Bittersweet (23 page)

ELMS AND OAKS WERE FROSTBITTEN TO RED AND GOLD, AND THE
warm yellow autumn leaves of the cottonwood trees lined the streets. Imogene stepped out of the stationer’s and heard a train whistle in the distance. “Most trains will be carrying Bishop Whitaker girls,” she said to herself. “They’ll be trickling in all week.” The thought brought a smile.

A gust of wind fluttered her shawl. She looked to the west, where the tips of stormclouds were visible beyond the mountain peak. As Imogene watched, the front grew and darkened. She hurried along the boardwalk.

McMurphy was lounging against the side of the stable across the street from the Wells Fargo office, his back against the sun-warmed wood. He jerked his hatbrim as she approached. “Afternoon, Miss Grelznik.”

“I haven’t seen you since August, Mac. Have you gone back to prospecting?” Imogene asked.

“No, ma’am, I got put up from stablehand to swamper. I been mostly on the run to Pyramid and Round Hole.”

“What does a swamper do?”

“This one reads.” He pulled a yellowed magazine out of his hip pocket, showing off to his teacher. The cover featured a cowboy and several dozen Indians. “I’m reading right now.” He tapped the magazine.

“After a fashion,” Imogene said dryly.

Mac laughed and folded the cowboy book back into his pocket. “What I do is ride along on the stage and see to the livestock, changing teams, hitching, unhitching, and feeding and whatnot. We’ve got horses at every stop, pretty near.”

Lightning flashed to the west, a great forked tongue licking down the mountain side. Half a minute later the rumble of thunder reached their ears.

Mac sniffed the air. “Whoo-ee! We ain’t long for it now.”

“It looks as if I’d best be going.” Imogene pushed her hatpins in. “Congratulations on your new position, Mac.”

“I hope you’re not thinking to go home,” Mac winked.

“Why not?” Imogene asked.

“Not more’n twenty minutes ago, Nate come by. He was slicked up and pomaded till a skunk wouldn’t have him. I asked him if he was going courting. He said, ‘Not today I ain’t. Today I’m going asking.’ He wasn’t just beating his gums, neither, he meant to do it. Figured he could talk little Mrs. Ebbitt around if they was alone. She’s a docile little gal. Maybe you want to hole up over to the office for a while, let them kids do their lovemaking. The judge’s got the stove going.”

Sarah was behind the house on the path, collecting colorful sprigs of leaves, when she heard Nate’s claybank on the drive. She stood poised for an instant like a doe ready to run, her basket of branches under her arm. Gusts heavily scented with the coming rain blew fire-colored leaves around her skirts.

Nate rapped smartly on the door. There was no answer and he opened it partway. “Anybody home?” Silence. He closed it and came around the end of the house. “Hello! Guess you didn’t hear my hullabaloo. I figured you might be to the outhouse.”

Sarah blushed. “I was collecting leaves, Mr. Weldrick.” She showed him her basket.

“Be your last chance, this storm blowing up’s going to pound them off.” He walked with her back to the house. In the closeness of the living room the smell of his pomade was overpowering. Sarah started to open a window and then stopped, embarrassed.

Nate grinned. “Guess I’m pretty ripe, ain’t I? I told the barber I was calling on a lady and he got kind of heavy-handed with the stinkum.”

Sarah smiled. She looked at the clock over the bookcase.

“You expecting Miss Grelznik home anytime soon?”

Sarah dropped her eyes. “Not for another hour or two.”

“Where’s the kid?”

“He was cranky. I think he was feeling a little peaked, so I put him to bed.”

Nate absorbed this information, nodding. “I’ll get right down to what I come about. I been calling pretty regular these past months, haven’t I?” He looked at Sarah. “You’ll give me that?”

“Yes, that’s so. You come to see Wolf.”

“You know that ain’t it; I come calling on you. You know that the same as you know I’m sitting here.”

Sarah didn’t say anything.

“What do you say to that, Sarah?”

It was the first time he had ever called her by her Christian name, and she looked up, startled.

