Enough of that, George replies.
We’re going to send him up to one of the wards, Dr. Wyatt says. We want to watch for any sign of infection.
The sheriff show up yet? George asks his wife.
Margaret shakes her head. That could have been a bluff.
Did she strike you as the bluffing kind? No, me neither. I expect he’ll wait until morning now.
Again, Dr. Wyatt says, we can call the police. Or the sheriff. We should . . . after all, whoever did this—
—knew what he was doing, says George. He tries to smile but a grimace appears instead. To Margaret he says, I don’t want you going back to the motel alone.
I won’t be long. But I need to get cleaned up. And get dressed. Margaret smiles shyly at this, as if the doctor and nurse could see what she’s wearing under her mackinaw. And I’ll pack up the car—
Before she finishes, George shakes his head. No. Not alone.
Nurse Adeline steps forward and puts a hand on Margaret’s back. He’s right, hon. Whoever did this? You need to stay close.
We know very well who did this, Margaret says angrily.
And you’ll need to tell the authorities, Dr. Wyatt says. But the swiftness of his remark makes it clear: But don’t tell us.
Adeline rubs Margaret’s shoulder. Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to find a bed someplace where you can lie down. My shift is over in a couple hours, and then you and I can go get your things. To George she says, It’ll be light then.
George is pale with exhaustion and pain, and he assents wearily to the nurse’s plan. He does this with a tired but adept wave of his bandaged hand, as if he’s already learned a use for a hand with three fingers missing.
27.
THE EMPTY BED THE NURSE HAS FOUND FOR MARGARET is on the obstetrics ward. Only one newborn is in the hospital’s nursery, and the instant he begins to cry he is swaddled, lifted out of his bin, and taken to his mother in a ward down the hall from Margaret. The crying stops almost immediately.
The two o’clock feeding, Margaret says to Adeline.
About three hours late. But yes.
I had twins. And I could never get them on quite the same schedule. I’d get one fed and just about when I was ready to fall asleep the other would wake up.
Me, I had six. In nine years. My milk cow years, I call them. More than a decade of raw nipples. Felt like there wasn’t an hour or a day when I didn’t have a hungry squalling baby coming at me with an open mouth. But now that they’re mostly grown and scattered I don’t sleep any better. So I’m always willing to work the night shift.
I always said a woman sleeps different than a man. Mother or not.
We’ve got a woman down the hall who’s in her second day of labor. Think we should go down and tell her to turn back now?
She won’t need much persuading, says Margaret. Two days? My God. Have you locked her windows?
Adeline shakes out a hospital gown. You can put this on. And if you like I can take that nightdress of yours straight down to the incinerator.
Margaret looks down at her nightgown. George’s blood has dried to the color of mahogany and the largest stains have stiffened the fabric. No, Margaret says. No, I better keep this. A reminder of what I got us into.
Won’t your husband’s hand be all the reminder you need? And unless you were wielding the hatchet, you need to go a little easy on yourself, my dear.
In his years of ranching, Margaret says, George Blackledge came close to losing an arm to a hay baler. He got kicked by horses and fell off a barn roof and broke his ankle. He almost lost fingers and toes to frostbite. When he was sheriff someone clunked him over the head with a paint can. He survived all that, but following me and one of my crazy ideas turns him into a man with only one good hand? No, easy isn’t what I have coming.
Then, to hide her tears from a woman who’s seen more of them than sunsets, Margaret turns her back and takes off her nightgown. She bares a body that reveals its years as plainly as yellow leaves reveal a season. The bony protrusions of hip and shoulder blade, the slackening belly and buttocks, the sagging tits that look as though they could never have provided sustenance, the liver spots and sun spots, the wrinkles, the gray hair—here is a body in all its aging frailty, yet it is also a body that only hours earlier was tuned to pleasure. But now it’s exposed to a nurse, whereas earlier it was gazed on by a man besotted with desire. Margaret slips her arms inside the hospital gown and then reaches behind to fasten the strings.
