Sisters (10 page)

Sophie followed behind,
stopping before she went in when she saw a s small figure sitting
near the corner of the shack. It was a child of about two. He looked
up at her suspiciously from beneath a tangle of black curls, then
resumed his play, as oblivious of the screams from inside as were the
chickens scratching in the dirt near him.

Sophie rushed on into the
shack and found Miss Travers kneeling beside a prostrate figure, a
woman incongruously dressed in red, who was sprawled near a hole in
the middle of the shack floor. "She's down there," the
woman was shrieking and sobbing, "and there are two rattlers,
two goddamned snakes and my Jenny!"

"Shh. Shh. You'll only
frighten Jenny more."

The hole in the floor was
the entrance to a crude, shallow cellar, Sophie realized, when she
saw the wooden cover laid to one side. She peered cautiously into the
cellar, and she could see a girl of about four frozen against the
dirt wall at the far end, her face a rigid circle of white. Almost
directly beneath Sophie was one of the menacing shapes, a large
rattler coiled up. Like its fellow several feet closer to the child,
the snake's head was weaving back and forth, its unblinking eyes
probing the dim light for any sign of motion. Its rattle quivered,
making a dry, deadly sound. "Keep still, little Jenny, keep
still," Sophie found herself whispering.

The woman started to scream
louder. "Jenny! Jenny!" And she started to pound on the
floor of the shack as she called out to the child.

"Baby, stop it! You
must stop that!" When the woman continued her mad pounding, Miss
Travers raised her arm and brought it down swiftly, delivering a blow
which twisted Baby's head around violently. Baby stopped her
pounding, covering her face with her hands and beginning to moan.

"She's not going to be
of any use," Miss Travers said. "Sophie, get me the
shotgun. Out in the buckboard. Get it."

When Sophie rushed back in,
Miss Travers was holding a hoe with a long wooden handle. "I
can't get into the cellar because of where the snakes are," she
said. "And I can't shoot down into it because I might hit Jenny.
What I'm going to do is to reach down with the hoe and pull the
rattlers out. You're going to shoot them."

When Sophie started to
protest, Miss Travers silenced her with a look. "There is no
choice," she said, emphasizing each word. "We have to do
this." Sophie nodded, and Miss Travers continued, "I'll
show you how to shoot the gun, and at close range, you won't miss.
The thing you must absolutely remember is not to shoot until I've got
both snakes out of the cellar. They can't hear, but movement,
vibration, will set them off, and the shotgun blast will surely
startle the child. She'll jerk, and if there's a snake down there
when she does, he'll be into her."

The assurance with which
Miss Travers moved Baby behind a bed in the corner and then showed
Sophie how to work the shotgun helped keep Sophie outwardly calm. But
inwardly she felt a panic rising. She had killed snakes as a girl,
but remembering it was like watching a young stranger do it. They
were too long ago, those days when she could kill a rattler with a
well-thrown rock. The memories were of no help to her now.

In the corner, Baby stopped
moaning, and the shack was quiet for the first time since Sophie and
Miss Travers had arrived. Then Sophie heard it, soft, like pebbles
sliding down a slope, but infinitely threatening too, like an
assassin's whisper. All the games she and Helen had played with snake
rattles when they were children did nothing to blunt the terror which
shot through Sophie when she heard that whirring sound.

"Jenny, I'm going to
get the snakes out now. No matter what happens, you mustn't move."
After Miss Travers had spoken to the child, she turned to Sophie.
"Remember, you can't shoot until they're both out." Then
she lay down on the floor and reached into the cellar with the hoe.

"There," she
said, "there, I've got him. No, no, he's off. No, there, I've
got him. He's coming, coming out." She rose to her knees,
pulling the how slowly out of the cellar; then she began to stand,
but something happened, the snake began to slip off the end of the
hoe, perhaps, for suddenly Miss Travers jerked the hoe upward and the
rattler flew out of the cellar and straight at Sophie. It hit her on
the shoulder and side of the face, a cool rope of muscle, and she
screamed as it fell writhing to the floor. She scuttled backward and
in an instant the snake had coiled into a shape like a figure eight.
Sophie took aim with the shotgun. The lidless yellow eyes began anew
their scan for motion, the head going back and forth faster now.

