The Star Garden (10 page)

“Savannah?” I asked.

“Yes, honey? Oh, Sarah, it’s you. I heard someone on the stairs. I thought it was one of the girls.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“No, no. I just came up here for something. I forgot what it was.”

The four daughters’ beds lined the walls in a neat formation like army cots. Only two of them had been slept in recently, Mary Pearl’s and Rebeccah’s. I patted her shoulder. “Well, you’ll remember directly,” I said. “For the life of me, sometimes I meet myself coming the other way in my house. Was it thread? Scissors? A pencil or a hairpin?”

Savannah rubbed the windowsill with one finger, as she kept on staring through the glass. “Sarah, did you ever just feel like something was going to happen? Something unusual? Did you ever feel a sense of expecting when you hadn’t ordered a package or anything, just a notion that something was coming?”

“When I was a girl and we left Cottonwood Springs. I told my mama I had that feeling. Later on, she said there was an ill wind a-blowing. That what you’re feeling now?”

Savannah turned and faced me. “No, nothing like that. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s nothing. Just daydreaming, I suspect. Did your mama come with you? Let’s go downstairs.”

Rebeccah, Granny, Savannah, and I sat at their great kitchen table, where at one end a pile of men’s clothes awaited mending. I thought she looked plum tuckered, her eyes red and sunken, but I didn’t say anything. After Savannah poured coffee, she said she hadn’t slept but an hour for two nights running, but she had gotten two pairs of pants made for Albert. We each picked a garment and threaded a needle, and passed a good time hearing about Rebeccah’s teaching adventures in Mexico.

In their parlor, Mary Pearl was pushing dust around with a torn rag, openly mooning over Aubrey being gone so soon back to town on some mission he wouldn’t discuss with her. He’d only stopped long enough to tell her he’d be back in three days with Gilbert and Chess, too. I saw the fire in her eyes, and I knew she only held her temper back because her mother watched her. If she’d been alone with that young man, him keeping secrets from her like she was a baby, why he’d a-left with half an ear chewed off, I reckon.

Well, after I told Savannah about the reason Gilbert was taking off to town, she said, “It’s getting to that season of life, where they’re all bound to head out, aren’t they?” She smiled at Rebeccah, who blushed as if there were some secret in her life, too.

I said, “I keep looking for my boys, sort of expecting them to be Ezra’s size, and every time I lay eyes on one, it’s some big stranger who’s come in and put on my children’s boots.”

“Have you heard from Charlie?”

“I’m hoping he’ll look at a calendar and try to head home for Christmas.” Then I told her about Rudolfo’s Christmas fiesta.

“We’ll go, if you’re going,” she said, “but I won’t go empty-handed. You know Rudolfo was nothing but generous and kind while we built your house. Still—” She held her breath, and let the silence finish the words.

My house. I’ve lived there three months and it doesn’t feel like home. It was big and comfortable and as fancy as Rudolfo’s big hacienda, and sat there empty at that very moment except for the cat.

“Mama,” said Mary Pearl, her flashing eyes peering from the doorway, “why couldn’t Uncle Harland have hired me to watch the children? I’d have been as good as Rachel. You know I would have. She wouldn’t have to leave her teaching position.”

“Still,” Savannah said, her eyes on Mary Pearl, “to let him provide it all gives me a sense of, well, I don’t know just how to put it.”

“As if we’re the serfs gone begging at the duke’s castle?” Rebeccah said.

I said, “Exactly. Reckon all I can afford to take to the fiesta will be a stack of tortillas.”

“We won’t go empty-handed. That’s that,” Savannah said.

I added, “Being flat broke doesn’t bother me as much as him saying he’d send armed escorts to see us there and back.”

All of us were quiet, then after a bit, Mary Pearl said, “We should take our own escorts and guns, too, just to be sure. If I were living in town watching our cousins—”

“You’d be courting every evening with young Mr. Hanna,” said Rebeccah. “That’s all you’re after. Now Mary-pie, you’re too young for such things.” Mary Pearl bristled. Seventeen was not too young for a lot of things, I remember. I wondered why Savannah had done nothing to quell her youngest’s longing for Aubrey Hanna, though he was ten years her senior. “Isn’t that right, Mama?” Rebeccah said.

Savannah’s puzzled expression made us all watch her face for the reaction. She said, “Well, Rebeccah, you’ve already started a quilt for her trousseau. You said so, yourself.”

