The Star Garden (29 page)

I lost all track of what I had come for. I told him I had to get home and start supper, and of course, he must come share with us. Then I headed home to think without anyone else’s opinion included.

I changed to an old house dress and worked up the row of buttons on the bodice, staring into my little looking glass. I couldn’t marry Udell Hanna. Not for anything. He wasn’t building that house out of loving me. The man was marrying his dead wife. Building
her
a house. Filling it with her things. He’d sent me off to school as if he had been daring me to find some excuse not to come home. Now I didn’t want to. I tried to remember the words I had so easily rattled off to Mary Pearl, caught in just such a fix.

But I was not Mary Pearl. I had my own land and house, my own children. I didn’t need Udell Hanna’s money, or his land, or his stone house. If I couldn’t have a man on my own terms, just for the preference of his company, I wouldn’t have him at all. It wasn’t the same as a young girl thinking of her future and needing a man to provide it. I wanted the things my own hands had provided, and I didn’t want to be seeing shadows in the halls nor wondering if he closed his
eyes
and thought of her at times.

Lord. I’d never live in that house. Yet oh, what have I done? Lain with him as if we were married, promised him, too, and spoke words as if I’d stand by them or bust for all time. Gave my word and now was weaseling out. Maybe what both of us had thought was love was just lonesomeness for the past.

When I got back to town, riding alongside Rachel in the back as Aubrey drove, I knew Aubrey had spent time at Albert’s place, but I couldn’t worry about whatever was brewing between those two. Hearing Aubrey’s voice as he and Rachel cheerily talked, I heard Udell’s voice, too. And Lord, I knew I loved him. But to spend my life there, with him, oh! My thoughts spilled on the floor like two sacks of loose buttons, never to be sorted out, and I stayed quiet the whole way.

All week that blamed piano kept popping up there on the page of my general science book betwixt the geologic structures of North America. By the end of Brownie’s class Tuesday I decided it seemed only fair to Udell to break the promise between us. In town I felt too far from my home and from him, misplacing my trust and my real feelings.

Life seemed better without Mathematics. Definitely better without Domestic Science. I wrote letters to Mary Pearl, and finally in one of them pressed her for some feelings toward Aubrey. I didn’t know if she were writing him, too, so I merely asked if she’d heard from him. Since I had fewer classes and more time, I went back to taking the buggy to school.

Brownie’s lecturing got more addled with each day and when he sent back our papers, a note written on mine said that I hadn’t any idea how to back up my thesis. That detestable little canker sore. Every time I thought of him, from then on, I remembered I had a setting hen named Brownie with a much nicer disposition and a good deal more intelligence.

Mister-Doctor Fairhaven acted kindly, even attentive. Too smiley, yet somehow his kindness was comforting, too. In Osterhaas’s class two more students read their “What I Want” themes. We discussed their way of putting words on paper as if no one cared what the students had put down that they’d like to own or sought to become. I looked again at the list of stuff I wanted, put it aside and rewrote the page, prettied it up with adjectives and such. Then I went to April’s house and had tea and read stories to her children while she nursed Tennyson. That little toot is tiny, but now that she is well, what a holler she’s got on her! She’ll be one to keep her mama busy, I reckon.

That week, Harland’s children all got rashes and a cough so they were kept out of school and fretful. The doctor has been to the house and said it was the eight-day measles but they were not quarantined because it isn’t the bad kind. Before I headed to Brownie’s class each day, I made sure to check on the children, especially Blessing, who is doing fine and playing quietly with her toys for a change.

One morning, having to feel obliged to drive Professor Fairhaven downtown suddenly seemed real inconvenient to me. I rode Baldy instead of driving the buggy and I determined I would do so until the end.

Instead of being run over by bicyclers, I found that now students parted for me the same way they did for the teachers. I sensed it meant something. As I arrived at the classroom, the train downtown blew its whistle. It reminded me of little Blessing running away from home. I stopped with my hand on the door to Brownie’s room. I detested the very knob, hated the man behind it, the stupid way he made me feel. The whistle moaned, dropping at the end with a sigh like a mourning dove. Which home was I running from?

We went over last week’s test in Brownie’s class. Mine had a large F on the top margin but not another mark. I’d long before swallowed any pride I’d owned about my scores. I’d gotten Cs and Ds all along, but never completely failed. I waited until after most of the students asked questions about the test answers they’d missed, then raised my hand. He called upon everyone he could find, even calling out names for their opinions, while my hand stayed up. When silence took over the room and my hand had turned to stone, I stood and said, “I’d like to know which of my answers is wrong, Professor Brown. I answered every question right. There isn’t a dot on this page except the F.”

