The man turned to the back of the ledger and read for a long minute. Swallowing against a tight throat, Gentry glanced at Winn, who looked back with an unsure expression. Gentry pressed her hands to her breast and stared at the ledger in the man’s hands, offering a silent prayer.
“We’ve never hired a Butch or an Abrams,” he finally said. The words floated in the air for several seconds before registering in Gentry’s ears. “Though I think we’ve gotten a letter or two addressed to an Abrams, if I recall.” He closed the ledger and shrugged. “Threw them away.”
Gentry’s body went cold. The chill started at her crown and flowed like molasses down her neck, chest, arms, stomach, and legs. Her stomach shrunk to the size of a pinhead. Her joints rippled into gelatin.
Her mind couldn’t register how long she stood there, staring at this stranger. He said, “Miss?” and she didn’t think it was the first time.
“Thank you,” Winn answered for her, his hand at the center of Gentry’s back. “We’ll be on our way.”
The man nodded, and suddenly Gentry faced the other way. The door, the bright afternoon. The sound of panning and picking fuzzed in her ears. Her legs were numb, yet somehow Winn directed her away.
And then Gentry was sitting on a boulder, with no recollection as to how she got there.
Winn crouched in front of her. “Gentry.”
She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone dry.
Winn sighed. “I came here, the day after I last saw you,” he explained. “I spoke to a few people at the company. None of them had ever heard the name Butch Abrams. I checked with the post office—they keep records, and sometimes people leave notes—but I didn’t find his name there, either. I thought . . . I thought I must have had some information wrong. The company, the name. Maybe he used a false one. I thought maybe you’d notice something I didn’t.” He sighed. “I should have mentioned it, but you were so hopeful. I wanted to be wrong.”
Her ears were ringing. Her fingers were ice beneath the hot summer sun.
“But I didn’t look everywhere,” he hastily added. “Boston may have been full. There are other companies here we could ask—you’d know his thinking better than anyone. Maybe he set off on his own, farther up the river—”
“He’s gone,” she whispered. The words sounded to her like they’d been carried on the wind, but she recognized her own voice. Her bones sank against her flesh as they registered. “He’s gone.”
“We can ask the—”
“He’s gone,” she repeated, peering out past the river, where the ocean would be, had a hill not been in the way. “I know he is.”
“Gentry—”
“He was never the same after Ma . . .” she paused, her throat constricting, and forced a deep breath. “I knew it too. He never . . . talked about gold. Mining. Never before, even to Rooster. Just all of a sudden, and he left . . .”
Her voice trickled to muteness, but the unspoken words radiated inside her mind: He left us.
He left us.
He left us.
And Gentry knew. She’d known it all along. Their ma had died. Been unfaithful. If Caleb wasn’t Pa’s, who was to say Gentry was? Rooster? Pearl? They were barely getting by. The West wasn’t what her pa thought it would be. Too hot, too hard. They were too poor. Three children to care for by himself. He never smiled. Never laughed. He was there, but he wasn’t there.
No letters. No wages. But Gentry knew. She knew he hadn’t been attacked by Indians or fallen from his horse or some other horrid thing. He left. Because he didn’t want to stay.
He left us.
She couldn’t look at Winn. Didn’t know if he heard her thoughts. He said her name, but she didn’t answer. Couldn’t. She could barely breathe.
There were no wages coming. No hope at the end of the road.
Her father was never coming home.
“Gentry!” Rooster stood from his chair as she walked through the door. A candle flickered from the center of the kitchen table, its light bouncing off Pearl’s tired and worried features. “Do you know what time it is? What happened? He didn’t get rough with you, did—”
Gentry knew the moment Winn stepped into the house after her—the moment her brother’s angry words cut short and his eyes looked past her. He had their Pa in his eyes. They all did.
Gentry pushed past her brother and trudged to the dark bedroom. Behind her, Winn said, “I need to speak with you.” A moment later, the front door closed.
“Gentry?” Pearl asked, but Gentry disappeared into the shadows of their shared room and shut that door as well.
