The Star Garden

by Nancy E. Turner

  Rain fell in earnest by the time I reached the switchback. Running water covered the boards. I dismounted and stepped into it. It barely covered the toe of my boot, but it was frothy and greasy looking. That meant this water had come a long way, washing through the chaparral; miles and miles of creosote bush pounded by rain against the rocky ground had turned the water to soap.

  I rode back and when I told the folks what I’d found, well, you’d have thought I said they were all to be cast out there in the road, there was such complaining.

  “Just how deep was the water?” Professor Fairhaven demanded.

  I tied Baldy on and climbed into the seat. “Couple inches, but running slick. It’s not how deep it is now,” I said, “it’s how deep it could get before we can get out the other side. A flood coming down that narrow gorge could sweep the wagon fifteen miles before we know it.”

  He stiffened up. “I say we press on. I should have been in Tucson yesterday. I have a meeting tomorrow morning. I won’t be delayed by three inches of water.”

  I snugged my hat down. “Not in the stage you wouldn’t. Empty, they’re half a ton or more. We’ve got less than a quarter. Yesterday, it was probably dry. Today, I’m not crossing it. Sign’s bad. Gittup, there.” I snapped the reins and we jerked into motion. I pulled tight on one side and got us turning in a circle.

  I could hear the consternation in Fairhaven’s voice at my back. “I say we vote on it! How many of us would rather go on to Tucson? We have a majority. Turn around.”

  “Mr. Fairhaven,” I said, “you may have a majority, but I have a surrey.” I pulled to a stop. “If you are inclined to walk your majority to town in the rain, you go right along. I’ll stop long enough for you to get out. Watch your step there.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “And it’s freezing,” said Miss James.

  “Well, so it is,” I said.

  “It’s Professor Fairhaven.”

  “So it is. Mind your step, Professor Fairhaven. I want to get the dead folks to town as bad as you do, believe me. You’ll see the lady gets to town, too, of course?” I grinned like a jack-o’-lantern.

  He hadn’t moved, but shrank into his seat. “There’s no call to be irascible.”

  Likely he didn’t think I knew that word. “Irascible? Why, not a harsh word came from my mouth, sir. I was being most amiable.”

  “It’s barely sprinkling.”

  I steadied the horses. “Mostly it’s Easterners that get washed away in the arroyos when they flood. I’ll have to make a note that Californians are susceptible to it, too.”

  At that, Professor Osterhaas laughed and said, “Mrs. Elliot, we’re in your debt already. Perhaps we should bow to your obvious experience with Arizona weather patterns and accept your hospitality one more night.”

  I nodded. Fairhaven was sputtering as I took off the brake. Miss James covered up her head with the blanket. I chucked the reins and we headed for the house. By the time we got there, it was raining solid and gray. Chess and I were soaked through our coats, skin deep. We were all looking forward to some coffee and we tore into the apple butter sandwiches while we waited for the water to boil. I left the surrey and wagon loaded except for the personal things of the “majority,” and put the horses away while Chess got on some dry clothes.

  There was nothing to do then but turn everyone loose in the house to read or amuse themselves. Professor Osterhaas went to the book room with a quilt around his shoulders and stood looking through the books, last I saw him. Miss James took some tatting from her carpetbag and found a chair near the light. I went into the kitchen where Granny snoozed by the stove with the calico cat in her lap. I didn’t know what I would serve this horde of folks for supper.

  I pumped water into a kettle. I put a log in the stove and pushed at the coals. A swirl of sparks rushed upward, turning black then quickly disappearing in the damp air.

  “Sarah?” Granny’s voice said behind me. “I want to go home.”

  “You are home, Mama.”

  “I was thinking about another place.”

  She does go on. I stared at the rows of canned goods lining my pantry. They were Savannah’s hard work, not mine. Everything I’d put up last summer had been broken when the walls came down. It still makes me sad to see things and remember what used to be my house. Reckon sometimes I long for home, too. I said, “Where’s that, Mama?”

  “Why don’t we move to Texas, like your pa said? It’s greener there. Better grazing.”