Here, Adeline says, I’ll get those for you. As she knots Margaret’s gown, she says, What I’ve seen of that husband of yours, he doesn’t strike me as a man who goes anywhere but that it’s of his own choosing.
You’d be right about that most of the time but not now. Margaret shakes her head. If he’d had his way he’d be sleeping in his own bed right now. With me beside him.
Margaret is the one in the hospital gown, but Adeline sits on the bed. I guess you could tell—Dr. Wyatt didn’t want to know too much about what happened to your George. He’s looking to move on from Gladstone as soon as possible and figures the less involved he is, the easier it’ll be.
From the pocket of her uniform Adeline takes out a pack of Pall Malls with a book of matches tucked inside the cellophane. She offers the pack to Margaret, who says no thank you. Adeline lights a cigarette for herself and finds a small tin ashtray on the windowsill. Now me, the nurse says, picking a shred of tobacco from her lip. I’m not going anywhere. I was born here and I’ll die here. I know you’re waiting on the sheriff, but if you feel like talking you might tell me who did that to your husband.
We got ourselves tangled up with the Weboy clan.
Adeline makes a clucking sound with her tongue. This would be Blanche and her sons?
And the uncle. Bill.
Tangled up is right. You’d as soon get snarled up in barbed wire as have anything to do with the Weboys. And what did you folks do to get on the wrong side of Blanche and those dim-witted boys of hers?
Margaret Blackledge’s eyes are red-rimmed and sunken and her voice bobs and quivers more than ever with her exhaustion, but she tells the nurse the story. How, after their son’s death, they took his widow and son into their home and tried to make it a place where both would want to live. How Lorna fell for the first smooth-talking, wavy-haired sonofabitch who came along and married him before another year of grass had healed over the seams of sod on her husband’s grave. How unsuited for motherhood Lorna was and how Donnie was not just an uncaring but a cruel stepfather. How they lit out for Montana without a moment’s consideration for how attached Margaret and George had become to that child. How they came to Montana hoping to convince Lorna to let the boy come back to live with them. How Blanche Weboy wants the boy to remain under her roof . . .
Adeline whistles softly. Over the years I’ve met any number of women—girls, I should say—who might like to unload a kid. Or two or three. But I bet not a one of them would ever say yes if the offer was put right to her. Just not something a mother can do. Adeline stabs out her cigarette, stands, and smooths the front of her uniform. She pulls back the covers on the bed. You’d have been better off, she says, if you’d have stolen the boy away. Because this Lorna might not have bothered to come after him.
She pats the sheet in invitation and Margaret climbs into bed. I know enough about Blanche Weboy, says Margaret, to know why she wants to hang on to the boy. And it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with how much she favors being a grandma. Once he crossed over into Montana and came into her house he became a Weboy. One of hers. And she doesn’t let go of what she thinks is hers.
You’ve got her pegged, all right. Adeline pulls the covers over Margaret but then, like a mother who knows when she’s still needed, sits down on the edge of the bed. Why his fingers? she asks softly.
Margaret covers her face with her hands. George grabbed a gun, she says, then brings her hands down and shakes her head as if trying to refuse the thought. Not right awa
y. I know when it happened and why. They barged into our cabin and of course George’s first impulse was to drive them out. But it wasn’t until Bill Weboy put his hands on me—no, no, nothing more than a touch—that George grabbed his gun. And he was too slow. But oh, I don’t know. They came in with the hatchet so who knows what mayhem they had in mind all along. Then they walked out the door with George’s pistol, so you can imagine the tale they’ll tell the sheriff.
Adeline sighs. Oh my. No way you could know this, of course, but our Sheriff Munson was Blanche Weboy’s beau for a time after her husband passed away. He was in deep enough he was ready to leave his wife for her. But he must have had shortcomings she couldn’t get past, because she finally sent him back to his wife. Anyway. Lots of folks think that’s the only reason her boys aren’t getting arrested every day of their lives. I don’t know how much of that’s so, but when it comes to men she can cast a spell, that’s sure.
