Grace of a Hawk Read online

  I’ll be careful. I’ll return as soon as I am able, I promised Sawyer without words, reading his face. I knew how difficult it was for him to allow me to ride from his sight, and therefore from his protection – neither could I easily bear the prospect of him riding away from me, no matter the circumstances. I’d been much plagued of late with exhausting bouts of vomiting, further increasing his concern.

  I know, he’d said, in return. I know.

  Positioned near Caroline’s right shoulder and helping to brace her against the pains, Rebecca encouraged, “Once more!”

  “And again!” I ordered.

  The infant’s head slid forth, red face bunched like a fist. I cupped my hands to receive the child as a shoulder nudged free of Caroline’s body. She groaned and heaved, and stool stained the bed beneath her; without further delay, the tiny form slipped into my palms.

  “A boy!” I announced, hurrying to insert the tip of my smallest finger into his mouth, making a gentle circular motion within the tiny sleek confines, cleaning out birth fluids.

  Caroline’s face split with the grin I knew to anticipate, one which never failed to stun me in the totality of its delight, an expression that denied the pain so recently suffered, the indignities enacted upon the mother’s body to deliver the child all at once negated as a mother reached for her child. Satisfied the boy was breathing on his own and having wiped fluids from his eyes and nose, I placed him into Caroline’s waiting arms to attend to the after-birth. Rebecca helped me, the two of us making loose fists to knead Caroline’s belly; I watched, hawk-like, assessing the amount of blood as Caroline’s last link with her child slid free of her body. Assured that she was not bleeding an excessive amount, I dried my hands and fetched a length of string, measuring two fingers above the child’s taut belly to tie off and then snip the birthing cord.

  “He’s beautiful,” I congratulated Caroline, whose joy lit her entire countenance.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Davis,” she murmured, eyes on her new son. She rocked him in her arms while Rebecca and I worked to tidy both mother and child, and the space about them.

  What should have been, only minutes later, a placid, happy scene was summarily interrupted; an intrusion as ugly as it was uninvited. The door opened with enough force to startle all of us; I nearly dropped the bundle of linen I was carrying and looked up to behold the figure of a rotund woman framed in the afternoon light, small heads peeking around her skirts in attempt to catch a glimpse of Caroline. This intrusive woman made no attempt at introduction and instead swept officiously into the room, slamming closed the door in her wake, the gesture communicating obvious anger.

  “How could you allow this?” she demanded of the room at large, a voice harsh in its accusatory overtone, though clearly this woman was acquainted with at least the idea of me, for her question was meant to be rhetorical; she answered her own query by gasping, “This is deplorable! This…” Gesturing in my direction, she stuttered over perhaps a series of cruel and offensive descriptors before settling upon, “This…woman of ill repute attending to your delivery, Caroline! You are my brother’s own wife, not some common strumpet!”

  All air in the room – or perhaps only my own lungs – seemed to thin and dissipate. In the process of tidying the delivery space, my hands encrusted with drying blood and the bedclothes still soiled, I stared without blinking at this belligerent stranger who stood with arms akimbo; I clutched a linen towel, damp with water from the basin, and its wetness created patches on my sleeves in its journey down my wrists. A small burst of white dots flared in my vision ahead of a small knot of pain, centered behind my right eye.

  “Mama!” crowed the little boy who’d no doubt occupied the role of youngest before this afternoon, scurrying around the hostile figure filling the doorway and darting for the bedside. This movement, inserting a certain amount of realism back into the space, allowed me to exhale; objects seemed to snap back into their proper places. I was aware that Rebecca had drawn herself up from the bedside and stood with fists bunched.

  “Alice Doherty, you call yourself a Christian?” Rebecca challenged.

  Alice Doherty’s chin lifted a good two inches; she was so angry and affronted the skin beneath her chin quavered as she cried, “My soul is not the one endangered, Mrs. Krage! You may choose to open your home to a…to this woman and her Rebel soldier husband,” Alice Doherty may as well have been describing vermin, “and thereby expose your own sons to such filth –”

  “Alice!” gasped poor Caroline, so recently delivered of her newest child; her face gleamed pale as a pearl as she slumped against the pillows stacked behind her.