“Gentry,” Winn said, crouching before her seat on the marble-esque bench. The house floated somewhere above central California. “Gentry,” he repeated, taking her face in his hands. “I’m so sorry. I thought . . . I had to be wrong. I thought you should check for yourself. Was I wrong? Did I hurt you?”
She didn’t answer. Her body lulled with the gentle movements of the bird-made house.
“It will be all right,” he whispered, dropping his hands to hers. “I’ll take care of you. And Rooster and Pearl. See? We’ll be fine. Trust me.”
But he couldn’t take care of them. Winn was just as poor as they were. He didn’t know the month’s mortgage payment was late and Gentry expected a notice any week now. He didn’t know there wasn’t enough food to last the week—that they’d have to skip lunch until Rooster’s next check. And Rooster was in bad need of new trousers. He couldn’t go to work without trousers, could he?
“Please,” she begged, “just take me home.”
She dropped onto her mattress—the old, thin mattress that hurt her back and was filled with holes. She pressed a knuckle into her belly, trying to relieve the tightness there. She hadn’t eaten, had she? But thoughts of the carrots and biscuit made her nauseous. Her body was too tight to fit food.
She would have to sell Bounder. The mare cost too much to keep, and they could get good money for her in Salt Lake City. How Gentry would get home after the sale, she didn’t know. She could have taken Rose, had Pa not claimed her first.
He’d taken Rose. He’d taken their savings. He’d left them with nothing.
Gentry leapt from the bed and snatched the empty candleholder off the nightstand, throwing it with all her strength into the opposite wall. It hit the wood with a thud and dropped to Rooster’s bed.
“You abandoned us,” she whispered, hot tears stinging her eyes and blurring the shadows. She grabbed her ma’s locket and jerked the chain from her neck, throwing it as well. “You both did!”
Sobbing, Gentry dropped to her knees and cradled her face in her hands. Maybe if she had worked harder, Pa wouldn’t have left. Maybe if she had been a boy, he would have loved her more. Maybe she should have tried harder to keep the family in Virginia. Maybe if her ma had been faithful, she wouldn’t have died, and Pa wouldn’t have left. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Gentry shuddered and gasped for air, tears leaking through her fingers.
She didn’t hear the door creak, only saw the light of the candle press against her eyelids. “Gentry?” Pearl asked.
“Blow it out!” she cried. “We can’t afford to waste a-another candle!”
The candle extinguished. Holding her aching middle, Gentry bent over and wept, her tears pattering against the uneven floorboards.
Pearl’s arms circled her. Not in front of Pearl, she thought, but it was too late for that, wasn’t it? It was too late for everything.
Gentry leaned into her sister’s shoulder, soaking her blouse, crying against the relentless twisting and burning of her gut. Hadn’t she been punished enough?
Pearl whispered, “He’s not coming home . . . is he?”
Gentry didn’t answer, and Pearl wept with her.
Gentry woke pressed against her sister in the center of their mattress, the blanket down around her hips. The sun had already risen, yet Gentry stared over the mop of Pearl’s blonde hair for a long moment, unable to stir herself to readiness. She heard Rooster
behind her, fumbling for some article of clothing or another, shutting a drawer. Leaving the room. Gentry studied the wall, searching for patterns in the rough grain of the wood and not finding any. When Pearl moved and began to rub her eyes, Gentry rolled over to the edge of the mattress. It creaked a familiar song under her weight.
Her body ached, though she couldn’t decipher why. She hadn’t done anything particularly strenuous yesterday, had she? But there were the gulls and the flight. That could make anyone stiff, she supposed.
She thought about Winn, her mind full of dreamy, almost incoherent flashes of memory and questions. She couldn’t piece together anything complex. So she merely thought about him, and that was that.
She hadn’t bothered to change into nightcap and gown, so she peeled off her dress and changed her underclothes. Her hairbrush had a surprising weight this morning; it strained her shoulders to run it through her locks. She examined the ends of her hair. She needed a trim. She stared at the hairbrush and noted the missing bristles without counting them. She couldn’t count this morning, either.
