The Widow

A great weary chilling shudder overwhelmed her. She stumbled forward, righted herself. Unclasped her grip on the rifle and let it fall, smashing to the ground, sending up clots of dank earth around her bare ankles. Her mind numb. Face ashen, she turned back toward the house and groped her way by instinct, her eyesight seeming to fail her. Back into the warmth of the stove-heated kitchen.

She was an exemplary farm wife, house-proud and exact in her attention to all the little details that made that old farmhouse a comfortable home. There was a pot of oatmeal faintly bubbling at the back of the stove. For the children, when she roused them from sleep before bustling about to prepare them for the school wagon.

That was the immediate picture of her day. What of the longer picture? No use to dwell on that, she was simply incapable of it. She wanted to focus her mind, to think toward what would be, but knew she first had to discipline her mind to begin working again, to think of the small, everyday things of her life. Above all, the children, their immediate needs. Her own need would be to have them leave the house for the day, as soon as possible. To enable her to muster herself, her resources. To make some kind of sense of all that had occurred. To plan for them. They would be solely dependent on her now.

She was a resourceful woman, and proud of that. But on a farm, without the presence of a man on a farm like theirs - hers - what could she accomplish? She was severely limited by the sheer physical demands of the place. And she knew that apart from her usual routine, she would be incapable of replacing the hard work of a determined, strong, wide-shouldered and confident man.

She could call upon her family. No, she could not. William, whose claim to fame in these parts was his serial, predatory exploits with hapless women? Not deigning to work for a living, he instead passed from one helpless, desperate woman, newly-abandoned, or -widowed, to another. What was the matter with those woman, she wondered? In their desperate straits, their futures of dire uncertainty, why would they succumb to the blandishments of a rogue like her brother? No point asking him for help. Apart from the fact that she deplored his instincts of a shark out for the easy kill, she wanted nothing to do with him. He shamed her, at a remove.

Dirk, then? With his soft, pink hands, more accustomed to lighting votive candles than pushing a ploughshare? Little wonder he turned out a bitter, wifeless pastor, with his fastidious disdain for women. She remembered well how he would shrink from the possibility of close physical contact even with their mother. She who neglected the emotional needs of children she never wanted, yet loved only that particular child of hers. Religion-addled, gospel-babbling Maddie. Although she infected her beloved son with her religious zeal she had only his deadly scorn for reward.

She shuddered, wished she could recall a more bonded, caring family, but that had not been her experience. Her mother had detested their father with the burning fire of disgust, horror that that lapsed Christian heathen assaulted her still well into their third decade of marriage, wishing desperately for him to die. The most horrible deaths imaginable for him animated her feverish dreams. Her fierce, malignant dreams remained dreams, never materialized.

She had been convinced that each of her pregnancies had her carrying the devil’s spawn. And she purged herself mercilessly, flogged her tender, burgeoning flesh, but they birthed, one after the other. A few to die in childbirth, the others hale enough. Their father barely noticed their presence, their mother barely tolerated their presence. When the boys were old enough their labour was enlisted on the farm. Her mother reluctantly taught her housewifery.

As for herself, now, in her predicament, Heather well understood she would not miss her husband’s hot, calloused, groping hands. His constant physical demands offended her sensibilities, but she was not her mother; she was stoic, and tried her best not to stand in judgement of a man with limited emotional capacity. A stupid, mindless error in judgement, her original attraction to him.

When she’d met him his very social awkwardness, offhanded good nature had betrayed her intelligence. He’d intrigued her, and truth was, she became besotted with the sight of him, broad-shouldered, hay-stacked hair, wide toothy grin. Unlike her mother though, she never fiercely maligned and detested him. She forgave him. Her good provider. He knew no other way. Tenderness was never given him, and he never learned its soothing calm.

She knew there were other possibilities, with other men, but that realization came too late to her. Her mother’s younger brother, shipped out to foreign countries, eventually captaining a ship of his own, was far more enlightened through the exposure he experienced. He’d once presented her with a Spanish novel translated to English, a romantic, historical novel that had quickened her pulse and informed her of a different kind of mutually-required emotion between men and women. Albert knew nothing of this, he could never visualize, nor wish to, an emotional and tender outpouring of devotion to a woman. Their conjugal couplings were acts of mental and emotional detachment, demanding and abrupt. He expected from her the same kind of submission that he sought from his farm stock.

He was not, she knew, a cruel man by nature. Simply a brutishly-nurtured one, unschooled in the most basic of social niceties. She had long since convinced herself through her occasional weeping fits, that he was not deeply averse to pleasing, he simply had no yardsticks to guide him, no experience of gentleness, concern expressed through empathy for the other.

What he witnessed, on those rare occasions when he marked her dark moods, puzzled him. He could not imagine what more a woman might need or want to fulfill her earthly destiny. Though such words and the very thoughts leading to them were well beyond him.

She would miss the heat emanating from his sleeping body, beside her on their bed on cold winter nights, but not his brief, animal passions. She would not miss his laconic acknowledgements of her hot, nourishing meals so satisfying to his other needs. Her passive acceptance of her life, lived at an emotional remove from this man whose inner thoughts she could never imagine, was her lot in life, she knew. And as such, she was far, far better off than many women of whose pathetic existence she knew. She was well taken care of as far as material things were concerned. She knew no want. A sturdy roof over her head, no lack of food, the occasional outfit she would sew from store-bought goods. Above all, her children’s futures assured.

The farm was a good one, the land arable, a steady income from mixed farming and beef cattle. A few milking cattle, mostly for their own use, for butter and cheese and table milk. Poultry; eggs to be gathered and sold at market in town; her province, and the money gained from those transactions her very own. In season, she and the children would gather wild berries and she would augment her market offerings with strawberry, rhubarb, blueberry, raspberry and blackberry pies. She was busy and liked what she did. Found it fulfilling. Her husband, though saying nothing, ate everything set before him. Her children hadn’t inherited his taciturn rectitude. Their delight at all these seasonal offerings had them pealing with laughter, arguing over who would get the largest slice.

She had always hated the dark brooding presence of the bull he had acquired years ago. It had an evil aura she had said, and he had laughed at her citified ways, a former schoolmarm. The bull was a menace, she was certain, it inhabited the darkest corners of her imagination, reared up in its blunt presence, in her nightmares. He didn’t need it, he could have used MacNeil’s bull to breed their cows, but he was a proud man and wanted neighbours to come to him to ask for his bull’s services. He was always stand-offish with their neighbours. But though reticent to approach them, complacent when he was approached for help, and never denied that help to others.

Dan MacNeil and Bill Munster were a great help to her the last week. And their wives sent over meals, baked goods, sat quietly with her when they could spare time from their own onerous chores as mothers themselves of large broods, and farmwives.

Those stupid cows. Mounting one another. As though one was a bull the other receiving its sperm. Hungry, likely, to be mounted themselves. But he hadn’t wanted those two to be serviced again so soon. Had other ideas. When he led that brute creature into the pen, it seemed to become instantly enraged, seeing the two cows, and despite Albert’s own powerful arms and the power of his voice that always steadied the bull, it charged. Threw the one cow over onto its side in the fury of its charge, and began trampling it in a dead heat of rage. Of course he wouldn’t stand by and see a valuable animal destroyed, so he intervened. And it was the last thing he ever did.

He wouldn’t have approved of what she’d done. But she did it, and that was that. The beast had stood there, alone in the pasture, securely tied to a post beside their century-old barn. The farm had been in his family a very long time. The bull stood there complacently, not bothering to look up as she approached, rifle held awkwardly, but with the purpose of a determined exterminator.