“The way I figure it, I got no call to go on calling you Mrs. Ebbitt. Either Mr. Ebbitt’s dead or run out on you, and either way, according to my way of thinking, he’s lost his claim. You leave a property unmined for a while and pretty soon your claim’s no good. It’s anybody’s. So I figure you’re just plain Sarah Ebbitt now.” Nate was loud, argumentative.

Sarah sat in the straight-backed chair by the stove, pleating and unpleating her skirt between her fingers.

“You ought to have a husband and kids of your own,” he went on. “Not living with a dried-up old maid, keeping house for her and raising a half-breed Indian kid. You ought to have a man to look after you.”

A war look came into Sarah’s eyes. “I like keeping house with Imogene.”

“That ain’t the point!” He made a chopping gesture and banged the end of his little finger on the chair. “Damn.” He thrust the injured pinky into his mouth and got up to pace in front of the window. The storm had hit; rain drummed against the glass, obscuring the trees on the far side of the yard behind wavering curtains of gray. There had been no single drops to herald the downpour; it had come all at once, dinning on the roof and ringing down the stovepipe. It was dark enough to light the lamps, though it was just after two o’clock.

The bedroom door opened a crack, then all the way, and Wolf
came out. “Sarie? I’m having bad dreams.” Sarah’s relief was evident as she turned her attention to the sleepy child. She knelt and pushed the lank hair from his face.

“What’s the matter, Wolf?” She laid the back of her hand on his forehead.

Nate turned from the window. “Damn it, Wolf, go on, get yourself back to bed. Don’t be bothering us now.”

Sarah folded Wolf in her arms. “Your pa doesn’t mean it, honey. What kind of dreams?” When she talked to the child, her shy, uneasy look evaporated, and her hazel eyes were warm, her small mouth soft. Wolf nuzzled into her shoulder.

Nate picked the boy bodily off the floor out of the comfort of Sarah’s embrace. “Come on, kid. This ain’t the time.” To Sarah he said, “You stay put. We ain’t done talking yet.” Before she could say a word he was out the door, Wolf with him.

The storm had broken before Imogene was halfway home, and she ran, her shawl pulled up over her head. Her skirts were heavy with water in a moment, and rain streamed off her face. Wet leaves blew against her, brown with the rain, clinging like seaweed.

As she turned off the river road, up the drive, thunder cracked overhead and a prong of lightning threw the cottage and the yard into sharp relief. Imogene slowed to a walk, clutching her side, panting for breath. Nate stepped out on the porch and slammed the door. Imogene recognized him and stopped. Instinctively she backed against the side of the main house, where she was half-hidden behind the stone chimney.

Nate carried Wolf under his arm; the boy’s face was tight with tears. Nate reached under the canvas waterproof over his saddle and jerked out his hat and coat. He jammed the protesting child into them, pulling the hat down around the boy’s ears. Then, carrying Wolf like a bundle of dirty laundry, Nate plunked him down on the top step of Addie’s back porch, where it was dry. “You stay put, you hear? Don’t you come in till I tell you.” And with that he strode back to the house and let himself in without knocking.

“The nerve of that man!” Imogene whispered. Color rushed to her cheeks and she began to shake. She stepped from the shelter of the chimney and stared at the house. Her lips twitched, thoughts forming and changing as she watched the mute façade of the home
she shared with Sarah. Rain formed icy rivulets and ran down her neck and collar.

A chirping sound distracted her. She looked over to the porch where Nate had left his son. Wolf had managed to wriggle out of Nate’s mackinaw, and bareheaded and coatless, he played at boats in the overflow of Addie’s rain gutter. He was as wet as if he’d been tossed in the river. Quickly, Imogene bundled the child in her sodden shawl and ran for the house.

The storm covered the sound of the front door opening.

Nate held Sarah by the shoulders, her narrow frame crumpled between his hands. His face was pushed close to hers. “What kind of a life have you got here? Answer me that,” he was insisting. Sarah would not raise her eyes to his.

