The Giver of Stars

10

One of the most notorious feuds of the Kentucky mountains began … in Hindman as a result of the killing of Linvin Higgins. Dolph Drawn, a deputy sheriff of Knott County, organized a posse and started for Letcher County with warrants for the arrest of William Wright and two other men accused of the murder … In the fight that followed several men were wounded and the sheriff’s horse was killed … (‘Devil John’ Wright, leader of the Wright faction, later paid for the animal because he ‘regretted the killing of a fine horse’.)

The feud lasted several years and was responsible for the death of 150 men.

WPA, Guide to Kentucky

Winter had come hard to the mountain, and Margery wrapped herself around Sven’s torso in the dark, hooking her leg around him for extra warmth, knowing that outside there would be four inches of ice to hack out of the top of the well and a whole bunch of animals waiting bad-temperedly to be fed and that these two facts, every morning, made the last five minutes under the huge pile of blankets all the sweeter.

‘Is this your way of trying to persuade me to make the coffee?’ Sven murmured sleepily, lowering his lips to her forehead, and shifting, just so she could be assured of quite how sweet he found it too.

‘Just saying good morning,’ she said, and let out a long, contented breath. His skin smelt so good. Sometimes when he wasn’t there she would sleep wrapped in his shirt, just to feel him near her. She trailed her finger speculatively across his chest, a question he answered silently. The minutes crept by pleasurably until he spoke again.

‘What’s the time, Marge?’

‘Um … a quarter to five.’

He groaned. ‘You do realize that if you’d stay with me we could get up a whole half-hour later?’

‘And it would be just as hard to do it. Plus Van Cleve would no more let me near his mine, these days, than he would ask me to take tea at his house.’

Sven had to admit she had a point. The last time she had come to see him – bringing a lunch pail he had forgotten – Bob at the Hoffman gate had informed her regretfully that he had specific orders not to let her in. Van Cleve had no proof, of course, that Margery O’Hare had anything to do with the legal letters about blocking the strip mining of North Ridge, but there were few enough people who had either the resources – or the courage – to have been behind it. And her public crack about the coloured miners had plainly stung.

‘So I guess it’ll be Christmas here, then,’ he said.

‘All the relatives as usual. A packed house,’ she said, her lips an inch from his. ‘Me, you, um … Bluey over there. Down, Blue!’ The dog, taking his name as a sign that food was imminent, had hurled himself onto the bed and across the coverlet, his bony legs scrabbling on top of their entwined bodies, licking their faces. ‘Ow! Jeez, dog! Oh, that’s done it. Okay. I’ll make the coffee.’ She sat up and pushed him away. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and detached regretfully the hand that had slid around her stomach.

‘You saving me from myself, Bluey boy?’ Sven said, and the dog rolled over between them, tongue lolling, for his belly to be tickled. ‘Both of you, huh?’

She grinned as she heard him fussing over the dog, the damn fool, and kept grinning the whole way into the kitchen, where she stooped, shivering, to light the range.

‘So, tell me something,’ Sven said, as they ate their eggs, their boots entwined under the table. ‘We spend nearly every night together. We eat together. We sleep together. I know how you like your eggs, the strength of your coffee, the fact that you don’t like cream. I know how hot you run your bath, the way you brush your hair forty strokes, tie it back and then don’t look at it a lick for the rest of the day. Hell, I know the names of all your animals, even that hen with the blunt beak. Minnie.’

‘Winnie.’

‘Okay. Nearly all your animals. So what is the difference between us living like this and doing it but just with a ring on your finger?’

Margery took a swig of her coffee. ‘You said we weren’t going to do this any more.’ She tried to smile, but there was a warning underneath it.

‘I’m not asking, I promise. I’m just curious. Because it seems to me there’s not a whole heap of difference.’

Margery put her knife and fork together on her plate. ‘Well, there is a difference. Because right now I can do what I like and there’s not much anyone could do about it.’

‘I told you that wouldn’t change. I’d hope you know after ten years that I’m a man of my word.’

‘I do. But it’s not just freedom to act without having to ask permission, it’s freedom in my head. The knowledge that I’m answerable to nobody. To go where I want. Do what I want. Say what I want. I love you, Sven, but I love you as a free woman.’ She leaned over and took his hand. ‘You don’t think knowing that I’m here purely because I want to be – not because some ring says I have to be – is a greater kind of love?’

