The Springsweet

by Saundra Mitchell

  An Indian woman crossed in front of us. Her black hair flowed loose down her back, and her clothes—though different from mine—were made out of familiar cotton and calico. She wore no paint or feathers, and I had begun to suspect that Buffalo Bill's dispatches from the West were, at best, embellishments and, more likely, fictions.

  The starkest difference was that all the men seemed to go in dungarees and shirtsleeves, held together by suspenders. Without jackets and ties, and often without hats, they were shockingly visible.

  Whenever my gaze trailed to Emerson, I had to snatch it away again. I had no business noticing his muscles, well developed from working the land, through his blue cambric shirt. And, I reminded myself, I did Thomas' memory a terrible disservice for wanting to look at all.

  "Where does your aunt live?" Emerson asked.

  His voice startled me, so I reached for my suitcase. It took a moment to remember it was gone. All I had left was a bundle of filthy dresses, some ruined stamps, and a dance card.

  Folding my hands in my lap, I kept my eyes forward and said, "I'm not entirely sure. We've always sent letters to Birdie Neal, West Glory, and they arrived."

  "We'll stop at the post office, then."

  The sweet scent of apple pie suddenly caught my attention. I turned to find its source—the little restaurant beside the general store was my best guess. It would have been decadent to have pie for breakfast, but I was starving. Emerson and I had shared the remains of the rabbit stew between us—a modest meal compared with the one I would have had at home.

  No, I told myself. This is home now.

  The moment Emerson stopped the buckboard, I let myself down. He protested handsomely, and I thought it just a little funny to leave him cursing under his breath in my wake.

  But my smile faltered when I stepped inside and saw the clerk behind iron bars. For a moment, I wondered if I hadn't walked into the jail by mistake—Emerson would be the one laughing then, wouldn't he?

  But the clerk cleared his throat at me. "Got something to post, miss?"

  Stirring through the still heat, I approached the counter. "No, sir. But could you tell me where I can find Mrs. Beatrice Neal? I know that she has several acres nearby, but I'm not entirely sure where."

  The clerk disappeared beneath the counter, then rose again with a groan. Flopping a giant ledger open, he flicked through pages efficiently, then turned it toward me. "This here is the town district. You want to head three miles northeast, more or less. If she's got her lot stake still up, it'll be 325."

  "Three miles northeast, plot 325," I repeated.

  He let me look at the book a moment more, then snapped it closed. "Anything else I can do you for?"

  "No, no, thank you," I said, turning for the door. Then I turned back, my curiosity too sharp to ignore. "Actually, pardon me for asking, but why have they got you caged up like that?"

  The clerk narrowed his eyes at me, then smiled. Running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, he said, "Because I'm just that damned irresistible, darling."

  My face flushed, and I hurried outside. Emerson loitered at my side of the buckboard. When he caught sight of me, he frowned. "What's the matter?"

  The attention only deepened my blush. Squeezing Emerson's hand overhard, I all but leapt into the wagon. "Three miles northeast, plot three two five."

  My voice came out brittle, which made me seem more unsettled than I was. Honestly, I'd been flirted with before—I'd been in love, I'd been kissed. And, I reminded myself wryly, I had kissed a total stranger in front of all Baltimore. But no one had ever spoken to me with that kind of—I didn't even know what to name it! Lust? Deliberation?

  When Emerson climbed up beside me, I turned on him and demanded, "Why is the clerk in a cage, in truth?"

  "To keep people from stealing the mail." He stared, as if thinking better of asking, but ask he did. "Why?"

  "Sheer curiosity."

  Emerson laughed, bafflement clear in the slope of his brows. But he said nothing else; he simply urged Epona in the right direction. Just as quickly as we'd come to West Glory, we'd exited, and I was glad to leave it behind.

  ***

  A strange, earthen lump greeted us three miles northeast.

  "What is that?" I asked, tipping my head slightly at what seemed to be a heap of mud and straw in the middle of the lot.

  "Home, I reckon." When I stared at him, he clarified. "It's a soddy."

  A soddy—a sod house. It looked dark and dank, as if the floor of a stable had risen up and cobbled itself into the vague shape of a building. My stomach clenched.

