The Star Garden (17 page)

This morning from the window upstairs I saw Udell coming up the walk before Lizzie let him in the door. I reckon I’d expected him to show up in a twelve-dollar suit, for all that booty he was supposed to bring home from Colorado, but he wore the same work clothes, same heavy lambskin coat and slightly broken hat. I heard Lizzie tell him to wait in the parlor, and heard Vallary, Lorelei, and Patricia all greeting him, him answering back, showing interest in something or other they were doing. I had seen some strain on April’s face, too, and I thought how tired she must be of all this company she had welcomed a month ago. It was time to go home. And Udell was back.

I didn’t wait to be summoned, but went right down to the parlor, although I set my face to be stern. Part of my heart wanted to run down the steps and rush to his arms, as if I were a girl, young enough to be not Mary Pearl’s aunt but her sister. April’s children were playing with a set of colored wooden animals in one corner of the parlor, and they ought not to be witness to some wanton spectacle. After all, that rascal had been gone more than a month and hadn’t written a single line.

When I came in, there was a flurry of greeting by the children again, aimed at me as if I’d been gone a week rather than upstairs for an hour, then I sent them to their toys.

“ ‘Morning, Mrs. Elliot,” Udell said. He held his hat in both hands, moved with the stiff solidity of a fellow who worked hard and close to the ground. Unlike the lanky, sword-swinging horseman Jack had been, Udell’s shape and gait was nothing that would draw him a second look anywhere. His brown eyes were not sparkling with mysterious laughter, but frankly honest and easily read. He watched me with a bit of hesitation, as if I somehow might not have recognized him after a month and three days.

“ ‘Morning, Mr. Hanna,” I returned.

“Heard you been sick,” he said. “Mighty glad to see you up and around.”

“Thank you.”

“I got home two weeks ago. I couldn’t call, you see, folks being quarantined and all. Been working on the house. It’s just some scaffold and rocks now. It’s going to be pretty good, I think. Your brother Harland is helping me.” His face flushed deeply as he said that last, though the words had nothing I could see to make a man blush like a girl.

I couldn’t help but see we were about five feet apart. All the times I’ve leaned against him, kissed the lips he spoke to me with now, pressed my face against that face, and at this moment it felt as if we were hollering across a canyon.
Ignore the children and sweep me into your arms.
One touch might convince my stubborn head how my heart truly felt. I said, “Harland is a pretty good architect. Did he draw you a house?” Little voices giggled across the room. My heart banged like a drum. “I’d like to see the picture.”

“Oh, better than that,” he said. “He’s out there hauling buckets of cement with his own hands. Nice fellow. Oh! Forgot to mention. Got my well in yesterday, so I finally had a bath—well, that isn’t a proper thing to say to a lady. So I finally got dressed up to come calling.”

April appeared at the door that came from her conservatory and called the children to lunch. She smiled at Udell and me, and said, “We’ll serve luncheon in the dining room for the grown-ups in half an hour.” Then she closed the great, sliding door behind her.

We were alone. “Udell,” I said, “was it a good trip? Weather all right?”

He took one small step toward me, saying, “I headed north through the Salt River Canyon but I couldn’t bring a wagon back through that. Came down through Santa Fe and Lordsburg. Sent three wagons on ahead. I’ve been ten days, starting to build a shed and all, to shelter the goods.”

I nodded.

He said, “Got the well in,” again.

“I should have asked you to sit. I’m all flustered.”

“Y’ look fine to me.” He smiled, a move that made the corners of his eyes tighten around lines deeply etched there. “The children are gone.”

“It’s broad daylight. And my daughter’s house. I wouldn’t—”

“Kiss me, here in the parlor?”

“Mr. Hanna!”

“You are some kind of woman, Mrs. Elliot.”

“Is that so?” I felt myself almost simpering at his attention, and couldn’t keep my face straightened out for anything. I could hear him breathing, and I was suddenly aware that he was listening to my breathing, too.

He drew a deep breath and said, “Mrs. Elliot? Ever hear tell of a bower bird?”

