by Karen Osborn
The children are carefree this summer as I have never seen them, Amy nearly dancing through the fields and George running behind her, sometimes charging ahead, with baby Margaret crawling after them through the high grasses, nearly lost in the thick fields of ripening corn. The color, you cannot imagine the color of it all! The deep yellow of the corn, the purple alfalfa, and the fields of dark green bordered by red and white cliffs, all of it covered by the bluest of skies. By next summer, Clayton promises we will have a larger home. Perhaps then you will visit us and see the harvest for yourself. Washed in the brightness of this place,
I am your sister,
Abigail
November 30, 1876
Dear Maggie,
December is nearly upon us, and so I am sending you these few gifts: a ristra made of red peppers, some stones from the mountains, which should delight the children, and a shawl for you, Maggie, one for Irene, and one for Mother, which I have knit of wool spun here in the valley. We wish you the joys of the season.
You asked about the clothing I wear here while working out-of-doors. It is far from what you would call stylish. Last winter I made myself a pair of men’s pantaloons of wool, which I wear under a short skirt. It is a practical and somewhat feminine outfit. There are times when I confess I pull on a pair of Clayton’s trousers before going out to do the chores. There is seldom anyone who sees me thus outfitted, except for an occasional Mexican on a burro. But yesterday morning as I stood hitching up my pants, having just left the barn with the morning’s milking, I saw Señor López sitting on his horse in our drive, his teeth flashing under the brim of his hat. He does not speak much English, and so the joke he might have made about the “Anglo” lady would have been lost to me. I suppose this much was fortunate.
Señor Martínez and his wife, Teresa, took us for a ride last month, and we saw a village which is nearby. The Indians were dancing in the streets, carrying sticks ornamented with feathers and rattles in their hands. They wore white moccasins and leg wrappings. Old men beat drums and sang. Margaret clapped her hands as if it were a parade.
Amy will take the train home soon, and Clayton will meet her with the wagon. We have plans for Christmas Day at the Deerings’ ranch. Their house was completed last summer, and it is quite large, with a wide sitting room and several bedrooms. Clayton has promised that he will add another room to our house by next fall. What a Christmas we will have then!
Your Sister,
Abigail
March 25, 1877
My Dear Maggie,
Patricia was born yesterday morning. She has a blond head of hair and eyes that mirror a desert sky. She is a hearty eater. Margaret has taken to holding my skirt hem all day, and I think she would keep me for herself if she could. I send her out to play in the yard with George and the rabbits they keep as pets.
George has a special love for his little sister. He sets Margaret in a cart and pushes her around the yard. She delights in this and claps her hands, demanding he go faster and faster, until they come charging across the yard, chickens scattering, Margaret screeching. Then she demands to have another “ride,” and they start it all again.
Soon it will be planting time, and Clayton is already outside most of the day with the two Mexicans he hired to help with the alfalfa. They will plant an acre or more in peppers also, which we hope to sell at the nearby market.
I regret I could not answer your letters this past winter. When Mother returned the shawl I had made for her, I felt that Virginia was a book I should close and put away on the shelf. All winter, while the snow fell two feet or more, I did not allow myself to think about any of you. Indeed, I feel cut away at times, as if the family of my childhood existed in another lifetime.
But Maggie, there are times when I stop in the middle of planting or cooking or washing the clothes and look out across the valley or up into the mountains, and I long for Stillwater. It is all of a sudden that I miss the streets lined with maples and dogwoods, their pale leaves unfolding, the heavily scented blossoming. You are fortunate, Maggie, that John owns both the store and such a home, the wide columns and those rooms filled with fine furniture, china bowls, and gold-framed portraits. I would I could see it and you for myself again.
The baby is awake. I must return to my duties! I am your happy but tired sister,
Abigail
May 27, 1877
Dearest Maggie,
You write that you are surprised I remember Stillwater after having been gone more than ten years. Has it been as long as that? Would I recognize the streets and the buildings? Have the people changed so much that I would walk the streets a stranger? What I long for most is to hold you in my arms; then I should care not what transformations the rest of the town has undergone.
Patsy is the sweetest baby. I can set her down at any time, for she amuses herself with the simplest things. Yesterday she spent nearly an hour wrapped in her blanket, propped up in a chair, “remarking” over her hands as she waved them in front of herself, curling the little fingers into fists. She delights in watching the other children and sleeps through any noise they make, her features smooth and soft as silk.
It is a blessing to have a baby as easy to care for as she is, for these have been our busiest months, and I cannot imagine how I would help with the planting and accomplish the cooking and cleaning with a colicky infant!
Señora Teresa gave me several fruit tree saplings, which Clayton and the children set into the ground with those she gave us last fall. Then a few days ago she took me to see an old Indian who keeps a substantial herd of sheep. They were well kept, healthy animals, and I have tried to persuade Clayton to purchase some of them, as I believe I could sell the wool at a profit, but he claims sheep are too much trouble. I suppose they would require more fencing. At any rate, it does not seem I shall get them.
