Chapter 21
“Yes,” Samantha said. “I came off a train.”
Her voice was not loud. It did not need to be. The parlor had gone so still that the swallows could be heard outside the raised blinds. Her voice went into that stillness plainly. Every soul in the room heard it.
“I came off a train at eight years old, in Iowa, in October. I had a paper tag on my coat. I stood in a row on a platform. The people walked along and looked at us. A woman felt my arms to see if I was strong enough to work, and I was. She took me home in a wagon. That is what Mrs. Stuart’s letter says, and every word of it is true.
I have never told any of you. That is true too. ”
She looked around the room. She made herself do it. The storekeeper’s wife. The red-faced woman. The thin one with the drawn-purse mouth. The sheriff by the door.
“I am what you call bad stock. I have been called it in a church, in a store, in this parlor, with a coffee pot in my hand. Every one of you I have heard say it, about children you had never met. I poured your coffee, and I smiled.”
Her hands had stopped being cold. She did not know when.
“I am done smiling. I came off a train. I am not ashamed of it. I was made ashamed of it, at eight. Twelve years I have carried the shame. I am setting it down here, on Mrs. Stuart’s carpet, in front of all of you.
It was never mine to carry. It was never my fault.
A child does not choose a platform. Nobody in this room would have chosen one. ”
Nobody spoke. Somewhere along the wall, a chair creaked.
“That is what I am,” Samantha said. “Now I will tell you what he is.”
She turned to Nathan West.
He was looking at her. The sorrow had gone out of his face, because he had not expected this. He had expected her to shrink. She saw him not know what to do with a woman who did not.
“Mr. West has told you his parents took me in and gave me a home. They did not. They took me for use. Twelve years I was worked from before light until after dark, and never paid a cent. I ate at the corner of the table on a stool. I slept in a loft over the kitchen with the roof an arm’s length from my face.
That was the home. Mr. West knows it. He ate at that table. ”
“Now, that’s not...”
“I am speaking.” She did not raise her voice.
He stopped. “His parents kept me unwed. They chased off every boy who came to the gate. A girl who works for nothing is worth more than a hired man, and they meant to keep her. And when they died at the ford, in the spring, the whole of that farm came to their son. He made it plain, the first night, that he counted me part of it.”
The room had gone very quiet indeed.
“He watched me. Every day. At his own supper table, he told me I was a debt his father had never called in. He told me he was not soft. He told me he kept what was his.”
She looked at the sheriff.
“There was no one to go to. I was the girl off the train. He was the master of the West farm. Not one soul in that county would have taken my word against his. He knew it. He was in no hurry. Only one person on the place stood between us. That was an old man named Amos, the hired hand, who was sixty years old and bent nearly double.”
She stopped. Her voice had shaken on the name, and she let it steady.
“On a night in May, three days before I was to leave for Texas, Mr. West sent Amos to mend a fence that was not down. Then he told me the mare was foaling and I was wanted in the barn. There was no foal. There was no fence. There was Mr. West, between me and the door. He told me he had found my ticket. He told me he kept what was his. His hand closed on my wrist so hard I cried out. That is what happened in that barn.”
She held up her wrist. There was nothing on it now. But she held it up anyway, and the room looked at it.
“And Amos came back. He had never gone. He had stood at the gate in the dark and watched the lanterns. Then he came in with the barn-bar in his hands, an old man who could barely lift a pail. He put himself between me and Mr. West.”
Her chin came up.
“And when Mr. West went for him, he swung. That is what struck him. An old man defending a girl in a barn, with the only weapon that came to hand. He told me to run, and I ran. I never learned what became of him. I do not know to this day whether he is alive or dead.”
Her voice broke on that at last. She let it break, and went on through it.
“I will not apologize for it. Not to Mr. West. Not to any of you. Amos did what a decent man does. He did what any man in this room would do if he found a girl alone in a barn with a man like that. And I ran, because there was nothing else on God’s earth for me to do.
I have never been sorry. Only for him. Only for Amos. ”
She stopped. She had said it. All of it. It was out of her, twelve years of it. It lay on the carpet in the white afternoon light. She stood over it with her hands at her sides and waited to see what the county would do.
Nathan West did not wait.
She saw it come up in his face before he moved.
It was the same look he had worn in the barn when she said there was no fence down.
Not the sorrowful mask. The thing under it.
He had told a good tale to a roomful of strangers, and it had been going well.
Now the girl herself was standing on a carpet in Texas calling him what he was, in front of a sheriff.
He could not stand that. She had known it in the barn. She had counted on it now.
“You,” he said. The pleasant voice had gone. “You lying little...”
“Mr. West,” said Eleanor sharply.
He did not hear her. He was looking at Samantha. The entitlement had come all the way up into his face. It was as plain as the scar.
