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Three days and nights of heavy October rain, biblical.
Josiah Kemp sat at the window of the fir-wood cabin he had built with his own hands and watched the autumn waters rise; the nearby lake’s arms were too full, too full, and spilling over.
Behind him, his daughter Elizabeth—all of three, all of wonder and only three years old—played with her doll on the floor before the woodstove. The doll was just a little homemade thing no bigger than a man’s hand, with wooden button eyes and a hand-stitched calico dress and a full head of her mother’s own nut-brown ringlets, lovingly trimmed.
It had been made before any one of them knew what was going to happen.
Josiah watched the rain, the dark clouds hovering like early night over the surrounding woods, and thought about the burial plot out behind the cabin, just up the hill into the treeline a little. It gave him an ache somewhere beneath his breastbone to think that this water would rise enough to sweep her away, and her only freshly gone to rest.
It was hard to think of her at all.
Instead, Josiah thought about the larder, how long he figured it all might last. When they had left the town across the water months before, left everything behind to move out here to this thickly-wooded place, they had dreamed such dreams. The quiet, the peace had all seemed so possible in the cold sunshine of March, when they had arrived. They were young and ready to work. Josiah had felled the trees and built the cabin, and Grace, well…Grace held it all together. Grace minded her child. Grace traveled into town to buy the chickens, to buy the seeds, to stock the larder. Grace took to it all like a duck to water.
The water. There’s too much water.
Josiah watched as the flood rose to lick the feet of the garden fenceline, mere yards from the cabin. But as he gazed at the fence, a flicker of movement beyond it caught his eye. A shape, dark against the surrounding trees. It moved along the distant edge of the far boundary-fence, slowly, as though looking for something.
It was a rider on horseback.
Unusual enough on a fine day, damn near impossible on a day like this.
As Josiah kept his eye on the rider, it rode along the fence and then disappeared down the road, the rain obscuring it from view.
Behind him, the woodstove popped, and Elizabeth murmured a whispered conversation with her doll. Josiah left the window to make supper.
*******
After Elizabeth had been tucked into her little bed in the corner, Josiah put on his waxed-canvas coat and his hat and went out to check on the livestock. The rains had not yet reached their small barn, and they stared at him in wide-eyed animal wonder as he refilled their troughs and counted them once, twice over to make sure all were present.
But as he rounded the corner of the cabin, he glanced out at the fenceline and saw it, again: the shape of a rider on horseback, features indistinct in the gathering twilight.
Josiah went quickly into the cabin and grabbed his shotgun from behind the door. But when he came back outside, the rider was gone.
Puzzled, Josiah waited for a while, watching as the rain fell in sheets, dripping down the brim of his hat. The cabin was far enough away from any neighbors and the nearest town was miles off; he couldn’t imagine anyone riding all the way out here. There was nothing out here but trees and the nearby lake. An isolated spot, just as Grace had hoped for.
Josiah waited, but when there was no further sign of the rider, he went back inside the cabin, tucked the shotgun back into its place, and sloughed off his wet coat and hat.
Then, he settled into his usual evening routine, sweeping up the cabin floor and hanging up all of his wet clothes to dry. He quietly cleaned up all the dishes from supper, setting them in a neat pile to wash the next morning out at the pump, and then settled into his chair by the woodstove with his pipe. He found that the smoking satisfied his hunger pangs; he had been eating very little, lately, to make sure that Elizabeth had enough.
Elizabeth had left her doll on the floor before the stove and it looked up at him with its wide, wooden button eyes. He picked it up, smoothed back the ringlets—Grace’s ringlets—and then gently lay the poppet on his lap.
Josiah lit his pipe and smoked, staring into the flames. He had not anticipated facing a long winter without Grace. It hadn’t even crossed his mind. He had always pictured these evenings with her sitting nearby at her stitching, or sleeping soundly with their daughter in her arms, or reading quietly to each other to pass the time. But this…this had never occurred to him. Long nights alone.
