The Star Garden (38 page)

Charlie screamed in concert with Rudolfo, their voices fierce as mountain lions’.

My son’s anger tore through me like a Bowie knife. There was no time to cry. Rudolfo charged at him, firing, but as Charlie moved toward Rudolfo with Elsa in his arms, bullets seemed to bounce off him. He was covered with blood, but walked on and on, toward the man who’d murdered his wife. Rudolfo’s gun clicked, loud and empty. Charlie laid Elsa on the ground and ran to pick up his pistols. Rudolfo’s men closed in, and then I moved out on the porch with Udell at my side and we rained lead on them. Hand over hand, Charlie shot. I fired my rifle and took down three of them. In a shower of bullets, Harland took one and Udell hit another four. Bullets peppered the metal trough and water gushed into the yard, swirling around a dead man, forming a red pool. Between us, all of Rudolfo’s men except two standing by him had either fled or died, and those two stood amidst frightened stomping horses, petrified, watching. Two of the animals fell and groaned.

Then the noise stopped. Silence blanketed the yard. Charlie, tears streaming from his eyes,
again laid his pistols in the dirt and groaned with a sound that seemed to rend the very air, leaning over Elsa. Rudolfo thrust his men aside and raced toward him.

Gilbert ran straight into the reddened mud between horses and men and all, and grabbed Rudolfo by the throat. Rudolfo reached for his guns, and that hesitation kept his hands busy long enough for Gilbert to knock him to the ground. They rolled and rolled. Both of them soaked in mud, they grappled for their lives. Rudolfo outweighed him by fifty pounds of pure meanness. I couldn’t get a clear shot without hurting Gil. Then I saw a flash of metal. My heart stopped beating. Between the two of them, twisting like snakes trying to kill each other, a long Mexican dagger went from one hand to another. Red began to flow between them. Mud made them slip and slide together, made the blade handle slick as glass. A sound punch flew from one man to the other, and one mud-coated form rose above the other, knife in hand.

A bang and a loud “Hah!” from beside the house made my knees shake. The upper man jerked back, mouth opening in shock, knife upraised. His form slumped forward onto his enemy, and the knife fell. Chess’s voice hollered, “I got him!” followed by a string of curses.

The lower man shoved the dead one over. Looking straight at me, venom in his eyes, Rudolfo stood.

He ran to his horse and mounted it. Udell rushed forward and shot at his back once, then fired again but the gun was empty. He pulled the trigger again, then lowered his rifle as horse and man galloped away.

Chess yelled, “I got him,” again, and came toward the mud where the final fray had taken place.

I outran him.

I lifted Gilbert’s head and shoulders into my lap and screamed and screamed until my voice gave out. Chess’s face was a knot of horror.

Gilbert opened his eyes. “I’m shot through the chest, Mama,” he said.

I hugged his head to my face, groaning like a wild animal. “No,” I said, repeatedly. Udell crouched at my side.

Chess made a fierce moan, dropped his rifle and stumbled away.

Gilbert winced. “Am I going to die?”

“No,” I said.

“I can’t breathe much, Mama. Damn, it hurts.” After a bit, he said, “Is everyone all right? Granny’s not killed, is she?”

“Granny’s fine.”

“Mama, can you give me anything for the hurt? I’m on fire inside.”

I crushed my face with my hands and let go a sob. Then I shrieked at Udell, “Get him a blanket! Get him inside!”

Udell bent and lifted Gilbert as if he’d been a child, as if he were strong as a bull, the same way he had carried my mama, he carried my son into the house. Past Charlie crying in the yard, cradling Elsa to his shoulder, past Savannah, horror-stricken, trying to console Charlie. Udell laid Gilbert on the kitchen table. Gilbert coughed and blood dribbled from his lip. All that was left now was his dying.

Gilbert moaned, half crying like a child, half stifled—the way I remember soldiers at the fort doing—as if he were scared like a little boy but still knew he was grown and was trying to brave up to the pain. I got my shears and cut through his Christmas shirt, opening the seams to release his arms without him having to move. Granny, Savannah, and I rinsed the mud away and wrapped him in clean linen with a folded soaker under his back. The bullet had not pierced his heart or he’d never have spoken a word, but it could do terror to the lights or other things. It had surely gone clean through, but too low to think there was a chance he’d live over this.

