Prayers for Sale (36 page)
Authors: Sandra Dallas
Tags: #Mountain, #Older Women, #Depressions, #Colorado, #West, #Travel, #Fiction, #United States, #Suspense, #Historical, #Female Friendship, #1929, #Cultural Heritage, #Contemporary Women
The minister was silent for a few minutes, and his eyelids fluttered and closed. The old man’s skin was as thin and mottled as old paper. Hennie sat quietly while Abram gathered his strength, and in a moment, he opened his eyes and said quickly, as if he might die before the words were out. “I ask your forgiveness, Ila Mae. My soul won’t rest easy without it.” He seemed to hold his breath while he waited for Hennie’s reply.
The old woman took a long time answering. She looked down at her shaking hands, and with an effort, she stilled them. Then she sighed deeply and said in a trembling voice, for his words had burned her as surely as if they’d been writ
with fire, “You have it.” And he did, she realized. After all those years, she was able to forgive. At that moment, she felt the tiny wild licorice prickers on her heart crumble and fall away as if the burrs were only feathers.
The minister tried to raise himself up in the bed, but he couldn’t. So Hennie leaned over him. “I don’t deny I wanted to kill you, would have done it with these hands if I’d had the chance.” She lifted her hands and looked at them. “I thought the fires of hell were too good for you. But after a time, I stopped hating you. One day when I was asking the Lord why He’d let Sarah die, the Lord said back to me that I was asking the wrong question. He told me to wonder why Sarah had lived, and I knew it wasn’t so that I could carry around enough hate to fill an ore cart. So I let the hate go, but until now, I never forgave, and that hard-heartedness ate away at me all these years, just like an assayer’s acid. I saw the good you did, but I still held that long-ago time against you. In all these years, I never knew that forgiveness would heal my soul as well as yours.”
Abram started to reply, but Hennie held up her hand. “I should have forgiven you a long time ago, Abram, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring you that ease. All those times I was praying for everybody else, I ought to have sent up a prayer for you. I believe if I had, it would have eased me.” She thought that over and added, “I can’t rightly ask the Lord to answer prayers when I have bitterness in my heart.”
Abram smiled and held out his hand, and Hennie leaned close, and in a minute, she grasped the hand. “You can call it ‘deep enough’ knowing I forgive you, Abram.”
A look of calm came over the man’s face, and he was silent.
Then he remembered something and whispered, “Your earbobs. I kept them all this time. They’re in the dresser drawer.”
Hennie smiled back, and the two old people looked at each other for a long time, no longer talking. There was no reason for further words. They’d said what they had to, and they needed no more spoken between them. In a little while, Nit went to the bucket and filled the dipper, carrying it to the bed, and Abram drank again. The girl stood beside Hennie then, watching as the old man closed his eyes and slept. She moved her chair next to Hennie’s, and the two women stayed at the bedside for a long time, not stirring when schoolchildren rushed by, running a stick across the old boards of the cabin. Somewhere, a woman called, “Come and get your dinner or I’ll throw it out,” and Nit smiled, but Hennie didn’t seem to hear. After a time, Bonnie came into the shack, then Carla with the beef tea, and Nit stood up.
“Is he . . . all right?” Carla asked
“He’s sleeping,” Hennie replied, rising from the chair. “I can’t say how he is, but it won’t be long. He’ll be gone before morning.”
“We’re planning for the worst. The coffin’s made,” Bonnie said. She added kindly, “It looks like you’ve blubbered up, Hennie, but I won’t pry into it. Whatever’s between you and the reverend isn’t my business.”
Hennie didn’t reply, and in a minute, the two sisters sat down in the chairs beside the bed.
“I’ll bring something to line the coffin with. I’ll bring it in the morning,” Hennie told them. The old woman stared down at the minister for a long time, then put her hand on his forehead. “Tap ’er light, Abram.”
As Hennie and Nit started for the door, Bonnie said softly to her sister, “I guess Hennie doesn’t know it, but the reverend’s given name is Paul, not Abram.”
