“Never had no sisters. Thanks to you, ladies,” he said. “But I brought my own duds. Well, it’s what I got on. Maybe a new shirt or two wouldn’t hurt. What’s that you’re carrying?” He dipped his head at Mary Pearl.
She said, “Basket. Like Esther said.”
“Naw. I mean that there.”
Mary Pearl looked down at herself. Esther was wearing a full pinafore tied over her dress for doing housework. Mary Pearl had a half apron tied at the waist. She shrugged. “Reckon I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Willie grinned and made a noise low in his throat. “Like the Irish pirate queen. A dagger at the belt.”
Forevermore! The boy read more than dime novels. Mary Pearl was explaining something to him about the hunting knife she keeps in a leather holster at her waist. I sat listening to the explanation, and tried to figure this boy. Savannah wants her girls to grow up genteel, and at the same time, she knows this is a hard land. Esther is too mild to arm herself, and she clings to her mother’s teachings. She leaned forward, listening to Mary Pearl, a troubled expression on her face. Mary Pearl would defend herself or another, and is all around a whole lot more use, to boot. What was going through my mind was the startling thing Willie’d said. A wastrel he might be, but a well-read one at least.
“What year did you do in school, Willie?” I asked.
“Ma’am?”
“What year, that you’d know about an Irish pirate queen?”
He grinned, looking foolish—just exactly the way I remembered my brother Ernest looking when he was about to play a joke on someone. “I been to school some.” He turned back to Mary Pearl and said, “You don’t know how to use that, do you?”
Esther caught Mary Pearl’s eye, and it looked as if she was trying to say something with her worried expression.
Mary Pearl said, “I been known to stick a fence post some.” Then Mary Pearl peered at Willie from the corner of her eye while she said to me, “Mama wants us home to finish helping with the canning. We’re only doing eighteen quarts today, so if you want me to, Aunt Sarah, I’ll run some of Ezra’s schoolbooks over after supper tonight.” She smiled, all dimples and beguiling. Mary Pearl is about as smart as a razor, and she has a little rascalness in her blood, too. She was laughing to herself, I could see, thinking what Willie was about to step into.
I nodded. Let her laugh. A girl can be too smart for her own good. Old Willie was still just grinning, looking from me to Granny and then to the girls. He hadn’t caught her little mean grin, thought she was just being polite. All the while, I could feel myself setting a course for him, this pushy stranger, this trespasser, cocky and grinning, looking like my brother, and as young and full of himself as Ernest senior always was. No telling why he’d really come here, but no denying he was family. That alone settled it: No Prines living under my roof were going to reach accountability without geometry, Latin and poetry, geography and stellar navigation, United States history, and at least a passing knowledge of Greco-Roman art forms. I’d schooled my boys and Savannah’s children up through their college exams, those that were old enough, straight from my bookshelf. Every one of them got in, too. My shelf of books was in there waiting for him. This boy would have to pass muster, just like the rest.
He grinned at me. I smiled right back, too. First thing I planned to do was judge how far he’d gone. A first-class education, that’s what he’s about to get. “Welcome to the family,” I said. “There’s some responsibility for you, and some fine blessings.”
“School, too? Ya’ll’re nice folks,” Willie said.
Mary Pearl giggled and touched Esther’s arm, turning to go.
I said, “Get along home, chickens.” Mary Pearl laughed louder, not even trying to hide her glee. When the sound of the girls’ feet on the porch had faded, I said to Willie, “Now, don’t be ashamed. Tell the truth. How far have you gone in school? We believe in normal education here. Makes a man out of you.”
“I just want to larn to rope an’ ride an’ stuff.”
“Well, we’ll teach you that, and a whole lot more. Right now, we’ve got our hands full with the summer chores and an early roundup because of the drought. Come fall, when the work’s all done, you’ll be doing school lessons to prepare for college. Manners, morals, too. How’s that sound to you?”
