Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  I chuckled. “Now. Heard you just got yourself freed from jail.”

  Lije whooped with laughter. “You heard that, huh? My legend precedes me.”

  “I also heard you was accounted a great faro player. Is that the legend that saw you locked up in a cage? Or was it something to do with cattle rustling, as the rumor goes? You can tell me without shame. I’m no stranger to the inside of a jail cell, myself.”

  “’Course you aint,” Lije said with no small amount of admiration. “You’re a Canary. No, I must admit it was a damn sight worse than cheating at cards. Even simple cattle rustling would be a preferable charge. I’m afraid it was fraud put me behind bars. I am ashamed to admit it, but it’s true.”

  “Fraud?” Even I had never done anything to terrible.

  “I ain’t proud of it,” Lije said again, “and I done my time. I’m a better man now—or I aim to be. Two other fellas and me, we cooked up a scheme among us. We’d buy up a herd of cattle and take out an insurance policy, claiming we was fixing to set ourselves up as ranchers. Then we’d drive the cattle down to the railroad tracks in the dead of night and leave ’em there. When the trains come along, the cattle would either be hit and perish, or would run off in a stampede. Either way, we cashed out our insurance, then ran the whole game over again. Guess I should have foreseen that it wouldn’t work more than two or three times before the law caught on.”

  “That’s a dirty trick.”

  “I know it, and as I said, I ain’t proud. But I’m settled into a new life now. Guess you heard this is Lena’s place.”

  I nodded.

  “She and her husband John have been real charitable. They took me in when I was released. I promised to work for John here on the farm for three years at least, and then I’ll set out on my own with some money honestly come by, and make of myself a respectable man.” Lije interrupted himself. “Damn, but it’s good to see you, Martha. I wondered about you so many times since we parted ways, and hoped you was all right.”

  “I wondered about you all, too.” Feared for you, I thought. “And Martha—no one has called me that in a terrible long time. These days, everybody calls me Jane.”

  Lije looked at me more closely—squinted at my trousers and my shirt, his mouth pressing hard and thin with suspicion. “You ain’t, by any chance, Calamity Jane?”

  “The one and only.”

  Lije hooted again. “Wish I could say I was surprised to learn it! What adventures you’ve had. Why, I heard—”

  “None of what you heard is true. All lies, I’m afraid, cooked up by those crazy novelists and dirty newspaper writers. My life ain’t been half as pretty as they made it seem.”

  He was sober now. “Guess nobody’s life has been a bed of roses.”

  I hesitated, fearing to ask the question I knew I must. “That ranch you and Cilus went off to…”

  Lije nodded. “It wasn’t the best of homes, but I can’t say it was the worst. The Richardsons worked us hard—damn hard. After a few years, they did make good on their promise and teach Cilus and me reading and sums, but mostly we was unpaid hands to them—and just about the only hands on the place. I guess neither Cilus nor me had much of a childhood, but we survived. That’s the important part.”

  “Where is Cilus now?”

  “Can’t say. The both of us took off from the Richardson place when I was eighteen and Cilus was about to turn twenty. We traveled together for a spell, went up to Montana and played with the idea of becoming prospectors. But the longer we cooled our heels in Montana, the less certain we became about what we ought to do next. Cilus had all kinds of ideas. Becoming a minister—though I can’t think of a wors’t preacher than Cilus Canary. I believe he took a shine to the idea just so’s he could lay his head in a nice house for free. Then he cooked up some crazy scheme to go Back East and get into a college somewheres, become an educated man. I told him it was a damn fool idea, that he couldn’t read well enough to get into no fancy schools. He took it bad; we quarreled. We parted ways that night, and he told me he’d come back by and by, when his temper cooled. But he stayed away for months on end, and so I left Montana, too.”

  “Do you suppose he could be—”

  “Dead? No, I don’t think so. Somebody would have contacted Lena or me if Cilus had met his end. No, he’s off East, I wager, still trying to weasel his way into a fancy gentleman’s college.”

  “What about Isabelle?”

