Bittersweet (31 page)

“No!” Sarah grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “I won’t give up, not yet. We’ve got to try.” She took Imogene in her arms and the big woman hid her face in Sarah’s soft hair. Sarah hugged her close. “We won’t give up Round Hole without a fight! ‘One holy hell of a fight,’ as David says.”

They tore down the stones that marked Karl’s grave and put his belongings back where he’d kept them. Imogene wrote a note to Ralph Jensen. She didn’t apologize for deceiving him the first time, she simply stated that she and Sarah would give up without a fuss if he would agree to lease the Round Hole stop to Karl Saunders and, if Karl agreed, let them stay on. She asked that he send the lease out with the next stage. She would see it was returned to him with Mr. Saunders’s signature.

They posted the letter with the next wagon through, and waited. The reply came back with unexpected alacrity. A freighter, bound for Oregon with a load of cheesecloth, brought it to them late Saturday afternoon. It read:
The hell you will. I’ll be out on the Wednesday stage to see Saunders sign it his own damn self.—R. J. Jensen
.

THE NEXT DAY, SARAH WATCHED THE MUDWAGON FROM THE WINDOW
of the tackroom as, tiny and toylike in the distance, it wound its way down from Sand Pass. It was Sunday, four days since Harland Maydley had left Round Hole with more threats than teeth in his mouth, three days before Ralph Jensen was due.

“You’d better get to the loft now,” Sarah said without turning from the window.

“You’ll tell Mac?”

“I’ll tell him.”

The door between the tackroom and the barn swung shut. Sarah pulled her thoughts from the oncoming coach and went back to sweeping the floor. As the coach arrived at the inn yard, she finished and emptied the dustpan into the barrel stove. The smell of burning hair made her eyes water, and she sank down on Karl’s cot, dabbing at them with her dresstail.

“Sarah, coach is in!” came the call from inside the barn. She ignored it and hid her face in her hands.

Mac hollered for Imogene, then for Karl. There was no reply. He lowered himself gently from the high seat of the coach and stomped the life back into his legs and feet. Liam, looking like a man of ice, his chapped face colorless and his lips blue with the cold, steadied the team. Steam rose from the horses’ hides and
puffed from their nostrils. The sky was low and leaden overhead. Hobbling and stiff, Mac opened the coach door. “Watch that first step,” he cautioned. “The ground’s froze and liable to jar your teeth out.”

The coach was full. Groaning, the men helped one another with the women and the baggage. A slender, handsome woman and her two pert teenage daughters, traveling with their elder brother, were handed down last and stood in a tired, unhappy cluster, small and out of place in the desert landscape.

Helpless under the distraught glances of the women, Mac looked around the deserted yard. “Gals are usually out to meet the coach. Miss Grelznik, at any rate. Miss Grelznik!” he called. “Coach’s in.” Smoke curled placidly from the chimney and the stovepipe behind the house; chickens, daring out of their coop in the bitter air, pecked the ground in a desultory fashion. But there were no faces at the windows nor Imogene’s usual call of “Company!” to warn Sarah.

“Karl!” There was no answering shout. “What in the hell…” Mac muttered. “Begging your pardon, ladies. Go on inside, the gals must be tied up some damn place. Looks like they got a fire lit, anyway. Just make yourself at home.” Relieved to get his unaccustomed duties over with, he hurried back to the company of the livestock.

In the dining room a fire burned high, holding winter at bay beyond the windows. A homey smell of onions and roasting meat permeated the air, mingling with the mellow smell of old wood and old whiskey. Cold enough to risk impropriety, the misses pulled their chairs close to the wide hearth and lifted their petticoats to toast their feet on the grate. Their mother hovered near, keeping a watchful eye on their modesty and on itinerant sparks. She had ventured a few hellos, but no one had come.

In the relative warmth of the stable, Mac rubbed down the horses and covered them with heavy blankets. A rustling just louder than a mouse caught his ear and he looked up over the horse’s broad back.

“Mac,” Sarah whispered. She was as pale as a wraith, her face the same dull pewter as the square of sky that filled the open door at her back. She wore neither hat nor coat.

“Where’ve you two been hiding? I’ve a coach full—” Mac’s voice trailed off, then he said, “What’s happened, Sarah?”

She opened and closed her mouth several times without produc
ing any sound. Her eyes were distracted and her hand shook as she pushed back a loose strand of hair. A horse kicked in its stall. She jumped as though she’d been pinched, and sucked in her breath sharply.

