A Sweetness to the Soul

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  Crickett blinked once or twice at my vehemence, rose to lift the cage, and set it just outside. Monroe lounged at the table, arms resting on the arched canes of the chair. He wore a slightly amused look on his face as he stood to offer his arm to Ella, a chair to Alice. Joseph’s look was quizzical.

  “If it’s the marriage you’re concerned about,” Crickett began as he turned back from the cat, “I know it’s quite a rush. Love can be like that sometimes.” He had an uncanny ability to anticipate my arguments. “We can visit often. She won’t be far away. I’ll take the best care of Alice—”

  “Alice!” Joseph interrupted.

  “I’m not an old man, truly,” Crickett pleaded. “Well able to provide.” He looked at Alice whose eyes glowed with admiration for him. “It is as though I’ve found that missing spirit of myself with Alice. Please, don’t let it slip away.”

  Too many events to deal with. Too many people to care about. Too many futures to manage. I could see my life changing minute by minute and knew I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it; at the moment didn’t think I would try. I wondered if this was what Mama felt the years after, when she lost what she loved and her world began spinning away.

  But I could make a different choice—love my “children”—and let them go.

  At least Crickett understood the enormity of what he proposed. And I supposed it was not all that unlike my learning to care for Joseph in an instant though I came to love him in a longer time. I looked to him now when he spoke. “Let’s give the idea a few days, Mother, and see where we are by then,” my husband wisely counseled.

  On the Thursday stage, almost a week after Crickett’s arrival and Sunmiet and Inanuks’s departure to her people’s camp across the river, the letter posting the death of Joseph’s brother arrived. Riding right behind the stage came the sheriff. The latter took our attention from the former.

  The sheriff thought he was merely stopping for the noon meal.

  “Plenty of sage grouse at Chicken Springs,” he said. “Always worth the extra here for Tai’s peppered steak.” The barrel-chested man chewed happily, alone in the dining room having seen the stage off before eating. “And that great tomato sauce you have him make.” He smothered the steak with ketchup.

  Crickett had spent much of his time with us, fishing. He took evening walks with Alice. Later, I was always grateful that I’d given up my reservations and had joined in with Ella and Alice preparing for the younger’s wedding. It would have been a double tragedy if she had not at least had the pleasure of anticipation. Unaware of the hour, Crickett rarely appeared for meals. Instead, he said he “lived on love.” At night, he wrote in a little book. “Notes on patients,” he said. I assumed at the Salem asylum. Only for Spirit did he seem to have some sense of timing. At noontime, he released the cat to stretch in the shade beneath the rimrocks. The cat’s long gray hair fairly frothed around its face as it stood, nose into the gentle breeze. Spirit rolled on its back next to Alice when she and Crickett sat together on a quilt, purring contentedly, rarely howling at all while Alice scratched its belly in the shade of the cinnamon rocks.

  It’s where the three of them were when the sheriff arrived. Between bites, he mentioned my brother, now eighteen. “George shows some interest in the law,” he told me. I was a bit irritated that a stranger should know more of my brother than I. The sheriff went on talking and it was only in passing that he mentioned his mission in coming by the falls. “Looking for an escapee,” he said, stuffing potatoes into his mouth, chewing, his black mustache bobbing.

  “From the jail?” I asked, pouring more coffee.

  He drank, swallowed, wiped his mouth with his palm. “Nope. From the crazy house. Near Salem. Not sure where he was headed. Managed to lift the valise of a doctor going on vacation. Just picked up his things waiting at the hospital. Someone said they sold a man meeting his description a ticket.” He took another bite of steak, caught the juice dribbling with his thick tongue. “A gray cat’s missing too. One that hung around the asylum, that the escapee took a liking to.”

  “What’s he there for?” I asked in a daze, staring out through the window at a happy couple, the cat’s paws jabbing at a long feather Crickett held.

  “Didn’t kill no one,” he said. “Just fits. Of sadness, forgets who he is, where he is. Tried to kill himself a couple a times.” He washed his meal down with a large glass of ice tea. “Sure made lots of changes here, Missus. Husband still working the roads?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s with the crew now. You say this person never harmed anyone?”

