The Star Garden (27 page)

I rode Baldy to school and dashed to Professor Brown’s General Science. When I hurried in, plum tired out, a few minutes late and embarrassed to boot, Professor Brown paid so little attention to my coming through the door I expected it had not interrupted him a bit. He went on and on about chemists’ compounds and what things make alloys. He always took the longest route on any short talk, saying a hundred words when five would do. When he asked the class for someone to name a chemical part of water, without thinking I blurted out, “Gas.”

The only thing that had been in my mind had been getting on to the next point, but he came to my desk, which sat just beside his, and said, “Why are you still here?”

My heart pounded. “Do you want me to sit somewhere else? Professor,” I added.

“Why don’t you plant yourself on your rocking chair at home and make room for a real student? This is not a hobby room, Mrs. Elliot.”

My face flushed with heat. The room fell silent. “I apologize, sir. Professor Brown.” I watched as he walked behind me, his hands balled in fists behind his back. For the first time I turned around. The students looked away from my gaze, nervous and picking at their books.

At lunch I went to check on Tenny and see how she fared. Not much changed, still a slight fever, still fussy. I rocked her a little and thought about Professor Brown. Then I had to hurry back to the school.

At home in my bedroom, the harder I worked the further behind I seemed to fall. I just couldn’t balance all the reading and papers and studying with Truth and Blessing dashing up and down the stairs being musketeers one minute, and Honor and Story staging Gettysburg under the dining table the next. “Rachel, please,” I begged. “Would you let me have two hours of quiet? At least try to keep them off the stairs and out of my room.” So off they went to the park, but in the silence, the very ticking of the clock confounded my mathematics and thundered in my aching head.

One Friday afternoon when Professor Osterhaas got called away during the reading of one boy’s story about an Indian fighter, the class got talking. Someone said, “Well, I happen to know Geronimo killed a hundred men. And two hundred women. Some worse than killed.”

“No he didn’t,” another boy said. “It was only a hundred of each.”

“Say, Foster, that was a great story you wrote. Sure was realistic.”

“No it wasn’t,” I said. All eyes turned to me. Someone grunted.

Foster, the boy whose story they had interrupted, said, “What about it, lady?”

I straightened my paper and laid down my pencil before I spoke. Jack had been there. Had chased the Apache chief across Mexico and through the Dragoon mountains, until he finally gave up. It had rained so much. Jack came home burning with fever. I said, “Geronimo killed four people after Army soldiers slaughtered his family and all his uncles and aunts and cousins. Reckon I hardly blame the man. I didn’t want them to capture him. Ulzana was the one to be afraid of.”

Someone muttered, “Ha. I’m glad they killed them all. Redskins are better dead than fed.”

“That’s not what I said.” I felt my face grow warm.

The room got quiet and stayed that way for a very long minute. The door opened, Professor Osterhaas returned and flexed his eyebrows with a smile. “Having a good discussion?” he asked.

Foster said, “Some people in the room didn’t like my story, Professor.”

“Well,” Professor Osterhaas said, “let’s have some pro and con, then.” So he lined people up to say they liked or didn’t like the story.

The boy named Foster asked me, “Lady, who was that you said? That other redskin? I never heard of him.”

“Ulzana. He was a Chiricahua Apache. One of—”

The Regulator on the wall chimed. People folded their books, but Professor Osterhaas held up his hand. Foster said, “And he was meaner than Geronimo?”

A scene of chaos and stumbling horses ran before my eyes like a dream visited in a breath of time, complete with the deafening war cries of Indians, shots fired, the crackle of a burning house. “He was a fierce warrior,” I said.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

My rifle had gone empty. Ulzana rode toward me, spear raised, and I pulled the trigger twice, uselessly. Jack Elliot had fired the shot that crippled Ulzana’s horse and saved my life. I caught a glimpse of dusty blue uniform, the glint of a saber through clouds of dust and gunpowder, heard the squeak of saddle leather and soldier’s boots grinding against stirrups. Jack’s hands, bandaged and bleeding, touched my cheeks, and his
eyes
pierced my heart. I stared into the unlined, never-shaven face before me, wide eyes as innocent of pain and experience as April’s new baby. “I just do,” I said.

