The Outlander (25 page)

The widow sighed and looked about her at the Reverend's home, her
new home, and slowly the pall began to lift. Here was a man who wore his scars on the
outside and held a merry heart within. How much better that was than its opposite.

The widow added pot after pot of hot water, steam exploding from her
little tent. Then she crept naked under the blankets and dipped first one foot and then
the other into the bath. Slowly, she lowered her buttocks in, pulled the last flap
closed, and finally sat rigid and upright with her knees raised to her chest. The water
came halfway up her hip, covered her ankle bones, but that was all. She dangled a metal
cup from her hand, carefully dipping it in and ladling a little hot water over her
shins. Only after a long interval was she able to lean back against the scalding metal
side of the bath, put her head back, and sigh.

The scent of the green leaves in the water, the steam, her breath. Through
a tiny space in the blankets she could see sunlight, the rafters, lines of nails in the
wood, hammered in place by the Reverend. She pictured him on one of his cockeyed
ladders, fishing a nail from his pocket. The whole place looked like him, had his mark.
The widow slid down into the bath and let the scalding water touch her chin. It was dark
and quiet in her tent; bands of sunlight came through the steam. The heat was
penetrating her shoulders, and she felt her muscles let go.

Am I happy
? she thought.
Is this happy
?

It was a question she used to ask herself as a girl, lying alone in bed
and wondering about the future. She would close her eyes and think ecstatically:
I
am so happy!
and let the words float inside her, testing the truth of them,
until, slowly, inevitably, the feeling became hollow and sank away to nothing. Certainly
she had often been glad — glad of a Christmas present, glad to see her father
coming down the lane, glad to sit down after a long day of chores. Had it been a happy
life so far? Not particularly. Not for anyone. The question seemed remote now, like
something in a Bible lesson, the voice of some marm asking: “And what did the
children do when they reached Jerusalem? They
. . . rejoiced.
”

She ran a palm over her belly and tried to feel something there, some
remembrance of pain or fullness, of life or the lack of it, of her own blood even, an
intimation of her former self, travelling like a muffled voice from skin to skin. But
there was nothing. She was as empty and unchanged as if none of it had ever happened.
She put a hand to her forehead, breathed deeply in the damp air. A hot tear ran back
across her cheek. What she felt now was simple relief. In the Reverend's house she
had found a kind of amnesty. It wasn't happiness, not damned happiness.

She'd been properly happy on her wedding day, gaily waving goodbye
on the train, embracing her husband when he finally came to her in bed. Happy as
expected. Then: the happy duped wife, the happy inept housekeeper left constantly alone,
with winter roaring outside the cabin and the voices roaring inside her. The happy
mother of a sick and dying baby . . .

THE MIDWIFE AND
her companions had arrived long after
dark. John had known they were coming when the owls stopped calling. There were three of
them — the night woman and two men, all on horseback, one man holding a lantern.
The old woman trailed John into the cabin, following his candle, while the two men stood
in silence by the trees and held the horses by the reins. The animals' coats
steamed in the snow-blown air.

Mary lay barely conscious near the bed, a candle on the wet wood floor
next to her. The baby trembled weakly between her legs. Though she did not know who was
speaking, Mary heard the woman's voice.

“Oh God,” it said, from a long way off, “have you two no
sense at all?”

“Can you help?” John said.

“Heat!” she hissed. “Get the goddamn stove on!
It's cold as hell in here.”

And then Mary heard a soft voice, “My dear, oh my dear . . .”
drifting in the darkness and knew it to be the midwife talking to the baby.

MORNING CAME AND
the men were gone, all of them, John
having departed with more easy company. The midwife sat hard-faced by the bed, her arms
crossed. Mary lay like a shrivelled queen under the blankets, the baby on her chest, her
hands limp at her sides. She opened one eye.

“So,” the midwife said. It seemed to Mary that she had been
waiting.

“Is it . . . did I?” she croaked.

