The Winter People(34)

Most of the town came to see us bury our little girl the next day. Reverend Ayers put on quite a show for them, talking about God’s little lambs and the beautiful glory of his Kingdom, but I was only half listening. I wouldn’t even look him in the eye. Instead, I stared down at the simple pine box they’d laid my Gertie out in. It was a miserably cold afternoon. I couldn’t stop shivering. Martin put his arm around me, but I pushed it off. I took off my coat and used it to cover the coffin, thinking poor Gertie must be terribly cold in there.

I have been despondent ever since. Bedridden. The truth was, I saw no point in going on. If I’d had the strength to rise up from my bed, I would have gone downstairs, found my husband’s rifle, and pulled the trigger with my teeth around the barrel. I saw myself doing just that. I visualized it. Dreamed it. Felt myself floating down those steps, reaching for the rifle, tasting the gunpowder.

I killed myself again and again in my dreams.

I’d wake up weeping, full of sorrow to find myself alive, trapped in my wretched body, in my wretched life. Alone in this bedroom with its white walls stained yellow from years of dust, smoke, and grime. Only me and the wooden bed with the feather mattress, the closet where our ragged clothes hang, the nightstand, the dresser full of our underthings, and the chair Martin sits in each night to take off his boots. When Gertie was alive, this room, the whole house, seemed to glow and radiate warmth. Now everything is dim, ugly, cold.

I came to believe that there was no point going on without my little Gertie, my sweet tadpole of a girl. Every time I closed my eyes, she was there, falling down that well, only in my mind it was a fall that went on forever. She went on and on into blackness until she was a tiny speck, and then—nothing at all. And when I opened my eyes, there was only the empty room, empty bed, my empty, aching heart.

I stopped eating. I hadn’t the energy to leave the bed. I just lay there, drifting in and out, imagining my own death. Martin came and went. He tried to spoon-feed me, cooing at me as if I were an injured baby bird. When that failed to yield results, he tried yelling, screaming sense into me: “Damn it, woman! It was Gertie who died! Not you. You and I, we’ve got to carry on living.”

Lucius came to see me several times. He brought a tonic that is supposed to help build my strength. It was thick and bitter, and the only way I could get it down was by imagining that it was deadly poison.

My niece, Amelia, tried to rouse me. She came into the room gaily, in a new bright dress, her hair neatly plaited. She brought me tea and shortbread cookies that came in a tin all the way from England.

“I had Abe Cushing order them for me special,” she said, prying open the tin and offering me a cookie. I took one and nibbled at the edge. It tasted like sawdust.

While Martin was with us, Amelia chatted about the news from town—there had been a fire at the Wilsons’ house, Theodore Grant was fired from the mill for showing up too drunk to work, Minnie Abare was pregnant with her fifth child (she was hoping for a girl, of course, what with four boys already).

After a few minutes, Martin left us alone.

“The dead never really leave us,” she whispered, stroking my hair. “I have been to the spiritualist circle in Montpelier,” she told me. “Gertie came through. She rapped on the table for us, told us she is fine and misses you very much. The women of the circle want you to join us. They can come here, to West Hall. We’ll meet in my house, and you can see for yourself. You can talk to Gertie again.”

Liar, I wanted to scream. But all I could do was close my eyes and drift back to sleep.

I woke up, sure Gertie was right there beside me. I could feel her, smell her. Then I opened my eyes and she was gone.

How cruel this life had become. How cold and empty and cruel.

And so I prayed. I prayed for the Lord I had by then forsaken to take me. Take me to join my Gertie. When this did not work, I prayed to the Devil to come and set my soul free.

Then, yesterday morning, Martin came in and kissed my forehead tenderly.

“I’m going into the woods to do some hunting. I was out scouting earlier and saw some nice tracks—a large buck, from the look of them. Amelia is coming by this afternoon. She’ll fix you lunch and sit with you until I’m home. I’ll be back before dark.”

I didn’t bother to nod, just rolled over and went back to sleep.

I dreamed Martin was chasing a deer through the woods; then the deer, somehow, had come into the house and was standing at the foot of my bed. I lifted my head for a closer look and discovered it wasn’t a deer at all, but Auntie.

She looked older, wiser, but still wore her deerskin coat with the quills, beads, and painted flowers. She smelled like leather, tobacco, and damp, tangled woods. I felt instantly comforted, and believed, for the first time in days, that things would be all right. Auntie was back. And Auntie could fix anything.

Auntie was talking to me. At first I couldn’t understand what she was saying, and I thought she was speaking the language of deer, which is silly, because deer are silent animals. The bedroom was dark, full of shadows that moved and twirled around us. The bed felt high up, as if it were floating over the wide pine floorboards, going up higher and higher, Auntie perched at the end like the masthead of a ship.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“The closet,” she told me plainly. I was relieved that she was speaking words I could understand.

“My Gertie is gone,” I told her, beginning to weep. “My little girl.”