Robert Goolrick: A Reliable Wife

“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 was as though she were looking through a magnifying glass. His beard was like black wheat stubble on a dry field. His skin was pale, and while from a distance he looked younger than she knew him to be, up close she could see the thousands of tiny lines across his skin. She could see the future of her own face, and she could see something else in him as his muscles went slack and his skin sagged away from his strong big bones. She could see the effort it cost him to keep his face composed, hopeful, and she could see the sadness that lay beneath the steely composure, the lack of life in him.

Her tiny fingers worked swiftly, following Mrs. Larsen’s hands along the length of the cut, and finally she was done. Not too bad.

He opened his eyes.

“All done.” She smiled at him, her hands still on his face, his head in her lap.

“Thank you.”

“We have to get you to bed. Could you… it would be better if you tried to stay awake for a while. Your head may be hurt. As long as you can.” She shyly reached to touch his face, but Larsen appeared, stamping, to interrupt her.

“We’ll take him from here, Miss. I’ll get him upstairs. Walk with him. There’s no need for you, and Mrs. has your dinner. I’ll take him.”

Larsen reached under and pulled Ralph to his feet. Ralph swayed, but held upright, and Catherine sat as she watched the two of them clumping upstairs, Mrs. Larsen following with useless flutter.

Then they were gone, and for the first time, Catherine looked at the room in which she sat, and was startled by it. It was nice, not at all what she had imagined: very plain, very clean, and spotless. It was an ordinary square room, and yet here and there sat pieces of furniture that seemed strangely incongruous, as though they had come from some other house in some other place. Bright color. Rich fabrics. Graceful and finely made furniture, only a few pieces, standing alongside the more mundane farm things, the china press, the plain pine grandfather clock.

The sofa she sat on was one of these odd pieces, all gilded arms and carved swans and sunset colored damask, now stained with Truitt’s blood. From her view, it looked like the kind of room where nobody would know where to sit, the kind of place maintained in perfect order, even though it was never used.

There was one chair, plain, strong oak, which was clearly where Truitt sat in the evenings, smoking a cigar, an ashtray and humidor on the low plain table next to it, the table covered also with farm journals and almanacs and ledgers. Next to it, a lamp that glowed with brilliant colors from a stained-glass shade, crimsons and purples, grapes and autumn leaves and delicate birds in flight. It was the kind of lamp she’d seen only in hotels. She had never imagined an ordinary person would own one, but Ralph Truitt did.