The Star Garden

  We took the long way around where the footing was firm. There we found Mr. B, whose real name was Bennecelli, nearly half a mile from where the stage had tipped over. None of the passengers said they’d heard Mr. Bennecelli fall, and they hadn’t noticed any change in the ride. There was not a mark on him except for a few light scratches that we could lay toward him having tumbled from atop the stage. For all I could tell, he’d died in his seat. And there should have been a man riding beside him. Fairhaven had said Mr. B had acted surly and drunk, but he’s one of the nicest fellows around, so if he’d acted sour to those folks, he must have been sick. He didn’t smell like drink, and I’d never known the man to touch liquor. I figured he must have tied off the reins and the mules, trained as they were not to stop for fear of highway robbers and Indians, and the animals never knew they were driverless. They’d continued in a fairly straight path, too, missing the bend in the road where it goes north by my mama’s place.

  Mr. Bennecelli used to sing fancy Italian songs he knew from his home across the ocean. I think he liked that I took the trouble to say his name proper instead of calling him B the way some folks did. He was fairly stout, too. Baldy wouldn’t carry two and none of these were in any shape to haul him. It was a sad thing to leave the man crumpled in the dirt like a tossed-out blanket.

  I pointed in the direction of my house. I said, “Yonder it is. You all can rest at my place for the night. Then we’ll see to your belongings and getting you to town.”

  My house was already fairly crowded with folks, despite that it’s a nearly new house with eleven full rooms. My mama lives there, too. She goes by Granny to most everyone around. Then there’s my youngest boy, Gilbert, and my father-in-law, Chess, who’s been here since my husband died some years back. My little brother, Harland, and his four children have lived with us since his wife died of cancer in Chicago this last fall. My oldest boy, Charlie, is a lawman for the Arizona Rangers and last I heard he was up in Holbrook. At least he’s a Ranger until he gets back, for the talk around town last week was that they’d disband by the end of the year. Maybe then he’ll see fit to return to school and set an example for his younger brother. We reached the yard. Gilbert was out by the chicken coop with the kettle and a bag to catch feathers, skinning some game birds.

  “How many’d you get?” I called.

  Gil looked up, and a minute passed while he took in the parade I was leading. Finally he spoke as if it were the most natural sight, and he knew I’d explain by and by. He said, “Fifteen. Grampa is already peeling potatoes.” He looked back over his shoulder at some hens pecking in the chicken yard. “I think Brownie looks like she wants to set some eggs. I put a couple more under her and turned the nesting tub over. You bring home some company?”

  “Stagecoach wrecked,” I said. “These folks were inside. Mr. Bennecelli’s dead.” The passengers stood shivering in the wind while I was all but glowing from all the work I’d done wearing this heavy coat. I handed Gilbert my string of birds. “When you get cleaned up, go ahead and start them cooking with some salt if there’s any left.”

  I led the strangers into the parlor, stoked up the fire in there good and hot, and told them to rest, and that I’d bring them coffee soon as I could.

  My father-in-law, Chess, was cutting up carrots for the stew, and with a scowl on his face he went back over the ones he’d just cut and diced them up finer, making a regular rhythm like a clock. “We don’t need more mouths to feed,” he said. “For once I thought we’d have enough supper.”

  “I know it.” I also knew Chess had been cutting his own helpings pretty small. The man was looking drawn and old. We’d been living on our hunting and the remnants of last summer’s canned goods for a month, and winter hadn’t even set in good, yet. “I’m going back up the hill to fetch Mr. Bennecelli.”

  “Hurt bad?”

  “Passed on.”

  Chess stopped his angry chopping. “You’ll need help.”

  “I was going to ask Gilbert.”

  Chess held the knife before him, staring down at the hilt. His hands trembled all the time now, and I saw his fingers whiten against the wooden handle before he said, “I’ll go along.”

  “Chess, I’d rather you stay and sort out the company. The older gent there, Dr. Osterhaas, says his arm’s bad. Might be broken. You look after him.”

