“You’re a spoilsport,” Grace told him.
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
He looked away, and Grace, remembering how he had not liked being called “bad boy,” decided to be less lighthearted. “What would you do with it, the money?”
“I’ll tell you.” He led her to two chairs that were a little ways away from the rest of the guests. They sat down, and Jim leaned forward earnestly and began to tell her about the poverty in Swandyke, Colorado, the town where he was superintendent of the Fourth of July, the area’s largest gold mine. He talked about the poor schools and the hard lives the miners lived. Grace looked at him wide-eyed, although she did not pay much attention to what he said. Each time a waiter came by, she nodded at the champagne, and the waiter took Jim’s empty glass and handed him a fresh one.
At last, Grace said, “It’s awfully hot here. Would you mind terribly if we went over to the pond, where it’s cooler?”
“I’ve bored you.”
“No,” Grace replied, lying. “I want to hear more. You’re the only person here who is serious about life, and I would like to hear what you have to say. But it’s very hot here.” They stood, Grace taking his arm and leading him to a secluded spot, where they sat down in the grass. It was quite dark now, and while they could hear the sounds of the orchestra and the chatter of the guests in the distance, they could see nothing but each other.
“I’ve never met anybody who is as concerned about other people as you are,” Grace said, putting her hand on his arm.
“Well, I never expected to find a girl at Charlotte’s wedding who would listen,” he replied.
They talked softly, Grace making sounds of sympathy and interest, because she knew how to flatter a man. Finishing school at least had taught her that. When he said something funny, she fluffed her hair and gave a tinkling laugh, and at last, Jim whispered, “Miss Grace—”
She put her finger on his lips and said, “It’s just Grace, Gracie if you like.” And she leaned in so that he could kiss her. After that, it was easy. She let him put his arms around her and caress her, and after a time, he pushed at her skirt, and she moved a little to make it easier for him. He knew what to do, and Grace thought later that she was not his first. Well, she probably had not been George’s first, either, because his father would have introduced him to brothels. Jim must have visited them, too, but likely on his own.
When they were finished, they lay on the grass beside each other for a long time. Grace was in no hurry to go home this time. At last, she sat up and said softly, “My God, Mr. Foote, what is it we’ve done?” It was the champagne, she told him, since he musn’t realize she was sober.
He put his head in his hands and apologized, saying he had had only the noblest intentions toward her when they’d found this place to talk. He seemed contrite, more than George had been, and Grace was forgiving, saying boldly that she shared the fault, for she had liked the way he’d touched her. And so she played him along, making him feel guilty but at the same time a little grateful for her understanding and forgiveness.
The next day, Jim called on Grace. “I haven’t slept,” he said, “and if anything…” He could not finish the thought. But he added, “I know my responsibility.” He left that afternoon, giving Grace his address, and a few days later, she received a letter from him, a formal one telling her how much he had enjoyed meeting her and saying he hoped she was well.
Two weeks after the wedding, Grace did not bleed as she had every four weeks since her nature first came to her, when she was fourteen. She did not tell Jim until another month passed and she knew for sure she was pregnant. She wrote, and within the week, Jim was in Saginaw. They eloped that day, Grace leaving a message for her parents that she could not bear going through the weeks of engagement festivities that had consumed Charlotte. Her parents were relieved. They could not stretch their declining fortune to cover the cost of a wedding like Charlotte’s. Perhaps they believed that Grace had eloped solely to save them the expense. So Nancy only sighed when her friends said how thoughtless it was of Grace to deprive her of the joy of planning her only daughter’s wedding.
Grace herself was glad to be away from Saginaw, although she had no idea of what lay ahead for her. She had read the popular Zane Grey novel Riders of the Purple Sage and thought Swandyke must be set in a glorious southwestern desert of sagebrush and piñon trees, with desperadoes and Indians. The two of them would go about on horseback, and Jim would be proud of her riding skill. He had written that the town was in a mountain valley, and she pictured pretty cottages and quaint people. The residents would be poor—she remembered that from the conversation with Jim—but they would be happy and would see her as Lady Bountiful. She envisioned herself visiting them when they were sick, taking along custards and beef tea that her cook had prepared, and handing out presents to the children at Christmas, just as her mother had done to the children of the servants.
