Mazy's teeth chattered. She wobbled between Jeremy and Elizabeth as cobwebs smothered her mind.
They set her arm, the rub of bone against bone making her sick in her stomach. They splinted it, held it firm to her chest with a sling formed from a strip of her petticoat; Mazy's swollen fingers fisted over a pair of Jeremy's gray knit socks, something soft to steady and grip. They gave her dark laudanum. It turned her mind to sleep.
“Can you wrap my arm in a poultice of fresh mullein leaves? It'll cut the swelling,” Mazy said through a thick tongue when she woke.
“Tomorrow,” her mother told her, the back of her palm soothing her daughter's hand. “We'll make a turmeric-and-water paste to stop bruises. Just like your papa used to.”
Jeremy adjusted the sling. “We've a good supply of milk now,” he said. He patted her arm. “That'll help the bones heal.”
“I don't like milk,” Mazy said.
“Essential for bones. Take it like medicine.”
“Some chamomile tea'll help you sleep,” her mother added. The older woman tugged at the tiny sticks and dirt still clinging to Mazy's hair. “Got your own little woods right here among your curls. That nose of yours'll have a bruise too, looks like. Don't look broken, though. So lucky, child.”
“‘Lucky’ isn't the word I'd have chosen,” Mazy said. Every part of her body felt riddled with rawness, and just as she wondered if she'd find sleep again without throbbing, she dozed.
“Fright,” Mazy heard her mother say later when she awoke to a candlelit room. Shadowy light flickered against a framed sampler hung on the log wall. “Afterwards, that's when you worry. Folks get through their pickles and then die of surviving. That's what her papa always said.” Elizabeth Muellers bulk obscured Jeremy until she moved and Mazy saw her husband seated at the table.
At forty-eight, Elizabeth Mueller was barely ten years older than Jeremy Bacon and sometimes Mazy wondered if he didn't have more in common with his mother-in-law than with his wife. She watched them now from her refuge on the bed, the low fire flickering against their faces. Jeremy read some sort of drawing laid out before him. Elizabeth Mueller leaned over, spoke in a low voice, then returned to the hickory rocker that creaked as she lowered herself into it. Mazy felt clammy and wondered if she had raised a fever.
“Doctoring all those years, her papa saw his share of death,” her mother said.
“We all go eventually,” Jeremy said.
“Some folks ain't ever prepared, though. When they see how close they come, that's when they shake.”
Mazy coughed.
Both Jeremy and her mother turned. “Hungry?” her mother asked.
“I'll get it,” Jeremy said, standing. He filled a wooden bowl from the caldron at the fireplace and, kneeling beside her, spooned her a thin soup of beef stock and potatoes. She lay on the goosedown ticking, letting him take care of her there in the great room, close to the warmth of the heated rock hearth.
“The cows weren't…well, weren't part of the plan, you know,” Jeremy began in his explaining tone.
“I did wonder if I'd missed that part,” Mazy said. “It must've been them I heard in the timber first. I didn't notice the brute behind me until it was too late. If only Pig'd been around. Or if I'd realized sooner what was happening.”
“Quite,” Jeremy said. With a neckerchief, he dabbed at a soup dribble on her chin
“So, the cows. How did they happen to show up in Grant County?”
He looked away from her, stood, pulled at the belt that tied his woolen pants. “Lucky for us, I'd say.”
“That interesting word again,” Mazy said.
“See, the original buyers failed to appear at the dock. Someone said they'd chucked everything. Headed west, I guess.” He blinked his eyes, cleared his throat. “I thought it would work fine to take them all. Cows're purebred. Knew someday I'd want some, but I thought later.” He paused, coughed. “I would've preferred to research their bloodlines.”
“And you paid for them, how?”
He glanced over at Mazy's mother before answering. Elizabeth squinted at the cream chemise she was mending. “Did you see what good straight backs they have?” he said, turning back to Mazy. “Nice udders. Should give us quite a start on a prize herd. Good coloring, like white mushrooms inside brown ones there at their hindquarters.”
“Color wasn't what I was tending to,” Mazy said.
