Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

Author:Jayne Anne Phillips [Phillips, Jayne Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

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From her vantage on the ridge, she waited and glimpsed Papa, as he called himself, but he gave no sign she could read. The storm of him buzzed like a whirl in the trees. She kept herself apart. There were comings and goings, then silence. When she could wait no longer she walked down the trail. The cabin door stood open. All were gone—all. And provisions taken from the larder, cook pots, feather tick, blankets—the bed was but its frame. ConaLee’s pallet gone, but her clothes left. Dearbhla saw, from the back window, the cow fallen dead on its side, swole as though to burst.

We was afraid to butcher the cow, said a voice behind her, since we didn’t know what killed her.

Dearbhla turned round to see the widow woman, from the ridge farm to the east, bobbing on her feet to lull the babe tied to her in a shawl. Might be I’d have saved her, Dearbhla said.

You’re that root doctor from up above, the widow said. She came closer, to show the sleeping babe. I took the girl twin. I could never have children, so I’m blessed to receive. And he said to take whatever stores we could use, not to waste. He gave me Eliza’s horse, that we rode here.

She was so poorly? Dearbhla asked. No need of her horse?

Oh, she was give out. Mute, she was, near senseless. He took her in the buckboard, three day ago, to the Asylum. He said it’s like a hotel. Rest and cure, he said. She was dressed nice, clothes he got in town. I fixed her hair, to suit a magazine picture the daughter fancied. The older widow, over to that side—she took the boys. She lost her sons, you know, in the War.

Where is ConaLee?

The daughter? She went with him, to help with her mama.

He went off with a twelve-year-old child?

Went off? He’s her father. She called him Papa. We all did. He helped about my place now and again, being the only man on these high ridges.

Dearbhla met her gaze. The widow, not young, was still of childbearing age. Likely he’d bedded her regular, and she not even his prisoner. You called him Papa? Dearbhla asked. He never said his name? What man, living legal, calls himself Papa?

The woman shrugged. I don’t get your meaning.

No matter, Dearbhla told the widow. You’ve a beautiful babe. Healthy. She’ll tell your fortune when she’s grown. Her poor mother, to lose all.

He spoke of cures, the widow said. But life here is too hard for such as her. This babe had no clothes but this wrapping—I’ll make her some. She moved the shawl from the babe’s face, and traced her forehead with a light touch.

Dearbhla turned behind her, to the old blanket trunk. She opened it and searched, moving quilts aside, for ConaLee’s things. She held up the knit woolen bunting Eliza had made the winter ConaLee was born. Take this, she told the widow. Lined in deerskin. For the winter—her sister wore it.

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