Bittersweet (24 page)

Never again would she see Imogene—not in the heaven that Sam’s Bible set forth.

Suddenly the Colt was heavy; it required too much effort to hold her wrists rigid. Sarah set the gun down on the bed, stroking the metal with her fingertip. “God,” she whispered, then slid to the floor and steepled her hands like a child. “God,” she began again, “what do you want of me?” In the silence she could hear the pendulum clock in the front room. “Damn you, answer me!” she cried, and with an angry gesture, swept the .45 off the coverlet. The gun slammed into the wall and the hammer fell. The sound of the gunshot rattled the window glass and the bullet shattered a pitcher on Imogene’s dressing table.

The silence in the room seemed palpable until a loud drip-drip ended it; water from the ruined pitcher had made its way to the table edge.

Sarah pulled herself to her feet and stole from the room. She
stopped long enough to gather her coat and bonnet before leaving the house.

The day had warmed and she was flushed with walking by the time she reached the Indian cemetery. She stopped at Wolf’s grave. Loosing her bonnet strings, she pushed it back and let the air dry her temples. “Wolf, my dear baby, I love you very much,” Sarah said, and looked from the dark earth of the grave to the sky. “But I love Imogene too. Maybe more than’s good. Maybe more than God.”

She stood for a moment, searching the sky, before she looked back to the pathetic mound of earth. “Is that why you take my children, Lord?” she breathed. Her throat filled with tears and choked off the words. Hardening her mouth, she scrubbed her eyes with the tail of her coat. “If there is a God,” she said defiantly. “Maybe there’s only love.” She looked into the depths of blue beyond the Sierra and grew afraid and lonely.

“Dear God,” she prayed, “I know you mustn’t tempt the Lord thy God and this isn’t that, it’s just business. If you could show me it wasn’t true that Nate killed Wolf—in a way—I’d put Imogene behind me, marry again. Marry Nate Weldrick.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the words to heaven. When she opened them she was alone and small under the ring of mountains, the little grave at her feet. “If not, Lord, I’m going to cast my lot with love.” The defiance returned and she added, “Half a year. I’ll listen half a year.”

For minutes she stood still, expecting to be struck to the ground, but there was nothing.

HAVING SWEPT UP THE SHARDS OF BROKEN PITCHER, PATCHED THE
bullet hole with baking soda, flour and water, and pasted a picture postcard over it, Sarah waited for Imogene to come home from school.

“I want to get a job,” she said as the schoolteacher let herself in. “I have to have something to do. It’s time I pulled my own weight, as Mac says.”

Imogene closed the door and took off her coat. “We can live on what I earn, you know that. We are even saving a little. You needn’t do this for me.”

“I want to feel I’m helping.”

Imogene warmed her hands at the potbellied stove. Enjoying the warmth of the fire and the homey smell of supper from the kitchen, she realized she’d grown to like returning at the end of each day to a home kindled with another woman’s work.

“You help me, Sarah.”

“I suppose,” Sarah said falteringly. “Yes…I suppose I do.”

Guilt shook Imogene from her complacency. Even with the toys cleared away, Wolf’s presence was everywhere, from the scuffed chairs to the smudged nose prints on the window. She turned from the stove. “I’ve gotten spoiled, having you to come home to. What kind of work are you thinking of?”

“Needlework is all I can do,” Sarah replied. “So that’s what I’m thinking of.”

“I’ll ask at school for you. Some of the girls come from well-to-do families.”

In the next week, Sarah gathered up her courage and posted notices advertising needlework for hire in the stores, but got no response.

Her resolve had not weakened, but she was running out of places to post notices when Kate Sills came up with an idea. The youngest girls at Bishop Whitaker’s were too young for the school and needed to be tutored. “What they need,” Kate had said wryly, “is a wet-nurse. The bishop had no business taking them.” There was no money in the budget to fund such a position, but if Sarah would work for a dollar a week and lunches, Kate said she would pay it out of her own pocket.

Imogene brought the news home like a gift.

“I couldn’t!” Sarah exclaimed. “What if I can’t do it? Oh, Imogene, what would Kate think of me? Needlework I can do here, with nobody watching me. Teaching? I don’t think so. You’re the teacher, Imogene, I couldn’t teach.”

