The Glassmaker's Wife by Lee Martin

Author:Lee Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Glassmaker’s Wife
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Winter

John Wynn had looked for Heinz Ernst throughout the autumn. He’d chased after rumors, but always they turned to wisps of smoke and dissipated into the air. He even ventured a trip to Dark Bend, in spite of his fear, but still there was no sign.

Now winter had set in for good. The snows came, and the wind, and the drifts peaked above the split rail fences and the broad road became impassable.

Time to hunker down and wait, no matter if you were the hunter or the prey. Time to let winter have its way.

In her cell, Betsey read from the Bible the Reverend Seed had left for her. She read the scriptures about what God promised in the afterlife: grace, redemption, forgiveness of all sins.

“It sounds like a fairy tale,” she said to the Reverend one daysat the end of January when he came to call, as he often did that winter. “Some beautiful story that someone made up to ease a child’s nightmares,” she said. “Surely it can’t be true.”

“Oh, but it can.” He sat on the stool inside her cell, his hands folded in his lap. “It is. Betsey, don’t you want it to be so?”

It was cold inside the cell. She pulled her shawl more tightly around her. This was her life now, this waiting and thinking and the long silence that mostly made up her days. Sometimes she imagined herself writing a letter from the lovelorn to Godey’s Lady’s Book. What would she say? That her love waited until she could be free, that she spent the days pining for him, that he’d promised her everything could be simple, and now look at the mess she was in. Or would she say she missed her husband, missed the life she’d had with him, no matter how much it frustrated and angered her at the time. Sometimes she closed her eyes and saw him coming up from the glasshouse in the snow, calling for her — “Betsey, Betsey!” — excited to tell her about a new piece he’d blown that day. Sometimes she heard the sounds of their time together — the ticking of the mantel clock, the popping of embers in the fire, the whisper of pages being turned as they both sat reading. Nothing to think on at all, unless you were in a cell, awaiting trial, not sure whether you’d live to see another winter.

“Betsey?” the Reverend Seed said again.

She wouldn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on his hands, still folded in his lap. “If I’m to die,” she said, and he interrupted her before she could go on.

“If you die, you won’t be the first or the last. We’ll all die, Betsey, but, if we believe, we’ll live again with God in Heaven. Nothing will be able to hurt us then. Nothing at all.”

Finally, she lifted her head to look at him. His face was so kind. He took off his spectacles to polish them with his handkerchief, and she could see the light in his eyes.

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