“Someone in class please explain a grading curve to Mrs. Elliot. I haven’t time.” Brownie camped behind a battered old painted wood desk that like to swallowed him. He fiddled with some bent brads while I stood listening to a boy in the back explain that I failed because most people got a C, a percentage got a B, and one person could get an A, so someone else had to fail. I felt my breath go cold.

I walked toward the desk. “Professor Brown?” I heard my hen cackling as I spoke.

“Take your seat.” His
eyes
widened. The brads clicked on the desk as he shrank into his chair. He watched those little metal brads and pushed them around as if they were important as bullets.

“Maybe you’ll have time to write something else on my paper,” I said.

“No. Class is almost over. The lecture—” He stopped, his eyes darting, his thin, unevenly shaved little mustache quivering like a cat sniffing something putrid.

I screwed up my eyes and quieted my voice, taking my sternest posture, the one I’d practiced on Rudolfo Maldonado. I felt almost as angry as then, too. “I got every answer correct and yet you tell me I’ve failed. I’ve read more books on geology and geography than anyone in this room, I’d lay a bet. Maybe even you. Professor Brown, you write on my paper that there are no incorrect answers. You don’t have to change the grade, just write the truth.” The little weasel squirmed in his chair. His inkwell was so dribbled on it had stuck to the desk itself. I placed my paper before him, dipped his own pen in the well, and held it toward him. “Everyone in this room is going to sit here until you write it,” I said. Then I gave those students a look that could defy the Magnolia Balm right off a woman.

Brownie trembled and breathed noisily. He stared at the pen. He looked around the room, but none of the students made a move to shoulder him up. A drop of ink hit the blotter in front of him and made a spider of blue. One tiny droplet dashed onto his knuckle and spread in the wrinkles. I waited, counting seconds, like I’d done with Rudolfo, never taking my gaze from his face. He coughed after nine seconds of pure silence. The faint smell of urine rose from under his desk. A clock in the hallway chimed. No one moved. Someone dropped a pen and a handful of papers, but didn’t retrieve them.

Brown’s face reddened and sweat beads formed on his lip where they spread and ran. He wiped at them with the back of his hand, leaving a thin, crooked line of blue across his mouth. With a trembling hand he took the pen and with great spasms of penmanship, he wrote, “There are no incorrect answers on this paper.”

“Sign it,” I said.

“I wrote what you wanted.”

“Sign it.”

He scribbled something that might have been his signature.

Then I went to the desk where I’d been sitting, put the paper between pages of my geology book, stacked it with everything else, and walked out of the room. I heard a few of the students follow me. One or two even called out my name and someone said, “We agree it isn’t fair,” but I kept walking and didn’t stop until I found Baldy.

I rode out of town, north to the Rillito riverbed, feeling murderous, hoping to fill my lungs with clean air before I could face any more school. A little rivulet snaked through the bottom of the sand. I stopped and let Baldy drink, and fished in his saddlebag for the book with the geology test. The big F stung me again when I saw it, but the scribble beneath salved it. I tossed the paper into the trickling stream. Two classes will be easier than three. Only Fairhaven and Osterhaas remained. I did not fail Brownie’s test, no matter what grade he wrote, but I will not go back. I have no respect left for that rascal. I should have listened to Charlie!

Then I got on Baldy and clucked to him. As we moved downstream, a clattering, honking noise filled the air. I heard dogs barking, some banging like cow bells. I kneed Baldy and we went toward the noise, slowly. Around a jutting boulder and clumps of dead trees filled with flood debris, waited a herd of dirty, noisy sheep. Two Mexican boys were herding them.

All this time I never knew people raised the critters around these parts and here a huge herd of them stumbled and bellowed and drank! Well, I called hello to the boys and got off Baldy. That afternoon I shared tortillas, green peppers, and the cheese and apples I had with two half-grown boys, the Uribe brothers, and learned some about sheep and sheep dogs in a broken mix of English and Spanish and even some Latin I’d improved in Fairhaven’s class. By the time the sun started to get low and Tonio Uribe said they had to get the animals home to their pens, I had plenty of knowledge to add to my time spent in town.

The air seemed cool. Baldy pranced now and then, happy to have a chance to stretch his legs and wind. Soon as I got to the house, Harland ran down the steps and said, “You’re home! I’ve been to the university looking everywhere for you. I’ve hitched up my big wagon. We got word there’s been shooting down at your place.”

