They all three looked and surely there in the dis-
tance, through the curtain of rain they could see a
light.
“Sweet Jesus,” Zack said.
Karen was just about to turn in. It had been a long tir-
ing day she’d spent keeping an eye out for the mad-
man. She was glad he hadn’t shown himself. She did
not want to kill anyone—even a mad Swede, even if
he had murdered his whole family. She did not want
to have to deal with murder or death anymore. The
rain, when it came, made things seem more lonesome
than usual. And every time it rained, day or night, she
couldn’t help but think of her past romantic liaisons
with Toussaint, how he used the rain as an excuse not
to do any work, and instead would talk her into bed
where they played like children—very wicked but
happy children.
But now, alone as she was, with naught to keep her
company but the grave of her one and only child, all
she could feel was the deep lonesomeness of it all.
Somehow the rain made the prairies seem even more
empty than they were, made a body seem more iso-
lated from any other form of life, made the rest of the
world seem more distant—as distant as the moon and
stars.
She undressed and slipped on her nightgown,
stood in front of the mirror, and brushed through her
short thick hair and thought, I’ve become almost like
a man over these years. Plain as the land, no beauty to
me whatsoever. No wonder I lost my husband. What
man would want a woman who looked so plain? She
turned in profile, this way and that. What man could I
hope to get looking as I do: square of shoulder, small
of breasts, thick of waist? There ain’t a lovely bone in
me. The only man who’d want me would be wanting
a woman for the sum total of ten minutes; a man like
a dog who’d hump anything female. She fought down
the emotions of sadness, of beauty once possessed but
now lost.
She told herself she was too old to concern herself
with such vanity, that even if she had wanted, she
could not have held onto the way she once looked be-
fore the hardships of living on the plains stole from her
her youth and beauty. No woman could. Then tears
spilled down her cheeks in spite of her resolve not to
cry, but she stiffened and wiped them away with the
back of her wrist and turned out the lamp. Darkness
fell into the room immediately and she did not have to
look at the unbeautiful reflection of herself.
She lay abed trying not to think, but the more she
tried not to, the more she did.
There were a few dollars left in the sugar bowl.
Money she meant for buying necessities. She was low
on flour and canned goods and sugar and coffee. And
though she didn’t want to ask him for it, she had had
it in mind to ask Otis for an extension on her line of
credit, knowing full well he’d give it to her and gladly
so. For she knew that Otis Dollar was still in love with
her even after all these years and even in spite of the
fact she was no longer an attractive woman. The only
reason she could think of was that he’d fallen in love
with her when she still had some beauty to her twenty
years earlier, and that was what he was still in love
with, that image of her back then. Nothing she could
do about it. And maybe she didn’t really want to do
anything about it, in spite of the fact Otis was obvi-
ously back in love with Martha. But was it so bad to
have someone love you and know that they loved you
even if you didn’t them?
By god, I’ll buy myself a dress, she thought sud-
denly. I’ll ask Otis to extend my line of credit and buy
a dress and I’ll go to the dance Saturday night at the
grange hall and I’ll dance with any man who asks me
and drink my share of punch and whatever might
happen will just have to happen. And come Sunday,
I’ll start looking for horses again and catch me
enough to pay back Otis and keep me through the
winter, and if things go well and I catch me enough
horses, I’ll sell this place and go somewhere exciting,
Europe maybe, England, see Queen Victoria. Maybe
I’ll even take an Englishman for a beau.
Her heart beat rapidly at the excited notions that
filled her head. Too long she’d been as fallow as an
unattended field . . . too many days and weeks and
months had gone by, filled with only hard work and
trying to raise a child by herself, and all it had gotten
her was grief and sorrow. Now she was alone, com-
pletely and utterly and she’d grown tired of it. She
imagined herself in the dress she was going to buy
from Otis. She imagined men asking her to dance and
how she wouldn’t turn any of them down. She imag-
ined . . . oh, my, Will Bird escorting her home after-
ward, coming to the door with her . . . and, perhaps
even inviting him to come in. The two of them stand-
ing in the darkened little house late at night, flush
with the evening’s revelry . . . his mouth on hers . . .
knowing it wouldn’t last more than a single night . . .
knowing she’d not want it to. A single night of pas-
sion would be enough. Just one single night.
