‘There is something not right with her.’
He kicked at a patch of snow. ‘She knows how to build a fire. What more do you want? We’re not looking to settle down.’
‘I think we should keep on,’ I repeated.
‘Door!’ cried the woman.
‘A couple of hours in a warm room would suit me fine,’ said Charlie.
‘I am the sick one,’ I said. ‘And I am willing to move on.’
‘I am for staying.’
The shadow of the woman crept along the far interior wall and she stood at the entrance once more. ‘Door!’ she shrieked. ‘Door! Door!’
‘You can see she wants us to enter,’ said Charlie.
Yes, I thought, past her lips and into her stomach. But I was too weak to fight any longer, and when my brother took me by the arm to enter the cabin I did not resist him.
In the room was a table, a chair, and an unclean mattress. Charlie and I sat before the stone fireplace on the twisted wooden floorboards. The heat stung pleasantly at my face and hands and for a moment I was happy with my new surroundings. The woman sat at the table speaking not a word, her face obscured in the folds of her rags. Before her lay a mound of dull red and black beads or stones; her hands emerged from her layers and nimbly took these up one by one, stringing them onto a piece of thin wire to fashion a long necklace or some other manner of elaborate jewelry. There was a lamp on the table, lowly lit and flickering yellow and orange, a tail of black smoke slipping from the tip of the flame.
‘We are obliged to you, ma’am,’ said Charlie. ‘My brother is feeling poorly, and in no condition to be sleeping out of doors.’ When the woman did not respond, Charlie said to me he supposed she was deaf. ‘I am not deaf,’ she countered. She brought a piece of the wire to her mouth and chewed it back and forth to snap it.
‘Of course,’ said Charlie. ‘I didn’t mean any offense to you. Now I can see how able you are, how sharp. And you keep a fine home, if you don’t mind my saying.’
She laid her beads and wire on the table. Her head swiveled to face us but her features remained hidden in slipping shadows. ‘Do you think I don’t know what type of men you are?’ she asked, pointing a broken-looking finger at our gun belts. ‘Who are you pretending to be, and why?’
Charlie’s demeanor changed, or resumed, and he was once more himself. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘who are we then?’
‘Would you not call yourselves killers?’
‘Just because of our guns, and you assume it?’
‘I assume nothing. I know by the dead men following behind you.’
The hair on my neck stood up. It was ridiculous, but I dared not turn around. Charlie’s tone was even: ‘Do you fear we will kill you?’
‘I fear nothing, least of all your bullets and talk.’ She looked at me and asked, ‘Do you fear I will kill you?’
‘I am very tired,’ came my lame reply.
‘Take the bed,’ she instructed.
‘Where will you sleep?’
‘I will not. I must finish my work. In the morning, I will be mostly gone.’
Charlie’s face had grown hard. ‘This isn’t your cabin, is it?’
At this she stiffened, and did not look to be breathing. She pulled back her rags, and in the firelight and lamplight I saw she had almost no hair on her head, only white tufts here and there, and her skull was dented, appearing soft in places, pushed in like an old piece of fruit. ‘Every heart has a tone,’ she said to Charlie, ‘just as every bell has one. Your heart’s tone is most oppressive to hear, young man. It is hurtful to my ears, and your eyes hurt my eyes to look at them.’
A long silence followed with Charlie and the old witch simply staring at each other. I could not, from either of their expressions, understand what they were thinking. Eventually the woman rewrapped her skull and resumed her work, and Charlie lay down on the floor. I did not climb onto the bed, but lay down beside him, because I was frightened by the woman and thought it safest for us to sleep close together. I was so weak that despite my uneasiness I soon fell away into a dream state wherein I envisaged the room just as it was, though I was standing by, watching my own sleeping body. The old woman rose and came upon us; my body began to fidget and sweat but Charlie’s was calm and still and the old woman leaned over him, opening his mouth with her hands. From the dark space in her folds there flowed a slow and heavy black liquid; this dropped into his mouth and I, not the sleeping I but the watching I, began to scream that she should leave him alone. With this the dream abruptly ended and I came to. Charlie was beside me, looking at me, eyes open though he was sleeping, as was his unnerving habit. Behind him sat the old woman, her bead pile significantly smaller—a good deal of time had passed. She remained at her table but her head was turned all the way around, looking in the far dark corner. I do not know what had caught her attention but she stared for such a time that I gave up wondering and returned my head to the floor. In a jump I was dead asleep once more.
Chapter 8
In the morning I awoke on the floor, and Charlie was not beside me. I heard a footfall at my back and turned to find him standing before the open doorway, looking out at the field before the cabin. It was a bright day and the horses stood in the distance, tied to the root of an upended snag. Nimble nosed about in the frost for a mouthful of grass; Tub shivered and stared at nothing. ‘The woman has left,’ Charlie said.
‘That is all right by me,’ I replied, standing. The room stunk of ash and charcoal and my eyes were raw and burning. I had to make water and moved to exit the cabin but Charlie blocked my way, his face gaunt and unrested. ‘She has left,’ he said, ‘but has kept us with something as a remembrance.’ He pointed and I followed the line of his finger. The woman had hung the string of beads around the jamb of the door. I will be mostly gone, I recalled her saying—mostly but not completely.
‘What do you make of it?’ I asked.
Charlie said, ‘It’s no decoration.’
‘We could take it down,’ I said, reaching.
He caught my hand. ‘Don’t touch it, Eli.’
We stood back to consider the options. The horses heard our voices and were watching us from the field. ‘We won’t walk beneath it,’ said Charlie. ‘The only thing is to knock out the window and climb through.’ Feeling my middle section, which is and always has been bountiful, I said I did not think I would fit in the small opening. Charlie mentioned it was worth a try but the idea of failing—of climbing back away from the hole red-faced—was not something I was eager to experience, and I said I would not attempt it.
‘Then I will go alone,’ said Charlie, ‘and return to you with some tools to cut a larger piece away.’ Standing on the old woman’s wobbly chair, he knocked out the glass with the handle of his revolver and I boosted him up and out the window. Now we faced each other on opposite sides of the door. He was smiling, and I was not. ‘There you are,’ he said, patting the glass shards from his belly.
I said, ‘I don’t like this plan. Striking out into the wild with hopes of finding a gentle soul eager to loan out his tools. You will ride aimlessly while I stew in this hovel. What if the old woman returns?’
‘She has left us her evil tidings, and there is no reason for her to come back.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
‘I believe it to be true. And what else can I do? If you have another plan, now is the time to share it.’
But no, I did not have one. I asked him to bring me my food bag and I watched him walk out to the horses. ‘Don’t forget a pan,’ I called. ‘What man?’ he asked. ‘A pan! A pan!’ I mimed a cooking-with-a-pan motion, and he nodded. He returned and pushed my effects through the window, wishing me a happy breakfast before mounting Nimble and riding away. I experienced a miserable feeling at their leaving; staring at the opening in the tree line where they had disappeared, I felt a premonitory concern they would never revisit it.