The Hunger

  * * *

  • • •

  REED HADN’T BEEN ABLE to see then what would follow in the years to come. The gradual frustrations that would arise between them. The aching and uncontrollable jealousy, the suspicion that McGee had transferred his affections to other men. Reed didn’t know then about the accounts, either. It would still be several years before Fitzwilliams started pointing out the irregularities—insisting there could be no other explanation but one: Edward had been stealing from them, slyly and steadily, for years.

  How could Reed have known then that when he would later confront the young man, McGee would threaten to tell the whole world what had been going on between them, would demand hush money—a large sum immediately and a regular annuity on top of it? That McGee’s demands would threaten to ruin him, ultimately leaving Reed no other choice than to flee Springfield?

  How could Reed have known that the Donners’ plan to travel west would ultimately save him?

  He couldn’t have known, of course. He couldn’t have known any of it. And maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything if he had. Because the slant in Edward’s smile had snagged in his heart like a fishing hook. The loneliness in Edward’s dark eyes—that had been real, Reed was sure. It had called to him, had echoed his own, had rendered him powerless. The boy’s touch had brought him to life. There could be no helping it. What would come, would come.

  OCTOBER 1846

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  At first, when Mary Graves saw the rider in the distance, she mistook it for a long shadow. They had left the arid basin the day before; the last hundred miles of the trek had been a long uphill climb, and they’d come up over the ridge to see a valley of wildflowers and pine grass, sweet-scented and pale green, that nearly startled Mary into crying. There were pine trees to be split for firewood. And a river: shallow but wide, throwing off a dazzle of light.

  Mary watched the shadow lengthen and materialize on the horizon: a horse, liver chestnut, the color of Charles Stanton’s mare.

  Her father, walking beside the oxen with a switch, lifted his head and brought a hand to his eyes. “He’s back,” was all he said.

  Stanton had two young Indian men with him, Salvador and Luis. The Murphys, Graveses, Reeds, and Fosters rushed him; the other families had pulled ahead on the trail. The children came running at the shouts of joy and laughter as he unstrapped his packages, sounds long unfamiliar to the wagon train. Stanton smiled at everyone, and tried to calm them, too, as they grabbed for his supplies.

  And yet Mary, who had begun to dream of his return, to think of him less as a man of mystery or some sort of savior and instead as a touchstone of reality—a person, perhaps the only person, whom she could trust—Mary, who had so many times glanced up to see a floating mirage in the distance and felt her heart leap at the sight of him, found that she was too shy to come forward now, and instead hung back.

  “Everyone’s near to starving,” Bill Foster, Lavinah’s son-in-law, said bluntly. But it must have been obvious. Mary saw him as Stanton must: a scarecrow in clothes now too big for him, shirt bloused around his waist and skin-thin arms, pants held up with a length of rope.

  “I ran into the Breens and Eddys up the trail. They told me how bad things have gotten,” Stanton said. “But I’m back with enough to last us a while.”

  “I hope you brought bacon,” Mary’s little brother said, running up to him. “We ain’t had bacon for weeks.” How gaunt his face had gotten. Five years old and Franklin looked like a little old man.

  “We should have a big feast to celebrate, like we did at the parting of the ways,” Virginia Reed said. Her eyes were feverishly bright. The children were turning into strange, stalky insects, all eyes and spikes and desperate twitches.

  Stanton, in comparison, looked like a man in color among a wash of wraiths even after weeks in the saddle. “Now, hold on there,” he said easily. But she noticed he stood between the settlers and his mules. “We’re not out of the woods yet. Take it easy with these provisions. We’re a long way from Sutter’s Fort.”

  Amanda McCutcheon pushed her way through the crowd. “Where’s my Will? Isn’t he with you?”

  Mary’s heart hollowed. In her excitement, she hadn’t even noticed that McCutcheon was missing. She doubted the others had remarked on it, either. They were too hungry to think of much else.

