#look at me drawing an autumn themed piece while its already snowing where i live

[cyanocittae]

frogs!!

(click for better quality // versions without tint, shading + lighting, plus sketch under cut)

[galadrieljones]

The Lily Farm - Chapter 46

AO3 | Masterpost

Pairing: Arthur x Mary Beth

Rating: M (Mature) - sexual content, violence, and adult themes

Summary: After Sean��s death, Mary Beth asks Arthur to take her on a hunting trip, somewhere far away. What takes place at first is a simple love story: full of trials and journeys that they must endure together, as a team. But over time, things complicate. The gang is in trouble, and as Arthur and Mary Beth aim to set out on their own one day, they must find a way to help those they love while eventually, finding escape. Their ultimate goal is to go north with the Marstons, to find the bucolic stretches of Wisconsin where, rumor has it, there are lily farms. Will they make it? How will they survive when all hope seems lost? This is their story.

Chapter 46: The Widow of Willard’s Rest, Pt. 1

***BEGINNING OF PART IV: AMERICAN PASTORAL***

Most days at Deer Cottage, Arthur would wake up early. He would go outside to chop firewood, and then he’d kindle the fire and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes outside. Most mornings, he would fish, but as the days were getting colder and shorter, sometimes he would just set up a trap line on the Kamassa to leave out all day instead, and then hike back up the ridge to the wooded hinterlands and hunt whitetail. He always rode home with enough to cook, smoke, and cure. He would then come back down to the river, empty out the fish trap and with any luck find a sturgeon or a largemouth bass. His new filly Leah, who he named for another character that he remembered from the Old Testament, which he had learned to read from many years before, was a fast girl and even in her temperament. She did not always take well to strange animals, and she had a wary look in her eye upon most passers-through. But she was wise to predators and upon Arthur’s constant and gentle reassurance, mostly a brave and kind girl.

Mary Beth seemed to need a lot of sleep, meanwhile. But she would stay up late knitting sweaters for everybody she knew, as winter was coming now, and she was anxious, and she needed something to keep her hands busy. Most days she did not wake up until Arthur was already busy with his routine, elsewhere, having left her a note or sometimes a little drawing with a pot of coffee on the stove. She wanted to be useful. She was used to having chores, hence the sweaters, and they were scarce on laundry so she made sure to keep things clean. She tidied the cottage in its every corner. There wasn’t much for berries this time of year, but Arthur had found an apple tree and with the dwindling autumn crop, she would bake. She read everything she could find, over and over again, and she wrote prose here and there, but her mind was occupied with a lot of worry and restlessness those days. The baby, the gang. Arthur would take her out shooting, and this seemed to help. He taught her to use every kind of gun. She tended the horses in the barn, which Arthur had built with help from Hamish over a period of one week. It was ramshackle business, but it would do.

Arthur and Mary Beth had been lying low in Roanoke Ridge now for three months. Together they rode into Annesburg at the end of every week, on Sunday, to check the post for word from Dutch, and to buy supplies and the newspaper. Annesburg was a mining community, and its little camps of gutter homes all lined up in a row made Mary Beth sad. As a boomtown, however, Arthur had said it reminded him of Virginia City, Nevada, a place to which he had traveled many years before right after he’d been more or less adopted by Dutch and Hosea. “They took me there,” he told her one Sunday, as they rode into town, down from the hills, “and we set up shop for many weeks. I pulled my weight in the gang at the blackjack tables for a long time, and I knew how to wrangle, and looking back, weren’t nobody better at keeping his head down than me.” He then sighed and grew stoic with concern. “Virginia City is where Susan taught me a thing or two about dancing,” he said, too, chewing on a reed or a piece of bark, smoking a cigarette, wearing an old cowboy hat given to him as a gift from Hamish. He was trying to make her feel better. The gunsmith in Annesburg was chatty and liked their company, too, so they would often make conversation with him. He thought they were implants from the western plains, looking to start a new life, and they supposed it was not altogether untrue.

There was still no word from Dutch. But the papers were quiet, which was a good sign. There had been a story on the “riverboat massacre” some weeks back—that’s what they’d called it down at the St. Denis Times—but no civilians had been killed, and authorities did not seem to know who or what had caused the blow-up. It had been reported that Angelo Bronte, foreign national and local philanthropist, had gone missing for a time, but he was back now, and safe, having claimed to be on vacation up the river, and though this was suspicious, there was not much to make of the feeling. Meanwhile the Mayor was in trouble with the state government for something or other. It looked like he might even get ousted from office. But Arthur did not keep up with politics. He didn’t care what happened to Lemieux nor Bronte, for he and Mary Beth were long gone, and they were never going back to Lemoyne.

