Safe Passage

by Carla Kelly

  His eyes were on the jars. He wiped his mouth. “Hard to say.”

  He had to do better than that, according to the expression on his wife’s face. “I know the Thayns won’t mind that you took their bottled fruit. In fact, I hope there’s more.” He started for the bureau. “I really need some of that now, whatever it is.”

  Ever the cook and nurturer, Addie sat him down on Grandma Sada’s trunk by the attic door and lifted up the metal hasps on the jar. She looked around. “I need a spoon.”

  He reached for the jar. “I don’t.” He took a cautious sip: blackberries in sugary juice. “Oh my word, Addie,” he said and downed the juice, reaching in when he finished to scoop out the berries.

  “You have no manners at all, Ammon Hancock,” she scolded, but gently, her eyes on the jar too.

  “Hold out your hand,” he ordered and she did. He teased out the rest of the berries and put them in her hand.

  She ate them fast and opened the other jar, drinking half the juice before handing it to him. Her mouth had a ring of purple around it. Impulsively, he leaned over and kissed her, then went back to stuffing the rest of the blackberries into his mouth.

  She laughed, which relieved his heart in a monumental way, and reached for the other bottle containing apricots so symmetrically arranged that he almost didn’t want her to open it.

  She held it up, turning the bottle this way and that to catch the light. “I try to be this perfect, but I never am. It bothered my father.”

  “Doesn’t bother me.”

  She turned the jar around. There was a dreamy smile on her face, and for a moment it was as though she forgot where they were. “Mama took me to a county fair in Logan once. This is what all the jars looked like.”

  He didn’t ever want her to look any other way, even though he knew she would remember in a moment that Grandma Sada lay dead and guerillas occupied García.

  “Let’s give it a blue ribbon and open it,” he said, hating to intrude on her pleasure, but still so hungry.

  She flipped the hasps on this jar and handed it to him. He drank half the juice, slower now, and disrupted the symmetry of the apricots in a major way. When he handed it back, she only ate a little.

  “I’ll save the rest for you,” she told him, even as she gave the bottle a lingering look. She set the Mason jar on the floor and gave a little jump when the guerillas started shooting again. He was still sitting on the trunk, so she joined him there, probably afraid to be alone.

  “What do we do?” she asked quietly.

  “ We wait.”

  B

  The afternoon may have been long, but at least it wasn’t hot. The growl of thunder to the west in the Sierra Madres finally amounted to something, a drenching rainstorm that Ammon knew heralded the arrival of autumn in the higher elevation.

  “Maybe they’ll leave town,” Addie said, inching closer. Ammon felt more comfortable leaning against Grandma Sada’s footboard, and she had joined him there.

  Ammon shook his head. “What they’ll do is hole up here in these empty houses until the storm lifts. We’d better go back into the attic.”

  He knew she didn’t want to. She even opened her mouth to tell him so, he was sure, but just then they heard the sound of horses on the street. Addie grabbed the empty jars and what was left of the apricots and crouched through the small door. She got the guns next, then looked around to make sure nothing else was out of place.

  “Hurry up!”

  He put his finger to his lips, and she went a shade paler. She sat down on the floor beside him, as though her legs wouldn’t hold her. It was worth a try, so he put his good arm around her, and she burrowed in close.

  “Listen a minute,” he whispered.

  She was beyond listening, so he just put his hand on her head and pulled her closer.

  “They’re right below us in the street and one of them is telling the others about a dead woman.” He let out a sigh when the horses and their riders moved on down the street. “Grandma Sada was always good to us. She still is.”

  Addie nodded but did not leave whatever puny protection she thought his chest offered. Women were funny that way, he decided.

  “Maybe they’ll tack up a sign on the door,” Addie said finally, her voice so wistful. “You know: to warn others away.”

  “They mostly don’t read.” He chuckled. “Or generally use privies. Trust a doctor to find my money. That chaps my thighs!”

