The Patchwork Bride

by Sandra Dallas

  “Well, good luck to him, then.” Buddy stomped out of the kitchen, letting the screen slam, and Nell, angry herself, took off her apron, balled it up, and threw it at the door.

  * * *

  For a day or two, Buddy sulked. He didn’t come around except for meals. Then he showed up one afternoon with a bouquet of roses he’d picked from Lucy’s garden. Lucy would be furious, but Nell was pleased at the gesture. It was Buddy’s way of apologizing, she thought. She held the flowers to her nose for a moment to take in their sweet smell, smiling a little as she remembered the bouquet of brown-eyed Susans with the bee inside. She put the flowers into a Mason jar of water and set it on the kitchen table.

  “I hope you aren’t still off your feed. I gave you time to cool down,” Buddy said. He didn’t apologize. Instead, he told her, “I got it all figured out. That ranch I told you I was buying, I signed the papers yesterday. The bank hurried it through when I telegraphed I was going off to be a Rough Rider. You can quit the Rockin’ A and go on up there and get things ready. This war isn’t going to last but a minute, and I’ll be home before you know it. I won’t buy the cattle till I’m back, so you don’t have to worry about them. Or hiring hands.” Buddy beamed at her. “I even arranged for us to get married on Friday. The judge is coming out here, and Mr. Archer said he’ll give you away. It’s all took care of.”

  Nell was stunned. She pushed aside the tin cans of geraniums and sat down on the window ledge, clasping her hands together because they were shaking. “You did this without asking me?”

  “There’s not a thing for you to worry about. I took care of everything.”

  Nell tried to think of some way to tell Buddy she wasn’t pleased, but suddenly she was angry, very angry. How dare he order her life without even consulting her! And getting married that week, without her grandparents present? She’d never agree to that. “Didn’t you remember I said you ought to consult me before you made those decisions? Didn’t you?” She clenched her fists.

  “You don’t have anything to do with it. It’s my ranch, and it’s my decision to join up.”

  “And your decision to get married—to get married on Friday.”

  “You rather wait to Saturday?” He smiled at his joke.

  Nell didn’t. “I thought we were getting married in the fall.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Well, I did not.”

  “I’m going off to war, and I want a wife to come home to. I’m not going less’n I’m married. So you’ll just have to go along with it.”

  “Then I guess you’ll stay home.” Nell glanced out the window and saw Lucy standing there with Mr. Archer. She wondered how much of the conversation they had heard, but she didn’t care.

  Buddy kicked at the table leg, nicking the wood with his spur and jarring the table, knocking over the roses. The water ran across the wood, but he only glanced at it and didn’t soak it up. Neither did Nell.

  Suddenly Buddy lowered his voice. “I said I’m getting married before I join up. If I go under, I want there to be somebody who’ll remember me. If you don’t want to marry me, then I know a girl who will.”

  Nell looked at him in astonishment. Did he mean it?

  “Alice?” She threw the word at him.

  “She’s not so balky. She’d marry me in a minute. Just you wait and see.”

  “Then you’d better go find her. I wouldn’t marry somebody as high-headed as you.”

  “You going to marry that Lane Philips fellow back in Kansas, then?”

  How did Buddy know about him? Then Nell remembered she had mentioned him once—once! “Just maybe I will.”

  Buddy kicked at a chair with the toe of his boot, then stopped and stared at Nell. “I guess it’s a good thing I found out how pig-headed you are. You go marry that Lane Philips or Owen or somebody else cultus. They’ll be glad to let you be in charge. I just guess I can marry Alice if I want to. It’s easy done, and it’s for sure I won’t marry you.”

  “And I wouldn’t marry you.”

  Buddy stomped out of the kitchen, stopping to use his arm to brush the roses and the jar from the table.

  Nell watched through the doorway as he mounted his horse and rode off in the direction of Las Vegas. Then she used a cloth to wipe the water from the table and knelt and picked up the roses and broken glass from the floor. After she’d thrown them into the trash, she went into her room and closed the door. She took out the flour sack and began shoving her clothes into it.

