After Eden

by Joyce Brandon

  Johnny forced thoughts of Tía out of his mind. He concentrated instead on Steve Burkhart, Judy’s older brother, who would bear the brunt of Bill’s loss because the responsibility for running the ranch and the mine would fall squarely on his broad shoulders. Steve sat in a corner, keeping a morose watch.

  Life wouldn’t change much for the three Mexican women who shuffled their leather sandals and fingered their beads, whispering prayers for their patrón. Or for the other hands who lounged on the long shaded porch of the casa grande in sober and watchful postures. Johnny wanted to join them out there, to feel the slight breeze on his face, to smell the sage and enjoy that certain freedom not found inside a house, not even an expensive, sprawling, well-built adobe house. As foreman he belonged with the family. Protocol.

  Dr. Potter and a nurse were also there, along with Amanda Adams, who had hoped to marry Bill. Probably so she could share some of the wealth from the Lucky Cuss silver mine in Tombstone. It couldn’t be love. Bristling with prickly independence, Bill Burkhart did not inspire romantic love.

  Johnny had no aspirations about inheriting anything from Bill. He was only the foreman of the ranching operation. Before he had left, he and Bill and Steve had worked easily together. That would not change. Steve was stable and hardworking—more engineer than cow man—and generally ready to take Johnny’s advice on ranching matters.

  Johnny was surprised when he heard his name called.

  “Mr. Brago,” the nurse said, her tone self-important. “Mr. Burkhart wants to see you now.”

  Every eye in the room was suddenly on Johnny. Coiling forward and then standing, Johnny glanced at Steve and took off his hat before he followed the nurse.

  Bill’s room was hot. One lamp burned beside his bed. Heavy drapes shut out the bright sunlight. Bill looked strangely fragile and small in the big bed. Was it because Johnny had never seen his boss in bed before?

  “Bill.”

  “Bunch of idiots!” Burkhart growled. “Open those damned curtains. If that bossy nurse tries to stop you, pinch her on the ass. If you can find it under all that starch and sass.”

  Smiling, Johnny complied, more at ease now that he could see Bill hadn’t changed all that much, even on his deathbed. The room filled with light.

  “That’s better!” Bill growled. “The only good thing about dying is those blamed hypocrites indulge me. I don’t have to put up with that bunch of wailing women out there. They can just stay out of my way.” He stopped suddenly. “I see you’re not crying.”

  Johnny shrugged. He didn’t know how to answer that. He hadn’t cried since he was fifteen and returned home to find both parents murdered by Apaches. But Burkhart didn’t wait for an answer. “Come over here where I can see you,” he said, motioning to the side of his bed.

  “How’s this?” Johnny asked, complying.

  “You in love with Judy?”

  “Reckon that’s between me and Judy,” he said softly.

  “Don’t play the gallant with me, dammit. I’m dying. I got a right to know.”

  Johnny frowned. He wasn’t being coy. His feelings for Judy were confused and not such that any man would feel comfortable discussing them with the girl’s father. Even the reason that had brought him back had become confused and tangled in his mind. Even when he had clearly understood it himself, it hadn’t been anything he could feel proud of…

  “You gotta be the damnedest, stubbornest cuss I ever knew! You ain’t gonna tell me, are you? And me dying.” Disbelief mixed with outrage on his thin face; Bill shook his head in accusation. Small patches of whiskers missed by the nurse’s razor sprouted like wild grass in the seams and creases of his wrinkled cheeks. Once Bill had been a handsome man—an older version of Steve—passing down the blond coloring and classic features of their Swedish forefathers. Now, at sixty-nine, that shock of flaxen hair was streaked with gray and silver, and his once handsome face was creased into an expression of testy sourness.

  Doing a quick calculation, Johnny figured that Bill must have been forty years old when Steve was born, forty-nine when Judy was born. A little late for starting a family. He had already been too cranky to be a patient husband or father. Was that why his wife had run away when Judy was eight? That had been two years before Johnny came to Rancho la Reina, but already Bill had been filled with the bitterness that drove people away from him. Steve had coped by staying in the East as long as he could, getting his degree in mining engineering. Trapped on the ranch, Judy had avoided Bill when she could. Now Johnny was avoiding him as well.

