Desert Hearts (19 page)

Late the next afternoon, Michael walked over to the Woolcotts’ quarters. He stood at the door for a minute before knocking, dreading the task before him. Elizabeth had seemed in control at the funeral, but whatever would he do if she started to try to hurt herself again?

He took off his hat, smoothed back his hair, and knocked twice. He could hear Orion barking in the backyard and smiled to himself.

“Thank you so much for coming, Sergeant Burke,” Elizabeth said as she opened the door. As he walked in, she apologized for the state of the parlor.

“I was trying to get some of my packing done this morning. I had a great deal of energy when I started, but after only an hour I am afraid I became overwhelmed.”

“ ‘Tis awful that ye have to be thinking of moving so soon, Mrs. Woolcott.”

“It is the army, Sergeant Burke,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders. “But please call me Elizabeth.”

“Then you must remember to call me Michael.”

“Come, sit down. I did make the tea I promised you. And the post ladies have been so busy baking for me that you have three choices of cakes!”

“Ye must eat to keep up yer strength, Elizabeth. Grief is tiring.”

“It is exhausting, I have found,” she said with a grave smile. She hesitated and then, putting her cup and saucer down, clasped her hands together and looked directly into his eyes.

“Sergeant Burke, I would like to hear the whole story from you. How Thomas died. What he said.”

“Are ye sure?”

“Yes,” she responded calmly. “And don’t worry, I won’t lose control this time.”

“ ‘Twas good to let yourself react strongly. It makes the grieving easier in the end. But I must confess it was hard to watch ye in such pain.”

Elizabeth put her hands together in her lap. “It is so hard to get through this.”

“You survived the loss of your family.”

“Yes,” she admitted with a catch in her throat. “But that was only because of Thomas. And now that he is gone it is like losing them all over again.”

She lowered her face as the tears came and Michael found himself wanting to hold her close and comfort her as she cried.

“I am sorry. It is just that I cannot seem to stop crying,” she said, laughing shakily and wiping her eyes. “Now, tell me what happened.”

“Em, I wasn’t there, as you know. I came back to the rendezvous point and found the lieutenant and half of his men gone.”

“
Why
did he go after them? They didn’t attack, did they?”

“ ‘Twas his duty, Elizabeth. He saw one wearing a cavalry cap, another leading army mules and two captive women.” Michael paused. “From what Mahoney told me, they followed the Navajo into a small canyon, where they were ambushed. Thomas is a hero, Elizabeth, for he insisted on going in first, to expose an ambush. He saved the others’ lives.”

“A
dead
hero. Oh, I wouldn’t have wanted the others to die, you must not think that. But Thomas was ever the rescuer. Look how he rescued me,” she added with some bitterness in her voice.

Michael continued slowly. “Mahoney brought him in.”

“He was conscious then? In pain?”

“He was only conscious for a short time before he died, Elizabeth.” At least that was the truth, thought Michael.

“But he did speak with you?”

“Yes. First he asked me to commend Mahoney to the colonel.”

Elizabeth gave something between a laugh and a sob. “Only Thomas.”

“He was a good officer. He thought of his men first, as indeed he should.”

“And then me.”

“His last thoughts were of you, Elizabeth. Clearly, for him you were the most important.”

“What did he say,” she whispered.

“He said, ‘Tell Elizabeth she made me very happy…very happy.’ He lost consciousness right afterwards and died almost immediately,” continued Michael. And may God forgive me for the lie.

The tears poured down Elizabeth’s face and she buried her head in her hands. When she finally looked up, there was such pain in her eyes that Michael could hardly bear it and without thinking he ran his hand lightly over her hair, saying, “Whist, now, the lieutenant died thinking of his happiness with you.”

“Ah, but you see, Michael, I am trying to understand
how
I made him happy.”

“Sure, and you and he would know that best, Elizabeth,” murmured Michael. “But ‘twas clear to all of us here that the lieutenant was a very lucky man to have such a good wife.”

“And what is a good wife, Michael?”

Michael hesitated, puzzled by her question. “Why, one like yerself, who made a good home for him wherever ye were sent.”

