Bittersweet (35 page)

Karl tried gently to extricate himself from her grasp. “You are a very nice young lady—” he began.

“You refused to go in swimming with Pa, though it must’ve been a hundred, so you could be with me. You did!”

“I can’t swim,” Karl said patiently. “I visited with your mother and sister as well.”

She dismissed that with a toss of her head. Karl held her away from him and looked into her face. “Lucy,” he said kindly, “you’re a lovely girl—a young woman—and I hope you are grown-up enough to forgive me for my behavior toward you; it wasn’t all that it should have been. You tickled the vanity of an old fool, is all. You are very young and there are things you won’t understand for many years. I’m very happy here, happy with things the way they are. Go on back to the house.”

“Her.” Lucy got right to the point.

“Yes. Sarah.”

“I don’t believe you! If it were true, you’d marry her.”

“Lucy!” A stern voice sounded in the darkness.

“It’s Ma,” the girl said breathlessly. “I have to go.” Quickly she pecked a chaste kiss on Karl’s cheek and turned to run to the house.

Mrs. Wells emerged into the glow of Karl’s single candle. “I thought I’d find you bothering Mr. Saunders.” She took her daughter firmly in hand. “I’m sorry about all this, Mr. Saunders. Last
week it was a lieutenant in the cavalry. And all she ever saw of him was his picture in the newspaper. It doesn’t take much when you’ve cotton between your ears instead of brains.” She gave Lucy a shake. “I’ve had about enough of you for one day.” Still lecturing, Mrs. Wells marched her eldest back to the house.

In the morning Lucy would not come down to breakfast, but pleaded illness. “She’s faking so she can stay and make eyes at Mr. Saunders,” the second Wells daughter declared.

“That’s enough out of you, miss,” her mother chided, but it was plain she was of the same opinion. Only Mr. Wells entertained any real anxiety over Lucy’s health. By the end of breakfast, Lucy had still not made an appearance and her mother was beginning to fume. Twice she’d started up the stairs to roust her daughter out, and twice Mr. Wells had insisted she give the girl more time.

The freighters were long gone, Coby and a sheepish-looking Karl had excused themselves to start the day’s work, and Sarah was brushing the crumbs from the tablecloth, when Mrs. Wells growled, “That’s it,” and rose abruptly from the table. “I’ve no time for this.”

“Mother, maybe she’s really sick.” Mr. Wells reached out to stop his wife, and she shot him a withering glance.

“This nonsense is as much your doing as hers, Lonny Wells. You let her get away with it. If I’d had my way, we’d be halfway to Fort Bidwell by now.”

“There’s going to be a scene,” Mr. Wells moaned, “and she’ll make herself sick if she’s not already. My little Lucy’s a strong-willed girl.”

“So’s your
big
Lucy,” his wife snapped.

Sarah looked up from her work. She hesitated for a moment, then spoke. “If it wouldn’t be interfering, I could talk to her,” she ventured. “I think I could help.”

“Fine by me.” Mrs. Wells sat down to finish her coffee.

Lucy was not in bed. She knelt by a window in her dressing gown, resting her elbows on the sill, watching two tiny figures on horseback out in the sage. Sarah slipped through the curtain without being heard, and sat down on the girl’s unmade bed. “Hello, Lucy, can we talk?”

Within half an hour, Miss Wells was dressed and downstairs, putting her overnight things in the wagon.

Coby and Karl rode in as the Wellses said their good-byes to Sarah. They dismounted to wish them well in Oregon and see them on their way. Lucy laid her hand on Karl’s arm and looked deep into his eyes. “Mrs. Ebbitt is very good,” she said, “and you are very brave.” With a good and brave smile, she let her father hand her into the wagon.

Mrs. Wells poked her head back through the canvas as the Conestoga rolled out of Round Hole. “What brought you around so sudden?” she demanded.

Lucy leaned close to her mother, making sure her little sister wouldn’t overhear. “Oh, Momma,” she whispered, “Mrs. Ebbitt told me poor Mr. Saunders was born less than a man—you know, from the waist
down
. Not like other men at all. She stays there with him so he won’t be alone. Isn’t that sad? She’s so good!”

