The Star Garden (20 page)

Next day, Harland got here about noon to see how Udell’s house was coming. Business was growing already, in town, he said, and he was real proud that he had taken the step to put down roots there. I allowed as I was proud for him, too, but truth was I was lonesome. It was better having too many people than too few. Especially when one of them was Savannah. If Harland moved back here, I’d have his children to look after. I had a talk with Harland and he wants to buy my place in Tucson and put down roots to stay. I’m happy about them staying, and it seemed the right thing to do. Marriage or no, the $2,000 he offered on the house will get me through two years, and by that time, I ought to have eight or ten new calves to sell, and I’ll be back in business. Remembering how foreign it felt to me when I was there, it wasn’t as hard to let go. I reckon one reason to build up property and houses is to have something to see a body over in a storm.

I asked him, since he knew about creating houses, if he knew about land rights. He said no matter who I married, my ranch would all belong to my husband. I laughed a little to show him I wasn’t worried, and said I wasn’t planning to marry. I want my own land. With no house in town, and all my years of work belonging to Udell, I’d be in a worse fix than Granny! At least she’s still got title to her land. The other reason to build up property is to pass it on to the family when you cross over, but the only way to do that was to sell my house to my children. I believe I know what kind of fellow Udell is, but yearning for someone isn’t the same as giving them over your entire lot in life. I believe this is the biggest quandary I’ve seen in all my days. Harland had dinner at my place, and he chuckled when I said he should just move back here to the ranch with me, then right after that, he went on down to Udell’s to oversee some more building.

Today dawned clear and beautiful, one of those perfect days that makes me wonder why I would ever think of leaving this place. The breezes moved my skirts. Trees budded at Albert’s farm. My rosebush shouts beauty to the world. There have been no stray bullets flying this way from Maldonado’s place. I have decided, for today at least, to forget and forgive myself for my many transgressions and get on with things.

Two batches of new chicks have hatched in my coop, and they toddle after their mama hens just as dear as can be. The other ladies are back to steady laying, so we are fixed with eggs for now. I worked all last month laying in my early garden and I spent last week stretching strips of cloth across the seed beds because we still could get a killing frost until the end of April.

We got a later start than usual this morning because Gilbert and Charlie were up half the night with a cow having her first calf, and we have a new addition to the herd. Udell’s six that were carrying have all dropped pretty calves, too, the last one three days ago. I decided to go check on them, so I put on a freshly ironed dress and took some pumpkin bread and a cup of butter in a basket, and started toward the barn.

Baldy didn’t look happy to see me. Though he’ll put up with just about anything including butterflies and gunfire, he’s never liked a basket. I had a dickens of a time trying to get on him and hide the basket at the same time.

When I reached Udell’s place, he was alone, sitting on a stack of fire bricks laid over with a tarpaulin. He looked up at the sound of Baldy’s hooves, and waved, calling, “Mrs. Elliot! Help me make this decision, will you? Your brother tells me the place where I planned to build my biggest hay barn is not stable enough. He says that plot would be better for a garden needing drainage, and I’ve been weeks hauling topsoil to this side of the house, where he says it’ll get too much shade. Now, with what you know about horticulture and all—seems to me the sun is so hard on man and beast, I meant the herbs to have some shade—don’t you suspect I could put a garden here? I’d like to get some corn in before summer comes along.”

I looked over the land he pointed at. “Well,” I said, “let’s walk it. You’re already behind if you haven’t planted. Summer can’t be more than a week or two away.” We looked closely at every weed, every rock, every greasewood bush. Standing still in a place a dozen yards from where he’d laid all that topsoil he carted from below, I said, “I think he was right. Over here’s cut off from the morning sun by the shadow of the house. Here’s a better place, shaded from the afternoon with these mesquites and all this sage. Look at that dead paloverde tree. See the dirt under it, how soft and dark it is? You’ve got loam that will sprout wheat and beans and squash all out of the same hole, given water. But you don’t want them right under a live tree or they’ll catch a rust. Put tomatoes out here and pumpkins here. If you want some drinking gourds, you have to plant them way down the hill somewhere.”

“So I’m not going to get a garden in this spring?”