Thunder rolled overhead, the wind abated, and for a moment it was still. Into the stillness, Imogene spoke. “A very fine life, Mr. Weldrick.”

She stepped over the sill and put the bundle that was Wolf into Sarah’s waiting arms. “He’s soaked to the skin, Sarah. Perhaps you will take care of Mr. Weldrick’s son. It is clear he will not.”

“Wolf!” Sarah cradled him to her breast. “No wrap.” She fixed Nate with a hard look. “Mr. Weldrick, if he catches cold…” She never finished her threat, but escaped into the bedroom with the child and slammed the door.

Imogene turned to Nate. “Please leave, Mr. Weldrick. Your attentions are not appreciated here.”

“Sarah!” He banged on the bedroom door and rattled the knob. She had locked it from the inside. “Sarah, that kid had a coat!”

“Get out!” Imogene turned him from Sarah’s door with one arm.

“I’m proposing marriage,” Nate protested.

“The young lady has a husband. You’ve been made aware of that.”

“She can get a divorce.”

“And live with her neighbors always pointing and gossiping?”

“Not out here, there ain’t enough women. Nobody’d ask. Nobody’d know. A gal like Sarah’d get respect wherever she was. You’re so damn jealous you can’t see straight.”

The blood drained from Imogene’s lips and her hand clenched on their chair back.

“That’s it, ain’t it?” Nate sneered. “Jealous. I ain’t blind. Mac
ain’t blind. Anybody with eyes can see. You go green when a man so much as looks at her. You’re jealous because men ain’t falling all over themselves to pay court to you. If anything wearing pants gave you the eye, you’d change your tune fast enough.”

Imogene laughed, not the hurting, humorless laugh of a frightened woman, but full-throated and easy, and Nate was surprised into silence. “Is that what you think, Mr. Weldrick?” The laughter still played around her mouth. “That I want a man of my own?”

“I do,” he said sullenly.

She smiled and shook her head. “You cut a sorry figure for a courting beau—giving your attentions to a married woman, no land, no job, no prospects. What do you come to offer Sarah? You’ve demeaned the life she has here with me. Here she is respected and cared for, she has clothes and food and a decent place to live, friends that love her. What do you offer? Your manliness? Get out.” Imogene held open the door, ignoring the rain that blew in on the rug.

“I can give her kids of her own.”

Imogene’s composure crumbled. “Get out!”

Unhurriedly, Nate crossed to the door. “I aim to get all them other things. I ain’t intending to drag Sarah all over the country; I figured to quit jobbing and settle down. If I’ve got to do it first, so be it. I’ll be back. And then you can prate your by-God, nose-in-the-air head off and be damned. I’m going to marry her.”

Imogene closed the door quietly after him and stayed for a moment staring at the wood. Low voices came from Sarah’s room, murmuring in mellow accord with the rain. Imogene’s wide shoulders sagged and she turned wearily. Sarah stood in the doorway. Rain drummed steadily on the roof and walls, filling the room with sound. Gray light, filtering through the streaming windows, ran down the walls and stripped the color from the rag rugs. Sarah crossed the room and put her arms around the schoolteacher’s waist, laying her head against the wet ruffles on Imogene’s bodice.

Imogene held her close. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I was so terribly jealous. So afraid I would lose you. I’m sorry. Do you want to marry Mr. Weldrick?” Her voice, deep and hollow, seemed to bubble up from the depths of a well.

“I don’t know.”

“Hush now, don’t cry, talk to me.”

“It would be better, maybe. I guess I should. I can’t go on forever like this. I just don’t know. I’m so afraid.”

Wolf was crying, a thin, fretful whimpering.

“He’s hot,” Sarah said. “It makes him peevish. I think he’s coming down with something.”

“We’d better see to him,” Imogene replied, but they stood a moment longer in the wavering half-light, holding on to each other.

THE LAMPS IN THE KITCHEN HAD BEEN LIT FOR HOURS. RAIN STILL
pounded against the windows. Neither Imogene nor Sarah had mentioned Nate or his proposal of that afternoon.