  Guilt twinged Johnny’s gut. Bill have given him a job and a home after his parents were murdered by renegade Apache warriors. He owed Bill. He would like to give him an answer, but there was nothing he could say that would make Bill feel better.

  “Damn!” Burkhart growled, slamming his gnarled fist onto the bed beside his thin form. “I thought you’d take care of Judy. That’s why we brought you back here, tracked you down. Damn your lying eyes. I saw how you used to look at her. You cain’t fool me there, you closemouthed cuss. You’re just tormenting me, ain’t ya?”

  “I ain’t tormenting you, Bill. Whatever you’ve done is tormenting you,” Johnny said quietly. “I keep my broad Cherokee nose in my own feed bag.”

  “I don’t need you telling me that…arghhhh!” Burkhart suppressed a groan. He strained forward tensely, his eyes reflecting an instant of pure agony, beseeching Johnny to help him. His lips worked soundlessly until he collapsed backward, exhausted.

  “Johnny,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “I’m here, Bill,” Johnny said gently, taking Bill’s hand.

  “Oh, God, Johnny, I cain’t undo it. I want to change what I done, but I cain’t. I’m not man enough. I done it in anger and spite, hankering after vengeance, but now when I don’t feel none of them things, I cain’t undo it. God knows I never hated that girl. I never did. I admit there were times when I looked at her, and I thought I hated her, but I don’t. I swear it.” Bill sagged back onto the bed, his breath coming in shallow pants.

  “What girl?”

  “Judy.”

  “You want to tell her yourself? She’s waiting to see you.”

  “No. No. There ain’t time…” Burkhart grabbed for Johnny’s arm, missing it, his fingers tearing at the air as if he could hold himself back from the edge he slipped toward.

  “It’s okay, Bill. I’m here.” Johnny took Bill’s hand, holding it tight so Bill would feel it, wondering if he should call for the doctor. Burkhart’s hand went limp, and Johnny felt a moment of panic as he realized Bill was dead. He continued to hold Bill’s hand for a few seconds, then put it gently down onto Bill’s chest, but he didn’t feel like calling anyone or moving yet. He felt at once deserted and set up. He didn’t understand how or why, but he knew that somehow the old schemer had fixed it so he would bear the brunt of whatever it was he had done to his daughter.

  Judy. Her image came into Johnny’s mind with the force of a body blow. Long brown hair, eloquent brown eyes, skin as pure and sweet as a baby’s, and a mouth that would drive any man insane. Flirt, tease, hoyden, even a cheat and a liar, but never with malicious intent. Judy was a survivor. She had more needs than other girls. She needed more love and attention, and she was willing to pay the price. Only the men she rejected complained.

  Johnny clamped his jaws against any more of that kind of thinking. Come what may, it was time to tell Bill’s family he was dead.

  That first second when Judy opened her eyes, everything seemed fine. As if today would be like any other day. Except for a headache that had formed deep inside her skull, throbbing into life as if nurtured by her waking heartbeats. Where had this headache been while she’d slept?

  The sun must be high overhead; shadows on her floor were short. No one had come to wake her. She should feel grateful for the extra sleep, but part of her was scared, as if she had been abandoned in this house. She would get up and be all alone. She strained her ears for any familiar sound. A cow ba
wled in the distance, and then one of the Mexican women, probably Carmen, scolded someone in Spanish.

  Relaxing back onto the bed, Judy closed her eyes. Usually filled with thoughts, today her mind was sluggish and balky. She tried hard not to remember, but with consciousness came the knowledge that her father was dead. As if her grief had been sleeping as well, it stirred and swelled into full-blown nausea. Tears welled in her eyes.

  She needed to rearrange her mind, to accept a world without her father. She lay very still. They had not been close for a long time, but he had been the cornerstone of her world. She felt like a house that had lost part of its foundation. Perhaps if she could lie still enough, her thoughts would arrange themselves, but if proper thoughts did come, she did not recognize them.

  Her eyes were tired and gritty. She was not ready for the simple burial ceremony that would be held today when her father’s friends arrived from Tombstone and Fort Bowie.

