The Star Garden

by Nancy E. Turner

  It was cool but not cold and, though the air was not bitter, we were all under lap blankets. You’d have thought they were still caught up in prayer, silent as the two were back there. At one point, I managed to need a good long look at a red bird flying by, just to have a reason to turn behind my seat. As the bird flitted off to one side I caught a glimpse of Aubrey and Mary Pearl. They stared into each other’s eyes, their faces flushed.

  When Udell finally stopped the rig, the two horses snorted several times. We were near the top of a rounded hill. This range was open grazing land, most of it beat into worthless desert by too many cows run at one time. Barrel cactus poked up their ugly heads all around like badgers, daring any animal to get close. A horse stepping into one would be crippled on the spot as those finger-long hooks tore tendons from bone.

  My cows were gone. Out of the eight hundred or so head I’d had, only a hundred and twenty were sold. Most of the rest were stolen when my nephew Willie took a bad road and went with some rustlers toward Mexico. The few remaining were scattered to the very wind by that range fire. I had twenty-one left. Udell had bought ten from me, to start himself a place, too. We shared the old bull, El Capitán, so I figure we each own ten and a half stock animals. Silly thing is, I’ve got twenty-three trained herd horses for watching ten and a half cows.

  “Care to take a stroll?” Udell asked, with his eyes toward Aubrey and Mary Pearl.

  “I’d be pleased to,” I said. He put his hands around my waist to help me down, and I pulled my shawl close. “You two mind if we stretch a mite?”

  “No, ma’am,” they said on top of each other’s words.

  Udell handed me a bag of oats and took up another. We looped them over the horses’ ears. I said, “Care to come? It’ll warm you both up.”

  “We’re warm under the blanket,” Mary Pearl said. “I’d rather stay here.”

  Udell called, louder than he needed to, “We’ll be right nearby.”

  We walked a long way without a word. He stopped when a yellow-eared jackrabbit darted out of the brush and hightailed it farther up the hill. Udell’s foot slipped on some gravel, so he turned to me and smiled and offered a hand, which I gladly took. We stayed on the trail that rabbit had taken, up a well-used path, not that we wanted a skinny old hare, but for a clear way to the crest of the hill.

  “It’s nice walking when it’s too cold for snakes,” I said.

  Mountains to the north and east were capped with snow. The air was frosty but the sun felt warm. Udell put his arm around my waist and held on as we reached a flat area below the top. “I don’t miss the snakes,” he said. Then he nodded toward the white peaks. “But I don’t miss that kind of snow, either.”

  “Worst I ever saw was when I was a girl up on the Little Colorado— breaking ice on the spring with a pickaxe so horses could drink, them always picking some sleety night to drop a foal. Pure misery.”

  We talked a while then, about when we were children, where we lived, how our parents lived. Udell’s parents were both gone, as was my pa. Of course, Granny was still with us. A cloud drifted by the sun and I felt a shiver. “Do you need my coat?” he asked.

  I felt warm inside as if a bed of coals had grown good and red. “Thank you, but I don’t really.”

  He pulled a paper from inside his coat, and proceeded to unfold it before me. “Sarah, this here is the plan of a house your brother Harland drew for me. Just the start, anyway. A couple of rooms and a kitchen. But eventually, it’ll have two floors. It’d take some doing to get it built. I had been thinking of putting it out here. Dig a new well. Start on raw ground.”

  “After you got all that bottom land plowed for a spring garden? Why would you go to the trouble of this when you’ve got the place already going where it is?”

  “That one’s too close to my borders, I suppose. Too close to—”

  “Maldonado’s?”

  “I like my freedom.” He walked away, studying the ground.

  I tagged behind him. When he stopped I said, “Tell me about your wife.”

  Expressions flitted across his face like the shadows of a flock of birds. At last, his face softened. Then, as memories crossed his mind, his eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “Frances was only sixteen when we married. Mercy, I was just twenty. Aubrey is twenty-eight, an old bachelor compared to his pa. Both of us, our fathers were stationed at Fort Laramie. Only hers was a corporal and mine was a rancher trying to keep enough sheep alive to feed the soldiers a good meal once a month. Her pa figured it was quite a comedown, sending her off with me. But the Sioux were defeated. Land was there for the taking. We built up a place, she and I. Aubrey was born in less than a year. We had six other children, all lost. One to typhus, two to measles. One died of great pox before he was two. Cal-lie died in the same coach accident with Frances.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and hung my head. “That’s not—I’m sorry. I meant, what was she like? Did she bake cakes? Go to women’s suffrage marches?”

