There were no neighbors. Not in the sense that Adelaide was used to. On the farm the nearest neighbors, the Gaines family, were two miles away. At the time she’d thought she lived in isolation, but out here, to say it again, there were no neighbors. There was only land.
When Mr. Olsen pulled his wagon up to Adelaide’s cabin, she laughed.
This couldn’t be it.
Her closest company, as far as she could see, were the Bear Paw Mountains. Even with Adelaide’s strong eyesight she found herself squinting to see them.
Mr. Olsen helped her haul the trunk out of the wagon; they had to work together to push it inside. Before he climbed back into the wagon, Adelaide touched his hand and he turned to her. Either her hand lingered there, or his did.
“Do you really think the Mudges will be waiting for you at their claim?”
He looked at their hands again, still touching.
“That wasn’t what I thought you were going to say.”
She knew what he meant, but feigned ignorance. Better that way. Safer. Instead she crossed her arms and spoke quickly.
“What if you get all that way,” she began, and stopped. Took a breath. Was she really going to say this? “What if they aren’t there? What will happen to their supplies?”
Mr. Olsen looked up at the wagon, then back to her. “By rights I’d get to sell them. Though I doubt I’d make all that much.”
Adelaide didn’t look at Mr. Olsen when she spoke next.
“If you get there and they don’t turn up, please come back. I’ll buy what they left behind.”
Just saying the words made her feel like a scavenger.
Even more so because it might actually be her fault the Mudges weren’t there.
“I understand,” Mr. Olsen said.
Then he climbed into the wagon. Right before he got the horses going, he reached below his seat and held his hand out to her.
“Take these,” he said.
The tin of dried peaches. With that, he rode off.
She stood at the doorway and watched Mr. Olsen go. She wanted him to turn around and say something, absolve her of her guilt. Her shame. But how could he do what she couldn’t do for herself?
Finally, she had to turn away from Mr. Olsen and his wagon. The land here lay so flat—and so empty—that she probably wouldn’t lose sight of him for miles. He might ride for an hour and it could still look like he’d barely moved. This made her feel lost, trapped, marooned. She focused on her new home just so she wouldn’t scream.
The cabin was twelve by twelve, a single room, with an outhouse already built out back. The shack had been built with no foundation, plain boards for siding, then black tar paper to cover that. All of it held in place by lath that had been nailed in. The shack had a roof, but no ceiling. Adelaide could already foresee nights when the wind would creep up under the roof and settle down on her. In true winter the temperature promised to plummet below zero. She’d need an oven and firewood or coal. But right now, all she had inside the cabin was that steamer trunk.
Behind the cabin, the outhouse sagged like the old hotel. One of her first jobs would be to fortify it. A well had indeed been dug nearby, but when she tested it, it only brought up alkaline water. Animals might drink it, but not people. She wondered if the salesman knew it was unusable when he sold her the claim. The promise of the well had added twenty-five dollars to the price.
An empty cabin, no food, a well that didn’t work, the utter emptiness of the landscape, and that wind, which never seemed to stop. Adelaide walked back into the cabin and sat on the trunk and wondered how she ever thought she would survive.
And then, for more than a moment, she wondered if she even should.
She had no people left, so what exactly was keeping her alive?
The only thought that brought her back was imagining Mr. Olsen arriving at her cabin door, meaning to sell her the Mudges’ goods and finding Adelaide dead by her own hand. Then he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, becoming curious about the steamer trunk. He would open it. And that would be the end of him.
How many more would die after that?
Adelaide Henry had a responsibility. One passed down from her parents. Caretaker? Jailer? What was the difference here, really? For her whole life—thirty-one years—she’d been preparing for this role. Some part of her had prayed that it would never come. But here it was.
Queer folk, that’s what they say about the Henrys.
That might’ve been true enough, but one thing they never said is that the Henrys shirked their responsibilities. They weren’t people who asked others to carry their load.
She took one deep breath sitting there on the trunk.
And then Adelaide Henry rose.