The Star Garden (8 page)

“You corned home?” he said. Harland looked over her head at me.

I said, “She was at the train depot. Fixing to get on the seven-thirty to Lordsburg.”

“You need me, don’t you, Poppy?” Blessing asked.

He looked puzzled and sad. “Yes, of course.”

“Where’s Mommy?”

Harland shuddered. “Go in the house, precious. Be a good girl. Find Rachel, and play with her. Go upstairs and … play. Wait until I can tell you the story again.”

She went. I handed him the valise. “Here’s what she was taking,” I said. “She may try this again. I think she wants to believe she can find her mother, so much that it might happen. Like a child sitting on a rug waiting for it to fly like a magic carpet.”

My brother scratched his head. “I’m making a mistake, aren’t I? I can’t do this without you.”

I forced myself to say, “Yes you can. This moving commotion will be over. You’ll have your work in the front room there that you’ve made into your office, and Rachel will see to the children. You won’t be far away. I won’t be, either. Melissa will be just over your shoulder, too. I was sorry to see you leave the ranch, but life in this town will be more what your little ones are accustomed to than at the ranch. They’ll have regular schooling. Friends to play with. Epworth League at the church. It’ll be good.”

“But not the same.”

“Harland, nothing ever is. Will you come down for Christmas?”

He sat on the edge of a wooden crate and picked at a loose thread pulled from the weave of his trousers. At last he looked at me and said, “We’ll bring the goose.”

“Fine,” I said.

Well, instead of playing with Rachel, I found Blessing sitting on a chair next to Chess, who was warming his hands at the kitchen stove. She was recounting her trip to the train station and he nodded now and then, repeatedly asking, “What happened next?”

That evening I repacked my purchases to be ready for the drive home, and waited for my supper as if I were some royal personage in a castle. Likely to get plum spoilt, having all that work go on without me. While we ate, commotion went on overhead as some fellows hoisted the last two beds into place upstairs.

It wasn’t a bad meal that Mrs. Ramsey cooked, it just wasn’t enough for two people, much less the twelve of us. Everyone had a taste of the potatoes and carrots and peas, and a morsel of meat. If I hadn’t made the soup, we’d have all gone hungry. The dessert was a single pie. Only eight inches across and cut into twelve pieces, it was little more than two bites each. Well, everybody is new at something once. Mrs. Ramsey would have to learn her job, I suppose.

After supper, Harland’s children were sent to the parlor where Rachel read them stories. The last workmen left and then Harland went to his study and started sorting things. I climbed the stairs slowly, feeling foreign as a daisy in a rose garden in this old familiar place, now all done up fancier than I’d ever seen it.

In the washroom I closed the door, ran the water, and had a good soak. From the tub, I stared at the mirror high over the washstand. How many times had I stood there, talking to Jack’s reflection as he worked that straight razor across his neck and face? After I dried off, I went to the mirror and touched the place on the washstand where Jack’s shaving cup had sat. When he was eleven, Charlie once knocked off and broke the shaving cup his father had carried through the Indian Wars. He’d had to buy a new one out of his allowance. I remembered the smell of Jack’s shaving soap tinctured with oil of bergamot and eucalyptus.

The room was cold. I dressed quickly and went to my new old room; it had been transformed, too. The cot was gone and in its place was a fine bed. Against one wall was an armoire, and a cushioned chair waited beneath the window with a companion table. The chair was padded and fat, and made a nice warm nest for someone to curl up their feet and have a good think. The bed had been laid with linen sheets and new blankets.

I put out the light. The almost dozen other people in the house managed to get themselves to bed without me, and I didn’t mind it a bit. In that fancy, soft bed, I stared into the darkness. If Jack were here right now, I’d make him love me and then wrap himself around me so we’d stay warm all night. The house got quiet. It was my house no longer. Felt different, sounded different, smelled of the new furnishings. It took a while for all the memories I knew of Jack in this house to fade into the night.

The ruckus of our return home was equivalent to watching the Sixth Army abandon its post years ago, and it appeared we were taking half the town with us. This being so close to Christmas, it seemed as if a migration had begun to points south. Since we were traveling with all those folks, for once there was little worry about highway robbers and bandidos.