“Aw, you’re making that up,” he said, and left to catch up with the other boys.

The school term is near halfway through and I can hardly believe it. Every moment I’m in town, I worry about what is happening at home. Udell has got up a garden after all, and he is keeping watch with his small flock of chicks and cows until he is so tired he can’t work on the house. I fear the work at home piles up. Granny and Chess are not able to keep up, Elsa is touchy with baby sickness, and while Charlie and Gilbert handle the rougher work, no one has made soap nor scoured the floors nor a hundred other things that need doing.

I write letters every few days to Udell, each time thanking him for his gift of schooling, although each one I close brings a heavy feeling of betrayal, for my doubt in my ability to keep on with this schooling grows daily. Along with it, strangely, grows hunger for more. I want not to return home at all. I want to stay and find more classes, let out on the ones too tormenting to abide and just take the wonderful ones. Still, I notice often how separate I am from the other students.

On my way to my horse one afternoon, three boys on bicycles nearly ran me down. For some reason I can’t tell, I stopped that very day and bought some Hagan’s Magnolia Balm: “Guaranteed to keep a woman from looking like a hag before her time.” I planned to put it to use while I was a student. Heaven knew it wasn’t my “time.”

Every minute of every weekend at home, I spend thinking of school. My unfinished assignments pile up like laundry from a dozen children. Then there’s the work I give to myself, such as after Professor Osterhaas told each person how to fix their essays I rewrote mine twice, determined to get a decent mark in that class. Also, I worry that Harland’s children need more care than Rachel can manage alone. April needed me there in town more than I realized. Once Tennyson’s fever left, April wanted my opinion about wallpaper or diaper rashes and thumb-sucking. Gilbert came to town too much to visit Charity, and makes himself at home at Harland’s place. When I asked if he wasn’t leaving too many chores to Charlie, well, Chess said to let the boy go to town if he wanted. Fine way to raise a spoiled fellow, if you ask me, but no one did.

Letters from Mary Pearl tell me of her successes. I see through the handwriting more than her words, for she is homesick but not lonely, challenged but not defeated, and so I write her about my professors, and tell her all sorts of things I’d never say to another soul. When I headed for the ranch, I took her letters and the drawings she sends and I put them there in my bureau drawer.

Friday I rode home in a drizzling rain. By the time I got there, my throat was sore as if I’d been swilling lye. It rained all night and all morning, Saturday. The rain finally quit and the air is prickly with cold, and when we go out to feed, damp needles of ice stab our faces. Mighty cold for this early. After lunch, Charlie left to ride to Udell’s place to check on the ten head of cattle he had there and to have a look around. He said they’d come back for supper, so Granny and I put a roast of beef in the oven with some onions and carrots, and settled in for a couple of hours of sewing. It was all I could manage, feeling poorly enough I wished I was in bed.

The fellows cleaned and sharpened knives and tools, fixing boots and playing checkers. I felt raw and poorly, but tried to study, out of desperation, I suspect.

Gilbert picked halfheartedly at his guitar, staring into the fire, starting pieces of song and never settling on something we could hum to. I worked arithmetic problems until my head ached, and I had to put the books aside. I stared out the window at the gray and dismal sky. I started a pot of coffee to have something hot on my throat. Gilbert got tired of plinking his guitar and went to the book room.

Granny has been piecing another quilt, this time a redwork piece. Granny had dozed off, quilt scraps still between her fingers, needle poised for duty but quiet when a distant rattle caught my ear. “C- C- Comanches,” she said.

“Chess!” I hollered. “Chess! Where are you?” The sound of running horses grew louder, and two more shots sounded near at hand. Then a whole string of shots followed like firecrackers. “You all, get away from the windows. Elsa, take Granny to the kitchen. Gilbert—” But Gilbert ran out the door with no coat and a pistol in hand, headed toward the gate. “Gilbert! Charlie!”

Before I could get a rifle in my hands, the door was flung open from the outside and in rushed Charlie. “Maldonado’s boys. They killed one of Udell’s cows and then chased us off his land, Mama,” Charlie gasped. Then Gilbert came in, bringing the last of a hard chill clinging to him, and he closed the door, pulling the bolt in place. It moved stiffly, since we had only latched it once or twice before. Charlie went on, “He had five sorry-looking vaqueros waiting there, and when we stopped them to ask where they were going one of them pulled out a shooter. Like
we
were trespassing. I should have never gone down there without a pistol.”