  “Still living in Piedmont, and about to marry. She wrote Lena and told her all about it. Lena and John are welcome to come to the wedding, she said—but not me, and nobody else from the family if they should chance to turn up. Isabelle is sure Lena is proper company, since she has a husband and a farm and all. But she don’t look too favorable on any other Canarys.”

  The news pained me. I remembered how Isabelle had cried when her new mother had taken her away. She had wanted to remain with the boys and me—wanted to keep the family together. I suppose over time she came to view the hardship of the trail in a different light, and was glad to put the past behind her.

  “Guess I deserve that,” I said.

  “Guess you don’t. None of us deserves it. We’re all family, Martha, no matter what misfortunes have come our way. Isabelle might kid herself that she can keep some distance, but family never can stay apart for long. Or at least, not for good. Before you ask, no one has heard tell of Sara, and not for lack of trying. Cilus and I tried to find her several times. Lena and John have tried, too. I expect that Mormon woman who took her in changed her name, and never told her nothing of her real origins.”

  For one wild moment, I thought to ask Lije whether he or Lena had ever tried to find me. Then I thought better of the impulse. It was a fair bet I’d rather not know the answer to that question.

  Lije glanced toward the prim white farmhouse and perked up. “Kitchen fire’s on. Lena must be done with her laundry, and started cooking supper. Let’s go in and see her.”

  “I shouldn’t.” If Isabelle wanted nothing to do with me, then Lena would want me even less.

  “Don’t be a fool, Martha. Come on; let’s bed your horse down and get to it. Lena will be surprised, but she won’t be hostile. I know her well. You must trust me where Lena is concerned.”

  A sickening weight of anticipation fair-about numbed all my senses as I followed Lije from the barn (where Pie was rewarded for his service with ration of grain.) I moved toward the house in a state of discomfort; my clothes all felt much too tight. The world around me seemed to have shifted, retreating from reality into the vague, half-solid realms of a dream—or more likely, a nightmare. The afternoon bore me along on its current. I could not slow time’s rapid flood, nor alter the course of my drifting. Lije led me up the back steps, into a small but tidy kitchen with a clean-swept, spotlessly scrubbed red-brick floor. The smell of wood smoke and fresh-baked bread wrapped all around me. I kept my eyes fixed on the bricks below my feet.

  “Supper will be ready in about an hour.” It was a young woman’s voice, smooth and high, pretty as a song. And it plucked a nerve inside me, sent a jolt of recognition traveling up my back till my scalp tingled and my heart went sick all at once with love and longing. I knew it was my sister’s voice, yet it sounded so much like my mother’s. I had scarcely thought of Ma, all those many years since we left Missouri. She leaped back into my awareness, vivid in memory—and once again I saw her knees showing below her pushed-up skirt; I saw pale dust flying as her horse sprinted away, bearing my ma beyond my reach.

  “Turn around and have a look, Lena,” my brother said. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  I couldn’t raise my eyes from the clean-swept floor, but I did see the hem of Lena’s skirt, pink flowers on white, rotating slowly as she turned from her stove. I could see the toes of her boots now, pointed and brown, as clean as the bricks. Lena held perfectly still and faced me. Silence flattened itself between us and lay there, cringing and thick.

  “Don’t you know who this is?” L
ije asked.

  “Of course I do.” Lena sounded half-choked. “I… I never thought to see her again, that’s all.”

  I could read no emotion in her voice. Only dull, cautious shock.

  After a spell, Lena said, “Hello, Martha.”

  I’ll never know how I convinced myself to speak. “Hello, Lena. You sure have a pretty place here.” I was still staring at the toes of her boots.

  “All thanks to John—my husband. He’s a hard-working man.” She cleared her throat and moved out of my sheepish, downcast vision. I heard the scrape of a chair across’t the floor. “Well,” Lena said briskly, “I suppose you ought to sit down. I’ll put the percolator on.”