  He put an arm around my waist and drew me a little closer. “No, nothing like that,” he said, smiling. “She always said she wanted nothing more than to keep house and hearth together. She sewed for some spending money, though, fancy dresses and crinolines. She had eyes the color of water in a glass, pale blue with a dark rim, like, like—” Suddenly his face turned dark. His mouth quivered and he looked away.

  I held him and he pressed me close, and for a while we didn’t move or speak.

  Then, he said, “What about your man, Jack?”

  “What about Jack?”

  “Did he go to suffrage marches?”

  I laughed against his chest. Then I inhaled. He smelled of shaving soap, the kind with the faintest touch of oil of bergamot. I said into his shoulder, “He was a soldier first and always. He was tall. His hair was brown and wavy. He was bent on protecting folks who couldn’t protect themselves.” I held Udell closer. Jack had had a jagged scar on his right arm from the blade of a Comanche knife. He had two healed-over bullet holes, too. One was on his side and the other made it hard for him to ride sitting down for a while. Jack Elliot carried my heart with him in his saddlebag, every time he left me, which he did more than not. I reckon he’d always thought I could take care of myself, too, though I’d have differed with him on that if he’d asked. I looked up at Udell’s face, almost surprised to see he’d been waiting for me to turn and look at him.

  “Your eyes are brown,” he said.

  “Just like yours. I don’t sew much that’s pretty. A quilt now and then.”

  “That’s all right. I never looked good in crinolines.”

  I laughed again. When our lips met, it was with the air of a well-practiced act, tentative only for a moment. I sank against him and he surrounded me. The man was shorter than Jack, just taller than I was, and while he kissed me I began to think how convenient it was to kiss a man not so different in height. Had I lost my love for Jack? Panic swept through me. I pushed Udell back, saying, “We’d better get back to the carriage.”

  But as I tried to pull away, he held my arm and slid his hand down to my fingers. “Sarah,” he said. “There’s something I want to say to you.”

  “Tell me in the carriage.”

  He tugged on my hand. “Were you happy, being married? Did you love him?”

  I rolled my eyes and tried to pull my hand from his. He pulled again, insistent. “Of course,” I said.

  Udell squinted as if he were trying to read something written on my face.

  I said, “I was happy and miserable. I loved him so much because he loved me. He was my very life and, well, what did I know? I was young and he was handsome and brave. Just like a prince in a story.”

  “Did you feel like you died?”

  I stared at the ground before me and gulped, waiting for my heart to start beating again. Gravel, burned bronze by the desert sun, had been kicked aside where we stood as we kissed, and the gray-white underside showed. A tear dribbled to my chin but I didn’t
brush it away. I said, “Lord, yes. For weeks. Months. Then, I had a family to raise. My boys. My ranch to run. I couldn’t lose another minute wishing for that man to come back.”

  “I thought I had, too. Crawled into a bottle of whiskey, hoping I’d never come out. All that did was make me sick. Aubrey dragged me home from an alley one night, left me in the cellar and called me a coward and a liar because I’d promised him I’d take care of him when I got home from the war. He was already a man then. When I got my feet under me, I realized he’d been right. So I quit then and there. Laid it all down, went to bed for a month, but when I got up, I got up sober. I don’t drink. Nor gamble or carry on with fancy women.”

  “Well, I never questioned your character, Udell.”

  “Nor I yours. Were you happy?”

  It took me a long time to finally say the words. “Painfully happy.”

  “I doubt I could ever live up to that. I don’t believe I kept Frances painfully happy, unless she found it in her heart in spite of me. I’m sure fond of you, Sarah.”

