Beyond the Mapped Stars

by Rosalyn Eves

  Mama nods. “It’s Rebekka.” My half sister, Far and Aunt Elisa’s oldest daughter, gone east to Wyoming these three years or more. “It’s nearin’ her time and the doctor is worried for her—telegram doesn’t say why, but perhaps they’re worried it will be like the other babes Rebekka lost before her time. Ammon wants her to have family with her at the birth.”

  Far rubs at his forehead. “ ’Tis only natural that a girl should want her mama at such a time. With Elisa gone, you’re the closest she has.”

  Mama’s hands go still on the iron. I don’t think Far sees that. “Rebekka’s a good lass, and Lord knows I love her like my own daughter.” She hesitates, and I pick at a hangnail on my smallest finger. I think Mama loves Rebekka more than some of her own daughters: she’s the standard against which I fail Mama, time and again. Mama continues, “But how am I supposed to leave now? Albert still suckles, and I can’t be leavin’ Rachel so soon after her near drownin’.”

  Neither of them say a word about Mama’s dark spells, though surely they must be thinking of them. If one of her moods hits while she’s helping Rebekka, who would help Mama?

  Both Mama and Far stare, dismayed, at the telegram lying crumpled on the table. Mary drops her darning and has to scramble after it. I think of Rebekka, saving scraps of yarn to make a colorful cap for my doll, when my six-year-old self worried she’d get cold in winter.

  “I’ll go.” The words escape me in a rush.

  Mama and Far both turn to gape at me. Far responds first, his eyes brightening. “That’s kind of you, Elizabeth.”

  Kindness is only part of this. I imagine riding the train, the mountains and plains spinning past as I’m carried east. Away from questions about my future, away from the immediate press of family duties, away from the constant guilt. Away from Brother Yergensen and his unwanted courtship.

  Far continues, “You’ll have to leave soon to be there before the birth. Today, if I can find someone heading north to Salt Lake City, where you can catch the train to Wyoming.”

  “I don’t know,” Mama says doubtfully. “Can we afford it? Can we trust Elizabeth to go so far on her own? Is it safe?” She doesn’t look at me as she adds, “She’s not the most responsible lass.”

  “I’ve got a bit saved up,” Far says. “And it’s not so far. Elizabeth’ll have company to Salt Lake, and then there will be porters and others on the train. It’s but two days to reach Cheyenne from Ogden, and Ammon can meet her at the station.”

  He does not add, Even she can manage so much, but I know both he and Mama are thinking it.

  “I’ll be safe, Mama. I’ll do everything you wish me to. And think how much more comfortable you will be, to have someone you know with Rebekka.” I catch my breath. Have I said too much?

  “It’s what Elisa would want,” Far says, and I could kiss him. The line between Mama’s eyebrows smooths out. She’s weakening.

  “But who will help around the house, with the little ones?”

  Far waves his hand. “It’s time Emily and Mary helped more anyhow. Elizabeth won’t be here forever.”

  “It’s not fair,” Mary mutters. “I want to see Rebekka too. And ride on a train.”

  “And ye will mind your stops and not miss them? And find yourself a nice family to sit beside, so the strange gentlemen don’t bother ye?” Mama pins me with her eyes.

  My hands are trembling. I clasp them together on my lap. “My word on it, Mama.”

  Mama lets out a long breath. “All right. I do not like it—but ye may go.”

  I escape outside before the bubble of joy in me bursts out in unseemly noise. Hiding my face in the laundry still on the line, I let loose something between a laugh and a howl. Heaven has dropped an adventure in my lap. The warm sunlight falling on my uncovered head, my exposed hands, no longer feels like an assault, but a caress.

  I mean to keep my promise, but if I can be obedient and see something of the world, I shall not repine.

  * * *

  * * *

  Far returns home a couple hours later to tell me he has found passage for me to Salt Lake City, leaving within the hour, if I can be ready. “One of the Willard boys is taking some furniture up to his brother, just as soon as they can get the piece finished. They’re nearly done.”

  “Which brother?” I ask. Not Samuel. Samuel Willard is a nuisance and a tease, and I can’t think about Vilate Ann’s hint at Sunday dinner without a flush of mortification.

