by Gwen Bristow
“No.”
“Good. I need more room to get mad in. That rattlebrain. Giving me his mother’s ikon!”
Florinda caught up the blue scarf and strode through the doorway. Garnet followed her. The kitchen did not offer much room to get mad in, for the table took up most of the floor-space, but Florinda was wrathfully pacing about what space there was, the blue scarf dangling from her arm and the ikon in her hand.
“That booby,” she said. “That stupid pig. What the hell am I going to do with this? His mother’s ikon! I’d like to crack his thick skull. Him going off to Russia so I can’t tell him what I think of him. Wheedling me into promising I’d take care of it. I’d like to wring his neck. That buzzard. Damn his—”
Her voice broke. To Garnet’s utter amazement, a rush of tears came to Florinda’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She sobbed into the blue scarf. “That big lumbering ox,” she choked. “That pinhead. Doing a crazy act like this.”
Garnet was not at all sure what this was about. But she went to Florinda and put an arm around her so Florinda could cry on her shoulder. Florinda jerked back indignantly.
“Don’t you get sentimental with me. I never felt like such a fool in my life. He wanted to make me feel like this. He wanted to make me cry. That’s why he gave it to me. So I’d feel like a fool and act like one. That half-witted baboon. I wish I could knock his face in.” But in spite of her rage the tears kept pouring down her cheeks. She wiped them off with the blue scarf.
Garnet said wonderingly, “I never saw you cry before.”
“No, and you never will again. He told me once long ago I ought to cry sometimes. Now he left me this to make me do it. That big luggerhead. I’d like to kick him.” She scrubbed her eyes with the scarf, and blew her nose on it. “Garnet,” she demanded shortly, “how far is it to St. Petersburg?”
“I don’t know. He guessed about ten thousand miles, remember?”
“Ten thousand miles. I wish it was ten million. I hope he drowns. I hope he gets caught by pirates and has to walk the plank. I hope he falls overboard and the whales eat him. I hope he gets scurvy and his teeth fall out. That pig. That crocodile. That God-damned fool. He told me he gave me this because I was a good woman. Hell for breakfast. Why does he talk such flapdoodle? If I’ve been good since I’ve been in Los Angeles it’s merely because there’s not a man here I’d look at twice and he knows it as well as I do. Just let this benighted country blossom out with a middling-pleasant gent who’s really rich, and you’ll see how good I’ll be.” She scrubbed her eyes again. “If there’s a man like that around I’ll be so good I’ll have him spinning in his tracks. I’ve done it often enough before and I can do it again. That Russian imbecile. Giving me his mother’s ikon. I hope he gets the smallpox.”
They heard a sound of footsteps outside, and Florinda started violently. “My God, is that Silky coming in? Don’t let him see me with my eyes red like this! Come upstairs.”
She dashed out. Garnet heard her running up the rickety staircase. Silky came in. He said to Garnet that he had seen the Brute’s train riding out of town, so now he was going to open up. José would be here any minute. “Where’s Florinda?” he asked.
“She went to her room.”
“Run up and tell her—” Silky began, and caught himself. He had just remembered that Garnet was no longer working for him. Garnet was about to be married to John, and while Silky had not yet heard anything about John’s prospect of gathering bagfuls of gold up north, still Silky knew John was a prosperous ranchero. He smiled and bowed. “If it is quite convenient, Mrs. Hale, will you have the kindness to tell Florinda we’re opening the bar?”
“Yes, I’ll tell her,” said Garnet. But she was sure Florinda was in no mood to come down yet, so she added, “I think Florinda would like to change her dress before she comes down. We threw on our clothes in such a hurry this morning.”
“Indeed yes, certainly. There is no hurry, none at all. And Mrs. Hale. May I take this opportunity of wishing you all joy in your approaching marriage?”
“Thank you, Silky,” said Garnet. Before he had a chance to get lost in a wilderness of words, she hurried toward the stairs and ran up. Florinda’s door was closed. Garnet knocked.