  I felt the selfsame words ready to roll off my tongue, as if all he’d said was “how d’e do,” and it was customary to return in kind. I dared not say those sacred words aloud until I was sure I meant them, for they would bind me in ways I’d already learned. That jackrabbit was watching us from atop a rock. I could hear Udell breathing. I drew in a long breath, too, my heart aching. The trouble was, I did love him. At least, I felt something. What exactly it was, I had yet to name. Long as I didn’t say it aloud, it could wait until the thoughts cleared on their own, I suspect.

  Then we started back down the hill toward the carriage. Udell whistled a tune as we stepped arm in arm through the brush. We found Aubrey and Mary Pearl sitting sedately next to each other. If it weren’t for the flush of their faces, I’d have believed they’d been discussing the weather.

  “Ready to head home?” Udell asked.

  “But please, drive slow, Pa,” his son answered.

  We turned the rig around and had just started down the hill, Udell pushing his foot on the brake to keep it from banging the horses’ legs, when I grabbed his arm. “Stop,” I hissed. “I heard something.”

  It took two more steps for the horses to come to a halt. Aubrey and Mary Pearl had little to say when we returned, but they both leaned forward now, asking what I had heard. There it was again. The sound of horses approaching. A dozen or more.

  With no thought to being ladylike and waiting for him to help me, I got down while Udell set the brake and gave the reins to Aubrey. I hurried toward the sound, stopping by a leafy ocotillo to peer around it before I stepped out from the shadows. Udell crouched next to me. Before us there played out a tableau that took away all the previous warm feelings and chilled me deep in my core.

  A band of riders, Mexicans by the cut of their getup, was moving across the desert below us, at least a mile away. Ahead of them, two men on horseback charged as if their lives were in the balance. One had lost a hat, the other whipped his horse with his as they leaned toward the setting sun. Then one of the horses of the men out front stumbled, and the rumbling of many hooves was overlaid with the squeal of the animal and that distinctive crack of bone. The other rider didn’t stop but kept on. The men closed ranks upon the fallen man, and two dismounted, strode up to him, and drew pistols while the others continued after the lone rider. The man on the ground clasped his hands together and his mouth moved, but we couldn’t hear him. Their guns barely a foot away, they shot him through the head. When he fell, they shot him again, then shot the horse, too. The chase had crossed another rise and was out of our line of sight, but before another minute passed, we heard a volley of gunfire.

  Udell took my arm, saying, “Let’s get away from here.” Aubrey and Mary Pearl had followed us, and hurried, too.

  We ran to the carriage. Udell drove as fast as he dared, stayed on the road for a bit, then suddenly turned off by a copse of ironwood. He pulled the horses to a stop along a natural pond, and told us all to get out. Hooves approached. Birds scattered noisily. Udell said, “Spread that blanket on the ground.” We laid it over the muddy bank and took the second coach blanket, too. Aubrey spread it over Mary Pearl’s lap while Udell and I put the feed bags back on the horses’ heads. I pulled the rifle from under the front seat and tucked it under, too. We joined them on the blanket in a circle, taking poses and laughing and chatting as if we’d been having a picnic.

  No sooner had we caught our breaths than the air filled with the din of horses. Udell pulled the rifle from my hands, putting it down the length of one leg. The men had circled the hill and were coming toward us. One of them shouted, “iAlto!” and they pulled to a stop with a clatter and the drawing of pistols. The men pulled kerchiefs over their noses, but stayed mounted while two eased out from the rest toward us. One man rode his horse up against our carriage, looking inside it as if there might be someone hiding.

  He reached out a hand, slowly, and patted one of our horses on the rump with an almost kindly gesture. The animal muttered into his feed bag, but nothing more. Then the man holstered his pistol, strapped low on his leg. He eyed us. A pair of vicious spurs dressed his heels, flashing in the sunlight. On his horse’s left shoulder, the Bar-M brand of Rudolfo Maldonado.

  I held my breath. A patch of foam hung on the flank of one of our horses. From where I sat, I could see it clearly, but from his point of view, he couldn’t know we’d run those horses unless there was foam on the other side.

