In Need of a Good Wife (35 page)

If Rowena had not seen it with her own eyes, she would not have believed it possible. The biblical proportions of the episode made it seem like the sort of exaggerated story a city girl might find in
Peterson’s
, a vague warning against—what? Marriage to a westerner? The godless pioneer life? She could picture Eliza Rourke tucked up in her Manhattan City parlor, reading the article with a silver tea tray at her elbow.

Mrs. Crowley canceled school after the flag outside the church had been gnawed to shreds, so all of the children were home and inside, restless and irritable and trying to read their books. They probably could have gone out into the yard for a while—the hoppers seemed to ebb and flow throughout the day—but Rowena couldn’t bear how, every time they opened the soddy door, a dozen of the insects buzzed in and the Gibsons had to scurry around to clobber them with the heels of their shoes and the dictionary. So she had decreed that the doors would stay closed. Laundry hung all around the sitting room, from the curtain rods and on the backs of the kitchen chairs, for Rowena didn’t dare hang it outside. As Daniel and Rowena sat at the table drinking coffee, astonishingly, someone knocked on the door.

Daniel’s eyes widened and he stood, crossing the room. Rowena followed and stood behind him. The children clustered around her. He pulled the door open only a crack. Stuart Moran stood in the shadow of the house. Hoppers dived and sailed through the air around his head, landing on his hat. Once one of them found a place to land, it seemed to send a signal to its friends, for soon there would be two, then eight, then twenty clustered together on the perch. Stuart removed his hat and shook off the insects. Two of them leapt into his thick black hair. He had a wild look in his eyes like he might lose his mind right then and there.

“Afternoon, Mr. Gibson, Mrs. Gibson,” he said. “May I please come in?”

“Of course,” Daniel said. He ushered Stuart inside.

“Children?” Rowena said, and they sprang into action with the frying pan, the old boot someone had outgrown. Ully seemed to take particular pleasure in wielding the giant dictionary over her head and bringing it smashing down. She looked a little like a grasshopper herself, Rowena thought, with her scrawny arms and oversized eyes.

Stuart laughed. “They are getting pretty good at this. How much longer do you think it will last, Daniel?”

“I talked to Leo about it. He says they will just keep coming until they eat everything up or it rains, whichever comes first. I can’t see that there’s much left for them to eat.”

“Well, they aren’t very discriminating, that’s for sure.” Suddenly Stuart yelped and began to thrash around. He dropped his hat on the floor and yanked the right side of his shirt free from his waistband, shaking it violently. A single hopper dropped to the floor, stunned, then buzzed off toward the kitchen. Ully followed it with the dictionary, howling like a banshee.

“My heavens!” Rowena said.

Stuart shook his head. “God deliver us.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like to get some relief, Mr. Moran,” Daniel said as a way of finding out about Stuart’s business.

“Apologies,” Stuart said. “I thank you, but I came just to deliver this to you, Mrs. Gibson. We’ve had it at the depot for two days now but you haven’t come for the mail—I mean, no one has. It was late coming today anyway, what with the train delay. These infernal insects have gummed up the track. The letter looked important, so I thought I’d bring it over.” This statement was an inquiry from the nosy man, Rowena knew. He waited to see whether she would offer up something he could gossip over later on.

“Well, thank you, Stuart,” she said. She looked at the letter. It had come from the Dodge County courthouse in Fremont.

Stuart sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll be going.” He took a deep breath and replaced his hat, then nodded to them both. With a swift motion he opened the door and exited, closing it behind him as quickly as possible. They watched at the window as he hurried down the lane. He waved his arms and swatted at the tormenters, which were invisible in the dusk. From the distance of the house, he looked like a lunatic.

The letter explained that on July fourth a judge was coming to Destination to hear evidence against Miss Clara Bixby on the charge of fraud leveled against her by a group of concerned Destination citizens. Rowena was ordered to appear in “court”—to be held in the tavern—to give testimony about what she had told Bill Albright at the brewery. This testimony would be given under oath.

