Sarah's Quilt

by Nancy E. Turner

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You were slinging the snake’s guts ever’where.”

  “I saw you. Just like a girl. Yurp, urp, slurp!”

  “I did not!”

  “Girlie-girlie!”

  “Boys!” I shouted through the open window. “Everyone in town can hear you. Why don’t you go play some baseball or something?”

  “Aunt Sarah, does a snake have three livers?”

  I couldn’t tell the three apart by their voices. “No,” I said. “That isn’t natural.”

  “Told you! That warn’t no liver,” another young voice said.

  Zack’s head popped up in the window. “Aunt Sarah, Val says there’s a swimming pool in town.”

  “Well,” I said, “they won’t take you as filthy as you are. You’d have to take a bath first, and it costs money to get in. Go down to the river and play in the water there. When you get home, we’ll rinse the river mud off with a bucket.”

  They weren’t gone half an hour before they came back. Apparently, some girls in the road had made fun of the way they looked and called them names, and the boys needed something to declare their scorn with. Naturally, the first things handy were road biscuits. They chased the girls and then came back to the house hot and tired, smelling awful. I pulled a metal tub from the barn and set it in the open doors there. Then I made a cover on a third side with a horse blanket hung on the clothesline. I told them to take off their overalls and play to their heart’s content. That ought to keep them busy for at least an hour.

  Chapter Twenty

  August 25, 1906

  On Saturday, it hadn’t got warm yet when clouds started to boil up from the south. It had let up raining for some days but looked about to start again. As the morning went on, the sky got darker and the air smelled of wet creosote bush and clay. Rain in the distance dimmed the Rincons from view, and pretty soon the Catalina Mountains, too. I opened up the house, letting in the fresh air.

  There was a tapping at the front door, and I was plenty surprised when April smiled prettily as I opened the door. She had a bundle in her hands. “Mother,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re up. I know it’s early.”

  “Well, come on in,” I said. “You know you don’t have to knock. I’m fixing to work on this quilt of Granny’s. Have you had some coffee yet?”

  She looked about the front parlor. “I remember,” she said, “when this used to be—I wish you’d put furniture back in this place. It feels abandoned.”

  “It’s temporary,” I said. Although I couldn’t say myself right then if the temporariness applied to the abandonment or to my staying there. “Come on in.”

  April followed me to the kitchen. She chattered as she began opening her bundle, fussing with the strings that bound it. “I’m planning a tea party, to introduce the girls to some of my friends. Some important people in town. I was wondering if you’d like to have my dressmaker sew you a new dress. I’ve brought a pattern for you to look at. Where are Aunt Savannah and Uncle Albert? Upstairs?”

  “Aunt Savannah is having a little baby sickness this morning. Albert went to buy horseshoes.”

  April’s face went pale. “Baby sickness?” Her hand flew to her mouth, the way mine sometimes did when I was thinking hard. “I wanted to have a tea—I’m sure no one would—It wouldn’t be fair to—I couldn’t ask Aunt Savannah to—oh mercy.”

  I felt my neck grow stiff. “If you’re wondering how to invite her out the door—”

  “Oh no, Mother. I would never do that.” For a few seconds, she stared at the tabletop. Then April turned to me with that beguiling, pretty smile I’d seen on her face recently and said, “I’d be devastated if she didn’t come.”

  “Snake oil and hen’s teeth. Why don’t you talk to Savannah yourself? Maybe she’d surprise you.” It made me simmer inside, this hoity-toity foolishness of hers. I’d just never had much truck with a person who didn’t say what they meant and come right out with things. And to think a married woman couldn’t sympathize with another’s trouble. April kept up talking, trying to smooth things over. The only thing I could think of as we worked was that my daughter would throw a shindig and “receive” her aunt, all the while wishing that sweet lady had stayed home, and Savannah would smile and attend a gathering of silly women twittering about fashions and recipes, wishing all the while that she’d stayed home. Now I had to be betwixt the two, and not tell either one where her rope landed. April stayed just another minute and then took off for her shopping. I rolled up the pattern she’d brought and folded it back into the brown paper wrapping.

  I was still staring at it when a voice said, “Mama wants some toast. If the fellows aren’t here, I hoped to take a ride.”

