Prayers for Sale (16 page)

“We can’t stand under these trees,” the old woman said. She continued down the trail, until she reached the faint impression of a turnoff and led the way through the pines, past drifts of snow that wouldn’t melt until summer was almost over, to a deserted shack. She removed two blocks placed so that porcupines wouldn’t gnaw the door, and pushed her way into the cabin. The shack smelled like a bunch of stewed owls, so Hennie left the door open, but that let in the cold. The girl shivered so that Hennie picked kindling off a pile and placed it in the fireplace, then found a baking soda can with matches in it and lit a fire. She took off Jake’s old sweater and placed it around the girl’s shoulders. “The rain won’t last but a few minutes,” she told Nit.

“This storm uneasies me. I wished there was a feather bed. We could lie down on a feather bed and never get struck by lightning,” Nit said, snuggling into the sweater. “Lightning never hits a feather bed. It’s a fact.” When the girl had warmed, she looked around the cabin, which had a built-in bunk in the corner and two rough chairs. She pulled one of them to the fire and sat down, reaching for a half-rusted Log Cabin syrup tin on the floor and showing it to Hennie. “This looks just like my little house. Do you think he’ll mind if I take it, the man who owns this place, I mean?”

“Take it. Nobody’s lived here since Joe Sarsfield. He’s been dead a long time. Some folks called him Vinegar Joe, on account of he was so sour. He was a sooty-looking man, a complainer, and as hard as a pine knot. He didn’t have to live up here so close to timberline, leaving Maudie snowed in for the winter. Wouldn’t give her hardly enough money to buy food, either.” Hennie’s face twisted in pain at the memory.

“His wife?” Nit asked, placing the syrup can in the lard bucket.

“Yes.”

“That sounds like another story,” Nit said.

“It is, or more of one I’ve already told you. Most of my stories fit together one way or the other,” Hennie said. She sat down in a chair beside Nit, took off her rubber shoes, and propped her feet on a box in front of the fire.

Maudie Sarsfield was the workingest woman on the Tenmile. She quilted for others for a half-dollar a spool. She spent a week using up all the thread on the spool, because
she took six or eight stitches in an inch, but she liked doing the stitching. “Quilting keeps me from going queer,” she told Hennie. Maudie stitched her initials on quilts when she was finished. Not one in ten women she quilted for ever noticed the
M.S.,
but Maudie took pleasure in it. She knew it was a bit of foolishness, but that was her way of being remembered. After all, a woman didn’t leave much behind in the world to show she’d been there. Even the children she bore and raised got their father’s name. But her quilts, now that was something she could pass on. Joe wouldn’t value her quilts after she crossed over and would likely tear them up for rags or horse blankets. But if her initials were hidden in some other woman’s quilts, why something of her would go on living.

Of course, Maudie kept all that to herself, because if Joe knew how much quilting pleased her, he wouldn’t have allowed her to do it. Joe Sarsfield was mean enough to insult Jesus Christ.

He was cruel to his wife in other ways. He could get out in the winter, go into town if he wanted. But Maudie was frail and couldn’t walk through the snowdrifts. She didn’t see a well day in her life living up here at the top of the Swan. The women knew that, and they made the trip up the mountain every whipstitch to visit with her and give her a little human comfort. One or two hinted that Maudie ought to leave Joe, but she knew he’d hunt her down and kill her, and there were some who believed he’d have that right. More than once, he threatened to put her in the asylum. Maudie never told these things to the women who were her friends, but they had a way of knowing.

Hennie understood things weren’t good between Joe and Maudie, but she hadn’t understood just how bad they were, not until that day she’d stopped by the cabin and found Maudie not an hour away from giving birth. “Where’s Joe? Did he go for the doctor?” she asked.

“He left two days ago. I expect he’s on a high lonesome somewhere.” Maudie twisted in agony on the bunk. “He didn’t know the baby was coming or he’d have been here. I know he would have. The baby’s early,” she added, pleading in her voice so that Hennie would not say a word of criticism about Joe.

