The Star Garden (5 page)

I felt that same rush of heat under my chin, but this time it hurt and threatened to make my eyes water. I looked toward the window and stared at the reflection in it. A kerosene lamp, lit, on the table, made an arrow of light under an image of Harland’s head.

He smiled kindly. “Sis? I’m good at what
I
do.”

I’d lost the battle. In front of strangers, too. I frowned and said, “I charge a mean rent. And inspections every Thursday.”

Harland grinned. I’d rarely seen him smile since he’d come here, other than the wan tremor he used facing his children’s eager faces, trying to approve their small accomplishments. Now here were two at one meal. He was coming back to life, that was it. I remember coming back to life after Jack died. I needed to do things, work at things, too. If I kept Harland here, it’d turn out no good for any of us. Judging from the spunk I saw in his eyes, there’d be no keeping him.

I wish I knew a word for that kind of righteous ache that weighs down my insides when I do what I know is the right thing to do, though it goes against all my normal leanings. I suppose I could quit aching if I quit trying to do right. I said, “Tell the children to put out anything that needs washing and we’ll do it tonight so you’ll have a few things to last when you get there. I’ve got work to do.” I left the table and went to pump water in the washtub. I added salt water to it, I reckon, as a couple of tears fell in the water before Granny came to help. She pulled out the hand wringer and the scrub board and brush, never saying a word. Then I wiped my face and mumbled something about the water splashing on me.

Well, the whole lot of folks followed me into the kitchen, and lingered about while we washed and rinsed, talking about Tucson. Harland’s boys were happy enough, I suppose, to be going to town, though I wondered about the littlest one, the only girl, Blessing. Those professors couldn’t hear enough about town then, and wanted to know anything Gilbert could tell them about the college. Harland went to talking about how he meant to start his business going. Granny and I set rows of little duds on wires hung near the stove, and I felt as if I could give over to lonesomeness right in front of them all.

Before we were finished, Harland sent the children to their room, the professors went to the book room to read, and Granny left for bed, too. I reckoned if the whole household was going to town, now, I’d better plan to stay a few days and help Harland get started. That meant I had to pack my own things. I told Gilbert to bank up the stove for morning, and I left him with Miss James overseeing his work.

In my bedroom, I took the box of odd buttons from its place on a shelf over my sewing machine. Beside it lay the waistcoat I’d been mending. For a while, I sat in the dim light of one small lamp and hunted something from the button box that might match the other buttons on the shirt. Nothing came close enough in both color and size. It had been pure silliness to put fancy buttons on a shirt of mine. They wear out and come off the same as the cheap kind. I bit my lip. Everything tears down and goes away. Eternal fire, I thought, I wish they’d all leave this very minute. Maybe I’d send Gilbert packing, too. High time that boy got out on his own like his brother.

I threaded a needle with black thread and bit the end off the spool before I tied a knot. I pushed the needle up from inside the sleeve, through the cloth, through the button, over the top and down. It has been the abiding hope of my life to know someone who came to stay and wanted to be with me. I know I have got an ornery streak in me, and some of my bones seem to be made of cast iron. Nothing about me ever gentled down and got soft and motherly like my brother Albert’s good wife, Savannah. I’m sure it is because she is of righteous makings that she has had Albert to take her along life’s path. No one has ever been my strength and shield. Nor even wanted to. I’ve stood on my own feet and fought my own fight. Even Jack, who I loved with those same iron bones, was never content to stay put and let me lean on him.

Miss James came in to go to bed. I had my torn pocket inside out and was working away on it, when she came over and turned up the flame on the lamp. “You’ll hurt your eyes,” she said. She put on the nightgown I’d loaned her, and sat on the end of the bed and watched me sew for a minute. “I can do that hem for you.”

“I’ll get it myself, thanks,” I said.

She picked up the waistcoat I’d put the odd button on. Holding it up in her hands as if she were considering wearing it herself, she said, “You’ve got a nice figure. My waist has never been very small.”

“Where are your folks? Don’t they mind that you’ve gone so far from home?”

Without answering the question, she said, “Are you feeling poorly, Mrs. Elliot?”

