Power in the Blood (69 page)

“It wasn’t you.… It had nothing to do with you. It just … happened. Stop crying, please. It isn’t your fault, Omie. Now, please … seeing tears just makes my arm hurt more.”

“How … how can it hurt, Mama?”

“I don’t know. I can still feel it, though. I met a man once, a long time ago when I was your age, and he had just one arm, and he said he could feel his arm still, and his fingers.…”

Omie watched her mother’s face crease with sorrow as her voice died away, then a sob unlike any Omie had ever heard came bursting from Zoe, a huge sob, followed by a string of little sobbings, then her mother began to moan and cry in earnest, and roll her body from side to side, all the while crying tears so heavy they flooded down her cheeks like rain, and her moans became a wailing that made the hair on Omie’s neck stand straight up. Mama is in hell, Omie thought, and became frightened by the intensity of Zoe’s anguish. It came rushing from her in waves of horror and self-loathing that Omie could sense without truly understanding; where was the anger her mother should be feeling toward her for not having foreseen the accident? Could she truly have meant it when she said Omie was not to blame? The waves from Zoe were huge and dark, many voices and fears rolled together, and they rocked Omie on her heels as they swept by her like the wind from massive beating wings.

A nurse finally entered the room, having heard the horrendous wailing from the far end of the passageway, and told Omie to get out. Omie did so, and was followed all the way to her room by the rolling waves of grief and desolation and one other thing, a thing Omie would never have thought could come from her mother, but it was unmistakably there—a picture of the window in Mama’s room, and Mama throwing herself down onto the rocks below that window. Omie fell to the floor in shock, then picked herself up and raced back to Zoe’s door, but the nurse had locked it, and Zoe’s pitiful howling was lessening even as Omie tugged at the doorknob, and eventually gave out with a single racking sob, a smaller sob than the one that had begun everything. When all was quiet, Omie walked away. She would come back later and tell Mama not to go near the window. This time her eye was working.

Zoe learned of the presence in Elk House of a stranger by way of the nurse. The nurse did not know the gentleman’s name, but allowed that he was very dignified for a man so young. Zoe gave instructions that the gentleman was not to be allowed anywhere near her, and her husband was to stay away also. Leo had been at her bedside twice that Zoe could recall, and both times he had been unable to do anything but stand there, shaking his head, saying, “My dear … my dear …” until Zoe told him to go away. She did not want him looking at her bandaged stump, and she did not want to look at him. She found she hated him, for no particular reason, and it would be best for them both if he stayed away. The nurse neither agreed to deliver such a message nor said outright that she would not. She busied herself with the sheets, and hoped that Dr. Gannett would arrive soon to administer more laudanum to his patient. The nurse had no medical training, and could do little more than fetch and empty chamber pots and keep the patient’s room tidy.

When Omie visited, Zoe asked her for information on the stranger. Leo had never invited anyone to stay at the house before; he usually entertained those few men with whom he had business dealings at the Stag Hotel in town.

“His name is Rowland,” said Omie, “and he’s from Denver. He likes Papa very much, but I don’t care for him.”

“Why not? What is his reason for being here?”

“He says he came to pay his respects to Papa, and that’s what Papa says too.”

“Can you learn any more?”

Omie knew what that meant, but she had already lanced Rowland’s head several times with her special eye, and the results had been a puzzlement. “There are lots of men with no faces, Mama.”

“No faces?”

“Well, I can’t see them, not clearly. They wear nice clothes, and they meet in a big room with dark wood all around the walls and smoke cigars and talk a lot.”

It meant nothing to Zoe beyond suggesting some kind of business meeting. She was no longer interested in Mr. Rowland Price.

“Can you still feel the fingers, Mama?”

“Yes, but not all the time, and they won’t do what I tell them to; isn’t that peculiar? Well, perhaps not, since they aren’t even there, Why should something that isn’t there do what I want?”

Omie smiled. Mama was making a joke, although not a very funny one, so she must be getting better.

“Have you been getting out of bed?”

“Once or twice.”

