“I’m gonna be lonesome, ain’t I, without my Dan,” Wilma said, at one point.
“I expect so, honey,” the Judge said.
“I don’t know how I’ll stand it, being so lonesome,” Wilma said. Her voice cracked, when she said it.
The Judge was not skilled at talking to women whose lives had been bent crooked by sudden death, and so he did not answer. Yet, sudden death lay all around them, like the shadows cast by the hills and the trees. He himself had been shot at seven times in his years on the circuit court. Fortunately, poor marksmanship was almost as common as death, or Mart would have been a widow long before. In those days, he had traveled with a law book and a bottle of whiskey in his saddlebags. The fact that seven men had missed him was not definitive, either; an eighth man could always come around the corner, and the eighth man might be a better shot.
When they were nearly to Fort Smith, he felt Wilma’s head rest against his shoulder. Then he felt a wetness on his shirt, and knew that she was crying. He kept on humming his hymn; it was all he could do. Let her cry, he thought—crying was the normal thing for a woman who had just lost her husband.
A little later, he noticed from her regular breathing that Wilma was asleep. From then on, the Judge took care to hold the mule to a steady gait, hoping he could get Wilma all the way to Mart before she woke again. Mart had dealt with many griefs in her life. She had already lost three of her sisters, one brother, and several cousins. If he could just get Wilma to town without any more trouble, he felt confident that Mart, his vigorous wife, would know what to do.
As the Judge rode into Fort Smith, Wilma sound asleep against his shoulder, he saw several men gathered around something in front of the saloon. Two of the men had lanterns; it looked like a body on the ground. The Judge rode over to have a look. If some drunk had gotten himself shot, he wanted to acquire a few of the facts before they got muddied up with exaggeration.
But it was no drunk—it was Cracky Bolen, stone dead.
“His mule brought him in, Judge,” one of the men said. “He was dead when he got here. We don’t know what it was he died of.”
“Snakebite,” the Judge said succinctly, annoyed that sudden death had once more made the operation of his court more difficult. Cracky had been a reliable messenger, one of the few he had who traveled regularly into the Blue Hills.
“Snakebite? Why, snakebite don’t kill a man, usually,” the fellow said. “I guess it was a big old rattler.”
“No rattler,” the Judge said, turning his mule. “It was a goddamn copperhead with an egg in its mouth.”
21
TEARS CAME INTO ZEKE’S EYES WHEN HE RODE UP TO NED’S PLACE and his girls came running out. Tears came into Jewel’s eyes, too—she had never seen her father looking so poorly. He was skinny and gaunt and filthy. When he hugged her, he hugged so hard her ribs almost cracked. He hugged Liza, too. Then Liza started yapping, trying to tell him all the things that had happened since she came to stay with Jewel and Ned. Jewel knew she would not be able to get a word in edgewise, not with Liza yapping, so she took his horse to the barn and unsaddled it.
The horse was so lame she had to lead it at a slow walk. Zeke had been walking, leading the horse, when he arrived. It was worrisome to Jewel, for her father had always taken pride in his horses, seeing to it that they had the best of everything. It was unlike him to show up on a horse so lame it could barely walk. The other worrisome thing was that there was no sign of Pete.
Zeke was unprepared for the feelings that came to him when he saw his girls. He did not realize how much he had missed them until he was holding them in his arms, looking at them, smelling their smells. He had been with those two girls most of the days of their lives, and had not thought much about them, day after day. But his recent loneliness made him see them in a different light.
Then Liza told him Jewel was going to have a baby, which surprised him so that at first he did not believe it. In his mind, Jewel was a baby herself, or at most, a little girl. But when he looked at her, hastily shucking corn by the back door of her house, he saw a rounding to her belly that had not been there before and knew that it must be true: she was going to be a mother.
“Pa, what happened to your horse?” Jewel asked. “It’s so lame, it can barely walk.”
“I come over a trail that was washed out,” Zeke said. “He got his foot caught between two rocks. I expect he’ll recover, but I don’t know when.”
