These Is My Words (51 page)

Tomorrow after breakfast she will head for home. I hope I have done the right thing. I hope Albert doesn’t think I am a lunatic. And I hope Savannah is brave enough not to have any more children than she positively wants.

And when I go upstairs, I am going to wake Captain Elliot up and tell him he is the answer to a prayer.

March 14, 1900

I was scrubbing the floor in the kitchen on my hands and knees this morning, when I heard the fire bell sound. Pretty soon, I saw some excited looking children running down the street, and I called out to one of them and asked what was burning. Whatever it was, I knew it was big, because the smoke soon blackened the whole town. I was so sorry to hear it was the new Pima County Courthouse. It is just a beautiful building, the kind I’m sure Harland is building in California. I have driven past many times just to watch the workmen, and study the plans when they will let me. Now some fool has gone and set it on fire. No doubt someone whose better interests are not served by having a courthouse in this raggedy town, where law and order might someday actually be carried out instead of wished for. There is a sorry and low element in this town that will all come to know the business end of a rope if we ever have enough law.

The school let out early, as Mrs. Fish and the other teachers realized there was no keeping the children at their studies with all the excitement and noise. My boys are now among the biggest in class, so I’m sure they led the way to where their father was fighting the fire. I was just closing the windows to keep out the smell when someone knocked on my front door like they would break it in.

The man that stood in my doorway was blacked with soot and looked like a fright, with rings of red around his bleary eyes and the smell of smoke heavy on him. Mrs. Elliot, the man said, You’d better come with me. Do you have a buggy?

I saw the look in his eyes even though he was so dirty. It’s Captain Elliot, isn’t it? I said.

Ma’am, he said, The fire, you know, they were painting inside and a can of varnish blew up and he’s on the way to the hospital.

I can ride, I said, Will your horse take two? He nodded and I climbed up behind him in the saddle, and I didn’t care if he was dirty and a stranger but I hung onto him, and he spurred that horse good and my legs showed for all the town to see.

In bits and pieces, he told me Jack had ordered all the firemen out of the building because the roof was caving in. Someone said they heard a scream inside, and Jack went in through a broken window. He went into a room where the paint cans were stored and just as he got inside the flames reached the cans, and the explosions sent metal pieces flying everywhere.

In the hospital room, all the white walls and sheets and nurses and doctors seemed to crowd in on Jack, lying blackened and sooty on the clean bed. They pulled a stretched linen curtain around us, and I sat by him. His face was black but under the sheet coverlet they had taken off his shirt and white skin showed, making him look like he wore a strange black mask. A huge bandage covered him from his shoulder to his hip, and blood seeped through it, and another smaller bandage wound around his left arm.

Captain Elliot, I whispered, do you hear me? He opened his eyes and I tried not to cry out. They were so bloodshot they looked at first as if they were bleeding. His eyebrows and mustache were singed and little curled up burnt hairs dotted his face in reddish coils against his black skin.

He struggled to breathe, and he said, Oh, Sarah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this to you. I thought I heard a baby crying in there. I know there was a baby crying in there. Did someone get him out? A baby. Get the baby out.

I started to shake all over. There was no baby, Jack, it was only the hissing of the cans getting ready to pop, making a whining sound.

He just looked kind of confused. Baby? he said again, and then cringed with pain.

No baby, I said again. It was nothing, Jack, there was no baby in there at all.

I had to save the baby, he said, and shook real hard all over for a minute. Then he turned toward me and reach his hand out, groping for me, and then I knew he couldn’t even see me. Sarah, my Sarah, he said, I’m sorry to tell you but I’m leaving again.

No, no, I said, No, you’re not. And tears fell on my cheeks instantly, flooding out in panic.

He slowly lifted his darkened hand and reached toward my face, and with one finger brushed softly at the tears on my cheeks. Now don’t do that, he said, I always liked it when you’d raise a fuss and get good and mad when I left. That way I knew you’d be all right.

Well, Jack, I said, I always cried later.

He winced then, maybe because of my words, I don’t know. He seemed to be sinking into the bed, getting smaller and smaller.

Don’t leave, Jack, you can’t go now. You said you’d never leave me again.

