The Star Garden

  May 29, 1907

  April and Morris welcomed a little girl the day after I arrived. She is no more than five pounds but hearty in the lungs, and April named her Tennyson after one of my favorite writers. I think that’s a crackerjack name if ever I heard one. Miss Tennyson Weingold has brought a heat spell with her, and she and her mother suffer from prickly heat. April will not allow wet burlap to be strung in the baby’s room, fearing it draws mosquitoes and some dire fever from the tropics, so they are both fretting and mighty tearful. To find some relief from the torment, I have spent some afternoons with Harland in my old house. I love to hear him talk about the new houses he is building, and where land is under survey for this or that new thing.

  Harland took his children and me in his horseless carriage up to the university to have a look around, getting the lay of the place before I have to go. He said he supposed I wouldn’t want to live in the basement of Old Main, and offered to rent me my old bedroom for the price of a peach pie and a haircut every month. Then we had a good chuckle over how that much in trade didn’t bring what it used to.

  June 13, 1907

  Pleased as I was to see my precious new granddaughter into this world, after two weeks of tending April and her family I looked forward to taking the road home and getting a good night’s sleep. I felt tired enough by the time we set off, you’d have thought I had been the one delivered a babe. Gilbert and I headed home at sunup.

  As we headed past the Pantano place, a fresh cut of wheels went through the brittlebush headed southwest. Gilbert thought we ought to follow the tracks and see where they went, but I reckoned it likely that at the end of the tracks we’d only find a broken-down wagon or a loop where the driver had thought better and gone back to the road. I had plenty of trouble and didn’t need to go sticking my nose in some other.

  June 15, 1907

  Next time I saw Udell Hanna’s house, the rock walls, six feet high before, were now ten feet to the top, and it looked to be as big and wide as a church. Someone had put on the front door, although the windows held no glass and a stairway ended in the sky, with the rest of the house and the roof still put together somewhere in Udell’s imagination. Each window hole had two shutters with a cross cut into each one. Every thick oaken shutter had been fitted with big iron dogs to lock it closed from the inside. The floor of bricks set in sand turned at angles and made a smooth pavement. On one wall, the second floor rose from the ridge of stone in two layers of wood, one inside and one without, with rock wool between them.

  I kept trying to remind myself not to think of this pile of boulders as his house, but ours. Yet, it was so drab and severe, so unlike any kind of house I ever pictured. When I saw it from afar, I turned my eyes, so that it was not as ugly as it seemed in the stark light of day. I stood on the rock walls again, this time even higher, so that the wind came up the hill toward us, and peered toward the east and Rudolfo’s hacienda. The corrals out front were empty. Peculiar stillness had replaced all the usual bustling there.

  I came across Udell in his garden, drenched with sweat, pouring water from a long-handled bucket onto a row of little sprouts. “My, those are looking fine,” I said, leaning over the fencepost.

  Udell spoke as if he were afraid someone at the neighbor’s house below could hear. “Maldonado came by yesterday. Offered to buy me out again.”

  “I’m not sure I like the tone of your voice.” I waited while he searched the horizon for some answer.

  “Offered to make sure I would want to sell to him.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Don’t know rightly. Just said I’d be wanting to sell before long, and he’d make sure of it.”

  “Reckon he didn’t expect you’d have stayed this long.”

  “Would you mind if we move my cows to your corral?” Without another word, we got off the walls and, on foot, leading our horses, we pushed his little herd around the bend and across Rudolfo’s corner by the big ocotillo to my place. We kept them slow as the heat could kill them. The little calves and the mamas now gave him a nice fifteen head. Still, not a one could be spared.

  Well, I tried to talk Udell into staying at our place, but he said he planned going to sleep in his house come Rudolfo or the Devil himself. If I were a man, I’d go there with him and spell him so he could sleep. Asking any of my family to go in my place didn’t seem right. Reckon Udell would have to fend for himself. So after supper, I asked him if he’d like to take our fellow Buttons along. That dog is about half grown now, still got big feet and a skinny neck, but he’s pretty good at watching. Udell said he’d tie him up good so he wouldn’t try to run home and get killed during the night, so he rode home carrying Buttons in his arms.