At last we came to the fork that leads to Granny’s old house where we homesteaded years ago, and from there we could see the sprawling rock home that Albert and Savannah have built over the years. Albert and his boys dropped off our train then, and I was left to drive on with Chess.

“You’ve been quiet,” he said, as we pulled into the yard.

I thought I’d been purely friendly, waving to folks on the road. “How so?”

“Nothing to come home to but old folk. This house is plum empty.”

“This house is this house,” I said.

“Less washing now.”

He wouldn’t look in my direction. So I said, “Go on in and I’ll unload this.”

Granny came out the door just then. She must have been watching by the window. She raised her hand and called out, “That feisty girl is about to make supper. I’ll tell her to lay a couple more plates.”

I knew who she meant. Mary Pearl did tend to flit through the house like a bird, too full of energy to sit still. “Afternoon, Mama,” I said. “Go tell her we’re here, then.”

I heard her voice from the open door, calling, “Put some water in the beans, Mary Pearl. The folks are home!”

Chess loaded up his arms and we piled things near the pantry. It was all I could do to keep up Chess’s pace. Soon as we were done, without saying a word, he drove the rig to the barn and disappeared while I stocked our shelves. Maybe Chess was the one who hated the empty house. While I was trying to keep all those little ones clean and fed and teaching them schoolwork every day they were here, he was the one holding Blessing on his knee as he spun a yarn about a magical bear that outsmarted a hunter. He was the one teaching Story, Honor, and Truth how to make a slingshot and aim it true. I’d been thinking they must surely have tried his patience, but maybe it had been the opposite. I had been too busy to see it.

Sunday, Savannah held her usual Sunday School. I sat in my best dress in her parlor, listening to her read aloud from the Bible. Albert was next to her and Mary Pearl next to him on the settee. Granny sat near Albert and Savannah’s son Clover. Her
eyes
were closed as if she were in prayer, but I believe she was snoozing. Chess was between Ezra and Zachary, both of them full of Mexican jumping beans. Three hours of not squirming was easier for them to withstand if they were kept apart from one another, and far easier than the chores that would be heaped upon them if they showed signs of disrespect, too. I laid my hands in my lap and stared at them, trying hard to study upon the words she read.

In the corner of the room, Udell Hanna’s hands were also folded in his lap. He was clean shaven and had a piece of cotton tied around the smallest finger of his left hand, as if he’d needed a bandage fresh this morning. I wondered if he was thinking of the Scriptures, or daydreaming about his son Aubrey, who should be driving up from Tucson in time for dinner to pay a call on Mary Pearl. I wondered, too, if his people kept Christmas. Had I been too forward, buying him a gift? I could give it to him now, simply because I bought it, and it wouldn’t be a Christmas present, so he wouldn’t feel obliged to return me one if he hadn’t already thought to. How could I keep it another two weeks, anyway? I couldn’t wait to see the pleased look on his face. Lands, I had plenty of sewing to do. I planned to start on it first thing tomorrow, cutting out shirts for the fellows. I hoped I’d bought enough buttons. Udell’s face looked deep in thought. I wondered what he was thinking.

Savannah had stopped reading. I turned toward her. She was staring straight at me as if I’d interrupted the Scriptures or sneezed or something equally awful. “Now?” she asked.

“You go on ahead,” I said. I had no earthly idea what she’d asked me to do. Albert began to pray and we all bowed our heads. Prayers. Of course. I listened hard. Then all was quiet and that’s when I began to let go of the people in the room about me and thought about our trials, feeling thankful we’d kept our heads above water. I also prayed I’d gotten the right number of buttons.

Prayers were signaled to a close by a knock at the door. Aubrey had come, leaving a nice horse and buggy tied up at the rail, and carrying a handful of roses, reds and pinks, mostly, with one white one which he presented to Savannah. Red and pink roses! If a man gave flowers of those colors to a girl, his passion was said to be unbridled! Heavens, I hoped Savannah wouldn’t send him scalded from the house. I heard Gilbert, Clover, and Joshua clear their throats. Then Aubrey said, “I stopped to admire them, Mrs. Prine, and the lady of the house said I should take some. Please don’t suspect I have hidden artifice in them, as they are the shades she had growing in her yard. She was quite embarrassed, asking me to take them, because of the colors, but they smelled so nice, and I do declare that no clever meanings are attached.”