  “Nope. But sometimes, he does crazy things. Guess that’s why he’s in the crazy house!” He laughed at his own lame joke. “Anyway, goes from sadness to laughter and then right on back. Pretends to be what he ain’t. Can convince anyone of it, too, he can. Sometimes he’s a steamboat captain. Sometimes a musician. Just whatever hits him. I’m supposed to bring him back. Got a family. Not dangerous, though.”

  I watched in slow motion as Crickett and Alice made motions of leaving their serenity beneath the rimrocks, almost willing them not to come to the house as they approached, hand in hand. Torn by the possibility of danger, the same possibility of safety, I suggested the sheriff walk out the side door, away from the rock wall, toward the river.

  Unfortunately, Spirit bounded the same direction, toward the river and she was followed close at hand by Crickett.

  The cat startled the sheriff, running straight past him as he did. And I saw something register in the lawman’s mind. Perhaps because he knew we kept only the pigs and dogs as pets; perhaps because the cat was so distinctive and would have been described by the hospital staff.

  So when Crickett ambled his big frame with his rust hair around the side of the inn, cage in hand, there was little doubt for the sheriff. Though he couldn’t have known—none of us could—what would happen when he “Howdy-ed” him.

  “You there!” the sheriff said, his arm upraised in greeting. “Is that a Salem cat?”

  “Yes, don’t you know,” Crickett said before he realized his error, “and he loves the country now we’re here.”

  “I thought as much. I’m here to take you and him back, Lonnie.” His voice was soft, kind.

  Crickett stopped. Alice beside him. “Name’s Spike,” he insisted. “Spike Crickett.”

  “You lifted the ‘Crickett,’ ” the sheriff said. “And the doctor’s looking for it back. It’s time now, Lonnie. No harm’ll come to you.”

  “No,” Crickett said, softly. “No!” Louder. He backed up slowly.

  “You’ve had your outing,” the sheriff continued. He began to ease toward Crickett who hunched like a cornered animal, shaking his head.

  I had followed the sheriff outside and called now to Alice. “Come here, dear,” I said. “Just for the moment.” I felt numb and agitated at the same time, reaching out to her as I spoke. I wondered how such a peaceful morning could be converted in a heartbeat to the slow motion of a nightmare. Alice saw me, shook her head. She eyed with confusion the man approaching her beloved. “He’s the sheriff, Alice. He won’t harm either of you,” I said, pleading with her to hear me, trust me.

  Her eyes were large, moving rapidly from Crickett to me, to the sheriff. Her thin back stiffened and then with a sinking heart, I saw her reach for Crickett’s hand, hang on.

  It must have registered with the sheriff at the exact same moment as with me. Crickett looked to take the river, and Alice with him!

  “No!” I shouted, walking with lead feet.

  The sheriff acted faster. He grabbed for Crickett just seconds before he reached the water, pulled him back away from the cliff ledges, stumbled over Alice, pushed her to the side where she lay sobbing when I reached her.

  Crickett scuffled with the sheriff. Helplessly, I watched them wrestle until the lawman tripped his quarry, and with Crickett on the ground, he closed the metal cuffs to hold him.

  I heard Crickett sobbing. “No, no, no, no, no.” Defeated, he
moved his face back and forth, scratching his pink skin on the rocks.

  The sheriff decided to wait until the morning stage returned from Canyon City, and arranged for Crickett—or Lonnie Williams as his family knew him—to stay in his room, cuffed to the bed. Crickett turned despondent. The sheriff tried to convince him that going back would not be bad. Crickett sat stony-faced and forlorn upon his bed. Dirt still smudged the front of his tight-fitting vest.

  Alice was inconsolable. She spent the better part of the afternoon sitting beneath the rimrock stroking Spirit, crying, her eyes puffed and red.

  “It’s not the end,” Joseph told her when he arrived back from the roads. He folded his long legs beneath himself and leaned back on his elbows beside her on the grass. He did not look at her, honored her, wanted her to know he was there. “Though I expect it doesn’t seem so now,” he said. “Maybe it’s the best place for him.”

