Bittersweet (30 page)

At that moment, Imogene appeared in the doorway. Maydley looked up, and it was as if her face had turned him to stone. Trapped in his hand, his penis withered, its tip disappearing into folds of skin and finally withdrawing completely behind his circled thumb and forefinger.

Imogene set the candle down. Her face was pale and set. Only her eyes were alive, but the gray had turned dark and they bored into him with a hatred that turned his bones to water. Harland tried to back away, to pull his pants up, but the trousers were jammed down around his thighs as tightly as ropes.

In two strides she crossed the room. She snatched a piece of firewood out of the woodbox. Swinging the wood from side to side like a scythe, she beat him. Harland shrieked and threw his hands up over his face. Grim, implacable, the blows rained down: crack, and his left arm hung useless; wood on bone, and a cut opened from eyebrow to chin. He fell and crawled across the floor on his belly, his naked pelvis scraping against the boards as he retreated. Imogene struck again and again, his legs, his back, his feet. The fabric of his trousers ripped, and his breeches fell down around his
ankles. On hands and knees he made the door and crawled across the porch, bellowing with fear and rage. Imogene hurled the log after him, striking him a glancing blow on the head.

“Next time I see you I shall kill you,” she said softly.

He managed to get to his feet and pull his pants up around his hips. He was crying and his face streamed blood. Holding his pants with his good arm, he shuffled out into the yard. Once out of reach, he turned to shout, “There ain’t no Mr. Ebbitt.” He spat out two of his teeth with the words. “I’ll see you lose this place. By God, I will!” He started crying again and stumbled into the dark.

The commotion brought Karl in from the barn. He was bent over, clutching his side, but there was an ax handle ready in his right hand. “Trouble, miss?” he called.

“It’s over, Karl. Get back to bed.” She could hear him shuffling back to the barn and saying something to Ross.

Imogene went inside and bolted the door. Sarah had come to her senses and was sitting huddled by the fire, her swollen face held between her palms.

Imogene went quickly to Sarah and hugged her as they both began to cry.

The fire burned down to nothing and still they sat curled against each other, Imogene’s wrapper pulled around them both.

“Imogene?” Sarah broke the long silence.

“What, dear?”

“Would you give me a bath?”

“Of course.”

The clothes Sarah had been wearing, down to her petticoats and stockings, were burned to heat water for the bath. It was so hot that it reddened her skin, but still she complained it wasn’t hot enough and Imogene added more until it slopped over the rim of the tub and darkened the floor. Imogene scrubbed her from head to toe with rough lye soap. As the callused palms and coarse soap scratched away the touch of Maydley’s hands, Sarah felt the stain he had left inside, the knot of shame, begin to loosen its hold.

At last, naked and dry and glowing, she stood before the fire. “Feeling better?” Imogene’s tender smile hid a word of hurt. Helplessness lay like a stone on her chest. Dark marks were forming on the perfect white skin of Sarah’s breasts, fingermarks where Maydley had clutched at her. Imogene reached out and touched the bruises gently.

“Davie used to say it was your fight if the other fellow looked worse than you,” Sarah said, and smiled crookedly into the older woman’s eyes. “Hold me, Imogene. Please hold me.” Her voice broke and Imogene cradled her like a child.

The stars were beginning to set, piercing a sky more blue than black, a desert sky, magnified by the dry air and scoured clean by high winds. Sarah’s hair, red-gold in the light of the fire, spread over the two women like fine lace.

Imogene eased her arm to settle Sarah more comfortably on her shoulder. The younger woman sighed, nestling closer, loving the warmth and smell of Imogene. “Will we have to leave here? He—” She couldn’t bring herself to say Harland Maydley’s name. “He will tell that man at Wells Fargo—Ralph Jensen—that there’s no Mr. Ebbitt.”

Imogene held her tighter. The thought of leaving the Smoke Creek Desert and the new life that had begun for them was intolerable. A sudden thought banished the coldness that was welling up inside her. “We’ll sign the lease over to Karl,” she said promptly.

Sarah propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at her old teacher. She traced the outline of Imogene’s wide mouth with a finger-tip. Her face was soft with love for her longtime friend. “Why are you so smart?”

“Because I’m not pretty—that’s what my father used to tell me.”

“You never talk about your parents. Why?”

“They weren’t happy people. My father was a sickly man, the runt of the family. All his younger brothers were great, robust fellows over six feet tall. It bothered him all his life and he took it out on my mother. When I was almost grown—I must have been just eighteen that summer—Father was drunk and he hit my mother. I knocked him out with just my fists. He left that night and we never heard of him again. Mother never forgave me. She watched for him every day until she died.”

