The Glovemaker

by Ann Weisgarber

  I nodded to that but I was thinking about Deborah. Find her, I willed Michael. Go to her cabin. Make sure she’s all right.

  Michael got off his horse. The three men knotted together by the toboggan.

  Carson said, “Why isn’t he signaling for me? What’s taking so long?”

  I shook my head.

  One of the men left the horses and walked to the cabin. “It’s Brother Michael,” Carson said. A voice called out. Michael’s. More voices and this time one was a woman’s. “It’s Sister Deborah,” Carson said. “She’s with your dog.”

  “My eyes aren’t that bad,” I said, the words clipped. I strained, looking, the dawn light brightening some. Her steps high in the snow, Deborah went back to the barnyard with Michael.

  “She looks all right,” I said.

  “Seems so.”

  They got to the barnyard. There was more talk. Beside me, the leather in Carson’s saddle creaked as he kept shifting. I figured that thinking about riding with the gentiles was working on his nerves. The eight miles through the Wastelands would feel like eighty. After getting the men and coffin through, Carson would turn back and Henry and MacGregor would go on to Thurber. It was another seventeen miles and the town had a telegraph office. Once they got to Thurber, I believed they’d make a straight line to the telegraph office and notify Marshal Frank Dyer up in Salt Lake about Fletcher’s death. When word got out the federal marshal from Tennessee was dead, Dyer’s people would likely descend on us with a vengeance.

  Anybody not from here would say we should all leave Junction before Dyer’s people showed up. But it was January. Some of the women were expecting. There were young children, babies. On the trail, wagons were drafty and canvas coverings didn’t do much good against the cold. Snowstorms could blow up from nowhere. Narrow mountain trails were hard going even in the summer.

  We were better off keeping with the story about finding a stranger on the bridge.

  At Deborah’s place, one of the men went inside the barn. Beside me, Carson kept shifting in his saddle. “You all right?” I said.

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat and leaned over the far side of his horse and spat. He cleared his throat again, then said, “Brother Nels. I’ve got to tell you something, something that’s been weighing on me. I’ve got to say it while I can. Before I go off with the gentiles. It’s about the rockslide.”

  A bad feeling came over me; I didn’t like Carson’s tone. “What about it?” I said.

  “I keep thinking about what I saw in the ravine.” He was ­whispering but his words were loud in my ears. “The glints, the shape of an arc. I told you it was rocks with crystals. But since then I keep picturing it for what it really was. Not an arc but almost a full circle. One made of metal.” Carson paused. “A wheel.”

  “A wheel? Is that what you said?” My words were a hiss. “A wheel? God Almighty. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want it to be. And when you didn’t see it, I thought I was wrong. But the truth of it won’t leave me alone.”

  I pulled in some air, breathing hard. A wheel.

  Carson said, “We’ll go back to the ravine, we’ll get all the men. Once this is over. I’ll go down and look.”

  “No.” The word was sharp with anger. My anger was against Carson for not telling me sooner. It was against what rode under his words. Without him saying so, the wheel might have come off Samuel’s wagon.

  “I’m willing,” Carson said.

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  Carson winced. I didn’t care. I said, “There’s not a rope long enough to send you down. If we tied some together, they could break. There’d be no getting you out. You’d live out your days trapped. All for something that might or might not be a wheel. All for something that has nothing to do with Samuel.”

  “But—” His words broke off. A shout came from the barnyard. It was Michael calling for Carson.

  “Go on,” I said, the words hard.

  “I’m sorry, Brother Nels. I should have told you.”

  “Go.” The nod I gave him was sharp. He reared back in his saddle, then gave me a nod as sharp as mine had been. Without another word, he flicked the reins and set off toward Deborah’s.

  Carson’s image blurred. A wheel. The two words crowded my thoughts. I pushed against them. I had to pay attention to what was playing out before me. There wasn’t room in my mind for anything else. The marshal’s body was in Junction. His son and cousin were at Deborah’s.

