14

PENNY WAS DEEP in the woodlot, her hands stained purple-black, sweet and slick with juice. She sucked her fingers, then picked more blackberries to fill the pail. Late afternoon in September, Cora had gone into town. Beneath the veil of mosquito netting, Phoebe dozed in her buggy, lulled by the rasping cottonwood leaves. White tufts of cottonwood fluff and milkweed drifted like snow in the slanting sunlight. The leaves were starting to turn, the wild grapevine twisting up the trunk of a dead oak like trembling blood-red hands. Going down a shallow ravine where the berries grew thick, Penny ate another handful, darkening her mouth. Then she started at the sound of tires tearing up the yard. It seemed curious that Cora was back so early. And since when did she drive so carelessly?

She pricked her ears to male voices. Their hooting and catcalls carried all the way into the trees that hid her. Rude, awful words, the kind that only roughnecks say to girls. Pen-ny, oh Pen-ny! They called out her name in menacing singsong. The geese were making a mighty racket. They could have driven off one person, but not a whole gang of boys. She wondered why Cora didn't have a big mean dog instead—some powerful mutt who would go straight for the throat. What good were a bunch of geese?

They kept singing out her name, their voices louder and louder. The woodlot echoed with the noise of snapping branches, big-booted feet smacking the ground. So this was it, what Mr. Renfew had warned her about. Why girls and women weren't supposed to live on remote farms without a man to protect them. At the bottom of the ravine, she crouched against the damp earth. Although she summoned all her will, she could not stop shaking. If they found her, they would rape her just like that Stadler girl. Throw a filthy blanket over her head and rough her up, one of them after the other, until she was too brutalized and ashamed to hold up her head in public again. How could she keep Phoebe safe? She began to sob uncontrollably.

She could already imagine people in town yakking about her sorry fate. "Well, it's a pity, but what was that girl thinking of when she went out to live on that farm?" Pictures flitted through her head of the rifle in Cora's pickup, of Cora's work boots and trousered legs. Then she considered her own flimsy skirt, ankle socks, and bare knees pressed against last year's dead leaves. If she could, she would have hacked off her braid then and there, turned herself into a hard-bodied, loudmouthed, big-fisted boy whom no one would dare to meddle with.

Phoebe began to cry, her thin wail echoing through the woodlot.

"Hey," a voice said. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

The footsteps grew louder.

No. Without rising from her cowering huddle, Penny grabbed the buggy frame and rocked it. Please be quiet, please. Her sweaty palm could barely hold on, but she managed to keep rocking until Phoebe's cries tapered off.

She lost all sense of time. The boys' voices echoed louder, softer, louder again. She could no longer decide where they were, if they were coming closer or heading away. Jagged laughter rang out, a drunken howl. The back door of the house kept slamming. The noise of something being shattered sent a shudder up her spine.

 

Stiff and cold, she lay on her stomach. When she arched her neck, she could see the black sky and sharp sickle moon that shone starkly through a break in the leaves. Night sounds drowned out whatever was happening in the house and yard. Raccoons crashed through the bushes. Mosquitoes whined, their bites covering her skin like a rash. Twigs and dead leaves glued themselves to her bare shins. When Phoebe screamed in hunger, Penny eased her hand into the buggy and tried to soothe her by letting her suck on her berry-stained finger. Footsteps tore through the woodlot. A hoarse voice called out her name. Frozen to the earth, her legs were useless, all pins and needles. Phoebe spat Penny's finger from her mouth and howled.

Someone came stumbling down the ravine with a kerosene lantern. "Oh, my God."

Before Penny could say anything, Cora set down her lantern and rifle, then picked her up off the ground and hugged her so hard that Penny gasped. Cora was in tears.

"I saw the mess they made in the house, then I couldn't find you."

Penny clung to her, too shaken to speak. Cora touched her face, then let go of her and reached into the buggy for Phoebe.

"Are they gone now?" Penny found her voice again. "Are they gone?" Somehow or other, she found the words to tell Cora what happened.

 

They had made a mess of the kitchen, throwing crocks of flour and sugar to the floor, breaking dishes and jam pots. In the parlor, all the books had been knocked down from the shelves, one lamp broken. They'd ripped into the mattresses upstairs, looking for hidden money. They had pissed on Cora's bed. While Penny and Cora cleaned up the mess, Penny kept thinking it could have been worse. There could have been something else that lay broken on the floor if she and Phoebe hadn't been in the woodlot when they came. She helped drag the ruined mattress outside. Then they carried the mattress in the hired man's old room up to Cora's bedroom.

