Sarah's Quilt

by Nancy E. Turner

  Well, I found myself asking him to stay to supper, and to spend at least one more night. I said he could bunk down on the sleeping porch with Chess and the boys, while Mary Pearl and I took the other side of the privacy sheet. We spent the evening recounting what had happened in town, beginning with the story of Esther’s eloping. Through all, Udell nodded and listened without saying much. Only when Zack and Ezra started telling about the fun they’d had showing their cousin Vallary through town did Udell liven up and ask the children questions.

  Then Udell said Rudolfo had indeed turned off some of my herd to him. Not fifty, as I’d promised, but eleven. A hard start, but better than none. He said he would return them to me, of course. Truth was, I didn’t see how I’d make it without them, but he had less to go on than I did, and I couldn’t reckon with taking away something I’d promised to a man who had so little else.

  When we finally bedded down, I listened in the darkness for a spell to the sounds of sleeping all around me. The little fellows’ childish breathing was quiet and deep. Chess rattled and snuffled, as always. The fourth man, Udell, had added a new rhythm to the place. I could hear his breathing just as clearly as if he were beside me. I smiled. Lands! What a thought. A chill ran down my arms and legs, and I straightened the single layer of sheeting over myself.

  After a long time, Mary Pearl whispered, “Aunt Sarah?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is Mama going to be all right?”

  “I believe so. I think it’s better she’s near the hospital, in case she gets sick.” I rolled to my side, facing her. “Try not to worry. She’d be telling you to say your prayers for Esther.”

  “I reckon Esther never thought she’d create such a stir.”

  “She thought about this awhile, didn’t she?”

  After another spell, she said, “I don’t want folks mad at Esther. I didn’t think she’d really do it. It seemed so stupid to up and leave with a fellow she hardly knew. He said he’d sweep her away like a knight rescuing a damsel, speeding away on his fiery steed or some such. There were lots more letters than the ones Mama knew of. And Esther wrote to him, too. Promising she’d be a good wife, things like that. I knew all of it.”

  “Glory,” I said, and let my head sink into the thin pillow. “And why didn’t you tell someone before now?”

  I heard her sigh loudly. “I thought it was hog wallow. But Esther wanted a fairy prince to take her to his castle. She was scared to death to go to college in town. Last night, I was going in to tell Mama. I thought it would soothe her to know Esther had gotten it in her head that this fellow was going to be her true love. Then Mama was so upset, I just couldn’t tell her. I was afraid she’d lose the baby. Or die.”

  “That’s why you left? Even after I called you?” Mary Pearl hadn’t heard the list that left off her name, merely a slip caused by her mother’s worry? Thank heavens I hadn’t gone after her to apologize! What pain that would have caused both the girl and her mother, to have aired all that had gone on in that moment. How blessed was the silence that had saved them both from needless suffering.

  “I just couldn’t tell her.”

  I reached across the dark place between our cots and patted Mary Pearl’s arm. “It’s probably the best decision for the time,” I said. “When April ran off, I worried night and day. Cried a river over her. If I’d known she was happy and healthy and—Even so, it’s better to let your mother know the truth. Do you still have all those letters?”

  “I should have told Esther he really wrote to me. That would have hurt her feelings, but she wouldn’t have run off with him.”

  I said, “She must have been more headstrong than anyone knew. Chances are, she wouldn’t have believed you.”

  “I could have tried,” Mary Pearl said. Her voice sounded pinched.

  “We’ll write your mama a letter. We’ll start soon as we get the boys out doing chores in the morning.”

  “I’d give her my new bristle hairbrush and looking-glass set if she’d just come home.”

  “I know,” I said.

  The next morning, I read those letters, feeling guilty at first, then just angrily looking for something that would lead us to Esther. I’ll say one thing. That boy could have turned the head of any girl in the county with the poetry and love telling in them. Time and again, he wrote, “To the image of my heart’s desire. I have built for you a bower lined with wild roses.” It was a hard thing to tell Savannah. It was equally hard to imagine Albert reading about what we’d found. Both Mary Pearl and I signed the paper. She insisted that she alone carry it to the mail station. “Ezra, you ride along, too,” I said.

