The Giver of Stars

13

There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.

Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

In the end they sent Pastor McIntosh, as if God’s word might hold sway where Van Cleve’s could not. He knocked on the door of the Packhorse Library on a Tuesday evening and found the women in a circle, cleaning their saddles, a bucket of warm water between them, chatting companionably as the log burner roared in the corner. He removed his hat, folding it to his chest. ‘Ladies, I am sorry to interrupt your work but I wondered if I might have a word with Mrs Van Cleve here.’

‘If it’s Mr Van Cleve sent you, Pastor McIntosh, I’ll save your breath and tell you exactly what I told him, and his son, and his housekeeper, and anyone else who wants to know. I’m not going back.’

‘Lord, but that man is relentless,’ muttered Beth.

‘Well, that’s an understandable emotion, given the high feelings of recent weeks. But you are married now, dear. You are subject to a higher authority.’

‘Mr Van Cleve’s?’

‘No. God’s. Those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’

‘Good job she’s a lady, then,’ muttered Beth, and sniggered.

Pastor McIntosh’s smile wavered. He sat heavily on the seat by the door, and leaned forward. ‘You were married under God, Alice, and it’s your duty to return home. You just walking out like this is … well, it’s causing ripples. You need to think about the wider effects of your behaviour. Bennett’s unhappy. His father is unhappy.’

‘And my happiness? I’m guessing that doesn’t come into it.’

‘Dear girl – it is through domestic life that you will achieve true contentment. A woman’s place is in the home. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the saviour of the body. Ephesians, Chapter five, Verse twenty-two.’

Margery rubbed vigorous circles into the saddle soap without looking up. ‘Pastor, you know you’re talking to a room full of happily unmarried women here, right?’

He acted like he couldn’t hear. ‘Alice, I urge you to be guided by the Holy Bible, to hear the word of God. I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully – that one is from the first epistle to Timothy, Chapter five, Verse fourteen. Do you understand what he is saying to you, dear?’

‘Oh, I think I understand, thank you, Pastor.’

‘Alice, you don’t have to sit here and –’

‘I’m fine, Margery,’ Alice said, holding up a hand. ‘The pastor and I have always had interesting conversations. And I do think I understand what it is you’re telling me, Pastor.’

The other women exchanged silent looks. Beth gave a tiny shake of her head.

Alice scrubbed at a stubborn patch of dirt with a rag. She cocked her head, thinking. ‘I would be much obliged if you could advise me a little further, though.’

The pastor steepled his fingers. ‘Why, yes, child. What is it you want to know?’

Alice compressed her mouth for a moment, as if choosing her words carefully. Then, without looking up, she started to speak. ‘What does God say about smashing your daughter-in-law’s head repeatedly into a table because she had the audacity to give two old toys to some motherless girls? Do you have a verse for that one? Because I’d love to hear it.’

‘I’m sorry – what did you –’

‘Perhaps you have one for when a woman’s sight is still blurred in one eye because her father-in-law smacked her so hard in the face that she saw stars? Or what’s the Bible verse for when a man tries to give you paper money to make you behave as he wants you to? Do you think Ephesians has a view on that? Fifty dollars is quite a sum, after all. Large enough to ignore all kinds of sinful behaviour.’

Beth’s eyes widened. Margery thrust her head down.

‘Alice, dear, this – uh – this is all a private ma –’

‘Is that godly behaviour, Pastor? Because I’m listening really hard and all I’m hearing is everyone telling me what I’m apparently doing wrong. When actually I think I may have been the godliest one in the Van Cleve household. I might not spend enough time in church, granted, but I actually do minister to the poor and sick and needy. Never looked at another man, or given my husband reason to doubt me. I give away what I can.’ She leaned forward over the saddle. ‘I’ll tell you what I don’t do. I don’t call in men with machine-guns from across state lines to threaten my own workforce. I don’t charge that same workforce four times the fair amount for groceries and sack them if they try to buy food anywhere but the company store, until they run up debts they’ll die before they can pay back. I don’t throw the sick out of their company homes when they can’t work. I certainly don’t beat up young women until they can’t see, then send a servant over with money to smooth it over. So tell me, Pastor, who really is the ungodly one in all this? Just who needs a lecture on how to behave? Because I’m darned if I can work this one out.’

The little library had fallen completely silent. The pastor, his mouth working up and down, regarded each of the women’s faces: Beth and Sophia stooped innocently over their work, Margery’s gaze flickering between the two of them, and Alice, her chin up, her face a blazing question.

He placed his hat on his head. ‘I – I can see you’re busy, Mrs Van Cleve. Perhaps I’ll come back another time.’

‘Oh, please do, Pastor,’ she called, as he opened the door and hurried off into the dark. ‘I do so enjoy our Bible studies!’

