These Is My Words (50 page)

May 29, 1895

We have just had a telegram from Chess that Jack’s sister Penelope’s husband has died. She has written his Pa and begged him and Jack to come to help her set things right and she is afraid of dealing with the lawyers. So he is headed off to Mississippi and will be gone four or five weeks. While he is gone I want to take the children to the ranch, and he will join us there for a while when he is back in the Territory. It is roundup time, and these children have only seen two other roundups since they were old enough to watch. Now they are big enough to help and it will be good lessons in hard work and square living for them. I think we might stay all summer, depending on the weather.

May 31, 1895

Dear Jack. We leave tomorrow morning, and he will be on the one o’clock train east. He said last night he misses us already, and the whole family went for a buggy ride up the foothills of the Catalinas to watch the sun set over the Tucson Mountains. There is a pretty stream, all brushy and rocky nearby, with so many colored birds like little pieces of broken rainbows flitting through the branches and singing at the top of their lungs. It is a fine sight, to see the grand rocky heights around us turn violet and many shades of orange and yellow, and then the sky go from turquoise to yellow, to dark violet, to indigo. Stars start to come out even before the last light is gone.

The boys started poking each other in the back seat and wrestling. They were purely bored with the scenery. Jack held my hand.

Remember, I told him, to keep your feet dry and eat plenty. Take that lung medicine with you.

Sarah, he says, it isn’t like I’m some old codger you have to coddle.

Well, I told him, I want you healthy, to be sure that someday you are.

He just smiled at me and put his arms around me. Then, right in front of the children, in the reflected orange light off the mountain, he put his hands on my face and kissed me hard.

The boys howled.

April whispered Hush, hush, you two knot-heads, to them.

I could hear this while we kissed, and Jack held me close, and I just felt like I melted into his chest.

I love you, Mrs. Elliot, Jack said out loud.

The boys giggled and twittered.

Oh, Mother, April said, exasperated.

I love you, too, Captain Elliot, I said. Fine example you’re setting for our children, though.

Yes, indeed, he said. I want them to know that I love you and just how much, too. And that I don’t leave you because that feeling’s not there, but I stay alive because it is. Will you pack up my saddle bags for me?

Yes, I said, as long as you will promise to bring them back.

He just looked at me funny, kind of sideways, and chucked the reins. The children were quiet as mice all the way home.

July 16, 1895

Jack has returned from Mississippi, and he will be here at the ranch for two more days, then he is going back to Tucson to take over his job again. It is a bad season for fires, what with the near drought conditions and the promise of several more dry lightning storms before the rains come. Everything is settled for his older sister. She refused to return to Texas to live with Chess, apparently she is too much a part of her surroundings in Mississippi to leave.

All the boys play together like there is no tomorrow. It is fun to watch Charlie and Gilbert and Clover and Joshua riding horses, running races, catching a ball and practicing throwing lariats and all. Today Charlie begged and begged Jack to show him how to draw a sword, and Charlie managed to cut the palm of his left hand right away. I think it needs stitches in it, but Jack said no. He has taped Charlie’s hand with adhesive tape, and he is helping him hold the sword in his right hand. It is almost noon and they are still at it. I told them when the cousins come over to find something else to do, as I will not be the one to try to explain to Savannah why her boys are being taught swordplay in my front yard. Her convictions about fighting and violence seem to be tempered with common sense too, but I know she would draw the line at something like that.

Rachel and Rebeccah and April are trés amigas, and scamper about just as rowdy as the boys sometimes. Savannah and I have made a pact to teach them some manners and gentility if it is the last thing we do. Often the passel of ours and Albert and Savannah’s children runs from our house to theirs on one mission or another the whole day through. When night falls, they barely get through dinner and fall asleep just as hard as they have played. Sometimes the littlest ones have actually drifted to sleep and nodded right into their plates.

