One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow: A Novel Read online

  The horse knew the river trail, and he carried Clyde through the dark without shying or stumbling. Clyde let his feet dangle alongside the stirrups, let the reins slide loosely through his cold fingers. He kept his other hand clenched tightly around the handle of his spade. Its weight across his thighs seemed more than a boy of sixteen ought to bear.

  The voice of the river came to him first, its endless hiss, the whisper of water over stones. Then he heard the scuffle of night animals retreating—scavengers—and he knew he’d found the place, even before Joe Buck snorted and threw up his head, offended by the smell of blood. Clyde didn’t dismount straight away. He feared wolves; there was no one to protect him if a wolf should come. He stared into the darkness for a long time, down at the shadows in the tall grass, the deepest black that clung low to the earth, until at last the weak moonlight revealed the body of his father sprawled across the ground.

  Substance Webber had never lived up to his name. Clyde had always known it, since he’d been little more than a tyke—since he’d first learned to see the shift in his father’s moods, the narrowing of his eye, the freezing over of what little kindness stirred inside the man. There was even less substance to him now. He seemed flat as a sheet of ice and every bit as colorless. The stillness of the body struck Clyde with a terrible significance; that stillness was more frightening than any thought of wolves.

  The long grass, touched by night breezes, moved gently, and Joe Buck’s ears flicked back and forth. The horse’s flanks rose and fell with his steady breath. Even the river’s quiet voice was evidence of its movement. But Substance Webber did not move. His eyes were partway open, staring up at the sky with the dry vacancy Clyde had seen countless times before in the deer he had shot and the sheep whose throats he cut when the time came to cull the flock. You can know your father will be dead someday, just as you know the long, bleak months of winter must follow the harvest, but nothing truly prepares you for the sight of him, fallen and unmoving, left where he was dropped among the shadows of the grass.

  Clyde shuddered with fear and disgust, with a superstitious revulsion for this scene, this reality. This was never the way life was meant to be—a son so young, not really a man, burying his own father. But it would disgust him more to know that he had left his father’s remains to be scattered by the coyotes Substance had always hated.

  He swung down from the saddle and turned his back on his father’s body, so he wouldn’t have to see its stillness while he worked. Clyde stabbed his spade down deep into the tight sod of the prairie and dug and bent and sweated till his thoughts fled, till everything fled except the rhythm of the work, and only when the grave was ready and the wind bit cold through his sweat-dampened shirt did he look at his father again.

  Clyde stepped carefully through the night. He stood above the body now, looking down at its blackness and whiteness. The face had blanched in death, pale as the sleeves of his shirt, and his beard and trousers and the patch of wet ruin that had been his chest were all the same deep and final shade of darkness. Clyde thought he should close his father’s eyes, but when he moved to touch his face, nausea clutched at his stomach and he withdrew. He thought, I should check his pockets for valuables. In case there’s anything we can sell up in town for a little money, something to keep us warm and fed through the winter. But he had a dreadful, dizzying fear that if he reached into the pockets, the body would move—the arm snaking out suddenly to strike at his hand—and then he would scream, and screaming would be a shame worse than crying.

  Yet he had to move the body to its grave. The hole was only a few feet away; it would be the work of a moment. Clyde told himself as much, bending to take his father by the wrist, by one outstretched arm. He gasped when he touched the body. It was cold and hard, the stiff limbs unyielding, like no dead thing he had handled before. Clyde gritted his teeth and pulled, clung with both hands to his father’s arm and dragged that stubborn, resisting weight through the grass to the spaded-up earth, and then he stepped across the narrow grave and hauled his father into the pit behind him. The legs fell down into the depths, but the rigid, outflung arms kept the body leaning ghoulishly up out of the hole. He seemed to stare at Clyde, his only living son, with heavy-lidded reproach.

  “I’m sorry,” Clyde said frantically, though his father couldn’t hear him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” though he knew he had nothing to be sorry for.

  Then, as gently as he could manage, he braced his foot against one of his father’s shoulders and pushed until the joint cracked and the corpse gave way, and Substance Webber subsided into his grave.