  Ez puffed up and said, “On Flojo?”

  “Well, you’ll never keep up on Big Boy. Get a move on.” I stingily peeled off a dollar from the money I had left to give them for postage. I made sure that besides the knife she usually carried, Mary Pearl had a pistol at her side and my old rifle in a scabbard. I had told her in the past how to know when she might need to use it. I told her again now for good measure. Her hands trembled a little as she took the thing, and that was good. It isn’t right for a person to be either too ready to use a bullet or too afraid. As she got into the saddle, I shook the toe of her stirrup just a little and said, “If anything happens, I know you’ll know what to do.” I stopped myself from adding “Be careful,” or any of the hundred things I usually sent my boys off with. Mary Pearl nodded, pulled her Stetson hat low over her eyes, and gave Duende both heels. Ezra was fast on their dust.

  Udell stayed most of the morning, and I was glad for the help. He said there was nothing living down at his place but that he would ride down and have a look-see, then check on us in a day or two. It wasn’t until he was long gone that I found he’d left his wife’s silver cross on my mantel. I hadn’t noticed it the day before. Too tired, I reckon. It looked kind of pretty standing there, watching over my little box with the cut-in swan where Jack’s watch and our wedding rings lay, resting.

  Zack and I plum fiddled out the rest of the day, feeding hens and horses, coaxing Nip to eat. We tried to concentrate on some lessons, but neither he nor I had much heart for it. I told him he could just read aloud after supper, then go play some. Late in the afternoon, Mary Pearl and Ezra came home. The rains had caused the greasewood to bloom, and its perfume helped to cover up the lingering dank smell of ashes. Rose looked to have healed up just fine from her snakebite, and she whinnied to me when she saw me. Hunter had grown, and he was friendly when he wasn’t busy frisking in the corral.

  My heart felt softened by sitting in the evening on my own front porch, listening to Zack recite a four-line stanza of a poem. Then he wanted to read a book that Vallary had given to him—a story about a flying machine. So he read and I listened with one ear. In the other, I heard nighthawks trilling and a big owl in the distance. I heard, too, one of the little dove-size owls that make a trilling sound that’s closer to a nighthawk’s than a barn owl’s.

  Coyotes set up a yip in the hills. “Aunt Sarah, are we done?” asked Zack.

  The boy startled me. I said, “Yes. It’ll be dark in half an hour.”

  Chess went to bed at dusk. Mary Pearl took a book to the parlor and sat by a lamp. I told Ezra and Zack that after they washed up and got changed, they could play checkers for a while. I stepped off the porch and looked at the stars. Jack’s star came up with the moon now; and along with a second star, they made a triangle in the sky. The sign of September. This was the time of year I always felt him closer than at any other. The sky turned azure, which faded to turquoise on the western horizon. I took up my snake stick from by the door and ambled up the rise toward the graveyard. Surely, Jack’s grave will have been overgrown with that old cholla. Likely, it would be done blooming now, so I wouldn’t feel as bad knocking off the seed pods as I would the pretty flowers smiling down on Jack’s face. “Jack?” I said softly, “I’m in a real fix here.”

  The moon was bright. The stars closed in, resting, it seemed, on my shoulders. I
felt powerfully alone until I bothered a covey of quail, which resettled twenty feet away. I’d thought to find a mess in the graveyard, but the ground between the graves had been swept. The stones were all lined up, and new soil had been mounded over each grave. Even the cholla had been trimmed back, although not pulled out. As if Udell had thought I meant it to be there—not knowing those things just plant themselves wherever they can be the most nuisance.

  I put my hand on Jack’s headstone. “Udell Hanna’s a nice man,” I said to him, “to do all this.” Listening, I waited for some movement in the brush, some sign of Lazrus jumping out at me. I knelt there in the dirt. A cottontail rabbit meandered through the graves, coming toward me. I held my breath. I looked in my direction, but since I didn’t move, it ambled on its way, unhurried and unafraid. I waited until the little animal had moved far enough away that I wouldn’t startle it, then went home to bed.

