Sarah's Quilt

by Nancy E. Turner

  We’ll be losing those cattle right and left if they have to go a day without a drink, since they’re already starved for water. We’d better start pushing the criollos in the section closest to the house toward part of our land that borders the Maldonados’ little creek. Early afternoon, Chess took Charlie and Flores back to the windmill. They drove the buckboard, and carried the two empty barrels to fill again. While I strained mud and boiled water, Gilbert rode down to Benson to buy five sticks of dynamite.

  Shorty and Gilbert succeeded in wiring up a cap into a single stick of dynamite, then dropped it down the well by the house. We held our ears, waiting for the explosion, then covered our faces and waited for the dust to settle. All it accomplished was to collapse the sides of the well. It took them the rest of the day to dig the rubble out. We were left with worse water than before—until it could settle all night—on top of having a blessed hole nearly six feet wide where it had been only three before.

  It’s a frightening thing to see quail and bobcats politely drinking side by side from the same little mud puddle, which is all that’s left of Cienega Creek. If it rains in the next forty-eight hours, we can go to sleep with easy souls. If it doesn’t rain, we are either in God’s hands or at the devil’s mercy—I don’t know which.

  May 5, 1906

  Gilbert was out this morning early, watching little Hunter prance and play, teaching him not to mind being handled and having his feet messed with. Petting a pony seems like a silly job to an outsider, but not to someone who has had to shoe a horse that doesn’t like his feet being touched. We have hauled water until we have—at least for today—some excess, so this morning I plan to wash some clothes, and then try to get a pound of rust off my own hide.

  Long ago, Rudolfo Maldonado built me a Mexican-type oven in the yard, and we have a little cooking circle with a table and a shade where we barbecue sometimes. Charlie and Mason are lighting a fire under the soap cauldron for the washing later, as I don’t intend to heat the stove and, with it, the kitchen. In the summer, we even make the morning’s coffee outside.

  All the men around here had strict orders to stay away from the house after breakfast, as I intended a long soak in the tub, which I set up in the kitchen. As I soaked in the cool water, I tried to call to mind all the things that had slid by the wayside while we’d been busy hauling water each day. I had to get Ezra and Zachary back to their schooling, that was one thing. Mary Pearl, too. That girl seems to have slipped away from her lessons, and she is probably thinking I’ve forgotten all about that theme I asked her to do on the legislative power of government. Well, I was deep in thought, absently scrubbing the bottom of my foot, when a bang made me jump near out of the tub. Something had hit the window in the parlor. Sometimes we get a dove that’s lost his mind or his vision or some such, and the poor bird will kill himself against a window. More than half the time, though, they don’t die, but lie on the porch, knocked all cattey whompus for a while, then get up and head for home. They leave dusty outlines shaped just like a bird, and it is so pretty a picture, I hate to wash the glass. Sometimes I leave the picture there for a long time.

  When there is a good dust picture of a bird on the glass, I wait until the light is just right and then hold a page of thin letter-writing paper to the glass and pencil-line the bird. I have about nine or ten good sketches of birds that seem to be still flying, the way their wings are spread. Well, I was curious to see if the one that had just hit had lived or not, so I got out of the tub and dried off quick, then tipped into the parlor with a quilt wrapped around me in case anyone came in. I opened the back door, and sure enough, there was a dove on the boards, its downy feathers swirling around it like smoke.

  I knelt over the bird and got a closer look. I touched it with my fingertips. Then I stretched out its wing a little. I could see a movement in a vein under the wing, and I knew it was still alive. I love how a dove feels. Its feathers were soft and smooth, not like a chicken’s, where you can feel the ribs. Of course, we don’t mind how they taste, either, but I wasn’t planning to eat one that had died this way.

  Well, my quilt started to slip down, so I pulled it back into shape, then had to stand up to rearrange it without it falling. I suppose I fanned that senseless dove with the corner of the quilt, for at that second it came to life and flew straight upward, right up between two folds of the wrap. I hollered and flung the quilt off, shaking the bird out of it. There I stood, buck naked in the sunshine, on the back porch, startled by a silly bird. It fluttered wildly, crying in that sad moan doves make, and I heard footsteps at the side of the house, so I knocked the door open, stepping backward. The silly dove flew straight over my head, into the house, and I closed the door fast for my own decency.