“Yes.” The midwife tapped Mary on her collarbone, by the
baby's cheek. “Here.”

The new mother looked down, almost cross-eyed, like a drunk eyeing the
buttons of his vest. She saw the top of a small, pale head. Her hand drifted up to it.
The baby barely moved, but its breath came fiercely, a tiny, panting thing against her
breast.

“A boy,” the midwife said and got up and left the room.

Mary lay her head back. She held the boy, the warm crown. She felt around
for a hand and discovered one, small as a nut, unmoving. They lay there together while
morning light came through the window. She turned her head to see the light, motes of
dust floating in on the sun, some rising, others falling, a strange traffic of specks.
But she paid them little mind as her hand held the marvellous tiny fist.

The midwife returned with a cup of melted snow and, dipping her fingers
into it, baptized the baby. “Name of the father son holy ghost amen.” When
she was done, she sat with her hands in her lap, looking at the young mother.

“He won't last,” she said.

EACH DAY
, the baby faded a little more. Mary whispered
to him, urged him into life the way one urges a runner in a race. She gave him names,
tried them out in sequence, and then suffered the conviction that if she finally chose
one, the job would be finished, and he would depart. After a week, he could no longer
nurse, his mouth open against her breast, and he rarely cried. She lay him in her bed
and fanned his face, trying not to see the calm, almost indifferent eyes. She put her
ear to the baby's chest just to hear the birdlike flutter. He grew less responsive
by the day, and every subtle sign of
his drifting away pierced her.
Unslept, starved, still bleeding, she had to be careful not to faint when rising from
the bed or from a chair, her hands on her knees and her spinning head held downward, the
cabin thumping, and her ears going briefly hollow. As the baby slept and sank deeper,
she forced herself to rise, to walk, to pace. She was afraid to sleep lest he leave her,
or spend his last moments alone. Day became just like night to her, there was no
distinction and no break in wakefulness. Everything was burning, she was on fire. She
put her forefinger into his hand, but he could not grip any more, so she carefully
pressed the tiny fingers in place and watched them fade open again. The sun rose cruelly
pink and soft on what would clearly be his final day. She could not breathe, could not
blink, but watched helplessly as the room suffused with light. She stayed with him to
the end, and long after.

Her husband had been gone for a week. When he returned, his son was dead
but not yet buried, and his wife had gone mad.

JOHN HAD BEEN
obliged to light a fire over the spot for
most of a day before he could get a shovel into the frozen earth to dig even a shallow
grave. When it was dug, the walls of it steamed, and cinders fell rolling down the sides
into it. Mary had no recollection of how the boy was put in it — her mind was a
savage blank on that — but she did remember the hollow
clank
of the
shovel as John tamped the mound down and the wisps of steam still rising in a ring about
it.

SPRING HAD COME
in a gush of muddy water through the
bare trees. Grey jays swept from branch to branch, calling to
one
another in their fluty voices, and water lay in sparkling pools about the cabin. Mary
had taken to her bed and barely moved from it. She watched the light crawl the rafters
above her, and her mouth constantly whispered. Everything in her mind came forth,
mouthed senselessly, repeating and circling back on each thought.

John's voice penetrated the air, and she turned her head to see him
standing there. “Can you not do something, Mary? Can you not get up?”

At first, John was always somewhere in the cabin, the quiet husband, his
smell of leather and cattle following him. She had no idea how he fed himself for she
didn't feed him, and she herself could not eat.

“There should be a woman here,” he'd said. It took her
some time to realize he meant some other woman who might look after them both. He stood
by the door and glared at the world. He sat at the end of their bed. Sometimes she
thought she could hear the men in the fields — their voices, laughter — but
she was never sure whether it was real.

Then one afternoon she became hungry, and she sat up, the body on its
phantom climb upward, swimming away from death. She began to walk again, and as she
regained her footing, John began to leave her alone for longer each day. Back to work.
Sometimes he went on the long trip to town. Gone again for the week.

So that was that; she could not die after all.

