Dollybird (13 page)

CHAPTER 19

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“Virgin soil is broke
with a sulky plow,” Silas told me. It'd been a week since Moses found water, and now I could finally turn to figuring out the farming. “It's heavier than a regular plow,
breaks it up better. But you'll need two horses to pull it. You're
lucky there're no trees and stumps on the place. Should make it a little easier.”

We were outside the tent listening to Moira chattering with Casey inside. Two plow horses. So far the only animal I owned was Mule.

“Where am I gonna get the money for horses?” I raked dirty fingers through my hair.

“I'll lend you a plow and my animals if you'll promise not to work them more than a few hours a day and treat them well.”

“You don't have to do this, Silas.”

“I know that.” He nodded toward the tent. “But they need you to make a go of this place. Just take my offer.”

I broke my first ten acres – the homestead agreement said ten acres the first year – watching the grass turn into huge lumps of earth, the plow skidding off when it hit hardpan, throwing me damn near off the seat. But I'd bring the horses back and start again, and slowly it was done. Each night I fed Silas's horses up good, brushed them down ‘til they shone. He trusted me with them. Nobody'd ever trusted me with anything, let alone their workhorses.

Each evening Casey waited at the tent door, excited to see me. Moira would have him fed and ready for bed so I could play with him a little. If I was honest, I'd have to admit I missed caring for him myself. I'd done it ‘cause I had to, but losing it made me sad, a kind of space opened up. I didn't belong any more, not in that spot where a woman lives in a kid's life. But it was right she was caring for him, the truth being I was too busy keeping my head above water with the farming. He was better off. Moira was a strange bird, but Casey seemed to like her right from the beginning, so I wasn't about to complain.

Made me wish for Taffy though. She'd trusted me. I'd fought for her and won. And now spent all my time wondering if she'd have been better off if I'd lost. Here was Moira, alive and making a life. If
Taffy'd stayed home, there'd have been shame, but she'd be a mother, maybe a wife. Or – maybe her father would have sent her away and she'd be like Moira, in some crazy place between a home and hell.

Being busy was a relief, saved me thinking too hard about it. After breaking those first acres, the next job was to ribbon the soil into furrows for seeding. I had a little money saved from the honey-wagon pay, and spent it to buy a used furrow plow from two brothers a mile east who looked at me like I'd just walked out of the bush. But no matter. It was the first piece of equipment I'd ever owned. Every time I went by it I had to stop and walk around it, running my hands over the wooden handles like they were thighs on a woman, testing the fine edge of the ploughshare.

In the field I gripped firm and followed behind, watching the blade ripping the clods of earth into tracts of mallow black dirt. It was finally real. Until then I'd just been a kid playing, pretending at being a farmer, the neighbours grinning at each other like there was a joke between them and I was it. But the plow made my chest swell, the fresh smell of dirt mixed with spring air kicking winter from the lungs, throwing out the dank stuff of the old winter shack that had got into my veins, chasing the events of the harvest out of my bones. My own place. My own air.

Silas had let me borrow a horse again, this time a lone furrow horse that knew more about plowing than I did. Nelly walked exactly so as to keep the furrow straight, needing hardly any guidance from me. After three days, it weren't so exciting as it was boring, and I got to excessive thinking. Silas had warned me. The
politics of plowing
he called it, too much thinking leading to questions, leading to meetings about marketing, freight rates, elevator organizations. He'd got himself into a grain growers' association, was getting involved in local politics. I didn't know what any of it meant and didn't give a fug either.

Truth was I felt like I was drowning in the little I'd learned and everything I hadn't yet. A few potatoes at home were one thing, but acres of wheat, well it made my chest tighten up again at the thought. I was doing everything Silas told me, but feeling like a blind man doing it, reaching ahead just far enough to touch the edge so I didn't fall off some sort of crazy road I'd started down. And I still had to get a house built.

Silas was the only one to help. He seemed to enjoy giving advice, teaching me. The others grunted answers, looking like if they said more they'd be giving away some kind of secret that might just put me ahead of them. I learned to ask without getting excited, to keep the hope out of my voice, asking like their answers didn't really matter, like I didn't run home and borrow some of Moira's paper to write them down so's I'd remember when the season was right. Some of the men spoke as though I were addled, their wisdom wasted on me, but they still went on, enjoying the audience that usually gathered. They were the real assholes. But it all helped, the tidbits coming together so I began to understand the theory of dryland farming, even if the details were still a little murky.

