Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  Robert paused in the doorway and said to Rose, “I’d welcome the opportunity to recount before a circuit judge the scene that just happened here. Please do call Marshal Campbell. If he needs me he can find me at the home of Emma Dawkins having Christmas dinner. Merry Christmas, both of you.”

  In the parlor, the three men were sitting on the lips of their chairs, gaping at the hall. Robert set the hunk of marble on a table as he passed. “Good day, gentlemen. This belongs to Mrs. Hossiter. She’ll be back to get it in a minute, I’m sure.”

  He and Addie were outside within three minutes of their arrival, the break made, the threats quelled. To Robert’s amazement, they had strode no more than four steps when Addie folded and dropped, covering her face with both hands as she broke into intense weeping. He squatted beside her, curling a hand around her sleeve.

  “Addie, what is it? Why are you crying?”

  “I don’t know... I don’t kn–know...”

  He drew her to her feet and put both arms around her, her face still covered with her gloved hands.

  “Are you doing this against your will?”

  “No...” she wailed.

  “Do you want to stay?”

  “No...” she wailed again.

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because.., it’s all I c–can do. They’re my only fr–friends.”

  “I thought you said they were hard.”

  “They are, but they’re my friends, t–too.”

  “I’m your friend. Sarah’s your friend, and soon the Daw-kins will be.”

  “I know... but I’m such a useless person. What good am I on this earth? I’ll only be a burden to Sarah and to you.”

  “Shh. You mustn’t talk that way. The burden was knowing you were in that place. Knowing you’re making a clean break is lifting the burden, don’t you see?”

  She peered at him through streaming eyes. “Is it really, Robert?”

  “Absolutely. And I never want to hear you say again what good are you on this earth. Whatever would it have been like for me if you hadn’t been on it?”

  “Oh Robert...” Behind her gloved hand her mouth trembled while a new waterfall of tears appeared. On the street before Rose’s she flung both arms around his neck and repeated, “Oh Robert...” And after a moment, still sniveling, “Robert Baysinger, you’ll make an honest woman of me yet.”

  He rested his hands on her waist and smiled, then pressed her away. “Would you like to stop at the hotel and wash your face before we go to the Dawkins’?”

  She gave him a quavery smile, a nod, and he took her arm.

  While Addie and Robert were checking her out of Rose’s, Sarah was doing the same at Mrs. Roundtree’s. Returning to the house, she packed a trunk, which she left, and a valise and bandbox, which she carried downstairs. She found her landlady in the kitchen, peeling apples into a crock bowl on her lap as she sat at a worktable.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Roundtree,” Sarah said from the doorway.

  The woman looked up, her lips downdrawn. “I hope you told your sister not to come around here again.”

  Sarah replied brusquely, “I’ll be vacating my room now, Mrs. Roundtree. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding another renter. I’ll send someone after my trunks first thing in the morning.”

  Mrs. Roundtree’s mouth dropped open. “Well, there’s no need to be hasty.”

  “My decision was made the moment you spurned my sister.”

  “What decent woman wouldn’t after she’s been soiling herself up there with the rest of those doves and taking money for it?”

  Sarah pinned her with an audacious stare. “Charity, Mrs. Roundtree. Charity for those less fortunate than ourselves—I’d advise you to adopt it. My sister wants to reform, and I intend to do everything in my power to support her, beginning with my leaving here. While you’re taking such a high-handed position, you might consider the intended spirit of this holiday. Is it selective love for mankind that Christmas stands for, or unbiased love for all?” Sarah tugged on one glove. “If in the future you should recognize yourself in one of my editorials, don’t be surprised.” She tugged on the other. “If anyone should ask, I’ll be lodging at the Grand Central with my sister for a while. Good day, Mrs. Roundtree.”

  She left the house feeling the ardent zeal that so often drove her when she espoused a new cause.

  The trio who arrived at the Dawkins’ at four P.M. were in the formation that seemed to symbolize their relationship throughout their young lives—Addie in the middle, flanked by Robert and Sarah. Ever it would be, it seemed, the two stronger ones shoring up the weaker.