Penny discovered the phone was still in order. "Let's call the police."

Cora took the mouthpiece from her and placed it back on the hook. "I don't want the law out here."

"But Cora ..."

"Penny, listen." There was an edge of pleading to her voice. "My husband's brother is a district court judge. If the authorities came out here, they might make more trouble for us than the Nelson brothers." She rubbed her face, then looked at Penny wearily. "The law hasn't been able to do anything about the Nelson brothers anyway. The bastards always find an alibi, don't they? Trust me on this. I can protect us better than the sheriff."

 

While Cora made up the bed with fresh sheets, Penny cooked supper. But she couldn't eat any of it.

"They came by once before," Cora said. "I thought I'd frightened them off for good. I swear, if they ever come back, that will be the last time."

A tremor of fear passed through Penny when she saw the firmness in Cora's jaw. She meant it. If she had to, she would really shoot the Nelson brothers dead. Penny stared at her plate of baked beans and mulled over the story of how Cora had nearly gunned down her husband in this very kitchen. Her rifle was still propped in the corner. She observed Cora's hands, imagined her finger pulling the trigger. The thought jarred her so much, she pushed her plate away and hauled herself out of her chair.

"What is it, Penny?" Cora got up and followed her. "You're still shaking." She took both of Penny's hands. "You're scared, aren't you? Listen to me, honey. Scared is the worst thing you can be."

Penny looked straight into Cora's eyes, green and clear as glass.

"If you're scared, that means you let them win. Get good and mad, for God's sake. Say a few swear words."

All Penny could manage was a feeble shit. Cora went to check the bolt on the door. "It's dark now, but tomorrow morning, bright and early, I'm taking you behind the barn and teaching you to shoot that rifle."

***

They stood ankle deep in the grass. On the other side of the barbed-wire fence, the cow lolled on her side and flicked away flies. Chickens scratched in the weeds. Phoebe babbled in her buggy a few feet behind them. Twenty feet in front of them was the old hitching post on which Cora had nailed a rusty coffee can.

"That's your target. And this is the rifle. First you should learn how to load it. Like this." Penny watched her feed bullet cartridges into the chamber. "Later I'll teach you how to clean and oil it, but now I want you to practice firing it. You have to hold the barrel at the right level." She demonstrated, the rifle butt against her shoulder, her hand holding the barrel steady. "Not too high, unless you're duck hunting, and not too low—you don't want to shoot your own foot. When you take aim, you look down the barrel. Now, this is the lever." She pointed to the long, flat oval lever behind the trigger. "You have to cock the lever downward and back up again between every shot. The lever releases the spent cartridge and chambers the new cartridge. Do you see, Penny? All right, now I've cocked the lever, and you can pull the trigger and fire at the target."

When Cora handed her the rifle, Penny's arms trembled under its weight. Stories raced through her head of deer hunters accidentally blowing their faces off. She recalled Mr. H.'s seldom-used rifle, which he kept locked in a glass cabinet in his study. He forbade his daughters to go anywhere near it. "Guns can go off, just like that," he had warned them. Besides, she thought, anyone seeing her with the rifle would notice how scared she was. They would grab it away and turn it against her.

"What's the matter?" Cora asked her.

"I can't."

When she tried to give the gun back, Cora refused to take it. "Supposing those louts come back. What are you going to do?" Impatience crept into her voice. For an instant, Penny thought she sounded exactly like her mother. "Hide on your belly at the bottom of the woodlot? This is how you hold it. The barrel should be this high. Brace the butt against your shoulder." She positioned Penny's limp and unwilling hands. "Come on, you're no sissy. I've seen you go after chickens with a hatchet. You don't even flinch. Why are you so afraid of the rifle?"

The Winchester was alien, so metallic and hard. It felt wrong for her to even touch it. When she tried to explain that, Cora placed her hand on Penny's shoulder—a firm and steadying grip.

"Maybe you heard all kinds of stories about how girls aren't supposed to shoot guns. Penny, that's a load of bunk. My parents used to take me hunting. My mother taught me how to shoot. I swear she was a better shot than my father."

Penny thought of the photograph of the woman in dungarees posing in triumph over the wildcat she had brought down. She could not possibly imagine herself doing such a thing. "It's so heavy." She wielded her last excuse like a butter knife.

"You'll get used to it." Stepping behind her, Cora placed one hand on Penny's under the barrel, helping her support the weight. With her other hand, she reached around, her finger steadying Penny's on the trigger. "When we pull the trigger," she said, her voice in Penny's ear, "you'll feel the recoil. The rifle will push back against you. That can give you a fright if you aren't prepared. If you don't know how to brace yourself, it can throw you back a couple feet or even knock you over. But I'm right here behind you. We'll brace together." It didn't matter anymore that her hands were shaking and sweating. Cora held them in place.

