Transformation Read online

  Transformation

  Kim Fielding

  Copyright © 2015 by Kim Fielding

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Kim Fielding

  1

  The unfamiliar bristles on Orris’s chin scraped the back of his hand. Despite the lingering bitter taste of vomit, he tried to keep his voice even. “What did this?”

  Samuel prodded the mangled remains of the lamb with his boot. When he pressed his lips together into a thin line, he bore a disturbing resemblance to their father. “Coyotes. John Dunning lost a goat to ’em last week.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  Samuel curled the corner of his upper lip. “Not for a grown man, they ain’t.” He used to speak as well as Orris—as well as any educated man in 1880s New York. But twelve years in Oregon had coarsened his speech as well as his features. Perhaps someday Orris would talk like that as well and his stomach would no longer roil at the sight of a mauled animal.

  “What will you do?” he asked.

  No doubt figuring the cost of lost livestock, Samuel shook his head. “Dunning bought a pair of guard dogs. They ain’t grown yet. Says when they breed he’ll trade me a pup for some work.”

  “That won’t do you any good now.”

  “Then you can be my guard dog. You’ll keep watch at night until the lambs are bigger.”

  Orris blinked at him. “But I don’t….”

  “Won’t take much to scare a coyote away. Even you can do it. Just have to yell at ’em, maybe fire a shot or two.”

  Fire a shot. Right. “I need to do more to earn my keep,” Orris said softly, not meeting his brother’s eyes.

  After a brief pause and another kick at the lamb’s corpse, Samuel gestured at the tree-covered hills behind him. “The coyotes are coming down from there, most likely. The vermin find our livestock easy pickings, and then they slink back up there to hide. No farmsteads in them woods yet. Now there’s just a couple of hunters up there. Someday, though. Soon.”

  Orris squinted at the distance. “You think so? People would have to clear the whole forest to farm up there.”

  “People will. It’s the way of things, Orris. We conquer the wilderness, or it kills us.” After a final glance at the pathetic pile of fleece and blood, he stomped toward the house.

  The sound of cutlery on china echoed in the cramped dining room, which always smelled of onions and damp.

  Lucy swallowed a bite of bread and wiped her mouth. “Mary Ann Dunning said we’ll have a doctor in town soon. He’s having a house built near the general store.”

  “Too far for us in an emergency,” Samuel responded.

  “But close enough if it’s not an emergency. You could use the help sometimes.” Samuel had gotten partway through medical training before fleeing the city. Lucy glanced down at her belly. “He might make it in time when the baby comes.”

  “Not if this one comes as fast as the others.” Samuel spared one of his rare smiles for his daughters, who smiled back. They were serious little girls, plain and sturdy like their mother, and both very bright. Orris had taken over their schooling since he’d arrived, freeing Lucy for her many other tasks. It was probably the only reason Lucy had agreed to allow Orris to live with them.

  “I think this one’s a boy,” she said. “Perhaps he’ll take his time.”

  Samuel shrugged at his wife before cutting a hunk of meat and stuffing it in his mouth. “Lost a lamb,” he said with his mouth full.

  “It’s not the scours?” she said, sounding alarmed.

  “Coyote.”

  “Ah. Like at the Dunnings. He’s been sitting out at night with his shotgun.”

  “I know.” Samuel took another big bite. “Me and Orris will be doing the same.”

  Lucy cut her eyes at Orris, then away. “He’s just as likely to shoot one of us as he is to shoot the coyote.”

  Orris scowled but didn’t say anything, in part because she was right. He’d never learned to use a gun.

  With a snort, Samuel reached for another piece of bread. “Maybe I’ll just give him some pot lids to bang together.” Everyone except Orris laughed, and Orris ducked his head. Samuel used to tease him when they were boys too. He took it as his right, being eight years older. Their five other brothers used to chime in. Orris should probably be grateful that now it was only Lucy and the girls.