Cold wind assailed us through the broken-out windows and somehow I was aware that Granny was busy stuffing rags and old clothes into the holes. She stoked up the fires, too, moving around, hovering, spiritlike, more than I’d seen her move in years.

Harland and Albert, Zack and Ezra have ridden to the four corners of the earth to find a doctor who’ll come out here. Albert’s gone to Tucson, the boys to Benson. We told them to promise any amount of money to a real doctor willing to come, as I’m sure Gilbert would not live through the wagon trip to one of them.

Savannah said she knew of something, and she ran on foot all the way to her house. She brought back a jug of apple cider that had turned. She was keeping it to dose her chickens if they got the sheds, so Udell is helping me dose Gilbert with quinine and hard cider. I put my two best feather pillows under my boy’s head. Then I kissed his face and sat by him. From where I sat, I could see light from the window kissing his face, too. The makings of a beard formed a gold line raised just above his skin.

Charlie and Chess have buried Elsa in our graveyard. I stepped away from Gilbert’s side for a while, to attend her. Later, they hauled the Maldonado men in a wagon to the edge of Rudolfo’s land and there they threw them out like dead animals, to rot in the desert sun. I told them that was uncommon poor to do, but Charlie’s anger is bigger than he can abide. He said he went all the way to the hacienda to kill Rudolfo, but the place was empty. It is as if Charlie could easily mow down every living thing around him, and if he’s got no Christian spirit to dig graves for them, I can hardly blame him. Yet, I am sitting at his brother’s deathbed and I won’t have him bringing anger into this kitchen. It can’t be any help to his brother.

I sent Charlie to Marsh Station to send word to Miss Charity about Gilbert. It’s something for him to do, and I reckon we’ll see if she cares.

A day and a night passed. By morning, Gil had fever rages, hotter by far than Udell’s had been with the malaria. He tossed and thrashed sometimes. I held him with my whole strength, then sometimes Savannah did, too, keeping him from falling off the table, mopping his brow and holding him still until he lost consciousness.

Charlie should have come back by now. Don’t know where Chess is, either. He must be tormented beyond all reason, thinking he’s killed Gilbert. I wakened, my arms numb and spidery-feeling from sleeping with my head upon them, stretched out onto the kitchen table, holding my boy.

Oh, God, my spirit ached. My heart was rent in two, my mind stilled and black. As the sun rose, my son trembled and his breath rattled with his death fever. His face had grown yellow and thin.

“Sarah?” a man’s voice said. “Sarah, wake up, please. The doctor is here. It’s a Dr. Pardee from Benson.” A young, gentle-eyed man, with a tidy swatch of beard and mustache that made a triangle around his mouth was bent over Gilbert and didn’t acknowledge me. Udell took my arms and lifted me from the wooden chair that felt as if it had grown into my bones. Then it seemed as if the room spun as he pulled me up, lifting me toward him. I reached for Udell and held his shoulders, and slid down a black, deep well, a tomb I had only thought I knew; this grief had become a newer, blacker, more menacing place than any grief I’d yet encountered. I sobbed into Udell’s shirt and he held me on his lap in a chair, like a child.

Then I straightened my shoulders and rose from his grasp. “I’ll go back to him, now,” I said. We stood by Gilbert while the doctor unwrapped the bandages I’d made. He prodded the bulletholes, front and back, and Gilbert cried out. Udell and I held him down while the doctor pulled a splinter of bone from his back. I retched, dry, for I hadn’t eaten in days, and turned my face. Then the doctor patched his wound again with cotton lint, bales of it, it seemed, and we laid the boy on his back again.

Pardee propped his leather bag on the sideboard and searched through it. Chess came into the room, then, standing shriveled and meek by the door. Dr. Pardee said, “Give him these every three hours. Crush one for him if he can’t swallow.”

“Will it cure his fever?” I said.

Ezra stood by the stove. He had ridden to Benson. He was proud of himself for getting the doctor, just he and his brother, and now he took responsibility for his cousin. Pardee shook his head, saying, “It’ll ease the pain.” Ezra’s shoulders slumped and his face twisted and grew red. He left the room, stumbling over Zachary, who just stared, wide-eyed, at the doctor.