  In a moment, Lucy came in. She didn’t knock but shoved open the door and stood by the bed, watching Nell. “I know it ain’t my business, but I got to ask. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “He got hot at me, and I’m leaving. Now.” Nell shoved a skirt into the bulging flour sack, then reached for another.

  “He’s just on the prod. He’ll calm down.”

  “No he won’t. He’s stubborn. He means what he says. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already halfway to town to propose to Alice Mackintosh. I mean what I say, too. I see him now with a clear eye, Aunt Lucy. It’s over.” She glared at her aunt, too angry to cry.

  “Now, Nell. You’ll work it out. That’s the way marriage is.”

  “Not marriage with Buddy. He thinks he’ll be in charge and I’m to do what he says.”

  “Well, men are that way. That’s one reason I chose not to marry again.”

  “We said too much that we can’t ever take back, Aunt Lucy. It’s the meanest luck, but it’s done with.” Nell looked around for anything she might have forgotten. She picked up her Bible from the bedside table and shoved it in with her clothes. “You heard what he said. He’s going off to marry Alice.”

  Lucy sat down on the bed and smoothed a shirt that had fallen out of one of the flour sacks, then folded it and put it back. “If you don’t stop him, I expect he’ll do just that.”

  “I don’t care. I have too much pride to go after him.” Nell stood and made a final sweep of the room. “Aunt Lucy, will you ask Wendell to take me to the depot?”

  Lucy sighed. “Ask him yourself. I’m not aiding and abetting.” She left the room, and Nell heard the screen door squeak.

  A moment later, Nell hurried to the barn and found Wendell and said she had to go to town right away. While she waited for Wendell to hitch up the carriage, she went back inside and wrote a note to Mr. Archer, but she did not write one to Buddy. He’d know why she was leaving. Then she slung the flour sacks over her shoulder and waited on the porch until Wendell drove up in the buggy, and she climbed in. No one waved to her, and no one said good-bye. Nell looked straight ahead as she left the ranch. She didn’t see the cattle that had stopped grazing to stare at her as she passed or the flapping windmill that she had fixed with Buddy. She didn’t look up as she rode by the broken wagon. And she didn’t see Buddy, who was stopped just off the road, watching her ride away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Ellen was finished telling the story of Nell and Buddy, June leaned forward in her chair and asked, “She left just like that?”

  “Stupid, wasn’t it? She should have stayed and worked it out. But she was too stubborn.”

  “Did Buddy go after her?

  “No, and that made her mad, too. She realized later that he didn’t know where she was, because she’d asked her aunt not to tell him.”

  Nell had returned to her grandparents’ farm in Kansas, Ellen explained. The farm was home. She might have gone to a city, but she needed to be where she felt loved. And safe. Besides, Nell wasn’t so adventuresome anymore. She wanted to sleep in her own bed and wake up to the sounds of cows and chickens. She’d always loved chickens. Ellen paused and looked out at one of her own chickens that was pecking at the dirt. They wouldn’t have chickens if she and Ben moved into Durango. They’d have to eat store-bought eggs from the Piggly Wiggly and chickens that had been killed and plucked in a factory. They’d taste like cardboard. Damn grocery stores, she thought.

  Ellen moved her chair to get o
ut of the sun. It was midday now, and the sky was cloudless, the sun very hot. An apartment wouldn’t have a porch either. Where would she go to cool off from the summer heat? She’d probably have to depend on that wretched air-conditioning people were starting to put in. You couldn’t even open the windows in some of those places. The veranda was one of the first things she and Ben had added to their honeymoon cabin. Except in the winter, they sat there almost every evening, looking out at the stars. Ben would talk about cattle prices, ask her opinion on improvements, because their marriage had always been a partnership. Sometimes they didn’t agree, and they’d argue, argue loud enough that Maria would come outside and shush them. But sooner or later, one of them would give in, and there would be peace. Ellen almost missed those fights, the times she’d win Ben over to her way of thinking or Ben would convince her he was right. They would make up and know that they really did beat with one heart.