He had sat like that for an hour or two, as the rainy night deepened, when sometime around midnight there came a knock on the cabin door. Respectful, three sharp taps.
Josiah’s neck chilled. He did not rise from his chair but leaned forward, ready.
“Who is it?” he asked, trying to keep quiet for Elizabeth’s sake.
“Don’t open the door, Mr. Kemp,” came a man’s voice. “Not until you’ve heard me out.”
The voice was low and smooth, unhurried yet firm.
Josiah eyed his shotgun where it sat behind the door, but he stayed put.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll hear you out.”
There was a pause. Then, the voice said, “You’re Josiah Kemp.”
It was not a question, but Josiah nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“Josiah, I am here to liberate you from your predicament,” the voice said. “I’m here to…save you, as it were. I know you’re in pain.”
“I’m doing just fine,” Josiah said. “I don’t know which of my neighbors told you anything different, but I assure you—”
“I don’t make a habit of getting my information from anyone’s neighbors,” the voice said, with a tinge of humor, a gentle smile audible in its tone. “My sources are far more reliable. Your wife is buried on the hill behind your house, and your daughter is asleep, and here you are, facing a long winter—a long life—alone and in pain. I can fix it for you. For both of you.”
Josiah took a long puff on his pipe. “I said I would hear you out,” he said. “But I won’t be willing to wait it out for long. Let’s hear it.”
A pause. Then, “I represent someone very, very powerful. Someone for whom business ventures have been extremely…lucrative. I am his agent, and I look out for his interests. Knowing your story and the pain you have experienced, I can make you a promise on his behalf that your cabin will survive this flood and that your larder will last the whole winter long. I can even promise you a new woman in your life in the coming weeks, so you’ll never have to be lonely again. I can make all of these things happen, and more besides.”
“I’m flattered that your employer would think of me,” Josiah said, suspiciously. “What could I possibly offer him, in return for such generosity?”
“You can offer him nothing,” the voice said. “He needs nothing from you. But there is only the logical thing for you to do, in response.”
“And what is that?”
“Allow me to take Elizabeth from you. From this cold, lonely place.”
Josiah lowered his pipe slowly, his hand shaking.
“No,” he said. “Absolutely not. Never.”
A pause. “I understand your reticence, Mr. Kemp. I truly do. But I need you to put aside your brutish feelings and think about this rationally. As it is, you will be raising your daughter without her mother, in an isolated cabin, all alone. Your larder is probably not sufficient enough to last you the winter, and you may never learn to thrive in this place. It is far more likely that you and your daughter will have to watch each other starve. Are you prepared to bury Elizabeth beside her mother, Mr. Kemp? Or, are you prepared to orphan her in this cabin, for it to be her tomb?”
Josiah could feel sweat beading on his brow. “That isn’t going to happen. We’re going to make do.”
The voice continued, low and with deep sympathy, “Make do. What a pitiable phrase. Consider this: if I take Elizabeth with me, she will want for nothing. She will be well fed. She will be clothed. She will be surrounded by others like her, a whole family who will love her. She will never, ever be alone. By opening this door and letting me take her away, you will be doing the best thing for her that you could ever do, Mr. Kemp. Don’t you want your daughter to live? Don’t you want her to thrive?”
Josiah’s heart was pounding. Behind him the woodstove popped and he startled. “I think…I think I could be a good father to her. She should be with her father.”
Another pause. Longer, this time.
“Josiah,” the voice said, its softest and gentlest yet. “You are a young man, and full of dreams. Too young and too fresh to do this. To raise a child alone. What I am giving you is a guarantee, and you’ll never get that anywhere else, or from anyone else. What would her mother have wanted? For you to hold stubbornly to principle, to sentiment, and curse your child to an early grave? To an ultimate doom? Think of yourself, think of your child. Save the both of you, if not for your sake, then for Elizabeth’s. The choice is yours. When you’re ready, open the door, and we’ll begin a new life for you both.”