She rose and wandered the house like a stranger, finding it terribly
messed, plates unwashed and bread left out to go hard. The canvas floor cover was
bunched and filthy, and there were drifts of leaves in the corners of the cabin. John
had knocked his pipe out into the washtub. His new boots
were set
side by side on the table, and his hat had fallen from its peg to the floor. These
things were like omens, dire warnings she alone understood. She bent to sweep, several
minutes at a time, then sat on the bed, her head reeling and tears in her raw eyes. She
waited, but she did not know what she was waiting for. A rainbow cut through the trees,
and the air was heavy with white mist. At night, she could hear a strange booming, far
away, as if the sky itself had woken from an angry dream. She sat on a chair, her
trembling hands in her lap.

One morning she saw a young bear standing over the grave where the child
was hidden. It had already pawed out a shallow hole but had found nothing. As if nothing
had ever been there, as if the boy had been a dream. The bear's eyes were small
and uncertain. It swayed slightly, gaunt and spring-hungry, its skin hanging loosely at
its belly. She watched it wander off, following a scent perhaps, smelling something
green pushing through the snow that lay preserved in the shadows and gullies. She went
out and, with gentle hands, swept the earth back into place.

John went off to the fields during the day. Men and a few boys came with
him, hired to turn the thawed fields, but when they arrived in the morning or returned
at dusk, they always stood outside the cabin door with their hats in their hands, as if
everyone knew that crossing her threshold brought misfortune. They left without food or
coffee. She was not strong enough yet to cook for so many, and when they were gone she
put her face in her hands with shame. At night, he lay with her in the bed and slept. He
allowed her to curl up behind him, her chin on his spine. He was warm, almost hot,
extraordinarily alive.

SHE HAD BEEN
out behind the cabin, hanging John's
laundry in the early summer breeze, the human debris of their small homestead strewn
about the yard, when she looked up and saw herself. Standing in the shadow was a girl so
similar to her that Mary's mouth fell open. The girl came forward into the sun,
sidling the way a cat does, her eyes coldly assessing. They stood in mutual regard,
waiting amid the curling rivulets of mist that a chinook had blown through the
trees.

“Where is he?” said the girl.

“My husband isn't home . . .” Mary's voice faded
away. She stared, fascinated by the girl's long dark hair, pale skin, pregnant
belly.

“I don't want
him
. Where's the baby?”

Unable to speak, Mary simply gaped. The girl licked her lips, her eyes
taking in everything. Then she turned and went into the cabin, cute as a daylight thief,
her ankles showing and her short skirts speckled with bits of weed. She lifted a work
hat from its perch on a chairback, then dropped it onto the seat. She went to the
kitchen and ran her finger over the bread board. She entered the bedroom and stood
looking at the photographs on the dresser while Mary lingered at the door.

“I imagined this place different,” the girl said.
“It's smaller. You keep it a mess.”

Mary realized her heart was leaping. Every move the girl made promised
disaster, as if by a gesture she could sew flames along the floorboards. The girl put
her hand to the swell of her belly, not kindly, not solicitously the way women do, but
as if to hold it back, hold it in, her face no longer merely unfriendly but infused with
rage. She turned to leave
the bedroom and Mary dashed out of her
way, backing along the kitchen wall, her eyes tracking the unwanted guest. The girl
paused by the table panting under her burden. “You're a lucky person,”
she said bitterly, looking not at Mary but at everything else. “I wish I was lucky
as you.”

“Who are you?”

“You could ask him. But you don't even know where he is, do
you?”

Mary's hand came slowly to her mouth, her eyes welling.

The girl gave her a rueful smile and nodded. “Now you see,”
she said, exiting. “But I don't know where he is either. And I don't
care.”

It was then that the girl spotted the little grave marker. She went to it
and stood over it for a long time, hands loose at her sides, and after a while she put
her foot out and poked at the cross to right it, but it drooped again, lopsided. Then
she turned away into the trees and was gone.