Willie stared at me like I’d just hit him with a wet dishrag. He stared at my mama for a long while, then down at his hands. He picked at his fingernails, rubbed his nose. He said, “I couldn’t go to college. That’s for city boys in starched collars. I’m ignorant as they come.”
“Not if you stay here,” I said. “If you are family, and you seem to be, then you have a right to become a gentleman. A real gentleman.”
He rubbed his calloused hands against his pant legs.
Mama nodded, as if she thoroughly agreed with me. “Sarah, do you have any blue thread?” she asked.
With Willie come to stay, Albert and Savannah withdrew their permission for Mary Pearl to live at my house, for the time being. She could come and go as much as she wanted to, chores permitting, but she was not to spend the night until he’d been there at least a week and seemed “settled in.”
Willie followed me like a motherless calf. He asked questions about everything from why a brown hen lays white eggs and a black hen lays brown to how to tell one snake from another. I showed him Caesar, the six-foot-long bull snake that lives in the garden. “It’ll scare you sometimes, seeing him draped through the beans, if you aren’t looking for him,” I said. “Here’s how a rattler’s head looks, and he’s got a tail like this.” I drew in the dirt with a stick. “Don’t ever touch one without seeing the tail, and don’t kill him if he doesn’t have a rattle. Old Caesar there keeps the pocket mice from ruining the garden. One time, we had one get in and eat so much, he couldn’t get back through the fence. After that, Caesar came for lunch one day, and we are pleased to let him stay.”
“Gol-durn,” he said, rubbing his chin. “A snake to watch the garden. You reckon I can touch it?”
“Maybe. Sometimes you can find him feeling sleepy. If he’s feeling his oats, he’ll still bite you. You just won’t die from it. One time, he got caught in a tomato string and I had to hold his head with one hand and clip the string off with these scissors. He wrapped clear around my arm up to the shoulder. Soon as I got the string off him, I turned him loose, and he took off for some shade.”
He slapped his hat against his leg and said, “God Almighty!”
We had a discussion then about why a person shouldn’t plant cucumbers and gourds in the same garden. At everything he saw, Willie was wide-eyed with wonder. He was also clumsy, and just as likely to step on a pepper plant as to pull a weed. When he watered the garden, he washed out roots of things. Willie needed a mother as if he’d never had one. I never saw a boy so eager to learn new things yet so bitterly upset when he was corrected. One aspect of him would make a fine college student, and the other might cause him to give up before he’d half started. I reckoned I’d seen evidence aplenty of that trait in the family line already.
After supper, Gilbert told me that Willie’d been looking at his set of ivory .44’s, and admiring them without bothering to see if they were loaded or not. I told him just to take the bullets out, as he doesn’t carry that set anyway.
Underlying everything was his hunger for guns, seemed like. And his wearisome picking at me to say if I’d ever shot someone. “That was in the old days,” I told him. “Indian Wars. There’s no law against defending yourself, but there’s a lot more to know about handling a gun than how to draw a pistol. Mostly, it’s how not to get yourself in that fix in the first place.” When he asked me if I had ever been shot, that was the last I could take. I gave him an hourlong lecture about what you do not say to a lady under any circumstances, top of which are items about personal health. I reckon he’d learned more than he’d bargained for that afternoon, but he quit pestering me about personal things. That night, Charlie told m
e Willie’d been after him about shooting, too.
Chapter Ten
July 2, 1906
The next morning, I made Willie go with Gilbert and Charlie out to the range. While they were down by Baker’s place, they found a hank of good rope, some wire twists, and pliers where somebody had dropped them. Gilbert and Willie spent the better part of three hours tracking down the owner of the tools.
Willie came to me after that, thirsty and hot. “Why’n tarnation,” he said, “did I have to waste the whole morning doing that? Gilbert told me he’d learn me to shoot a rifle this morning, and the whole durn-burned time we chased around, taking stuff to people. Then he tells me he’s got work to do, and to go home.” He took off his fancy boots and banged them on the floor, dumping half a cup of sand from each one.
