She unstuck the blade from his skin quickly and without effort brought the blade just underneath his jawbone. She slid it into the Deputy, and moved the blade across. She made another pass and then another, spilling from his throat a reminder of what she’d lost. What had been stolen from her. And Deputy Iverson, who bled the same as any man, seized and shook before falling still in the bright light of the morning.

21

When Lady Mae woke, she was in the depot leaning back in the chair. She felt the hard leather beneath her, smelled the antiseptic in the hot, sticky air. She heard the shuffling of feet and clearing of throats. As her eyes focused, she saw that Ruby stood to her right, to her left Edith’s father. They each held one of Lady Mae’s hands, worry on their faces. She understood before she saw: her leg, dead and poisoning her body, was gone.

“Don’t try to move there, Lady Mae,” Ruby said. “We had to go and wake you up. We did what we could, but you ought to examine it yourself to make sure you’ll heal.”

Ruby squeezed Lady Mae’s hand quickly and nervously, wincing at each press of the palm. Even still, she held on to Lady Mae who leaned into the touch. Her leg was fire and her heart scorched, but she was alive. And Ruby, the only one to ever say something kind about her mother, had been the one to save her.

“I don’t understand—how—” Lady Mae took her hand from Ruby’s and lifted the sheet up to peer underneath. Beneath her knee was nothing, the empty space full of sparks on invisible skin. She felt the need to wiggle her toes, point her foot forward, and stretch her shin. She tried to sit up and swing her feet—her foot—over the edge of the chair, but Edith’s father pressed her softly back.

“You ought to know you’ve got to recover a bit.”

“But how did you? How’d you know—”

“Well I can’t rightly speak for all them residents,” he said, “but Ruby and I figured we’d heard about atonements so much, nearly learned how to do them ourselves. Grown up knowing about which veins to avoid, how fast someone can bleed out. Almost like we’d been doing them our whole lives. Reckoned we ought least give it a go. Thought we lost you there up on the scaffold. Glad to see we didn’t.”

Of course. They were born and raised thinking about their turn in the chair, for in the end, nearly all ended up there. Did they gather around the kitchen table late at night, tell their wives and husbands and daughters and sons of how deep the first cut was? Did they pay attention, past the pain and delirium, watching as Lady Mae, her mother, her grandmother, and great-grandmother had clamped and burned the ends of veins into one tangled mass?

You thought you knew too, Arbuckle.

Just cut too deep is all, my love.