Chapter Twenty-Three


Marie-Rose waited a day. The town was quiet. People would return eventually as word got round. Tully was good to ride, though wouldn't, and she waited yet a while longer till Willam improved sufficient to put a hand on Tully's face, then his shoulder, instructing him to be vigilant as he rode escort for her. Doc Abernathy's promises were insufficient, and not till Missus Louisa Lancaster swore solemn oath not to let Willam need for a thing till Tully returned in his own person to this very bedside could Tully be moved. They rode to Divinity Falls. He was somber quiet, and she at first thought he was smarting at not being around for the leave-taking, but on further reflection she realized he was pensive about bigger things, things to which he, along with the other men, had been party. She was minded to think of him differently now. She would chafe if he didn't answer her questions when he couldn't or wouldn't answer, but still she was grieved to see him settle into that stony suffocation as men grew into.

After a while he asked her why she didn't ask, and she told him why he wouldn't answer if she did ask. She said she knew men well, and how they couldn't bring themselves to talk easy about what burdened them. Maybe bragging to each other round the campfire, but mostly thrown to the bottom of the mineshaft of their souls; either way things weren't often shared with the womenfolk. Sometimes, in the dark, after a bout on the sheets and enough drink, a man would speak low and grave about something that bore down on his soul. She finally told him to think of this day, some day hence, when he had a woman of his own, and that when he leaves her to wait, and she would wait, to remember that this is what it was like for her, him never telling and her never knowing. She then said she was rattling like a brokedown hay wagon and they should just ride.

Fearful of what they might find, or of finding nothing, they came to the windblown shipwreck of Divinity Falls. Tumbleweeds loitered in the street and gathered in the doorways of the indifferent buildings. Aside from lizards and jackrabbits, the only living things were the two horses, tied on long leads nearest to the carcass of a church.

Tully spoke for the first time in some while. "This would have been Gilead."

She looked around at the locust-husk empty buildings, then looked at him. "Not going to be."

Looking inside the church, they found the remains of many candles, some objects best not examined close, and evidence of markings having been on the walls and floor having been hastily but sufficiently eradicated. Motes of ash danced over a white patch in the center aisle—curled and charred leather book covers in the remnants of a small fierce fire. They didn't linger. From one of the horse's saddlebags fluttered the two blue gingham cloths that had wrapped the provender for the Winchesters' journey, and looking inside that bag they found what cash money that remained to the brothers, their firearms, and a paper. She wished she knew whose hand had written on the paper, for the message was clever worded so to be from both brothers together and from each alone:

Miss Marie-Rose Dumaine and all of the Astoria,

Thank you for everything you did for me, and thank you for everything you did for my brother.

Mister Dean Winchester and Mister Sam Winchester, Deputies Sheriff of Gilead.

P.S., Under the last pew, for Tully.

Of the six pews, two were upright, and under the last was the tomahawk.

On the ride back, stopping to water the horses under a stand of white bone sycamores by a swollen stream, she thought on things. She thought on her bruised lilies back at the Astoria. Lisabet, waiting for a man who would leave, and there he went, but couldn't take her with. Clara, waiting for a man who would stay, and there was a man to stay with but couldn't stay with her. She thought of herself. She thought of the events of the last days, and how despite all she still hadn't heard a good reckoning of what all had gone on, and didn't that raise her hackles? She thought on the Belrose ranch, which would go up for auction, and the businesses of the town that Belrose had owned, like the new trade goods merchantile half to finished, and the considerable value of her deposits secured in the vaults of the Nemaha First Bank in Brownsville. She thought how she was sick to her back teeth with waiting, waiting for men to do right by her town, and do right by her girls, and waiting for men or God or anyone else to do right by her.

Tully gingerly asked her what was on her mind, as she had over the last hour developed a truly frightful expression. She informed him of such sundry thoughts of which Tully should take note: it that was time Gilead had a mayor, and it was time Willam Bodiene settled down, and it was further time for Tully Bodiene to put down his broom and give thought to operating the future Gilead Trade Goods Mercantile. She kept to herself her thoughts of coins and swords, earth and fire, and how she didn't know which card would be her own, but she would look it full in the face when she drew it. They rode back to Gilead along a trail cut through goldenrod earning its name and purple beardtounge buzzing with bees.




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