Sisters (15 page)

"And the doll? Why did
you break the doll?"

The girl shook her head
hard at the question, as if she didn't want to hear it. "I don't
know. I don't know."

Sophie rubbed her back and
rubbed and rubbed until the tears stopped the girl's eyelids began to
droop. "Come on, sweetheart, let's get to bed." She helped
her up and with an arm around her walked her to her room. As Sophie
pulled the covers up around the girl, she experienced an unfamiliar
pang. It took her a moment to identify it as regret for her own
childlessness. How fine a thing it would be to help another human
being, a bud of herself, unfold and grow.

"Aunt Sophie?"

"Yes, Esther?"

"Will you go to the
circus with me? I'm not too old for the circus, am I?"

"No, and I'm not too
old, either." The girl smiled sleepily, and Sophie felt a warm
affection easing the emptiness which had invaded just the moment
before. "I'd like very much to go with you," she told the
sleeping child.

She carried Tom downstairs
to her room, and when she returned from filling his water dish, she
saw that he had posted himself on the tower window seat. With his
ears perked, he was looking intently down into the yard. Ignoring
him, thinking perhaps a cat had wandered by below, she extinguished
the light. The dog began to growl.

"Hush, Tom."

The growling continued.

"Tom, hush! That's
enough!"

When still he growled,
Sophie sat up, meaning to go see what was bothering him. But as she
stood, there was a loud sound from near where he was, a damp,
slapping sound, as though a heavy wet rag had been thrown against the
window. The dog began barking wildly.

"What...?" Sophie
started toward the tower, but before she got there, the sound came
again, this time more loudly, and at the same instant, the window in
the tower burst inward. Something hit the floor with a heavy,
sickening thud, and suddenly there was an overwhelming stench in the
room. It was the smell of death, of putrefying flesh and bloated body
cavity. [Editor's note: Thus far Mrs. Biscuitbarrel has refrained
from commenting on the narrative, but those last images certainly
don't put her and Mr. B., shall we say, in the mood for love. But let
us allow Mrs. Cheney to continue...]

To Sophie is seemed as
though all her nightmares had suddenly become real. It was Helen. It
had to be. Someone must have thrown Helen's body into the room. Her
sister was lying there in the dark, head bent oddly at the broken
neck, dead eyes staring unseeingly. Struggling to find the light,
Sophie fought down a scream. As she fumbled with the switch, she
heard a whimpering noise. At first she thought it was Tom. Then she
realized she was making the noise herself.

She flipped the switch, and
light flooded the room. She saw Tom sniffing at something on the
floor in the tower. She screamed at him, "Get away from there."
The dog ignored her, continuing to sniff. "Tom, come here! Get
away from there now!" There was a rising note of hysteria in her
voice, and still the dog paid no attention. Sophie forced herself to
move closer, forced her eyes to the object lying in the tower. She
saw shining entrails. but they were so small, and so was the bag from
which they had burst--no, the bags. There were several of them, all
tied together, small and brown and furry. The prairie gophers. It was
the prairie gophers. Someone had tied several of the rotting animals
together and thrown them through the window of her room.

She was still trying to
absorb [sic] what she saw when there was a loud knocking on her door.
"Sophie? Sophie?" It was James' voice.

She opened the door and he
came in, followed behind by Connie, her face swollen with sleep.

"I heard a crash. Are
you all right?" James asked.

She nodded, pointing at the
carcasses in the tower.

"What? Did those kids
do this? Where's Sally?"

"James, Sally's
asleep. It wasn't her."

"Then who? This is
crazy." He moved to the window, put his head out, and looked
below. "Looks like another bunch of carcasses near the front
walk. Whoever did this must have meant to throw them up here too.
Maybe they were scared off."

"No, they threw the
other bunch too. They just didn't manage to break the window with
them."

He turned and moved to
where the carcasses lay, and Sophie, selfconscious now in her thin
gown and chilled by the night breeze coming through the broken
window, reached for her robe. As she did so, she caught sight of
Connie's face. The girl's eyes were swimming, whether from sleepiness
or nausea, Sophie wasn't sure.