  Rebecca moved so swiftly that her skirts flowed in a blur; she clamped a hand around Alice’s upper arm and turned her about to face the dooryard, an impressive feat, as Alice was a good several-dozen pounds heavier than Rebecca. In no uncertain terms, her tone calling Tilson to my mind, Rebecca ordered, “You shall shut your despicable mouth and leave this house.”

  Alice wrenched free her arm and despite my condition I acted without thinking; I felt certain in that moment the self-righteous woman intended to strike Rebecca. I darted between them, displacing Rebecca; as I did so, I was granted a regrettably intimate look at Alice Doherty, noticing minute and unpleasant details – the grain of her sweating skin, nostrils that resembled those of a creature in the porcine lineage, fair hair swept beneath an un-adorned white bonnet. Her eyes, a watery blue, widened and she reared away, as though proximity to me might sully her flesh.

  “Keep away from me, whore!” Alice hissed. “And you, Rebecca Krage! How dare you call me despicable! I speak the truth.” Her cruel words landed like blows upon my face but I refused to give her the satisfaction of flinching; little did she know I had faced far worse than her.

  “The truth? You should not recognize the truth were it to fall from the heavens and land upon your personage!” Rebecca cried before I could respond, and stepped in front of me, both protective and furious. “Apologize to Mrs. Davis this instant!”

  Alice faced us with no hesitation, no sense of remorse. Her brow beetled as she regarded Rebecca anew, with an expression of taunting calculation. “Rebel soldiers and shameless whores. Are these heathen what you allow at your hearth?”

  Rebecca’s face appeared carved of pale stone as she stared bullets at Alice; I was gratified to observe the slightest suggestion of apprehension pass across Alice’s brow. Maintaining her composure with great effort, Rebecca said, “You know nothing of what you speak.”

  “Your sister-in-law has just been delivered of a child, Mrs. Doherty,” I interjected, my tone flat and unprovocative; Rebecca was trembling with anger and I edged around her, suddenly conscious of the stunned, gaping manner in which Caroline and her children were observing this unfortunate exchange. The infant was Alice’s newest nephew but she did not appear to wish for congratulations. Forcing myself to hold her spiteful gaze, which reminded me of Ginny Hossiter’s, I mustered the calm to say, “We are upsetting the both of them.”

  “Then you shall take your leave, at once,” Alice ordered, bristling, her lips white with sanctimonious anger. “I should have been called for this afternoon. I’ve spoken out against the doctor allowing you to attend births in our area. This is a community of upstanding people.”

  Rebecca’s composure shattered like a brick through plate glass. “How dare you circulate rumors concerning Mrs. Davis or my uncle, or any person in my home? What right have you to judge those you are unacquainted with?”

  Alice ignored these shouted questions, brushing past us and sailing to the bedside, where Caroline watched with speechless astonishment the drama unfolding in her house.

  “Mrs. Hemming, I do apologize,” I said. And then to Rebecca, “Come, let us take our leave,” unwilling to allow Alice a chance to discern the tremble in my hands; my heart beat with an erratic refrain but I refused to allow Alice to witness the way her words affected me, turning my attention to gathering our supplies. Assured that Caroline
and her newest son were managing well, I left the house clutching Tilson’s satchel, Rebecca at my side.

  Evening, and its subsequent chill, had advanced while Caroline labored. Rebecca and I sat alongside one another on the buggy seat, a heavy shawl tucked over our laps, Rebecca holding the reins while I leaned against her side, allowed the chance to crumble as I could not in the presence of others, dry-eyed but drained of all energy. Words retained their own singular capacity to injure, and devastate, this I knew well. I fixed my gaze on Whistler’s familiar rump as she drew the little buggy along the road that led to the bridge over the Iowa River, along the southern road and back to our homestead. I cupped both hands over my belly, offering wordless apologies to my unborn child.