  Emma, always the spokesman for her family, met them at the door and offered a handshake when introduced to Addie.

  “Miss Adelaide,” she said, “welcome. These are my children, Josh, Lettie and Geneva, and this is my man, Byron. We’re awful pleased you could join us for supper. Mr. Bay-singer...” She shook his hand. “You too. We’re very fond of Sarah, and it just wouldn’t do to leave her out of the holiday celebration. Your being her dear ones, well... shoot. This is right where you belong.”

  Emma’s welcome assuaged the first of Addie’s misgivings. Each family member followed with a welcome, the girls’ shy, Josh’s wide-eyed with curiosity, Byron’s quiet but sincere.

  They gathered at a table whose seating had been extended with planks between the chairs. Byron said a simple grace.

  “Dear lord, we thank you for this food, these friends, and this wonderful Christmas season. Amen.”

  They ate a delicious meal of roast goose, mashed potatoes, apple dressing, cole slaw, candied yam pie and a bevy of breads and sweetmeats. Though Addie took little part in the conversation, she was neither excluded nor included to any greater degree than anyone else. The primary topic was last night’s Christmas program and the impromptu triangle serenade that had taken the whole gulch by surprise.

  Geneva said, “Mother let us leave the windows open and listen after we went to bed. Did you leave yours open, too, Sarah?”

  “Yes, I did,” Sarah answered, then grew pensive, remembering what had followed, wondering what it was like in the Spearfish Valley where he was, if he, too, was eating Christmas supper, when he would return, and if he was thinking of her at this moment.

  Emma interrupted her reverie. She was speaking to Addie. “Your sister tells me you’d like to set up housekeeping but you don’t know much about it. Well, that’s all right. Most of us have a lot to learn when we do that. Anytime you want to learn to mix up a batch of bread, you just come on over to the bakery about five A.M. Heck, we might even put you to work!”

  “Five A.M.?” Addie repeated dubiously.

  “Shouldn’t take you but three or four times and you’ll get the knack.”

  “That’s terribly early, isn’t it?”

  “Got to start that early to get the bread baked by nine.”

  “Thank you. I—I’ll remember that when we find our house.”

  “No time like the present to get started, then by the time you find a place of your own you’ll be as comfortable around the kitchen as these girls of mine.”

  “They bake bread?” Addie glanced in wonder at Lettie and Geneva.

  “They don’t need to with us owning the bakery. But they know how, and they know their way around a cookpot, too, don’t you girls? Why, they made the cabbage salad and the sweet potato pie and helped with prett’ near the whole meal. You’re a little late getting started, but don’t you worry, Miss Adelaide. We’ll teach you what you need to know.”

  When they’d thanked the Dawkins and were heading to the hotel, Addie said despairingly, “Those young girls know more than I do.”

  “Well, of course they do,” answered Sarah. “They’ve had a mother to teach them. Don’t worry, though. If Emma says she can teach you, she can. And you won’t have to learn everything overnight. Heavens, we don’t even have our house yet.”

  At the hotel they parted in the hall. Robert gave them e
ach a kiss on the cheek and said, “It’s been a wonderful Christmas, thanks to you both. I won’t be seeing you in the morning. I’ll be going out to the mill early.”

  Addie watched him abjectly as he proceeded along the hall to his adjacent room. At his door he lifted a hand, sent them a smile and went inside.

  Sarah watched and waited. After a long moment, Addie turned toward her. Sarah gave an understanding smile. “Without him, you’re afraid again, I know. But I’m here for you, too, and you must not doubt that within yourself there is a strong, resilient person waiting to spring back and show the world her spirit. Come...” She held out a hand. “Let’s go to bed, just as we used to when we were very small and afraid of the dark. Together.”

  Addie put her hand in Sarah’s and they opened the door of room 11.

