Desert Hearts (2 page)

Elizabeth Jane had been furious. She was just entering her third year at Mrs. Compton’s Academy for Young Ladies. She could read Latin and French and play the piano. And best of all, she was the star pupil in drawing and painting.

“I will stay here, Papa,” she had said quite calmly and properly. All the young ladies at Mrs. Compton’s were calm and proper. “You and Mama and Jonathan can go.”

That was when Papa had started singing the song. “Oh, where is the girl who will go out West with me…?” He sang it to her mother, but Elizabeth Jane also knew that she would have to go with her family, will she or nill she.

“I need another woman with me, Elizabeth Jane,” Mother had said to her. “Someone to talk to. Someone who will help keep this family civilized. I know how much you love school, but the truth is we don’t have the money for you to stay, even if I could be persuaded to leave you behind.”

So here she was, many long weeks later, on the last part of their journey, listening to her father sing his song again, watching him trying to coax a little enthusiasm from her.

“I swear, Helen, the child acts like she’s never left civilization,” she’d heard him say one night. “The only thing that seems to bring her enjoyment is her paintbox.”

“She’s scared, David. And she is not a child still, nor yet a woman. She is just holding on as long as she can to what is familiar to her.”

“I thought I’d have more trouble with you, Helen,” her father said, “but you’ve taken to the trail like a mountain man!” Then there was whispering and soft laughter and Elizabeth Jane knew that they had slipped away to do whatever it was married folk do.

Was
she scared? And wasn’t she already a young lady? She knew how to walk and talk like one. Her breasts were swelling quite nicely and filling out her dresses. Maybe her mother thought there was still more swelling to go?

Now that would be too bad. What there was was sufficient enough, thank you.

* * * *

They had separated from the other wagons after Raton. The wagon scout had warned David Rush, but he was too impatient to hold to the pace of fourteen wagons when he could get there faster on his own. The scout had shook his head and waved them good-bye with a worried frown on his face.

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do, David?”

“We are through the worst of the mountains. And we are only a week or so out of Santa Fe. The weather should hold.”

“It isn’t the weather, David. What about Indians?”

“Most of them are settled Indians, Helen. They live in towns. Not like the Sioux or Cheyenne. We’ll be safe. And besides, I’m a good shot.”

Elizabeth Jane was glad to say good-bye to the wagon train. All of the girls her age had been rough-and-tumble tomboys, none of them with much schooling. There were even two Irish families on the train, a fact that appalled her. Mrs. Compton had always warned her girls against the Irish children in Boston. “They are of an inferior race,” she had explained. “Dirty, lice-ridden,”—here she had lowered her voice—“and they are in thrall to their papist superstitions.”

If the truth be told, Elizabeth Jane had felt a little lonely having to keep away from Kathy Kelly and her friend Mary. They were less hoydenish than the other girls and in the beginning had wanted her to be friends. She had held back out of fear of their difference, and soon all the girls on the train were calling her a stuck-up snob.

It hurt, though she didn’t let them know. She didn’t think she was a snob. She just didn’t want to leave Miss Elizabeth Jane Rush behind in Boston. She didn’t want to leave her home behind, and she didn’t know how else to hold on to it.

“This looks like a likely spot to camp tonight,” her father announced, pulling the horses up.

They were down out of the mountains, but not out of sight of them, and there were still trees around and water and grass.

“Elizabeth Jane, will you get us some water from the creek,” her mother asked, handing her the wooden bucket.

“Can’t Jonathan do it, Mama? I hate the way the water slops all over my dress.”

“Elizabeth Jane Rush, do as your mother says,” said her father sternly. “You are a big girl of fourteen and Jonathan is only seven.”

“Yes, Papa.” When her father sounded like that, which was rare, you obeyed him. Jonathan stuck his tongue out at her as she walked by and without thinking, she stuck hers back, forgetting that she was a young lady.

“Lizzie stuck her tongue at me, Mama,” cried Jonathan, moving off to where their mother was unpacking the pots and pans.

“Lizzie” indeed. She hated it when he called her that and he knew it and she was almost ready to turn back and box his ears for telling, but she was almost down the hill to the creek by now.