  Yes, I was a whore. But I am no longer ashamed, and I pray you need never be ashamed of your mama.

  “I am so very angry, Lorie,” Rebecca said for the second time, and clutched my left hand in her right, winding our fingers together. “I am sorry she spoke to you in such a manner, dear one. I wanted to strike her malicious face. Please, do not believe for a moment what she says.”

  I held fast to Rebecca’s hand, unable to respond. Insults directed my way were painful enough but this was not simply an affront to me, which I could have tolerated, but also one to my husband. My Sawyer, who had come so close to death, whose scarred body and missing eye could be attributed precisely to what Alice Doherty suggested – the hatred directed at former Confederate soldiers, undying amongst those who’d fought on the opposite side of the conflict. Had not Zeb Crawford wanted each of us dead for that very reason, our Southern roots? He’d wanted us to pay for the grievous wrongs enacted upon him through the deaths of his soldier sons, all lost to the Cause; the brutality, the ravaging of soul after soul, the long-unhealed wounds, those both physical and emotional, likely incapable of mending in the span of my lifetime. Here was additional proof.

  More quietly, Rebecca continued, “Though it is no excuse for her miserable behavior, Alice Doherty lost her husband in the War and has never remarried. Her father was the minister to these parts for many years before he passed away and you shall never meet a more solid hypocrite than Alice. She is small-minded, and vicious in her opinions.”

  “But she speaks for the town, I am certain,” I whispered at last, feeling I must acknowledge this truth. Horace Parmley, an unctuous local journalist, took a morbid interest in our story back in July, producing, to date, two pieces in his broadside circular concerning my past as a prostitute, however reformed, and the continuing search for Thomas Yancy, federal marshal, who had not resurfaced since the night Zeb Crawford was killed in Rebecca’s dooryard. Yancy had ridden away like a demon that night, and Malcolm believed the shot he’d fired after the man struck true. But as much as I wished for Yancy’s subsequent death, instinct warned he was still alive somewhere out there. The physical state in which he currently existed, and his exact location, remained a mystery to this day.

  “Please do not believe that,” Rebecca said, squeezing my hand. “There are some equally dogmatic as Alice, this is true, but she represents a small minority, at best.”

  “But she said…”

  “She hurt you, and spoke against you and Sawyer, and for that I wish to hurt her,” Rebecca declared, with tender loyalty. “Oh, Lorie, you believed Alice was about to lift her hand to strike me, did you not, and rushed to defend me. I am ever so moved, dear one, though I was not in jeopardy. My intent was to drag Alice from the house and set her upon her large backside in the street.”

  Though the bitterness of Alice’s punishing words stung badly, I smiled at Rebecca’s frank pronouncement.

  “She did rather resemble a pig,” I agreed, and Rebecca laughed too. I squeezed my dearest friend’s hand and whispered, “Thank you for standing up for me.”

  “Horace’s absurd articles have stirred up the mutterings in the first place. I am certain the furor would have died away by now, as it has been months,” Rebecca groused. “He is ever less man than weasel.”

  “Yancy’s prolonged disappearance keeps the story alive.” I despised the man’s name on my tongue and restrained a shudder at the notion of him hiding somewhere, plotting his revenge. And neither had his son, Fallon, reappeared. Quade, himself also a marshal, kept us well informed of any unfolding developments; indeed, Quade had inquired after Yancy at the federal level, seeing to it that Yancy’s role the night of Zeb Crawford’s death was well documented. Sawyer, Rebecca, Tilson and I had each given testimony before yet another marshal, a lean, mild-mannered fellow sent from Des Moines last August to take our official statements.

  We had tied off all ends as best we could, here in Iowa City.

  It is finished, I thought, wishing the words did not inspire the hollow ache of ambiguity in my gut.

  Rebecca said, “You are possessed of an extraordinary soul, Lorie. Please, do not let a bitter woman such as Alice Doherty cast a pall over today. You were astonishing in your calm while Caroline labored.”