I packed to head home in two shakes. Harland could not take the children, measles and all, he said, especially into something that could be dangerous. I fussed at him, “You stay here with your children. If something happened, they’d be orphans,” but he wouldn’t listen.

Then he surprised me and pulled a brand-new Winchester out of a closet. “I’ve been meaning to ask you to show me how to use this,” he said.

“This isn’t the time for you to learn.”

“Just load it up and you take it. I’ll drive.”

Blessing came running in and threw her arms around my legs. “Take me, Auntie Sarah. Make Poppy take me. You need me.”

“I need you to stay here and get well,” I said. “Poppy can’t watch out for you and me both.”

“You’re watching out for him, aren’t you? I’ll help.”

I pulled her hands loose. “Blessing, go to bed.”

Rachel dragged her away, sobbing, as Harland and I exchanged sad glances. “Stay here, Harland.”

“I’ve made up my mind.”

“I’m surrounded by ornery men.”

“Well, we’re cut from the same cloth.”

Rachel came back in a few minutes and said, “Uncle Harland, Blessing has a fever again. She says her throat hurts, just like before.”

“See?” I said. “You must stay.”

“You know I’d come.”

“I know. Mama’ll know, too.”

I tied Baldy on the back of the buggy and headed south toward home.

I swan. A bunch of men have blocked our road. Soon as I passed, they must have dragged all those beams and posted guards to keep us here. Another of Udell’s cows has been shot down. I didn’t think to bring extra provisions on that run home. Short of shooting our way through, there was no way to return to town. Part of me would like to run through them as if these were the old days and they were Indians, take down a few and keep on going. However, the railroad’s outlaws seem more willing than Apache warriors to shoot back, and outnumber us twenty to one, and there’s not a one of my family I’d be willing to sacrifice just to get back to town and fail school.

Eventually, supplies are going to run out. We can live without sugar or coffee and even salt. Still, sooner or later, saltless beans and cornbread are going to taste pretty tiresome, and then there’s Elsa’s expectations, and my schoolwork. This nonsense just had to stop. I managed to get to Udell by a roundabout coyote trail that went past the south windmill down and back up over some steep hills to his place. I had a desperate notion that this was a kind of siege. We just hadn’t come to grips with it yet.

Charlie said they also watched the mail route to Marsh Station. We’re so far out, this capture could go on until we starved to death or they forged papers to take the whole territory from us, and no one would know to come looking. Gilbert was willing to try slipping through the brush on foot to get to Marsh Station with a letter to Sheriff Pacheco asking help not to leave us caught like this. I told him we’d all think it over.

Udell tried to talk with Rudolfo but twenty riders met him, forming a half circle between him and the hacienda. They answered his questions with stone silence, though he asked half a dozen times. He reckoned the bunch to be the ones we saw murder the two fellows they outran last fall. When he described the brands they wore, I knew it was Rudolfo’s men. Everything I’d planned to say to Udell would have to wait.

Between our houses, from Udell’s farthest south, to mine between, and Albert’s on the north across the Cienega, we pass freely. This morning Udell rode up and said he felt useless and so he went with Charlie before dawn to see how far south they could travel. When they returned, Charlie told us that they have cut a route through the farthest south section of our land, and he and Udell had watched from some hills. Before long six drays moving south from Maldonado’s came to a stop at a clearing. The wagons were met by riders who switched places with the drivers, exchanged parcels from their packhorses, and then the drays continued south while their former drivers, now mounted, headed northwest. Udell and Charlie followed them as they crossed from our land to the Cujillos’ place, until they cut off the Cujillos’ land and onto Maldonado’s, heading straight for the main house.

That afternoon, Granny sat rocking on the porch next to Elsa, knitting baby soakers. They talked softly and the sound comforted me. I put some lard in four bread pans and set the loaves in to rise. No doubt Mrs. Everly would have had something to say about the way I did that, too.

At the very second I stood straight up, three shots from something powerful and close range slammed into the front of the house. Elsa and Granny screamed. Two more shots hit the adobe bricks, then, and one of them splintered the windowsill right by where I’d been standing, sending glass and wood slivers into the bread dough sitting in the pans.

Udell rushed out, scooting Elsa through the door and lifting Granny like a baby. Cradling her in his arms, he set her on her feet in the kitchen. I barred the door. Granny stood for a moment, then fell to her knees and slumped to the floor. I cried out and knelt by her. “Mama, Mama! Have they killed you? Oh, Lord. She’s shot.” Red soaked her apron pocket.

Granny lay on the floor, shaking and moaning, her eyes closed and her mouth open, as if she neared death. “They shot m’ finger.”