  Lije gave me a gentle push towards the table. He joined me there, grinning eagerly, looking from me to Lena and back again. Timid, I risked a glance toward the stove and found Lena in profile, busying herself with a copper coffee pot. She was very pale; her brows had drawn together in a stern frown, or perhaps that was just the way she looked whenever she worked. Her hair was like mine, dark and gently curled, but glossy where mine was always dull from trail dust. She had swept her hair up into a fashionable roll, too, with a little puff standing up at her forehead and the whole arrangement held in place with a tortoiseshell comb. She had our mother’s eyes—keen and dark, with a spark of hardness to them, but so prettily shaped you couldn’t help but stare. As I took in the sight of my sister, I realized Lena was only a few years older than my ma was in my favorite memories. She must have been twenty-five in 1885. Lena was much smaller in stature than I was, and finer in the face and hands. But still she bore the unmistakable stamp of our family—a firm presence, a carriage far prouder than a Canary ought to be. Once in my hurdy-gurdy days, I had heard a woman called “statuesque,” and that word came back to me as I gazed at my beautiful sister. She looked just like a marble carving, valuable and set high upon its plinth.

  When she had put the percolator on the stove to boil, Lena approached the table with the grim resolve of someone determined to see to an unpleasant task. Her belly pushed out a little, filling her skirt. She was pregnant—six or seven months along, from what I could tell. The pain of losing my son had eased a little by then, so I could be more pleased for her than envious.

  “You’re gonna have a baby,” I said.

  “Yes—my first. I guess he’ll come by the end of summer.”

  “It’s a dreadful thing, to be pregnant in the summertime.” I feared she would ask me whether I had any children, so I added quickly, “Or so I hear tell.”

  Lena smiled rather tightly. “I will manage.” She flicked a cautious look at Lije, and I blushed at my own stupidity. It wasn’t fit, to talk of bearing babies where a man could hear.

  Lena said, “What brings you to Lander, Martha? And in… such a state?”

  “Oh.” I brushed my big, clumsy hands down the front of my shirt, fidgeting in my trousers. “You must excuse me for all this. I been running a delivery service out of Boulder, Colorado. The work is so terrible dirty, I find it more suitable to dress like a man than a lady.” Lena couldn’t quite disguise her scowl, though I saw her try. I added, “But of course, I always wear a dress to church on Sundays.”

  “Of course. You made a delivery to Lander, then?”

  I swallowed hard before I spoke again. “As for what brought me here—to tell you the truth, I heard tell that Lije was in Lander. I thought to find him. I didn’t know you was here, too, till I arrived this afternoon. But I’m right glad to see you.” Suddenly all the reservation broke within me like a breached dam. Words—desperate explanations—poured from my mouth. I couldn’t have stopped talking if I’d tried. “Lena, I thought about you every day since we parted. You and everyone else. I fretted over you so often, I could never count all the times. You can’t imagine how it soothes my soul, to see you set up so well in such a pretty house, and married to a man you like, with a baby on the way. Oh, all the times I wondered what became of you! I feel as if I’m witnessing a proper miracle, right here and now. I could jump up and sing a hymn.”

  Lena smiled, but it was a small and tentative thing. A good deal of confusion tensed the corners of her eyes. She made herself laugh. It sounded forced. “There’s no need to sing. And yes, I am well; thank you for your concern. I work hard—John works hard, too, selling meat and vegetables to the Army and to other expeditions that pass through the valley. But one small farm alone can’t provide the sort of future John and I have planned for. So I have taken up the laundry business.” She sighed; there was no mistaking her weariness. Then she shook her head and asked, “What of you, Martha? Where did life take you after… after we parted ways?”

  I didn’t know how to answer such a question. I had no doubt Lena wouldn’t care for the truth. If she knew even half of my sorry history, she was like to toss me out the kitchen door on my backside. So I said, “I met with hardship, here and there.”

  All the pains I’d felt over those sixteen years—and the loves I had lost—rose up and struck me all at once, a concerted blow harder and meaner than any man’s fist. I longed for my family with a hunger I had never felt before, never since leaving Piedmont. I had only the two of them now, Lena and Lije, but I knew I couldn’t part with either one, even if Lena scorned me. My heart would break at the separation. I had found my family again—what scraps of family remained—and I knew this time, I mustn’t let us fall apart.

