The Star Garden (19 page)

Elsa sobbed and ran from the room. Charlie looked helplessly at me; I nodded toward the path Elsa had taken and he followed her.

“It’s a wonder he didn’t throttle someone,” I said. “I don’t blame him for it.”

Udell sat back in his chair, looked over the remains of the uneaten supper, and said, “There wasn’t any
good
way to say it. The man’s dangerous, and now he’s mad like a wounded bear. It’d be one thing if Charlie was some worthless saddle tramp. Give old Rudolfo time. He’ll see Charlie’s a hardworking, Godfearing man. Fine sort.”

Chess nodded. “He’s right, Sarah. He’ll warm up to it after a while. Like you said before, when that first baby comes along.”

As the night wore on and we cleaned the supper fixings off the table, the wind that had been fussing at the windows turned into a cold blast that shot rain hard as hail against the glass. I told Udell that he’d have to stay the night, as I wouldn’t even have sent Rudolfo home in a storm like that. He didn’t put up any argument. Likely we’d all heard enough harsh words this night to last us a month or more.

At long last, Savannah and Albert have brought Mary Pearl home. I saw their surrey coming up the road, and I went to the chicken coop to find a couple of pullets for supper to have ready to take over. They’d need something made after that long drive. Maybe I’ll put in a sweet pie, too.

Well, just as I sat plucking the chickens and had a mess of feathers flying across the porch, here came Savannah, dressed in the dress she usually wears for Sunday, and wearing her best white cap and bonnet. I waved to her and smiled, but I was too big a mess to get up and hug her. “Come on over and set a spell,” I called.

Savannah stared at the chickens, one lying headless at my feet, the other in my hands, nearly naked of feathers. She didn’t speak.

I said, “Thought I’d fix you some supper. Ezra and Zack are—”

“Sarah?” she said.

“Mary Pearl’s all right, isn’t she?”

“I’ve always trusted you. Always thought I could count on you.”

A feather flitted up and whisked at my face. I rubbed my nose with the back of my arm. “I count on you, too,” I said, and nodded, pretending I didn’t register her word “thought.” She seemed upset as ever I have known.

“Never thought you to be the kind to go behind our backs. To approve of her taking off like that. I trusted you with my children but I see that was a mistake. I should be wary of your influence with them, should never have let you have them around so much that they lose their good sense and upbringing.”

“Savannah, what’s got under your bonnet?”

“You encouraged her to go off and leave her betrothed behind, like some … some … trollop! You contrived with my daughter to send her away to some
school
at the far end of the country, away from her beloved and her family, away from her … her home.”

I stood up. “Now wait just a minute, Savannah. I didn’t contrive anything. Mary Pearl wanted to write to the school. She asked me about a picture she drew. I told her if she didn’t like it to draw it again.”

“You didn’t think it was important enough to tell her parents that she was planning this foolishness? You didn’t think to stop her? Talk reasonably with her? You couldn’t tell us so we could reason with her? Is that because you knew it was wrong?”

“She was sick and we thought she was dying. What was the use of telling it? Then, why, I was sick, too. It never crossed my—by the time she started getting better, they never wrote back, so I figured it was not going to happen anyway. I thought about telling you at first and then I forgot. Seemed like it was over and they didn’t want her. I simply forgot.”

“You forgot? Well, they do want her. And she wants to go, just like that.
And
her father is allowing it! You have been pushing her toward this all her life just like your own children, always insisting everybody ought to go to college. Telling her that’s the most important thing. Well, it isn’t necessary for every girl to go to school—it’s not even in this Territory!—or boy, either. She’s got her reading and writing and plenty of education, and has no need to traipse across the country, a betrothed woman. He’ll have grounds to put her aside, same as divorced. He’ll marry some other. I thought I made that understood to you!” She turned to leave, but stopped short and whirled around at me. “Don’t think I will let you have your hand in the teaching of my children anymore, from this day on. I’m perfectly capable of learning my own children all they need. And if you have need of a Sunday School lesson, which I think you do, you should make the effort to study the only book a woman need concern herself with.”

With that, she walked away, and her every step beat her fury into the ground of my yard. Even Savannah’s back looked angry.