“It’s from Africa, I think. The fellow builds a house for his lady bird.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He took two steps closer to me. Dropped his hands to his sides. The hat to the floor. “Mrs. Elliot, Sarah, I plan to build my love a bower. I—I know I haven’t known you very long. I spent some time thinking on this trip and decided it’s not a thing to take lightly. Different than with Frances. Loving a different kind of woman, someone who takes my breath away and keeps my head spinning and makes me feel so simple that it’s a wonder she even looks my direction. Makes me proud and humbled at the same time. I’m going to build it strong and safe on the outside, with gardens and trees and plentiful water, and put every kind of pretty in it. Just like one of those bower birds. I’ll fix it up until you like it enough you’re willing to come there.”

I turned from his earnest face to where a Regulator on the wall started to chime noon. Not even Jack had made such an offer. Jack let me build my own house and came and went as it pleased him. I loved him with every fiber of my being, but he never once considered building a nest for me. Suddenly, I felt very much afraid of Udell Hanna. Afraid of how much I could love him if I let go of the reins and just gave over to the feelings that were turning my neck scarlet. I peered at him from the corners of my eyes, and startled myself when my voice wouldn’t come out louder than a whisper when I said, “I don’t know what to do with you, Udell Hanna.”

“Come see it, that’s all, when I get it built.” He leaned toward me, raised his hands, and I reached out with mine. I could almost feel his kiss on my lips while we were still far apart. At the moment our fingertips touched, the conservatory door slid open on its grumbling rail.

“Mother? Mr. Hanna? It’s already done.” April said. “Won’t you come in?”

At lunch, we told Udell about the quarantine we’d endured and he told of the travel he’d done. He said he was surely happy that Mary Pearl was not going to leave us so soon, and that Aubrey would certainly have come apart at the seams if she had. Then he said he had come back with some furniture his wife’s mother left, and the sale of her house had brought cash, too.

Udell offered to take me shopping before driving home. I’d gotten the doctor to write us a note to the druggist so I got some of that Coca-Cola tonic for influenza, with directions how to use it. It was pretty much settled that we’d leave for home on Monday. Mary Pearl was going to stay another week with her folks in town so she would be recovered enough to go home. I would go back to Albert’s home and relieve Clover of taking care of Ezra and Zachary, and move the three of them to my place. I’d been gone long enough that Charlie and Elsa may well have gotten the notion to go on their own to seek her papa’s blessing. If I know my boy, it’s the kind of thing he’d have done. A year spent as an Arizona Ranger has put iron and steel where his backbone used to be. I told Udell about Charlie and Elsa, too. He didn’t have good feelings about Rudolfo’s daughter being on my place, either.

Udell drove his old freight wagon, loaded with lumber and bags of nails and hinges. I sat next to him wearing my old coat and one of his warm shearling ones, too, with a big woolen blanket across our laps, binding us together. Behind us, Gilbert drove the wagon I’d come in, filled high as we could get it with food and goods. Udell had insisted on adding things to my pile of goods, niceties I didn’t usually go in for, like fine white flour and white sugar, raisins, and plenty of extra coffee and oats and ointments for horses. He even bought me a whole bolt of fine muslin and half a bolt each of a summer sky-colored calico and a green-and-black plaid.

I watched Udell’s strong hands driving that team of mules he’d come home with from Colorado. As I sat next to him, so close our knees sometimes bumped, my heart had lost the fire that I’d felt in April’s parlor. Tempered by a morning in a church meeting yesterday, discreetly sitting on either end of a pew with Savannah and Albert between us, the feeling today was a familiarity as gentle as if Udell and I had already been married for years and were just returning from town—as if we’d made this trip seated close on a wagon seat a hundred times before. It was a feeling of simply belonging, and that, too, made a ripple of fear run through my spine. And I never quit thinking that Gilbert drove a second rig right behind us. That influenza had taken the starch plum out of me. Before we reached the arroyo, I felt weak as a bale of loose string.

