chapter 1
Some years ago, in Dodge, I was a sporting woman. This was before I took up my current trade, back when the prairie ran with cattle like a river runs with fish. It’s different now, of course, but then, so am I. I didn’t mind whoring—it can be good work in the right house—but it demands a great deal of keeping still, and I’m one of those itchy, fidgety sorts who’s always looking out the window or glancing toward the door, so it was only a matter of time until I had to move on. Most rambling types like to act as if they just woke up one morning and lit out, turning their backs to all and sundry, but this is just good storytelling. The truth is that making your own way happens piecemeal, like a baby who scoots, then crawls, then eventually toddles her way right out the cabin door where she’s as likely to be snatched up by coyotes as she is to seek her fortune; either way, once she gets loose, there’ll be no getting her back. All of which is to say that though I ended up a pretty girl in boy’s clothes, mounted like a woman and armed like a man, I started much smaller and simpler, and mostly alone.
Before I was a whore in Kansas, I was a poor drunkard’s daughter in Arkansas. My pa wasn’t a bad man, but it was far too easy for circumstances to get the upper hand on him. He called himself unlucky, but the losing hands dealt him were too frequent and too numerous to be mere turns of fate. I will admit that at times, events truly were beyond his control: first Ma died having me, then came the Brothers War, then he was on the losing side, and then he lost what was left of the farm to nursing his broken heart. But there were other misadventures that showed me, if not him, that there’s more to this life than luck, even bad luck.
First there were the mustangs, which he bought cheap and wild but lacked the will to break and was forced to sell off cheaper and wilder. Then the sheep flock, whose feed he let rot so they all went mad when they ate it. When we finally had to slaughter them, the screaming clatter of blood and terror seemed to thrust him back to some Virginian hellscape, for halfway through he threw aside his knife and shot the rest as fast as he could. In between, there were crates of plow-blades that wouldn’t hold an edge, barrels of discarded horseshoes, bales of kinked wire, all manner of flotsam that somehow always cost more than it made. He told himself he was getting by on his wits, when most of the time it was my willingness to scrub linens, tote water, and muck out horse barns that kept our souls inside of our bodies.
When I wasn’t hiring myself out on odd jobs, I was usually standing in the doorway of our small cabin on the edge of Fort Smith, from whence I watched the sunsets and periodically wondered if my pa had finally gone off for good. He was a restless soul, and his absences always mixed me up bad. There was the fear that comes from being alone—I was just sixteen and getting a little too ripe to be left unguarded—the snapping awake at every shift in the wind outside only to stare into the blue-black darkness and wait with bated breath for nothing to happen. There was the righteous fury at having been forgotten, as though I, his child and only living kin, was no more memorable than a cracked jug or a harness with a broken strap. This fury would surge up unannounced: suddenly I’d find myself slamming down buckets only to slosh water over my feet, wringing wet linens like turkey necks, shoveling horse shit like I was digging one grave to hold all of my enemies. And then there was relief, the sole proprietorship over my supper, the break from caring for the one person left on this earth who should have cared for me.
We always scraped together just enough to keep us in that little house at the far reaches of the town. I would watch for Pa’s return, going about my chores with half an eye on the cabin door, propped open during the warm months to admit the evening. I couldn’t tell you what he did when he was gone; he’d just disappear, leaving me to scratch out a few pennies doing other folks’ chores, and come back whenever he’d a mind to, half singing a loop of some dirty song he’d learned long ago in the army. He’d roar for cornbread or a fire, but when I couldn’t produce them he never got rough, just sad. The cold, blue reflection of the empty hearth would pierce through the fog of liquor in some way that the sun, or I, never could, and for a moment he would understand that he was a disgrace, supported by a daughter who pitched hay and scrubbed petticoats, and greasy, overlarge tears would well up in his eyes. If I didn’t move quickly to cheer him up with a song or a joke he’d set to weeping, which only required more soothing and petting to tame down. Once he started crying I’d have to smile and lie right into his face for hours on end, until he calmed enough to pull himself up into the loft, where he’d snore like a full crew of lumberjacks, or toss and shout when his dreams grew too lifelike. Sometimes, as I lay awake after a long evening spent dabbing at his cheeks, I wished he would’ve just smacked me instead. It was an ungrateful sentiment, but a beating would have been less humiliating than pretending I didn’t mind that I’d never been to school, that all I wore were baggy hand-me-downs, that the pretty town girls wouldn’t even talk to me.
At five days and counting, this was Pa’s longest spree yet: usually his drinking spells only lasted three, four days at most, but now as the sun was easing down to kiss the tops of the pines, he was still nowhere to be seen.
The sun dipped an inch lower, and at last I heard a rattling, then a scrape and holler.
