The bit of gold flickered, leaped into a tongue of fire, and she saw the room and Charlie, ghostly white, reflected in searing flame. A dog howled.
“No,” Polly cried, spinning around.
She realized immediately the flame was only Charlie lighting the lamp, the howl Teddy reminding her of her promise. But when she took the empty mug from Charlie, it shattered in her grasp.
A shard pierced her palm. Instinctively she brought it to her lips and sucked the wound. The blood tasted of salt. Like tears.
THIRTY-ONE
During the long winter months, the red stains in Charlie’s phlegm had grown larger and darker, his cough more deep seated. But with the coming of the dry summer heat, his cough had eased up, and though he was still too weak to walk, Polly was confident he was on the mend.
She set his empty dinner dishes on the tray. “You know, Bruce Crofoot at Sheep Creek have the spitting blood sickness like you and he come to Salmon River to die. Now he is more healthy than me. You know why? Because he eat mold. All the mold he can find. Especially bread mold.”
Charlie dealt out a game of solitaire on the light summer quilt Polly insisted he needed. “Don’t get any ideas about feeding me mold,” he said.
“What do you think stop your infection when Cox shoot you?” she said, retrieving Teddy’s empty bowl from where he lay at the foot of the bed.
“That wasn’t any old mold. It was Li Dick’s. And I didn’t have to eat it.”
She peered over Charlie’s shoulder. “Put the three of spades there and that queen here,” she advised, pointing.
“I thought you were going fishing,” he said.
Laughing, she picked up the tray. Teddy pawed at the edge of the bed, silently begging to be carried down and taken with her. She rubbed his nose. “No, Teddy. You stay with Charlie,” she said, scratching his chin, his twitching whiskers. “You too old to climb over rocks.”
She was getting too old for climbing over blisteringly hot rocks herself, Polly realized, puffing, her heat-swollen feet chaffing against the stiff leather of her brogues. But by August, Polly Creek was too low for good fishing and, with Pete in Dixie, she did not want to disturb Shepp for something so trivial as rowing her over to Crooked Creek.
Scrambling over one final boulder, she set down her rod and tackle, wiped her face free of perspiration, took a few minutes to catch her breath, then unlaced her brogues, pulled off her stockings, and soaked her burning feet in the ice cold water of the Salmon.
The swift current swirled around her feet, soothing, and she closed her eyes and settled back against the smooth hollow of a sun-baked rock. The lacy fronds of willow shading her from the sun created a cool blue green world, and inside Polly, peace and contentment brimmed replete.
When Polly woke, the air had become heavy and threatening, and the sun had already begun its descent in the arc of sky above the canyon rim. She dried her feet quickly on her apron, pulled on stockings and shoes, attached bait to hook, lifted her rod, and cast out. The line curved, sure and graceful, into the glittering white water of the Salmon.
The glare of sun on water hurt her eyes, and she looked beyond the silver streak of river to the sparsely wooded slope rising from the stretch of rocks and sand. In the open space around a deer lick, three or four doe and a young buck became suddenly still, then darted from the hollow. Their big ears and long slim necks flashed between rocky outcrops as they disappeared into tall grasses and pines, leaving Polly jumpy, her senses fractured, yet keenly aware.
She felt the stifling heat that bounced off the canyon walls, heard the nervous chatter of squirrels. Bird cries. Flapping wings. Crackling. The acrid smell of smoke. Her eyes scanned the tree-and brush-covered slopes ahead of her. All clear. She turned. There, rising from behind the thick copse of trees screening the house was the smoke, a thin, innocent spiral. A cooking fire started by a prospector or friend? Then why the flight of deer and squirrels and birds?
The rod slid from Polly’s fingers and she scrambled back over the rocks, heedless of the sharp edges that snagged her stockings and scraped her hands.
Her legs, hampered by skirts and fear, grew heavy. Her rock-torn palms stung. Throat and lungs burned. Heart pounded, threatening to burst through chest. But now she could hear Teddy’s mournful wailing, the pounding of hooves against stable doors, frightened neighing, Charlie’s hoarse cries, and she dared not stop.