‘I understand your reasoning.’

‘Then what?’

‘I think.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘I guess I’m just … afraid.’

‘Of what?’

He sighed. Turned her hand over in his. ‘That one day you’ll tell me to go.’

How could she convey to him how wrong he was? How could she let him know that he was in all ways the finest man she had known and that the few months she had spent without him had made every day feel like the bleakest winter? How could she tell him that even now, ten years in, him simply resting a hand on her waist made something buck and spark inside her?

She got up from the table and placed her arms around his neck, her seat upon his lap. She rested her cheek against his, so that her words were murmured in his ear. ‘I will never, ever tell you to go. There is no chance of that happening, Mr Gustavsson. I will be with you, day and night, for as long as you can stand me. And you know I never say anything I don’t mean.’

He was late to work, of course. He struggled to feel bad about it all day.

A holly wreath, a corn-husk doll, a pot of preserved fruit or a bracelet of polished stone; as Christmas drew closer, the girls would return each day with small thank-you gifts from the homes they visited. They pooled them at the library building, agreeing that something should be given to Fred Guisler for his support over the past six months but that bracelets and dollies were probably a little wide of the mark. Margery suspected there was only one gift that would make him happy, and that was something he was unlikely to put on his Christmas list.

Alice’s life now seemed to revolve around the library. She was fiercely efficient, had memorized every route from Baileyville to Jeffersonville, never balking at any extra mileage that Margery threw her way. She was the first to arrive each morning, striding down the dark, frost-covered road, and the last to leave at night, determinedly stitching books that Sophia would unpick and redo after she had gone. She had grown wiry, muscles newly visible in her arms, her skin weathered by long days exposed to the elements, and her face was set so that her lovely smile rarely lit her features, but flashed up only when it was required, and rarely stretched as far as her eyes.

‘That girl is the saddest thing I ever saw,’ Sophia remarked, as Alice brought her saddle in and went straight back out into the dark to give Spirit a rub-down. ‘Something ain’t right in that house.’ She shook her head as she sucked a piece of cotton, ready to rethread her needle.

‘I used to think Bennett Van Cleve was the greatest catch in Baileyville,’ said Izzy. ‘But I watched him walking with Alice from church the other day and he acts like she’s got chiggers. Wouldn’t even take her arm.’

‘He’s a pig,’ said Beth. ‘And that damn Peggy Foreman is always strolling past him in her finest, with her girls, trying to catch his eye.’

‘Ssh,’ said Margery, evenly. ‘No need for gossip. Alice is our friend.’

‘I meant it nicely,’ Izzy protested.

‘Doesn’t stop it being gossip,’ Margery said. She glanced at Fred, who was focused intently on framing three maps of the new routes they had taken on that week. He often stayed late, finding excuses to walk down and fix things that didn’t really need fixing long after he had finished with his horses, stacking up logs for the burner, or blocking draughts with rags. It didn’t take a genius to work out why.

‘How you doing, Kathleen?’

Kathleen Bligh wiped her forehead, and tried to raise a smile. ‘Oh, you know. Getting by.’

There was a peculiar weighted quality to the silence left by Garrett Bligh’s absence. On the table there was a selection of filled bowls and baskets, food gifts left by neighbours, and some mourning cards stood on the mantel; outside the back door two hens ruffled their feathers on a large stack of firewood that had arrived, unheralded, overnight. Further up the slope, the newly carved gravestone stood bleached white against its neighbours. People of the mountain, whatever anyone said about them, knew how to look after their own. So the cabin was warm, and food ready to be eaten, but the interior was still, motes floating in the undisturbed air, and the children lay motionless in the cot, their arms thrust across each other in afternoon sleep, as if the whole domestic tableau were suspended in time.

‘I brought you some magazines. I know you couldn’t face reading the last few, but I thought maybe some short stories? Or something for the children?’

‘You’re very kind,’ said Kathleen.

Alice stole a look at her. She didn’t know what to do, faced with the enormity of the woman’s loss. It was etched across Kathleen’s face, in her downturned eyes and the new lines around her mouth, visible in the effort it seemed to take her just to move her hand across her brow. She looked almost unbearably weary, as if she just wanted to lie down and sleep for a million years.

