Charity (34 page)

The cotton sky was turning to gray at the northern horizon. Wind blew from the north as Gustie slid the barn door open and closed behind her.

The barn was snug and fragrant with fresh hay in the mangers and clean straw on the floor. Each horse had a bucket of water and another of oats. Gustie lit the lamp that hung on a large nail from the center post. Its yellow light reflected softly off the shining coats of the four horses: two browns, a black, and a white. Gustie petted each horse wordlessly and sat on the edge of the manger between Moon and Biddie. Over the rim of the stall, she could see the place where Frederick had pushed Lena against the wall. She saw the place where Jordis had slipped in front of her growling like a mad cat at the first sight of the gun, taking the bullet that had been aimed at Gustie. Over the last three days, Gustie had lived that moment over and over again. Why hadn’t she stepped forward herself? Why hadn’t she pushed Jordis aside? Why hadn’t she... Each time she relived it she tried to keep it from happening. But each time, the shot cracked and Jordis fell heavily into her arms.

Clare had not been so heavy. Clare was a small woman, wasted by her illness. She weighed practically nothing at all. It seemed to Gustie now that Clare had come all this way just to die. There were no good places to die back east. Here there were many.

After two years of only nightmares, Jordis had enabled Gustie to dream. After two years of making no plans, Jordis had given Gustie a future.

Gustie’s dream had been simple: A happiness she could take for granted, like the comfort of her moccasins—the feeling of your feet not being cold; the feeling of a shoe not pinching too tight.

Gustie had endured a life of loneliness, mitigated briefly by Clare, then by Jordis. Both small flarings of joy had been swiftly, brutally extinguished. She did not think there would be any more.

She knew what she would do. One bitter cold night, she would walk far out onto the prairie and fall asleep. This time, she would go somewhere where no one, not Dorcas, not anyone, could rescue her.

This land sucked feeling out of people. She knew now why these people were stoical. She had not understood before how amid such beauty, people could go crazy. How all faith and hope could be siphoned out of you by this vast, shadowless land until you were a husk floating along the surface, blown by the winds, then merely dust. She no longer cared about the land. Only the sky and her stars. She could still walk among them. The stars were hidden now, but they were there waiting for her. When Jordis was gone, she would pick her starry night.

Gustie, calm in her decision, petted the horses once more on her way out to return to the bedroom, where Jordis lay, not alive, not yet released into death.

When Gustie slid open the barn door, she faced a wall of white, through which she could see nothing. The house was only a few yards away, a little to the right. She pulled the barn door closed behind her, adjusted her angle toward the house, and headed into the snow.

The wind blew from all directions, first batting her in the face, then pushing her from behind. A swift buffet to the side knocked her down. When she got to her feet, she no longer knew in which direction she faced. Everything was solid white—blinding white.
I fell to the side,
she thought.
I was facing that way. I got up, still facing that way...I think...well...
she pushed ahead.

She walked, knocked about by the wind, seeing nothing but her hands in front of her trying to shelter her face from the biting snow.

When Gustie realized she was lost and that she must still be only a few yards from either house, or barn, or outhouse, she smiled. Not exactly how she had planned it, but nearly so. Therefore, it did not matter whether she found her way back or not, if she kept walking or sat down. Oddly, she was not tired now, nor did she feel the cold. Caked with snow, her glasses were useless. She took them off and slipped them into her pocket. Feeling certain now that Jordis was gone, she experienced no surge of sorrow, only the thought:
Everything has been death since I came to this country.

As Gustie plodded on, she felt as if she were pushing through whirlpool after whirlpool in a sea of snow. She could not tell how much snow was actually falling because the wind did not let it rest. She did not have drifts to wade through yet. At most, the snow was ankle to mid-calf deep.

