The Star Garden

  “Can’t stand pussyfootin’ around when there’s a thing to be said.” We were quiet for a long while. My heart quivered with pain. Sometimes I wondered why it kept beating at all, it hurt so deeply, so often.

  He said, “Anything I can bring? I’ll be passing through town coming back.”

  “Sugar. That pie was the last of it and Granny likes it. Udell, do you think that’s all it comes down to, in the end? That a person is only the money they leave behind? How much or how little, that’s all there is?”

  “That your impression of what I’m doing?”

  “Someone else brought up the subject earlier. Never thought of my mama as a cipher.” I winced at my impatience with her.

  “I believe your mama is richer than Solomon. She’s got you. What I don’t have is working cash to build me a farm.”

  My throat grew tight. I said, “I wish you knew her before she got so addled.”

  A smile worked its way around Udell’s mouth. He reached for my hand again and this time I gave it to him. “I am mightily fond of you, Mrs. Elliot,” Udell whispered.

  I sipped the last of my coffee, then said, “It’s awful late to get home. You could take Charlie’s bed since he’s gone.” As if heaven conspired to make my point, a distant clap of thunder announced a light rainfall. “Granny’s a light sleeper,” I added.

  Udell leaned toward me and placed a tiny, light kiss on my lips. In that small touch, so much more than the passionate one before, I could feel the stubble on his cheek in need of a fresh shave. I inhaled the smell of his skin mixed with coffee and a hint of soap and a faint whiff of sweat; the smell of a man. It would be a hard contest to decide which kiss I enjoyed more.

  He went to tend his horse while I banked the coals in the stove and refilled the kettle so the steam would heat the room through the night. I carried coals in the scuttle to start Granny’s bedroom stove along with the ones in my room and Charlie’s. I set extra wood by Charlie’s stove, too, and turned up the lamp in there.

  As I carried a last lamp to my room, Udell came in from outside. From the hallway, I watched him hang his damp hat and coat, watched him reach the doorway to Charlie’s room, hands outstretched in the near dark. He was only a shadow with the light behind him. “Good night, Mr. Hanna,” I whispered.

  I saw him turn from the open bedroom door. He said, “Sweet dreams, to you, Mrs. Elliot.”

  Neither of us took a step. The lamp grew heavier in my hands until I feared I’d drop it. We stood like statues, in the doorways of two rooms so far from each other he might as well already be in Denver. The lamplight sparkled in his eyes.

  Come to me. Rush across this cold floor and take me in your arms. If I take one step would I fly wantonly to you? Would you be repulsed by such a show of vulgar desire? Or would you run to meet me, pinning me against the wall with passionate caresses? The house was empty except for Granny snoring soundly behind a heavy door at the end bedroom. My feet took root. We stayed there, watching each other in the shadows.

  At last, he crossed his arms, sighed deeply, and said, “Good night, Mrs. Elliot.”

  “Good night, Mr. Hanna.” I slipped into my room, set the lamp on the table, and inched the door into place without making a sound. Only then did I begin to breathe. From my bed, for a long, long time, I listened to the fire whisper behind the grate in the stove and watched the door, wondering if it would open.

  But Udell Hanna was a gentleman. Next time I saw him was breakfast.

  Udell left early and came back riding his dun horse and pulling a pack mule. He said farewell quickly and rode off. As he vanished over the horizon toward town I couldn’t keep from my mind all the men I’ve seen ride away from me in that direction. No one remained at my place but me and my mama, now. Nothing I could ever do pulled them back, made them stay. My insides filled with a darkness I couldn’t name, watching his packhorse finally drop out of sight. I figured I’d never see the man again. It was that easy to lose someone in the Territory. Same way he’d come across that hill last fall, looking more or less concerned and bringing my brother Ernest’s remains home from San Juan, here he was leaving, not seeming too concerned about that, either. I decided right then I couldn’t figure that man any more than I could figure the other ones around me, so I left off trying.

  Gilbert came home that afternoon with a grin on his face and the buttons I needed. Chess said nothing to me of the girl in question. Over the next days, I set about finishing the shirts and pinafores I had cut for all my family. Chess all but disappeared into his workshop in the barn, where he, too, worked long hours, probably at the same motive I had, to make some token gifts for our loved ones.