  “He took ill on the trail,” Stanton said quietly. “But don’t worry; he made it to Sutter’s Fort and that’s where he’s resting. He’ll be waiting for you there.”

  “Ill? He must be powerful sick not to come back for us . . .”

  “The doctor says he’ll recover. With the weather starting to shift, I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

  The weather was starting to shift; funny, Mary hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. It had happened in the past handful of days. Even the hot afternoons had lost their edge and the earlier sunsets brought longer, cooler evenings.

  And that meant winter wasn’t far behind.

  Two nights earlier, she’d sat up late with her brother William. They lay on their backs on the cool ground to look up at the stars, a favorite pastime back in Springfield. The wide black sky, the vastness that usually filled her with optimism, made her feel small and fragile that night. Nature had shown them these past few months how vulnerable they were. Her brother must’ve felt the same, for he asked Mary if she thought they were going to die.

  The question was on everyone’s mind so she wasn’t surprised, but it filled her with rage. Not at the unfairness of it, for she understood that life was deeply unfair, and, truly, had never expected otherwise. But it angered and astonished her that fear and hopelessness had so easily taken root among them. Mary believed in certain fundamental truths, and one of them was in life’s persistence—in the incredible will within each of us to go on, to thrive, to improve, and, when tested, to do good.

  As the crowd shifted, she found her way next to Stanton with renewed determination, despite the fact that so far he had yet to look in her direction.

  Beneath the burble of the crowd, she was able to speak softly, so no one else could hear. “You came back for us.”

  “I said that I would, didn’t I?” He smiled grimly as he started to loosen the rope rigging on the nearest mule.

  Had he come to forget about her these weeks away, or worse, come to believe that she had led the general persecution against Tamsen? After all, it had been Mary who brought the rest to the scene of Halloran’s murder. If he believed that about her, she couldn’t blame him. But she could set him straight. Not because she needed his favor but because she wanted it.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t seem he was going to give her that chance, which of course made her desire it all the more.

  With hardly a glance in her direction, he turned back to address the group. “If everyone is ready, we can distribute the rest of these provisions. No pushing, or arguing. It’s all been sorted according to the amount of money you put in. Let’s start with the Murphys . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE PARTY QUIT EARLY for the day. Everyone was anxious to have their first proper meal in weeks, to celebrate their salvation. Mary wasn’t ready to celebrate, not until she’d had a chance to say her piece. She kept an eye out for Stanton, hoping for a few minutes alone, but he was constantly surrounded by members of the wagon train intent on hearing about the trail that lay before them or about Sutter’s Fort—at this point, a destination as elusive and chimerical as heaven. She wasn’t sure if he was really that busy or trying to avoid her.

  But she wouldn’t give up. It simply went against her nature. Her father had called her stubborn more times than she could count, and perhaps about that he’d been right.

  So she waited on the periphery, behind the well-wishers and the curious. She would be patient. Finally, he saw her hovering just out of earshot. He ducked to say some
thing to the two Miwoks before striding out to meet her.

  “Will you speak to me, Mr. Stanton?” she asked. Her voice sounded high and nervous to her ears.

  He only nodded.

  They walked side by side, and Mary felt she might burn away. She was overwhelmed by relief and terror all at once. She had prayed for him to return, prayed that she would be given a chance to set things right between them, and now that he was here, she did not know what to say to him.

  “I feared—” She stopped, overwhelmed. “I feared I would never see you again.”

  “Perhaps that would have been for the best,” he said, his voice low and hard.

  She reeled as though she’d been slapped in the face. “Can you really hate me so much?”

  “Mary.” His voice softened.

  “I don’t see how you can.” She pushed on defensively. “You have hardly given me any chance at all to prove myself to you. We haven’t even spoken since—”

  “You don’t need to prove yourself to me, or to anyone. I don’t hate you, Mary. Not in the slightest.” At this, a broad smile spread over his face, though he attempted to tuck it away.

