The Star Garden (6 page)

“All that,” I said, “takes place here in Tucson? In the Territory?”

“It took place in Philadelphia. I’m sure the university here is quite the same.”

“My daughter and her husband lived in Philadelphia for a while. She never mentioned a university.”

“Well, it probably wouldn’t interest a married woman. She’d have many other concerns.”

“Raising babies. She’s got three already.”

“And that young man, Harland, he’s a brother, not your husband?”

Well, he’d whittled things out of me without my knowing. “Professor, I’ve put two husbands in the ground by that big tree at our place. Here’s the arroyo. You hold on to the sides. This gets to shaking, but it’s not going over.”

It took our train the better part of an hour to go down one side and back up the other. Professor Osterhaas turned whiter than a sheet a couple of times, but I drove that team hard against the sides, and the footing was wet and soggy but did not give way. At the bottom, we unloaded the buckboard, and while I drove, the men pushed it uphill. To the last, each of us wore half our weight in mud by the time we got back on the road.

The professor must have been some orator for he started in again, and kept me in a spell with his words about learning. If anyone ever wanted to hear a fine speech, they’d do worse than to pay a nickel for his time. A long time later, when we could see the outlines of Tucson in the distance, Professor Osterhaas said, “I suppose you’re quite caught up in household affairs. Pity. With your educational background, you’d make a fine student.”

I gritted my teeth against a quick, sharp pain in my chin. “Sir, my educational background was only this side of Abe Lincoln’s spade. The honest truth is that I found some books cast off by the side of the road. That there was the lock, stock, and barrel of my school in between washing diapers, baking bread, and fighting Indians. I’d no more fit in that classroom full of young thirsty minds—as you put it—than I could wear feathers and fly to Constantinople.” I snapped the reins. The buggy jerked forward as the horses picked up their feet a bit. A fine student! Long ago, I’d dreamed of it, but I’d been a girl. Now it was pure tomfoolery and nonsense.

My eyes watered up and I couldn’t see. Tears slid out of place and tracked down my cheeks. I turned my head away and wiped them, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I had a ranch to run. Work to do if I was going to drag my place out of the ground again. It might never be what it had been when Chess first came with his gift of a cattle herd. The children were small. Jack was here. The work was keeping track of breed stock and branding and hiring and such. Now there was just hoping and scraping and trying to get the garden up and keep the chickens safe from coyotes, both four-legged and two-. What would make a man I barely know think he could talk to me of my secret dreams as if they were no more hidden than a pinto pony in broad daylight?

“Still, any woman who’s read
Theories of Planetary Motion
without benefit of instruction, why, deserves a chance—”

I quit crying. “I reckon you’re trying to be polite, Professor. I’ve always longed to go to school and there’s no one that’s thought about it more than me. It just ain’t going to happen, so I wish you’d let go of that rope and just let the dust settle on it!”

“Pardon me, madam.” He was quiet the rest of the way to town. It took me a long while to set my face to rights, feeling so torn inside.

Chess called a halt to our travels and Miss James climbed into the surrey with the children. Then Chess turned off the road toward the undertaker’s. Harland followed me north of town to finally take leave of our company of travelers.

When we got to the university steps to let them out, that buzzard professor says to me, “It
was
a simple spade he used. I seem to remember he dug a good, long furrow with it, too. President Lincoln, that is,” and took his bags with not a single word of thanks for all I’d done for him.

By the time we pulled up to my house in town, the sun had dropped behind the mountains past Sentinel Peak, and long shadows followed our weary horses. Jack and I had built that house when April was little and the boys were babies. Two more children had been born there. The baby boy never took a breath, but little Suzanne grew to be two years old. She’d skinned her nose once, toppling off the porch when she was learning to walk. Scarlet fever took her from us before she was three. There were a lot of memories in that place. I watched Harland’s “band of rogues” bundling up the steps, impatiently waiting for me to open the door. I suppose I hadn’t even thought of the place as sad, but there was nothing like the clatter of children to wake a wooden house up. Truth, Honor, and Story bolted through the empty place, whooping and scrambling up the stairs, and for a long while we could hear them stampeding across wooden floors high overhead.

