The Star Garden

  “I need more steam kettles. The stove may have gone out. Some of them aren’t hot enough anymore.”

  I gave him a shake and shifted my shoulders down, bracing for some kind of nightmare in the room beyond him—beyond the door to Blessing’s room. I flung it open and entered a damp, clammy world. The very air hung with cloying mist, the curtains sagged, the counterpane was stained with brown, and the place smelled of kerosene and dank old woolen clothes. First thing I wanted to do was throw open a window and let in the fresh air. A young woman in a nurse’s uniform, equally exhausted and shriveled with steam as Harland had been, stood by the bed, and she whispered, “Now, take this. Open your mouth. Your daddy wants you to take this. Don’t be naughty. Be a good girl.”

  “Blessing!” The word flung itself from my lips. In one step, I was at her bedside. “What is the matter with her?” I demanded.

  The nurse said, “Influenza again. And pneumonia. Came right on top of the mumps. The child has been so ill. Her defenses were down. Would you please see if you can make Mr. Prine fetch some more steam kettles?” The thickened air felt as if it crawled into my lungs carrying pestilence along with it. How could anyone believe this vile air could save a child? Yet the only alternative was the bitter winter storm outside.

  “What medicine are you giving her?”

  “Right now, just water. Doctor ordered a teaspoon of water every fifteen minutes. We are quite stubborn, and what little we get in her, we spit up. Our congestion of the lungs and bowels is severe.”

  “Gilbert, take that lamp and this teakettle here, fill it up and set it to boil. Fetch everything else you can boil water in, and then come get these others and start them, too.”

  “Ma’am,” said the young woman, “you shouldn’t expose yourself to this. This house is quarantined. The other children were sent to some relative’s.”

  “April’s house? With only the maid there? Where in blazes is the doctor?”

  “He’s been with her day and night, ma’am. There is little else he could do. He’s left me in charge, to keep trying, at least, until the end.”

  “The end? There isn’t going to be an end!”

  The girl cowered, drawing back. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Of course not. We’re going to have our little cherub right again in no time. Doctor said we must have some water every fifteen minutes to keep our kidneys from drying up.”

  I could hear the falseness in her voice, though I could barely see her face. I hated the way “we” were sick and “we” were congested in “our” kidneys. The cow couldn’t possibly feel the dragging effects of Blessing’s illness.

  I said, “Why don’t you go and fetch more water, too? I’ll stir up the stove and put on more wood.”

  “It’s coal, ma’am.”

  “Coal, then! Go ahead. I’ll tend her for a spell.”

  When she left, I made that fire roar. Then I sat in the nurse’s chair at Blessing’s side and laid my hand across her brow. She was ablaze with fever. No wonder that she had dry kidneys, for any water in the girl was leaving her in sweat. “Blessing?” I called, trying to sound cheerful. “Blessing? Won’t you wake up? Aunt Sarah is here.”

  Her eyelids flickered. “Mommy?” she croaked.

  “Aunt Sarah.”

  “Oh.”

  “Have some water, precious.” I held the teaspoon to her lips and drizzled it in. She swallowed, choked, then coughed with a racking rattle that vibrated my own ribs. Stubborn? The child wasn’t being stubborn. I knew my little Blessing. This was not contrariness here. She was horribly sick. Her chest heaved up and down, gasping for air. Every hair on my arms stood upright. I placed her tiny hand in mine and held it. She didn’t respond. I patted and stroked her hand and arm.

  I sat there the night through, while Harland and Gilbert and the nurse shuffled in and out with coal and kettles of water. The storm outside broke down into a tumultuous rain, and close to four, it tapered off and stopped. Trying to force water down Blessing’s throat always ended with the gasping and coughing, and finally, I asked the nurse if we had to continue it. Yes, she said. Doctor’s order.

  Dawn broke through a clouded sky, looking again like one of those paintings I used to love. Blessing rattled and struggled for air. And then she drew in one shallow breath and let out a very long one. Her tiny, wracked body sunk ever deeper into the coverlets. She grew very still. I watched that little body. The struggle for breath was finished. Our Blessing was no more. I stepped away, holding my head in my hands.

