THAT AUTUMN WAS A LANDMARK TIME FOR THE GOSSIPS OF CALLIOPE. The little church had two weddings in as many weeks. The first was the marriage of Karen Cogswell to Earl’s brother, Clay. Judith laced her daughter tight in a whalebone corset, but Karen’s pregnancy still showed. Halfway up the aisle, the bride, wild-eyed and sweating, clamped her hand over her mouth and bolted for the side door. Her father held her veil out of the dirt while she vomited. “Ought to have known better than to have a morning wedding,” someone grumbled.
Clay alone, of all the wedding party, was happy. His broad face was radiant as he took Karen’s hand from her father’s and closed it reverently in his.
The second wedding was that of Sarah Tolstonadge and Sam Ebbitt.
They were married September 29, 1874, and with a box of clothing and two dozen cookies tied up in a borrowed cloth, Sarah moved out of the little bedroom she had shared with her sisters for as long as she could remember.
The Ebbitt house was a two-story log building. The second story, larger than the first, jutted out over the squat lower rooms, throwing the few windows into deep shade. Sam had lived alone in the house for twenty-six years. No homely appointments warmed it; no curtains hung at the windows, no rugs brightened the dark floors, no cloths made the plain tables and heavy chairs less dreary. Twenty-six years of dust hardened in corners and crevices, twenty-six years of flyspecks darkened the window glass, and twenty-six years of dinners were burnt to the stove. A new wire brush and a new store-bought broom were in the pantry; Sarah had begun married life.
She and Sam quickly settled into the routine their days were to follow. Sam altered his life very little; he ate and he worked, and in the evenings he read from his Bible or sat silent by the living room stove. Sarah cooked and cleaned and lay still in the bed nights when Sam climbed on top of her. There was plenty to eat, and for the first time in Sarah’s life, there was money for sturdy shoes that fit, and warm woolen dresses for winter.
December passed cold and dry, the new year blowing in on icy rains that turned the barnyard into a mire. Arms full of kindling, Sarah slogged back from the woodshed, eyes wide against the night. The dog growled, lunging at her in the darkness, straining at his chain. Sarah ran quickly by. Balancing the wood against her hip, she wrestled with the kitchen door latch. The cold metal gave grudgingly and she backed in and dumped the kindling into the woodbox. It still looked pathetically empty. Pulling out a few sticks, she opened the maw of the stove. Wind caught in the chimney and puffed a cloud of sparks out the open door. Emitting a shriek, she dropped the wood and leaped back, batting at the burning embers on her apron and skirts. Only one had burned the fabric and it was scarcely noticeable.
Quickly she collected the scattered firewood and peeked around the door into the main room of the house. Sam sat undisturbed before the potbellied stove, the Bible open on the table, his hands folded on his stomach, knees wide and feet planted, staring into the empty air in front of him. Sarah let the door close softly and, standing carefully to the side, stoked the stove. When the water was hot, she poured it into the sink, wincing as the steam hit her chapped hands, and busied herself with the supper dishes.
Sam pushed open the kitchen door soundlessly. Sarah hummed softly under her breath, swaying slightly in time with her song, her slender hips swinging from side to side, her skirts sweeping the heels of her small boots. Sam hitched up his trousers and combed his beard with his fingers.
“Sare.”
She jumped, startled, and resting her dripping hands on the edge of the sink, she looked over her shoulder. “What is it, Sam?” His eyes were narrowed and his face taut. Sarah’s eyes flicked down over the bulge in his pants. “Let me finish these dishes,” she said wearily. “They’ll stick if I leave them.”
“It’s time for bed. Let ’em go till morning.” He held the door open as she dried her hands and took off her apron. His bulk almost filled the doorway and Sarah pressed by him. He followed her up the stairs with the lamp, closing and locking the bedroom door behind them.
Sarah waited on the edge of the bed, the coverlet pulled over her shoulders for warmth. Sam had shut himself in the little room adjoining, and she could hear him getting undressed. The bedroom, like every other room in the house, was larger than it needed to be and was impossible to keep warm. A small stone fireplace gaped against the end wall, dark and free of ash. Sam wouldn’t waste wood to heat a room used only for sleeping. Dark walls built of squared-off tree trunks climbed up out of sight into the gloom beyond the rafters. The bed, too, was oversized and Sarah’s feet didn’t touch the floor. Bed, dresser, and washstand were the only furnishings; without rugs on the floor, the pieces looked adrift in a sea of wood that vanished into dark walls and darker corners.