“The oldest isn’t even six,” Imogene reassured her. “All you need do is care for them, play with them, take the time with them that the other teachers can’t spare. It wouldn’t be teaching, really.”

Sarah squared her shoulders. “I’ll do it,” she declared, as if she were promising to rebuild the Colossus at Rhodes.

Seven girls at Bishop Whitaker’s were under the age of six, girls that the bishop, in his softheartedness, had taken because their older sisters were enrolled and the mothers had pleaded. Sarah was to take them from eight-thirty in the morning until noon, the hours when the other teachers were the busiest. One of the recitation rooms was set aside for her use. “When the weather is better, you can take the girls out of doors if you like,” Kate had offered. Secretly, Sarah felt she’d be let go before winter was out, but she put on a brave face.

The first morning, Imogene walked her to the recitation room and introduced her to the children assembled there. The little girls greeted Imogene with boisterous affection. Seven sober faces bobbed and seven stiff curtsies were dropped for Sarah. “See you at lunch,” Imogene whispered as she left. “They are going to love you.”

As the door swung shut behind Imogene, the eldest, Maybelle,
a pigtailed child of five and a half, stepped forward. “Why do I have to be with the little kids?” she demanded. Two of the very little girls started to snuffle because their feelings were hurt.

Sarah’s heart sank.

Nobody would talk except to say something spiteful. Finally, Sarah separated the two older girls and gave them each a stack of picture books. The youngest she let play together, happy to have them occupied and moderately quiet.

By ten o’clock the smaller children were bored with one another and had started to squabble. Before the morning was out, Sarah had all seven isolated, each scowling over her own pile of pictures.

Imogene rescued her in time for lunch. The moment she opened the recitation room door, seven voices piped, “Miss Grelznik!” and there was a mad rush of children to hide in her skirts. Sarah was not far behind.

“It was awful!” Sarah wailed over the soup. “They hated me. I’ll never be a teacher until they invent rooms with more corners. I ran out of places to send them, they were so bad.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Imogene reminded her. “Do you want to stop? No one will think less of you for it.”

“No.” Sarah took a spoonful of soup. “I want you to help me make up a lesson plan.”

“Sarah, they are just babies—”

“I don’t care. Maybe they don’t need a lesson plan, but I do.”

“We’ll do it first thing after supper,” Imogene promised.

That night it was Imogene who cleared up the dinner things while Sarah pored over sheets of foolscap. Near midnight, Imogene came to stand behind Sarah’s chair, resting her hands lightly on the younger woman’s shoulders. Sarah leaned her head against the schoolteacher and closed her eyes. “I’m almost finished,” she sighed.

Imogene kissed the golden crown of hair. “Take care of yourself, Sarah. Your love is more than a net under me. It is the tower from which I shout down the world.”

Next morning, armed with a basket of paints, paper, glue, and bits of cloth, Sarah again took possession of the recitation room. When Imogene peeked in before the noon break, all the children were happily absorbed in making Christmas ornaments. She mouthed a silent “Congratulations” to Sarah and closed the door noiselessly.

“They are warming to me,” Sarah reported as she and Imogene ate in the school lunchroom. “The eight of us had a good time this morning. I taught them something, too. While we worked, I told them the story of Christmas and how it is celebrated in Holland and Italy. You told those stories to me, years ago. Remember?” There was a scuffle and commotion in the hall. Several of the teachers, including Imogene, left the table. Half a minute later, Imogene poked her head back into the lunchroom.

“Maybelle has skinned her knee on the ice. She says no one is to touch it but Mrs. Ebbitt.”

Sarah stayed at Bishop Whitaker’s School through the winter, and by spring she was teaching fine needlework to the older girls and assisting in the classroom during the afternoons. Sarah never spoke of Wolf, though she would sometimes talk to him when she knew she was alone, and she never forgot her pact with God.