‘Did you want a drink?’ Kathleen said abruptly, as if remembering herself. She glanced behind her. ‘I think I have some coffee. Should still be warm. I’m sure I made some this morning.’

‘I’m fine. Thank you.’

They sat in the little room and Kathleen pulled her shawl around her. Outside, the mountain was silent, the trees bare, and the grey sky hung low over the spindly branches. A solitary crow broke the stillness, its harsh, abrasive cry rising above the mountaintop. Spirit, tied to the fence post, stamped a foot, steam rising from her nostrils.

Alice pulled the books from her saddlebag. ‘I know little Pete loves the rabbit stories and this one is new in from the publishing house itself. But I’ve earmarked some Bible readings in this one that you might take comfort in, if you really didn’t want to read anything longer. And there’s some poetry. Have you heard of George Herbert? Those can be good to dip into. I’ve been … reading quite a bit of poetry myself lately.’

She placed the books neatly on the table. ‘And you can keep these until the New Year.’

Kathleen regarded the little pile for a moment. She reached out a finger and traced the title of the book on the top. Then she withdrew it. ‘Miss Alice, you may as well take these back with you.’ She pushed her hair back from her face. ‘I wouldn’t want to waste them. I know how desperate everyone is for reading. And that’s a long wait for some.’

‘It’s no trouble.’

Kathleen’s smile wavered. ‘In fact, I can’t see how it’s worth you wasting your time coming all the way up here just now. To tell you the truth, I can’t hold a thought in my head and the children … Well, I don’t seem to have much time or energy to read to them either.’

‘Don’t you worry. There are plenty of books and magazines to go round. And I’ll just leave picture books for the children. You won’t need to do anything and they can –’

‘I can’t – I can’t seem to fix on much. I can’t do anything. I get up each day and I get through my chores and I feed the children and mind the animals but it all seems …’ Her smile broke. Kathleen lowered her face into her hands and let out an audible shaky sigh. A moment passed. Her shoulders began to convulse silently and, just as Alice was wondering what to say, a low, broken howl emerged from somewhere deep within Kathleen, raw and animal. It was the most painful sound Alice had ever heard. It rose and fell on a tide of grief, and seemed to come from some place completely broken. ‘I miss him.’ Kathleen wept, her hands pressed tightly to her face. ‘I just miss him. I miss him so much. I miss the feel of him and the touch of him and I miss his hair and I miss the way he used to say my name and I know he was sick for so long and that by the end he was barely a shell of himself but, oh, Lord, how am I meant to go on without him? Oh, God. Oh, God, I can’t do it. I just can’t. Oh, Miss Alice, I want my Garrett back. I just want him back.’

It was doubly shocking because, outside anger, Alice had never seen any of the local families express greater emotion than either mild disapproval or amusement. Mountain people were stoic, not given to unexpected shows of vulnerability. Which made this somehow even more unbearable. Alice leaned forward and took Kathleen in her arms, the young woman’s body racked with sobs so fierce that Alice’s own body shook with them. She placed her arms tightly around her, pulled her close and let her cry, holding her so tightly that the sadness seeping out of Kathleen became an almost tangible thing, the grief she carried a weight that settled over them both. She pressed her head to Kathleen’s, trying to lift a little of the sadness, to tell her silently that there was still beauty in this world, even if some days it took every bit of strength and obstinacy to find it. Eventually, like a wave crashing onto the shore, Kathleen’s sobs slowed, and quieted into sniffs and hiccups, leaving her to shake her head with embarrassment, and wipe at her eyes.

‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Alice whispered back. ‘Please don’t be sorry.’ She took Kathleen’s hands in her own. ‘It’s wonderful that you got to love somebody that much.’

Kathleen raised her head then, and her swollen, red-rimmed eyes searched Alice’s. She squeezed Alice’s hands. Both were roughened from work, thin and strong. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, and this time Alice understood that she meant something quite different. She held the woman’s gaze, until Kathleen finally released her hand and swiped at her tears with her flat palm, glancing over at the still sleeping children.

‘My goodness. You’d best be getting on,’ she said. ‘You got rounds to get through. Lord knows the weather’s closing in. And I’d better wake those babies or they’ll have me up half the night again.’

Alice didn’t move. ‘Kathleen?’

