Carla Kelly (23 page)

Julia began with her mother's Sunday dinner, roast beef and baked beans, ordinary in the extreme. By the time James came into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes, everything was cooking slow in a low oven. Lonely for company, Julia sat with him in the barn while he milked the cow. While Julia strained the milk, she lamented that the cow was drying up, which meant canned milk for the winter. There was cream enough for cream cake. When all was done, Julia took a sheet from her trunk and shook it onto the table, where it billowed and flattened.

James watched her. “What's that for?”

“It's for us,” she said as she set out the heavy ranch crockery. “It's a sheet I have renamed a tablecloth. While we're waiting for dinner to cook, we're going to read from the Bible.”

“Mr. Otto does that sometimes,” James said, surprising her.

“I didn't know he had one. Where is it?”

He turned without answering her, and she followed him to Mr. Otto's room. As she stood in the doorway, too shy to go in, the boy went to the bureau and took the wooden box that he had emptied to use for the loaf cake.

He held it out to her. It contained an old Bible, well-thumbed and divided here and there with pressed flowers, a Jack of Spades—which made her smile—and a paper-thin scrap of paper with faded printing on it.

“My goodness, James. This is indeed a Bible. Do you have a favorite story?”

“Joseph and his coat,” he said without hesitation.

“Let's find it,” she told him, taking the book carefully in her hands. Out of curiosity, she turned to the front. “ ‘Peter Otto,’ “ she read. “ ‘ Cherry, North Carolina. Born December 8, 1846. Son of Lucy and James Otto.’ “ She closed the book. “Mr. Otto is a long way from home.”

“He's just around Laramie Peak,” James reminded her.

She smiled. “True! James, I think we should read about Joseph in our parlor.”

“Mr. Otto usually reads to me in here.”

“It's not my room, and I wouldn't feel right doing that,” Julia explained.

James understood. “You'd probably fall asleep, like Mr. Otto does.”

“I probably would,” she said with a laugh.

They read in the parlor, sitting close together on the settee that used to hold windmill parts. Luckily, James was an uncritical audience, which soothed Julia's soul, considering how long it took her to find the story of Joseph and his brothers.
I am a scripture slug,
she scolded herself as she searched the pages, hunting for Joseph and his pesky coat through Exodus and Deuteronomy before slapping her forehead and turning to the end of Genesis.

She read the story of Joseph and his brothers, thinking of her own two brothers, who ranched and taught school in Dixie, and Iris, who was just learning to be a wife on a dairy farm.
I'm glad we get along better than Joseph and his brothers,
she thought.

James dozed. She took a deep breath, certain from the kitchen odors that dinner was nearly ready. The potatoes she had cooked and left in the warming oven were ready to mash. She opened the Bible again and carefully ruffled the pages to find a bookmark.

Julia found that scrap of paper and placed it in Genesis. Before she closed the Bible again, she looked at the much-creased piece of paper, squinting to read the one sentence underlined in fading ink. She read out loud softly: “ ‘For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have?’ “

That was odd. She read it again. “Well, well, Mr. Otto, I think this is from the Book of Mormon,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “I can't remember where, but I think it is.”

She closed the Bible thoughtfully, thinking of Matt Malloy and how he came to the ranch. Mr. Otto had told him something about everyone being a beggar.

“Are we not all beggars?” she repeated softly. “How would you know that, Mr. Otto?”

After dinner, Julia and James took a walk down to the river. James needed no coaxing to take off his shoes, roll up his pant legs, and cross the slippery stones to where the bed of watercress grew in the lengthening shadows. “If you can fetch me a big handful, I will make watercress soup,” she told him.

He did as she asked, waving the bunch over his head and laughing at himself when the water on the peppery grass sprayed him. “You eat this?” he asked, his voice dubious.

“Try it. Just take a few leaves. There now.”

He nodded and ate some more. “What else can we eat around here?” he asked.

“Dandelions in the spring. We'll have to look around. I might just make watercress soup for Mr. Otto.”

He came back to her, balancing on the rocks, and handed her the watercress. “I think mostly he likes beef.”

“That may be so, but we have to branch out and flex our gastronomic muscles,” she told him, remembering a lecture from Miss Farmer on precisely that subject. She glanced at James, who plainly had no idea what she was talking about. “We have to try new things. That's why I am here.”

She spent the afternoon writing letters that would never be delivered in anything close to timely fashion. She spent the most time over her letter to Iris, telling her sister about the ranch, the kitchen, and the Rudigers. By the time she had finished, folding the pages and looking around in her trunk for an envelope, the day was over. One Sunday gone, fifty-one to go. In fifty-two more Sundays, she would be home.

James needed no urging to go to bed, especially when she promised to read the rest of Joseph's story. She followed it up with the little half-book. He was still awake, but just barely, by the time she reached the last page, so she made up her own ending, with the children reuniting with their family after weeks and weeks away, sipping watercress soup and toasting cheese.

