These Is My Words (52 page)

Authors: Nancy E. Turner

Charlie and Gilbert were tossing their hats in the air and whooping like wild Indians. At the ranch? At the ranch, we get to live at the ranch! No more school! Nothing but roping and riding and we get to live at the ranch! They were both hollering at once, punching each other in the arm.

Chess looked at me, and he looks so old now, and he said real slowly, I don’t know if you mean that, Miss Sarah, but I’d rather live with you if you don’t mind. My ranch runs itself, I don’t do a thing there anymore. And my daughters both live with their children, and they don’t have room for an old cuss like me.

Well, I said, yes I meant it. Every word. We will start packing up tomorrow, and this house will rent out just fine.

April cried out with tears in her eyes, I won’t go without my good furniture, I won’t sleep on a nasty old straw mattress. Mama, how could you do this to me? And she ran upstairs wailing “I hate that ranch” at the top of her lungs like a baby.

We are going anyway, I said to the boys. We’ll ship the furniture and everything, and decide later what to use. So now you have to help out, and you can get some wood from the shed and start building small crates today for dishes. Then tomorrow when the stores are open, we’ll start in on the big things.

March 30, 1900

It took only three days to move us out to the ranch. But it is just me and the boys and Chess. The day we left with the last of the crates in a flatbed wagon, I found a note from April in the door of her room, and she has run off with Morris Winegold to get married. She says he has money and will not make her live in an old ranch house.

Well, this hurt my heart, and yet, I understand that she probably has some terrible memories of the ranch and the struggles we had there, and that she is grown now with a mind of her own, and although we didn’t approve of Morris for her to marry, it was not because he’s not a nice family man. The Winegolds are a rich family and have high plans for their son that don’t include the daughter of a soldier. I had tried to explain to April that if his mother doesn’t like her background, it will be a rough row to hoe being married to him, no matter how much they love each other. But she is gone now. Maybe she will be happy. I hope so. Some of the things I tried to say to her she will understand someday when she has children of her own to worry over. As soon as I hear from her, I will just tell her I love her and they should come to visit any time, as I will not turn them away for this. I will never turn away. How fragile our lives are anyway. How quickly things can change forever. Write me, daughter. Write me.

April 1, 1900

Mason has been letting the ranch slip. He is grown so old, I hadn’t noticed before now. All his hair is white as snow. He still courts my Mama every Tuesday evening.

The sun was hanging low in the sky when I finally got to catch my breath. Chess and the boys have saddled up and are out for a ride to get the lay of the place; they just can’t wait to start being ranchers, and their grandpa Chess is a good man to teach them. I sat on the front porch steps and just felt the homeyness of it all and breathed in the smells I knew so well of the desert and the trees.

All is in bloom now and my little rose bush has become a big rose bush. Mason tended it carefully and for that I will be forever thankful. I let my eyes wander the hills and the little road that followed the stream. And I remembered Jack jostling April on his shoulders those days after the bad flood. And I remembered him being pinned under that horse on the ridge. Then I couldn’t stop the tears, and I cried and cried, and loved him with all the love I have ever had. I opened up the last box, the one I had saved because I couldn’t stand to look inside. I again unwound the leather stitching from Jack’s old saddlebag. I touched the ragged and scarred little book with the hole through it. Stumbling and sobbing, I put the scarlet velvet lady book, with the letters safely inside it, into my carved wooden perfume box on the top shelf in the parlor.

Jack’s medals were in there, his watch, his wedding ring, and my brooch. I sat Mrs. Lady on top of the box, to guard it from intruders, and her worn and faded dress spread out across the top, her little patch of tangled hair flew around her head. Then I kissed the little old portrait of us from our wedding trip, and I washed my face and dried my eyes.

The other Elliot men came in noisily for supper, talking about the ranch, and the sun was setting fast as we ate. Every now and then I could hear Jack’s voice in someone’s from the table, just a word or a tone, but Jack was alive in these men around me.