  Ready or not, somehow, with Carmen’s help, Judy was properly washed, gowned, and combed in time to greet Jim Furnett, justice of the peace, barrister, and her father’s friend. He presided over the solemn group of family, friends, and employees who assembled two hundred feet behind the casa grande, beside a gaping grave that had not been there yesterday.

  Judy sensed the dull sanctity of the occasion in the small things: Furnett’s slight self-consciousness as he read from the Burkhart family Bible, Carmen’s sniffling, the pungent sweetness of the desert sage, the crackling of stiff yellowed grass as man and women shuffled from foot to foot under the hot sun. Furnett’s words did not stick in her mind.

  At last it was over. But then supper had to be cooked for all who had made the long trip from Tombstone and the short trip from Fort Bowie. Numbly, glad of anything that took her out of herself, Judy helped serve the heavy platters of food Carmen must have stayed up all night to prepare.

  After supper Steve poured whiskey for the men, and then, gratefully, people began leaving, mouthing kind, awkward words of consolation to her and Steve.

  Amanda Adams and Furnett stayed. After the last guest departed Furnett asked the family to assemble in the parlor. Needing his strength, Judy sat beside Steve, pressing against his warmth in spite of the heat that still bore down on them.

  Furnett read the will as he had read from the Bible, in a stern and solemn voice:

  I, William Zetta Burkhart, of the town of Tombstone, County of Cochise, Territory of Arizona, being of sound mind, make this my last will and testament. After the payment of my just debts I devise and bequeath as follows: To my son, Steven William Burkhart, an undivided one-half interest in Rancho la Reina and the Lucky Cuss silver mine. To my daughter, Teresa Garcia-Lorca, an undivided one-half interest in Rancho la Reina and the Lucky Cuss silver mine. These two bequests are granted with one condition: that each of them live and work together on the ranch or at the mine. If either of them leave the ranch to establish any alternate residence, except as is made necessary by the mining business, he or she forfeits his or her interest in both for all time.

  Too surprised and stunned to speak, Judy sat like a stone. Unblinking, as if unaware he had dropped a bomb in the midst of the little group in the parlor, Furnett droned on.

  To Judith Elaine Burkhart, my stepdaughter, I leave the sum of five thousand dollars. To Johnny Brago, I leave the sum of one thousand dollars. All the rest and residue of my property and estate are to be divided equally between my son, Steven, and my daughter, Teresa, with the same condition stated above, that they live and work together. I hereby appoint my good friend, Jim Furnett, Esquire, to be the executor of this will. In witness whereof I have set my hand this 10th day of June, 1879.

  William Zetta Burkhart

  “What the hell does this mean?” Steve demanded. “And who the hell is Teresa Garcia-Lorca?”

  Furnett cleared his throat. The action, like small explosions that puffed his cheeks out three times, fascinated Judy. Smoothing the parchment between his hands and looking strangely pleased with himself, Furnett fidgeted.

  Suddenly everything about this man interested Judy. Smiling at her when they met, asking polite inane questions men ask women and children who do not really exist for them, he had kept his terrible secret for two years, maybe longer. Now his simple, florid face, so impersonal in the past, looked treacherous to her. It was the face of a man who could look simple and uninteresting, but could harbor hurtful, ugly secrets and could write them down in stilted, legal documents, recording them for all the world to know.

  Furnett was talking again, but the words were not registering in her mind—it had become resistant to new words. Steve pulled Judy to her feet to stand beside him, his arm holding her trembling body close. What did the will mean? My stepdaughter? Bill Burkhart was her father…

  Furnett cleared his throat again. “I reckon this is kind of a rough way to find out, but Teresa Garcia-Lorca is your half sister.”

  Looking up at Steve, Judy flinched. Heat flushed his handsome, usually calm face. His jaw was set, angry. “Like hell she is! Judy is my sister. If my father didn’t have the guts to own up to his bastard when he was alive, he can’t expect us to do it now.”

