“Well, apparently she felt the heat badly, like you do too, and she was also pining for her home back in France, and she took to sleeping out in the yard to keep cool, but one night… one night she…” His fingers grasped the night air, searching for a way to tell her without telling her.
“She what?”
“She cut her own throat,” he said, in a rush. “Three children waiting for her indoors and all.” Caroline swallowed convulsively, her own throat closing at the thought of such violence.
“And you thought I’d… done that to myself?” she breathed.
“No! No, love, no. I was just worried for you, that’s all.” He ushered her back into the bedroom and said he would wait up until she slept, but soon his soft snores began again, and still Caroline’s eyes stayed fixed upon the ceiling.
She wondered. She wondered where Corin went all day. It had never occurred to her to think about this before. He always gave an account of his day over the supper table, but how could she know that he was telling it true? How could she know how long it took to round up strays, to pursue rustlers, to brand the new steers, to set the stallion Apache to a brood mare, to mend fences, to plough or sow or reap the wheat fields, or cut hay, or do any of it? And Corin could, of course, send Joe anywhere if he wanted him out of the way. And Magpie had often already left, by an hour or so, before Corin came in for the evening. There were times, plenty of times, when she had no idea where either of them might be. And the way he had touched Magpie, that time-the way he had put his hands on her at the Woodward gala. These were Caroline’s thoughts as she lay awake, and as she sat in the ringing silence at the end of each day, waiting for Corin’s return. When Caroline saw her husband, her fears vanished. When she was alone, they flourished like weeds. Her solace was Magpie’s plainness, as she saw it. The coarseness of her hair, the fat on her figure, the alien planes of her face. She noted these things and called to mind Corin’s praise of her own beauty.
But one hard August day when a high, spiteful sun was bleaching the grassland, even this solace was taken from Caroline. Magpie was at the kitchen window, standing sideways so that she could lean her hip against the bench as she peeled carrots with a short, sharp blade. She was singing, as usual, her expression soft and her hands busy. Caroline watched her through the doorway from the main room, from behind a book she was supposedly reading, and a falter in the quiet song made her blink. Magpie stopped peeling, her gaze falling out of focus and one hand going to her distended belly. A tiny smile twitched her lips and then the song and the work continued. The baby had shifted, Caroline realized. It was awake, alive inside the girl. It was listening to its mother singing. Swallowing, Caroline put her hand to her own stomach. It was more than flat, it was concave; there was no welcoming fold of flesh, no fulsome vitality. She could feel her ribs and her hipbones, wooden and sharp. How dry and hard and dead her body seemed, compared to Magpie’s. Like the dead husks, the chaff that the men beat out of the wheat. She looked at the girl again, and then her throat went tight and for a second she couldn’t breathe. The sun streaming in through the window caught the gloss of Magpie’s thick, black hair; the wide, bowed curve of her top lip; the high slant of her cheeks and eyes; the warm glow of her skin. Magpie was beautiful.
Before dawn the next day, as Corin stirred and began to wake, Caroline went on soft feet to the kitchen. She poured him a cup of cold tea and cut two thick slices of bread from yesterday’s loaf, which she spread with honey. She presented him with these offerings as he sat up, blinking in the charcoal glow of near-day.
“Breakfast in bed. I always used to have breakfast in bed on Saturdays,” she told him, smiling.
“Well, thank you. How grand I feel!” Corin cupped her face in the palm of his hand, and took a long draft of the tea. Caroline propped the pillows up against the wall behind him.
“Sit back for a moment, love. You don’t have to rush out just yet,” she urged him.
“Putting off a chore never got it finished faster,” he sighed, ruefully.
“Just five more minutes,” she begged. “Try some of the bread. I spread it with that honey Joe collected for us.”
“That man is a marvel with bees,” Corin nodded. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Just walks right up to the nest and puts in his arm, and never once takes a sting.”
“Some Indian magic, perhaps?”
“Either that or he’s just got the toughest hide of any man alive,” Corin mused. Caroline thought of this-of Joe with his unforgiving black eyes and skin like the bark of a tree. She shuddered slightly, wondering how Magpie could bear to bed herself with him.
“Corin?”
“Yes?”
“You know, it’s been more than a year now since we were wed and, well… we never have been back to go swimming again, like on our honeymoon.”
“I know. I know it, Caroline. It’s so hard to find the time,” Corin said, leaning his head back against the wall, his face still languid with sleep.
“Can we go? Soon? I just… I want to spend the day with you. The whole day… we hardly ever do that! Not with all the work you have to do.”
“Well, I don’t know, Caroline. There’s just so much to do at this time of year! We’ve got the stupidest bunch of beeves as I’ve ever had on the ranch and they’ve been busting through the fences every chance they get, wandering off and getting themselves stuck in the creek and caught up in wire and I don’t know what else. Maybe in a week. In a week or two… how about that?”
“You promised me we would,” she said quietly.
“And we will. We will,” he insisted.
Soon afterwards he rose, pulled himself into his clothes, stroked one hand gently over Caroline’s hair and kissed the top of her head before going through to the kitchen to make coffee. Caroline sat and listened to the rattle of the coffee beans, the clang of the kettle hitting the stove, and she felt a peculiar weariness wash over her. For a moment, she did not think she had the strength to rise, to see another day through to its end. Every bone in her body seemed leaden. But she drew in a long breath, and she stood, and began to dress herself slowly.
At the end of September, Joe appeared at the house one wet afternoon, his hat in his hands, eyes half shut against the steady downpour and an air of impenetrable calm about him. Caroline smiled, but she could not help but draw back from him, and she saw a hardening in his eye when she did this.
“Magpie’s time is come. She asks for you to go there,” Joe said.
“To go where? Why?” Caroline said, not understanding.
“To go to her. To help the baby,” Joe explained, in his guttural accent. His tone was as neutral as his expression, but something told Caroline that he did not necessarily approve of his wife’s request. She hesitated, and felt her pulse quicken. She would have to go inside the dugout. However used to having Magpie around the house Caroline had become, she could not help thinking of that low, half-submerged dwelling as some kind of animal’s den.
“I see,” she said quietly. “I see.”
“In this way, she honors you,” Joe told her solemnly. “Such work is only for family.”
After a hung pause, pinned by Joe’s inscrutable gaze, Caroline went back inside. She squashed her hat onto her hair, took off her apron and felt panic rising like bubbles in her throat. She had no knowledge of birth, no idea what she should do to help. She was not sure that she wanted to help at all.
Outside, Joe showed the first and only sign of impatience Caroline had ever seen any of the Ponca show. He repositioned his hat in his hands and looked over his shoulder toward where his wife lay in labor. Seeing this, Caroline felt a stab of guilt and she hurried out, turning her face to the ground as they went so that she would not see the terrifying spread of land around them. Ever since her abortive walk to the Moore’s farm, she had felt a dizzying horror of the gaping landscape of Woodward County. The expanse of it seemed to pull her thoughts apart, building an unbearable pressure behind her eyes. She felt the urge to run, to throw herself back indoors before she disintegrated into the mighty sky. Their footsteps splashed and Caroline’s hem was soon soaked with water, stained ruddy from the soil.