In Need of a Good Wife (37 page)

Stuart watched her. “If the object is
departure
, without so much concern for the
destination
,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “then perhaps you would consider the westbound train. It’s due within the hour.”

So it would be the West, then, Rowena thought. It wasn’t New York that she had planned on, of course, despite what she had told Daniel, but Chicago. Her mother’s cousin was there. They hadn’t spoken since her condolence letter after Rowena’s mother had died. But Rowena knew she would take her cousin in, out of duty if nothing else. It was the only plan Rowena had, but it seemed now that it was not to be. She would go west, as far as the train would take her, then farther still by coach. What mattered was that she be anywhere else but here.

“Yes, I’ll take it,” she said, and handed him the money for the ticket.

“You have about twenty minutes,” Stuart said. He was showing remarkable restraint, though she knew he was bursting to tattle to someone the moment she stepped onto the train. “Safe travels.”

“Thank you for the peach.”

As she left the depot, she thought she saw a man around the corner wearing a brown bowler hat. When she looked again, he was gone. Rowena sighed. It seemed her mind was playing tricks on her. Tomas was sure to be gone by now. She wondered where he had finally decided to go. Across from the depot was the brewery and she crossed the main road and circled behind that building, then around the back of the tavern, careful to cut a wide path so that she would not be seen from its windows. With the peach in one hand and her case in the other, she climbed the exterior stairs, ducking to avoid the flapping laundry. At the depot, passengers lingered as they waited for the train to arrive. She tried to stay out of sight. She felt as though an invisible hand at the small of her back pushed her to the second-floor hallway, to the rented rooms above the tavern. She stepped carefully, knowing that the people gathered for the hearing downstairs could hear her footsteps across the creaky floor.

Rowena crouched down, set the case on the floor, and opened the latch. She removed a stocking and dropped the peach into it, wrapping the silk around the fruit to keep it from bruising, then tucked it into the lining. Then she removed the envelope of money. There was all the money Daniel had given her plus the things she had managed to steal. Rowena counted out the sum owed to the thwarted bachelors, then added most of the rest of what she had. She began to wrap it in her handkerchief, but paused. That Rowena would give this money to Clara was no longer in question—she had succumbed to whatever relentless force, fate or conscience, was propelling her. But the notion that Clara would feel victorious, that somehow Clara’s drab and uninteresting ways had triumphed over Rowena’s beauty and cunning, was too much for Rowena to bear. She might try to be better, but the Lord knew she could never stop being herself.

She put her handkerchief back in the case, then glanced around. Back out on the stairs, a row of handkerchiefs undulated in the breeze. Rowena scurried over, plucking one of them off the line, then quickly folded it over the bundle of money, with the monogram
RC
in the center.

Then in one movement, Rowena snapped her case closed, shoved the money under the door, and stalked down the stairs. In the distance she heard the
chhh-chhh-chhh
of the train.

Rowena Moore Gibson never showed up at the hearing. That was the first good thing to happen on what would prove to be a very good day indeed.

“Well, Sheriff,” Judge Tharp said as he put his palms on the table and pushed himself out of his chair. “You’ve wasted just about as much of my time as I’m willing to forfeit today.” The judge stood up and buttoned his coat over his expansive belly, then grunted to the room at large, “Now, somebody needs to see about my horse.”

Sheriff Brooks stood at the tavern door and held up his hand. “With respect, Judge, I’m sure Mrs. Gibson is going to be along any minute now.”

Clara shifted restlessly in her chair. Across the main road at the depot, a handful of people gathered, waiting for the train. Though she had felt too worn down all these months—and too sure of her own innocence—to try to plan any kind of escape, Clara wished now that she had. She imagined slipping in among the passengers, boarding the train, and saying goodbye to Destination and these hateful men forever.

She recognized one man who was waiting by the tracks in a brown bowler hat, Mr. Skala, the carpenter who had worked with George. Though all the others were looking down the line, waiting to see the engine puffing smoke in the distance, Mr. Skala looked at something off to the side of the tavern. Clara heard the old wooden stairs creaking under footsteps. Probably just Mrs. Healy, taking the mayor’s laundry down from the clothesline. But Mr. Skala didn’t wave to her; instead, he pulled the brim of his hat down lower and slipped inside the depot.