  “Anyplace special?” I motioned toward the bread bin.

  “Just getting Duende’s legs under him again.” Mary Pearl laid two cuts of bread on the griddle and slid it into the coals in the oven, watching it as she crouched by the door. “Mama said she wants it dry. Don’t you think she’d like some peach preserve instead?”

  “No. A woman having baby sickness only wants what she wants and nothing more.” Mary Pearl took the toast upstairs, and awhile later I heard the back door open and close. I put my quilt on the table and laid it out flat. Purely homespun, that’s what it looked. Scraps of clothes sewn in little bits. Nothing new but the backing. I reckoned April hadn’t got a quilt in her whole house. At that moment, I felt like Mary Pearl’s other old shoe.

  I heard riders in the yard, horses drawn up, and the sound of hard-soled boots on the porch. Without knocking, someone opened the front door. Gilbert. And Chess right behind him. I made a whooping noise and ran to them, calling out, “Come in this house, you two.” Shiner barked and skittered around when she saw them.

  Gilbert said, “Mama? Didn’t expect you to be here. I thought we’d just knock off some dust and eat something in town, then keep heading home.” They told me how they’d had some trouble, and a two-day dust storm on the flats above Picacho. After that, they’d had rustlers try to cut out a few, but they’d chased them off, and then had to stand guard day and night. They’d sold the combined herd, got a good price for the 110 of ours. When Rudolfo Maldonado finally caught up to them, he brought 150 head. Only ten of them wore our Lazy Bar E.

  “Here it is, Sarah,” Chess said. “Four hundred and thirteen miserable dollars. Most of the cattle were the angle Slash—Maldonado’s. He got two thousand and some for himself. That jasper bother to come by here? Likely halfway home.” He slapped his hat against the floor as he dropped into a chair in the kitchen. I took the stack of bills. Four hundred and thirteen dollars. With no garden, no cattle, we’d be lucky to last to spring, put seed in the garden and hope to live on canned goods.

  Gilbert said, “We’ve been talking to Cujillo and Flores. El Maldonado has cut into everyone’s profit, trying to run too many. We’ve been doing some talking, Grandpa and me. We think there’s only one way to make it fair. Fence.” He opened the icebox and pulled out a jug, then yanked the cork and smelled it. “Milk!” he said. “You saving this for anything?”

  I said, “A man comes around every other day selling fresh milk for the little boys. I’m taking it on credit, and I owe him two dollars. Have it if you like. More’s coming tomorrow.”

  “What little boys? You got any biscuits?”

  Then it was my turn to tell how we came to be here. “You two stay here, won’t you? Stay until Sunday or Monday, and we’ll head south together. April’s going down to visit us a week or two later.”

  Chess said, “Any bed not laid on the ground will do me.”

  “All I can offer you is a pallet on the springs upstairs. I’ll move my things out of there. There are two cots. Gilbert, you take one and sleep down here. Zack, Val, and Ezra can sleep on the floor.”

  Chess said, “I won’t be putting you out of your bed.”

  “Don’t argue with me, Chess. I’ve had all the aggravation I can take lately, and I’m feeling raw and m
ean. I’ll pull a cot into Jack’s and my old room. About time I slept there again.”

  Gilbert finished the milk, then said, “All right if I take a bath? I know it’s the middle of the day. If you’ll pull me some water, Mama, I’ll wash these clothes. Grandpa and I need to scrape a little trail dust off us. Then we’ll go say hello to Aprilcakes.”

  “You mean to tell me you’re volunteering to wash your own clothes?”

  He nodded. “Grampa Chess said you’d likely drop your teeth.”

  “Not likely. But I might want to hire a picture taker for the event. You go peel off. I’ll start the kettle boiling.”

  Gilbert headed up the stairs. Chess sat on a kitchen chair, leaning back against the wall, snoring. I reckoned Gil had learned a thing or two about appreciation while he was on the trail drive. After he washed both their clothes with a scrub board and lye soap, I hung them out on the line for them, since the two had nothing but quilts to wear until they dried. I fixed them some food, and they ate dressed in quilts, now and then giving Shiner some bits of biscuit sopped in chicken gravy. I pushed a pan of gingerbread into the oven and suddenly straightened. “Where’s Aubrey Hanna?” I asked.