  Granny and I worked side by side until we no longer felt like two lost spoons in a box. Hazy clouds kept the house dark; though I lit lamps, nothing seemed to brighten the daylight. Hour upon hour, my ankles ached from making that sewing machine dash through the cloth. My backside felt like it took root to the chair. It was worse than riding roundup—at least a saddle is shaped something like a person’s behind. Granny said she’d make the buttonholes for me, and for that I surely was thankful.

  Mary Pearl spent two days helping me wash and iron the boys’ new shirts. With her here, Aubrey stayed underfoot. But still no word from Charlie. I worked extra hard on his shirt, and gave him two pockets instead of one, and did his buttonholes up myself, in hopes I’d see him wearing them.

  At last, when I had all my gifts starched, ironed, and neatly folded in packets tied with string, I stacked them all in the traveling chest I keep at the foot of my bed. With a sigh, I put Udell’s gift, the spirit level, in, also. At first I laid it on top, but it was heavy enough to wrinkle the crisp shirts, so I pushed it down the side, burrowing it under my quilt scraps at the bottom where it, and my heart, would wait for his return.

  Chapter Six

  December 23, 1906

  The morning dawned clear and brittle, one of those so cold I have to break the ice on the troughs and watering pans for my critters. I put Udell from my mind as if he’d never existed. Savannah came after her morning chores with five pounds of sugar and a jug of fresh cream, and we are trying our hands at making taffy candies from an old receipt she found in a newspaper long ago. She came upon it yesterday after going through a trunk, and we are having a fine time. We are set up in my kitchen for some long boiling and stirring of sugar syrup. Then we plan to get everyone in for some pulling.

  Ezra, Zack, the big boys, and Albert have put Christmas trees made out of cholla skeletons up in their house and mine, and they are stringing popcorn and dried chilies on the branches right now in the parlor. It will be a fancy Christmas tree, but I wonder if old Saint Nick will know it, as it sure doesn’t look piney. At any rate, we have a new pup, and he was getting a good sniff at the thing, yapping at it and strutting around as if it were some danger he was guarding. Buttons is a spotted fellow, all mottled up like no dog I ever saw, some kind of breed mixed with sassafras and tumbleweeds and no telling what. When Albert got him in November and held him up to see if he was a girl or not, on his chest were three black “buttons” like he had on a waistcoat. Well, Albert meant to keep him for a yard dog, but Buttons ambled over here one day and just took up residence, so now he’s my dog.

  By the time we got the boys worn out pulling taffy, we had talked about our children and our dogs, our distant loved ones and those long dead, our woes and our hopes. We had crossed every bridge of our lives more than once. Then we set about cutting the taffy in bits to cure. While Savannah and I washed up, Granny wrapped each piece in white paper that she oiled with clean lard. Savannah told me all that was wrong yesterday was a touch of the melancholy, and not the change Granny was talking about, because nothing had changed. Granny just stared hard at her and went on wrapping candy.

  I ran water in one of the pans that was still coated with sugar cooked on, and let my dogs drink it. Nothing here is overfat, so it won’t hurt them to have a treat, I reckon. Old, crippled-up Nip and Shiner took
their drinks, now and then letting little Buttons in for a taste. After he’d had a good drink, I sent him outside with the other dogs. Then Savannah and Albert’s family went on home so everyone could get on with their afternoon chores.

  December 24, 1906

  It’s Christmas Eve and I declare, I feel purely childish and pouty about Udell being gone. Still no sign of Charlie, either. What law puts a star on a boy’s chest and a gun on his side and sends him away from home on Christmas? I took Charlie’s new shirt out of the stack of others I’d made and ironed it again under white paper, carefully refolding it. Then I put on Charlie’s old coat and went to the barn. Gil was out there helping Chess, so I hollered to them that I was going hunting, pulled Baldy to the post and saddled him. He snuffled at my pocket, hoping for sugar. I gave him an apple, and while he ate, I went and petted my colt Hunter and the old horses I keep inside. Rose has been with me many a year, and she was happy to see me, murmuring and tapping her feet. I left her an apple, too.