Karl and Sarah stood together, watching the Wellses’ wagon roll off toward Oregon. “What got her out of bed?” Karl asked.

Sarah linked her arm through his and smiled. “I told her you weren’t man enough for the two of us.”

Karl laughed but said, “Be careful, Sarah.”

MATTHEW TURNED SIX AND GREW AN INCH. HE RANGED THROUGH
the sage for a mile in every direction, the coyote at his heels, and ate like there was no tomorrow. Sarah seemed to grow along with her son. As he bloomed in the high desert air, she stood straighter and laughed more often, and her skin took on a warm tone.

Matthew continued to call her Momma, and the delight never palled for her. Often when he would call from another room she would pause before she answered, waiting to hear him shout “Momma!” again. Every night, Sarah read him some of the letters she’d sent him during the long years they’d been apart. Now when she cried over them, the little boy would twine his arms around her neck and pet her cheek until she was comforted.

Coby settled into life at the stop without a hitch, quiet and reserved, with a low-key sense of humor. Sarah, the child, and Karl all provided a sense of home, and he was content to stay.

Karl didn’t seem to age at all; the white streaks at his temples might have been a little wider or the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes a little deeper. Some evenings, when Sarah was busy with her mending and Coby was whittling or playing solitaire by the fire, Karl gave Matthew his lessons, the two of them poring over the books brought from Reno. Karl would sit with his eyeglasses perched on his nose, the boy with his lips moving in painful con
centration as they unraveled the mysteries of the alphabet together.

Matthew had an agile mind and learned quickly. His imagination was active, and with Coby, who was almost a boy himself, he would sit spellbound by the hour while Sarah read aloud from
A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist
, and, by spring,
The Three Musketeers
. Matthew was so open and affectionate, so fearless in his play and cheerful about his chores, that it was a matter of concern when in late spring he grew cranky and sullen.

Sarah dumped the envelope of seeds into her palm and knelt by the neat rows she’d spent the morning hoeing. She’d shoveled manure and chopped straw for the garden and dug it under with a spade, but the desert earth turned up a pale, unpromising dusty brown. She pinched up a few seeds and was sprinkling them carefully along the furrow when her elbow was jostled and she spilled the lot.

“Matthew, that’s the third time you’ve bumped me. Stay back, you’re spoiling the garden.” He moved away a foot or so to crouch like an infant gargoyle on a row she’d already planted. “You’re on my lettuce. All the way back. Over there.” She pointed outside the garden fence. “If you want to watch, you can sit on that barrel. If you want to help, you’re going to have to go to the shed and get another trowel out of the toolbox like I told you.”

The boy watched her with round accusing eyes, his mouth pressed shut.

The anger went out of her for a moment and she dropped her hands in her lap. “What’s the matter with you lately, Mattie? Are you sick? Do you hurt anywhere?” She pulled off a glove and lay her hand on his brow. “You feel all right.” Matthew said nothing; his usually expressive face was still and the skin around his eyes dark and drawn. “You’re going to bed early tonight,” Sarah declared. “You’re so sleepy there’s circles under your eyes.”

“No.”

“Yes,” she insisted. “There’ll be no more about it.”

He didn’t argue but retreated to the barrel at a snail’s pace, scuffing his feet over her neatly turned rows. He sat there, immobile, while she finished the carrots and began on the onions. Moss Face trotted out from under the house to whine and bark for him to
come down and play, but when Matthew would only hold him too tight and pet him, he ran off again.

The sun was low in the sky and the afternoon had lost its warmth when Sarah took off her gardening gloves and smock and shook the dirt from her dress. “Half done. I’ll finish tomorrow. Coby and Karl ought to be getting in. We don’t own that many cows. Besides, it’ll be dark soon. Looks like we’ve company coming, too.” She squinted into the slanting light. “Freighters. The front one looks to be Jerome Jannis, doesn’t it?”

Matthew’s sharp eyes fixed on the distance. “It’s Mr. Jannis.”

“Then that must be Charley behind, eating dust. You’d almost think those two were yoked together.” She gathered up her tools. “Hon, would you run these over to the shed and put them away for me? I’d best get supper on the stove.”