With that final attempt by Pastor McIntosh – a man who could not accurately be described as the soul of discretion – word had finally travelled around the county that Alice Van Cleve really had left her husband and was not coming back. It had not improved Geoffrey Van Cleve’s mood – already weighted down by those rabble-rousers at the mine – one jot. Emboldened by the anonymous letters, the same troublemakers who had tried to resurrect the unions were now rumoured to be doing so again. This time, however, they were smarter about it. This time it had been done in quiet conversations, in casual talks down at Marvin’s Bar or the Red Horse honky-tonk, and often mentioned so swiftly that by the time Van Cleve’s men had arrived all there was to see was a few Hoffman men legitimately downing a cold beer after a long week’s work and just a vague sense of disturbance in the air.

‘Word is,’ said the governor, as they sat in the hotel bar, ‘you’re losing your grip.’

‘My grip?’

‘You’ve been obsessing about that damn library and not focusing on what’s going on at your mine.’

‘Where did you hear such nonsense? I have the firmest of grips, Governor. Why, didn’t we discover a whole bunch of those troublemakers from the UMWA just two months ago and shut that down? I got Jack Morrissey and his boys to see them off. Oh, yes.’

The governor gazed into his drink.

‘I got eyes and ears all over this county. I’m keeping track of these subversive elements. But we have sent a warning, if you like. And I have friends at the sheriff’s office who are very understanding about such matters.’

The governor raised the slightest of eyebrows.

‘What?’ said Van Cleve, after a pause.

‘They say you can’t even keep control of your own home.’

Van Cleve’s neck shot to the back of his collar.

‘Is it true that your Bennett’s wife ran off to a cabin in the woods and you ain’t been able to get her home again?’

‘The young ’uns may be having a few hiccups just now. She – she asked to stay with her friend. Bennett’s letting her just till things simmer down.’ He ran a hand over his face. ‘The girl got very emotional, you know, about not being able to bear him a child …’

‘Well, I’m sad to hear that, Geoff. But I have to tell you that’s not how it’s being parlayed.’

‘What?’

‘They say the O’Hare girl’s running rings around you.’

‘Frank O’Hare’s daughter? Pfft. That little … hillbilly. She – she just hangs off Alice’s coat tails. Got some kind of fascination with her. You don’t want to listen to anything anyone says about that girl. Hah! Last I heard, her so-called library was on its last legs anyway. Not that I’m much troubled by the library one way or another. Oh, no.’

The governor nodded. But he didn’t laugh and agree, slap Van Cleve on the back and offer him a whisky. He just nodded, finished his drink, slid off his bar stool and left.

And when Van Cleve finally got up to leave the bar, several bourbons and a whole lot of brooding later, his face was the dark purple of the upholstery.

‘You good, Mr Van Cleve?’ said the bartender.

‘Why? You got an opinion as well as everyone else around here?’ He sent the empty glass skidding and it was only the bartender’s sharp reflexes that stopped it flying off the end of the bar.

Bennett looked up as his father slammed the screen door. He had been listening to the wireless and reading a baseball magazine.

Now Van Cleve smacked it out of his hand. ‘I’m done with this. Go get your coat.’

‘What?’

‘We’re bringing Alice home. We’ll pick her up and put her in the trunk if necessary.’

‘Pop, I told you a hundred times. She says she’ll just keep leaving until we get the message.’

‘And you’re going to take that from a little girl? Your own wife? You know what this is doing to my name?’

Bennett opened his magazine again, mumbling into his collar. ‘It’s just folk talking. It’ll die down soon enough.’

‘Meaning what?’

Bennett shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just … we should maybe leave her be.’

Van Cleve squinted at his son, as if he might have been replaced by some alien he barely recognized. ‘Do you even want her to come home?’

Bennett shrugged again.

‘What in hell does that mean?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oho … Is this because little Peggy Foreman’s been hanging around you again? Oh, yes, I know all about that. I see you, son. I hear things. You think your mother and I didn’t have our difficulties? You think there weren’t times we didn’t want to be around each other? But she was a woman who understood her responsibilities. You’re married. Do you understand, son? Married in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the law and according to the laws of nature. If you want to be fooling around with Peggy you do it quietly and on the side of things, not so that everybody’s looking and talking. You hear me?’

Van Cleve adjusted his jacket, checking his reflection in the mirror over the mantel. ‘You have to be a man now. I’m done with waiting around while some stuck-up English girl wrecks my family’s reputation. The Van Cleve name means something around here. Get your damn coat.’

‘What are you going to do?

‘We’re going to fetch her.’ Van Cleve looked up at the larger figure of his son, now standing in his way. ‘Are you blocking me, boy? My own son?’

‘I won’t be part of it, Pa. Some things are best … left.’

