Power in the Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

whereas a daughter was simply a burden to be employed domestically, until such time as she could be married off to some young man who wished to use her for the purpose of siring a son to whom he could pass along his property. It was the cycle of human affairs, as such things were understood in Indiana.
    Zoe’s breasts had placed her already precarious position within the household in jeopardy. She knew her mother would not approve of Hassenplug’s gropings in the barn, since Zoe wasn’t married to him. What if someday he should actually force her to lift her skirts, and she had a son! Would she then be considered married to her father in the same way that Mrs. Hassenplug was, in the manner of the Mormons? It seemed an unlikely arrangement this far from Utah, and anyway, the Hassenplugs were Presbyterians, even if they never attended church meetings. Having the son for Hassenplug that his wife seemed unable to provide would not result in any new arrangement of benefit to Zoe, that much was obvious, and so she held the egg-laden basket before her like an armored breastplate, to ward off the man beneath whose roof she lived.
    In the first year, she had waited for Clay to ride up the road to the farm. He would be mounted on a fine pony, and carrying a pistol. She would know him even from a distance, because he was her brother. When he was close enough, he would smile and say, “Sorry I took so long. Pack your things; we have to go fetch Drew now.”
    The dream sustained her well into the second year, then died. No one came riding up the road but an occasional neighbor. Hassenplug never took his wife or Zoe to town, just twelve miles away. “You want something, you tell me and I’ll get it,” he said. He hadn’t considered buying a dress that fit Zoe properly until his wife mentioned how foolish the girl looked in clothing too small for her. When two new dresses of the least expensive kind finally were brought home, they were several sizes too big. “She can grow into ’em gradual,” explained Hassenplug, “so we don’t get no more of this whining about clothes that’s too small. Using the brain, see?” He tapped the side of his narrow head and grinned. Zoe tried on the dresses and wept. He had done it deliberately, to humiliate her, and she couldn’t guess why.
    By the time the new dresses fit, she no longer thought of rescue by Clay, scarcely thought of him at all, except in dreams of Schenectady. And when the dresses that were too large eventually became tight across her expanding chest, her father’s disposition changed so abruptly she was caught by surprise—in the barn, with the eggs.
    He tried bribery when direct requests for the lifting of her skirts were ignored. Dresses seemed an appropriate commodity for barter. “Just a little piece of loving” was all he wanted in exchange for stitched cloth. Zoe could choose the pattern, the style, even try the dress on beforehand to make sure it was exactly right for her. He would take her to town for a fitting.
    “You take me there,” she said, “and I’ll think about it.”
    Her nerve amazed Zoe, flabbergasted Hassenplug. His little orphan girl was turning into a wily vixen. He laughed and said he’d do the thinking. For a week he gave no sign, then offered her a ride to Wister’s Landing with him on the monthly trip for supplies.
    Mrs. Hassenplug was outraged. “Why her and not me!” she demanded. Her husband thought about it, then smacked her once across the face with force enough to send her reeling into the kitchen corner. “Because I say so,” he said.
    The trip to town was still three days distant, but the slap that preceded it spelled the end of the casual relationship between Zoe and her foster mother. Mrs. Hassenplug, long since reconciled to being the mate of a churl, would have accepted the slap (it was not the first) if the reason for it had not been Zoe. Her man intended carrying this young female in his wagon a distance of twelve miles to