The Brushstroke Legacy (27 page)

Eloise nodded and fumbled with the fold. When she had it open, she looked inside, stuck her hand in, and pulled out a lemon drop. Then before putting one in her own mouth, she handed one to him. “You want candy?”

“Thank you.”

Hank chuckled, and she took him one, then one to Nilda, before she finally popped one in her own mouth.

Nilda gave her daughter a hug and peeked in the sack when she held it out. “Very good. Candy, lemon drops.”

“I like candy, Ma.” When both Hank and her mother laughed, she giggled herself.

“Have you milked yet?” Hank asked.

“No, it was too early, but I will now.”

“I will. And the chickens?”

“They are fed and the eggs picked.” She looked to Mr. Peterson. “What happened with the butter?”

“He will take any butter or cream or whatever you have.”

“Eggs?”

“Most likely.” He pulled out his leather pouch. “And here are your wages for the month.” He handed her twenty dollars.

“Thank you.”

“One other thing. The only church in Medora is the Catholic church, started by Mrs. de Mores.”

“Oh. Thank you for asking.”
Will wonders never cease?
As she put the packages away she found another full ham. How hard would it be to raise their own hogs on the leftover whey and milk and smoke their own hams? As her mother used to say, “Waste not, want not.” Although the chickens surely didn’t think feeding them the whey was wasteful.

When she put Eloise to bed that night, she found another package under the pillow. Two small flat cans of mineral oil and turpentine and a paintbrush. There must not have been paints for sale in Medora, but now at least she could try making her own. Perhaps she would find some of the red rock along the riverbank. She could grind charcoal for black, but what else could she use for pigments?

Was it good news or bad news?

Ragni stared at the receiver as if more information would be forthcoming. Her call to the office made her happy beyond belief on one hand and yet concerned on the other. She’d not had to ask for more time off; James had suggested it.
And what is he doing in the office on Saturday?

“Hopefully we are getting to the bottom of this, and I believe some more time would help solve the mystery.”

She replayed his words in her mind again, looking for their hidden meaning.
Stop it, you know you wanted more time here, and now you have it. You’re second-guessing the situation. Take the gift at face value, and call your sister.

Sometimes obeying the instructions from her inner mother made good sense. She dialed her sister’s home number, never knowing what shift Susan was on.

“Hello?”

Ragni took the receiver from her ear and stared at it again. “Sorry, I must have the wrong number.”

“Ragni, is that you?” A trace of her bossy sister emerged.

“All right, what’s wrong? Mom said you’d tried to call, but you know I don’t have cell service out here.”

“Where are you now?”

“In Dickinson, a town near the cabin. What’s wrong?”

“Just a bout with some bug.”

“You never catch bugs.”

“Did this time. I wanted to tell you that your boss called here and said he needed to get in touch with you.”

“Took care of that. He’s giving me extra time off which saved me asking for another week.”

“You want to stay longer?”

Was that relief she heard in Susan’s still not-normal voice?

“We do.”

“Both of you?”

“I know, hard as it is to believe, Erika is having a great time. She opted not to come to town with me because Paul’s niece and nephew came to the ranch, and the three of them went riding. She plays with Sparky every day, more a combination of playing and training, but one surely wouldn’t call it work. She tried to call you.”

“I know. Perhaps next time you are at the motel, our schedules will work out.”

“Susan, why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me everything? Besides, we most likely won’t be staying at the motel much. We can sleep in the cabin now, and we have discovered the excitement—read that ice-cold excitement—of a swim in the river to wash both us and our clothes.”

“Erika too?”

“I know. I see pieces of our real kid and am now certain she is still in there, behind all that black. How’s Dad?”

“About the same. I’m trying to convince Mom to put him in day care one day a week so she gets a break.”

“And are you succeeding?”

“I think so. We’re going to go visit one tomorrow or the next day.”

“Well, tell her I’ll call again. And I hope you get better quick.”

“Me too. Thanks for calling. Bye.”

Ragni mulled over both calls as she shopped, first at the arts and crafts store where she bought precut stretchers, canvas, another easel, more paints in bigger tubes and a couple more oil brushes. If she knew they were going to stay longer than an extra week, she’d have Susan go to her apartment and box up some of the art supplies there. However, there was something special in opening a new tube of paint, in mixing colors both on the palette and on the canvas.

Erika was enjoying it too. Such good memories Ragni had of their hours drawing, coloring, painting in all the media, doing decoupage and paper crafts. They’d tried many things but stayed away from the knitting, crocheting, and sewing like her own mother did. At one time she’d thought Susan might be jealous of the time they spent together, but Susan seemed to get over it. Reading was her way to spend any spare hours she could find, since she frequently worked extra shifts or ended up on call.

After another stop at the lumber and hardware store, Ragni drove west. She’d thought of heading up to the park at sunrise on Sunday morning but now that they had an extra week, the thought of attending church with Paul held more appeal.

Driving a car made for great cogitating time. Being alone was the
missing ingredient on this entire vacation. She thought of the boxes on the counter that held her great-grandmother’s things. While she wanted to know what was in them, she wanted to work on her painting more. So she had, until Erika had pulled her away to join the others at Paul’s for lunch.

She slammed the heel of her hand against the steering wheel. Erika had asked for more batteries.
Well, I’m not going back. I’ll have to get them at the gas station in Medora. One more stop.
The desire to keep painting ached like a tooth gone bad. While
Storm
was shaping up, her cattle on the other canvas needed some help. She’d even bought the camera in case she saw the cows again and could get a few shots. Then, of course, she’d have to have the pictures developed. At home she would have used her digital camera, slid the card into the computer, and viewed them instantly—in all sizes. Lack of electricity definitely hampered someone who was used to the techno age.