After a while, he said, “You seem tired.”

“I’m all right,” I said. “Just wrung out. Tell me more about your trip.”

“Pure-D lonesome, most of it. Rode through some snow that like to kept me from making it by the end of the year. Or the century. I got there in time, though.”

I nodded.

“Fixed up for the future a little better than before. Don’t suppose you had a chance to think on anyone or anything except the sick ones at the house there?”

“Only to wonder if you were coming back.”

He didn’t say anything for a good while. Quail scurried in front of us as we interrupted their steady march to forage. We had a sorry time crossing the arroyo, with the wagon loaded as it was. The ground was wet and the mules ornery, and we had to let off some of the lumber for them to make it up the far side. After we got to the top, when it’d seem like a fellow would let off some steam, all Udell said was, “The other day in the house, I’d a-thought it was … well, then. What led you to think I was leaving for good?”

“Can’t say. Just thought that, is all.”

“I’ve got all my teeth,” he said with a grin. “See here? Sound as a dollar.”

I laughed at him. “What’d you say that for?”

“I believe you to be a clever horse trader, and you’d naturally like to know, that’s all. You aim to only throw me a bone for the rest of my days?”

“I expect more of a man than I do of a horse.”

“I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to winning your affections, besides the house. Bought books on cattle husbandry, farming processes, fertiliz-ers.

“Udell, I’m looking at my boy Gil, and thinking of Charlie and your Aubrey and Mary Pearl, and, well, marriage is for young folks. What would be the sense for you and me? And what about children? Have you thought about children? Why, you’ve got a boy older than mine, and I’ve got grandchildren already.”

His face was red and he turned his head, shocked, I suppose, at my brazen talk. Then after a bit he said, “But Sarah, you’re young yet. And beautiful. What would be the matter with children? Maybe have a chance to raise some whose pa’d had the sense knocked into him by then. And not have their ma fighting Indians like you did. Children brought up safe and whole, just like your girl April is bringing up hers. With the better things of life, that’s all.”

“I’m trying to be practical.”

“Ah. I thought you were trying to bedevil me. I’ll tell you a poem I made up while I rode that nag to Denver. There was an old feller from down by San Pedro, who turned on a road headed north. He waded through waters and canyons on foot; though lonesome and fool he might be …”

Without conversation, Udell began a tale that rhymed and went along just as perfectly grand as if it came from a book, about a sad and lonesome cowboy who went to Denver to dig up a treasure chest, so he could buy his lady love a golden ring and take her to his castle in a land where the sun shone ever after. I smiled at it, but squirmed inside as the story went on. It was surely about him wanting to marry. He’d made up a tale that made me seem like some exotic princess in a far-off land, too proud to love a poor cowpoke.

In every stanza of the poem, the wanderer did a new and wilder thing to get the girl to love him. Every so often he mentioned that word “bower,” too, as the perfect home for the princess. Udell recited it all patiently, as if he were a boy in school doing his recitations. When he came to what seemed to be the finish, he said, “… and his heart it soared like a cloud on high, to his Maker he loudly called ‘bless!’ when with the lady’s dainty sigh, she happily, truly said …” Then he left off reciting and didn’t look at me nor ask me anything again, the rest of the way. I felt so disappointed at wanting to hear the end of the story, I plum forgot it was about me. He left it unsaid to bedevil
me.

Why in heaven’s name would I want to spend more of my days ironing some old rusty fellow’s shirts? I was purely put out by the man, and when we got unloaded at my place and Gilbert took his team to the barn, I felt almost glad to see Udell Hanna crossing the horizon heading away from here. Bone-deep wished him to stay, too.

I was glad as I could be to be at home again. At least it was away from the bustle of Tucson. I put the tonic on the highest shelf in the pantry, behind other jars where it can’t get broken. Nice thing to have a receipt that actually seems to do a person some good when so many of them are nothing but moonshine and kerosene.