  He was only trying to distract her, and it worked. He felt her low laughter right against his heart.

  “Did you just leave it in plain sight? I know you’re smarter than that.”

  “I’m way smarter than that,” he agreed. “I left the money in a little wooden box where I kept—um—some pages from an old Sears and Roebuck Catalog. You know, sort of like I was hiding my stash. Some dollars, some pesos—not much, really.”

  He knew she was smart, and let her think about it for a moment. “So it was just a decoy! You wanted whoever stole your money to think that was all, and leave.” She nudged his chest. “And that maybe you weren’t too smart.”

  “I couldn’t have fooled you. Guess where the actual strongbox is?”

  “I don’t even have to, because you’re a rounder. Is it a two-hole privy?”

  “Of course. I’m sociable,” he teased, and she jabbed him. “I added a little shelf to the inside of one hole, just out of sight. It fits my strongbox. I, uh, don’t use that hole.”

  She shook her head. He couldn’t see her face to tell if she was impressed, but he felt her chuckle and decided she was.

  They stayed close together at the foot of the bed and he dozed as the rain poured. He woke up when Addie shook him, not surprised that his head was resting in her lap now. He heard the guerillas downstairs before she said anything.

  They crawled quietly into the attic and closed the door as the men started upstairs. Addie started to shake again, and he held his hand close to her mouth, just in case. Huddled in each other’s arms, they sat by the little door.

  The midday invasion was repeated as shadows lengthened across the room and the air smelled of rain and something else now: Grandma Sada mellowing.

  Practically holding his breath, Ammon heard someone light the lamp on the bureau. He let out his breath—or maybe Addie was doing the same thing; they were so close it was hard to tell—when the men in the room shrieked like girls. They must have tried to go through the door at the same time, because he heard wood splinter. They ran down the stairs, missing a few treads, because they sounded jumbled together in a heap. The next sound was horses galloping away. The next smell was wood burning.

  Before he could act, Addie leaped up, cracked her head on the little door, and ran into the room. As he watched from the doorway, she took the rug and beat out the flames from the lamp, which the men must have upset in their terror to leave the room.

  “We don’t need a fire right now,” Addie said decisively as she dusted off her hands and rejoined him in the attic.

  “You’re a cool-headed woman.”

  She shook her head. The attic door was still open and he winced at the fright on her face. “I just don’t want to die, or … or be interfered with. Women always have more at stake.”

  He nodded, thinking of Serena then, and the laughing ladies on the porch of Hacienda Chavez that he had admired earlier that summer. He had heard something in her voice of her determination to see his money got safely to the doctor’s wife, and now he understood it.

  “Did the doctor protect you?”

  She nodded. When she spoke, her voice was small as though she was reliving the experience. “I have some awful bruises on my arms, but Doctor Menendez got to me in time.”

  “Oh, honey.” He hadn’t called her that in two years. “We’ll get that money to the doctor’s wife somehow,” he assured her.

  “I only wish it were more,” she replied simply.

  So do I, he thought, surprising himself again how little his hard-earned pesos wer
e starting to mean to him. Come to think of it, Old Ammon the Nephite had probably lit out for his mission among the Lamanites with basically nothing except his brothers. If he can, I can.

  She was silent then, but busy, giving herself something to do, which he understood. As he watched in the fast-fading light, she rearranged their attic space until she had created a nest of clothing that looked almost comfortable.

  I simply have to feel better in the morning, Ammon told himself. I’m in charge here. He smiled in the dark. At least I think I am.

  “Lie down and go to sleep,” Addie said when she finished.

  He hesitated. “Nature is calling.”

  He saw the fear again. “You can’t go outside.”

  “Didn’t intend to. Grandma Sada wouldn’t like it, but I’m just going to pick a room and let it go at that.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then just nodded. He smiled at her. “And you can pick a room too.”

  “There’ll be worse in here after we leave, won’t there?”

