In Need of a Good Wife (12 page)

“Are you ill, sweet love?” she whispered. “You’re awfully quiet.”

Randall shook his head, pulled her closer. “I’m fine. I’m better now.” He glanced lazily around the room. A painting of two lovers on a riverbank hung on one wall. In the corner opposite the stove was Mariah’s armoire, stuffed with dresses and bonnets far too fine for any social event in this town. He knew very little about her, only that she was twenty years old and from Detroit. She meant to go to California someday. She didn’t put milk in her tea. Randall felt the old nagging questions bubbling up. How had he come to be here, in this town? What had he really
done
with all his useless years?

Mariah stood up and gathered her garments from the floor. She padded over to the armoire and hung them up, then took a dressing gown from the hook and shrugged into it, tying it at the waist. When she padded back to the bed, her footsteps silent, Randall bolted upright.

He pointed at the floor. “You got a carpet!”

Mariah seemed pleased that he had noticed. “It was a gift.”

Randall laughed and stood up. He threw on his clothes, his mood brightening. “I’ve got to go, Mariah.”

She giggled. “Well, what’s gotten into you?”

“Until next time, my dear.”

She waved from the bed as Randall slipped out the door. He buttoned his coat as he rushed down the hallway, then fumbled to get his snowshoes back on outside. In the barn, the puzzle of the broom sat in pieces, waiting to be solved. And now it could be of use.

It was late in the season for butchering, but Dodge County had just passed through one of the warmest falls on record, and it made little sense to slaughter a cow until it was good and cold.

At least that was what Daniel Gibson told himself, but the truth was that he simply hadn’t done it yet. Daniel kept wondering if he was lazy. It seemed a strange question to ask himself since, if he really was lazy, wouldn’t he also be the sort of man to make excuses about it, to deny that the fundamental problem resided in his own disposition? On the other hand, Daniel really
didn’t
believe laziness was the problem. It wasn’t that he felt unwilling to do the work; he simply felt frozen, as inert as that cow would be a few minutes after he slit its throat. Wyndham Ross asked him about it again after Sunday service—when should he bring over his cow?—and again Daniel muttered a litany of excuses to keep the farmer at bay. His son Dag had been sick, and this being the first winter his wife was gone, Daniel had his hands full. There was a leak in his soddy’s roof that needed repair. He had sent his knives to Omaha for sharpening.

“All right, then,” Ross said. “But I really can’t wait too much longer.”

He was right, of course. Nobody else had asked Daniel about beef this year, but there were plenty of pigs to deal with, salt pork and sausage to make, hams to smoke out behind the shop. Any misfortune could befall a town—drought, plague, war—but hunger never deserted a human being until his life was over. They always needed Daniel to do his work and until now he had never failed to perform it.

In the shop on a Tuesday morning, Daniel wiped down all the clean surfaces once again. The empty barrels were tipped upside down against the wall to keep out the dust. Once he butchered a few pigs he would fill these with layers of salt and pork about halfway up, then cover it with a strong brine and a brick to hold the pork under its surface.

Daniel heard the door and looked up to see Amos Riddle. Could there be a man less well suited to homesteading? Small and bespectacled, Amos had pale, white hands that flipped nimbly through the pages of books in his parlor in Philadelphia, but they hadn’t ever done much else until he arrived in Nebraska. Everyone in Destination knew he was bright—probably the brightest one in town, possessed of a university education bought with a little family money—but he’d never held a hammer or saw or rifle before he claimed his land. Daniel suspected Amos had read about homesteading in a boys’ adventure story, or a volume of soaring poetry, and gotten his chest puffed up with romantic notions.

“Morning, Amos,” Daniel said. The man was scarcely keeping the fire going through the night, much less raising livestock out there on his plot, so Daniel didn’t think he had to worry about another order.

“Good morning. I am wondering if you can help me with my goat.”

“What kind of help do you need?” It was highly unusual for a man from these parts to
eat
a goat, but Amos was an unusual man.

“I’d like to have him slaughtered.”

Daniel nodded slowly. “All right. Can’t say as I’ve ever butchered a goat, but it’s all the same to me. Bring him in and I’ll take care of it.”