  My heart was thumping wildly, though I couldn’t move for a minute. The bird fluttered through the house, dropping downy feathers like a pillow that had been hit too hard and was losing the stuffing. Someone banged on the back door. “Mama?” a man’s voice said. “I heard you yell. What’s going on? Are you all right?” It was Charlie.

  “I’m fine!” I hollered. “There’s a bird in here.”

  “What?” he said. The door started to open.

  “Don’t come in! I’m—I’m taking a bath. It’s nothing. Just a bird.”

  “How’d you get a bird in there?” he hollered through the door.

  “Oh, Charlie, just go along. I’ll tell you after I get dressed!” The dove sailed right past me and lighted on the frame of the door, looking as if it was pleading for escape. It seemed as if it might stay put for a minute, and I got my drawers and a chemise on before it started dashing hell-bent through the house again.

  Doves can fly so fast. I’ve seen one outrace a hawk in flight, darting and turning, sighing with each push of its wings. In my underwear, I tried cornering it, tried shooing it to one end of the room. Now and then, it came to rest, looking fearful and wide-eyed, and I’d creep up on it, getting my hands within inches of it before it would take off for a bedroom or back to the kitchen. Finally, I held up the wet towel I’d used to dry off with after my bath, and when the bird lit on the back of a chair, I flung the towel on it and caught it.

  Well, I figured Charlie had left the back porch. Seems to me anybody would have reckoned that if you told your son to go away because you were barely dressed, and just happened to be chasing a bird in the house, too, he’d go away. But no, not one of my sons. I pushed the back door, expecting empty desert, planning to open that wet towel and release the dove so he could fly willy-nilly into a tree or something, and standing there in a ring, waiting for a spectacle, were Charlie, Gilbert, Flores, and Chess—and Rudolfo Maldonado.

  I let out a yell, and then flapped the bird out of the towel. It lay on the ground, pathetic and wet. The boys all looked sheepish, seeing me in my drawers, and turned their faces. Flores put his hat down in front of his face. Rudolfo, I noticed, took a little longer than the rest to turn away. “Well?” I said. “What in heaven are you all doing here?”

  Charlie, still facing the brush, said, “I came to tell you that El Maldonado was on his way over.”

  “Mama, why were you bathing a dove in the bathtub?” Gilbert asked.

  I said, “It wasn’t in the tub.”

  “Well, it’s wet. I think you drowned it.”

  “Good Lord, Gilbert. I wasn’t bathing the bird.”

  I heard a strange noise—a vibrating, hissing, fluttering noise. Before me were the backs of five men who were shaking up and down, hands to their faces. Every last one of them was laughing up his sleeve and trying to be polite about it. I picked up the quilt I’d left on the porch and went back in the house, making sure they heard the door shut. Shaking my head, I went to finish getting dressed. Standing at the chest of drawers, I looked into the mirror. My hair was covered with a crown of gray down, like a cap. I looked to be wearing a hat of dove feathers on my wet hair. I’d probably catch lice from this mess.

  The chuckling on the back porch had become full-ou
t laughter. “Mama!” Gilbert called. “Your bird is about dead. You want me to call the undertaker?”

  “No, no! It’s a miracle. Look at that,” said Charlie. “Resurrection! You want me to catch him? After a bath, he probably needs a shave and a shoe shine, too.”

  I opened the window and shouted through, “One of you boys go get me some turpentine, and quit that braying. The rest of you drift on out of here.”

  Charlie was laughing all the harder. “Mama,” he called, “I don’t think you can shave him with turpentine.”

  “Charlie? Do I have to take a switch to you?” I said.

  I went to put on my skirt, so at least that half of me would be decent. I wasn’t about to get fully dressed until I’d washed my hair again. When there was another knock at the door, some man’s long arm reached in with a gallon can of turpentine. I opened the door all the way. Rudolfo’s arm was sticking through my doorway; the rest of the no-accounts had vanished.