  The rider turned, thrust his chin toward the south, and at once, the band of men sped away in a clattering flurry. We were left quaking together on the blanket, wondering what we’d just witnessed. When I tried to stand, I found my legs cold from the dampness that seeped through the blanket; my knees shook as I hurried to the far horse, looking him over carefully. There was no foam. No reason for them to suspect us of lying, other than that heavier smell of a just-run horse.

  Aubrey said, “Mary Pearl, quickly, get in,” and he jostled the wet blanket into a bundle at their feet. Udell’s face was grim and hard. He took the reins. I took the rifle. We turned the horses toward home and made dust.

  Chapter Five

  December 17, 1906

  Last night I said good night to Udell in the dark, outside the house. The night had been crisply cold; the stars all seemed only a few feet over our heads. The moon hung like a lantern, low in the sky. He had put his hands against my cheeks but he did not kiss me. He had only held my face and said, “Be careful.”

  Then I took his face in my hands and said, “Y tu. You also,” and I made Udell carry my rifle when he and Aubrey went home. As he mounted his horse I called, “Aim left a touch.”

  After that, it seemed I carried the warmth of him in my hands, and as I curled up in bed that night, shivering, trying to warm up one spot before I stretched out, I folded my hands and told myself I could still feel the skin of Udell’s face. It was a guilty pleasure, craving the touch of his skin against mine. When I thought about it a little, I thought about it a lot. I wanted to press my cheek to his, and leave it there, and sleep, curled against him. If Jack walked in the door this very minute, I’d never think about Udell Hanna again, but Jack’s not going to do that. So I put my hands on my own face, remembering Udell’s hands and his face in the fabric of my own skin, and slept that way through the night, comforted.

  This morning as I was headed out to feed the chickens, Rudolfo Maldonado rode up to my front porch. The sight of him gave me a start and I realized that I’d been looking for Udell. I pulled an old hat on, took my basket, and stepped off the porch toward the chicken coop. I wondered if he would tell me about what went on at his place without me asking. I wished my suspicions about him would quiet. Reckon once someone has crossed that line with me and I quit trusting them, they’re going to travel down a long, long road to get back to where I believe what they say.

  Gussied up and grinning, Rudolfo swept off his hat, saying he’d come to beg my family, Albert’s family, and
even Udell and his son, to come to his home Christmas Eve for a fiesta. I told him he’d have to ask each one, and that I’d not speak for others. I unwound the wire that held the pen shut and went inside.

  Rudolfo watched me closely while I dumped out the hens’ trough and banged it against a post to knock the gravel and trash out of it. From the corner of my eye I saw him put his boot up on the chopping block I keep by the door of the coop and lean toward me. He said, “You should have some peon to do this, Sarah.” He let out a long breath and the steam came toward me.

  “Well, I don’t,” I said as I measured mash in an old coffee can and spread it in three big streaks on the ground. The chickens all came a-running, making that waterfalling sound they do when they’re happily eating. When several minutes passed and Rudolfo said nothing else, I turned and looked him in the eye. The expression on his face was not the slick baldness of lying I’ve seen on him before. Instead, it was a shade of some unspoken sorrow. Regret, maybe, or pain.

  It still rankles me to remember last summer. He’ll never know how close I came to accepting his marriage proposal only a few months ago. He had come to me saying he was planning to go into politics and needed a wife. He had all the land and cows in the area. I’d never worry another day of my life. I’d have had peons to feed my chickens, cocineros to fetch my supper, caballeros to tend my stock. Just in time, I’d found out he’d paid a man to tear up my south windmill and poison the water tanks. Why, I’d as soon be hung as marry the likes of Rudolfo after that.

  Within days of my threatening Rudolfo with a shotgun, he had married a neighbor girl. Leta was the oldest daughter of the Cujillo family; probably had figured her life was to be a spinster, until her much older vecino suddenly chose her from the brood to be his esposa. I held fast to my feed bucket, keeping some distance between us, watching him study the chickens as they clustered around the hem of my skirt. After their honeymoon he had set off with some of his hired men for Vera Cruz and Mexico City, and was gone over a fortnight. His wife, all of twenty and two years old, was home by that time and holding a bucket of her own, sicker than any girl I ever knew with a baby coming. What I knew of her, I reckoned Leta Cujillo Maldonado made his life just about what Rudolfo deserved.