Zoe watched Omie’s face. She had been warned by Omie to stay clear of the windows; Omie would not say why. Zoe knew she could never do now what she had fully intended doing in those first awful hours when she became aware of her condition. Omie was the true nurse, not the woman appointed by Dr. Gannett; that bustling individual could not stop gushing about the doctor’s wonderful and awe-inspiring abilities as a man of medicine. Zoe suspected the nurse was in love with her employer, and even suspected the good doctor might be using her in his bed. Thoughts of that kind had become repugnant to Zoe. She did not wish to be touched by any man again. Her missing arm was like a returned hymen, a barrier to intimacy. This would be her lot from that time on, a shotgun marriage to her lessened self, with shame the bridesmaid.

She wondered how she might fill the hours and days and years ahead of her, spent as they would be within the walls of her room. If she was not going to kill herself, there would have to be some manner of distraction from her torment. Dr. Gannett’s laudanum was fairly efficacious as a solvent for her pain, even more effective as a means of loosening the strings around her mind. Sometimes she would daydream for hours after a stiff dose of the green liquid, her thoughts unspooling like ribbons hurled into an abyss, and her mood would veer from its habitual self-pity, allowing Zoe to roam the pastures of yesterday with Mr. Duckfeet and Mr. Pigeontoes, Nettie Dugan’s names for Clay and Drew. She pictured them both as boys, even as they ran alongside herself, a grown woman with two good arms, and as the drug relinquished its hold, Zoe would cry softly for what was gone forever.

When Rowland Price at last departed for Denver, Leo was left undecided over the proposition that had been offered to him. To enter politics, when his business required all of his attention, did not seem wise, yet he found he could not dismiss the vision Price had conjured for his consideration; to be the leader of the first new political entity in the land for more than a century was not a role to refuse without first carefully weighing the disadvantages against the satisfaction that would be his if the gamble should pay off and he be made the nation’s president.

The opportunities for remaking America were enticing. He would be able to tackle all the old problems the modern age had not alleviated: the poverty and ignorance, the social injustices that proliferated now more than ever, as the wealthy became more so, and the poor made do with the little they had. It was a challenge only a special man could hope to meet and overcome. The nation’s ills were like the mountains Leo stared at from his windows, massive, seemingly immovable, so entrenched in their current form they defied conquest. Yet Leo had heard of a design for a mining process that someday would eat entire mountains for their hidden minerals, literally raze them with vast machines as yet undeveloped, and crush them into submission between mechanical jaws that would dwarf his own crushers and stampers. Might not the problems no man had yet found a solution to yield under similar farsightedness and scientific application?

It would require a man such as himself to make the new social order work for everyone. Price had said a pure man, a person of moral integrity and proven ability to organize the complex strands required in business, was the only viable type to manage the long-overdue transition from the America of yesterday to the America of tomorrow. The twentieth century was fast approaching; as the old century thudded shut like a stone sealing a tomb, a new doorway filled with light must open, and the Praetorian party, with Leo at its forefront, was the only possible keeper of the keys.

He knew that such dreams of power and influence were also a distraction for himself from the nightmare of Zoe’s tragedy. The horrific accident had changed his wife utterly, and the least part of it was the actual loss of her arm; she would not see him when he came to her, nor eat with him in the dining room, no matter how early he came home. She would not even leave her bedroom, and permitted only Omie to see her. Once the stitches had been removed from the stump by Dr. Gannett, the doctor and the nurse he had hired on behalf of the Brannans were dismissed by Zoe. She wanted no one near her but her daughter. It was Omie who fetched and carried her mother’s meals and emptied her chamber pot and changed her bedding, a little blue-faced servant who performed her chores seemingly without complaint, and read to Zoe from storybooks, and comforted her. Omie had become a doting parent, and Zoe a capricious child. Leo knew it was not healthy for such a reversal to take place, but he could not think how else to cope with the aftermath of Zoe’s misfortune other than by allowing it to continue.