After she and Nit returned home, Hennie removed the second of the burro quilts from the frame in the big room and put it aside. Then she went to her trunk and took out the half-finished Murder quilt, the one Abram had slashed so many years before. It was age-spotted now and one of the corners was mouse-nibbled, but the colors were bright, and for a moment, Hennie remembered that she had dyed the fabric herself; the crimson came from poppy petals, the green from hickory bark, the yellow from black-eyed susans. She mended the slash that Abram had made in the quilt, then put it into the frame, thinking that seventy years before, the quilt had been set in that very same frame, outside, in front of the house Billy had built. Then she began to quilt. If she worked all night, she would finish it by morning.
Hennie quilted for hours, stopping only to nibble at the supper Nit fixed. She continued her stitching after the babies went to sleep and Dick and Nit closed the bedroom door. It was past midnight when Nit crept down the stairs. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought you might want other hands. With two of us at the frame, we can finish this quilt afore you can scat a cat. But if you feel the need to quilt it by yourself, I understand,” she told the old woman.
Hennie pushed back her chair, rising slowly, for she had sat so long at the frame that her muscles were knotted. She had indeed thought to finish the quilt by herself, but now,
she was grateful for the young girl to share the duty. “I’d be obliged. Just you sit,” she said, not altogether surprised that Nit was sensible of what Hennie was doing. Sometimes the young girl and the old woman seemed like slices from the same loaf of bread.
“You want tea?”
“Coffee,” Hennie said. She stretched to soften the hurting that was in her back. After Nit brought their coffee, her own doctored and Hennie’s plain, the two women sat down across the quilt from each other.
Before she threaded her needle, Nit removed two earbobs from her basket and held them out to Hennie. “I took these out of the reverend’s drawer for you before Bonnie and Carla came back.”
Hennie stared at the earrings, two thin gold hoops, and smiled. “Billy gave them to me for a wedding present. You keep them,” she said.
The girl was startled and said they were Hennie’s, but the old woman waved her hand. “What will I do with them? I can’t wear them now. My ears closed up a long time ago. Besides, all that’s gone and past. I’m thinking about tomorrow.”
Nit returned the earrings to the basket. She started to thank Hennie but stopped herself and instead, she said, “I’ve got to be real careful with the stitches, for we’re sewing for eternity.”
Hennie laughed for the first time since she’d left her house to go to Abram. It was nice, she thought, that quilting with a friend, even in the darkest times, made her feel better.
Nit poured them more coffee, and later, she went to the stove to make a second pot. Hennie paused once to run a
hand over the smooth rails of the frame, stopping with her little finger over one of the holes that had been made with a hot poker. Suddenly she said, “I believe I’ll leave this frame for you to use. It wouldn’t be right, a person walking into this room and not seeing the quilt frame set up.” Nit protested, but Hennie, holding her needle, waved her hand. “I’ll be too busy to quilt.”
Nit swallowed hard, sensible to what the frame had meant to Hennie all those years, and said, “I’ll treat it like a precious thing.” Then the girl giggled. “Are you leaving the
PRAYERS FOR SALE
sign, too?”
Hennie thought about that and nodded. “I expect your prayers are as good as mine. We both of us are blessed enough to have prayers left over.”
They took the Murder quilt from the frame as the dark was leaving the sky, and tacked the binding in place. Nit took her final stitch, then returned the needle and thimble to her sewing basket.
Hennie, too, was done with her sewing. She ran her hand over the quilt and decided that only the sharpest eye would see that it had ever been slashed. She and the girl folded the quilt, and Nit set it on a chair by the window. Then she turned to Hennie, pondering something. “The time when I first came to Middle Swan, after you told me that story about Abram Fletcher, you said it didn’t have an ending. Now it does.”
Hennie fixed her needle to a bit of flannel that was tied to the frame before she nodded at Nit. “It does,” she repeated, “and I believe it’s a good one.”
“And now, you’ve started on another story.”
Hennie looked past Nit to the sky, where the gray of dawn was giving way to red streaks that were rounded like the ridges on a washboard. A storm that was brewing over the Tenmile made her twitchy. She hoped it wouldn’t be a heavy snow that delayed her departure from Middle Swan. “Yes, I have.” The old woman smiled and cocked her head. “I’m hopefuller than can be that it’ll be a while yet before I know how that story comes out.”