What have I done, Margaret says. What have I done . . .
Adeline smooths the blankets over Margaret and stands up. You rest. I’ll take another look in on your husband right now, but then later today I’ll go with you to the motel. I’ll stand guard while you pack up.
Just the two of us?
Adeline smiles. What? You don’t think a couple of old ladies are a match for the Weboys? Besides, this will be broad daylight. The Weboys won’t dare do a thing. They need the dark of night for their dealings.
Thank you . . .
Then, until your husband’s ready to travel, you’ll stay at our place.
I couldn’t. Your husband—
Adeline holds up a hand. Ssh. No argument about it. And Homer won’t mind. Of course, you might. This arrangement will have you sleeping under a drunkard’s roof. Which is what Homer Witt is. But he’s the gentle kind. And maybe if he’s off to a slow start today, he’ll come to the motel with us.
28.
SHORTLY AFTER NOON, MARGARET AND ADELINE BEGIN packing up the Blackledges’ car. The two women work under a September sun so bright and warm that the white of Adeline’s uniform seems sun-bleached rather than store-bought. It’s a day sure to give eastern Montanans the feeling that it might be the last of its kind for a long time to come. They leave the cabin door open, and the prairie smells of sage and sun-heated stones enter and mingle with the aroma of cheap soap and bleached linens.
Then, when the car is packed, Margaret obliterates those odors with a new one. The caustic smell of Pine-Sol reaches almost to the highway as Margaret works on her hands and knees, trying to wash her husband’s blood tracks off the floor. She scrubs for almost an hour, yet she can’t eliminate all the stains. As long as Cabin Number Eight of the Prairie View Motor Court stands, a few dark burgundy drops and streaks will discolor the linoleum.
Before the women drive off, two more chores need to be done.
First Margaret walks to the motel’s office. At the counter is a plump young woman with slightly crossed eyes behind thick glasses, who regards Margaret with suspicion.
Margaret hands over the key to Cabin Number Eight and an envelope. We’re checking out, says Margaret. What I calculate we owe you is in here, along with extra for a towel we took when we had a little emergency. I wrote down our address back in North Dakota if you don’t think that’s fair.
The young woman seems reluctant to take the envelope but finally does, turning it over in her hand like a summons. The envelope bears the name and address of the Prairie View Motor Court, as does the sheet of stationery inside.
As if she’s expecting an argument, Margaret waits for a moment.
Okay, the young woman says, and only then does Margaret walk away.
She stops at the door, however, turns around, and jabs a finger in the young woman’s direction. But you tell them, says Margaret, her vibrato rising as if her voice were strung on a too-tight wire, you tell them if they’re looking for a dispute, they better be ready to answer for their part in what happened here!
Margaret strides out of the office and back to Cabin Number Eight. She goes inside but not for long. When she comes back out she’s carrying something. It’s a small makeshift parcel made from drawing up the corners of a handkerchief, a handkerchief of the kind neatly stacked and sold in the men’s department of Montgomery Ward. Adeline Witt has been standing by the Hudson, and when Margaret approaches, the nurse reaches into the car and brings out the garden trowel that until two hours ago hung from a nail on the wall of the Witts’ garage. She hands the trowel to Margaret, who walks off in the direction of the vacant land behind the cabins. Adeline follows her.
You can wait here, Margaret says over her shoulder. I’ll do this.
I’ll stand watch.
Ten yards from the shadow of the cabin, in a sunlit patch of ground bare but for a few stones, and just before the line where the tall, tough prairie grasses begin their uninterrupted run to the bluffs and buttes in the distance, Margaret Blackledge drops to her knees. After all her hard work scrubbing the cabin floor you’d think her energies might be flagging, but with the trowel she stabs and digs into that hard-baked square of earth as if doing so were her only commission in this world.
While she digs she talks, and though her words must be directed to the woman who is standing nearby with her back turned to Margaret, nothing Margaret says seems to ask for a response. Her talk isn’t punctuated so much by the wobble in her voice as by the grunts of exertion as she fights with the earth to make it give way.