  She looked at him, accusing. “This was the best place for him. Until that man came.”

  “He’s only doing his job, Alice. It’ll take you nowhere but to misery to blame another for things the way they are. Not Crickett’s fault either. He had to do what he had to do. We all do, I suspect.” He reached for her then and I saw through the window that she allowed him to hold her while she cried. It was progress.

  Crickett wasn’t hungry when I took a tray to him. Even Alice with her handkerchief stuffed up her dress sleeve in case she began to cry again, could not urge him. “Just take a bite,” Alice said. Crickett stared straight ahead.

  I succumbed to the strangeness of the day and let Spirit spend the night out of her cage with Alice.

  In the morning, the stage arrived, three passengers disembarked, donned their moccasins and slipped their feet beneath the table. A pretty woman not much taller than me said she was a photographer from Minnesota, looking to set up a studio in The Dalles or maybe Portland. We talked of Ella’s wedding later in the summer and she handed me her card. “Jessie Shep” it read. “I can be reached at this post.” She wrote a Portland number on the card. “At least until August.” Something about her intrigued me. Perhaps it was talking with someone without having to look up, or enjoying the presence of another independent woman here beside the river.

  The male passengers always behaved better when a woman rode with them, so when I met the sheriff and Crickett in the hall, I made a fateful suggestion. “If Crickett wants to eat breakfast, perhaps he could do so without the cuffs? There’s a woman passenger.” The sheriff shrugged his shoulders, asked a subdued Crickett if he’d like to eat at the table, and Crickett nodded yes.

  And Crickett did eat. A bit woodenly but enough to make Alice feel better about him and the long ride ahead. The driver gave the five-minute call, and the men stood to put their boots on. Standing on the porch, they talked of weather, the horses, smoked their rolled cigarettes. Peach blossoms from the upper orchard drifted to the earth in the gentle breeze like snow falling softly. The photographer walked toward the falls and asked if there was sufficient time before they left to take a photo.

  “Sure ’nuf,” Young Handly, the driver, said. “Got to load the sheriff’s passenger yet. Guess we’ll tie his horse,” he added absently to himself.

  The driver lifted the stagecoach boot and handed Jessie her tripod and her camera. She set it up, bent beneath the black cloth and focused, loaded the glass plates and took her shot of the falls. Seeing the men standing on the porch, the inn and the unusual rock wall as a backdrop, the blossoms drifting through the air, she asked if they wouldn’t like to pose. A few coughs, lame protests and the men lined up. “You too,” she called to Crickett and the sheriff stepping out of the inn. “The men of the meal,” she jested. “The tallest—line up in back,” which is what Crickett and the sheriff did as she reloaded.

  “Got it,” she said in a lilting voice after she took her picture. The men moved forward, offered to carry the heavy camera, her tripod. Jessie meandered, seemed to relish the fragrant morning, the roar of the river. Even the sheriff slowed to talk with one of the passengers.

  Then into that placid lull before the storm, Crickett made his decision. Our laxness brought opportunity mixed with anticipated loss, and Crickett brushed forward in an instant, past the sheriff, past the photographer, past the stage. He headed for the river.

  Crickett’s spirit was a good one, though, and while he could not seem to stop himself, when he plunged headlong into the turquoise swirl of the raging Deschutes River, he leaped alone.

  UNFOLDING

  It did not seem possible that in one short week new life should join us and another leave. While we tried to comfort Alice, explain how much Crickett’s mind must have suffered to end it as he did, tried to make sense of the craziness of choosing death over the torments of his life, none of it made sense to her. She had lost him just after he was found.

  “It’s that way, sometimes,” I said, holding her while she cried. We sat at the river’s edge, Alice’s place of belonging.

  “Never again!” she said adamantly, pulling back from me. “I will not care so much, never again. Why did that man have to come for him? We should have run from the dance!” A further thought caused more anguish as she said: “If it was not for me, he would never have remained at this river!”

  She sat apart from me, resolute. Fearful that she might waste years as I had, I shot an arrow prayer for wisdom and good counsel before I spoke next.