Moira didn't appreciate any of it. Walking her around the plow, I'd point out its furrow depth and width, how much I expected to be able to get done in a day. She didn't seem to care, nodding even when I knew she hadn't heard a thing, hurrying back to the tent the minute she could escape.

“Yes, that'd be a good idea.” She nodded when I announced it was Red Fife wheat we'd be growing.

“They say it needs a long season, but it's early yet.”

She was looking right past me, not listening.

“They say it can't be beat for hardness of kernel and flour strength.” Not really knowing what it all meant, it still felt good to know the right words. “If we can get it planted in the next couple of weeks, we should be okay.”

“That's good then.”

Following the plow was hot and sweaty, and I was thirsty, lips dry, mouth full of grit. Spitting hard, I was suddenly mad. What the hell did it matter what Moira thought? I didn't need her blessing. Only it was nice to share things, tell someone about the day, about the decisions running around my head, like saying them out loud would make them good. But to hell with her. I couldn't make her care. The next day I would go to town and pick up the seed and then begin to sow. My lungs almost hurt from spring air laced with the smell of fresh dirt and horse manure.

All at once I was on the ground with my nose in it, and my head pounding hard where the handle of the plow had knocked it. The furrow horse was looking back at me lying there gasping. She snorted and stomped her foot, impatient with the delay my broken skull was causing.

“Oh shit.” I rolled onto my side.

Silas had warned me to watch out for large rocks heaved up by the frost. “If the plow hits ‘em, it'll buck like a son-of-a-bitch.” He'd thrown his arms around wildly, his head tilted forward, eyebrows furrowed like my field. I'd laughed. “Don't laugh, you bugger. I'm warning you. It'll throw you right off your goddamn feet, or worse.”

Judging by the pain in the side of my head, worse had happened. I got up slow, holding my head to stop the world spinning, and went to unhitch the horse from the plow. The harness dropped off her shoulders and head.

“Go home now.” Slapping her hard on the rear end, I lowered myself to the ground to wait for help.

“Probably a concussion. But if you didn't lose consciousness, you should be all right.” Moira sounded pretty certain. Nelly had run straight home to Silas's place and he was there when she rounded the corner. He guessed the rest and found me, brought me home and dumped me on Moira's tick. My tick. She pressed and prodded, and once she'd cleaned up the cut, poured a little antiseptic on it, making me yelp so loud Silas raised his eyebrows. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“Don't be a baby now. I've seen a man lose a leg and complain less.”

My ears grew hot. “Well it still hurts like hell.”

“I know. Now just hold still.”

She started stitching and I sucked in my breath real hard to keep the tears back.

“Are you sure there's nothing more?” I held onto my head when she was done. “God, it's pounding.”

She shone a taper in my face again. “If you cracked your skull or hurt your brain, your pupils would be huge and you'd be vomiting and falling asleep.”

“Oh well, sorry then, Doc.” I glanced at Silas, who was amused at something. “What?”

Silas scratched his head. “It's just you'd think a guy would be grateful he wasn't about to die.”

Though the pain was shooting behind my eyes, I laughed and couldn't stop. “It must have been funnier than hell to see it. One minute I'm daydreaming about what a great farm I'm gonna have.” I swiped my hands over my face. “And the next, wham, I'm in the dirt. Great farmer!”

Silas and Moira started to chuckle.

“Poor Nelly. Couldn't figure out what happened. Probably thinking...” I lowered my voice, “... ‘What's the poor bugger doing down there?
'
”

No one could speak for laughing. Slowly I got up off Moira's bed and made it to a chair at the table. Casey woke up hollering and Moira went to get him.

“So you learned something from your old man, eh?”

“I guess so.” She looked back at me with raised eyebrows.

“We could use a doctor around here,” Silas said. “Berkowski's in Ibsen, but he's so busy he doesn't get out to the farms much. Sometimes I don't think he wants to. I know lots of families...” He frowned. “Well, the doc just didn't get there in time.”