  After dinner, Orris helped with the washing up. Samuel scoffed, claiming it was women’s work, but Orris didn’t mind scrubbing pots and dishes. When the kitchen was clean and Lucy and the girls had settled in the parlor with their sewing, Orris wandered outside. A light mist fell, the moisture and the gray evening light softening the edges of the outbuildings. Orris could sometimes swear that moss would grow on him if he stayed still too long in this climate.

  Samuel knelt in the mud outside the small barn, inspecting a cracked wooden board. He didn’t look up when Orris approached, but he gave a soft grunt. “I’ll have to replace this. I’ll show you how in the morning, after I teach you to use my gun.”

  “But it’s just one board.”

  “Just one, or soon another.” Samuel stood and wiped his hands on his trousers. “You have to keep on top of it, or it all goes to hell.”

  “How can you… how can you stand it? There’s always something breaking, something dying….”

  “How could you stand breathing musty old books all your life? And listening to asses in tight collars and ridiculous hats jawing on about nothing, day in, day out?” Samuel shrugged. “I’d choose a barn that needed mending any time.”

  Orris nodded at him. Samuel had always seemed too big for stuffy rooms and crowded city streets. He’d always stomped around with his hair mussed and his clothes slightly askew. He looked more at home here, with muck on his boots and bits of hay caught in his collar.

  “Do you want me to keep watch for the coyote tonight?” Orris asked. “I can shout if I see it. Or bang pot lids.”

  “No. Not tonight. But tomorrow night you will because the day after that I’ll be riding into Portland.”

  “Portland?” Orris had seen the city only briefly, when he’d arrived via the new railway line. But he’d been exhausted from the long journey and overwhelmed with the turn his life had taken. He’d barely registered the muddy streets, the squat buildings with false fronts, the tall-masted ships crowding the river, and the rough-looking locals. He’d worried then about being shanghaied—he’d read lurid stories about the practice in the New York newspapers—but Samuel had met him at the train station and whisked him away as quickly as a one-horse buckboard permitted.

  Now Samuel toed at a small rock. “I need supplies. Lumber, mostly. Want to get the house addition built before we get too busy with growing season.”

  Orris’s heart made a funny little hitch. “House addition?”

  “I reckon you’re getting tired of sleeping in the parlor. Sofa’s lumpy. Your room will be a small one, but we can fit a bed in it. Give you some privacy. You’ll have to help me build it, though, so you’d best learn to use a hammer well.”

  “So I can… I can stay?” He hated the way his voice cracked over the words.

  Samuel smiled at him. “Didn’t let you travel all the way ac
ross the continent just so I could turn you away. You’re not—well, you’re not well suited to our life here, but you’ll learn to manage. And you’re my baby brother.”

  Orris was not going to cry. “Thank you,” he rasped, staring at his shoes. They were badly scuffed. He needed boots like Samuel’s.

  “I don’t give a damn about your proclivities, you know,” Samuel said, making Orris snap his gaze up in surprise.

  “Most people say my… my proclivities are an abomination.”

  “Father said that, I suppose. And our brothers.” Samuel scowled and shook his head. “Fools, the whole lot of them.”

  “The Bible says—”

  “I don’t give a fig what the Bible says! The Bible says a man can take a harem’s worth of wives, but I doubt Lucy’d much approve of that. It says men can be sold into slavery; that they ought to take a blade to their sons’ necks if a voice tells them to. It’s a bunch of stories believed by people too weak to trust their own morals. But I know what’s right and what’s wrong, and I don’t fear facing the Almighty when my judgment comes.”

  While Orris was slightly scandalized to hear Samuel utter these words, he wasn’t exactly surprised. At age twenty-one, Samuel had steadfastly refused to attend church. He’d scoffed at their father’s accusations of blasphemy, collected a few belongings, and headed west. Meanwhile, Orris had faithfully attended services every Sunday, even though he’d known he’d be condemned were his secrets discovered.