  When the children were young, they played on the porch, galloping back and forth on stick horses, and when they were older, they honed their roping skills on chairs and tables. The veranda was their rumpus room. The children did their homework there, too. Ellen remembered how John had filled out his college application forms at a table on the porch. She had been sitting there when he came in from the mailbox one afternoon with a letter saying he’d been accepted at Harvard.

  Although the nights were cold now, Ellen and Ben still sat on the veranda after dinner, watching the sunset streak the sky with violent swaths of purple and orange and pink. Ben would remember times long past, and they’d call each other by pet names they hadn’t used in years. Sometimes they didn’t need to talk. They just sat and held hands.

  “Buddy and Nell might have worked things out, I suppose, but they were both too stubborn,” Ellen continued, setting her sewing on the table. She had stitched while she told the story—intricate embroidery stitches that covered the seams between the patches of fabric.

  “Like you?” June asked.

  “Oh, no, she was much worse.” Ellen smiled, as she ran her hand over a patch from a silk gown, a wedding dress that had been in the family. Maybe she shouldn’t have cut it up, but some of the silk was split. The top was shredded, and only part of the skirt was any good. What was the point of keeping it?

  A second chicken came along, and the women watched as the two chickens fought over a worm. They squawked. The first chicken triumphed, and the other walked away.

  There was an afternoon train out of Las Vegas, and Nell barely made it, Ellen said, going back to her story. “You have to wonder what would have happened if she’d missed it. She might have changed her mind. Or Buddy might have come after her. Of course, neither of those things happened.”

  “Did she believe they’d make up somehow and she’d marry him after all?”

  “No,” Ellen said, shaking her head. “After Nell was home, she realized it was over. There had been too many hurtful words. Once she was back in Kansas, Nell knew she’d never marry Buddy after what they’d said to each other. She wouldn’t be happy with someone who felt he had the right to tell her what to do,” Ellen said.

  “Like me?” June asked.

  Ellen thought a moment. “That’s for you and Dave to decide.” Nell had other complications, she explained. She’d pretty much convinced herself that Buddy didn’t really love her, and that maybe, after what had happened in that cabin, he no longer respected her. She knew that ranching is lonely work, and that Buddy wanted a wife. Maybe Buddy chose her because she was strong and worked hard. Nell was aware there were other girls if she turned him down. “There are men who think one woman is pretty much like another. And then, of course, Alice was waiting in the wings,” Ellen said, staring into the distance. “Nell convinced herself of a lot of things.”

  “What became of Buddy?” June asked. “Did he survive the war?”

  “Yes,” Ellen replied. “The Spanish-American War lasted only a few weeks, and there weren’t all that many men in the fighting. Or that many casualties. In fact, some soldiers never even made it to Cuba before the war ended. All war is awful,” she said, “but Buddy’s war was short, so it wasn’t as bad as the two world wars with all their carnage. Or Korea.” Nell glanced at her granddaughter when she mentioned Korea, but June didn’t react. “You know, of course, that Theodore Roosevelt, who was second in command of the Rough Riders, became president.”

  “Maybe Buddy went to Washington with him. Was his picture ever in the paper?”

  Ellen shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  “Maybe he came looking for her after the war.”

  He hadn’t, because he didn’t know where she’d gone, Ellen said. Lucy might have told him, but she died not long after Nell left, kicked in the head by a horse. Nell might have gone back for the funeral, but it was a long time before she learned what had happened to her aunt, and by then, it was too late.

  “Lucy never married Mr. Archer?”

  “No. It’s funny. He might have married her, but she held out. Maybe Lucy giving Nell the dress she’d once intended for her own wedding was like admitting that she’d never marry again. Lucy was awfully independent.”

  “Like Nell?”

  “Do you think Nell was really independent? Oh, she moved out west to live on a ranch in New Mexico, but she was after a husband. That was the main reason she went there. And that was why she moved on later.” Ellen twisted her embroidery thread to make a French knot.

  “What happened to Buddy?”

  “He married, all right.”

  Just then, the screen banged, and Maria came out and asked if they wanted their dinner on the porch.