Mary Pearl grimaced. “Why, Sister Rebeccah, if you keep a-pulling my leg,” she said, and stumped toward her sister with an exaggerated limp, “it’s a-gonna make my weddin’ dress run up on one side.” She giggled, letting loose her anger in silliness.

“Baby sister, I’m doing no such a thing,” Rebeccah said, grinning.

“Now, Rebeccah,” Savannah said, “insincerity—”

A sharp bang shook the door in its frame. The sound brought the small hairs on the back of my neck to attention just as Mary Pearl pulled it open. I saw a man, dressed in a suit of fine wool, pin-striped and elegant as any congressman ever thought of being, standing there. He held a hat in his hands. His gray hair was greased down and a flag hung from a button-pin in his lapel. “Pardon me, miss,” he said. “Oh, my. Aren’t
you
the beauty of the county? Is your mother at home, dear?”

Savannah and I both rushed to the door and while Savannah tucked Mary Pearl behind her, I planted my feet square on with this new stranger. “Lost, mister?” I said.

Fumbling with the hat, he bent to fetch a fancy gold-topped cane from the porch floor. “Never meant to drop the thing. Must have sounded like thunder from inside, eh?” He looked across the yard toward Granny’s old, shut-down house, “No, ma’am, I’m not lost. That’s the place, I believe. Do you folks know what’s happened with the lady who lived there? The place does look abandoned.” The fellow’s face seemed nice, but he was far yonder too full of questions for this part of the territory.

“Rebeccah,” Savannah called over her shoulder, “ring the bell for your papa.” When they heard the supper bell at an odd time of day, Albert and Clover would surely know something wasn’t straight at the house. I felt Savannah close in behind me. I watched for him to make a move even half an inch toward the open door, and held my right hand behind my back. Savannah’s fingers touched mine, and when she backed away, the heaviness of a revolver remained. I kept still, waiting for him to make a move.

Finally, I said, “Mister? Are you paying a social call? Not having been introduced to you, I’d say it had to be business.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Quite forgotten my manners, I have, dear lady,” the fellow said, and then simpered. “May I present my card?” He reached into his watch pocket and pulled out a fancy calling card. I took it with my left hand while he proceeded to explain it to me as if I couldn’t read. “Elvin Richards, special purchasing agent with the Santa Fe Overland Express Company. I represent the railroad, madam. We acquired a piece of land up the road there, a few months ago, from a Mrs. Prine. I told her I’d be returning later in the year. Almost didn’t make it.” He smiled again, his face gentle and sincere, but his eyes searched the room behind me. “Do you know where she’s gone?”

So this was the skunk that swindled my mama out of a big piece of her homestead plot. About that time Albert came up with Clover. Albert told the fellow he could sit in their parlor and asked Rebeccah to make coffee. I slipped the pistol in my pocket when they weren’t looking.

Granny was snoozing by the kitchen window, so we didn’t wake her.

I declare, that fellow could charm the daylight out of the sky. We passed an hour and then some as Mr. Richards explained how wonderful it was going to be having a screeching, smoke-belching, thundering locomotive hauling cows and freight from Kansas to California through our front rooms for all posterity. He said that he was going to offer a good sum for the rest of Granny’s place, soon as he could find her. Albert said there was no use making an offer, but Mr. Richards said, “Ten thousand dollars is no foolish whim, sir. It’s a fortune. And to a kindly old widow with no use for that land herself, and all her worldly needs met by good, loving folks such as yourselves, it’s a fortune you would eventually inherit. Think about it.” With that, he said good day and left, riding off on a black horse.

“They’ve got part of the land and they want the rest of it,” Savannah said.

Albert looked from Savannah to me. He said, “I can see how he got Mama to believe in him, last fall. That fellow could talk fleas off a dog.”

I said, “He waved ten thousand dollars under our noses and as much as told us we should talk Granny into taking that money so
we
could get it!”

I squeezed my arms against my ribs and went to the kitchen. Granny’s head bobbed with her snores. Her fingers looked like white wooden spindles with brown leather stretched tightly over them. That tiny person there was not just
some
old person. Never mind that she’d been driven beyond all understanding by watching her children and husband die, she was the one who’d tied my hair up and kissed my tears. I have always believed that if she could just once get enough rest, my mama would come back to herself, think clearer, be stronger. She never seemed sickly, just brain-tired.

