In Need of a Good Wife (29 page)

The Methodist Church of Destination was a small A-frame building with a year-old coat of paint now worn through down to the wood by the omnipresent prairie dust. There was no bell, no steeple, no stained glass. It could have been merely one of the finer homes in town (being that it was made from wood and not sod), but for the cross that hung over the door and the graves scattered on the plot of land on the building’s east side, surrounded by a fence to keep a wandering cow or horse from befouling the sacred ground. Among those graves, Clara knew, were the eternal resting places of the two drunken men who had burned down Gerhard Gade’s barn with his horse roasting inside. Mr. Skala’s wife and parents, and Mrs. Healy’s husband, all of them killed in that train robbery, were buried here too along with men who claimed land ten years ago or more but hadn’t survived, and rail workers lost to fever or injury.

Mrs. Healy had told Clara that the worst part of her husband’s death came after the shooting, when the bandits were carted off by the marshals and the train carried on down the line. Mr. Skala and Mrs. Healy, so rattled and disbelieving of what had taken place, had insisted on riding in the half-empty luggage car with the bodies of their loved ones the rest of the way to Destination, a town they had never seen. They leaned their backs against two large crates of nails that had come all the way from Detroit and sipped whiskey from Mr. Skala’s pocket flask. Mrs. Healy said she could hear her husband’s dentures rattling with the rhythm of the rails from inside the wood crate that served as his makeshift coffin. Somebody had forgotten to take them out.

Clara had dressed for church in her traveling suit and arranged her hair with care. She poked George where he lay in a heap on the mattress. He groaned and stirred but refused to wake up. It was just as well. Clara wanted to go to meeting by herself. Just to be certain she would not be plagued with anxiety while she was gone, Clara tipped the contents of the teacup into her coin purse and stuffed it deep into the pocket of her skirt. As she was leaving, she noticed George peering at her through one slitty eye. Clara had said nothing to him about the playing card she’d found in his shirt pocket. She wanted to believe that he had changed, that the presence of that card was a fluke, an apparition. But she wasn’t going to take any chances.

Inside the church, Clara slipped into a back pew, hoping for invisibility. She nearly got it. Bill Albright cut his eyes at her, but that was to be expected. Deborah floated in, clutching her husband Stuart’s arm close. She winked at Clara as she passed by, as if to say that certain wifely duties were not quite so burdensome as she had first suspected. Reverend Crowley began his sermon, Mrs. Crowley gazing adoringly at him from her place in the front pew. He read to them from the Scripture. “Cursed be the man who trusteth in man. He shall inhabit the parched places of the wilderness. But blessed be the man who trusteth in the Lord, whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green.”

Clara tried to contemplate these words but found in her heart only skepticism. What good would it do any of them to sit here hoping for rain? She found herself distracted by the presence of one Rowena Moore Gibson, three pews up. The haughty woman sat shoulder to shoulder with her husband, his blond children arranged in order of height on his other side like a staircase leading down to the far aisle of the sanctuary. The littlest one, a girl, kicked the pew in front of her with a continual thudding, then lay down in the aisle with her feet up in the air. Rowena simply ignored this disgraceful behavior.

Clara despaired. The weeks of constant work had allowed her to keep her guilt over what she had done to Rowena at bay. But in the quiet of the church it tumbled in her mind. How had she allowed things to go so far that Rowena would make up this awful story about the fraud? Clara knew she should have apologized right at the start for the deception about Mr. Gibson and should have helped Rowena get back to New York somehow. But Clara had insisted on teaching the young woman some kind of lesson through suffering. As if Clara were in any position to dole out wisdom. And as if suffering ever taught anybody a thing except to thank God when it ended.

“Just as the Lord protected Noah from the flood,” Reverend Crowley said. “So will he protect us, his faithful ones.”

There
was a wager George would be smart enough not to take, Clara thought. The piano started up then and the collection plate bobbed along the pews, lingering for a long moment in Rowena’s lap, Clara noticed. Clara bowed her head as the parishioners filed out. But instead of praying she only wished she could go back to November and stop herself from writing that first letter to the mayor. She should have stayed in New York, found another position in another tavern after Mr. Rathbone let her go. She should have kept her head down and saved her money, then gone somewhere sane, western Pennsylvania or Ohio, and found her little white cottage in a small town.

