by Celia Hayes
Magda counted back: in the fall it would be twenty-three years since her husband brought her along this very road, driving a wagon with her bride chest in it and his saddle horse, old Three-Socks clumping along behind, tied to the wagon’s tailgate. She thought at the time that it was the end of a long journey; that long journey that brought her and her family from Albeck, across the grey cold Atlantic to a promised paradise in Texas. And paradise it had truly seemed, especially after it had been forbidden to her. But no archangel with a flaming sword stood barrier now. She caught her breath, seeing the fine new stone gateposts on either side of a well-traveled drive, the low places filled in with river gravel.
“The trees are grown up thicker,” she ventured. “We used once to be able to see the house from here.”
On the day they had been sent away, she and Hannah and Sam had sat on the back of the cart, bumping down the road towards Comfort and watching a grey column of smoke rise into the pure blue autumn sky. The soldiers were firing the barn as they left, looting the farmyard and their stores of food, for the greater benefit of the Confederacy.
The two outriders and Sam spurred their ponies ahead as soon as they reached the gate. Daddy Hurst looked over his shoulder, “Dey go now, tell de folks that you heah at las’ Miz Becker.”
She hardly heard his voice, for she eagerly drank in the sight of her husband’s old pasture and fields. The fences that he and Trap Talmadge had built with so much laborious care were repaired and stout. Someone was plowing; the scent of new-turned soil rose like perfume from the damp earth, as rich and dark as plum-pudding. That had been the cornfield, most years; enriched with stable muck. Now she saw that it was larger than ever before. The cedar thickets were gone, all but the largest trees. The wide pasture that stretched from below the orchard wall nearly to the river was dotted here and there with tall oaks, their leaves new and brightly green in the afternoon sun which slanted golden. Horses grazed there, more horses than Magda had ever seen on her husband’s land.
“Dey been roundin’ up an’ breakin’ ponies foah de remuda,” Daddy Hurst commented.
“Oh, look, Mama!” Hannah breathed just as Lottie turned and asked, excitedly, “Is that the house, Mama? The big house, on top of the hill?”
“Oh!” Magda had been holding her breath, without realizing. Now she let it out. “I . . . I scarce recognize it! So much larger. And the orchard in bloom, so fair and white! Oh, Hannah, Lottchen, we are come home at last!”
Carl Becker’s stone-built house had always crowned that low knoll above the wide meandering Guadalupe. The white limestone from which it was built had aged over time to a mellow honey color. It rose out of the orchard below like a sea cliff, and against it billows of white apple blossom foamed like waves. It had been a small house, shaped like an L, with a long covered porch in the angle of the L. Carl had built into the slope, which provided it with a tall basement dug back into the hillside. His house was as stout as any fortress in the old country, with tall shuttered windows that looked out over the orchard and the meadow beyond it, down to the river road. The other side had looked into the farmyard and the rising folds of hills that lined the river valley, hills that went from green to blue and violet with distance, sometimes clear and sharp as a paper outline against the sky and sometimes misty and softening indistinguishably into each other.
The house appeared nearly twice the length of what it had been, the new work fresh and white, and the shingles were dark, not weathered to silvery gray. Daddy Hurst clucked to the horses; they leaned into their harness, for the ground began rising at the place where the orchard wall began.
“Stop the wagon,” Magda commanded him, overtaken by a sudden urgent impulse. “Stop the wagon and let me down.”
Daddy Hurst pulled his reins and looked over his shoulder at her. “Miz Becker? We ‘mose there, now.”
“I know,” Magda answered, breathlessly “Take the girls up to the house, just let me down here. I’ll walk up through the orchard.”
She was already throwing aside the quilts and standing up, resettling her bonnet on her head, vaguely aware of Lottie’s puzzled voice and Daddy Hurst mumbling under his breath. He set the brake and came around to hand her down to the ground. She told herself to be sensible, to wait until Daddy Hurst delivered them all to the house, to be greeted by her sons, made welcome home—but she could not deny this sudden inchoate longing for her husband’s presence. This she must do first, although she could not know why; and she would prefer to do it alone.
