Longshadow's Woman. Bronwyn Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ maybe longer, without needing to stop. He could take the mule, but stealing a mule was a hanging offense.

      On the other hand, he would rather hang for something he did than for something he didn’t. Either way, he concluded, he would be back with his papers before she brought his supper.

      When her Jesus Day came around, the woman was up before sunrise, harnessing Sorry to the cart. She set a napkin-covered basket in the cart, handed him a plate of bread, side meat and greens, and explained that she was going to visit her friend. “I’m going to trust you,” she said, her small, pink face so earnest he wanted to take it between his hands and reassure her. “I’m not going to lock you up, because I can’t think of a way to do it without using those miserable old irons, and I wouldn’t do that to a mad dog. But I cooked you some greens last night because a body needs greens to stay healthy, and I’ll bring back a jar of Emma’s peach preserves. You can have that to look forward to.”

      Wearing a different dress from the one she wore every day—a faded yellow that bared her arms and throat, she stared at him as if waiting for a response.

      He was tempted. By Daw-k’hee, the good mother earth, he was tempted.

      But he only nodded his agreement. Watching her drive away a few minutes later, he set aside his conflicted feelings and concentrated on fixing directions in his mind. He had noted certain landmarks on his way north from the jailhouse. His sense of direction was well honed, both from instinct and from experience, but he had never traveled from this place to his own land. Asking directions would be risky.

      Carrie’s hand was not healing. “Honey, I’m going to have to open it up again,” the old woman said, shaking her head. Carrie knew the procedure. Dreaded it like a bad toothache, but she knew it had to be done. So she washed Emma’s butcher knife, sharpened it on the stone, then held it in the candle flame until the edge glowed red.

      She cried. Couldn’t help herself, and with Emma, she didn’t even try to pretend. She cried not only from the pain, but for what her life had become, for what it had been before, which was both better and worse—and for the glimpse of something more wonderful than anything she could have imagined.

      Something she would never have.

      While she sat with the basin on her lap, allowing the blood and pus to flow from her ragged hatchet wound, she told the old woman about her prisoner. “I know it’s only because I’m there alone so much, but it’s almost like having another friend. I don’t even know his name, but he’s got the clearest gray eyes. I’ve seen him smile, mostly when he doesn’t know I’m watching. And Emma, he’s got the whitest teeth.”

      “Mmm-hmm. A woman can’t help but think, as long as that’s as far as it goes.” It was clearly a warning, and Carrie took it in the spirit in which it had been offered. Her own mother would have probably done the same.

      Emma Tamplin was a small woman, barely four and a half feet tall. Having once been wed to a successful farmer who had gone to war when the Yankees had invaded the south, she had lost everything—husband, home, children—everything except for her dignity, her wisdom and her kind heart.

      All of which Carrie had come to value enormously. Trying hard to ignore the throbbing of her hand that went all the way up to her shoulder, she said, “I know, I know—I’m being foolish. But Emma, following him in the field every day, watching the way he works so hard—Why, if Darther ever put in a single day’s work, I swear, I’d fall over in a dead heap, but my prisoner works like it was his corn we’d be planting come spring.”

      “Any man worth his salt would rather be outside in the fresh air than rotting away in jail.” Emma’s husband had died in a Yankee prison. To this day she couldn’t bear to see things penned up if she could possibly help it. “I’m going to poultice you with my special salve, if you’ll hand me that there jar over there on the dresser.”

      Carrie happened to know the greasy salve was made of ground mouse dung and butter, with a few herbs mixed in, but if Emma believed in it, then Carrie did, too. An hour later, her arm no longer throbbing quite so fearfully, they sat on the tiny front porch and talked about this and that. Emma never complained, which made Carrie ashamed of all her own complaints.

      “I know it’s not right, but sometimes I wish he would forget where he lived and not come home at all,” she said, cradling her hand in her lap. She’d been airing her latest grievance against Darther, who’d refused to give her money to buy a cow because he had a chance to buy into a certain surefire winner.

      “Racetrack trash, that’s what he is. I heard all about racetrack trash when I was at Uncle Henry’s. That’s all they ever talked about—who was losing his shirt, and who was winning big, and where the next race was going to be. They weren’t even real races, not the kind where ladies go and wear nice gowns and fancy hats.”

      “I don’t know your husband personally, child. I do know he’s not made a single friend in these parts in all the years he’s been here, but there’s bound to be some good in him somewhere, even if he is a Yankee. He had the good sense to marry you, didn’t he?”

      Carrie didn’t bother to reply. Emma knew how hopeless things were. She had seen Carrie’s bruises too many times to believe they were all caused by her own carelessness. Besides, they almost always coincided with one of Darther’s infrequent visits home.

      “Living alone can be peaceful, I’ll not deny that. Still, I’d give anything in the world to hear my Luther ranting and raving over the fools who’re running our government now, or fussing because I can’t make bread the way his mother used to do. Sometimes even harsh words are better than no words at all.”

      Carrie couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. Harsh words were about all she’d heard ever since her Uncle Henry had sent for her, and Mrs. Robinson had put her on the train with a change of clothes in a paper sack and a dollar bill pinned inside her pinafore pocket.

      A little while later, pleasantly full from the biscuits she’d baked and brought with her, served with Emma’s wild peach preserves, Carrie hitched Sorry to the cart and set out along the narrow road. There was a shortcut through the woods she took when she was afoot, but today she’d felt like riding. She had actually expected that blasted mule to behave, seeing as how her Kie-oh-way had him trained now. The man didn’t even have to swear at him, he just looked him in the eye before they set out to do a job, and the mule turned sweet as pie.

      As if sensing her inattention, Sorry came to an abrupt stop, laid back his ears and brayed. Startled, Carrie nearly dropped the reins. “You stubborn, no-account crazy bastard, you do that again and I’m going to whomp your hide till it’s raw, you hear me? Now, git to movin’!” She cracked the whip in the air, and the mule moved another few steps, then halted again.

      The man was a witch. Carrie didn’t know if mules and witches spoke the same language, she only knew that her hand was hurting again from being cut open, drained and poulticed, and then having to drive a contrary mule. What’s more, she was starting to get that crampy feeling in the pit of her belly, which meant drinking a slug of whiskey, which she despised, and going to bed with a hot brick wrapped in a towel.

      She finally gave up and let the beast have his head. He knew the way home as well as she did. He also knew he wouldn’t be fed or watered until he got her there. She was in no mood to put up with stubborn animals, four-legged or two-legged. “No wonder Darther calls you Sorry,” she muttered. “You’re the sorriest son of a bitch ever to suck air.”

      She was going to have to stop swearing. Emma didn’t like it. Mrs. Robinson would be shocked. All the missionaries would СКАЧАТЬ