  I rubbed my eyes. My vision cleared. Carson had reached the barnyard. There, two of the men got on their horses. It took some doing to get themselves arranged but finally the three horsemen began to move. They rode single file. The riderless horse that pulled the coffin was followed by one of the horsemen. Deborah and who I figured was Michael, stayed where they were in the yard. From where I was, Carson, Henry and MacGregor were nothing but dark shapes against the snow as they headed toward the Wastelands. It didn’t take long for them to fade from my sight.

  After a while, Deborah and Michael walked back to the cabin. Midway, they stopped. Facing my direction, Michael raised his hand to me.

  He wasn’t beckoning me to join them. It was a gesture meant to say that everything was all right. I was glad for that. But I wanted to be waved in, told that I was wanted.

  I wasn’t.

  I raised my hand in return. Then I turned Bob around and headed toward home, Carson’s words—a wheel—bearing down heavy in my mind.

  When the sun was well up, I put the blankets used by the marshal into my washbasin and poured warm water over them. I got my soiled mattress, hauled it outside, and set it on fire. Orange flames shot up and ate the dry straw ticking in the mattress. Gray smoke pillared upward. The gray cloth blackened and curled. The snow under and around the fire sizzled and shrank into streams of water.

  I watched the flames do their work. I’d make a new mattress when I was able to buy cloth. Until then, I’d sleep on the floor. Doing that seemed like a kind of justice. Not only because I’d lied about what had happened to the marshal and got rid of his badge and the warrant. Today was January fifteenth. I’d believed Samuel would be home by now. At the latest. I believed it so much that I made Deborah believe it too.

  A wheel in the ravine.

  I stirred the fire with a long poker. Red sparks shot up. I tried to shut out Carson’s words.

  My hands shook. I dropped the poker and jammed my hands in my coat pockets. My gloves, the ones Deborah made for me, were inside them. I’d forgotten they were there. I put them on to steady my hands.

  Just because Carson thought he saw a wheel didn’t mean it had anything to do with Samuel. It could have been there for years.

  As for Samuel getting home by now, I could have misfigured the time. He might know of a longer but easier trail other than through the Fish Lakes. Or he could be holed up in a miner’s cabin waiting out the weather. People were known to disappear in the canyon country. They were given up for dead. Months later, they turned up. A broken leg, a crushed foot, or maybe a long-­lasting sickness had caused their delay.

  A wheel.

  Maybe I should tell Deborah what Carson thought he saw. She was the kind of woman who would want to know.

  A funnel of black ashes rose from my mattress. The sooty smoke caused a rawness in my throat. I coughed; my eyes watered from the fire.

  Telling Deborah would hit her hard. It would tear her up bad.

  I couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it. Carson was wrong. His imagination had gone off-track. I hadn’t seen any glints of light in the ravine. Good as his eyes were, he couldn’t know for sure it was a wheel. The floor was in shadows.

  Samuel was all right. The wheel was someone else’s. If there really was one. It was me. I’d figured the time wrong. Maybe I’d figured the route wrong. Nothing was certain in the canyon country. I’d had no business pinning Samuel’s getting-home time to a fixed week.

  That was what I had to tell Deborah. She had pushed me awa
y but I had to ease her worry. Today.

  The fire was burning itself out when all at once, Sally came leaping through the snow toward me. She’d been at Deborah’s. She circled around me, then ran back to the bridge. Deborah, wearing her coat and hat, stood on my side of the creek. It was like she knew I had something important to tell her.

  I raised my hand to Deborah and walked toward her. She was fixed on the fire. Her gloved fingertips skimmed the top of Sally’s neck.

  Before I could reach her, Deborah shook her head. I stopped. Her gaze pierced me. I felt her anger. She said, “You told me Samuel would be home by now.”

  “I was wrong. The snow, the weather, the trail, I misfigured the time.”

  “Something bad happened. Didn’t it?”

  “No. It’s the weather.”

  A wheel.