Got to, he spoke with a gasp. Orders.

But Jack, you’re just a Captain and I’m the General. I order you not to go.

He tried to smile, but I couldn’t look at his poor burnt eyes. These orders, he whispered, come from the Commander in Chief. Then he seemed stronger for a second, and he said, That fool doctor wanted to cut on me, said it would be a good operation, and then in the same breath said I wouldn’t live anyway. Damn jackass fool doctor. Damn them all anyway. Acute Inflammation. Doctors don’t know a damned thing, can’t help a sick child. God damn them all. Let my baby Suzy die. Sarah! he moaned, crushing my hand in his and gasping, and for a bit I thought he was gone, but then he breathed easier and I suppose he was intent on staying with me longer. April slipped into the room then. She had come behind me in the buggy.

April’s here, I said to him.

Oh, April, Jack said, You’re here? Well, honey, I want you to know I love you, I always have. You’ve been giving your Mama some gall lately and I want you to stop it and be good to her. You two need each other, and more now than ever. But don’t you ever forget I love you like my own child. Don’t you ever forget it was me that held you when you cried.

April started to cry. She promised she wouldn’t forget, then Jack told her to go find the boys to say goodbye to their Papa, and she hurried away. When she was gone, he said to me with a look on his face I know was pure pride, She’s a grown woman, isn’t she?

I just nodded. Only three days ago April had scalded Jack and I both with angry words of how he wasn’t her real father, and had no call to tell her what to do nor who to keep company with.

I held Jack’s hand and just sat with him for a bit. It wasn’t long before I heard our boys clattering into the room. Charlie is so tall now, all legs and big feet, nothing he does is quiet. He took off his hat and held it sheepishly between his hands, turning it around and around. Gil looked at his Papa and sniffed and started to cry.

Boys, Jack said, and then breathed a ragged breath. Listen to me, Men. I’ve gone and done a fool thing and let your Mama down, and now I can’t be here to see to your raising. And you aren’t done yet, so don’t think now is your chance to run wild, because I’ll be watching you. Both the boys started to sniff noisily and tears stained their ash smudged shirts. Now, men, Jack began again, it normally isn’t right for men to say too much to each other, but this is a special circumstance. I’ve got to tell you I love you because it’s the last time you’ll hear my voice. I can’t be there to show you how to grow to men, but you just ask your Mama, she knows the way to go.

He breathed a little easier then, as if he pushed on to set things as right as he could before leaving. Now, Gilbert, you have a mission. You go to the Marshal’s office, and tell him, real polite, but don’t take no guff from him, tell him I said to send a messenger to Grandma Prine’s and to escort her to town. Your Mama will be needing Grandma for some days. Gilbert straightened up stiff. You can do it, can’t you son?

Gil nodded.

Jack smiled. Go on, then. I’ve always been proud of you, Gilbert. Jack gasped for air. The bandage on his chest was growing redder and the sweetish smell of blood filled the little stuffy room. Now Charlie, he started again, and closed his eyes. Charlie, you’re a fine man, almost grown. I’ve always felt so proud of you it ain’t right. You look like me, you act like me, and likely that’ll be a load too heavy for you to overcome. Don’t worry your Mama like I’ve done, you hear? You’ve got to go to the fort, and get to the wireman’s office, and you tell him to send a wire to Pop. If some shavetail tries to stand in your way, you just don’t let him. You’ve got to tell Pop I’m going soon. Reach in my pocket here, well, they took my pants. Damn ’em. Sarah, I want my pants on.

Jack, I said, I don’t know where they are.

He looked real confused for a minute and said, Well, if they tell you there’s a cost for the wire, you tell them it is a calling in of a debt, and if they still stop you, remind General Crook about Mexico, Sahuarita. Now go, son, your Mama and I have to be together for a spell.

Jack held onto my hand. I held onto him. Sarah, he said after a long time, Sarah I’m so cold, is there a blanket I could have?