  Clyde turned away and heaved into the tall grass. Nothing came up from his stomach, but he couldn’t stop. Choking and coughing, his guts spasmed so hard his whole body rocked, and a pressure built behind his ears that roared louder with every heave. When he had control again, he shoveled dirt over his father’s corpse, quickly so he could leave and forget what he had seen and done. The body didn’t lie in neat repose; it was an undignified heap in the black earth. But it was the best Clyde could do. He had never buried a man before.

  When the work was finished, he thought perhaps he ought to pray. That was the way a proper burial was done; Clyde felt sure of that. He recalled the small, sober funeral for his sister Anna, who’d died not ten years before. And before Anna, his brother Luther—what seemed ages ago, when the Webbers had still lived in Nebraska. He could remember something of the burial of his three-year-old sister Alta, too—years before Luther died, when Clyde had been a small boy. And before Alta, when Clyde had been younger still, he had stood beside a tiny grave and watched as Mother and Father had laid to rest a baby boy who had lived only a few days, not even long enough for Clyde to feel as if the baby had truly been his brother. He remembered each time clasping his hands and lowering his head as Mother told him to do. He remembered Father speaking the words, a toneless recitation of grief, and In Jesus’ name, amen. But now Clyde could think of nothing to say, no words to commemorate his father’s life, and nothing to excuse his death. He hung his head, but instead of praying, he cried—great, racking sobs that shook his body and raised the sick feeling up to his stomach again. He cried, and pulled his fists up inside his sleeves and bunched the fabric from the inside so he could wipe and wipe at his face, his swollen eyes and running nose. He mewled like some weak, small thing until Joe Buck moved closer, blowing gently through the darkness, and rubbed his forehead against Clyde’s shoulder.

  It was time to return home. Mother would be worried with Clyde out there in the darkness. She needed him now. There was little love lost between his parents—Clyde had known that for a long time—but Substance had been the mainstay of their lives, the force that had kept them tethered to the prairie. What would Mother do now that her husband was gone?

  Working by feel, Clyde straightened Joe Buck’s reins. He swung up into the saddle and laid the spade once more across his lap, then turned his horse away from the river, back toward home. Joe Buck found the trail and moved slow and steady through the darkness. His hooves fell softly enough that Clyde could hear the rustle of the coyotes moving in again, searching for the death that had drawn them. But they would find nothing tonight. Substance was gone and buried now. Only his son remained.

  CORA

  After Ernest took himself off to jail, the world became a place of hollows and omissions, of yawning, empty spaces where he should have been. Cora sank onto the settee beside the hearth and watched as the bleak world ceased to turn around her. She was aware of nothing—not the rising of the sun by morning nor the singing of crickets by night. Not her children’s voices nor the feel of their soft and trembling hands as they came seeking comfort Cora couldn’t give. She heard only silence, even when the wind moaned down the chimney, and somewhere below and behind that silence, the voice of guilt scolding her, mocking her, filling her heart with the weight of blame and loss.

  Cora had never felt any particular fondness for Substance Webber, though she supposed his undeniabl
e show of strength—of grim, imposing power—had attracted her interest if not her heart. Substance was everything Ernest was not: firm in his every decision, commanding and sure, a bulwark against the numberless uncertainties that shaded every day, that marked life out there on the range. When their carryings-on had first begun, Substance had made Cora feel important again—the center of what little society their two families could claim, isolated as they were in a sea of grass, the gray-brown vastness of seclusion. But every time a tryst ended, Cora parted from Substance plagued by guilt, gnawed by its sharp teeth. Ernest had always been a kind, good husband, even if he had brought her to the foot of the Bighorns where there was nothing to do or see, nothing but nothingness for miles around.

  Nothing. Substance had meant nothing to Cora; she had known it all along. He was only a change, a different face, different hands after almost fifteen years of marriage and eight years of the cruel prairie. She had ruined her life and the lives of her children—ruined Ernest’s life, too—for nothing. She had gotten Substance Webber killed for nothing, made Mrs. Webber a widow for nothing, left the neighbor boy fatherless—for what? A distraction. For an act that held no more meaning to Cora than the dust she swept from her kitchen floor.