"Sophie, no, don't
shoot! He won't strike unless you move. I must get the other out
before you shoot."

Sophie didn't answer. She
was afraid to move her lips, afraid even to blink. Not only would the
motion alert the rattler, it would break her concentration, and it
took the total effort of her mind and will to keep from pulling the
trigger and shooting the snake. His head was going back and forth,
searching the air for her, the susurrus of his rattle telling of
muscles tensed, waiting for release.

Out of the corner of her
eye Sophie could see Miss Travers reaching into the cellar with the
hoe again. This time she brought it up slowly, smoothly, flipping the
snake on the end of it to near the door. "All right, Sophie,"
she said, starting to duck down into the cellar.

But at that moment, Sophie
saw the black-haired child from outside in the doorway. The boy had
one hand on the doorframe and was about to step into the shack, right
into the rattler's striking range. "Miss Travers! The doorway!"
Sophie grasped and pointed, letting the shotgun fall.

Two things happened at
once. Miss Travers leaped forward with the hoe and chopped at the
snake near the door.

And the snake close to
Sophie struck. He hit her skirts and stuck there, his fangs caught in
the material. She kept trying to move away from him, backing up, but
they were joined together, trapped together. Sophie tried to take aim
with the shotgun, but the snake was too close. "Miss Travers!
Miss Travers!" Sophie screamed again and again, overcome with
horror at the writhing creature caught in her skirts. "Miss
Travers!"

The schoolteacher ran
across the room with her hoe, and with a single blow severed the
snake's body. Both halves continued to write, blood leaking out as he
twisted. Miss Travers struck at the head again and again, until
finally the creature lay dead. He fell away from Sophie, their
loathsome joining ended.

She fell into Miss Travers'
arms. "Shhh, shhh, now, you're fine," the older woman said,
patting her on the back. "Come, now, we must see to the
children."

Sophie calmed herself and
picked up the black-haired boy, who seemed sullenly unmindful of the
danger he'd been in. While Miss Travers got his crying sister from
the cellar, Baby reappeared from the corner beside the bed. She
reached for neither of her children, choosing instead to make some
repairs to her hairdo in from of the dusty mirror hanging from one of
the shack's bare studs. Now that Sophie had a moment to study her,
she saw that Baby's upturned nose and rosy lips were set on a softly
rounded prominence of bone. The result was a vaguely simian look that
was somehow appealingly sensuous. Not like anyone would mistake Baby
for a lady, particularly not in her red dress with its extreme
decolletage.

"Boy, did you save our
skins," Baby said, pushing a hairpin into her long brown hair.
"I thought Jenny was a goner for sure."

"What's a goner,
Mommy?" the girl asked from Miss Travers' lap. She was hiccuping
a little, but had stopped her sobbing.

"It's what Miss
Travers and her friend here kept you from bein', sweetie." Baby
tilted her head to examine the bruise beginning to form on her
jawline.

"This is Sophie
Dymond, Baby," Miss Travers said. "She's Helen's sister."

"Helen's sister! You
don't look anything like Helen!"

"Your two children are
quite different too," Sophie said. She made the observation
simply for the sake of conversation, but the result was far from
casual. Baby blushed furiously and turned back to the mirror. It
occurred to Sophie there might be some question about the children's
paternity, and she thought it best to change the subject. "Miss
Travers tells me Helen used to visit you."

"Yeah, she used to
come out here. It was good when she did." Baby spoke slowly, as
if remembering. "I get so lonesome to talk to another woman--"

"What happened to your
windows, Baby?" Miss Travers interrupted. The blond child on her
lap was waving flies away.

"They was shot out."

"Shot out? Who did
it?" Sophie asked.

"I didn't see exactly.
It happened at night. But I know who it was."

"Who?" Sophie
asked.

Baby looked at Miss
Travers. "It was the cattlemen," she said. "The big
cattlemen over in Cheyenne. They want us outta here."

"So they shot out your
windows?"