  Far shrugs. “One of the middling ones? There are so many children in that house. Besides, what does it matter? His sister goes with him.”

  “There are many children in this house,” I point out. “Yet you manage to remember each of us.”

  Far squints at me. “Which one are you? Mary?”

  I laugh, though it’s bittersweet. I shall miss Far.

  “Ye’d best hurry,” Mama says. “If ye mean to join them.”

  I’ve already packed my trunk while waiting for Far, so there is not much that remains. Mama gives me a small velvet satchel with a mixture of herbs and spices to brew a tea to soothe Rebekka as she labors. She tucks the satchel and a small vial of oil into the bottom of my trunk, in case it is needed to bless Rebekka before the baby comes. Besides the trunk, I have an old carpetbag to hold a few things for the train. It can be unfolded to serve as a blanket, though I can’t imagine needing it in the July heat.

  Mama tilts her head at me. “Your hair’s come undone.” She leads me to her room and sits me at the small vanity. She pulls the remaining pins from my hair and runs a comb through my reddish-brown curls. As a child I loved the feel of Mama’s fingers against my scalp, her touch tender where her words were not. It has been many months since Mama has brushed my hair, and I close my eyes to savor this. Despite her stern words, her fingers say she has begun to forgive me for what happened to Rachel.

  “Be sure that any ties on Rebekka’s clothes are untied, that the doors and windows are unlocked, so the baby can find its way into the world. And cover the mirrors and open the bottles,” Mama says, revealing the Old World beliefs that have snuck into her New World faith.

  “Yes, Mama.” Now that the time has come to leave, I’m suddenly unsure. Is it right of me to leave Mama and Rachel? Am I making the same mistake again, indulging myself at the expense of my family?

  “It’s a good thing ye’re doing,” Mama says gruffly. “I begin to have hope for ye.”

  I smile a little. I think Mama means this as a compliment.

  “Be good and helpful, and mind Rebekka. Put your family before yourself and put God before all, and ye shall be well.”

  “And happy?” I ask.

  Mama’s fingers still, so briefly I wonder if I imagine it. “Happy is the girl who does what she ought.” With deft hands, she sweeps my hair up and pins it so I can settle a bonnet over it. She does not kiss me goodbye, as Mary and Emily do, or hug me as the little boys do, but she rests her palm against my cheek, her gaze steady.

  When I go to the bedroom to see Rachel, still tucked in her bed, my sister tries to give me her dolly. “So you will not be lonely,” she says, and I swallow against a sudden tightness in my throat and kiss both her round cheeks.

  Far presses a few dollars into my hand, for expenses, and then Hyrum helps me load my battered trunk into the wagon and we set off.

  We do not speak for a while, rattling along the dirt road. I can tell Hyrum wants to say something, though, from the way he keeps pursing his lips together and glancing sidelong at me. I wait. I’ve learned there’s no hurrying him.

  At last, he says, “Are you scared, to be heading out alone?”

  I don’t think this is what he meant to say, but I shake my head. “No, not scared. Excited to see Rebekka, guilty at leaving Mama and Rachel and the others. Sorry to leave you.”

  “I wish you weren’t going.”

&nb
sp; Even with my guilt at leaving Mama, I can’t wish that. “I wish you could come with me.”

  Now Hyrum shakes his head. He waves his hand around at the valley, the fields hazy in the afternoon sun. “I don’t want to leave. This valley is home. These rocks and canyons, they get into your blood somehow. But you—you’ve always been different. Always wanting something new, something unexpected, where I like what’s known and familiar.”

  I laugh. “You never have liked surprises.” The fall Hyrum turned sixteen, I planned with some of his friends in town to surprise him with a party. I told Hyrum that one of his friends needed help with some carpentry work, and so Hyrum had turned up, dressed in old clothes and carrying his tools, to find half the young people in town, all arrayed in Sunday best. He had opened the door to the light and noise and happy cries and backed right out of the house. It had taken all my persuasive skills to get him to return inside.

