An Undisturbed Peace by Mary Glickman Read Free Book Online

meal of roasted turkey and corn. He praised her food profusely, talking nonstop about its flavor and texture. When he ran out of reasonable compliments, he became ludicrous, then stuttered under the weight of his own flattery. She left her chair and lay on the bed. After staring at him silently for a few minutes, she opened her arms to him. He went to her and worked to banish her sadness with the urgency of his love.
    At the dawn, Abe opened his eyes to find Marian propped up on one elbow and studying him. She reached over and ruffled his hair affectionately as if she were his mother rather than his lover. He stretched and put his arms around her, drawing her close.
    â€œHow are you today?” he asked.
    She smiled. “Well. I’m doing very well. Ready to face the day my Father the Sun has given me.” She leaned forward and kissed his lips. “I’m getting used to you,” she declared with the confidence of a queen. “You may stay a little longer.”
    â€œI will stay with you the rest of my life.”
    â€œNo. You will stay until I tell you to leave, Peddler. Have you not work to do? Sales to make? Will you not be missed and your customers make inquiries?”
    She had him there. He envisioned Isadore’s trackers coming with their dogs to find him out. He feared what those brutal men might do to her should they arrive to drag him back to camp, and if she thought to object. Hiding his fears, he dissembled to affect a courtliness he imagined she’d experienced in her days abroad.
    â€œWhatever you allow me will be the greatest gift,” he said.
    â€œHmph,” she muttered. She got up, put on her buckskins and shirt, and left to feed her animals before she fed herself. She gestured toward the potbellied stove on her way out the door. “Make us something to eat. I won’t be long.”
    He opened the stove. It was full of kindling, which he lit. Marian had eggs in her larder and a kind of bread he’d never seen before. He broke it open and tasted its dark yellow dough. Potato, he decided, a very strange potato. There were also onions and mushrooms. Other foodstuffs she kept he did not recognize. He left the latter alone and mixed the identifiable together, breaking the bread into pieces, chopping the vegetables, mixing the eggs, then stirring the lot in a pan over the stove’s hot burner. When she returned, they sat and ate. Although she finished every bite, she did not compliment him, an omission that stung until she said, “This will be your job while you’re with me. To make the food in the morning while I tend the livestock.” He thought this meant he had not exactly failed her and was pleased.
    After breakfast, she taught him how to grind corn and grain, pointing out huge heaps of unhusked corn and fresh-cut grain that needed attention. Then she sent him to clean the horse shed and goat pen, and to re-bed them. Once finished with that, he was to empty, then scrub the water troughs and refill them, bucket by bucket, from the living stream behind her house. There was wash to be done also, if he had time to manage that. In the meantime, she would ride out and inspect her fields, which were in a valley in a place the white men did not know. Afterward, perhaps, she would hunt. Abe was so in awe of her by now he did not grumble but set to his work on the stable as soon as she and her horse were out of sight.
    An hour or two later, he hauled water with worthy resolve until he heard the approach of strangers. He picked his head up. White men in long oilcloth coats and broad-brimmed hats, armed to the teeth with both shotguns and pistols, rode toward him on mounts as disheveled and mud-caked as the brutes astride them. He walked into the cabin as swiftly as he could without seeming to run or rush, so as not to betray his fear. He grabbed a rifle from the wall and went to face the visitors outside by raising his weapon and pointing it at them. Blood