  Through the long days and nights after Substance was killed, while Cora remained mired in regret, her girl Beulah shepherded the younger children, feeding them and marshaling them, keeping them safe. Beulah put porridge in the children’s bellies every morning and stew every night, with a good slice of buttered bread in between. At night, Beulah saw that their faces were scrubbed. She tucked the boys into the bed they shared and sang songs for the baby, Miranda, until she fell asleep. And all the while, Cora did nothing more than sit, wrapped in a blanket, shivering even beside a warm hearth. Astonishment over what she had done consumed her, and all that was left was a skeleton of grief, dry and brittle, rattling with blame.

  Cora couldn’t help but relive the moment it had happened. The memory returned ceaselessly and repeated inside her head, a zoetrope spinning faster and faster, turned by the hand of her conscience. She had been lying in the grass, watching the cottonwood branches move overhead, while Substance had his way. The branches were a net of graceful black lines against an autumn sunset, that depth of color one saw at no other time of the year, and what leaves remained on the cottonwoods were still bright. The leaves turned in the river wind, shivering, sparkling like gold or like the delicate crystal drops of the chandeliers she had seen at the dances in Saint Louis when she was a girl. She thought of the dances while she watched the cottonwood leaves, while Substance took what he wanted. All those balls in grand society homes, and the dresses she had worn—not as fine as the other girls’ gowns, but better than her prairie calico. How Cora had longed for a coming-out ball of her own, even though she had known her grandfather hadn’t the money to host one. She had resolved herself to be content as a guest, taking her fun at the other girls’ parties, going with a sweep of her skirts and a charming giggle into the arms of young men. How splendid they had all been—the men in their coattails with perfumed silk squares bright at the edges of their pockets, the girls colorful and intricate as flowers. Cora had felt precious while she danced, while one man after another held her small waist between his hands. She was delicate, breakable, something to be cherished and protected, and her own desirability had excited her. The men with whom she danced had always asked Cora if the rumors were true—was she really General Grant’s niece? I am, she told them all, because it was the truth. And when the girls laughed behind their hands, whispering as Cora passed, she promised herself that someday she would have a house as fine and beautiful as any in Saint Louis. She would have a ballroom with a chandelier and a parquet floor, and parties whenever she felt like dancing, and life would be gentle and lit by happiness and she would never feel lonesome again.

  Then Ernest had appeared on the riverbank, shattering the color and the memories. Substance lurched up, yanking up his trousers. He roared something foul at Ernest while Cora covered herself with her petticoats and crawled away into the grass, weeping with sudden shame. She never saw Ernest raise his rifle and take the shot, nor did she watch Substance fall. But she knew, when that blast split the air, that she had destroyed what little sweetness still remained in her life.

  Cora had lurched to her feet, ears muffled and ringing. She had run past Substance’s body and had seen from the corner of her eye the redness all around him, the slick sheen of blood, the arc of droplets sprayed out behind him. She had gone to Ernest with hands outstretched, pleading, but the look on his face had been terrible, and he had turned away before Cora could touch him. That was when she’d known Ernest was lost to her forever—that even if the sheriff up in Paintrock didn’t hang him as a murderer, Ernest would be not a presence in Cora’s life but a void—another part of herself irrevocably gone, never to return. Then a desolation came upon her, worse than she had imagined any sorrow could be. It was worse by far than the loneliness that had haunted Cora for eight years on the prairie, so far from Saint Louis and the joyous, easy years of girlhood.

  The hearth and the blanket and the settee became the whole of Cora’s world, the safety in which she wrapped herself so she wouldn’t hear the shotgun blast again and again, wouldn’t see the bubble and flow of blood pouring from Substance Webber’s chest. She pulled the blanket ever tighter around her shoulders. She must take the blanket’s embrace in place of Ernest’s forgiving arms.