“I’m so sorry.” Sarah smoothed the hair from Imogene’s cheek. “You’re still warm; the fever’s not quite left you.”

Imogene caught her hand and kissed the palm. “I’ve never felt better. Not in all the years of my life. No one need be sorry for me.”

The Reno stage rolled in just past one o’clock the next afternoon. Noisy had gotten so drunk celebrating his last run that he’d
fallen out of a saloon in Reno, broken his shoulder, and couldn’t drive. They’d had to hold the stage until his replacement arrived from Virginia City. The new driver, Liam, a lean and uncommunicative Irishman, seemed sullen and taciturn compared with noisy Dave. Karl was too sick to stand, and stayed in the tackroom.

As soon as the team had been changed, Harland crept painfully from the shadowy recesses of the barn where he’d hidden himself. His clothes were covered with straw and manure, his jacket and vest were missing, and his face was streaked with dried blood. One arm stuck out at an odd angle and he walked with difficulty. He crawled into the mudwagon and insisted that they leave immediately. Liam, new to the job, succumbed to his threats, though Mac cursed and fumed at cutting the rest period short and railed at Sarah to tell him “what in hell’s going on.” Sick, Imogene had kept to her room and Sarah refused to tell Mac anything. She was afraid he would kill Maydley. And she was terribly ashamed.

BY THAT EVENING, KARL WAS WORSE. HE HAD CURLED HIMSELF INTO
a ball, trying to ease the hurt in his stomach, and the women feared it was appendicitis.

Imogene was cooking supper when Sarah ran in from the barn. Karl was dying. The two of them sat with him, bathing his face with cool cloths and easing him with kind words and gentle hands. Just after midnight the big, quiet man passed away. His body grew limp and the pain left his face. Outside, the moss-faced coyote began to howl. Kneeling by the bed, Sarah wept. Imogene went on holding the hired man’s hand between her own. She felt old and tired, too tired to comfort, too tired to move.

Sarah recovered first, dried her face on her apron, and blew her nose. Then, with great care, as though afraid of waking him, she rolled Karl onto his back and straightened his limbs. His skin was still warm, still alive with blood, still damp from his sweat. For a moment Sarah held her breath, as if waiting for him to speak to her.

“There’s so much dying, Imogene. We’ve seen so much dying. Somehow I thought Karl would just be worn away over the centuries, carved by the wind and the sand until he was as smooth and hard as the pyramids at the lake. Who’d have thought Karl would die?”

Imogene rubbed her face. Her eyes felt grainy, full of sand. “His
appendix must have ruptured. There was nothing we could do. Nothing.” She started to rise from the dead man’s cot, but her legs were too heavy to lift and she sat for a while longer, staring past Sarah into the darkness beyond the window.

Moss Face howled again and was answered by the coyotes in the hills. The hair on the back of Imogene’s neck stirred and Sarah shivered, though the room was warm. “He knows Karl’s dead,” she whispered.

“Don’t be silly, you’re scaring yourself,” Imogene snapped, but she knew it was true and shook herself to be rid of the fear and loneliness. “Break up the fire,” she said abruptly. “I’ll open the windows. It will be better if it’s cold in here.”

Sarah hurried to comply, glad of something to do. “Will he—will Karl—keep till morning?”

An icy wind blew over the still and snuffed out the candle. Revived by the sudden gust, the fire in the stove flared to life again, and as suddenly died. “Karl will be fine,” Imogene replied. Sarah drew strength from her nearness, and for several minutes they stood quietly in the darkened room, each saying their good-byes to Karl Saunders.

Supper had dried up to nothing. Both women were too tired and numb to sleep, and sat at the kitchen table hunched over plates of cold food. Outside, desolate howling rent the night. Sarah had tried to coax the coyote indoors but he had run from her like a wild thing. In the hall the pendulum clock pounded the dull minutes toward dawn.

“We should eat,” Sarah said without enthusiasm.

“We should get some sleep,” Imogene replied, but made no move to rise.

Another cry broke the night stillness, and Sarah shoved her coffee aside. “We’ll have to leave Round Hole now, won’t we, Imogene?” The older woman was silent for so long that Sarah spoke again: “Imogene? We will have to go, won’t we? Without Karl to take over the lease for us?”

The schoolteacher’s shoulders sagged and she pressed her palms to her eyes as though she were blind. “I can’t think about it now. I can’t think at all.

“Do you love me?” Imogene asked softly.

“You know I do,” came the reply.

“We’ll stay. We’ll keep the stop. I’ll think of something. Let’s try to get some sleep now.”