Clara felt a few pairs of vicious eyes on her, then felt them pass. She peeked up over her folded hands to see that the pews ahead of her were empty. Rowena and her brood were now safely out of the church. Clara sighed, the nagging fears about George surfacing once again. What was she going to do if he betrayed her?

Just then, she felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up.

Elsa Traugott stood next to Clara in the pew. Leo Schreier passed behind her and out the door, moving as quickly as his bad leg would let him. He seemed not to be a man for too much chatter.

“Good morning, Miss Bixby. I’m glad to see you,” Elsa said.

“You are? How are things going out at the farm?”

Elsa smiled that serene, closed-lip smile that pulled her plump cheeks up high like two apples on a string. “Very well. It has taken some getting used to, but I must say I do not miss the laundry at the Channings’.”

“I can’t imagine how you would,” Clara said with laugh. She remembered that back in New York nothing had seemed worse to her than doing someone else’s laundry to earn her bread. Now she would happily do it, would happily do anything to resolve the mess with these men.

Elsa took Clara’s elbow. “Let’s go outside and talk for a moment.” They moved out into the aisle, Elsa’s rump brushing the hymnals askew in their slots as she swished past.

Outside, Leo had pulled the wagon around front and held the reins. “Come on, Elsa.” His mouth worked impatiently on the hunk of tobacco he had wedged in his cheek.

“Yes, sir. Just a minute.” She turned to Clara. “And how do things go for you,
Mrs.
Bixby?”

“Ah,” Clara nodded. “So you heard about George finding his way out here, then?”

Elsa nodded. Mr. Schreier’s horses shifted out of boredom and the wagon lurched. “Elsa, let’s go.”

She nodded. “Mrs. Bixby, why don’t you pay me a visit sometime?” She put her hand on Clara’s arm.

Clara felt her eyes filling with tears and looked away, clearing her throat. She was working so hard to keep everything together that any kindness felt like a threat. She feared, more than anything, coming undone. “This dust is another kind of plague, I swear.”

Daniel Gibson approached them on Elsa’s other side. “Miss Traugott, I wonder if I could have a word with you.”

Up in the wagon, Mr. Schreier sighed dramatically.

Rowena stood off to the side with those seemingly endless Gibson children. She wouldn’t look at Clara.

Clara noticed Elsa stiffen and instinctively kept close to her side.

“Of course,” Elsa nearly whispered to Daniel. She glanced up at Mr. Schreier.

“Well, I just wanted you to know that
I
know my Ulrika has been coming around your place an awful lot.”

“Well, occasionally, yes, sir.”

Daniel laughed. “I don’t know how
you
define
occasionally
, but it seems like an awful lot to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Elsa said again.

“I just wanted to thank you for your kindness. That child has been in a terrible way since her mother has been gone. I honestly haven’t known what to do with her. And things with the new Mrs. Moore are still … settling.”

Elsa nodded, then glanced again, nervously, at Mr. Schreier. “Well, it’s my pleasure, sir. She is a good girl.”

Daniel sighed. “I believe that somewhere deep down she is just that, though she does a remarkable job of convincing everyone otherwise. If it ever gets to be too much, you know, just send her on home. She and Mrs. Gibson are going to have to get used to each other eventually. I’ve got no energy to deal with the child myself, what with trying to keep my business going in this awful summer.”

“I am happy to have her, sir.”

Mr. Gibson shook his head, a little amazed at this good fortune. “Well. Good day, Miss Traugott, Mrs. Bixby,” he said, tipping his hat. Elsa said good-bye to Clara, then got up into the wagon, and Mr. Schreier took off down the main road so quickly, Elsa’s bonnet sailed behind her head, secured by its chin strap. Mr. Gibson and Rowena set off walking too, followed by the children. Everyone in Destination scattered to get home and out of the heat, leaving Clara standing alone in front of the empty church. Showing up for the service hadn’t gone as poorly as she feared it might, so with some relief Clara headed back to her room.