The first finger of her left hand looked fine except that it abruptly ended at the first knuckle and blood flowed from it as if it were a fount. Udell took her hand and pressed on the finger. She whimpered again. “Hold this tight,” he said to me. “Right on the wound.” Then he took off.

I wrapped her finger with a clean towel, and Elsa and I carried her to her bedroom. Elsa set to bandaging it while I pulled curtains across the windows. Together we dragged her bed to a corner as far from the window as we could, then pulled a highboy in front of the glass. A bullet hit the window just as I did, shattering the glass and making spiderwebbed cracks on the mirror of the highboy. From the side, I could see a ball of lead sticking from the back of the mirror. I heard other shots, too, farther off, and waited by the door with my pistol in my hand.

Suddenly I realized that I didn’t know where Charlie, Gil, or Chess were. They should have been no farther than the barn. Should have heard the shooting, yet no one came. Our dogs were going crazy in the yard. The thought flickered in the back of my mind that my men all lay dead in their tracks, already murdered by the person trying to kill my mother, but I put that aside; it was simply too terrible to imagine. The girl sat on the edge of the bed. “Elsa, get in this corner and keep down.” I glanced from my poor mother to my pregnant daughter-in-law and pictured Elsa shielding Granny with her own body. “She’s low in the bed. The bureau will make it a hard angle to hit. Pull this chair in front of the door when I leave and stay in the corner. I won’t have you shot, too.”

A dozen shots came from every direction outside, then. Running to the front of the house, I took my rifle and crawled under the windows, trying to see as far as I could without being right in somebody’s line of fire. Shots came from the barn and the side of the house. I reckoned my boys might be in the barn with Chess, so I crept around back and slipped around the side. A man sat in shadows before me. I raised the rifle and drew on him as he hunkered low, aiming to the barn. Udell. I got to him after stumbling over the length of my skirt, nearly tripping headlong just as Chess had done. He didn’t look up nor seem surprised to find me at his side.

Udell said, “Look between that saguaro and the smokehouse, just to the right there. That’s where the shots came from. Someone in the barn is holding them down, but there’re bullets coming in high from somewhere I can’t see.” Without warning, he pulled up and fired twice. A thud and a groan came from the distance, followed closely by the sound of brush being trampled. A man lay in the bushes beyond the smokehouse.

A fast volley of gunfire went off again from the barn itself, and a man rolled—dead before he landed—off the very top of the barn and into the round corral, spooking horses. Then all grew quiet. I stood. Udell held his hand up and motioned me back to my knees. He laid a finger on my arm then pointed to the smokehouse again. Then he hollered, “Charlie? You boys all right there in the barn?”

The barn door swung wide and Chess stepped in plain sight just like he was trying to draw fire. Udell fired a single time toward the smokehouse, and a man fell to the dust, his own rifle still in his hands, pointed toward the barn door. Then we heard loud hoofs, riding away, saw dust rise in the west. From the opening of the barn came Gilbert riding Baldy, barebacked, shotgun in hand, followed by another horse carrying his older brother holding a pistol. Udell and I had just risen to our feet when we heard the shotgun go off, several shouts, and then all got quiet. No birds were calling, no animals lowing.

Udell rushed to check out the three dead men. My heart grew quiet. I searched carefully for more shooters. Dead men posed no problem to me. I had to keep hold of my senses until my sons rode back to the house. Time stretched long, and I couldn’t think, except to pin up the thought that someone had decided it was time to inherit Granny’s land.

They’d come to kill my mother. No more meanness in the woman than a little gray dove on a nest; the vision of her bleeding finger loomed in my eyes while I watched the horizon for the return of my sons.

Behind me, I heard “Charlie!” and saw Elsa run from the house across the yard to him. Charlie and Gilbert were both on a single horse. Hatch. Chess and Udell joined Charlie and Gil. They came to me, talking, laughing nervously, talking more. Finally, I could bear no more, and I said, “Anyone else hurt?”

“No,” they answered, all around. Then Gilbert said, “What do you mean ‘else’? Who
is
hurt, Mama?”

“Granny. Took off her finger, but she’s old and a touch of sepsis could kill her.”

The whole family gathered at Granny’s bed, and she seemed revived a bit. While she told her story, the boys told theirs. Gilbert had let go with both barrels from the back of my best horse. He’d served justice on the shooter, but Baldy wanted nothing to do with cannons going off over his head and he’d left Gilbert riding a clump of prickly pear.