The dressing-room door opened and Sam emerged in his nightshirt and cap, his feet still in his wooden work socks. Without the heavy outer garments he wore summer and winter, he was not imposing-his nightshirt bulged out over his pot belly and his legs were white and bandied. He brought the candle with him, setting it on the washstand. Sarah jumped down from the bed and snatched up her old flannel gown. Sam stood between her and the dressing room. “It’s cold, what with the window in there. You’d best be changing here.”
Sarah looked at him oddly. “There’s windows here too, Sam. I don’t see-”
“It’s cold,” he said flatly.
She chewed her underlip. “I don’t mind the cold.” She started past him, but he put out his arm.
“I’m telling you, Sare, you’ll be undressing in here tonight.”
“Sam-” Sarah looked up at him and broke off; his eyes were hard and wet, like those of a man with a fever. He got into bed, his back against the heavy headboard, the covers tucked around his waist.
Poised on the balls of her feet, holding her nightgown to her chest, Sarah looked uncertainly from the bed to the dressing room. She unfastened the top button of her bodice awkwardly. Her hands fumbled and she broke for the shelter of the darkened dressing room.
“Sare!” Sam’s voice caught her. Tears sprang into her eyes and she wiped them on the soft flannel before she turned around.
“Sam, you want me to put out the light?” She reached toward the washstand.
“Leave it be.”
She stopped at the edge in his voice, and turning her back to him, she began unbuttoning her dress. On the wall her shadow leaped and danced; Sam had turned up the lamp. Sarah faltered and a button clattered to the floor.
“Get on with it. It’s too cold to be dawdlin’.” His voice was thick.
She pulled the dress off over her head and laid it on the chest of drawers, hugging herself against the cold and the light. Goosepimples stood out on her bare arms, and her small breasts, their nipples hard, showed against the thin cotton of her chemise. She hiked her skirt over her knees and rolled her black stockings down. Sam’s breathing quickened, audible in the silent room. In the mirror she could see his face; his lips were slightly parted and his eyes glittered in the moving light. She shivered, a prickling between her thighs, a warmth catching her breath and filling her throat. She paused, her arm outstretched for her nightgown, and watched his eyes devour her. Her breath escaped in an aching sigh. Leaving the gown where it lay, she untied the ribbons of her chemise slowly, deliberately. Sliding her hands under the cotton, she cupped her breasts a moment, her palms warm against her skin, then shrugged, letting the chemise slide free of her shoulders. She stepped out of her petticoats and stood naked, feeling the cold on her thighs and the heat inside her. Her narrow shoulders sloped gently away from a round neck; her breasts, pointed and firm, threw their shadow on the wall behind her. The lamp by the bedside warmed her body with yellow light, catching the soft hair at her nape and groin in a golden mesh.
Sam sucked in his breath. “Come to bed,” he said hoarsely. Sarah slipped on her nightdress as he blew out the lamp, and crawled under the covers. He rolled against her, fumbling with the edge of her gown, pulling it up. His callused hand slid up over her thigh, pressing her groin. Fingers, working their way up her belly, kneading the soft flesh, closed roughly on her breast, pinching the nipple. She closed her eyes tight and gasped. There was a tearing sound as Sam ripped her nightgown; his mouth, wet, groping, worked down her throat. His lips closed around her breast and he sucked greedily, like a hungry child. Sarah’s fists clenched on the sheets and her eyes widened, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Sam’s mouth searched out the other breast as he forced her thighs apart with the side of his hand. Yanking his nightshirt up, he pulled himself on top of her. Sarah’s knees fell wide to receive him. He grasped his thick penis and thrust it into her, letting his weight fall against her. Whimpering, she arched her back to meet him, a small, animal cry deep in her throat as she grabbed his buttocks to pull him into her.
Sam froze, his body gone rigid, his weight crushing down on her.
Sarah moaned and shoved her hips hard against his, grinding for her own release. He wrenched himself up off of her as if he’d been burned. Sarah emitted a stifled sound, following his body with hers, and he jerked away, pulling himself free with a sucking sound. Sarah fell back on the bed, opening her eyes like a sleepwalker.