“I've never toasted cheese,” James said after an enormous yawn.

“We'll do it this winter,” she assured him, thinking of all the cheese she and Iris had toasted in the parlor fireplace while Mama and Papa read out loud from the
Improvement Era.
Maybe Mama would send her copies of the
Juvenile Instructor,
with its poems and stories with endings.

When James was asleep, Julia took the Bible back into Mr. Otto's room, taking the wooden box from the bureau. She sat down on his bed, wondering if there were other scraps in the Bible. She looked at the impromptu bookmark she had placed in Genesis. Beggars.

She put the Bible back into the box, but not before she noticed a small double picture frame, folded on its hinges. “Where are your manners, Julia Darling?” she asked aloud. “No one will know.” She picked up the little frames and opened them.

She gasped and dropped it back into the box, her heart pounding in her chest. When her breathing slowed to nearly normal, she opened the frame again, holding it at arm's length.

She hadn't been mistaken. It wasn't her imagination. Dressed in wedding clothes, a man and a woman looked out at her from their separate frames. Someone in an obvious fury had taken scissors or a knife to each sepia-toned photograph, breaking the glass, and then dragging the sharp edge across each face. Holding her breath, she bent closer for a better look.

Without question, the man was Mr. Otto.

Unnerved, Julia closed the frames. With shaking fingers, she positioned the Bible back in the box and quickly returned it to the top of the bureau. She couldn't leave the room fast enough.

ulia took a long time getting to sleep. After making sure the latch was fixed on the outside door, she propped a chair against the door in her room and climbed into bed. After a moment of wide-eyed fear, she flung back the covers, disgusted with herself. If her door was closed, she would never hear James if he cried out in a nightmare. Too bad there wasn't someone to comfort her if
she
cried out.

She opened her door, certain she would see the photographs propped on the kitchen table, staring at her from maimed eyes. “You're ridiculous,” she said out loud to bolster her courage. The only things on the table were condiment bottles.

Mature chef,
she thought, as she got back into bed.
You're the adult here. Act like one.
She toyed with kneeling by her bed for evening prayers but then vetoed it, just this once. No telling what was underneath her bed.

She pulled the covers over her head and lay awake a long time, remembering all the aggravations in her engagement to Ezra Quayle. She knew that some of them were petty and shallow; others were real. None of them even came close to willfully gouging out the eyes of a photograph.

Before she dropped off to sleep, Julia knew that no matter what she thought, there was no way she could ever bring up the subject with her employer. If she said anything, Mr. Otto would know she had been snooping in his belongings. True, she had only been returning the Bible to its receptacle, but bumptious curiosity had compelled her to open the double frame.

As she shivered and resolutely kept the blanket over her head like a child, Julia could not help asking herself: what kind of marriage led to such mutilation? It was nothing she was remotely acquainted with. As much as she did not want to consider it, she also had to wonder which of the partners had done the photograph damage. Was it Mr. Otto or his wife, whoever and wherever she was?

She could solve her problem immediately. A letter to her parents would bring her father to Wyoming to take her home, contract or no contract. Julia considered it for a long moment, but pride kept her in bed and not at the table, writing a letter.
I agreed to come here,
she thought.
I will work this out myself.

By morning light, the terror diminished. The simple act of stewing some dried apples and liberally sprinkling cinnamon and sugar over the bubbling goodness restored some peace to her mind; cooking did that. She stirred the pot, breathing deep of the soothing, familiar odors. Still, later that day, it was a relief when James came running inside from playing by the river to announce that Mr. Marlowe was coming.

Can't be,
she thought, pushing a stray pin into her chignon.
He's with the roundup.
She went to the front step, and shaded her eyes against the sun's glare, and laughed out loud. Poor James. He was destined to never know the difference between Mr. and Mrs.

Dressed in trousers and a flannel shirt, Alice Marlowe brought eggs in a basket. Julia sighed with relief and led her inside.

“Be it ever so humble,” she told Alice as they stepped inside. “It's a far cry from what I walked into, a few days ago, if you'll please excuse Miss October! We need a dignified calendar—”

“—which you may never find in Wyoming,” Alice finished.

“There were calendars covering all the walls, but that was nothing to the calving ropes in the rafters and the layers of grease on everything,” Julia said. “Would you like some treacle loaf? I even made a pot of hot chocolate this morning.”

Julia handed Alice a slice of the treacle loaf, chewy and fragrant with nutmeg and cinnamon. “Mr. Otto only believes in tin plates, I think, but the forks are genuine silver.” She sat down too. “He's a contradiction.”

“Then I would say he is like most men.” Alice touched the egg basket. “I'll keep the eggs coming as long as my barnyard girls are laying.” The Queen Atlantic caught her eye. “I must say, this is better than anything I imagined you would find! I had visions of you using flint and steel to make a twig fire.”