Sarah's Quilt

by Nancy E. Turner

  I walked to his little window. “We’ll pay. We didn’t ask for charity.”

  “It’s not charity, madam. It’s policy. Stage is full at six adults, or seven if they’re children. I couldn’t turn away a paying passenger, but he booked again for tomorrow. One extra little girl on someone’s lap—well, it hardly seems right to make her pay for a ticket. Check your luggage.”

  I felt low-down as the snake I thought I was fooling. Little Blessing probably could have just sat on my lap without my having concocted this frightening tale. “There isn’t any luggage,” I said. “These folks have lost all.” He nodded, as if he’d heard that story a hundred times.

  The trip was miserable in some aspects, and marvelous in others. What kept us going was the idea of heading toward cleanliness, food, and rest. Inside, though, I was ashamed of myself. After a lifetime of trying to teach my children honesty, I repented about sixty times an hour for the whopper I’d told. Reckon I’d have felt worse if I’d used the derringer instead, but not much. I shifted Blessing on my lap, and she clutched my sleeve and put her thumb in her mouth.

  I’ll need a bigger house. Don’t know why these children whom I’ve never met affect me more deeply than Rudolfo’s, even when I’ve known and helped birth most of them. Reckon it’s just the ties that bind.

  It wasn’t long before the children had fallen deep into sleep. Melissa had not stirred. “Harland,” I said, “tell me the rest. The children are asleep.”

  He looked out the window a long time, and I’d about decided he wasn’t going to say a word, when he started to talk. He said, “The first doctor said she was exhausted, that it caused a loss of appetite. She got thinner each day the last month. And she’d been tired and fretful for six months before that. Wakeful at night, consumed by unusual sweats even in a cool room. The second doctor said she was going into the change of life. Said it was ‘female hysteria.’”

  I shook my head and said, “A woman could have broken bones coming through her skin, and they’d call it female hysteria. Surely it’s just the malaise from all this goings-on. She’s just worn-out.”

  He dropped his head to the side. “Ten days ago, another doctor came and examined her. He believes it’s cancer. That’s when I wrote you. He said the shock and excitement of the last few weeks has aggravated her already-weak condition. Told me the only chance was to get her to specialists. Chicago.”

  Compared to the ruins of San Francisco, San Jose seemed like heaven on earth—baths, clean sheets, laundry, plenty of good things to eat. I was ever thankful that I’d listened to Chess when he said to pay for a hotel room and leave things here.

  I helped Melissa bathe, then washed her hair. She was bones and thin skin, and she slept for several hard hours after the bath. After a day’s rest, though, she perked up and sat up in bed, talking to us and the children. I couldn’t tell if she knew she was terribly sick. Doctors never tell the person suffering if it’s something serious. They say it’s better for the sick to keep up believing they will get well. When Harland told her she was going to Chicago to see a specialist, she nodded and passed it off as if he’d told her she was catching a cold. She put on a good brave face for her children, but I could see darkness there behind her eyes, as if she knew. I didn’t dare say a word.

  Melissa spent every waking hour talking to the children and listening to them tell what they’d endured. All the while they talked, they clambered on the bed beside her. She petted the little boys and kissed them, and as they told of their adventures, she said, “Oh my, how brave! You did? All by yourself? There’s my little man. Oh, Blessing, my sweet darling bunny rabbit.”

  Chess and I tried our level best to convince Harland that there was plenty of room for the children at my house in Tucson or at the ranch. We didn’t mention the well running dry, but I expected by the time we got home, the boys would have dug it deeper. Maybe it had rained. Harland insisted on taking them. I took his arm and said, “Do you know what you’re doing? It could be so hard on them.”

  “I’ll take a room, and hire a nursemaid. They’ll be with their mother. That’s the most important thing,” he said.

  “I had every intention of taking them home with me. You, too, Harland.”

  Melissa said, “Sarah, you have saved us. We owe you everything. But the children are my little angels. I—I know what I’m facing. I can’t do it without them.”

