Corral Nocturne (7 page)

As Ellie approached, Mrs. McGregor, large and
cheerful; several boisterous children; three dogs, a cat and a
stray hen poured forth from the house to greet her. The McGregors
appreciated any kind of company wherever they found it, and their
welcome was universal—even the dogs were exceedingly glad to see
her, to the extent of leaving several paw prints on her skirt. When
she had greeted the chorusing children, removed the affectionate
paws of the dogs from her skirt again, and answered Mrs. McGregor’s
friendly inquiries about her family’s health, crops and general
well-being, she managed to explain her request. This Ellie found
not difficult, but rather more embarrassing than she had
anticipated, owing to Mrs. McGregor’s lively and unabashed interest
in the whole affair. But the response was immediately
relieving.

“Sure you kin go with us!” declared Mrs.
McGregor. “Pa’s going to hitch up the big wagon, so we’ll have
plenty of room. We wanted the young ‘uns to have some fun on the
Fourth this year, since we didn’t go last. So we’re goin’ in for
the supper. Maybelle and Jane, they’re right lookin’ forward to the
dancin’. They haven’t got young men waitin’ for them like you, but
they’re expectin’ to find some. They’ll be real pleased to have you
along!”

“Oh, thank you,” said Ellie, patting the head
of the brown dog who had taken a particular fancy to her and
unsuccessfully trying to push him down. “What time should I be
ready? Will seven be too early?”

“Well now, I wouldn’t say it will,” said Mrs.
McGregor, reflecting. “We might be some earlier, an’ we might be
some later. It don’t really matter.”

“Very well,” said Ellie, privately resolving
to be ready at six. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,
Mrs. McGregor!”

“Go on!” said Mrs. McGregor, flapping her
dishtowel in a friendly way. “We’re pleased to have you. Going?
Sure you won’t come in and set a spell? Well, tell your ma I asked
after her, and I’ll be seein’ her Friday.”

Friday evening. Ellie, alternating between
hot and cold, her heart beating rapidly with excitement, made ready
in her bedroom. Her old best petticoat, washed and starched and
ironed to a crisp frilly whiteness that was almost like new. The
new silk stockings, fresh from their wrappings. Spread out on her
bed lay the new dress of delicate pink lawn. It had a
softly-flowing skirt with three narrow flounces, full sleeves
gathered to a ruffle at the elbows, and a wide rounded yoke. From
some long-undisturbed recess in her old trunk Mrs. Strickland had
brought a strip of fine old lace, slightly yellowed with age, which
when carefully washed and bleached in the sun served beautifully
for the standing collar. And then there were the new shoes, white
kid with a short French heel and a narrow elegant toe. Ellie and
Mrs. Strickland both thought they were the prettiest shoes they had
ever seen.

Ellie was doing her hair in front of the
looking-glass, her mouth full of hairpins. She was doing it a
little differently than usual, feeling wonderfully daring. She had
had it tied up in rag curls all day, and now fluffed it a little
higher above her forehead and coiled it in a slightly more
elaborate way at the back of her head. She left a few short
ringlets to fall at her temples and curl along the back of her
neck. Last of all, she put on her dressing-gown over her petticoats
and stepped into her everyday boots for a moment to slip out of the
house. She waded out beyond the barn into the thick grass of the
meadow that Ed had not hayed yet, golden-orange in the evening sun
streaming over it, and gathered a handful of prairie chickweed.

Back in her room, she carefully put on the
dress, and the new shoes. They were ever-so-slightly too tight—just
a tiny bit, Ellie had assured her mother; she could manage with
that. The next size up would certainly have been too big. Standing
in front of the mirror again, she pinned a few of the small white
chickweed flowers in her hair. She lowered her hands, and stared at
her reflection. It did not seem quite real—the pink lawn, the lace,
the flowers in the soft waves of hair, and the shine in her own
eyes.

There was a knock at the door, and Mrs.
Strickland entered with something in her hand. “Ellie, I brought
you something you might like to wear tonight,” she said. “I don’t
believe I’ve worn this brooch since before your pa’s funeral. He
gave it to me back when we were first married. I thought it might
look pretty on your new dress.”

Ellie took it gently in her hand. It was a
small cameo etched from a rosy-colored background, set in a
slightly tarnished but still handsome frame of gold. “It’s
beautiful!” she said. “And it matches just perfectly.”

“Here, let me pin it on for you,” said Mrs.
Strickland. Ellie stood still as her mother pinned the cameo at her
throat, against the lace of the collar. Mrs. Strickland’s eyes
shifted to her daughter’s and she smiled.

“I remember wearing it to dances when I was
younger, too,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”

Ellie put her arms around her mother’s neck
and pressed her cheek to the thinner and faded one, and her
mother’s arms went around her waist. “Thank you for everything,”
she whispered.

They were silent for just a second. Then Mrs.
Strickland stepped back and looked at her, satisfaction as well as
fond pride in her eyes. “It all came out real pretty,” she said.
“That color just suits you, too. And I like the flowers in your
hair.”

Ed’s voice called dryly from out front:
“Looks like your coach is coming, Ellie.”

“They’re here,” said Ellie, breathless in an
instant. She kissed her mother quickly, picked up her dressing-gown
and a hairbrush from her bed, changed her mind and dropped them
again and ran from the room.