“I
loved
Thomas,” she whispered fiercely.

“Of course ye did,” he reassured her.

“What do you want in a wife, Michael, when you marry?”

Michael was taken aback by her question. “Em…I suppose what any man wants: someone who loves me, who welcomes me warmly home at the end of a long day….”

“And someone who would welcome you to bed as eagerly as Mrs. Casey does the men?”

Michael sat back from her, his face reddening.

“Now I have embarrassed you and I am sorry. But wouldn’t you want a wife to give herself to you passionately? Or is that something men would only expect from…laundresses?”

Michael remained silent. Elizabeth apologized again. “I am sorry, Michael. I have gone way beyond what is proper and the only excuse I have is my grief. You see the hardest thing about losing Thomas is that I am only beginning to realize how much I took from him and how little I gave him of myself in return.”

“I have been with men when they died, Elizabeth. They don’t lie on their deathbeds. Last words are always true words. You made Mr. Woolcott happy, Elizabeth, whatever you did or did not give him. That is the truth.”

Elizabeth sobbed. “But that is what is so hard to accept. That I made him happy with what now seems to be so little.”

Michael was beginning to understand the source of her grief. He struggled to find some way of relieving it.

“Elizabeth, a person might be capable of loving more and not knowing it until it is too late. But maybe people are also a little like….” Michael cast his eyes around as he tried to put clearly what he was only beginning to understand himself.
He
would not have been satisfied with the sort of marriage Elizabeth was describing, which would have been amusing at another time, since he had so envied Thomas Woolcott. But Lieutenant Woolcott had been happy. Michael’s eyes came to rest on the crystal glasses and decanter in the cabinet.

“What if one person was like that jug, Elizabeth,” he said, pointing to the crystal. “Full of love. And the other was like that glass, waiting to be filled. But there is more love in the jug than the glass can contain, isn’t there? The glass would be happy with what it received, even if there was more brandy…. I mean love….” Michael laughed. “I am getting all twisted here and maybe ‘tis not the best way to put it, but do you see my meaning?”

Elizabeth sighed deeply. “I do, Michael, I do.”

“Do ye see, even if Thomas had lived, he might not have been looking for much more than ye were giving.”

“It is so hard, either way,” she moaned.

“ ‘Twill be hard for a while,” Michael whispered. “I wish it could be easier. Em, I’d better be going, or I’ll be wakin’ up a private.”

He started to get up, but Elizabeth grasped his hands and pulled him down.

“Thank you, Michael,” she said, her eyes lowered in embarrassment, “for letting me speak so frankly. You have become a good friend to me.”

Michael squeezed her hands and got up. ‘Twas not only her friend he wished to be, he was beginning to realize. “I am happy to offer you my friendship, Elizabeth,” he said.

* * * *

Elizabeth moved in with the Grays a week after Thomas was buried. All her furniture was put into storage except for Thomas’s favorite chair, which she squeezed into the small bedroom in order to have something to remind her of their years together.

At first she was too dazed by grief to focus on her situation. The colonel was kind to her in a distracted way and Mrs. Gray treated her like the daughter she had always wanted. For the first few weeks, she spent her time resting and walking Orion.

It was not until the beginning of December that she began to feel in the way. Not that the Grays ever made her feel that way. In fact, when Mrs. Gray told Elizabeth how much she enjoyed the company of another woman, Elizabeth knew she was telling the truth. The colonel was very busy these days in his efforts to keep the fragile peace and his wife would have been alone at supper many nights had it not been for her guest.

But the morning Elizabeth heard the Grays’ striker cursing Orion, she began to feel herself an imposition.

“Orion,” she said later as they went for their daily walk around the stockade, “how could you repay the colonel’s hospitality by stealing a ham?”

The dog only grinned up at her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his eyes dancing as though he were remembering the thrill of getting away with his theft.

“What are we going to do, Orion?” she asked with real despair in her voice. The change in tone made the dog immediately responsive and he pushed his nose into her hand in an effort to comfort her.