I sat over the bloody mess of chicken feathers and guts. And I cried. Deep, long, childish gulps of agony swept through me and racked me until I thought I might vomit. Elsa came out the door then, hearing me, I suspect. I handed her the pullets, and walked and walked, through the yard and out the gate and over the hill. There I sat on the cold ground and sobbed like the child I felt—scolded and scorned. Savannah and I have not had harsh words with each other in the twenty years I’ve known her. Now she felt betrayed and maybe rightly so. It seemed all I was good for lately was back-shooting people I had cared about.

I walked to the banks of the Cienega and rinsed my hands in the icy water. She’d worked hard on that speech. Just like Elsa had done trying to please her papa, Savannah had practiced her scorn. I felt so forlorn, it was near as hard as when Jack died. Worse, almost, because he didn’t have a choice about dying. I stayed there, shivering and miserable, not ready to go to the house, not able to move. It wasn’t long, however, before Albert came up on horseback. He got down, sitting on his haunches next to me. I sniffed, staring hard into the water.

After a while, Albert said, “Savannah told me what she said to you. She said she only meant to ask why you’d not told us about Mary Pearl writing the letter, but she got angrier and angrier as she spoke and said it got bad. She’s pretty torn up. I’m sorry.”

“What’s the good of you being sorry, Albert?”

“Well, she’s upset.”

“I figured that.”

“I come to get you.”

“Go home, Albert.”

“At least let me take you to the house.”

“I’ve just been shot with both barrels. And Savannah didn’t send you to apologize for her, you only said
you
were sorry. Go on home and leave me be, brother. Go on.”

“Sarah?”

“Get!” I said, and stomped off toward home. By the time I got there, though, I felt just awful, and I went to bed, without explaining anything, without a kind word, just straight to bed. There I relived the afternoon again, seeing it this way and that, one time hearing this thing said and one time that thing, until the room darkened and I fell asleep.

A light has gone out in this land, oh, my soul, and darkness overtakes me, and my soul cries out to Thee and Thou hearest me not. Something like that, Savannah read once. I can’t even find my Bible. Likely it’s gone somewhere for some good purpose but I can’t lay my hands on it. I know how that one felt, though. King David just crying out and no one to hear, and not even God gives a dang about it.

I never felt so forsaken. Never thought I could be so torn. Why, I’d have hurt less if Savannah had died. I haven’t heard from her since that day, nearly a fortnight. Lands and heavens and earth and vexation, all is vexation and bro-kenness of spirit.

I went to their house today, and Albert received me in and the children were sweet as could be and polite, but Savannah wouldn’t come from her room. I’m as shunned as if I had murdered Mary Pearl with my own hands. I said to Albert, “You and the children come on over any time you choose, but I won’t come here until I’m invited by Savannah herself. I can’t cross this bridge she’s torn down unless some of the ties come from her side. So you tell her that. I’m waiting.”

Since I said those words my every footstep wants to turn toward their house, to hug Savannah to my bosom and cry on her neck and beg her to love me again. I don’t understand this nor cotton to it in any way. I can see being angry with folks. Shoot, I’d about hang Chess on the laundry line any day of the week, but I don’t shun him. Shunning’s no way to get over and done with your fussing. It just drives in a sword that won’t come out unless the person holding it pulls first. So every few minutes, I look toward their house and sigh. And I don’t go over there.

It is March and Mary Pearl may be getting ready to leave for school or for a wedding and I won’t know.

I only know I have work to do.

All morning, Elsa and I have been turning soil in the garden, working side by side. We got down the end of a long row that had overgrown with goat thorn, and when she pulled back the dried weed tops with a hoe, she let out a gasp.

“Snake?” I asked.

“No, Dona. A big hole.”

I came closer, a long-handled shovel in my hands. “Step back. Let’s have a look.”

We peered carefully. The hole was four inches across. Elsa leaned over it. “What do you think it is? Rabbits?”

“Well, there’s no mound outside it. Not rabbits. Nor foxes.”

“Snakes?” she asked.

“Or ground squirrels. Nothing I want taking up housekeeping in this garden.”

“Let’s dig it up carefully, and see.”

“You stand far back as you can, lest it is a snake hole.” So we tugged off the weed cover and tossed it over the fence, then began to gently remove dirt from the top of the burrow. When a little of the rim caved in, we could see which direction the tunnel went, and started scraping in that line. Before too long, another hole fell in, and we had a shallow spot nearly two feet wide. Under the dirt, something moved and made a shriek. With a dusty flurry of wings, two little owls burst from the soil and headed straight up overhead. I raised my arms in defense as I shouted, “Ground owls!” but I was only startled, and immediately felt foolish, for the little things were no threat to anyone.