Amos looked down. “Well, I’ll be needing help with that too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t get him out of my house.”

Daniel stared at him a moment. “Well, how in the hell did he get
into
your house in the first place?”

“Don’t ask,” Amos said. “All you need to know is that he’s there now, and I want to make a stew out of him. Will you help me?”

Daniel couldn’t help but laugh. He hoped it didn’t sound mean-spirited. Whatever was between Amos and the goat seemed contentious and personal. In a way Daniel admired Amos for sticking it out through the winter here all alone, when he could be just about anywhere else, doing anything but breaking his back on work he knew nothing about. “Sure, I’ll help you,” Daniel said. “Why don’t I stop by later this afternoon?”

Amos nodded and tipped his hat. “The sooner, the better.”

With that, Amos left and Daniel got back to work. Around two, he pulled the collar of his wool coat up over his ears and went a few doors down the main road to the tavern. He liked to wait until most everybody else had come and gone and the tavern was quiet. Mrs. Healy always kept a bowl of stew warm for him.

“Mr. Gibson,” she said when he came in. “I was wondering whether I’d see you this afternoon. Thought maybe you finally let Mr. Ross bring in his cow.”

“Let me guess—he was just here talking about that very thing.” Daniel sat down at the bar and took off his hat.

“Indeed,” Mrs. Healy said. She went into the kitchen and came out with his stew and a plate of corn bread. “He seems a little perturbed, if you want to know.”

“Well,” Daniel began, as if he were going to say something else on the matter. But how could he explain it to her, the strange lack of confidence he suddenly felt in his knife, the way he would grip the handle tighter and tighter but still imagine it slipping out of his hand at the wrong moment and clattering to the floor? His palms grew damp all the time now. His fingers shook.

Mrs. Healy gave him a worried glance. “Is everything all right?”

“Oh, yes—fine. Just hungry I suppose.”

“Good. Now, tell me how your children are doing.” Oh, the children. Daniel fought the urge to put his head in his hands. Four boys with their cuffs up around their shins, outgrowing everything they owned and nobody in the house who knew how to sew. His one little girl was nearly feral now from lack of attention and he had not the faintest idea how to talk to her. The children missed Mother’s food, they cried. They missed her singing voice, the little plays she helped them put on. Why did she have to die?

“It’s such a shame, what happened to you,” Mrs. Healy said.

Daniel gave her a knowing smile. “Well, there’s enough tragedy to go around in this town, isn’t there?”

Everyone knew how Mrs. Healy had ended up here—she and her husband had decided to start again in California after their grown son died of the fever, but her husband was killed by robbers on that train, and all their money was gone. Nobody knew why she stayed. Even at her age, it puzzled Daniel why, at the very least, she hadn’t set her sights on another man by now. It had to be awfully hard for a woman to be on her own out here. He knew it had been hard on Greta, so hard it played tricks on her mind. Sometimes she looked at Daniel as if she didn’t recognize him. The children too. About broke his heart to see one of them tapping her on the back of the hand, saying, “Mother? Mother, won’t you talk to me?” And Greta standing up and walking over to the window. After the spring came, the prairie shot through with wildflowers in pink and yellow and white, they were living without her.

It was why, when Mayor Cartwright told them one night in the tavern about the letter he’d received from New York, Daniel decided on the spot to pay the fee, whatever it was, and send for any woman who would have him. He didn’t want to think about how these children would fare through another year alone. He had no notion of love, though, admittedly, hope stirred a little when he saw how pretty Rowena was in her tintype. How young and clear-eyed. Daniel was lonely, but in truth he wasn’t any lonelier than he had been when Greta was still with them, shut up tight in the world inside her head. It was a blessing that he didn’t have much time to think about any of it.

“Do you have a wife coming in the spring?” Mrs. Healy asked as she rubbed a rag in circles on the end of the bar. She wouldn’t meet his gaze as she asked the question. Everyone in town knew about Daniel’s troubles, but they didn’t like to pry.

“That’s what they tell me,” Daniel said. He decided then, on impulse, that he wouldn’t tell Rowena about how he earned his living for fear the nature of the work would trouble her and she would decide not to come west. Besides, by the time she arrived, he might not be a butcher anymore. He might not be anything.