  With both the .410 and the rifle, I rode north of the house on a long curved path that leads to Albert and Savannah’s place. I veered off the trail toward the sandy cliff where the stage had turned. Its hulk was gone now, dragged up and salvaged for the hardware sometime while I wasn’t paying attention. The Cienega was running and a red bird flickered out of the bosque. It called and seemed to be dancing in the sunlight. Finches twittered nearby, too, and the birds were having a Christmas feast. I pushed Baldy through the water at a shallows and we climbed the backside of the hill. I could hear quail and doves, too, hoping to get a covey so a single shot would bring down enough for dinner.

  Farther on I turned back toward the creek, and then I got down to look at the ground. Deer track led through some fine gravel and I followed them on foot a good distance. I reckoned there were at least three. Where the trail turned back down into the thick of the bosque, I stopped to see which side of the wind I was on before going after them. I picked my steps carefully, remembering how Jack used to tease me about being able to sneak up on an Indian scout. I carried both the weapons, in case I needed them.

  In a clearing no bigger than a bathtub, a buck and two does nuzzled at new grass. The buck was young but husky, and one doe had swelled as if she were in foal. The other female was middle-sized and slender, perfect for several meals, but she ambled around with her tail toward me so I didn’t have a decent shot.

  I laid the .410 on the ground and pulled the rifle up, working the cartridge in slowly, not to make any noise. The deer kept on eating. There was no way I could move to either side without rustling the brush, so I waited, hoping she’d nibble around and turn. The other two were good shots, as if they were posing for me, but I didn’t want to leave the does unprotected, nor take the foaling one. After a good long bit, I heard a flutter in the brush to my left, and I re-sighted, hoping the herd would move.

  Well, like they do sometimes, a great commotion of dove and quail rose up at once, a squawking, wing-beating riot of feathers, scared by some whim. They flew between me and the deer, all three of which went in different directions. The doe I wanted got wide-eyed and darted forward, then turned on a nickel and sprang to the right five feet in the air over the brambles that enclosed them. I squeezed the trigger but she kept on going. The other two vanished.

  I headed after my supper through the ironwood thorns, catching my skirt wickedly in the brush, and then came upon the animal, stone dead, six feet from where it jumped. I was glad it had been a clean shot, but when I looked around and saw where the animal landed, I knew it was going to be a piece of work to get our Christmas dinner off this hill and home.

  It took me three hours to get the animal field-dressed and tied onto Baldy so it wouldn’t fall off. And on the way back through the Cienega, I flushed out another mixed covey and fired two shotgun blasts quick enough to bring down nine birds. I’d make a good pot of greens to go with them and hang the deer for us to have later. Now I could go to Rudolfo’s shindig with food in hand, not “begging at the castle,” as Rebeccah had said. That red bird peeked at me as I collected the game birds. The pretty red one quit singing, watching suspiciously as I tied the quail feet with twine. I told it I’d never eat a red bird.

  On the way back to the house I came across a mule wearing a collar and dragging a piece of rigging. It was one of the team from the stage wreck. He wouldn’t let me catch him at first, but I drove him ahead of us and then caught his tether and tied him to my saddle, too. He pulled a bit but then quit, maybe remembering that people meant hay and water. We may never find the other, but I’ll take this one to town and hand it over to the Wells Fargo, next time we go. It was a good Christmas Eve. All I needed then was my Charlie to come home. And Udell. But I determined with all my strength not to think about him.

  Chess helped me hang the deer and he and Gilbert worked at doing the rest of it. Aubrey decided he’d watch from afar; he didn’t have much stomach for cleaning a deer. Chess is going to put it on a spit and start the fire right away so we’ll have it tomorrow. While they were busy with that, Mary Pearl and I fixed up a row of pie tins and we cooked up those quail for tonight. Granny had started a pot of beans going this morning, with three marrow bones. She got into the kitchen too, and fixed up the crust all fancy with pinched edges. Each one of us got a bath while the beans and pies baked, then they’d call me and I’d take out the pies while the next person filled the tub. By the time it was my turn, we had six steaming pies on the table and the sun was down.