The judge turned toward her accusers. “Gentlemen, do I have it correct that Mrs. Gibson’s testimony comprises the whole of your evidence to support a charge of fraud against this woman?” The judge pointed again to the coat tree behind Clara. She wondered whether he thought her particularly tall and thin and
inert
for a woman of her age and station.

Bill sighed. “Yes, Your Honor, you are correct.”

“Well, then, I see no reason why Dodge County would proceed any further with this matter. The inevitable separation of a fool from his money is of very little concern to the law of this land.”

Jeremiah flew to his feet. “But this woman swindled us, Judge!”

“In this country, we prosecute crimes based on evidence, not rumor. Which is lucky for you, Drake, as I’ve heard plenty of ugly rumors about you. Crooked business deals in Cheyenne, bribery of officials from the land office. And just generally being a pain in the ass—my apologies, ma’am,” he said, turning to Clara.

“Please don’t worry,” she said.

“—which is not illegal, but probably should be. If I were you, I don’t believe I’d be casting stones.”

Jeremiah eased slowly back into his chair.

“Why don’t you all try finding a wife the usual way? There’s a lot of girls over in Omaha now. A lot of church dinners and other nonsense of that kind. How do you think I found Mrs. Tharp?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Bill mumbled. Walther nodded his head.

“No, I am asking you a question—how do you think I found her?”

“I don’t know, Your Honor,” Bill said.

“I was in
Chicago
,” he said, striking the table with his fist. “Had two good eyes then too, thank the Lord. Mrs. Tharp—she was just Lucinda, then—was pouring lemonade for the men. It was a
picnic
.” His fist hit the table once again. “So what do you think, boys? Did I write her letters for six months, hoping to speak with her someday far in the future?”

“I imagine not, Your Honor.”

“You’re out of your deuced mind if you think I did that.”

“I
said
I imagined not.” Bill slumped in his chair.

“That’s right. I walked right up to her at the table and said, ‘You’re the prettiest girl in Chicago, and someday I’m going to be rich, and it only makes sense for us to pair up now.’ And what do you think she did?”

“Fell madly in love with you, of course,” Bill said miserably.

“That’s right. Of course, I was wrong about getting rich—we’ve rarely had two pennies to rub together. She was pretty, though—I wasn’t wrong about that.”

“Your Honor,” Clara ventured. “Does this mean I am free to leave?”

The judge turned to the coat tree and opened his mouth to respond. Just then, the sheriff shrieked in a most unmanly way. The men bolted from their chairs to join him at the door.

The judge sniffed the air. “Now just what in the Sam Hill is going on out there?”

An engineer reached for Rowena’s elbow to help her step up from the platform into the car.

“Good day, madam. We are quite full this afternoon,” he said.

Rowena nodded as she passed by him and walked slowly up the long car, glancing from side to side at the backs of the passengers’ heads. The reason the train was so full, of course, was that no one was getting off at Destination, or anywhere else in eastern Nebraska, for that matter. The passengers were men, mostly, wearing brand new gray and brown coats over crisp white shirts, but there were a few women travelers, their enormous brightly colored skirts cascading into the aisle. Many of them clutched cases on their laps and gazed out the window at the desolate main road. Rowena wondered what those cases contained. A letter of introduction to a music school, where this traveler might teach piano lessons to young children? A platinum letter opener with a line of diamonds down the handle, the last vestige of a family’s long-faded wealth, brought to be sold? So many hopeful, clean, brightly dressed people! The train seemed to be fueled not by coal but by optimism itself, the self-sustaining energy source of Americans moving west to begin again or
yet again
, after the last failed beginning. It was impossible that every person on this train would accomplish the thing he or she set out to do—the music school might be shuttered, the diamonds might be glass—and yet each face radiated the signs of the belief lodged in the ribs: that
he
would be the one to succeed, that Providence would make the ways straight and somehow fill her coffers. It was dizzying and troubling all at once, this fearlessness, this foolishness. Rowena clutched her case closer, thinking of the peach nestled in her underthings, the shrewdest cargo of all. For it promised nothing more than itself, plotted nothing but a few moments’ indulgence that would quench hunger and thirst for a brief time. Everything that came after that peach would have to be earned.

