The Grass Widow (16 page)

“Joss, this is your whiskey talking—”

“Whiskey, the devil! A man doin’ my work would scarce bother with such as this!”

“Joss, you can’t cut your hair! My stars, what people would say—”

“Hang what they say! They say now I’m the hell-bound bastard daughter of a Yankee whore with the bathtub to prove it. When they gossip of me they leave some other soul be. Aidan, please cut it for me. It’s a trial I’ve no time for.”

“Oh, Joss—” Helplessly, she gathered the black thickness into both her hands, loving it for itself and for the nightly transition it effected; she understood the request, but was afraid of it. “Saint Paul said—”

“Oh, Saint Paul! Paul said the man was the glory o’ God, an’ the woman the glory o’ the man. He didn’t hold a woman to be no more than chattel, an’ ain’t no man owns me. He said this damnable tress was given me for a cover for when I pray unto God?” Her voice was thick with scorn. “I prayed unto God with all this hair an’ all my heart, an’ all I got for my prayers was four fresh graves. God don’t give a damn about me or my hair.” She shoved back from the table, four steps taking her to her belt and the sheath knife there. “I’ll cut it myself, then. Damn the gossip an’ damn God if He can’t admit a short-haired woman to His Kingdom.”

“Joss, that’s blasphemy! Oh, Lord, forgive her—”

“He’ll have to forgive me without this insufferable hair.”

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She knew the knife was sharp; the last thing she’d done before sheathing it was hone it, and now, this moment, that unruly mane had to leave her neck, her waistband when she tucked in her shirt, her face when she chopped pokeweed or split wood or shoveled stalls. She wound it into a damp, taut twist.

“Joss, no!” Aidan caught her arm. “Not that way, Joss, please!

Sit. I’ll do it—”

“If I sit you’ll but try to dissuade me. I know my own mind, Aidan.”

I prayed unto Him with all this hair and all my heart and all I got
for my prayers was four fresh graves.
“No,” she said softly, and knew she would see the inside of the Washburn Station Baptist Church only for the rare weddings and funerals Joss felt a need to attend.

“No, Joss. I’ll just cut your hair.”

Joss sat, watching warily as Aidan got her sewing basket for the shears and scissors there; Aidan put those tools on the table and finished combing out the dark mane. She tied it back with string and rested her hands on Joss’s shoulders. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”
No, Hank. Not you, not anyone, not ever, and with this gone
no man would think to want me. All I want is to be left be.
“Please. Just cut it.”

There was a breathless realization that it was too late to change her mind when Aidan’s almost-moan chased the crunching bite of the shears: “God forgive us both—” and a two-foot-long damp black ponytail came around her shoulder to be placed gently on the table.

“It’s too late for regrets.” Joss tried to appease Aidan, but she was almost queasy at the evidence before her. “Finish it. Like Doc’s, up around the ears an’ close to the neck.”
I’m sorry, God.
I’m not strong enough to bear all my crosses and that hair too.
She settled in the chair, too distracted by what Aidan was doing to be too aware of her touch. The blades of the scissors were cool at the back of her neck as Aidan sculpted the first brutal hack.

“Hank Richland came by,” she said at last.

“I thought that was his horse. What was Hank about?”

“He asked me to marry him.”

The scissors hesitated, and finally clipped again. “And?”

“Would I be gettin’ a haircut if I’d said yes? I told him to go shit in his hat an’ pull it down over his ears. That’s how many times I’ve told him no.”

“Oh, Joss! You’re
so
vulgar.” It was a helpless laugh; the scissors paused their whispering around her left ear for a moment. “Does it occur to you that he might truly love you? He seems a gentle fellow.”

“Oh, he’s gentle enough, an’ a good friend, but lovin’ me’s his misfortune. Can’t you see me in that white getup, holdin’ a bouquet o’ tumbleweeds an’ sayin’ I do when I don’t want to?

That’d be worth hirin’ the picture-taker for.” She blew a brief, moist raspberry. “He says he’d make me a good husband by not lettin’ me do hard work. Such goodness as that I can live well enough without, an’ watchin’ my farm go to hell for havin’ a storekeep not know how to run it nor let me, either.”

“You do work too hard, Joss.”

“I live on the face o’ God’s green earth. A farm’s hard. Wish I could’ve took on Zeke Clark for a hand—Flora got him for bed an’ board an’ a half-eagle a month, Doc says—but I’d’ve made a hard enemy out’ve Ottis if I had. He’s still all up in a froth over that hayin’ business, like it was my fault Zeke called him out. Gid was the one tellin’ him just cause his Pa’s a ass ain’t no reason for him to be one too, an’ him almost growed.” She chuckled. “It was that ‘almost’ that got Zeke all het up, Gid said. Ain’t sixteen a age for a boy to be! All horn an’ howl an’ not a lick o’ sense in a wagonload of ’em.”