We’d barely gotten in the door when Blessing dropped to the dusty floor and started kicking her feet against the boards. She yelled and hollered until Harland was beside himself trying to get her to hush. Finally, I said, “Harland, follow me,” and led him out the door. We left her crying on the floor and went around the yard. “You’d better either cut a switch and use it, or ignore that, much as you’re able,” I said. “Soon as she sees you’re not paying attention, she’ll quit.”

He looked a little nervous, but paid attention while I showed him how to start the pump to get water to the top floor, where the ash hopper went through the wall, and where the valve was to get the gas going into the pipes for lights in the parlor. The whole time, Blessing followed us, sniffling, at times crying, but we ignored her until she came and put her arms around Harland’s right leg.

“Poppy? Carry me.”

He took her in his arms, where she sagged against his neck, quiet at last. Harland said, “And how can you tell if all the lights are down? Isn’t there a main switch? I’d put one in.”

“Maybe you should. I always worried about the gas and mostly used kerosene. We never ran gas lines to the upper floors because I was afraid the children would leave one open and unlit.” I felt as if I were abandoning my little brother to take care of himself. Then I remembered he was only a couple of years younger than I and he’d been doing just that for twenty years. I took Harland’s arm.

I’d left a couple of cots in the place, where Albert’s and my offspring usually slept while they took classes at the university, and a rugged old table and a few beat-up chairs furnished the kitchen. Otherwise, the house had more spiders than furniture. Well, Harland said he couldn’t possibly do up the place without a woman’s help, so he asked me to stay another day and help him buy some things. I told him if he wanted real style, he’d do better to ask April to come along, as she has lived in Philadelphia and her house is the grandest thing I’ve ever known.

That evening, I fixed us a simple supper and we all pitched in to clean and sweep the kitchen and make up spare fixings for tonight, with the promise of better things tomorrow. The children were none too happy with just a blanket to curl on, to be sure. But I circled them up and made up a story for them, about four children on a great adventure who could ride their bedrolls like a cloud in the sky, and wherever they wished to go, they could go. The kitchen was the only warm place in the house, so Harland and I let them eat their suppers sitting on their blankets around the cookstove. They made up a game and shouted out fantastic things we’d eat from their magic bedrolls, like popcorn-ball-picnics held deep under the ocean and animal crackers over the moon, flying fish in India and noodles in New York. Truth said he’d prefer camping in the kitchen to having a regular bed, anytime.

Harland gave me a stiff argument about the rent, insisting he’d pay $52 a month. I got him to settle on $38. It was fair enough, since he’d helped me build the house years ago. Then he paid me in cash, six months in advance. I’d never taken money from my family, except for when Granny paid for my well and windmill this fall. I took that money—$228 in folding money made a wad too big to put in my pocket—and as I held it in my hand, it poured an awful and strange torrent of feelings through my soul. I was glad to have it, sorry to take it, happy to know we’d eat through Christmas, and mortified to need it, all at the same time. He said he’d fix up a room so I’d always have a bed in town.

First thing we did next morning was to pay a call at April and Morris’s house. I let my brother talk to my daughter—and she went on and on about furniture and wallpapers and fancy new linoleum floors—while I went upstairs to find her children. Vallary was nine now, Patricia was six, and Lorelei was three. How I love to see those three grandchildren of mine run to my arms! As they smothered me in kisses, I thought of Professor Osterhaas’s foolish suggestion. Schoolgirl grandma—what a hoot! When we came down, April sent their maid for some tea and cookies. She looked pale. When I gave her a hug, she said, “Oh, Mama, please don’t. Oh, my—” and then hurried out of the room. Well, I followed her a ways and she only made it to the conservatory door before she let up her lunch into the potted fern there.

