Elm Creek Quilts [10] The Quilter's Homecoming (20 page)

“What do you mean?”

Mary Katherine shrugged as if the answer was so obvious, the only mystery was why anyone would pose the question. “The Barclays keep to themselves.”

“Is that their choice?”

Mary Katherine gave her a speculative look. “Well, I don’t know exactly. Why do you ask?”

“It seems strange to me that John Barclay would run the post office out of his house if he craved solitude.”

Mary Katherine hesitated. “I never thought of that. I suppose…I suppose it’s fair to say that their isolation isn’t entirely of their own choosing. But don’t judge us too harshly. We have good reason to leave them alone. John Barclay is so unpleasant even on his best days, and Rosa—well, it breaks your heart just to look in her eyes.”

Elizabeth knew exactly what she meant.

“I don’t think anyone means to be unkind, but it’s hard not to be suspicious, and perhaps even fearful, when so much death and misfortune have beset that poor family.” Mary Katherine clasped her hands together in her lap and gazed out the window at the construction site as they passed. “Some people say Rosa and John are doing something to bring on their children’s illnesses—poison, or bad food, or even simple neglect. Others say it’s God’s will, and that He must be punishing Rosa or John for some terrible sin the rest of us can only imagine. I know that one of John’s sisters died of a wasting illness as a young girl, so maybe it
is
a problem with their water, as some people think.”

For someone who claimed to have few friends to chat with, Mary Katherine kept herself well informed regarding the opinions of her neighbors. “And what do you think?”

“I can’t believe Rosa would ever harm her children,” declared Mary Katherine. “She grieves every day for those lost babies. If anyone is to blame—and I’m not saying anyone is—I would look to John. If bitterness in a man’s heart can poison a child, then he’s the guilty party.”

“Mr. Barclay poisoned his babies?” exclaimed Annalise in horror.

“Of course not! It’s just an expression.” Mary Katherine rolled her eyes at Elizabeth. “This is how rumors get started. Mark my words, the next time you go to the Arboles Grocery, someone will whisper in your ear that the sheriff found ten bottles of poison buried in the Barclays’ barley field.”

Elizabeth smiled and drove on.

Soon they left Meadowbrook Hills behind and reached the edge of the town, where Mary Katherine instructed Elizabeth to turn south. Accustomed to her guide’s last-minute warnings, Elizabeth had slowed the car in anticipation as they approached the intersection and made the turn easily. In the backseat, the girls made noises of disappointment as they failed to be sent careening from one side of the leather seat to the other.

They drove south down Ventura Boulevard until they arrived at a long, low building with four-foot-tall letters spelling out
HANNEMAN
’
S SAFARI WORLD
on the peak of the roof, which had been covered in thatch to give it a rustic appearance. Automobiles filled the parking lot, and a line of families with young children and couples holding hands snaked along the sidewalk to the front gate. They joined the end of the line, and when they reached the entrance, Mary Katherine paid their admission and thrust a souvenir map into Elizabeth’s hand. “In case we get separated,” she said, as Margaret seized her hand and pulled her through the open gate.

Elizabeth, who was expecting either a circus or a zoo, found that Safari World seemed to be a combination of both. As the girls darted from the monkey house to the camel rides to the elephant pens, Mary Katherine tried valiantly to keep up with them while giving Elizabeth a running commentary on the sights around them and the history of the place. George Hanneman, she explained as she pursued her daughters, had worked as an animal trainer and occasional movie extra for Galaxy Pictures. If an elephant went on a rampage in a film, it was almost certain George Hanneman was the rajah he seemed to trample underfoot. If a lion tried to bite off the head of a British explorer in the wilds of Africa, George Hanneman was the man Tarzan rescued in the nick of time. When Galaxy Pictures decided to close its studio zoo, George, who had become fond of the lions in particular, decided to open his own animal farm to supply movie studios with well-trained animal actors as needed. Never one to overlook a business opportunity, after local boys began peering through knotholes in the fences to watch him train the lions, George decided to set up bleachers and charge admission. Within a year, he added monkeys, camels, panthers, tigers, and horses to the roster of performers and built a snack bar and gift shop on the compound. Circus troupes from all parts of the west came to Safari World for the winter, taking the train to Simi Valley and then parading over the grade and through the Arboles Valley, the smaller animals hauled along in cages on gaudily painted wagons, the elephants marching single file, each grasping the tail of the one before it with its trunk. The ground shook as they marched, frightening the residents of farms along the road with thoughts of earthquakes until they remembered it was circus season.