“Tell your brothers I will be along in a moment,” she said. “Dolph cannot have changed the place so much that I cannot find my own way from here!”
“She is going to Papa,” she thought she heard Hannah’s gentle but confident voice telling Lottie.
She walked swiftly along a path at the foot of the orchard wall that had been worn by feet and wagon wheels. The ambulance continued on with a lurch and a crunch of iron tires on gravel. Here was the lower gate, made wide enough to admit a wagon into the orchard. The heavy wooden gate stood open; there was no need to protect the tender young trees from deer and cattle. She supposed that with so many settlers returning to the Hills and the Federal Army returning to their forts in the north and west, and so many hands hired to work here, that there was not much need to keep the gate closed for fear of Indians either.
The orchard! She walked through the gate and stopped short. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the white cloud drifts of apple blossom; how she had loved this place above all! How her husband had loved it, tending the trees that he had collected with such care, making such farsighted plans. So many plans, some of them made in the knowledge that it would take more than one lifetime to see them to fruition! A lifetime, she thought, oh, that God had granted that Carl’s had been a longer one. The ache of his loss at that moment was as fresh and lacerating as it was on the day that Carl Becker was buried in his own orchard, buried and mourned by those few friends who braved the Hanging Band and the provost marshal.
She walked swiftly among the trees on the lowest terrace, hardly aware that they showered white petals upon her black dress and shawl as she brushed through low hanging branches. By the end of summer, when they would have to leave for San Antonio, these branches would be hanging ever lower, heavy with fruit. Apples—how he had loved apples! They had shared an apple on that long-ago day when they met. He had peeled a winter-withered apple from his sister’s trees, cutting it into quarters and making a small jest about the Garden of Eden.
In no time at all, Magda reached the farthest corner of the orchard. There was an open space there, in the angle of the wall. To her surprise there was now a low iron fence marking off a tiny enclosure around the two graves. The grass within was clipped tidily short, the little gate stood closed. Magda unlatched it and stepped within. The stones stood straight and clean, scrubbed free of any dirt that birds might have left on them. Here lay her first daughter, the baby who barely lived a month . . . and her children’s father. Someone had even brought flowers, two small jars with water and field-flowers. Magda’s eyes filled again and overflowed. She sank to her knees on a little square of green before the stones. Such tranquility was in this place, as if peace and sunshine filled it like a cup. She patted the ground over Carl’s grave as gently as if she stroked a sleeping child and said, “Dearest dear, we are home at last!”
She had the oddest conviction that somewhere, somehow he heard her, that he welcomed them home with his customary quiet affection, a brush of a kiss on her lips as light as a feather. “The children are safe, safe from the malice of Waldrip. I saw to that, dearest dear—you would have been very proud of my aim. I have missed your companionship so dreadfully—we would have returned before now. Your son has been seeing to things.” She sighed; what would Carl have thought of all this? As long as his treasured orchard was tended, Magda did not think he would have cared much. “And now I suppose,” she added in a stronger voice, “I must go and see what the Confederacy and our son togethe
r have done with this house!”
It came to her, as she climbed the steps to the second terrace and then to the topmost, that although she had traveled all day and had felt quite tired until five minutes ago—now she felt as refreshed as if she had gotten a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed.
At the top of the slope, near where the orchard wall joined the house, there had long been a gate. In times past, it had opened into the farmyard, in the space between the house and the barn where the vegetable garden had once been. When Carl Becker had first begun to build, the house, barn and bunkhouse had been connected by a rough palisade of logs the height of a man; above all a careful and wary man, he sought to protect his family, his hired hands, and his horses against Indian raids or brigandage. Now it appeared that possibility was no longer to be feared; or at least, not so much feared as before. She stepped through the gate into a relatively open space, a forecourt to the house with a number of other buildings set around it: a pair of newly plastered cabins of logs and stone, both of them much larger than the old bunkhouse had been. One of them even had a covered porch. There was also a large barn of sawed planks, with an adjacent corral and a number of saddled horses hitched to the fence. There was even an open shed with a brick forge-fireplace inside, an anvil set before it.