  I wore my best new dress. It’s a fine black skirt and shirtwaist in a new style, with a lavender blouse and a hat that matches. It makes me sad to see it, though. Fine as it is, it was made for me by April’s seamstress, on the occasion of my nephew Willie’s trial for rustling and murder. I pushed each of the thirty tiny buttons through their holes, thinking of that day. I set Willie’s memory aside, with all the other hurts of my life, and took a deep breath. I tried to remember what Udell had said, about how going toward the future was better than just leaving the past behind. I couldn’t see much difference in the two, especially when everyone’s future seemed to be taking place somewhere else.

  I let out a long breath and looked in the mirror. I wished I could go to Rudolfo’s place looking like I had some sand and vinegar in me. I felt low on both supplies. My hair was an ordinary brown color with no curl except for a wave where my hat presses. Even fresh-washed, it has no shape but the braids I put in it. April does hers with curling irons, but I hadn’t got one and I’d probably burn myself bald if I did. Savannah buns her hair at the back of her neck, but the new way to wear it is with a rolled cushion of hair around the face, and some ladies carry that as big as they can get it, but that took hair rats and combs I didn’t own, either. What I could manage was to braid it, raise it up tight and slack off a bit, then tie it pretty much like I always had. I got it pinned up about the time Chess went out to load the buggy, put my dressy hat on and ran the pin through, hoping that at least in Rudolfo’s sitting room, it would pass for a nice run-up.

  Granny opened my bedroom door, and said, “They’re here. Get the shotgun.”

  “Who, Mama?”

  “Maldonado’s outlaws.”

  “He sent a buggy. Aren’t you going to wear your other dress?” I asked.

  “I’m going to sit here with a pistol and wait on you to get home.”

  “Mama,” I started. If she didn’t go, one of us would have to stay here with her. I wouldn’t leave her alone on Christmas Eve, even for a couple of hours. I looked in the mirror again. What was I doing all this for? I didn’t owe Rudolfo the pleasure of my company. I’d much rather serve up those beans to my own kin and enjoy our spare bounty. There was a knock at the front door and I heard Gilbert greet someone.

  I heard the voices of Albert and his family, and then a tapping at my bedroom door. Savannah came in looking fresh-pressed and fine. But when she found out Granny wanted to stay home, Savannah said, “I’ll keep Granny company. You take my pecan cake and go t
o the dinner.”

  Well, it wasn’t much later that I headed down the road in one of Rudolfo’s fine carriages, accompanied by Mary Pearl and Aubrey, Albert, Gilbert, Ezra and Zachary. Chess, Granny, and Savannah stayed at my house. We divided up the beans and quail pies before we left so they’d have some supper, although Savannah said it wouldn’t do to send a cake that had been cut, so it was offered up whole for the feast.

  I can’t say I expected what we found at Rudolfo’s hacienda. I never saw such a spectacle. The yard was strung with trails of candles nodding in the breeze, and lanterns hung from every post and beam. Guitarristas played melodies continually, crooning songs I’d never heard before, most of them in Spanish but with accents I hadn’t known in these parts, like the musicians were from somewhere far south of here.

  Inside, every corner of every wall was draped with festoons in bright colors. Candles glittered on every table, so thick that the air hung with heavy smoke and the smell of wax was dense enough to taste. Men smoking cigars gathered in the main hall, a room not unlike my own new parlor, and I saw again how Rudolfo had been a major factor in building that house for me, how like his house mine was. No duty-bound wife greeted us, though. Leta was hiding in her room, I reckoned, banished for the crime of being swollen with child.

  Rudolfo introduced us all around to several gentlemen wearing fancy finery and gold lapel pins, even neck ribbons hung with gold medals like army citations. They stood and kissed Mary Pearl’s and my hands. These fellows all looked too alike to miss that they were a breed apart from me and my kin. We had indeed come as country peons to the nobility’s feast. They nodded and smiled at each other with an air like they were a string of Thoroughbreds forced to welcome a boxcarload of hacks.

  There was a priest there, a padre I didn’t know, though I thought I knew all of them in these parts. He gave me a cold shiver when he shook my hand rather than kiss my fingers like the others. His eyes had no more feeling in them than if I’d been a sack of flour.