  I’d given up trying to understand when she was like this. I said, “No critters left to graze. I’d go get some bacon if I didn’t have to get wet to do it. Maybe Harland wouldn’t mind going out for me.”

  “Harland is in Kentucky.”

  “Mama, Harland is in the parlor teaching his boys to play checkers.”

  “That’s not right.”

  Harland had been in San Francisco for years. Then he took Melissa to Chicago where she died in a hospital. Granny had been by her side and then came with him back here. “It’s all right, Mama,” I said. “Playing checkers won’t hurt them. It’s not gambling.”

  “I mean it wasn’t Ken-tuck. Rufus. He was in Kentucky.”

  I sighed. “All right, Mama.”

  Gilbert came in then, dripping, carrying something under his coat. He pulled off his hat and opened the jacket. “Thought you might use this for supper,” he said, grinning.

  At first all I saw was that it was meat and I was relieved not having to trudge to the smokehouse with its dwindling supply of hanging meats. Only the poorest bony portions remained. “Son, you have read my mind,” I said.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me where I got ‘im? Look here, what he is. I didn’t cut him up so you could see the size of him.” He held the carcass up by the hind legs. It looked to be the biggest jackrabbit I ever saw, fully the size of a good dog. Gilbert said, “It’s old Rotten.”

  “No!” The long-legged hare we called Rotten Rabbit. When there were no children about I called him some other things, too. That rangy jackanapes had scourged my garden for a year. He’d grown fast and fat, living on my hard work. I took the thing from Gilbert, thinking what a fine table he’d set, all buttered up with lima beans.

  Gilbert said, “I waited by the garden where I found a hole under the fence. Soon as the clouds came over and the rain had barely started, here he came, heading for the pole peas. Got him with one shot.”

  “Buckshot?”

  “Nope. Thirty-two.”

  I grinned. My youngest living son was fixing to turn twenty years old. Looking more like a man every day. “I’m proud of you, boy,” I said. I pulled a big skillet off its hook on the wall. “I’m going to brown him up this minute. Then we’ll give him a nice long simmer, and start some dough rising.”

  We passed a nice enough evening. This time instead of the children reciting, Professor Osterhaas found some poetry in my book room and he read forth in a fine style such as I’ve never heard, waving his good arm and even holding the volume in his sore hand. Not to be outdone, Professor Fairhaven gave us a speech from Hamlet, then one in pure Latin, all from memory. Professor Osterhaas praised my books and said he’d been too worn and pained to notice the night before. He wanted to know how I’d started collecting books and which ones I’d read. He was surprised when I said I’d read every one. I didn’t tell him I had read them several times, for I was suddenly taken with the notion he’d think me stupid to have to read a book more than once. I can’t imagine owning a book you hadn’t read at least once. What’s the sense of having a book at hand and not opening it?

  Then, as he was feeling less uneasy about these folks than before, Gilbert took down his guitar and played us several tunes. Chess played checkers with Story while Harland watched Truth and Honor drawing on their slates. Blessing dressed and redressed her dolly in Granny’s lap. Miss James stared into the fireplace. The professors read, and I took up my sewing basket and went to work on the elbow of one of my own waistcoats. A
fter a bit, Miss James said, “Do you know ‘Keegan’s Lament’?” She began to sing, and taught Gil the song, and pretty soon he’d found chords for it. He played and she sang it again, staring at the fire, while her voice seemed to travel right out of his fingers as he picked across the strings in a pattern.

  Then Miss James said she knew one about a magic animal called a Silkie. She sang that one but Gilbert couldn’t find all the chords to it. Professor Fairhaven asked if anyone knew any other music, as if what he’d been hearing wasn’t to his liking. So Gilbert started picking out the tune to “Dixie,” which didn’t make the professor any happier. Gil followed it with a dance tune and then he wanted to try Charity James’s songs again. She asked him for the guitar and what do you know but she played some, too, and showed him the place for his fingers on the Silkie song. I liked that one.

  Gilbert went back to “Keegan’s Lament” and then played one like it we have out here called “The Drover’s Lament.” Listening to Gilbert singing, I hummed with him. If I didn’t hum, those old songs would take me back in time and I’d get weepy. I knew as much and didn’t care to visit the past in front of those people. It was a fine time, though.