“Sarah?” Mac walked around the horse’s rump, the currycomb in his hand.

“Imogene is dead.” Sarah moved her hands before her, the little unfinished gestures of a crippled bird.

“Oh Jesus.” Mac looked at her, then at the floor. “Jesus Christ.” He set the currycomb blindly on the partition between the stalls, missing it by half a foot, and it clattered to the floor. Sarah came to take his hand, warming the maimed, gnarled fist between her small hands. “How did it happen?” His voice was thick. He looked for a place to spit, but didn’t.

“Two days ago—she was feeling poorly Sunday, she hurt here”—Sarah pressed her hand to the side of her abdomen—“so bad she couldn’t stand up straight. The next day, Monday, she…” Sarah’s throat closed, choking off the words.

“No need now.” Mac patted her shoulder clumsily.

“No, I want to tell it. Monday it was read bad, sometimes she didn’t know who we were.” Sarah spoke in the monotone of a schoolgirl reciting a lesson she’s committed to memory. “Monday, late, she died.” Turning her face to Mac’s shoulder, Sarah cried, then abruptly stopped.

“We—K-Karl and me—buried her. We—had to take a pick to the ground to break it.” She cried again and Mac stood miserably by patting her arm.

“Karl was under the weather too. Is he up and around?” Mac asked.

Sarah stared at him dumbly, then stammered, “Up and around. Yes. He is. Up and around,” she repeated. Then she cried, “Oh God!” and fell again to sobbing. In time she stopped and raised her eyes. “Do you want to see the grave?”

Mac nodded and she led him from the gloom of the stable. After the close, animal-warned air, the west wind cut like a knife, brittle and clean and so cold it burned to breathe. Holding tightly to his hand, Sarah went across the yard and around behind the house. Fifty yards away, in a small clearing in the sage, a broken rubble of clods bristling with sparse brown grass was heaped in a mound. At
one end, a rough cross of two-by-fours had been driven into the earth. There was no name on it.

Moss Face was curled up near the unpainted cross, his nose buried under his tail. He whined as they approached, and Sarah gathered him in her arms and hugged him close. He’d grown long and rangy, a faded red bandanna was tied around his neck, proclaiming his domesticity.

Mac pulled his hat off, his hands red and white with the cold. Sarah stood at his side, looking past the grave to the dark Fox Range. A narrow wedge of blue showed above the mountains. Pale rays of a cold sun shone through the break in the clouds, firing the snow on the peaks.

After a time of silence, Mac dug his knuckles into his eyes and spat carefully downwind. “Where’s Saunders?”

Sarah jumped. “Karl? Karl has gone to Fish Springs for a wagon part.”

He stared at her incredulously. “Now is a hell of a time to be going for wagon parts,” he barked. “Why that goddamn, blockheaded, numbskulled, knucklebrained son of a bitch. If he had half the sense he was born with—”

Sarah started to cry, wailing loud and frightened like a child, and like a child, she clung to his arm. “Please don’t. Please.”

Subdued to a grumble, Mac walked with her to the house. Sarah’s nose was strawberry-colored with crying and the cold, and her teeth chattered. Mac took her to the warmth and privacy of the kitchen, where she recovered herself somewhat, the necessity of seeing to the guests making her dry her eyes and stiffen her back. When he left, she was tied into her apron and tending to a savory venison stew.

Mac let himself out by the back door to avoid the clutch of people warming themselves with fire and whiskey in the main room. His grizzled head bent against the wind, his collar turned up around his ears, he walked to the barn.

Gaps between the boards, widened each summer as moisture was sucked from the already parched wood, moaned as the wind blew over them. Hard white light filtered through, draining color until the straw, the worn wood, the horse blankets on the wall, the leather harnesses, the coils of rope, the cans lining the crossbeams—all the contents of the barn—looked dull and lifeless. Mac, too, looked bleached with time and life, his shoulders stooped under his
sixty-odd years; his sparse, wiry hair was almost white, and the furrows that seamed his face made him look less gnomish than simply tired. He slumped down on a half-filled nail keg and the sharp, tearing sounds of grief, sobs robbed of tears from years of being strong, grated from him.

In the murky half-light of the loft above, a shape shifted and the faded red plaid of Karl’s shirt rose from the bales, the battered felt hat pulled low. For a moment, sympathetic gray eyes looked down on the grieving old man, then soundlessly ducked down behind the barrier of hay.

Sarah managed to show the guests to their rooms and get dinner on the table; then, exhausted to the point where she was shaking, she excused herself to pick at her own dinner in the comfort of her kitchen.