Gustie was numb. She no longer felt the sting of the snow or the push and pull of the wind. She felt, in fact, as if she had no body at all. She was merely an impulse to keep going. Then, ahead of her, the whiteness, in places, congealed to gray. The grayness seemed to have form and substance. “Who is there?” The wind howled in her ears so she could not even hear her own voice. A trick of the snow in her eyes and her poor vision without her glasses—the gray form was no longer there.

Beneath the howling she heard a blowing sound behind her, like the sound a horse makes to clear its nostrils, but it wasn’t a horse. She did not know what it was. She turned, and turned again, for she thought she saw another gray-brown shadow in the snow. Something brushed against her side. She had been beaten by the wind so much she was not certain if it was wind she felt, or something more solid. She turned and saw something black. She found herself turning in circles to grasp the fragmented visions of this thing that moved around and around her like a phantom. Then, peering out of the white flurry was a large warm brown eye that blinked once and disappeared. She looked up and saw a curve of bone.
What is this thing?
A black nose breathing silver steam. A squared-off rump materialized in the maelstrom and disappeared again.
How many are there?
She could only see one, but there seemed to be many...then she saw the complete form of one as the snow cleared a moment. A stag, with flaring antlers, stood before her. He stamped the snowy ground once, twice, three times in measured, quick succession, then the snow swirled about him again, and all she saw was a patch of brown hide to her right. She blinked her eyes hard and wiped her frozen hands over her face. The shapes were in a circle around her...or was there only one? Oh! She couldn’t be sure. Deer!

Of course. They have come close to people because there are barns here. They must smell the hay. They are hungry. Gustie could not speak. Her mouth was frozen, but she thought,
If I knew how to get back I would give you some hay.
A circle of warmth closed in around her. She was surrounded by hides and outlines of gracile limbs as they picked their way deliberately, delicately through the lashing snow. Gustie had no choice but to go with them.
They can smell the barn.
She heard a cry, faint on the raging wind. She kept walking, forced to keep pace with them, as they surrounded her, even bumping her if she slowed. The cry on the wind grew more distinct.

“Gustie!”

Then, “Will! Will! She’s here! Oh, Gustie! We thought we’d lost you. Will! Will!” Lena tugged hard on a taut rope that was fastened to an iron ring just inside the shanty door and extended out disappearing into the blizzard.

Will appeared, pulling himself back to the house, hand over hand on the rope. “Oh, Will!” cried Gustie. “We need some hay for the deer. They are hungry.”

Gustie felt herself pulled and shoved into the shanty. Two pairs of hands brushed snow off her roughly and rubbed her icy hands.

Gustie thought she was speaking clearly, but the looks on her friends’ faces were clearly uncomprehending. Maybe she was babbling. Her mouth and jaw still felt frozen stiff. She tried to force each word out slowly. “The deer. They are hungry. We must give them some hay. Can’t we give them a little hay?”

“What? What are you talking about?” Lena kept rubbing and slapping her all over. To Will, Lena said, “She’s off her head with cold.”

“No. I must go to the barn. I promised them some hay.”

Will, half pushing her, half lifting her off the floor, maneuvered her into the kitchen where a blast of hot air hurt her face. How could one live in such heat?

Lena was already busy at the stove, and Will was back in the shanty stomping the snow off his legs and feet and hanging up his coat and hat.

“The deer,” Gustie pleaded again.

“I told you. She’s delirious,” Lena said over her shoulder.

Lena filled a saucepan with milk and waited for it to warm up. She suddenly turned on Gustie. “You foolish woman! What do you mean going out into this weather like that? You knew we would come and get you. We waited because we thought you needed some time to yourself, and then Will went out to the barn and you were gone! Haven’t I told you time and time again...” Lena, close to tears, grabbed Gustie and hugged her hard and then pushed her away and went back to the stove. “Oh, my milk is going to scald.”

Gustie sat down. “I’m sorry, Lena. I didn’t think.”

“Oh, I know. I know. You just scared ten years off the both of us.” Lena filled a cup with hot milk and sprinkled ginger into it.