Elsa and Charlie were quiet, blushing, and every few minutes looked for one another and made signs with their eyes—just happy as two ducks in a pond. She cooked and cleaned as if she had something to prove, and the place hasn’t looked this sparkly since it was built. Even the glass in the windows had been scrubbed. Well, soon enough, her hands will be full of children and the windows will go back to the way I generally keep them—dusty prints of doves who had no sense of direction making a crazy-quilt pattern between crusted and dirty rain splatters.

First thing they said was now that I was home, they wanted to invite Rudolfo to come here for supper. To celebrate their wedding, and let him see how happy his daughter was. I thought of his other girls, especially Luz, now passed over as lady of the house by the new wife, Leta Cujillo, and how angry she had been, thinking I would come to their house instead of Leta. I told Elsa this would only do if we invited Rudolfo and all Elsa’s sisters. And, Leta. Lord a-mercy.
Son familia,
my kith and kin.

We discussed, too, whether to tell Rudolfo the reason behind it, or let him come and find out at my door. It’s purely against my nature to plan a secret attack on a person, and other than Christmastime, I’m mostly bad at keeping a secret. I reckoned that if Rudolfo were angry about the situation, he might show restraint in front of his girls, all decked in their party finery, whereas if he knew in advance, he might arrive with his armed
caballeros
to do some harm. It was my intention to let him know that Elsa was here and why, along with the invitation to supper.

Then Chess said, “Sarah, you know I ain’t telling you how to run things. But look who you’re dealing with. No matter what, he’s liable to come gunning for the lot of us.”

Charlie said, “It’s not like I stole her, Grampa. I asked her to marry, but she had a choice. More than she did when he put her in the convent. I say we have Elsa come from some other room after he gets here.”

I said, “Reckon it’s no different than Rudolfo himself would do. Using Christmas supper to railroad me into selling land to his pack of snakes.”

So it was settled, a secret, and a date two days from now. As underhanded a plot as I’d ever been part of, far worse than just knowing Mary Pearl wrote a letter and didn’t get any answer. Charlie, with Gilbert and Chess, would go and deliver the invitation. Having just come from town with a load of flour, I had plenty of things on hand to have a first-rate fiesta, and just maybe a well-ordered and generous feast would soften Rudolfo’s heart. Deep in my soul, I doubted that prospect.

The fellows got back and told me they just naturally invited Udell Hanna to come to the fiesta, too. Well, I don’t know what was so natural about having him around, him and his unfinished poem. Maybe I’d bother him to tell it again and he’d get to the end of it because there were other folks around. Reckon I’d have to make some of those butter pecan cookies he is so fond of. I set the men to putting up tables in the central plaza and collecting lanterns, while Elsa and I, with help from Granny, started making foods that could be done ahead, near every kind we knew.

Granny said more than once, looking at Elsa, “Who is
this?”
And ever again, I explained that Charlie had married while he was in town. When my mama pressed us for more details about who Elsa was, I told her she was Rudolfo Mal-donado’s daughter. Then, minutes later, Granny would ask with a different emphasis, “
Who
is that?” as if she were settling in her mind the connection to the
haciendado
on the south road.

I am thankful, now that the day of this ambush party has arrived—for ambush is the only way to think of it—that Albert and Savannah, Mary Pearl, Rachel, and Rebeccah are still not home. If they were, they’d have to be invited. It is better that if any trouble comes between the Maldonados and my bunch, that it doesn’t include all the rest. However, as determined as I am to have nothing but a fine time tonight, I talked with Charlie, Gil, and Chess, and we have loaded pistols and rifles but hidden them from sight. “I know,” I said, “that Rudolfo wouldn’t dream of bringing any but his family, or causing a ruckus, but I will have more peace tonight if we are prepared for calamity.”

The weather has favored us and it has been a mild day with a fresh but gentle breeze hinting of spring being just around the corner. The sounds of my home surround me and I love a spring morning like this, with the windmill reassuringly creaking on its axles, the chickens muttering in their yard, the bull and cows in the near distance, now and then letting out a low hum. The beauty of the day made me feel even more sinister, as we prepared the feast for this family of ours so recently expanded. Can’t say whether Rudolfo and I will ever feel like friends again. He’s likely never to forgive my rejecting his offer of marriage in that stubborn way a man can—never mind that it was only about taking my land for himself—to him it will always be an insult. Still, I know enough to enjoy every minute of a day such as this, for there are too few fresh breezes in the Territory.