But I haven’t missed it at all, not even e-mail
. The thought caught her by surprise. If someone had told her a month ago she’d be offline for weeks, she’d have laughed herself silly.

Keeping an eye on the traffic, she watched for the buffalo or the wild horses inside the park fence. Disappointed, she took the Medora turnoff, stopped at the gas station for the batteries, and headed back to the cabin.

Her thoughts roved back to the meal she’d shared with Paul and his family. While at first the niece and nephew had looked at Erika a bit strangely, Paul had broken the ice by telling them about Erika playing with Sparky and then suggested they all go riding for the afternoon. Ragni had caught him watching her more than once. Each time their eyes met, her fingertips got warm and rills ran up and down
her back. Even thinking about him now caused similar sensations. So there was an attraction there. She’d been attracted before, and look where it had gotten her. And this one was seriously improbable. She had yet to hear of a long-distance romance that worked out, unless one person finally relocated.

This ranch wouldn’t fit in Chicago.

She slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road, being careful to choose a gravelly place. All she needed was to get stuck. The dirty white cattle that she knew belonged to Paul were grazing in a small meadow by the road, along with other cows in various mixtures of red, brown, black, and white. A young red calf with a white face raced off, tail straight in the air, the puff at the end of the tail a flag of white. If only she’d brought her good camera along from home, what a picture that would make. Instead, she got out of the car and took shots of the grazing cattle, the walking cattle, and those lying down.
What I know about cows wouldn’t fill up a page.
She shook her head and climbed back in the car. But perhaps she could paint them anyway, from a distance.

When she reached the river valley, she could see Paul’s machinery raising a dust cloud as he progressed down the field. Instead of stopping at the ranch, she continued on to the cabin and unloaded the supplies. At the rate she was going, she’d have to rent a trailer to take everything back to Chicago or else ship a bunch of boxes.

Or leave things here in the cabin for when I come back.
She’d built up enough vacation hours that she could come back for a couple of weeks later in the fall, if she got her projects at work caught up and finished.

After testing to see if the paint on
Storm
was sufficiently dry to continue, which it wasn’t, she picked up
Watering Hole
and redrew two
of the cows from what she’d noticed on her trip from town. When she sat down and filled the brush, she immediately lost all sense of time, totally focused on the scene coming alive beneath her brushstrokes. When she came back to reality, her rear was tired from sitting in the chair so long, and she was thirsty enough to drink out of the river.

Holding a water bottle from the cooler, she stood in front of both paintings and studied what she’d done. Cows were not her forte. Yet. But the pond and the background worked well. If only she had a picture of that running calf. And of Sparky. Before lunch, Erika had insisted she come down to the barn and see how the colt had grown and how he came when she called.

“Sure he comes,” Ragni had said. “He knows a good deal when he sees one.” Ragni took a couple of the carrot pieces and palmed them for the mare as Erika slipped a halter on the colt. She stepped back from the door so Sparky could parade past, following on the lead like a puppy on a leash. When his mother nickered, he turned to look at her but kept going with Erika.

“You taught him to lead?”

“Yep. And to stand when I brush him. Paul says he is learning good manners.”

“Just like teaching kids manners, huh?”

“He even lets me pick up his feet.” Erika clucked her tongue and trotted forward. The colt paused, then pricked his dark ears and followed her, the white sox on his front feet catching sun dazzle as they ran.

Ragni smiled to remember.
If I could paint that for Susan for Christmas, she’d be thrilled.
She reached for one of the other canvases and started sketching before she lost the picture in her head.

That night when it was too dark to paint, Ragni and Erika opened the boxes Myra had brought. There were a couple of albums, black pages filled with black-and-white snapshots tucked into corner holders, names of those in the photos carefully recorded in fading ink.

“Look, there’s Grammy as a little girl.” Erika studied the picture closely. “She looks like some pictures of me when I was little, doesn’t she?”

“Or perhaps you look like her.”

“Right. Mom will love seeing these—Grammy will too.” Erika turned more pages. “I wish I we had a magnifying glass.”

“Put it on the list.” Ragni swapped grins with her niece. She held up a picture that wasn’t in the book, tilting it to the lamplight so she could see better. “Look at her face.”

“Who?”

“My great-grandmother. She has wrinkles like she must have laughed or at least smiled a lot. Not frown lines, see?” Ragni traced the creases at the edges of the woman’s eyes and the curves in her cheeks. “I wonder what color her eyes were? She looks pretty gray here.” Ragni turned the picture over to find the date. “She was born in 1882, so here she was, eighteen plus twenty-seven is…”

“Forty-five.”

“Thanks. I never was good with math. Forty-five isn’t really old now, but I guess it was more so then.”

“Why?”

“People didn’t live as long then as they do now.”

Erika took a paper out of an envelope and read it. “She died in 1947 at the age of sixty-five.”

Ragni glanced at the paper. “That’s her death certificate? Was there a funeral notice in there?”

“No.”

“I think she moved into town in the thirties, after her husband died.”

“I wonder where she lived then?”

“I don’t know but we might find out when we go through all this stuff.” Ragni stretched her arms above her head and yawned her eyes closed. “This all gets curiouser and curiouser. As much as I want to keep going, I think you’re right. We should save it for your mom and Grandma, and we can all see it at once. That will make it even more fun. Besides, we can say, ‘I know something you don’t know.’”