"What's this?"
James had spotted a stained piece of paper tied to the neck of one of
the prairie gophers. He bent to pick it up and had to jerk it to tear
ir away from the string which attached it to the dead animal. As he
did so, the entire mass shook, and the ooze of entrails on the
bedroom floor widened.

"What is it?"
Sophie asked, looking away.

James didn't answer right
away. "Let's go downstairs," he said to Sophie finally. And
to Connie: "I'll send someone to help you clean this up."
The girl nodded as if she were in a daze, and Sophie wondered if she
had understood.

Downstairs, the library was
chilly, and while Sophie read the note, James started a fire. "Well,
what do you think?" he said, turning to her.

She considered the crudely
printed words, "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, SQUAW." The word,
"squaw." Why did it make her recoil? There was insult
implicit in it, she sensed that, and there also was the strangeness
of having it addressed to her. It was so... so unexpectedly odd to be
aligned with her grandmother, to be put by a word into a world which
had always seemed so foreign to her. "I'm stunned, I suppose,"
she said to James. "'Squaw'?" No one's ever called me that.
Not when I was a child growing up. Joe wouldn't have let them, I
suppose. And not since I've been an adult. Oh, there are instances
when people make remarks about Indians, but usually if they know I'm
part Shoshone, they respond differently, as if there's something rare
about it and ... exotic."

"That's in the East,
Sophie. It's different out here." He used the bellows on the
fire, and it began to flame brightly. "Who'd do this?" he
asked, turning back to her. "Who'd want to keep you out of their
business?"

She gave a full account of
her conversations of her conversations with Huber and told him about
the exchange she'd had with Rodman.

"Why didn't you tell
me before?" he demanded angrily. "Don't you see? Since I
didn't object, they must think I approve their harassing you,
especially after the way I put up with Rodman's staring at you. I
should have done something about that. And you should have told me
about the threats!"

"I wanted to take care
of it myself, not come running to you as if I were helpless."

"It's all well and
good to be independent when you're playing a game that goes by polite
rules, but it looks like you've come across another kind." A log
fell in the fireplace, and he took the poker and pushed it back.
"Being a woman doesn't always mean you'll be treated in a polite
and civilized way," he said to her.

"I never thought that.
You make me sound naive."

"I didn't mean to. Not
at all. In more instances that not, a woman can count on being
accorded respect out here, on being protected by her sex. I've come
across women who've taken the most incredible journeys by themselves,
shared campfires with cowboys, traveled through outlaw territory
completely unmolested. The men out here play some rough games, but
sometimes they'll change the rules entirely if women get involved.
Remember Anna May talking about elections at dinner last night?"

"Yes, and I remember
you arguing with her."

One corner of his mouth
went up in a half-smile. "That has no bearing at all on the
validity of her observation. Since women've been voting, elections
are much soberer, more orderly affairs. That's one of the games the
men agreed to play differently when they let in the women--no, not
the women, the ladies. And that's the point, you see. There are some
categories of female the Western male feels no obligation to pay
special regard--"

"The Western male,
James. Aren't you one?"

"Let me make my point,
Sophie. There are some women who are thought not to merit special
regard--"

Again she interrupted. "And
Indian women are among them."

"That's right. You're
absolutely right. So you see why they called you 'squaw' in that
note. It made their job easier. If they could think of you in those
terms, it was easier for them to do something like this to you.":

"It makes me indignant
to think I need--how did you say it?--'special regard' from a thug
like Jake Rodman. It's such an affront. I shouldn't need his 'special
regard.' I'm... I'm better than he is! Oh, that's not what I mean."

"Of course it is. And
you're right. You're smarter, cleverer, but you're not stronger,
Sophie, and you're not as vicious. I don't know if you could ever
bring yourself to do some of the things which are second nature to a
man like Rodman, and that's to your disadvantage in a confrontation.
It seems to me you could use an ally."

