A Reliable Wife (4 page)

The horses calmed beneath her hands, their panic passed. They heard her voice, barely audible above the howling wind, and
they stood patiently as she inched her way back through the harness, her hands never leaving their flesh, never letting them
forget that she was there, was in charge, promising them safe delivery.

She gently picked up the reins again and they walked, exhausted now, her eyes straining in the howling dark to pick up the
ruts in the snow so she could tell where they had come from, driving them slowly back to the place where the deer had leapt
out of nothing and sent the stillness flying into panic.

On the road again, the horses stood pitiful and defeated. The gelding almost collapsed, but pulled himself upright, and together
the two horses hauled the carriage into the white blindness. Miraculously, the lanterns had held, and she could see a short
distance ahead.

They almost ran over Ralph before she saw him. He stood calmly in the middle of the road, swaying a bit, blood streaming from
a gash in his forehead, a gash deep as bone.

She jumped from the carriage. She hadn’t come all this way to have him die now. Not now. She caught the hem of her skirt on
the edge of the seat, heard the quick tear of the cheap material as she almost fell into his arms. The blood covered his face,
mixing with the snow clotted in the fur collar of his black coat. She took his elbow. He shook her off, but then he staggered,
and she took his arm again and this time he didn’t push her away but leaned into her, so that she realized the size and solidity
of him, the depth of his chest, even through his heavy coat the heat of his body was clear. She helped him to the seat, the
blood streaming from his forehead. She found her cloak, her foolish thin cape, and covered his shivering legs.

“The horses all right?” His voice was strained.

“They can carry us.” She climbed up. “Which way, Mr. Truitt?”

“They know. Just let them go.” The horses moved forward, one limping and wheezing, and both blind in the night, but sure of
their way.

Ralph sat as stiffly as he could, trying not to give in to the searing pain, but it was too much. He felt himself slowly crumpling,
his hurt body folding in against hers. He felt it as her arm came up across him, pulling him down, pulling his head to rest
against her breast, her racing heart.

CHAPTER FOUR

There was a moment of utter stillness in which she took in every detail, the weight of Ralph in her arms, the house, the face
at the window, stricken with terror, the horse, its broken leg, realizing now that the cracking sound on the ice had been
bone not ice. She saw herself, her hair wild around her head, her hands chill and raw, her skirt light, the hem spilling her
jewels in the snow. She saw them standing in the yard, snow up to the iron wheel hubs, the horses’ heads drooping in exhaustion
and pain, the house itself. The house.

It’s like a clean white shirt, she thought. A clean white shirt hanging on the back of a door.

A neat, columned porch, a warm rust light through drawn curtains, the turn of a chair left out long past summer. Details.
She couldn’t see the whole of it, couldn’t see the point at which the peaked roof met. But it seemed warm. It seemed nice.

The horses stopped, the brown mare stamping its hooves, the black gelding couldn’t take another step, its right front leg
raised off the ground, hoof hanging dangerously. The light from the porch lit up the sweat on their heaving flanks, turned
the breath streaming from their wide nostrils into bright wispy feathers.

It was trim, the house, simple without being austere, and it was bright with lights, not at all the way she had imagined it.
It sat foursquare in the center of a neat lawn, steps running up to a wide porch. She had imagined something more squalid,
something grown greasy through years of neglect. She had imagined a house that was desolate, an unloved structure in a bleak
terrain. This was a surprise, like a crisply wrapped package, all white tissue and blue ribbon trim.

The moment ended and time began again, all in a rush. The face howled, vanished from the window and the door flew open. A
woman stood dumbfounded inside.

Ralph Truitt was bleeding badly and lay heavily against Catherine. His breath was easy, his eyes were open but staring ahead
without direction or focus, and the porch, the glittering door, and safety seemed miles away.

“Truitt?” the gray head thrust out, eyes peering into the swirl, voice carrying past Catherine’s ears. “Is that you Mr. Truitt?”

“Help! We’re here!” Catherine yelled into the wind, hysteria suddenly seizing her. “Please come! We need help.”

A man and a woman ran from the house, their hair, their clothes catching the wind and flying madly. The man went straight
for the faltering, groaning gelding and began to check the extent of the injuries, speaking calmly, his hand on the horse’s
flank as he shook his head at the pitiful leg. Catherine could see the broken bone thrust through the flesh, could feel the
animal’s defeat in the way the ribcage shimmered with pain.

The woman ran straight for Truitt. “Sweet Jesus,” she yelled. “What’s happened? What did you do?” Her brittle, bright eyes
caught Catherine’s, held there, accusing.