“Bridget!” His voice came from up the track. My whole back prickled like a porcupine, that strange admixture of fury and relief that, once again, he’d survived his own recklessness.
“Where’s my little red hen?” came a second shout. I’d swung the kettle out from over the fire and was poking at the contents, willing the possum I’d earned chopping firewood to turn into stew so my stomach could cease its fistlike clenching.
“Come on, Henny Penny, I’m stuck!” he called out again, tacking a hoarse laugh onto the end.
With a stick of firewood I pushed the kettle of possum back over the flames, wiped my hands on my apron, and went outside. It was that hazy, uncertain time of day when the sky can’t decide whether to keep its day clothes on, and the lowest-hung tree branches blur together like a mist. A little way down the track that led past our house I found my pa perched on the seat of a rattly little buckboard I hadn’t seen before. There were two skinny mules attached, flicking their ears and staring wall-eyed into the trees. The wagon’s rear wheel was stuck on a rock, the work of a moment for anyone remotely capable.
“Where’d you get all this?” I said, hands on hips like I was his overworked wife rather than his underfed daughter.
“That’s none of your nevermind,” he said. He swayed as he spoke, focused on some fixed point in the air. I pursed my lips and went around behind the wagon to dig out the rock, scrabbling at it with my nails while my pa kept his seat, humming that same old song, something about a lady in a red dress. I pulled the rock loose—it stuck up high but wasn’t nestled in very deep—and the wagon jolted forward into our yard, leaving me to chase after.
“Where’d you get all this?” I asked again as I caught up to them behind the cabin. He clambered down and started unhitching the mules, tying them up at an empty trough.
“Traded for ’em!” he crowed.
My heart sank, mind searching wildly for something he could have traded away, even for such a lean prize as this.
“Traded what?” I asked him, tensed all over.
“Well, the man who gave ’em to me said he was looking for a gal to care for him and his aging mother,” he said, looking up at me. I stopped breathing, staring at him with my mouth wide open. He winked like the joke was obvious. “But I told him I was too attached to my girl to give her up on such terms. So he’s taking the cabin instead.” He lifted one hand and gestured at our little house.
“You gave him our house?” I gasped. I looked at the mules again. Their hip bones stuck out and one of them still had the shaggy remains of a winter coat patchworked over his flank. “For them?”
“And this,” he said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a folded piece of paper, worn through where it had been folded and refolded too many times. He thrust it at me and I looked at the words, but I was poorly lettered and all I could pick out before he plucked it back from me was Kansas.
“Twenty acres, plus these two fine fellows. A fresh start, Bridget! A chance to change our luck!” The dusky shadows hid his face so that he was naught but a blue-gray silhouette. Instinct told me that to be less than jubilant would bring out a storm of tears and drown us both; I smiled and must have said something pleasant, for he drew me close and ushered me inside, complimented my treatment of the stringy, obstinate-tasting possum, and fell asleep still mumbling that song about some far-off pretty girl, long since forgotten.
—
Much to my surprise, traveling agreed with my pa: he just nipped at a bottle at night, stretched out alongside the fire right in the open air, snores reduced to horselike sighs, and for moments here and there I thought this might not have been a terrible mistake. As we bumped along, the cool forests of Arkansas gradually thinned and gave way to prairie under vast swathes of blue and white sky. It troubled me to come out from under the cover of trees; I’d lived my whole life in the shade and hadn’t realized how much I had come to rely on the pines for their uprightness, how under their canopy I’d felt held as by the great, green hand of God. As the woods dissolved, first into groves and then single, isolated trees, I found myself staring hard at them, suppressing the urge to wave sadly as though bidding old friends farewell, not that I’d had any. I began to wonder if each tree I saw would be the last, and to worry that I wouldn’t recognize that last one when I saw it.
Of course, there never was a real end to trees, just as there never is a real start to grass. And perhaps there should have been, for in the end it was our shared love of shade trees that got my pa killed. We were well into Kansas by then, just west of Abilene. Some speck on the horizon must have caught his attention, for he swung the mules off the wagon track and into open country, jolting me awake from where I’d been dozing in the mostly empty wagon bed.
“What is it?” I asked him, sitting up and rubbing the back of my head, which felt bruisy after so many days spent bumping in and out of sleep.
“A grove,” he said. “And maybe some water.”
He swung around and grinned at me. His hat had fallen forward so that I could only see his teeth, flat white and crowded together like passengers pressing toward a train door. “What do you say, Bridget, could you use a little shade?”
“I surely could,” I replied. I couldn’t see anything when I squinted past his shoulder, but I meant it all the same. We’d been under nothing but beating prairie sun for days; it seemed impossible that we could have traveled so far and still be surrounded by so little.