“I don't know.” Moira shook her head and rubbed her huge belly. But I could tell she was thinking, her voice getting excited. “I'm almost due now. I don't know how much I can do.”

I couldn't believe she was actually considering it.

“I'd drive the wagon. You wouldn't be alone.” Silas was rubbing his hands together, the idea blooming right up there in front of his eyes. Moira had her head cocked to the side, picturing it too. I was looking from one to the other, getting mad.

“Wait just a minute,” I said. “She's supposed to be helping me, remember.”

“How much help do you need?” said Silas. “As long as Casey's looked after. You're a grown man. Fend for yourself.”

Moira gave a short laugh and I glared at her, turned away and then couldn't help myself. I turned back. “How the hell am I gonna get any farming done if she's running all over the countryside playing doctor instead of watching Casey?”

They both fixed me with a stunned look.

“Oh don't worry.” Moira's voice was bitter. “I won't be playing. I'll be right here with you, being the good little dollybird you ordered.” Her look made my balls wither. She stormed outside, Casey looking after her surprised.

Silas was watching me real careful, but he didn't say a word. I didn't want to know what he was thinking, what the question hanging between us might be. Past the throbbing in my head, I knew he was right. I could manage. But it wasn't right him coming here and starting things that messed with my life. It wasn't right. I turned away and heard the tent flap fall closed behind him.

“Shit.”

CHAPTER 20

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MOIRA

My Dear Aileen,

We've got water and what a relief it is. A person can't know how important it is until you've had to ration and save. And Dillan is downright happy. I think the well helps him believe in a future here, at least for Casey and himself. I'm not quite sure where I fit in, given the circumstances. It's so awkward.

I'm hoping to become a bit of an on-call doctor in the area. Last week I treated an abscessed tooth with cocaine solution and two days ago was midwife to a very young woman, just a girl really. She was scared out of her wits, naturally, but she listened and she and her baby girl are fine. It was a much simpler episode than any of Mrs. McGiver's deliveries. Nevertheless it was a nice challenge...

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In spite of Dillan's childish outburst, I'd gone doctoring a few times while he finished seeding. It felt good helping people who had no one else to turn to, their appreciation the familiar kind shown to Father back home. I took the tokens they offered, the odd bits of money or food, remembering Father's observation that those in poverty hated to feel indebted. Father might have been proud of my efforts had he known of them. Silas seemed to be. He drove me to wherever I was needed.

Riding beside him now, I looked up at the barren farmyard he'd brought me to. The barking of an emaciated black dog broke the silence, a quiet both eerie and incongruous with the cheerful April morning. The dog ran circles around us, tail thumping a greeting despite his desperate state. Silas went quickly up the steps to the door. I hung back; it was too quiet, too dark, the curtains drawn against the sun. Silas knocked lightly, opened the door and reeled back with a gasp. The smell of ripening bodies attacked us, seeping through holes in the flimsy masks we wore. As we entered, I tried breathing through my mouth, but only succeeded in adding an acrid taste to the cloying assault on my senses.

Just inside and to the left of the door, a man and his son lay clutched in each other's arms on a narrow cot. They were dead, their bodies stiff and stinking. Stopping to draw a breath at an open window, I pushed the curtain back to find the sill wreathed with flies awaiting their anticipated feast. Bile surged to the back of my throat and I forced my feet forward to a larger bed where the rest of the family lay. A mother and two small girls had been consumed by diphtheria.

“They were probably sick within days of each other,” I whispered to Silas following behind.

“No one knew,” he said quietly. “Old Frank down the road saw their jersey wandering in the field with an udder full to bursting. He came to check. When no one answered he got scared and came for me.”

“And you're not scared of anything.”

Silas shrugged. “We got the shots.”

Father had warned of the virulence of the disease. He'd tried to quarantine people and force them to receive antitoxins, but most resisted. Even the sight of their own dead family members was insufficient persuasion to overcome fear and superstition. Dr. Berkowski had, with the understanding he would not be held responsible, injected both me and Silas. He'd agreed the science on antitoxins was sound, but still seemed relieved and a little impressed at my willingness to attend to those farm families afflicted. But in the house the disease lingered in every breath we took. The injection, the mask – they were suddenly all too little for something so violent.