Limp and flaccid, Sam’s penis shrank away under the overhang of his belly. His face twisted with anger, and he slapped her. “There’s a whore in you,” he cried, and slapped her again, snapping her head from side to side. “Crying like a bitch in heat.” He spat at her contemptuously, but his mouth was dry. Sarah flinched. “You be afraid and you go on being afraid.” He threw back the covers and stared down at her. Her nightdress was rumpled above her waist, her legs and loins bare. He backed away from the bed and pulled his trousers on over his nightshirt. He pointed a blunt finger at Sarah. “You stay in that bed and you think on yourself.”
The sound of his footsteps receded down the stairs and the back door banged as he slammed it behind him. Sarah lay listening, her face crumpled in a soundless cry. Fear numbing her fingers, she pulled at her nightgown, working it from under her back and tugging it down until it covered her nakedness. She was shaking. She clenched her teeth to stop their chattering, and stared into the shadows over the bed until the muffled tread of Sam’s stockinged feet sounded on the stairs. Sarah pulled the coverlet under her chin and squeezed her eyes shut as the bedroom door opened. He lit the lamp.
“Get out of bed,” he said coldly. Sarah didn’t move. He crossed the room and jerked the covers off her. Her hands still clutched, clawlike, at the air where the blankets had been, her teeth clattered, and she sucked air noisily through closed jaws.
“Get up.”
Sarah gasped; her breath had gone out of her and she gulped at the air. Abruptly, Sam rolled her over, putting her feet on the floor, her face and torso still on the bed, and grabbed up the willow switches he had dropped inside the door. Frozen into rods, the willows sang through the air as he slashed at her legs. Pain loosened her jaws and she screamed. Scrabbling at the covers, she tried to crawl over the bed. He grabbed her collar and dragged her back, whipping her until her nightgown was ripped and ribboned.
He threw down the rods and lifted her up by the shoulders, turning her to face him. “Quit your howling.” A scream tore open her throat, and he shook her. “Quit it now!” Sarah choked and coughed. He held her until she was done. “You feel those welts on your legs and you think on yourself.” As he let go of her, her knees gave way and she sat down hard. Sam pulled off his trousers and, extinguishing the lamp, got into bed, settling the covers around his shoulders. Steam issued from his mouth, the room had grown so cold. He looked at his wife’s narrow shoulders hunched in the dark. “Pull some covers over yourself,” he said, not unkindly. “No sense freezing to death.” There was no response, and he rolled onto his side, away from her.
Sarah sat facing into the dark, her little reddened hands folded in her lap and her small white feet dangling beneath the hem of the tattered flannel. She stared at nothing; her eyes were dry and as blind as the windows made opaque by frost.
An east wind sawed under the eaves, the windows silvered with moonlight and dimmed again. Finally she stirred. Pushing herself stiffly from the edge of the bed and creeping into the dressing room, she lowered her head over the chamber pot and was sick.
Sarah woke up alone for the first time she could remember, and cried out for Lizbeth and Gracie. Her own voice roused her and she sat up blinking in the blue half-light. Sam’s side of the mattress was cold, and his trousers were gone from the footboard. She eased her feet over the edge of the bed, holding the weight up off her legs.
Her clothes were tumbled over the dresser top, the black stockings draped down to the floor. Sarah looked at them and her face flushed. She picked up the dress and petticoat, avoiding her reflection in the mirror, and pulled them on over her nightgown. Dressed, she faced herself in the glass. Her thin hair was matted at the back of her head and stuck out like straw. The collar of her nightgown poked out above the somber brown of her bodice. She ran from the room.
The fireplace grate was cold and the stoves hadn’t been lit. The kitchen door was open and there was a thin layer of ice in the pail she used to heat the dishwater. Sam’s Bible lay open on the table. Sarah eyed it with alarm as she closed the door and sat down on the edge of a chair. Crumpled petticoats gouged at her torn legs; she grimaced, holding in the pain.
Sam had opened the Bible to Proverbs, Chapter Five. At the top of the page was the heading: “The Mischiefs of Whoredom.” The faded satin ribbon lay in the crease to mark the place. Sarah leaned her elbows on the table and, digging her fingers into her hair, read:
“For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
“But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
“Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell.”
Tears drowned the words; she threw herself from the chair and lay crying on the floor until she exhausted herself and was still.