An obstinate look came into his eyes and he wouldn’t look at her. Pushing his hands deep in his trouser pockets, he poked the toe of his shoe at an unfortunate beetle crawling by.

Sarah took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose. “Never mind. It’ll be faster to do it myself.” She dumped the trowel and gloves into her smock and gathered up the corners. Matthew ran after he as she hurried to the shed, and hovered by the door, anxious not to lose sight of her. “What’s got into you?” she said as she stumbled over him on her way out. He tagged behind her as she crossed the yard, following so close that he trod on her heels. With an exasperated sigh, she turned on him.

“Go on. Go play with Moss Face, air yourself off. The way you’ve been behaving lately, I can do without your help in the kitchen tonight.” Again the accusing look. “Go on now, you’re moping around. Run around some, maybe you’ll sleep better.” Still he hung about, never out of reach of her skirttail. She looked about for something to occupy him for a while.

“There.” She pointed to the eastern road. Karl and Coby rode half a mile out, coming into the stop from the opposite direction as the freightwagons. Shadows crossed the valley, black fingers reaching over the road and touching the mountains to the east.

“Run and meet Karl and Coby,” Sarah said to her son. “If you ask Karl nice, I bet he’ll give you a ride in.”

Matthew looked down the road. “It’ll be dark.” There was just the beginning of a whine in his voice, and it firmed Sarah’s resolution.

“Not if you run. Scoot!” She swatted his behind and he took off as if all the devils in hell were after him, calling, “Karl! Coby! Karl!” at the top of his lungs before he had run as far as the gate.

The riders and the freightwagons arrived at the stop within minutes of each other, and Karl and Coby helped with the unhitching.

Jerome and Charley had started driving mule and rig over the desert early in the year, and now made a regular run. Round Hole had seen them several times a month since February. Both were in their forties, redfaced, round headed, and thick through the neck and shoulders. Jerome did most of the talking for the two of them; Charley seemed to be happy with the role of straight man and audience. They were immensely strong: one night, on a bet, the two of them had lifted an eight-year-old mule and its rider. They’d turned as blackfaced as storm clouds, and their necks had grown even thicker and redder, but they’d done it.

Matthew hung around the men, getting in the way, until Coby lifted him up onto the boxes in the back of one of the wagons, where he wouldn’t get stepped on. When they started to the house without him, he cried out so frantically that Karl swatted his behind. “Don’t scream like that, Matthew. Not unless you are really hurt. It’s like the little boy who cried ‘Wolf.’ Remember that story? I will always come at a run when you scream, so will your mother and Coby.”

The younger man nodded. “If you’re not in trouble when I get there, you will be when I leave.” Coby smacked his fist into his palm, but there was no malice in it and it helped take the sting out of Karl’s lecture.

Sarah served the after-dinner coffee on the porch. It was a brisk spring night, the air fresh and sweet with the smell of sage, and the sky close with stars. Coby was indoors at the bar, writing a letter to his creditor in Elko. Karl, Jerome, and Charley sat with their chairs tilted back against the side of the house, their ankles propped on the porch rail, all in like postures. The wagoners smoked pipes, the bowls glowing orange when they drew on the tobacco.

Sarah handed the coffee cups to Karl and he passed them to the other men before she sat down on the top step and folded her hands around her own mug.

“Do you want me to get your shawl?” Karl offered.

“No thanks, Karl. I’m fine.”

Jerome winked at the exchange. “You’ll spoil ’er,” he warned.
He struck a match on the sole of his partner’s boot and grinned. Screwing up his face, one eye completely closed, he sucked the flame into the pipe. The light showed Matthew hunched, small in the corner, almost under Charley’s chair. He was hugging his knees, listening to the talk. The pointed snout of the coyote protruded from behind him, his neckerchief red in the sudden light.

Sarah’s eye caught her son’s. “Isn’t it time somebody was doing his chores?”

Matthew curled down smaller and busied himself with rescuing the dog’s tail: Moss Face had swished it precariously near the spot where Charley’s chair leg was bound to come crashing down eventually.