The thing about George Blackledge was, Margaret says, he could not get up to make a speech to save his life. And you might think that that shouldn’t be a qualification to be a North Dakota sheriff, but it matters. It just does. Ask him a question, yes, he could respond, but his answer would be as short as he could make it. I’d try to tutor him a little, suggest he string out his answers a bit. And bore the hell out of people? he’d say. So when he was running for office, I’d come up with little schemes for him to meet the voters. We’d go to church suppers. To all the high school’s sporting events. Just walk around the county fair, I’d tell him, and make yourself available. And smile, I’d say. Would it kill you to smile at folks? Make them think you’re happy to see them and not resentful of the time it takes to say good day.
She’s dug down to pale clay and there she stops. It’s deep enough. Deeper.
And she keeps talking. George always ran with Buck Stinson, the state’s attorney, and it was likely Buck who carried George into office. Now, Buck had the opposite problem. He could make a speech at the drop of a hat, but you couldn’t get him to stop.
She fills in the little grave and then tamps the dirt down hard with the back of the trowel blade. Because of the pebbles in the dirt, the trowel makes a small ringing sound each time Margaret slaps the earth.
I did a little campaigning myself, she says. It didn’t bother me to buttonhole folks on the street and give them the reasons why they should vote for George. George used to tell me that I was the one who should run for office. But it’s you I believe in, I said. You. Even if you don’t believe in yourself.
She gets stiffly to her feet and begins her search for larger rocks. Nothing smaller than a dinner plate or a saucepan will do, but she doesn’t have to range far to find stones of sufficient size and weight. These she places carefully on the packed-down dirt, fitting one on top of another with the care of a stonemason. There, she says, wiping her hands on her dungarees. Even if a dog or a coyote gets the scent, they’re not going to be able to move these out of the way.
At some point Adeline Witt had walked away and is now waiting at the car. When Margaret Blackledge comes around the corner of the cabin, she walks with the rapid step of someone determined not to look back. Because there’s dirt on her hands, she leaves a dark streak when she wipes her cheek. To Adeline, she says, Let’s get the hell out of here.
Neither woman speaks again until they are in the heart of Gladstone, on the street that will take them to the hospital.
Can you believe it? Mar
garet says, both the quaver and the vivacity returned to her voice. Before the Prairie View Motor Court, I’d never before stayed in a hotel or motel two nights in a row. Even our honeymoon, in the Grand View Hotel in Bismarck, North Dakota, was only the one night.
Margaret shields her eyes from the car windshields and storefront plate glass windows glinting in the afternoon sun. But I suppose that second night at the Prairie View doesn’t count as an entire night, does it?
29.
ODORS OF ANTISEPTIC AND FLOOR WAX. THE RATTLE OF bed rails being lifted into place, of clipboards taken from their hooks and put back on again. The hush of rubber-soled shoes, of a wheelchair pushed down a long corridor. The grunt and groan of an old man trying to find ease in his sleep . . . In the hospital ward, Margaret Blackledge sits at her husband’s bedside, and she’s drawn her chair close enough to hold his unbandaged hand in hers and to be heard as she speaks to him in a voice barely above a whisper. George’s eyes are closed, and it’s impossible to tell whether he’s listening or dozing through her monologue.
You know what I was thinking about today, George? I was remembering when the twins started school, and you and I both drove them into town and watched them walk together into Emerson Elementary. I suppose there’s something in the September sunlight that brought all this on. . . Anyway. Do you remember that day? Just before they stepped through the door, James turned around and waved his sad, brave little wave. None of that for Janie, of course. She marched right in like she expected they’d been waiting for her arrival. Then we drove back to the ranch. We looked at each other like we weren’t sure what we were supposed to do with all those alone hours. Well, it took us about three seconds to figure that out, didn’t it? As if we didn’t both have work waiting for us. As I recall, we ended up right there on the floor of the parlor. Just like back when we were both a couple of randy, impatient kids.