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THE BRIDE’S HOUSE
Available April 26, 2011 from St. Martin’s Press
S
OMETHING CAUSED MEN TO STARE
at Nealie Bent, although just what it was that made them do so wasn’t clear. Her body was more angles than curves, and her face, too, had all those sharp planes, far too many to be pretty. She was too tall to suit, and with her long legs, she took strides that were more like a man’s than the mincing steps of a young girl. The dress she wore, one of only two she owned, was faded yellow calico, threadbare at the wrists and neck and of the wrong color to complement her pale skin. Her second dress was no better.
Still, men turned to look at Nealie Bent, for there was no question that the tall, thin girl was striking, or at least peculiarlooking, with her eyes the color of the palest blue columbines late in the spring, her hair such a pale red that it was almost the hue of pink quartz, and her face as freckled as a turkey egg. It could have been her youth that drew their attention. After all, Georgetown itself was still young, and youth was highly prized. Most of the young women there were already old, worn out from the work a mining town demanded of them, and from childbearing. The Alvarado Cemetery was full of babies, with here and there a mother buried beside her newborn in that forlorn spot. Like all the mountain towns, Georgetown was a hard place, and folks there had a saying: Any cat with a tail is a stranger.
The same might be said in a slightly different way for a young woman, because any female with youth, such as Nealie, was new in Georgetown. But she would age quick enough. Still, for now—and for a few years hence, perhaps—the girl’s youthfulness matched the spirit of the town, a place that was mightily attractive to those seeking to make their fortunes.
If it wasn’t Nealie’s youth that drew glances, then it might have been her air of innocence, and innocence was in even shorter supply in Georgetown than youth. But in that, the girl’s appearance was a sham, for Nealie’s short life had been a hard one. Though she knew more about the dark side of life than most her age, there was not even the hint of those hardships on Nealie Bent, and she appeared as fresh and guileless as a newborn.
So no one could put a finger on exactly what it was that made men take another look at Nealie, not that anyone in that town bothered to analyze. But no one doubted that they turned to stare at her as she passed them on the broad board sidewalk or paused in her rounds of shopping to peer into store windows at the delectable items she could only dream about buying.
Will Spaulding was no different from the rest of the men in his admiration. He’d seen the girl as she filled her basket from the bins of apples and onions and potatoes. And now, as Nealie stood at the counter of the Kaiser Mercantile store, talking quietly with Mr. Kaiser, Will measured her with his eyes. She was five feet eight inches, only two inches shorter than he was. Will’s eyes wandered over Nealie, taking in her slender build under the shabby dress, until he became aware that Mr. Kaiser was watching him and clearing his throat.
“I said, ‘What can I do for you, young man?’” the storekeeper repeated. The girl had placed her purchases in her basket and was turning to go, not sending so much as a glance at the man standing next to her.
Will cleared his throat, but he didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he stared at the girl as she left the store and walked past the large-glass window, leaving behind her soapy scent and the tinkling of the bell that announced customers. “Who is she?” he asked, as if he had the right to know.
“Oh, that’s Nealie Bent,” the older man replied, a look of bemused tolerance on his face. “You’re not the first to ask. Did you come in for something or just to stare at the ladies?”
Without answering, Will turned away from the door and looked at the shop keeper. He removed a list from his pocket, laying it on the counter and smoothing it with his hand. “I’m working up at the Rose of Sharon, and I’ll be needing these things.” He turned the list so that Mr. Kaiser could read it.
“We take cash,” Mr. Kaiser said, which wasn’t exactly true. He extended credit to those in town who needed it, as well as to good customers such as Nealie’s employer, but he did not extend the courtesy to strangers.
“I’ll pay it.” Will’s voice sounded as if he was not used to his credit being questioned. The older man moved his finger down the list, tapping a broken nail beside each item as he pronounced it out loud: “Three pair work pants, three work shirts, cap, boots, jacket, gloves, candlesticks, candles.” He droned on, and when he was finished, he said, “Yep, you work at a mine, all right. You a trammer?”
“Engineer. For the summer.”
The young man’s voice carried the slightest bit of authority as he corrected the misimpression, and Mr. Kaiser looked up and squinted at him, taking in the cut of his clothes, which made it obvious that Will was too fashionably dressed to be an ordinary miner. “You somebody’s son?” he asked.