There had been one letter in all those months—from Ranger Call. He kept coy and symbolic in his language, but in the letter, he hinted at a complicating factor involving John and the federal penitentiary. This worried them both gravely. Apparently, there was a hold-up on moving the gang to a more permanent relocation, and they’d had to take temporary shelter in Lakay until the problem was solved. But this had been weeks before. The letter also said they were going west, maybe. Or continuing north. That was what Dutch had claimed, but there was uncertainty.

Some members of the gang had gone, claimed Woodrow. Namely, Micah. The asshole feller with the handlebar mustache, he wrote. He went by the wayside when the Man attenuated their plans to rob a city bank. Some wonder if he is even still alive, as a couple days before his disappearance, he had gotten in a tussle with Mr. Matthews, who threatened his life. He said there would be more news when the gang found camp once more. Do not come to Lakay, Mr. Morgan, said the letter. For the Man has sent scouts high and low, from the Grizzlies East to the Big Valley. There will be salvation soon. In the meantime, Mr. Matthews thinks it would be safest, per Mrs. Morgan’s condition, and for how recognizable you have become down here in Lemoyne, for the two of you to remain where you are. The letter also contained information about the Wintersons. They are okay, it said. They are in Chicago and will return in a matter of months. This was a relief. Of course, they tried not to fret too much over John, as all they could do from here was, ironically enough, have faith that it was under control, counting on both Dutch and Hosea as so often they had done in the past.

In the end, there was very little else that Arthur and Mary Beth could do now but survive, not until they got word on where to go next. Hamish had traveled up to visit them on a few occasions. He was doing okay, and he and Arthur would hunt big game during the day and then at twilight they would all go fishing. Other than the constant worrying over John and the rest of the gang, and the occasional fears for the coming winter, and the baby, the way they were living up there in the Roanoke Valley, it wasn’t so bad. There was so much solitude, privacy, time to just be together. It was a privilege they had not been able to entertain in a very long time. Sometimes at night, Mary Beth would cook up a fine dinner, and they would play music on the gramophone, dance as they had that first night they had admitted their love to one another so long ago. Of course they laughed while they did it. It was silly, and they were rare to approach these sorts of sentimental affairs without sarcasm those days. But that was the point. Arthur would fashion a flower from behind her ear, little magic tricks that he had picked from Josiah, and they would talk and play cards and sip whiskey tea. Arthur had a way of letting it all roll right off of him, like raindrops on a tin roof, and that reassured Mary Beth and got her to focus on the day-to-day. She knew how he held the big picture in his mind like a story, navigating the plot, keeping calm. He had not always been so calm, he thought. This was such a positive development for him that had taken some time, and a lot of work. She was starting to show a little bit now, under her dress. They both saw it. Whenever he himself wanted soothing, he would place his head in her lap in the evenings while they listened to music and looked at the fire. She would tell him stories she made up out of the ether. Stories about escaped princesses with swords and poison arrows, and the country knights who loved and defended them. In Mary Beth’s stories, the knights needed protection, too. They were not immortal, or demigods. Just men, she would say. Arthur liked her stories very much.

One day, when the weather was nice, Arthur and Mary Beth rode north up the river with a mind to do some fishing near Brandywine Drop. They kept riding as the sun was warming their backs from its place in the sky, and it felt good. There had been snow already up in these hills, but it was melting off the trees that day and muddy, and Arthur shot a cougar from a distance with his rifle and then together they observed a moose nosing its way through the pines. They decided to camp after clearing the area for Murfree Brood. There were none about that day. Before the sun went down that day, they were just riding up the river, looking for a place to camp when they came upon a woman up the hillside, under a ridge, crying. When they found her, she was sitting on her knees in front of a wooden cross stuck in the dirt, a grave. She was not dressed warm enough for the weather, and she was very dirty. She had dark hair falling apart all around her face in pieces. Both Arthur and Mary Beth were concerned. They approached on horseback. When she saw them, she staggered to her feet and looked terrified. She clutched herself. Arthur stayed back, but Mary Beth got off her horse. She went toward the woman carefully, with her hands in front of her. She said, “It’s okay. We ain’t gonna hurt you.”

The woman looked around, like she was hopeless. She seemed to trust Mary Beth, as most did. “Who are you?” she said.