HEADS BOWED OVER THEIR BOOKS, BRAIDS AND CURLS TUMBLING
over their cheeks, the bishop’s girls scratched answers on their final examination papers. Occasionally they glanced up at the test questions Imogene had written on the board. Sunlight streamed through the windows, warm on Imogene’s face and hands. Careful not to disturb her scholars, she slid the sash up and leaned out. Eva Quaiffe, the music teacher, had laughed, telling Imogene that spring was short-lived in the eastern Sierra. “It came on Tuesday last year,” she’d remarked. But now the bitterbrush was in bloom on the mountainside, and the sweet scent of the yellow flowers drifted down, mingling with the sharpness of sage. Imogene breathed deeply and closed her eyes.

“Soon all your girls will be gone,” said a voice at her elbow.

“They are your girls too, Kate. What will you do with the summer?”

The principal settled her elbows on the sill by Imogene’s and looked to the mountains east of town. “I’ll be here most of it. The bishop has finally gotten the money to have the drive landscaped, and I want to be here when it’s done. Catch up on my back work. But I’m going back East for a month, I hope, to see my sister in St. Louis.”

A chair scraped, drawing their attention back inside. The chair
scraper was a ten-year-old girl, small for her age, with an angular face and frizzy brown curls that pushed defiantly from under her hair ribbons. Her hand bobbed above her head and she periodically bounced herself several inches out of her chair, the increased height of her hand designed to bring the teacher more promptly.

From a small desk near the rear of the room, Sarah rose and crossed noiselessly to the little girl’s desk. Imogene and Kate watched the two in whispered conference for a moment before turning back to their former positions. Imogene smiled as she leaned near Kate. “This ought to be good for discipline, the principal and one of the teachers hanging out of the window after we’ve scolded the girls about it half a hundred times.”

“That’s why it is better to be a woman than a girl,” Kate returned. “Your new assistant seems to be getting on nicely.”

“Sarah Mary is good with little children.”

Kate glanced back at the young woman. “She will be a good teacher if she ever overcomes her shyness. The older girls adore her. How is she? It’s been five months since the little boy died, hasn’t it?”

“She seems better, but she’s so quiet, even at home. She doesn’t talk about it much.”

“You’re looking after her, Imogene. She’ll come back to herself.”

“Unless someone else starts working on her. Sometimes she talks of marrying Mr. Weldrick. He could press her into it, in the state she’s in now. She sometimes thinks Wolf’s death was God’s way of telling her she is living wrong.” Imogene smiled without humor.

“That’s nonsense. God isn’t a matchmaker.”

“Tell that to Sarah. She talks of marrying Nate one minute, and the next of how he put Wolf out in the rain. I don’t know how she will resolve the two things if Mr. Weldrick ever comes back.” Imogene looked across the hills, blue with sage, toward the cemetery north of town. Flowers were planted on the little mound, and it was free of weeds; Imogene tended the sad little garden religiously. “It was good of you and the bishop to agree to take her on as my assistant—I don’t like her to be alone.”

Kate laid her hand on Imogene’s for a moment. “She’s turned out to be a great help to us.”

Imogene looked at the watch pinned on her bodice. “All right, girls,” she said, turning back to her students, “time is up. Put down your pens.”

The Saturday after school let out, the Reno Wheelmen sponsored a dance, a fund-raiser, in the meadow south of town. Some of the older girls were allowed to stay at Bishop Whitaker’s an extra day to attend. The bishop promised to drive them to and from the affair himself with his wife, Miss Sills, Mrs. Ebbitt, and Miss Grelznik along to chaperone.

Saturday was beautiful. It was early summer, the grasses in the meadow not yet baked desert-brown and the wildflowers at their most abundant.

Fred Bone’s grocery wagon was full of picnickers. He and Lutie shared the front seat, Fred looking dapper in a new haircut, his mustache freshly dyed, and Lutie resplendent in yards of pale yellow gingham. Behind, in the open bed, Fred had arranged bales of hay in a square and covered them with canvas to form makeshift seats. Evelynne Bone sat on one bale, straight and proper and over-coiffed, bestowing flirtatious glances on her seat partner, Judge Curler. The judge, in his bowler and spectacles, a whiskey blush clowning the end of his nose, was as dignified as she. He was holding forth on the hair-raising adventures of a Wells Fargo employee. The latest hullabaloo, he said, had involved one of the remote stations: the wife of the stationmaster at Round Hole had gone out of her mind contemplating another summer in the Smoke Creek Desert. Dizable & Denning, the firm that leased the buildings at the stage stop, were searching desperately for a replacement.