Hennie wondered why a wife would protect her husband that way, but Maudie must have her reasons, she decided, and only sniffed. “They’re all early up here. It’s too late to go for the doctor. You’re too far along to be left alone. I guess it’s up to you and me to deliver this baby—mostly you.” She chuckled to ease herself and to make the woman in the bed smile. “Being early means a small baby and an easy delivery.”

The labor didn’t last long, but Maudie was sickly, and it was all she could do to push out the baby, a mewly thing, tiny but healthy. Hennie wrapped the baby in a bit of towel and was just finishing cleaning up the bed when Joe stalked in, drunk, cursing his wife because supper wasn’t on the table.

Hennie swallowed down her anger and told him, “Maudie needs her rest. She’s just given you a daughter.”

“A daughter!” Joe took a swig from the bottle in his hand. “I’d rather have a sow than a daughter for all she’s worth. I told her a son. I wanted a son. All this time, and nothing but a girl!” he said, raging as if he’d swallowed a kerosene lamp. “I
guess she’s not woman enough to give me a son, just a hard-boiled brat of a girl.”

Hennie glanced over at Maudie then, grateful that the woman had gone to sleep and was spared her husband’s anger.

“Now she’s done with it, she can get up and fix my supper.”

“I’ll do it,” Hennie said, mad enough to wring the man’s stringy neck. Hennie knew he wouldn’t cook his own food, and if she didn’t do it, Joe would pull his wife out of her sickbed as soon as Hennie left. She wondered then about the bruises she’d seen on Maudie’s arms and legs. Most likely, the man had taken a stick to his wife.

When Joe had eaten and finished his bottle, Hennie told him, “Don’t bother Maudie now. She needs her rest.”

“Don’t you be telling me what for. The Bible says women’s to be silent around their men.”

“What do you know about the Bible?”

“I know that much.”

Hennie wanted to remind Joe of some other things the Bible said, but she’d have been wasting her breath. Besides, Maudie would suffer if Hennie got the best of Joe. So instead, she told him she’d bring his dinner the next day.

That night, however, a terrible storm swept across the mountain range. It raged for days, leaving Hennie snowbound at home. As soon as the trail was passable, she put on her snowshoes and went to Maudie. The woman was sitting in a rocker in front of a dead fire, staring straight ahead, when Hennie pushed open the door.

“Where’s your baby?” Hennie asked.

Maudie didn’t answer for a long time. “Gone under.”

“Oh, Maudie.” Hennie knelt beside the woman, taking her hands. “I’ll help with the laying out. I brought along my piecing, a doll quilt for Mae. It’s almost done. We’ll wrap her in that.”

“Joe’s got rid of her.” Maudie said it just like that—“Joe’s got rid of her”—as if he’d just stood at the door and thrown the baby into the trash heap.

Hennie shuddered as she wondered whether the little child was alive when Joe took her from her mother. That would have been murder, a terrible thing to accuse someone of doing, and Hennie didn’t ask. She feared what Joe would do to Maudie if he found out she’d told. And Hennie was afraid of what Joe might do to her for knowing. Or what she’d do to him.

Hennie didn’t tell anyone her suspicions, but she gave it out to the women along the Swan how things stood with Maudie, and they made sure she was provided for. There were some that gave their prayers. Hennie would have bought prayers off
them
for Maudie, but they weren’t for sale. They were freely given. This one gave her a sack of onions, saying they’d rot if Maudie didn’t take them, and that one brought her scraps for her piecing, telling Maudie it would be a blessing to take them because she was so sick of the double-pink, she couldn’t stand to take another stitch in it. Even women such as Hennie who joyed to quilt took their tops to her to be quilted. Instead of paying her money, which Joe would have taken, they brought her groceries from the Pinto store.

Women had a way of sharing, and Maudie knew that it
would be an unkindness to turn them down, for she was well aware they acted out of love. Accepting the work was her way of thanking the women for their generosity. When Maudie opened the door and saw one of her friends standing there, happiness spread across the dishearted woman’s face.