“Is that Garnet?” Florinda called. “Come in.”
Garnet went in. Florinda was sitting on the bed, gazing down at the ikon in her hand. Her eyes were still red, but she was not crying any more.
“Silky told me to tell you he’s opening the bar,” said Garnet.
Florinda did not raise her eyes. “Silky can go sit on a tack,” she said. “I’m thinking. Garnet.”
“Yes, dear.”
“You won’t tell anybody I stood up there bawling like a kid with the colic, will you?”
“You know I won’t.”
“And don’t tell anybody the Brute left me this thing. I’d feel too silly to show my face in public again.”
“I won’t tell.”
“That jingle-brained yokel,” said Florinda. She was still looking down at the ikon. “That goose with a lump of dough in his head. And Garnet.”
“Yes, Florinda,” said Garnet. She went and sat by Florinda on the bed.
“You know I don’t mean any of those things I said, don’t you? About hoping he’d drown or get eaten by whales.”
“Yes, dear, I know it.”
“I don’t hope any such thing. That simpleton. I could choke him. I hope he gets to Russia with no trouble at all and I hope he finds a woman who’s good enough for him. No, he can’t do that, there’s not a woman on earth good enough for him. But I hope he finds one who’ll spend her whole life trying to be. That donkey. Giving me his mother’s ikon and making me cry. I could smash his nose.”
Garnet did not answer. She did not think Florinda wanted her to. Florinda was looking so intently at the ikon that she seemed only half aware of having anybody there to hear what she was saying. But she had not quite forgotten Garnet’s presence, for after a moment she put her hand over Garnet’s and held it, as though glad to have her. There was a brief silence. Then suddenly, as though struck by a surprising idea, Florinda sat up straight.
“Garnet, run along, will you?”
“Yes, of course I will,” said Garnet. She stood up.
Florinda caught her hand again and pressed it, looking up to smile at her. “You were a dear to stand by me just now. But I’d like to be by myself a minute.”
Garnet bent and dropped a kiss on her head. She went out.
At the sound of the door closing, Florinda started. She waited a moment, listening, until she heard Garnet go into her own room and shut that door too. Florinda looked around, with a furtive attention, as though afraid there might be somebody else observing her. Laying the ikon beside her on the bed, she got up and went to the door. The door had a bolt, but she did not often use it. She had put it there in case some drunken fool got up here from the rooms downstairs, but the doors downstairs were so carefully locked that this had never happened. Nobody slept at this side of the loft but herself and Garnet, and she had never till now had any reason to want to lock Garnet out. But now she pushed at the bolt. It was stiff from disuse. Florinda struggled with it till she had got it over.
She waited a moment, making sure Garnet had not heard her moving the bolt and was not coming back to ask if something was the matter. She wanted to be sure she was alone.
Florinda had felt a mystifying impulse; she did not know what to make of it, but she knew she did not want to be caught in the middle of any such embarrassing performance. She looked around again. There was certainly nobody else in the room, but the window-shutters were open and she hurried to close them. It was not likely that anybody could see up here from the street, and the nearby houses had only one floor, but still she felt more private with the shutters closed.
She took care that they were tight, and dropped the latch across them. Standing in the middle of the floor, she tried to think what she ought to do now.
Florinda had only a sketchy notion of how to go about saying a prayer. Feeling very awkward, she went over and knelt by the bed. She folded her hands one on top of the other. Since she did not know what she was supposed to say, she said what she was thinking.
“Dear God,
I know I am going about this badly, but I apologize, and I hope You understand that I’m doing the best I can. Please don’t let anything happen to him. Please let him get there safe and sound. And when he gets there please let everybody be nice to him and let him be happy.
“Now as to whether or not I want him to come back, I honestly don’t know. He said even if he did come back it might not be for ten years and in ten years I’ll be thirty-six years old and only You know what I’ll look like by that time. Anyway, even if I’m still beautiful ten years from now, I just don’t know if I want him back or not. So I guess I’ll leave that up to You. But whatever he does, please let him be happy doing it. Please let him be happy always, as long as he lives.