  “Well, I was going to ask Chess to help. Rudolfo, will you do this for me?” I said. “I’m going to hold my head over the rail here and you pour that stuff on it. Try not to get it on the wood.”

  “Sarah,” he said. Then he waited, as if he were about to say something else, and finally he said, “All right, then. Sí.”

  I bent over the rail. He poured the turpentine all through my hair. I squeezed it and rubbed it until I believed I’d gotten every single hair coated. Then I worked it some more. Finally, I rolled up the hair to the top of my head and held it with one hand as I stood and unbent my back. Rudolfo held the can between us. He tried to smile. His face was dark red. “¿Suficiente?” he said.

  “Well, I reckon it might take longer to catch lice from a bird than five minutes, but I don’t know for sure. The boys said you wanted to see me. Is it urgent, or can you wait until I wash this out?”

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  I nodded and went back inside. I finished the job, hanging my head back over the cold bathwater and scrubbing with lye soap, then rinsing with a pitcherful of clear water.

  When I finally got a towel around my hair and wiped my eyes, I was startled to find Rudolfo had been sitting silently on a kitchen chair the entire time. “Why didn’t you say something?” I asked. “I didn’t know you were inside.”

  I could hear him breathing. Rudolfo had a strange, hungry look in his eyes, though he seemed to be studying the window curtains or something in that direction. He said, “You left the door open. I thought you meant for me to follow you. Forgive me if I’ve embarrassed you, por favor.”

  I suddenly felt uneasy, and I was very aware that I was alone with Rudolfo in the kitchen, wearing only a damp white shimmy from the waist up. “Well, do you want some water? Shall I make some dinner?”

  He turned his gaze at me, his eyes sweeping down then up to my own. “Sarah, you have the form of a young woman. So …”

  I crossed my arms over my breasts. “That’s not what you came here to say, amigo.”

  His face reddened before he spoke. “I came to tell you one of the hands said to me he can find out who ruined your windmill. I told him I’d pay him extra if he’s correct. I think he already knows. He wants more money than I offered.”

  I said, “Paying for information—that feels sort of dirty.”

  His brows moved, but his face stayed calm. “No worse than beating it out of him. You can’t expect every peon to be honest and just confess it to you.”

  “No, I don’t—rightly—expect that. Do you want me to pay it?”

  “No. I’m just telling you what I know. Con permiso, I’ll get back to my work.”

  I took up the quilt that had started all the fuss and folded it in my arms, holding it high, so I felt a little more covered. “Stay for dinner? It’s nearly noon.”

  “Luz will expect her papa. Buenos dias.”

  “Y tu,” I said.

  He left by the back door, where he’d come in. Feathers and down flitted across the porch in a small stirring of breeze from his passing. I touched my hair. The towel had fallen around my shoulders and my hair was already starting to dry in the warm air. It had been a long time since a man had looked at me the way Rudolfo had. Not that I’d wanted for males around the place, but they’d always been family. There was nothing brotherly in Rudolfo’s expression, nor in the violet flush of his neck and face.

  As I pulled my arms through the sleeves of my blouse, I remembered Jack’s arms, and his broad shoulders, and leaning against him, listening to his heart beating. Rudolfo—when I pictured him before me—didn’t move me that way, but the memory of loving a man seemed now just a moment past, not years. I stared at my reflection in the mirror over the chest of drawers. My face was flushed, too. Was that passion? For Rudolfo? Did I really want to be Mrs.—Doña—Maldonado? Had he awakened something with his dark glances? Or did I just want to be loved again?

  With a sigh, I tucked the shirtwaist into my waistband and fastened on the string with its scissors and key. I needed to get outside, get my hair dry in the sun, put it up, and get the boys’ dinner on the table. Once I got my hair up, I went to my keepsake box and took out the old daguerreotype of Jack and me, looking formal and starched, right after our wedding. Jack’s pocket watch was under the picture. I took it out and opened it. Engraved “With my love” and given to him on our wedding day, it still worked if a person cared to wind it regularly. I held the watch case to my cheek and felt Jack’s warmth come through it into my face. If I married Rudolfo, would I always close my eyes and think of Jack?

