Outlawed(71)

In the bunkhouse, in the early morning light, I looked, once more, at his oldest wound. The whorled scarring, the stub where his penis once had been—they no longer disgusted me. Instead they made me angry and guilty—that Lark should have survived this, only to die by a stranger’s gun in a bank robbery gone wrong, all to help me get where I wanted to go. I had not cried yet for Lark; now I shed tears of frustration and self-blame.

There was only one thing I could do for Lark now, and so I washed the blood from each of the wounds in his chest and bandaged them as though he were alive. I cleaned the dirt from under his fingernails. I washed and combed his hair. I treated his body with the same care and attention that I imagined the veterinarian lavishing on his animals, and I swore to myself that from now on I would treat every body I touched that way, living or dead, patient or lover. Then I wrapped Lark in his shroud, and News and I carried him out to the orchard to be buried.

The days that followed were slow, strange ones. The job was half-finished—the gold was piled high in the barn, where the horses periodically nuzzled it and then lost interest since it had no smell except that of the musty burlap bags in which it was stored. Now we had to wait.

Seven days, the Kid had said, would be enough for the bank president to get desperate. If at first the residents of Fiddleback had been sympathetic to the plight of an innocent businessman robbed by thugs, their fellow-feeling would turn to rage once they realized that the president kept his large house on a hill above town while their life savings—the gold that kept food on their tables and cattle in their pastures, that fixed their roofs and shod their horses and paid the midwife when their babies were born—rode away in a stranger’s wagon. They would gather outside the president’s house with eggs, with rocks, and eventually with guns. The president would be eager to sell.

At least, so the Kid had told us—but now the Kid was gone. On the second day of the week, Cassie rode out to the cowboy shack with a satchel of food and a canteen of fresh water, and returned a few hours later with the news that the Kid was much better and looking forward to rejoining us soon. But when she spoke she looked at a point above our heads, avoiding all our eyes. Later, she followed me to the barn when I went to brush Amity.

“The Kid’s sleeping again,” she said.

“That’s a good sign, right?” I asked as I worked the currycomb across Amity’s flank.

But Cassie looked worried.

“I mean only sleeping. Won’t eat, won’t speak. Barely even looks at me. I almost miss the ranting and raving. Maybe you could come and do an examination.”

The cowboy shack contained little—a narrow bed, a pitcher for water, a few old saddles and bridles piled against the wall. When I came in, the Kid was lying facing the wall, wearing a wrinkled, off-white nightshirt.

I remembered all the ways I’d tried to rouse Mama the year that she was sick. I’d made her favorite foods—biscuits and gravy, strawberries with sugar on them, corn pie loaded with butter and cheese. I’d brewed strong hot coffee, teas with lemon balm and hawthorn, broth with beef bones I convinced the butcher to give me for free. Nothing seemed to work and then, one day, she got out of bed for a little while, and the next day a little while longer, and the next day a little while longer, until one day I got up and she was already awake, laughing and playing on the floor with baby Bee. Later, when I asked her what had finally healed her, she shrugged and said, “Time.”

Then she thought for a moment and added, “When you talked to me, that helped.”

I told the Kid about the weather outside, what Cassie had made for breakfast that morning and dinner the night before, which horses were acting ornery and which people weren’t getting along. The Kid said nothing.

“Would you like to take a walk outside?” I asked.

The Kid said nothing.

“Would you like to eat some soup?”

The Kid said nothing.

Then I began simply to talk for talking’s sake, telling the Kid the story of my life, from its beginning in my mother’s house, through my sojourn at Holy Child, all the way to the moment when I sat at the Kid’s bedside.

The Kid said nothing.

Finally I decided to ask the Kid a question to which I actually wanted the answer.

“Why didn’t you become a preacher?” I asked.

The Kid sighed, turned to face me, and began to speak.

“I was married at sixteen to a man from our congregation, someone my daddy picked out for me. He was a kind man, and liberal in his thinking. He didn’t mind that I was to be a preacher one day. We tried for a year, but we couldn’t have a child.”

“Did he kick you out?” I asked.

The Kid held up a hand. I saw the burn across the wrist and arm; it had begun to heal, leaving new raw skin behind.

“At the end of the year, my mama took me to see a master midwife. She gave me an herb to regulate my monthlies. I fell pregnant and we had a little girl.”

“You have a child?” I asked.

The Kid held up a hand again.

“The birth was difficult. For weeks afterward I couldn’t walk. That was when the sickness came for the first time. I was awake thirty nights, then asleep thirty days, at least it felt that way to me. Then my husband’s family brought in a doctor from San Antonio. He looked at my tongue and the soles of my feet and the whites of my eyes.

“He told my husband there was nothing the matter with my body, but that my mind was diseased. He said the disease was contagious. If my daughter was exposed to me, she would catch it. So my husband was to keep us apart as much as possible—a single visit on Sundays, at most, was permitted.”