“Yours respectfully, Florinda Grove.
“Amen.”
Garnet sat on the wall-bench in her room, looking out at the oxcarts and the people idling in the sun and the water-sellers strolling about with yokes over their shoulders. Above the voices and the creaks of the carts she heard what she could always hear through any other kind of noise, Stephen babbling as he played on the back porch.
She looked out at Los Angeles. What an ugly, rackety, smelly town it was. This was the end of the Jubilee Trail. You left the States, wherever you were, you came to Independence and you took the trail to Santa Fe. You left Santa Fe, and you took the Jubilee Trail to Los Angeles. You left Los Angeles, and you took another trail to—where? She did not know. The end of every trail was the start of another; you never knew where you were going, but you had to go all the same. All you did know was that you were not a little girl any more. You would never again take a new trail with that same blissful confidence that the going would be easy and your happiness would be safe.
Oh, how hard it is, she thought, that we must give that up! That fair blundering business of being young, that gay incompetent way of living before we know how to live, that plunging into the trail full of joy because we don’t know enough to be scared. Just take a look at Los Angeles, this huddle of brown boxes under this majestic sweep of mountains—take a look at it, Garnet, and finally own up to yourself that you love it. You love it because you lived so fully and richly here. Yes you did, even when you thought you hated it and were trying so hard to get away. We always hate the schoolroom where we learn hard lessons. But then we love it, because that’s the school that taught us all we know, and gave us all the strength we have. I wasn’t fit for the Jubilee Trail when I took it. I wonder if I’m any more fit for the new one. I don’t know.
All I know is that I am older, so much older, than I was when I took the trail before. Older by so much more than time. Older by three thousand miles and so many, many thousand hours of being scared and lonesome. I’m not lonesome any more. I’ve got John. But I’m still scared. That’s because I’ve learned so much. When you are young, you are not scared; when you are older, you are scared and you know you’ll be scared as long as you live.
Among the people and the ox-carts, she saw John. He was coming back from the alcalde’s office, to tell her when they could be married. Garnet raised herself eagerly and knelt on the wall-bench. Leaning out between the shutters, she called to him.
“John!” she cried. “John!”
He heard her, and paused. For a moment he looked around, not sure where her voice was coming from. She called again.
“John!”
He looked up then, and saw her in the window. A light broke over his face. He waved at her, and she waved back. “Tomorrow!” he called. He beckoned her to come down.
She nodded, and hurried away from the window. As she ran down the stairs to meet him she felt little tingles of happiness running all over her skin. Tomorrow she would be married, and then she would start the new trail to the gold-fields. She wondered what was waiting for her there.
About the Author
Gwen Bristow (1903–1980), the author of seven bestselling historical novels that bring to life momentous events in American history, such as the siege of Charleston during the American Revolution (Celia Garth) and the great California gold rush (Calico Palace), was born in South Carolina, where the Bristow family had settled in the seventeenth century. After graduating from Judson College in Alabama and attending the Columbia School of Journalism, Bristow worked as a reporter for New Orleans’ Times-Picayune from 1925 to 1934. Through her husband, screenwriter Bruce Manning, she developed an interest in longer forms of writing—novels and screenplays.
After Bristow moved to Hollywood, her literary career took off with the publication of Deep Summer, the first novel in a trilogy of Louisiana-set historical novels, which also includes The Handsome Road and This Side of Glory. Bristow continued to write about the American South and explored the settling of the American West in her bestselling novels Jubilee Trail, which was made into a film in 1954, and in her only work of nonfiction, Golden Dreams. Her novel Tomorrow Is Forever also became a film, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and Natalie Wood, in 1946.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1950, 1978 by Gwen Bristow
Foreword by Nancy E. Turner copyright © 2006 by Nancy E. Turner
Foreword by Sandra Dallas copyright © 2006 by Sandra Dallas
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4804-8514-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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