When she arrived in Swandyke, however, Grace was stunned at the brutality and the ugliness, and then at the harshness of that first winter she spent at the Fourth of July. Still, she told herself, it was better than giving birth in Saginaw to George’s off-child, his bastard. Nothing could be worse than that. She had made a bargain with the devil, and she would keep her part of it.
Grace went into labor on a spring day, when the snow had stopped and the warmth of the sun and the sounds of birds came into the house. She was attended by the company doctor, a man who assured her he was well acquainted with childbirth. No society doctor for Grace Foote. Nor was there a white-tile bath to be turned into a birthing room. She gave birth in an old brass bed, tended by the doctor and a nurse, who later gave up the job to become an inmate at a whorehouse up the river in Middle Swan. The labor was an easy one, and the baby was a boy. The doctor held him up, and Grace blanched when she saw him, for he was the exact image of his father. And then the fruit of her deceit hit her, and she gave a bitter laugh. The joke was on her. The big ears, the eyes, the long arms, and even the bald head identified him as Jim Foote’s son.
Now, Grace stood at the window of the superintendent’s house, holding back the curtains with her long fingers, the nails perfectly varnished, looking down the treeless snow-covered slope below the Fourth of July Mine, remembering the irony that Jim, not George, was the father of her son. She had tricked her husband into marriage, when it hadn’t even been necessary. Poor Jim, she thought. He was so honorable. She had tried to be a good wife, but she was ill-prepared to be married to a mining man in such a dreadful place.
With Schuyler in school now, she had time on her hands and brooded about why her life had turned out the way it had, wondered if everything that had happened had been preordained, and whether the old black woman had seen that in her hand. And if the past had been set for her, the future would be, too. That was what concerned her now. Would she spend the rest of her life staring out the window at the endless snow?
A few weeks earlier, Grace had asked her mother to send her books on the occult, explaining that the local people were taken with superstitions. Grace wrote her mother long letters about the mine and the mountains and the townspeople, fantasy letters describing the beauty of Swandyke and the gentleness of its inhabitants. The letters were so entertaining that Nancy passed them around among her friends, and everyone said that Grace ought to have them published. Her mother had never been to Swandyke, and Grace saw no reason to let her know the real circumstances of life there.
John Schuyler had died—or had he committed suicide?—in a hunting accident not six months after Grace left Saginaw, and Nancy had married just a year later. The new husband was immensely wealthy, and the couple spent much of their time in Europe. Grace visited them in Saginaw, always taking Schuyler. She loved the boy and did not want to be away from him. He was the one good thing that had resulted from the awful mistake that had begun with George. She often encountered George and Charlotte on the trips. They seemed perfectly suited for each other now, because George had grown fat an
d dull, and Grace could not imagine what her life with him would have been.
Now, Grace glanced at the horseshoe that hung over the door; she’d explained to Jim she’d placed it there to ensure that spring would come. She set aside the needlepoint to stare out the window again, looking out at the long white slope sparkling in the sunlight, waiting to catch a glimpse of Schuyler coming home from school. And slowly, a sense of foreboding came upon her, and she thought again of the long-ago curse.
Chapter Five
This time of year, the sun did little to warm the graves under the pine trees of the Mountainbrook burial ground. Minder Evans stood in the shadows and shivered a little, because he had seen some years. At seventy-five, he was too old to tramp the cemetery each day in the winter’s cold. But he came, even these past few days, when he’d had to wade through the heavy snow the storm had dumped on Swandyke. It was a pact he’d made with himself when he sold his interest in the Fourth of July Mine—to visit the cemetery every day instead of just on Sunday, as he had for years. People thought it was a little odd, he knew, this remainder of the Grand Old Army coming to the graves so often, but then, the Civil War veterans were a strange lot. Folks had grown used to seeing Minder wandering among the stones, not just those of the Union soldiers but of the Confederate ones, too, for in the end, the two sides had enough in common to override their differences of long years ago.