  Compared with the soaring three stories of the row house at home, this soddy was terrifying. But I wouldn't be missish about it.

  White chickens ran around it, chased by a little girl in a green pinafore. I guessed that must be my baby cousin Louella. Before I could call to her, she fled into grasses so high I couldn't make out the shape of her bonnet.

  While I considered my new home, Emerson hopped down, his stride swift as he rounded the back of the wagon. Since he seemed so completely determined to be a gentleman today, I felt it my God-given duty to thwart him.

  Despite his speed, I managed to let myself down before he arrived, and I fixed him with a sweet smile. He stood too close, and I tipped my head all the way back to look up at him.

  Innocently, I said, "You're out of breath, Mr. Birch."

  Reaching past me, he gathered my things and cut me a sharp look. "Pleased with yourself?"

  "I am. Thank you for asking," I replied, then jumped when a woman's voice cut between us.

  "Get your hands off my niece."

  The crack of a shotgun being racked punctuated the order, and Emerson all but leapt away from me. Two things struck me when I turned toward my Aunt Birdie. The first, uneasiness that she raised a gun so quickly, the second, that she too was hardly older than I.

  Though I knew Mama was Birdie's elder by fifteen years, I supposed I'd never considered what that meant. The tintype of her in our parlor was young and fresh-faced. Her pale hair coiled like a crown on her head, and the clarity of her eyes was apparent, even without color to define them.

  She was still that girl exactly—aside from the calico replacing her serge, and the shotgun in her hands in place of a fan. I put my hands out and approached her, praying there'd be no scent of black powder when I came close. "He did me a kindness, Aunt Birdie. The stage was robbed, and he..."

  Looking past me, Birdie gestured for Emerson to get back in his wagon. "Go on. I don't need you sniffing around here."

  "He's not, he's—"

  "Going, ma'am. Good luck to you, Miss Stewart." Emerson tipped his weatherbeaten hat at the two of us, then climbed back into the wagon. His voice was flat as slate, and he didn't meet my eyes. Bitter animosity weighed the air.

  Birdie's brow smoothed, but she didn't lower the gun.

  "Wait," I said. The wind kicked up, a hot breath that stirred the earth around us. A haze rose with it as I hurtled toward the buckboard. "Wait! My things!"

  Reining Epona, Emerson dropped the sorry bundle of my laundry into my arms, then drove away in an ashen gout of dust. Whatever had passed between him and Birdie did more than baffle me; it angered me.

  I could concede that Emerson did have a touch of arrogance to him, but he had, in fact, rescued me on the road. Given me a place to sleep for the night, protected me from the wolves. And then carried me into town and beyond it, just to see that I was safely delivered to my destination.

  Pulling my shoulders back, I marched toward my aunt. Carefully, I measured my voice, asking instead of demanding, "Why would you drive him off like that, without even a cup of tea? He did nothing but see me to your door."

  Birdie cracked the shotgun open again, dumping the shells in her hand. "It's for your own good, Zora. Nobody here knows what happened in Baltimore, and we'll keep it that way. But you can't go running around with Birch."

  A protest flew to my lips-—I had hardly intended to go running
around with anyone, but to be forbidden without explanation? "Why can't I?"

  "He stole that land he's living on," Birdie told me, clear green eyes narrowing. The expression marred her dollish features. "He's as bad as those Dalton Gang boys, and I don't want him around."

  My skin tingled—not quite numbness, almost a sort of fire. Emerson hardly struck me as a thief or a murderer, and certainly as nothing less than a gentleman, however rough his manner. And I raged inwardly that a single, calculated kiss had so lowered my aunt's opinion of me, sight unseen.

  "But he—"

  Already frustrated, Birdie dropped the shotgun shells into her apron pocket and directed me toward the soddy. "It's for your own good." Then, as if realizing we were strangers and hardly introduced, she turned to catch my face between her hands. The hardness in her eyes faded. "You look just like your mother."

  "Do I?" I asked automatically.