“I don’t care for Ottis. There’s something...coarse about him.”

“Look at them eyes,” Joss agreed. “Man’s meaner’n a snake.”

She resumed the making of the cigarette she had started earlier.

“Marcus is about the only one that don’t watch words around him, I guess, but Marcus’s big enough to hunt bear with a switch, an’

he don’t miss them fingers none in a fight. Ma always says it was the good Lord’s doin’ that put the Bodetts ’tween the Jacksons an’ the Clarks or there wouldn’t be nothin’ left but the bones.”

“Turn your chair; I need to get at your front. Thank you.”

Aidan stepped between Joss’s knees so she could reach. “Tell me about Flora Washburn. Everyone talks about her, but I’ve never met her.”

“Flora’s a queer ol’ bird. She’ll give a boy a hand up one day, like Zeke, an’ hold another one under her boot the next. She let Ethan have go at all them pecans, but not a week later she like to wore the hide off‘n Nat Day for fillin’ his poke with what’d dropped over the fence. He picked a hundred bushels o’ nuts to pay for that pokeful, an’ his daddy barely in the ground.”

“Ethan asked her. Nathaniel didn’t.”

“I suppose. Seemed harsh to me. He didn’t jump into the orchard.” She fingered her unlit cigarette, keeping her eyes closed, but she could still smell the clean, soft scent of Aidan too close to her. “She’s about eighty, they say. Older‘n Methuselah, anyway. Don’t look it. Still rides, an’ drives her own buggy. Surprised she ain’t showed up yet. Maybe she’s waitin’ on me to present you. Suppose we could dig out the finery an’ pay a call one afternoon. I ain’t wearin’ no dress, though. She wears breeches. Only reason I ever got away with it.”

“You’d have done as you pleased with or without Flora Washburn. Tip your head up.” She touched a finger under Joss’s chin and gave her a critical look one side to the other; dubiously, she shook her head. “I’m as done as I can do. Mayhap the barber will take pity and finish the job.”

Joss let her fingers have first look; it felt like what she had asked for. It felt exotic and free and comfortable; it felt frightening. She wondered if she’d dare to take off her hat in town for the next—oh, six or eight years. She stood, brushing hair from her shirtfront, and lit her cigarette.

“Aren’t you going to look in the glass?”

“I will. I need to shake out this shirt, though. I feel all itchies.”

She went to the porch and stepped out of the light; Aidan heard the snap of the shirt, and in a moment Joss came back, still doing buttons. “How’s it look?”

“Don’t ask me. See for yourself.”

“Suppose I’ve got to,” Joss murmured. “Feels so good I hate to, though.” Reluctantly, she went to the mirror.

“Mercy—” It was a soft breath of shock. “Moses on the mountain, look at Ethan,” she whispered. “A rat’s-tail of a mustache an’ I’d be Ethan Bodett.”

Weakly, Aidan smiled, recalling her arrival in Washburn Station and her first sight of the slim and handsome cowboy who had approached her; she had assumed that person to be Ethan, had known he was Ethan. Two of the deepest shocks of her nineteen years had been her father’s dry, “You’re with child,”

and that cowboy’s equally dry, “I’m Joss Bodett.” Looking at Joss now, she saw that darkly handsome cowboy again, and it stirred something vaguely uneasy in her.

“You did a fine job of it, Aidan,” Joss said softly. “Thank you.”

And she smiled: it was an Ethan-smile, glinting and wicked. “We’ll tell Saint Paul I got the lice. Maybe he wasn’t lookin’ tonight an’

we’ll get by with it.”

“Hush,” Aidan protested, not at all comfortable with the possibility of Saint Paul’s opinion. She hung the hank of hair on the wire over the stove and got the broom and dustpan. “Do you really look like Ethan now?”