The enormity of what she had started pressed down on her and she heard her father’s voice.
Oh, this is quite a mess you have
made, Rowena.

Daniel, may we speak for a moment?” Rowena asked a week later, on the morning of the Fourth of July. He was on his way out the door, into the infestation, with a flour sack wrapped around his collar and over his shoulders to keep the grasshoppers from crawling down his shirt. He had tucked the edge of it into the back of his hat so that it looked like a long curtain of burlap hair. The children blew by him and out the door, like shots from a cannon. Rowena was so tired of having them underfoot she had told them to go out and play in the swarm.

“All right,” he said, and stepped back into the kitchen.

“Why don’t we sit for a moment?” Rowena eased into a chair.

Daniel appraised her face, winced, and sighed. “This doesn’t sound like good news.”

“Daniel,” she said, taking a breath. “I’m going to take the train back to New York. Today.”

“Today?”
He removed his hat and the flour sack flopped over the back of the chair. “Why do you have to go today?”

“Because my mind’s made up.”

“It’s not because today’s the day you’re supposed to go speak in front of those men about Clara Bixby?” Daniel asked.

“How do you know about that?” Rowena whispered.

Daniel sighed. “This is a small town, Rowena.”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about that. The reason I’m leaving is that it isn’t fair to you for me to keep staying on.”

He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Well, then why even
tell
me, Rowena? Why not just pack your bags and go, since you
will
do as you please?”

“Because …” She stalled. She had determined to come clean. She pressed herself on. “Because I owe you an apology. You have been so good to me and I haven’t treated you very well.”

Daniel shook his head. “It was a doomed arrangement from the start, I suppose, built as it was on near total misunderstanding.”

“My father is dead, Daniel.”

His face changed then because he was a compassionate man, a good man. Indeed, watching Daniel now, Rowena’s definition of a
good man
shifted. It no longer had to do with Richard’s fearless gallantry, a tireless hero on a quest to defend a noble set of ideals. She wasn’t even really sure if Richard had embodied all those things or whether she had merely ascribed them to him because she saw in him the potential to become them, to grow into them, given enough time—time of which they were robbed. Love hadn’t made her blind. It had given her a far-sightedness she never had before, an ability to look down to the end of a long road and see how they would stand there together, side by side, improved by life. But they never even began their journey.

A good man, Rowena thought now, was a man who moved through the world careful not to do others harm. That was it, simple as it seemed, but it was a profound and essential thing upon which to build an entire life, a succession of lives. Daniel Gibson was
this
sort of good man. Rowena didn’t love him, but she wished mightily that she could. Whoever did love him—and someone certainly would—was a blessed woman indeed.

“Rowena, forgive me for being cross just then,” he said. “I didn’t know the reason for your journey.”

“No, Daniel. You don’t understand. My father died weeks ago.”

His eyes widened, but still he did not suspect her of dishonesty. His goodness benefited Rowena in many ways, but it certainly did Daniel himself no favors. “Word took so long to reach you!”

Rowena put her head in her hands, then took a breath, determined he should know the breadth of her crimes. “I’ve known for some time, but I didn’t tell you so that you would continue to give me money. I’ve been saving it so that I could leave you. And now I’m going to do it.”

He nodded, then looked down at his hands and said nothing. She couldn’t have been more clear.

“Do you see
now
? I’ve lied to you, I’ve stolen from you. I’m no
good
, Daniel. I don’t know if I ever will be.”

He nodded again, his eyes still on his hands in his lap. He chewed his lip. He scratched his beard on the side of his chin, and finally he looked up. “It’s all right.”

“What do you mean, it’s all right? It’s
not
all right!” She felt like throttling him. Here she was, trying, finally, to make her confession, and he wouldn’t accept it.

He held out his palms. “The money is yours to do with as you wish.”

She had hoped in her secret heart that he might shove her into the wall, strike her, curse her name for all the neighbors to hear. She deserved at least that much. But he did none of those things. She felt worse than she had before, more hopeless for herself. “But you
must
be angry that I lied,” she whispered.