The older man’s mouth, clamped shut, worked like a trap. He shoved past him. ‘This is the thin end of the wedge. You might be too pussy to send that girl a message. But if you think I’m the kind of man to sit by and do nothing, then you really don’t know your old pa at all.’

Margery rode home deep in thought, nostalgic for times when all she had to think about was whether she had enough food for the next three days. As she often did, when her thoughts grew deep and cold, she murmured to herself under her breath. ‘It’s not so bad. We’re still here, aren’t we, Charley boy? Books are still getting out there.’

The mule’s big ears flicked back and forth so that she swore he understood half her conversation. Sven laughed at the way she talked to her animals, and every time she would retort that they made more sense to her than half the humans around there. And then, of course, she would catch him murmuring to the damn dog like a baby when he thought she wasn’t looking – Who’s a good boy then, huh? Who’s the best dog? Soft-hearted, for all his bluntness. Kind with it. Not many men would have been so welcoming of another woman in the house. Margery thought about the apple pie Alice had rustled up the night before, half of which was still sitting on the side. Seemed like the cabin was always chock full of people, these days, bustling around, making food, helping with chores. A year ago she would have bridled at it. Now returning to an empty house seemed like a strange thing, not the relief she might have imagined.

A little delirious with tiredness, Margery’s thoughts meandered and splintered as the mule plodded up the dark track. She thought of Kathleen Bligh, returning to a home echoing with loss. Thanks to her, these last two weeks, despite the weather, they had managed to cover nearly all their rounds, and the loss of those families who had fallen out of the project due to Van Cleve’s rumours meant they were pretty much up to date. If she had the budget she’d take Kathleen on for good. But Mrs Brady wasn’t much for talking about the future of the library just now. ‘I have held off writing to Mrs Nofcier about our current troubles,’ she had told her the previous week, confirming that Mr Brady was as yet unbending on the issue of Izzy’s return. ‘I am hoping that we can win round enough townspeople that Mrs Nofcier might never have to hear about this … misfortune.’

Alice had started riding again, her bruises luminous yellow echoes of the injuries she had endured. She had taken the long route up to Patchett’s Creek that day, supposedly to stretch Spirit out a little, but Margery knew it was so she, Margery, could have some time with Sven alone at the house. The families on the creek route liked Alice, made her speak English place names to them – Beaulieu and Piccadilly and Leicester Square – and fell about laughing at her accent. She never minded. She was slow to offend, that girl. It was one of the things Margery liked about her, she thought. While enough people round here would find a slight in the mildest of words, every compliment a secret barb aimed just at them, Alice still seemed primed to see the best in everyone she came across. Probably why she’d married that human beefsteak Bennett.

She yawned, wondering how long it was going to take Sven to come home. ‘What do you think, Charley boy? Have I got time to boil up some hot water and get this grime off me? Do you think he’ll care a whit one way or the other?’

She pulled the mule to a halt at the large gate, dismounting to open it up. ‘The way I feel, I’ll be lucky if I manage to stay awake long enough for him to get here.’

It took her a minute after replacing the catch to realize what was missing.

‘Bluey?’

She walked up the path, calling him, her boots crunching in the snow. She hooked the mule’s reins over the pole by the porch, and lifted her hand to her brow. Where had the darn dog shot off to now? Two weeks ago he had made his way three miles across the creek to Henscher’s place, just to play with the young dog there. Came home sheepish with his ears down, like he knew he’d done wrong, his face so full of guilt that she didn’t have the heart to tell him off. Her voice echoed back across the holler. ‘Bluey?’

She took the porch steps two at a time. And then she saw him, at the far end by the rocker. A pale limp body, his ice-coloured eyes staring blankly at the roof, his tongue lolling and his legs splayed, as if he had been stopped directly in the act of running. A clean dark red bullet hole ran straight through his skull.

‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’

Margery ran to him and dropped to her knees and a wail emerged from somewhere she hadn’t known she possessed. ‘Oh, not my boy. No. No.’

She cradled the dog’s head, feeling the velvet-soft fur of his cheeks, stroking his muzzle, knowing even as she did that there was nothing to be done. ‘Oh, Bluey. My sweet baby.’ She pressed her face to his – I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m sorry – her hands clutching him to her, her whole body mourning a stupid young hound that would never bounce onto her bed again.

It was like this that Alice found her, as she rode up on Spirit half an hour later, her legs aching and her feet numb with cold.

Margery O’Hare, a woman who had remained dry-eyed throughout her own father’s funeral, who had bitten her lip until it bled as she buried her sister, a woman who had taken the best part of four years to confess her feelings to the man she loved most in the world, and still swore she had not a sentimental bone in her body, sat keening like a child on the porch, her back doubled over with grief and her dead dog’s head cradled tenderly in her lap.

