The Star Garden (4 page)

Chess pursed his lips. “Raining pretty good up there.”

I studied the sky. The time it would take to get both these rigs across the arroyo grande, we were still six hours from town in good weather. “Let’s get to Pacheco’s crossing,” I said. “Then I’ll ride up and see what it looks like before we take the wagons and the folks the rest of the way.”

He nodded and snapped his reins, moving ahead of the surrey. My three passengers seemed to take no notice of the pause in travel. Whether it was boredom or aggravation that kept them quiet, it didn’t matter to me. We pulled up at the round in the road, a place where the stage will turn sometimes to let passengers out to stretch their legs. It was the best place we’d find to head back for home if we needed to. I put the brake on and untied Baldy, slinging myself onto his back.

Professor Fairhaven put his head out from one of the curtains on the surrey. “Why are we stopping?” he said, and then a little panicky, he added, “Where are you going?”

“Checking the road ahead,” I said. “You have a stretch but stay close by. Last time I came this way I saw lion tracks.” I nudged Baldy and took off toward the arroyo at a pretty good clip. We scared a herd of four white-tail deer, down from the mountains for winter, and I slowed him down as we approached the crossing. Mist fell against my face, damp and cold. Baldy’s breath formed flags of steam around my knees.

Stopping at the highest edge of the crossing, I got off and led him down the wide path that traverses the side and switches back halfway down. Farther on lay a foot-thick barrier of fine sand which we have kept passable by constantly feeding it heavy lumber ties. Last fall while I was in town awhile, Udell, Charlie, and Albert fixed up the bottom so it was good and sound, near to a bridge as it could be, planted there on the ground.

Rain fell in earnest by the time I reached the switchback. Running water covered the boards. I dismounted and stepped into it. It barely covered the toe of my boot, but it was frothy and greasy looking. That meant this water had come a long way, washing through the chaparral; miles and miles of creosote bush pounded by rain against the rocky ground had turned the water to soap.

I rode back and when I told the folks what I’d found, well, you’d have thought I said they were all to be cast out there in the road, there was such complaining.

“Just how deep was the water?” Professor Fairhaven demanded.

I tied Baldy on and climbed into the seat. “Couple inches, but running slick. It’s not how deep it is now,” I said, “it’s how deep it could get before we can get out the other side. A flood coming down that narrow gorge could sweep the wagon fifteen miles before we know it.”

He stiffened up. “I say we press on. I should have been in Tucson yesterday. I have a meeting tomorrow morning. I won’t be delayed by three inches of water.”

I snugged my hat down. “Not in the stage you wouldn’t. Empty, they’re half a ton or more. We’ve got less than a quarter. Yesterday, it was probably dry. Today, I’m not crossing it. Sign’s bad. Gittup, there.” I snapped the reins and we jerked into motion. I pulled tight on one side and got us turning in a circle.

I could hear the consternation in Fairhaven’s voice at my back. “I say we vote on it! How many of us would rather go on to Tucson? We have a majority. Turn around.”

“
Mr.
Fairhaven,” I said, “you may have a majority, but
I
have a surrey.” I pulled to a stop. “If you are inclined to walk your majority to town in the rain, you go right along. I’ll stop long enough for you to get out. Watch your step there.”

“It’s raining.”

“And it’s freezing,” said Miss James.

“Well, so it is,” I said.

“It’s
Professor
Fairhaven.”

“So it is. Mind your step, Professor Fairhaven. I want to get the dead folks to town as bad as you do, believe me. You’ll see the lady gets to town, too, of course?” I grinned like a jack-o’-lantern.

He hadn’t moved, but shrank into his seat. “There’s no call to be irascible.”

Likely he didn’t think I knew that word. “Irascible? Why, not a harsh word came from my mouth, sir. I was being most amiable.”

“It’s barely sprinkling.”

I steadied the horses. “Mostly it’s Easterners that get washed away in the arroyos when they flood. I’ll have to make a note that Californians are susceptible to it, too.”

At that, Professor Osterhaas laughed and said, “Mrs. Elliot, we’re in your debt already. Perhaps we should bow to your obvious experience with Arizona weather patterns and accept your hospitality one more night.”