He had a blanket on him, and it was warm in the room anyway. Jack, it’s just cold, I lied. Let me hold you closer. So I leaned upon the bed, and cradled his head next to my breast, and felt his breathing so shallow, so cool, not the hot and vital breath I knew all those years. I wet his hair with my tears, they dropped without stopping now. And there was so much gray hair on his head, I had never noticed, but he never seemed a bit older than the day he proposed to me in the shade of the peach orchard.

Sarah, he said, reaching up to hold onto my shoulder, I’ve been a hard man to live with, I know, he said, but I’ve always admired you and loved you. You are some kind of woman. You’ll be fine. You keep your powder dry, and an eye on the horizon.

Then I felt him start to kind of tremble all over.

A man in a white coat and a nun with an apron came in and said to me, Mrs. Elliot you should leave now.

Leave? How could I leave him, after all we’ve been through, how could they think I’d just walk away and leave him to face his last moments alone?

Jack’s hand touched mine, and he held me in a strong grip that reminded me of how big and sturdy he always was. He mumbled something, then said, Sarah, don’t leave my saddle bag, don’t lose it. And then he shook a little softer, and he buried his face in my bosom, and then I felt one long warm breath come from his lips and no more.

I laid his head on the pillow gently, and then buried my own face on it, and I shed tears the like of which I didn’t know I owned.

March 20, 1900

Rusty has lived at the fire house to be near Jack all these years of him being Fire Chief. He will not leave and come home, but waits and waits by the door to Jack’s office for him to come out. All the firemen said it was fine with them if Rusty stayed, they will feed him and care for him. I petted his head and he turned toward my voice, but he would not come with me.

All through the funeral and all the polite callers and my family gathered around and my children weeping I have sat and walked and spoken politely and properly and without any tears. A hundred thoughts run through my head, about how he was always safe doing what he wanted to do, and because he quit the Army he died being a Fire Chief.

But then, Jack was always bursting through walls, always riding off cliffs, always thinking he was somehow immortal. I think at times like that he never felt pain, either, it was like he really was more than just a man. Sometimes, though, I needed him to be around, and he always just believed I would be fine, like I didn’t really need him. But he refused to understand when I told him, too. It was like he only came home to prime himself up again to go out and fight the world’s woes.

Stubborn man. Stupid man. Gone and left me now for good. Always before when he left I got mad in his face and then when he was over the hill I wept my heart out on his pillow. This time I cried right in front of him and held him to me to keep him from going. But he went anyway. And I am mad. It doesn’t make sense. I am so mad at him if he walked in this room this minute I’d give him a piece of my mind, I would at that. I am mad as a wet hen.

I have to ask my Mama why do I feel so angry? It isn’t right to feel this way.

March 25, 1900

Sunday morning. I tried to picture what I would do if I were Savannah: hold my head up and bravely take my mourning children to church in that peaceful, reverent way of hers. We dressed up for church, everyone in clothes of mourning black. I suppose there’s more mourning in this life than otherwise. Chess is here and he made it for Jack’s funeral but I forgot to write that down before now. Anyway, he said he will sit at the house and tend to dinner while we are gone.

I made Charlie drive instead of his Papa, and Gil sat beside him and April and I in the back. We pulled up in front of the church house and there was already singing coming from inside.

Wait just a minute, I said to Charlie. I looked at those front steps, and through the window to the people inside, and I knew most of them by name. I looked at my little family in this buggy, and I said, Charlie, turn us around and take us home.

He was grinning I know, and I saw Jack’s eyes twinkle in Charlie’s face. Yes Ma’am, was all he said, but he trotted that horse back home.

I sat everyone down at the kitchen table. It was not just a work table, but a fancy carved-legged thing Jack had bought for us. Most of the chairs matched each other, too. Now, I said to them all, I have come to a decision. My town days are over. We are packing up and moving to the ranch. You boys can finish out your school year by mail the way Harland did. Now, Chess, you are welcome to come and live with us, I will be glad to have you around, and I’m not trying to be rude but we are moving and we are starting tomorrow. I didn’t even know I had made those decisions, but my mouth just opened and the words came out, as if saying them made them so.

April was furious. No, Mama, no! she hollered. I won’t leave to go to that dirty old ranch, I hate it!

I just looked at her real cool and said, Well, you have to, so there.