Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  Sarah began setting the plates around. There was one extra, as she’d hoped.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “Then why all the cogitating?”

  “No reason. We’ve gotten a little less contentious since we worked together on the health board. Today we just talked about the cat and laughed a little bit.”

  “And then?”

  “And then when I was walking away... oh, it’s nothing.”

  Emma dropped a cluster of silverware on the table. “What? Spit it out.”

  “Well, like I said, we were walking away from each other and I just turned around to look at him for some reason, and he was standing there on the boardwalk staring back at me.”

  With her hands on her hips Emma studied the younger woman, who was carefully placing each fork and knife on the table. “That’s not nothing. That’s an interested man.”

  “Oh Emma, don’t be silly. I’ve irritated him since the first day I came into town.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first couple in history who started out hating each other.”

  “We’re not a couple. If anything we’re adversaries.”

  “Not since the smallpox fight. You just said so yourself.”

  The women’s gazes held, Emma’s matter-of-fact, Sarah’s troubled. “Emma, I’m very confused about him.” At that moment Josh came stomping in. “I’m home, Ma. Oh hi, Sarah.”

  “Hello, Josh,” Sarah replied, regretfully dropping the subject of Noah Campbell. “Is everything all right at the office?”

  “Yup. All closed up.”

  “Sarah’s staying for supper. Get your hands washed,” his mother ordered, “the others will be here in a minute.”

  The family gathered and there was no more time for private talk. After supper Sarah helped with the dishes, but the children remained in the kitchen until seven o’clock when she left for home, affording no further opportunity for her and Emma to pick up the threads of their earlier conversation.

  Still, Noah Campbell remained on her mind as she walked home. Why had he been looking back at her? He was an unlikable, outspoken man of loose morals who had made it plain she’d better step wide around him. She was a woman of uncompromising morals who would never, never overlook a man’s prurient bent. Why had she been looking back at him? Granted, they’d swallowed their antipathy out of necessity while they’d joined forces to fight the smallpox. But the fight was won; it was back to business as usual, and that business meant the two of them on opposite sides over the issue of closing the brothels.

  The wind was still howling and the sleet had turned to snow. The night sky was inky but for the sheets of white that came down sideways. Sarah passed the newspaper office and tried the front door from force of habit. It was locked as it should be so she continued toward home. She took a side street and climbed the foot trail up the side of the gulch to Mrs. Roundtree’s. She was ascending the steep steps to the front door when a voice from above startled her.

  “Well, you’re back.”

  “Marshal, what are you doing out here?” She stopped two steps below him, looking up. How distracting to encounter him after he’d been so strong on her mind.

  “Smoking.”

  Smoking was, however, allowed inside the house; the parlor was provided with giant free-standing ashtrays. Furthermore, he’d never felt the need to do his smoking—what little of it he did—outside before. She got the distinct impression he’d been waiting for her.

  “You missed supper,” he said.

  “Yes, I ate with the Dawkins.”

  “How is Lettie?”

  “Self-conscious, of her scars.”

  “That’ll pass.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Sarah knew from personal experience that self-consciousness over one’s shortcomings in the beauty department did not pass. For some reason she’d been dwelling on hers often lately.

  He took a drag of the cigarette, and the wind tore the smoke from his mouth as he flicked the butt away. He peered off into the distance, as if the weather were of capital interest to him.

  “Nasty night,” he remarked.

  She took the plunge. “You weren’t worried about me, were you?”

  “It’s my job to worry about the residents of Deadwood.”

  “Well, I’m all right, so you can go back inside.”

  She climbed the last two steps and reached for the doorknob. Before she could turn it he asked, “So how did your sister like the cat?”

  “She loved it. She’s going to name it Ruler.”

  “Well... that should make you happy.”

  “Yes.” They stood close in the windy, black night with the sound of her skirts luffing against his ankle and the fine shards of snow ricocheting off his hat brim and her forehead. She held her coat closed at the throat and he had stuffed both hands into his jacket pockets. If there was an embryonic attraction between them, it pleased neither of them.

  “Well, good night, Mr. Campbell,” she bid finally.

  “Good night, Miss Merritt.”

  In her room she lit a lantern and built a fire in her tiny six-plate iron stove. Standing before it, with her palms extended, she wondered about him. Had he, indeed, been waiting for her? Could Emma be right about his being interested? Surely not. Then why had he turned to study her on the boardwalk? All right, supposing he was interested, what was her own reaction? This afternoon on the boardwalk, when she’d run into him there had been a moment—a brief moment, granted—of exhilaration when their eyes had met. He had been as surprised as she, and while he’d stood there gripping her arms she had looked into his gray eyes with their spiky auburn lashes and found them unduly attractive. His face no longer put her off. His freckles had faded over the autumn, and his cheeks had looked ruddy from the wind. Funny, she had even grown accustomed to his mustache. And his nose— well, his nose was Scottish, and very appropriate for a man named Campbell.

  So, what of your feelings for him, Sarah?

  She had, her entire life long, been a thinker; it was natural for her to dissect and rationalize rather than admit offhand that her feelings for him might possibly be changing. The truth was, she did not want her feelings for him to change. It could lead to nothing but an awkward situation, given that he’d been Addie’s lover and probably still was.

