Abandon

FORTY-THREE

G

loria wet the nib of her pen in the inkwell. She sat in a chair built of bent aspen branches and wrote by the light of a shadowgee made from an old can of Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup, cut in half and poked full of holes. It hung from a rafter over the beautiful oak table Bart Packer had given them, the candle inside dispensing just enough light for her to write without straining her eyes.

When she’d finished, she blew the page dry and left the diary open on the table. Gloria walked to the bedroom doorway. She and Ezekiel had been lucky to find a cabin with a plank floor, and they’d spent a weekend last September laying straw and blue denim over the boards. It wasn’t carpet, but it wasn’t dirt, and you could walk over it in socks without freezing your toes.

Bessie and Harriet slept on the iron bedstead, and watching the mother and child hold each other under the quilt, Gloria felt a flare of envy. She looked at the mail-order rocking chair in the corner by the window, at Gus’s crib, which Ezekiel had assembled out of packing crates, some of her dead son’s clothes still laid out on the tiny mattress—a burlap sack stuffed with pine boughs.

The front porch creaked. Zeke. Someone banged on the door.

Gloria hurried back to the living room, grabbed the Schofield from the bookcase, where she’d left it sitting near a few dime novels.

“Mrs. Curtice! Y-you in there?” Gloria edged to the door. “Need to speak to you straight away!”

Her husband’s words echoed in her head: Don’t open it for nobody. Billy or Oatha or some rough-lookin feller come by, you know what to do.

The door shook.

Gloria put her hand on the latch, said, “What is it, Mr. McCabe?”

“I come for Bessie and Harriet. They in there with ye?”

Bessie emerged from the bedroom in her flour-sack underpinnings, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She mouthed “No.”

“They aren’t here, Mr.—”

“N-n-now I don’t know if I believe that. How about you open this door and let me take a look for my own self?”

“Now isn’t the best time, Mr. McCabe. I’m sure you understand.”

“Naw, Mrs. Curtice. I don’t understand. But I’ll give you ten full seconds to open this door ’fore I tear it off the hinges.”

Bessie said, “We ain’t comin home with you, Billy.”

“Oh, y-y-y-you ain’t, huh? Why don’t you open this door so we can have a face-to-face conversation like adult human beins?”

Gloria said, “When Zeke gets home, we’ll all talk this out.”

“W-w-well, we might be waitin here quite a spell.”

Gloria lifted the latch, threw open the door. The barrel of the single-action revolver touched the end of Billy’s nose.

“You wanna elaborate on what the hell that meant?”

Billy smiled, his jagged teeth showing, but his eyes were skittish. His horse stamped in the snow. Even though his vaquero hat kept his face in shadow, Gloria could see that it was flecked with blood, and her heart fluttered.

“Why don’t you go on and, and, and, and put that away. You ain’t never shot nobody. You ain’t about to.”

“You don’t know anything about me. Get your hand away from that gun. Where’s my husband? He went up to the mine, lookin for you.”

“I guess he didn’t find me, did he?”

“You said, ‘We might be waitin here quite a spell.’ What’s that mean, you runt? Ain’t you man enough to stand by the words that come out of your mouth?”

“You do like I said and p-p-p-put that revolver away.”

Gloria thumbed back the hammer. Billy’s eyes widened.

“I don’t know what’s happened to you,” Bessie said. “Your mind ain’t right. You and Oatha kill those people like they say?”

“Now ain’t the time, Bess. Go on and get Harriet and come on.”

“Said I ain’t goin with you, Billy.”

His face went red and the corner of his mouth began to twitch. He turned as if to leave, then suddenly reached back and swiped the revolver out of Gloria’s hand, almost like an afterthought, and swung the walnut stock into her face.

Gloria sat down in the cabin doorway, dazed, her nose burning. When she looked up, Bessie was crying in the threshold of the bedroom, blocking her husband’s path to Harriet.