Udell came early, as if he’d finished chores before noon, and when he came a-hollering up to my front porch, I was shaking a towel off the side, making a white cloud of flour. “Fair weather, this morning,” he called. Strange, how that voice made warmth spread through me, and I drew a deep breath, feeling my worries ebbing away. Udell tipped his hat with one hand while stepping down from his horse.

“Yes, ‘tis, Mr. Hanna. How’s work going on your house?”

“Bottom main floor is about squared in. It’s going slow now, but Harland says it will pick up once the timbers come for the upper floor and roof.”

“Is he out at your place? He should come to supper, too.”

“No. I meant last time he wrote.”

“Don’t you have timbers for the bottom floor? I thought you drove home with a couple of wagonsful.”

“I’m only using the wood framework to hold until the cement sets. The bottom floor is built of solid rock. I thought maybe this afternoon, there’d be time to ride back and see it. If you’d care to. I know you’ve probably got something on the stove, though.”

I gave the rag another flip in the air, snapping it loudly. “I’ve got bread rising. Rest is pretty much ready. I reckon between Elsa and the boys and my mama, they can manage if I’m gone for an hour. Will your horse take two?”

He pondered the animal. It was a heavy draft horse. “He’s got the wind for it, but I don’t know about the temperament. I’d better get you—”

“Baldy. I’ll get him from the corral.” Only I didn’t need to fetch the horse; he’d come on his own given the right bait. Whistling that melody I’d heard Gilbert and Charity James singing, I fetched an apron full of apples, then hollered to Gilbert to let the gate down. When he did, I whistled a shrill for Baldy. That good rascal came along pretty smart, expecting an apple or two for his good manners. I fed him two, gave two to Udell’s horse, then I slung myself up on Baldy’s warm, bare back, and off we went.

Udell said, “He’ll mind with a cotton halter?”

“Oh, Baldy’ll mind even without a rider. He’s about my favorite, now that Rose is retired.”

We talked about horses on the way, about how I got some of them to do so well, and I don’t allow Mexican spurs on the place. I’d seen
caballeros
leave a horse bloody and scared to death in an hour, and have to have a new one ten times a day, as they rode them so hard. Myself, I’ll work on only one horse or two, most of the day, but I don’t ask him to kill himself for me, and I reckon they know it. Udell allowed it was good to have a horse know who was boss, but it was sure better to keep them in good spirits.

It was a nice time that early afternoon, with the wind soft at our backs, and me smelling so much of fresh-baked bread like a fancy perfume, and him all cleaned up and shaved with witch hazel and soap. I notice how a man smells. It’d never be right to say it to anyone, and I don’t know if all women do, but I notice. I reckon that is part of the many mysteries women must keep secret, part out of decency and part because it would seem plum foolishness to tell a man I liked the smell of him. I found myself hoping he’d take the liberty he’d come so close to taking in April’s parlor, too.

We passed the field where his herd of sheep had been killed in the fire, tied in their tracks by one of Rudolfo’s men, so the poor animals couldn’t even run. The ground was damp and haired with green shoots. One end of the plot of land was dug up and a row of three barrows stood waiting to be filled. Farther on, where the hills rose and fell away and rose again, we passed the trees where we’d hid from the bandits that day not long past. And then, rounding a curve in a road that Udell had been slowly etching into the ground toward his new place, I saw the hill where we’d followed the jackrabbit that day, leaving Mary Pearl and Aubrey behind in the buggy.