  The rain let up the following day. After a stack of flapjacks, Gil rode up to the wash but came back saying it was running so hard there’d be no crossing it. One more meal for all these folks. So I got out the sack of beans. When he saw me cleaning a bowl of pinto beans to soak down for our supper, Professor Osterhaas asked me if I couldn’t kill one of the chickens instead. “They aren’t mine,” I told him. “Those chickens are Savannah’s. I borrowed them to start new chicks this spring. They’ve got to last through winter.” He looked disappointed but didn’t say more. I suppose some folks aren’t partial to beans. Dressed up with some red chili and onions they go down all right to me.

  That night we gathered around the supper table where I’d laid out risen biscuits and tortillas, red sauce and piccalilli and beans. I noticed Gilbert held out the chair for Miss James, then took a seat right next to her. I’d be happy enough to be soon rid of these strangers. For a while, everyone was eating and it got quiet. Then Harland up and said, “Sarah? Clover and Mary Pearl came by with the mail while you all were gone. Rachel’s written back. I … I’ve hired her for a governess.”

  Granny said, “A girl can’t even vote, son. How do you expect her to be the governor?”

  He smiled. “Mama, she’ll watch the children after school. Tend to them. Give them lessons in town. I’ve decided not to wait any longer. Sarah has offered me her house there. When we take these folks in, I’m going, too. Going to hang out my shingle.”

  Gilbert said, “Town’s growing.”

  Harland went on, barely hiding the excitement in his voice, “Houses going up like weeds. Macadamized roads. Gas stoves. Horseless carriages all over.”

  I pushed the plate full of biscuits toward him. Everyone got quiet. Chess said, “Folks may not need an architect. They generally just order up a house from the Sears and Roebuck or draw a square and start hauling rocks.”

  “Well,” Harland said, “if it doesn’t work, I guess I’ll go on home to California.”

  Then all three of our guests started in with Harland, discussing all the grand places they’d seen in California, painting the place up like a new barn, as fancy and flowery as the Garden of Eden. The only part of California I’d seen was San Francisco and the memory of that destruction was printed in my mind like a lithograph: sludge and mud and rain, smoke and disease and desolation. It truly sounded as if they were talking about some other, far-distant, airy and lovely place—the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Listening to them chatter, I began to think they were all in cahoots with one another, even my baby brother, working up a gullywasher of a tall tale.

  Finally, there was a quiet spell and I said, “You don’t need to go yet.”

  “I can make a living in Tucson. Pay you rent on the house. You’ll have money coming in, enough to live on.”

  “That’s what this is about. We aren’t starving.”

  “Well, not entirely. I can’t go on here. It—it makes me feel invalid. I need to get back to work. You need the money. It’s good all around.”

  “So’s castor oil.” I felt as if I could run from the table. The company had grown silent. No one dared move.

  “Sis?”

  “Oh, go on, then. Never mind I need you here.”

  “I don’t do anything here. I’m no good at all the things you make look slick and easy. All I’m doing is collecting dust.”

  I felt that same rush of heat under my chin, but this time it hurt and threatened to make my eyes water. I looked toward the window and stared at the reflection in it. A kerosene lamp, lit, on the table, made an arrow of light under an image of Harland’s head.

  He smiled kindly. “Sis? I’m good at what I do.”

  I’d lost the battle. In front of strangers, too. I frowned and said, “I charge a mean rent. And inspections every Thursday.”

  Harland grinned. I’d rarely seen him smile since he’d come here, other than the wan tremor he used facing his children’s eager faces, trying to approve their small accomplishments. Now here were two at one meal. He was coming back to life, that was it. I remember coming back to life after Jack died. I needed to do things, work at things, too. If I kept Harland here, it’d turn out no good for any of us. Judging from the spunk I saw in his eyes, there’d be no keeping him.