It was late afternoon by the time we came to the spring, nestled into a little dell that fed down to a creek bed, overhung by a stand of twisted cottonwoods. It wasn’t until we were under their shade that I saw the sod house dug into what passed for the hillside, a hairy facade with a silvery wooden door in the middle. I stayed in the wagon while Pa hopped down to take a look. The sun was getting lazy, and the light tilted into a golden syrup that spilled over his back; the grass was tall and yellow around his knees, sighing under the touch of a soft wind that ran over it like a hand over a piece of fine cloth; for the first time, I saw how such country could be beautiful.
Pa called out a hello, then rattled at the door when no one answered, but there came not a sound, not so much as a puff of dust.
“Ain’t no one here,” he said. “Let’s stop for the night.”
“In there?”
“No, let’s camp out here, just in case. Besides, I’ve grown fond of sleeping wild, ain’t you?”
“What if someone comes?” I said.
“And what if they do? Who would begrudge us, two simple travelers bunked out by a spring?” he said, crossing his arms and grinning at me again. Behind him the clear water of the spring rippled, sending up little stars of reflected sunlight, so I said nothing and climbed down. Our campsite twinkled to life as though laid out by fairies, so eager were we to stretch out and enjoy the cool shade and clear water. The hobbled mules huffed and snuffled as they drank, startling a prairie chicken who scuttled off into the brush before we could catch it. I waded straight into the spring to bathe my bare feet and Pa stretched out long at the base of a tree, pulling his hat down over his face. A fine breeze whispered over the grass and stirred the leaves of the cottonwoods; the sun dawdled overhead, and we drifted under its mindless gaze. Through the dancing leaves I watched the sky, enchanted and yet wondering how something that cared so little for me could so capture my attention. First it was a clear, reeling blue of staggering depth, but as I watched, the color drained away and was replaced by a deep gray as though the sky were turning to stone above us. I watched, fascinated, not realizing that the roiling texture it had taken on was cloud until the breeze suddenly turned cold, then whipped itself up stronger. I sat up when the first thick, heavy drops hit my face and shoulders. A new, fierce wind whipped my hair about my face like a blindfold.
“Pa!” I called out, but it was already dark, and he was already moving. We rolled up our meager camp and hustled toward the sod house. Its crumbling, hairy walls were lit white for a split second before the thunder rang out. I had never heard anything like it: the sound was physical, great hands clapping together as if we were two gnats they meant to smash. A fresh lashing of rain sent me barreling through the dark little mouth of the open doorway, the floor before me flashing around my own cutout shadow, and then the answer to the lightning’s question hit me like a whip between the shoulder blades and chased me into a corner where I curled up small in the darkness, waiting for the next crack and roll. We’d had thunderstorms in Arkansas, of course, but this was different, my first taste of real prairie weather that has nothing to give it shape or direct its madness. I pulled myself in closer and shivered.
“Come on now, be brave,” said Pa. “Ain’t nothing but a little lightning, and you ain’t been scared of nothing before this.”
For a moment I tightened from brow to shoulders with a sudden desire to spit back all the things I’d been afraid of those countless times he’d left me alone, all the things I prayed against before he came back. But there came another white flash and then the crack, louder this time. A sob burst out of me before I could stop it, and I crouched down, clutching the roll of blankets I’d grabbed on my run inside. What had possessed us to come to such a place?
Pa struck a match but made no further move to comfort me. Instead, he searched out a hearth, which he found at the back of the little house. “Why, some Samaritan has even left us some firewood,” he said. I heard sticks breaking and clattering against stone.
The next flash of lightning picked out the frame of a window straining to hold on to its ill-fitted shutter, and I was seized with fresh fear that it would burst open and that the storm, which I now viewed as a living, malevolent creature, would get inside.
“Well, if you ain’t going to help, I guess I’ll have to do everything,” said Pa in his half-joking way. I didn’t answer but instead kept my eyes fixed on the window. There was more rustling and shuffling behind me, and then a soft, yellowish glow spread out toward the door. The heat woke up a comforting musk of wet dirt and horses that clung to the walls; as my back warmed I felt the most animal part of my fear begin to dissipate, and a little calm pooled in my chest.
Though I was grateful to be in shelter, the sod house was even worse on the inside than it had looked from the outside. There was a ratty-looking pallet on one side of the hearth, away from the window. On the other, a table and two chairs that looked as though they’d sooner collapse than hold a body off the floor. There came another thunderclap, but this one was steadier, more of a long roll, and when it passed I could actually hear the rain outside, lapping over the grass. It was a pleasant sound, familiar. My hands allowed themselves to unclench, and I soon set to laying out our bedrolls, calming myself with work.