Udell said, “Doctor?”

The doctor faced each of us and simply said, “No. There’s infection. I swabbed it with sulfur and Mercurochrome. We can’t do anything else. Eventually the infection will take his brain, and the pain will get bad. No sense in letting him go that way. I know you’re decent people, but have you got any hard spirits? That’d be good for him. Anything? Even some vanilla. There’s nothing else I can do. I am truly sorry.”

“There’s a little of that cider left, that went hard. We gave him some before you got here.” I turned to Zack. “Boy? Go run to your mama’s pantry and bring the vanilla bottle. Don’t you drop it.” I drew a shattered breath. “Will you stay, Dr. Pardee? Will you stay with him? I’ll pay you to stay, anything you ask. Please?”

“I have patients in town.” He looked from Gilbert, sweating, shivering, groaning, to me. Then he said, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll stay with you until it’s over.”

“Can we move him to a bed?”

“No. That’ll cause more bleeding.”

We dosed Gilbert with vanilla, and then the house smelled like sulfur and cake.

I went to make the doctor some coffee. I heard him ask Udell how Gilbert got shot. Udell told him we’d tangled with some Mexican bandidos, nothing more. While the coffee heated, I went to change my dress; I still wore the same dirty one I’d had on all these days. I heard a muffled bump of wood against wood. In Charlie’s room, I found him roughly stuffing things into two small wooden crates. I went to him and laid my hand on his shoulder. He froze stiff for a moment. Then he gasped two short breaths, hard sobs he choked down into his boots. He wiped at his eyes.

“It ain’t fair, Mama. Should be me dead there. I as much as dared him to kill me. Walked right through every bullet. I want to be dead with my Elsa. I want to be with her.” He set one hand on mine and squeezed.

I could only bite my lips from the inside. We stood like statues for five minutes, just aching. I glanced into a box he was loading. It was full of the baby soakers and wrappers Elsa had been knitting. I wept, too, and sat beside him on his bed.

Finally, Charlie said, “Mama, I ain’t staying here. I can’t.”

“Where you going to go?”

“I’m going to go kill Rudolfo Maldonado and then run. Disappear to somewhere there’s lots of space. Montana, maybe. Argentina.”

“Listen to me,” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Don’t you go thinking that way. That isn’t going to bring her back.”

“It’ll put him where he belongs.”

I held Charlie’s arm. “You’ve got to stay with me awhile. Watch over Gilbert.”

“I’ll see Maldonado in hell. I swear it.”

“But not today.”

Charlie bent and tugged at his hair. Then he straightened himself. He put an arm around my middle. “Mama, you are nothing but skin and bones. Go get some dinner. I’ll sit with him awhile.”

Granny came into his room. She said, “Boy? You listen to your old grandmother. There was a time when all this was going on, when I was a girl, and the neighbors killed each other, too. Can’t even recollect who was on whose side, now. But this here, we got the law on our side and the right, you being a Ranger and all. Don’t you go off to the Argen-tine. You catch that varmint and bring ‘im here to hang.”

Charlie scratched his head. “I can’t stay here.”

“You think on it, though, Charlie,” I said.

“He’s probably gone to Mexico. I’ll go find him.”

Granny said, “With all his army and guns? Ain’t ye’ got no sense left? You gotta get some men to go with you. Take that Hanna feller. And that Miles.”

I said, “Take some time, son. Catching Rudolfo isn’t our biggest worry. You’ll make the right choice. I know it.”

I tried to rock a spell on the porch. The flies annoyed me too much. I went back to sit by Gilbert where the doctor kept watch. Now and then my eyes would flood with tears that did not flow. Heat sweats and cold shivers swept over me. Shocks like splashed cold water rolled over me every time Gil made a noise.

Rebeccah and Savannah moved in and out of the room lighting candles. The doctor snored in the chair, his head against the wall. Harland left to fetch April.

In a while, Rebeccah put the candles out, and another night had passed. Gilbert still breathed, rattling and liquid. In Gil’s room Charlie leaned, staring out through the piece of broken window that was now stuffed with rags to keep out flies.

I went to him but didn’t touch him. “You still planning to kill Rudolfo?” I said.

