Rose (4 page)

“How’s it goin’ down there, G.W.?” Kase teased as he reached down to grab the boy’s arm and hoist him to his feet.

G.W. was dressed as the urchin he was, shirtless and shoeless, with nothing beneath the overalls that hung from the boy’s bony frame.

“Goin’ jus’ fine, Marshal. Pappy sent me to fetch you. Dat big old mule you call a hoss is all ready for you to collect.”

The boy pointed toward Decatur Davis’s blacksmith shop at the end of town in the event Kase had forgotten exactly where it was he’d left his horse.

“In that case, G.W., I’d better go get Sinbad.” The two started down the middle of the empty street together, and Kase looked down at the nappy-headed boy who barely reached his gun belt.

“You think your pa would object to my giving you a treat for coming after me?” Kase inquired, his expression serious. He already knew the answer.

G.W.’s eyes lit up. “No, suh.”

Kase flipped G.W. a nickel and watched the boy run off in the direction of Al-Ray’s store. As Kase walked toward the blacksmith’s shop, he pulled out the gold pocket watch that had once been Caleb Storm’s father’s and noted the hour. Deciding he had time for a ride before dinner, Kase snapped the timepiece shut and worked it down into the watch pocket of his denims with his forefinger. Maybe a long, hard ride would drive some of the confusion from his mind. He always had done some of his best thinking in the saddle.

The immigrant car of the Union Pacific bound for the end of the line at Promontory clattered and swayed as it rolled along the tracks. Part of a twenty-six-car caravan, the flat-roofed wooden box was sandwiched between a two-truck Shay locomotive and a jaunty red caboose. Rosa Audi swayed with the incessant motion of the train as she gazed out the window at the flowing landscape with the ever-changing colors of this raw new land. She had been staring for hours, at times aware of the passing grandeur, sometimes unaware of the scenery as she thought of home and family. Now that she was half a world away, Rosa knew her memories would have to last a lifetime.

Everyone had gathered to bid her farewell on the morning she left Crotte. Angelina had come with her husband Genesio who had dressed in his finest suit, his hair slicked and parted in the center. Mario had worn one of his long, dour expressions. Guido had sat in the rocking chair beneath the grape arbor. Even though it was still early in the day, he was already drinking too much wine. Zia Rina and Angelina’s little Margarina had hovered about—questioning, straightening Rosa’s dress and hat, checking and rechecking the trunk and valise until Rosa thought she would scream. Finally, it had been time to leave. Pino loaded her baggage into the rickety hay wagon and helped her into the high seat beside him.

Zia Rina had thrust a lush bouquet of carefully dethorned roses into her arms. Rosa buried her face in them, drinking in their heady fragrance while Pino flicked the reins over the horse’s back. The wagon had lurched forward, nearly unseating her before beginning the journey out of Crotte.

Today, a month later, the memory of the parting was still vivid in Rosa’s mind. She remembered that she had waved and waved to them all as the wagon creaked and groaned its way up the winding road to the village. Never before had the old stone house looked so warm and nurturing, the roses in the garden so vibrant, the twisted vines of the grape arbor so lush as they had on that last day. As Pino drove the old swayback nag up the road, Rosa promised herself that her new home would have a rose garden.

The old wagon labored up the hill and passed beneath the archway beside the church. When they reached the front of the church, Rosa asked him to stop. She climbed down and hurried across the piazza. The heavy wooden door of the church whined mournfully as she pushed it open just far enough to allow herself to slip inside. The interior of San Genesio’s was cool and dark, an incense-scented retreat lit only by the colored shards of light that pierced the stained-glass windows to penetrate the gloom. Her gaze had been drawn upward to the vaulted ceiling that loomed above the darkened interior. There had been something ominous about leaving the church behind. How well she remembered kneeling on a hard wooded priedieu when she was barely tall enough to see over the top. At the end of the long aisle formed by neat rows of kneelers, shrouded in pristine white linen and dark mystery, the altar stood silent.

She could not help but think of how Giovanni might have looked as he celebrated his first mass here in the village church—but he had married her instead. God forgive me, she had prayed, for taking him from you. Then, unwilling to make Pino wait any longer, Rosa had whispered one final prayer, one for safe passage to America, crossed herself, and slipped out the door.

Now, as she stared out of the train window at the passing landscape, she thought of the flowers of Crotte, the empty church of San Genesio, and she wondered if she would find roses, or even a church, in mis place called Wyoming.

As the train rattled down the line toward her destination, Rosa unconsciously smoothed the lush velvet of the black traveling dress her mentor, the Contessa de Raphael, had given her for the trek to America.

The contessa was a member of one of the many noble families that had chosen Corio as their summer residence. When the old count had died, the childless widow had decided to remain in the mountain retreat. The contessa, who could read and write both Italian and English, had been Rosa’s only hope. Mustering her courage, Rosa had knocked at the great double doors of the contessa’s villa and asked the woman for a position as a housemaid. Rosa then brazenly suggested that instead of paying her in coin, the contessa teach her to read and write English.

Rosa would not soon forget the relief she felt when the lady had laughed and shrugged, “Why not? It will be a challenge that will help fill the loneliness of my days.” In time, the contessa had become more of a confidante than an employer. On Rosa’s last visit to the villa the great lady had presented her with the velvet gown. “I am old, Rosa. I will never go to America. You must take my dress. At least that way it will be as if a part of me is there.”