I nodded. Fairhaven was sputtering as I took off the brake. Miss James covered up her head with the blanket. I chucked the reins and we headed for the house. By the time we got there, it was raining solid and gray. Chess and I were soaked through our coats, skin deep. We were all looking forward to some coffee and we tore into the apple butter sandwiches while we waited for the water to boil. I left the surrey and wagon loaded except for the personal things of the “majority,” and put the horses away while Chess got on some dry clothes.

There was nothing to do then but turn everyone loose in the house to read or amuse themselves. Professor Osterhaas went to the book room with a quilt around his shoulders and stood looking through the books, last I saw him. Miss James took some tatting from her carpetbag and found a chair near the light. I went into the kitchen where Granny snoozed by the stove with the calico cat in her lap. I didn’t know what I would serve this horde of folks for supper.

I pumped water into a kettle. I put a log in the stove and pushed at the coals. A swirl of sparks rushed upward, turning black then quickly disappearing in the damp air.

“Sarah?” Granny’s voice said behind me. “I want to go home.”

“You are home, Mama.”

“I was thinking about another place.”

She does go on. I stared at the rows of canned goods lining my pantry. They were Savannah’s hard work, not mine. Everything I’d put up last summer had been broken when the walls came down. It still makes me sad to see things and remember what used to be my house. Reckon sometimes I long for home, too. I said, “Where’s that, Mama?”

“Why don’t we move to Texas, like your pa said? It’s greener there. Better grazing.”

I’d given up trying to understand when she was like this. I said, “No critters left to graze. I’d go get some bacon if I didn’t have to get wet to do it. Maybe Harland wouldn’t mind going out for me.”

“Harland is in Kentucky.”

“Mama, Harland is in the parlor teaching his boys to play checkers.”

“That’s not right.”

Harland had been in San Francisco for years. Then he took Melissa to Chicago where she died in a hospital. Granny had been by her side and then came with him back here. “It’s all right, Mama,” I said. “Playing checkers won’t hurt them. It’s not gambling.”

“I mean it wasn’t Ken-tuck. Rufus. He was in Kentucky.”

I sighed. “All right, Mama.”

Gilbert came in then, dripping, carrying something under his coat. He pulled off his hat and opened the jacket. “Thought you might use this for supper,” he said, grinning.

At first all I saw was that it was meat and I was relieved not having to trudge to the smokehouse with its dwindling supply of hanging meats. Only the poorest bony portions remained. “Son, you have read my mind,” I said.

“Aren’t you going to ask me where I got ‘im? Look here, what he is. I didn’t cut him up so you could see the size of him.” He held the carcass up by the hind legs. It looked to be the biggest jackrabbit I ever saw, fully the size of a good dog. Gilbert said, “It’s old Rotten.”

“No!” The long-legged hare we called Rotten Rabbit. When there were no children about I called him some other things, too. That rangy jackanapes had scourged my garden for a year. He’d grown fast and fat, living on my hard work. I took the thing from Gilbert, thinking what a fine table he’d set, all buttered up with lima beans.

Gilbert said, “I waited by the garden where I found a hole under the fence. Soon as the clouds came over and the rain had barely started, here he came, heading for the pole peas. Got him with one shot.”

“Buckshot?”

“Nope. Thirty-two.”

I grinned. My youngest living son was fixing to turn twenty years old. Looking more like a man every day. “I’m proud of you, boy,” I said. I pulled a big skillet off its hook on the wall. “I’m going to brown him up this minute. Then we’ll give him a nice long simmer, and start some dough rising.”

We passed a nice enough evening. This time instead of the children reciting, Professor Osterhaas found some poetry in my book room and he read forth in a fine style such as I’ve never heard, waving his good arm and even holding the volume in his sore hand. Not to be outdone, Professor Fairhaven gave us a speech from
Hamlet,
then one in pure Latin, all from memory. Professor Osterhaas praised my books and said he’d been too worn and pained to notice the night before. He wanted to know how I’d started collecting books and which ones I’d read. He was surprised when I said I’d read every one. I didn’t tell him I had read them several times, for I was suddenly taken with the notion he’d think me stupid to have to read a book more than once. I can’t imagine owning a book you hadn’t read at least once. What’s the sense of having a book at hand and not opening it?