Would a man of integrity, as Price insisted Leo was, let his wife become what Zoe had become, simply because that was the easiest option? Should he dismiss all thoughts of accepting the political challenge until such time as Zoe was herself again, or was it ethically permissible to launch himself into newer, deeper waters while she had already withdrawn herself from himself and his interests? What difference could it make to Zoe if her husband became involved in a venture that would doubtless take him far from Glory Hole on many occasions, even before a successful electoral bid should take him away to the east for four solid years. Perhaps by that time Zoe would be recovered, and in a position to accompany him to Washington. The imponderables of Leo’s dilemma sat like vultures on either shoulder. He would have to decide for himself, and do so quickly; Price had left him in no doubt that although his name was at the head of a list of suitable candidates for the position of party leader, the list itself was proof that his refusal would not stop the Praetorians from proceeding under the leadership of a lesser light. He wished sometimes he were a drinking man.

“Papa has gone away to Denver.”

“For what purpose?”

“He said it was business, Mama, but I saw Mr. Price in his thoughts.”

“It may be that Mr. Price is in the mining business.”

“No, he doesn’t know anything about mines, I looked.”

“What did you see?”

“The same men, Mama, with big cigars. Their faces were clearer than the last time, but I didn’t know any of them.”

“Then we shan’t worry about them. I’m sure Papa has his reasons for going.”

“Why won’t you talk to him?”

“I do not wish to.”

“But why?”

“I’m ugly now.”

“No, Mama, you’re not.”

“I am, and I have no wish to be seen by anyone but you.”

Omie knew her mother was telling the truth; inside Zoe’s mind was a picture of herself, grossly distorted, with the missing arm even shorter than it really was, while her other limbs were gigantic appendages that made her resemble a lopsided octopus. Omie did not bother to contradict with mere words what Zoe saw; the repellent image was far too strong to be broken by argument, especially from someone as young as herself. She was more or less resigned to being Zoe’s servant forever, having attempted on several occasions to peer into the future for a glimpse of less tragic times ahead. Despite her best efforts, no pictures came to her, and again she began to doubt the efficacy of her special eye. If she should ever lose it permanently, as her mother had lost an arm, would she react in a similar fashion, cutting herself off from almost everyone? It disturbed Omie to imagine herself and Mama together in the bedroom, looking after each other like a pair of invalids.

“We might be here till we die, Mama.”

“I shall. You won’t.”

“Why won’t I?”

“Because you will leave this place and marry some man and bring up his children, those that survive, and your life will be what it should.”

This did not sound any more acceptable to Omie than the bleak future she had pictured for herself and Zoe.

“I don’t want to get married.”

“And why not?”

“The husbands run away after a while.”

Zoe gave a laugh that was more akin to a bark, making Omie jump. “Perhaps you’re right. Stay a virgin, and be true to yourself alone.”

“Were you married to my real papa?”

“No. He was a brute, a farmer. He raped me. Do you know what rape is?”

“No,” said Omie, but was immediately struck between the eyes by Zoe’s recollection of the event, a memory so painful still, and so inexplicable in its leering violence, that Omie’s breath was taken from her for a moment or two. She began to cry, and seeing the tears, Zoe hated herself for having deliberately caused them by uttering a truth that was best kept hidden, if such things could be hidden from Omie’s eye.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. I had no right. The point is, Omie, it doesn’t matter in the least who put you inside me. You don’t resemble him at all, not even to look at. You are not his daughter. You are mine, and mine alone. That’s the thing to remember. I apologize, my darling. I think … I think I wanted you to see how awful a place the world can be. That is part of growing up, seeing the world as it truly is. Sometimes it is ugly, but that isn’t my fault or your fault or even the fault of people like the man who raped me. I don’t know whose fault it is. No one does, but we have religion for those who insist on an answer.”

“Did he make my face the wrong color, the man?”

“Certainly not. That is just bad luck … like my arm. We’re not responsible for every unfortunate thing that befalls us, Omie, but we must recognize those things for which we are. Listen to me: I sound like a sage.”

“That’s a plant, Mama.”

“Another kind of sage. Really, I know nothing, nothing at all that’s worth ten cents. Isn’t that terrible?”