At last she was past the rocks and blind of trees and on the grassy slope to garden and house. A small tongue of flame licked the peak of the roof nearest the chimney. A roof fire? And the cedar shakes drier than the kindling she used to light the stove. How bad was it? How fast was it spreading? What was happening on the side she could not see?
Her thoughts raced past her feet. The pole ladder. The one in the shed. Water. Too far to the creek. Use the water in the barrel first. Then the creek. Can’t do it alone. Shepp. Telephone him first. Then the ladder, then the buckets.
Cut across the vegetable patch. Shorter. Can’t. The deer fence. She tore at the poles. Too deeply embedded. The gate too far. Squeeze through. Not enough space.
Splinters pierced her skirts, her flesh.
“Polly!”
She whipped around. Shepp was in his rowboat, already halfway across the Salmon. He knew. He was coming. Help was coming!
Hope surged through Polly, giving her the strength to burst through the fence. Her feet crushed cabbages, squashes, melons. She pushed through rows of corn. And then the earth exploded, throwing Polly to the ground. A rifle cracked. And then another, and another, the sharp reports of pistol and rifle ammunition exploding one shell at a time. Dirt filled Polly’s mouth, her nose, her ears, her eyes. Fragments of vegetables. Grit. Screams. Drumming hooves. Teddy’s barks. The frantic squawking of chickens.
Dazed by her fall, choking from the dust and smoke, Polly pulled herself to her knees. The cabin was completely enveloped in flames.
“Charlie!” she screamed, scrambling to her feet. “Charlie.”
With a fierce energy she thought lost forever, Polly broke through the fence, rushed across the strip of yard and tore up the stairs, heedless of the flames that leaped around her.
The smoke upstairs was far thicker and blacker. She covered her nose and mouth with her apron, dropped to her knees, and crawled to their bedroom. Her eyes, unprotected, smarted and teared. Groping, she found the bed. Empty.
“Charlie,” Polly called through her apron. “Where are you?”
Smoke burned her throat raw. She coughed. Above the crackle of flames she heard Teddy whimper, felt his tongue wet against her arm. She hugged the dog to her.
“Where’s Charlie?” she asked.
Teddy tugged at her sleeve. She crawled behind him. Around the bed. Past the dresser. To the desk beside the washstand. He stopped and pulled feebly at a crumpled quilt beside the open trunk.
Polly fell on the lifeless form beneath it. “Charlie!” she cried.
He stirred, struggling to reach the desk. “Papers. Must get papers,” he whispered.
“We have to go,” she said, tearing a towel from the rack above the washstand and dunking it into the pitcher of water. “Get out. Now.” She wrung out the towel. “You hold towel over your mouth with one hand. Wrap your other arm around me, and . . .”
Charlie pushed the towel away. “No. Got to get certificates. Claim.”
Polly staggered to her feet. “Charlie, please. Help me,” she pleaded, trying to pull him upright.
Glowing cinders and ash showered down, sparking small flickering fires. Teddy frisked like a puppy, yelping in pain. Polly, choking from the smoke, the smell of singed fur, and burning flesh, released Charlie to stamp and beat out the flames on the floor, Charlie, Teddy, herself.
“Polly? Charlie?”
“Shepp,” Polly called. “Over here.” She patted Teddy. “Fetch Shepp,” she commanded.
She tore a second towel off the rack and dunked it in the pitcher.
“Here,” she
said, handing the towel to Shepp. “You take.”
Shepp draped the wet towel over his head and shoulders. “Hurry,” he said, hoisting Charlie to his feet. “The staircase will go any minute.”
Charlie struggled. “No,” he coughed. “Papers. Must get papers.”
Polly jerked open the drawer of the desk, grabbed a sheaf of papers and waved them in front of Charlie. “I have papers,” she said, stuffing them into the bib of her apron.
Quickly, she covered his face with the wet towel and lifted the hem of her apron, making a sling for Teddy.
“Charlie’s passed out,” Shepp said. “He’s dead weight.”
“I help,” Polly said. Cradling Teddy with one hand, she tried to lift Charlie’s legs with the other. She could not.