There were not many Civil War graves, just twenty-two, but the tending of them took time. There may have been more, undoubtedly were, but these were the ones marked with the names and ranks and units. These were the graves of soldiers who wanted to be remembered for their part in the conflagration, men for whom the war never ended. Minder stopped at each one, said a word or two to the dead, swept the gravestones clear of snow in the winter and pine needles in the summer, repaired and painted the five wooden markers, cleaned the marble and stone ones.
The number of veterans was of no consequence to Minder, because he had nothing else to do except, of course, to care for his grandson, Emmett. The boy was ten now, and Minder walked him to school each day, because Emmett was timid, and his grandfather was all he had. And Emmett was all that Minder had. They were like two old men together, and precious to each other. Minder thought he would not live if anything happened to the boy. He had lost everyone else. His wife and his daughter had both taken the pneumonia and died on the same day, when Emmett was not yet old enough to walk. And then Emmett’s father had taken out. Minder hadn’t heard from him since the day the man had gone off to work, saying he’d come home for dinner, but he’d never come home for dinner. Instead, he’d left out, and they’d never seen him again. The deaths had put Minder himself in misery so deep that he could hardly blame the young man. But the father should have put aside his sorrow for the sake of the boy. He hadn’t, and that meant Minder had the care of Emmett. No one else would take him, and Minder wouldn’t give him over to an orphan asylum. So he’d raised the boy himself, taught him to work and have good manners. “Just doing those two things will keep you out of trouble,” he told Emmett. But Minder knew better.
Minder wasn’t thinking about Emmett now as he stood in front of the grave of Junius Cable (“Co. D, 18 Ohio Inf.”). The plain marble stone, rounded at the top like a church window, was surrounded by an iron fence. He hadn’t known Junius Cable, who had died in 1869, and Minder wondered again if the man had perished from the lingering effects of the war. So many of them had, especially the Southerners, like Cyrus Cheek (“Virginia”—the rest of the identification had worn off). He’d died in 1872 and was buried on the other side of the cemetery. Minder didn’t know for sure if the war was the cause of Cyrus Cheek’s death, either, but he’d known the man a little, and he’d come to believe it was. Either that or he’d died of plain meanness. Cyrus wouldn’t give a person the sweat off a black cat’s eye, and he acted as if the Virginia cavalry, of which he’d been a member, had won the war.
Minder trudged on to Theodore Wesley Arden’s grave (“7th Ohio Inf.”), which was marked by a red sandstone obelisk, broken off at the top, decorated with sandstone leaves. He’d known Ted Arden, too, a righteous man who thought he was a sinner because he loved to dance, and indeed, he could cut a step like nobody else. But the poor old fellow was stroked, and at the ending up, he could barely talk. His last words to Minder were, “I never was arrested, and I never was a juror. I never rode in an automobile, and I have one tooth left. You think I’ll go to heaven?”
“I believe you’ll go on past heaven,” Minder replied, and the old man pondered that as he took his last breath.
Minder walked the same route every day, beginning with Lieut. S. P. Key (“Co. K, 3rd Colo. Cav.”) and ending with Sgt. Frank Comb (“Co. B, 1st Minn. Inf.”). He’d made a path through the snow from grave to grave, half of them clustered together, the rest spread out in family plots. The cemetery was deserted that day, as it usually was in winter. The ground was so hard that you had to use dynamite to blast out a grave, and folks wished the dying would hold out just a little longer, until spring, so the burying would be easier. Few came to visit the dead when the weather was bad, only the old widow, Mittie McCauley, and she did not intrude, just nodded, because she had her own ghosts to ride. Or maybe she liked the solitude, too.