  That evening, Chess took the last of our cash, went to the depot, and bought them six tickets to Chicago. Their train would leave in the morning. We sorted some clothes that fit everyone, packed all the food they could carry, along with a few extra things like hair combs and shoe buttons. Some bread was still good and had dried, rather than gotten moldy, so I packed that, too.

  Next morning, we took them to the depot and put them on board, settling Melissa and the children in their seats. When I hugged Harland one last time, the conductor was calling out, “All aboard!” I pressed my sons’ ten-dollar piece into Harland’s palm.

  “I owe you everything,” he said.

  “You’re my brother,” I replied. Then I went down the stairs and stepped off the train. The engine hissed and the whole thing jerked. The sound of the iron wheels squealing against the rails felt as if it pierced my rib cage.

  Is this all I can do? Drag them from that disease-ridden tent, buy some tickets, and put them on a train? All that way we’d come, all those weary footsteps through the mud, searching, and in the back of my mind the whole time, I’d figured on them going home with me. Instead, there we were in front of a depot, waving farewell. I could see the face of my brother through the window. Little Blessing peered out, too, and waved her hand slowly, like a mechanical windup doll. Harland was cleaned up and pressed, his face shaved and his hair combed neatly; he seemed like he’d got a second wind. It would have to hold up the six of them. I just wasn’t sure he could do it without me.

  Chess clasped my hand and said softly, “Leave it be, honey. It’s better this way.” As their faces disappeared in a cloud of steam, Chess took my arm and pulled me back from the edge of the platform. “We’ve done what we come for,” he said.

  I said, “It feels like the job’s half-finished.”

  “It isn’t. You did all you could. Let them go now. It’s cruel to take children away from their mother, even if they have to watch her die. They did that to me, you know. Your brother’s a grown man, and he’s got his feet back under him. We’ve got stock at home dying from thirst, and I’m so tired of the rain here, I can hardly think about the unfairness of the spread of rain on this land. Myself, I could use a drink of something besides water.”

  “Well,” I said, “when we get on that train, you go to the saloon car and have one, with my blessings.”

  “I bought us tickets for home last evening, too. Leaves at noon.”

  I looked at the tickets and nearly hollered, for he’d left me precious little time to pack. What Harland’s children couldn’t wear would fit no one at home, so I put the rest in a crate and told the desk man to send it to the relief society. That left us with just a single carpetbag apiece, filled with our dirty laundry. A couple of minutes before the trip, I opened mine to find my comb, and I nearly fainted from the moldering smell of mud and sweat. It was a good thing Chess had advised me to wear something old and tattered. I took tongs from the fireplace and used them to lift the dress out and put it down the incinerator chute. Except for the comb and a little hand mirror, my bag was empty. Light traveling. I had set my mind to be corralling young ones on this trip, and I felt purely empty-handed—and exhausted.

  I slept on the train straight through Barstow. I reckon I slept the whole way from California to Tucson and barely woke when we got to town. As much as the heat in the territories can dredge the life out of a person, I felt revived being close to home. Chess whistled a tune, and when I asked him why he was so cheerful, he said there was no reason not to be. I have to admit I felt the same way. Sleeping in my own bed under my own roof will be a blessing t
imes two.

  Driving to our place from Tucson, we stopped at Albert and Savannah’s place to tell them the news. We weren’t halfway from the bend in the road when I saw someone walking our way. “What’s Charlie doing on foot?” Chess asked.

  I waved to him. It was Charlie all right, but him a-walking toward us felt wrong. Before too long, we finally come up alongside him and pulled up. He climbed on the back and sat, breathless from running the last little bit. “What’re you doing, son?” I asked as Chess chucked the reins and we started moving again.

  “Saving watering a thirsty horse. Where’s the rest of the folks? I thought Harland and Melissa and the kids were coming back with you,” Charlie said. “Gil and I cleared out of our rooms so they’d have a place to stay. We’re living in the bunkhouse.”

  I turned on the seat. Well, at least he wasn’t turning out selfish or purely foolish after that leaving-school stunt. “That’s generous of you boys. Suppose you can move back in now. What’s happened with the water?”