  Chess said, “Harland can see to that.” He pushed the vegetables into a pile, laying the knife atop the mound. “Blessing!”

  Harland’s little girl, my niece, was but five years old, born the day after my thirty-eighth birthday. Blessing came into the room carrying the rag doll Granny had made for her. I was right fond of the child. And I never ceased to wonder at Providence for bringing her to this house, for I’d never have known her or her three older brothers had not the earthquake destroyed Harland’s architecture practice in San Francisco last spring, and the cancer destroyed his wife this fall. Blessing carried her bundle as if it were a live baby. With all the consternation of a new mother, she put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Grampa Chess, Molly is sleeping.”

  Her words drowned out his foul mood like water on a fire. “Blessing, my blessing,” Chess said, “you put your baby down now and cut up these potatoes. Cut ‘em real small, we’ve got to spread the gravy thin tonight.”

  “Poppy says there’d be more ‘tatoes if Aunty Sarah’d let him buy us some.”

  I knew my brother would gladly buy anything we needed, as I’d heard him offer, but this was not California and even in town there were no potatoes to be had this time of year. Chess knelt in front of her. He patted her shoulder and said, “You ever leave this table hungry, sweet dolly-do-lolly?”

  “No, sir, Grampa Chess.”

  “Well? The Lord provides all you need, then. That’s all anyone can ask. Mind your fingers with that blade.”

  When Chess and I got the wagon hitched up and started back up the hill to get Mr. Bennecelli, I shook the reins and said to Chess but toward the horses, “The Lord provides all you need, too. It’s an ornery old cuss that won’t take good food when it’s put in front of him.” He grunted so I kept talking. “What good’s it do you to skimp on your rations? Last night there were beans left over.”

  “Dogs has got to eat, too.”

  “That’s why God made mice.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Sarah Agnes. Now quit your fussin’ at me. Show some respect. There’s our old friend.”

  We laid Mr. Bennecelli under a canvas tarpaulin in our flatbed wagon. We pulled it next to the house where the fence would keep the wolves away and wrapped Miss Castle in an old sheet and put her there, too. The cold tonight will freeze them and those stage passengers can haul them to town tomorrow. I expected to take further stock of our guests and see which of them I’d trust to bring my wagon back before I let them take it to town.

  We had supper at my table, the three tinhorns sitting across from Gilbert, who is now nearly twenty, and Chess, who is a good thirty years older than I. I just hit forty-three, though it feels like last week my sons were small and carefree as puppies. Reckon I don’t include my girl April in that feeling because if I think about it for a while, my April was born old. She had seen murder and shooting and too much blood spilled before she was two years old, enough to last a lifetime. She grew up worrisome, not like my boys. Never seemed like a child. My brother Harland is thirty-six and is also old before his time, what with caring for his wife and now his babes.

  Harland’s three sons are a surefire ruckus in a grease can all by themselves. After a couple of weeks of being good and quiet, they have turned back into regular children and they are a handful. Always squabbling about a tin soldier lost or a bigger piece of pie. Tonight, in honor of the strange company before them, they and their little sister, Blessing, had put their manners back on as if they’d slipped into heavy overcoats.

  By the time we got washed up for supper, Harland got Professor Osterhaas’s arm rigged up in a sling. Harland said while it looked
bruised, he didn’t expect it was broken. Professor Osterhaas, like Professor Fairhaven, was a doctor of letters. The two professors had been on their way to the university in Tucson from California. The woman, Miss Charity James, didn’t say precisely what her purpose was. Most women would state right off that they’ve come to visit their mother or to take water cures at the mineral springs or something. I began to think she had no repute but a foul one, but then she said she’d been traveling with Miss Castle who was a milliner and who had planned to open a shop in town. Still, the things she didn’t say about herself made me wonder all the more. The cut of her dress was new and stylish, like I’ve seen my daughter April wear, but the whole thing was done up in flimsy cloth that looked cheap to me.