“The horses bolted. A deer . . . they bolted and threw him. I think his head hit the wheel. It wasn’t my fault,” she added
uselessly. “It was a deer. So fast.”

“Inside. Larsen!” The old man’s head jerked up from the animal, which was slowly sinking to the ground. “Truitt’s cut bad.
Get him in the house.”

So the three of them, each taking a part, carried Truitt’s body into the house. He was jerking around now, wild with the pain
and the blood, and it took every muscle of all three of them to get him up the stairs and into the house. They laid him on
a velvet sofa, put a pillow beneath his head.

The woman said, “He’ll bleed to death.”

“He needs a doctor. Surely . . .”

Mrs. Larsen, she must have been, turned on Catherine. “In this weather? Not even for Ralph Truitt. It’s miles both ways, and
too late by a long shot when the doctor gets here. If you can find him. Drunk. If he’ll come. Drunk and useless.”

“Get my case, please,” Catherine said. She was completely calm. “From the wagon. A gray case. And hot water. And towels and
iodine, if you’ve got it.”

The old couple stared at her, not sure. Truitt lay on the sofa, eyes straight ahead.

“Get her case,” the old lady said. “And get your gun. For that gelding.”

Larsen suddenly moved, leaving the room. The old woman, his wife, Catherine supposed, moved as well. Truitt came suddenly
awake, eyes red with pain, and Catherine and Ralph stared at one another in the sudden quiet.

“You’re not going to die,” she said.

“I have that hope.”

A sharp gust of wind blew into the hall as Larsen went out into the night. Catherine and Truitt waited. She felt she might
take his hand, but did not.

They heard the gunshot from the yard. Catherine jumped, and ran to the window, pulling back heavy velvet curtains to see the
single thrashing of the giant horse, its head a hollow of blood.

After a long time, Larsen came back through the snow, carrying Catherine’s suitcase in one hand, the pistol loose in the other.
He laid the suitcase at her feet. He looked at her with hatred as though all of it had been her fault, and all of it unforgivable.

She clicked the rusted cheap clasps and opened the suitcase, rummaging around in her black clothes and plain underthings to
find her sewing case. Turning, she stepped on the hem of her skirt, ripping again at the tear. . . . Jesus hell, she thought,
the jewelry. She knelt quickly, felt at the hem. Nothing. Christ and hell.

Mrs. Larsen came back, a bowl of steaming water in her hands, her arms filled with towels. She stared at Catherine, eyed her
skirt.

Catherine rose. “It’s . . . it’s nothing. It tore. I lost something. In the accident.”

“Well, it’s gone then. Gone till spring.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Lost, yes, thought Catherine. Lost my jewelry, and lost any way out of this place.

Catherine stared at Truitt. “This will hurt.”

“It hurts now.” He managed a weak smile.

“Is there anything to drink?”

“I don’t touch liquor.”

“It’ll hurt worse.”

“I know.”

“Can you sit up? A little?”

He groaned as they raised him up from the sofa, enough for Catherine to sit and settle his head on her lap. The blood dripped
steadily onto her skirt. She could feel it wetting her legs almost immediately.

As Mrs. Larsen held the bowl, Catherine dipped a towel in the steaming water, began gently to clean his wound. She knew it
hurt, but beneath her hand his face calmed, his breathing slowed. He never closed his eyes, never made a sound, although tears
streamed down his cheeks.

“I cry,” he said. “I’m like a baby.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. Ma’am? The iodine.” She took the bottle Mrs. Larsen produced from the pocket of her apron, tipped
it enough to pour a tiny stream, just along the wound that ran from his eyebrow to his hairline. She dabbed at the trickle,
and Truitt closed his eyes, then winced as the sharp sting hit the bone, which Catherine could see, as the sharp smell brought
to each of them a sense of the urgency of what she was doing.

That poor horse, she thought, dragging us all this way, lying now in the snow. Tomorrow, she supposed, whenever this stopped,
Larsen would use the living horse to drag the dead one out of sight.

“My sewing kit, and I need you, Mrs. . . .”

“Larsen, Miss.”

“Mrs. Larsen. I need you, very gently, to press the edges together, like this.”

Catherine showed her, like pressing pie dough to the edges of the pan, her thumbs smoothing, smoothing the skin until the
edges almost met. The cut was not clean. There would be a scar, no matter what.

Catherine found her strongest thread, dipped her needle in the iodine, and blew gently on the needle, and on the cut, bleeding
harder now.