“Drop the dog,” Shepp said.
“No.” She stuffed the bunched up apron into her mouth and held it with her teeth, leaving her arms free to lift Charlie’s legs.
She backed toward the door. The heat in the hallway was intense. Polly twisted her head to see behind her, but the smoke and flames had created an impenetrable black and orange wall.
“Left,” Shepp shouted above the roar of flames and falling timber. “Right. First stair.”
Hardly able to breathe, her jaw straining from Teddy’s weight, her arms from Charlie’s, Polly felt warily for the edge of the stair, lowered one foot, then the next. And again for the second stair. The third.
The awkward angle pushed Charlie’s feet against Teddy, tearing at the taut stretch of apron. Polly clenched her teeth tighter. She thrust Charlie’s legs stiffly forward from Teddy’s bulk, dropped onto another stair, snapped her head back, pulled Charlie’s feet back against her belly, and lowered Teddy onto Charlie’s legs. Immediately, the pressure on her teeth, jaw, and neck lifted.
She continued the torturous descent. Right foot feel, drop. Left foot follow. Right foot feel, drop. Left foot follow.
Her skin blistered from the profusion of falling cinders. Her eyes teared. She gagged from the choking black smoke, the apron stuffed into her mouth. The weight on her arms, her jaws, and neck became unbearable. She tried pushing Charlie’s legs onto one side of her so she could wrap her arms around them more fully, but the movement threatened Teddy’s precarious balance in the slackened folds of her apron. Almost there, she told herself, tightening her grip. Right foot feel, drop. Left foot follow. Right foot feel, drop.
Her foot plunged through the stair. Jagged, splintered wood tore through her stockings. Flames seared her scratched flesh. She hurled herself forward, reaching for the banister, pulling her leg back through the charred stair. Teddy squirmed, yelping, burrowing. There was a sudden release of pressure on her teeth and jaws, an emptiness, a long mournful howl. The crash of a falling beam. A shower of cinders. The awful stink of scorched fur and flesh.
“You all right?” Shepp shouted.
Tearing the now useless apron sling from between clenched teeth, Polly coughed a faint, “Yes.”
Grimly, she hoisted Charlie’s legs back up, clutched the bannister, and half slid, half fell to the bottom of the stairs, staggering around fallen timbers, raging flames, outside to air. Life. And a rain of ashes cold as her own heart.
THIRTY-TWO
From the spare bedroom of Shepp and Pete’s house, Polly could not see what was left of Polly Place. Yet there had not been a moment, day or night, in the seven weeks since the fire when the events of that afternoon did not replay themselves in her mind’s eye.
Exhausted, choking from smoke and fear, their clothes scorched, and their singed hair and blistered flesh stinking, she and Shepp had carried Charlie to safety, released the horses and cow, and run back and forth from the creek, pouring bucket after bucket of water, stamping and beating out new bursts of flames. The fire had not spread beyond the sheds. But the house was a black skeleton above dead embers, Teddy and twenty-eight years of her life buried in its ashes. And Charlie?
In the gloomy yellow puddle of light cast by the lamp, his bearded face peered corpselike above the bright patchwork of borrowed quilts, radiating questions which haunted like spectres.
What if she had not gone fishing that afternoon? What if she had not fallen asleep down by the river? What if Charlie had not been so worried about the papers needed for her protection? Would he have tried sliding down the stairs on his own before the explosion, escaping the clouds of black smoke that had filled his weakened lungs? Or what if she had not tried to save Teddy, a toothless dog already close to death? Would Charlie then be free of this terrible gurgling that sounded increasingly like a death rattle?
Only an hour ago, when his coughing had become so severe that breathing became impossible, she had thrust her fingers down his throat, allowing the phlegm, blood, and corruption to spill out in curdled lumps, clearing the clogged passages. But already they had refilled, and again his chest was heaving, his lungs straining for the small bits of rank sickroom air that grated through the blocked passages of his nose and throat.
Polly fumbled for the bottle of oil among the jars and bottles that crowded the nightstand. When she had inserted her fingers in Charlie’s mouth before, his teeth had clamped down involuntarily, and she had had to pry open his jaws with her other hand in order to force her fingers into his throat. She knew he would not let her try again, yet it was the constant struggle for air that used up his strength.