Sarah and Imogene sat together on another bale. The two were turned around almost backwards in an attempt to ignore the scrutiny of the judge’s assistant, Harland Maydley. Several picnic baskets, covered with cloths to discourage the flies, bumped along between the bales. One of the Wheelmen, his starched collar gleaming white, his tie nattily in place, whizzed by them as they approached the meadow. At the sight of a man on a bicycle, the horses shied and showed the whites of their eyes.

Lutie clucked. “They just work their feet to death to give their fannies a ride!” she declared.

“Lutie Bown-yay! What language. And in front of a gentleman, too.” Lutie’s mother-in-law smiled coyly at the judge.

“It’s Bone, Ma,” Fred said mildly. “B-O-N-E. Bone.”

The meadow was already filling with wagons and carriages. Young girls in bright summer dresses dotted the landscape like wildflowers. Their mothers, only slightly less excited, stayed back in the
shade of the carriages or under the canvas roof of the pavilion. Men wearing colorful shirts, unstained by their day-to-day labors, hair dark with grease and combed close to the head, mustaches dyed and waxed, visited in groups, admiring one another’s horses and equipage. The murmur of voices and the creak of wagons was punctuated by the staccato beat of the Wheelmen hammering together the dance floor.

As soon as the wagon rolled to a stop, Imogene excused Sarah and herself to find the bishop’s party. Harland Maydley invited himself along, but Lutie, seeing Sarah’s distress, called him back to help carry the picnic baskets.

In the afternoon, the Wheelmen, smart in their striped jackets and knickers, put on a show. They rode backwards, seated on the handlebars; four men got onto one bicycle, tangled together like affectionate acrobats, and pedaled an eighth of a mile down the wagon road; a line of cyclists coasted down a gentle slope by the creek, their bellies on the seats, their feet pointing out behind; they rode every way a person could contort and still manage to push the pedals and steer. The performance met with such success that they did several of the tricks a second time. Afterwards they gave free rides to the young ladies, filling their arms with chintz and white ruffled cotton as the girls tried to balance on the narrow handlebars.

Cowhands from the nearby ranches grew restless and green-eyed, watching the girls flock around the cyclists, crying prettily for another turn, and they set up a riding course of picnic baskets and tree stumps. Their show of fancy horsemanship brought the dimples and adoring glances back from the Wheelmen, but the cowboys’ opposing offers of free horseback rides were not so well received; most of the girls had grown up around horses. The cowboys were deluged with tots anxious to grow into cowboys themselves, and spent a disgruntled hour or so riding ecstatic children down the meadow and back.

Near sunset the musicians took their places on the completed bandstand and tuned up. The soft lights and the discordant sounds drew the picnickers in from the meadow and the fringe of evergreens that flanked it. By the time the first star of evening had risen in a mother-of-pearl sky, and the breeze had died away to a zephyr, the people were all gathered around the dance floor, their blankets spread on the grass.

Imogene and Sarah were near the steps opposite the musicians’
stand. Sharing their blanket were two of the bishop’s girls, Fanny May Enor and Emma Hazlet. When the call to choose partners came, the two girls feigned great indifference and talked animatedly between themselves, watching the comings and goings of booted feet out of the corners of their eyes. Under the pressure of being chosen or left to sit, Sarah grew as nervous as the schoolgirls and confined her eyes to her folded hands. Boys nudged each other and giggled, but they were the choosers, and those fearing rejection could choose not to take the chance. Girls had only the power to veto, and for the ugly and the shy it was no consolation.

Couples passed, climbing the steps arm in arm, some stopping to plunk small children in a box behind the accordionist for safekeeping before taking to the floor. On the blanket spread by the steps, only Imogene was at her ease with the frilly dresses and bouncing lights. And only Imogene was asked to dance. Mac entrusted his hat to Sarah and led the schoolteacher onto the floor.