She loved visiting with the women, but Mae was her especial joy. Hennie believed Maudie must have seen her own baby’s face in Mae. The woman begged Hennie to bring Mae with her when she called, and on the few times Maudie made it down to Middle Swan, she stopped at the Comfort house, asking if Mae was about. Hennie, who’d told her Mae’s story, thought Maudie felt a kinship with the little lost child, for the woman was as lost a person as Hennie ever saw.

Hennie called on Maudie for the last time to find the woman in the cabin, lying in the bunk, Joe sitting in front of the fire. Hennie had brought along a pie, which she set on the table before she went to her friend. Maudie roused herself and turned, her hand covering the side of her face. But her hand wasn’t large enough to hide the burn.

“The fool woman burned herself. She screamed her eyes out till I thought I’d have to fist her. What the hell you waiting on? Bring me that pie. I ain’t had a decent thing to eat for two days. I need a drink, too. You got any about you?”

Hennie turned on him. “You get the doctor!”

“Get him yourself.”

“Git! Now!” Hennie snarled. “Or I’ll tell every man in Middle Swan what you did to your wife.” Hennie was mad enough to gouge his eyes out.

For a minute, she thought he might get up and try to kill her, and she didn’t care, because she was angry enough to fight a panther. But she knew Joe was a coward. He whined and fussed, muttering he hadn’t done a thing, but after a time, he put on his coat and left. Hennie wondered if he’d really bring the doctor, but maybe it didn’t matter, for she knew Maudie was dying. There was no need for a doctor, but it was in Hennie’s mind that Maudie would die easier if her husband wasn’t around.

After Joe left, Hennie went to the sick woman and folded back the quilt. Maudie lay there naked, her whole side burned, as if she’d fallen into the fire—or been shoved, Hennie thought. Maudie would have ripped off her fiery clothes, then lain down on the bed and suffered for hours. As she put her arm under Maudie’s pillow, Hennie felt an angel crown under the woman’s head and knew that little mass of feathers wadded up in the pillow meant the woman didn’t have but a little while left on this earth. “Maudie?” Hennie said, touching her friend’s hand.

The woman opened her eyes and muttered, “Hennie?” She tried to raise her head but couldn’t. So she squeezed Hennie’s hand instead.

“Joe’s gone for the doctor.”

“No use. I’m done for, and I’m glad. I don’t want to live anymore. I prayed you’d come. There’s something I got to give you,” Maudie said, taking her time with the words. Hennie thought Maudie meant a few coins or a trinket, something she didn’t want her husband to have, and Hennie said not to trouble herself.

But Maudie was agitated and wouldn’t be still until Hennie
brought her sewing basket to her. “It’s in the bottom, under a bit of paper,” Maudie whispered.

Hennie took the contents out of the basket, noticing the basting threads that had been carefully saved to be reused, the old-fashioned brass pins, and a wooden thimble that the woman must have carved herself. At the bottom of the basket was part of an envelope that had been glued down. Hennie pried it up then stopped, as she stared at what Maudie had saved. It was a piece of Mae’s dress, the one she was wearing when Hennie found her. Homespun it was and dyed blue. Only the scrap was new, never even washed.

“How did you get this?” Hennie asked after a time, although she knew the answer. “Mae is . . . Mae is . . .” She couldn’t speak the words.

“My baby,” Maudie said for her.

“You should have claimed her. Why didn’t you?”

“Joe would have killed her, too,” Maudie whispered. It took the dying woman a long time to tell the story, for her life was draining out of her.

She and Joe and Orleana, for that was Mae’s name, crossed the plains in a wagon by themselves. One night, the girl wandered off, and when he discovered her missing in the morning, Joe wouldn’t let Maudie search for her. He said that leaving her like that would teach the worthless thing. Maudie refused to leave without her child, so Joe tied her to the wagon, telling her she could go along or get dragged to death.

“He never wanted Orleana,” Maudie said slowly, explaining she’d prayed that someone kind would find her little girl
and keep her. She thought the child might even be better off with the Indians than with her own father. “But you found her,” Maudie said, her burned lips trying to form a smile.