I Shall Be Near to You(14)

I am watching my boots mash their prints into the slushy mud, not paying any mind to where I am going, when a voice says, ‘Rosetta Edwards. You’re a ways from home yet, ain’t you?’

‘That ain’t my name no more,’ I say, my heart pounding to see Eli Snyder in the middle of the path.

I kick myself for walking this far when I’ve got other things to be doing. By avoiding one hurt, I have just brought myself a different kind of trouble.

‘That’s right. You’re a married woman now. What are you doing here then, Mrs. Wakefield?’

‘Going visiting,’ I say, and square my shoulders, meeting his look dead-on.

‘Your think your new family is going to get your Papa those water rights? That’s why you got married now, after hanging on Jeremiah all this time, ain’t it? And everybody knows Jeremiah only married you to get the bigger enlisting bounty.’

Eli steps closer, his hand stretching out, reaching for my skirt. I think how the boss mare in a herd don’t wait to kick, and I aim for his man parts. He catches my leg, twisting and shoving until I fall back into the slush. Then he bends over me as I scrabble backward, my feet slipping in the mud. He is panting now but he keeps coming. I can’t get my feet under me to stand and he lurches forward, pinning me and snatching my hem. My shriek is so loud I can’t hear my gathered skirt seam pulling free of the bodice, but I can feel the ripping fabric.

Jeremiah’s voice says, You’ve got to punch hard and not get punched. I ball up my right hand, thinking of weak spots. Eli’s hand clamps my leg. The other grabs my left wrist, pushing it into the ground, digging each one of his fingers and every rock into my wrist. His fingers scratch and claw at my thigh, but I aim for his nose like Jeremiah taught me, hearing him say, When you punch, you’ve got to move, and then I smash my fist into Eli’s face.

Before I even see the blood, I am shoving up off the ground, quick, ready to punch again. Eli rolls away from me in the slush.

‘Don’t you touch me!’ I scream.

Eli keeps his eyes trained on me as he sits up off the ground, blood coming between the fingers of the hand he has clamped over his nose.

‘There’s something wrong with you,’ he says.

‘I ain’t the one who’s wrong,’ I yell. ‘You get away! Unless you want another crack to put downstairs with you.’

‘You know Jeremiah’s Ma won’t take up your part against mine, don’t you? This ain’t over,’ Eli says, and then he stalks off, his shoulders hunched forward, one arm hiding his bleeding nose.

By the time I can fill my lungs proper, Eli is down the path and through the trees. I stand there dumb, using what’s left of my skirt to wipe my nose. My knees shake and my hands and wrists and thigh burn. Right before Eli disappears, he turns back to look at me, making my teeth go to chattering.


WALKING UP THE steps to my dark Little House, I start feeling shaky again, like somehow Eli could be here waiting for me, or maybe he has already made up some story about me and how his nose came to be bloody, but it is just as quiet inside as when I left. Safe in the bedroom, I get myself fixed up right and get hold of myself because my insides go to warbling again and no one can know a thing. I pluck my other dress out of the chest and a scrap of paper flutters to the ground. I miss you already, it says. And then I start crying.


EVEN AFTER I wash myself and put on a fresh dress, my thoughts won’t quiet. I sit to mend my dress. I am fine. I am strong. Eli won’t bother me again. But everything would be better if Jeremiah was with me and none of this would have happened if he’d stayed. Only maybe that ain’t true.

But Eli ain’t the whole of it. Even Jeremiah himself, writing that letter, has been dreaming on how I might make something different of myself, how I might be a good wife.

I drag the woodpile ax back into our bedroom, leaning it against the wall. Laying there on our bed is Jeremiah’s work shirt where I left it, the map unfolded beside it. And then like a hornets’ nest in the hot dust that you almost don’t see until it’s too late, but once you have, you can’t not see it for the buzzing in and out of the crack in the dirt crust, the idea of it just comes to me.





CHAPTER

5


WAKEFIELD FARM: FEBRUARY 1862

I take the sturdy shears out from the bottom of my hope chest. I carry them through the hall to the kitchen hearth and I don’t stop to think; I sit in front of that woodstove, still throwing out heat from the morning’s cooking, and plait my hair into one thick braid hanging down my back. Then I push those shears to the base of my braid and force down, using both hands to make those scissors saw my hair bit by bit, cutting it all off. It falls to the floor with a heavy thump, a light brown snake coiled behind me.

I stare at it there and Betsy’s voice is in my head saying, ‘Why you got such pretty hair? All wasted on someone who don’t care none about it?’

Then I feel Jeremiah running his fingers through my hair, but I’ve got to stop that. I snatch that braid up, the top thick and splayed, the bottom curled to a tip, and fling it into the cinders. It almost chokes out the fire, but I breathe on it and use fresh kindling from the box to poke it down until the flames lick at the braid, filling the room with its awful smell.

In our bedroom, there’s a pair of Jeremiah’s old trousers, ones he’s got the hems frayed and worn down on. I step into them, trying not to look at Eli’s fingerprints pressed into my thigh, turning up the legs to fit. I fold my apron and my mended dress and the petticoat and lay them in my chest, where they will be waiting when we come back. Those sheets Betsy worked at hemming so carefully tear easily into long strips. When I have rolled up all the strips but one, I hold it against my bosom with one hand, getting it under my arm and then wrapping it tight around myself. It’s hard at first but I keep pulling it tight and then it’s working. I cover myself with Jeremiah’s old shirt and roll the sleeves before getting Jeremiah’s straw hat from the hook by the door. In the looking glass that used to be Mama’s I make my face look like stone, with tight lips and my jaw pushed out. I tip the mirror down to see the shirt and trousers, how they fit loose enough to hide everything. I could do it so easy, earn a soldier’s pay instead of just a nurse’s or a laundress’s and stay with Jeremiah for as long as this war drags on.