She threaded the needle. She saw how Larsen turned away, busied himself elsewhere as she took the first stitch.

“I’ll get the wagon put away now. Unless . . .”

“No. We’re fine.” The needle pricking into and through the flesh, Catherine’s hand steady and calm. The door opened and closed
again as Larsen went out into the night.

Slowly the wound began to close, the flow of blood to lessen. “Are you a nurse, Miss?”

“My father was a doctor. I watched him.”

It was a lie, however lightly she said it. Her father was a drunk and a liar. He had no profession. Catherine knew no more
than the simple fact that she had not come all this way to watch Ralph Truitt die in her arms. If you were going to sew a
wound shut, she figured, there were only so many ways to do it.

“So you never . . .”

“Never. But I watched him many times. There’s no other way.”

At some point she felt Truitt slip away from her, lose consciousness. His pale eyes, fixed and white with pain, finally closed,
and she saw for the first time, darting her eyes from his wound, the expanse of his skin, so close it was as though she were
looking through a magnifying glass. His beard was like black wheat stubble on a dry field. His skin was pale, and while from
a distance he looked younger than she knew him to be, up close she could see the thousands of tiny lines across his skin.
She could see the future of her own face, and she could see something else in him as his muscles went slack and his skin sagged
away from his strong big bones. She could see the effort it cost him to keep his face composed, hopeful, and she could see
the sadness that lay beneath the steely composure, the lack of life in him.

Her tiny fingers worked swiftly, following Mrs. Larsen’s hands along the length of the cut, and finally she was done. Not
too bad.

He opened his eyes.

“All done.” She smiled at him, her hands still on his face, his head in her lap.

“Thank you.”

“We have to get you to bed. Could you . . . it would be better if you tried to stay awake for a while. Your head may be hurt.
As long as you can.” She shyly reached to touch his face, but Larsen appeared, stamping, to interrupt her.

“We’ll take him from here, Miss. I’ll get him upstairs. Walk with him. There’s no need for you, and Mrs. has your dinner.
I’ll take him.”

Larsen reached under and pulled Ralph to his feet. Ralph swayed, but held upright, and Catherine sat as she watched the two
of them clumping upstairs, Mrs. Larsen following with useless flutter.

Then they were gone, and for the first time, Catherine looked at the room in which she sat, and was startled by it. It was
nice, not at all what she had imagined: very plain, very clean, and spotless. It was an ordinary square room, and yet here
and there sat pieces of furniture that seemed strangely incongruous, as though they had come from some other house in some
other place. Bright color. Rich fabrics. Graceful and finely made furniture, only a few pieces, standing alongside the more
mundane farm things, the china press, the plain pine grandfather clock.

The sofa she sat on was one of these odd pieces, all gilded arms and carved swans and sunset colored damask, now stained with
Truitt’s blood. From her view, it looked like the kind of room where nobody would know where to sit, the kind of place maintained
in perfect order, even though it was never used.

There was one chair, plain, strong oak, which was clearly where Truitt sat in the evenings, smoking a cigar, an ashtray and
humidor on the low plain table next to it, the table covered also with farm journals and almanacs and ledgers. Next to it,
a lamp that glowed with brilliant colors from a stained-glass shade, crimsons and purples, grapes and autumn leaves and delicate
birds in flight. It was the kind of lamp she’d seen only in hotels. She had never imagined an ordinary person would own one,
but Ralph Truitt did.

He must be very rich, she thought. The thought warmed her, and brought a smile to her face. He’s not going to die. Now it’s
beginning. Her heart raced as though she were about to steal a pair of kid gloves from a shop.

She could hear the heavy sounds of the three moving upstairs, one boot falling on the floor, then another. Ah, they were undressing
him, she realized. She had thought she had been shut out because they had not wanted her to see his weakness, but it was,
in fact, his body they were denying her.

The clock ticked steadily. The wind howled without peace. Catherine sat alone, wondering if anybody on the face of the earth
knew where she was, could picture how she sat, her hands quietly in her lap, her fingers touched with blood, her torn hem,
her lost jewels.

She wanted a cigarette. A cigarette in her little silver holder. And a glass of whiskey, one glass to take away the chill.
But that was another life in another place, and here, in Ralph Truitt’s house, Catherine simply sat, her hands in her lap.

Here they were, four people, each one moving separately through the rooms of the same house. She had held his head in her
lap and her clothes were wet with his blood, yet she was alone. Alone as she had always been.