Stephen pulled two enameled graniteware pots off the fire and hustled them over to the rustic table where Harriet sat waiting for supper. He eased down onto the deacon seat and lifted the top from the larger of the two pots.
Steam bellowed out. The slumgullion simmered.
He spooned a serving of stew into Harriet’s bowl, then sliced her a piece of sourdough bread and lathered on several spoonfuls of wild raspberry preserves. One of his parishioners had left the bread and jar of jam on his doorstep Christmas morning. He dipped Harriet’s tin cup into an earthen vessel he’d bought off a Navajo trader, filled her cup with water, then poured himself some Arbuckle’s from a spouted pot, allowing himself a sip of coffee before ladling the stew into his own bowl.
He blessed the meal. It needed prayer.
The stew was horrendous—so wanting of salt and spice that it held all the complexity of dirty water with chunks of gristly elk meat and potatoes and cabbage bobbing on the oily surface.
But his new guest slurped it down without prejudice and even asked for more.
After supper, Stephen prepared Harriet’s bed on the mattress he’d taken from the McCabes’ shack earlier in the afternoon.
For pajamas, Harriet wore her underclothes, Bessie’s peignoir—too long and bunched up around her feet—and a pair of drafty socks sewn from flour sacks. Stephen made Harriet turn away while he slipped a flannel nightshirt over his union suit.
“Would you like a story before we go to sleep?” he asked.
Harriet stood at the foot of his aspen bedstead, looking at the old newspaper that served as wallpaper, tacked to the logs.
“What would that be like?”
“You’ve never had a bedtime story read to you?”
She shook her head, and Stephen realized it owed to her parents’ illiteracy. He got up from his mattress—just a bunch of burlap stitched together and stuffed with pine boughs—and walked over to the railroad tie mounted to the stone above the fireplace, the shelf serving as mantel and bookshelf.
He chose a scuffed, well-used volume, called Harriet over to her bed before the hearth, and tucked her in under the quilts. She lay between Stephen’s legs with her head in his lap, and he read for ten minutes by firelight from
He closed the book when he thought she’d fallen asleep, but as he tried to extricate himself without waking her, Harriet’s eyes fluttered open and she said, “What happened to Miss Madsen?”
Stephen touched the back of his hand to the young girl’s face. It was soft and cool. He gently wound one of her pitch-black ringlets around his finger. “Molly was very sick,” he said.
“Like scarlet fever?”
“No, in her head. God told me to end her suffering, so I did.”
“How did you?”
“Do you know how a gun works?”
“They hurt you.”
“They can. I shot a bullet into the back of Molly’s head so she wouldn’t be sick or sad anymore.”
“Did it hurt her?”
“It killed her body, but her soul never felt a thing.”
“You gonna shoot me in my head so I go to Jesus?”
“No, Harriet. You’ve got a long and happy life ahead of you.”
She closed her eyes.
Stephen ran his fingers through her hair until she fell asleep.
Harriet awoke. The fire was dying, and though her feet were cold, she could still feel the warmth of the flames on her face. The sound that had roused her from the dream came again. She sat up on the lumpy mattress, looked over her shoulder at Mr. Cole’s bed in the corner against the wall. The preacher had buried his face into his pillow, and he made strange, sad sounds.
Harriet took her doll and got up from the mattress and walked over to his bedside. “Hey,” she said.
Mr. Cole lifted his head off the pillow. Even in the low light of the cabin, she could see the wetness on his face, knew what it was.
“What are you doing up?”
“I heard you bein sad. Is the wet because everyone’s gone?”
Stephen wiped his eyes and sat up against the wall, his long legs hanging off the bed, feet touching the freezing dirt floor.
Harriet climbed onto the mattress with him.
“I’m sad for a lot of reasons.”
“Like what reasons?”
“Well, mainly because God told me to do a very hard thing, something I didn’t think He was capable of. Or me, for that matter. But I did it, because we have to obey God. Always. And now, I um . . .” He wept again. “I feel like I don’t know Him anymore. Like He isn’t who I thought He was. And that’s fine. He’s perfect, whatever He is. That’s
