“Comin down like it got no mind to stop. Dust me off, will ye?”
Billy walked over, brushed the snow off her blankets.
“W-w-w-well, looky what’s under the tree,” he said.
Bessie saw the small package on the flour sack and smiled. “I didn’t think you’d got me nothin.” Bessie draped the blankets over the rocking chair beside the stove and approached the dying spruce.
She lifted the present. “Heavy.”
“C-c-c-c-come over to the bed.” Bessie sat down on the mattress. Harriet crawled over, crouched at her parents’ feet.
Bessie ripped off the old newspaper.
“Holy God, Billy.” What lay in Bessie’s lap amid the torn newspaper was inconceivable, a dream.
“I weighed it,” Billy said. “Twenty-two pounds.”
“Mama, let me see.”
Bessie hoisted the bar of solid gold, the metal freezing cold to the touch, marred with scrapes and tiny chinks, a dully gleaming bronze.
“How much?” she asked.
“Gold’s at twenty dollars and sixty-seven cents a ounce, so you’re holdin more’n seven thousand dollars right there.”
It was more money than Bessie had ever heard of. She began to cry. Billy put his arm around her.
“Where’d you get this?” Bessie asked.
Billy sipped his coffee. The grounds had been used and reused so many times, they barely even colored the water.
“Look at this place.” He waved a hand at their shanty. “We live in squalor,” he said. “Ain’t ye tired of it yet? This floor turnin to mud ever time it rains? Chinks fallin out. They’s goddamn drifts in the kitchen from snow blowin through the walls.”
“Where’d you get it?” Bessie asked again.
“I-I-I-I don’t think ye need to know. We’re rich, Bessie. Concern yourself with that. Oh, and this ain’t the only one.”
“What do you mean?”
He grinned. “That bar’s got a whole mess a brothers and sisters.”
Bessie dropped the bar on the bed and stood up. With her hands, she framed Billy’s acne-speckled face. He’d been trying for a mustache the last six months, but it looked patchy and ridiculous.
“I need to know right now what you done,” she said.
He swatted her hands away.
“What you mean, what I done? I’m providin for my fuckin family.”
“Billy, when you brought the high-grade home from the mine, I didn’t like it, but I let it go. Next thing I know, we got a half ton a ore in the root cellar. I said nothin. But that.” She pointed at the bar of gold. “You take it from the Godsend?”
“What if I told you I found it and—”
“I’d call you a black liar.” He jumped to his feet and grabbed Bessie’s arms and shoved her toward the kitchen.
She crashed into the washbasin and the shelves. A can of condensed milk fell on her head, jars of sugar, long sweetening, flour, and salt shattering on the dirt floor. When Bessie looked up, Billy stood over her, eyes twitching, face bloodred.
Harriet had disappeared under the table, but her crying filled the cabin. Billy ripped the oilcloth off the table, glared at his daughter. “Now you shut that fuckin yap, Harriet! I’m speakin to your mother, and I don’t wanna hear peep one out a you!”
The little girl buried her face in her dress to muffle her sobs.
“Your daughter, Billy!” Bessie screamed. “That’s your—”
Billy grabbed his wife by the ankles and dragged her toward the bed. He picked her up and slammed her onto the mattress, climbed on top of her, pinning her underneath his weight.
“L-l-l-l-listen, you ungrateful cunt,” he whispered, straining to hold her down. “By God, I’ll make you be still.” He slapped her twice. Bessie quit struggling. They lay pressed together, panting, Bessie trying not to gag at the fishy reek of Billy’s breath.
“It’s Oatha, ain’t it?” Bessie said. “He got you into somethin. You changed since you taken up his company.” Billy pressed his forearm into his wife’s neck and leaned into her windpipe.
“M-m-m-m-make no mistake,” he whispered. “One word, I’ll fuckin kill ye. Simple as that.”
“And your daughter, Billy?” she wheezed. “Gonna kill Harriet, too?” Bessie saw it happen. The madness spilled over in Billy’s eyes and she knew he would suffocate her. “All right, baby. All right.” She’d been digging her fingernails into his biceps, but now she let go and ran her fingers through his greasy sandy-blond hair. “Billy.” She couldn’t produce anything louder than a whisper. “Billy, I can’t breathe.”
It passed. He let up on his wife’s neck, but he still lay sprawled on top of her as she coughed and gasped for