Albert called Ezra from the back of the house. Pretty soon, Zack and Ez showed up, sweating and panting. Albert said, “Zack, you stay here with your mama and Aunt Sarah. Ezra, follow that Mr. Richards up the road a ways. See which way he turns when he comes to the west fork. Come back and tell your mama if you can’t find me.” Then Albert and Clover went back to work in the barn.

When we were alone in the house, Savannah said to me, “I feel like that man just brought something evil to my house.”

Granny woke and jumped at us, giving us a start. “Is it Indians?” she said.

“No, Mama,” I said. “It’s railroaders.”

“You need me to load for you?” she said, tossing off her shawl.

I said, “No, I hadn’t decided to shoot him, yet.”

Shortly, Ezra returned and nodded to each of us in turn; the boy suddenly seemed five years older than his thirteen years. “Well,” he announced, “he didn’t take the west fork at all. Went north and circled Granny’s place, left a note nailed to her door saying he’d come back, and made a wide loop headed south. He didn’t stop at your place, Aunt Sarah, but went straight to the hacienda.” Then Ezra left to tell Albert. The hacienda. Rudolfo Maldonado.

I thought that news explained everything, but it didn’t explain what Savannah did next. She said, “My head is pounding like someone is driving a nail through it. How will we fight the railroad? What are we going to do? If only Esther were home! If she hadn’t run off and died—” Then she sat in a wooden chair and burst into tears. After a few minutes, she gasped out, “Lands, it’s hot in here. Open a window, Sarah.”

“You need a rest,” I said. I hugged her but I felt uneasy doing it. I didn’t know what to say or do. It seemed the addled notions that have taken my mama for all these years had suddenly jumped into Savannah, who has always been my sure foundation.

I put my arm over Savannah’s shoulders as she heaved in great, pathetic sobs. Rebeccah and Mary Pearl came in to see what the commotion was. Savannah said, “Oh, I’m so very tired.”

Granny looked suspiciously from one of us to the other and said, “Your mama’s going through the change. Leave her alone!”

At that, Savannah cried all the harder. It was only after a good spell that she settled down and we all surrounded her and made her go to bed to take a nap. She told me then that she hadn’t been sleeping for weeks, and she’d thought it was in sorrow for her daughter who was murdered, but now she was afraid she would die of not sleeping. While she pulled off her black skirt and waist, I drew the curtains in her room. The curtains were only starched plain muslin, though, and didn’t keep out much light so we laid cold wet cloths over her face.

“Close your eyes, Savannah,” I said. “Just close your eyes.” I sat by her bed, watching tears mixed with drips of water eke across her cheeks sideways and dampen her hair. Were women all doomed to follow Granny into that gray world of half-truths and mysterious memories where real life is muddled with bits of songs and shadows and old pains that seem new? If I lose Savannah to that dark place, what will I do for a friend? When she started breathing regularly and seemed to be asleep I tiptoed from the room. I told the girls to fix her some soup for dinner, and keep quiet, then I fetched Granny and drove home. We didn’t talk but I thought plenty, first about Savannah’s weakness and then about how I didn’t know how old my own mother was. She seemed as eternal as sunshine to me, but her hands looked so very old. Mr. Richards was sitting at this minute with Rudolfo exchanging winks about how soon my mama might die.

When I got home, one of Udell’s work horses was tied up at our trough. I felt as if the burden upon my shoulders lifted, just seeing the animal.

“Rascal’s back,” Granny said.

I left her at the porch and drove to the barn to put the team away. I found Udell there, fixing a blanket on Hunter, my orphaned yearling colt. The place looked bright in the drawing afternoon light, and I saw he’d filled lamps and cleaned the chimneys, waiting for us to come back. He didn’t look up when I came in, but he smiled at Hunter and said, “Didn’t know if you went for the night, so I fed your stock. This fellow’s sure a pretty piece.”

“He’s feeling his oats,” I said. I felt my face grow hot, and I started pulling the harness off my draft horse. The two of us together made quick work of it. While we did I told him about the railroad man. “Will you stay for supper?” I asked. “I’ll make a pie.”

“I’d be obliged, Mrs. Elliot.”

“I’d offer you to spend the night but the men are gone to town. Reckon it wouldn’t be proper.” Suddenly, that felt like the worst thing I could have said. “I’d better go make some ruckus in the kitchen.”