"That coffee can is about the height of a man's chest. This is just for practice. I don't want you to aim to kill unless it's your last resort. But it's a powerful thing, knowing you could do it if you had to. Because once you know how, your opponent will see it in your eyes. Usually that's enough to make him back off. If you shoot over his head, then he'll hightail it. Now squeeze the trigger as gently as you can. If you pull too hard, the rifle will jerk and you'll lose control of your aim. You don't want that."

Before Penny could protest, Cora's hand helped her aim for the coffee can and her finger pressed Penny's on the trigger, pulling it back. The crack of the bullet's report exploded inside her head. The recoil threw her back against Cora, who kept her upright and held her hands in place. The cow bolted to the other side of the pasture. Phoebe shrieked. But for the first time, Cora ignored her cries.

"Look, Penny! Look at that hole you shot through the coffee can."

Only then did she see how the morning sky glimmered through the bullet hole.

"Let's try it again. Brace yourself for the next shot. Bend your knees a little. Remember, you won't always have me behind you. Cock the lever like I showed you."

Penny moved the lever down and back up again, listening to the click of the new cartridge settling into place.

"Good. Now stand steady and pull gently."

This time Penny braced, anticipating the hard push against her shoulder and the ache that followed. She tried to close her ears to the deafening racket. She cocked and squeezed the trigger again, another bullet ripping through the coffee can. Phoebe's cries were lost as they fired over and over. Cora's hands steadied hers and corrected her aim until Penny couldn't say anymore who was shooting. Then, without a word, Cora stepped away, leaving her to hold the rifle's full weight. Bracing herself, knees supple, Penny looked down the barrel at her target and fired. As the bullet tore another hole in the coffee can, a blinding sense of elation pierced her.

Cora picked up Phoebe. Penny thought she would take the baby back to the house, but she stayed and watched. When Penny missed the coffee can, Cora told her to sight her target again and aim steady. Cora watched her progress until Phoebe got used to the loud bangs and stopped crying.

Penny's arms ached and her shoulder felt bruised, but she went on cocking the lever, squeezing the trigger. When she ran out of bullets, Cora showed her how to reload. Prizing the old coffee can off the post, she nailed up a new one. As Penny started firing again, something new took possession of her. She contemplated the force that had driven her mother's hand when she slapped her, how she had let her mother hit her without raising her hands to ward off the blow. Now the force behind her mother's hand was moving through her. She would never be defenseless again, never just stand there and take it. She kept firing until she ran out of the second round of bullets. When Cora finally took the rifle away, she looked at Penny in a way she never had before. A few seconds passed before Penny recognized the awe in her gaze.

"Well, well," said Cora. "You nearly had me fooled into thinking you were a timid little mouse. But look at how fast you got the hang of that. You're a natural, Penny. You have a natural talent for this."

 

A natural talent. The words engraved themselves in Penny's head. Every morning they practiced. Cora set more difficult targets, having Penny aim at an old tire that hung from a tree and swung in the wind. She made her shoot from farther away. She had her fire from a crouch, then from a kneeling position. The tender spot on Penny's right shoulder grew tough. Together they practiced until Penny was nearly as good a shot as Cora. As she read The Odyssey, she kept reminding herself that Athena was a warrior goddess, armed and ready to strike.

 

"When I fire and hit a target, it feels so good," she confessed after rifle practice one morning. Though she had never touched liquor, Penny imagined that the singing pleasure that rushed through her when she was shooting must be as intoxicating as wine. "Does that mean I'm crazy?" She said this jokingly, catching Cora's eye with a grin.

Cora didn't return her smile. "As long as you don't go around shooting people for the sake of it. Remember that these lessons are only for defending yourself."

Penny nodded, about to change the subject.

"Don't ever get tripped up by blood lust," Cora went on. There was something alien in her voice.

"Blood lust?" The expression made Penny laugh.

Cora remained sober. "It's just like any other kind of lust except it's hate that's behind it. Be careful what you hate. Especially now that you know how to shoot a rifle." She paused for breath. "What you hate will become your master as much as what you love."

Penny felt a blow. She considered the way she resented her mother and what she was doing with Mr. H. She told herself she didn't actually bate her. Hate was far too strong. She thought about her eleventh birthday, when her mother had taken her to the pictures to see Charlie Chaplin, squeezing her hand as they laughed together.