“I’m Mary Beth, and this is my husband Arthur," she said. "We’ve been living in a cottage just down the river. We’ve been there a few months. How long have you been up here?”

The woman looked back to Arthur, who removed his hat in chivalry. He still did not dismount his horse. He knew what he must have looked like out here to a woman all on her own. He didn’t want to scare her.

“Um,” said the woman, as if gathering her faculties. “We came here—a month ago? Maybe more. I don’t know.”

“Who’s we, ma’am?” said Arthur. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“My husband and me,” she said. She seemed to brace herself, then looked back at the cross, the grave. She was crying, a little. “We came out here from back east, Philadelphia.”

Mary Beth got a little closer. She stood beside the woman. “What happened?”

The woman dried her eyes on her sleeve. She shook her head in a combination of sadness and shock. “A bear,” she said, staring at the grave. “It was horrifying. He survived, but only a couple of days."

“Oh my,” said Mary Beth, in near on disbelief. She placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder to comfort her. The woman did not protest.

“I buried him, maybe a week ago," she said.

Mary Beth glanced back to Arthur, who shook his head in sadness. This was worse than it seemed, they both thought together, and they were needed. He got off his horse and came over. When he did, the woman looked up at him. She was very small, smaller than Mary Beth even. But Arthur had a way of softening his demeanor when he wanted to. He took a deep breath. “We are very sorry for your loss, ma’am,” he said.

“Thank you.” She seemed confused, like she was getting lost in his eyes, or like somehow she had forgotten where she was.

“Is there a town, or a train station that we can take you to?" he said. "You shouldn’t be out here alone. I know you’re—I know you’re grieving, but it really ain’t safe.”

“What?” she said. She snapped out of it then, almost immediately. “No. No, I can’t leave.”

“All do respect, ma’am, but why not?”

"Because it was our dream.”

“Your dream?”

“Yes,” said the woman, almost defiant. “We came out here from the city in search of a different life. Something true. Something real. I hate to say that we found it, in the worst possible way, but we did. And I can’t leave now. I can’t leave him behind.” She looked back to the grave. She closed her eyes. "For you." She said his name then, which was Cal.

Mary Beth, still with her hand on the woman’s shoulder, was looking at Arthur like she didn’t quite know how to proceed. They couldn’t leave the woman alone up here. It was feral country, and winter was coming. Surely, she would die. Arthur shrugged. Mary Beth did, too.

“What’s your name?” she said, to the woman.

“Charlotte,” said the woman. “Charlotte Balfour.”

“Well, Charlotte,” said Mary Beth. “Maybe we can help you then, get back on your feet.”

Charlotte looked at them like they were crazy. “Help me?”

“Yeah,” said Mary Beth. “Me and Arthur—well, Arthur especially—we been living on the range a long time, and like I said, we’re so nearby.”

“You’ll starve out here,” said Arthur, watching the woman, closely. “That is, if something else don't get to you first. Bear, mountain lions, or worse. You know how to hunt?”

Charlotte laughed to herself then. It was a strange sound amidst all the sadness. “No,” she said. “Of course not. And of course, I’m nearly out of food.”

Arthur smiled at this. “Well, we’ll teach you.”

“You’ll teach me?”

“Of course,” said Arthur. “Mary Beth here, even she knows how to use a rifle.”

“Ain’t nothing to it,” said Mary Beth.

Charlotte watched them, like she didn't fully understand, but she was listening. Somewhere far away, there was a loon going off, ringing in the twilight. The air was getting colder as the sun was going down past the ridge line. “Okay,” she said, with hesitance.

“Good,” said Arthur, almost soft now. He was half-groomed that day. He’d let Mary Beth cut his hair, had trimmed down his beard. It was probably a good thing. When you could see his eyes, his whole face, he had a kind and a sturdy look that most people trusted. He really was a warm man. “You got a rifle?” he went on. “If not, that’s okay. We got guns.”

“I do,” she said. “I have a couple.”

“Where’s your house?”

“Up the ridge,” she said. “Come, I’ll show you.”

They followed her up a long path to a small homestead painted green. There was a barn and a chicken coup. The coup was bustling, but it looked to Mary Beth that the eggs had not been harvested in a while. “You got eggs here,” she said. “Do you mind if I bring some in for you?”

“Oh,” said Charlotte, like she had not noticed. She was so thin. It looked like she probably had not eaten or slept proper since her husband, maybe not since Philadelphia. “Of course not. Thank you.”

“Any time.”

