The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [43]
Shortly after Louisa flew to the arms of the minister, he realized that the widow did. One night, there was a rap on his door and Mrs. Swivel, who was large-hipped, plain, and shrewd, entered his cold little room. His bedstead did not seem sturdy enough to bear the weight of them both, and though the warmth and bread-dough fragrance of her body was sweet, he worried as he made his way toward bliss which one of them would pay for the bed if it collapsed. Their nights grew frequent and the bed more frail. He strapped the legs to the frame with strong rope and braced the base of the bed with river stones. She fed him better than her other boarders, which got their suspicions up. But real fear did not enter him until the first day of November, when she gave back half his rent and told him with a glint of tooth that she’d reduced it. So Joseph Coutts was ready to make a change in his life when he met up with Reginald Bull, who was looking for a man to join a town-site expedition heading for the plains.
Reginald was enough like his surname for that alone to stick. Bull was thick, wide-necked, powerful, but had the prettiest bashful brown eyes and a red bud of a mouth, which he was often teased for. As Bull laid it out, two land speculators, Odin Merrimack and Colonel LeVinne P. Poolcaugh, were getting up a party of men, which they would outfit at their own expense, and sending them out past the Dakota-Minnesota border to survey and establish claim by occupancy on several huge pieces of land that would most certainly become towns, perhaps cities, when the railroad reached that part of the world. The men would be paid in shares of land, said Bull, and there was already talk of millions in it; he’d heard that phrase. But they were not the only ones with town fever. Other outfits were making plans. They’d beat everyone by heading out in the dead of winter.
“I’ve seen men get richer out here,” said Joseph, “but I never have seen a man poor to begin with obtain much wealth, not yet.”
“It’s a going proposition,” Bull insisted. “And we’re outfitted with the best. Two ox teams and a cook. Not only that, but we’ve got the cleverest guides in this country, Henri and Lafayette Peace. They’ll get us through anything.”
At this, Joseph was impressed. Henri Peace was known by reputation, though he’d never heard of Lafayette. There was also a German named Emil Buckendorf and three of his brothers, all excellent ox-team drivers.
“Give me one night,” said Joseph. But when he thought of going back to his room and remembered the state of his bed legs, he changed his mind and agreed right there on the spot. That very afternoon, he visited his school district officer and put in his resignation; that night, he gave his landlady notice. He’d thought Dorea might be downcast to see him go, perhaps even angry, but when he explained his plan and told her of the interest he’d earn in the town-to-come, her face grew radiant, almost beautiful. The thought of so much money to be made just by camping out in a place made her so excited that she almost wanted to go herself. Alarmed, Joseph mentioned that they would be guided by bois brl or Metis French Indians, and her features shut tighter than a drumhead.
She left him alone that night and he was surprised at how much he missed her. Unable to sleep, he lighted a candle stub and paged through the Meditations until he found the one he needed, the one that told him no longer to wander at hazard or wait to read the books he was reserving for old age, but to throw away idle hopes