  Seated beside Furnett, Amanda Adams shook her head. “Not only his bastard, but apparently a half-breed as well,” she said, her pale gray eyes flashing with righteous indignation. “It’s never good—a man like Bill living alone all those years after his wife run off. Mark my words. I told that to Bill himself. Told him a fine-looking, virile man like himself shouldn’t be living alone, with only low types and Mexican women. Too many Mexican housekeepers in and out of here all the time…”

  Amanda turned on Judy, who was clinging to Steve’s arm lest her trembling legs gave way and buckled beneath her.

  “Seems strange your mother would leave you with him…him not even being your own pa and all. I sure Lord didn’t know you were only Bill’s stepdaughter,” she said as if regretting the pains she had taken to impress Burkhart with her motherly warmth.

  Steve questioned Furnett about ways to break the will. Furnett’s answers blurred in Judy’s head. Slipping out of Steve’s embrace, unnoticed, she walked quickly to her room. Once inside, she stopped at her vanity and stared at her reflection. Her face was pasty white. Her eyes reminded her of her horse, Dervish, after he had broken his leg and she’d had to shoot him. Dead, his eyes had been open, but the light had gone out of them.

  She had been disinherited. Her father had left her half of the ranch and mine to his real daughter, Teresa. That might have meaning later, but at the moment all she felt was a terrible, all-pervading emptiness. She had felt like his daughter. She had never doubted it for a second. Daddy—Bill Burkhart, she corrected herself—he must have known for years.

  If he were alive she could reason with him, beg him to see that she really was his daughter. Many times she had charmed him into doing things he didn’t want to do. She had loved him as if she were his real daughter. She had put up with his moods and his occasional meannesses and bouts of temper as if she were his real daughter.

  It seemed odd that all her years of loving him counted for nothing. Her stomach felt sick with grief, her world was black with it, and yet it counted for nothing. It seemed odd to hurt so bad and be declared illegitimate by a few words written on paper.

  She would be thrown off the ranch by Teresa, the real daughter. Teresa’s grief, if she felt anything at all, would be the real grief. Judy would be known by everyone as the bastard stepdaughter, an accident left by a woman who also counted for nothing.

  The weakness in her legs grew so great that she sagged against the bureau. She could not stay here, and yet she had no place to go. Rancho la Reina had always been her home.

  Judy forced herself to look at her room. Usually so cheerful and pleasing with its canary-yellow walls, white rugs, and yellow coverlet, the room now seemed to mock her with its cheeriness. Or was it only that the knowledge that her father—the man she had thought her father—had never loved her, had pro
bably actively hated her, stunned her? Now she understood so many things…so many things…

  Understanding the past bewildered her but also pointed out the senselessness of her life, living at the mercy of people who were supposed to care for her but carried out secret acts against her when she was most vulnerable, making her hate herself and her own intense emotions.

  She walked shakily from the bureau, slumped onto the edge of the bed, and huddled there, holding herself against the cold ache in her stomach.

  Her heart pounded hard and fast in her chest. Judy hugged her fists to her chest. Between two creases, a pulse in her slender wrist puffed up like a worm jerking under her skin, trying to hide. Her thoughts were disconnected by all those heartbeats. There were too many of them. How could she think with so many heartbeats? How could she get control of so many nerves with all that blood surging through her so wildly?

  The small worm of her blood that writhed against her pale wrist pulsed rapidly as if trying to push through her.

  Alien blood coursed through her veins. Bastard blood. Her chest felt suffocated. Judy wished she were dead. If she were dead, no one would ever be able to surprise her with their spiteful acts of viciousness. Not Mommy, not Daddy, not even Johnny…not loving her.

  She sat up and walked down the hall, past the parlor, where they still talked, and around the corner into Steve’s bedroom. She slipped inside and opened his top dresser drawer. The straight-edged razor he shaved with gleamed in the near darkness. She slipped it into the deep pocket of her gown and walked quietly past the parlor again.

  They would not come looking for her until morning.

  Voices raised in the parlor. Judy heard the word “bastard” clearly. They were talking about her. Amanda had finally realized Judy’s mother had been married to Bill Burkhart for two years before Judy was born, that if she wasn’t Bill’s, she had to be Ellen Burkhart’s love child, foisted off on Bill all these years as if she’d been his. “Why, I declare,” Amanda said, her voice hushed. “Judy is a bastard.”