The Grass Widow by Nanci Little

headboards burnt in the stove. White men don’t respect nothin’ but their own wants.”
    She snapped a cup towel from the wire over the stove and banged dishes to their places as she dried them. “They don’t understand home, or give a damn for just havin’ enough. They only ever want more, an’ don’t care how they get it.”
    She dumped the dishwater, poured the rinsewater into the pan, and jammed cup towels and dishcloths into the still-steaming water. She grated in soap and sloshed the small laundry around, leaving it to soak while she took the bucket to the well. Back
     
    with it, she slopped the rinse-kettle full; water hissed and danced over the surface of the stove. She dumped the laundry water and poured the rest of the fresh water into the dishpan to rinse the soap from the linens, and dumped that and wrung the cloths and hung them over the stove, all in a dark fury words hadn’t dissipated. “I’d burn this house an’ salt the fields ere I’d see that son of a bitch Slade own a speck of it.” She banged around in the china closet, finding a small, soft leather bag, and slammed out to the porch.
    Aidan sat at the table, her eyes closed, her breath shallow in her throat; Joss might be a Bodett by name, but there was no denying her Blackstone blood. She sighed, finally, and stood. There was something she’d neglected to say, and if that oversight was part of Joss’s ill humor, it was a part she could try to appease. Joss was leaning on the porch rail, trying with fingers not quite steady enough to roll a cigarette. “I owe you an apology,”
    Aidan said quietly, and Joss looked up. “I was dreadfully rude to you. You didn’t deserve it, and I’m sorry. And thank you for defending me. I’m sure he meant to strike me.”
    “I’d be diggin’ a hole in the beans by now if he had. You’ve been struck often enough.” She abandoned the cigarette she’d been trying to make, jamming the little bag inside her shirt and her hands into her jeans pockets. “There’d be a measure o’
    satisfaction in plantin’ that jackanapes.”
    “He’s hardly worth the risk to your soul. Are you all right?”
    “I’m angry. It’s nothin’ you did. It’s over principle, an’ it don’t go away. It only rises an’ ebbs, an’ it needs to ebb.” She picked the Colt from the rocker and took it inside; she cleaned it meticulously, and loaded it, and snugged it into its holster, and by the time she was done, the anger had receded.
    On the porch, Aidan sat wearily in one of the rockers; she didn’t look up until Joss spoke.
    “It seems since you’ve been here we’ve had so much turmoil, an’ so little chance to just sit an’ talk,” Joss said quietly. “If I made a pot o’ tea, could we try an’ start fresh?”
    “English tea, please. That Chinese brew of yours—”
     
    Joss grinned. “I know. The vile concoction. Good pekoe it shall be.”
    She managed a smile, holding it until Joss turned, then went back to her silent battle with her digestion. For weeks, waking up had been enough to distress her; any disruption of her morning routine queased her breakfast in her. The Kansas battles with her father had reduced her to a cold-sweating misery huddled over a basin or the back porch rail; halfway across the continent by train was an experience she wanted only to forget. Argus Slade—
    “I forget if you take milk or—Aidan? You’re white as butter!
    What—”
    “I’m sorry, Joss, I’m going to be—”
    Joss got her to the edge of the porch, and held her head; strange, Aidan thought, gagging, how a cool palm at your forehead helps you know you’ll live through the indignity. “I’m—oh, Joss, I’m sorry—”
    “Shh. Just let it come.”
    She had no choice. When it was over her legs deserted her; Joss supported her in her collapse to the porch floor. She hated needing the support, but had no choice in that, either, and she leaned, swallowing and shivering, into Joss’s worried