It was a lovely warm evening and the creek ran happily over the rocks. Elizabeth Jane pulled off her stockings and waded in. She had to admit that squishing her hot toes in cool red mud felt good and was something you couldn’t do in Boston.

All was still except for the creek running and the sound of her father’s voice.

“Oh, sa-ay, will you go out West wi—”

Elizabeth Jane heard a sharp crack at the same time her father stopped singing. Had he snapped a branch for the fire? Then she heard Jonathan scream. And then her mother. She stood paralyzed in the cold running water. Jonathan was yelling, “Mama, Papa! Let me go!” Mama was crying and saying, “No, please, no.”

Elizabeth Jane put the bucket down very carefully at the edge of the creek and, lying flat on her stomach, crawled up the bank. Papa was lying near the fire and red stain had blossomed on his white shirt like a great rose. There were six or seven of them. They weren’t Indians, they were white men. Maybe some were Spanish, thought Elizabeth Jane, registering black hair and knee breeches. She could smell them from here, or maybe that was her imagination. She could smell the whiskey. That was not her imagination. They were passing a jug around, three of them. Another was tying Jonathan to the back of a mule. He was very still, but surety he was still alive if they were bothering to take him? Then she saw Mama and wished she hadn’t. The other three men had her on the ground and were doing something to her. Her skirts were up and at first she screamed, “No, no” as each man got on top of her and did whatever he was doing to her. Then one of the others came over and shot her through the head. “That’ll shut her up,” he said.

Mama lay there staring up at the sky, her skirts around her waist, her most private parts exposed. Elizabeth Jane slid a few feet back down the hill and lay there trembling and nauseous. If they came for water, they would see her and tie her to a mule. Or maybe, since she was almost a woman, they would do to her what they had done to Mama.

She heard them going through the pots and pans and tins in the wagon. Looking for jewelry and money, she guessed. She heard one cursing, “Goddamn pins and needles,” and pictured him opening Mama’s sewing box. That seemed more of a violation than anything. With her eyes closed, she could see the small rosewood box, silk threads carefully laid out, pins in the small blue velvet pin cushion and needles in the oblong tin needle case.

She lay still for a long time. She had to relieve herself very badly, but couldn’t even squirm to distract herself. Finally she had to let go and could feel her legs go warm with her own water, and then cold.

Even after she heard them leave, she lay there. What if one of them had stayed behind and was watching? Finally she had to get up. It was getting dark, but at least the moon would be full in a day or so, and as it rose, it gave her enough light to make her way to the wagon.

She didn’t look at her father or mother. Instead, she crawled into the ransacked wagon and pulled a quilt around her. She couldn’t stop shaking for hours, and slept only fitfully in the last hours before dawn. When she awoke, she was disoriented. She could smell coffee as usual, but it was close and strong, not wafting in from the campfire where Mama was cooking breakfast. Then she realized the smell was coming from the bed of the wagon, where coffee, sugar, and beans were all spilled together.

“Mama, Papa,” she whispered, and climbed down.

It was a beautiful morning. Cool, as it always was before the sun was fully up, and the greens of the sage and grass and cottonwoods by the creek were lit from the inside by the clear light of morning. Everything shone pure. It was like waking up to the first morning of the world.

Until she looked over at her father. The rose on his chest was no longer crimson, but brown and black. Both her parents’ eyes were open, and that was wrong. Elizabeth Jane knew someone should smooth their eyes closed. She looked around, as if to ask for help, but of course she was the only someone there. She walked to her father first and drew her hand over his eyes. When she turned to her mother, she realized Helen Rush’s thighs were smeared with reddish brown blood and Elizabeth Jane pulled her mother’s skirts down quickly before she brushed gently at her face.

Then she stood there and let the sun come up. What else could she do? She tried to stop it. She closed her eyes and willed it to stay low in the sky, willed time to stop. The sun had no business rising and bathing everything in its clear light. The sun had no right to make such a morning. How could it rise on such horror?

She was very thirsty and she stumbled down the hill to the creek, picking up the wooden bucket from the bank. What if Mama had given in to her? Would Jonathan be alive? And she tied to the back of a mule? She splashed water on her face and on her legs, which were sticky from wetting herself, and then climbed up the hill again.