Morning brought no answers. At sunup they bundled into their coats and scarves to see to Karl’s remains. A kernel of anger lay hard in Sarah’s chest. “We’re going to have to leave the stop,” she said, knowing the words would hurt. “Maydley will tell Mr. Jensen. You know he will. We may as well start packing our things now. We’re going to have to leave on the next stage.” Imogene said nothing. She pressed her lips into a thin line and jerked mittens on over her gloves. Sarah felt mean and little. “Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve been chased from my home.”

Imogene looked at her sharply. “Are you sorry, Sarah?”

The hurt in her old friend’s face took the bitterness out of Sarah. Gently she said, “No, Imogene, I’m not sorry. It’s been a long time coming and it’s right. I no longer believe in a God that rations out love only where the neighbors see fit.”

Imogene nodded shortly.

A wind had risen with the sun and blew steadily from the northwest. Moss Face was standing guard before the tackroom door. Sarah scratched his ears as they slipped past him and inside.

Karl’s room was as spare as a monk’s cell. Against the wall, opposite the narrow cot where Karl’s body lay, was a nail keg containing the entirety of the hired man’s estate: a jackknife, a silver chain with a silver nugget, a faded photograph of a middle-aged woman, and, tucked in a tobacco tin, every penny they had paid him in wages since the day he arrived.

Sarah looked at the shrouded figure of Karl Saunders. “Somehow I expected to find that he was all right this morning, not to see him just like we left him.” She started for the bed to turn back the cover from his face, but changed her mind.

“We haven’t the lumber for a coffin,” Imogene said. “We’ll have to bury him in a shroud.”

“I read somewhere that they sew sailors into sails before they bury them at sea,” Sarah replied. “Could we do that for Karl? A horse blanket—a sheet is so thin it wouldn’t keep out the damp.” Her eyes strayed to the feet of her friend, thurst out from under the cover, so human and vulnerable in their mended stockings.

“Karl’s too tall for a horse blanket,” Imogene said kindly. “We would have to sew four of them together.”

“We couldn’t spare four.”

There was a long silence while the cold seeped through their clothes and the coyote whined at the door.

“The best blanket in the house,” Sarah declared finally. “The one the bishop’s wife gave me.” It was of fine wool and brightly colored. Sarah felt good for the small sacrifice.

Moss Face squeezed in as she opened the tackroom door, and was across the room like a shot. He stopped short of Karl’s bed as though someone had jerked an invisible leash. A low moan built in his chest until it broke free in a howl. Imogene reached for him, soothing words forming on her lips, but he growled and darted under the bed. Imogene murmured and coaxed, but though he whined and thumped the floor with his tail, he wouldn’t come out.

Sarah watched from the door, the wind whipping her skirts into the room. A gust caught up a handful of ashes from the stove and scattered them over Karl. “Let’s go on with it,” Imogene said as she stood up. “Moss Face is all right where he is, I guess.” While Imogene fetched the long needles and strong waxed thread from the harness-repair kit, Sarah ran to the house for the blanket. When she returned they spread it on the floor beside the dead man’s bed so they could lower the body down onto it.

Tentatively, Sarah pulled the cover back. Karl was gone; only the pale, lifeless husk remained. She looked at the bloodless face, the stiff shoulders, and knew with a rush of relief that she could bury him.

The moment they laid hands on Karl’s corpse, the coyote went wild. Snarling, he exploded from under the cot like a wolverine defending its whelp. His usually soft brown eyes were narrowed, and hackles ridged his back. Crouching by Karl’s body, Moss Face bared his teeth in silent warning. The women retreated to the far side of the room. Immediately Moss Face sat down, the hair along his spine settled, and he looked up at them sheepishly, the picture of canine remorse.

“Look at him,” Sarah marveled.

The coyote crept toward them on knees and elbows. In the middle of the blanket he laid his chin on his paws and wagged his tail apologetically. Sarah started forward but the older woman stopped her. “We’d better give him a wide berth for a few days,” she said. “He is pretty upset.”

“We’ve got to get him out of here. We can’t just leave Karl.”
Sarah lowered her voice and glanced furtively around the room. “Mam says till you’ve been buried and last rites said, the spirit wanders. It can do people harm.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Moss Face feels it,” Sarah insisted.

“If you don’t stop, I’ll be feeling it.” Imogene resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. “Still, it isn’t suitable to leave Karl any longer. Take the far corner of the blanket, I’ll get this one. At the count of three we’ll wrap Moss Face in it. I’ll lock him in the house until he settles down.” Their stealth put the coyote on the alert, but they were too quick for him. They folded him in the heavy wool and Imogene scooped him up. Inside the bundle, Moss Face fought, but the blanket was thick and Imogene held him tight.