Your Sister,
Abigail
October 7, 1877
Dear Maggie,
We have had another successful harvest. It was a good year again for rain, and we improved one of the ditches. We had so much alfalfa that we hired Mexicans to help with the cutting, and we have an abundance of melons, squash, and every kind of bean. I spend long afternoons shelling out the smooth shiny beans while the children sleep.
Autumn gleams with color here beside the mountains, fields of pumpkins and squash, red oaks and yellow cottonwood. Strings of red peppers are brilliant against the whitewashed adobes. When we took Amy back to school last month, we visited the market, which was crowded with red and green peppers, golden melons, red and blue corn, and the massive Indian jars filled with beans. There were embroidered shawls, strings of prayer beads, moccasins, turquoise, and silver, and sitting in front of a long line of burros was an old man selling ladles made of sheep horns which had been split and hooves that had been turned into rattles. I have heard that these things are kept by witches and used for evil spells, but I do not believe it.
The little ones grow like beans or corn. Someday I will get a picture taken to send to you. Margaret is quick as a jack rabbit and follows George Michael wherever he goes. They run about outside most of the day, even when the wind pushes across the land as if the sky itself had split apart. Patsy is the strongest little baby you ever saw. She crawls everywhere and has thick skin on her knees from crawling over the hot sand.
Amanda Deering has told me that when last she was in Santa Fe she heard of a Dr. Mayfield who had a practice there, and out of curiosity she paid him a visit and found he was the same Thomas Mayfield who had visited Mr. Peerson’s ranch. She tried to tell me the details, that he is married, that he travels all over the southwest because of his interest in geology. But I could not make myself hear all of it. After so much time you would think it would not pain me. I wish he had stayed in the east.
Your Sister,
Abigail
April 6, 1878
Dear Maggie,
How quickly the winter has gone, and how many times I thought of you and started to take ou
t my writing box. My only excuses are the usual ones—the animals, the children, the land, and Clayton’s trips to the mines, where he is speculating again. We are a busy household, and as you can imagine, our house, to which we added a second room before Patsy was born, is not nearly large enough. We are planning a new house, with wooden floors and a long front porch.
Sister, I am thankful for all the activity. It gives me little time to think on my life and how it has unfolded. You write that you are “content” in your marriage to John, that “married love is naturally burdened by the demands of raising children and earning a living, or perhaps,” you said, “love is made stronger by marriage so that it can support these responsibilities.” I suppose I expect too much, for when I have the time to reflect, my marriage seems so much without inspiration, and I wonder if Clayton and I were unsuited to one another from the beginning or if we only became distanced, for we are distanced, Maggie, especially these last years since his injury.
Clayton and I have never talked to one another about those months when I thought he had been killed working in the mines. He was dead for me, Maggie, and I had planned the life I would lead without him. The miracle of finding him living was overshadowed by the loss of that life. I know you will understand my meaning. When I heard Thomas Mayfield had married, I wanted to walk out into the desert, into the wind and sand and rock. I would have stood there under the sky until my bones were laid out for the heat and cold, the hard landscape.
I will not write of this again, Maggie, but know it is in my heart.
Your Sister,
Abigail
August 29, 1878
Dearest Maggie,
Thank you for your words of consolation and the pressed irises and roses, which did much to cheer me through the dry heat of these past two months. You have said I am your every concern, but do not worry too much over me. I remember well what Mother said before I came west, that I was too spoiled to live in the fallen world of the south, that I expected more than I would ever get of life. She was right, which means a part of me will always be disappointed. But when I look out across the wide desert, the dark mesa with its long rectangular shape gives me pause and enough peace and wonder that I can smile when Clayton turns to me in the night, I can be glad for the life I have.
This month has been so dry, I fear at times my skin will split apart. There have been curses and evil portents; Doña Romero and Teresa will not say what more is to come. A skull was found in someone’s field. In a nearby town, a young woman who had married her closest friend’s lover went suddenly mad. And then a week ago we heard that the Deerings’ oldest son had been shot while trying to defend their herd.
We harvest the corn and beans, tie up bundles of dark-green alfalfa for sale at the market. There was a man murdered on the road not far from here. Clayton says it was some personal vendetta and that no murderer will come here. But next month while he is away I will keep the shotgun near my hand and one ear listening through the night.
Your Sister,
Abigail
April 2, 1879
Dear Maggie,
All week I have watched the long processions of the Penitents, who walk the road to their church dressed in white trousers, whipping themselves on their back. I have seen their skin redden with welts; it bleeds, and when they become too weak to hit themselves, they beg a friend to do it for them. All afternoon we hear the chains they rattle, the whistles, the loud mournful calls they make with their instruments. Sometimes I think I will go outside and scream at them and not be able to stop. I do not want to hear their suffering. The baby cries, and the children are frightened.
Then today, when I thought I would pack up the children and ride to Pamela Porter’s or simply up into the mountains (for you see, Clayton left last week to do some speculating, and so I am alone with all this cacophony), there came, pulled slowly up the road, a large wagon carrying a skeleton. Behind it walked a man who was nearly naked, dragging a wooden cross. I thought of Mary and how I should run out into the road with a cup of water and nearly did, the man was so bent with pain. I have heard they will hang him an hour or more and that he may not live.