Hair twisted and tucked, she stepped into the rest of the house. It felt overly spacious, for once. Empty. Missing something. The bare walls hurt her eyes. Rooster opened and closed cupboard doors.
“I can make flapjacks.” The hoarseness of her voice surprised her. “If you can wait.”
Rooster pressed his lips together and looked out the window—the one with the cracked glass, near the door. He nodded and sat down.
The kitchen was very far away. Gentry’s legs hurt by the time she reached it. Flour, eggs, a little sugar. When Ma was alive, they had preserves to go on their flapjacks. In Virginia, they’d had maple syrup sometimes.
Gentry made the simplest batter she could, in the smallest proportions—enough to feed Rooster and Pearl. Her stomach didn’t want food, not yet. She supposed that was a blessing.
As the first cake sizzled in the pan, Gentry asked, “Where’s Winn?”
“I asked him to go home,” Rooster replied. His voice sounded different too. Not hoarse, but lower and softer. Older. “So we could sort things out.”
Gentry flipped the cake. Set it on a plate. Started another. Flipped it. “He told you.”
A pause. “Yeah. I shouldn’t be . . . I don’t know. Surprised, but it still . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Gentry plated the second flapjack and started a third. If she scraped the bowl, she could get a small fourth.
Pearl came out of the room. She said nothing. Sat by Rooster.
Breakfast cooked, Gentry set the plate on the table. Rooster took the small cake off the top, blew on it, and chewed slowly. “We should write to Hannah.”
“I don’t want to burden her.” A little more of her mind woke up—the part that could count. They had seven eggs left, one pound of flour. Too many days until Rooster’s next payment.
“They always welcome us,” he offered, his voice still hushed and low and old.
Gentry turned from the stove and leaned against the cupboard, letting the coals warm her back. “For visits, yes. And I think they would take us in, but we have nothing to offer them. Nothing but hungry bellies and crowded beds. We have nothing to offer anyone.”
That’s not true, whispered another part of her thoughts as they groggily stirred into awareness. You have something to offer.
The memory played out. The Hinkles’ house, the setting sun against its eaves, the wagon and the farmhands beside her. Hoss leaning down to make his offer.
She glanced to the fiddle, stowed away in its box of pine.
Hoss.
She rubbed her temples, his name thick as marmalade as it churned in her mind. Hoss. Hoss could take care of them. Hoss had already offered.
She blinked, and in the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw Winn outlined in gold.
Turning around, Gentry fumbled for a cup and filled it with the last water from the bucket from their last draw. She sipped it slowly, its coolness sloshing against the sides of her stomach, making her shiver.
Rooster stood. He’d eaten two flapjacks. Was two flapjacks enough? Gentry didn’t think so, but she didn’t say anything.
Her brother didn’t move until both her eyes locked with his. “Eat,” he said, and he shuffled for the door, taking his hat off the hook there and planting it on his head.
Gentry swallowed. “Don’t tell—”
“I’m not telling anyone.” Rooster’s hand lingered on the doorknob. His shoulders slumped. “Besides, maybe we’re wrong.”
He left, closing the door too firmly behind him.
Gentry looked at the plate. One cake left. Pearl still nibbled on hers, her bites dainty and rabbitlike. Gentry sat across from her and, hesitant, tore the cake into uneven halves, leaving the bigger for Pearl. She took a bite. The bread tasted bland and a little gummy. She chewed and swallowed, feeling when the bit of food hit the bottom of her stomach.
Hoss.
Hoss had been one of the first people to visit the Abrams family after they built their house, though he’d never met her ma. Few had, before Caleb was born. He’d always been friendly when he came by. Made decent friends with Pa. Gentry wasn’t sure when he’d noticed her. When she discerned that his friendliness might be a little more than the goodwill of a neighbor. Maybe around the time he hired Rooster on. He’d offered her brother that job—Rooster hadn’t asked for it.
If you needed . . . what I mean is . . . well, I could take care of you too.
“Gentry?”