Imogene dismissed class at three-thirty and cleared her desk. The wind, which had been rising steadily since noon, howled under the eaves, making the room creak and the windows rattle. The schoolroom emptied quickly, the children running home like late leaves scudding before the storm. Imogene closed the stove’s damper and sat on one of the small desks, listening to the wind cry and the stove click and pop comfortingly. By four o’clock the light was going. She gathered up a pile of texts and let herself out, hurrying home, head down and shoulders hunched against the cold. Someone called her name and she faced into the cutting wind.
Sarah was huddled in the lee of the school, leaning on the rough wood of the building, her cloak held tight around her. Matted hair half hid her face, but Imogene could see that her eyes were red from crying.
“Sarah Mary? Sarah, what in heaven’s name are you doing here?”
Sarah stumbled away from the shelter of the schoolhouse. Her knees started to buckle. Imogene dropped the books, catching her before she fell. Sliding one arm around Sarah’s waist and the other behind her knees, she lifted her, carrying her like a child. The girl’s cloak fell open and trailed over the ground, riffling the pages of the scattered books. Loose pages, freed, flew up and over the buildings like wild things.
She set Sarah down in the rocker in front of the fireplace. Still in a faint, Sarah slumped against the back, setting the chair rocking. Imogene steadied it with her foot and felt Sarah’s face and hands; they were like ice.
Putting the girl’s hands back in her lap, she started to tend to the fire. Sarah cried out and reached for her, and Imogene held her again. When she was quiet, the schoolteacher knelt in front of her. “Here, blow your nose.” Sarah obediently took the proffered handkerchief, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. Finished, she held it out. “You keep it,” Imogene told her, smiling. “Will you be all right long enough for me to build a fire?” Sarah nodded and wiped her nose again; it was red from the tears and the cold.
When the fire was burning high, Imogene coaxed her out of her cloak and sat her near the blaze with a mug of hot tea and honey. Sarah held it in both hands, blowing on it. “Drink that slowly. I put a bit of rum in it to drive off the chill you took.” Imogene pulled the footstool near Sarah’s feet and sat on it, her dark skirts settling around her like stormclouds. Sleet started to fall and the fire hissed as the first drops blew down the chimney.
The heat and the rum were bringing the color back to Sarah’s cheeks. “Feeling better? You look a little less peaked.”
“I’m better.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Sarah looked up from the fire into Imogene’s gray eyes, and the tears welled up, spilling down her face. Imogene took the tea from her trembling hands and set it on the hearth. “My dear.” She took the weeping girl to her and hugged her close. Sarah clutched at her, hiding her face in the soft woolen pleats of Imogene’s bodice.
“Sam-Sam wanted the marriage-” She choked on her tears and coughed. “-the marriage act, and I liked it.” She held tight to Imogene’s waist, her eyes squeezed shut. “I liked it like a whore and Sam whipped me. I want to die. I can’t go home.”
“Hush now. Hush. That’s my girl.” She stroked Sarah’s hair, murmuring. “Come on now, sit up. You can lean against me.” The girl rested her head on Imogene’s shoulder, hiccoughing, and Imogene took up the rum-laced tea. “Here, drink this. It’ll make you feel better.” Sarah drank and relaxed against Imogene’s shoulder, flinching as the cuts on the backs of her legs opened.
“He whipped you.”
Sarah nodded.
“Let me see,” Imogene said gently.
Sarah pulled her skirts up and picked gingerly at a black stocking. The wool stuck where the blood had dried. She yanked it partway down, sucking in her breath at the tearing. The back of her thigh was crisscrossed with marks from the willow switches, the broken skin curled back, white and bloodless, from long, shallow cuts. Tufts of black wool stuck to the wounds, and where the flesh was not lacerated, it was bruised. Imogene looked at the leg and her face hardened. Sarah saw and was ashamed.
“Am I bad, Imogene?”
“No. Lie down here by the fire where it’s warmest. I’m going to tend to those cuts.” She helped Sarah out of her clothes, hanging her dress and petticoat on the pegs in the bedroom. The nightgown Sarah had worn underneath was so tattered that Imogene shoved it into the ragbag under the bed and gave her an old wrapper of her own to wear, rolling up the cuffs and pulling the skirt up through the sash so it wouldn’t drag the floor. She brought her another cup of tea and rum, then soaked a cloth in warm water and laid it over Sarah’s stockinged legs, wetting the wool until it pulled easily away from the wounds. Sarah’s legs were slashed from ankles to buttocks.
“What did Sam whip you with?” Imogene’s voice was controlled.
“A willow switch.”
