A Northern Light(64)

He turned the horses around, talking as he did. "Wells charged them good for it, but still, forty acres."

"Royal!" I suddenly said. Too loudly.

"What?"

"Just ... don't forget. Don't forget to come back for me."

He frowned at me. "I said I'd be back in two hours. Didn't you hear me?"

I nodded. I did hear you, Royal, I thought, but I don't believe you. I still don't believe any of this. Not the boat ride on Big Moose Lake. Not the walks and buckboard rides since then. Not your promise of a ring. You'll forget all about me and I'll have to walk home from Minnie's and I'll see you on the way, riding with Martha Miller, and you'll look right through me and I'll wake up and realize that it was all a dream. Please come back for me, I said silently, watching him go. Please take me riding. Because I like how everyone looks at us when we pass by. And I like sitting next to you in the wagon with your leg pressed against mine. And I don't even mind listening to all the characteristics of hybrid corn, because I want you to touch me and kiss me even if I am plain and bookish. Especially because I am those things.

The blackboard disappeared around the bend, and I turned and headed up the road toward Minnie's house. As I walked, I waved to the hired hands. They were building split-rail fences from the trees they'd felled to enclose Jim's land. I saw Thistle, one of the cows, grazing nearby. She was huge and would calve any day now. Gravid was my word of the day. It means pregnant. When I read it that morning, I thought it was the strangest-sounding word for pregnant. Until I'd read on and learned that it also means burdened or loaded down. Looking at Thistle, with her heavy belly and her tired eyes, it made perfect sense.

I smelled the flowers I'd picked for Minnie. I hoped she would like them. It had been so long since I'd seen her—weeks—and I had so much to tell her. Last time I went to visit, I'd just received the letter from Barnard, but I never got the chance to show it to her, because she'd been laboring with her twins. And then I was busy with the farm and Miss Wilcox's library, and then I'd gone to the Glenmore, and it seemed like ages since I'd really been able to talk to her. I still wanted to tell her about the letter, even if I wasn't going. I wanted to tell her about Royal, too, and the ring he was going to give me. I wanted to see if maybe she could help me figure a way to both be married to Royal and still be a writer, to be two things at once—like one of those fancy coats they have in the Sears and Roebuck catalog that you can change into a whole different coat just by turning it inside out.

When I got to her porch, the front door banged open. Jim greeted me sullenly, stuffed the remains of a sandwich in his mouth, and trotted down the steps to join the hired hands.

"Minnie?" I called, stepping inside. A nasty smell hit me. A sour reek of old food and dirty diapers.

"Matt, is that you?" a tired voice asked. Minnie was sitting on her bed, nursing her twins. She looked so thin and drawn that I barely recognized her. Her blond hair was greasy. Her clothing was stained. The babies were sucking at her hungrily, making greedy grunting noises. Her eyes darted around the room. She looked anxious and embarrassed.

"Yes, it's me. I brought you these," I said, holding out the flowers.

"They're so pretty, Mattie. Thank you. Will you put them in something?"

I went to find a glass or a jar, and it was then I noticed how filthy the place was. Plates and glasses crusted with food littered the table and counters, cutlery filled the sink. Dirty pots covered the stove top. The floor looked like it hadn't been swept in ages.

"I apologize for the state of things," Minnie said. "Jim's had four men helping him all week. Seems I just get one meal cooked and it's time for the next one. The babies are always hungry, too. Here, take them for a minute, will you? I'll make us a cup of tea."

She handed one of the babies to me, wincing as she pulled him off her swollen, blue-veined breast. Her skin, where the baby's mouth had been, was livid. Tiny droplets of blood seeped from a crack in it. She saw me staring and covered herself. She handed me the other baby, and in no rime flat, they were both screaming. They twisted and kicked. They screwed up their tiny faces and opened their little pink mouths like two screeching baby birds. Their diapers were soggy. Their cheeks were rashy. Their scalps were crusty. They stank of milk and piss. I was trying to settle them, so they'd stop screaming, so the wet from the diapers wouldn't soak into my skirt, when the next thing I knew, Minnie was standing over me, her arms at her side, her hands clenched.

"Give them to me! Give them back! Don't look at them like that! Don't look at me! Just get out! Go! Get out of here!" she shouted.

"Min ... I ... I'm sorry! I wasn't ... I didn't mean..."

But it was too late. Minnie was hysterical. She crushed the babies to her and started to cry. "You hate them, don't you, Mattie? Don't you?"

"Minnie! What are you saying?"

"I know you do. I hate them, too. Sometimes. I do." Her voice had dropped to a whisper. Her eyes were tormented.

"You hush right now! You don't mean that!"

"I do mean it. I wish I'd never had them. I wish I'd never gotten married." The babies struggled and howled against her. She sat down on the bed, opened her blouse, and grimaced as they latched on to her. She leaned back against the pillows and closed her eyes. Tears leaked out from under her pale lashes and I was suddenly reminded of a story Lawton once told me, after he'd come home from walking a trapline with French Louis Seymour. Louis had caught a bear in one of his steel traps. A mother bear that had two cubs. The trap had broken her front leg. By the time Louis and Lawton got to her, she was mad with fear and pain. She lay on her side, keening. Her other side was gone. There was no fur there, no meat, only a livid mass of gore and bones. Her frantic, starving cubs had eaten her flesh away.