As I hang wet clothes on the line, April is patching holes in the boys’ pant legs for me with a gift Jack has brought, a sewing machine. It is a wonder. You have to put a little wound up thread shuttle underneath, and a spool on top on a peg, and then with a flick of your foot, it will just whip that needle up and down. I am fretting every second she will get her fingers too close to the needle, but she promised she will go very slowly, and is a bit afraid of it, also, so I must trust it to her. It is a hard thing to let your children near danger, and yet, I remember my Papa teaching me to fire a rifle before I could even hold it with my own strength. And if he hadn’t trusted me to be careful, I would have never had faith in myself to do it.

It is no wonder my Mama’s hair was gray before her children were grown. Every time I hear that saber clear the scabbard and that sewing treadle go around, I feel my heart speed up.

January 22, 1896

A letter has come for Jack, inviting him back in the Army as a post commander up in Wyoming. Jack looked at the letter a while and studied it carefully before he told me about it, and then he watched me like a hawk on a mouse. Well, I said, do you have a mind to go?

No, he said.

Well, do you know much about Wyoming? What kind of life would there be for the children? Is there a school? Did you ever go there?

No, no, he said again. I don’t know much except that it is more wilderness and rough living. And taller trees, he added.

They’re offering you a fine salary, I said, watching him. You’re considering it?

Jack just laughed, and said, That’s how I know you are teasing, Sarah. Anything the Army could offer is just fiddling in the wind next to the cattle ranch and the life we have here.

Well, he assures me the thought never crosses his mind, but I know part of Jack will always miss the Army. He is happy here, but it is not the same, and yet it is not as if you can turn back time, either. I have wished for that to happen, myself, and I know we just have to go on. Still, he gets up every morning at reveille, even when we can’t hear the bugle at the fort clearly.

March 10, 1900

Can it really be four years since I have had time to write? Each month spins past until it becomes a year without my knowing, and though I used to feel that my journal kept me going, lately I just can’t bear the thought of writing in it. Mama said it’s probably because of Suzanne, and that you are never the same after a child dies. That made me wonder what she was like before Clover died, because I don’t think I really knew my own mother until I had children, and if she was different before, I don’t remember it.

Our children are growing quickly and no more have been added to our family. After the one I lost, there was never another, even though we both wanted more and tried so hard. I spend a lot of time helping with the children’s schoolwork. Mostly our lives seem pretty ordinary and all the tumult of our early marriage is gone.

Jack stays in town all day. Rusty stays by his side. He is more Jack’s dog than mine, and even more than Toobuddy ever was. Every time they answer a fire call, there is Rusty right up there between Jack’s legs, grinning his sparkly eyed dog grin, excited to go to the fire. Jack spends a lot of time organizing his team of firemen. He has taken to attending Town Hall meetings and speaking out, and folks respect his words. Jack has a fine reputation from his days as a soldier, and he is thought of as a hero by many people. They all tell him to run for Representative or Senator or some other office and promise they will vote for him. Then at home he tells me he thinks they are crazy.

In the evenings folks like to stroll down the sidewalks and pay calls. So we have our share of company, but it is always the same thing, little words about the weather and the health of the children, and what do we think of the statehood issue. Then there is lemonade or tea, and they go on their way and tell each other my house needed dusting or sweeping.

March 11, 1900

Had a letter from Ernest this morning. He writes pretty regularly, every month or so, although I have not seen hide nor hair of him since Thanksgiving four years ago. He says that before Christmas, Felicity was feeling poorly, and went to visit her sister in a city called Marionville, to take the air. Poor Ernest. He just doesn’t see the truth of that woman. This letter says she is also having some female problems and has been to several doctors, and then he has her address and wants me to write to her. I suppose for the sake of my brother, I will, but it is a sorry thing to see him hooked up with her. At any rate, I will send her a letter this afternoon, and tell her to try some castor oil and to eat plenty of liver. I think I will also remind her of the hot summers and the tarantulas and snakes and outlaws hereabouts, lest she get the idea of visiting me again. I prefer her to take the air wherever Marionville is, than to suck it dry here in Tucson. I hope she is at least being good to Ernest. I read his letter over and over, and I wonder if it could be that he finally knows what Felicity is, but can’t bring himself to admit it to me. My, that is a mixed up stew if I ever saw one.