  Stroking a rough thumb against my cheek, Birdie seemed caught in memories for a moment—pleasant ones, at least, for the corner of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. "Very much so. Come inside. We'll have some tea before we start the laundry."

  She nudged me toward the door, then raised her voice to call, "Louella! Louella Lou, come home! Come meet your cousin Zora!"

  Ducking inside the soddy, I tried not to be surprised. Earth floor and earthen walls made for a cool but dark little house. What should have been windows were holes with oilpaper tacked over them. They let in just enough light for me to realize that my aunt had a very spare life indeed.

  I put myself to work building a fire in the squat iron stove. She had hard, golden sticks in the wood box. Examining them closely, I realized they were bundles of straw, braided and folded.

  In Baltimore, we would have boiled the water for the washing in the kitchen, but there was hardly room for that in the soddy. I decided there must be a fire pit outside somewhere, which meant stoking that as well.

  This simple plan thrummed through me, and I was unnerved that the prospect of chores gave me pleasure. But something hard, to work the muscles and settle the mind, sounded delicious.

  It would scrub away my leftover, unseemly thoughts about Emerson—whose company I shouldn't have been so distressed to be denied. I stood on this land, in this country, to be my aunt's helpmeet and to do honor to the life I would have had, if Thomas were still at my side.

  A wistful pang went through me. I wondered what Thomas would have thought about a soddy. If he would have greeted this as an adventure or a hardship. But then, we'd planned to settle in Annapolis, hadn't we? A city well established—plenty of brick and wood to make a strong house there.

  Brushing those thoughts away, I focused on the fire. The straw logs burned much the way wood did. I watched them all the same, for the novelty of it, I suppose. Settling into this place, thick walled and cool except by the stove, I marveled that I could hear little from the outside.

  I felt just as safe in these walls as I had within the more familiar sort of Emerson's cabin. And when I took a deep breath, I smelled spring water all around, running pure beneath the parched earth. I had a feeling that my aunt's well was dug deep and true, and that comforted me.

  There was no good reckoning why I had abided by the water in Baltimore, living on the shore and tasting it in the wind, but it was here in these dusty plains that I called it to me. But I did, and knowing I could look into the dark and see water flowing silver in the distance gave me peace.

  It was something wholly new; it made me new—I was Zora Stewart, but no longer the same.

  Five

  But just as a strong pulse is needed to move a body, it needs breath as well. And when Birdie introduced me to the yoke I'd need to haul water, I wasn't sure I'd ever get a full breath again.

  "It's only heavy at first," she told me.

  Indeed, though it looked like a wooden railroad tie, she hefted it with ease. Someone had smoothed a curve into the center of it, which I discovered was the place it was meant to sit on my shoulders. A small notch accommodated the back of my neck. Thankfully, it was sanded smooth.

  But it didn't fit well. Nor was it light. Though it was vaguely balanced, I still felt like a clumsy scarecrow when Birdie hung pails on either end.

  Wobbling, I swayed first to one side, then so violently to the other that I dropped the first bucket. Then the other bucket slid the length and cracked against my bare hand.

  "Maybe you should walk up and down a ways first," Birdie said, reclaiming the pails. They were wooden, with rusted bands holding them together. My suspicion was that she was primarily concerned about their well-being, not mine.

  Rebalancing myself, I took a few tentative steps. The thing was awful—hot and heavy—but I was determined to master it. Sweat kissed the nape of my neck, and my chest burned. I wanted to draw in deep, but whalebone and silk restrained me.

  Nonetheless, I circumnavigated the soddy twice and was almost proud of myself. At least, until my dear cousin, the chicken tormenter, shrieked through and sent me tumbling.

  "Louella, enough!" Birdie had not one hint of amusement or indulgence in her voice.

  I lay in the dirt, staring into a sky bright enough to sting my eyes. Blinking through my blindness, I pressed my elbows into the ground. That stirred the fine dust, which turned my nose to twitching. Now I had stunted two senses as I sprawled there.

  My corset's steel conspired against me; for all my might, I couldn't push myself up. Flopping against the hard pillow of the yoke, I gazed helplessly at the sky once more. Still boundless, its expanse mocked me, stretching everywhere when I could do nothing but lie there.