Where the stone cistern had been there was now a neat white-washed shed, and water dripped into a stone water trough outside. She could scarcely find the place in the farmyard where she had stood and leveled a Paterson at a Confederate soldier. They had come, a whole company of undisciplined young louts, to strip the Becker farm bare of all the foodstuffs, the stock, and their wagons. Having done that, three of them had amused themselves tormenting Jack the dog by shooting the ground near him. She had come running out into the yard, heavy with child, to find Sam holding Jack in his arms, crying frantically for her to make the soldiers stop. With his childish faith in her capability, just as they were being robbed of everything!
A soldier held his musket trained on her son. Whether he had meant to shoot or not, she did not know. But she had in turn held the Paterson on him. She had gone beyond all fear in those moments, somewhere beyond anger. No man would threaten her children. Magda had felt something of the same cold rage when she had killed Waldrip; so she would have killed that young Confederate soldier. In the end, his officer had called him away, and had ordered Magda and her children to go. So they had obeyed; now they had returned at last.
She barely had time to take in much else, for her children were gathered around the ambulance, with Dolph and Daddy Hurst and a Mexican woman with a shawl over her head all clamorously greeting the younger children. A fair of dogs orbited the humans, including Pepper, that Kansas hound with the scarred throat, and the little black herding dog, now grown to maturity. Only Hannah seemed composed, smiling at her mother with serene comprehension.
Sam shouted, “Oh, Mama, Dolph says that I may have three horses to ride on the trail!”
“You’ll need every one of them, squirt,” Dolph said easily, “For you’ll be riding drag and eating dust with all the rest of the new hands. I can’t do you special favors just because you’re my brother! Hello, Mama.” He embraced her warmly and kissed her cheek. With sudden shy uncertainty he waved his hand around, asking, “Well . . . what do you think?”
Magda realized that not only was it more substantial than before—it was also busy. Smoke rose from the forge building, along with the clear regular ringing of hammer on metal. A kitchen wagon, larger and heavier than the one they had used on that momentous first trail drive north, sat in the barn doorway, already half loaded with sacks of flour and barrels of salt-meat. Horsemen rode into the yard at a great pace and a cloud of dust before they dismounted.
“It’s . . . very grand,” Magda answered, breathlessly. “I would hardly have recognized anything at all.”
“It’s the show-place that Papa intended it to be,” her son affirmed. She marveled once more at how easily he bore authority—for the property and the cattle, and all the men he had hired. Hard to believe that he was the same being as the plump fair-haired baby, chewing on rusks, fussing to be let out of the baby-pen to be spoiled by his father. He then looked at her critically, adding, “Onkel Hansi said you should not kill yourself with work this summer—only that which you really wish to do around the place. This is Tia Leticia, Alejandro’s mother . . . you know my head horse wrangler? She’s a cousin of Porfirio’s, of course. She’s a widow, too . . . and didn’t want to marry again. She and Alejandro’s sisters do the cooking and laundry, and look after the housekeeping.” He spoke to the Mexican woman in soft Spanish, obviously performing introductions. “She’ll look after you and the girls while we’re away, and Frank Inman—my ranch foreman—he’ll see to everything else. His younger boy is one of Onkel Fredi’s top hands.”
Magda was abruptly smothered in an affectionate embrace and a flood of Spanish. Tia Leticia looked to be about her own age, plump and bossy. She patted Magda’s cheek; her voice sounded sympathetic. Dolph added, sounding amused, “She knows you were ill. Now she is upbraiding us for having you stand around. You should come inside, she says, and wash off the dust of travel. If you do not want to have supper in the dining room, she will make you a tray and bring it upstairs. You really should see the inside, Mama.”