In fact, he was annoyed with himself for being so impatient during his trip over the Mountain that he had allowed the horse to lame himself. Now if he had to go back on the scout and had to go quick, he would have to go on foot, unless he could borrow a horse from Ned, or from Tuxie Miller. Ned seldom kept more than one or two horses, and Tuxie Miller rarely owned one that was worth borrowing, which meant Zeke was in a fix or certainly would be, if the law came.
“Where’s Pete?” Jewel asked. “I’m surprised you’d go off without Pete.”
Zeke kept quiet. Jewel turned from her shucking, and saw that her father was looking at her with tears in his eyes. When she saw the tears, she immediately thought something bad must have happened to make him tearful—maybe something bad had happened to Pete. It was only when he was drunk, or playing the fiddle, or remembering his dead brothers, that she had ever seen him cry.
“Jewel, no one told me about your baby,” Zeke said. “I been on the scout. I had no way to get the news.”
Jewel was touched that her father cared so and was showing it. She went over and hugged him again.
“Ned thinks it’s a boy, but I’m figuring on a girl myself,” she said.
Jewel had always had a sweet smell, Zeke remembered. He hugged her again hard, dripping a few tears on her hair. Holding her close, smelling her sweet smell, he felt a flash of anger at Ned Christie, who had ridden up one day and taken advantage of the fact that Zeke had been drunk. The next minute, it seemed like, Ned had ridden off with Jewel.
“It’ll be your first baby, you ought to get your way!” Zeke growled, getting angrier as he contemplated how their lives had changed since Ned had taken Jewel away from home.
Up until then, the Proctors had been a family. He and Becca had their falling-outs and their ups and downs, but that, too, was normal. He had a home to go to, and tasty grub on the table; he could carouse with his triplets every night; or play the fiddle till the wee hours; or just go up to the smokehouse and get drunk amid the hams and hindquarters.
It seemed to Zeke, in his unhappiness, that when Ned took Jewel away, it was as if he had pulled a plug out of a barrel. Their family happiness was the barrel: the minute Ned pulled the plug, it had started draining away, and it had drained away until he found himself without any more family happiness. Becca was no longer a wife to him; both girls were gone; he never saw his triplets; and according to Sully Eagle, even Pete was keeping himself scarce, no doubt embittered at having been left behind.
Now his family happiness had thoroughly drained away. He found himself sleeping in caves, with rough men, or else camping in the bushes, come wet or dry. In Zeke’s mind, the business with Polly Beck was only an accident, though of course, an extremely unfortunate accident for all concerned. The real trouble started, in Zeke’s mind, when Ned took away Jewel. It was not for nothing that he and Becca had named her Jewel; she had been their jewel, rare and precious, and they had laughed at her and cuddled her when they themselves had been happy.
Now here she stood, with a swelling belly, shucking corn. If he and Becca ever managed to get any happiness back, they would clearly have to do it without their Jewel.
Her father looked so gaunt that Jewel’s first thought was to feed him. He was so weary that he nodded off at the table while Jewel was boiling the corn.
“Pa’s tired—make him a pallet, Liza,” Jewel told her little sister.
“What if the law comes? Where will we hide him?” Liza asked. She had only been to Tahlequah twice in her life, and had never even seen a lawman othe
r than Sheriff Bobtail, who sometimes came by for supper—but in her imagination, the law was everywhere. She had had a powerful dream once, in which a lawman with cold, black eyes was quirting her with a stinging quirt. The sight of her father, so weary and so weak, made her apprehensive that the law would show up at any time.
“The law ain’t gonna come, just make a pallet,” Jewel said.
She cooked her best meal and Zeke roused himself enough to eat heartily.
“Where’s Ned?” he kept asking. “I supposed Ned would be here.
“He went off to find a preacher,” Jewel told him. “If he brings the preacher back with him, maybe we can be married while you’re here.
“I hope he finds one,” Jewel added. “I’d like to be married by the preacher while you’re here, Pa.”