Mary Beth gathered a dozen or so into her skirt. When she came over, Charlotte seemed to notice then that she might have been pregnant, but she didn’t say anything. They stood on the porch. Arthur was quiet and calm, chewing on a toothpick.

Before she let them in the house, Charlotte stopped with her hand on the door handle. She looked inquisitive and she said, “What—or, who exactly are you?” She seemed embarrassed by the question, like she’d meant to say something more formal. “I just mean—why have you come to the Roanoke Valley? What is it that you do here?”

Mary Beth smiled.

“We’ve had all manner of jobs,” said Arthur. “We been on the road for some time now, and the road gets weary. Like you, we’re looking for a new life.”

This seemed to reassure Charlotte. She smiled down at her muddy but elegant boots. “Oh," she said. "Well, I should say, you look like farmers, or ranchers, maybe? Salt of the earth, if you will.”

“You ain’t wrong,” said Arthur. But he said not more. They went inside then, where Charlotte showed them around her modest home. There was lovely wallpaper and heavy oak furniture. Charlotte was digging around in a big leather trunk by the window, and Arthur and Mary Beth were waiting patiently, but by the time she finally found the rifles and the bullets, it was getting dark, and too cold to go back outside.

“Oh, good heavens,” she said, looking out the window, then at her watch. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Arthur.

“Would you stay the night?” she asked them, like she was desperate. She’d been picking at the skin around her fingernails, Mary Beth had noticed. She was so nervous, and worried, and scared and sad and alone. Mary Beth had not met another woman like her since they'd picked up Sadie up near Colter. “I have an extra bedroom," Charlotte went on, "with a bed big enough for the two of you. I just—now that you’ve come, I—”

“Sure,” said Mary Beth. She went to the kitchen table to sort the eggs into a basket, and Arthur was just sort of wandering around with his shotgun still slung over his shoulder. There were some pictures hanging on the wall of Charlotte and the man who must have been her husband, pictures which he was looking at. “We’ll stay. Right, baby?”

“Huh?” said Arthur, only half-listening as he looked at the pictures.

“I said, we’ll stay. We can go out and have a fresh start in the morning. Right?"

He surfaced then, looked at her, easy-going. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

Charlotte was relieved.

She showed them to their room. It was simple but beautiful with a high, brass bed and a white comforter stuffed with down feathers. There was not much for food that night, so Arthur stoked the hearth and went back out in the dark to hunt some rabbit, alone, while Mary Beth fried a couple of eggs and made her famous whiskey tea. Charlotte ate the eggs hungrily, though Mary Beth could still sense her trying to be demure about it. They sat on the small sofa together, sipping the tea then, looking at the fire. Mary Beth felt warm and comfortable and though she felt bad for Charlotte, and she could not herself imagine losing her husband and still finding a way to survive, she tried not to pity her, for she, too, had once been a woman all alone in the wild, and after all, she was glad to have a job now, something to do, somebody to help. For a while there, it seemed she and Arthur were always the ones who needed saving.

“Your husband,” said Charlotte after a little while. She was distant, sobered. “He seems very…sturdy, and wise. And you do, too. Do the two of you always know exactly what to do?”

The question was earnest. Mary Beth found it amusing. “Of course not,” she said. “We have found ourselves in our fair share of trouble over the years. But when it comes to surviving in the wild, it's true that we’ve got skills.”

“How long have you been married?” said Charlotte. The fire crackled. The room was warm.

“Not too long,” said Mary Beth. “Maybe four or five months? I am losing track of the weeks now. But we have known each other for a lot longer than that.”

“How did you meet?” said Charlotte.

Mary Beth took a long drink of her tea. She looked at Charlotte and could tell that she was just desperately lonely, that she needed preoccupation and companionship. Mary Beth didn’t want to lie to her. “We met in Kansas City,” she said, shoving the hair out of her face. Her curls were messy from the day. “I was only nineteen, living completely on my own. I was an orphan, and I didn’t have nothing to my name. I was in trouble back then, and alone. Like you. But I met Arthur and his…well, his family, I guess. They took me in.”

Charlotte was listening, rapt. She seemed surprised, maybe, that it was so bad. Like she did not know what to say. It seemed her instinct then to back off. She didn’t ask for anymore details, but she did not close herself off emotionally. She just had a certain polish about her, a certain sheen, even despite her current predicament. For this, and coupled with everything else from the wallpaper to the fine quality of her leather boots, Mary Beth could tell she came from money. “You're so brave," said Charlotte, shaking her head. "It's terrible you had to go through all of that."