Will appeared taken aback at the impertinence, but he replied pleasantly enough, “Grandson. I’m William Spaulding. My grandfather’s Theodore Spaulding. He owns half of the Sharon.”
“Owns mines up in Leadville and Summit County, too,” Mr. Kaiser added. Like everyone in the mountain towns, the shopkeeper was caught up in the mining fever and was as sure of the names of prominent investors as he was of those of his own customers. And well he might be, because outside capital was the lifeblood of the mining industry. Without development money, the gold and silver deposits were all but useless. Theodore Spaulding was not only a man of wealth but one respected in mining circles for his understanding of ore bodies and extraction methods. That did not make his grandson anything more than a trifler, however. “So you thought you’d see what goes on underground, did you?”
“I’ve already seen what’s underground. I have an engineering degree so I know about mining, you see, at least theoretically. The old man thought I ought to get some practical experience for the summer. I’ve only just arrived.”
“You’ll get it.” Now that he seemed satisfied about his customer’s identity, Mr. Kaiser returned to the list. “I reckon we got everything you need.” He moved around behind the counter, taking down boxes and holding out shirts and pants for sizes. He told Will to try on the heavy leather cap, then nodded, because the fit was right. Then he handed the young man two pairs of boots and told him to see which ones suited. Will sat down on a kitchen chair propped against the cold potbellied stove and removed his fine shoes. He clumped about on the floor in the stiff boots, and settled on one pair. Then he set his shoes on the counter and said that with all the mud on the streets, he might as well keep the boots on.
“Socks. You’ll need plenty of them, because the Sharon floods, and you don’t want to get your feet wet. Worst thing there is, wet feet in a mine. If the water doesn’t rot your feet, it’ll give you pneumonia.” Mr. Kaiser placed four pairs on top of the pile of clothing. He checked the list again, then pulled a dark blue bandana from a drawer and set it on top. “Present,” he said.
“Splendid! It will look grand.”
“It’s not for looks, Mr. Spaulding. You’ll need the handkerchief to wipe your face when it’s slashed with muck and cover your mouth and nose after a dynamite blast so’s you won’t get the miner’s puff.”
“Then I thank you, sir.”
Mr. Kaiser licked the tip of the lead pencil he kept behind his ear and wrote the charge next to each item on the list, totaled the amount, and turned the paper toward Will, who pulled the money out of his pocket.
“There’s one other thing I’m needing,” the young man said, as he watched Mr. Kaiser wrap the purchases in brown paper and tie the bundle with string. “A boardinghouse. I’m staying at the Hotel de Paris until my cottage is ready. Once I move in, I’ll need a place to eat, because I don’t fancy cooking for myself. Nor do I want to dress up every night for supper at the hotel.”
“Georgetown’s got a plenty of eateries.”
“Somewhere clean where the food is good.”
“That narrows it some.” Mr. Kaiser thought a minute. “You might try the Grubstake up on the hill. The bosses prefer it, since it’s a good bit tonier than the others. Ma Judson’s place is up on Main. She sets a good table. Then there’s Lydia Travers’s house on Rose Street. If I was you’d, I’d board with Mrs. Travers—Lidie, she’s called.”
“She’s the best cook?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Will waited.
“Fact is, when it comes to cooking, Mrs. Travers’s second to Ma Judson and not much better than the Grubstake.”
“Cleaner, then?”
“Not so’s you’d notice.”
“Then why should I take my meals there?”
Mr. Kaiser studied the young man a minute and chuckled. “That’s where Nealie Bent works.”
Will reddened, and the shopkeeper added, “You wouldn’t be the first to pick Mrs. Travers’s place because of Nealie. But I ought to tell you she’s all but spoke for by Charlie Dumas. He’d marry her in a minute if she’d have him.”
Will took his bundle and started for the door, ignoring Mr. Kaiser’s last words.
“Best you take no notice of her, Mr. Spaulding,” Mr. Kaiser called after him. “It’s certain she took none of you.”
The young man grinned and turned back to the counter, where Mr. Kaiser stood fingering the canned goods, glancing surreptiously at the girl.