Mac joined her after supper. He knocked timidly. “Sarah, it’s Mac.”

“Come in, Mac.” She lifted her eyes from the congealed mess of stew on her plate and managed a weak smile. He sat down heavily opposite her, and for a while neither spoke.

The sounds of feet on the stairs, as the guests said their good nights and carried their candles up to bed, roused Mac from his thoughts.

“You go on back with Liam. I’ll stay on till Jensen gets a new boy.”

Sarah stared, openmouthed. “Mac! I can’t leave Imogene.” Confusion clouded her face, and tears welled up in her eyes.

“Jensen was going to put you out anyway. I was to tell you. Soon as he found somebody else. He’d always pretty much known Mr. Ebbitt never showed, but there weren’t no complaints and he was satisfied to leave things well enough alone. But your friend Harland Maydley make a stink. Said he’d go over Ralph’s head if he had to. Since the lease was signed by two women, it ain’t legal.”

“Karl could take over, couldn’t he? Sign a new lease or something?”

“And you’d stay on?” Mac gave her a long knowing look, and she bridled a little.

“It’s not that, Mac.”

“I wouldn’t be pointing the finger if it was. A woman could do a hell of a lot worse’n Karl. He don’t say much but he ain’t stupid. Some fellas don’t say much and you figure they’re just duller than
a hoe, and when they do speak up, sure enough, they ain’t much sharper. But when Karl talks, he’s not just beating his gums.”

“It’s not that.”

“Not much company for you out here; there’d be folks your own age in town. Women.”

“I’ll stay. You’ll be here sometimes.”

Mac shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m too old for swamping, been too old for fifteen years. This’ll be my last winter. I don’t mind telling you, Miss Grelznik’s going’s took the heart out of it.” Sarah reached out for his hand and held it. “ ’Course, I’d be more’n happy to stay on here if you need me,” he added.

“No, don’t stay,” she said, a bit too quickly, and Mac looked both hurt and relieved.

The house was still, the fires burned down to embers. Mac sat alone in front of the hearth, the only one besides Sarah who was still awake.

Sarah had gone to bed and, warm under the wool, swathed in a heavy flannel nightdress, she lay staring at the ceiling. No shadows mottled the darkness, and even the square of the window was scarcely lighter than the wall. Restless, she threw off the covers and drew on her robe. With her face pressed against the glass, she looked out over the harsh lines of the Smoke Creek Desert. Under the overcast the stage was as black as ink, the outline of the privy barely discernible.

A long, eerie howl made her shiver. There was a moment of silence, deeper for having been so recently rent, then another cry. Sarah pressed her plans over her ears. Another quavering call went up into the night, this time close to the house. Snatching up her shawl from the bedpost, Sarah lit a kerosene lamp and tiptoed through the house and out the back door into the winter night. Pellets of snow stung her face and neck. She pulled the shawl over her head and squinted into the blackness. The howling came again and she shoved her fist into her mouth to choke off her own crying. Steadfastly she made her way out through the gate and to the clearing in the brush.

Moss Face perched on the freshly turned clods of the grave, his narrow face pointed at the blind sky.

“Moss Face,” Sarah called, stopping near the fence about fifty feet from the mound of dirt. “Come here.” The dog stopped his
lament, looked at her, and whimpered. Pressing his chin down between his forepaws, he crept toward her on his belly. Sarah wouldn’t go any closer to the grave; she crouched down and stepped on the tail of her nightgown, wrapping the loose flannel over her cold toes. “Come here, little fella,” she coaxed, and the dog whined.

Wind gusted past the lamp chimney, making it throw an uncertain, dancing light. Just beyond its glow, a pale face appeared out of the darkness.

“Karl!” Sarah screamed, and lurched up, but the hem of her gown pulled her to her knees and the lamp fell from her hand. Its bowl shattered, and flames ran like liquid over the ground, whipping with a life of their own. “Karl! No!” Sarah covered her face and screamed again, stumbling back from the grave.

Strong hands caught her and held her. “It’s me. Don’t be afraid. I’m not a ghost. It’s me.” Sarah cringed and clung to the rough wool of the coat, burying her face in Karl’s vest. The fire winked out, the kerosene consumed. “You go back to bed, Sarah. I came out to get Moss Face.”

“Oh Lord, what have we gotten ourselves into?” Sarah cried.

“Hush! Do you want me to walk you to the house?”

“No. I’ll be all right.” Sarah’s voice was a bare thread of sound, almost lost in the wind.