“Anyone following you, waiting for someone to stick their head out the door?”

“They turned tail when Gil came running out and winged one of them with his first shot.”

We heard a rattling sprinkle of more gunshots, not far away. I turned to Gilbert, who looked pretty trembly. He gulped and said, “I’m going down to the old
señors
place and tell him a thing or two.”

“No you’re not!” Charlie hollered the same words just when I did.

Elsa ran to Charlie’s side and the two of them whispered for a minute. Then Charlie said, “Mama, this is about him being angry with us. We’re going to leave. We knew this might come. We’ve got to go away to keep you all safe.”

Here came Granny, lugging a box that looked to weigh as much as she did. It was the shot box we used to carry, about half full of ready-loads. None of them needed packing or loose powder, thank goodness.

“Mama, what are you doing?” I asked, taking it from her.

She said, “Put this by the window. It’s full of shot and lint and powder. I’ll load for you. Always did it for your pa and before that, too. We’ll teach them who’s got the pluck
and the
lead.” She shook her little bony fist toward the window. “Just show yerselves, you varmints! My Sarah can put the eye out of a tick from a hundred yards!”

“Mama,” I said, “it’s over, for now. Anybody seen Chess?”

Armed like bandits ourselves, we scoured the house in the next few minutes but didn’t find him. Gil went to the barn with Clover; Charlie checked the smokehouse. Around the side of the house, it looked to me like prints from Chess’s boots left the yard and went over the hill toward the south on foot, so I followed them.

I could hear a man’s voice. The muddy ground made tracking easy enough. I looked everywhere but behind myself, and listening as I was to the voice, heading toward it, I stopped to turn around. I felt plum startled to find Elsa trailing after me. We walked on, following the sound, and came upon Chess standing with his back to us. He laid down a stream of the sorriest curses ever known, and as rangy as he can be, I never heard the like from him.

I hollered over the commotion, “What in heaven’s name is wrong with you?”

“Missed every dad-blasted one of them. Damn it to blazes! Not a shot. This old rifle is bent. The sight is off and these loads are wet. Couldn’t hit— and I was always a shot! Not a thing. Not a god—” He caught himself up, seeing Elsa at my side. “Son of a gol-damned—Tarnation, girls. Get back to the house. Can’t you see when a man has got some cussin’ to do?”

I said, “Come do it in the yard out of their line of fire,” and turned Elsa around, taking her hand, and we hurried back to the house. Partway there, I chanced a peek at her face. I expected pale, well-mannered shock, but saw a smirk.

Elsa said, “Señor Chess makes me very thirsty!”

“Some men
are
saltier than others,” I said. Then we just had ourselves a bitter little laugh, and got inside the house.

The night passed peacefully enough though I sank into
la grippe
and tossed the night through. In the morning I had chills that rocked me in the bed, and could not make a sound. I stayed in bed until supper, then I got up to have a cup of hot coffee. Elsa felt sick, too, but not with fever. I moved slow as cold molasses. Chess sat in his chair by the fire for a long time, watching me while I sipped the cup. I had to whisper. “Something on your mind?”

“You get that rifle sighted in yet?”

“No. Leave it in the kitchen here. I’ll try it tomorrow. Maybe it got dropped.”

“That Hanna’s expecting you to marry soon’s you get done with this dad-blasted schooling. Isn’t that why you were asking me about Texas? Ready to run?”

I lifted the coffeepot using my skirt wrapped around the metal handle, poured him a cup next to mine.

“You’d be free of an old worn-out boot. Charlie and his girl will be here. Gil, too.
You
shouldn’t run off to Texas.
I’ll
go back to Texas. You’d be free.”

“I’m not taking up living with Udell to get shed of you. It’s already settled with him. He’s building you a room. I’m not going without you, Chess. Mama, either.”

“Fah!” he said with a wave of his hand.

“That’s exactly the kind of conversation I couldn’t live without,” I said. “The curious vocabulary of a right ornery man.”