  That night, Jack rode a horse I’d never seen before, coming right up to the porch rail. It was a full seventeen hands high as I’m standing. I smiled when I saw him but didn’t call out. Always before, when I called, he’d only wave and ride away. I heard his boots clear as day on the floorboards. “Sarah?” he called. “Sarah? Don’t wake the children.”

  I saw no children around, but I reached toward him. His hand brushed mine. I felt his sleeve. He stood just past my reach then, so very close that I could see that he needed a shave. Little whiskers glimmered in the half-light of the full moon, making his face edged in light. I said, “I’ve been waiting for you. Take me with you.”

  He smiled and then Jack said, “No. I’m leaving for good now. You’re all right.”

  Tears streaked my nightgown as I said, “But I need you now more than ever. Take me, please. I’m so blessed tired. And I’m so alone. Tired of being alone.”

  “I’ve stayed too long. You don’t need me now. Good-bye, Sarah. Good-bye.”

  “Jack?” Then, I felt something cool and warm at the same time wrap around me. Like a quilt in the winter, like a drink of deep well water in the summer, a breeze softer than the breath of a newborn baby passed over my skin and lingered in my hair, and then it was gone. “Jack?” I called.

  “Sarah?” called Chess. “What in tarnation are you doing out there in the middle of the night?”

  I was behind the house, off the sleeping porch, under the full moon. “Having a dream, is all,” I said. I crept back into bed.

  It was hot. I laid uncovered except for my nightgown. The threadbare gown, faded to gray, though once upon a time it had been white, glowed in reflected moonlight even there under the porch roof. Setting my hand lightly against the sheet, I remembered Jack’s sleeve under my fingertips. Instead of longing and sorrow, however, what I felt was peace. Peace, from either deep inside my soul or from the far reaches of heaven. In a single strange breath, Jack’s touch and his saying good-bye seemed to be the things I wanted most in the world to hear. I asked myself how that could be, since of course I wanted him to stay, needed him by my side. I had more to wrangle with now than ever before in my life. But he’d said good-bye, and that was enough. I touched my hair, remembering the lifting air that had gone through it. “Good-bye, Jack,” I whispered to the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  September 6, 1906

  I slept well past sunup and woke to the smell of bacon and coffee. Mary Pearl had risen early. She said, “You must have been purely tuckered. It feels strange not having chores to do. I’ll ride to our place and check on the chickens. See if Conciliada is feeding them well enough.”

  “First,” I said, “run by the barn and get Shorty to go with you.”

  “Oh, Aunt Sarah. I went all the way to the station just yesterday.”

  “With Ezra. It’s either that or don’t go at all. And don’t be rolling those eyes at me.”

  “Yes’m. My back was turned. How did you know?”

  “Same way I know which way a calf is going to bolt.”

  When Mary Pearl had gotten on down the road, I sent Zack and Ezra to pull weeds and rake more cactus out of the garden. Chess had climbed up on the roof and was fixing more loose shingles he’d seen yesterday. I went to the pump and filled the metal trough that runs by way of a water pipe to the garden. Though the sounds of cattle were gone, the sounds of life at this ranch were coming back. A hummingbird buzzed through the air like some great hornet, paused to stare at me as I worked the pump handle, and then settled on the edge of the trough. It dipped its little bill into the water three or four times and watched me again. A glistening drop of water perched on the tip of its beak. I stopped moving to see what the tiny bird would do, but soon as I quit, it flew away.

  Well, I washed up some beans to start a pot for supper, and about the time I got them over a bed of coals on the outside fire pit where I make soap, along came a rider from the south. The man on the horse was leading another horse and a pack mule. It was Rudolfo, dressed up pretty fine for a hot day like this one. I waved when I recognized him. “Amigo!” I hollered. “¿Adónde?” We had things to talk about. I knew some of them were troublesome; still, Rudolfo was a friend and I was glad to see him.

  As Rudolfo drew closer, I saw he was grinning from ear to ear. He drew up the reins at my yard and dismounted. Before I knew it, Rudolfo had swept me up in his arms and hugged me tightly. He set me down and said, “I have heard you are home at last. All is well with tu hija?”

  I said, “You look like you just ate your weight in liver pills. ¿Que?”

