Carla Kelly (22 page)

I will not worry about Mr. Otto,
Julia thought as she and James walked back the way they had come. He was going to be gone for two weeks. Maybe he would develop amnesia and forget that the parlor and kitchen had been bleak and grimy when he left.
Two weeks is two weeks,
Julia decided. She would worry about Mr. Otto later.

She stopped again at the almost-hidden ranch turn-off. It was almost as though the Ottos had never wanted anyone to know where they lived. The Ottos had secrets, she decided. She touched the rim of the lady's straw hat she wore, wondering what had gone so wrong.

James idled along beside her, reminding her how kind her employer was, taking in strays in human form. Surely he could have no serious objection to helping his nearest neighbors.

“The Rudigers don't have much, do they?” James asked.

“No, they don't.”

“We have more.”

“We do. We're going to share what we have.”

James tugged her hand. “Is that important, like saying prayers when we eat oatmeal?”

“I believe it is.”
I am Ursula Rudiger's visiting teacher,
Julia thought.
That's the way it is, Mr. Otto.

inner was stew and baked apples—simple fare that thrilled James but that made her mindful of what she would really cook when the men returned. James helped her with the dishes and didn't object to dumping ashes. He must have thought it reward enough when she dusted off the Victrola in what was to become the parlor and found one unbroken record.

“Enrico Caruso,” she said, looking at the faded label. “There must be other records.” She looked into the corner of the room and felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Someone had stuck shards of shattered records into one earthenware pot, like little plants. Julia rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. While Caruso sang, she swept up the shards and disposed of the pot, trying not to think about it.

When the Victrola ran down, she wound it again. “Caruso has one of the great voices of the opera world, James,” she said. “I heard him in a recital last fall, when I lived in Boston.”

“Did he sing ‘Sweet Evalina'?”

James asked. Julia laughed, glad to dispel the bleak feeling of the room. “Not that night! Maybe he was saving it for Carnegie Hall.”

After James went to bed, Julia stood in the doorway of the parlor, rubbing her arms again. In the morning, she would see if there were more feed sacks in the barn, some for curtains in here, and others to share with the Rudigers. Almost against her will, she sat in the small rocking chair. She had wiped it clean and rubbed a shine into the arms, wishing she knew something about the lady who had used it nearly a decade ago.

She didn't sleep well; she woke as dawn came. The water in the Queen Atlantic's reservoir was still warm, so she poured herself a basin of water and washed her face, hands, and underarms after pulling down her nightgown and knotting it around her waist. She wouldn't be able to do this when the men returned. Maybe she could ask Mr. Rudiger to build her a washstand for her room.

By the time the Rudigers arrived, she and James had pulled the parlor furniture into the center of the room and moved what they could in the kitchen. She told the Rudigers she had waited so they could eat breakfast together—pancakes bloated with butter and maple syrup, with fresh milk a sleepy-eyed James had coaxed from the Jersey cow now cropping grass by the door.

She expected no complaint from the Rudigers and encouraged them to eat. No one objected when she added sausage links from the smokehouse. Finally, Mr. Rudiger held up his hands, as if to surrender, which warmed Julia's heart.

While Ursula dried the dishes, Rudiger walked around the parlor, nodding to himself. He fingered the building paper and nodded again. “A hammer, nails?” he asked.

She went with him into the barn, where he found what he needed. She pointed out the tar paper, and he nodded again. “It will be enough,” he told her. “A knife?” They found that too.

Back in the house, Mr. Rudiger bowed and formally asked James to help. Soon Julia heard tapping as the homesteader tacked the paper to the wall. She turned her attention to bread, pretending a sore shoulder as she carefully dumped level measures of flour into the largest bowl she could find and set cakes of yeast in warm water.

She knew Ursula could not understand her, but Julia kept up a steady conversation, telling the shy woman about her plans for a meal the men of the Double Tipi would never forget, when they returned. They both kneaded bread as Danila greased the few loaf pans Julia could find. When the pans were packed, covered, and rising in the heat of the warming shelf, the women sat at the table and shaped the remaining dough into rolls.

As Julia shaped rolls, Ursula put her hand on Julia's fingers, stopping her. She deftly shaped the dough into another form.

“That's lovely,” Julia said. “Show me again, please?”

Ursula did, and Julia copied her, pleased with the effect. “We shall do all the rest that way,” she said. “It's much prettier than my way.”

How to do this,
Julia thought when the rolls were rising. She gestured for Ursula to come with her to her room, where she had folded all the clothes she'd washed yesterday. She sat Ursula down on her bed, held out the smaller clothing that James had outgrown, and then pointed to Danila, who had followed her mother into the bedroom.

Ursula understood, nodding as Julia held out the clothing. She held up a shirt to Danila and nodded again.

“I wish I had clothes for little girls, but perhaps you can use these,” Julia told her. “I wish you understood me.”