“Not if you’re going to move all that soil you dragged up here. Why don’t you move half, on the shadiest side, and plant in a couple of days? It won’t be too late to get some good carrots and broccoli, long as you put up rabbit fence. Squash’ll come later, with cucumbers and lettuce, which ought to shoot right up. I can barely get an ear of corn to produce in my garden for love or money. It isn’t corn country.”

“What about the barn?”

I studied the lay of the land around the house for the hundredth time. I thought it was odd he hadn’t built the barn first—what I’d have done. “What did Harland say?”

He pointed. “He’d put it there. I’d wish it was closer by when there’s bad weather, but that’s pretty rare.”

“Let’s walk it.” So we started down the shallow slope, the only way now, up to the house. It went southeast and curved a bit, then met up with the road. Farther east, the Cienega split off a rivulet that was bubbling and flowing, but would be dry come summer. We went toward the trees and stepped off the distance from the windmill, talked about where to put a water tank for the animals. “If you put your barn here and a cistern beside it with some gutters off the roof, I think you could make use of this stream in the winters and after the
sudestadas
—those summer rains.”

We went around the house farther downhill, then upstream where the flowing water disappeared in the streambed for a few feet. Every few steps we stopped to look back at the house and judge a place to put a barn. When we got to the shallow where the stream came aboveground again, we turned toward the house. From this angle, those ugly, plain rocks had grown from homely to handsome. The place was a fortress, but it had white painted trim and the doors and shutters were a dark, velvety green. “It’s becoming a fine-looking house,” I said. He was talking on and I didn’t catch it, as his voice seemed to be just one more murmur in the hum of the spring air.

Udell said, “… and if I put the barn between that mesquite there with the cholla under it—the one that’s blooming, not the other—and the road? Then a corral that comes over to this creek and a waiting pen closer to the house? With the slope on that hill, which looks to be mostly rock, I could put an entry on two floors and not have to use a hoist. Could even store a buggy up on top.”

“I like that idea, Mr. Hanna. I like it fine.” Suddenly it seemed as if we’d been talking nonsense and both of us grinned foolishly at each other. I declare, one minute I am head over for the man, the next I don’t care for him at all, and then I’m as addled as a colt. My head felt stuffed with wool.

He searched the sky for a moment. “Mrs. Elliot, I thank you for your opinion. There,” he said, “I aim to put trees of our own. Pecan if you like, as Albert said he had some seedlings ready to transplant. They’re good shade in the summer, he says. And maybe a few others. Peaches suit you?”

“Oh, peaches suit me. Kind of mosquito-y, though. You might like them farther from the house, pecans closer. But do what you’d like; it’s
your
house, Mr. Hanna.”

We walked to the stream and got near the place where we’d hidden from those bandidos last fall. All was quiet now. Birds chirped happily at us. A red bird swooped past. The early wildflowers were on full display, and some wild iris had braved the rocky banks of the Cienega to make purple stars in the grass. “Aren’t they pretty?” I said.

“If you like them, I’ll dig ‘em up and plant a hundred by the door to the house.”

“They might not like the sun. They’re blooming here in the shade.”

“Then, where it’s too dark for tomatoes, it should be right for purple stars.” Udell found a flatter rock, and he motioned for me to have a seat on it. “Take a look from here. I come here every evening, to see the progress. Sometimes you can’t tell much, because things change on the inside while the outside is the same.”

From my perch, the house did look more elegant. The drive to it was trimmed with rocks, small blue-green boulders alternated with white chalky quartz. Udell’s house had rooms for my mother and my father-in-law on the ground floor so they are not made in their old age to climb stairs. An enormous stone hearth warms the old folks’ rooms and the kitchen and dining area. It has rooms for my books and my sewing, a visiting parlor and a reading parlor, plus separate bedrooms for four extra people. Even an indoor privy upstairs that meant no midnight trips to an outhouse. Yes, Udell had built me a bower, and here he was, suddenly on one knee in front of me, shyly studying a seam on my gloves, though he was brazen enough to be holding my hand.

My heart swelled. The papers were on my desk at home to sell my children my ranch. If the deeds were in front of me at that moment, I’d have signed them over and married him that minute. I smiled at him, and he turned and stared at the house. So I knelt beside him and tried to ponder it, again.