  “Will you be staying in town?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Miss James said. “I was only coming along to help. She had all the learning smarts with the banking and taxes and whatnot. I was a lacemaker before. And a seamstress. I’d hoped to dress hats. I’ve done a few before. The one in the coach, did you see it? I could make you up a nice hat.”

  Professor Fairhaven spoke up then. “Perhaps you should return to your lace factory in California.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I can’t ever go back there,” she said. Miss James studied the tablecloth real close.

  I said, “One thing about the Territory is, a woman can still do what she wants here. If you’ve a mind to and some grit and backbone, there’s always folks around who’ll help if you need it.”

  She kept on staring at the tablecloth, and picked at a biscuit crumb she’d dropped there. “Dr. Fairhaven, you should mind your own business … He doesn’t even miss her. Look at him,” Miss James said with a whimper. “Miss Castle was a good person. She believed him. Now she’s dead and gone and you’d never know it by him.”

  Fairhaven scowled. Professor Osterhaas looked pained. The air in the room seemed heavy and bristly.

  Harland looked in my direction and said, “Well, time to hear your recitations, boys. Truth, Honor, and Story, go wash the sorghum off your chins and let’s have a good showing. Our guests will like a little entertainment after supper.”

  The boys traipsed from the table in the order of their names, but after they left the room we heard a commotion and a scuffle and one of them hollering, “I called I was first! Gimme that, you.”

  “Poppy?” said Blessing. “I have learnt all the words to the Running a Race poem.”

  “Yes, she did,” I said. “She recites it eloquently.” Our guests looked at me as if I’d grown horns. “You folks fill up your coffee cups if you’d care to, and we’ll go to the book room.”

  Well, we filed into the room Harland has called the library, although in this heavy adobe house surrounded by saguaros and serenaded by coyotes, I’d think it could just as well be called the book room. I’ve seen a real library in town up at the university, and even given them some books from time to time. The ones I’ve got here are dear to me and old, and they cover most of three walls in the room. I suppose I haven’t got the brass to call it a library. Besides, I’d skin anyone who attempted to loan themselves a volume.

  We pulled up chairs and stoked the stove, then Harland’s boys Honor and Story chanted one after the other through the stanzas of “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Truth read an essay he’d written about liberty being a precious possession. Then Blessing recited a poem I’d taught her from my Peerless Reciter about a tear and a smile both racing down the face of a baby. When she came to the last line, where the smile won the race and the baby was happy, she looked about with utmost seriousness at everyone gathered before her. Raising her finger, she said, “And I think a real, live baby would be the dearest thing ever I could see and pet and kiss. And that someone in this family should get a baby. Hopefully a girl but a boy baby would do if he’s precious and smiling. I’ve asked everyone and they all say no. Poppy, can’t we have a baby? Please?”

  The fire crackled a full minute. The clock ticked. I looked at Harland. I was embarrassed, and for a moment thought he’d scold her, guests or no. Harland stared at our unfamiliar company. Chess knotted his chin and lips up in one hand. It was my brother’s place to chide his daughter, but he seemed lost in thought. The wind howled at the window, rattling the glass against the wooden frame.

  “Blessing Prine,” I said, “babies come from heaven in their own time. Little girls who say such things aloud will never get their wishes. You must only think it to yourself if you have a wish like that.”

  Blessing glared at me and ran to her father. Harland crushed her to himself. Tears spilled from his eyes. The poor man was still grieving too hard to be embarrassed over what his girl had said in front of strangers.

  I said, “Thank you, children, for your very nice recitations. I’m sure these folks will be glad to rest now.” I stood up, feeling odd in my own house. “As you can see, we have a full house and all the bedrooms are taken. You two professors, we’ll put beds in here for you, in the book room. Miss James, you can stay with me. Harland? If you’ll see to the children, let’s all get some sleep.”