  For three days Cora remained that way, content to shrink from her thoughts, glad for the emptiness of silence. When, now and again, she came up from her dark musings like a fish rising to the surface of a murky pond, she found Beulah—her girl, the first child Ernest gave her—managing the farm without complaint, with a quiet steadiness and patient acceptance that seemed to say Beulah had expected this sorry turn of events all her young life and was shocked by none of it. Not even disappointed.

  Without Beulah, Cora never could have managed the younger children in those dark days. But after all, Beulah was only a girl, and she had always been more inclined toward daydreams than work. By the third evening after Ernest’s departure, Beulah was falling behind on chores. The children were gathered at the table—Charles and Benjamin, their trousers muddy to their knees, and Miranda with her hair a nest of yellow snarls.

  “Ma,” Miranda said plaintively, “we’re hungry.”

  “Shush,” Charles answered. “Ma won’t feed us. Only Beulie makes supper now.”

  Cora loosened the blanket around her shoulders. Cooler air came in, rousing her senses. She looked beyond the children, through the window to the farm outside. In the south-facing yard, Beulah was moving back and forth across the trampled grass. Wet garments hung heavily in her thin arms. In the weak autumn sunshine, the girl pinned shirts and aprons and stockings one at a time to the drying line. The cows bellowed in their pen, crying out to be milked, aching with the pressure. Beulah couldn’t keep up the homestead alone—not by herself.

  For her sake, I must wake up and face the truth of what I’ve done.

  Cora pushed herself up from the settee. Her legs scarcely remembered how to hold her, after all those days crippled by grief and fear, and she paused to lean on the table, breathless amid the chatter of her children. She left them waiting at the table and went to the door, limbs tingling with the pain of movement, determined to take over hanging up the wash so Beulah could get on with the milking. She must show her daughter that she was not alone—not even here, where God had made nothing but loneliness.

  When she stepped out onto the porch, Cora saw a man riding up the lane. He was mounted on a sorrel horse, and for a moment, her heart leaped with the lightness of her spirit, for she was certain it was Ernest, come back to forgive her. But then she remembered Ernest had left on the gray mare. She had seen him go, watching through her parted fingers as tears spilled down between her cheeks and her palms, leaving her skin roughened by salt. In the next moment, Cora recognized the sheriff out of Pain
trock, and her stomach welled with terrible dread.

  Beulah had seen the sheriff coming, too. She hung up whatever bit of cloth she’d been fussing with and started toward the gate, moving with the same unhurried peace that seemed to bless her in all times and seasons. For a moment, Cora hung back on the step, content to let her daughter shoulder this burden, too. Then a black gout of self-loathing rose up inside her, and Cora made herself walk out to meet the sheriff herself. She wouldn’t leave everything to the girl. She would do this one thing right, if nothing else.

  Cora reached the gate a few steps ahead of Beulah. They stood silently side by side as the sheriff reined in and dismounted, sweeping off his hat to reveal thin, graying hair slicked against his pate by the sweat of a long ride.

  “Mrs. Bemis,” the sheriff said—then, with a glance at Beulah, “young lady. I suppose you know why I’ve come.”

  Cora nodded. She tried to speak, but she had no strength for words. She went on nodding, waiting for the news to come.

  “He’s not to be hanged, is he?” Beulah said. There wasn’t the barest hint of fear in her. She seemed to know the answer before the sheriff spoke.

  “No, not hanged.” The man loosened his collar. “Since he turned himself in and was properly remorseful—and seeing as how it was a crime of passion, not of malice—the judge didn’t think hanging was necessary. Everyone in Paintrock knows Ernest Bemis, and can swear he’s a good man.”

  “Want some water?” Beulah asked. “You look thirsty.”

  The sheriff blinked at her. Cora could all but hear his thoughts: Your father has just killed a man. Shouldn’t you be upset, child?

  “Go fetch a cup of water,” Cora told her daughter. When Beulah had drifted off toward the well, Cora said to the sheriff, apologetically, “Beulah is peculiar, but she’s a good girl.” And better than I deserve.