“It's too late.” I turned to bolt.

Silas caught me. “It'll be all right, Moira.”

“Their blood's poisoned, carried it to their hearts and lungs. It won't be all right.” Anger was a calming agent. I took a moment to look around and discovered a small girl gazing at me through death-drunk eyes.

“She's still alive.” I hurried to the bed and pulled her away from the bodies around her. I sat with her on my lap in a kitchen chair. She had huge, startlingly pink eyes rimmed with white lashes. They stared out from a ghostly pale face surrounded by granny-white hair. Though she was not more than five years old, there was an ancient quality in the albino features that were sunken with fever and exhaustion. A cough seized the girl until she was almost blue. She heaved a little, coughed again. Gathering her in my arms, I held her upright to make breathing easier and through the thin nightgown felt her bones, fragile as the delicate bluebells wilted in the vase on the night table.

“Mommy,” the girl whimpered, tucking herself into me.

Silas was across the room closing the mother's eyes.

“It's okay, honey. You'll be okay.” Whispering it into the girl's silky-fine hair, I rocked her gently back and forth, surveying the room, tears threatening. Dear God. In that instant I wanted to pray, but there were no words for this. God was nowhere near this family.

“Don't cry,” said the girl, momentarily lucid. She cast about the room until her eyes landed on her mother's body. Slowly she looked to where Silas was bent over her dead sister. He looked up at that moment, trying to force a smile from his slack mouth, but his face was stitched with grief, belying what he knew, what even the tiny waif in my arms knew.

“It's all right.” Her voice was small in the room. “We're going to be fine. Soon.”

There was nothing to do but wait, rocking her, whispering soothing words into her cold ear. Silas busied himself covering the bodies, opening windows and tidying up a home that would be burned before the sun set. Finally her head lolled back across my arm. She'd joined the rest of them, the small house now a family morgue. The weight of her frail body grew as though what had buoyed her in life was expelled and replaced by solid matter. Maybe soul is simply air temporarily travelling through a person, escaping in one last breath to search for the heaven everyone speaks of. The light had left her, something in her eyes become only vapour. I lay the child down and covered her. I didn't know her name.

Through a haze of tears I could see what had until that moment been the girl's home. A pail, half full of water, sat on the floor by the door, a tin dipper hanging just above it. Clothing of various sizes hung neatly from hooks on the wall beside the bed. The table was set for five, as though the mother's faith in the ordinary domestic patterns of her life could save her family.

Pushing myself up, I set the girl with her mother and sister and pulled the blanket back over them. I couldn't speak except to mutter familiar words, “Rest in peace. Rest in peace. Rest in peace.”

“I couldn't do anything,” I said. Silas's arm seemed the only solid thing in the room as I sagged against it.

“Nobody could. At least you tried.”

“Yes. But they're still dead.”

Daylight was another assault on our gaping, raw senses. The sun was on the west end of its ancient arc, sending our shadows stretching long ahead. A slight haze rendered the world insubstantial and slightly lazy, too drugged with spring to care about the family it had just released.

We were silent walking to the wagon. Silas sighed deeply. “They're somewhere better now.”

“I think my father attempted faith.” I shook my head. “He would come home from something just like this, and sit in his study in a big overstuffed chair, his head bowed over the Bible. But I never saw him actually read it. His eyes were always closed as though his comfort came from the solid weight of those words in his hands.”

“Maybe it gave him strength, knowing all that faith went into those pages,” Silas said.

“I don't know how it could.”

Father had seen misery like this almost every day. When he was doctoring he held his body erect, kept his step light, as though confidence alone could save lives. The neighbours thought him aloof and distant, if awe-inspiring. But listening to the suffering of others slowly diminished him, his certainty ebbing away with each death, reminded he was not God after all. And worse, perhaps God had abandoned him. Slumped in his chair, Father wasn't awesome, only human, slightly afraid like everyone else, searching something old and distant and beyond logic for answers he'd already been given in everything he'd studied. While he couldn't embrace my mother's Catholic zeal and absolute faith – her need to evangelize and fend off her own fears – time had also stolen his belief in the rational sciences. He was left with nothing.