  “You’re tired,” I said. “You work hard, as you say. Let me work for you, Lena. You need to rest, with that baby on the way. I done laundering before—plenty of it. You’ll find me a real good worker. And you don’t need to pay me one cent; I got money enough to live on, thanks to my bullwhacking. You don’t need to put me up here, neither; I can board in town and ride to work, or walk, if you prefer.”

  Lena looked perplexed, at first—then almost angry. She turned her face away, staring at the wall, and her frown returned, the fine black brows drawn together.

  Lije said, “You talked about hiring a girl to help you with the washing, Lena.”

  She shot our brother a withering stare. Lije only shrugged and leaned back in his chair, grinning, satisfied. He seemed confident already that Lena would accept my offer, but I wasn’t so sure.

  “Martha ain’t half wrong,” Lije went on. “You need help more’n ever, with a baby on the way. Who better to lend a hand than your own sister?”

  Lena shifted uncomfortably on her chair. She didn’t seem much inclined to meet my eye. Then the percolator began to chatter, and she jumped to her feet, grateful for the distraction.

  “How about it,” Lije said.

  Lena sighed, turning away from us both. “Yes, all right,” she said. “Very well.”

  I hastened into town that very evening and sent a telegram to my boys back in Boulder. The bullwhacking business is yours, I told them—all yours. Sell it if you please, and divide the profits among you, or keep running it—it’s all one to me. I’ve found my missing family, and I don’t aim to leave any time soon. Or words to that effect; I don’t recall their precise nature now. All I remember with any certainty is the hope I felt blossoming in my breast, unfurling like some bright and miraculous flower. Now, of course, I know what a fool I was. At the time, I thought my travails had come to an end, and only happiness lay before me. I should have known better. My life has only ever been fit for calamity.

  I worked for Lena all the remaining months of her pregnancy, driving a cart into town to fetch her customers’ garments, sorting them all into stamped bags, and returning their goods after me and Lena washed and pressed them. It was hot and tiring work, made all the more miserable by the fact that I was obliged to work in a dress. Lena’s sense of propriety demanded nothing less. But I toiled for her gladly, taking on the brunt of her labors—especially as the summer waxed and the heat took its toll on her health.

  Lena was never especially warm with me. I can’t say as I blame her, for by that time, we was little better than strangers. But she was tolerant and
patient with my early mistakes, and seemed honestly determined to make the best of our strange situation. In time, as I grew used to the rhythms of her laundry shed, Lena even came to appreciate my work. She thanked me often. She seemed to admire my strength, my refusal to wear down. But she never grew especially friendly towards me.

  At the end of a long day of labor, I often joined Lije at the edge of the potato field, reclining in the shade of the cottonwoods. Or we wandered down to the crick together, wading up to our knees in the bitingly cold water, splashing and joking exactly like we did as children, when we had played in muddy ditches between the Missouri fields.

  One hot evening, while Lije and I stood in the lazy current of the stream, I worked up the gumption to ask him why Lena still treated me so distant and cold.

  Lije stared down at his bare knees showing below his rolled-up trouser legs. I could read his hesitation in his silence. But at last, he heaved a sigh and said, “Sometimes I think Lena blames you for the way things went. You know—when we was small.”

  I felt hot tears pricking at my eyelids. “I done my best.”

  “I know you did, Martha. I know.” Lije waded closer and put one arm around my shoulders. “But Lena was such a tiny thing back then—just a mite. She don’t recall those days the same as we do.”

  As twilight settled over the valley, I walked to my boarding house in Lander properly dejected. That night I lay awake for hours, fretting over the past. Sixteen years of silence between my sister and me—all those years when Lena despised me. I couldn’t do a thing now to change what had befallen the Canarys. I couldn’t have done a thing back then, neither, when I was a desperate orphan girl of thirteen. I was a child in those days, as much as Lena was. But she had carved her version of the Canary history deep into her heart. I saw no way to change Lena’s mind now.