“Rowena, I am only disappointed that, try as I might, I could not offer you the sort of life that would make you happy. You owe me nothing.” He stood and picked up the flour sack from the back of the chair. “We’ll be all right. They’re my children, and I’ll see to them. I should have been doing a better job of it all along.” He sighed. “You’ll be gone, then, when I return home this evening?”

She nodded.

“All right. I ask that you say nothing to the children, and that you take nothing else from this house, besides the money, which is yours to keep.”

She nodded again. It was mortifying. Of course, she wouldn’t
dream
of—and then she remembered the strand of the former Mrs. Gibson’s pearls she had tucked into the pocket of her trunk. She shuddered with surprise at her own deceitfulness. Daniel stood there, stupidly refusing to punish her. Would he never leave for the shop? It was unbearable.

“You say you aren’t good, Rowena, but that just isn’t true. You could be good, if you
chose
to be. That’s all it is, a choice.”

“I haven’t done one good thing in a very long time.”

“But just now you turned the tide. You told me the truth, you honored me enough to tell me the truth.”

“So that
I
would feel better, so that
I
would not have to carry guilt. It’s really only for myself, you see.”

He shook his head. “You feel remorse about what you did
because
you are good. And you could keep being good, if you wanted to.” He nodded at her and strode toward the door. “Good-bye, Rowena,” he said.

She sat at the table for a long time after he left, wondering whether what he said was true.

Sheriff Brooks had decided to hold the hearing in the tavern as it was the only place in town, besides the Methodist church, with enough chairs for everyone. The church certainly smelled better, but it was in constant demand lately from people coming to pray for rain.

Mrs. Healy knocked on Clara’s door at seven that morning and brought in a tray of coffee and toast. She came back a while later and helped Clara dress. Clara felt perspiration pool in the cleft above her lip but the black cape she wore over her shoulders made the worn dress somewhat respectable, and she could use every advantage she could get. She braided her stiff incorrigible hair into two plaits, then wound them together and pinned them in a low bun at the nape of her neck. Mrs. Healy tied the plain black bonnet beneath Clara’s chin.

“You look like a widow,” Mrs. Healy said.

“All the better,” said Clara.

Mrs. Healy wanted to pray and Clara didn’t object. She began with the
Ave Maria
, and though Clara had been taught from an early age to rebuke Mary worship wherever she heard it, she found the meaningless Latin words soothing, like an incantation against whatever awful outcome awaited her downstairs. There was nothing Clara wanted to say about it in any language.

Just before nine, Mrs. Healy hugged her and Clara descended the stairs, Mayor Cartwright’s laundry brushing over her cheeks and shoulders as she passed through it. The sky was a dull gray-white; grasshoppers bobbed in the air all around.

Clara had taken special care to clean the tavern thoroughly before she went to sleep the previous night. The floor was tidy and the surface of the tables gleamed. Sheriff Brooks was moving them off to the side of the room when she stepped inside.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” Clara said.

He nodded at her. Two tables remained at the front of the room, with chairs behind them, and the remaining chairs faced these in four rows. The sheriff adjusted the one on the end so that it was evenly spaced from the rest, and Clara was again struck by the notion that this small man was only pretending the way a boy pretends, with toy soldiers and a rifle made out of a tree branch.

“Sir,” Clara said, sitting down in one of the chairs in the first row. “Is all of this really necessary?”

He pursed his lips. “Today is July the fourth, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you have not met the condition of repaying the men whose money you stole?”

“Sir, I did not
steal
—”

The sheriff cut her off. “Have you repaid the money? Yes or no.”

“No.”

“Then all of this is
indeed
necessary. Quite necessary. Judge Tharp is on his way here now, in fact. He is old and a bit infirm. I wouldn’t summon him here if it weren’t important. And I expect Mrs. Gi—that is, our
witness
, any minute now.”

Clara laughed. “Sheriff, there is no need to shroud this in mystery. I know that Rowena Gibson is your witness.

He ran his finger over his mustache. “You do?”