Toe-tapping music and swaying lights finally overcame even the most reticent swains, and by moonrise all the girls were dancing. Evelynne Bone had even taken a stately turn around the floor with Judge Curler before one of the wags watching told her he was called “Judge” only because he could drink more than any two men and still look sober. Disappointed in love, Evelynne had retired to spend the rest of the evening pleading a headache.

Nearly everyone danced. There weren’t enough women, so some of the men tied handkerchiefs around their arms to signify that they were “ladies” for a square, and, out of the way, under the lanterns, the children danced their own versions of what they saw. A burly shopkeeper, with his partner literally on his arm, danced a dignified square with his four-year-old daughter.

The moon, three-quarters full, flooded the meadow with silver light, and the dance floor, with its colored lanterns, shone like a fairy ring.

Sarah and Imogene were resting after a square, clapping in time with the music, watching the stars rise over the black bulk of the mountains, when suddenly Sarah stopped and clasped her hands to her breast. Beyond the dancers, pale and otherworldly in the moonlight, Nate Weldrick rode up the dirt track from town. In the cold light, the claybank stallion showed a dull pewter.

“Sarah? What’s the matter?” Imogene asked. Sarah pointed a rigid finger toward the approaching horseman.

Nate rode out of sight behind the pavilion, reemerging into the moonlight a few minutes later on foot. Both women had forgotten the noise and the lights and the dancing.

“Miss Grelznik! You two moonstruck? This is the third asking.”

They looked up into Fred’s friendly face. He had his arm thrust out in a welcoming hook. “I haven’t had a dance yet. Come on, as soon as they get swept, we’ll be setting new squares.”

Distracted, Imogene shook her head. “I’m tired. Thank you, though, Fred.”

“Not enough dances in this part of the country for anybody to get tired. Especially the gals. In some counties it’s the law they got to bring an extra pair of shoes, because the boys are going to dance them through one pair before midnight.” Fred had pulled Imogene up and walked her halfway to the dance floor. The music started, and holding her arm firmly, he ran to form the side of a square.

Imogene swirled around the floor, her feet attending to the calls, her eyes and mind on the darkness beyond the lanterns.

Fanny May and Emma were gone to the dancers, and Sarah sat alone. She watched Nate as he worked his way around the circle of people. Spots of color burned high on her cheeks. Nate’s eyes raked over the rows of blankets, searching from face to face.

Sarah pulled her knees up and hugged them, forcing herself to concentrate on the kaleidoscopic patterns of the square dance.

“Sarah?” Nate was beside her, his hat in his hand, the familiar smell of pomade mixing with pine pitch, sweat, and the fresh smell of the night. “Sarah, could I have the next dance?”

Sarah shook her head, her eyes steadfastly on the dancers.

“Mind if I sit down? I been riding all day.”

“No…I mean…please…” Sarah hugged her knees tighter.

With a grunt, he sat down anyway, his feet stuck awkwardly in front of him where his boots wouldn’t spoil the blanket. “It’s a pretty night, no denying that.” He watched her covertly, her smooth cheek rosy in the soft light of the paper lanterns.

“You look even prettier than when I saw you last time.” He laughed. “It’s been a while.”

Sarah’s little teeth nibbled at her upper lip.

“Of course, you were in a bit of a tizzy then.” He laughed again, remembering.

“Wolf died.” The words burst from her, loud enough that the people nearest turned to stare.

Nate stopped laughing. “Wolf died?”

“Your son. My Wolf. He’s dead these six months.” She watched him closely, her eyes fixed on his.

“Jesus.” Nate rubbed his hand over his face. “Jesus, I’m sorry. That’s too bad. He wasn’t a bad kid. What did he die of?” he asked gently.

“He died because he was put out in the rain with no coat! Put out like a dog! He got a chill and he died,” Sarah said coldly. “Because of you.”

The dance finished and Imogene fled from the floor. In the spill of yellow light she could see Nate talking with Sarah. She reached the blanket just as Sarah sprang up and ran off into the dark confusion of wagons. She started after her, but Nate Weldrick caught her arm. “Miss Grelznik, Sarah will wait a minute. I got to talk to you. She’s running away from me, thinking I killed that boy. You know that ain’t so.”