  Now she thought she must be dreaming—perhaps hunger and exhaustion had gotten the better of her, because she couldn’t make sense of his words.

  “Well, if you don’t hate me, then why have you been avoiding me?” she insisted. “Why did you say it would have been for the best never to see me again? I fear that either I do not understand you, Mr. Stanton, or you do not understand yourself.”

  “More likely the latter,” he said, his smile melting into a rueful half grin. “You see, it’s not at all that I hate you but that I fear I quite like you. That’s what keeps me away, if you must know. But I can’t have you off thinking badly of me.”

  “Me thinking badly of you?” Now it was her turn to smile. “I have thought of little else but you, though none of the thoughts were bad.” She was shocked by her own boldness and tempted to cover her mouth to keep a surprised laugh from bursting out.

  He beat her to it, though, and his laugh was like water running over stones in the creek—fast and free and clear. She wanted to enter that laugh and to swim and bathe and splash in it, to drink it down and be cleansed by it.

  “Well, that’s a relief, then,” he said, though she was the one who felt relief—was nearly dizzy with it.

  This feeling amazed her. How neatly the answer came to her, that this man, Charles Stanton, who had, even before she’d realized it, occupied so many of her thoughts—this man was the man for her. The person for her. She knew it in this moment, suddenly and definitively, as though it had been preordained, as though her life had been building up to it from the start: She, Mary Graves—the serious, ever-practical, always patient Mary Graves—was giddily, stupidly, happily in love with Charles Stanton.

  And because she was so certain of it, she felt the truth would have to be known. She must tell him. Soon. Very soon. But not now. Not yet.

  After all, since they met, they’d spent nearly as much time apart as together. She would wait, at least, until the latter outmeasured the former before she would give full voice to her feelings. It seemed only right, and she wanted to do things right, now more than ever.

  As they wandered along the creek, the late-afternoon sun comfortable on their shoulders, she started to tell him about the things that had happened while he was away—about Snyder’s death and Reed’s banishment. That hit Stanton hard—he’d come to trust in Reed, and he admitted that it scared him how quickly the group could turn.

  She told him about the rest, too: The old Belgian, Hardkoop, had taken ill and been left behind, and then Jacob Wolfinger had tried to go back for him, never to return. She told of how the sounds of Doris Wolfinger’s soft crying seemed to hang in the air for many nights thereafter, as though the realization that her husband was gone for good had come to her only in gradual waves.

  “I don’t know what to make of everything that’s happened to us,” Mary said truthfully, feeling more overwhelmed than before as the weight of it all piled back on top of her. “I can’t tell who’s good or who’s bad anymore. It seemed so easy back in Springfield. But not one of those good people lifted a finger to help poor Mr. Hardkoop when Lewis Keseberg threw him out . . . Or went back to look for Mr. Wolfinger when he disappeared. It’s like everyone is just out for himself . . . Everyone says Tamsen’s a liar, with her tales of shadowy men in the basin. Even those who once trusted her seem to despise her now, but I saw her after they brought her back from the fire. I don’t know why she would have made up a story like that.”

  Stanton shook his head. “Tamsen likes attention, but not the negative kind. You’re right, Mary. It is very strange.”

  “And then there’s Mr. Reed,” she went on, not eager to linger on the theme of Tamsen and her disconcerting stories. “Reed didn’t seem capable of killing a man in cold blood like that . . .”

  “You’re right about that, too. That doesn’t sound like the man I know.” Stanton’s voice was hard, distant.

  “It just makes no sense, no sense at all.” She looked toward the horizon, hazy with sun. “That’s why I’m so glad you’re back, Mr. Stanton. One of the many reasons.” She blushed. “You always seem to make sense. I—I feel safer around you.”

  He appeared to withdraw then—it was subtle but she felt a tiny space had reopened between them. He stepped closer to the river to avoid their elbows brushing, and a coldness rustled through her that had nothing to do with the changing weather.

