In my gut, I knew I’d just imagined legendary Willie Matthews, costumed as a boy, driving cattle up Chisholm Trail. She was one woman, a moment in time, who had re-created history. And the other woman, the one with the long black braids scrambling through briars, perhaps another forgotten legend from long ago.
I couldn’t explain what sorts of magic existed out on the cold, dark plains. I turned from the stories and disappeared back into the gloom.
Before the crackle of the woodfire, with the moan of an oncoming storm, I dragged a quilt atop my knees. I raised my fingers before me, considered my reddened, knobby knuckles. Just cold, not frostbitten. I flung my head back and sighed, tales wandering inside my mind. Sakes alive, course I wasn’t infected with hysteria. My ma always told of discernment, of her Holy Spirit, of how forces beyond our realm would speak—if you’d just quiet, just listen. Whatever was knotted in the wind didn’t feel like my ma’s religion but like something not yet named. I recognized that the world was more expansive than my belief.
In my rock fireplace, the flames writhed and stretched. Minutes evolved, time an everlasting swell. I read several chapters ofVanity Fair, then grabbed my pencil and theGuthrie Daily Leadercrossword. I marked the squares, my handwriting precise and angled, as wax bubbled down my tallow candle. The wind rattled—paper scraps shivered on the walls. To fill holes between boards, I’d shoved in newsprint and ripped up a sky-blue skirt, mismatched materials jigsawing up my walls. Hand-braided rugs lay on my wood-planked floors, and crates with curtains slung across became cabinets. My shack was cozy, quiet. And mine. I’d expected foreboding and terror, during lonesome nights on the prairie. But even after the horrors I’d experienced, I felt at ease. The shadowed, muted parts of myself felt at home in the wide dark.
For Yuletide, I’d plopped a sage bush in a brass drum, looped on popcorn and dried berries. In a few days, I’d light beeswax candles in tin holders and open the lone package resting on the tree—something the size of my fist brought over by the Browns. I pressed the newspaper flat. Five across, eight letters,King of the Wild Frontier. Crockett, the legendary frontiersman my brother Willie had imitated for a season with his antique coonskin cap—until ourrelentless teasing had pushed him into lavish cattlemen fashion. Fringed chaps and bright-chroma bandannas. I unwound my plait and trailed my fingers through my hair, swept up in memories of terrifying Magnolia with tales fromDavy Crockett’s Almanacks: Katy Goodgrit wrestling wolves, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind’s double streaks of blue lightning, or the giant haunting Old Sally Cato’s woods. That had been years after Magnolia had come to live with us, but before the haunted look left her eyes.
One dawn, light slanting through the barn’s eaves, I’d handed her the milk pail to haul inside. “If you spill,” I’d said, “Billy Bally Bully will stomp down outta the hills and eat you in one bite, lickety-split.”
She swallowed, whites showing round her brown eyes. “But Old Sally Cato killed him.”
“Right.” I dried my hands on my apron. “But he’s got buddies. That crashing during thunderstorms are giants as wide as twelve barns strolling on down to Kansas from the Missouri foothills.” I crouched. “If ever you hearsqueakity whirr whirr whirron the wind, that’s the sound of Old Sally Cato spinning thread on her porch.”
Magnolia’s knuckles pinked, tightening on the iron handle. I told her how Old Sally Cato’s boys had roused Billy Bally Bully from his sleep and then raced on home, the monster on their heels, his mouth as broad as a valley, teeth as sharp as pitchforks. Magnolia blinked slow, and I continued, leaning against a post. “But, quick as lightning straight up sideaways, Old Sally Cato fought the monster, then sat back down at her spinning wheel.Squeakity whirr whirr whirr.”
A few nights later, during the midnight hours, with a norther whistling between loose boards, I’d felt Magnolia slip from beneath our quilt. She knelt on the floor, the wood planks faintly creaking, and peeked under the bed, her golden curls gathered under her puffy sleep bonnet, the blue hue of night shading her with otherworldly shadow.
“Magnolia,” I said, “sweetheart, come back to bed.”
Magnolia shrieked and lurched, bumping against the bed frame, her pale lashes translucent in the moon rays. The big owl stirred in theeaves and flew away, his wings flapping into the night. I gathered her in my arms and pulled her into bed. “It’s me, it’s me, I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “Squeakity whirr whirr whirris just wind songs.”
As far back as I could remember, I had stirred up disorder and chaos. With one mindless tale, her body had tensed again, her worries returned.
“It’s me.” I rubbed her back. “It’s always you and me.”
As moonlight crept through the cracks between wallpaper and fabric, my candle guttering, firelight a’glow on the mounds of wax, I folded my hair into a long braid. On the newsprint, belowCrockett, I added the last words to my crossword,a haunting, then folded the newspaper in fourths and sat awhile in the loud silence. Flame glowed through my Ball jar of potpourri, brightening the melon and fuchsia and rouge tones of last spring, the wildflowers I’d gathered and boiled. Rose vervain and fleabane, hedge parsley and sky-blue aster. Now the petals were just abandoned memory, isolated in their glass cage. I tugged my robe tight over my nightgown. I felt hazy, detached from reality, my thoughts spiraling round and round, aimlessly circling how the wind screeched out in my open plain. A cattle drive spread across my land, a downpour foaming over the herd, Willie Matthews wrangling steers on her mustang, yellow oilcloth slicker bright in the gloom. Flame stretched from my fireplace, and my candlewick scrawled long shadows across my walls. I pressed my thumb into the warm wax, felt something. Then I stood and tossed the newspaper, with all those words, into the fire.
Chapter Fifteen
Itrimmed my lampwicks with my dagger, fresh kerosene ready for sundown. Wiping my blackened palms on my apron, I grabbed the sagebrush broom off its nail. Swept the floor and chimney, whisking the pile of ash from my home, thoughts tangled up with long-forgotten stories. With household chores almost complete, I could gallop through fields, training my horses.
I groaned—I’d forgotten to clean the dratted butter separator again. I hated the slow, precise disassembling of parts, the gentle scrubbing, the absolute tedium. If I ever dragged out my oil paints, I’d grasp gray and brown pigment, toss some dirt across canvas, capture the monotonous emptiness that was winter on my farm. As I removed the crank handle and disks from the separator, the swish of skirts through grass broke my solitude. I squinted through unbroken sunrays. Olive strode toward me with a basket rounded by a cheery gingham cloth. “Joyous tidings,” she called.
I dropped the separator and wrung my hands on my apron. “Olive, happy Yule.”
She smirked. “You’ve ash all about your face.”
I dragged my rag across my skin, scraping off dirt and weariness.
“It’s in your hair,” she added.
“Of course it is. Shall you like to come back after I’ve had my wash?” I flung my hand westward. “In the frigid creek.”
Her gaze swept the clutter of projects strewn across my porch. “Mmm.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“I never said it wasn’t.” She transferred her weight, the plum velvet ribbon rimming her hem wavering, then settling. “Heard tomorrow was Christmas Eve.”
“Huh. Heard that too.”
“Coming to the dance?”
I sat beneath my wooden shake-shingles. “Not likely.”
Olive grabbed my pail of walnuts and sat beside me, puffing her starchy skirts over her propped knees. One warm autumn day, I’d tossed the pail of lime-green walnut balls across a hard patch of earth, and without restraint I’d set to stomping the nuts from the soft outer hull. Though homesteading was lonesome and monotonous, some moments were full of lavish, private abandon.
