Carla Kelly (9 page)

They sat together in silence until Paul kissed the top of her head. “Have you resigned yourself to being curly top now?”

She nodded, happy to change the subject, and told him about the two young women in the ward who had showed up at church with short hair. He smiled and traced her neck scar gently with his finger. “This bothering you so much?”

“Not so much, not after Uncle Albert and I had a good talk about scars on the inside and on the outside. I'll tell you about that later. He's gone back to Koosharem, and said he might be here for Christmas. I… I wouldn't exactly hold my breath for that.”

“I won't. It's more than enough to see you, and frankly, I don't think my uncle feels comfortable around me.”

“He doesn't,” she replied equally frank. “You remind him of a hard time, and besides, he doesn't know you the way I know you.”

“And you love me anyway.”

James and her parents came home when she was finishing dinner and Paul was sleeping in the parlor again. James almost danced as he described the wonder of mechanical elves, all of them moving and gesturing in a store window.

He held still long enough for her to unwind his muffler and take off his coat, which gave him a moment to reflect. “Here's what's strange, Mr. Darling,” he told her. “There were people walking by the window and they didn't even stop to look! What's wrong with them?”

“Maybe they've seen it before,” Julia suggested.

James rejected that with a frown in her direction, which made Julia smile inside. “Jee-rusalem Crickets,” he muttered, sounding very much like Mr. Otto.

“I know it's hard to imagine,” she said. “Did you see Santa Claus?”

Obviously James's opinion was mixed, starting with, “He wanted me to sit on his lap,” then morphing into, “He just out of the blue asked me what I wanted for Christmas!”

“What did you tell him?” Julia asked, her eyes lively.

James’ face fell. “I couldn't think of a thing.” He brightened then. “But I did ask for a house for you.”

That's kinder than I deserve
, Julia thought as she hugged him, breathing in the little boy fragrance she had been missing and thinking of all her complaints.
Let me take a page from your book
.
I know it's not the first time
.

It was a good time to ask. “James, what
has
been done on the house?”

“Next to nothing,” came a sleepy voice from the doorway. “I have already abandoned my less-than-spectacular career as a prevaricator.”

“What's that?” James asked. “Mr. Otto, your hair is rumpled.”

He grinned and grabbed Julia, who shrieked when he tousled her hair. “Not as bad as Mr. Darling's! Besides, she did it. James,
prevaricator
is a big word for liar. I found it in Doc's dictionary. I am up to the P's now.”

“Mr. Otto, you've never told a lie in your life,” James said.

“Yes I have, and not too long ago,” he murmured. “Julia, point him to the cutlery and plates, and he'll help. You'll have to tell Mr. Darling here how you've been hauling wood for Charlotte.”

“I like her,” the boy said simply. “So does Matt.”

Her eyes merry, Julia glanced at Paul, who suddenly looked inscrutable. “How's
that
wind blowing?”

“Matt doesn't bother me about my love life, and I don't trouble him about his,” Paul said, clipping his words and sounding remarkably like Mr. Otto. He clapped his hands together. “Big change of subject: Yes, your house—our house—had a foundation with center supports in place and not much else. No time, Julia, just no time.”

She rested her hand on his shoulder, and he covered her fingers with his in a gesture so automatic that she knew she would never nag about something as mundane as a mere house. “Paul, we're still getting married March 17, no matter if we have to spread out a bedroll on the foundation and tack up tumbleweed to cut the breeze.”

He kissed her fingers with a loud smack, which made Mama smile as she stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Darling, you certainly raised a daughter with low expectations. She'll do well in Wyoming.”

Considering that they were still raw from the pain of remembering Iris a year later, Mama and Papa made a special effort for James.
And me too
, Julia thought, as she popped popcorn in a wire basket vigorously shaken directly over the flames with a stove lid removed. They had been hurting too bad last Christmas to make popcorn balls, but Mama didn't hesitate this year, enlisting James to butter his hands and help her shape the fragrant treats.

“We'll eat some of these tonight and set two out for Santa Claus,” Mama explained. Julia's smile trembled a little when Mama said, her voice almost too soft for Julia's ears, “Julia and Iris were my little girls, and they always set out popcorn balls, one apiece. That's for Santa, who comes down the chimney and leaves toys.”

James looked at Paul, skeptical. Paul held up his hands to ward off his expression. “That's what they do here in Salt Lake City!”

The boy thought about it, and Julia remembered the deliberate way he reasoned. “What are you thinking, James?” she coaxed, dumping more popcorn in the bowl on the kitchen table.

“Do you think he'll know I'd like a knife?” He hung his head. “I should have told him.”

“He'll know,” Julia said with a questioning glance at Paul, who nodded.

“It came up a time or two,” Paul whispered in her ear when James turned his attention to the popcorn balls.

Julia smiled and watched her mother show James what to do, remembering how Mama had showed Iris. She knew Mama had been looking forward to showing the grandchildren she would never have now from Iris and Spencer Davison. She glanced at Paul, who was watching her.

“Our children, some day,” she told him, blushing when he nodded.

“Our child right now,” he said. He poured another handful of popcorn in the wire basket. “And that's something else we need to talk about.” He wasn't smiling now and kept looking at James thoughtfully. Julia put her hand in his shyly, aware of that envelope of Indian silence that sometimes surrounded him and not wishing to interfere with it.

“He'll be safe, Paul,” she said. “You'll keep him safe.”

“Can I? It's more than that.”

She wondered what he meant, but there wasn't any opportunity to ask until the popcorn balls were finished and eaten, along with the ribbon candy she had made, left over from the stake president's dinner, and the elegant Bûche de Noël that had even impressed Miss Fannie Farmer at the Boston School.

“I got an A in confections for one very much like that,” Julia said as she handed around the slices on Mama's best china.