Savannah held the roses and smelled them. She smiled at the young man, and said, “God made all flowers equally beautiful.”

Once dinner was over it was time for quiet work, reading or stitchery. Aubrey had come to spend Christmas with his father, but along with that, he’d come intending to take Mary Pearl for a drive. Savannah pulled back the curtain at the parlor window so she could see his new buggy, and said, “Your father should drive, Mary Pearl, and take our surrey.”

Mary Pearl’s face showed no disappointment, though I do suspect she would have considered driving alone with a man in the afternoon if her mother hadn’t spoken. She was seventeen and prettier than a girl has any business being. Mighty headstrong, too.

Udell stepped up and said, “Miss Savannah, if you’d allow, I was planning to ask Miss Sarah to take a drive with me. How about if she and I were to go? We’ll provide the children with plenty of company.”

Mary Pearl stared at the ceiling as if her mother’s answer would come from it. Savannah pursed her lips. Udell had done a good thing making it seem like they needed company instead of watchdogging. I said, “I don’t mind spending the afternoon,” trying not to sound too anxious myself.

“We’ll go, too,” said Zachary.

“Yeah,” Ezra echoed.

I suppose Mary Pearl and I are closer under the skin to being two buttons on a single card—she wasn’t just my niece, I felt more like her older sister. At this moment, we were conspirators in crime, even if the crime was only a few innocent minutes alone with a fellow. Having Ezra and Zack along to ride herd on us would take all the frill off the afternoon. So I said, “Don’t you two have lessons to write?”

“We already did ‘em,” Ezra protested.

“Never mind,” Savannah said. “You fellows are going to read a chapter apiece from a work of inspirational thought. Then you may play outside. There will be no riding this afternoon.”

The boys turned angry glares at me, dead sure they were surrounded by adults who delighted in keeping them from having any fun whatsoever.

Udell and I sat in the front of Albert and Savannah’s old surrey, with the two young people in the back. Udell drove south past my place and farther on, where Cienega Creek runs toward the San Pedro River. This place is so hilly it’s like a wrinkled bed. Cross one hill and another and nothing lies before you but another hill. If you go west a bit and south, there’s ever flatter and grassier land, but here the rocks and crags fight for a place amongst the grassy slopes. Trees were coming back from the range fire of autumn.

Everybody hereabouts had lost plenty in that fire, except for Rudolfo Mal-donado. His family had been on that four sections for three generations when ours came, sometimes trading with, sometimes fighting off, four different tribes of Indians. In the years since my brothers, Savannah, and my mama and I drove up in our rattling single wagon, El Maldonado’s parents have passed on, as has his wife, Celia, and the four-room adobe has grown to a twelve-room hacienda. He has hired servants enough to start his own town, and every form of finery that can be shipped to this territory fills his place. But, though we were both young folks at the same time, and have grown older together, while I have had a home and fine family, I believe Rudolfo’s riches have not made him satisfied. His new wife, Leta, is a year or so older than both our Mary Pearl and Elsa, his oldest daughter, who he’s sent to Tucson to the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet for safekeeping. Some days I long for the old times when his first wife, Celia, was alive—when I could call him friend.

It was cool but not cold and, though the air was not bitter, we were all under lap blankets. You’d have thought they were still caught up in prayer, silent as the two were back there. At one point, I managed to need a good long look at a red bird flying by, just to have a reason to turn behind my seat. As the bird flitted off to one side I caught a glimpse of Aubrey and Mary Pearl. They stared into each other’s eyes, their faces flushed.

When Udell finally stopped the rig, the two horses snorted several times. We were near the top of a rounded hill. This range was open grazing land, most of it beat into worthless desert by too many cows run at one time. Barrel cactus poked up their ugly heads all around like badgers, daring any animal to get close. A horse stepping into one would be crippled on the spot as those finger-long hooks tore tendons from bone.