An elderly man struggled to push himself up on his cane. He had a shock of white hair that reminded Rowena of her father and she thought of him sitting on the bench on Wards Island, looking out at gulls swarming the East River, with his weathered hands stacked on top of his cane. But then she remembered that he was no longer there, was instead in the damp asylum cemetery ground, or that his
body
was in that grave but that the rest of him was nowhere, or everywhere, loosed and scattered through the world. How many particles did a dead man become?

“Madam,” the old man croaked. “You are welcome to this seat.” He gestured with a palsied hand toward the place where he had been sitting and she smiled at him, still imagining her father, disassembled, swirling around the train. And then Randolph Blair shocked her to her center by hurtling himself against the glass—
thwop, thwop, thwop
. Rowena gasped and her left hand flew to her throat. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Of course, it was not her father, but only the grasshoppers swarming back into town, the train colliding with the hard shells of their bodies.

“That is so kind of you, sir, but I couldn’t take your seat,” Rowena said, and pushed on down the aisle. Her heart pounded. She watched the glass, waiting to see the mangled insects appear in clumps, but instead she saw clear, crooked rivulets distorting the image of the world.

“Could you take
this
seat, madam?” a voice behind Rowena asked.

“It’s raining!” a woman cried somewhere in the car, and the passengers began to chatter, then cheer. Some of the men got out of their seats, crowding toward the windows. The downpour was fierce and deafening; a clap of thunder added to the marvelous chaos.

Rowena turned around to see the last empty seat on the train and the man who sat beside it, with his hat in his hands.

She nodded slowly, her nose filling with the earthy scent of the rain. “Yes, I could,” she said, smiling.

“That is what I am thinking you say,” Tomas replied.

The Independence Day rain began with a sound Elsa had never heard the rain make: It began with a hiss. The first uncertain droplets evaporated before they even hit the rockhard ground, hot to the touch. The water vapor formed a kind of rolling fog over the prairie and when the air was saturated, the rain began to fall in earnest. It rang on the metal cistern out by the barn like a peal of church bells calling the people to worship.

“Ully, come on!” Elsa said, pulling her to the open kitchen door to see. It seemed impossible that the sky could contain this much water. It poured violently down, the caked soil unable to absorb it, and ran in a hundred rivers across the land. The tributaries met in the narrow lane that led to town, tamping down the clouds of dust that had lingered there beneath the cottonwoods since the day Elsa had arrived in Destination.

“Do you think it’s raining where Pa is?” Ully cried. “I can’t
wait
for him to see it.”

“Oh, yes,
Spatzchen
—it’s raining everywhere in this county right now, I’d wager.” Ully made a move to run out the door, but Elsa held her arm. “Ully, look at that road—you’ll be washed away. Stay with me until it dies down some.”

The girl scowled but relented easily. Elsa was glad they could share watching the rain come down, that they had been together, standing next to each other in the kitchen side by side, the moment when the fortunes of everyone in the town might change.

Just then, Leo and Nit exploded out of the barn, each carrying a stack of milk pails. They barred the door behind them. Nit waved to Elsa with his arm stretched high over his head. They began to arrange the pails on the ground in a line to catch the water. Together they tipped the horse trough to dump the fetid water on the ground and let it fill up with fresh water from the rain.

“Come on—let’s help them,” Elsa said. She took the girl’s hand and they ran across the field, raindrops the size of pennies exploding on their shoulders. Elsa glanced at Ully. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks and the nape of her long neck. Her thin dress sculpted the lines of her shoulder blades. She loped like a rabbit, focused and beautiful, as she ran.

When they reached the barn, Nit looked questioningly at the child but Leo seemed not to notice her at all. Leo explained quickly what they had to do, shouting to be heard over the rain. The animals were the most important thing—what was left of the crop would be lost now to the flooding. Whatever stalks of barley the hoppers hadn’t eaten were being wrenched out of the soil by the rushing water. Inside the barn, Honey and the sheep were kicking the walls with their hooves, anxious to get at the fresh water. They could smell it, the hot muddy froth sending its aroma under the barn door, through the cracks in the walls.