First thing I wanted to do, naturally, was box his ears straight to Texas. But I took hold of myself, set down right by him, and said, “Willie, a man is known by two things, the people he rides with and the value of his word. This family has a reputation for being straight-up. That’s who you’re riding with. A man who is honest about a piece of wire will be honest about a horse, about his money, and about his life. Someone who’d steal something as silly as a wire might just steal a whole lot more.”
“That’s about the stupidest thing I heard, ever.”
“You ride with us, you do like us.”
I saw him bristling up again. “Tarnation.”
I smiled, and nodded. “Sometimes it’s a lot more trouble to do the right thing.”
He grinned. Then he said, “Aint Sair, this being a rancher is pure work.”
“Yes, it is. Now,” I said, “another part of living by your word is taking up what you put down, not leaving something of yours that interferes with someone else.” I pointed to the two piles of sand on the kitchen floor.
“How’s that interfering with anybody?”
“I spent half an hour cleaning this floor.”
He jerked his head. “It weren’t dirty to begin with. You wasted your time.”
“That’s because I don’t let long-legged jaspers dump their boots here. Take that little broom and brush that outside.” He did as he was told, screwing his lips around as if he’d been a green horse with a new bit in his mouth. But he did it. While he swept, I said, “You know, your aunt Savannah says sand and sin are one and the same. Tolerate a little, and soon it’ll be a lot.”
He held the broom in his hands, peering at it as if it were strange. “What? Does it grow? Sand?”
“It does in the Territories,” I said, laughing, “like weeds. Here’s some lemonade for you. Did Charlie tell you where he was going this afternoon?”
“Down to that big house. I reckon that old Mex is one mean son of a gun.”
“Who’s that?”
“Old man Maldaraedo.”
“Don’t know how you figure that. The Maldonados have been our friends for two decades.”
“I seen him take a horse halter to a fellow and slap him out of a saddle.”
I said, “Well, what did the man do before that?”
“He was just trying to get the stubborn thing to move. Kicked him with some of them Mexican spurs. I like those kind with all the jingle. Big old stars with about a hundred spikes.”
“I better not see any Mexican spurs on this place, or I’ll chase off the fellow wearing ’em, too. Nothing but a little spit would wear something like that.”
My mama was snoozing in the rocker on the porch. When I said that, she suddenly came awake and hollered, “Sarah Agnes, did I just hear you cuss?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “No more than usual, anyhow.” Willie laughed.
Granny said, “I’m going yonder to Savannah’s house, where the air is cleaner,” and she took off like the wind.
I started up the road, caught up to her, and took Granny’s arm. “Willie! I’m going with Granny to Aunt Savannah’s,” I called. “When you get that kindling split and stacked, you can just take it easy.”
I talked about Willie on the way with my mama. Long as I left out the part of him being Ernest’s son, instead of Ernest himself, she seemed to have a pretty good idea of how he acted. Willie was a kind of boy I’d never known before. The day had gone well, but sometimes when I tried to talk straight to him, he’d get his back up or get a wounded look on his face. When I’d go gentle with him, he’d sometimes get ornery or say something rude. I didn’t mention that to her. Just seemed like something I couldn’t prove nor ask about. But I kept hearing in my memory him saying how his mother had run off and left him. Even a mother like Felicity was still a mother, I suppose.
Granny stayed in the kitchen, where the girls washed clothes in five big tubs. I went outside to where Savannah was hanging things on the line. Savannah and I speculated about Willie, whether he was the type to grow up to become an outlaw or some kind of hellfire–Holy Ghost preacher. I laughed and said, “Maybe both.”
Poor Savannah has been ailing a little with this baby she’s expecting. Her feet keep swelling up on her. She says she has trouble sleeping, and some back pain that doesn’t seem warranted from a strain. That makes me worry for her, since that was exactly how I felt when I had that boy baby who never drew a breath.
They’d hired Flores’s wife, Conciliada, to help them when the work was overwhelming. Other times, Conciliada went to watch out for Granny and cook her some meals now and then. She was out in the yard, too, and came from behind a white sheet when she heard us talking. “Señora Elliot!” she called. “I hear we are to be cousins. I am so happy.”