  I wish I knew a word for that kind of righteous ache that weighs down my insides when I do what I know is the right thing to do, though it goes against all my normal leanings. I suppose I could quit aching if I quit trying to do right. I said, “Tell the children to put out anything that needs washing and we’ll do it tonight so you’ll have a few things to last when you get there. I’ve got work to do.” I left the table and went to pump water in the washtub. I added salt water to it, I reckon, as a couple of tears fell in the water before Granny came to help. She pulled out the hand wringer and the scrub board and brush, never saying a word. Then I wiped my face and mumbled something about the water splashing on me.

  Well, the whole lot of folks followed me into the kitchen, and lingered about while we washed and rinsed, talking about Tucson. Harland’s boys were happy enough, I suppose, to be going to town, though I wondered about the littlest one, the only girl, Blessing. Those professors couldn’t hear enough about town then, and wanted to know anything Gilbert could tell them about the college. Harland went to talking about how he meant to start his business going. Granny and I set rows of little duds on wires hung near the stove, and I felt as if I could give over to lonesomeness right in front of them all.

  Before we were finished, Harland sent the children to their room, the professors went to the book room to read, and Granny left for bed, too. I reckoned if the whole household was going to town, now, I’d better plan to stay a few days and help Harland get started. That meant I had to pack my own things. I told Gilbert to bank up the stove for morning, and I left him with Miss James overseeing his work.

  In my bedroom, I took the box of odd buttons from its place on a shelf over my sewing machine. Beside it lay the waistcoat I’d been mending. For a while, I sat in the dim light of one small lamp and hunted something from the button box that might match the other buttons on the shirt. Nothing came close enough in both color and size. It had been pure silliness to put fancy buttons on a shirt of mine. They wear out and come off the same as the cheap kind. I bit my lip. Everything tears down and goes away. Eternal fire, I thought, I wish they’d all leave this very minute. Maybe I’d send Gilbert packing, too. High time that boy got out on his own like his brother.

  I threaded a needle with black thread and bit the end off the spool before I tied a knot. I pushed the needle up from inside the sleeve, through the cloth, through the button, over the top and down. It has been the abiding hope of my life to know someone who came to stay and wanted to be with me. I know I have got an ornery streak in me, and some of my bones seem to
be made of cast iron. Nothing about me ever gentled down and got soft and motherly like my brother Albert’s good wife, Savannah. I’m sure it is because she is of righteous makings that she has had Albert to take her along life’s path. No one has ever been my strength and shield. Nor even wanted to. I’ve stood on my own feet and fought my own fight. Even Jack, who I loved with those same iron bones, was never content to stay put and let me lean on him.

  Miss James came in to go to bed. I had my torn pocket inside out and was working away on it, when she came over and turned up the flame on the lamp. “You’ll hurt your eyes,” she said. She put on the nightgown I’d loaned her, and sat on the end of the bed and watched me sew for a minute. “I can do that hem for you.”

  “I’ll get it myself, thanks,” I said.

  She picked up the waistcoat I’d put the odd button on. Holding it up in her hands as if she were considering wearing it herself, she said, “You’ve got a nice figure. My waist has never been very small.”

  “Where are your folks? Don’t they mind that you’ve gone so far from home?”

  Without answering the question, she said, “Are you feeling poorly, Mrs. Elliot?”

  “Bone tired, is all. This is finished. Put out that light, will you please?” I got myself undressed and got into bed. I could hear her breathing next to me.

  After a bit, she said, “Did I do something to make you angry?”

  I did feel mettlesome. I wanted these strangers out of my house. I wanted things set to rights. It was these strangers gave Harland the notion to up and leave. I said, “I’ll go in the morning and see if the water’s down yet.”

  “Your brother seems like a nice fellow. How long has his wife been dead?”

  I flew out of that bed. Stood there, stiff as the iron fence I pictured made up my ribs. Stared at where I thought she’d be, in the dark. Before too long, I started shaking. I would not share my bed with a slattern and a hussy. I couldn’t turn her out of my room, for then she’d be free to approach someone else for a place to lie. I kept my voice low. “To think I’ve fed the snake in my own corn crib,” I said. I fumbled for the matches on the highboy but couldn’t find them. Light from the moon outlined her form.