"Once I was too soft," Cora was saying. "I hated myself for being so weak. Each time he hit me, I felt like I ... I hated myself even more. He fed off that. He..." Cora stopped short. A strand of hair had blown into her mouth, and she drew it out. When the wind blew, her hair was long enough to get into her eyes. It covered her ears and neck. "But then, when I was pregnant for the second time, I started hating him instead. I made a promise to myself that I would never let him touch me again. I hope you never feel as much hate in all your life as I did when he showed up at the farm that night."

"Is it true you almost shot him?" Penny searched Cora's eyes, but they slipped right past her. "That's what people in town say."

Cora pressed her lips together. "I hope you don't go around spreading rumors about me the way that hired man did."

Penny let out a breath. "I'd never say anything behind your back. I don't even talk to anyone." She looked away, miserably aware that she had just confessed to Cora that she had no friends apart from her.

"At least that rumor is true." Cora's voice was emotionless. "I came so close to killing him. But just imagine if I had. Would I be free of him then?"

Penny shrugged in confusion. "Well, he'd be dead, wouldn't he?"

"And I'd be in jail."

"Even if you shot him to defend yourself?" Penny's forehead began to throb.

"Maybe the jury would've had some sympathy for me. But then again, maybe not. Certain judges like to make examples of women like me. I have no evidence that he hit me. It would have been my husband's reputation against my word. He's a chief surgeon." Cora shoved her hair out of her face. "It wouldn't be like taking a shot at one of those scruffy boys. I'd have his family coming after me. His brother's a judge. They would want justice. Or their idea of it. And what would happen to Phoebe if I was in jail?"

"But what if he comes back?" When Penny saw Cora shrink and turn away, she regretted the question.

"When it comes to protecting Phoebe, I'll take any consequences." She raked her hair, pulling it back tightly, stretching the skin on her forehead. "If it comes down to that, I would really kill. But that's not hate anymore." She smiled brokenly. "That's love for my daughter."

"If he's ever stupid enough to come back, he'll have both of us to worry about." Penny touched her arm. "I'd never let anyone hurt you or Phoebe."

Cora pulled away from her. "Don't talk like that. He's my burden, not yours. I don't want you thinking those kinds of thoughts."

 

That night after supper, Penny sat in the rocking chair with Phoebe while Cora took a bath upstairs. Penny heard the faint splashing of water, then the sound of the water draining away and Cora padding back to her room.

"Look how strong you are," Penny whispered, holding out her forefinger to Phoebe, who grasped it in her fist. She looked into the baby's eyes and made faces until she smiled.

"Penny! Could you come up here, please?"

Penny swept up the baby and climbed the stairs.

Wrapped in her grandfather's old dressing gown, Cora sat in front of the wardrobe mirror. She had combed the tangles out of her wet hair. Before Penny could say anything, she handed her the kitchen shears. From the shine on the blades, Penny could tell they had been sharpened that day.

"Could you cut my hair?" She took the baby and held her in her lap. "When I do it myself, it looks crooked."

Penny looked at the shears and then at Cora's face in the mirror. She looked so tired, so pale. "But why do you want to cut it? It looks nicer when it's a little longer. You have such pretty hair."

"Just cut it, Penny." Cora swallowed, then looked up at her. Her face softened. "Please."

So Penny reluctantly snipped at her chestnut locks, already starting to curl even though Cora had combed them out straight. She tried to cut as little as she could get away with.

"Shorter," Cora kept saying. "I want to get it off my neck and out of my eyes."

But that wasn't the real reason. A voice spoke inside Penny, as clear as the moonlight that shone through the opening in the curtains. Cora was afraid. Afraid that if she let her hair grow back, those hooligans would lose their fear of her. She was scared that if her hair got too long, it would make her vulnerable again, no different from any other woman. Penny kept cutting until Cora seemed satisfied. Though her hair wasn't quite as severely short as when Penny had first met her, she couldn't help noticing how exposed Cora's brow and cheekbones were. The tendons in her neck. And her face seemed new again, as naked as if she had just shed her skin.

 

One Saturday in September, they drove to Sandborn. "It's good for you," Cora said, "to see that there are other places in the world besides Minerva." She parked on Sandborn Main Street, which was twice as long as Main Street in Minerva. When Penny got out of the pickup and looked around, she swore that the buildings here were twice as high as anything she had seen before. There were more shops than she could count, at least four different banks, even restaurants and cafés. There was an opera house with Greek pillars and a fountain in which children tossed pennies. She couldn't resist peering into every shop window to ogle the things that weren't available in Minerva. The mannequins in Littleton's Apparel were dressed in scandalously short skirts that rose above the knee and bared the thigh. No one in Minerva would dare to wear something like that.

