“Dorothy wanted to go with Jamie,” she answered quietly.
Into the silence, the reverend struck up singing “Thou Art Gone to the Grave,” and one by one the assembled joined in, their voices so frail against the giant landscape that the small knot of them seemed to make scarcely more sound than the eternal rustling whisper of the wind through the prairie grass. Magdalena didn’t blink or make another sound as she watched the remains of her doll and her baby brother disappear under the unforgiving earth. The sun had plunged below the horizon, and the temperature plummeted. When they crowded inside Julia’s tiny house, everyone was shivering. Magdalena clutched her now empty hands to her chest.
Neighbors from adjacent claims had brought food, so the small group quietly broke bread and ate soup, warming by the fire as a sharp wind beat across the flat land outside.
Maud sent her sister to bed, noting that Julia took a generous dose of Godfrey’s Cordial before she retired, insisting that it would help her sleep. Next, Maud put Magdalena to bed in her narrow cot next to her parents’ bed, staying with her niece until she was sure she had fallen asleep. All the while James Carpenter, who had said almost nothing all day, stayed near the stove with a jug of spirits, staring morosely out the window.
By the time the kitchen was straightened, Maud wanted to faint with fatigue. She had planned to make a cot for herself near the fire, but she didn’t want to stay alone with Julia’s husband, who had not moved from his spot by the window. Eventually she pushed open the door to the back room and crawled into bed next to Julia. Her sister’s medicine had evidently not worked. Maud found her sister wide-eyed, and no sooner had Maud joined her than wolves started howling outside. It was clear that their lonesome cries came from the north side of the house, where the baby had just been buried. Maud stroked her sister’s forehead and said nothing. For a long while, Julia lay perfectly still in the bed. The wolves finally ceased their howling and Maud listened to her sister’s breathing, hoping that at last she had fallen asleep. But after a few moments of blissful silence, the wolves started up again. Julia flung herself upright, threw back the bedclothes, and leapt out of bed so quickly that her white nightdress swirled around her like a wraith. She began pounding on the wall of the house with both fists.
“Quiet now!” she cried out. “Quiet now!”
Maud leapt out of bed to follow her, shivering as the frigid air cut through her nightdress.
“Come now, Julia,” Maud whispered. “You’ll wake Magdalena. Come back to bed.”
“I don’t care!” Julia said. “I don’t care who I wake. Don’t you know what that sound is? That’s the sound of my dead baby, crying in the cold, cold ground.”
The wolves kept howling. Maud pulled Julia toward her, trying to muffle her screams. From the front room, Maud heard rustling, the scrape of the dead bolt, then a door slamming.
Out the window, the yard was lit up by a full moon shining on the snow. The fresh mound of dirt over Jamie’s grave was the only dark spot. It lay like a splotch of dried blood on the brittle crust of snow. James, rifle in hand, was staggering across the icy ground. He tripped over the fresh dirt, then continued unsteadily. He stopped abruptly, visibly swaying, pulled the rifle up to his shoulder, and fired a shot. Its sound was so loud that for a moment, Julia was stunned into silence, and the wolves’ infernal cry ceased. James lurched a bit, staring off into the darkness, but after a moment, the wolves started up again, wailing like inmates of Bedlam when the moon was full. James shot again—but his arm was too unsteady to allow him to take aim. Still holding up the rifle, he took a couple of steps back toward the dwelling. Julia pushed the bedroom door open and lunged into the front room, her nightdress billowing up behind her. The door was wide open and banging in the frigid wind.
“Julia, no!” Maud tried to grab her sister’s arm to prevent her from going outside. James was now pointing his rifle in the direction of the room where Magdalena was sleeping. James held the rifle up to his shoulder, preparing to fire again.
“James!” Plunging outdoors, Julia immediately slipped on the ice, letting out a loud scream. James turned to look at her. Maud rushed forward, careful not to slip herself, and picked Julia up from the ground.