  Harland sent the children to their room; the two oldest boys, Truth and Honor, shared a bed, Blessing slept on a settee made up with a blanket and pillow, and Story slept in a moving crate that we’d made a straw mattress for. It took us a half hour to set up pallets for the men in the book room. When we were done, Harland followed me toward the kitchen. My brother’s face, standing a head and then some taller than me, flickered in the dim light of a covered candle. As I fixed up the stove for morning, banking the coals down good and tight, he said, “Sarah, I want to talk to you.”

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked. He had been hinting for two weeks now that he could move to Tucson and hang out his shingle. He thinks a fancy San Francisco architect could make a good living in Tucson. I had told him Tucson was a rough old cob of a place, but he showed me where the Weekly Star says that Tucson is the most important city between St. Louis and Los Angeles. I’d told him, “Tucson may well be the best city between St. Louis and China, but it still isn’t much.” Why, he’d never make it there.

  “I’ve been thinking—now don’t get flustered, hear me out—about the children’s education.”

  “They’re learning so quick, I can hardly keep up with them,” I said. “Regular scholars.”

  “Sis, they’re pulling a switch on you. Story and Honor both had that poem a year ago in school. And Truth wrote that essay a while back, too. They all made believe they were new and pretended to learn them. And they’re not doing any arithmetic except a few sums.”

  What more do they need? My children and Albert’s had all come here for school. Every one of them had come up through my book room knowing all they needed to get into college. “They’re doing Latin and planetary motion.”

  “Their manners are atrocious. I’m raising a pack of rogues.”

  All four of them were pretty spoiled, that was true. I never felt it was my place to do more than fuss at them, though fussing surely didn’t change their behavior much. Harland barely noticed what they did, back-talking and laughing at grown folks, fighting with each other like wildcats. I said, “They won’t be better behaved in town. You won’t even have me to help you look after them and feed them. Are you going to have time to teach them etiquette and wash their duds and cook and sew, and draw diagrams of parlors and keeping rooms?”

  He put his arm around my shoulders. “You’ve taken great care of all of us. You feed us and keep everything clean and fine. The only thing that’s wrong here is that life is not what my children are accustomed to. There’s so little structure. So much is expected, you see, in a private school and home with a governess. Discipline and control …”

  I let out my breath. Discipline and control? Did he want to raise soldiers? And was he telling me the only things he thinks I do are cooking and cleaning? I was mad enough at his words that I’d like to see him on his way. Harland’s arm lay heavy across my shoulder,
and my anger was tempered with the weight of that arm. “Little brother, you know you’re welcome to stay. I own that house in Tucson. If you want it, you can live there and try your luck.”

  “First time you actually sound like you’d let me go.”

  “Keep telling me I don’t know how to mind children, and I’ll mail you to town myself with a stamp from my boot. General delivery. Why would you want to take your children to town? They’ll be exposed to all kinds of diseases. Rough characters. Unfair teachers.”

  “They tell me you’re a mean teacher.”

  “They tell me you can whistle out your eyebrows.”

  He laughed. “You know, that house of yours was the first whole house I ever built.”

  “Did I ever pay you for that?”

  “I recollect I billed you a peach pie and a haircut. Believe you paid twice.”

  I patted his arm. “When you leaving?”

  “I don’t know. Thought I’d have more trouble convincing you than that.”

  “There’s no rush.”

  Later, I showed Miss James to my room. Then I handed her a night shift and set about tightening up the ropes under my bed to pull the sagging middle up flatter. When I’m alone there’s no harm in letting it sag. I don’t mind sharing with someone but with another woman in the bed, I’d as soon we didn’t slide toward the middle all night long.

  I turned down the lamp, and as I was getting in, Miss James rolled away from me. I faced the opposite wall, too. I was thinking about Harland and each of his children. Thinking what they’d need, how they’d fare in town, how much better they’d be here in the fresh air.

  Miss James’s voice startled me. “Miss Castle thought he was going to marry her. That’s all. I saw you looking cross when her name was brought up.”

  It took me a minute to put that into place. “Professor Fairhaven?”