I went past her and found a clean towel in a stack of folded ones. I ran water over it and brought it to her to wipe her face. “Honey,” I said, “you’d better get out of that corset and lie down.”

She mopped at her brow and held the cloth to her face. “Oh, Mama. I’m expecting another baby.”

I smiled. “That’s just wonderful. When’s it coming?”

“May or June.”

I held her hands. “I’ll get to be with you for this one,” I said.

She groaned and said, “I’m faint. Would you undo my stays for me?”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

“Right here. I don’t think I can make it upstairs.”

I opened her buttons and loosened her stays. I couldn’t stop smiling. I saw the skin of her back had grown puffy, already ripening. She gasped for air when the bands came loose. By that time, the children found us, and I threw my shawl around her shoulders to hide her open dress. April told her son, Vallary, to go fetch their maid to throw out the poor fern.

It was settled that if she were able, April would accompany us the next day as soon as the stores opened, to help her uncle choose the right chairs and such. I’ve never known finery except the things Jack ordered mail order. Just a few short years have turned Tucson into a big place. There are stores selling things I didn’t even know I could want.

That afternoon Albert and his boys, Clover, Ezra, and Zack, along with Mary Pearl, arrived. Savannah and Rebeccah had stayed at home for want of the surrey we’d used. Albert said they had some errands to do for Savannah, but he drove to fetch Rachel from the schoolhouse where she lived and worked. We’d have one more night on the floor, and then a busy day tomorrow.

Rachel has been small and frail compared to her twin, Rebeccah, ever since she took rheumatic fever a few years ago. Her frame seemed as delicate as Granny’s, though her eyes were bright and her mind plenty quick to handle all these children.

As Harland introduced them to their new governess, Story piped up with, “Does this mean we can go to regular school again, or are you our teacher like Aunt Sarah?”

“Regular school. But if you got the measles and missed a day, I’ve been a teacher and I’ll help you out.”

I saw Harland’s boys cut eyes at each other. No telling what their experiences had been in San Francisco with schoolteachers, but it didn’t look as if they were pleased to have one for a governess. Small as Rachel was, I figured the children would be in good hands. She was Savannah’s daughter, after all.

Next thing, I went in the kitchen to start supper and Harland got a newspaper to see if there was an advertisement of someone wanting to be a house girl. While he went to visit a lady who’d run a notice, I started up a big pot of soup and made myself a list of things I needed to buy to take back home. I counted out thirty dollars and folded the bills up tightly, tied them with string, and put the money in my pocket for tomorrow.

April and Rachel decided they’d stay at the house and visit, so I told them to keep the fire going, then took up my cloak to go back to town and get my own errands done. Just then there was a knock at the door. Two women in dark hoods and cloaks stood there, their arms loaded down with baskets of bread and cakes. The Methodist ladies were having a baked-goods sale to raise money. The taller lady said one fund was to put a new stove in the parson’s kitchen, as his wife heated it so hot the top sank in and none of her pans will sit up straight nor hold half a pint of water. Well, I told them to tell her to just cook in the yard on a spit, the way I grew up doing. Folks who think they have to have a stove need to think again. Then the shorter lady said they had another collection, which was to take food and building supplies to the townspeople of Clifton. They said the entire town had washed away in the recent rains, and the money was to help them move and rebuild everything higher up on the hills.

One powerful storm and all my memories had been pulled from under me as if they were no more than sand. Harland’s, too, when he’d lost the house in the earthquake. I knew exactly what the people were feeling. Flattened out like dried leather. No idea where to turn. I felt the lump of money weighing down my skirt. Harland’s little ones and Ezra and Zachary, Albert’s youngest boys, crowded about my back, sniffing the air like foxes. Those boys would eat cake any time of the day, any day of the week.

“Would you try the cinnamon cake? It’s my grandmother’s recipe. She always claimed it was very good for warding off the grippe, too. It must have been so, since I never had it until I left home.”