My cows were gone. Out of the eight hundred or so head I’d had, only a hundred and twenty were sold. Most of the rest were stolen when my nephew Willie took a bad road and went with some rustlers toward Mexico. The few remaining were scattered to the very wind by that range fire. I had twenty-one left. Udell had bought ten from me, to start himself a place, too. We shared the old bull, El Capitán, so I figure we each own ten and a half stock animals. Silly thing is, I’ve got twenty-three trained herd horses for watching ten and a half cows.

“Care to take a stroll?” Udell asked, with his eyes toward Aubrey and Mary Pearl.

“I’d be pleased to,” I said. He put his hands around my waist to help me down, and I pulled my shawl close. “You two mind if we stretch a mite?”

“No, ma’am,” they said on top of each other’s words.

Udell handed me a bag of oats and took up another. We looped them over the horses’ ears. I said, “Care to come? It’ll warm you both up.”

“We’re warm under the blanket,” Mary Pearl said. “I’d rather stay here.”

Udell called, louder than he needed to, “We’ll be right nearby.”

We walked a long way without a word. He stopped when a yellow-eared jackrabbit darted out of the brush and hightailed it farther up the hill. Udell’s foot slipped on some gravel, so he turned to me and smiled and offered a hand, which I gladly took. We stayed on the trail that rabbit had taken, up a well-used path, not that we wanted a skinny old hare, but for a clear way to the crest of the hill.

“It’s nice walking when it’s too cold for snakes,” I said.

Mountains to the north and east were capped with snow. The air was frosty but the sun felt warm. Udell put his arm around my waist and held on as we reached a flat area below the top. “I don’t miss the snakes,” he said. Then he nodded toward the white peaks. “But I don’t miss that kind of snow, either.”

“Worst I ever saw was when I was a girl up on the Little Colorado— breaking ice on the spring with a pickaxe so horses could drink, them always picking some sleety night to drop a foal. Pure misery.”

We talked a while then, about when we were children, where we lived, how our parents lived. Udell’s parents were both gone, as was my pa. Of course, Granny was still with us. A cloud drifted by the sun and I felt a shiver. “Do you need my coat?” he asked.

I felt warm inside as if a bed of coals had grown good and red. “Thank you, but I don’t really.”

He pulled a paper from inside his coat, and proceeded to unfold it before me. “Sarah, this here is the plan of a house your brother Harland drew for me. Just the start, anyway. A couple of rooms and a kitchen. But eventually, it’ll have two floors. It’d take some doing to get it built. I had been thinking of putting it out here. Dig a new well. Start on raw ground.”

“After you got all that bottom land plowed for a spring garden? Why would you go to the trouble of this when you’ve got the place already going where it is?”

“That one’s too close to my borders, I suppose. Too close to—”

“Maldonado’s?”

“I like my freedom.” He walked away, studying the ground.

I tagged behind him. When he stopped I said, “Tell me about your wife.”

Expressions flitted across his face like the shadows of a flock of birds. At last, his face softened. Then, as memories crossed his mind, his eyes crinkled at the corners.

“Frances was only sixteen when we married. Mercy, I was just twenty. Aubrey is twenty-eight, an old bachelor compared to his pa. Both of us, our fathers were stationed at Fort Laramie. Only hers was a corporal and mine was a rancher trying to keep enough sheep alive to feed the soldiers a good meal once a month. Her pa figured it was quite a comedown, sending her off with me. But the Sioux were defeated. Land was there for the taking. We built up a place, she and I. Aubrey was born in less than a year. We had six other children, all lost. One to typhus, two to measles. One died of great pox before he was two. Cal-lie died in the same coach accident with Frances.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and hung my head. “That’s not—I’m sorry. I meant, what was she like? Did she bake cakes? Go to women’s suffrage marches?”

He put an arm around my waist and drew me a little closer. “No, nothing like that,” he said, smiling. “She always said she wanted nothing more than to keep house and hearth together. She sewed for some spending money, though, fancy dresses and crinolines. She had eyes the color of water in a glass, pale blue with a dark rim, like, like—” Suddenly his face turned dark. His mouth quivered and he looked away.