Prayers for Sale (24 page)

Martha hated the way the money changed Charlie. He put on airs and began talking about becoming senator or maybe governor, and he threw away money on his political pals. He avoided his old friends from Middle Swan. And instead of sitting around the fire in the evening with Martha reading aloud to him, the way they’d pleasured themselves in Middle Swan, he went off to his clubs—or elsewhere, for Charlie had turned into a loose horse. He’d stay out all night and come home smelling of liquor and perfume. They had words, cruel ones, about that.

Charlie had his complaints, too. Martha didn’t appreciate what he’d done for her, and instead of being grateful, she’d turned into a sharp-tongued woman. “To tell you where it started, I couldn’t,” Martha told Hennie, who had hurried to Denver from Middle Swan, when she heard Charlie was past caring for Martha. “But I’ll tell you where it ended.”

One day, a woman showed up at the mansion and claimed she was in a family way. “Charlie’s its father,” she said, showing as proof a note that Charlie had written to her, saying, “I can’t stay away from you.” So Martha called it deep enough. When Charlie arrived home late that evening, Martha had his bags packed and told him she wouldn’t go it anymore.

“Charlie Grove is the biggest kind of fool,” Hennie said, when Martha told her, “but I ought to thump you, too, for what you had between you was uncommon good. You ought to work it out.”

“The time’s gone by when we can talk things over,” Martha replied.

Charlie married the girl. Martha stayed in that mansion with nobody else, the rooms closed up and sheetcovers over the furniture, living on popcorn, baked sweet potatoes, and molasses candy.

Then the silver crash came. In 1893, the government stopped backing the price of silver, and the crash led to the worst depression the West had ever seen, with silver mines shutting down, and thousands of miners going on the tramp. The mine owners were in bad shape, too, and since Charlie’d never put his money into anything but silver, he lost his fortune—his mines, the houses, the horses. Martha lost everything, as well, because instead of taking a cash settlement when she divorced Charlie, Martha had agreed to let Charlie pay her a sum of money every month. She’d wanted that connection with him, Hennie believed. Then Charlie’s new wife left him. And it turned out there never was any baby.

Her boys were grown by then, and they wanted Martha to move east so that they could look after her. But instead, she went back to Middle Swan and lived in the house where she and Charlie had been so happy. The boys sent her a little money, and she made do. By then, Charlie had disappeared. Nobody saw him for ten or twenty years, and when his name came up, which wasn’t often, everyone assumed he’d crossed over.

Time passed on. It ran on, and one day, Hennie was out in her yard after a summer storm, sweeping away the pine needles, and there came Charlie Grove over the hill, a pick and a gold pan strapped to the back of his burro, looking just like he had forty years before, poor as fool’s gold. Hennie said, “Charlie Grove, you get in here and have you a
toddy and so forth.” He’d hardly lifted the glass and said, “Here’s to you,” when Hennie got her idea. She told Charlie to wash himself good while she went to Roy Pinto’s to buy something for them to eat, for he smelled worse than beaver bait. Hennie went to the store, all right, but she also stopped at Martha’s house and invited her to take supper.

There never were any two people as surprised and happy as Charlie and Martha when she walked through the door. Charlie took to courting her all over again, just as he had when they were young, and it didn’t take much doing, because Martha had loved him all along. Why, it wasn’t any time at all before they got married again and Charlie moved back into the old cabin.

“Finally at last, that’s the end of my stories for today,” Hennie said. “Now, best us finish picking and be on our way.” She started to get up, but suddenly, she stopped. “Why, Mrs. Spindle, we forgot all about our quilting. I must be in my final days, because quilting’s the last thing I’d ever forget.” She laughed at herself as she reached into her pocket and took out a half-done quilt square and some loose pieces. “Look you, it’s Pine Tree. Now isn’t that the finest coincidence?” she asked, shoving the quilting back into her pocket.

Nit helped Hennie to her feet, and the two took the empty bucket and went to gathering berries. In a few minutes, the last bucket was full. Hennie covered each pail with a napkin, and the two women started down the trail. Picking raspberries at Mae’s house in Fort Madison would be easier, Hennie thought, for Mae had the bushes right in her back
yard, but the berries wouldn’t be as sweet as those gathered at ten thousand feet on a midsummer’s day.

The descent was easier than the climb, of course, but after a time, Hennie called a halt, for she didn’t want to wear out the girl. Nit went to the stream and filled the canteen, then the two rested for a few minutes. “I’ve been thinking, Mrs. Comfort,” the girl said. “Whatever happened to Martha and Charlie Grove?”

“I thought you’d get around to that.” The old woman chuckled. “It wasn’t all sunshine, for old age never is, but those two have had more fun than a little. The second time around, they didn’t want anything but each other. It’s a good marriage, yes. But then you can judge that for yourself.” Hennie waited until the words sank in and Nit sent her a questioning look. “That’s right. Judge for yourself. You saw Martha and Charlie Grove this morning. They were walking down the street with the birdcage.”

A look of pleasure came over Hennie Comfort’s face as she opened the door to find Tom Earley standing on her threshold. He leaned over and kissed her old cheek, which was still egg-smooth despite the sun and wind and blizzards of more than two thirds of a century living on the earth’s backbone.

Tom entered the house and looked around, nodding at the young couple sitting on the broad sofa and telling Hennie, as he had a hundred times before, that she had it real nice there. Real nice, he added, and he was right. The log walls shone amber in the late-day light, and the big furniture with its comfortable pillows made from old quilts was welcoming. Tom handed her two loaves of bread, then took from his pocket something wrapped in tissue paper and tied
with a gold ribbon. “Go ahead, open it,” he said with a trace of excitement in his voice.