  Ellen pushed aside the quilt and stood, saying that would be nice. It wouldn’t be long before it would be too cold to eat outside. “June and I can fetch it.”

  “I’ll do it. You’re supposed to take it easy. June, you make sure your grandma don’t work too hard. The doctor says for her to rest.”

  “Oh, hell, I’m not an invalid,” Ellen said. “Sometimes you treat Mr. Ben and me like we’ve got one foot in the grave.”

  “Well…” Maria crossed herself.

  Ellen waved her hand. “Don’t rub it in. We still have one foot out of the grave. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to do it while I’m sitting in a chair.”

  Maria threw up her hands and went back inside. June asked her grandmother, “Is your heart that bad?”

  “No, of course not. I just have to take my pills and be careful climbing stairs. The doctor won’t let me on a horse anymore.”

  “So you don’t ride?”

  Ellen didn’t answer.

  “Granny?”

  “Your grandfather doesn’t understand when I tell him I’m supposed to stay off horses.” Just the day before, Ben had saddled Ellen’s mare and shown up at the kitchen door with the horse. When Ellen told him she wasn’t supposed to ride, he looked as hurt as if she’d slapped him in the face. He said he wanted to ride out to the creek, and there wasn’t anybody else to go with him. Lord, June had thought, she couldn’t let him go alone. He’d have ridden into the next county, and she never would have found him.

  “So you went with him?”

  Ellen shrugged. “Somebody has to look after him.” They’d had a nice time, too. Ellen had asked Maria to fix a picnic, and they’d spread an old quilt on the ground under a cottonwood and eaten the lunch. Then Ben had napped on the quilt, his hat over his face, while Ellen took off her boots and put her toes into the cold water. It was as nice an outing as they’d had in a long time. When Ben woke up, he thought for a moment it was fifty years earlier, not long after they moved to the ranch. They had made love in that very spot. He seemed to remember and reached for her hand, and they had sat holding hands until suppertime. Maria feared that Ellen had been bucked off her horse and Ben had wandered away to get help. She was ready to send Wesley to search for them when they finally showed up.

  “Can’t Maria take over some of your work?” June asked.

  “
She already has, but there’s just so much she can do. She can barely read and write.” There was no way the housekeeper could keep books and fill out government forms. After all the years she’d lived with them, Maria didn’t know a thing about beef except how to cook it.

  “What about Wesley?” June asked.

  Ellen smiled. “He’s as loyal and honest and hardworking as the day is long, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for us, but would you trust him to run a ranch?”

  “At least he can read and write.”

  “Can he?”

  “I see your point.”

  June held the door, and the two of them followed Maria into the big kitchen. It was Ellen’s favorite room in the sprawling ranch house. The man from Sears, Roebuck who designed kitchens had drawn up a plan with metal cupboards and a linoleum floor. It looked like something from a women’s magazine, not like a real ranch kitchen. Ellen had thrown away the drawing and hired a carpenter to make big wooden cupboards. She’d put in a countertop of bright Mexican tiles, some of them broken now, and a wood floor that had been worn down over the years by hundreds, maybe thousands of boots. There was a pantry with bins that held hundred-pound sacks of flour and sugar, a freezer big enough to accommodate an entire beef or maybe two, a stove with six burners—and a dishwasher. The heart of the kitchen was the scrub-top wooden table that could seat a dozen, and during roundup, there were often that many men gathered around it. Ellen had found the table at a ranch sale. Then she’d picked up old pressed-wood chairs that nobody wanted anymore. They were sturdy enough that a man could lean back in one until it rested on two legs and not fall over.

  Maria went to the stove and stirred a big pot of chili with a long wooden spoon. She tasted it and nodded her satisfaction. “It’s not too hot for you,” she said.

  “I’m not an invalid, Maria,” Ellen told her. “I don’t want chili that tastes like junket. You can’t make a chili that’s too hot for me.”

  Maria waved away the insult as she dished up bowls of meat and beans and sprinkled cheese on top. She wrapped hot tortillas in a towel, then set everything on a tray.