  CHAPTER

  16

  True Blevins happened to be in town, so Noah took him home to spend Christmas with his family. They rode out on horseback, since horses were faster and surer than a wagon at this time of year. They moved single file, in silence for the most part. The Spearfish Canyon was incredibly beautiful beneath its quilt of snow. Spearfish Creek, still open, whispered beneath thin-edged ice, then gurgled into the sunlight, breaking into a million reflected pinpoints of silver. Sometimes it disappeared underground to re-emerge later and become a surface stream again. Banks climbed from it, immense tumbles of great brown rocks amidst which an occasional mouth of a cave would appear, with animal tracks having worn away the snow at its door.

  The pine-shrouded hills loomed up in silent majesty, the black-green branches of the ponderosas drooping like old shoulders clad in heavy ermine capes while overhead they hobnobbed with the very blue Black Hills sky. Here and there splashes of color appeared—a covey of red crossbills working among the conifer branches extracting seeds from pinecones; the brighter green of dog-haired pine growing in crowded, stunted clusters; the flash of a bluejay; the straight red pillars of the ponderosas themselves.

  The silence was broken by the dull thump of the horses’ hooves, the taunting of a crow, the chatter of the open water. A solitaire spiraled above the treetops singing its clear, musical warble. A doe came crashing through a thick stand of deerbrush in an old burn area, heeled sharply when surprised by the horses and bounded off the way she’d come.

  True’s mount whickered and sidestepped. Behind it, Noah’s did too.

  True said, “Easy, girl,” then moved on as before.

  Noah did likewise, then relaxed in the saddle and took up thinking of Sarah Merritt again.

  The woman had him in a tizzy. He should have dropped her to the bed last night and found out whether she was capable of melting or not. No, he shouldn’t have. He’d done the right thing. But doing the right thing was so damned fustrating! So how the hell was a man expected to proceed with such a woman?

  Sarah Merritt—her face came to him in vivid detail—I don’t know what to do about you.

  It struck him that for the first time in his life he wanted to court a woman and he didn’t know how.

  Court her?

  The idea still terrified him.

  He wanted to court a woman who was so excessively virtuous she could not allow herself to kiss a man without tearful recriminations? He, whose first sexual liaison had taken place at sixteen? He, who had since enjoyed women wherever he could find them? He wanted to marry a woman whose Puritanical virtue would in all likelihood lead to a lifetime of frugal caresses and dutiful subservience at bedtime?

  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. If you fell in love with a woman she was supposed to get short-breathed and willful, like you. She was supposed to touch your face and your hair and your body like the soiled doves did, look into your face the way they did, only meaning it.

  Instead, Sarah Merritt recoiled.

  Yet she’d admitted she was attracted to him.

  There was the puzzlement. If she was, and last night was an example of what he could hope to expect, where could it lead? Not every girl in Noah’s past had been paid for. Some had been good, wholesome girls who favored him to the extent that denial became difficult. They were chaste girls like Sarah, yet they’d had what he considered a normal curiosity and appetite for seduction. If Sarah had acted like them—tempted rather than threatened—he’d be less confused, but she seemed to have the distorted idea that intimacy presumed wantonness, which was not true.

  Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He pictured himself returning to the boardinghouse, knocking on her bedroom door and leaving it wide open while he said point-blank, Sarah, I love you. Do you love me?

  The truth was he was deathly afraid she’d say no and he’d be decimated. Kissing a girl the way he’d kissed Sarah last night was supposed to give a man a clue to her feelings. Instead, the experience left him even more unsure and vulnerable than before, frightened because he was actually getting serious about the idea of marriage.

  True slowed and waited until Noah came up on his left flank, then they walked their horses, side by side.

  “You’re quiet today,” True remarked.

  “Sorry.”

  “Actually, I don’t need a man gabbin’ my ear off to be comfortable with him.”

  “Guess I’m just tired. Those bells kept me awake last night.”

  “Me too. Sounded pretty though, didn’t they?”

  “Yup.”