Then he said, “I saw that house there. He said he’s thought of a deal where you keep this here place and let your boys live on it. Sell it to ‘em for a dollar. He asked me what I thought and I told him it was the damnedest thing.”

Udell hadn’t said a word of this to me. “Only he didn’t mention where you fit in,” I said, and went to fill our cups again. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing. I came home to pack my duds and head east.”

“Not while I’ve got this tornado brewing with Rudolfo, you’re not.” I started to feel my voice coming back. “I can’t go to school and have to worry about this here, if you’re gone.”

“Can’t hit the broad side of a barn. No use staying around. You’re leaving, too.”

I stood and put my hands on both hips, saying, “Well, aren’t you the sorry old buzzard? I haven’t asked you for fancy target shooting in all these years and suddenly your aim is off one day and you’re cashing in and heading out, and never mind what in thunder I’d do without you? If that isn’t the lowest, cussedest thing. I knew you were a tough old bird, Chester Elliot, but I never thought you’d slip so low as to leave me when the chips were down. Just because there’s change on the wind and lightning in the air, you aim to take off and desert the family that’s counted on you all these years. Never mind the patches I sewed on your behind nor the biscuits I cooked nor a fireside that’s been your home as much as mine all these years, you are just leaving me to the wind, just like that! Well, I swan!” Then I left the room and went to find Granny.

I woke her from a nap in the parlor, and said, “Mama? You know if I marry Udell Hanna, you’re going to have to move to his new house. Are you going to come, or not?”

“Oh, one chair is as good as another,” she said. “Never had no root to speak of.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “If I don’t marry, we’ll stay put.”

“You sure are in a fuss. Indians again? I’d sure like some soup for dinner.”

“I’ll make you soup, Mama, tomorrow.” Chess had followed me into the room and stood right behind me. “Chess?” I said. I took hold of the sleeve of his shirt and pulled it. “If you won’t come with me, I won’t marry him.”

“Aw, honey,” he said.

Then, for the first time in all our lives together, he put his arm around my shoulder. His hands patted my back as if he thought I’d break. I felt tears heat up behind my eyes and pushed him away. I said, “Now, get along. I’m sick and I’ve got to get to bed. Straightening out your rope was all I had in me.”

Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t go back to town. I felt so weak and ill it was hard to breathe. I’d have to quit. Well, the boys told me students were allowed to be sick and stay home, and to just lay up and get well, so I did. It was pretty near accepted that with all the new folks around everyone would be sharing their sickness, too. For near a week I got coddled on by my family and by Friday I grew plum right again. All the while in bed, I caught up on all the papers and readings, too. I felt joyful when Sunday rolled around and it got time to head back to town. Until I got to school.

Although Brownie was mean as a boot full of cholla, Mrs. Everly made me want to draw swords every time I laid eyes on her. The harder subjects may have been things I didn’t understand, but that Everly woman just made me feel a fool over things I’ve been doing as natural as breathing, my whole life. I decided to let myself out of Domestic Science to preserve the common good and keep myself out of jail.

In mathematics I scored a passing mark on a paper. I felt pleased, but such a stack of work awaited and they were so far ahead, by the time I got to Brownie’s class I was pure sorry I had laid off sick. His rambling lectures have nothing whatever to do with the tests he gives, and I kept remembering that when Charlie and Gilbert dropped out of school last year, three weeks before final examinations, Charlie had complained that I didn’t know what they were up against, and swore the geology professor had been unfair and cantankerous. That teacher had been this Fergus Brown, a little squirt no bigger than my right arm. Brown had quailed my boy Charlie, a man who had been an Arizona Ranger and was tough and smart as anyone you’d care to know. I piled up my books and notes and lugged them to Professor Osterhaas’s class feeling like the tail end of destruction.

Professor Osterhaas asked us to write a theme on “What I Want.” It seemed simple enough. He would require us to read them aloud, and each person must learn to express himself well. I put that on the top of a new page in my tablet. What I Want. I thought about schooling, and my family, and my home. I thought about going on to more schooling, mostly, and the railroad should go bankrupt. Rudolfo should get friendly again. My mama to get her thinking back. I made a list and connected the things on it with dashes. I was ready. I quit carrying the pistol. The place was like home.