  The room warmed. She removed her coat and hung it on the wall pegs but found herself restless, pacing the confines of her sleeping space, thinking of Addie, wondering things about Addie and Noah Campbell that she’had no right to wonder. She imagined Addie with her fingers in Noah’s hair. He had the most beautiful head of hair she’d ever seen on a man, with enough natural curl to spring up and twine around a woman’s fingers. Sarah had never in her life had her fingers in a man’s hair.

  She withdrew from her reverie and went to the mirror to take down her own hair. She brushed it vigorously, donned her nightwear and found a small hand mirror. In it she studied her Elizabethan nose, covering the end of it to imagine what she’d look like if it were shorter. She studied her lips. Too thin, not plump and seductive like Addie’s. Her eyes—they still pleased her, vivid, blue and sparkly when she need not wear her glasses, but the moment she put them on, she looked frumpish and lackluster.

  She sighed, set aside her mirror in favor of pen and ink and tried working on an editorial about the need to preserve the last of the great buffalo herds which were now centered in the valley east of the Big Horns. But often she’d snap out of a lapse to find the ink dried on the pen nib instead of the paper, and a picture of Noah Campbell’s hair in her mind.

  At breakfast the following morning she was uncomfortably aware of him across the table. In spite of her previous night’s rationalization, the fact remained she and Noah had been seeing each other with disturbing regularity for quite a few weeks already—two meals a day and in between—and she had memorized things about him that a sensible woman would not have noticed. She had come to recognize the stubborn refusal of his hair to remain obediently sleeked down, a
nd the various hues—from mahogany to nutmeg—that it took on as it dried each morning during breakfast. She had grown familiar with the hatline that dented it even when his hat wasn’t on, and the curls that sprang up below it, at the temples, like the tail feathers on a mallard.

  She had come to appreciate the faint scent of his shaving soap which he brought down to breakfast with him, accompanied by the shine of his freshly bladed skin above and below his mustache. She was familiar with all his shirts—he wore a clean one each morning under his black leather vest—the red flannel he’d been wearing the first morning; a green plaid with a collar badly in need of turning; two blue cambrics—one with a neatly sewn patch on the right elbow, the other newer; a tan one that looked terrible with his ruddy complexion; and the white one he wore on Sundays.

  She knew his mealtime preferences: coffee black, salt and pepper over his entire plate before he even tasted it, a second helping of fried potatoes with his morning eggs; no cabbage, rutabagas or turnips—these he disliked—but any other vegetable offered; a huge puddle of gravy if it was on the table, two additional cups of coffee during the course of the meal, and a cigarette afterward instead of a sweet.

  She knew his mannerisms, too. He always nodded to the men as he said good morning. Never nodded when he said it to her. When he was listening most intently, he rested a forefinger along his upper Up. When he said something humorous he often tugged at his right earlobe. He seemed comfortable using a napkin while some of the men used their cuffs.

  Leaving the dining room when breakfast was finished, Sarah realized, to her dismay, that she had memorized no such things about Mrs. Roundtree’s other boarders.

  He had grown familiar with her, too. She wore mostly shades of brown—skirts, shirtwaists and jackets—and pinned her pendant watch in precisely the same spot upon her left breast each morning. She carried her dirty laundry downtown on Monday mornings and back home on Tuesday afternoons. She was a creature of utter punctuality, leaving her bedroom at precisely the stroke of seven-thirty each morning, appearing at supper on the dot of six. Ironically, she cared little for the food itself but ate only because she must, leaving food abandoned when her mind was preoccupied with a story. He recognized her preoccupation by the way she took little part in the mealtime conversation and the way she stared at the sugar bowl. Sometimes she’d have to be called twice before realizing she was being spoken to, though in print, she never missed a detail that was newsworthy, be it obvious or incidental. She was acute at picking out and printing items that would have seemed banal to the average ear, but beneath her skilled hand became articles of pertinence to both Deadwood residents and the country beyond the hills. The middle finger of her right hand was misshapen from overusing a pen, and most times it bore a faint black crescent of ingrained ink. She had arresting blue eyes that won a second glance from him whenever he encountered her without her glasses. She was a woman without artifice—no kohl on her eyes, no carmine on her lips—but he thought if she were ever to show up at the table wearing these, he would be outraged. Her coiffure scarcely changed from day to day except when the bump at the back was slightly off-center, as if she’d secured it without benefit of a mirror. Her nails were clipped short and she owned a single pair of unbecoming shoes, as far as he could tell—lace-up, brown, blucher-style boots that saw her through mud, snow, sleet, and the dung on the street, about which she continued to badger in each issue of her newspaper. He suspected, if the town had a church, the same shoes would appear there with her Sunday clothes. One fact he was aware of above all others: ever since the day they’d spoken on the boardwalk she had stopped looking him directly in the eye when she spoke to him. Instead, she fixed her attention on the star on his chest.

  Sarah Merritt’s and Noah Campbell’s jobs put them into contact with one another on a regular basis. In collecting news, she consulted him for items about arrests and the law. In making his rounds, he walked into businesses at random—hers included.