Joss found a damp four-inch lock of hair on the floor and stuck it under her nose. “Ethan. I wish you’d’ve known him.” Her mustache disintegrated as she spoke; she sat, brushing hairs from her lip. “An’ I say that—” She drew on her cigarette and found it dead; she scratched a match under the table, raising an eyebrow in request for permission. Aidan nodded, and Joss lit up and exhaled smoke in a soft sigh. “You’d love Seth. He’s like Ma—quiet an’

sweet—even if there’s somethin’ in the both of ’em to make you wonder if they ain’t just resigned. But Ethan—”

She frowned at her jelly jar, finally swallowing the rye left in it. “I don’t expect you’d’ve cared for him in the long run.” She picked a hair from her tongue and flicked it away. “You’d’ve fell in love with him at the first; he’s such a charmer. But he don’t understand—” She groped for a word. “Fences? Restraints. Or—

limits, I guess. An’ you’d have saw that. He was fun, but he just

wasn’t reliable. Had he not died of the grippe, it would’ve been by the hand of a jealous man, or one beat at cards—fair, though. Ethan didn’t need to cheat; he was God-blessed lucky at them pasteboards. But he lived what parts o’ life he enjoyed an’ never mind the rest. Today he’d’ve likely shot the deer an’ been gone, as if good aim was work enough an’ I couldn’t’ve did it.”

Aidan, remembering her own response to good aim, turned to the stove with her dustpan, not wanting Joss to see the blush.

“Land sakes, girl, don’t burn that great lot of hair,” Joss protested when she reached for the lid lifter to raise a burner plate. “It’ll stink to high heaven.” She rescued the dustpan and took it to the porch, winging its contents to the night— “No, cat. Stay out where the mice are.” —and came back brushing off her hands.

“But still, I wish you could’ve known him.”

“As do I. All of them.” Aidan sat at the table; she trimmed the lamp to its softest light. “Poor cat should have a name,” she murmured. Finally she looked up. “Joss, this morning...I hate it that I slapped you. I didn’t understand—”

Joss looked away; there was plenty about today that she didn’t understand, or dare to approach. “It’s all right, Aidan. Let it be. Let’s think up a name for the cat.”

“Orion, after the constellation; he hunts in the stars, like the cat. And it’s not all right. I saw something beautiful, and for a moment I despised you for killing it, but I had no leave to do what I did. We call it Blackstone blood and we damn it, but I don’t want this child to learn those ways. I need to remember how it hurt us both that it happened.”

Joss tipped her jelly jar to its side. “Did you empty the bottle?”

“Not quite.”

Joss went to the china cabinet and the soup tureen there. She got the bottle from it and came back to the table. The cork squeaked as she drew it from the neck; a quick shiver chased up Aidan’s spine. “You’ll remember,” Joss said quietly, emptying the amber liquid into her glass. “It’s the only time I’ve ever saw it true that it hurt you worse than it hurt me.”

“I don’t believe that. I can still see how you looked. I didn’t hurt your face, Joss, I hurt your heart. And I hate that.”

“I’ve got an’ given worse. Let it go, Aidan.”

Aidan sighed. “Would that I could. Perhaps had the others been here to share the work—but I was of so little use to you!

This morning I saw a murder. Tonight I see so much hard, hard work for little more end than keeping a frivolous city girl alive—”

Joss sent her an aggrieved look, remembering muttering those same accusing words that morning. “Aidan, you’re not—”

“—and I want you to know how dearly I appreciate it. At home there was meat on the table and we ate it, or we went to market and bought it.” She looked up from under a fringe of dark lashes. “Butcher shops by the dozen in those big Eastern cities,”

she teased gently; Joss managed a pained smile. “I deserved that. But here, saving chickens, whatever I’ve eaten was killed and tended to before I came—until now. I know what it cost now. I know good aim was the easy part and hardly work enough done, and had Ethan been here and left you with the work after the killing, I’d not have fed him tonight. Maybe from him, I’d have still seen it as a murder.”

Joss gave her a weary smile. “Ethan would shoot for the pleasure o’ shootin’ well, but I never saw him kill just for the pleasure o’ killin.’ I think was we required to eat all we killed we’d live in peace, but you can’t tell some men that. They enjoy the killin’ too much.”

“Argus Slade,” Aidan murmured. And she stared at her cup; it wasn’t just Slade. It was Jared Hayward, and his father, and her own; it was the newly-crowned man who was Ezekiel Clark, who had taken grim pleasure in the beating he’d given his father—and it was his father, and the soldiers who had accosted her when she had stepped from the train her first day on the western side of the Missouri River. They could fight a war to free the slaves, she thought, because they knew they still had women. She knew a man—Ethan or most any other—would make his kill and expect his women to clean up after him.

But Joss? Joss was as good as a man at man’s work, but she

thought like a woman: she assumed nothing, as likely to lend a hand at the dishpan or stove as she was to mend fences or split wood; Aidan felt like a partner, not a slave, to this enigmatic being who in the space of a morning could kill without compunction and then kiss her as gently as—more gently than—