“I can’t stay with the Grays forever, although I suppose I am there for the winter,” she admitted. “And I can’t go back to Santa Fe and Nellie. The children are grown and gone and she has no money to support me. I have the pension, but I don’t want to live with Nellie, Orion. I must find my own life.”

Easily said, she thought. Not so easily done for a woman alone.

She was good with her needle. She supposed she could go to Santa Fe and hire herself out. With the pension and a small income she could eke out a living. But aside from Thomas’s sister, she knew no one in the city. And she was used to the army. Despite the moving and the arbitrariness of the service, it had given her security and had been her life for the past six years. But the only way to stay at Fort Defiance was to marry another soldier or move into the laundresses’ row, she thought with ironic humor. “Neither option greatly appeals to me, Orion,” she told the dog. “Especially since the only offer I’d be likely to get would be from Mr. Cooper,” she added with a shudder.

Cooper had made her uncomfortable even when Thomas was alive. He had always sought her out for dancing at a post party, and when they waltzed, his arm always snaked around her waist, pulling her even closer than her husband did. He had seemed sincere in his condolences though, she had to give him that. But he’d been calling too frequently for her comfort, even though his visits were short and respectful. She didn’t think he had caused any gossip yet, but if he continued this pattern, soon it would look like his sympathy calls had turned into courting.

Sergeant Burke, on the other hand, had only called once or twice, to see that she was comfortably settled. He had seemed almost distant to her, considering the intimacy of their last conversation, and she was surprised at how much it affected her. He had promised to be her friend, but then had left her to her own devices and to the attentions of Lieutenant Cooper.

“I know it is irrational of me, Orion, to expect more from Sergeant Burke. He probably considers me well taken care of. And why
should
he concern himself with a superior officer’s behavior. Or my future, for that matter.” The only person really concerned about her future was herself and she had better get used to the idea.

* * * *

Once Elizabeth had moved into the colonel’s quarters, Michael knew he would have to stay away. One or two visits from a concerned acquaintance was appropriate, but he was a noncommissioned officer and not someone who could frequent the post commander’s home.

Mr. Cooper was free, of course, to make social calls and Michael was in a helpless fury about it. How dare the oily bastard bother Elizabeth at a time like this? And why did Cooper have the freedom to visit while he did not? There wasn’t much gossip yet, but there would be as time went on.

He had returned from a patrol once or twice when she was walking Orion and she had waved to him and he had lifted his hand in a half salute. She looked thin and tired, but he supposed that was only natural. The colonel’s lady would make sure she got enough food and rest, of that he was sure.

He went to Mary Ann’s occasionally, but her charms didn’t work for him the way they had before. His initial attraction to both women had been only physical, but now that he had seen Elizabeth’s grief, she was more to him than an attractive woman. She was a fellow human being who had awakened his sympathy and elicited affection. An affection that he had better ignore, he told himself, since he was only a noncommissioned officer and she a lieutenant’s widow.

As Christmas approached, Elizabeth threw herself into Mrs. Gray’s preparations to distract herself. The army wives had devised their own rituals for celebrating the holiday far from home and family. At Fort Defiance it was customary for the officers’ wives to send fruit cakes to the enlisted men of their husbands’ companies. Elizabeth had always made what her mother called a “black cake,” dark with molasses and full of brandy-soaked raisins. The rich smells that filled the kitchen the week before Christmas made her grief for Thomas and her family sharper, and yet in some strange way they also comforted her with their familiarity.

She took herself off early for bed in the evenings and would sit in Thomas’s chair and crochet gifts for the colonel and Mrs. Gray. She was working a delicate gray shawl for her hostess and a tightly woven dark blue scarf for the colonel. As she felt the wool slip through her fingers, she was reminded of Serena and not for the first time wondered if she would ever see her friend again.

She had received a small package from Thomas’s sister and she was glad she had something to put out on the table along with their gifts for the traditional Christmas morning walk along the line. All the wives displayed their gifts from family and friends and walking into each officer’s quarters made them all feel that the lovely gifts were for everyone. There was mulled punch to drink, and when the time came to visit the company barracks, Elizabeth, for the first time in weeks, was free for a while of the ever-present sensation of loss.