One store window was full of phonograph records. The tune "Charleston" blared out the open door. "Listen!" she called out to Cora. "That's that song they all talk about." She had read about the dance craze in the Chicago paper. The music made her want to sashay down the street. She could almost imagine she was in a big city where people danced all night. Then she moved on to a shop that sold radios. "Why don't we get one?" she asked breathlessly. It would be like bringing the city dance halls right into their house. "We could listen to music all day long." Washing diapers wouldn't be so bad if there was jazz in the background. The Hamiltons had a radio. Sometimes she used to listen to the serials and soap operas. Suddenly her time at the Hamiltons seemed so long ago. When she tried to remember certain things, like the wallpaper pattern in the back bedroom where she and her mother had slept, her memory grew fuzzy.

"Too much racket," Cora said. "Why do you want to spend your time listening to a box?" Then she looked thoughtful. "I think there might be an old gramophone somewhere in the attic. I can get it down if you like."

Penny had already moved on to the next shop window, belonging to E. J. Duvall, Fine Photographer. On display was an arrangement of his work: wedding portraits, high school graduation pictures, family reunion photographs. But what caught her eye were the baby pictures. "Cora!" She grabbed her sleeve and pointed. "Don't you want some pictures of Phoebe?"

"I suppose I might. This place looks too pricey, though. I'm surprised at these gewgaws on display. Small towns didn't used to be like this."

It was shocking to hear Cora refer to Sandborn as a small town. It had fifteen thousand people, five times as many as Minerva.

"My grandfather got to be well-off because he worked hard and never parted with a penny unless he had good reason. Now it seems they just want everybody to spend, spend, spend."

"Why are you so stingy about baby pictures?" Penny rolled her eyes.

On a street corner, a man played an accordion and sang in a language she couldn't understand. Cora gave him a dime. "French Canadian," she whispered to Penny.

Penny didn't see a soul she recognized. For the first time, she was among strangers who knew nothing about her or Cora. To them, we could be any two people, she thought, savoring the novelty of anonymity. Some of the boys eyed her legs in the brand-new silk stockings, but nobody gave her any funny looks. The most extraordinary thing was that no one gave Cora a second glance. Her hair had just been cut, and she had grown lean and muscled since Phoebe's birth. Since the weather was getting cooler, she wore a loose Chesterfield jacket over her freshly ironed white shirt. They must be worldly here, Penny decided. The sight of a woman in trousers seemed nothing out of the ordinary to them.

After strolling around the lake that skirted the center of town, they stopped in a corner shop to buy a bag of peanuts and two bottles of pop to tide them over on the way home. Penny took Phoebe when Cora went to the counter to pay. An old farmer asked Cora a few questions, which she answered cheerfully while waiting for the shopkeeper to bring her change. Balancing Phoebe in one arm, Penny leafed through the ladies' magazines and carefully memorized the pictures of the new bob hairstyles. Maybe one of these days she would pluck up the nerve to ask Cora to chop off her braid. She wouldn't want her hair as short as Cora's, just something fresh and sophisticated. And it would sure make washing it a lot simpler.

The old farmer ambled in her direction. "Say, that's a sweet baby you got there."

"She's our little sunshine, all right." She gazed proudly at Phoebe, who smiled for the old man.

"Penny, are you ready?"

Since Penny was carrying the baby, Cora held the door for her on their way out. Penny smiled back over her shoulder to the old farmer. When they were out on the sidewalk, she heard him talking to the shopkeeper. "That one looks awfully young to be a mother." At first she wondered what he was talking about. Cora was twenty-five. Then she stood reeling, hugging the baby for comfort.

"Penny!" Cora called out. She was already in the pickup. "Are you coming?"

He thought she was Phoebe's mother. That meant he probably thought that Cora was her husband. When Penny got into the pickup, she was too embarrassed to glance in her direction. Cora could pass, truly pass, as a man. That was why no one in Sandborn had looked at her peculiarly. She had everyone fooled. She was a shape-shifter, just like the selkie creature she once told her about. She could change herself from a woman to a man and back again.

"Are you all right?" Cora asked.

"I'm fine," she whispered.

"If you say so."

When Cora started driving down Sandborn Main Street, Penny looked out the fly-spattered windshield at the people who didn't know them. Something came loose inside her when she concluded those strangers would take one look at them and assume that she, Cora, and Phoebe were a family.