PROLOGUE

1917

In the moments while Belle Jane sat on the biffy, the sky darkened to such a steel that her legs disappeared. She could’ve been the magician’s assistant as he performed that trick, sawing a woman in half. It often felt like her legs were of her, travelling her body, but getting commands from some other mind. The legs: to the wood pile, to the fire, to the kettle, to the coop and the cows. To the stove, to the table, to the dishes and the socks. To the axe. To the horses, to the creek to the weanlings. To the pedals, for the children had asked her to play Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay! Or Come Josephine, In My Flying Machine! Again, if she’d please. She stroked her calf muscles, lithe and thick. That’s what she was, thick.

But Belle Jane's legs could not help her now, as she pushed and huffed. It was stuck, twisted with her angst and her mind could not quite locate it, instruct it.

Below, a sting of cool air and the rank of urine. Greedy flies with their not-teeth, like the old men at the Chinese restaurant. Last spring, bluebirds had nested in the roof, right above the walls she’d papered with golden hummingbirds drinking at peonies. Someday, she would have plumbing and electric lights. Someday, she would die.

In the mid-night hours, even when the legs knew it was not right, they went to the barn. To the fire, to the iron, to the bowie knife, to the needle, to the cleaver, to the bow saw, to the stash of lime. While Bill spooned the colt on the dirt, held its jaw like a lover, straddled its hind legs. Smiled.

The legs.

She felt a wash of nausea, at this moment, this life. How long could they all carry on? A week last a Mountie stopped the Priest girls riding to school, inspected the brands and asked where the horses had been got.

As her insides roiled, for some strange reason, her mind called her to remember a name she’d once had, Mrs. Junk. Had anything ever been funnier? Peter Junk’s fingers (still damp from rinsing his dick in the sink), coming to grips with her throat on the train, the last train. The fair. The boy. Her mind had always tried to drift off the memory, but at the oddest times a tide would rush back the child’s wail, his cheeks.

Well, here it was, finally. Spoils of the animals she’d reared, roasted and devoured, were now spitting out, away. How sad, a bit of remorse that she would be upon the legs again soon.

Her expression of relief was fleeting. Outside, she heard the sound of hooves slap the earth, the cinch of rope, a cuss: “You Goddamn Goddamn . . .”

Had the stranger lost the words, or the nerve?

Her heart was a mad racehorse, dashing but to where? She stood, peeked out the cut-out waning moon, scanned the low, snow-dusted hills all around, hoping George would not rise from a coulee.

“Shuf?”

“Bill! It was you, wasn’t it?”

A punch, a guttural, choking sound. “Hoah.”

Bill Kinnick, her husband, was on his back, at the pig slop, wiping his mouth. They knew a man, a Swede, who’d been bit by his sow and died of a fever. Bill’s hat, that old Plainsman, had landed about five feet off in the dirt.

Frank Shufletofski, her neighbour of a place eight miles south, was running to the barn. Bill Kinnick scrambled up, caught his boot, yanked him to the mud. Both men rose, to their knees and then their rage-wobbled feet.

“It’s been you all along!” Shuf threw down his gloves, readied his fists. “Well I won’t take it. That’s my buckskin you’ve got runnin’ there, now isn’t it?”

He pointed to the range beyond, where a herd of horses that’d been stampeding for no reason came to a still behind Morning Star, the head of the herd. The buckskin ran drag, at the back. Its coat, like wet hay, glistened. It had dark socks and dark eyes that always gave it a look of fright. Even from the biffy, Belle Jane could see Morning Star’s nose jerked high, ears tall. Feeling for the vibration, the smell, of danger.

The sky wanted to watch the fight too. The dark clouds and puffy white tops sailed above their ranch, threatened rain or hail or sleet. Or sun. This was Saskatchewan.

Her breath became edgy, panicky. She fumbled for her stockings, her lace underwear, her skirts. Where was Old Angus, the deuce, when shit like this was doing?

Shuf knocked Bill across the jaw, then boxed his ear. Shuf had a funny way of punching sideways, like a raccoon burrowing in the dirt.

Bill gave him a look: half glare, half grin. “I’ll take you Shuf, and I’ll take you again.”

The button of her skirt, she couldn’t get it to hook. It was dark. Her fingers were dumb and fat and shaking.

But as the men’s boots and fists collided, it was sideways-punching Shuf who was getting the best of Bill.

Oh hell, she thought, forgoing the button, I better help him.

Belle Jane remembered she was in the biffy, the stash of branding irons. She let the door wince open just a hair so she could get down on her knees, wiggle loose the board, and grab the first one, a half circle.

The air was dense with possibility: it could hail, a man could lose an eye.

The hens skittered to the shadow of the sawhorse. Bill saw her coming, shot her a look of baffled terror. What was she going to do?

She stalked the backside of Shuf, who had all his blood and senses fixed right there, in the storm of the fight.

Somewhere, far but not so far, a child sang a jubilant, heartfelt tune.

If she’d thought to go for the gut, knock the wind out of him. But she didn’t. She swung the iron at Shuf like a baseball bat. He ducked or stumbled, and the iron clocked Bill square between the eyes just as her skirts dropped. His face, there was no time for marvel or humiliation. His lids squeezed shut and his body tipped back like a pine log.

She dropped, her skirts dropped, Bill dropped. “Bill!”

There was dust, boots, a “Yah!” as the neighbour made south on his saddle horse. High to the hills in the west, a man she couldn’t make out, crabbing up the coulee on foot. Cousin Hector?

“Get to hell off, Shuf!” she hollered. “Take your chickenshit buckskin too.”

Her fingers reached for Bill’s temple, his heart.

The clouds let off a mist of rain. The iron, how cool it felt in her hands.