When Lester reached the doorless passenger side of the truck, he whirled with an arm outstretched and a finger pointing, like a courtroom lawyer with a bent for the theatrical. “I think you killed her! And sooner or later, murder will out!”
Henry—or Hank, as he now preferred to be called—came out of the barn. He had been pitching hay and he held the pitchfork across his chest like a rifle at port arms. “What I think is you better get out of here before you start bleeding,” he said. The kind and rather timid boy I had known until the summer of ’22 would never have said such a thing, but this one did, and Lester saw that he meant it. He got in. With no door to slam, he settled for crossing his arms over his chest.
“Come back anytime, Lars,” I said pleasantly, “but don’t bring him, no matter how much he offers you to cart his useless ass.”
“No, sir, Mr. James,” Lars said, and off they went.
I turned to Henry. “Would you have stuck him with that pitchfork?”
“Yessir. Made him squeal.” Then, unsmiling, he went back into the barn.
But he wasn’t always unsmiling that summer, and Shannon Cotterie was the reason why. He saw a lot of her (more of her than was good for either of them; that I found out in the fall). She began coming to the house on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, long-skirted and neatly bonneted, toting a side-sack loaded with good things to eat. She said she knew “what men cook”—as though she were 30 instead of just 15—and said she intended to see we had at least two decent suppers a week. And although I had only one of her mother’s casseroles for comparison, I’d have to say that even at 15 she was the superior cook. Henry and I just threw steaks in a skillet on the stove; she had a way of seasoning that made plain old chew-meat delicious. She brought fresh vegetables in her side-sack—not just carrots and peas but exotic (to us) things like asparagus and fat green beans she cooked with pearl onions and bacon. There was even dessert. I can close my eyes in this shabby hotel room and smell her pastry. I can see her standing at the kitchen counter with her bottom swaying as she beat eggs or whipped cream.
Generous was the word for Shannon: of hip, of bust, of heart. She was gentle with Henry, and she cared for him. That made me care for her… only that’s too thin, Reader. I loved her, and we both loved Henry. After those Tuesday and Thursday dinners, I’d insist on doing the washing-up and send them out on the porch. Sometimes I heard them murmuring to each other, and would peek out to see them sitting side by side in the wicker chairs, looking out at West Field and holding hands like an old married couple. Other times I spied them kissing, and there was nothing of the old married couple about that at all. There was a sweet urgency to those kisses that belongs only to the very young, and I stole away with my heart aching.
One hot Tuesday afternoon she came early. Her father was out in our North Field on his harvester, Henry riding with him, a little crew of Indians from the Shoshone reservation in Lyme Biska walking along behind… and behind them, Old Pie driving the gather-truck. Shannon asked for a dipper of cold water, which I was glad to provide. She stood there on the shady side of the house, looking impossibly cool in a voluminous dress that covered her from throat to shin and shoulder to wrist—a Quaker dress, almost. Her manner was grave, perhaps even scared, and for a moment I was scared myself. He’s told her, I thought. That turned out not to be true. Except, in a way, it was.
“Mr. James, is Henry sick?”
“Sick? Why, no. Healthy as a horse, I’d say. And eats like one, too. You’ve seen that for yourself. Although I think even a man who was sick would have trouble saying no to your cooking, Shannon.”
That earned me a smile, but it was of the distracted variety. “He’s different this summer. I always used to know what he was thinking, but now I don’t. He broods.”
“Does he?” I asked (too heartily).
“You haven’t seen it?”
“No, ma’am.” (I had.) “He seems like his old self to me. But he cares for you an awful lot, Shan. Maybe what looks like brooding to you feels like the lovesicks to him.”
I thought that would get me a real smile, but no. She touched my wrist. Her hand was cool from the dipper handle. “I’ve thought of that, but…” The rest she blurted out. “Mr. James, if he was sweet on someone else—one of the girls from school—you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t try to… to spare my feelings?”
I laughed at that, and I could see her pretty face lighten with relief. “Shan, listen to me. Because I am your friend. Summer’s always a hardworking time, and with Arlette gone, Hank and I have been busier than one-armed paperhangers. When we come in at night, we eat a meal—a fine one, if you happen to show up—and then read for an hour. Sometimes he talks about how he misses his mama. After that we go to bed, and the next day we get up and do it all again. He barely has time to spark you, let alone another girl.”
“He’s sparked me, all right,” she said, and looked off to where her father’s harvester was chugging along the skyline.
“Well… that’s good, isn’t it?”
“I just thought… he’s so quiet now… so moody… sometimes he looks off into the distance and I have to say his name twice or three times before he hears me and answers.” She blushed fiercely. “Even his kisses seem different. I don’t know how to explain it, but they do. And if you ever tell him I said that, I’ll die. I will just die.”
“I never would,” I said. “Friends don’t peach on friends.”
“I guess I’m being a silly-billy. And of course he misses his mama, I know he does. But so many of the girls at school are prettier than me… prettier than me…”
I tilted her chin up so she was looking at me. “Shannon Cotterie, when my boy looks at you, he sees the prettiest girl in the world. And he’s right. Why, if I was his age, I’d spark you myself.”
“Thank you,” she said. Tears like tiny diamonds stood in the corners of her eyes.
“The only thing you need to worry about is putting him back in his place if he gets out of it. Boys can get pretty steamed up, you know. And if I’m out of line, you just go on and tell me so. That’s another thing that’s all right, if it’s between friends.”
She hugged me then, and I hugged her back. A good strong hug, but perhaps better for Shannon than me. Because Arlette was between us. She was between me and everyone else in the summer of 1922, and it was the same for Henry. Shannon had just told me so.
One night in August, with the good picking done and Old Pie’s crew paid up and back on the rez, I woke to the sound of a cow lowing. I overslept milking time, I thought, but when I fumbled my father’s pocket watch off the table beside my bed and peered at it, I saw it was quarter past three in the morning. I put the watch to my ear to see if it was still ticking, but a look out the window into the moonless dark would have served the same purpose. Those weren’t the mildly uncomfortable calls of a cow needing to be rid of her milk, either. It was the sound of an animal in pain. Cows sometimes sound that way when they’re calving, but our goddesses were long past that stage of their lives.
I got up, started out the door, then went back to the closet for my .22. I heard Henry sawing wood behind the closed door of his room as I hurried past with the rifle in one hand and my boots in the other. I hoped he wouldn’t wake up and want to join me on what could be a dangerous errand. There were only a few wolves left on the plains by then, but Old Pie had told me there was summer-sick in some of the foxes along the Platte and Medicine Creek. It was what the Shoshone called rabies, and a rabid critter in the barn was the most likely cause of those cries.
Once I was outside the house, the agonized lowing was very loud, and hollow, somehow. Echoing. Like a cow in a well, I thought. That thought chilled the flesh on my arms and made me grip the .22 tighter.