The children made appreciative noises. My neighbors had built me a house and given me more than a roof. They’d made it a palace. I needed the money in my pocket, but here were neighbors I didn’t know in straits I knew all too well. “How much?” I said.

“Fifty cents for a cake. But it’s for charity.”

As I untied the string I’d just fixed, another flood of feelings swept through me. I said, “Let us have two. We’ve a lot of children here today.” I handed over the cash and took two cakes. “And would you please send along an extra dollar—two dollars?” Those poor folks needed the money, but still, I had to think that three dollars gone was a day’s wages for a man. A week’s worth for a poor one.

“Oh, do take another cake for it.”

“No,” I said. “You sell that, and two extra dollars will buy a few pounds of nails. Mind, this is for the people who lost their houses, not for the parson’s wife to melt her stove.”

“Yes, ma’am. And thank you,” she said.

The children crowed with happiness as I carried those two big cakes, still warm and smelling like Christmas Day, into the kitchen. They hollered when I told them they had to wait until after supper to eat them.

Then I left so I could run some errands of my own. Might as well find Udell’s hinges and get some goods for the ranch before nightfall so we could head home in the morning.

First I went through Sharp’s Candy Store and got some horehound in case the ague or the quinsy made the rounds of our family again this winter. I got some Foley’s Honey and Tar Cure, too. Nearby was a store I dared not go in. Corbett’s books and toys was as spellbinding a place to me as it was to the smallest babe in the family, for they had books for sale. Everything I owned I’d read at least twice, some several times. I stopped and looked in the window. There was a large volume on a display stand, propped open, bound in heavy leather and illustrated with amazing watercolor paintings.

The man behind the counter saw me at the door, came right outside and said, “Well, good afternoon, Mrs. Elliot. How lovely to see you.” He took my arm and led me in the door. I must admit, I didn’t resist the tug much at all, but fell into that den of sore temptation like a common drunk toward a saloon.

“I’m just thinking,” I said. “Looking and thinking.”

“You know your credit is always good here. No need for cash. You can pay next summer after the cattle sales.”

I pictured my horde of nephews and nieces languishing in front of those cakes in the kitchen with the same tortured hunger I felt standing in this store where the air was perfumed with the delicious fragrance unique to an unsavored book. “Thinking,” I said, “that it’s a nice day, and I’ve got more shopping to do.”

The man’s face fell for an instant, but he said, “We have the most complete line of toys and dolls. Santa Claus is coming, after all. There
must
be some apple of your eye deserving of a gift on the tree this year?”

I sighed. “Many, many children.” I could see beyond the books now, to where charming dollies stared, unblinking, their china heads longing to be loved by some little girl. Beyond them, baseballs and leather gloves and carved wooden bats hung over tin trains and lead soldiers, paint sets and hobby horses. “I’ll be making them shirts and pinafores for Christmas.”

“What about a nice volume for yourself?
The Family Mark Twain
is popular. Have you seen the
Peerless Reciter Or Popular Program?.
Rich with tableaux and readings for young and old. Briar Rose, Romeo and Juliet—”

“I’ve got those.” Nearly worn them out, making all the children read.

He pulled a different book off the shelf and opened it. The back of it made that lovely sound, pages starched and perfect as a man’s new shirt collar, too stiff to lie flat, loosening their grip on each other. “Here we have
The Advance of the British Empire.
Are you interested in Egyptian secrets from the tombs of the pharaohs?”

I reached for the book, then took my hand away without touching it. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I never really meant to come inside. There’s a man over there wanting to buy that flashlight machine.” I left the store fast as my feet would go down the boarded walk. I’d better do my dreaming in a general store. I had a family to think of.

Christmas
was
coming. I’d need more whole cloth and ticking. Knowing the cash in my pocket was all I had left caused that now-familiar surge of nerves to awaken, and as I ordered things off the list, I spoke slowly, watching Mr. Griego stack goods on the counter, all the while feeling on the verge of panic. What if the flour got weevils, the beans got mold? Should I buy twenty pounds and risk mice eating it up?