

"I was afraid of that," Dru said. "We girls are made to wear narrow shoes from little on, so our feet are forced to take on this shape. The hem of your dress touches the floor, so I don't think anyone will notice if you wear your own shoes underneath."

There was that to be grateful for. In my pa's shoes, at least my
feet
would feel like they belonged to a man.

When Dru had finished her fluffing and declared me "lovely," we headed down the stairs to the stable. We had a plan. Dru would go out first, make sure there were no women close enough to get a good gawk at me, then I would, as Dru had said, stroll, taking birdlike steps and swaying my hips, past the resting room and enter the house through the kitchen. It was a mighty fine plan, but it never saw daylight.

No sooner had we reached the bottom of the steps than the stable doors flew open, letting in the Tinka wagon. I yanked the bonnet off my head, and stood there, dumbfounded. Eliza, who'd been the one to open the doors, rushed over to where Dru and I stood. "The Tinka boy has been shot. Dru, go at once and fetch the doctor." Then, as if not noticing that I was wearing a dress, she said, "And Isaac, you tend to the Tinkas' horses."

Dru, her skirts hiked to her knees, left at a run. I didn't bother with the buttons, just ripped the dress away and let it fall in a heap to the cobblestone floor, and then straightaway I began to unhitch the team. Leaning back and looking sideways, I saw Mr. Tinka come down from the wagon, his boy, Carlos, in his arms. Carlos was limp, his shirt soaked with blood.

"Up there," Eliza said, pointing to my room. Mrs. Tinka, the lap of her dress stained red, hurried after. Eliza, holding the hand of the younger girl, followed Mrs. Tinka up the stairs.

Rosa still hadn't shown herself by the time I finished with the horses, so I circled around to the back of the wagon and looked in. Rosa sat on a mattress on the floor, her face in her hands, her body rocking back and forth.

Hannah was at my side then. "What happened?" she asked.

"Carlos has been shot. They've carried him up to my room, and Dru's gone for the doctor."

Hannah, without saying another word, climbed the ladder into the wagon. She sat herself down on the mattress and slid an arm across Rosas shoulders like it was something she did every day.

I
'D BEEN IN MY ROOM, STARING AT A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER,
when the commotion of a team and wagon racing up the drive drew me to the window in the room across the hall. It was the Tinka wagon. Sensing trouble in their speed, I hurried down the stairs. In the resting room, a knot of women had gathered at the open doorway, another at each of the windows. One woman turned to me as I passed. "Why have those people come here?" she asked, a dash of bitters in her tone.

All the lessons about not talking back to my elders flew out the window, and I answered, "They, too, are Eliza's friends."

In the stable, Isaac, bare-chested and grim-faced, stood at the rear of the Tinka wagon. He told me the little he knew before I climbed inside. The mattress Rosa sat on was badly stained, but I took no mind of that. Rosa choked out foreign words I couldn't understand, though I knew what they meant. However the accident had happened, Rosa blamed herself.

"Your brother will be fine," I said again and again and in rhythm with her rocking.

When I thought Rosa was ready, I said, "Go to him. He needs you." And she did. Isaac, who hadn't left his vigil at the rear of the wagon, helped Rosa down and then, taking her elbow, escorted her up the steps.