“Cannot you believe in Christ without killing some poor fool to prove it?” I asked Teresa. In Virginia they would be arrested for it and should be here, except that we have no laws to prevent barbarity and no one to enforce such laws if they did exist.
It is on days such as these that I feel myself in some foreign land, a place I will never understand. A Methodist preacher and his family and sister have recently moved to the valley to try to convert the Indians. I would like to imagine they will be successful, but five years ago, in a town not far from here, a Presbyterian minister tried to start a church, and the Catholics made a bonfire in the middle of the street of all the hymnals. They claim more missionaries will arrive next week to start a mission school. If it is successful for more than a few months, I will be grateful. George does not read or write with any ease and would rather be in the fields or digging a ditch. His greatest joy is to be on a horse. I have not been able to influence him and therefore welcome any school to the valley where I might send him.
Your Sister,
Abigail
July 28, 1879
My Dear Maggie,
For nearly a month, we have had no rain, and the ditches stand all but dry. The alfalfa is brown, and the fields of beans and corn are filled with brittle, bent stalks. When we open the gate there is nothing but a brown slug of silt. Since the acequia is usually somewhat higher in the morning, Clayton went to the water commissioner, asking that we be given additional hours. He is certain that those upstream from us are using our water, but we have no proof. The water commissioner merely smiled and told Clayton that everyone wants more water these days. “We should pray for the rain.”
The night after his trip to the water commissioner, Clayton left the gate up all night, riding out before dawn to close it. Three nights in a row he did this, and we had water again in our fields. On the evening of the fourth night, the water commissioner rode out with a neighbor of ours and Señor López to check the condition of the ditch. While they were here, the water commissioner outlined the fines that apply for misuse of the acequia. Señora Teresa has warned me that we should not resist. She claims Señor López is a powerful man.
We must go to the river for all our water now. I carry what I can and give some water to our vegetable patch, but there is little we can do for the fields of alfalfa. When I look out across them, I feel myself hardening, turning brittle as the stalks of corn, as if the dry wind swept through me, taking with it every drop of moisture.
The children complain of the heat, and I must keep the baby inside much of the day. Yesterday evening when a pack of wild dogs gathered outside the house, I thought they would tear us apart. Clayton shot at them, and finally they scattered, but not until three of them lay dead in the dust. All night we hear the coyotes howl.
I do not think I could get through the day without Amy’s help, as she watches the younger children, hauls water, cooks meals, and cleans, all with a cheerful disposition. George is also a help, hauling the water; indeed, for him it is great sport to carry the sloshing buckets. I do believe that most of the time when he spills large quantities of it on himself, it is done on purpose.
Your Sister,
Abigail
November 1, 1879
Dear Maggie,
We had rain, finally, throughout much of late August and September. It was too late to save our fields, but we did harvest a few vegetables. Señor López, who owns the land upstream from us, seems to have lost little of the grain which he grows there. Clayton would not take the corn or beans he sent over in a wagon last month, but while Clayton was away I accepted the few bales of hay, for I do not want to lose our milk cow. Clayton rants against the river and the land; he is certain that we have been cursed. I have tried to convince him that his fears and superstitions are groundless, but at times I am also frightened.
Last week I rode out with Doña Romero to help deliver a baby. The young couple was newly settled from the east and spoke no Spanish, so I had offered to come with Doña Romero. It was late at night and she sat next to me on the wagon seat, when the road was filled suddenly with bats. We buried our faces and covered our heads as their dark wings beat above us. “They’ve taken the new child’s soul,” Doña Romero called out, predicting the baby would die at birth.
The baby was born soon after we arrived, alive but black with strangulation, the cord wrapped twice around her neck. I went back yesterday to see if it had lived. She is the prettiest thing, with large blue eyes, her parents’ first child and all her mother’s delight. I do not see how she can live long, as she is continuously in spasms. The father told me he wants to move to a place more settled as soon as the baby gains its strength. This is a beautiful but isolated place.
Your Sister,
Abigail
January 7, 1880
Dear Maggie,
I hope the package I sent by railroad reached you before Christmas. After such a difficult summer, we were blessed by the holiday. Amy came for two weeks with a friend who goes to the academy, and we had Christmas dinner at the Deerings’ ranch, a feast of pheasant, beef, and pork, with all kinds of squash and potatoes. Clayton had luck with his speculations last fall, and while he was in Santa Fe he bought me an easel, material for canvases, and a large box of oil paints. He had made frames and stretched the canvases for me. Everything was wrapped for Christmas.
For many years I thought he saw my desire to paint as something frivolous. So much of our concern was for survival. “I see this cannot wait any longer,” he said to me. There are other things we need—a cook stove that is not cracked, a new plow—but he bought me an easel. I have set it up in the far corner of the living room, in front of the window that frames the mesa. The box of paints is open on the table next to it, with the various brushes laid out, so that even if I can spare only a few minutes I can brush color across a canvas.