She had nothing to do. She had nowhere to go. So she just sat against the wagon wheel and watched the sun climb higher in the sky and listened as the flies began to buzz around her parents’ bodies.

* * * *

A day later the soldiers found her. It took them a few minutes to get through the buzzing, for the flies seemed to have moved inside her head and were all she could hear.

“This one’s alive, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Thomas Woolcott dismounted and walked over to kneel beside the girl. Her eyes opened when he touched her arm. She seemed to be looking at him, but he wasn’t sure if she was
seeing
him.

“Are you hurt anywhere, miss,” he asked gently.

The girl seemed to be listening the way she was looking; she was there and not there at the same time.

“She’s in shock, Lieutenant. I’ve seen it before after an Indian raid.”

“This wasn’t no Indians,” said their scout, who was walking around carefully. “Boots, not moccasins, for one thing. And we’re too far from the Navajo, and the Jicarilla haven’t done any raiding for the past year. Comancheros, from the look of things. Worse than any tribe I know.”

Elizabeth Jane started shivering when she saw one of the soldiers approach her mother’s body. Lieutenant Woolcott moved himself in front of her and rubbed her back rhythmically. “Get me something to put over her,” he whispered to the trooper standing closest to him.

The man found a wool shawl in the wagon and Woolcott draped it over Elizabeth Jane’s shoulders.

It was Mama’s best shawl and it smelled like her: a combination of milled soap and rosewater cologne. It was the scent of roses that did it. It brought her mother to life and Elizabeth Jane could hear her voice, see her dabbing the cologne behind her ears. Great wrenching sobs racked her and the lieutenant wrapped his arms around her.

“That’s the way, miss. Just let it all out.”

She cried until she had no more tears and then she slept. By the time she awoke, it was dark and the fire was lit. She looked around for her father and then remembered; her parents were dead, her brother gone, and the soldiers were here to keep her safe.

The bodies were gone, she realized. She saw the lieutenant studying the fire, a cup of coffee in his hand, and she pulled herself up and went over to him.

“You are awake then, miss,” he said kindly.

“Yes, sir. My name is Rush. Elizabeth Jane Rush.”

“Well, Elizabeth Jane Rush, you have had a hard time of it. Where was your family headed? Do you have any relatives in the territory?”

“We left everyone behind, Captain. We were headed for Arizona by way of Santa Fe.”

“Only ‘Lieutenant,’ ” he corrected her with a smile. “Lieutenant Thomas Woolcott. Where are you from, Miss Rush?”

“Boston.”

“And do you have family there?”

“Only my grandfather.”

“Then we will see you safe into Santa Fe and make sure you get back home.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to go back to Grandfather’s,” she said immediately. “He wouldn’t know what to do with me. And he wasn’t very happy with Papa when we left.”

“Hmmmm.” Thomas Woolcott looked down at the girl by his side. She was over the initial shock, he could tell, and seemed to know what she
didn’t
want to do. “But where will you go, Miss Rush? You are only a girl.”

“I am fourteen, Lieutenant. Really almost a young lady.”

“Santa Fe is hardly the place for a young lady from back East.”

“Isn’t there some school where I could work? Or seam-stressing? I can sew very well, Lieutenant.”

She was almost grown
, thought Thomas Woolcott, having felt her soft curves when he had pulled her to his side to comfort her. He was ashamed of himself for even thinking about a fourteen-year-old that way, but there was something about the way she had composed herself and was trying to deal calmly with the horror that life had handed her that drew him.

“I have a sister in Santa Fe, Miss Rush. She is a widow with three small children and from what I’ve seen of them, could use some help. I could see if Nellie could take you in and you could try it out for a while. Then, if you change your mind, I can see that you get back to Boston.”

Elizabeth Jane turned to him, her eyes full of relief and gratitude. “Thank you very much, Lieutenant Woolcott. If your sister is willing, I would like to stay with her.”

* * * *

The next morning at dawn, he found her standing by the two mounds that were her parents’ graves.

“I think Papa went quickly,” she whispered.