  I shook my head against that and said, “The trail through the Fish Lakes is high, there’s more snow than here. I didn’t figure it right. I was wrong.”

  She gave me a long look. Finally she said, “Don’t ever do that to me again. Don’t you ever give me something to hold on to, not unless you know for sure.”

  “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

  “I am, too.” From the distance, Deborah’s anger bore into me. She turned and walked over the bridge away from me. Sally went with her. A hand seemed to reach inside my chest and squeeze my windpipe.

  I watched Deborah walk farther from me. My windpipe squeezed tighter. I’d hurt her. I deserved her anger.

  On the other side of the bridge, Deborah came to a stop. Sally ran on ahead of her. Deborah faced east toward the schoolhouse. Today was Sunday. There’d be services. A federal marshal had died in our town. More trouble was bound to come to Junction. And Samuel wasn’t back.

  Deborah turned away from the schoolhouse. “Go home,” I heard her call out to Sally. “Where you belong.” Sally’s tail drooped. “Go home,” Deborah said again. This time, Sally obeyed and came back to the bridge.

  Deborah walked toward her cabin. Hers and Samuel’s. Where she belonged and where I didn’t. Her anger, I understood, wasn’t only about me being wrong about Samuel. She knew how I felt about her. I had given it away when the two of us were alone. I had betrayed Samuel, and Deborah had come to warn me to stay away.

  My face heated with shame.

  It was full dark when Carson got back to Junction. He came by and told me how Henry and MacGregor didn’t give him any trouble. “Every gully we came to,” he said, “took the three of us to get the coffin out of it.”

  He said this standing inside my cabin with his back close to the door. He didn’t unfasten his coat buttons. He didn’t intend to linger, and I didn’t ask him to. The way we had left matters this morning put unease between us.

  Carson said, “The nails in the coffin lid came loose a few times. From all the jostling. Me and MacGregor used rocks to hammer them back into place. Henry couldn’t take it. All that pounding and his pa’s body under it. He had to walk away each time.”

  “That’s the boy in him,” I said. “Even grown men have the boy in them when their fathers die.”

  Carson ran a hand over the stubble of his beard. He studied me, taking in my words. I took them in, too. It wasn’t just the loss of a father that could turn a man into a child.

  I cleared my throat. Carson said, “When we got through the Wastelands, the trail west to Thurber was clear enough. There was no call for me to stay with them. I turned around like I was coming directly home. But I held up for a while by a butte and watched them head west until I couldn’t see them anymore.”

  “You did good,” I said and meant it. Our disagreement about what he thought he’d seen in the ravine had nothing to do with this.

  He shrugged. It was how he accepted praise. Then he ran his hand over his face. I tensed. There was something more he intended to say.

  “Went to the mail tree,” Carson said. “After Henry and MacGregor were gone.”

  The mail tree was on the far side of the Wastelands. We kept a bag nailed to it so people passing by could leave mail should there be any. Most usually this time of year there wasn’t any.

  “There were three letters,” Carson was saying. “I took them to Sister Deborah before coming here. She lit up when she saw them. It was Brother Samuel’s handwriting.”

  “Letters? From Samuel? Is that what you said? God Almighty, that’s good. Good. I knew he was all right. When were they written?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t open them. Not with me there.”

  I laughed, something I hadn’t done in a long time. I said, “That’s right, she wouldn’t. Don’t know what I was thinking. We’ll probably have to wait until morning to hear.”

  Nodding, Carson said, “Probably so. Letters like that are between a man and his wife.”

  “That’s so.” The tightness I’d been carrying in my shoulders loosened. Word from Samuel. News about where he’d been and where he was headed.

  Carson said, “I couldn’t help noticing how two of the envelopes were ragged and dirty. It was like they’d traveled a long way. The other one wasn’t near as worn.”