  Gilbert said, “He’s staying in town. Got himself a job and a room at the Classical Boarding House up on Main Street. He wants us to tell his pa what he’s up to. Says he’s going to make a good life for him and a certain girl he’s got an eye on. Says he’s finished with schooling and thinks she’d be proud if he could earn a couple of dollars a week doing something useful—besides ranching, that is.”

  “That so?” I said. I looked from Gilbert to Chess. “Well, that’s all right, if he wants to.” I swan. Finished with school? Everyone wants to go to college except the two fellows I have been aiming toward education their whole lives. “There’s nothing wrong with ranching to make a life, either, if that’s what a man wants. Long as there’s rain.” I felt a little shamed I hadn’t missed Aubrey at first. Udell would be completely alone down there, waiting on his son. I hurt for him, thinking how I’d waited on mine.

  Gil and I left Chess resting while we bustled up the road, grown familiar now, toward April’s house. She was tickled as a little bird to see her little brother. They hugged and squeezed each other, and April filled his hands with cookies and lemonade with ice and phosphate in it. Ezra and Zachary hung on him like little monkeys and pleaded with him to throw them a baseball. Val—nothing sissy about him anymore—sported a black-and-blue ring under his eye from a ball he’d caught with his face. The boys went outside in a flurry to show Gill the snakeskin, and the girls and I were left in the house.

  April said, “How is your new dress coming, Mother?”

  “Well, it’s just cloth yet,” I said. “Gil and Grandpa Chess came home, and that took some time. What are you sewing here?”

  “It’s Rachel’s. Hasn’t she got the smallest waist?” Rebeccah said, holding up a narrow strip of cloth. “Mary Pearl, that piece there has a wrinkle you’ve pinned in.”

  Well, we’d just got the rest of the pattern pinned down and marked when someone knocked at the door. Pretty soon, there was tapping at the pocket door, too. When April opened it barely an inch, the girls and I kept quiet. Lizzie whispered. April whispered. Then she pushed the door open with a whoosh, sending it into its pocket. “Charlie,” she called. “Charlie!”

  I rushed toward the sound of April’s excited cries but had to stop short when I saw the man who stood before us. It had been only a couple of weeks since I’d seen him. He was the living image of Jack. A memory of Jack stood before me, mustache and all. Young. Handsome. Home. “Charlie,” I said with a stutter, “let me look at you.”

  April called, “Lizzie, bring him something to eat.” Then she said, “Come here, brother Charles. Sit, sit.”

  After we got gathered around him and I’d hugged him good, I stood back and just looked at him again. “Did you go to the house?” I asked.

  “Grandpa Chess told me how to find you. Filled my hands with gingerbread. My favorite kind. How’d you know I was coming?”

  I said, “I wish I could say I made it specially for you. Chess looked a little peaked. I made it to perk him up.”

  Ezra, Zack, and Val burst into the room, and Charlie stood abruptly at the racket they made. While Zack and Ezra raced toward Charlie, Val stopped in his tracks, his mouth hanging open, as if he were seeing an elephant in the parlor. “Look!” he hollered. “A cowboy! Mother, there’s a real cowboy in the house!”

  Ezra and Zack attacked Charlie and climbed on him, much the same as they had on Gilbert. The difference, however, was that Charlie was taller—tall enough that his sleeves didn’t touch his wrists anymore. And when the boys hung on his arms, Charlie lifted them off the ground, each of them poking and shouting for joy, wanting another turn to ride Charlie’s arm-lifter. Val didn’t want a turn. He just stared. I tapped Val’s shoulder and said, “He’s not a cowboy. That’s your uncle Charlie.”

  Val just said, “Whoa! My uncle’s a cowboy.”

  I’d have to explain it to him later that we didn’t hold with cowboys. Seemed everyone from the other side of the Rio Grande thought any man wearing spurs should now be called a cowboy. That’d be like us calling every man in a bowler hat a grifter.