Every now and then I look at Mrs. Lady and smile at her, and I know she appreciates the treasure she guards.

Jack Elliot, you are a sore trial and a wonder.

June 30, 1901

This morning I paid two men from town to move the coffins of my husband and my children from town to their resting places here, and put up a pretty carved headstone for each of them. And I planted a little tree called a jacaranda at their heads. It is a tiny stem, with only three little branches, but all the branches have a shoot of flowers on them, and Chess says that in Texas these trees get as big as a house, and will shade the entire hill eventually.

The air now is balmy and cool, and while the days are warm they are not as fiercely hot as during the worst of the summer. In the twilight here from the porch I can see, rising in the clear summer sky, a brilliant star, brighter than any other in the heavens. Every night it joins another one and the moon in a triangle, and makes a journey across the sky and sets in the hills. I have stayed up sometimes well towards midnight to watch it.

I have named the star Jack’s Star. It is beautiful and bright and gives me joy when it is here and pain when it is not, and every year as the summer approaches, I have seen it coming over the hills. I used to think that maybe someday I will learn what educated people have called it and why it is only here sometimes, but now I think it wouldn’t matter. It is Jack’s Star, and they have only to ask me and I will tell them its name.

They will have to ask the star itself where it goes and why it is not content to stay.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my family and friends for their encouragement and support; my daughter, April, for keenly recognizing the good and bad in my work; my son, Sterling, who listened and laughed in the right places; and my husband, John, who refused to cast opinion until I asked, and was there for the rejection as well as the acceptance.

None of this would have appeared in print without the hard work of a patient yet tenacious literary agent. John Ware has proved himself beyond the call of duty in every respect.

I extend special appreciation to those faculty members of the Writing Department at Pima Community College, Tucson, Arizona, whose goal is the fanning of the flame. Otis Bronson first told me I was a writer and sent me to the forge. Meg Files, a remarkably gifted writer and quite likely the most extraordinary teacher I’ve had the pleasure to study under, showed me how to refine the blade and polish the edge, and cheered me onward at every turn.

About the Author

NANCY E. TURNER
is the author of several works of fiction, including
The Water and the Blood
and
Sarah’s Quilt.
She has been a seam snipper in a clothing factory, a church piano player, a paleontologist’s aide, and an executive secretary. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband and two children.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Praise
for
These Is My Words

“Clear, at times lyrical prose…providing vivid, colorful characters and historically accurate backdrop.”

—Washington Post

“This is a beautifully written book that quickly captures readers’ attention and holds it tightly and emotionally until the end.”

—Library Journal

“A vivid picture of one woman’s true grit on the frontier.”

—Dallas Morning News

“Jack and Sarah are as delicious a couple as Rhett and Scarlett. The three-hankie ending to their long love affair will definitely make you give a damn.”

—USA Today

“
These Is My Words
belongs on your must-read list. In her first book, Nancy E. Turner approaches the fine qualities of Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer-winning
Lonesome Dove
. The two books share unforgettable characters, a grand sweep of history, adventure, love, and emotion so real that you feel it…. A book not to miss.”

—Omaha World-Herald

“An entertaining—at times harrowing—reading experience.”

—Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“A compelling portrait of an enduring love, the rough old West, and a memorable pioneer.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A lushly satisfying romance, period-authentic, with true grit.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Nancy E. Turner has spun a frontier novel that teeters on the fine edge of truth and fiction…. Simply place an 1880s map of the Southwest next to the book and enjoy the ride.”

—Arizona Republic

“Says more about America than
Gone with the Wind….
I’d put it up there with
To Kill a Mockingbird
. It is moving, funny, and rings very true.”

—Mary Stewart, author of
The Crystal Cave

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THESE IS MY WORDS
. Copyright © 1998 by Nancy E. Turner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Mobipocket Reader May 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-166306-2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1