Jeremy scraped the wooden dish with the spoon and set the bowl on the table as he sat down on the floor beside her, his eyes level with hers. He reached for her, twirled a strand of her hair around his finger, lowered his voice to a whisper. “You're looking more rested.”
“Some prize herd with a mad cow brute at the head of it,” she said.
“He just got agitated.” He pulled his finger from her hair, smoothed a wrinkle in the sling. “All the newness. Long trip. They're stout animals, Maze Calmed down now. All of them.”
“Resting peacefully, are they?”
“Quite,” He took a deep breath, stood. “Not much of an anniversary for you, is it? I am sorry about your garden.”
“We salvaged what we could,” her mother said, looking up from the needlework spread at her lap. Mazy marveled at her mothers hearing, able to listen to conversations meant for private. “‘Fraid the love apples look the worst. Still not sure it's safe to eat them. I covered what's left, case it freezes.”
“Aren't you always telling me to be adventurous, Mother? I planted something new with those tomatoes, which is, by the way, what they're called.”
“Advice I always thought fell on deaf ears,” her mother said. She smiled then. “Excepting for them bloomers.”
“Quite possibly a sign you're not to have a garden this year,” Jeremy said.
“After all the work of the winter? Be forced to depend on our neighbors’ success? Go hungry? No. A gardens the sign that life keeps going on, Jeremy, that people are home and happy to be there. This year more than any other, I should celebrate that. I'll replant, soon as I'm able.”
“Came close to losing you,” Jeremy said. He pushed the muslin sling back and bent to kiss her swollen fingers curled over his socks.
“The worst part,” Mazy said, reaching for her husband's hand, “was wondering where you were and if you were all right.”
He coughed. “You were quite smart to drop down. How'd you know to do that?”
“Something just said to.”
“And for once,” he said, “you didn't argue.”
It must have been near midnight when Jeremy slipped into the bed beside her.
“Would you rather I slept on the floor, so as not to bother?” he asked.
“I'd like you beside me on the anniversary of our marriage vows,” Mazy said. “Lie next to the wall, though. Watch my arm.”
He gentled himself over her, slid under the comforter, and lay on his side, his back to the logs, his arm arched over her head. He stroked her forehead with his fingers. He smelled of sweat and tobacco.
“Maze,” he began in a whisper. “I meant to tell you.”
What was that tone in his voice? Tentative?
“About the cows,” she said.
“Yes. And…”
No, something different, something cool, a threatening thread that wound its way from the weave of his words to her heart.
“You were the one who had them shipped in all along, weren't you? The cows”
She felt him relax.
“You knew.” He sniffed now, reached beneath the pillow for a handkerchief, and blew his nose. He rested his hand back on the rise of her hip, his fingers fisted around the damp cloth.
“I didn't want to say so in front of Mama ” She whispered the words, not sorry they sounded like a hiss “Think our business should be ours and not a part of hers.” She glanced to see if her mother still slept in the rocker. Mazy turned onto her back, and Jeremy adjusted the sling. “Surprised me you brought Mama back with you. She doesn't like to travel all that much, I never th
ought.”
He didn't respond, and she waited so long she thought he'd fallen asleep, but his breathing never slowed.
“Your mother was wanting a change,” he said.
That tone again, of reeds beneath the surface.
“Cassville's a change of scenery from Milwaukee, all right.”
“Now she'll have a story to tell her grandbabies when they arrive,” Jeremy said.
“About their mother surviving the mad cow brute named Marvel and how their grandma chased the cows?”
“Something like that.” He drew a circle in the thickness of her hair, twisting it around his finger. “She didn't want to be left behind,” he said, “when we…” He mumbled something that sounded like “new place.”
“She's found a new place?” She turned to face him in the dark.
He coughed and cleared his throat, blew his nose. “Our new place, Maze,” he said “She wants to see our new place.”
Mazy lay still, stared at the mud chink in the ceiling, confused by his words, holding firm to familiar. “But she's visited here before.”
