15
Murdock Ranch
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1906
Drizzle fell intermittently outside the open bedroom window as Hattie helped Doc lay out Jane-Ellen’s body. Although Hattie’s emotions were numbed by fatigue, she experienced a dull sense of relief that Jane-Ellen was finally at rest. Her death three hours ago had been a merciful release from an ordeal progressively more agonizing and ugly.
Within a day and a half of Doc’s diagnosis, Jane-Ellen developed difficulty opening her mouth, the symptom from which lockjaw got its name. It was followed by difficulty swallowing. Her muscles became rigid and subject to excruciating spasms. Convulsions followed, and Hattie feared she would relive Jane-Ellen’s ragged efforts to breathe in her dreams for a long time.
By the time Jake returned from the barn with a ranch hand and the plank to transport Jane-Ellen’s body to the icehouse, Doc and Hattie had finished washing and dressing it. Hattie looked away as the men transferred Jane-Ellen’s forever stilled body from the bed onto the board. She simply could not bear seeing the large mound of Jane-Ellen’s stomach where her unborn child still resided. Every time she glimpsed it, she was reminded of the day the baby abruptly stopped moving, all prior signs of life erased.
Jake’s reaction was the exact opposite. Compulsively, he stared at the shrouded mound. That was his child under there, forever barred from entering the world. He’d never know if it was a boy or a girl. He would probably wonder for the rest of his life.
He felt like he was bleeding to death, deep inside where no one could see. He’d dreamed sometimes of being free of this marriage in which his touch caused his wife to cringe. But not like this. Shit. Never like this. Jane-Ellen hadn’t been the right woman for him. But she’d been sweet and decent, undeserving of the inhuman agony she’d suffered from the first tetanus symptoms to her death. They’d both awaited the birth of their child eagerly. And, dammit, they would have made good parents. He felt it in his bones.
The icehouse door creaked when the ranch hand opened it. As they maneuvered the burdened plank through the opening and onto the sawdust-covered ice blocks, Jake thought it seemed a lonely place to leave Jane-Ellen’s body. But they didn’t have much choice in the matter.
The day Doc informed Hattie and Jake of Jane-Ellen’s condition, they sent a telegram to Augusta. One couldn’t, however, simply fly like a bird between San Francisco and Mattawa. Augusta had wired back to inform them that she and Mirabel had missed last week’s sailing but were booked on a steamer ship scheduled to leave tomorrow for Seattle and from there they would catch a train home. With a little luck and reasonable weather on the Pacific Ocean, they would arrive Sunday evening around five fifteen. Jake had talked to the pastor and scheduled the funeral for late Monday afternoon.
He gathered a couple more ranch hands to help him return the piano to the parlor. The day after Doc gave them the news, Hattie insisted they bring it upstairs to the room next to Jane-Ellen’s. Between bouts of nursing her, Hattie had played tirelessly. It was the only thing that helped alleviate Jane-Ellen’s pain—and then, only temporarily.
Doc materialized at his shoulder, haggard and thin, looking five years older than last week. “I’m going now, son,” he said wearily. “I’ve been ignoring my practice since Jane-Ellen fell sick. More ’n likely, there’s a load of patients after me like hounds after a bitch in heat.”
Jake shook his father-in-law’s hand, reaching out to squeeze Doc’s forearm with his free hand. “I’m sorry, Doc.”
“I know you are, son.” Doc’s eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them back. “I am, too.”
“Where’s Hattie?”
“I sent her to bed. She’s worn herself to the bone, but I couldn’t get her to sleep for more ’n two, three hours at a stretch before now.” Raising his eyes to meet Jake’s, he sighed. “Don’t be a stranger, now, boy. No matter what the future brings, I will always think of you as a son.” He walked away, loneliness stark in the slump of his shoulders. He had just lost his last blood kin.
Hattie emerged slowly from a deep, dreamless sleep. Finding it dark outside, she peered at the clock on her bureau to check the time. Her brow pleated. That couldn’t be correct. It was much too dark for seven a.m. Sitting up and reaching for her wrapper, she stared at the clock as though it might suddenly reveal the correct time. Then she realized the pendulum was still.
Of course. She hadn’t wound it during the not quite two weeks since hearing Jane-Ellen’s diagnosis.
Hattie used the necessary and brushed her teeth. Barefoot, she groped her way down the stairs. Using the moonlight through the kitchen windows to find her way around, she stirred the embers in the stove, added a couple of sticks of wood, and put on the kettle. While she waited for it to heat, she prepared the teapot and cut herself a wedge of cake.
A short while later, feeling stronger for her sleep and the snack, she opened the back door and stepped out into the cool early morning air. It was the first time she’d been outside since Doc said Jane-Ellen’s illness was fatal, and Hattie drew a deep breath. The boards of the porch were damp with dew against her bare feet.