Maud all but shoved her sister back into the house. She jammed her feet into a pair of Julia’s boots that stood by the door, grabbed a folded blanket from the settee, and ran out into the frigid night, heading straight toward the man who was holding the rifle, now pointed directly at her heart.
“Drop that gun right now, James Carpenter, before you hurt yourself or somebody else!” Maud’s voice sounded firm and steady, but her knees were trembling so hard she thought she might collapse.
The night had gone silent again. The wolves, no doubt scared off by the ruckus, had stopped howling.
“I’m not going to stop!” James said, his words slurred. “Got to chase those wolves away from my son!”
Maud tried to think fast. “But listen, James,” she said, her voice now much more gentle. “You are such a good shot. You’ve killed them! See, it’s quiet now.”
James kept the rifle cocked, its muzzle swinging unsteadily.
“Now, you come on back inside the house,” Maud said. “It’s cold out here, and we need to get you warmed up.”
James swayed, rifle still cocked. Maud’s teeth were chattering so hard it sounded like gunfire inside her head. She could see the black shaft of the rifle as it meandered back and forth, now aiming at the house where Magdalena slept, now yawing point-blank at Maud.
“James? Come now.” Slowly, Maud stretched out her hand, palm up as if approaching a frightened dog.
The whites of James’s eyes reflected against the snow.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Maud looked back and forth from James’s wild eyes to the gun’s muzzle, afraid to breathe. At last, James dropped the rifle to his side and shuffled back to the house. Maud, shivering as if gripped by a mortal fever, followed behind. Inside, James propped the rifle up in the corner and flung himself down on the settee, still wearing his boots. Maud took the blanket from her own shoulders and laid it over him.
“Go to sleep now,” she said. “We’ve all had a long day.”
Maud looked up to see little Magdalena standing in the bedroom doorway, her hand on the doorjamb, shivering in her nightdress, her eyes dark and wide.
“What happened, Auntie Maud?”
“Nothing, sweet pea. Let’s get you back into bed.”
When Maud at last climbed back into bed next to her sister, Julia was still awake.
“Julia! He could have killed us all with that rifle!”
“It’s the drink that does it,” Julia whispered to her sister. “He’s a good man, but he goes to the devil with drink.”
Maud pulled her sister around to face her. “Julia! A good man does not go to the devil with drink. A man who goes to the devil with drink is not a good man!”
“There’s nothing to do about it,” Julia said. “Whenever I tell him to stop, he says he’ll leave me here and not come back. Where would I be alone out here with the children?”
“You do not have to stay out here alone! Come to Aberdeen and let him do as he will. We will look after you. You can stay with us. Don’t you remember what Frank said? Our door is always open.”
There was such a long silence from the other side of the bed that Maud thought Julia had fallen asleep, until she said, “Maudie, you just don’t understand.”
“A drunken husband firing his rifle. You lost a child today. Do you want to lose another one? Did Mother teach you nothing at all about standing your ground?”
Julia did not respond, but her body was shaking and tears shone on her cheeks in the moonlight. Again, she whispered, “You don’t understand.”
“It’s been such a long day,” Maud said. “Let’s rest. We can think about this tomorrow. Here now…” Maud pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her nightdress and dabbed her sister’s tears.
Maud lay like a board until Julia’s sobbing subsided. At last all was still, just the quiet breathing sounds of Julia and Magdalena.
Then the wolves started up their howling again.
* * *
—
THE NEXT MORNING, while James snored on the settee, deep in a stupor, Maud implored her sister to gather up her things and leave. But Julia acted as if the events of the previous night had not even happened and insisted that she needed to stay near her newly buried child.
Maud boiled strong coffee and plied James with several cups of it, until he was ready to drive her back to the Edgeley depot so she could catch the train back to Aberdeen.
As she was getting ready to leave, Magdalena tugged on Maud’s hand and looked up at her plaintively. Her hair had grown out a bit, and her braids now hung below her shoulders again. She tilted her face upward, her chin pointing like a prow through stormy waters.