  “I’m thankful that it was an easy birth.” I drew the shawl farther over my knees. The hours of sunlight shortened with each passing day and there was a bite in the air not present even a week ago.

  “Do not be modest,” Rebecca chided.

  “And I remain most especially grateful that you will be in attendance when my turn comes.”

  “I am thankful for that, as well,” she said, and kissed my cheek. The homestead appeared on the horizon; two cabins of solid, rough-cut logs, the sprawling barn and adjacent corral, a curl of smoke from each chimney, gingham curtains adorning the single window, stately pines guarding the northern edge of the dooryard. The cheerful place beckoned with an undeniable sense of home. Rebecca indicated a particular horse in the pen and said, “Leverett has arrived. I had forgotten he was to dine with us this evening. I do hope he has been good company for Sawyer, and that the boys have not deviled them too terribly.”

  “Sawyer loves those boys,” I said, knowing this for truth. Cort and Nathaniel tagged along at his heels, just as they had at Boyd’s last summer, asking questions and getting in the way, but I knew Sawyer enjoyed their company.

  “He is most tolerant with them,” Rebecca agreed. “Even Lev is not always so, though I know he cares for my boys as well as could be expected.”

  Rebecca and Marshal Quade planned a March wedding. She wished for me to witness the marriage before Sawyer and I left for Minnesota and I found myself grateful for the buffer of the winter months before our inevitable separation. I ached at the thought of the rest of my life without Rebecca or Tilson present in it; even Deirdre, whose friendship and strength I would never forget, had not been as dear to me as Rebecca. And though she had not spoken the words aloud, I understood Rebecca’s fervent wish to delay her marriage to Quade until the last possible moment. I tucked my arm through hers, with love, and deep regret.

  She inferred the direction of my thoughts, to a certain degree. “I shall miss you so, Lorie. I try my best not to think of it.”

  “And I, you. I wish…” But I broke off the sentence, as one snapping a dry twig.

  “Lorie…”

  I looked her way at the imploring whisper, finding her cheeks mottled as she studied Quade’s horse in the corral, as though the gelding represented the inescapable reality in which she found herself. I could discern the pulse in her neck and knew who truly occupied her thoughts just now.

  “Not a day…hardly an hour…passes when I do not think of him.” The words were thick with choking pain.

  I wrapped my arms about her waist and held fast; she knew I understood she meant Boyd. There was nothing I could say to offer comfort and so I simply held her. The continued strain of having received no word from them bit into each of us, with increasing concern. A dozen times a day I manufactured excuses as to why Boyd had not posted a letter; or, I tried to rationalize, perhaps a note had been posted and then, for whatever reason, failed to make it all the way back to us here in Iowa City. But with each sunset drawing us closer
to winter snows our fear for them grew, quiet and insidious. Sawyer paced a nightly trench along the earthen floor of our cabin.

  Rebecca declared with quiet passion, “I know I have no right to continue to feel for Boyd – Lorie, only you are able to understand this, as I could never admit such to another living soul – but I do feel for him.” She issued a gasp, as though stabbed by an unseen knife. “I love him, oh dear God, I love him so. I believed, indeed I have prayed so desperately, that with time the feeling would atrophy within me but it seems to have only grown stronger for the passing of time.”

  Her words ran like blood from a deep gash and I gathered the reins from her grasp in the dusky evening light. Rebecca covered her face with both hands. The air around us shone with a tranquil copper glow, pristine with autumn beauty, chill and crisp as darkness advanced, the prairie’s greens having long since given way to gold; dry gold grasses lit by clear golden beams, only dust motes appearing to be in motion. I knew saying anything about Boyd and his intractable stubbornness would only serve to hurt her; I acknowledged softly, “He should not have left.”

  “But he must, I understand this,” Rebecca insisted, swiping at her tears. Her lovely face disclosed such deep longing I felt wounded. “He means to reach his kin and I only admire him for that. He needs them. I should never stand in the way of such need. But, how I miss him. The house and yard seem so terribly empty without him. And I miss dear young Malcolm, to be sure, but it is Boyd I think of all through the night.”