  “I don’t know why you have given me your trust—again and again, Mary. I want it, of course, but you must know I don’t deserve it.” He had stopped walking and was staring quietly at the flowing river.

  “Whatever you’ve done, whatever happened in your past, it can’t be as bad as you imagine.” She touched his arm gently. “The sin has atoned for itself—I can see that in you, in the way you carry the burden of it. You must forgive yourself.” She said these words because she believed them to be true—the Bible teaches forgiveness in others so that God may bestow forgiveness on all.

  She thought, fleetingly, that he might cry, but he only let out a heavy breath and pushed a hand through his hair. “I can never forgive myself—it would be like letting her die again. I already fail to save her, over and over again, in my dreams. Every night, I watch her drown again.”

  Mary’s breath caught in her throat. She knew what he was referring to: the story of the girl he had loved—and whom he left when she was with child.

  “I planned to marry her, you know,” he said. “I had come to tell her so that very day.” Mary watched his knuckles turn white as he clenched his hands and flexed them. Then he turned to look at her, as if expecting her to protest.

  “Then it wasn’t your fault,” Mary said, though she could tell the words didn’t touch him. Mary’s father had told her that the poor girl had killed herself because Stanton had abandoned her. But now she could see that perhaps there’d been another reason altogether. The man—the boy—her father described hadn’t sounded like Stanton at all. It seemed absurd now that she had doubted Stanton, even for a minute.

  The shadow of a lone cloud, high overhead, rippled over the landscape in front of them. It was a sign, like the hand of God touching the valley.

  They walked slowly for a few more minutes, listening to the gentle sluice of the creek and the far-off noises from camp. He squeezed her hand and she liked how it felt, the strength in his fingers. Strength she could depend on.

  “There is something more than the loss of her, and the horrible manner of her death, that haunts me, Mary.”

  She waited.

  “I had no money, and nowhere to go when all of this happened. My reputation had been destroyed, I couldn’t get a lick of work, and I was cast away by my own family, you have to understand. But still it’s no excuse for . . .” He trailed off, squi
nting at the fading sun. It had been setting earlier and earlier, Mary noticed, and she shivered at the knowledge of autumn’s descent, and of their limited time.

  “No excuse for . . .” she prodded, both dreading to hear it and needing to, needing to understand him, to know him. And, she sensed, Stanton needed to be known by her.

  “For accepting his help.”

  “His?”

  Stanton sighed. “Lydia’s father gave me the sum of money that got my life started. He was paying me off, you see. Paying me to leave, to help make the whole tragic incident go away. His money got me all the way to Virginia. When the law office no longer suited me, I went off to war in Texas. But then I found I still had nothing to return to and nowhere to start. With what remained of his . . . charity”—he seemed to choke on the word, but pushed on—“I was able to set up a shop in Springfield. I thought with the last of Knox’s money finally spent, the past was good and dead, then. But it wasn’t. Knox ran into difficult times of his own, and called on me to repay my debts to him. He was very demanding, and I, well . . . I couldn’t say no to him, Mary.”

  She felt a chill; darkness was descending and she wanted to beg him to stop here. She didn’t need to hear more. She knew men could do desperate things for money. Her own family had certainly tried everything to change their own circumstances. It had always been up to Mary to take care of her family, and though she resented it, she understood it, too.

  “Don’t you want to know why I couldn’t refuse him, Mary?” he said, his voice guttural and low.

  “You felt guilty. Anyone would have.” A bird cawed overhead. She couldn’t make out what type in the silvery dusk.

  “But I was guilty. Don’t you see? Not of Lydia’s suicide, but of other things. Knox knew . . . he’d discovered the affairs I’d had since.”

  Affairs. Mary felt heat rise to her face. She slipped her hand out of his. So Lydia’s father had, in a word, blackmailed Stanton.