“You belong to me. You hear? You belong to the West farm. My father fed you twelve years, and you’re mine to keep.
No old fool with a fence rail changes that.
No rich widow’s brat in a good coat changes it either.
I don’t care what you say in front of these people.
I don’t care what tale you tell. You’re coming back where you belong, and you’re coming today.
If I have to drag you out of this fine house by the arm, I’ll do it, and I’ll... ”
He came across the carpet.
Fast, as he had come across the barn, with his hand out to take hold of her.
In front of the sheriff, a dozen witnesses, and a boy in the doorway.
The room drew its breath as one. Somebody cried out.
Samantha did not step back. She had stepped back in the barn, and there had been nothing behind her but a wall. She stood.
She never learned afterward whether he would have reached her.
Ramsay was between them.
He had come from the window. She had not seen him move. One moment he was standing by the white light with his face the color of limestone. The next he was in front of her, on the carpet, between her and Nathan West. His shoulder took her a half step back without his hand ever touching her.
Nathan did not stop. He was past stopping. He put his hand out to shove the man aside, as he had shoved through every door in his life. Ramsay Stuart hit him.
It was one blow. It was not a fine one. It came up from somewhere near the floor and took Nathan West under the jaw. It made a sound that Samantha would hear afterward in her sleep. It put him down.
He went down hard on Eleanor’s good carpet, like a sack going down, and lay there.
For a moment nobody in the room moved. Ramsay stood over him with his fists still closed and his breath coming hard. He looked down at the man on the floor, and did not say a word.
Then the sheriff came off the door.
He crossed the room without hurry. He was a heavy man who had watched a good deal in his time. He looked down at Nathan West, who was beginning to move, and put one boot on his shoulder to save him the trouble.
“Well,” the sheriff said. “I reckon that settles it.”
He looked around the parlor. The faces along the wall had changed again.
They had changed as faces do when they have watched a man show what he is with his own two hands.
The storekeeper’s wife had both hands over her mouth.
The red-faced woman was on her feet. The thin woman with the drawn-purse mouth stared at Nathan West on the carpet.
She looked at him as if he were something that had crawled in from the yard.
“I’ve been a peace officer twenty-two years,” the sheriff said to the room in general. “I never yet saw a man near murdered by a girl and a hired hand who acted like this one. Couldn’t keep his hands off the girl in front of the law five minutes together.”
He shook his head.
“I said before, what happened in Iowa is Iowa’s to try, and nobody in Iowa has asked me for her.
I’ll write down what she told, and what he told.
Both can go north to their county clerk if anybody up there still wants them.
What she told sounded to me like an old man defending a girl.
But that’s not mine to judge.” He looked down.
“What’s mine is this carpet. I saw a man lay hands on a woman in front of a dozen witnesses.
That’s an assault in this county. I don’t need a letter from anybody to act on it. Get up, mister.”
Nathan got up. It took him a while, and the sheriff did not help him. He stood swaying on the carpet with his jaw already going purple and blood on his lip. He looked round the room. Not one face in it would meet his.
“Here’s your choice,” the sheriff said. “You can come with me now to the courthouse basement. In the morning, you answer to the justice for what you did in this room. There’s a dozen here who’ll swear to it, and I’ll be the first. Or you can go back to the hotel, be on the northbound at first light, and I’ll not trouble the justice with you. ”
He let that sit a moment.
“My written account of this afternoon goes north either way. If you’re minded to swear complaints in Iowa, they’ll have mine to read beside yours.” He took his boot off the man’s shoulder. “I’d think about it, but not long. Which is it to be?”
Nathan West looked at the room, at the sheriff’s face, at the door.
“The train,” he said.
“I thought it might be. Then you’ll not be in this county at noon tomorrow, nor any day I’m sheriff of it. That’s not the law talking. That’s me. The law will be waiting behind me if you make me fetch it.”
Nathan West said nothing. He looked at Samantha once more. It was the last time she would ever see him look at her. There was nothing in it now but a beaten man’s spite. It could not touch her. She had set the shame down on the carpet. She was not going to pick it up again for him.
He picked up his hat. He went out through the hall past the boy in the doorway. Harry pressed back against the frame and let him pass. He did not lower his eyes.
The buggy went off down the valley road in the white heat. Nobody watched it go.
With it went the Iowa shadow. A letter and a liar’s word, with no warrant behind either.
Samantha felt it go. She stood on the carpet where she had stood for the whole of it.
Something that had lain across her since she was eight years old lifted off.
It went out the door after Nathan West, and did not come back.
She was still standing. She had not fallen down. She had never, in her whole life, been permitted to, and she found now that she no longer wished to.
But the room was still full. Eleanor was still in it. And Ramsay had not yet turned around.