Paul took a healthy bite and rolled his eyes. He gestured at James with his fork, “Son, I've done two really smart things in my life.”

“Only two?”

“Believe me, that's a lot for a rancher,” he joked. He ate another bite. “One was advertising in the
Deseret News
for a cook, and the other was reading the Book of Mormon. They're pretty much one and two in pretty close order, and the order shifts, depending.”

“On what?” Julia asked. “Hold still.” She dabbed at his moustache, where some of the whipped cream was lodged.

“Let me take another bite. Right now, it's the cook. But don't you know, when we read tonight about Nephi and that day and a night and a day when Christ was born, the order will likely shift.”

“Pretty simple,” Papa said. “When she's in your house cooking, you can eat and read at the same time.”

“My thought precisely,” Paul said. He took a deep breath and set down the plate, unable to say any more.

As long as Julia could remember, they always read the scriptures on Christmas Eve, starting with Luke and then reading the passages in Helaman and Third Nephi. Most years, she and Iris were too excited to pay attention, thinking about the presents coming on the next day, while their brothers suffered their enthusiasm, in that way of the older and wiser.

Last Christmas, still numb with Iris's death, they hadn't read, which left a hollow place in Julia's heart that wasn't filled until a week later, when Paul read Luke 2 to James on the Double Tipi at their belated Christmas.

Here they were again, not so raw, reading, “There were shepherds abiding in the fields,” and “On the morrow, come I into the world.” The earth's axis may have shifted with a vengeance in 1909, but the sweetness had returned this year. Her eyes moist, Julia looked around at her parents, sitting so close together, and Paul, with James leaning against him on one side and her on the other, his arms around them both. The Christmas she had almost dreaded was gentler and kinder and braver than she could have hoped for. “Thank you” seemed a paltry way to tell Heavenly Father what was truly unspeakable, but it was the best she could do.

Julia said good night to her parents. She couldn't bring herself to say good night to Paul, not at all. Every instinct rebelled against it, and so she told him, after the house was quiet and dark.

“I feel the same way,” he whispered, “but you know we're going to do just that.”

She nodded. He took her hand. “There's one more thing I have to tell you, and it's not pretty. In fact, it unnerves me, but I need your advice.” He touched her cheek. “Don't look so worried! It has nothing to do with you…” He looked away. “Well, yes it does. How about we just sit here on the stairs?”

He took her hand and walked her down the stairs, sitting her on the bottom step, where they could see into the parlor. Mama had left the drapes open, and Christmas lights still winked far below the avenues.

She hesitated, then put her hand on his thigh in a proprietary gesture that made him smile. He tugged it a little higher, and even in the dim light from the upstairs hall, she saw in his face a great need for comfort.

“Paul, what on earth is wrong?” she questioned, almost afraid to ask and wondering what could be worse than McAtee on the range.

“I hate to do this.” He leaned toward her, correctly gauging the panic in her eyes. “No. No. It's not you and me! Nothing changes there, but this is still hard. Julia, I told President Gillespie about my encounter with McAtee. He immediately offered his home for James.”

Julia couldn't help her sigh. She just wished it hadn't sounded so ragged and needy. Paul touched her neck. “You've had a tough year, courtesy of me,” he said, “and I do regret the pain. Believe me, I do.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him no, of course, but not for the reason you're thinking.”

“What are you so sure I'm thinking? My dear, all I want to know is what's going on!”

He chuckled. “And I'm exasperating you. You don't know this yet, but it looks like Sister Gillespie is… uh…”

“Good for her,” Julia whispered in his ear. “My, but you cowboys are shy.” She leaned back. “And you just don't want to burden the Gillespies with another responsibility, with their house already bulging at the seams?”

“So right.” He took her hand again. “Julia, when our pesky house ever gets built, it's going to have four large bedrooms. Just so you know.”

It was her turn to blush. “My, but you cooks are shy,” he teased, and then grew immediately serious. “I assured Heber I couldn't impose that way. He nodded, then asked me if I planned to keep James up there in isolation on the Double Tipi, with no opportunity for school or other advantages that boys his age usually have. I couldn't think of a thing to say to that.”

Julia nodded. “I've been wondering about that too.”

“Some ranchers move their families into town and visit them on Saturdays and Sundays,” he said. “The thought of ever being that far from you again makes my blood run in chunks.” He looked at her. “But this isn't about us yet, although it's something we'll have to think about in the future.” He smiled. “If we're lucky enough to have the Gillespies’ problem.”

“What
are
you going to do about James?” she asked in the lengthening silence.

“I asked myself that, after I talked to Heber. I prayed about it too. Oh my word, all the time I was praying about it, sitting there in that cold saddle, when Matt probably thought I was asleep. Amazing how a cold saddle sharpens the mind. You ever pray all the time?”

She knew he was teasing her now, and she pinched his thigh.

“You have wicked fingers, but I deserved that! Well, a funny thing happened the next week. Before I joined the Church, I'd have called it a coincidence. I'm almost smart enough now to know an answer to prayer, no matter how strange it may seem. Julia, when James and I are able to get to church, he likes to sit with Cora Shumway. Remember her?”

Julia thought a moment, remembering a tall, thin woman, all angles and planes. “She teaches the children's Sunday school class.”

“The very one.”

“And doesn't Sister Groesbeck always hand Sister Shumway her baby, so she can play the pump organ?”

“She does. Cora's husband is Eugene, that meek little guy about half a head shorter than she is, who used to look afraid of me.”

Eugene and most of the people in Wyoming
, she thought,
but you'll never hear that from me
. “I know.”

“When Eugene and I are at the Sacrament table, James just gravitates to Cora Shumway. He sits with her, and I've noticed Sister Shumway puts her arm around him. You know how he nestles in when someone does that.”