“Ready in plenty of time,” said Mrs.
Strickland, following more placidly. “Don’t step on your dress,
now. Look at your sister, Ed; doesn’t she look beautiful?”

“Yeah, not bad,” said Ed after a critical
look; at which Ellie laughed and made a face at him when his back
was turned.

The conveyance of the McGregors was lurching
into the yard by now, and at first sight of it Ellie’s laughter
almost faltered. It was a big, long, high-sided wagon drawn by a
double span of lanky gray mules with long ears that stood, or hung,
or flapped in every direction according to whim. Mr. and Mrs.
McGregor, large in size and brave in finery, were on the front
seat, and their offspring filled the wagon box. Ellie and Mrs.
Strickland, with expressions difficult to describe, stood and
stared as the ponderous rig made its turn about the yard and drew
to a stop at the door.

“Evenin’!” Mrs. McGregor hailed them. She was
resplendent in yellow poplin with a red flower print, and a black
straw hat with a stiff bush of artificial sunflowers. “How do you
do, Miz Strickland? It’s a fine night for the Fourth, ain’t it! Go
right around and climb in, Ellie; there’s plenty o’ room.”

The McGregor children, eight in number, were
sitting in a thick bed of straw spread in the wagon box, evidently
quite content with their accommodations. The two young ladies were
bright in purple and blue, with an abundance of artificial fruit
bunched on their hats. The little girls wore hair bows nearly twice
the size of their heads, and were tumbling joyfully about in the
straw with their brothers. Ellie looked in dismay at the straw, and
the thick black boots of the boys, and the rough board sides of the
wagon. “But my
dress
—”

Mrs. McGregor peered round over a substantial
shoulder. “What, you’re afeard of tearin’ it? (Henry! John! you
stop that wrestlin’; you’ll muss your clean shirts.) Well, maybe
you better sit up here with us if you can fit. Climb on up!”

Clinging anxiously to her delicate pink
skirts, Ellie climbed up the front wheel beside Mrs. McGregor and
settled herself on the end of the seat, in the tiny fragment of
space left available. With the precious new shoes perched on the
front edge of the wagon box, she kept hold on the folds of her
dress and prayed there were no splinters in the seat to catch it.
Mrs. Strickland, meanwhile, having sized up the situation, had gone
back into the house and now came hurrying back out carrying a
shawl. “Here, Ellie,” she said, thrusting it up over the side of
the wagon toward her, “you’d better take this in case it gets
chilly later.” Ellie thanked her with a grateful glance and pulled
the shawl around her shoulders, surreptitiously tucking the end
beneath her on the seat.

“Don’t stay too late,” said Mrs. Strickland,
lingering by the wagon. “I know the dance’ll go till after
midnight, but you’ll be home before then, won’t you? And if Cole
doesn’t come, then you come right home with the McGregors.”

Ellie acquiesced, but her heart sank at the
idea. Cheerful and obliging as the McGregors were, this was
certainly nothing like driving with Cole.

“Giddap!” said Mr. McGregor, his sole
contribution to the conversation, and the mules started.

For Ellie, the night of the Fourth of July
seemed divided into two parts. But while she was in the midst of
it, she could hardly have said where the break came. The jolting,
precarious ride on the high wagon seat with the ears of the four
mules flapping in front, the young McGregors laughing and
chattering and squealing in the back and Mrs. McGregor talking
cheerfully away beside her, was real and ordinary enough. Driving
into the crowded streets of town as sunset melted into twilight
spangled with the glow of torches and bonfires; pulling in among
the ranks of empty wagons, climbing down and threading her way out
from among them; and the walk up toward the dance with the
McGregors, that was all reality still. But once she was up on the
platform, with the colored paper lanterns strung overhead and the
tricolor bunting draped on the rails, the gaily colored dresses of
the women and girls flitting about under the lights and the music
weaving in and out of everything, she was in another world. She
felt curiously light and unreal, as if she had left the greater
part of herself behind somewhere, and had stepped like a gauzy pink
butterfly from its chrysalis into the realm of the lights and music
themselves. And yet she was still herself, smiling and answering
people’s greetings, looking about with eager and satisfied eyes at
everything she had hoped to see—the long tables spread with food,
the knots of people laughing and talking in the corners, the
musicians with their fiddles and accordion at the end of the
platform.

Cole Newcomb was not there. Lovely and
entrancing as it all was, Ellie felt that without him everything
was still waiting to begin; it had no real excuse for existence.
She had other partners—Fred Jackson and Tom Hill and other young
men she knew had come forward almost at once and asked her for
dances—but they all seemed slightly detached from her, mere
trimmings to the edge of her experience as they guided her about
the floor and she made gentle, diffident answers to their
remarks.

Overhead the sky had darkened to velvety
black spangled with stars, like a vaulted roof for the little
amphitheater of lights and bunting on the platform. Laughter and
the scent of barbecue and bonfire smoke floated in the air. The
fiddle leading the others sang sweetly, sliding and leaping with
little flourishes through the music. The McGregors had all melted
away into the crowd, remarkable as that seemed, and Ellie was by
herself in it all. She never knew how the time passed, she was so
happy, and content to let the night flow on and on. Dance followed
dance, with occasional breaks to stand and talk to others. And
then, as the ripple of applause died away after the conclusion of a
lively two-step and the dancers were moving to leave the floor or
find new partners, she saw Cole Newcomb standing inside the
entrance at the other side of the platform.