  “I know it seems you’ll never heal,” I said. “And you may not want to. I didn’t, a long time ago, when I lost three someones I loved. I thought that I would never want to feel again, it hurt so much. Worse, I thought my loving caused it.” She was listening though staring straight ahead at the rocks across the river, rocks she loved to fish from, rocks she escaped to. “I waited a long time. I blamed others who blamed me and then myself. I said only one thing could ever fill my empty space. If I had stayed that way,” I told her, talking quietly, “I never could have loved you, or Ella when she came.” Alice’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I would have missed so many moments, from Sunmiet’s children, you, Joseph, all the ones I love who softened me up over the years.” I thought of my brother, too, wondered if I’d stayed away from him these years not just to avoid my mother but to protect him, afraid my loving him meant I would lose him too. “A hard heart has no room for the good things God gives,” I said. She tossed a small rock into the rushing water, watched it sink from sight. “I know your heart feels like a stone now, but please don’t let it stay that way. Love did not cause your loss,” I said softly. “It gave you your greatest joy.”

  Alice sat poised like a frightened deer. Almost anything could set her off, make her disappear in fact or form. Then into that taut moment jumped Spirit, springing onto Alice’s lap with her fur and purr. Alice startled and patted the cat’s arched back, running her hands out to the tip of its tail. The cat put its nose to her chin, pushed, and I saw a small smile through Alice’s swollen eyes and knew it would be Spirit who would bring Alice from her deep despair. Spirit, answered prayer, and our unyielding love, which in time gave us back our happy Alice. Spirit, who joined us at Sherar’s Bridge that summer and never spent another night inside her cage. Spirit, who some months later, led the real Dr. Crickett and great change to Alice’s life.

  The letter informing us of James’ death back in New York had taken weeks to reach us despite advances in the postal system. Sometime in March he’d died. Eliza penned the letter, said that she and Carrie and Henry would be fine, that she thought James had left them well cared for.

  My husband did not grieve, at least not in the way I expected. Or perhaps I didn’t notice as I might have. Ella’s wedding preparations took my time and energy. That and keeping an eye on Alice. For a brief time we’d been planning two marriages. “We’ll have to clean twice as much, mother,” Alice had said once, her dark eyes glowing. I had delighted in her newfound consideration of me as mother, was grateful Crickett’s death did not take that away.

 
We prepared for the marriage of our now legally adopted daughter, papers all signed and courthouse sealed. I had thought some great feeling would arise from me the day we signed the papers making Susan Ella Turner become Susan Ella Sherar, but it did not. I suppose I had already accepted her as my own—perhaps even all those years before—so the papers were but the punctuation in a long sentence of our lives.

  Every mother imagines her daughter’s wedding day. Must be something put into the water of the womb. And while I was deprived of that water, the image did not escape me. So we traveled, Ella and Joseph and I, to Portland to find the loveliest dress that ever fashioned itself over a form.

  White lace, layer on layer, flowed from Ella’s shoulders out over that bustle right down to her toes. She wore a wide-brimmed hat with an ostrich plume pouring ivory over the side. I couldn’t resist purchasing the stuffed silk dove made in Chinatown, though Joseph shook his head like I’d lost mine. We pinned it into Ella’s hat, peeking out from under the plume for the occasion. I thought Dr. Hey would have been pleased with my choice of symbolism. After all, I had taken his advice and mixed with the sage wisdom of Sunmiet and Pastor Condon, had found my place in life, found forgiveness and another kind of nesting place, found my family.

  Here stood Ella on her wedding day as proud proof.

  The dress fit perfectly and was not too hot for July. On her feet, she wore slippers of pure satin. A gold chain draped around her neck, hung down over the tiny tucks in the bodice. Joseph gave it to her along with a locket. Her father from Vale sent her a lovely gold bracelet and I wondered if after all these years of mining, he had finally struck it rich—though he had already given us his greatest treasure. Ella’s ash blond hair was swirled on top of her head with a mass of curls and to finish off her modern look, she rubbed real rouge we’d bought in Portland on her dimpled cheeks.

  She was as lovely as the white icing on her cake.

  I didn’t want to think of Ella’s leaving. My face must have been speaking up a storm while Alice and I were dressing Ella.