When she approached the tavern, Mrs. Healy waved to her from the wooden steps that went up the outside of the building to the second floor. She was taking laundry down from the complicated zigzag of clothesline she had rigged up there, high enough to stay out of the dust. Clara climbed the stairs.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Healy.”

“I don’t know about
good
.” She and Kathleen Connolly and the handful of Catholics in town had their own church at the other end of the main road, but no priest. Now and then an itinerant came through on the train to hear confession and give communion. What they did in that building on their own each Sunday morning was anybody’s guess, but it probably wasn’t nearly so interesting or scandalous as the Methodists speculated.

Clara reached for a shirt collar. “May I help you with these?”

“Mayor Cartwright usually comes to pick them up on Saturday evening, but he must have forgotten. I was going to take them over to him.”

“What do you know about him, Mrs. Healy? I’m surprised that he is still a bachelor.”

“So am I. I suppose it has something to do with choosing to live out here, of all places, where there’s nary a woman to be found. He’s a good nephew to that ungrateful uncle of his, but it has cost him his youth. I wonder now if he isn’t too settled in his ways. After all, he could have asked
you
to bring him a bride.”

Clara put her head in her hands. “Thank goodness he didn’t. I’ve got about all I can handle as it is.” She folded the last collar. “I don’t mind walking the bundle over. I know you’ve got plenty to do here.”

Mrs. Healy leveled her eyes at Clara. “I surely do. You should see the state of the room down the hall from yours. You would think I rented it to a wild hog. Dishes and crumbs everywhere, empty bottles, cigar stubs. I don’t know why I bother with any of this. Mr. Healy would have a fit if he knew how I earn my bread these days.”

Clara shook her head in solidarity. “I’ll get started on the room right away.”

Mrs. Healy waved her hand. “I’ll do it if you’ll take these to the mayor. I can’t bear walking anywhere in this heat.” She piled the two stacks of folded clothes in the sheet and tied the four corners into a neat bow.

“Of course,” Clara said. “And leave the room as it is. I’ll clean it up as soon as I get back.” It felt good to do something to ease Mrs. Healy’s burden, to repay her for her kindness and friendship. Clara had learned the hard way never to take those things for granted.

Mrs. Healy smiled gratefully at her. “You are a dear. I surely don’t know why so many in this town speak hard words about you, Clara. To my mind, you are a fine woman.”

“Well, they have their reasons, I suppose. It’s a long story that brought all of us out here, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Healy laughed. “When you get to be my age, there’s nothing that
isn’t
a long story.”

Clara set off back down the main road with the laundry. She was halfway to the mayor’s office before she realized that he wouldn’t be there on the Sabbath and also that she didn’t know where he lived. Just then, Anna was coming out of the front door of the church after sweeping the floor. She gripped the broom with one hand and stretched her back, then saw Clara waving to her.

“Mrs. Crowley, where is Mr. Kellinger’s farm?”

She pointed southwest. “If you’re looking for the mayor, he’ll be out in the barn working on his machines.”

“His machines?” Clara asked.

“You’ll see. Would you like the reverend to give you a ride? He’s around here somewhere.”

“No, thank you,” Clara said. “I don’t mind the walk.”

Clara continued to the west end of the main road and then about a half mile across the dusty pasture to Lambert Kellinger’s farm. Next to the barn a couple of meager trees clustered together to suck moisture from way down deep in the soil with all their might. Two hot and thirsty cows stood beneath them trying to stay cool.

“Mrs. Crowley said I’d find you out here tinkering,” Clara called to the mayor on the other side of the barn. She set the bundle of laundry down on a chair just inside the doorway.

He glanced up from where he worked, crouched on the floor. His back was as wide and sturdy-looking as the barn door. When he saw her he smiled. “Tinkering? Mrs. Bixby, what you see here is
invention
.”

“Hm,” Clara said, glancing around at what looked to be nothing more than a big mess. Mr. Cartwright’s work was spread on a table. A tan cloth lay draped over one side with oily tools and gears and nuts and bolts of all sizes spread out over it. Around him in the hay were machines in various states of completion, along with metal rods and leather belts. The mayor had traded his waistcoat and cravat for a farmhand’s attire: denims and boots and a collarless shirt filthy with smudges of grease.