  As they had been, eventually.

  Orris scratched at his small beard. “Even so, they say it’s unnatural.”

  Samuel snorted. “Unnatural! A few years ago, I had a pair of rams who had eyes only for each other. Couldn’t interest either of ’em in a ewe until I sold one ram away, and even then, the other was never very eager in his duties. I got a pair of drakes right now who are plenty cozy with one another. I even seen them sitting on eggs. If sheep and ducks can hanker after their own sex, there’s nothing unnatural about it.”

  “I’m not a sheep or a duck,” Orris said.

  “No. You’re a good man, Orr. You’ve always been kind, and you’re the smartest among us. There’s nothing immoral or wrong about you. You were only… you were born like this, I reckon. Just like William was born left-handed. Damned inconvenient sometimes, but not evil or unnatural.”

  Orris had never had a conversation like this with anyone. Even when he’d faced his father after having been expelled from the university—even when they both knew very well why he’d been expelled—they’d addressed the topic only obliquely, as if it were too shameful even to name. Maybe it was easier to talk about these things standing in a muddy farmyard than in a gilded parlor on Fifth Avenue.

  For a few moments, Orris and Samuel were silent, both staring at the clouds. Night would fall soon. The darkness here was so much more profound than it had ever been in New York. It scared Orris a little, and yet it was somehow also comforting. He felt that here a man might be able to keep his secrets to himself.

  In a quiet voice, Orris admitted his greatest sorrow. “I’ll never be loved. I’ll never belong to someone, or have him belong to me.”

  Samuel didn’t answer at once. Perhaps he was thinking about their father’s disapproval of Lucy, still expressed in his letters even though he’d never met her.

  Finally, Samuel cleared his throat. “We have rules, Orr. You know I got no patience for the spectacle that calls itself society back east, but even here we got rules. They keep us civilized, even if they don’t always make much sense. Not too long ago, the girls were complaining to me, asking why they couldn’t wear trousers like the boys. Skirts get in the way, they said. I s’pose they do. And it’s stupid and it’s not fair, but the rules keep the wilderness at bay.” He gestured west toward the hills, although it was too cloudy to see them.

  “I understand,” Orris said. And he did, even though his heart ached and his soul despaired.

  “There’s a place or two you can go in Portland. Never been myself, of course—not my taste, and anyway I have Lucy—but I’ve heard rumors. Places where folks look the other way if the rules get bent a bit. Maybe you’ll pay them a visit once in a while. I can send you into the city when I need things. I don’t much like going myself.”

  Orris nodded slightly. Portland was full of sailors, frequented by men traveling alone and far from family and home. At least a few of them would be interested in other men’s company. The same had been true on a larger scale in New York. But although he might wish to venture into the city eventually, he would not seek out the places Samuel referred to.

  With a heavy sigh, Samuel again wiped his hands on his trousers. “I’ll need some coffee if I’m gonna to be up all night.” He turned and walked back to the house.

  Rain pattered against the windows as Orris squirmed uncomfortably on the sofa. He felt guilty for being wrapped like a mummy in several quilts, warm and dry indoors while Samuel guarded the livestock outside. And he knew he ought to sleep while he could, because Lucy and the girls would be downstairs before dawn, setting the fire and beginning the morning chores. He couldn’t help but long for the times when he’d lazed comfortably in his feather bed well past sunrise, knowing the servants would be taking care of things and Cook would make him breakfast whenever he was ready for it.

  Even better, though, had been those few delicious mornings spent in Daniel’s wide bed, their limbs entwined, their skin sticky with sweat and spend. After their ardor was sated, Daniel liked to play with the messy strands of Orris’s red-gold hair. They’d use the soft pillows to muffle their laughter at the silly impressions of their pompous old philosophy professor. And Daniel liked to tickle Orris under his arms and on his ribs, and—

  Now he was somewhere in Europe, and Orris had been banished an additional three thousand miles away. They would never see each other again.