  True turned and studied Noah lazily, as if waiting for Noah to say more. When he didn’t, they rode on in silence. Soon they scaled a hogback and ahead of them stretched the Spear-fish Valley with its hayfields lying like great white linens on a fallen clothesline. Chimney smoke rose in lazy plumes. Haystacks appeared like snow-covered hummocks in the unbroken expanse of white.

  At his parents’ house Carrie hugged them, Kirk took their jackets and Arden asked, “Have you seen Sarah? How is she? Is she seeing anyone?”

  True’s eyes nonchalantly passed to Noah, who ignored the question.

  “Well, tell me!” Arden demanded.

  Removing his hat, Noah replied, “Yes, fine, and I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know. You know everything that happens in that town. You make it your business to know!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do!” Arden threw his hands in the air.

  “Arden, for pity sake, quit nettling your brother,” Carrie chided.

  “I saw her at the Christmas program last night,” Noah offered—a crumb in hopes of shutting Arden up. “She directed the children’s choir.”

  “She did?” Obviously a crumb wasn’t going to do the trick. “How’d she look? What was she wearing?”

  “Hell, I don’t know—True, how did she look?”

  True said, “Like an angel.”

  “Damn! I knew we should’ve gone in and seen it. Didn’t I tell you, Ma, we should go?”

  “That’s a long ride in there and back again the same day when Noah was coming out here anyway, and a person never knows about the weather at this time of year. Besides, I told you both, you and your pa, I didn’t want to be in any hotel on Christmas Eve.”

  They had to recount every particular about the Christmas program. Noah left most of the telling to True, who went into surprising detail in describing Sarah’s green jacket, her hair, even the angel costumes.

  Noah turned to stare at True. What the hell was going on here? How did True remember all that? True’s gaze rested on Arden throughout the recital, but from all he said Noah supposed True had seen him leaving with Sarah. If he did, he never mentioned it.

  For Noah it was a flat day, in spite of True’s presence, Carrie’s home cooking and being with his family again. All the while he was in the valley, he kept wishing he were back in town. All the while he sat at his mother’s table he kept wishing he were at Mrs. Roundtree’s. All the while he faced Arden across it, he kept wishing he were facing Sarah instead.

  Often he’d find himself taking no part in the
conversation around him, remembering given moments during the last three months: the day Sarah had given him the Stetson and Andy Tatum had said, my guess is she’s got an eye for you, Noah; the day he’d run into her on the boardwalk when she was taking the cat to her sister; the night he’d first kissed her in Mrs. Roundtree’s kitchen.

  They stayed overnight, he and True, and started for town at midmorning, beneath a sky turned turgid with gray-cheeked clouds that scudded and scowled, each one seeming to bear a face with a warning that their return trip would be colder than their trip up had been.

  True again rode lead with Noah’s gray gelding close on the mare’s wind-whipped tail, closing rank even when Noah attempted to rein him back. In the deep canyons and creek-bottoms the wind eddied and whistled like a morning teakettle. It arched the tips of the pines. It lifted great sheets of snow from their branches and scattered them like puzzle pieces on the earth below. It plucked Noah’s voice from his lips and hurled it at the back of True’s head.

  “Hey, True, you mind if I ask you something?”

  True cranked his head ninety degrees to the right. His cheek bumped his upturned collar.

  “Ask!” He had to shout to be heard above the wind.

  “Remember that little Mormon girl you told me about, the one you wanted to marry?”

  “Francie?”

  “Yeah, Francie.”

  “What about her?”

  “How did you know you loved her?”

  Noah watched True bob up and down in the saddle. They were trotting on a fairly flat stretch of trail with a patch of paper birches on their right. True’s hat was pulled low over his forehead. His wool collar nudged it from behind. Once again True turned his head to be heard.

  “I knew ‘cause making her happy in bed seemed less important than making her happy out of it.”

  Noah thought about that some. “You mean you took her to bed—a Mormon girl?”

  “Nope. Never did. Wanted to, but I never did. I wouldn’t’ve done that to her unless we were married.”