Karl was so tall they had to lay him on the blanket corner to corner and fold it into a triangle like an apple turnover. The lack of dignity disturbed Imogene, but Sarah knew the big taciturn man would have enjoyed the joke.

The sewing finished, Sarah brought the wheelbarrow from the shed and they loaded the body onto it. The grave was to be on the shoulder of the hill behind the house, and they trundled their sad cargo up through the sage. Tools were fetched and Sarah was sent back to the house, out of the cold.

Imogene broke through the frozen ground with a pick. When the crust lay like paving stones by the side of the grave, she took up the shovel and began to dig. It was slow going in the rocky soil. Once, Imogene’s spade struck a stone the size of a man’s head. “Alas, poor Yorick,” she said, and smiled a little as she threw the rock into the sage. Two hours later the grave was four feet deep and just over six feet long.

Sarah came up the hill with hot tea and stayed on to keep Imogene company and to avoid being alone. In the house, by herself, she kept hearing things. Looking down over the weathered buildings and gray alkali flats to the blue of the Fox Range beyond, Sarah sensed the emptiness of leaving and pulled her coat closer around her throat. “I’ve gotten so used to it here, I even like the alkali water. I don’t smell the rotten-egg smell anymore.”

Imogene stopped working and leaned on her shovel for a moment, the sweat shining on her brow and upper lip. “I love it here. It’s a hard land, but it’s clean. Clean of people.”

“You haven’t much use for people once they’ve turned twelve, have you?”

Imogene laughed. “Not much. I do love the children, they are so full of what people could be. But they almost never make it. The humanity is shamed or beaten out of most of them before they have turned twenty. They plod down the same narrow track their parents did, and never see the sky.”

“We have got to go back,” Sarah said softly. “We have to, now that Karl’s gone. Back in among the people. Out here, we made the rules.” A sad howl echoed up the hillside, adding finality to Sarah’s words.

Imogene plied her shovel in silence.

After another hour the grave was dug. The two of them dragged the body, shrouded in its blue-striped envelope, to the edge of the hole. They tried to lower it gently, but it got away from them, and the remains of Karl Saunders tumbled the last few feet. In the pocket of her coat, Imogene carried the Bible. As she read the words over him, the wind snatched them from her lips. Sarah hoped that if they were blown to where Karl could hear them, they brought him comfort.

Working with both shovel and pick, they filled in the grave and, stone by stone, made a small cairn to keep the animals from digging it up. Imogene promised to build a cross.

Finally all that remained was to clear away the few personal effects Karl had left behind, the work of half an hour. “I guess we’ll be packing our own things next,” Sarah said, and Imogene crumpled as though she had struck her.

Sarah ran to her, clung to her, patting her back and shoulders. Imogene burst out in fresh cries, the dry sounds of a person unaccustomed to tears. “Please, Imogene! Please!” Sarah rubbed her neck and held her, kissed the rough cheeks.

“I’m going to lose you,” Imogene cried. “I cannot bear it. We’ll leave this desert and I’ll lose you.”

“My love, my love,” Sarah murmured. “No. Never. Don’t cry. It’ll be the same. Just you and me. I promise. People won’t make any difference. I promise they won’t.”

Even as she said it, Sarah knew it wasn’t true and Imogene only sobbed harder, her face buried in her hands.

“Imogene!” Sarah cried frantically. “Please, stop it! Listen to me, Imogene!” Sarah tried to pull the schoolteacher’s hands from
her face. “We’ll stay. Here on the Smoke Creek. I’ve got an idea. We can stay, honest to God. Damn you! Listen.” Sarah swore fervently and tugged at Imogene’s wrists. Imogene quieted a little. “We won’t tell anyone Karl’s dead,” she went on hurriedly. “We’ll sign the lease for him like we did for Sam last time. We’ll pretend he’s not dead, that he’s still here.”

Imogene shook her head, but she wasn’t crying. “We can do it,” Sarah pressed. “Noisy’s quit the run and Mac would never let on. The other people that come through here are mostly strangers going someplace else, they’d never know a thing. Jensen never comes, and after the licking you gave Maydley, I bet he wouldn’t dare. If somebody asked, we could say Karl had gone here or there and wouldn’t be back for a few days, Karl didn’t have any people, so there would be nobody to tell.”

A momentary light showed in Imogene’s eyes, but it faded quickly. “It wouldn’t work, Sarah. Word would get back that there was no man here. Freighters would talk. Even Mac. Mac is as transparent as glass. You know he couldn’t hide a thing.” A bleak emptiness settled over Imogene’s mind and, sad-faced and silent, she succumbed to it.