But in fact, Nealie Bent had taken considerable notice of young Will Spaulding. She had caught sight of him as she ran her hands through the bin of potatoes to find ones that were firm, with no rotten spots. She had glanced up and observed him through her pale lashes, taken in the young man’s face, which was strong with no soft places, a little like a good potato. He was clean shaven, a nice thing, because Nealie was not partial to whiskers. Will’s eyes were a deep brown with flecks of gold the color of aspen leaves in the fall, and his brown hair fell across his face in waves. He might have been the handsomest man she had ever seen, and certainly, he was the best dressed in a town where few wore anything but faded work shirts and rusty overalls.
She admired Will’s jacket, a thick corduroy the color of a mountain sheep, that was handsomely tailored to fit his shape, not store bought at a place like the Kaiser Mercantile. He wore tight-fitting trousers that were better suited to a big city than a mining camp, and his shoes—Nealie had to keep herself from smiling—were of leather as fine as a glove and wouldn’t last a day in the muck of the Georgetown streets.
The man was a stranger and a well-fixed one. And not for the likes of you, Nealie told herself as she pushed so hard at a soft spot in a potato that she broke the peel. She hastily placed the spoiled potato back in the bin, hoping Mr. Kaiser wasn’t watching her. He was a bad one to tease and she would die of mortification if he remarked on the way she had appraised the new fellow.
Such a man wasn’t likely to notice her, she told herself. Nealie was not aware of the effect that she had on men, and if she had been, she would have been bewildered. Still, she wondered, as the young man came up to stand beside her at the counter while Mr. Kaiser wrote down her purchases on a piece of brown wrapping paper, what it would be like to be courted by such. Her mind wandered to thoughts of carriages and roses in the winter and diamond rings. But not for long. She could more easily find a gold mine than attract a man like this stranger, and so she turned her attention to Mr. Kaiser, double-checking his addition in her mind, because she was smart with numbers. Nealie considered questioning one of the figures so the young man would turn and look at her and maybe wish her a good morning, but she blushed at the thought, and without a word, she signed beside the amount entered in the ledger on the page that bore Mrs. Travers’s name.
Then wishing that instead of her soundless cotton shift, she owned a satin petticoat with a ruffle to wear, a garment that would create a soft
whish
as she moved, Nealie turned to the door, shifting the basket from hand to arm to free her other hand for the handle. She went out then, forcing herself not to turn around for another look at the young man, and walked past the big window without so much as a backward glance. She would think about him later, for what was the harm in dreaming about matched horses and diamonds as thick as stars?
At the corner, she confronted the mud, slick as treacle, that was the street. The runoff from the snow had turned the dirt streets into a wet mass as thick as fudge. Although it was May, spring—or what passed for spring—had not quite reached the high country. Houses bore bare spots where the wind had scoured off the paint, and yards were covered with patches of late snow. But the drifts high up on the peaks were melting, and water cascaded down the gullies and through the streets. Although Nealie wore serviceable boots instead of slippers, she did not care to dirty them. It was an unpleasant chore to scrape off the mud that clung to them like glue, and to oil the leather. She looked for dry spots in the muck or a board placed across the street for pedestrians, but such was not available. Nealie sighed and was just about to step into the brown stew when a man grabbed her arm.
“I’ll carry you across, Miss Nealie,” he said.
Remembering the man in the store, Nealie felt a wave of disappointment at the voice. Yes, Charlie Dumas could carry her as easily as if she was a feather. Charlie was a giant of a man, with the strength of a mule, and he could have picked up her and Mr. Kaiser and the stranger all at the same time and transported them across the street. But Nealie didn’t want Charlie, who stood there with the neck buttons of his union shirt unbuttoned and his baggy pant legs tied to his boots with fuse cord. He snatched off his wide-brimmed hat, which had been rubbed with linseed oil to make it hard, and grinned at her. Charlie was altogether too familiar, and for reasons she didn’t quite understand, she did not care to see the stranger come out of the store and find her in Charlie’s arms. But it was that or muddy her boots and maybe her skirts, too. Besides, if the stranger had not noticed her in the store, he surely would pay no attention to her on the street. So Nealie said she was obliged and let Charlie lift her as easily as she did her basket and ferry her through the muck.
