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Two of Emma’s dresses were black, but she was thinking about dyeing the blue-and-yellow one as well. Alice Evans only wore black these days, although the boys had stopped as soon as was respectful. Something Emma was thankful for now that she was the one who did the laundry; dirt showed up on black, almost worse than on white.
She’d been going to church almost every Sunday for quite a while now. Not because she believed any of it, exactly. Some days, when a sermon dwelled too long on subjects like sin and repentance and punishment, she itched to stand up and sing her old song about Bileam’s ass, punctuating the chorus with slaps like she used to do. Most of the sober-faced folk around her probably knew it by heart anyway. (Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, Jesus had said, so Emma tried to have forbearance.) But at least no one was drunk in church.
She’d never spoken to Mrs. Evans before they met there, only knew her as Dan Evans’ wife, now his widow. Straight and yellow-haired and pretty even in black. She listened to every sermon with genuine interest, like Emma did most of the time, but not in the same way; she looked like she knew what it meant. That alone was enough to make Emma want to talk to her. The youngest boy would fiddle in his seat and look around in search of something more interesting than the fat man who droned on and on about things that happened a thousand years ago. One day Emma caught his eye and then squinted hard so both her eyes rolled toward her nose, and he giggled shrilly. After that he started looking at Emma every time, so she obliged him by making funny shapes with her hands when she thought no one saw.
Alice noticed, though. Emma was prepared for an earful about leading the boy astray as she’d no doubt led so many men – she’d had one or two lectures like that from other women – but instead Mrs. Evans thanked her for keeping Mark in his seat until the sermon was over.
Emma was so weary of the saloon by then that she agreed to come and stay with them. They needed someone to help now Dan was gone, and they could afford to pay her. Alice never asked about her singing days; Emma went to church and really listened to what was said there, and that meant she was good enough. Her idea of what it meants to be a Christian wasn’t everyone’s.
She thinks I’m Mary Magdalene, Emma thought sometimes. She thinks she’s saving me. But that really wasn’t fair.
Alice read the Bible in bed most nights, opening it up here and there and reading the parts that came up, not like Emma, who was slowly reading it cover to cover.
“We used to tell fortunes like that,” she said one night. “Me and my sister. We didn’t understand what any of it meant then, of course, but we had fun trying to find the secret messages in it.”
“All girls do that,” Alice said. “All the girls I’ve known, anyway. It was my grandmother who told me how.”
“Can you read to me?”
Alice looked at her. “Will you try to find secret messages in it if I do?”
“Most likely I will, but I won’t tell you if you don’t ask.” She smiled. “That’s why I started coming to church. I don’t understand, but I want to.”
Alice nodded, believing her, and let the book fall open with a gesture. It sounded beautiful when she read it, but it was sad to listen to, as if she was speaking in a foreign tongue Emma almost understood, but not quite.
The next day Emma started singing while she worked. Only psalms; they were easier than the book, and besides she didn’t want to shock Alice. Her voice was still beautiful.
“You have a sweet voice,” William said. “Why can’t you sing something else? Something that’s not about Heaven and salvation?”
She avoided his eyes by concentrating on the bedsheet she was folding. “The words make more sense to me when I sing them.”
“You must know other songs – you worked in the saloon, didn’t you?”
She looked up at him. “What would your mother say?”
“I don’t know. Probably What a pretty tune Emma’s singing, quite different from all those gloomy old church songs.”
She wondered if the gloomy church songs reminded him of his father’s death, if that was why he wanted something cheerier. Dan Evans probably stood as good a chance at salvation as anyone Emma had ever known, but you couldn’t be sure. That was one of the things that bothered her; who was good enough, and how could you know?
Another time, to Emma’s surprise, Alice asked the same thing. She gave the same answer: “I’m trying to understand. It makes more sense this way.”
Alice nodded as if that made sense. “But psalms is all you sing. The Bible does tell us to praise the Lord in song, but it doesn’t say we should never sing about anything else.”
Emma felt a grin spread across her face. “They aren’t all about Him. Some of them talk about renouncing sin, and being saved, and the eternal joys of paradise.”
Alice actually made a face at her. “Didn’t they teach you any songs at the saloon? They can’t spend all their time singing psalms over there.”
“Most of those weren’t about renouncing sin, no.”
She sang the one about the merry meadowlark, as a compromise, and Alice joined in on the choruses.
It was nearly a year since Dan’s death now, and the Evans farm was doing better than it ever had, which was to say at least they weren’t poor any more. That was because of how he’d died; it had been the twon’s only topic of conversation for a month or two. People did look differently at Alice these days.
Alice continued to wear black even after her sons stopped. She still went about her work briskly, as if nothing had really changed. Dan always seemed like a hard-working man, and he’d done his duty at the cost of his life, but for Alice, it was as if she’d been the one who kept the farm running the whole time. She never prayed for him that Emma heard. Maybe she was angry at him for dying; maybe she knew he was saved so there was no need. She rarely said her prayers in front of Emma, anyway.
Sometimes Emma prayed silently for Ben Wade. He’d been a worse sinner than she was, but he didn’t seem bad in the few hours she knew him. She regretted his death; she’d have liked to talk with him again.
She’d slept in his bed that night, and in between times he told her about men and women he’d known and all the places he’d been to. Some of it was so outrageous that Emma wanted to scold him for lying, but she decided she didn’t care; she wanted it to be true. He didn’t, she thought, but his face was hard to read. He listened to her story, which she told him without making anything up. It seemed so small compared to his. He nodded gravely, and then he made her laugh about it, and rolled on top of her again so they could both forget for a while, pretend they were in another story.
Now he was dead, likely in Hell even if he’d shown her kindness, and she was on a farm out in the dust-dry countryside, making even less money than the old saloonkeeper had paid her and with only a grave-faced yellow-haired woman for company at night. She waited for the tired, dusty look to disappear from her face, but there it was in the mirror every morning. What was she doing here? She was going to be famous once.
What was Alice doing here? She was so beautiful, but the lines were creeping in around her eyes and her mouth, just like they were on Emma’s face. Emma watched her while she slept and wondered where she’d come from, and what her Bible had told her when she asked it about her future, and what she wanted the answer to be.
Emma was always mending the boys’ clothes, adding an inch to William’s sleeves every month, or so it seemed. In a year’s time he would be leaving; Mr. Butterfield had arranged for him to go to Chicago and work as a clerk. (“He says I’ve got good handwriting,” William told Emma, both proud and puzzled that that was a skill to be proud of.) Emma hoped – prayed, even – that Chicago would be beautiful, that he would have whatever it was he wanted. She wondered how the farm would do without him, even if he sent money. God fed the birds of the air, she thought, at least the ones who were lucky and worked hard. Alice prayed for her sons, but not for herself, not that Emma heard. Was this where their stories would end? Emma staying to help the widow Evans at her farm, never to travel again or have a man bring her lilies of the valley? How could she leave?
She took out the blue-and-yellow dress and looked at it. The flowers hadn’t faded any, but it had to be ten years out of fashion, and there was a small brown stain near the hem. Dyeing it would be best; at least it would hide the stain. But Alice stopped her.
“Emma, you don’t want to dye that! I’ve never seen you wear it.”
“But you always wear black,” Emma said.
“I’m a widow - you’re not. I wish you’d wear this once in a while; I’ve had enough of black all around me.”
Emma held it up to inspect the bodice. It was cut lower than Alice’s dresses, but not as low as she remembered. She’d have to take it in quite a bit.
“I can sew one like it for you if you want.” She was only half joking, but Alice laughed and said maybe she could teach her some of her songs instead.