  Exile sounded very romantic when one read about it in stories. But the reality wasn’t romantic at all, especially when one was scrunched on a narrow horsehair sofa, yearning for something that would always be denied.

  The floorboards overhead creaked as someone walked across an upstairs room. Lucy, probably. She wasn’t sleeping well with the discomfort of her pregnancy. Besides, Samuel had told Orris that Lucy often woke up to check on their daughters, as if something might have happened to them during the night. The house was safe enough, but her worries were understandable. She’d lost her first daughter to fever when the girl was but an infant.

  With Samuel on guard for dangers outside, and Lucy being watchful for problems indoors, Orris felt especially irrelevant. He was immensely grateful they’d been willing to take him in despite his disgrace, but he doubted he’d ever fit in any better here than he had in New York. He was the seventh son of a seventh son. Possibly cursed, definitely extraneous.

  And good Lord, so lonely.

  If he’d had his own room, he might have taken himself in hand, both for the comfort of touch and for the sleepiness he’d feel after his release. But he wouldn’t dare here in his brother’s parlor, with his sister-in-law pacing just over his head.

  He finally drifted off and dreamt that he was dressed in thick woolen clothes that weighed him down as something chased him. He couldn’t see the monster behind him, but he could hear it—snarls and growls and nasty laughter. It chased him up Fifth Avenue, where people stood to watch and the buildings closed in tightly, trying to trap him. He darted down a side street where dark churches loomed, and even as he ran, he desperately shed his clothing. Soon he was naked, and that was wrong; and being nude felt good, which was worse. Then he came across a human corpse blocking his way, and although it was horribly mangled, he recognized it as Daniel. But Orris simply leapt over the bloody body, not feeling any regret over Daniel’s death, and that was the worst of all. No. No, it wasn’t. The worst was when he turned another corner to find his family huddled together. When they saw him, they screamed and began to run away. And Orris chased them, snarling and growling and laughin
g with glee.

  2

  Orris’s beard didn’t grow in particularly quickly, but in New York he’d visited the barber three times each week. Here in the wilds of Oregon, the nearest barber was a half-day’s journey away. Perhaps he could have shaved himself, but he didn’t trust his hand to be steady with the blade and so he’d grown a beard. He often caught himself stroking his whiskers when he paused to rest. He was doing it now, in fact—running his fingers through the coarse hairs as Samuel inspected his novice repair work.

  Orris wondered whether any of his friends in New York would recognize him now. Former friends. All of them had turned their backs on him when his disgrace became known. Even Hugh Price, who spent most of his waking hours drinking and whoring in the Bowery. And even John Bernard, who sometimes visited the bathhouses for trysts with other men. Ah, but the Prices were obscenely wealthy, and the family’s donations to the university were generous enough to permit Hugh’s atrocious behavior and worse marks to be overlooked. And Bernard’s habits were whispered about, but unlike Orris, he’d never been caught in bed—in flagrante, actually—with the son of a titan of industry.

  “Not bad,” Samuel said, nodding slightly at the barn repair. “The boards are a little crooked, but they’ll do. The nails are set true, and you didn’t waste many.”

  “Thank you,” said Orris, smiling. He didn’t often receive praise.

  “By the time you finish helping me build the addition, you’ll be an expert. Who knew? All these years wastin’ time with your dusty books when you could’ve been a carpenter.”

  “I hardly think Father would have approved of that profession.”

  “Father.” Samuel waved his free hand dismissively. “You could fill a library by listing things that man disapproves of. He’s certainly not pleased that I became a farmer. As if there’s shame in bringing food to people’s tables. Father and our brothers, they sit indoors all day, pushing around pieces of paper and thinking themselves important. I work damned hard here, Orris. You seen that already. But I’d rather spend my days digging up stones and wading through sheep shit than to become a banker or a lawyer like the rest of ’em.”