"I am no worse for the wear," said Mary Beth. "I found Arthur from it. But thank you."

"My husband and I had all the safety in the world,” she said then, shaking her head like it was just so stupid, so small and silly in comparison. “And still, it wasn’t enough. What a pair of fools.” She closed her eyes. A little tear plopped out. “This was his dream, to escape our lives," she said. "Our lives of privilege, of predictability. And I followed him.”

“I understand that,” said Mary Beth.

“How is it that you’re not afraid?” she said then, opening her wide, pale eyes. “Living…on the range, as you said earlier. All alone? Everything you’ve been through. It sounds so hard, and terrifying. I’ve never known hardship before—before all this. I am a stupid woman, and I am starting to wonder now if I should have been smarter. Maybe I should have been more argumentative, said no. Maybe we never should have come here.” She looked away, at the hardwood floors, which looked new.

“Well, I do get afraid,” said Mary Beth, sincerely. She placed her hand on Charlotte’s hand where they sat in front of the fire. “I get afraid all the damn time."

"You do?"

"Yes. Mostly of losing Arthur," said Mary Beth, "as I have lost so much before him, and I know what that’s like. Losing. As I said, I understand. But listen, Charlotte. It don’t matter where you come from, or who you are. There’s always something better out there, waiting. That's what I'm learning. There’s always something to escape from, and there’s always somewhere better you’re trying to be. You should try not to regret what you did. You don’t know what might’ve happened if you’d stayed in the city. Life is so fragile, I think, and you got to do what you want. It’s easy to worry too much. We gotta...keep perspective. For as long as we can. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm keeping perspective. Arthur helps me with that. There's a lot going on in my life, that's scary, but you know, you don't really find the meaning in life on your own. It finds you. Like with me and Arthur. We was friends for…years, before love found us. Life can be real bad, I reckon, but you never know what’s gonna happen that’s good. Right? So you just gotta keep living, and that’s it, right?” She sat back and placed her hand on her little tummy, as if to reassure herself with the same words she was using to try and reassure Charlotte. "You just gotta try." She sipped her tea and smiled in such a way so that she would seem strong, and like she knew what she was talking about. It was true, she herself was struggling with such similar predicaments, but her husband was alive, and in that, she was the sturdier woman on the sofa that day, by far, so she acted like it.

Charlotte, meanwhile, was staring at Mary Beth, and then looking down into her tea and then back at the fire. They heard Arthur’s heavy boots then, out on the porch. They both glanced toward the sound with immense relief. Charlotte then suddenly looked back to Mary Beth, brightening up a little. She was not okay, but Mary Beth had hit on something it seemed—she was reassured. “Thank you,” she said. “So much. I hate to be a burden to strangers. But you are good people.”

Mary Beth waved her off as the atmosphere between them changed and grown more comfortable. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “And I hope we won’t stay strangers for long.”

Charlotte smiled. “Me, too.”

Arthur came in the door then. He took off his hat and shook the cold off. He had two rabbits, skinned and cleaned and tied together, laying over his shoulder. “Lord in heaven, it’s cold out there,” he said. He looked at them fondly then, huddled on the sofa, blowing into his hands. “But you two ladies look nice and cozy.”

“Is those rabbits ready to cook?” said Mary Beth.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” said Charlotte. She rose from the sofa. Went to him and took the rabbits off his hands. “Thank you, so much, Arthur.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said. He rubbed his hands together and looked at Mary Beth. “You got anymore of that tea, my lady?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mary Beth. She got up to pour him some. He took off his jacket and went to warm himself by the fire, and when she handed him the mug, he thanked her and kissed her on the head. Then he came and sat at the kitchen table. Mary Beth helped Charlotte to prepare a stew and they all three of them chatted for a while. Charlotte had some carrots, cabbage, and salt in her pantry, which they chopped up and used generously. As they were sitting down for dinner a little while later, they looked out the window. It was starting to snow.

“Sweet Christmas,” said Mary Beth. “Is that snow?”

“I guess we’re in it,” said Arthur, amused. He seemed so relaxed there, so deeply in his element. He tucked one of Charlotte’s fine cloth napkins into his collar. “Winter is upon us."

“I guess so,” said Charlotte, like she was unsure. They ate their stew.

As they did, the wind howled through the chimney, filling the room with its strange reminder of all the uncertainty beyond, all of which seemed so inconsequential while they were safe and sound there inside those walls. So much had started, finished, been found, and lost. And yet, there was still so much to do, it seemed, to weather the storm.