Elsa asked, “Are those bad?”

“No. We want these here. They eat mice and packrats. Look. Eggs. I’m sorry we’ve bothered their nest, now. Let’s see if we can fix it back.” Well, with a piece of a board and a chunk of greasewood over the little clutch of eggs, we carefully repacked the dirt and laid the torn sticker bush across it.

Elsa crossed herself and prayed aloud to Mary for the owls to return and to forgive us for tearing apart their home. Then she turned to me with tears in her eyes and said, “Are
you
sometimes very lonely, Doña?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have I torn apart my papa’s home, by marrying?”

I scanned the sky for any sign of the owls. “No. The rend in Rudolfo’s tent comes from the inside out, honey.”

She nodded. Then she touched up the edges of the little burrow with her hands.

I said, “But you’re right. Sometimes I feel awfully lonesome. I reckon it’s just my lot in life.” Savannah’s face whisked before me, along with all those I’ve lost.

Elsa bent again, sizing up our work. “These owls may not come back.”

“Depends on how much they want those eggs, I ‘spect.” I pushed the goat thorn back into place a little more. “Does that look like how we found it, to you? A nice little home for an owl family?”

Elsa stood and hugged me close, and I patted her on the back. Then she said, “I see now why my mother called you her friend, more than I knew before. We’ll watch and pray for them to return.”

“We will,” I said, and headed down to the other end of the garden to start on a new row.

These days, most of my family spends their time when they aren’t doing their own chores helping Udell raise his house. The days of winter rain are past, and so, it seems, is Rudolfo’s temper, as we have had no more brushes with bullets from his end of the Territory. Still, it is obvious that every day there is enough commerce of some sort taking place on Maldonado land that it would put Fishes’ Mercantile to shame.

When he’s not building, Udell has been sticking by me as much as he can, and the both of us are puzzled by Savannah’s actions. I told him some things I knew about how her mother died, and her sister Ulyssa who had the consumption, and how much she looked like Mary Pearl does now. Of course, he already knew about her daughter, Mary Pearl’s sister Esther, eloping with a hired hand from Rudolfo’s gathering, and being murdered only a few weeks later. Maybe Savannah feared that Mary Pearl would die like Ulyssa had, or like Esther had.

Udell said maybe she simply feared losing all her children to their growing up. Well, one thing I knew about Savannah was that she had always been sensible. “No,” I said. “Reckon I betrayed a trust. All her children spend near as much time at my place as they do at their own, and I as much as lied to her about something important, by keeping quiet. The fact that I had a reason or that I forgot is no excuse.”

That was two people I had betrayed. The lowest thing I could think of to do. Blamed if I didn’t know how to come back out of this hole I’d dug for myself. Now I had enemies on all sides of me. The worst part was, the one person I always thought I could trust was me. I felt more like cussing it all and running to Texas with every passing day.

I fill my days and nights with work. And every day, I think of Savannah less by five minutes. In a year or two, I won’t think of her at all.

Last night, Albert came to the house for a bite of dessert. I asked him if he’d take cream in his coffee, and if he thought it would rain soon, and if he’s seen my new calf. He answered, “Would it make you feel any better to know that she’s more mad at me than at you?”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“Well, she is. Savannah can’t… well, it wouldn’t do to talk behind her back. I think …” Albert said, “give it time. Not forever, but a while.”

“Patience is my middle name, don’t you know?”

Albert laughed, only a bit at first, then loud and merry. Then he said, “Mary Pearl will be leaving in a few more weeks. She wants to take her horse with her. Savannah is having a fit over that, too.”

“Well, a girl has got to have some transportation. Does Savannah think they have a trolley on every corner?”

“I don’t know. Reckon we’ll send Duende along with her. It costs another forty dollars to send the horse and two dollars a month to board him there. Only twelve dollars more and I could send another student! I’ll tell you, he’d better get good marks or I won’t pay his tuition another course.” He got fixed to leave, then stopped and said, “Have you taken Udell up on his offer of matrimony yet?”

“If I do, you’ll be the first person I tell.”

He went home, humming, but with his shoulders hanging down in a dejected sort of way. Likely he reckoned the tempest in his own parlor was going to be a long one. I grieve for the death of our friendship, as dear to me as the true life of a living person. The days stretch endlessly and dreary without Savannah to console me in the pain of missing her—but in my two score and three years I have become well accustomed to grief and how to bear it. Five minutes at a time.