“Billy, just leave. Please. I’m scared a you and it—”

“Your hair’s fallin out ’cause I can’t put adequate food on our table. Know what that feels like for a man? They’s risks and they’s sacrifices in life, yeah? Well, I just made a few big ones, and now we’re set like you can’t even believe. That dream we talked about before I come out west? Remember? Well, it’s here. We got it for the takin. Tired a goin to bed hungry? A not bein able to afford cake soap? A wearin fuckin flour sacks for clothes? S-s-savin all year just to buy a doll for Harriet? You want a new dress? You can have twenty of ’em. It’ll take our baby girl all day to open her presents next Christmas. We’ll go somewhere warm and buy a big house and Abandon won’t seem like nothin but a bad dream. H-h-h-hell, we’ll go back to Tennessee if you want. Get your mother, your brothers out a them shacks. Maybe I can take care a Arnold. You think they don’t deserve that?”

Gloria struggled to her feet. She felt dizzy, her head swimming, blood and tears running down her chin, staining her white petticoat.

“What about Oatha?” Bessie asked. “I don’t like that bunko.”

“Fuck Oatha. We’ll get our share, leave that son of a bitch in Silverton, shove out on our own steam, just you, me, Harriet, and our life could be so good if you can find a way to forget a couple days a poor behavior. C-c-can you do that, Bess? Then it’s all yours. Everthin you ever wanted. We’ll be a well-heeled pair a bums on the plush. Straight goods.”

Gloria had begun to back quietly toward the kitchen. There was a knife inside the small wood box—a medicine chest filled with herbs and tinctures—sitting on one of the newspaper-lined shelves.

“Hey, Daddy,” Harriet said. The little girl had climbed out of bed and she stood behind her mother, clinging to Bessie’s legs.

“Hey there, darlin.”

As she reached the kitchen, a board squeaked beneath Gloria, and Billy spun, drew his big Walker. “You do me a great favor and set down by the fire, Mrs. Curtice.” Billy looked back at his wife. “You think I’m some monster, Bessie, but I ain’t. Just willin to do more for my family than most.”

“Billy, you say you done this for me, but look at my face. What kind a man beats on his—”

“Won’t ever lay a hand on you again. That’s a promise.”

“I need to know what all you done before I—”

“And I’ll tell you. Everthin. No more secrets. But right now, ’til we get out a this town, I need you to trust me. I love you and Harriet. You’re my blue chips. That’s the only reason I done any a this. Will you trust me?” Bessie looked over at Gloria. “Don’t look at her. Look in my eyes. This is your crossroads. What do you want?”

“To be with the boy I fell in love with in Tennessee.”

“You’re lookin at him.”

“Am I?”

“For a fact. Gonna be different after we leave. So much better.”

“I wanna believe that, Billy.”

Gloria said, “Bessie, you didn’t see what your husband did to—”

“Shut up!” Billy touched his wife’s face, and Gloria saw it happen—a softening in Bessie’s eyes, walls coming down.

“Burn the breeze back to the cabin,” Billy said. “I want you to pack what food we got, enough clothes for us to get to Silverton.”

“We’re goin now?”

“Can’t stay in this bog hole.”

“Bessie!” Gloria said. “What are you doing?”

Bessie reached down and took her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But he is my husband. I ain’t got nothin else.”

Gloria’s eyes ran over. “Where’s my husband? Where’s Zeke?”

The McCabes walked onto the front porch.

Billy said, “Y’all go on. I gotta talk to Mrs. Curtice alone.”

“About what?”

“Gonna trust me or not, Bess?” As Billy closed the door, Gloria stood up, the fire nothing more than a few orange coals.

“Is he dead? Will you tell me that before you shoot me down? Is that Zeke’s blood on your . . . Oh God!” She’d noticed his cowhide custom-mades. “You’re wearing his boots!”

“I can’t shoot ye, Mrs. Curtice.” Billy jammed the long barrel of the Walker down his pants and pulled a rusted buffalo skinner with a stag-horn grip from a sheath under his frock coat.

“Please,” she said as he came toward her.

“Got no choice here. You set still, and we’ll do this quick.”

The front door opened. Billy tucked his knife into his coat, looked back over his shoulder.

“I thought I told you—”

“Something’s happenin,” Bessie said. “Oscar and Randall are ridin around yellin for everyone to come outside.”

“What for?”

Gloria could hear the shouting now, saw two men on horseback loping up the path toward the cabin.

“Somethin about Indians. Come on, they’re callin for you, Billy. Want you to ride up to the pass with some a the other men, help head ’em off.”