Hennie untied the ribbon and folded back the tissue. Her eyes glowed when she saw the tortoiseshell side combs edged with silver and dotted with turquoise. “Oh my,” she said, sighing. “These must have been made by the wild Indians.” She combed up stray white hairs on the side of her head with one and fastened the comb to her hair, then repeated the grooming on the other side with the second comb. “Now, don’t I look just as fancy as the Queen of England?”

“And prettier,” Tom said, as Hennie went to a mirror and admired herself, thinking she didn’t look so bad at that. “The silver matches your hair,” Tom said.

“Yours, too.” Hennie continued looking at her reflection until she became sensible that Tom was still standing. “Now where are my manners? You taken off your coat and hang it on the hook. Would you have a hoot, Tom?”

He removed the wool jacket, which he had worn because, although it was summer yet in Middle Swan, the nights were always cool, and there could be frost before long. Hennie had laid a fire in the stone fireplace, ready to light if the evening turned cold. “I don’t want my stomach to rust,” he replied. “I’ll take a drink as long as there’s one in the house.”

Hennie set the bread on the table, then went to the sink and poured a goodly amount of whiskey into a tumbler that was standing on the drainboard. She had added a dash of water to the boy’s drink and the girl’s was almost all water, but Hennie and Tom took their whiskey neat. “Did I tell you
this is Tenmile Moon, made right here on the Swan?” she asked the boy, as she handed Tom his glass. “Tastiest stuff there is. And it won’t give you a Tenmile head. That’s what we call a hangover at ten thousand feet.”

“Or a blue Monday, either,” Tom added.

The leather bellies didn’t call it “blue Monday” because of washday. Blue Monday was when you were still hungover from drinking whiskey on Saturday night, Hennie explained. She stood back and lifted her glass. “Here’s to your health.” She took in her three guests with the toast.

“And the same right back to you.” Tom lifted his tumbler and downed the whiskey in one gulp.

Hennie motioned for Tom to sit down in Jake’s old chair, a heavy oak piece with wide arms, a chair as rooted to the floor as a stump to the land. Tom leaned his cane against the arm and sat down awkwardly, holding out his right leg, for it was stiff. He propped it on a stool. “You already met Nit Spindle yesterday morning on the street. Now, make you acquainted with her husband, Dick Spindle,” Hennie said.

Dick was a tall, thin fellow with sandy hair and wind-burned face, not much older than his young wife, and he stood and leaned toward Tom, holding out his hand. With Tom seated, the two men shook, while Hennie picked up Tom’s glass and asked if he wanted another shot.

“I will reply in the affirmative,” he said.

Hennie took the tumbler back to the sink and refilled it, handing it to her friend, who only sipped the whiskey now. “Mr. Spindle works on the Liberty Dredge,” she told Tom.

“Is that right?”

Dick nodded.

“You like the dredge, do you?”

The young fellow glanced at his wife before he shrugged. “I’ve never seen nothing that could beat it for confusion. I’m grateful for the job, but I can’t say as I like it. Working that deck’s rough, and the noise of the rocks falling on those big piles pesters my ears. I’d give out, but there’s no jobs wherever. I’m lucky I’ve not been Hoovered from this one.”

As if to punctuate the boy’s remarks, the dredge up the Swan gave a loud screech, followed by the grinding of metal. Although the noise was muffled by the log walls, Nit put her hands over her ears. “I couldn’t stand to listen to that up close all day long. It uneasies me,” she said. “It’s not right, Dick working there. He’s all but fallen off the boat a dozen times. I don’t rest easy when he’s working.”

Dick colored with embarrassment, and Tom said quickly, “I never liked a dredge. It seems unnatural, tearing up the land that way. Where was green grass, there’s nothing but rocks. It won’t sprout a pea.” He took a sip from the glass and relaxed back into the chair.

“A mine dump won’t sprout a pea, either,” Hennie reminded him.

Tom thought that over. “But mining doesn’t dig up a mountain river.”

Hennie guffawed at that. “You taken a look at what mine runoff does to a mountain stream? I wouldn’t drink it if it was five parts whiskey.”

Tom agreed then that she was right. He asked the boy, “You work for Silas Hemp, do you?”

Dick nodded and looked at the glass in his hand, turning it around a little.

“Worst man on the Swan. You watch out for him,” Tom said. “He ran an ore car over a man’s legs once, and the poor fellow almost lost them. Silas said it was an accident, but the two had been feuding, so nobody believed him.”

“He’s more torment to me than forty head of stray ducks. I guess he doesn’t like it that somebody else hired me, instead of him doing it, although I know he’d have turned me down.” The boy set the drink on a table and studied his hands, with their cracked nails and dirt embedded so deeply in the skin that no amount of scrubbing would get it out. There were scars on his arms, barely healed, and one hand showed the remains of a rope burn.

“Tell him what Mr. Hemp did. Tell him, Dick,” Nit said. She turned to Hennie and added, “They done him devilment. I was scared green over it.”

Dick took a sip of his drink and shook his head, as if it wasn’t manly to talk about such a thing, but Tom prodded him, so the boy said, “You know that big hose they got connected to the pump?” When Tom nodded, Dick continued. “I was holding it when Mr. Hemp turned the valve full on. I had to hang on like sixty just to keep ahold of that thing. I couldn’t drop it to turn down the valve or that hose would have whipped me to death. The fellow that used to have that job got his leg broke near off when he set down the hose when it’s full on. I’m lucky I didn’t hurt myself pretty bad. Mr. Hemp and the others, they just laughed to beat anything.” The boy reddened again, uneasy at the way he’d been tricked.