Free Blue Moon by Jill Marie Landis Page B

Susanna’s bed, his dirty bare feet adding another contribution to an already soiled quilt. Payson inspected Little Pay’s wound and slipped his arm around the boy’s shoulder as he held the dishtowel against the superficial cut. Beneath his worn cotton shirt, Little Pay felt bone thin. All of them had lost weight during the long hard winter when there was little food put by because Payson had discovered too late that his hunting skills were lacking, but his elder son seemed to have suffered most of all.
    “Maybe Mama could wipe it off.” Little Pay sounded doubtful as he looked over at his mother.
    “Let’s not bother your mama.” Payson glanced toward his young wife and felt the rip in his heart tear a little more. He bit his lips and concentrated on his boy.
    “You’re all right, son,” Payson told the child as he pressed the rag to the wound. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Little Pay between his knees and asked, “How did you manage to do this?”
    He dabbed at the cut until it stopped bleeding.
    Little Pay shrugged. “Just fell.”
    “You’ve got to be more careful,” Payson warned. “There’s not an inch left of you that’s not bruised or battered.”
    Freddie was trying to climb up the cabin wall by inserting his bare toes into the cracks between the wood where the chinking was missing. Payson ignored him.
    “Freddie’s climbin’ the wall, Pa,” Little Pay told him.
    Payson sighed. “I know, son. Freddie, get down, please.”
    “Papa, you need help putting in those seeds yet?” His wound forgotten for the moment, Little Pay volunteered so earnestly that Payson felt ashamed.
    “The field isn’t ready yet, son. Besides, the plow handle broke this morning. I’ll have to fix it and finish plowing before I can start the planting.”
    The boy said nothing. He looked over at his mother and Payson followed his gaze. The rocker had stopped moving, but his wife held her silence and did not turn around.
    Susanna could hear her boys and Payson across the room, but she felt as if she were trapped in another world where she could not reach them. They had begun to talk around her as if she were not there, and in a very real sense, she wasn’t. Just her body and a corner of her mind that still clung to a thread of her old life, her old self.
    She was too young to feel so old, but she did. Old and helpless, the life draining out of her a little more each day. She imagined it seeping into the dirt floor beneath her feet, draining right through the soles of her shoes, right down into the soil of this cursed Illinois ground.
    Little Pay seemed to scratch or bruise or skin something constantly. She wondered if perhaps it made the hurt inside go away if you hurt bad enough on the outside. She ached for Payson and the boys, but she could do nothing. The pain she already bore went so deep she was numb, paralyzed with it.
    She could still hear everything, though. Even earlier, when Payson had said something about a broken plow, she was screaming inside, but the sound would not come out. How could it, when it took every ounce of strength she had in her just to breathe?
    Didn’t Payson know they were cursed now and always would be? When would he stop trying? When would he admit that he had been wrong and simply give up?
    Not until he was dead, she reckoned. Not until then, when they might all be dead and buried.
    He was beside her now, hunkered down on one knee, his hand atop hers. She knew if she turned her head very slightly that she would see him looking up at her as if he wanted to cut his heart out and lay it on a platter and give it to her, if that would make her happy. The flat light of guilt would be there in his blue eyes, along with the beaten-down hopelessness that had taken up residence inside of him in the same way that pain had made a permanent home in her heart.
    She could not worry about the boys’ aches and complaints, or a broken plow, or anything else. Not when it was only a matter