“Wolf’s a little under the weather,” Sarah said, removing the boy’s place setting and putting it away. “I’m going to put him to bed with a dish of bread pudding. I think he’s taken a chill. That drenching Nate put him through seems to have aggravated it. He was feeling a little peaked before Mr. Weldrick came.” She scooped a bowl half-full of pudding and took a spoon from the drawer.

“Take a candle?”

“No need.” Slipping the spoon in her pocket, Sarah left the kitchen.

Imogene pushed the fried ham to the back of the stove, where it would stay warm, and took the potatoes from the oven. She squeezed them until their jackets burst open and put a chunk of butter in each.

Sarah returned, slipped into her place at the table, and said grace. Neither had an appetite, and after making a feeble attempt to eat, they cleared the dishes and went to sit by Wolf. The only light in the room spilled in through the open door from the living room. Wolf, round-faced as the moon, lay quiet, his arms at his sides.

Sarah smiled. “He’s asleep.”

“It’s a good sign.”

At the sound of voices, Wolf opened his dark eyes. “You sleep,” Sarah said, and he closed them obediently. Imogene laid the back of her hand against the curve of his cheek. “If the fever is not gone of itself by morning, we’ll call the doctor.”

In the morning he was worse; his eyes shone with an unnatural luster, and the skin of his face was drawn and hot. The bed gave him no comfort and he complained ceaselessly that there were rocks and spiders in it.

The doctor came at midmorning. It was influenza. People died of it in the winter. He’d seen whole mining camps wiped out. “Keep him warm,” he said. “As warm as he’ll let you. Sometimes the fever breaks.”

Imogene stood over Wolf. The little box bed came scarcely to her knees, and she loomed over it like a giantess. “I’ve been out in the rain, soaked to the skin a hundred times. When I was a girl at Elmira College in New York, I used to wash my hair Saturday afternoon before chapel. In winter it would freeze on the way across College Square and melt during prayers, dripping down my back. I never once caught cold.”

“Wolf’s a baby,” Sarah replied.

“Who would think a moment in the rain without a coat could chill him so much?”

“It was more than a moment; Mr. Weldrick made him go outside before you came home.”

Imogene shook as a tremor ran down her spine, and busied herself in the kitchen making strong broth.

They took turns sitting with Wolf, replacing the covers when he threw them off, and watching the fever consume him. Sarah grew pale and dark-eyed, mirroring the face of the child. She would not sleep even when Imogene sat with Wolf, and wouldn’t stay out of the room long enough to eat a proper meal.

Near midnight on the third night of Wolf’s illness, Imogene came in to sit with her.

“You ought to try to sleep, Sarah. You’ll get sick.”

Sarah shook her head. Her hair, plaited into one long braid, fell over her shoulder. She tied it in the sash of her robe to keep it out of the way. Wolf lay quiet in his little bed, the covers tucked up under his chin.

“He seems to be resting better,” Sarah said.

Imogene looked at the hollow eyes, their pupils twitching under the lids, and laid her hand on his chest. The fragile cage of flesh and bone trembled under her palm as Wolf labored for air. “Maybe.”

“Mr. Weldrick put him out in the rain with no coat.”

Imogene didn’t comment.

“I might have stopped him if I’d said something.”

“Don’t, Sarah. Nate Weldrick did what he did. You can’t blame yourself.”

In the early hours of morning, Imogene lay awake, the lamp turned low by her bedside. Sarah was sitting with Wolf in the other room. Too tired to concentrate on her book, Imogene lay listening. The rain had let up and the wind soughed through the wet and falling leaves. A low, piercing wail started. As if that had been the sound she was listening for, Imogene threw back the bedclothes and ran to the other room.

Hands clasped tightly in her lap, her shoulders hunched almost to her knees, Sarah keened a single, wavering, high-pitched note, and rocked herself. She looked up when Imogene came in.

“He’s just gone. Burned up.” She clawed at the air, trying to drag understanding from it. “Gone.”