Savannah looked toward me over her shoulder. Clothespins stuck from her mouth as she rearranged a shirttail on the line. I looked at Savannah, then to Conciliada. I said, “Cousins? How will that be?”
Conciliada said, “Doña Celia Maldonado was my cousin. May she rest in peace. If you marry her husband, won’t we be relatives?”
The clothespins fell from Savannah’s lips. She stared at me.
I said, “I don’t have any plans to marry Rudolfo Maldonado.” I felt myself flush dark red, and sweat broke out on my face. Maybe more than one person had seen that foolish kiss.
Savannah said, “Did he propose to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I told him no.” Conciliada looked a little sad. I said, “I’m not ready to get married again. He’s a nice fellow and all.” Even as I said it, I felt doubts about him being so nice. He’d always been a friend, but that business of the man he’d killed over tearing up my windmill still bothered me. It wasn’t that justice in the territories hadn’t come in the form of a ten-cent slug of lead before. I just couldn’t put my finger on what I didn’t like. The more earnest he seemed about wanting to marry me, the more my heart seemed to be pulling me away from Rudolfo.
Well, I’d no sooner gotten the last pin screwed down over a dishrag when an owl, mottled white and brown and big as a house cat, sailed past us just a few feet overhead. In these parts, it’s more common to see hawks of a dozen varieties in the sky than not. What you hardly ever see in the daylight is a barn owl. Its wings cut through the air in complete silence, ghostly, as if it were just imaginary.
Conciliada’s eyes grew round and fear clutched her. She made the sign of the cross three times in a row. Then she said, “No mas trabajo. ¡Acabado!” And she turned and ran from the yard, saying something fast and low. She disappeared down the road toward Granny’s place. Farther up is where she and Flores have a little house.
I turned to Savannah. My sister-in-law held absolutely no toleration for superstitions that touched on heathenness. I didn’t say anything about the owl and how I’d heard from Shorty that the old-time Mexicans believed it only flew in the daytime to carry a message of death. Good thing we were all Methodists. I said, “I don’t know what got into her, but I’m not marrying Rudolfo.”
July 8, 1906
Each and every Sunday since we moved here, except for one when she was giving birth, Savannah has put on a black starched dress and a whit
e bonnet, and she teaches anyone who will listen a Sunday school lesson. Folks come for miles. It is a nice time. Once in awhile, folks stay for supper, which is potluck, but mostly it is just us, and still a fine way to spend an afternoon.
Sundays in their house begin and end with regular feeding and watering chores, but no gardening or mending. Once Sunday School is completed with long, quiet prayers, the Sabbath is observed by doing needlepoint and quiet reading, and no laughing out loud.
I asked Savannah once, as she insisted the Lord’s Day was for rest, how did she figure to rest, what with fixing meals for ten people three times a day—more if my bunch came—on top of teaching Sunday School to all the children in the county. But she said there wasn’t any way to get around it that she could see. Even if all the food was served cold, someone still had to put it on a plate, then wash up afterward.
Savannah said that the rest must be of a different kind. Animals still had to eat. Cows must be milked. She said she depended on the Lord for inner peace and didn’t worry about the other kind. Reckon we work so hard that when I look for peace behind closed eyes, I tend to fall asleep. I knew what she meant, though. I always found mine on the hill under the jacaranda tree.
We finished our meal today and pushed back our chairs, talking about heading for their wide front porch, lazy as lizards in the afternoon heat. Flores’s wife, Conciliada was there, helping cook and clean, and Rachel and Rebeccah had already washed most of the dishes. Esther and Mary Pearl were drying them. The twins went to get their books from the parlor. Savannah and I linked arms and went to the porch. Albert smiled at us and patted the chair next to him for his wife. Joshua, who was sitting on a long wooden bench under the shade of a bougainvillea, moaned, putting his head in his hands. He called out, “Conciliada? Did you put something new in the tamales?”
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