“I wish you would see to the deer now, Will. They are with me. They’ve come back for the hay.”

Lena put the cup in Gustie’s cold hands. It burned. “Gustie, there is nothing out there. You came right up to the door by yourself.”

Jordis opened her eyes that evening. She had been unconscious for nearly four days. “I’m thirsty,” she said. Her voice was low and scratchy. “Why are you crying?”

Gustie just shook her head. She could not say a word.

Lena appeared at the door and saw Jordis’s eyes open and Gustie’s full of tears. She clasped her hands together. “Oh, my! Oh, my. Thank you, dear Lord,” and she ran to tell Will.

Dennis found the letter, sealed and addressed to Lena, placed carefully in the center of Julia’s kitchen table and weighted down by a vase of dried flowers. Next to it was an opal ring.

Before he could deliver it, the storm swept in and raged for several days. When the sky cleared and a cold sun bounced off a landscape of endless white snow, the sheriff put on snowshoes and trudged to Will and Lena’s house with the letter in his pocket.

“For heaven sakes!” was all Lena could say when she saw him at her door. Dennis grinned sheepishly and stamped the snow from his feet in the shanty before entering her kitchen, where he was made to sit down and drink several cups of hot coffee.

Lena took the letter into the living room, and Gustie and Dennis stayed in the kitchen so she could read it in private. Will was outside shoveling. Jordis was asleep. Gustie and the sheriff rushed into the living room when they heard Lena wail.

“I can’t read it!” she cried. “You read it. Take it. I don’t want it.” Her hands were shaking as she held the sheets of paper away from herself as if they were on fire. Then she dropped them.

Gustie gathered them up. She knew what they must contain because Jordis had told her what she had seen in the ice house. Since Frederick and Julia were both dead, they thought it was not necessary to tell Lena. There had been enough dreadful revelations. But now it was to come out anyway. The letter was dated the day Lena, Gustie, and Jordis had come back to Charity and looked into the ice house. She must have written it that night.

Gustie glanced at Dennis. He nodded and she began to read out loud:

“Pa Kaiser killed my babies. All my babies. Gertrude told me they were still born, all but Frederick, the first, which they let live but didn’t let me keep. They said it was best that we say he was hers. As if anything so fine could ever come from her. Anybody with eyes can see that he’s no more hers th
—
. He is mine! He has always known it. I wasn’t supposed to, but I told him and it has been our secret all these long years.

“They told me they were still born. I knew they lied so they could take my babes away from me. For Frederick’s sake, I pretended to believe them, knowing I’d given birth to living children. I gave birth to all my babies, and they took them from me and put them in the ice house to freeze to death. Then, he buried them there.

“All these years I thought they had been taken to Argus. It makes me laugh to think of it
—
how but for needing a bit of ice for my cream jug and these skinny old hands, I would never have found out. Iver delivered my cream early in the morning, you see, and I had run out of ice the day before. I went out to get a piece of ice to keep my cream until Pa got back to get me a good big chunk. I looked for a corner of a block of ice that I could knock off and carry myself. I chipped off pieces and put them in my bucket. My hands were cold. My ring slipped off. It fell down behind some ice. So, later on I got Frederick to help me. When he moved the blocks of ice, we felt around for the ring in the straw and we found wood...like a trap door in the earth, and I made him dig around it and pry it open. I thought it was something Gertrude was hoarding down there. Something of Mother’s. There were so many of Mother’s lovely things missing that should have been mine. That would have been just like her to hide them away like that where nobody could use them rather than let me have them. We opened it. I saw what he’d done. My babies, wrapped in the little quilts I’d made for each of them. Frederick wanted to go straight to Dennis, and I said wait till I talked to Pa, myself. I waited for him to come home
—
it was very late. I stopped him before he went into the house. I said I wanted to talk to him. Not in his house where Gertrude would hear, and not in my house, because Frederick was there. We went into the barn, and I told him I knew what he’d done.