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“Walt is not here then. I am sorry for disturbing you,” Henry says with that strange mix of submissive apology and clipped efficiency that made you want to apologize or argue somehow.
“Nonsense. Come on inside.” She offers instead, stepping back from the trailer door.
“I would not want to intrude, Martha. In retrospect I should not have dropped by unannounced at such a late hour.”
He’s not wrong, and usually she would have given anyone who so violated the little privacy she had these says a piece of her mind, but it is so clear it hadn’t been premeditated and he seems a little shell shocked, and the truth is he’s a welcome alternative to sitting up awake waiting to see when Walt will make his way back.
“It’s fine, Henry. Really. Would it help you feel more comfortable if you thought of it as doing me a favor? Because I could use the company. I don’t sleep much these days,” she admits gesturing to her expanding midsection, “and I know Walt’s job can’t be done on a 9 to 5 schedule but I have to admit that sometimes it feels like Lucien is a particularly demanding mistress… or maybe as if I’m the mistress and his work is his real wife.”
“I am sure it is merely an adjustment period. In time he will find a balance just as in time I will remember that things have changed and I cannot be continually showing up in the middle of the night now that Walt has a family.”
“You’re part of his family, Henry. I knew that before I let him drag me out into this forsaken wilderness.”
Perhaps that is why she feels comforted by his presence. At least this baby she is bringing into the world in a few short months will have someone other than herself and her preeoccupied bridegroom to turn to. Another man, another situation, she might have thought all kinds of things about what he was after, but in this last year she’s already come to understand just the kind of friend Henry is to Walt. Maybe it’s something about Deputy Walter Longmire that brings out the kind of crazy devotion that led her here that is responsible for that bond, but maybe it is something about Henry too.
“He will get that cabin built,” Henry tries to assure her, glancing out the trailer window at the partial frame of said structure before glancing back at Martha’s current status and adding, “Though perhaps not before baby Longmire makes his or her debut into the world.”
“It’s not the cabin,” she sighs, “I think I just didn’t realize how different living in Wyoming would be. It’s like living in a different time.”
Henry surveys her face for a moment, like he’s a fortune teller reading a palm, “Walt has told you the story of how he and I met, has he not?”
“Sure. The two of you had a good old fashioned brawl and then were thick as thieves forever after.”
“It was not the so called brawl that mattered. We fought because I assumed his actions were racially motivated, taking offense towards a boy I did not know; because, that was my understanding of the world I was living in. We became friends; because, I was wrong in my assumption.”
“You think I need to give the good people of Absaroka County a chance? That I’m being unfair to them.”
“Perhaps not all of them,” Henry concedes, “But if you do not allow for the possibility that some of us might be better than you think you may find yourself fighting a number of unnecessary battles and rather short on friends. I was lucky that Walt did not hold my presumption against me.”
“I don’t think badly of you, Henry,” she feels the need to clarify, nothing his use of ‘us’ rather than ‘them’, “I hope you know that.”
“You have never given me reason to take offense, Martha.”
She supposes she hasn’t, though he hasn’t given her reason to either. There has been no territorial pissing matches, no testing the boundaries of her sway over his best friend. Henry Standing Bear looked at her the day that Walt brought her home, glanced between them, and welcomed her with a restrained by sincere grace that she’d never had reason to doubt. He’d taken her to appointments when Walt couldn’t manage to make it. It occurs to her now, that she has been civil enough, but she’s only ever considered Henry as an extension of Walt.
“So why did you come out here, really?” she suddenly asks, “Surely it wasn’t to discuss my transition to country life.”
“It is not important. Do not concern yourself over it.”
“Bullcrap. You didn’t rush all the way out here to talk to Walt at nearly two in them morning for something that’s not worth bothering over.”
“I realize now that it was a miscalculation on my part. I should not have troubled him about it and I will certainly not do so to you.”
“Nonsense. It’s about that girl of yours isn’t it, Deena?”
“She is not-” Henry cuts himself off pressing his lips together and taking a deep breath, “Did Walt say something?”