  Then I sober. This visit to Rebekka’s must have come as an unpleasant surprise too—nothing like this had been planned this morning. “I’m sorry this has come on so sudden. But Mama couldn’t go and Rebekka needs help.”

  Hyrum doesn’t look at me but fixes his gaze on the road in front of us. “Will you come back?”

  My heart pinches tight. I used to think I’d leave this valley for college, to study the stars. But of course that was only foolish dreaming. How could I leave Hyrum? Mama needs me too—I can’t leave her to Emily and Mary’s casual care. And Rachel—if I left, I would miss seeing her grow. “I’ll always come back.”

  Hyrum shoots me a small, sideways smile, and I do my best to return it, though my lips feel stiff.

  When we reach the Willard cabin, Vilate Ann is already outside, sitting on the spring seat of the wagon, a straw bonnet tied neatly over her blond curls. She waves when she sees us, a smile splitting her rosy cheeks.

  Hyrum helps me down and fetches my trunk from the back of our wagon. As he lifts it to the Willard wagon and pushes it underneath the seat, Vilate Ann leans toward him.

  “What a gentleman you are, Brother Bertelsen. They say a man who’s kind to his sisters will be kind to his wife too.”

  Hyrum casts a quick, almost frightened look at Vilate Ann and ducks his head in response. I smother a giggle. Vilate Ann would be hard-pressed to find a less willing recipient of her mild flirtation.

  Luckily for Hyrum, before Vilate Ann can say anything else, Samuel and another of his brothers emerge from the house, carrying a heavy wooden table. A third brother appears with a pair of chairs. Hyrum helps them load the furniture.

  I wait beside the wagon, wishing the heat did not make me so inclined to perspire. There’s nothing elegant about dampness.

  When everything is secure, Vilate calls to me, encouraging me to take my seat beside her.

  I give Hyrum one last hug and promise to write. Hyrum nods at the Willard boys, avoids Vilate Ann, and turns our wagon back toward home.

  As I’m about to take the outside seat, Vilate Ann stands and ushers me into the middle seat. She curls her arm through mine. “I’m so glad you’re coming with us. I do love my brother, but he does not appreciate my need to talk.”

  At that I laugh, though a part of my heart is following Hyrum back up the road. Some of my excitement is fading before the reality of our departure, and I still don’t know which Willard brother is to drive us.

  Lyman, just younger than me, disappears around the side of the house and reappears a moment later leading two horses, which Samuel helps him hitch to the wagon. Lyman would be all right as a driver. I don’t have any embarrassing memories involving him.

  The three Willard brothers confer briefly; then Samuel slaps his nearest brother on the back and climbs into the driver’s seat.

  Thanks to Vilate Ann’s maneuvering, I am right next to him, his thigh brushing mine, our elbows jostling as he picks up the reins and flicks them, clicking to the horses to start.

  I dart a glance at Vilate Ann, but she only smiles back at me, her face suspiciously innocent.

  I press my lips together in annoyance. Already, my cheeks are warming beyond what is warranted by the heat of the day, and my mind is scrambling for something, anything, innocuous to say. Worse still is my intense awareness of him, of the heat of his body, of the cheerful humming that inexplicably sets my heart jumping, of his smell—like wood dust and juniper.

  Lord, help me.

  chapter five

  Tuesday, July 2, 1878

  Between Monroe and Salt Lake City, Utah

  Twenty-six days until eclipse

  “Everything in order?” Samuel asks me as we pull away from the cabin.

  “What?” I say. Because of course just when I most want to avoid embarrassment, all my wits desert me.

  “You all ready for the journey?” Samuel doesn’t look up from the road, but there’s a slight curl to his lips that suggests amusement.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Samuel only hums a little to himself in answer.

  Vilate Ann asks, “How’s your sister faring?”

  “Much better, thank you.” The image of Rachel offering her dolly rises in my mind, and I swallow. “She’ll be up and about soon.”

  Samuel doesn’t say much after that, but Vilate Ann chatters enough to cover our silences, with opinions on everything from the weather (unbearably hot) to the new dress pattern her mother is cutting for her (unbearably fine) to her hopes that we reach Salt Lake City before July fourth and get to see some fireworks.