Imogene wrung the cloth with a vicious twist. “This will hurt a little.” She washed the injuries tenderly. “I never knew a willow whip to cut this bad.”
“I guess it was froze.”
“Frozen.”
“Frozen.”
When the cuts were clean, Imogene spread a thick layer of salve over them and helped the girl into an old pair of cotton pantelets. Sarah lay down again by the fire, watching Imogene clean up the pots and rags. “Sam said I was a whore.”
“You’re not a whore, dear.”
“He said I acted like one.”
“He shouldn’t have. Love sometimes expresses itself that way.”
“I don’t think I love Sam,” Sarah said after a while. “Not like I do you or Mam or David. I just felt funny, kind of buzzy inside, and I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see him-just nobody-and feeling that…like when I used to climb the rope in the barn when I was little. I don’t feel funny when I think of Sam.” Sarah finished her tea and stretched her toes under the rocker. Her voice was slow and sleepy. “Sam just grabs at me like I was an old plow.”
Imogene crossed to the window and, pulling aside the curtain, stared out into the dark. The storm was moving east, the sleet pounding against the back of the house. Rivulets rutted the main street, carrying slush down to the ditches that served the town as gutters.
Sarah had fallen asleep in front of the fire. The girl’s face was turned toward the flames, and was clear and rosy in the warm light. Her lashes, darker than her hair, curled against the soft skin, fragile and vulnerable. The sleeve of the wrapper had unrolled and claimed one of her hands; the other lay open on the hearth rug, the fingers slightly curled. Imogene leaned down and tickled the palm with her fingertip. Sarah murmured in her sleep, and the schoolteacher smiled.
Imogene cleared the tea things from the living room and washed them before she roused the sleeping girl. Sarah stirred at her touch and opened her eyes, her lashes dried in dark spikes.
“Can I stay with you?”
“No!” Imogene said, suddenly sharp.
Sarah bit the insides of her cheeks and swallowed hard, but still her eyes filled. She pulled herself awkwardly from the floor and looked vaguely around the room for her clothes.
Imogene caught her by the hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, and glancing at the door, laughed nervously. “The night’s got me in fidgets. I didn’t mean to be harsh.”
Sarah’s legs were shaking so that she could barely stand, and under the pink of the fire and alcohol, her face was pinched. Imogene checked her watch for something to do; it was after eleven. The storm pounded, unabated, outside. Steepling her hands, Imogene pressed her fingertips to her lips and nodded to herself shortly. Then, to Sarah, still waiting, still watching: “You can stay-as long as you like.” She smiled and turned Sarah by the shoulders. “Go along to bed now. I’ll be there in a minute.”
As the girl left the room, Imogene bolted the door and checked the windows. The curtains were all drawn tight. A log fell and the fire hissed and sparked. Imogene gasped, starting involuntarily.
“Don’t be a goose,” she said quietly. She set the screen in front of the fire and carried the lamp into the bedroom.
Sarah was already fast asleep. Imogene sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair absentmindedly. The last of the firelight from the other room played on the watercolors over the window: fragile yellow buttercups in meadow grass, the tiny white flowers that the people of Calliope called Johnny-jump-ups.
Imogene watched until the fire had burned down to embers and no longer cast its light upon the wall, then rose with a sigh and, taking a blanket from the closet shelf, made herself a bed on the living room floor.
Sam came before dawn the next day, cold and quiet. Imogene said nothing. She wrapped Sarah in her cloak and helped her into the wagon with exaggerated care. Sarah was too frightened to talk, and dully accepted Imogene’s kiss on her cheek. The wagon pulled away, sluggish in the mud, its tracks filling with water. The storm had passed.
They reached the farm as the sun rose, a chill gray light in the east. Sam jerked on the reins and the cart horse stopped, rearing in the traces, trying to back away from the bite of the bit. He pulled the horsewhip from the seat beside him and held it across his knees.
“You’ll not be running off like that again.”
Sarah felt the sting of the salve in her wounds, felt her own fragility next to the bulk of her husband. In the summertime, before her marriage, she and Imogene had looked up the word “husband” in the teacher’s dictionary: to cultivate, to nurture, to husband.
Sam cracked the whip against the footboard and Sarah jumped half a foot. “Sarah, you’ll not be running off again.” His eyes bored into her, and she could feel the tears hot in her throat. With an effort, she swallowed them; she was done crying in front of Sam Ebbitt.
“I won’t, Sam,” she managed.