Outlawed(20)

“The pear could grab that gun out of your hand from here,” she said. “Now try farther back.”

But all that day and the next I could only hit the stump from ten paces—even eleven threw my aim wild and I peppered the ground with bullets. On the third day Elzy showed me how to load and unload the gun, then gave me a box of bullets.

“Shoot until you finish these,” she said. “Then I’ll give you more.”

Three days later I could hit the pear at eleven paces about a third of the time, but firing still felt like rolling dice—I looked at the sights and tried to hold the gun straight, but whether I hit the target was up to the bullet, not to me.

“How did you learn?” I asked Elzy at the firepit on the third night. We were all gathered drinking dandelion wine as News, the fiddler, played a lively rendition of “Simple Gifts.”

“My daddy showed me when I was small. ‘In case a fox comes for the chickens,’ he said.”

“And he taught you the same way you’re teaching me?” I asked.

Elzy knitted her brows.

“He didn’t really have to do much teaching,” she said. “I suppose I took to it naturally.”

The answer annoyed me. When Mama was training me, she had made me memorize the four stages and ten stations of labor, the seven medicinal herbs, and the four phases of the menstrual cycle before I was even allowed to go with her on a visit. Once I asked her how she had become so skilled in so many ways of healing the body, and she said she had always kept her eyes and ears open, and never missed a chance to learn. Mama did not believe in natural talent; she believed in wisdom.

“How about the others?” I asked. “How did they learn?”

“Well, News learned from cowboying, I know that. Texas grew up on a horse farm so she learned from her daddy, same as me. Lo, I showed her when she came, but she was a quick study. Aggie Rose, I tried to show, but honestly her marksmanship is still shit. The Kid learned from the Kid’s husband.”

“He—she—the Kid had a husband?” I asked, trying to keep my voice low.

“Not he, not she,” Elzy said. “The Kid is just the Kid. And of course. Most of us here were married. Otherwise how do you think we found out we were barren?”

She reached out to rub Cassie’s back, and Cassie briefly dropped her head to Elzy’s shoulder. Elzy kissed her hair. I knew Elzy was a woman now—the others called her “she” and I’d heard Cassie refer to her once or twice as Elizabeth.

I surmised that the two must be like Diana Jesperson and Katie Carr, who were inseparable when they were in ninth form, always holding hands and, it was rumored, doing more under cover of night—though at the time, none of us understood what more might be. Both were from good, big families, so they were married when the time came, and then Diana’s mother-in-law forbade her from seeing Katie, believing that Katie was distracting her from her wifely duties. Soon both were pregnant, and then mothers, and no one talked about their friendship any longer, but Diana especially lost the sense of humor she’d had as a girl, and frequently called on Mama for medicine to help her sleep. I wondered, for the first time, what would have become of them if they had not married, if they would be inseparable still.

“Did you have a husband?” I asked Elzy.

“ ‘Did you have a husband?’ ” She parroted my question back to me with mock incredulity. “Did anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions, Doctor?”

“Yes,” I said, chastened. “I’m sorry.”

Elzy laughed then, a sweet sound, and tickled me beneath the ribs.

“I’m teasing you,” she said. “No, in fact, I never had a husband. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

It did not begin to. Across the firepit, the Kid was showing Texas something on a map. Texas was watching and nodding; the Kid wore a suit, a silk cravat printed with roses, and an expression of complete self-assuredness. It was impossible to picture the Kid as someone like me, a frightened wife, cast out of the house for failing to bear a child. I did not understand how any of them had become what they appeared to be now: strong, high-spirited, masters of their various crafts. It made my heart lift to think of it—perhaps I would not be green forever.

Elzy stretched and reached for the wine bottle.

“You’re just going to have to keep practicing,” she said. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

I was out by the stump with a fresh box of bullets the next afternoon when I saw the Kid walking up the path from the bunkhouse. The Kid always looked tall to me from far away. Up close I was taller, but the effect remained, something about the Kid’s carriage and stride that made you want to look up instead of down.

“What’s Elzy been teaching you?” the Kid asked.

“She showed me how to aim and shoot,” I said. “I’m just not very good at it.”

“How exactly did she show you?”

“She shot a pear from thirty paces,” I said. “Then she had me try. I’ve been trying ever since.”

The Kid smiled. “Like asking a wild horse to teach someone to run. Very well. Show me your progress, Doctor.”

I fired a shot off somewhere into the orchard.

“Again,” the Kid said.

This time I saw the bullet hit a hummock of dirt and grass behind and about six feet to the left of the stump.