So Alice Van Cleve gave herself to the strange rhythms of the evening. She sat a few feet from a dead man, ate the food, sipped a little of the drink, sang along to hymns she barely knew, clasped the hands of strangers, who no longer felt like strangers. And when night fell and Margery whispered in her ear that they really should get going now, because a hard frost would be setting in, Alice was surprised to find that she felt as if she was leaving home, not heading back to it, and this thought was so disconcerting that it pushed away all else for the whole of the slow, cold, lantern-lit ride back down the mountain.

NINE

   Many medical men now recognize that numerous nervous and other diseases are associated with the lack of physiological relief for natural or stimulated sex feelings in women.

• DR. MARIE STOPES, Married Love

According to the local midwives, there was a reason most babies came in summer, and that was because there wasn’t a whole heap to do in Baileyville once the light had gone. The picture house tended to get its movies some months after they had been and gone elsewhere. Even when they came Mr. Rand, who ran it, loved his liquor, to the extent that you could never be sure that you’d see the end of the show before a reel crumpled and burned on screen, victim to one of his impromptu naps, prompting jeers and disappointment across the audience. Harvest festival and hog-slaughter had slid past and it was too early for Thanksgiving, which left a long month with nothing but darkening skies, the increasing smell of wood smoke in the air, and the encroaching cold to look forward to.

And yet. It was apparent to anybody who took notice of such things (and Baileyville’s residents made whole careers out of taking notice) that this fall an inordinate number of local men seemed oddly cheerful. They raced home as soon as they could and whistled their way through their days bug-eyed with sleep deprivation but shorn of their usual short tempers. Jim Forrester, who drove for the Mathews lumber yard, was barely seen at the honky-tonks, where he usually spent his non-working hours. Sam Torrance and his wife had taken to walking around holding hands and smiling at each other. And Michael Murphy, whose mouth had been welded into a thin line of dissatisfaction for most of his thirty-odd years, had been seen singing—actually singing—to his wife on his porch.

These were not developments that the elders of the town felt able to complain about, exactly, but certainly added, they confided to each other with a vague feeling of discombobulation, to a sense that things were shifting in a way they were at a loss to understand.

The inhabitants of the Packhorse Library were not quite as perplexed. The little blue book—which had proven more popular and more useful than any number of bestsellers, and required almost constant repair—was dispatched and returned week after week, under piles of magazines, with quick, grateful smiles, accompanied by whispered murmurings of My Joshua never even heard of such a thing, but he sure does seem to like it! And No baby this springtime for us. I cannot tell you the relief. A honeymooner’s blush would accompany many of these confidences, or a distinct twinkle in the eye. Only one woman returned it stony-faced, with the admonition that she had never seen the devil’s work cast into print before. But even then Sophia noted that there were several pages where the corners had been carefully turned to keep their place.

Margery would slide the little book back into its home in the wooden chest where they kept cleaning materials, blister liniment and spare stirrup leathers, and a day or two later the word would be passed to another remote cabin, and the query would be made, tentatively, to another librarian: “Um . . . before you go, my cousin over at Chalk Hollow says you have a book that covers matters of . . . a certain delicacy . . .” and it would find itself on its way again.

“What are you girls doing?”

Izzy and Beth sprang back from the corner as Margery walked in, kicking mud from the heels of her boots in a way that would infuriate Sophia later. Beth was quite helpless with laughter, and Izzy’s cheeks glowed pink. Alice was at the desk, entering her books into the ledger and pretending to ignore them.

“Are you girls looking at what I think you’re looking at?”

Beth held up the book. “Is this true? That ‘female animals may actually die if denied sexual union’?” Beth was open-mouthed. “Because I’m not hanging off no man and I don’t look like I’m fit to drop, do I?”

“But what do you die of?” said Izzy, aghast.

“Maybe your hole closes up and then you can’t breathe properly. Like one of them dolphins.”

“Beth!” exclaimed Izzy.

“If that’s where you’re breathing out of, Beth Pinker, then lack of sexual congress isn’t the thing we need to be worrying about,” said Margery. “Anyway, you girls shouldn’t be reading about that. You’re not even married.”

“Nor are you, and you’ve read it twice.”

Margery pulled a face. The girl had a point.

“Jeez, what are the ‘natural completions of a woman’s sex-functions’?” Beth started to giggle again. “Oh, my, look here, this says that women who don’t get satisfaction may suffer an actual nervous breakdown. Can you believe that? But if they do get satisfaction, ‘every organ in their bodies is influenced and stimulated to play its part, while their spirits, after soaring in the dizzy heights of rapture, are wafted to oblivion.’”

“My organs are meant to be wafting?” said Izzy.

“Beth Pinker, will you just shut up for five minutes?” Alice slammed her book down on the desk. “Some of us are actually trying to work here.”

There was a brief silence. The women exchanged sideways looks.

“I’m just joking with you.”

“Well, some of us don’t want to hear your horrible jokes. Can you just cut it out? It’s not funny.”

Beth frowned at Alice. She picked casually at a piece of cotton on her breeches. “I’m so sorry, Miss Alice. I hate that I might have caused you distress,” she said, solemnly. A sly smile spread across her face. “You’re not . . . you’re not having a nervous breakdown, are you?”

Margery, who had lightning-quick reaction times, managed to get between them just before Alice’s fist made contact. She raised her palms, pushing them apart, and gestured Beth toward the door. “Beth, why don’t you check those horses have fresh water? Izzy, put that book back in the trunk and come and sweep up this mess. Miss Sophia gets back from her aunt’s tomorrow and you know what she’ll have to say about it all.”

She looked at Alice, who had sat down again and was now staring with intense concentration at the ledger, her whole demeanor warning Margery not to say another thing. She would be there long after the rest of them had gone home, as she was every working night. And Margery knew she wasn’t reading a word.