She rubbed the oil into the blue gray ridges and fissures of Charlie’s swollen fever-cracked lips, remembering their smooth, gentle warmth, their ability to please, love, and hurt.
His eyelids fluttered open. He lifted his arm and reached for hers. “The laws haven’t changed,” he whispered, just as he did each time he woke.
She took his hand, the flesh so shriveled, so cold she could almost feel the pull of death. “I know, but you not worry. I have papers. See?”
She picked up the wedding certificate, certificate of residence, and claim for the ranch, and held them close. He strained forward. The gurgling deep in his chest intensified, and he fell back against the pillows, gasping for air. Polly dropped the papers and added another pillow to the already large pile beneath his head.
“It’s no good,” he panted. “I’m drowning. Drowning in my own juices.”
He coughed. Polly pulled a wad of clean sacking from her apron pocket. She wiped the blood from Charlie’s mouth and beard, the perspiration from his forehead, neck, and chest, grieving for his loss of strength, his regression to the helplessness of a child, a baby.
A baby. Hadn’t she once saved a baby by taking a reed, pulling out the pithy center to make a hollow tube, working the reed down the baby’s throat, and sucking out the mucus? Then why not Charlie? She threw down the soiled sacking. “Charlie, I go get a reed to make tube that can help you breathe.”
He clutched her sleeve, his eyes dark pits of fear. “No. Stay.”
“I won’t be long. Just a few minutes.”
“Pol, you can’t save me,” he rasped, the rattle from his chest and throat muffling his words so she could scarcely hear him.
Her eyes glistened. “You say that when Cox shoot you. I pull you through then. I can get you through this.” Out of the corner of her eye, a tear trickled.
Charlie’s fingers touched the tear, traced its passage down her wrinkled cheek. “Let me go.”
Unable to speak, Polly stroked his sunken cheeks, his wisps of white hair, and beard.
“Remember how you held me all through the night after Cox shot me?”
She nodded.
“Hold me now.”
She climbed onto the bed beside him
“Hold me tight. Like you did then.”
Polly wrapped her arms around Charlie, cradling him, making his strangled fight for breath become her own. For a long time, her chest strained, struggling. Then their breathing became one, and together they sank into a soft, feathery darkness.
When Polly wakened, the moon had risen, filling the room with its cold white light, turning the r
ock face of the canyon a gravestone white. From far away, she heard a loon cry, the sound a lonely haunt against the rushing roar of the Salmon. Closer, she heard the half-audible call of cow to calf, the sharp, harsh quack of a duck. A dog growled.
She shuddered. Nightsounds, she told herself. Ordinary nightsounds. And then she understood. It was not the animal cries that made her shudder, but the silence. The absolute quiet that had come while she slept.
She tightened her arms around Charlie, comforted by the real presence of his weight. Then, resting her face against his, she began to speak, filling the silence with words.
“Once, a long time ago, a goddess give a man a pill. She tell him if he eat the pill, he can live forever. But first he must build up body strength. So he hide the pill in a ceiling beam and wait.
“One day, his wife see the pill shining in the moonlight like a pearl. She not know what it is and she curious, so she put it in her mouth. A noise frighten her, and she swallow the pill. Straightaway, she fly out of the window to the moon.
“There, she lonely for her husband, and he lonely for her. So the goddess give him a charm which let him visit his wife on the fifteenth day of each month.”
She paused and stared up at the moon, a perfect white circle of light against the pitch black of the night sky. “That is why one time each month the moon is especially big and bright.
“Like tonight,” she whispered. “Like tonight.”
THIRTY-THREE
The chicken, onion, garlic, and parsley Polly needed for croquettes had been diced sufficently fine long ago, but she did not stop chopping, for as long as she kept knife striking meat, vegetables, and board, she could not hear the sounds of death. The whine of Shepp’s saw. The pounding of his hammer as he constructed Charlie’s coffin. The clang and ring of shovels as Pete, Shultz, and Holmes dug Charlie’s grave.
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