  “Probably.”

  They went in opposite directions down the hall. He started to laugh.

  “Stop laughing right now or I’m going to thrash you into next Tuesday, at some point,” his sweet wife muttered.

  The nest of clothing was so comfortable that he went to sleep immediately when he returned to the attic. He was dimly aware when Addie joined him, gratified that she wasn’t going to thrash him anytime soon because she cuddled close with a sigh of her own.

  He woke up in the middle of the night, probably because the rain had stopped and the house and street were silent, just the way he wanted it.

  “Are you all right?” She sounded frightened, maybe worried that he would run a high fever, turn delirious, develop red streaks up his arm, die of gangrene poisoning before dawn, and leave her alone with two dead bodies.

  “I feel better, actually,” he assured her, and it was true. “Where’s that quart of apricots?”

  She handed it to him, and he drank some of the juice and fruit, wanting to leave more for her. The apricots went down cool and sweet.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he told her as he lay down again stretching out his good arm for her to pillow her head, if he was so lucky.

  She didn’t accept the invitation, if that’s what it was. “I couldn’t sleep. One of us should stay awake.”

  He couldn’t see her in the dark, but he knew her well and figured there was more. He waited, pretty sure what she wanted to know and not certain how to respond.

  “Why are you here?”

  Her voice was so quiet, almost as though she didn’t want to hear his answer.

  “Your father had been asking around the lumberyard—we were all staying there—trying to locate you. When the García men came out, he found me. I figured you’d gone to Juárez earlier on that last train out. None of us knew you were here with Grandma.”

  “He told me to watch over her,” she said, her voice even smaller. Another long pause. “Did he offer to pay you?”

  “He did.”

  “And you told him you wouldn’t take any money?” She sounded so hopeful.

  Lie or tell the truth, he thought and knew he had no choice, because he wasn’t a liar. “I almost did, then I changed my mind.”

  He knew she was too kind to thrash him into next Tuesday because she needed him right now as much as any woman had ever needed a man. He couldn’t help himself, but in his mind, he saw all over again her fierce anger, so far from her usual serenity, when he had tried to explain himself, standing there with crutches. Maybe some things were impossible to forget. She was listening now, so he chose his words with infinite care.

  “My folks came out of García with one trunk among the eight of them. My father and I managed to hide most of our cattle in a box canyon, but I ran into trouble on my way here, and I doubt the cattle are there now. We Hancocks have busted out. We’re dead broke. Dad’s working in a Mexican mercado, culling bad fruit, and my mother, aunt, sisters, and cousins are living in a stall in the lumberyard.”

  He heard her sigh, but she said nothing. At least she didn’t leap up and leave the attic, he thought grimly, then his humor surfaced. As if she could. He had a captive audience, the thing he had wanted most for two years. Thank you, Mexican Revolution.

  “I told your father I would rescue you for one thousand dollars.”

  She gasped. “I never thought he would …” She stopped.

  “Pay that much for you? Addie, you’re worth much more.”

  “What will you do with all that money?” she asked after another long pause, and he heard the icicles hanging from her words.

  “It’s not mine. The deal was he would give five hundred dollars right away to my father to help him start over.”

  The ice started to thaw. “And the rest?”

  “If I die and don’t get you out, it goes to my father too,” he told her. “If I succeed, the five hundred is yours. Those were my conditions.”

  “Noth … nothing for you?”

  He thought he heard more uncertainty, but she had to hear what he was telling her. “I don’t need it. The US Army has contracted my team and wagon to haul freight for our friends and relatives camped along the border who are trying to decide what to do. If I return, I’ll keep hauling freight somewhere, hopefully back in Pearson, because Mexico is my home. That’s it, Addie. Go to sleep now.”

  “What am I supposed to do with the money?” she asked, so uncertain that his heart ached.