Her husband took a deep breath, and even before he spoke, she felt struck in her stomach, empty of air. Her heart pounded loud in her ears. “Guess the time's come to tell you,” he said. “I've sold the farm”
Every tendril of her hair ached. Her throat burned. Her soul felt shriveled and sliced as though the brute's horns pierced afresh. “A new place?” Her voice was tiny, distant to her ears. She tried to sit up on her elbow, couldn't, lay back down. Something heavy sat on her soul, kept her from taking a filling-up breath. “You didn't talk with me?”
“You don't like change, don't handle it well,” he said. His words sounded clipped, rehearsed now. “Didn't want to alarm you unless everything went through. And it did.” Jeremy's words tumbled out faster now “I was never cut out to farm, you know that. Wouldn't have come to this place without Uncle's leaving it to us. The manure makes my hands break out in bumps, and the dirt”—he rubbed his nose— ”aggravates my head. But the Ayrshires—they challenge.”
“Plenty of manure and dirt where cows are.”
“I can hire people to do the dirt work. I'll manage the breeding program, the matching of people and animals, building the herd. That's what I'm meant for.”
“You haven't managed so far,” she said. “You were aimless as a stray until your uncle left you this place. Drifting, a dockworker, not saving coins or moving toward a future. That's what you said when you met me, remember?”
“I've done this. Nearly two years.”
“But no love of the earth? No loyalty to our home?”
“Dirt's dirt,” he said.
Tears pressed against her nose, thickened in her throat. Had Jeremy hated this place and she'd never known? How could that be?
“We have a good life,” Mazy said, her heart thudding, even in her swollen fingers “Can't we get what you want where we already are? I love this place, Jeremy. The bluffs, the eagles…” She heard the wail in her own voice, the piercing of tears. “I'll milk the cows.” Her voice broke, but she kept talking. “We can build the herd here. I'll do the work in the dirt, Jeremy, you—”
“Where did you think the money for the brute came from? Think that grew on your love apples?”
“I thought the timber, I…don't know. I don't think I can live anywhere else. I don't want to live anywhere but on this place.”
“This place.” He spit the words. “It would take years on this place. Denniston's ‘Big Brick’ hotel stands empty, acts like the plague for keeping folks away. Cassville's stagnant, Maze, done, almost folded. Titles are so messed up for most, they can't even sell no matter how hard Dewey works to clear them. We're lucky that way.”
“But the ferry, the iron ore, the button factory—there're reasons to come here, to stay.”
He shook his head. “It'll never lure others who'd invest in dairying, nor the people who need it.”
She sank back into the down, lay there, longing, bruising from loss.
He took a deep breath. “You don't need to agree with this, Mazy. It's done. It's my responsibility to provide for us. I am, my way.”
“I'll stay here, then,” she said after a time.
“You're not listening. I've sold it. People are coming to live here. It's done and I'm going.”
He hadn't said we, just I.
“Where then? Back to Milwaukee? Or to Chicago where there're people like…yellow jackets over trash? Why buy the cows, then? And why did my mother know, before I did?”
“I wanted you to come along, remember?” he said. He sat up in the bed, arms folded across his chest, his neck stretched, jaw pushed forward. “This, your…wounding wouldn't have happened if you had come.”
“You're the wound,” she said.
“It's a wound for a man to care for his wife, to invest his money in a future and not gamble or drink it away? Some wound. I know a dozen wives who'd jump at the chance to live with the pains you think I've given. And they wouldn't argue about it, not one. A dozen who'd make a good life in the west.”
“My life is good. Or was.” She felt sluggish, her thinking as mixed up as the dog's food. Her side throbbed. “You've sold the bluffs. The meadow. My garden. My life.” She paused, her words muffled by swallowed tears. “What the brute did today was nothing.”
“If you'd have been with us…three could have handled the animals better. You could have driven the wagon instead of my having to. I could have herded them. The brute wouldn't have bolted.”
“You bought another wagon, too?”
He said nothing for a moment, then, “Going through Iowa, I'll need a sturdier wagon. After I cross the Missouri at Kanesville, maybe I'll join with an overland train, maybe go west alone.”
Lying flat on the floor, Pig yipped in his sleep, shook, then quieted.