  “I doubt it,” Samuel says. “Unless you can somehow fly us over the mountains or induce a new rail line to appear, I don’t expect to reach Salt Lake City before next week.”

  We spend the first night in Richfield, with friends of the Willards’. The family feeds us stew and biscuits until our stomachs groan, and we sing songs around their battered piano until we cannot keep our eyes open. When darkness and quiet finally descend on the house, I whisper my prayers beside Vilate Ann, before climbing into the trundle bed we are to share.

  All the next day, we continue traveling north through Sevier County, in countryside that still looks so much like home that I’m given no chance to miss it: red rock, cottonwoods along the riverbeds, scrub pine and juniper on the mountains. On the third day, the road we’re following starts to climb toward Manti, and in early evening we pass by a lake, low and glittering in the fading light. Our destination is a homestead a little farther on, someone else the Willards know.

  It’s Independence Day. I wonder if Mama and the others went to Richfield to celebrate, if Rachel was well enough to go with them.

  Vilate Ann hasn’t repeated her wish for fireworks, but as the stars start to appear, I point out familiar constellations for her: the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia’s crown, the cross of Cygnus directly overhead. Then, so faint I think at first I have imagined it, a falling star above the eastern horizon.

  Samuel asks, “Do you know any stories of the constellations?”

  He’s on the far side of Vilate Ann tonight, and I have to strain a bit to hear him.

  “Are you sure you want me to tell stories of the stars?” I ask. “I might not be able to stop.”

  “Oh, I’ll stop listening if I have to. Vilate Ann has given me lots of practice.”

  Vilate Ann pokes him, indignant, and Samuel only laughs.

  I like his laugh—it rises from somewhere deep inside him, booming and infectious. I’m not sure I like noticing his laugh, though, so I switch my attention to the star-studded sky. I tell Samuel and Vilate Ann about Phaethon, the son of Helios, who begs to drive his father’s chariot for a day. His drive ends in disaster, as he cannot control the chariot, and Zeus destroys it—and him—with a thunderbolt. Phaethon’s dear friend Cycnus grieves by the river where Phaethon’s body falls, diving repeatedly into the water to try to rescue his friend’s charred body. The gods, mo
ved by this devotion, turn him into a swan and put him among the stars.

  When my words fade away, there’s silence as all of us stare upward. Then Vilate Ann says, “If you crash this chariot because you’re staring at the sky, Samuel Willard, don’t expect me to collect your charred bones. I don’t want some old gods to stick me in the sky.”

  “If they did, you wouldn’t be a swan,” Samuel says. “You’d be a hummingbird—small, brightly colored, and always buzzing around.”

  Vilate Ann says, “I do not buzz. And if you were a constellation, you’d be a cat. A lazy, vexing creature that likes to sleep all day.”

  “You forgot good-tempered,” Samuel says.

  “Yes, so long as no one tries to touch it, scratch its ears, or take its dinner,” I say tartly, annoyed that Samuel remains so irritatingly calm while riling up his sister.

  “Meow,” Samuel says. I can’t help it. A surprised laugh bubbles out of me, warm and loose.

  “What about you? What constellation would you choose?” he asks me. “Wait—let me guess. An owl.”

  I flush in the growing darkness, trying to figure out how he means to tease me with this. “Because I can rotate my head unusually far? Or because I cough up the bones of my prey?”

  “Can you?” Samuel asks, leaning forward to see me around Vilate Ann, his eyes bright with interest. When I don’t answer, he continues, “No, only because you have a kind of quiet grace and you’re always so focused. And smart. Owls were associated with Athena, weren’t they? The goddess of wisdom?”

  They were, but I’m surprised Samuel knows this—and that he thinks anything so nice about me. To cover my confusion, I say, “I’d rather be a comet than a constellation. A light burning through the sky, a mystery people write about centuries later.”

  “But what good is a comet, if it doesn’t last?” Vilate Ann asks.

  “Some do,” I say. “Halley’s comet reappears about every seventy-five years.” Then I think: Perhaps my life already is like a comet, following a predetermined path.