An ugly, rugged structure grew from the top of the hill, thick and squat, with narrow windows and wide doors, built completely of rock. It was about the sorriest thing I’d ever seen. Not fit for a chicken coop, it seemed to me. My heart sank. Then I thought maybe this was a barn. It would be natural to build a barn first. So I looked around with better hopes that this was not the “bower” meant to tempt me into marriage. The walls were about six feet high, braced here and there with frames and struts of wood. Strange openings were on one side of the big square thing, and a pile of cut bricks showed where he’d been creating an old-fashioned fire box and hearth. We rode around the whole of it. Udell talked about difficulties he had overcome in the building here and there, bracing and timbers and callused hands, and about how he’d hired some fellows but they had gone home at noon and wouldn’t be back until the first week of February. He made it clear that this stack of broken rock and concrete was the house itself.

Beside the half-built walls, a windmill turned merrily in the light breeze. It was a new Aeromotor, and a painted one at that. Pretty as a quilt, all red and white, it looked like an incredible flower in the sky. Whoever had put in his well while I was quarantined in town had done it slick and fine.

We got off our horses and I listened while he pointed here and there some more, talking about what he had in mind for raising a crop and more cows. I kept turning back to those rock walls. The man believed he was building something beautiful for me and that heap of rocks had less charm than an army camp. I didn’t know rightly what to say. Maybe this was the foundation foot he was building, and got it too high, but then the firebox would be in a basement. I felt as if a shadow from some unseen cloud passed across my heart. This wasn’t a place I could ever love. Nor live in. Maybe I was fooling myself into wanting this man. Maybe I have been blinded by lonesomeness into telling him I’d come here.

As if he could hear me thinking, Udell said, “Well, what do you think?”

I said, “It’s looking fine. But I thought you said you had the house started.”

“This here’s the house.” It had all those holes in it, not like any kind of house, and though I only know a wood house and adobe, I started to wonder what on earth he was building. I even wondered if he’d lost his mind on it, and if Harland had designed this, what had gone with my little brother’s reason, too. He said, “Sure gonna be a beauty. Come on up here and see. It’s an easy step-hold, the way we left it. The rocks there will hold the next layer better when they’re all in stairs, and I can start fresh with the wet cement over the dry because the weight of them holds it down. Walls are a good two foot thick. It’ll be safe as a bank vault, and cool as a spring morning in the summer, warm in the winter. This—watch your step there—is going to be the kitchen. And that wall run with a lead pan up on top? Windmill takes a pipe no bigger than your little finger, and sends a fine drizzle of water down it any time you want. That kitchen will stay airy all summer long. Feel the breeze that comes up this side of the hill? That’s what convinced Harland and me it’d work. Those slots there will pull in the air all you want, and you can close them off in the winter with iron furnace plates.”

Standing on the walls, I held his hand just to keep balanced. The strength of his grip, the warmth there, pushed the clouds back. I held my face toward the sunlight. To the north hills, I could see smoke from the two ovens going at my house. There was a clear sight of the road we’d come down, too, especially where we cross under the twelve-foot-wide ocotillo that marks the corners where Udell’s and my land make the junction with Rudolfo’s. To the west, I could see the fields, the rows of barrows that now obviously looked as if he were hauling that dirt one bucketful at a time to some other place. Eastward, we got a clear sight to the Rincon Mountains; below that, a place where the clear-cut canal supplied water straight from the San Pedro to Udell’s land. A road I’d never known, older and grown over, cut across the landscape here and there. And to the southwest, so small it seemed no more than a matchbox on a ledge, but clearer than a picture postcard, was Rudolfo’s hacienda.

Udell had stopped talking. He stood on top of the wall close to my side and took my arm. We watched the scurry of a couple of men riding up to the hacienda, dust rising only high as the horses’ knees. A large fancy wagon with a team of four perfectly matched buckskin horses stood out in the yard.

“Maldonados are fixing to head to our place for the supper,” I said. It would take him forty minutes or more to drive that slowly to my house. We had time, and we were only a ten-minute ride away, on horseback. I turned to Udell. I looked down at the rocks under my feet, all carefully laid in two rows with a sandwiched layer of scrabble and cement in the middle. Then it dawned on me from something I’d read long ago.