  Next day after morning chores, I rode down to see how they did during the night. While I talked to Udell, Buttons slept off his breakfast of bacon and biscuits, and I laughed at his middle sticking out like he was a gourd with legs.

  June 20, 1907

  Clover drove up in the big surrey with Mary Pearl, come to say goodbye. Ezra and Rebeccah sat in the back. They told us Clover will be going along on the train to see Mary Pearl and Duende all the way to Wheaton. Rebeccah is going to bring home some goods from Tucson, and Ezra is to do the driving back. Zack stayed home doing chores. They clambered down and filed into the kitchen. I passed them biscuits and some sorghum. Rebeccah said she’d already had breakfast, so Ezra ate his and hers to boot.

  Mary Pearl watched her brothers like she needed to commit them to memory. After they ate, I asked if she wanted me to take up writing Granny’s memoirs, but she said it was pretty much finished. I asked her if she wanted me to send her some new duds, but Savannah had made sure she had more clothes than she could want in ten years, all of them gray or brown and plain as a board, she said, without even a black button on them. Usually she wore split skirts cut above her boots for riding and a Cavalry-style Stetson. Mary Pearl spoke out in front of Rebeccah, so I figured she didn’t have any suspicions that her sister would scold behind her back to their mother. Savannah had gone and made the girl a little starched cap of old-fashioned design, like she’d worn when we were girls.

  “I got my regular hat in a box,” Mary Pearl said. “So I can ride now and then.”

  Chess came in the room and peered at her, and pretended like he didn’t know her, until it almost brought her to fuss-fighting. Charlie and Gilbert just stared until, finally, Charlie said, “Mary P, if your mama feared you were too pretty before, it ain’t helping to wear that.”

  “This cap? I’ll have to wear a bonnet on top, too, to keep from getting all freckled up and brown, and it feels awful on my neck, having a bow there.”

  Gilbert just snorted and said, “Shucks, Mary Pearl. Ain’t seen you without your hat before. You already turned into a city girl. Better not be any lop-eared hooligans carrying on around you, or you write us and we’ll come fix ‘em.”

  Charlie said, “I reckon you ought to be carrying Mama’s old derringer.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders. “Now, a young lady needs protection, but it might not do, carrying a pistol in Illinois State. You don’t want to go giving a bad impression right off. Have you got your knife, though?”

  The girl raised her brows and smiled. Clover and Mary Pearl exchanged glances. He said, “Mama forbids it.”

  I said, “But it’s dangerous. A young girl in a strange town. Didn’t your pa—”

  “I fixed a scabbard on her boot. With strict instructions”—he wagged his finger at her as if reminding her of a conversation they’d already had—“about its secrecy.”

  “Wait just a minute,” I said. I hurried to my bedroom and opened the top drawer on the high boy. I unloaded my two-shot derringer, the little gun Jack had called a ‘lady’s pistol’ when he gave it to me. I took the rounds and the gun back to the parlor and placed them in Mary Pearl’s hands. “Take these,” I said. “Just in case.”

  Mary Pearl winked at me. Her dimples puckered, making me sure she’d never be safe
in that far-off place. She whispered, “We’re both students, you and me! Will you write me? Every week? I hope the mail will come regular. ‘Course, you’ll be in town, won’t you? It will, won’t it?”

  “Yes, and I will write, every week,” I said. “You tell me about your lessons and I’ll tell about mine.” Though I felt foolish after I said it.

  “We have to get on, now,” Clover said.

  “It’s hot. You all drive slow,” Chess said.