“Won’t right nothing.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Mama?” he said. But it seemed as if he knew I could see the trembling in his lip, and that was enough talk for him. He just shook his head and bit the inside of his jaw.

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

From somewhere in the house I smelled coffee. Rebeccah brought me a cup and I tried to sip at it. She fetched more wood for the stove, and I let her fill it without lending a hand, just watching and drinking coffee, lost in a twelve-foot-square room. I’d lost track of everything and everyone. As she finished, Dr. Pardee leaned over Gilbert, rubbing his chin. “That right lung is gone, I think. But he’s still holding on. I’ve got an idea. I can’t tell you whether it’ll help. It’s just an idea.”

“What?” I said. “I know some doctoring. Whatever it is, we’ll do it.”

He said, “I was watching a hot air balloon one time at a fair. The thing accidentally landed in a duck pond. The picture of it made me wonder. Your boy here is strong, and hanging on, but he’s drowning. I’m guessing pooling blood is crushing the lung like that balloon, so he can’t breathe. I am wondering if a simple surgery might drain that out.”

“We’ll do whatever you say, Dr. Pardee.”

He rushed to the water pump and washed his hands, using nearly half a cake of lye soap. “Wash your hands, too, Mrs. Elliot. I shall need a nurse.”

I scrubbed my hands, shaking hard, weak in the knees, trying to hold my stomach still. My heart pounded in my ears so loud the room seemed filled with drumming. Dr. Pardee rummaged through his leather bag. He pulled out metal instruments and gruesome things I never laid eyes
on before that looked like the inventions of a tormentor. He started fixing some things together, making a metal cylinder and fixing a large needle to it. He stropped that needle several times and then rinsed the whole thing in grain alcohol. The smell of it filled the room and made the floor lift and turn. “I had morphine in here,” he said. “Have you seen anybody get into my bag?”

“No, sir,” I said. “No one would take it.”

He scrambled through the satchel again, impatient as a schoolboy going through a lunch. He said, “We haven’t got time to mess with that. Hold him over, then. I’m going to try from the back.”

We rolled Gilbert on his side and Udell and I held him down. He moaned when Pardee stuck him. I turned my head away. The sounds of liquid dripping were all I could take; I could not look at what Dr. Pardee was doing. After a bit, Pardee said, “All right. Lay him back.”

When we laid him down to rest, Gilbert drew a deep breath. A flush of red came back to his face for a few seconds, then left. Pardee said, “I will do that every hour or so. It does look as if it helped.”

With that, though, I nodded and stepped away from Gilbert’s side. Then my eyes caught on the blood-filled bowl.

I awoke in my bed with Savannah seated at my side, slowly and gently brushing my hair. I tried to get up and she pushed my shoulders back to the bed.

Savannah said, “Albert has gone with Charlie to look for Chess.”

“Where is he?” Chess? Gone to murder Rudolfo?

As if she heard me thinking, Savannah said, “Well, to tell you the truth if he’s gone to kill Rudolfo I would gladly load the pistol for him. Your hair needs tending, honey. Just lie back. Rebeccah is here and she’s drawing you a bath. You need to eat, too.”

“Gilbert?”

“Gilbert’s still with us. He’s improving. Dr. Pardee is a good doctor. Becca is helping, good as any nurse.”

“My boy,” I said, and closed my eyes. I could feel her cooling hands through my hair. I could feel every thread on the bedclothes through my skirts and camisole. I could feel the grain of the wooden floor coming through the ropes that held me above it. “Not like this. Not like this.”

Dr. Pardee tapped on the door as he entered the room. “Mrs. Elliot? Mrs. Prine? You should call your family. I believe Gilbert’s turned a corner.”

I nearly sprang up from the bed.

“Go,” said Savannah. “I’ll fetch the rest.”

Dr. Pardee held up one hand, a motion of gentle pause. “I didn’t want you to think … falsely. He seems a bit more lively, ma’am, but there is a revived state that often comes just before the end.” I glared at him.

I rushed to Gilbert. Albert, Clover, and Rebeccah were there. Harland, too. Even Zack and Ezra and all the littler fellows. Zachary and Ezra looked as if they had aged ten years, both boys gone old before being grown. I heard Savannah’s voice calling from outside, and pretty soon Charlie came in.