  “I suggest you file for divorce and start over some place where you want to live,” he said, not mincing his words. “I told you the truth when I said no one told me about your … your …” He stopped, feeling his own pain. “No, our miscarriage. We both said some harsh things.”

  “Is it too hard to un-hear them?”

  She said it so softly. He nodded, then knew she couldn’t see him in the dark. “Quizás,” he said, suddenly unsure. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. He had started this rescue of his wife thinking he could teach her something. Now he wasn’t so sure who had to learn the most.

  Silence. At least she wasn’t in tears, which meant she was thinking about what he said, using her head instead of her heart. She lay down, burrowing into the pile of old clothes she had arranged for them both, not close to him, but not across the attic, either. He was content with that. If they could stay alive, time was on his side.

  He thought of Old Ammon the Nephite, who went into a foreign land where everyone wanted to kill him. Before he left, his father, King Mosiah, had been promised by the Lord that no harm would come to his beloved son. Ammon didn’t know if Heavenly Father had cut the same deal with his own father, but he didn’t know He hadn’t, either.

  Ammon looked toward Addie, lying so still now, even though he didn’t think she was asleep. I will not force her hand, he thought, chilled to realize how close she had come to what he suspected was a woman’s worst fear. How in the world could her father have left her alone in García, in charge of an elderly woman who had been threatening to die for four or five years at least? He considered the matter. In fairness to Thomas Finch, his father-in-law had no idea when he left García that the whole matter of Mormons in Mexico would change so quickly, when word came to pull out of the country.

  I wouldn’t have done that to my daughter, he thought. Just call me Señor Self-Righteous. This was not a comforting thought to coax him to sleep. The rain on the roof did that. If Addie wanted to stay awake and guard them, that was her business. He closed his eyes, more perplexed than usual.

  TEN

  HE WOKE IN the morning to the sound of horses trotting down the main street of García a block over. He sat up alert and on edge, but too slow for Addie, who was already sitting by the open window, watching just out of sight, the rifle in her lap.

  The rebel army—which faction he had no idea— was on the move again, heading south. He would have preferred to see them ride west toward Sonora, especially since Addie had to d
eliver his stolen money to a doctor’s wife south of them. Maybe if they hung back long enough, the guerillas would have swarmed through that area like locusts and moved on to victimize another village.

  Ammon watched Addie from the attic doorway. He sniffed the air, smelling smoke. Stifling a groan, he crouched his way out of the attic, grateful all over again that Addie was such a poor shot.

  “Smoke,” he said, and Addie nodded, pointing with the rifle toward the south.

  “It’s probably Brother Barrett’s place,” she told him. “I think it was his cattle they shot yesterday.”

  She spoke calmly, almost as though he were just an acquaintance, and not the man she had knelt across the altar from in the St. George Temple four years ago. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so plainspoken last night.

  He considered the matter and decided he had been right. His journey south, bad as it was, had convinced him that he did not want to leave this nation of his birth. If Addie decided to stay with him, she had to weigh all the possible delights with the danger. He would see that she had five hundred dollars, which would at least give her breathing room to think it through on the safe side of the border. And if she decided to stay with him, there was time to worry about that later, once she was safe. If not—he gave himself a mental shrug—he wouldn’t be the first man who had made a mistake.

  “We’re going to bury Grandma Sada as soon as the army rides away,” she said in a tone of voice he had never heard from her before. She had always been so gentle and pliable. This time, she spoke with firmness that told him if he did not agree, she would do it by herself.

  “I’m not sure I can dig too well, Addie,” he told her, stating the obvious truth but also curious to hear her reaction.

  She didn’t raise her voice. “I’ll do what you cannot.” She stepped back from the window and toward him, where she could not be seen from the street, if some soldero had dared to look at the house with a dead woman inside. “The ground out back is soft from all that rain. I’m going down the hall to our … my … room, to see if the guerillas left me a needle and thread. I intend to sew this coverlet around Grandma.”