“There now, none the worse for wear,” said Pa. He came over and smoothed out the blankets, reaching out one hand to chuck me under the chin. He had deep lines around his mouth where he had spent most of his life smiling, but they hadn’t been smiles of happiness, and the resulting grooves were not handsome. Still, I could see he meant well, and smiled back. We shared some crackers and a wedge of cheese while Pa got to work on a bottle he’d bought two days earlier in Abilene—something about being cooped up seemed to bring out the urge in him. The thunder passed and the rain relaxed into a steady pace. Worn out with travel and panic, I pulled a blanket over my head and turned over to let sleep find me.
I woke to Pa’s screaming. It had happened plenty of times before, when he’d get caught in a dream of a lost battle, so as my eyes searched for anything at all in the pitch dark, my first sensation was annoyance. But then I realized this was different—these screams were high-pitched and strangled sounding. I knew my pa’s voice better than any other, and I’d never heard this shrill, twisted tightness before. It froze my heart in my chest even as I struggled to understand the cause. I groped in the blackness for matches and struck one: in its little circle of light I could see my pa writhing on the ground, clutching his throat and kicking out wildly with both feet. A big, blunt-nosed rattlesnake lifted its fangs out of his throat and sank them once again, this time into the back of his hand. Pa’s arm shot out to fling the snake away just as my match went out. In the dark I heard him jump up, still screaming; the next lit match showed him twisting like a dancer, flapping his arm until the snake finally lost its grip and flew off across the room, thudding softly against the sod wall before it scrambled away into the gap left by a missing hearthstone.
The match scorched my fingertips as it went out. I struck a third one and held it up to see that Pa had fallen to his knees, tears streaming down his face. His screams had died to a ragged sound somewhere between breath and sob. On hands and knees, I felt around for the stump of a candle and lit it as I crawled over the mess of tangled bedding to examine his wounds. I threaded one arm around his back and held up the candle. There was a bad bite in his neck, a pair of dark-red, seeping punctures that opened a door between him and the world. I clamped my lips down and pulled hard, filling my mouth with the taste of iron laced with bitter poison, turning to spit over my shoulder. By my third pull, his body had taken on a leaden aspect that chilled me worse than the screaming, worse than his raspy wheeze. I shifted my hold—he was not a large man, but still awkward to handle—and saw a faraway look moving into his eyes.
“Pa,” I said, surprised by the catch in my voice.
His eyes flickered up to mine like the ticking of a clock. “Just bad luck, Bridget,” he whispered.
I would have thought that two deep bites from a snake as big and mean as that rattler would kill a man outright, but it took almost a full day for Pa to cross over. At first light I dragged him outside and laid him under the cottonwoods, where the grass sparkled and the air was fresh as a whole field of daisies. The veins in his neck and arm stood out purple while red patches grew out from the bite wounds until finally, he just gulped like a catfish. I sat beside him and bathed his face with cool spring water, helplessly clutching at his hand while my pa slid away from me, one breath at a time, each growing more ragged and standing out more clearly against the rustle of the leaves dancing above us. All things being equal, it was a beautiful place to die.
Somewhere in the late afternoon, there came an exhale that was not followed by an inhalation. In the silence that followed, I sat halfway up, leaning forward as though it was only a moment’s suspense that I had to weather and not the soundless crossing over into a new, orphaned life. I stood up, dizzy, and stumbled on tingling, half-asleep feet back to the spring, wading in up to my knees before I sank down, submerged to the waist and gazing out across the empty plains. I looked at the dappled shadows on the water’s surface and found suddenly that I’d had my fill of shade.
Eventually I chilled and crawled out of the water. I sat up through the night, listening to the sound of my own breathing and feeling that it was both the loudest and the softest sound I’d heard in my life. There was no moon, but the stars picked themselves out one by one against the woolly blackness like a mourning dress, half-sewn, with silver pins still tucked into the seams. Each rising and falling of my chest lay heavy on me as I realized that I was truly alone now, that the periods in which I’d been abandoned previously both had and had not prepared me for this. I imagined my pa waving his hat and wishing me good luck as he placed me in the hands of fate, and felt a crack in the crust of resentment that had grown over my heart. I did not wish myself good luck, and I did not hope that Providence would treat me kindly. Instead, I told myself that it was up to me to keep my chest rising and falling, and that to do so I could not be governed by the world’s twists and turns, always whipped about by sad winds as he had been. I had never held out much hope for the places my life’s road would take me, for I was the daughter of a poor and feckless man, and in witnessing his thrashing about I had learned to adjust my expectations again and again. But I also found, as I sat under the black wing of the night sky, that I still had some fight left in me, and I made a promise to the indifferent stars above that I would live better than that wet-eyed corpse ever could.
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