Gentry started, nearly choking on a half-chewed piece of flapjack on her tongue. She looked at Pearl, noticing for the first time the thickness around her eyes from crying. Gentry lifted a hand and felt her own face. She likely didn’t look much better.
Pearl fiddled with her flapjack—her appetite must not have been much bigger than Gentry’s. A few long seconds passed. “We’ll have to sell Bounder, won’t we?”
Hoss.
Her heart constricted at the thought, tighter than her stomach had ever been. She took a deep breath, hoping the air would inflate her and smooth out all the wrinkles inside. It didn’t. “I don’t know, Pearl. Maybe not. I need to think on it a bit.”
Pearl nodded and cast her gaze to the tabletop.
“When you’re done, could you fetch some water?”
She nodded and set down her unfinished breakfast, heading straight to the empty pail and out the door. Gentry frowned as she went. Leaving her breakfast too, Gentry retreated into the bedroom, wringing her hands the whole way.
Hoss, she thought, and her heart beat back, Winn.
Winn.
Oh, Winn.
Gentry shut the bedroom door and leaned her forehead against it. Trying not to think of the man who magically appeared in her life, yet her thoughts were veined with gold. His voice echoed in her ears, and his smile carved itself across her breast. She licked her lips, thinking of the taste of butternut, but her tongue found only the saltiness of her own tears.
It’s all right. We’ll be fine.
Do you trust me?
Trust me?
Trust me.
“But I can’t,” she whispered. Straightening, she wiped her sleeve across her eyes.
Oh yes, she could run off with him, if he asked. She could let him sweep her up into his house of birds and travel all of the States and beyond with him, visiting Indians and fighting off mad magic and staying in hotels while he worked odd jobs here and there, never settling in any one place for long. But Rooster and Pearl—they couldn’t live like that. There would never be enough for them. Winn provided only for himself, not a whole family. And why should he?
He hadn’t asked her, either. And what if he never did? What if Winn swept through women the same way he swept through territories and jobs? Gentry didn’t really know, did she?
Hoss. Hoss had a successful farm. Hoss had employees. Hoss had stability. He had never made Gentry’s heart flutter, but perhaps she might learn to love him. How could she not lov
e a man who put a stable, stationary roof over her head and food in her siblings’ stomachs? And he wasn’t a bad-looking fellow, either.
Yes, Gentry had one thing to offer: herself. Her hands in the kitchen, her energy to keep the house clean, her virtue. It was not such a hard thing to give to another, to make her family happy.
But she wanted Winn.
More tears came, and she wiped each of them away before they fell. How much crying could she do? None of these tears would pay the mortgage or mend her clothes. Yet despite how she reasoned, she couldn’t hold them back, so she sank onto the edge of her bed and let them flow—as many as her dehydrated body could spare.
Last night, she mourned her father.
Today, she mourned Winn.
Gentry heated the iron in the dying coals of their small oven and used it to smooth out the skirt of her green dress. Then she unbound her hair and brushed it, taking more care to pin it this time, smoothing the locks into place. She splashed her face with cold water and patted it dry. Had she perfume, she would have dabbed it on as well, but today the natural scents of the desert would have to do.
“Where are you going?” Pearl asked. She’d watched Gentry’s preparations in silence—she hadn’t come into the bedroom since fetching the water, which meant Gentry’s tears hadn’t been as quiet as she hoped—until now. “To that little church? It’s not Sunday.”
“No.” Gentry shook her hands to keep her palms from sweating. She walked to the far side of the house, trying not to notice the magic-made wall that still contained Winn’s earring at its core, and back again. Trying to work out the muscles that had tied themselves in knots as she readied herself. The exercise did little to help.
“My bonnet,” she began, and Pearl pointed to the table where it lay. Gentry picked it up and shook it out before carefully tying it onto her head. She felt like she should bring something with her—a loaf of bread, a basket of apples—but, of course, she didn’t have anything of the sort, unless Hoss had a fancy for old hay.
She waved her hands back and forth again, urging them dry.
Veins of Gold Page 18