  Then Louella's face filled my sight as she came over to poke at me. "Mama says I'm sorry."

  "I am too," I replied. I held my hand out to her, "Can you help me up?"

  With puppyish grunts, Louella pulled as hard as she could. And for a moment, I thought I might be freed, but she lost her grip. She sat down hard, and I thumped my head on the yoke when I slipped back again.

  "For Pete's sake," Birdie said. She didn't finish the thought, but in a blur of motion, she lifted Louella out of the dirt, then hauled me to my feet as if I were made of nothing more than down.

  Looking me over, she sucked a breath through her teeth. Her eyes narrowed, seeing straight past my gown and into my undergarments. It was plain she measured my corset with her gaze; then, without mercy, she said, "Go take it off."

  "Let me take out the busk stiffener," I bargained.

  Birdie didn't indulge me, either. "You can keep it for Sundays and callings, but I've got no use for you if you can't bend down or stand up on your own."

  My face flamed. Oklahoma Territory had no end of in dignities, it seemed. A welcome by robbery and gunpoint, a first night in a stranger's bed, and now the loss of my corset. I didn't want to be precious, truly I didn't, and I could see Birdie's point.

  But I still stung as I hunched beneath the raw ceiling of the soddy. It struck me then, as I worked a myriad of buttons and peeled off layer after layer, that whether I wanted to be precious or not, I certainly was. Standing there in my chemise and drawers, I folded my corset and put it in a shelf dug out of the wall.

  Prickles crawled my skin, and I realized that this little house had its advantages. It was cooler than the open fields, for certain. Once I could breathe deep, I smelled the freshness of it, the rich, welcoming cool of a root cellar, only above ground.

  Pulling my petticoats and dress back on, I searched my own body with my hands. I felt rather like jelly poured out of its glass. I held my shape but wobbled all the same.

  "Let me try again," I told Birdie when I stepped outside once more.

  It was strange—I felt the sun more directly through my gown, and the wind more directly as well. The yoke, though heavy yet, settled more comfortably on my shoulders, now that it wasn't compressing me into my stays.

  "Lou can show you the well," Birdie said, hanging the pails on the yoke again. "Just fill them halfway at first, until you get u
sed to it. Do your best to get that basin filled; I need to work on some lace for Caroline in town."

  "Yes, ma'am," I said, then squared myself to do as she asked. I had taken only a few steps into the prairie when I heard her call after me. Turning toward her, I managed to stay on my feet—quite an accomplishment in itself. "Yes?"

  Birdie put her hands on her hips and told me with a scrap of sympathy in her voice, "You'll get used to it."

  And I doubted not at all when I replied, "I'm sure I will."

  ***

  Standing over the little stove, Birdie swirled her wooden spoon in a bubbling pot. Her glances in my direction became rare as I proved I was perfectly capable of holding Louella in my lap and showing her how to stitch on her little piece of muslin.

  "Do you want to see my favorite?" I asked.

  Glad to be done, Louella became an anchor in my lap and laid her head against my shoulder. I turned the fabric around, trying to smooth a spot. The scrap had seen far better days, though. Once, it was cream colored; now it was dark as a shadow on its edges, and varying shades of gray throughout.

  "All right, duck," I said. Finding my fingers, I started a border on the scrap. A little, ornate chain appeared with my careful sewing. "This is a chained featherstitch. Do you see how it loops and joins up?"

  Louella nodded, and Birdie looked back at me. "Don't do anything you can't pick out. Thread's dear." Then, as she turned back to her pot, I heard her mutter, "But then, what isn't?"

  Quiet, I told Louella, "I have a world of experience picking stitches back out. But let's put some in. Look, I'm going to make a pretty pattern with it."

  Stuffing a finger in her mouth, Louella swayed, watching my stitches bloom on her cloth. Her lashes kept falling, and I thought very much that she might sleep right there on my lap.

  It was sweet for me, how warm and real she was in the curve of my arms. How useful I felt, though I was hardly teaching her anything at this point. Her hair smelled of sunshine and prairie grass, burned clean by the land.