‘Yes?’ That desperate bright smile again, wavering, and yet determined. It seemed to take all the effort in the world.

Alice lifted the books onto her lap. ‘Would … would you like me to read to you?’

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

Two women sat in a tiny cabin on the side of a vast mountain as the sky slowly darkened, and inside the lamps sent out slivers of gold light through the gaps in the wide oak planks. One read, her voice quiet and precise, and the other sat, her stockinged feet tucked up under her on the chair, her head resting against her open palm, lost in her thoughts. Time passed slowly, and neither of them minded and the children, when they stirred awake, didn’t cry but sat quietly and listened, even though they understood barely any of what was said. An hour later, the two women stood at the door and, almost on an impulse, hugged each other tightly.

They wished each other a happy Christmas, and both smiled wryly, knowing that for each this year it would simply have to be endured. ‘Better days,’ said Kathleen.

‘Yes,’ Alice responded. ‘Better days.’ And with this thought she wrapped her scarf high around her neck so that it covered everything but her eyes, mounted the little brown and white horse and made her way back towards the town.

Perhaps it was boredom at being stuck in the house after years of long days spent in the camaraderie of other miners, but William liked Sophia to tell him what had been happening at the library each day. He knew all about Margery’s anonymous letters to the families of North Ridge, who had asked for which books at the cabin, about Mr Frederick’s deepening crush on Miss Alice, and the way she herself seemed to be hardening, like ice creeping across water, as that fool Bennett Van Cleve gave her the cold shoulder and killed her love for him, inch by frozen inch.

‘You think he’s one of them?’ William asked. ‘Men that like … other men?’

‘Who knows? Far as I can see that boy don’t love nothin’ but his own reflection. Wouldn’t surprise me if he stands in front of the mirror and kisses the glass every day ’stead of his wife,’ she retorted, and enjoyed the rare sight of her brother bent double with laughter.

But she was darned if she could find much to tell him today. Alice had sat down heavily on the little cane chair in the corner and her shoulders had slumped like she was carrying the weight of the world.

Tiredness doesn’t make you look like that. When they were physically tired the girls would pull off their boots and bitch and moan and rub at their eyes and laugh at each other. Alice just sat there, still as a stone, her thoughts somewhere far from the little cabin. Fred saw it. Sophia saw he was pretty much itching to walk over there, and comfort her, but instead he just went to his coffee jug and brewed her a fresh mug, placing it in front of her so gently that it took her a moment even to register that he had done it. Your heart would break to see how tender he looked at her.

‘You okay, girl?’ Sophia said quietly, when Fred had stepped out for more logs.

She didn’t speak for a moment, then wiped at her eyes with the heel of her palms. ‘I’m fine, Sophia. Thank you.’ She looked over her shoulder at the door. ‘Plenty worse off than me, right?’ She said it like it was something she’d repeated to herself many times. She said it like she was trying to convince herself of it.

‘Ain’t that always the truth,’ Sophia responded.

But then there was Margery. She’d blown in like a whirlwind as dusk fell, her eyes wild, her coat dusted with snow and a strange, brittle energy about her so that she forgot to close the door and Sophia had to scold her to remind her that it was still blizzarding outside, and was she actually born in a barn?

‘Anyone been by here?’ she said. The girl’s face was as white as if she’d seen a haint.

‘Who you expecting?’

‘Nobody,’ she said quickly. Her hands were trembling, but it wasn’t from cold.

Sophia put down her book. ‘You okay, Miss Margery? You don’t seem yourself.’

‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’ She peered out of the door, like she was waiting for something.

Sophia eyed her bag. ‘You want to give me those books, so I can enter them?’

Margery didn’t answer, her attention still fixed on the door, so Sophia got up and pulled them out herself, placing them on the desk one by one. ‘Mack Maguire and the Indian Chief? Weren’t you taking this to the Stone sisters up at Arnott’s Ridge?’

Margery’s head spun round. ‘What? Oh. Yes. I’ll … I’ll take them tomorrow.’

‘Ridge not passable?’

‘No.’

‘Then how you going to get up there tomorrow? It’s still snowing.’

Margery seemed temporarily lost for words. ‘I’ll … I’ll work it out.’

‘Where’s Little Women? You signed that out too, remember?’

She was behaving real strange. And then, she told William, Mr Frederick came in and it got really odd.