“Bone tired, is all. This is finished. Put out that light, will you please?” I got myself undressed and got into bed. I could hear her breathing next to me.

After a bit, she said, “Did I do something to make you angry?”

I did feel mettlesome. I wanted these strangers out of my house. I wanted things set to rights. It was these strangers gave Harland the notion to up and leave. I said, “I’ll go in the morning and see if the water’s down yet.”

“Your brother seems like a nice fellow. How long has his wife been dead?”

I flew out of that bed. Stood there, stiff as the iron fence I pictured made up my ribs. Stared at where I thought she’d be, in the dark. Before too long, I started shaking. I would not share my bed with a slattern and a hussy. I couldn’t turn her out of my room, for then she’d be free to approach someone else for a place to lie. I kept my voice low. “To think I’ve fed the snake in my own corn crib,” I said. I fumbled for the matches on the highboy but couldn’t find them. Light from the moon outlined her form.

“I didn’t mean it thataway.” She flustered, pulling the coverlet up to her chin. My feet felt as if they were drilled into the floor. “You best not be putting designs on him or you’ll answer to me.”

“I only meant he seemed like a nice man. Nicer than Professor Fairhaven.”

There was no way to tell what she meant in the dark, nothing but the sad whine of her voice. A person could make any sound come from their throat, but they’d have to go a long ways before they could hide what’s in their
eyes.
I wanted to shout and chase her from my room, but I’d better keep her right here so there wouldn’t be any foolishness going on. I said, “He is a nice man. His wife was dear to this family. He’s not looking for a wife right now.”

“Professor Fairhaven began to make advances toward me so I come to bed.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “What’d he say? I’ll throw him out of the house.”

“He didn’t say anything. It was the way he looked at me.”

“Just get some sleep,” I said. I rolled back in and pulled up the covers, trying not to touch her. After a bit I heard her sniffing at odd times and I believed she was crying. I kept quiet. When I awoke before dawn, she was deep asleep and I slid out of the bed without waking her.

I did the feeding with Gilbert. The eleven head of cows we ended up the season with were all in a fenced pasture close to the house where I could watch for rustlers. That meant they had to be fed and I was deep into Albert’s pockets for that. I’d kept all my horses, too—against my own common sense—because Albert put his foot down and was buying feed for them, too. Our pa had us raising horses before any of us could walk, and Albert said someday we’d need ‘em again. He just couldn’t bear the idea of me selling off the two dozen horses, though their feed bill is triple that of the cows. If all my life fell into perfect step-in-time for the next five years, I’d see things back the way they were. For now I was counting on family and neighbors to keep my place off some banker’s mortgage blotter.

Hot breath curled from the nose of El Capitán, the prize bull, forced out in gasps between holding his breath as he tried to take a lion’s share of the hay I tossed out, and he made thick noises as he chewed. I tapped him on the side and chanced to rub his great head. There was a crusting of frost on all the cows. The only thing on them that looked warm were their wet and steaming noses. Capitán stepped sideways and I jumped quick to keep from getting my feet broken. The old fellow had gotten pretty tame, being fed and petted. Better to have a bull that only wants to kill you half the time instead of all the time. Most of ‘em see anything moving as standing between themselves and two minutes of true love. That made me think of that Professor Fairhaven. I’d sure be glad to have these strangers gone.

I left the household to cook their own breakfast while I rode to the arroyo. I wore a pair of Gilbert’s pants under my split skirt. Udell once told me he thought he could sell sheepskin coats in Arizona. I’d laughed at him. What I wouldn’t give for a heavy fleece coat this morning.

The sky had cleared overnight and the morning world was coated with heavy frost. Puddles on the road were frozen near solid. Baldy had been sassy when I was trying to saddle him before full daylight, and now he acted foolish, stepping in frozen puddles like a little boy will do, just to hear the ice crack. Never saw a horse do that before. At the arroyo, there were still three inches of water in the bottom, but it was sludged over with silt and branches, the last tracks of a rushing torrent. As I stood in the bottom of the gorge, torn weeds and shredded trees showed the height of the flood that had come through. The water had been higher than the tips of my fingers, with my arms stretched as far as I could reach. We’d have all been dead if we’d been in it. I headed for home and gave the horse his head. He was still feeling his oats so he got me there in under an hour, though my nose was near frozen.

