And Adolph? She didn’t like him, she would never like him, but here he had his moment of grace, lifting his eyes to hers for just the briefest instant before nodding in acknowledgment, turning on his heels and slipping out the door.
* * *
So there was the cat. The cat that had come from shore, where Adolph had been just days ago, mere days, and now there was the promise — or the hope, the hope at least — that they would all be going there, going home, as soon as Will was able to fix things with Nichols and the manager in waiting. In the meanwhile, there was a new cycle beginning, the strength coming back to her in increments and everything revolving around that soaring promise — she forced herself from bed after a full week of inactivity, forced herself to pull open her steamer trunk and hatboxes and begin packing her clothes and hats for the trip back, overseeing things, and when she couldn’t put it off any longer, even going downstairs, to the kitchen, where Ida was.
She came down the stairs that first day on silent feet, in her carpet slippers, the cat padding noiselessly behind her. She was walking, moving, but she couldn’t feel her legs. They seemed fiberless and weak, as if they’d become detached from her body, as if she were walking on someone else’s legs, someone feeble, impossibly old, etherealized already. Ethereal, that was what she was. A spirit. A thing of the air. And if she had reason to doubt it, she saw that the walls of the corridor had been washed free of the taint of her blood, as if she’d never passed this way at all.
She found Ida in the kitchen, bent to the washing, the windows steamed over, heat radiating from the stove, the usual smells at war. For a long moment she stood there in the doorway, hesitating. What would she say to her? How could she look her in the face? How could she live under the same roof without exploding from within like one of Will’s shattered boulders? Before she could think, the cat gave her away. He paraded into the room, tail held high, and Ida, her hair in a long frizzled braid that dangled over one shoulder, glanced up at the motion and in that instant they were staring into each other’s eyes. “Ma’am,” Ida blurted, “oh, ma’am, I don’t know what to say—”
Steel, she was made of steel, unbendable, unbreakable, and now she could feel her legs, the muscles tightening there, everything in her gone rigid suddenly. “Then don’t say anything at all.”
“But I—” Ida’s face crumpled. She was in tears before she could draw her hands from the soapy water and rub them spasmodically on her apron.
The table was Marantha’s destination. She wanted only to cross the room, sit at that table with a cup of tea and a slice of buttered bread and gaze round her at something other than the four walls of her bedroom, no matter how shabby or disordered, but she never got there because Ida backed away from the washbasin and came gliding to her as if she’d been drawn on a string. Marantha almost held out her arms to her, almost took hold of her and drew her to herself like the child she was, but that wasn’t natural, that wasn’t right. “No,” she said, shaking her head side to side while the girl slumped her shoulders and dropped her chin to her chest in mortification. And though she saw then that what had happened wasn’t the fault of Ida, but of Will — of Will and herself too, for allowing him to bring them all out here to this desolate place where there was no society and no affection or manners or common human decency and where the disease could have its way with her — she turned away, went to the table and pulled out the chair there. “Bring me a cup of tea,” she said over her shoulder. “And a sandwich. Make me a sandwich.”
One-Arm
April faded into May. Her steamer trunk, packed and ready to go, stood just inside the front door, positioned there so Will could see it every time he came in or out, and no, she wasn’t going to decorate it with a cloth or a vase of flowers or attempt to disguise it in any way. It was her trunk. And it stood by the door. He could make of that what he would.
She was on the porch with Edith one afternoon, the balls of her feet rising and falling with the motion of the rocker, her breathing shallow but steady, the sheet she was mending spread across her lap in a series of gentle undulating folds and the cat asleep in a golden puddle of sunlight beside her, when the one-armed man made his appearance, entirely unannounced. Edith was the first to spot him. She’d been rocking too, absorbed for once in her studies, Will and the hands nowhere to be seen — mending fence, collecting driftwood, who knew where they were? — when suddenly she let out a low exclamation and jumped to her feet so abruptly the rocker pitched back against the clapboards behind her. “It’s, it’s Captain Curner, Mother, look! And who’s that with him?”
She had to blink twice to be sure she wasn’t seeing things. Two figures had just crested the hill, rising up out of the haze that hung in the distance though it was past two in the afternoon and should have burned off by now. There was Curner, sure enough, his face the color and texture of smoked ham under his grimy seaman’s cap and with a wooden crate propped up on one shoulder, and how had they missed his sail in the harbor? The fog, that was what it was. It still hovered over the water, as if the sea had pulled the sky down like a shade and left nothing in between. But who was the other man?
It all came clear in the next moment, Curner lumbering across the yard to set down the crate on the edge of the porch while the stranger, following along in his wake, pulled up short at the base of the steps to peer up at her and Edith with a narrowing look of appraisal. He was a slight man, no bigger than Jimmie, in patched and faded work clothes, and his left sleeve hung empty so that he looked as if he were leaning to one side when in fact he was standing straight on, as erect as a soldier. “Good afternoon, missus,” he said, his face drawn down to its underpinnings of bone and the straight slash of an oversized nose, an English nose, as it turned out. “And good afternoon to you, miss. Am I correct in assuming that I have the pleasure of addressing Miss and Missus Waters?”
“Yes,” she heard herself murmur, even as Curner mumbled a greeting of his own, and Edith, for once at a loss for words, echoed her.
The new man — and suddenly she knew who he was, the apprehension striking her so suddenly she almost cried out in rapture — gave her a horse’s smile, all teeth and no lips. “I’m Horace Reed, missus,” he said, eliding the h, “at your service.”
“He’s come out for the day — and the night, that is, because we’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,” Curner said.
“Just to get acquainted,” Reed put in. “To see if I’m acceptable to your husband. And you — you, of course.”
Another attempt at a grin. And then he was fumbling in the breast pocket of his coat for something, a sealed envelope, which he extracted and handed across to her. It was from Nichols and addressed to her husband, but she was so excited in that moment, so carried away, she couldn’t help tearing it open and snatching a look at the letter within.
This is to introduce Mr. Reed, a man who has had large experience in the field of ranching in general and sheep in particular, mostly in his native country but on a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley as well. I took the trouble of communicating with the owner there, who holds him in high regard. He is eager for the job here, as he has six children and a wife to feed and is currently out of work, his previous employer having sold the ranch to new interests. He assures me that in spite of his small stature and his obvious disfigurement, he is fully capable of managing our operations on the terms you and I fixed upon — that is, he will supply his own needs and receive one-third the value of the flock’s increase per annum. If he meets with your approval, he means to take over from you on the twenty-ninth of this month.