‘Fred, you got any spare guns?’

He put a basket of logs down by the burner. ‘Guns? What you want guns for, Marge?’

‘I just thought … I thought maybe it would be good for the girls to learn to shoot. To take a firearm on the remote routes. In case.’ She blinked twice. ‘Of snakes.’

‘In winter?’

‘Bears, then.’

‘Hibernating. ’Sides, nobody’s seen a bear in these mountains for five, ten years. You know that as well as I do.’

Sophia looked incredulous. ‘You think Mrs Brady’s gonna let her little girl carry a gun? You’re meant to be carrying books, Marge, not guns. You think some family who don’t trust you girls anyways gonna trust you more if you turn up at their house with a hunting rifle strapped to your back?’

Fred was frowning at her. He and Sophia exchanged a bemused look.

Margery appeared to snap out of whatever weird funk she was in. ‘You’re right. You’re right. Don’t know what I was thinking.’ She raised an unconvincing smile.

But here was the thing, Sophia told William, as they sat at the little table eating supper. Two days later when Margery returned, Sophia picked up her saddlebag to unpack it while Margery stepped out to use the water closet. The days were cold and hard and she liked to help the girls whichever way she could. She took out the last of the books, then nearly dropped the canvas bag in fright. At the bottom, neatly wrapped in a red handkerchief, she could just make out the bone grip of a Colt .45 pistol.

‘Bob told me you were waiting out here. I wondered why you cancelled on me last night.’ Sven Gustavsson emerged from the gates of the mine still in his work overalls but with his thick flannel jacket over the top and his hands thrust deep into his pockets. He walked up to the mule and stroked his neck, letting Charley’s soft nose nuzzle his pockets for treats. ‘Get a better offer, did you?’ He smiled and placed his hand on Margery’s leg. She flinched.

He removed it, his smile vanishing. ‘You okay?’

‘Can you come to mine when you’re done?’

He studied her face. ‘Sure. But I thought we weren’t seeing each other till Friday.’

‘Please.’

She never said please.

Despite the freezing temperatures he found her on the rocking chair on the stoop, her rifle across her legs in the dark, the light of the little oil lamp flickering across her face. She was rigid, her eyes trained on the horizon, her jaw set. Bluey sat at her feet, glancing up at her from minute to minute, as if her anxiety had rubbed off on him, and shaking in short bursts from the cold.

‘What’s going on, Marge?’

‘I think Clem McCullough is coming after me.’

Sven walked up to her. There was something absent and watchful in the way she spoke, as if she barely registered him being there. Her teeth chattered.

‘Marge?’ He went to place his hand on her knee, but remembering her reaction of earlier, he touched the back of her hand lightly instead. She was frozen. ‘Marge? It’s too cold to sit out here. You got to come inside.’

‘I need to be ready for him.’

‘The dog will let us know if anyone’s coming. C’mon. What happened?’

She stood finally and allowed him to steer her in. The cabin was freezing, and he wondered if she’d been inside at all. He lit the stove and brought in some more logs as she stood by the window looking out. Then he fed Bluey and boiled some water. ‘You stayed up all last night like that?’

‘Didn’t sleep a wink.’

Finally he sat down beside her and handed her a bowl of soup. She looked at it as if she didn’t want it, but then drank it in short, greedy bursts. And when she’d finished, she told him the story of her ride to Red Lick, her voice uncharacteristically halting, her knuckles white and trembling, as if even now she could feel McCullough’s grip still on her, his hot breath on her skin. And Sven Gustavsson, a man renowned for his unusually level temperament in a town full of hotheads, a man who would break up a bar fight nineteen times out of twenty where another would be unable to resist the satisfaction of the hurled punch, found that he was possessed of an uncharacteristic rage, a red mist that descended and made him want to seek out McCullough and deliver some of his own brand of vengeance, a vengeance that involved blood and fists and busted teeth.

None of this showed in his face, or in the calm of his voice when he spoke again. ‘You’re exhausted. Go to bed.’

She looked up at him. ‘You not coming?’

‘Nope. I’ll be out here while you sleep.’

Margery O’Hare was not a woman who liked to depend on anyone. It was a measure of how shaken she was, he realized, that she thanked him quietly, and took herself to bed without a word of protest.