Keeping his eyes on the house, Udell said, “Sarah? You know I’m a plain man. And you know I care for you truly. There’s those who think once a man and woman have had their first true loves, well, they should be done with that and go into their twilight years alone. But I don’t see the sense in that. Why, it could be a long time ‘til twilight for you and me. Have I done any one thing that makes you not think I’d be true to you, and loyal, and kind?”

“No, not a thing,” I said. Oh, Lord. Where I’d been willing a second before to swoon into his arms, I felt a surge of alarm at the way he talked. Was he going to argue me to the altar with him? I got my back up. I was ready to say to him,
Listen, Mr. Hanna. Press me with kisses or tempt me with spring flowers, but don’t argue me!

“I’ll gladly buy you a gold ring. Any you chose; I know you’re particular. The roof will be finished by the end of July, long as I’m able. We could go to town together before long. Hitch up.”

Those words flung my anger from me as if it had been an old blanket that didn’t fit my notion anymore. I didn’t say to him not to think of that. I couldn’t. I felt like my thoughts were riding a waterfall over a scoop in the rocks, churned at the bottom only to ride over another crest again.

We sat side by side in the grass, listening to birds splashing in the pools. A dozen quail lined up in a row crossed an open place in front of us. There was no reason I could think of not to marry Udell Hanna this very day. If he wanted to argue, I’d be ready. But if he didn’t, my only argument was that I didn’t believe he knew just exactly how ornery to the very core I could be.

He stared at the house, at the ground, then the sky, looking all around, as if he’d plum forgot the train of our conversation. After a while, he picked a stem of grass and peeled it, then used it to draw a circle on the leg of his pants. “Sarah,” he said, “I’ve talked every way I know to ask you to marry me. I gave up a couple of weeks ago, figuring it was no good. Then, after Harland came out last time, I thought to try one more thing. I know it wasn’t right to talk about you behind your back but we did, some of your kin and me. Wasn’t their fault, it was me asked ‘em. I learned some things about you from your boys and Harland. It gave me the idea, so I went and did something. It can be undone if you don’t want it, but it’s done and ready if you do. Now, here’s the thing. One of those times I went to town for supplies, well, I stopped at the college. And I know you might say you won’t, but hear me out.”

“Udell, you’re talking in circles.”

“Yes’m, I am.” He breathed deeply and started again. “There’s one thing the boys told me I could give you that no one else ever gave, nor did you have the chance to take. One gift that might mean more to you than a box full of solid gold. And so … and so I put your name in at the college and enrolled you as a student. Unless you swear right now that you don’t want to, Mrs. Sarah Elliot, you are going to the university in Tucson this fall. Fully enrolled. It’s a betrothing gift to you. Latin, English composition, algebra, and general science. Girls are required to take cooking, too, isn’t that a hoot? You could teach them a thing or two. You’ll have to be there come August.”

The breath went out of me. My heart came to a complete halt. I stammered for words. I looked at this man sitting in long grass beside me, still facing the house, his eyes on the sky above it. I trembled so hard my teeth chattered. I said, “Aw, you’re just teasing.”

“It’s the gospel, Sarah. On my life.”

“Udell,” I whispered, brushing my lips with my fingertips. “Oh, Lord. Udell Hanna.”

To the sky, he said, “I’ll expect you to make passing marks, of course.”

He turned to me, and I kissed him as I’d never imagined doing. Rapture sent my arms to his neck and my lips to his mouth again and again. We fell into the grass, returning the other’s kisses as if there were no night or day, no world around us.
Oh, Lord, stop me! The
birds chirped “University, University!” and we kissed each other as if we were to become the other, melting together like candy under glass. We rolled on the grass until my hair came loose and spread like a great feather fan I could feel with my cheek when I turned my head as he kissed hard at my neck.
This, then, was love.
Crushing his chest into mine with my arms, I closed my eyes against the morning sun and my surrender didn’t seem wrong, or sad, or anything else but heaven-come-to-earth to lie with him there in the grass, finding each other, tumbling together, knowing his body and him knowing mine, and all the earth coming to a stop at this place and this time, the sun shining like a halo on his hair as he raised over me, the very breath he breathed making my heart sing.
Merciful heaven. Oh, perfect bliss.