The Broken Statue

Five

FiveFor several long minutes, while wood crackled in the stove and a slow block of sunlight spread over the kitchen table, Bridget sat with Cora, her head on Cora’s shoulder. When she felt able, they pulled on their coats and walked arm in arm through the trampled snow back to the barn. They carried warm water and towels. Cora thought to grab a comb.

The body lay in a box Papa Henry had built himself. Seeing it there, Bridget couldn’t immediately cross the barn floor. She went to Luna-Blue milling nervously in her stall, the horse’s eyes showing too much white. The mare had heard the shots fired. She’d smelled the gunpowder, seen the stabbing, and watched Smoke being led away. She smelled Papa Henry’s blood even now and knew the body was there.

“It’s all right, girl.” Bridget stroked the long face, pushed back the white mane from Luna-Blue’s eyes. “Sherriff Thayer will find Smoke.” Would he?

She left the horse and dropped to her knees on the straw-littered floor beside the pine box. Thayer’s men hadn’t bothered to fit on a top, and Papa Henry’s gray eyes stared.

Cora knelt beside her.

“You’ve done this before?” Bridget asked. “Washed the dead?”

“It can be nice. The last moments with a person. When you are serving them.”

Bridget dipped a washcloth in the water and wiped Papa Henry’s cheeks. She’d kissed them countless times, but she’d never run an intimate hand over the wrinkled, leathered skin. She stopped and sank back on her heels. He was beautiful. The etchings on his face like the fine grains in wood or the ridges and veins in leaves. Only the sight of his staring eyes tore at her.

“His eyes,” she sobbed.

Cora reached to touch them closed, but the frozen lids remained open. She patted her coat pockets, then the pockets on her trouser skirt. “I haven’t a coin on me.” She sighed, held out a handkerchief. “Is this all right?”

Bridget nodded.

Carefully, solemnly, Cora draped the starched and pressed hankie with its lace trim over the dark and frozen face.

Bridget’s lungs heaved. The act felt like a burial. She reached behind Papa Henry’s neck to pull his braids forward and lay them over his chest. Only stubble.

“Cora,” she cried. “His braids are gone!”

“God save us! Why would someone?”

For trophies? Grief coursed through Bridget. With fresh horror, she noticed his hands were open, palms up. He’d frozen facedown, his fingers splayed. Turned over, his hands looked as if he wanted them held. His shoulders had been crammed into the box, and dirty boot prints soiled his coat front.

Wire leapt up at her gasp, stood on his hind leg just as he’d done earlier, and leaned into her. Luna-Blue whickered in her stall. At the edge of the haymow, two peering cats scurried off, knocking down loose bits of straw.

After Dr. Potter had finished his examination and returned to the house, Thayer’s men, Bridget knew, had put the body in a coffin. One that was too narrow. Rather than look for a larger box, they’d stomped on Papa Henry’s chest, breaking frozen joints.

“Don’t weep over it,” Cora said of Bridget’s furious brushing at the mud. “He’s at peace. Whoever did that hasn’t disrespected Henry, only himself.”

The minutes dragged into an hour. Bridget hated leaving the body again despite Cora’s coaxing. She relented only when they both shivered and even their gloved fingertips stung with cold.

Papa Henry’s knife still lay on the table. Afraid Cora meant to somehow dispose of it, or that Thayer might realize evidence should be secured and return for it, Bridget slid the blade into a drawer.

Cora added wood to the stove and in the rising warmth rubbed her cold hands together. “I’m afraid Thayer’s in over his head.”

“It’s not just that.” Bridget drew in a tight breath. “He doesn’t care. And he’s not going to question Cripe.”

“An investigation doesn’t need to begin and end with Thayer. A state marshal can be brought in.”

“How? Who decides that? Do we write the governor, and how long will that take? And when he hears Papa Henry was half Omaha Indian?”

“I don’t know.” Cora stopped rubbing her hands. “I’m only saying justice doesn’t begin and end with what Thayer decides.”

The eggs Bridget cooked earlier sat cold and rubbery on a plate. She picked one up by its crusty edge and held it out for Wire. Then the second, letting the dog lick the grease from her fingers. Papa Henry had saved Wire, fishing him out of the river after someone cruelly wrapped him in barbed wire and threw him in to drown.

“Did you know Papa Henry thought Cripe caused this?” She patted the stub off Wire’s hip.

Cora shuddered. “Cripe likely isn’t the only man around who’d toss a dog into the river.”

The morning before, Bridget had been in the Fester house. Though she hadn’t cursed Mr. Fester, her looks hadn’t been sweet. Had she so angered him? He’d suffered a host of hardships that were turning him into a mean and desperate man, but he wouldn’t steal and murder. Would he?

“Many men around here,” Cora went on, “could use the money a beautiful horse brought. Let’s see what Thayer does. If his investigation goes nowhere, or he does nothing, we’ll go over his head. I’ll do as you say and write to the governor.”

“And wait weeks for an answer.”

“Justice is more important than speed.”

“What if justice depends on speed? If even a few days pass, Smoke will be long gone. He needs to be found now, see who has him before he’s sold. Sold again and again, passing through a number of hands.”

Cora carried the plate Bridget had emptied to the sink and began to pump water. “I don’t like that look in your eyes. Let men handle it.”

“Even if they don’t care? Papa Henry would want Smoke brought home. And Cripe—”

“Henry would not want you running off looking for a horse and a murderer,” Cora said. “Think about your future.”

“I am.” She’d shamed herself by standing silently in front of the admissions board. She wouldn’t disrespect Papa Henry a second time. “I can’t live with myself if I do nothing.”

“Writing to higher authorities, insisting on a full investigation, isn’t nothing.”

Bridget held her tongue. Cora and her letters. Before Papa Henry adopted Bridget, Cora had written to newspapers in states west of Nebraska seeking any information on Bridget’s parents. A letter arrived from a stranger stating Kathleen and Darcy Wright had passed on. Died in Butte, Montana, of camp sickness. That information, Bridget knew—though Cora believed it like a Biblical truth—might easily be false. The letter writer may have heard about the camp’s sicknesses second-or third-hand, the story mangled with each retelling, names added, others only assumed dead. Or a case of mistaken identity, another couple from Ireland having died that harsh winter. Or the letter could have been an outright hoax. Bridget hadn’t seen a body or even a grave marker. With almost no memories of Pappy, it was easier to believe him dead. Believing it of Mum was another matter.

A letter could not confirm her parents’ death, and a letter would not find Papa Henry’s murderer.