He was right. She didn't
like to admit it, but he was right. "Are you sure you want to
align yourself with me? You can't be certain what I'll say about the
stock growers."

He shrugged and smiled. "I
guess I'll have to trust to your good judgment. And it won't take
much to get Rodman and Huber to back off. I'll just let them know
you're off-limits, not to be bothered..." He broke off,
frowning.

"What is it?"

"I have to leave first
thing tomorrow. Spring roundup's nearly over, and I'm making a
circuit of the company's ranches. I've no idea where Rodman is
staying, and I heard Huber say he was leaving for his ranch... But it
doesn't matter. I'll stop and see Paul before I leave. I'll tell him
to deliver the messages. That'll take care of it."

She looked up at him, and
though it was late, she thought he looked fresh, alert--energized,
that was it. The last hour seemed to have driven the last hint of
melancholy from him, and he looked like the man she had met twelve
years ago, handsome, a bit imperious, perhaps, but she didn't mind.
No, she'd never minded male sureness and strength, though she knew
well how much trouble they could be. She'd seen with Philip the
energy and effort a man accustomed to dominance requires. A woman
must constantly be fighting for her selfhood with such a man, and
after Philip's death, she'd resolved she wanted no more such battles.
But when she'd considered the matter abstractly, she'd forgotten how
strong the attraction could be. What other kind of man was worth
loving, after all?

"If you'd like to go
back upstairs," James said, "I'm sure your room's been
taken care of. If you draw the tower curtains, I'm certain you'll be
warm enough."

"Not just yet. I'd
like to stay here awhile. Would you stay with me?" She reached
up a hand, and he took it in his, looking at her as he did so. She
was suddenly aware his eyes were blue. The color was so deep, she'd
simply thought of his eyes as dark before, but now she realized they
were the color of a night sky, the color of a mountain lake at
midnight. They were blue, a blue so deep it seemed to reflect
blueness into the whites of his eyes, a blue so compelling she let
herself be pulled past all her doubts.

"Sophie?" It was
a complex question he was asking, compressed into a single word.

"Yes, James."
With the strong affirmation of her tone, she answered him. Then she
excused herself, promising to return right away. Upstairs she opened
the wardrobe and moved aside tissue-wrapped hats on the shelf until
she saw the lacquered box. She wasn't sure if the various maids who
had worked for her knew what was in the box, but she suspected they
did. And she suspected that after Philip's death, the question of
whether to continue packing it with her other things had caused
considerable consternation. She had waited to see who would have the
courage to bring it up, but no one had, and so she had let the matter
slide. And well she had, she thought, lifting the box off the shelf.

A few minutes later when
she returned to the library, James was turning down the lights. She
sat down near the fire and was surprised when he took a chair some
distance away. When he spoke, it was of inconsequential things and
she was so puzzled by his behavior that she almost felt like
laughing. Had he forgotten their last scene? Had she only imagined
it? Then she realized he was giving her a chance to reconsider. It
was an awkward gesture, because it was so out of keeping with his
nature, but she was touched by it, and when she looked into the
shadows where he sat and saw him looking fixedly at her, she was
moved in quite another way, struck by how erotic restraint could be.

She got up and went to him,
kneeling on the carpet by his chair. They were both still, and she
could hear her heart pounding, but at the same time she was seized
with a strange sense of unreality. She felt insubstantial as a ghost,
as though this were not she kneeling beside this man, wanting him,
but someone she was dreaming. He turned to her, leaned down, and put
his hand gently on the side of her face. "You are
extraordinarily beautiful," he said quietly. They kissed, and
then she lay with him in the firelight, unmindful of the past,
unmindful of anything except this moment, this man, and herself.

When she awoke the next
morning, it was a slow, gentle emergence from sleep. She was unsure
at first of where she was, but she felt no haste to settle the
matter. Without turning her head, she could see a doorway, a polished
mahogany wardrobe, a nightstand. This was not her New York apartment,
not the train. It was the guest suite in the Stevenson house; she was
in her bedroom in the Stevenson house.