“Matthew,” Sarah said in her high-priority tone. “Get those plates scraped. It’ll only take you a minute, and Moss Face would probably appreciate the leavings. Go on now, honey.”

“I want to stay,” Matthew said in a voice meant to be too low to be heard.

“Go on now.”

With agonizing slowness, the child uncurled himself and crawled under the propped-up legs of the men. He crept all the way out, flat on his belly, and lay still, gazing out through the bars into the stars-pricked darkness.

“Matthew, I’m going to get mad in half a minute if you don’t get a move on.” Sarah rapped the wood with her knuckles.

“Mrs. Ebbitt,” Matthew muttered peevishly under his breath.

It was not so low it didn’t reach Karl’s ears, poised as he was above the boy. His chair slammed down and he planted one foot on either side of the prone child. “That does it.” He lifted Matthew and strode into the house.

Sarah maintained her seat on the steps, but winced every time the crack of Karl’s hand on her son’s bare bottom sounded through the open door. Several minutes later, Karl reemerged.

“Did you send him to bed?” she asked.

“No. He’s scraping plates.”

Sarah met and held Karl’s eyes for a moment until, conscious of the wagoners’ attention, she went on to talk of other things.

Later, Karl helped Sarah with the dishes, a habit he maintained despite the ribbing he got. His sleeves rolled up, he scrubbed the bottom of a cast-iron kettle while Sarah dried the crockery and put
it away. They had been worrying the subject of Matthew’s sullenness all through the clean-up.

“Where is he?” Karl asked. “Is he still sulking over his spanking?”

Sarah hung a cup on one of the nails over the kitchen counter. “I imagine he’s probably out with Jerome and Charley. Whenever they’re through here lately, he can’t leave them alone. He loves listening to the men. He’s getting to be quite a little man himself. Did you ever notice him copying you? The way you walk? Sometimes he’ll walk beside you all straight and long-stepping, just like you do.”

Karl laughed, pleased. “He’d better not pattern himself on me.”

“Why not? You turned out to be a fine man.”

Karl answered her with a wry smile.

“Speaking of you, tomorrow’s the coach from Bishop. Ross’ll be driving, so you better plan to be somewhere else.”

“I’m tired of leaving you when the old-timers come through.”

“I know. I’m okay here. We’ve got Coby now, and he’s a worker.”

“I’ll go over to Fish Springs Ranch. I’ve been meaning to look at a couple of bulls that Ernie Fex has, anyway. I’ve learned a lot about cattle from Coby and from the books we ordered. I think I know what to look for. I’d like to try to improve our herd. What do you think?”

“It never cost anything to look.” Finished drying, she draped her dishcloth through the oven-door handle. “Do you think he’s coming down with something? He’s a good boy. I don’t know what’s eating at him. I’ve tried to talk to him but he clams up. Two nights this week he woke me, crying—nightmares about the most awful things. Graves opening and the dead bodies coming out. Fever’ll sometimes bring on bad dreams, but he never felt warm or anything.”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if he outgrows it.” Karl heaved the kettle onto the still-warm stove and swabbed it out with a towel so it wouldn’t rust. “I’d better be getting to bed. Good night.”

Sarah took his hand and laid it against her cheek. The scarred palm was rough and familiar. “Tell Jerome and Charley good night for me. Their beds are made up and there are candles on the bar. And will you send Matthew in? It’s past time he was in bed.”

The porch was bathed in the clear, ghostly glow of a desert moon, just risen, hanging flat and white over the mountains.

“Oooooooo…” A high round sound, eerie in the night. “They claw their way up through the dirt first. Their fingers all cloudy-like from digging. See, they wasn’t buried proper and their chief, he wouldn’t let the medicine man do his mumbo-jumbo over the grave. And so late at night they come pushing up out of the dirt and look for the folks that let them be buried like that without them death rites.”

Jerome sat back in his chair and winked broadly at Charley. Matthew, his eyes seeming to take up all of his face, perched in Karl’s chair, leaning forward.

“What do they do?” Matthew looked nervously into the darkness beyond the porch railing and scrunched unobtrusively closer to Jerome. “When they catch them, I mean.”

Jerome feigned indifference. “Catch who?”