“What about Ma?” Liza asked. “Ma ought to be here, too, if there’s going to be a wedding.”
“Who would go get her?” Jewel asked. “Pa’s horse is lame.”
“Your ma’s taken against me, I doubt she’d come, even if I went to fetch her myself,” Zeke confessed.
The memory of Becca’s cold refusal the last time he had been home still angered him. He wished he had boxed her ears a few times, instead of just dragging her by the hair. At the same time, he wished none of it had happened at all. He wished they could just be together again, simply—as man and wife. Jewel’s belly was swelling; they were going to be grandparents soon, which in his view was all the more reason why they should resolve their differences and be together. But he did not know if Becca would take him back—she had put herself at a distance from him, and he did not know what he could do about it.
Liza fixed a nice pallet, and Zeke gratefully lay down on it. Though he was weary in the extreme, he could not sleep. He kept his pistol in his hand, and sprang up at every sound.
“When do you think Ned will be back?” he asked, several times. “I need to see Ned.”
“I guess as soon as he finds that preacher,” Jewel told him. Then she went on up to bed.
Upstairs, as sleepless as her father, Jewel had her own doubts to wrestle with. She lay down and stared out her bedroom window. The moon shone in, lighting up the livestock pen and the path that led away from their house. It would be easy for a horseman as skilled as Ned to ride home in the bright moonlight. She listened and listened for the sound of horse hooves approaching. Jewel had an ache just under her breastbone, a deep ache, she missed Ned so. But she could not help remembering, now that she lay in their bed together all alone, the hasty way in which Ned had taken his leave. He had saddled his horse, muttered a few words about a preacher, and left.
Jewel did not know, now, if she believed the part about the preacher. Ned had not said anything about a preacher for more than a month; then all of a sudden he blurted out something, and was gone. To her, it seemed like something in him just did not want to stay. She took care of him the best that she could; she embraced him whenever he wanted her, and eagerly; and she was as good to him as she could be, hoping that the part of him that did not want to stay would just dry up and blow away, like feathery dandelion flowers gone to seed.
Jewel looked out the window again. The moon shone bright, lighting the bedroom as if it were daytime. Though she was safe in their bed, with their baby inside her, she shivered—for Ned was gone, the bed was empty, and she was alone.
22
IT WAS THE MORNING MINNIE SQUASHED THE BULLFROG WITH THE rock that she found the dead skunk. The little bullfrog hopped too far from the pond, and got in some weeds that kept it from hopping properly. The triplets surrounded it, and began to try and hit it with sticks.
“Hit it, Willie!” Minnie commanded. She normally gave the orders when the triplets were playing, and they were always playing.
“I done hit it,” Willie pointed out. In fact, he had hit the bullfrog three times, but the bullfrog just kept up its ungainly hopping.
“That stick’s too little, get a bigger one,” Minnie instructed. Then she happened to see a big, flat rock, and smashed the bullfrog just in time. One more hop, and it would have been back in the pond.
“Look—its guts came out,” Willie said. He was annoyed that his sister had seen the rock first. If he had seen it first, he would have smashed the bullfrog even harder, and even more guts would have come out.
“I’m going home,” Linnie informed her brother and sister.
“Why, are you a sissy?” Minnie asked.
“No, but I didn’t tell you to kill this bullfrog,” Linnie said.
Linnie was the fastidious triplet. She did not like offal or blood. She liked to invent stories about the Little People. It was said that Little People looked just like Cherokees—they even spoke Cherokee— except that they stood only one or two feet tall, roaming the woods and sometimes snatching children who wandered off where they did not belong. Minnie and Willie were afraid of the Little People, but Linnie was intrigued by them. Her father had told the triplets how they ought to keep an eye out for one another when they were off playing, because the Little People were known to take children who were not watchful, or who strayed too far from home. When her father was around, the two of them would carry a saucer of milk out every night and leave it near a toadstool, for the Little People to drink.