In the summer and fall, the cemetery was filled with women tending the graves, for women were the survivors. They came with their bouquets of columbine and lupin summer’s-half-over set in jars of water and propped them beside the markers. Women in Swandyke were charged with caring for the departed, most of them dead from accidents in the mines or on the gold dredges, much the way the widows of the South carried on what they called the “noble cause” after that terrible war. They had forgotten there was nothing noble about war, about the killing and the maiming. Minder’d never forget the dead men, nor the smell of rotting flesh that had risen up when he’d stepped on a severed leg or guts that had spilled out onto the red dirt. Or the sounds—the guns, the cries of the wounded, the rebel yell, which could chill a Union soldier to the bone. And the silence when it was all over. That had been even worse, the silence as you walked among the dead and praised God that you were still alive, although you never knew why. Why had God spared him and not the rebel boy who had lain at his feet, his head lying off to the side, the skull cleaved as cleanly as if it were a split melon? Why had God saved Minder and not his pard? It made a man wonder if God cared or if there really was a God. Over the years, Minder had decided there wasn’t. And even if there was, Minder didn’t like him much.
Then there were the worst sounds of all, the noise of the explosion and the screams of the men burning, drowning, calling out as they sank into the water and then were still. Those were the sounds of Minder’s own personal hell, the sounds that he believed would follow him into eternity.
The old man walked on to the next grave, stopped, and greeted Alfred Totter. He’d known Al Totter, worked beside him for five years at the old Irish Queen Mine in the 1870s before either one mentioned he’d fought in the war. And then they’d considered each other warily, like dogs circling, before they found out they were both Union volunteers. They’d talked about the war as only two men who’d shared a terrible time could do, because no one else understood. Neither wives nor children, especially not wives. Minder had never told his wife about the worst of the war. She was a good woman and had suffered, too, but she hadn’t seen her friends dying around her, their faces torn off, their limbs severed.
Nor had he ever told anyone else about that terror he relived every day.
Minder picked up a pine bough on the Totter grave and shook off the snow, then replaced the branch. He thought of those branches as quilts, and in winter, he placed them on the graves reverently, as if to keep the occupants warm.
Now, he looked out at the sun shining on the snow and saw Mittie McCauley trudging up the trail to the graveyard, and suddenly he felt the need of a human voice. The day’s work at the cemetery made him gloomy, and he wanted to shake
off the feeling before Emmett came home, bursting through the door with news of his day. Emmett didn’t like going off in the morning, was afraid of the new day, but he was happy when he walked home with his little friends.
Minder waved to Mittie and watched as she came through the iron arch with MOUNTAINBROOK CEMETERY spelled out in big iron letters. Seeing Minder waiting for her, the old woman went over to him, adjusting her scarf, retying it under her chin. Her face was brown from the sun, but smooth, and she was as fit as anyone her age—my age, Minder thought, maybe a little younger. She ought to marry again, her being a widow for ten, fifteen years. He himself had given it a little thought. The boy needed a woman around. But Minder didn’t want to adjust to someone else. Besides, better men had courted the woman and had no luck, and he’d known his chances were poor.
“You do them proud,” the woman told him now. “You don’t let them be forgot.”
“It’s little enough. I’m the lone sentinel around here.” He had a sudden thought. “Did Frederick fight in the war? Was your husband a soldier? I ask you: Was Fred one of us?”
She looked off at the far mountains, sky blue in the distance. “He was. Frederick fought for the Union, was at Shiloh. But he wouldn’t talk of it.”
“I could tend his grave for you, save you the trouble of tramping out in the cold.”
“No, it’s my job. I can talk to him up here, talk out loud. People must think I’m touched.”
Minder smiled. He talked out loud to the graves, too.
“I look at the ground when I tell him things, but I like to think he’s up there.” She pointed upward with her chin and laughed a little. “I guess I’ll never know. There’s things can’t be explained in this world.”
“If Fred McCauley’s not in heaven, nobody’s there,” Minder replied, although he wasn’t so sure. The old woman’s husband had fallen into temptation at times.
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