We lined up the rigs and took stock so we could load all the people and baggage from the stage, plus Harland’s family and their few possessions. Albert’s surrey could seat eight people if two were small. Gilbert hitched my dusty old buggy that hadn’t seen daylight in ten years or more, being too small for a family. Then Chess pulled up the buckboard with the two dead folks. None of us dared a look but we decided they’d be frozen pretty solid, judging by the layer of ice on the tarpaulin covering them. We rigged up a platform on the sides and piled the freight on top. Then it was time to sort the people.

I supposed it would be best to insist Miss James ride with me to keep her from making cow
eyes
at Harland, but she preferred to ride with Chess, sitting over the dead ones, on top of the boxes and baggage filling the buckboard’s false floor. Professor Osterhaas took off his hat and asked if he could have the pleasure of riding with me.

Fairhaven did not look happy about riding with Harland’s children all the way to town, which gave me a guilty pleasure thinking how the children would surely entertain him. Gilbert was to stay home and mind the place, but he walked us out of the yard holding the side of the buckboard, until we turned the corner toward Albert’s place. Harland wanted to stop a minute and say farewell. Albert will follow us tomorrow and help drive all these rigs home. It was nearly ten before we got on the road.

One thing about a long trip with a stranger, if they’re inclined to talk and be genteel, it can be interesting and pass the time right along. Professor Osterhaas knew a great many things, but he was also every bit as interested in what
I
knew, and asked why I read so many books and all. He declared he had been up most of the night reading, and didn’t even seem surprised that I taught my children and all my nieces and nephews until they went to town for university studies.

“But you’ve never been, yourself?” he asked.

My double team was made up of one fairly sober horse on the left and an ornery one on the right that always thought she should pull left. If I put her on the left, we did nothing but turn in circles as if she were hard of seeing in one eye. I shook the reins. It helped to make her pay attention that I was the one holding the harnesses. “Nary a whit.”

“May I ask where you took your prior education?”

“Took it, sir?”

“Normal school, or grammar, that sort of thing?”

He had a colorful way of stringing words, this professor of letters. Why, under threat I would not admit to a stranger that I’d never passed through the door of a schoolhouse, except the day I took my twelfth-grade examination by mail order. I was plenty tired of these folks, and I surely didn’t want this one clucking his tongue over my ignorance for the next eighty miles.

Then I remembered my papa making me sound out letters and words from our old family Bible, and then Savannah giving me a piece of newspaper to practice on. “Private,” I said. “I was schooled privately.”

“Excellent. What a fine governess you’ve had, then. What was that good lady’s name?”

“Most of the time I’d like to not be asked so many questions, Professor Osterhaas.”

“Beg pardon, ma’am.”

“How’s your arm?”

“I think it’s better. Still black and blue.”

“Starting to knit up, then.”

After a spell of silence he said, “I must say, it has been a relief to be free for a few minutes from Professor Fairhaven.”

“How so?” I said.

“The man’s an intemperate rounder. A popinjay.”

“Well, I had him called, then. I’d have thought someone who’s a professor—”

“It has been to my continual … ah. If we had remained in California I’d have recommended him for censure. When I found out the unfortunate Miss Castle was not his bride, you see, I was put in a dreadful fix. As we had been hired together, I was forced to extend professional courtesy as a colleague.”

My team tussled with their rig. I said, “Tell me about going to college. All my boys tell me about is the pranks they pull and how awful it is, but I saw from their books what they get to read.”

Reckon I hit on Professor Osterhaas’s best subject. He expounded for a good hour on everything a person could study and do and see and all in the name of education. Hearing it made a tingling run from my hair to my shoulders. At the same time disappointment made itself hard in my throat. While he talked, I could imagine the school buildings before me, picture folks from all over the territory waiting for a professor to come tell them about Chaucer or the Alps or Gregorian music. There were student meetings after class, discussions of philosophies from distant lands, clubs and societies for this subject or that, convocations to attend, displays of bird species and lectures on chemistry and real microscopes to look through, and what he called “savoring the search for truth” with poetry and tableaux and violinists from New York.