  Chapter Three

  May 7, 1906

  First thing, I thought I was dreaming. I rushed outside in the dark, still in my nightdress. It was rain that woke me, but it came from one of those odd desert cloudbursts that cobble up and move off, all the while with clear sky around them. The house was wet. Not a drop had hit the garden. The round corral was soaked and puddled. Half the barn looked darkened and damp, the other half dry as tinder. Soon as the sun came over the hill, the ground had dried. Within an hour of sunrise, hot air stirred around the yard, creating small dust devils, as if it had never been wet. Reckon that was proof enough it was too good even for a dream. I don’t know if it was good news or bad, but the well seemed to be about half-full of red-brown water. Surely it’s going to come back up.

  I rigged up a regular water-sieving machine on the porch. It had a can at the top with a piece of window screen in it to get out pebbles and twigs, which drained into another can, this one with a single layer of cheesecloth. When the water dripped through that, it was thin enough to run, and it was poured into a third can with four layers of cheesecloth and one of hopsacking. The last can was lined with muslin, and the water that came from it, clear but still a bit brown, went into a kettle to be boiled on the pit fire in the yard.

  Savannah sent Esther and Mary Pearl to help me with the water preparations. They have water aplenty up there, and Albert’s place is higher than mine. I surely can’t figure that one, for I thought the lower elevation meant we were closer to the groundwater. I’ll ask Charlie if he’s read up to anything about water levels in his geology studies. Sure can’t figure why it would rise underground.

  When I had a two-gallon can full and cooled off from the boiling, I carried it out to the old horses in the round corral to see how they’d take to it. Well, they didn’t seem to mind it at all. Then I left the girls to the task of cleaning more water, and took a ride down to Rudolfo Maldonado’s place. His oldest daughter, Luz, met me at the gate and called one of the other children to run and fetch their father. I had always thought of her mother, Celia, as a friend. I taught her to speak English after she married Rudolfo, and she taught me better Spanish. It made a peaceful evening when we finally learned enough in each other’s lingua to be able to find the right word in one or the other, and stop all the silly pointing and acting out. Before Celia died, we spent years sharing recipes, cures for children’s ailments, bolts of calico. After Luz and I talked awhile, she took me in the hou
se and brought a tray with a pitcher of water and glass tumblers to drink from.

  Luz led me to the gallery, set down the tray, and bowed as if she were a servant, then left me alone. Luz has taken her mother’s place running the household. She’s the age of my Charlie. The second girl they have, Elsa, has gone to a convent in Tucson. To Elsa, I had been tia, an aunt. But to Luz, older and always more somber, I was just another ganadero here to speak to her papa.

  The adobe room was wide as a church, freshly plastered, with tiles and fine carpet on the floor. The ceilings were fourteen feet overhead, and every wall had windows in two rows high and low, so that breezes pulled in and ruffled the curtains, even though there was no wind outside. One side held three sets of tall, narrow double doors that opened on the courtyard in the center of the house. Rudolfo came in with a little girl tugging at his pant leg. He put his hat on a hook and said something to his smallest daughter, Magdalena. She looked to be about eight years old. She giggled, then left.

  “You know I’ve had some trouble,” I said.

  Rudolfo poured water in glasses for us both. “Sí. The person who did this must be found.” He added a dram of whiskey to his water and tipped it toward me, just for a moment. He knew I’d not have it, but did it for politeness’ sake. Then he handed me my glass of water and sat before me, crossing a foot over the other knee.

  I said, “When Charlie went back to get more water, he thought enough to look for footprints, but he couldn’t find any except our own.”

  “I have dos caballeros I don’t know well. A couple more I know, but don’t trust. All the others, I have talked with. We’ll watch, listen to the small noises of the night. We’ll discover things in the quiet.” He drank about half the glass, then set it on the desk. He smiled. “I’ll sort it out for you.”