Alice saw Van Cleve’s Ford before she saw him. For weeks she had backed into the shadows when he passed, had turned her face, her heart in her mouth, braced for another puce-faced demand that she come home right now and stop all this nonsense or she might just find herself regretting it. Even in company the sight of him made her tremble a little, as if some residual memory was lodged in her cells that still felt the impact of that blunt fist.

But now, propelled by a long night of grief that had been somehow so much more painful to witness than her own, she dug in her heels as she saw the burgundy car heading down the hill, sending Spirit wheeling hard across the road so that she was directly in front of him and he had to stamp on the brakes, screeching to a halt in front of the store, causing all passers-by – a fair number, given that the store had a special deal on flour – to stop and observe the commotion. Van Cleve blinked at the girl on the horse through his windshield, unsure at first who it was. He wound down his window. ‘You properly lost your mind now, Alice?’

Alice glared at him. She dropped her reins and her voice carried, clear as cut glass, through the still air, glittering with anger. ‘You shot her dog?’

There was a brief silence.

‘You shot Margery’s dog?’

‘I shot nothing.’

She lifted her chin and looked steadily at him. ‘No, of course you didn’t. You wouldn’t get your own hands dirty, would you? You probably got your men to come out here just to shoot that puppy.’ She shook her head. ‘My God. What kind of man are you?’

She saw then from the questioning way Bennett swivelled to look at his father that he hadn’t known, and some small part of her was glad.

Van Cleve, who had been open-mouthed, swiftly recovered his composure. ‘You’re crazy. Living with that O’Hare girl has turned you crazy!’ He glanced out of his window, noting the neighbours who had stopped to listen, murmuring to each other. This was rich meat indeed for a quiet town. Van Cleve shot Margery O’Hare’s dog. ‘She’s crazy! Look at her, riding her horse straight into my car! As if I’d shoot a dog!’ He slapped his hands on the steering wheel. Alice didn’t move. His voice rose a register. ‘Me! Shoot a damn dog!’

And finally, when nobody moved, and nobody spoke: ‘Come on, Bennett. We got work to do.’ He wrestled the wheel so that the car spun around her and accelerated briskly up the road, leaving Spirit to prance and shy as the gravel sprayed at her feet.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Sven leaned over the rough wooden table with Fred and the two women and relayed the tales coming out of Harlan County, of men dynamited clean out of their beds because of the escalating union disputes, of thugs with machine-guns, of sheriffs turning the blindest of eyes. In the light of all this a dead dog shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. But it seemed to knock the fight right out of Margery. She’d been sick twice with the shock of it, and she cast around for her hound reflexively when they were home, her palm pressed to her cheek, as if even now she half expected him to come bounding around the corner.

‘Van Cleve’s canny,’ muttered Sven, as she left the room to check on Charley, as she did repeatedly through each evening. ‘He knew Margery wouldn’t bat an eyelid if someone looked at her down the barrel of a gun. But if he picked off the things she loves …’

Alice considered this. ‘Are … you worried, Sven?’

‘For me? No. I’m a company man. And he needs a fire captain. I’m not unionized, but anything happens to me, all my boys go out. We’re agreed on that. And if we walk, the mine shuts down. The sheriff might be in Van Cleve’s pocket but there are limits to what the state will tolerate.’ He sniffed. ‘Besides, this one’s about him and you two girls. And he won’t want attention drawn to the fact that he’s engaged in a fight with a pair of women. Oh, no.’

He took a slug of bourbon. ‘He’s just trying to spook you. But his men wouldn’t hurt a woman. Even those thugs of his. They’re bound by the code of the hills.’

‘What about the ones he’s bringing in from out of state?’ said Fred. ‘You sure they’re bound by the code of the hills, too?’

Sven didn’t seem to have an answer for that.

Fred taught her how to use a shotgun. He showed her how to balance the stock and pull the butt against her shoulder, how to factor in the hefty kick backwards when she lined up her sights, reminding her not to hold her breath but to release the trigger as she breathed out slowly. The first time she pulled the trigger he was standing close behind her, his hands on hers, and she bounced so hard against him that her face stayed pink for an hour.

She was a natural, he told her, lining up cans on the fallen tree at the edge of Margery’s land. Within days she could pick them off, like apples falling from a branch. At night, as she secured the new locks on the doors, Alice would run her hands along the barrel, lift it speculatively to her shoulder, firing imaginary rounds at unseen intruders coming up the track. She would pull the trigger for her friend; she had no doubt of that.

Because something else had changed too, something fundamental. Alice had discovered how, for a woman at least, it was much easier to feel anger on behalf of someone you cared about, to access that cold burn, to want to make someone suffer if they had hurt someone you loved.

Alice, it turned out, was no longer afraid.