Then, as he was feeling less uneasy about these folks than before, Gilbert took down his guitar and played us several tunes. Chess played checkers with Story while Harland watched Truth and Honor drawing on their slates. Blessing dressed and redressed her dolly in Granny’s lap. Miss James stared into the fireplace. The professors read, and I took up my sewing basket and went to work on the elbow of one of my own waistcoats. After a bit, Miss James said, “Do you know ‘Keegan’s Lament’?” She began to sing, and taught Gil the song, and pretty soon he’d found chords for it. He played and she sang it again, staring at the fire, while her voice seemed to travel right out of his fingers as he picked across the strings in a pattern.

Then Miss James said she knew one about a magic animal called a Silkie. She sang that one but Gilbert couldn’t find all the chords to it. Professor Fairhaven asked if anyone knew any
other
music, as if what he’d been hearing wasn’t to his liking. So Gilbert started picking out the tune to “Dixie,” which didn’t make the professor any happier. Gil followed it with a dance tune and then he wanted to try Charity James’s songs again. She asked him for the guitar and what do you know but she played some, too, and showed him the place for his fingers on the Silkie song. I liked that one.

Gilbert went back to “Keegan’s Lament” and then played one like it we have out here called “The Drover’s Lament.” Listening to Gilbert singing, I hummed with him. If I didn’t hum, those old songs would take me back in time and I’d get weepy. I knew as much and didn’t care to visit the past in front of those people. It was a fine time, though.

The rain let up the following day. After a stack of flapjacks, Gil rode up to the wash but came back saying it was running so hard there’d be no crossing it. One more meal for all these folks. So I got out the sack of beans. When he saw me cleaning a bowl of pinto beans to soak down for our supper, Professor Osterhaas asked me if I couldn’t kill one of the chickens instead. “They aren’t mine,” I told him. “Those chickens are Savannah’s. I borrowed them to start new chicks this spring. They’ve got to last through winter.” He looked disappointed but didn’t say more. I suppose some folks aren’t partial to beans. Dressed up with some red chili and onions they go down all right to me.

That night we gathered around the supper table where I’d laid out risen biscuits and tortillas, red sauce and piccalilli and beans. I noticed Gilbert held out the chair for Miss James, then took a seat right next to her. I’d be happy enough to be soon rid of these strangers. For a while, everyone was eating and it got quiet. Then Harland up and said, “Sarah? Clover and Mary Pearl came by with the mail while you all were gone. Rachel’s written back. I … I’ve hired her for a governess.”

Granny said, “A girl can’t even vote, son. How do you expect her to be the governor?”

He smiled. “Mama, she’ll watch the children after school. Tend to them. Give them lessons in town. I’ve decided not to wait any longer. Sarah has offered me her house there. When we take these folks in, I’m going, too. Going to hang out my shingle.”

Gilbert said, “Town’s growing.”

Harland went on, barely hiding the excitement in his voice, “Houses going up like weeds. Macadamized roads. Gas stoves. Horseless carriages all over.”

I pushed the plate full of biscuits toward him. Everyone got quiet. Chess said, “Folks may not need an architect. They generally just order up a house from the Sears and Roebuck or draw a square and start hauling rocks.”

“Well,” Harland said, “if it doesn’t work, I guess I’ll go on home to California.”

Then all three of our guests started in with Harland, discussing all the grand places they’d seen in California, painting the place up like a new barn, as fancy and flowery as the Garden of Eden. The only part of California I’d seen was San Francisco and the memory of that destruction was printed in my mind like a lithograph: sludge and mud and rain, smoke and disease and desolation. It truly sounded as if they were talking about some other, far-distant, airy and lovely place—the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Listening to them chatter, I began to think they were all in cahoots with one another, even my baby brother, working up a gullywasher of a tall tale.

Finally, there was a quiet spell and I said, “You don’t need to go yet.”

“I can make a living in Tucson. Pay you rent on the house. You’ll have money coming in, enough to live on.”

“That’s what this is about. We aren’t starving.”

“Well, not entirely. I can’t go on here. It—it makes me feel invalid. I need to get back to work. You need the money. It’s good all around.”

“So’s castor oil.” I felt as if I could run from the table. The company had grown silent. No one dared move.

“Sis?”

“Oh, go on, then. Never mind I need you here.”

“I don’t do anything here. I’m no good at all the things you make look slick and easy. All I’m doing is collecting dust.”