Otis. It caused her heart to ache to think she may
have been.
She went to retrieve her dress but when she did the
man turned to look at her.
She had the blanket pulled up around her. He
seemed to stare right through it.
“You look better in the light,” he said.
“Can I ask you something?” Martha said, reaching
for her dress.
He shrugged. He was a handsome fellow, not badly
dressed in a wool suit of clothes, trousers tucked
down inside his boots, the butt of a gun showing be-
tween the flaps of his coat. He had longish cinnamon
hair and wide-set eyes.
“Ask away,” he said.
“Did you do anything that would make me un-
faithful to my husband?”
He half smiled.
“No,” he said. “Not, very much . . . maybe just a
little.”
She felt sad all at once.
“I don’t remember doing nothing with you,” she
said.
“Well, I guess it don’t matter, then,” he said. “Be-
sides, I’ve got me a woman up in a place near here. So
if you don’t tell, I won’t, either.”
“You mind turning your back so I can get dressed?”
“You want to dress, go ahead,” he said without
turning away.
In the greatest frustration she turned her own back
to him and pulled on her dress, then sat on the side of
the bed and put on her shoes, lacing them with all due
deliberation. Would it be possible to kill him, to shoot
him cold so he could never say anything to Otis? Poor,
poor Otis. She felt like weeping for him, for the sor-
row and uncertainty he must be going through worry-
ing about her. She vowed to make it up to him
somehow. Perhaps they could start fresh like he’d
wanted to by taking her on the picnic. She would stop
being hard on him and maybe it would work out be-
tween them and she could truly learn to love him
again.
“You said you had a gal near here,” she said.
“Possibly in a place called Sweet Sorrow,” he said.
“How about taking me with you, then? I’m from
there, too.”
“Maybe you know her,” he said.
“What’s her name?”
“Clara,” he said. “Monroe. I’m her husband.”
Something told her to fear this man, the fact that the
new schoolteacher had told others she was a widow.
“No,” she said. “I never heard of anyone by that
name.”
He shrugged, set his hat on his head, and opened
the door.
“You’d leave me here, stranded?”
“Your troubles are none of my own,” he said. “I
imagine some Good Samaritan will come along sooner
or later.”
“What sort of man do you consider yourself to be
leaving a lady alone like this on these wild grasslands?”
“The leaving sort of man,” he said.
She was mad enough to fight him, but she knew she
could not win and so stood in the doorway and
watched him ride off. She never felt more alone in all
her life. With his leaving, the sun suddenly broke
through the clouds as though a sign of better things.
She took the busted-bottom chair out front and sat
with her face lifted toward the light. She felt cold
from the inside out. Cold and violated in a way she
never could have imagined.
Dear Lord, let me be saved and let my husband be
saved as well. Let me get returned to him and let me
be a good wife from now on. Then a terrible thought
entered her head: what if the man
And what if his seed was to grow in her? She was ter-
rible old to bear children. But she’d known of other
women old as she who had. It caused her to weep
thinking of the possibility.
Jake and Toussaint found her sitting on a busted-
bottom chair out front of the shack muttering to
herself.
“Martha,” Jake said. “You all right?”
She opened her eyes.
She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t more men come to
have at her and threw her hands up in front of her face.
“It’s okay,” Jake said dismounting and kneeling
next to her. “We’ve got you now.”
He tugged her hands away so that he could look
at her.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
She simply stared at him.
“Did anybody hurt you, Martha?”
She glanced at Toussaint who sat the mule holding
the reins to Jake’s horse.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Jake wiped dirt from her cheeks, smoothed her
hair, his ministrations gentle.
“Come on, Martha. Toussaint and me are going to