  Harland knew what had happened, the moment I did it. He dropped to his knees at her bed, sobbing. Gilbert stood at the door, crying in strangling sounds, half-man, half-boy sounds. The nurse left the room. Her shoes echoed on the stairs. I went to the window and rubbed a circle into the steamed glass with my sleeve. A set of double, shimmering rainbows circled the damp town outside.

  I opened the window just an inch, and the cold air sent a chill to my damp skin and clothes. The practical things, now, would fill my day, and the grief would shatter all the practical things, minute by minute. There would be the funeral to arrange, quietly, because of the quarantine. There would be the coffin to order. The dress to choose. April’s family must be kept away for the sake of Tennyson and her big sisters and brother, Harland’s three sons staying there. All this swirled in my thoughts, until I sank to the floor by the window, peering out through the inch of fresh, cold air, to those vivid rainbows. They grew brighter the way a flame will, with new fuel added, more air pushed at them. I held to the window skirt and leaned against the wall. Then I gave over to the tears I could hold off no longer. Blessing had finally caught the long, black train home to her mother.

  November 30, 1907

  We dressed Blessing in the blue calico. I curled her hair. Harland had a photographer take a picture of her, lying there as if dressed for a play party and suddenly taken with sleep. The icy rain returned with vengeance and stayed the day through, forcing the service miserably short.

  It would still be a fortnight before we could allow Harland’s sons to return to the house. It had to be aired and cleaned, top to bottom. I got Harland to agree to letting me take the boys home with us, and coming along, too, to stay until after Christmas. If they wanted for clothes, they could wear castoffs from Savannah’s boys. My dear April promised to bring her children for Christmas, though she didn’t dare even hug me until the two weeks’ spell was past.

  December 1, 1907

  Sunday, the rain quit, so after we gathered for prayers, somber and silent, I drove my buggy filled with quiet little boys behind Albert and Savannah’s and we made our way home. The arroyo was not running but puddled, and we decided to cross it, letting everyone out on foot while Albert drove first the surrey then my buggy up the side. Harland didn’t seem to be good for much of anything, and no one would fault him for it, so he watched from the side next to me. Right before us, Story punched Honor a hard clip on the back, and the two fell upon each other like wildcats. Harland grabbed Honor and I wrangled Story, and we made sure to keep them apart the rest of the trip.

  Though the sky cleared and the birds sang, dark clouds loomed over my heart, long after we got to the house and settled everyone in.

  The sheriff and Mr. Miles had departed, so it was just our family at home. Chess said all had been quiet. When he found out Blessing had left us for heaven’s arms, he retreated to his hole in the barn and would hardly answer when I spoke to him, except to say he had to hurry and get this new saddle finished. It was truly as fine as ever I have seen him make. I told him so, standing at his elbow, and like to got my head knocked off for the trouble. Chess was busy hammering cut designs into a piece of wet leather.

  I waited a while and asked, “Are you planning to sell it? It ought to bring three hundred dollars, a nice work like that.”

  “This one’s for my boy. Gilbert. ‘N’ don’t you go telling him, neither.”

  “When are you going to give it to him?”

  Chess pounded that hammer three m
ore times before he said, “When I’m done. Before he goes off to the Point.”

  “Ah. You don’t think he’d marry that girl instead?”

  “Either way, he could use a good saddle.” The thing was more than a good saddle. It was going to be too nice to use. He whacked into that leather with a punch, his shaky old fingers making a true and straight line with the tool.

  “Think we’re finally safe from Maldonado?” I asked.

  “You’re asking me?” 1 am.

  “First time for ever’thing. No. I don’t.” Chess rubbed a wet rag across the leather. “If Gil goes to the Point he’ll need this. It’s a gentleman’s saddle. Not cuttin’ and workin’.” His mallet rattled the bench again and again, as if he’d lost track of me. Then he hammered and banged and swore and threw the broken mallet so it bounded off the wall and was lost in the hay rake. “Why in tarnation would anyone think we needed a little old flower around this house?”