  “We’ve done everything we could figure. We kept on trying to cut the old well deeper. Tried two sticks of dynamite the other day, and this time it opened a little seep. I searched through my geology books, thought I had figured the best place on the whole range for a well, but it came up dry.”

  “How far down you go?” Chess asked.

  “We dug out about twenty more feet. Seems to be the level of the hardpan. Gil’s still trying.”

  “What’s in the well?” I asked.

  “Enough to drink, but not for the stock. Still no more than a foot a day after that last blast. All that boiling and straining—we couldn’t keep up with it and still do the rest of the chores, so we’re hauling barrels from the lower quarter for the house and the horses.”

  Chess swatted at a fly. I stared straight ahead. I don’t know why I’d expected it had rained here and that my well was full again. Maybe when you see so much sadness and damp weather as we have, you quit thinking any place is dry and hot. You quit thinking you’ve got troubles of your own. Maybe you quit thinking at all. Chess finally said, “S’pose it’s no sense asking if there’s been rain.”

  Charlie said, “Not a cloud. That big saguaro off the side of the smokehouse has dropped two arms. Lucky no one was nearby when they fell.”

  We rolled up to Granny’s house. My mama was on her front porch, a fan in her hand. She was setting in her old rocker, and wearing a faded cotton dress. She was moving so slow a person could have guessed she was not moving at all, just tipping in the wind. If there’d been wind. The air felt hot and dry, as if someone had opened a stove—a heat that seemed to cook your skin, unless you were under a tree, not moving.

  I asked Chess to let me off, and I’d be home after I saw Granny. He drove on to the house with Charlie and our bags. I told her about Savannah’s new baby coming. She was having a good day, and asked questions and remembered where I’d gone and all about April’s family. “You’ve done real good, Sarah,” she said. “Sakes alive, you have a way of getting things done just like a man.” She got up and went into the house.

  I followed her. “Well, Mama, I don’t have a man to do them for me.”

  “Me, either. Your boys are home now, though. Look here at my hexagon quilt.” She pointed to a chair set at her kitchen table, where the length of patchwork had been spread and admired. “It’s nearly six feet in one direction.”

  “Yes, Mama, it is. You’ve got some done while I was gone.”

  “I hired you a driller, and I’ll pay for a wind pump. I sold some land.”

  “Sold some land? Who to? When?”

  “The railroad. They just needed it for a passage right. Take a look. They paid in gold. Here. It’s for you.” She pulled out papers that appeared to be a legal quit claim on her homestead and held out a cloth sack full of gold coins she could hardly lift with her little side-bent fingers. As she proceeded to pour out her booty, she fingered each piece. Her face was like a pirate’s in a storybook—she was purely tickled with herself. Mama started telling the whole story. While I was gone, a man had come to her house and told her she had a parcel he was interested in for the railroad, and she’d signed her X to his paper without knowing at all what it said.

  They could drive tracks clear up to Granny’s doorstep and put her out of the house. The railroad could lay them up to Albert’s or my places, straight through the kitchen, and then offer to buy the land at a tenth of the price. While she talked, I looked over that claim, and it seemed sure enough legal. There was no mistake about the money. It was real. Sixty acres, gone. The name at the top was some attorney’s office in Prescott, and nowhere did it say the land would be used for a railroad right-of-way.

  After I’d read all of it, I folded the deed back into the sheaf it came from. At last, I took a really slow breath and said, “Mama, let’s have some coffee.”

  “It’s too hot for coffee. You’ll strangle.” She reminds me all the time of things I’ve been doing since I first married.

  “How about some water, then?”