He finished up his food and screwed his hat back on his head, then left to keep his promise to Amos. Daniel kept his wagon on runners through the winter and his horse pulled it easily over the ice-crusted snow, out to Amos’s small plot of land. If his mind and hands were working right, Daniel would slaughter the goat when he got there and hang it in Amos’s sorry excuse for a barn to drain. A few days later Daniel would go back out and bring the carcass to the shop in his wagon. He had looked up goats in the butcher’s guide that came from the knife company in Chicago and learned he could salt the meat Amos didn’t want to use right away, just like pork, in the big barrels he kept in the cellar. He wondered how it would taste.

Amos was sitting on an overturned crate in front of his soddy when Daniel pulled up.

“What the devil are you doing out here?” Daniel said, squinting against the glare on the snow. “You’re likely to freeze solid.”

Amos just shook his head. “Come on and see for yourself,” he said, walking toward the door and gesturing for Daniel to follow. “But I’m warning you—it’s pretty bad in there.”

The first thing Daniel noticed when Amos opened the door was the smell. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness inside the house, but when they did, he wanted to turn around and head right back out the door. The floor was dotted with dark pellets of feces and puddles of urine. In the kitchen, the small cupboard door had been pulled off its hinges and broken jars lay on the floor in front of it. One kitchen chair leaned to the side and Daniel could see it was because half the leg had been chewed away. The sofa was dented where the stuffing had been pulled out. In the corner by the window the goat sat and stared at them, its horns curling up like question marks.

Daniel turned to Amos openmouthed. “How long has it been in here?”

“About a week,” Amos said. “This time.”

“It’s been in here before?”

Amos nodded. “He comes and goes as he pleases.” He pointed to a ladder on the other side of the room that led to a blanket up in the sleeping loft. “And I’ve been spending most of my time up there.”

Daniel kept his gloves on. He moved toward the goat, its waste squishing under his boots. It trotted over by the stove, out of reach. When Daniel followed it there, the goat slid behind the sofa, then back into the kitchen. It scraped its horns on the cupboard door and bleated at them. “Damn it,” Daniel said.

“Believe me—he can do this all day,” Amos said. The goat charged suddenly, straight for Amos, but he was practiced at stepping quickly out of the way. His hip hit the table beside the armchair, and the oil lamp crashed to the floor. The goat trotted over and began to lick at the oil. Amos shook his head and looked at Daniel, holding up his hands.

Daniel knew they could just shoot the animal, but it wasn’t a bright idea to fire a gun inside the house. They needed to get the creature outside. Daniel went back out to the wagon and brought back a length of rope. He tied a slipknot on the end and tiptoed up behind the animal.

“Oh, he doesn’t like rope,” Amos cautioned.

“Shut up, if you’re not going to help.”

Daniel got close but the goat bucked its head and a horn stabbed Daniel’s palm. He pulled his hand back, then opened it wide as the goat slid behind the sofa again. His palm was bleeding but the cut wasn’t deep. Daniel took a deep, angry breath, his molars clamped down. His whole life felt this way lately; he barely knew what he wanted, but whatever it was kept eluding him. He crossed the room to the sofa and yanked one side away from the wall with a swift motion. The goat turned in a half circle, then made a low staccato sound. Moving quickly, Daniel came at it from the side with his knee, knocked it hard off its back legs, and pressed its hindquarters down on the floor. It kept still long enough for him to slip the rope over its neck.

Daniel stood up, his pants slick with shit, and let the goat right itself. He pulled it out from behind the sofa and Amos hollered with delight. Daniel cut his eyes at Amos and he quieted, then shoved his hands into his pockets.

The goat pulled mightily against the rope, but its hooves couldn’t gain traction and it moved backward like a skater toward the open door as Daniel pulled on the rope. Out in the snow, the daylight was so bright Daniel’s eyes teared up. He held the rope with one hand while he swiped his sleeve over both eyes. His nose was running. He pulled the goat over to the wagon, reached in with one arm to open the case that contained his knives, and pulled one out. Daniel had meant to put the goat down inside the barn so there wouldn’t be such a mess out in front of the house, but he wasn’t going to take any chances with the animal getting away now.