  I didn’t ask what he meant. It was clear enough. We did need our flowers. Our Blessings. How tender are the girls in this family. So treasured and fragile as glass. “The sickness was just more than she could fight.”

  I went to Baldy’s place, got him a blanket on, and threw my old work saddle over him. He puffed out his belly and I blew on his nose until he exhaled to cinch up. Then I pulled him from the stall toward the door.

  Chess looked up, tools in his hands, one metal poker behind an ear, and he said, “Railroad man came around again. Said they were changing the route again, wanted us to know. I told him he already had what he wanted and offered to nail his tail to a six-foot board. He skedaddled quick enough. You can’t fight the damned railroad. It’s trying to argue with the air. Them gunrunners to Mexico ain’t about to listen to no one, neither. Then you got Maldonado who thinks your boy stole his girl from the convent where he had her stashed. Now you’ve went and sold out and our Blessing’s—well, I’d say it’s time to go to Texas.”

  “Wish you’d a heard him out. Where they’re aiming it now, and all.”

  “Well, there ‘as nothing I wanted to hear from him but his feet making tracks.”

  “We’re staying, Chess. That means you, too. It’s settled,” I said. “Rudolfo’s backed off because I sold to the Wells Fargo Company to get the railroad off our front porch. Mama was in agreement. You don’t have to worry about it, Chess. We’ll let the giants either fight it out or work hand in glove. It isn’t going to touch us anymore.”

  Then I got on Baldy, pulled my hat low, and rode to the gate. I left it open for my return, and headed south, toward the far windmill I’d had so much trouble with last year. Now it was someone else’s problem. To Chess, Texas still seemed a long way from all of it. But there was really no escape. There’d only be a different kind of trouble. There’d always be a railroad, always the rattle of a saber someplace not far enough away, and always be a neighbor I couldn’t predict. You couldn’t have children and not lose some of them. The air was cold but the sun beat on my shoulders. I rode, just ambling, thinking about the pains of the last year.

  I passed reminders of last year’s fire that cleaned out the brush left from three years of drought. Here and there a down and rotting saguaro, charred stumps of mesquites, and among the newly grown but dry grasses, bones. Cattle, lean and starved, dying of thirst, had been overcome by the rampage of fire and dropped where they stood. Their bones lay, picked clean before winter was through, bleached white under the suns of summer, and stark against the dark, sodden ground.

  I wished for a heavier coat. Thought about Udell’s lambskin overcoat, how toasty it had been. The calico on the back of my shirt was faded near to white, but it was still blue on the front. Even under my cloth coat, the frost in the air felt as if it burned the flowers into my skin in little tattoos. A little old flower. Oh, Blessing. Little rosebud. I rode on across lowlands and then into some hills that marked the newly sawed-off end of my property and the beginning of my lease land. From there, a rider could make Mexico in two hours in the winter, being careful with a horse. Summertime, it would take only four hours to the border. Farther down, beyond my vision, was the old windmill and the place I’d sold to Wells Fargo.

  It was good to be alone, and to feel safe being alone. After an hour I rode back up and before long I found myself in the shadow of Udell’s stone house, now finished, the second-story walls painted and trimmed, smoke curling deli-ciously from two chimneys. I rapped on the door. Buttons came barking from the side of the house, and I petted his back and rubbed his tummy. In just a few minutes, Udell opened the door, and the scowl he’d worn for a half second vanished. “Mrs. Elliot? I, I mean, come on in and warm up.”

  “Just passing by and thought—”

  “I’ve got coffee made. Have a seat there by the fire.”

  I followed his orders. Something about the place had changed. The lamps in the big room were lit, for one thing, but the lace trifles, doilies, and chair covers had disappeared. Could he have only set them about thinking to charm me with pretties? Were they not something he wanted to see around himself to remind him of her? Udell placed a large cup of coffee wrapped in a thick cloth in my hands. He didn’t let his fingers touch mine for an instant.

  I told him about selling the land, first. It was a good choice, he said. He’d been watching after we left for town, and the hacienda had grown still and quiet. For now, at least, the wagon caravans of rifles had ceased. Then I told him about Blessing.