When a tall man in an elegant red coat and jodhpurs announced that the lion show was about to begin, Elizabeth and Mary Katherine grasped the hands of the younger girls and made their way through the crowd to the central stage. The bars separating the bleachers from the performance space seemed dangerously insubstantial to Elizabeth, especially when three lions suddenly bounded onstage guided by a slim, muscular man in a black shirt and slacks. At his command, the largest of the cats, an enormous male with a thick, shaggy mane, leapt onto a tall platform and let out a roar that made the crowd gasp. Margaret covered her ears and Elizabeth sank back into her seat, trembling.

“Charlie,” said Mary Katherine breathlessly, her eyes on the lion. Elizabeth swallowed and nodded. She would have recognized that roar anywhere.

She watched, entranced, as George Hanneman put the lions through their paces. They jumped from platform to platform, awing the audience with their strength and agility. They reenacted scenes Elizabeth remembered from jungle movies she had seen years before. George Hanneman demonstrated how a lion attack would be staged and filmed, first explaining how he had trained Charlie to pounce upon him without hurting him, as he might in play. Even then, he warned, only a trainer who knew his cat exceptionally well should attempt such a stunt. In all the years he had known and cared for Charlie, he never allowed himself to forget that Charlie was not a pet, but a dangerous and potentially lethal wild carnivore.

The crowd shuddered and murmured in respectful fear, but Mary Katherine sighed and rested her chin on her palm. “The movies always lose a little magic once you know how it’s done. I can’t ever see an animal attack in a film now without seeing a trainer and a well-fed animal looking for the favorite toy hidden in his pocket.”

Elizabeth did not agree. When George wrestled with Charlie, it looked every bit as dangerous as on film—and felt even more real with the musky animal scent and low snarls in the air, the scuffling of sharp claws in the dirt. She was so fearful for George’s life that her stomach hurt.

When the lions’ performance ended, she clapped until her palms stung. Some of the onlookers began to leave, but others remained in their seats to await the horse show. “May we stay?” asked Elizabeth when Annalise and Margaret took their mother’s hands and began to drag her off to buy them peanuts and lemonade.

Mary Katherine hesitated, clearly surprised that Elizabeth wanted to stay. Like the Jorgensens, she should have had her fill of horses every day on the farm. But those were work horses, not show horses, and certainly not trained, performing horses. For Elizabeth, they called to mind Bergstrom Thoroughbreds and Elm Creek Manor, and even though she knew it was unlikely any of Safari World’s horses had come from Uncle Fred and Aunt Eleanor’s farm, she felt a sharp stab of longing to see them, just in case.

Mary Katherine must have read the longing on her face, for she suggested that she take the girls for their treats and meet up with Elizabeth after the show. After they left, Elizabeth waited for another ten minutes for the show to begin. When a woman in her midthirties rode into the ring on the back of the most beautiful horse Elizabeth had seen since leaving Pennsylvania, a shock of familiarity rippled through her. The gait, the coat, the speed—every feature identified the proud horse as a Bergstrom Thoroughbred.

Elizabeth could hardly tear her eyes from the horse throughout the twenty-minute performance, hungrily taking in the unexpected glimpse of home. An older gentleman who had taken Mary Katherine’s seat misinterpreted her rapt attention. “She’s quite a horse-woman, isn’t she?” he remarked. “That’s Caroline Hanneman. To look at her, you’d never suspect she didn’t know anything about show biz until she married George.”