“Everyone needs something other than themselves, Moira.” Silas startled me.

I wanted to believe like my father once had, to be as certain as my mother, but if there was a God, he wasn't with me or the little girl who just died. I had science, medicine. If more people understood the possibilities they wouldn't be waiting around like this family, praying for some higher power miraculously to fix things.

“But in the end we have to rely on ourselves,” I said.

“That girl in there. She wasn't waiting for God to save her. Only to take her home.”

The white-haired girl, her life probably already made difficult by the distinction of her pigment. I wanted to throw something. “That girl died because people are too ignorant to accept help in this world. Don't you see?” I found myself standing with feet apart, hands on hips. “There were other choices for that family. If someone had gone for help, if someone had known. Antitoxins. That's what might have saved them.”

“All right, Moira.” Silas's hand was on my arm. “I only think life is sometimes easier if we accept what we can't change.”

“Dillan says things like that. And he acts like it's all fate. I think people have to take control of their life, their destiny.”

The house was a dark silhouette behind us. Silas helped me into the wagon and jumped in, flicking the reins over Nelly's back. He was silent for a moment. “But even you don't have control over everything. You're here. They sent you here.”

“My mother did.”

“And do you want to go back to her? What about your father?”

“There are others. I have a sister, Aileen. You'd like her. Very practical.”

Silas waited. I felt awkward, like I owed him an explanation, but where to start with a family so strangely ordinary.

“Aileen doesn't have any dreams,” I blurted. “She lives in my mother's world and doesn't expect anything else of her life. As though that's all she can hope for.”

“Don't we all hope to be like our parents? Until they disappoint us. Then we want more.” He lifted the front of his cowboy hat to scratch his head where the band had plastered his hair to his scalp.

“I want to be like my father. He's a good man.”

“I'm sure he is.”

I lightened my tone, shrugging to brush off his opinion. “I'm only saying he would have kept me at home.”

“But he didn't.”

We headed home in silence. My head was pounding, back aching. I was exhausted and sad and, in those few honest moments between waking and sleep, I understood that Silas was right. Father could have kept me home, stood up to Mother, forced Evan's father to let his son take responsibility. My throat constricted with fear, my loneliness complete. I dozed off, barely conscious of the welcome warmth of Silas's arm around my shoulder, the comfort of resting my head on his chest.

We were approaching the tent when I woke and quickly moved away from Silas. “Sorry, I'm just so tired.”

“You have a right to be.”

Dillan had lit a lamp and its glow threw a silhouette of him at the table with Casey on his lap. He was feeding him supper. The scene reflected the warmth of a family. At least the little albino girl had that much in her short life. I didn't want to get down from the wagon and smiled sleepily at Silas.

“You're a good man too.”

“No. I've just lived a little longer. And I've learned something about acceptance. I lost a wife and child to smallpox.”

“Oh no. I'm so sorry.” I thought of the bodies we'd left behind. They'd be burned along with their house and all its contents. There would be no trace left, the family consumed in flames to reassure those fearful of suffering a similar fate. The girl and her family would be forgotten, their passing marked only by a small cross. Silas had stood over the same scene with his own. I couldn't imagine what he might be feeling.

“It was a long time ago,” he said, stopping the wagon in front of the tent. He was silent for a moment, then suddenly jumped from the sideboard and helped me climb down. “So maybe that's why I hang around. I want to help you.” He blushed. “And maybe I can help Dillan with Casey. I don't know.”

My feet hit the ground and a sharp pang shot through my lower belly. I was grateful for the certainty of pain, a dependable reminder of existing in a less than dependable world.

“I do know one thing,” he said. “You shouldn't be giving this baby away.”

I'd been adjusting my skirts and reaching for my bag, but stiffened at his words, breath stopped. “If I keep this baby” – every word was drawn out – “it will be because I want to, and not because I feel guilty or ashamed.”

Silas's face was open, challenging but friendly, reminding me that, for whatever reason, he cared about what happened to me. It was more than I could say for others in my life. My shoulders dropped. “Dillan has enough guilt for three people, and it seems to be killing him.”