Dulcy looked down at her brown wrists and fingers: bug bites, scratches. Carrie wouldn’t recognize these hands. Maybe Dulcy could hide herself in plain sight by going entirely native, turn into one of the old Italian ladies at the produce store.
“You’re fine,” said Margaret, brushing pollen off the dress. Dulcy covered up with a black shawl, the wearing of which nearly killed her when they left the buggy’s shade. Margaret didn’t ask anything inane about graves Dulcy should have been visiting, and Dulcy didn’t comment on the brevity of their visit with Mr. Mallow, whose spot had greened over nicely. The cemetery was packed, and when news spread that the river was cresting and that the bridge to McLeod Island was likely to collapse, Irving packed the carriage and took all of them to the rise above Miles Park where a party had formed, flood watching as a sport.
Dulcy spread the shawl on the ground. They were just in time to see the small bridge give way, a faded cracking sound under the ongoing roar, bobbing rails sucked down in liquid that looked like hot chocolate. For once she approved of Grover, who’d propped his camera close to the edge, interested enough not to fret over facing a crowd with his substantial ass.
“Here we are,” said Samuel. “Look what I found on the three o’ clock train.”
She craned around from her spot on the blanket and peered into the sun. “Early, for once,” said Samuel. “He must be sick.”
“I’m not sick,” snapped Lewis, sitting next to her on the grass. “And I said I’d be back.”
“Looks wrecked, doesn’t he?” said Samuel.
Lewis was a little in front, and Dulcy’s view included the side of his face, the tight skin on his right cheekbone, the whorl at the back of his head, the tense neck. She curled her scratched hands under her legs, but Lewis was paying no attention, talking to Margaret while they all watched a fifty-foot length of cottonwood bounce off the far bank and twirl.
“Did you have a good trip, then?” asked Margaret, touching his arm. Margaret could make that kind of easy gesture. “You do look frail, you know.”
“It was an easy trip,” said Lewis. “And please stop saying that. This is quite a show.”
Samuel swatted a mayfly. They watched Bixby charge by in one of the police wagons. James Macalester muttered about automobile accidents, and what a Model A looked like after a driver hit a bull. Dulcy counted the trees that shot by, racing toward the Dakotas, and thought that it was like watching a long earthquake. She stretched her legs, then saw Lewis look down at her ankles. He reached out and brushed an ant off her skirt.
Her blood hummed into her face. She was a horrible actress, but there was nothing she could do. “I have something for you,” he said. “A silly thing, a late birthday present.”
“When was your birthday?” asked Margaret, surprised.
“A while back,” said Dulcy. “A busy day.” She couldn’t remember telling anyone in this town.
“We’re going to a play in Bozeman tonight,” said Samuel. “If anyone would like to come along.”
Lewis finished a bottle of lemonade. “I won’t be climbing back on a train today,” he said.
They watched Grover crouched by the bank, muddying his knees, crumpled and intent behind the massive black camera. “I’m sure he’d love to go,” said Margaret, climbing to her feet. “I’d love to go.”
“I need to go home,” said Dulcy, standing with her. “I was in the middle of a thousand things.”
Lewis pulled himself upright. “I’ll walk you. I’m done for the day.”
Dulcy started off, but by then the Macalesters had repacked their basket and joined them. James asked about Lewis’s trip—pleasant weather in New York, the siblings and father all fine, no compelling scandals or fashions to pass on—and then segued into the Hubie mess, and how Gerry’s wife had telegrammed Eugenia that he’d already abandoned the cure, and they would divorce.
James rarely talked this much, but almost nothing that Dulcy would have wanted to say to Lewis could be said, anyway. When the Macalesters remembered where they lived and turned north on Sixth, Dulcy and Lewis walked in silence as a line of carriages passed, with Nesser the realtor in the sole automobile. He turned, and Lewis stared back while Dulcy waved. When they reached Eighth Street, Brach was on his porch. He only nodded in response to Lewis’s greeting but watched them openly as they reached Dulcy’s gate. Lewis touched his hat. “Have a fine evening, Mrs. Nash. It was good to see you again.”
He walked away, not bothering to acknowledge the gnome a second time. Dulcy made her way to her back porch steps, where she waited to cry. It would take a bit: she could feel a wave behind her eyes, but the rest of her body was ringing. She tried to look up at the sky—it was hard to cry while looking straight up—but her eyes still filled. Brach had begun singing, badly, about God, and as she watched his chickens peck by her wall, she decided to kill them. A tortoiseshell cat watched them from the sunny top of the wall, flicking its tail like a metronome.
Dulcy looked down at her hands and tried to remember what she’d been doing when Margaret had pulled her out of the yard. A chickadee landed near her feet, but when she checked for the cat again, it was looking in the same direction as the chickens, all of them watching the alley. She turned to see Lewis drop into the yard from the wall. He landed, and pulled off his jacket, and walked toward her as Brach continued to sing.
???
In 1899, Walton had been recovering from a flare in his illness and Copenhagen’s version of treatment when he managed this lecture: “The world is all about touch, Dulce. You don’t believe it now, or you only think about it in terms of food or plants, which is the only way your poor sour grandmother understands the concept, but you will know what I mean by the end. It’s all about touch, even if it’s the temperature of water or wind on your skin, and everything will truly change when you understand another human hand or mouth.”
At some point that night, Lewis said, “Old Ed Nash wasn’t much of a lover, was he?”
“No. He wasn’t.”
“What did he like to do?”
“Nothing,” said Dulcy.
The next afternoon Lewis slipped back to the hotel for clean clothes, and when he reappeared at dusk, he brought two things. Dulcy had not been belabored by gifts from men. Victor had been so consumed by anxiety that an offering became a test, fraught with pitfalls: bright diamond earrings, some careful books, the emerald ring she’d returned. But Lewis’s English nursery catalogue was like a fat bouquet in a secret language, like someone knowing you only liked one very particular kind of berry, or opals, or Turkish perfume. The other gift was a soft blue jumper of Afghan wool, and she wore it as a robe in the middle of the night.