Beneath the normal nocturnal noises, a harsh sound whispered on the wind. Hattie stepped off the back porch, trying to pinpoint the source. It sounded like it originated in the front yard, and she picked her way carefully over the damp lawn. Stopping at the corner of the house, she strained to see into the front porch shadows. The sound she’d heard was that of a man crying—harsh, deep, gut-wrenching crying.
Her eyes adjusted to the nighttime gloom and she stood at the edge of the flowerbed, distressed, uncertain. Rubbing one bare foot atop the other, she pondered how to help Jake, who sat on the porch floor, hunched over his pulled-up knees, head pressed against his kneecaps and shoulders jerking beneath the force of violent sobs.
Hattie had never seen a man cry like this before and she didn’t know what to do. Should she slip away and allow him to grieve in private? Should she offer comfort? Oh God, which was the least destructive option? In the end, she simply couldn’t walk away while he tore himself apart. Not trying to help was unthinkable. She climbed the stairs and crossed to squat next to him. Reaching out, she touched his shoulder. “Jake?”
He raised his head, and his eyelids were swollen and rimmed with red. The sound he made deep in his throat when he swallowed mid-sob made Hattie’s throat ache in sympathy. Then he reached out for her, pulling her into his arms with a force that knocked her off her feet.
She fell half across his lap, her knees striking the floor of the porch. She gasped for air as he clutched her with a strength that made her ribs creak. Carefully, she adjusted herself to a semicomfortable position. One of her feet struck a nearby bottle, sending it rolling, and she smelled whiskey as it splashed across the floorboards. Hattie wrapped her arms around Jake’s neck, tunneling her fingers into the soft layers of his hair as she pressed his face into the contour of her neck. Tremors wracked his body with each muffled cry.
“God, Hattie, I loved her so much when we got married.”
“I know.”
“It could have been so good,” he mumbled into her neck. “Dammit, it could have been perfect. Except she couldn’t stand me touching her. I loved her so much—and it repulsed her when I touched her.” His chest heaved with the force of his grief.
“Shh.” Hattie managed not to freeze in shock at the unexpected revelation. But she simply held Jake, rocking him and whispering mindless platitudes that hopefully soothed.
Jake gradually found comfort in Hattie’s embrace. She was soft and resilient, her arms holding him securely in an ultimately calming way. When the force of his crying gradually diminished and he finally pulled away, they were both overheated and damp from the combination of warm evening air, body heat, and tears.
“When you first announced your plans to marry Jane-Ellen,” Hattie said softly, “I was prepared to hate her.” She watched Jake wipe his nose on his shirtsleeve like a little boy before he recollected himself and pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “I wanted you to wait for me to grow up, you see, so I could marry you myself.” She smiled softly when his startled gaze flew to hers. “You ruined my plans, Jake. I wasn’t about to like your fiancée.”
Jake reached for the whiskey bottle, contemplating it for an instant before setting it aside. He looked at Hattie crouched a few feet away, her hair a wild tangle leached of color in the darkness, her white nightgown billowing around her. Rising to his feet, he dragged over a wicker chair. “Here, sit.” When she did, he sat at her feet cross-legged. “I never knew that. About you planning to marry me.”
“Well, of course not. I had my pride. But the point is, I was prepared not to like Jane-Ellen.” Tears rose in her eyes. “Only, I discovered it was impossible. She was always so nice to me. We were so different and she could really irritate me sometimes. The way she constantly worried about everyone’s opinion.”
He nodded. Jane-Ellen had definitely done that.
“But she was sweet and good to me,” Hattie went on. “Even when she acted as if her corsets were laced too tight.”
A snort of laughter escaped Jake, taking him by surprise. For a second he was appalled he found the least bit of humor in this situation. But, tears standing in her eyes, Hattie’s mouth cocked up on one side in a self-deprecatory grin, and he knew it was okay. They weren’t being disrespectful. And it wouldn’t do to idealize Jane-Ellen just because she was gone.
Gone. How euphemistic. Still, it sounded less final, somehow, than “dead.”
“She did do that, didn’t she? It was as though she needed to be absolutely perfect at all times.” Jake was silent for a moment. Then, suddenly, his fist smashed down on the floor of the porch. “Dammit, Hattie, she shouldn’t’ve had to die that way!”
“I know. It was so unfair.”
“Hell, yes, it’s unfair. And my baby—” His voice suddenly cracked in the middle of the word and he looked up into Hattie’s stricken eyes with angry, helpless grief. “I will never know, now, whether I would have had a son or a daughter.”
Dawn was just beginning to replace the darkness with a less impenetrable gray as once again they cried.