“Is a saucer enough?” Linnie asked Zeke once, as they were putting a saucer near a toadstool.
“It’s enough,” her father assured her. “They’re little people, Linnie. Why, some of ’em ain’t no bigger than baby rabbits.”
Now, every time Linnie saw a baby cottontail, she thought of the Little People. She wished her father would come home, so they could put the milk out for them again. Her mother did not like her putting out the milk; she thought it was wasteful.
“The Lord will take care of the Little People, like he takes care of all of us,” her mother told her.
Linnie did not see what it hurt to put out a little milk, just in case the Lord got too busy and forgot about the Little People. But she did not argue with her mother. Her father would come home soon, she was certain, and they could put the milk out again, together. It was more fun to do when her father was home, because they could talk about the Little People, and how they lived. Her father said there used to be one in the barn—he claimed he could see it, now and then. Linnie looked and looked, but she never saw the one in the barn. In their talks, her father had often told her that the Little People were very shy. She was sure the one in the barn was just too shy to show itself to her. Sometimes, sitting in the barn, trying to be very quiet, Linnie would imagine that the one who lived there was nearby, just out of sight behind a pile of hay, peeking at her under a heap of harness.
Since her father had been gone, the fact that there was one of the Little People in the barn was a comfort to Linnie—knowing it was there made her feel a little less lonesome. She did not know exactly what they ate, but she thought they might like watermelon. When the melons in the field began to be ripe, Linnie would sometimes sneak down to the barn and leave out little pieces of ripe red melon. The melon would always be gone the next day, or at least bits of it would have been nibbled away, which made Linnie all the more certain that one of the Little People lived in her barn.
The frog Minnie had killed was a shiny green. Minnie was jiggling it up and down, trying to make more guts come out of the frog’s mouth. Willie was jealous that Minnie had killed the bullfrog. He ran back to the pond with his stick, hoping to find another frog to whack.
“Let’s make a fire and cook this frog,” Minnie suggested. “Let’s eat his toes.”
“No, his guts are coming out, I don’t want to eat him,” Linnie said. “You should have let him be.”
Minnie, suddenly changing her mind, whirled the frog around her head and threw it out in the pond as far as she could throw it.
“I guess an old turtle will eat it,” she said, watching the dead frog float on top of the brown water. Patches of yellow pollen swirled around the frog, having fallen from the willo
w trees that hung over the edges of the pond. Several dragonflies were hovering over the pollen—to Linnie, the dragonflies looked a little like how she imagined fairies would look. She wondered if fairies could turn into dragonflies; it was one of the many questions she meant to ask her father as soon as he returned home.
It was while Linnie and Minnie were looking for plums, over by a little seeping spring where wild plum bushes grew, that Minnie spotted the dead skunk. She saw something black, over by a clump of rocks. At first, she thought it might just be a shadow. But when she looked again, she saw it was the remains of an animal with black fur.
“Look, Linnie. What’s that?” Minnie inquired, moving close to her sister. Minnie had been bold when she smashed the bullfrog with the rock, but the sight of the black fur caused her to lose some of her boldness.
“I think it’s something dead,” she said to Linnie.
“Maybe it’s a skunk,” Linnie suggested. “Skunks are mostly black.”
When they crept closer, they saw that Linnie was right: it was a dead skunk. Its eyes were open, but it was dead. Green bottleflies swarmed all over a big hole where its belly had been. Something had bitten off one of the skunk’s legs, which lay a little distance from his body.
“What if a bear got him?” Minnie said. “Let’s run!”
She was seized with such a fright that she could barely breathe, though she began to run as fast as she could toward their house. When Willie saw her running, he began to run, too, though he did not know why his sister was in such a hurry. From the look on her face, he thought she might have seen the bogeyman, a giant with hair all over him who lived in a cave and ate little children, if he could catch them. Sully Eagle had told them about the bogeyman. Willie himself did not want an old, hairy giant to catch him and eat him, so he ran as fast as he could. Neither he nor Minnie slowed down until they were at their house.