  Lizzie put a plate of food in Charlie’s hands, blushing hard as she did, as April peeled the boys off him for the fourth time. The skin around his eyes crinkled, his face now darkened to a bronze color from the sun. That mustache! Hair too long. Jack always let his get too long before he’d get it cut. Said he hated a haircut almost as much as having a tooth pulled. I had asked him when he’d had a tooth pulled, and he would just laugh and say, “Guess!” and kiss me. I felt so glad to see Charlie—and deep, aching sad to see Charlie, too, the very image of his papa. “Charlie,” I said, “did you find Willie?”

  He gazed from me to April and then to his cousins. “That skunk is holed up down in Cochise County, near the Chiricahua Mountains. There’s been some other trouble. I had to get here first. I’m going to find him. I won’t come back without him.”

  Charlie ate the sandwiches Lizzie had brought. I waited for him to say something, the way I’d always waited for Jack. He’d talk when he got his mind around the subject.

  Then Mary Pearl said, “You know, he wants our farm. That’s what he came for.”

  Rachel said, “Now, Mary Pearl. Willie may have come to be part of the family.”

  Charlie said, “Maybe at first. Any rate, I aim to settle his affairs once and for all. Mama, I’ve got a job to do. To get Willie.” There was something in his expression I just couldn’t read. He stared at his empty plate for a second, then looked me in the eye. “I’m saying you’re looking at the newest member of the Arizona Rangers. Hired on through a man down to Bisbee. Came to town to get my papers and some ammunition. And to see somebody and ask her something. What’s wrong?”

  Suddenly, it was as if there was no one else in the room but my oldest son and me. I said, “You didn’t have to do that to get Willie.”

  “Yes, I did. Two men with guns facing off, town doesn’t know which one’s right. Gives me jurisdiction in places where they weren’t willing to take my word on it.”

  “But Charlie, what about school?”

  He pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to me. A badge. He said, “I’ve been thinking about this a long time. Not just while I was gone, but way back, when I first went to school. I aim to bring Boots back with as many of our cattle as I can muster.”

  “Are you going alone?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “There’s a price on his head. I want to get him before some bounty hunter puts a slug through him for fifty dollars.” The girls were talking. I felt as if the room were spinning around. Gilbert’s voice added to the commotion. Charlie said, “Before I leave, I aim to ask Miss Esperanza to wait for me until I get back. Then I aim to court her serious. I’ll have a salary. Be able t
o build a house of our own, just like you said I needed. I’ve been thinking about it, and you were right, Mama. I want my own house. And a family.”

  “I’ll ride with you,” Gilbert said.

  “No,” I said again. “You’ve both got school to get to. You’re too young to be doing this.” I could almost hear the rolling of their eyes, rattling as loudly as old Sparky’s glass ones wobbling in their hollow holes. They exchanged glances with their cousins.

  Gilbert said, “Old Charliehorse could use someone watching his back.”

  “It’s all right with me,” Charlie said, “only they aren’t going to pay you.”

  Gilbert grinned. “Mama can tell Mr. Hanna about his wayward son. Shoot, Mama. If you wait around a while, old Aubrey’ll probably pay you a social call.”

  April went to Charlie, patted his hand. “I think it’s a noble thing for you to do.”

  My children have all plum left their senses. Loony as coots, the lot of them. Lost as their granny. Crazed beyond my control. I rubbed my face. There was nothing I could say. Everyone in the room talked, and the sound swirled around me like the clucking of a flock of chickens. I went to the window and pulled back the heavy drapes, stared into the hot afternoon outside. Voices wove a mesh of colors. Charlie spoke and someone said “Esperanza,” and Ezra and Zack fluttered among the older cousins. Girls’ voices said “Esperanza,” and Charlie said yes about something. Whenever I got my fill of men and need an ear to bend, some woman who can see things straight, I need Savannah. I wanted to go home.

  I heard Charlie say, “Well, I better git if I’m going.”

  April said, “I’ll have our cook make you some food to take.”

  “You have a cook?” Charlie said. “I thought that girl was some friend of yours.”

  Mary Pearl said, “They have a cook and a maid to clean house, and they send out their laundry.”

  Charlie laughed, straightening his hat and pinning the badge on his shirt. “A cook and a maid? Only three children? What’re you going to do all day?”