Sarah turned her face against the familiar planes of her friend’s broad chest, and great gulping sobs tore out of her. Imogene held her, her own tears falling into the soft halo of hair.

Wolf was an Indian and so couldn’t be buried in the Christian cemetery. The Indian cemetery was on the outskirts of Reno, and the gravediggers grumbled at having to walk so far in the rain. Drizzle darkened and smeared the wooden tombstones, and around the grave the mud was ankle-deep. Imogene stood close to Sarah, with Lutie and Fred beside her. Mac was at Sarah’s other side, his grizzled old face as soft as a woman’s around the mouth and eyes. He’d carried the coffin from the wagon, he and Fred Bone; it was scarcely half the length of a man, and its toy-sized dimensions mocked the living. Across from them, over the open grave, the bishop and Mrs. Whitaker bowed their heads. Sarah, dead calm, stood between Imogene and Mac, her face drawn and sunken around the eyes, but composed.

When it was over and the handfuls of wet earth had been dropped on the coffin, Sarah and Imogene rode home with the
Whitakers. Ozi’s proud, matched bays, young and spirited, refused to suit their steps to the occasion and lifted their feet high out of the mud as if dancing. The cloud cover had begun to break and the sun came through in rainbowed fingers, touching the leaves back to gold.

“Will you come in for a bite?” Mrs. Whitaker asked as they drew abreast of the Whitaker house. “I’ll bet you’ve not had a decent meal in a while. Come in and eat.”

“Sarah?” Imogene asked.

“No thank you, Mrs. Whitaker, I couldn’t.”

“Won’t help to go hungry,” the bishop’s wife advised.

Ozi shook the reins. “Bishop?” Imogene laid a hand on the seatback. “I’d like to walk the rest, if you don’t mind. I need to get out and walk a little.”

“It’s wet. You’ll catch a chill yourself.”

“I’d like to walk too,” Sarah said unexpectedly. There was a sense of quiet authority drawn around her like a cloak, the same sad sense of self-possession that had straightened her back at the graveside. The bishop bowed to the dignity of her grief and helped them both from the carriage.

Late-autumn sunlight shone warm on their backs, and the morning’s drizzle sparkled on every leaf and blade of grass. The pungent smell of rain-washed earth and rotting leaves swelled up from the ground. A thin mist rose from the river and blew into translucent ribbons over the water. Arms linked, they walked side by side on the grassy bank, avoiding the mud of the path.

“Things aren’t real yet,” Sarah said. “Like Wolf’s not being home when we get there. No more. Something that can’t be fixed, won’t ever be better. I can’t believe that. How am I going to bear it when I do?”

“We’ll bear it together.”

“I should have married Mr. Weldrick like he wanted me to.”

“Why?”

“I had another chance. Mam says folks don’t often get more than one. Maybe God took Wolf because I wouldn’t take it. If there was a life to be taken, it should’ve been mine.”

“I can’t believe in a God who would kill a child to prove a point,” Imogene said.

“Imogene! Please don’t!” Sarah glanced nervously up at the
clearing depths of the sky. “He does things like that in the Bible all the time.”

“So he does.”

Their skirts were wet and mud-spattered by the time they reached home. Wrapped in a dry robe, Imogene built a fire and arranged their petticoats over a chair in front of the stove, their wet shoes and stockings lined up like black attendants underneath. Sarah, clad only in bodice and pantalets, sat by the table, her eyes fixed on nothing.

By her chair, a picture book lay on the floor. Toys littered a corner of the room, a half-demolished castle of wooden blocks leaned against the bookcase, and a miniature jacket hung beside Sarah’s blue wool coat on a peg by the door.

“Why don’t you lie down for a while, Sarah?”

“Can I lay on your bed?”

“We can trade rooms if you like.”

Sarah stopped in the doorway and looked back. “Nate Weldrick put him out like a stray cat,” she said. “I might have married Nate. I wouldn’t have liked it, maybe, but I know I’ve got to right myself with things. But he put him out without a thought. Drowned him like a kitten.”