Elizabeth looked away from the Bergstrom Thoroughbred long enough to reply. “She’s not from Hollywood, like her husband?”

“Not at all. She was born and raised in the valley, on a farm right next to this one.” He chuckled. “She tells a story about how she and George met. It so happened that George fed his lions at the same time every morning when it was milking time on her parents’ farm. The lions’ roars scared her cows so much that they kicked over their buckets of milk. One morning she got so fed up, she marched over here to give George Hanneman a piece of her mind. Two years later, they were married.”

Elizabeth smiled. “I suppose there’s a lesson there for all of us.”

“That’s for sure. The way George tells it, he had to marry her to get her to stop complaining.”

Elizabeth managed to keep her smile in place as she returned her attention to the show. She would have preferred a lesson about how love could blossom from enmity, how affection could overcome anger. The last moral she wanted to hear was that marriage meant the end of a woman’s right to speak her mind. She could not imagine any Bergstrom woman standing for that, or any Jorgensen woman, either. As for Caroline Hanneman, any woman who could handle a Bergstrom Thoroughbred with such confidence wouldn’t back down to a mere husband.

Midway through the show, two men in denim and cowboy hats took over while Caroline disappeared backstage and emerged moments later in similar western attire. For the rest of the performance, the three demonstrated how horses were trained to fall down on command without injuring themselves, how to lie down as if wounded, how to rear back threateningly. “None of these learned behaviors hurt the horses,” Caroline assured her listeners. “We would never allow our animals to appear on any set where they are not respected and properly cared for. That’s the first thing we tell any producer who sets foot on this property.”

Elizabeth instinctively sat up straighter and, with a glance around for anyone who looked out of place, fluffed the curls of her blond bob. A movie producer, here? It made sense, of course; it was far easier for producers to come to Safari World than for George Hanneman and his trainers to parade wild animals through the streets of Hollywood.

Perhaps Henry was wrong, and Elizabeth didn’t live too far from Los Angeles for a career in the movies. He couldn’t object if she would not have to travel far for a film role, especially if the job paid well.

The show ended and Elizabeth climbed down from the bleachers to join the flow of people leaving the arena. She consulted the map Mary Katherine had given her and made her way to the animal pens, where they had arranged to meet. On the way she passed a corral and a stable, where the two men from the show had removed their costumes—which meant that they had removed the cowboy trappings from their usual work clothes—and were tending to the horses. She paused to watch, wondering how on earth a Bergstrombred horse had ended up in Safari World, and with a Hollywood résumé that would make any would-be starlet envious.

As she lingered, she overheard the wranglers discussing a recent failed attempt to buy a horse. The prices local farmers charged amounted to robbery, the men griped, and that’s if they had anything to sell. Safari World’s wranglers did not have time to scout around the whole valley and beyond to find the animals they needed. Times were better, the taller of the two men said, when farmers brought the animals to them.

“I can find horses for you,” said Elizabeth.

The two men looked up. The smaller man eyed her with a smirk. “What’d you say, girlie?”

“I can find the horses you need.”

The taller man scratched at his beard. “Why would you want to do that?”

Why not? If Henry could take on extra work, so could she. “Because I know horses and I know where to find them, and you don’t have the time to look. And because of the finder’s fee you’ll pay me in return.”

The men exchanged a grin, amused. The shorter man said, “Listen, doll, why don’t you send your husband over and we’ll talk business with him?”

“Because my husband isn’t here and your business is with me. I know horses better than he does, anyway. I was practically born and raised on a horse farm.” That last bit was an exaggeration, but these men couldn’t possibly know that. She indicated the horse the taller man was grooming. “I’ll prove it. That impressive stallion is a Bergstrom Thoroughbred, bred at Elm Creek Manor in Pennsylvania. That brown horse with the black mane and the star on his forehead is a little more difficult to place, but I would guess that it was bred on the Compson farm in Maryland. Am I right?”

She held her breath while the men took this in. She knew of no other breeders by name besides her uncle and his strongest rival, but that might be enough to convince these two.