  I felt myself grinning. Word from Samuel. I said, “If I were a betting man, I’d wager my last nickel that Samuel, in that last letter, the one not so worn, I bet he wrote how something came up, a change in plans, that he’ll be longer than he figured on.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know it. He’s been delayed. He missed the rockslide by weeks, months even.” My words came out fast, each one stepping on top of the other. “He still had to turn around when he came across it, still had to come another way. But the slide happened before he got to it. That last letter will prove it so. You’ll see.”

  “It’ll be welcome news.”

  Word from Samuel. I wasn’t the only one grinning. Carson was too.

  He said, “All right. That’s it, then.” He tugged his hat into place. “Best be getting on home, Ma being the kind to worry.”

  “You did good work for Junction today,” I said. He shrugged off the praise like he always did. Him doing that made me grin all the wider. Carson turned toward the door, started to open it, then stopped. He looked at me. His face had clouded. His grin was gone.

  “About the ravine,” he said. “I pray I’m wrong.” Then he left, cold air blowing in and taking his place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DEBORAH – OUT-OF-THE-WAY PLACES

  January 15, 1888

  Three letters from my husband. I was airy with relief. I sat at the kitchen table with them laid out in front of me. Samuel’s letters.

  When Carson Miller gave them to me, I turned woozy and light at the same time. The worry I’d carried, lifted. News from Samuel. He was all right.

  I had opened the letters as soon as Brother Carson left. Samuel had penciled the words and in places the letters were smudged. It was his handwriting, though. I would know it anywhere. His penmanship lacked flourishes and slanted hard to the left. I read the letters in a rush, my heart rattling against my breastbone. The words floated in front of my eyes. The second time I read them, the words took on meaning and it was almost as if Samuel were in the cabin with me. I laughed at the notion of a man so in need of wheels that he waited for Samuel by the privy. I laughed to think of Samuel jumping to touch the stars. The third time I read the letters I was sure I heard the mules wheezing and bellowing their complaints.

  Now the letters were spread flat on the table with the envelopes beside them. I had the wall calendar and Nels’ map also on the table. I picked up the first letter and angled it toward the slivers of light from the two lamps on the table. I willed myself to read slowly and to think about each part.

  September 29, 1887

  I studied the calendar, counting as I turned the pages back. Three months and sixteen days between today and September the twenty-ninth. It wasn’t all that long ago. Yet I didn’t have any memory of what I had been doing on the day Samuel sat under his wagon and wrote to me.
r />   Kindling is so heavy with Water the notion came to Me it would be handy to have your Wringer.

  It hurt me to think of him in the rain. Yet, it was his way to make light of the weather. He didn’t want me to worry.

  I left Escalante 2 Days back and am going South to Henrieville.

  I didn’t know for sure where either Escalante or Henrieville was. They weren’t on the map Nels had drawn for me but I believed that Escalante was nearly due south. Samuel traveled there most every fall and had told me it sat in a valley with high mountains on all sides. “It’s named after a missionary,” Samuel once told me. “Catholics claimed the place before Brigham Young was even born.”

  Escalante has more Houses and Streets than it did last Year. Do not let that disturb You. I did not get lost.

  I traced the last sentence with my forefinger. Samuel had not gotten lost in Escalante, and he would not get lost coming through the Fish Lakes.

  If You were here We would listen to drops of Rain fall from the Trees. With you beside me it would be a cheersome Sound.

  My breathing went ragged. I put the letter down, picked up Samuel’s black-and-white rock that I kept on the table, and held it to my cheek. When I finally gathered myself, I put the rock down and read the second letter.

  October 15, 1887

  He had been in Johnson, a new outpost with two families and a child buried in a cemetery.

  The Creek is down to a trickle.

  Fear gripped my heart. I understood what this meant. Like the families in Johnson, Samuel was suffering, parched dry.

  Do not worry about me. My bones got so wet from the Rain up by Escalante that I will be a long Time drying out.

  Come home, Samuel. For all your words of reassurance, that’s the only way you can ease my worry.

  In the Morning I go North and some West to Mt. Carmel. It will not take long to get there.

  This was the turning point. From that time on, he’d be making his way north toward home.