When I heard that, I said, “All right. Gilbert, you get in yonder and drop your drawers, and your brother and your grandpa are going to take out any thorns you got left. Then you are going to draw yourself a hot bath and put some witch hazel in it and make sure
you
don’t get septic, too. If you get so infected you can’t sit a horse, you’re going to be in a mighty fix if anything else happens. And don’t make that face at me, ‘cause you aren’t too big to strap, the mood I’m in. Elsa? Look after Granny.” And I put my hat squarely on my head. “Mama? Do exactly what Udell tells you and soak that finger. Bandage her up and I’ll be back in two shakes.”

“Where are you going?” Udell said.

“Get my horse,” I said. I heard someone calling me but I kept walking.

I didn’t have to go far. I hopped on Hatch and followed the trail west. I turned north at the only clear place between the scrub and cholla. I reined up hard and put my fingers to my lips, whistling as loud as I could. Hatch tussled around but I didn’t give her any slack. I whistled twice more, and there came Baldy, looking rank and shaking his head as if his ears were still ringing. It was a miracle he’d even heard me, what with a shotgun going off over the poor animal’s skull. I took his reins and he balked, bit at Hatch, made sure we all ate some dust. Then I kicked us into a run and we got home. I planned to have a long talk with Señor Maldonado. A very convincing talk.

I chopped vegetables feverishly, making minced pieces that would cook down soft for my mama to eat. The kitchen was empty and quiet except for the rhythm of the knife. Udell came in. With a glance around, he took my hand and I dropped the knife. He said, “We’re going to figure this out, Sarah.” He put his arms around my waist and pulled me close. “I’ll keep you safe, if I have to perish doing it.”

I pushed away and took up the knife again. “Don’t think it,” I said. “No perishing of anyone allowed from now on.” Lands. I needed to have a long talk with Udell, too.

“I could just go ask them if we can pass by. Just neighborly. You need to get back to school.”

“Just go ask them? They’re not joshing. Think you can reason with them?” It seemed too easy to go crawling to some man and ask for passage down a free road we have traveled for twenty years. I didn’t want lead flying but I’d have understood Udell more if he’d a-wanted to order the man to let us pass or taste steel. Jack would have taken the high road with them and put those men in irons by now.

"I’m going to go ask ‘em to be reasonable. Usually I can talk to folks—”

“Besides. I won’t go back. I’ve missed so much. They won’t let me catch up and I wouldn’t leave Granny no matter what. I reckon I’m not cut out for schooling, anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

“What on earth made you give me schooling as a present? Anyone else would have bought me a ring or even a horse or a bolt of calico.” I couldn’t hide the tone of my voice, yet I knew I wasn’t angry at him.

“I don’t know. Maybe ‘cause you wanted it so. Everybody knows it. I thought at the time it was like giving a woman a bathtub. Even if she asked for it, you’d be half afraid she’d think you’re telling her she needs it. Seemed like you wanted it. If you don’t want it no more, well, it isn’t like you needed it in the first place.”

“Fiddlesticks. Carry that soup for me.” The things I wanted most in the world could tear me asunder. I took Granny hot biscuits loaded with butter and swimming in sorghum, and she ate one then fell hard asleep. Udell stayed in the room with me as I watched over her. I finished then, as if nothing had interrupted, whispering, “I
do
want it. But I never in my life had to be someplace and know something by a time of day. I learned everything in smidgens between tending babies and hauling horse feed. Never set a clock by my learning and it took me away from my home and family. If I’da been here this wouldn’t have happened.”

“But you were here.”

“I can’t go back to town, now.”

“I know.”

“You angry with me for quitting?”

“I figure you’d know when you had enough.”

It hadn’t been two days since I declared to myself that I wanted to keep on at school forever. To do that it would have to come my way, not me change to its way. Still, so much was left, those papers due, the pages of Latin I’d translated, the essays and all. I was doomed to fail school. And that troubled me as much as every other trouble hereabouts, as if I gave some half-addled notion equal weight with the peril of my family. Rain and hail in Beulah land. I must have lost my senses, but I longed to go back even as I told myself I’d already failed out. I took the plate and cup from Granny’s table and Udell followed me into the kitchen. I said, “Reckon I haven’t quit entirely yet. Just missed some. What’s that look on your face mean?”

“You are a hard woman to figure, is all.”

“Well, I can’t quit.”

“Stubborn as the day is long. Chess is right.”

“Better you know what you’re getting, if you still want to marry after this is over.” If it were his choice to quit on me, I wouldn’t have to say the words to him.

“Harder-headed woman you’ll never find,” Chess tossed in.

Udell smiled. “Leave off this talking to Rudolfo, then.”