  She said, “I’ve got some lemon conserve one of Savannah’s girls made last year. It’d make a lemonade.” She fetched a pitcher, and I got the jar of conserve off the top shelf in her pantry. Then she doused cool water from the olla on the back porch in the pitcher, I stirred in the yellow stuff, and we poured us each a cupful. I was amazed at how quick she stepped and how strong she seemed. Not near as frail as some days. As she was pouring, Mama said, “Now don’t ever put this in a plain cup. It has to go in the plated kind, or you’ll get the tin poison.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know.” I took a deep drink. “This is good. It feels cool all the way down.” I took another long drink, then waited to get hold of my feeling of dread about her land. If there was anything I’d never mess with, it was the railroad. You couldn’t trust those men in their fancy woolsey any more than you could a politician in a two-dollar suit. She’d sold her place, and probably ours, too, on some kind of whim. I tapped the folded paper. “Did you have someone read this to you? This deed gives them the top sixty acres by the road. Mama, why did you do this? You know they’ll put tracks right through my land and yours, even our houses, if they please.”

  “Don’t you worry. He had a nice honest face. I made him read me the important parts. Gilbert told me how you’d gone and wired a thousand dollars to Harland in California. Now you’ve got to round up and sell out if you’re going to make it through. That’s just like you to run throw your last hitch to save someone else. Well, I ain’t farming this land, nor ranching, nor doing a thing but setting here getting old. I’m just holding it for you-all to inherit, but if you cain’t hold on, what good will that be? So I’m throwing this here hitch for you, just like you done for Harland. After all, they cain’t put tracks through your land if you don’t sell to them. I figure if I sell and no one else does, why, those varmints’ll be up a creek without a paddle. You need a well dug.”

  “Mama.”

  “Now don’t go treating me like I’m some addle-brained child. He offered me twelve hundred, but I bargained him up. I hadn’t lived this long without knowing a few things. Just you take this money and get that water in, before you lose everything.”

  “I still have some cash.”

  “Not enough to drill a well and keep the ranch going.”

  “Mama, I’ve heard about doing business with the railroad. They’ll stop at nothing to get what they want. Did you ask Albert about this before you did it?”

  “I don’t need Albert’s go-ahead to tell me what to do.”

  “What did Albert say?”

  “Same as you. Threw a fit.” She pushed the pile of money toward me. “Fifteen hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

  “I’m going to write my lawyer in town and see if we can get your land back. Sue them if we have to.”

  Mama picked up the packet with the deed to a third of her land and held it to her chest with a look on her face of pure determination. “Sarah, you do that, you’ll pay
the lawyers all of it, and still lose your land, and still not have a drop to drink. You think your papa and I come all this way and suffered and died just so you could give up on account you’re too prideful to take money from the railroad? Your boys been digging and hunting, and like to killing themselves trying to water them cattle. Take that and drill a well, or you can’t have it. I’ll spend it on a purty dress and bonnet if you don’t.”

  There was nothing to do, and no way to argue with her. Sixty acres, gone, just like that. Anybody could have told her I’d figure out something to do without losing our land. The very idea of a railroad track cutting through this property just put my insides plum in a knot. A sackful of knots. I’ll have to move in with Mama to protect her from flimflam men. I put my hand on top of Mama’s as she moved the last coins, and held it. I said really softly, “Well, Mama, you’ve got this all reckoned.”

  She started filling the canvas sack with the money. “The water witch is a-coming from Sonoita day after tomorrow. I sent for ’im myself. Mr. Sherrill is to send down to Douglas for a driller when the time is right. You know Savannah is having none of that, said she won’t lay eyes on a sure-enough witch? I told her he’s not that kind of witch, and that my grandmama could find water, too, but she’s afraid it isn’t Christian. This feller’s found water up and down the territory. I sent him ten dollars and told him there’d be forty more when we see clear.” I could see this was not going to get better before it got worse. I stared into the bottom of the cup, where a little lump of the lemon conserve sat. Mama went on: “I made some butter biscuits this morning. My dog Molly’s getting so fat, she cain’t hardly get ahead of her own tracks. We might as well have a few.” She set a pan of biscuits on the table and pulled a jug of molasses down. “You’re looking a mite peaked after that traveling. Did you know Albert’s girl Rachel has got a job with the Mexican government teaching school down to Nogales? Starts in a few weeks. The other like-alike Rebeccah, she’s going to teach in town. Those girls aren’t coming home. Girls ought to come on home. Say, what’s the meaning of you coming here before getting on home?”