seemed warm. It seemed nice.
The horses stopped, the brown mare stamping its hooves, the black gelding couldn’t take another step, its right front leg raised off the ground, hoof hanging dangerously. The light from the porch lit up the sweat on their heaving flanks, turned the breath streaming from their wide nostrils into bright wispy feathers.
It was trim, the house, simple without being austere, and it was bright with lights, not at all the way she had imagined it. It sat foursquare in the center of a neat lawn, steps running up to a wide porch. She had imagined something more squalid, something grown greasy through years of neglect. She had imagined a house that was desolate, an unloved structure in a bleak terrain. This was a surprise, like a crisply wrapped package, all white tissue and blue ribbon trim.
The moment ended and time began again, all in a rush. The face howled, vanished from the window and the door flew open. A woman stood dumbfounded inside.
Ralph Truitt was bleeding badly and lay heavily against Catherine. His breath was easy, his eyes were open but staring ahead without direction or focus, and the porch, the glittering door, and safety seemed miles away.
“Truitt?” the gray head thrust out, eyes peering into the swirl, voice carrying past Catherine’s ears. “Is that you Mr. Truitt?”
“Help! We’re here!” Catherine yelled into the wind, hysteria suddenly seizing her. “Please come! We need help.”
A man and a woman ran from the house, their hair, their clothes catching the wind and flying madly. The man went straight for the faltering, groaning gelding and began to check the extent of the injuries, speaking calmly, his hand on the horse’s flank as he shook his head at the pitiful leg. Catherine could see the broken bone thrust through the flesh, could feel the animal’s defeat in the way the ribcage shimmered with pain.
The woman ran straight for Truitt. “Sweet Jesus,” she yelled. “What’s happened? What did you do?” Her brittle, bright eyes caught Catherine’s, held there, accusing.
“The horses bolted. A deer… they bolted and threw him. I think his head hit the wheel. It wasn’t my fault,” she added uselessly. “It was a deer. So fast.”
“Inside. Larsen!” The old man’s head jerked up from the animal, which was slowly sinking to the ground. “Truitt’s cut bad. Get him in the house.”
So the three of them, each taking a part, carried Truitt’s body into the house. He was jerking around now, wild with the pain and the blood, and it took every muscle of all three of them to get him up the stairs and into the house. They laid him on a velvet sofa, put a pillow beneath his head.
The woman said, “He’ll bleed to death.”
“He needs a doctor. Surely…”
Mrs. Larsen, she must have been, turned on Catherine. “In this weather? Not even for Ralph Truitt. It’s miles both ways, and too late by a long shot when the doctor gets here. If you can find him. Drunk. If he’ll come. Drunk and useless.”
“Get my case, please,” Catherine said. She was completely calm. “From the wagon. A gray case. And hot water. And towels and iodine, if you’ve got it.”
The old couple stared at her, not sure. Truitt lay on the sofa, eyes straight ahead.
“Get her case,” the old lady said. “And get your gun. For that gelding.”
Larsen suddenly moved, leaving the room. The old woman, his wife, Catherine supposed, moved as well. Truitt came suddenly awake, eyes red with pain, and Catherine and Ralph stared at one another in the sudden quiet.
“You’re not going to die,” she said.
“I have that hope.”
A sharp gust of wind blew into the hall as Larsen went out into the night. Catherine and Truitt waited. She felt she might take his hand, but did not.
They heard the gunshot from the yard. Catherine jumped, and ran to the window, pulling back heavy velvet curtains to see the single thrashing of the giant horse, its head a hollow of blood.
After a long time, Larsen came back through the snow, carrying Catherine’s suitcase in one hand, the pistol loose in the other. He laid the suitcase at her feet. He looked at her with hatred as though all of it had been her fault, and all of it unforgivable.
She clicked the rusted cheap clasps and opened the suitcase, rummaging around in her black clothes and plain underthings to find her sewing case. Turning, she stepped on the hem of her skirt, ripping again at the tear… Jesus hell, she thought, the jewelry. She knelt quickly, felt at the hem. Nothing. Christ and hell.
Mrs. Larsen came back, a bowl of steaming water in her hands, her arms filled with towels. She stared at Catherine, eyed her skirt.
Catherine rose. “It’s… it’s nothing. It tore. I lost something. In the accident.”
“Well, it’s gone then. Gone till spring.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Lost, yes, thought Catherine. Lost my jewelry, and lost any way out of this place.
Catherine stared at Truitt. “This will hurt.”
“It hurts now.” He managed a weak smile.
“Is there anything to drink?”
“I don’t touch liquor.”
“It’ll hurt worse.”
“I know.”
“Can you sit up? A little?”
He groaned as they raised him up from the sofa, enough for Catherine to sit and settle his head on her lap. The blood dripped steadily onto her skirt. She could feel it wetting her legs almost immediately.
As Mrs. Larsen held the bowl, Catherine dipped a towel in the steaming water, began gently to clean his wound. She knew it hurt, but beneath her hand his face calmed, his breathing slowed. He never closed his eyes, never made a sound, although tears streamed down his cheeks.
“I cry,” he said. “I’m like a baby.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. Ma’am? The iodine.” She took the bottle Mrs. Larsen produced from the pocket of her apron, tipped it enough to pour a tiny stream, just along the wound that ran from his eyebrow to his hairline. She dabbed at the trickle, and Truitt closed his eyes, then winced as the sharp sting hit the bone, which Catherine could see, as the sharp smell brought to each of them a sense of the urgency of what she was doing.
That poor horse, she thought, dragging us all this way, lying now in the snow. Tomorrow, she supposed, whenever this stopped, Larsen would use the living horse to drag the dead one out of sight.
“My sewing kit, and I need you, Mrs…”
“Larsen, Miss.”
“Mrs. Larsen. I need you, very gently, to press the edges together, like this.”
Catherine showed her, like pressing pie dough to the edges of the pan, her thumbs smoothing, smoothing the skin until the edges almost met. The cut was not clean. There would be a scar, no matter what.
Catherine found her strongest thread, dipped her needle in the iodine, and blew gently on the needle, and on the cut, bleeding harder now.
She threaded the needle. She saw how Larsen turned away, busied himself elsewhere as she took the first stitch.
“I’ll get the wagon put away now. Unless…”
“No. We’re fine.” The needle pricking into and through the flesh, Catherine’s hand steady and calm. The door opened and closed again as Larsen went out into the night.
Slowly the wound began to close, the flow of blood to lessen. “Are you a nurse, Miss?”
“My father was a doctor. I watched him.”
It was a lie, however lightly she said it. Her father was a drunk and a liar. He had no profession. Catherine knew no more than the simple fact that she had not come all this way to watch Ralph Truitt die in her arms. If you were going to sew a wound shut, she figured, there were only so many ways to do it.
“So you never…”
“Never. But I watched him many times. There’s no other way.”
At some point she felt Truitt slip away from her, lose consciousness. His pale eyes, fixed and white with pain, finally closed, and she saw for the first time, darting her eyes from his wound, the expanse of his skin, so close it