  I said, “You’ve got your riding saddle, don’t you? I think your working one is still in our barn. Well. It’s come down to this. I suppose you’d better be getting off. Here, take this.” I handed Mary Pearl a new canteen I’d bought for her as a going-off gift. It had a thick canvas on it to cool it and ought to get her down the road all right. She took it and grinned and kissed my face and then she climbed aboard the buggy. A painful knot formed in my throat, threatening to strangle me as she leaned down and I kissed her once more. Of all the foolish things people might say in farewell, all I could muster was a single word. “Mind—” Then I sighed. Her face darkened up, quieting tears.

  They pulled out and headed up the road, the big surrey loaded with two trunks, four grips, four brothers and sisters, and pulling Duende, a half-wild stallion fidgeting at his tether behind. I thought of Albert staying behind to comfort Savannah. A man ought to do that, when his children were old enough to push out of the nest. If things were different, I might be there in Savannah’s kitchen this very minute, talking and laughing, drinking coffee, shedding sweet tears and hugging each other. He’d be driving his daughter to college.

  Mary Pearl seemed cut from the same cloth as me, more than any of my own children, yet I had no claim to her. Glimpses of April clouded my eyes. How separate we were. I always expected my daughter to grow up to be a reflection of myself, but it hadn’t happened. Mary Pearl, though, had always been as much a piece of me as my arm.

  Mary Pearl waved for a long time, and then before they turned the corner and took the road beyond my line of sight, I saw her head come around the side of the buggy for one last glance. I watched until they went around the curve toward their place and beyond, over the last horizon to the north. She has started a journey from which she will never really return.

  Then I pulled weeds and watered and trenched and fought with the soil of my garden until I nearly collapsed from the heat. No matter what I did, I couldn’t work the lonesome out of my bones, and no sense dying for it, so by half past two, I went to the house. I pumped a bath for myself, and after cooling off, dressed in a cotton shift to lie on the sleeping porch and wait for the sun to go down so I could go back to work.

  July 1, 1907

  This morning while I hung the wash, Charlie came and stood around for a while, either waiting for something, or couldn’t think what he wanted to say. Finally, I heard his voice through the rows of sheets and pants and shirts, “Mama, are you feeling poorly?”

  “I’m just fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “You been quiet.”

  I tugged the line down with the clothespin in my hand, so I could see his face. “A person can be quiet.”

  “You ain’t sick?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then. Well, Elsa is anxious to take a drive. I told her we’d take the wagon up the road and fetch mail. She says she wants to get out of the house.”

  I needed to be alone. “Yes. Get the mail. Take your time,” I said.

  “I’ve got work to do, but Elsa can’t drive a rig, so I want to take her.”

  “Well, you don’t have to explain it to me. I know you aren’t shirking chores.” As he turned, I said, “Reckon it’s certain, this time?”

  “Oh, reckon so.”

  “Acting ornery one minute and crying the next?”

  “Yes, ma’am. To make me want to holler.”

  “Don’t be surprised if you get to the end of the yard and she says that’s enough. Having a baby makes a girl all nerves.”

  He grinned and blushed darkly. “Not for good and all, though, right?”

  I hugged him and kissed his face, already leathery. Already so much a man. I said, “It’s temporary.” Watching him bustle around and get ready to take Elsa to the station, I saw Gilbert hop onto the back of Hatch and follow. It looked like a nice time for them, headed up the road.

  I’d finished with the chickens when I heard a commotion of horses and shouting, far in the distance. Our yard dogs set up a racket, sniffing the air. I looked out the window and here came our buggy with Charlie whipping those horses, Gilbert riding hard at his side. Gilbert’s horse didn’t stop at the gate but jumped over the fence. He slid off as slick as if he had no saddle at all, then swung the gate open. Charlie drove them in, then jerked the brake. The wheels locked up, chucking up dirt and rocks, while the animals kept fighting their bits, wild with fear.

  Before I got out the door, Chess ran and helped Gilbert and Charlie take the leads on each horse and get the buggy stopped. Almost as soon as it did, Elsa jumped from the buggy and threw her arms around Charlie’s neck, then began screaming something at him in Spanish. First I thought she’d taken the maternal instincts too far, then I heard a gunshot. The dogs started barking again.