West. Leave this place.
“You let me plant the garden,” Mazy said, staring at the ceiling, “knowing I wouldn't be here to ever see the harvest? You sat there at the table, hour after hour looking at Ayrshires, finding a brute to buy and never said you planned to take him west?”
He lay back beside her, kept his arms crossed over his chest. “I didn't want to upset you.”
Hotness flushed over her. “It never occurred to you that I'd be upset left out of the choice? You never thought I might want to have a say in my own life?”
“I haven't wanted to say this, Maze, but you are just a child in many ways.” He paused, twirled a curl of her hair around his finger. She could almost see his lazy grin trying to slip over her emptiness. “Running around in your bloomers.”
“Now what I wear bothers you?” She yanked at the comforter, pulling it from him, brushed at his hand in her hair. “Nothing I do suits you.
“It might have been someone else coming through the trees,” he lectured. “Exposing your ankles wont be wise where we re going, Maze. If you re going with me…”
“What if I go back with Mama and live in Milwaukee. What then?”
“Your mothers going too, so I need you to drive a wagon. Load up and drive and no arguments.”
“My mother is…?” She stared at the woman who slept through her husbands betrayal.
“That was thoughtless, what I just said, about needing you just to drive.”
“It must be the laudanum.” She threaded her hand through her hair. “Why would Mother leave home? She's—”
“She wants adventure. She told me. Look.” He dabbed at Mazy s eyes with his handkerchief, softening her resolve, engaging her in that way he had. “Well find another place with boundaries that take in mountains and rivers and timber and meadows, too. You'll see.”
Shadows from the hearth danced against the chinking. Her mother snored, a ruffled nightcap framing her round face that lolled back against the rocker, mouth open in the sleep of the innocent.
“And if I don't go?”
“I'm thirty-six years old, Maze. If I don't take aim now, I'll be angry with myself
for however long I live for having missed this shot.”
“And my choice,” she said, “is to do the most foreign thing I can think of. Watch my husband walk away, maybe even my mother, or step out into a cloud of the unknown and hope I don't fall through.”
“You'll have your mother with you”
She swallowed a sob and turned her face to the down. Jeremy reached to hold her, but she pulled away “I don't understand why things need to change,” she said. “I don't understand!”
The dog stirred and came to the side of the bed, his face bumping against hers as he sniffed.
“Will you come, Maze?”
She couldn't answer—her thoughts too heavy, so choking.
They lay silent beside each other.
“I know what a beaver feels like now,” Mazy said as the night stepped aside for the morning. “Pushed into a trap. Its not the dying he fears. Its the change, made without choice. And knowing hell never see home again.”
His lips brushed her forehead. She stiffened and turned away
2
choices
“You'll feel better when you're not so sore,” Elizabeth told her only child the next morning. She patted Mazy's still swollen fingers, exposed from the sling. “They look like little fat sausages. Maybe the bandage is too tight. I'll ponder that.”
“I'm too sore to think,” Mazy said. She sat on the side of the bed, dizzy.
The dog lumbered over, made growling and slurping sounds as he nuzzled Mazy's good hand.
“Even sounds like a pig,” Elizabeth said. “That how you named him?” She bent, scratched the dog's head.
“I just liked the sound of the word.”
“Words, words. So much readin and writin you got no time for grandbabies.” Elizabeth laughed.
Mazy didn't.
Elizabeth frowned, irritated with herself for making light talk with her daughter who almost always wanted serious.
“I know you're grieved,” Elizabeth said, adjusting the bandage. “But change is part of living. Can't stop it no matter how you try. I remember when your papa brought me from Virginia to tend his big house in Milwaukee.” Elizabeth stood, held a sun-dried sheet with her chin, and started to fold it “The busde ofthat city, all the smells of people cooking and doing, woke me up when I didn't even know I'd been sleeping.” She held the flannel to her breast, inhaling the memory. “Why, I might have gone my whole life without them moments if I'd stayed put just cooking. Worse, your papa surely woulda found another to love and marry. You mighta been born to a butchers wife instead of a tender doctors.”