Maybe it didn't matter. With a bob of her head and another smile, Ursula took the clothing. When Mr. Rudiger declared he was done for the day, the clothes were packed into the little wagon, along with most of the bread and rolls. Rudiger just smiled and shook his head when he saw what Julia had done. In that courtly gesture Julia decided she could like very much, he took her hand and bowed over it.

“You are kind to us,
fraulein,”
he said. “Why, if I may ask?”

A week ago, maybe even yesterday, she would have been flustered and embarrassed. Something had happened while she kneaded dough and talked all day to a woman who didn't understand what she was saying.

“I need your help, Mr. Rudiger, if I am to have this place presentable by the time Mr. Otto returns,” she told him. “As for the bread…” She looked at Ursula. “No one has used this kitchen range properly in many years. I am determined that it will work, and the best way to test it is to use it.”

Julia didn't care if he believed her or not.
I dare you to tell me to stop,
she thought.
Please don't. I want to help your family.

Rudiger must have sensed the futility of arguing over someone else's generosity. He bowed again. “You go in that room tonight and tell me what you think. I will start on the kitchen tomorrow.”

After the Rudigers left with James accompanying them to make sure they reached the main road safely, Julia went into the parlor. She stood in the doorway, admiring the way something as pedestrian as gray building paper could bring a touch of comfort to what used to be little more than a glorified tack room with a Victrola. Even Mama would be pleased.

She couldn't help looking in the corner where she had uncovered all those broken records planted weirdly in a pot. Feeling unsettled, she went into the kitchen.

It took Mr. Rudiger three days to finish the work in the kitchen and parlor. Silent for the most part, he skillfully measured and cut the building paper, anchoring it firmly to the worn logs underneath, patching where he needed to around the window, and working around the Queen Atlantic, which bubbled with Connecticut chowder. James and Danila had provided trout from the river, which Julia had cleaned, scaled, and beheaded, dubbing it cod.

Rudiger came back the next day to fetch the tar paper, bringing a skinny horse and a feeble excuse for a wagon. Julia instructed James to make sure the horse was well-fortified with as much feed as it would eat, while the Queen Atlantic produced split pea soup weighed down with ham chunks from the smokehouse. By the end of the day, the kitchen was done, and so was the soup. Julia lugged a bucket of it to the wagon and wedged it next to the tar paper. She added a pound of the butter she had made earlier.

“We can't possibly drink all this milk,” she said, settling a well-filled crock into a tight spot by the tar paper. “For a little cow, she really produces.”

When she and James said good-bye to the Rudigers that night, Julia felt her misgivings grow. Maybe Mr. Otto had plans for that tar paper. Still, if he had wanted to use it, he wouldn't have stuffed it under feed sacks and machinery.
He won't even know it's gone,
she thought, brushing aside another twinge of conscience that seemed to float around like smoke.

When she woke in the morning, Julia felt a surge of disappointment that the work was done, and there was no reason for the Rudigers to visit. As she stirred a small pot of farina, she glanced at the calendar, surprised to see that it was Sunday. She added a handful of raisins to the pot and set it at the back of the range, missing her family.

Elbows on the table that had been scraped clean of years of detritus, she stared at the Queen Atlantic and wished herself home. Mama would be smelling of talcum powder and getting ready for Sunday School. Papa would already be at an early morning meeting. If the weather was nice in Salt Lake, she and Mama would walk to Sunday School. There would be roast beef and baked beans for dinner, a nap, and then sacrament meeting later: a day of church and talk, letter-writing and visiting. There had been a time when it bored her.

Julia had enjoyed Sundays in Boston, meeting at the small branch and sloughing off a week of cooking classes and other students who politely thought her strange. She enjoyed the fellowship of other displaced Saints a long way from the Rocky Mountains. Here there was nothing: no friends of like mind, no Sunday School, no sacrament meeting. If she was not mindful, Sunday could become as ordinary as Monday.

It was a distressing thought; maybe she was guilty of taking the Church for granted. She looked around the kitchen, with the clean, gray paper; the gleaming Queen Atlantic; the curtains she had strung late last night; and the neatly filled wood box. All was orderly, but she wanted to be in church.

What is it I am missing?
she asked herself. Julia frowned and looked at the loaf of bread on the table, thinking of the deacons at the sacrament table with the bread and water. If she took ill in this lonely place, no one could give her a blessing. The good advice from her father could come in letters, as it had in Boston, but these letters would probably sit in a postal box in Gun Barrel for weeks until someone fetched them. With an ache in her heart, Julia knew she was missing the priesthood, a constant in her life that was no longer available.

Lonely, she wandered to the door of James's room, where he slept, his hand over his eyes. The gentle rise and fall of his chest soothed her and reminded her of her duty to him. The boy had been left in her care. If she had been thinking for even one second about leaving the Double Tipi—and how could she, since she had signed that pernicious contract—she made herself think again.

She watched James another moment, went to the front step, and sat down on the rough bench. She stared at the corral, empty of everything except a lame horse and the Jersey cow and her calf. “From now on, Julia Darling, Sundays will be what you make them,” she said, “even if they are bare of everything you're used to. It's up to you to fill the day.”