"It's not the first
time they done somethin' like that." Baby had finished with her
hair and came to sit on the edge of the bed beside Sophie. She spoke
to the child on Sophie's lap, "How ya doin', sweetheart?"
The child stretched out his arms and Baby took him, but at the same
time she was examining Sophie closely. "You married?" she
asked, her eyes shining like a small and curious animal.

"I have been. I'm a
widow now."

"Zack said he'd marry
me. Soon as we prove up on the homesteads, he said we'd get married."
She rocked gently back and forth with the little boy. "Maybe
you'll come visit me again?" she asked wistfully. "It gets
real lonesome out here. Zack hardly ever home, and I don't see nobody
'cept sometimes some of his friends." She ducked her head and
pushed a curl around the boy's ear, then turned to Sophie again, her
face earnest. "There's some things, you know, you can only talk
about with a married woman." She was speaking in a low voice so
that Miss Travers, who was cleaning the other child's face, wouldn't
hear. "Your sister, I could tell her things and she could tell
me things about men, you know. Things some people"--she looked
meaningfully at Miss Travers' direction--wouldn't understand."

"Helen told you
things?" It seemed impossible to Sophie that her sister would
have confided in this woman, but Baby nodded, holding her fingers to
her lips at the same time.

"But what? What kinds
of things did Helen tell you?"

"About that husband of
hers--what's his name?--and what he done to her." Because she
was whispering, Sophie hardly caught her words, and she had no chance
to ask her to repeat them, because Amy Travers had finished with the
older child. She sent her outside and turned to Baby.

"I want to know what
Jenny was doing in the cellar, Baby," Miss Travers said.

"Gettin' me some
potatoes. I never thought about snakes down down. Guess they was
tryin' to get cool. We had all that rain, and now it's so hot and
dry." She paused for a moment, then realized the intent of Miss
Travers' question. "Why?" she asked suspiciously. "What
d'ya think?"

Miss Travers answered by
taking in Baby's red dress.

"You think I'd put her
in the cellar while I...?" Baby hugged the boy child to her. "I
wouldn't do that. I wouldn't."

Miss Travers said nothing,
but continued to look meaningfully at the red dress. Baby looked down
at it too. "All right! I was hopin' for some company. But later.
How could you thinnk I'd put them down in the cellar? I just sent her
down for some potatoes..." Her voice trailed off, and she
brushed at the little boy's hair. Then suddenly she was shouting, "I
get so damned lonesome out here, what d'ya expect of me? Look at this
place." She swept one hand around at the shack's single room.
There were two beds, both with straw mattresses, a table, some
chairs, an iron stove for heating and cooking. There were no
cupboards, but shelves had been attached to the shack's bare studs,
and on them a few dishes were neatly stacked. Pans bright with
scouring hung from hooks underneath, and there were other signs
someone had tried to make the best of the shack: at the windows were
curtains hand-sewn from flour sacks; on the wall near the table, two
brightly colored chromos had been hung. But like everything else,
they were coated with a thin layer of dust. One could actually see
the dust trailing into the cabin over the bare windowsills. "No
goddamned windows!" Baby was shouting, on her feet now, pacing
back and forth, one arm holding the child on her hip. "No
goddamned windows and no goddamned people!"

Tears were running down her
cheeks, and she wiped at them angrily, leaving dirty smears in which
more tears left pale tracks. "And you think I'm no goddamned
good!" she shouted at Amy Travers. "You come out here and
talk to me about bein' proud and bein' pure, and you actin' like you
care, but you don't mean none of it, do you?" As she turned her
face away from Miss Travers, her eyes caught Sophie's, and suddenly
Baby seemed embarrassed by her outburst. "Now you won't come
back and see me, will you?" she said, wiping her face with the
back of her hand again.

Sophie did not know how to
answer, but she was saved from having to when Baby seemed to remember
something. A craftiness came into her eyes, and she looked more than
ever like a clever monkey, able to plot and devise, but unable to
simulate guilelessness. "You come back and we'll talk about
Helen," she said loudly to Sophie. She flashed a quick look at
Amy Travers, then turned back to Sophie. "You come back, and
we'll talk about my friend Helen."

As they drove away, Sophie
surveyed the Wilson homestead: two shacks and a sod hut, a grouping
made only a little less desolate by the nearby creek with cottonwoods
growing along it.