Sam and Daddy Hurst quickly gathered up the small luggage they had brought with them. Magda allowed her son and Tia Leticia, one on either side, to escort her into the house. Sam and Lottie ran ahead, Lottie almost incandescent with excitement. Once her house, she thought with a pang—still her house, she supposed, even if Dolph and Tia Leticia between them had already decided on its management.
The front door and the entryway were little changed; still the bird’s nest on the apple branch and the date carved on the lintel; another one of Carl Becker’s quiet jests. The bird in the nest for Miss Vogel. The house had been furnished sparely but appropriately, in simple taste, with furniture that Margaret sent from Austin as her wedding present, vowing that for all she knew, her brother would be content with a simple bedroll in the corner of the kitchen. The hallway looked much the same—stairs to the upper floor directly opposite, with the door to the parlor underneath, and the kitchen to the left. The kitchen, the heart of the house, where all the work of it went on—Tia Leticia’s domain now, Magda supposed. There was a new doorway, to the right, into the new portion of the house.
“Dining room,” Dolph explained. “You should see it, Mama. Mr. Tatsch made the buffet special. Beyond it there’s an office and a little sitting room. I had them put your desk from Vati’s house in there. I thought you would like it. There’s glass in all the windows now, no more shutters keeping out the light!”
Tia Leticia patted Magda’s hand and gestured towards the stairs. Sam had already gone halfway up, chattering to Lottie and asking over his shoulder if he could stay in the bunkhouse with the other hired hands. He and Hannah had been children, when they had been sent into exile. To both of them, Magda supposed that this return had something of the unreality of a fairy tale, a fable and a memory that grew thinner and more insubstantial with each passing year; overtaken by the worries and realities of school, the disruptions of the war, and the slow coming of peace with its attendant new concerns. As Hannah had observed, they had lived longer at Vati’s than they had here.
She stopped cold at the doorway of the biggest bedroom, the one over the kitchen. This had been theirs, the heart of their kingdom. All of their children had been conceived here, she and Carl had laughed and loved here, talked of their future, of the future their children would have. Here was where she was told sorrowfully by her brother Johann that Carl had been murdered, treacherously shot in the back by J.P. Waldrip as he was arrested and taken away by lawless men who did the bidding of the Confederate authorities. No, she couldn’t bear to sleep in this room alone.
“I think the girls should have this room,” she said breathlessly.
Dolph looked startled. “But it was y
ours and Papa’s before,” he protested. Tia Leticia’s eyes went shrewdly from her face to his, seeming to comprehend as Magda shook her head.
“So it was, but I cannot sleep there now. Let Hannah and Lottie share it.”
Tia Leticia spoke, a quick and authoritative rattle, seeming to scold Dolph while she patted Magda’s cheek again. She knows, Magda realized—she knows and she understands my feelings on this. I think she rather expected such, being another widow without a wish to remarry.
Dolph shrugged, still somewhat puzzled. “There are three more bedrooms; the smallest has a fine view of the orchard, all the way down to the river.”
“I would like that,” Magda answered quickly. “I’d love to look out on the orchard.”
That room was plastered pale yellow, a color that held the sunshine and glowed in the afternoon like a Chinese paper lantern from the sunlight that poured in through a pair of tall windows. Yes, Magda thought, this will do very well. This room is new; it will not haunt me with memories of vanished happiness. We will sort out the things that we brought from Vati’s house, and it will be our home again. Not quite as it was—but ours.
“Oh, there was a letter for you from Onkel Hansi,” Dolph recalled suddenly, when she came downstairs that evening and joined her children in the parlor. That room was very fine now, with a tall tripartite glass window that had the same aspect as her bedroom: the orchard and the meadow beyond. Mr. Tatsch’s workshop had excelled in providing the furniture; so comfortable and commodious, in simple and modern taste.
“So, now I know what you two were plotting, all last fall, after the cattle drive,” Magda said to Dolph and Hannah. She opened the letter that he brought her from what he grandly described as his office, a small room that had its own door onto the covered porch that now ran the length of the house front, tucked between the kitchen and dairy on one side, and the new addition on the other.