  Whenever they met she greeted him formally as “Marshal Campbell,” and he did likewise, calling her “Miss Merritt.”

  If, as the days passed, they encountered each other more often, they credited it to necessity and nothing more.

  A week after their encounter on the boardwalk, Sarah and her staff were working in the newspaper office when a short, pudgy woman entered. She was brown as an old saddle and had dark hair with a few streaks of gray curving away from a center part. Her gray eyes were direct, if not quite piercing, and she zeroed in on Sarah as if the others were not present.

  “So you’re her!” the woman said in a voice that rang through the room like a dinner triangle.

  Sarah rose from her desk, removed her cuff guards and left them behind.

  “I’m Sarah Merritt,” she said.

  The woman stuck out a hand. “I’m Noah Campbell’s mother, Carrie.”

  Sarah saw the resemblance immediately—the gray eyes, the tiny knob that ended the nose, the high, round cheekbones.

  “Hello, Mrs. Campbell.” She shook the woman’s hand.

  “He told us about you. About this place, too. Thought I’d come and have a look-see for myself. Howdy.” She nodded to Patrick and Josh without pausing to allow introductions, all the while giving the premises a blatant assessment. “By the sound of it you’re a regular go-getter. Noah admires that.”

  “He does?” Sarah was doing her best to hide her surprise.

  “I says to him, Noah, why don’t you bring her out here sometime, but you know how sons are. Once they leave home you’ve got the triple dickens trying to get them back themselves, much less bring any of their friends.”

  Friends? This woman thought Sarah was Noah’s friend?

  “So I says, all right, I’ll just go into that newspaper office myself and say hello. My other son, Arden, he’ll probably be in here sometime today, too. Kirk, now—he’s my man—he’s got better things to do, since we don’t come into town too often, but Arden and me, we were just plain curious since Noah he talked so much about you when he was out last time.”

  He did? Sarah was conscious of Patrick listening, all the while he manned the press, and Josh, too, as he did the inking.

  “Sounds like you’re a bright lady, running this newspaper like you do. Me, I have a struggle just to read, let alone write, but Noah, he brought us out a copy of your paper, and though I had to muddle through it, I have to admit it was downright exciting to read what’s going on in the rest of the country, as well as here in town.”

  “You live out in the Spearfish Valley, I believe?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would you mind answering a few questions about it?”

  “Why...” Carrie Campbell’s eyebrows rose. “Why, no, though I don’t know what I’d have to say that you’d be interested in.”

  “The Spearfish was the last stronghold of the Indians. The rest of the country is watching it carefully to see if the Indians uphold their part of the treaty.”

  The ensuing interview reiterated to Carrie Campbell how bright Sarah Merritt really was. Her questions touched upon the quality of this year’s harvest, which particular crops had been grown, the number of bushels yielded per acre, the current price of stock feed, the overall weather conditions including rainy days versus sunny during the past growing season, the number of families residing in the Spearfish, their ethnic background, their geographic background and what if any social events took place there.

  When all of Sarah’s questions had been answered, Carrie watched the younger woman remove her oval spectacles and lay them aside, wondering what the deuce her boy Noah was waiting for. The girl wasn’t much to look at, but she was smarter than a few men Carrie could name. Furthermore, she’d come all the way out here and opened up this business, hadn’t she? That took spunk. And though she was skinny, she looked healthy enough to bear a few grandchildren, and probably bright ones at that!

  “When the piece is written, I’ll be sure to send a copy out with Noah,” Sarah offere
d.

  “Yes, I wish you would, unless of course you’d care to bring it out yourself, maybe stay for dinner along with Noah.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Campbell, but I’m afraid I’m very busy keeping the paper running. I gather all the news myself, you see, and write the articles, too, besides selling ads and attending whatever local functions and meetings need to be covered. I have very little time to myself, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Sure... well... it’s been a pleasure meeting you.” Carrie extended her hand again. “You take care of yourself now.”

  “Thank you. You do the same.”

  When she was gone, Sarah felt Patrick’s eyes following her around the office. She avoided them. He got out his flask, took a nip and went back to work.

  At ten minutes to twelve someone else entered the newspaper office. He was dark-haired and cute and several years younger than Sarah.

  “Hi,” he said, removing his hat. “Are you Sarah Merritt?”

  She suspected who he was even before she answered. “Yes, I am.”

  “I’m Arden Campbell, Noah’s brother. I came to ask if I could take you out to dinner.”

  She stood staring at him for five seconds, stupefied, then burst out laughing.

  He laughed, too, then asked, “Well, could I?”

  “Mr. Campbell, I don’t even know you.”

  “Well, I know that. That’s why I asked you out to dinner, so we could get to know each other. I’m harmless, and a lot more friendly than my brother. I’m twenty-one and I like pretty women and I haven’t had the pleasure of one’s company since we moved out here, and we both have to eat a noon meal, so why not do it together?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr. Campbell.”

  “Why? Has Noah got dibs on you?”

  “No.” She felt herself begin to blush.

  “Has somebody else?”

  “No.”

  “Then why not?” He lifted his left arm and sniffed beneath it. “I smell bad or something?”