March 12, 1900

Savannah and her precious brood came to town today. With the new baby, Zachary, that makes eight of them. What a joy. My children were sorry they had to spend the day at school, but they took their older cousins with them, and so it was not too bad. I kept the younger ones, Mary Pearl, Esther, Mark, and the baby, so Savannah could visit Ulyssa for a little while.

Then we talked until late. After supper, Jack was set upon by all the children, begging for stories and some tall tales he is so good at telling. Some of them really happened, but parts are stretched out so the truth is hard to find. I know the real stories behind some of them, and it makes me smile to hear the yarns he can spin. While he entertained the bunch, Savannah and I made up pallets and beds for all the children in the upstairs bedrooms, and then filed them in two at a time for baths until we got to the bigger ones. Then they moved the story telling up to the bedroom. Finally, all was quiet except for the sound of Jack’s deep voice, and now and then the children laughing or moaning or somehow responding to his story. Savannah and I had coffee in the kitchen while she nursed Zachary and we laughed at his noisy suckling.

Ulyssa is better, she said, and is able to be out on the grounds of the asylum. And she has had a letter from Louisianna that she and her new husband have bought a farm near a little town in Texas called Lubbock. Savannah had a daguerreotype of their wedding day she showed me. Louisianna was a grown woman. I would never have known her if I met her face to face. Her husband is a homely fellow, thick set and whiskery, but she says he is gentle and quiet, said Savannah.

Then Jack came in and said his audience had fallen asleep. He took little Zachary from Savannah, and went and rocked him in the rocking chair in the parlor.

Savannah smiled at me and took my hand. Jack is a good father, isn’t he, Sarah, she said.

Pretty good, I said. A little hard to hang on to, but pretty good, I said. Albert is too, of course.

Oh, certainly, said Savannah. But Albert is calm and just always there. Jack has this kind of desperateness about him, like he needs you and the children very much.

I just smiled at that and set some cream on the table. I suppose that’s one way to put it. Savannah, I said, I keep wishing we’d have another baby, but it just isn’t happening. For a while I didn’t really want it, but now I do. Do you know anything I can do?

She looked into her cup. Not really, she said. But I’ll pray for you to conceive. It seems all I have to do is begin to fit into my old clothes, and there I am swelling again. I’m a bit tired of it, actually.

Well, I said, you just have to quit having them.

Sarah, said Savannah, kind of wound up and embarrassed sounding.

Well, you know, I told her. That’s how I kept from having a child every year at first. Do you know what I mean?

I don’t think so, she said.

I looked at Savannah all red-faced and nearly ashamed, and wished with all my heart I could say the words that would help her not have so many babies, but I just couldn’t. How could I say those things that even Jack and I never put into words? I don’t know how he knew them, either. Savannah, I said, and took a real deep breath, Lean up here close. And then I put my mouth next to her ear and closed my eyes tight and told her everything I knew.

I started with, Tomorrow you go by the druggist’s on your way out of town and ask him for the Lady’s Preventative, and you will have to get a new one every six months or so, because they wear down. I found out that’s how Gilbert came when we weren’t planning. Then I told her how to use it.

I could never do it, Savannah whispered.

Do what? I said.

Ask for it, she said.

So I told her I’d go with her and I’d buy it. And, I said, it comes in a brown paper parcel, no bigger than an oatmeal cookie. It’s not fool proof, but half a chance is better than none. Then I told her sometimes Jack and I just hold each other instead.

Savannah clapped her hand over her mouth at that and looked shocked. Isn’t it strange, she said, how the table has turned? Do you remember when you asked me what you had to count on the ceiling? She smiled and cried, together.

Then we both cried. Then we both laughed, sort of scared and red-faced, but glad. Then Jack came in the kitchen and said Zachary was asleep in the crib he had put up in the parlor, and we women could gossip all night but he was going to turn in. Well, Savannah jumped up from the table and went to clatter around at the stove and couldn’t look at him, but said goodnight over her shoulder. When he was gone she rushed back to my side and kissed my cheek and smiled.