  He grinned broadly, striding toward the horse he’d had in tow. He pulled the filly, leading her toward me. She was a silvery gray, with a smoky mane and tail. I saw right away that the horse stepped lightly, as if her hooves hardly touched the dirt. Nice breadth. Good head and well-set eyes. My papa would have said she was “a pretty” all right. Rudolfo said, “For you, Sarah. A gift from me to you.”

  “A gift?” I said, patting the animal’s side. He’d plum taken my breath away. I didn’t want a gift from Rudolfo, and there was no occasion, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that fine horse. The filly nuzzled at me, as if she were mine from that instant, and chortled in her throat—about the most soothing sound there is.

  “The saddle, too. Brought from Mexico City.”

  Now I did look right into his face. “This is really fine, Rudolfo. But I can’t accept these things. This horse and rig must have cost—well, way yonder too much for a gift. It’s all very kind of you, but I can’t take it.”

  “You must. You must. Please, amiga. Accept this from me. I’ve had good luck at the sale. Good rain here. Already there are letters mailed to everyone who can vote. Signs posted. Business attended to. All of that may be boring to you, but six weeks from now, I will be governor of the territory. While you were gone, I have ridden to Flagstaff and Holbrook, Prescott and Miami. All the miners from Globe are voting for me. I have a contingent in Douglas and even Agua Prieta. It’s all good, you see?”

  Contingent. That word made me remember the rest of what was stewing on my back burners. I had a few things I wanted to talk about with Mr. Rudolfo Maldonado. First of which was why my cattle sale amounted to four hundred and some change and his was nearer to three thousand. I said, “Come on in the house, Rudolfo.” As I stepped up on the porch, I felt him take my arm from behind and tug.

  Rudolfo went down on his knee on the porch floor, clinging to my hand. “Sarah, make me happy. Make this a great day for us. I present you with this contrato matrimonial.” He pulled a box from his jacket pocket. Opening it, he said, “There will be more like it. As many as you wish.”

  What was in that little box took my breath away: a length of gold chain, all set with emeralds and diamonds, some as big as my little fingernail. I said, “I—we have some business to discuss. I cannot accept these things, Rudolfo.”

  He waited, watching my face. “See there on the mule? Fabrics from the Orient. Sedas. Perfumes and laces from Europe. All for you. More awaiting my bride, in your rooms at my hacienda.”


  “Oh, Rudolfo. Get up. I can’t talk to you there.”

  He obeyed, pushing the necklace toward me. Then I remembered the dream. Jack on the strange horse, telling me to go on, that he was letting me go. The filly whinnied sweetly. The necklace gleamed in the sunlight, blinding me. Jack had said I didn’t need him anymore. And I hadn’t felt alone, or as needful. I sat in my rocker.

  Rudolfo pulled another chair toward mine and sat, too, waiting. “Sarah,” he began again, this time in a different, more serious tone of voice. “Are you my friend?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Give me a thousand dollars, then.”

  I stiffened.

  Rudolfo said, “Give me a hundred dollars, Sarah.”

  By the end of December, I’ll need to pay nearly a hundred dollars in taxes up in Tucson if I’m going to keep the house in town. Another $110 to the county on all the acres I own here. With luck, I might stretch the rest until March. With a trainload of luck. We could live on deer and corn bread, the way we did when we first came here. I knew Rudolfo was testing me, though. Wanting something I couldn’t figure. He didn’t need money. Still, I said, “All right. If you need it, Rudolfo, I’ll spare it. I’ll fix up some beans and tortillas. Are you hungry?”

  “Give me ten centavos, Sarah.”

  “What are you driving at?” I asked.

  “That your nephew has destroyed you. You have almost nothing left. No way to live. Nothing to sell next year and nothing to live on until then. Marry me. As mi esposa, you will never need to think about money for the rest of your life. You will have servants and plenty, always. Am I so horrible that you cannot bear the thought of me?”

  I’ve known Rudolfo more than twenty years. “No, not so horrible.”

  “And will you think of it?”

  My heart was pounding. I looked into the face of my friend. “I will think of it,” I said. “Consider, and think of it some.”

  His face lit up. “Take this, then. And when you start to doubt my intentions, you wear this, and know that I am very serious. We can be married after the election. Or—or before, if you wish.”