  Elsa’s words didn’t sound angry but plaintive. She tried to kneel in front of him, shaking his pant legs and crying out, but he stood her up, not letting her sink to the dirt. I didn’t catch every word but the gist of it was that she was not about to let him go alone after some outlaws, and that at least they were all safe.

  Charlie said three men blocked their way with guns drawn, and one of them fired as they turned the buggy around. Gilbert said he’d wanted to shoot back, but he couldn’t risk his horse throwing him for the trouble, so they all turned tail. The men chased them and got their horses in a lather, and halfway here, Gilbert’s mount spotted a rattlesnake crossing the road, then it was hell-for-leather toward home, barely getting the horses stopped.

  “I’m going after them,” Charlie said.

  “I’ll get my rifle,” Chess hollered, and took off before anyone could stop him.

  Elsa begged, “No! Tell him, señora. Please! Charlie, you can’t.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “You can’t expect to hold your own against three.”

  Gilbert said he’d load up more guns and go with his brother. But Charlie looked at Elsa, then at me, then toward the hill where they’d driven so wild only a minute before. He said, “If they were highwaymen, they hadn’t got the knack of it. They didn’t chase us long enough. They’re here for something else.”

  Gilbert said, “One of them had a big kit of some sort with him. Could be just prospectors.”

  Charlie answered, “Think prospectors’d greet strangers with guns drawn? They’re up to something, having a look around maybe but didn’t want anyone to see what they were up to. We surprised them and they figured to scare us away.”

  “I reckon,” said Gil, “they held up a bank or a train or something.”

  I asked, “How far up the road?”

  “About four miles,” Gil said.

  “It wasn’t by the train wreck, was it?” People still keep coming out to look at the wreckage from the Santa Fe that went off its tracks and burned a couple of years ago. Some bring photographers’ gear, and some bring shovels, hunting gold they reckon is left in the disaster. They all shook their heads. “Then it’s railroaders,” I said. “Sure as I’m standing here. Rudolfo’s got a parlor full of them and we’ve chased off more than one in the last six months. They’re up to something, all right. Long as it doesn’t take place on our land, we’ll leave ‘em be.”

  “But Mama,” said Gil, “what if they are old Maldonado’s men? What if they’re coming for us?”

  “Well, then they’d be here by now,” I said. “Your sister-in-law is Rudolfo’s daughter and you won’t be using that tone about her father. You ought to respect folks you love, son, but you make a big mistake
not to respect folks you don’t see eye to eye with. Elsa, you stay here with Granny and Chess, and he’ll watch out for you both. I think we’d better all ride together.”

  Charlie said, “I don’t want you up there.”

  “Then get Udell. You and Elsa put off your driving a couple of days. That won’t hurt, will it?”

  Elsa had started for the house. Charlie whispered, “They can’t hold us captive when we might need to get to town. She’s having a baby.”

  Gilbert groaned and said, “Aw, Charlie, for crying up a crick. What a thing to say.” He headed for the barn, whipping his hat against his leg and shaking his head.

  I smiled and bit my lower lip. “Well, son, she’s not having it today.”

  A loud gunshot and the crack of glass interrupted us, followed by a stream of violent shouts that sounded like Chess’s voice. We hurried in the direction of the noise to the side of the house, and came upon Chess covered with dust and hopping mad. He beat at his own arms and legs, knocking a cloud of dirt from his clothes just as he filled that cloud with the sorriest storm of cussing I’d heard yet. Elsa put one hand over her lips. Savannah had been right. The coarseness of my household full of men was not a fit place for a girl.

  The boys tried to steady Chess by the arms. He jerked this way and that and commenced to cussing them for helping him. His rifle lay in the dirt and at the barrel end a long scuff told the tale of a round that had gone off while the thing lay on the ground. When Chess finally got settled, he rubbed his nose with his sleeve and said a no-account cat had run across his path and tripped him. Then he said I shouldn’t allow so many cats around the place, what a nuisance they were and still mice in the barn and all. He swore he meant to shoot them all.