Josiah could feel his hands shaking and the weight of the world settling on his shoulders as the rain thundered down on the cabin roof. He knew the waters were rising.
There was something in what the voice was saying. Some kernel of truth in it, buried deeply in the soil of his heart, six feet down. He feared the flood. He feared the long winter. He feared the empty larder. But most of all, he feared the mistakes. The accidents. The illnesses. The potential for everything to go wrong, for him to ruin it all, for him to curse Elizabeth with his lack. His impotence.
He was not able to save Grace. Perhaps, with this mysterious opportunity, he could save her child.
Josiah Kemp looked down at the poppet on his lap, and the wooden button eyes looked back up at him. He smoothed down Grace’s nut-brown ringlets, which she had trimmed and sewn so carefully to the soft little doll’s head with her own hands.
Near the end, she had not been able to speak much. But one night, one tear-soaked night, he had sat at her bedside and apologized to her, over and over, for bringing her out to this wilderness. Out to these isolated woods. He had thought it would be paradise, and with her help at his side it had certainly felt like it. But with her illness, it had become hell.
She had shaken her head, then, those nut-brown ringlets on the pillow wet with sweat, and said, “I would still do it all again.”
Josiah stared at the doll, those words replaying in his mind, over and over.
I would still do it all again.
Even with the suffering. Even with the burial plot on the hill. She would still have chosen it, for the beauty it had been, if only for a time.
And something tugged at the hem of Josiah’s thoughts, then. He tipped his face up, looked at the door, where he knew the voice was still waiting.
“You seem to know much,” he said, slowly. “But not once have you said my wife’s name. Tell it to me, if you know it. If she would have wanted me to open the door for you, then say her name to me.”
The voice was silent, but Josiah thought he could hear the rhythm of rattling breath.
“You need not test me,” it said at last, but with less certainty than it had had before. “You know in your heart that I’m speaking the truth to you.”
“If you come here in my wife’s name and with any care for her and her child,” Josiah said, hearing the strength in his own voice, “then tell me her name. Speak it aloud.”
But the voice only laughed, grimly. “Open the door, Mr. Kemp. Let me save you.”
Josiah shook his head. “You cannot save me, whatever you are. Take your empty promises and leave this place. Though the waters rise and sweep us away, I will not let you lay one hand upon my daughter.”
Josiah stood, picking up the poppet, and crossed over to where Elizabeth lay sleeping. He tucked the doll under her arm, kissed her on the forehead. Then he fed another log into the woodstove and went back to his chair.
All night long the voice lingered behind the door, whispering, cajoling, repeating its promises and assurances. Expanding upon them, all kinds of amazing rewards. Wealth, power, privilege, prestige.
But Josiah Kemp did not open the door.
*******
It was just before sunrise when the whispering finally stopped.
Josiah—who had only slept in short fits and starts, sitting upright in his chair—sat up blearily when the silence finally settled over the cabin.
No whispering. And the rain had ceased, too.
Josiah stood and crossed to the window. It was still dark outside, early morning, but through the gloom he could see the shape of a horse and rider, making its way slowly away from the cabin along the fenceline where the shadowy horse’s hooves barely rippled the floodwaters. Above it, the clouds had parted and the stars were visible, fading in the promise of an impending sunrise.
At the place where the property met the road the rider turned, and looked back at the cabin, and Josiah saw the flash of glowing eyes like an animal startled by lamplight.
But only for a moment, before it vanished into the trees.
END
As a dad of a little girl myself (though my wife is alive and well and here, thank heaven), I felt this hard, as they say. Almost stood up and cheered at the end. You tell 'em, Josiah. You TELL 'em.
Gosh Sally this one has me near tears. The fake black and white choice, the brutal reality of the winter, the uncertainty of what will come of it all…
Now, remind me what Ivy’s mom’s name is again?