Imogene looked away, hiding her eyes with her hand.

Imogene boxed up Wolf’s toys and tidied the house while Sarah slept, and later the two of them sat at the table, Sarah reading, Imogene plying her needle to the hem of a pillow sham. Scented autumn air came in through the open windows, and a small fire burned in the woodstove to take the chill out.

Kate Sills came up the drive with a basket of preserves—gifts from the staff and herself. Wet leaves muffled her footsteps and neither Sarah nor Imogene heard her until she reached the house. Imogene put the kettle on and the three of them sat around the table, the two teachers talking quietly.

“Imogene, Bishop Whitaker and I have discussed it,” Kate said, “and we can get by without you for the first week or so of winter-term, if you’d like.”

Sarah spoke up before Imogene could reply. “Go back Monday, Imogene, you know you should. Teaching always makes you feel better.”

“I don’t want you to be by yourself in an empty house.”

“I’ll be all right. I have some things to do. I’ll have Addie and I can walk over to Mrs. Whitaker’s if I’m lonely.” There was a new firmness to Sarah and no trace of self-pity in her words.

Imogene stirred her tea.

“I think I would like to be alone for a while,” Sarah said, and it was decided.

The last few days of the week, neighbors came and went, bringing things they thought would be needed. Lutie brought fresh linens from the Broken Promise so that Imogene and Sarah would be spared the bulk of the week’s laundry, Mac brought a load of wood cut to fit the potbellied stove—though he’d brought them a cord in September—and Mrs. Whitaker brought over more food than the two of them could eat in a week. It was a relief when, in the evenings, there was time for the two of them to sit together, quiet with each other and their grief.

Trusting to the strength Sarah seemed to have found in her loss, Imogene left for school early Monday morning. Sarah walked with her to the river path. The sun hadn’t been up half an hour, and shadows stretched long over the moving water. Their breath came in clouds, and the frosty air brought blood to their cheeks and noses.

“I’m afraid winter is here,” Imogene said as they reached the path. “You’d better get back inside before you catch cold.”

“I will,” Sarah promised. “Let me walk with you a little further.”

Pleased, Imogene slowed her steps, though she had been late leaving the house. Sarah hooked her arm through the older woman’s and they walked without speaking. The storm had torn the last leaves from the trees along the river’s edge, and bare branches painted a winter scene against the blue November sky. The two women walked on a carpet of mauve and purple. Sarah kicked a clump of leaves, but they were heavy with water and wouldn’t take to the air.

“We used to make great piles of them when I was little, and dive into them. I like remembering then,” Sarah said.

“My father didn’t abide leaf-diving.” Imogene hardly ever mentioned her childhood; all her talk of memories suggested she had entered the world through a schoolroom in her late twenties. “Not for young ladies anyhow.”

They had come to the foot of the hill leading up to the school.
Sarah detached her arm from Imogene’s and laid the schoolteacher’s gloved hand against her cheek, but said nothing.

“Thank you for walking with me,” Imogene said. “I enjoy things so much more when you’re with me.”

Sarah watched Imogene until she vanished from sight behind the school door. Then, running lightly over the sodden ground, she hurried home. In Imogene’s room she dragged a chair over to the closet, climbed up, and rummaged through the boxes on the top shelf until she found the one she was looking for—a battered blue hatbox with an ill-fitting lid. She carried it to the bed and dumped off the top. Inside was the Colt .45 that Mac had insisted Imogene keep.

“By the authority of Judge Colt,” Sarah said.

Using both thumbs, she pulled back the hammer and a mechanism clicked, holding it in place. She held the gun away from her and fired. A bullet smashed into the wainscoting and the pistol bucked backwards. Without hesitation, she pulled the hammer back again and turned the pistol around. She pushed the barrel of the .45 against her breast, feeling the cold metal through her bodice. Steadying the gun in her two hands, she tried to imagine life draining from her, pumping out with her blood, leaving emptiness and peace behind: a quiet, permanent stillness.

She would be with Wolf.