  Udell put his cup down and came to my side, sitting at my knee. “I’m so sorry.”

  I nodded.

  “Sarah?” he whispered as he took my hand. “Are you sorely grieved?”

  “Yes, reckon so.” Tears rushed forth I hadn’t even expected.

  “Sweet, precious little Sunbonnet.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I could have been there for you.” I do, too.

  “You aren’t plum mad at me, then?”

  “No, Udell. I just didn’t think it was right for us to marry.”

  “Ah.”

  “I was thinking, riding here, of something to even up the debt between us.”

  “What debt?”

  “To pay you back for the school, you know. I want to give you a gift, but it’s not the kind to give if the person isn’t inclined toward it. Like a bathtub, the way you said it. I’m back in the black, now, good for a few years even if I don’t sell so much as a single egg. I found some boys herding sheep, Udell, and they told me the sheep do right well hereabouts. I would buy you a herd of sheep; lock, stock, and dogs. A hundred head. If you built a higher corral, with the boards closer, you could keep ‘em.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Would you take them? It’d make me real happy to give them to you.”

  He thought a minute. “Suppose so. I’d like that. If you wanted to, I’d like it.”

  “The place is looking good.”

  “Finished, I suppose. Mostly. Could paint upstairs, maybe.”

  “Nice and warm.”

  “M-m, yes.”

  A chasm spread between us, wide as the great arroyo. I wanted to sit on the floor beside him, before the imposing rock fireplace, to regain what had slipped away. “Suppose I should go on, then,” I said.

  “I’m really sorry for your little girl. Your loss, I mean.”

  “Obliged. I’ll head home, I reckon.” I stood.

  Udell rose to his feet, too. Though he didn’t really move, I imagined his arms reaching for me, recollected the feel of resting against his shoulder, the shaving cream smell of him and the stubble on the tiny place he always managed to miss. “I’ll start building a pen, then. And I’ll have to clear a place and plant some good pasturage for spring.”

  “Come to supper?”

  “All right.”

  I smiled. He did, too. The expanse between us closed by half. So I let my smile widen, and then I had to go.

  In a few minutes I crossed the corner where Rudolfo’s land met my place and Udell?
??s, next to the spreading ocotillo.

  “Wah …” a soft voice whispered.

  I couldn’t see anyone. “Who is that?” I shouted.

  A soft, breathy voice said, “Agua … por favor…”

  I got down and took the rifle from my saddle rig. Slowly, I walked around the big ocotillo. On the shady side, a man lay curled in the dirt. He appeared to be dead, but when my shadow crossed him, he moved. I stepped back, quickly scanning the brush and trees around the place and keeping myself more than an arm’s length from him. This could be a trap.

  “Agua … “he said again. He raised a scratched and torn hand; up to the elbow covered in brown stain and caked with sand. He had crusted, dusty hair and wore battered sandals. They were the work clothes of a ranch hand, coarse cloth, sewn nothing fancy and often patched. He tried to straighten himself, and when he did I saw the brown from his hands was on his shirt, too. In the center of a large brown ring was a darker, brownish-red one. “Muerte. Agua … poquito, “he said with eyes closed.

  Still watching the brush around me, I fetched the canteen from where I’d left Baldy, then scrunched down closer to his level. He revived just seeing me take the cork from it, and reached, throwing water into his mouth clumsily with both hands. I said, “Do I know you? Caldo? Isn’t that it? You drove Maldonado’s coach.”

  “Aye. Sí.”

  “You’ve been shot? Who did this? Bandits?”

  He gasped out, “El señor.”

  “Rudolfo shot you?”

  “Sí.”

  “Why would he do that? Let me help you onto my horse.” I reached for him, but he hollered.

  “Maybe he say I tell you. Maybe he think I say.”

  “Say what, Caldo?”

  “The train she is coming.”

  “Where?”

  “To the door of the big house. Un año. El jefe is angry. In a year these train she is going through his cocina. He is wanting all you familia to be dead. And he is coming for … la niña… religiosa. Alas agua…” He drank again, gasped, and for a moment, I thought he had died.