The train swayed on toward Wyoming. Rosa pressed her forehead against the windowpane seeking relief from the stifling heat in the long, narrow car that housed immigrant travelers. Other cars on the train were just as extreme in their plainness and designated for various groups of travelers. One was set aside for single men, another for Chinese and others of obvious exotic origins. Few windows were fully open, for the air outside was as hot as, or even hotter than, the air inside. What fresh air the passengers were afforded was no luxury, for it carried with it cinders and ash that poured from the locomotive’s smokestack.

A barrel-chested conductor sporting a waxed mustache drew her attention as he walked along the passage between the wooden benches on either side of the aisle. The same man had been on duty the previous evening, and Rosa wondered how he managed to remain so cool and unruffled in the tailored midnight coat ornamented with its shining brass buttons, while she sat rumpled and overwarm in black velvet. The man’s tie remained irritatingly straight and jauntily tied while his round, flat cap rode straight upon his head.

Last night he had offered to sell Rosa two hard lengths of pine and three pillows stuffed with straw that would convert the stiff-backed, narrow benches into a bed. Rather than part with two dollars, she decided she would be quite as comfortable leaning against the window. It was not too long before the ache in her back and the crimp in her neck proved her wrong.

“Busted Heel, Wyoming, next stop!”

She nearly jumped out of her seat at the booming sound of the conductor’s voice as he passed by her seat. Like every American she had encountered thus far, the man had a most peculiar habit of yelling as though he hoped to be heard by everyone within miles. He called out the same announcement twice more before he walked out of the rear door of the car. Rosa pressed her face against the window and tried to see down the tracks ahead. Anxious to stretch her legs, she reached up and unpinned the hat that matched her dress, another gift from the widowed contessa. Rosa smiled as she brushed the dust from the wide-brimmed hat that was unadorned except for a swag of netting draped across the front. Like her dress, the hat was black, and although Rosa had felt a slight, ominous stirring when she had donned the color relegated to widows, she thought the ensemble made her appear older and more sophisticated. The ebony did much to enhance the pure ivory tone of her skin and deepened the gold of her eyes to a darker brown.

Rosa glanced out the window again as she straightened her hat over the pile of unruly hair wound on the crown of her head. She secured the hat with a long, lethal-looking pin adorned with a pearl and wondered if Giovanni would still find her desirable. After all, she thought, he had not seen her for three years. Doubt assailed Rosa, and she fidgeted on the hard seat, tugging at her heavy, draped skirt. They had been married less than a month before he left for America in search of the dream he said he had for them both. It had been barely enough time to become used to the fact that she was married at all, hardly enough time to become versed in the ways of love between a man and his wife. The direction her thoughts had taken made her jumpy, and in the nervous way of all travelers, Rosa reached down for the hundredth time to reassure herself the bulging valise she had stored beneath the bench was still there.

“Busted Heel!”

As the conductor made a return trip through the car, she wondered if she would ever get used to the harsh sound of English. Everyone she had encountered spoke more rapidly, not to mention louder, than had the contessa.

Rosa frowned when she felt her hat list slowly toward her left ear. She planted her hand firmly in the center of it and hastily re-anchored the hat pin. Thankful that she had reached her stop at last, she remembered how the transfer station at Council Bluffs had nearly been her undoing. It was there Rosa had asked for a transfer to Broken Shoe, Wyoming. The station agent had informed her with very little sympathy that there was no such stop.

“Yes,” Rosa had insisted in halting, heavily accented English. “There hasa to be. Is in Wyoming.”

“No, there’s not!” The man had leaned forward and yelled so loudly and distinctly that Rosa’s face had flamed with color. Everyone on the loading dock had heard him. “There... is ... no ... such ... place!” the man bellowed again, as if shouting at her would help her understand.

She had leaned toward him in retaliation, her face nearly pressed against the bars of the ticket window and shouted back. “Dare ... hasa ... to be ... becausa ... my husband ... saysa ... so!” Her nerves at the breaking point, she had pulled the letter from Giovanni out of her pocket and, without bothering to unfold it, waved it in his face.

The agent reached down and pulled a thick schedule book from a shelf below the counter. With an exaggerated sigh, he thumbed through it quickly and scanned the pages headed “Wyoming Territory.”

“Egbert, Hillsdale, Busted Heel, Archer, Cheyenne.” He leaned forward and shouted again. “Where?”

“Brokena Shoe.” Rosa spoke through clenched teeth and wished for the first time ever that Guido was standing behind her.

The man threw back his head and howled with laughter.

“Lady, the only place I can find that might
remotely
be the place you want is this flyspeck on the map called Busted Heel.” He pointed to the words she tried to read upside down. “I guess the closest your husband could come to that in Eye-talian is ‘Broken Shoe.’ You want a ticket?”

“To where?”

He began shouting again. “To ... Busted ... Heel!”

Rosa nodded, too angry to speak, and within moments the transaction had been made. The man had been more than insulting, the entire experience so wearing that Rosa had felt tears threaten. She longed to tell him that for all she cared, his stupid Union Pacific train could drive straight into the ocean once she disembarked.

Now she had reached the place called Busted Heel, which might or might not turn out to be the town of Broken Shoe that Giovanni had instructed her to find. As the train pulled into the station, her heart tripped faster as she realized that tonight she would sleep in a real bed. Beside Giovanni.