Dandelion Iron Book One

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  Our spread was so pretty. The house was a nice cotton-candy blue Victorian that perched on a little hill sticking out of the yellowed plains like a winsome smile on an ugly girl. The original house had been a ramshackle wreck, the wood too old for salvage, and the insides equally worthless. But after the territory government in Lamar gave land to squatters, Mama hired the best builders around to tear it down and rebuild it, keeping the house old-fashioned, as was the style. Yet Mama added some modern touches as well. Every window in the place could be locked tight with Neofiber shutters, turning our house into a fortress. You couldn’t tell that though, not even if you looked hard.

  A wide, wrap-around porch hugged the building. Fancy lace curtains showed through white-trimmed windows ’cause the defensive shutters were open wide. Three big stoves kept the place tolerable in the winter. Lots of nice rooms on ten thousand acres of fine grazing land, fertile after the Knockout and more rain than usual. Near the house, to the west, stood our big red barn and a bunkhouse where most of our employees lived—Breeze, Keys, Annabeth Burton, and Aunt Bea.

  Yeah, Aunt Bea, but not like that black-and-white video with the old lady and the sheriff. Our Aunt Bea was Beatrice Maria Mercedes Gonzales, Mexican down to her tortillas. She sure felt like an aunt. Mama and Bea had hooked up early in the Juniper, both recognizing a tireless, bloody-fingered worker in each other. Workers, sisters to the grave, that was Mama and Bea.

  Annabeth was new. I heard all about her from Sharlotte’s letters. Annabeth came south from Mavis Meetchum’s outfit and joined us to be closer to her aging mother in Burlington. Our new hire was experienced, but old, with a face like a work glove.

  We had a fifth employee on the Weller ranch, and though Lucretia Macaby had only been with us a short time, Crete was young enough for Mama to feel motherly over her. She got a room in the house up in the attic. I knew Crete from elementary school, and she was too blonde, too flirty, and too silly to make it in the Juniper. Eventually, like her sisters, the family would get enough money and they’d send her into the World where she’d trick some boy into marrying her.

  “Cavatica.” Pilate’s voice made me turn. At the top of the driveway, Pilate pointed to the icehouse, which sat in the shade of the back patio that led into the kitchen. “Your mom should still be in there. You might want to pay your respects.”

  It was time. I took in a big, deep breath. I wasn’t ready, but I had to face her.

  Wren pulled open the door to the icehouse, looked inside for a minute, shrugged, and then walked away toward the house.

  Pilate shook his head at her.

  “See, Pilate,” Petal said in a scratchy, loud voice, “she feels so guilty, she can’t even face her own dead mother. What a besharam kutia.”

  Pilate shushed her. Wren kept walking like she hadn’t heard, but I knew she had.

  I couldn’t care about that right then. I found myself walking across the ground to the icehouse. The air inside the little shed dropped thirty degrees. Packed inside were big, solid squares of ice covered with sawdust. My mother lay on the dirt floor, wrapped in a sheet.

  I bent down to unwrap her. I didn’t know if I was supposed to do it or not, but I wanted to see her now. I couldn’t find the edge of the sheet, and I felt too weak to turn her over. Something wet dropped on my hand. I didn’t even know I was crying. It was like I was a stranger to myself. Who was this girl crying? Who was this girl kneeling down in front of her dead mother? She sure wasn’t me.

  This strange, crying girl talked in a strangled voice. “I wanna see her face, Pilate. Can you help me?”

  “Sure, Cavatica.”

  We unwrapped the body until it was my mother, in her work dress, her face sunken in, her skin snowy dead.

  That body, shriveled and cold, that wasn’t my mama. Mama had gone away, and she would never come bursting out of the house again, or push me to work, or hug me, or sing that old R&B song with every bit of soul she had.

  How much do I love you, oh, where do I start? Through the valleys of my soul, ’cross the mountains of my heart.

  I fell down next to her, and I sobbed. I couldn’t get all the sobs out of me—it was like I was so full of tears I would split open wide if I tried to keep a single one inside.

  Sharlotte and Wren were suddenly there, and I knew they wouldn’t cry.

  So I cried for all three of us until they had to drag me off.

  ’Cause I’d never hear my mama sing again. Not ever again.

  Through the valleys of my soul, ’cross the mountains of my heart.

  (ii)

  Around noon on that Saturday, I was in my room, looking over my old things. My bedroom was painted a light blue and the curtains were lacey and frilly. For most every birthday I ever had, Mama gave me candles. I rarely burned them, so there were pretty candles all over. Most things, though, were either too small or too childish for me to care about anymore. Still, everything was clean and pristine. Leave it to Sharlotte to dust an unused room.

  I had spent most of the morning in my bedroom, only leaving to help prepare Mama’s body for the funeral.

  I was fingering through the ribbons I’d won at the Kit Carson County Fair when Sharlotte knocked on the door. “You ready to help, Cavvy?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I opened the door. Sharlotte had been so busy, we really hadn’t talked.

  Standing there in her cloudy gray Sally dress, which was New Morality, only a little fancier, my sister looked like she was playing dress-up, but not very well. Shar was a big woman, meaty and curvy and strong as an ox. We shared the same straw-colored hair, a round face like our mother, but Sharlotte was far prettier. Like Wren, Sharlotte’s pretty was in her dark-lashed, nighttime eyes, which they both got from Daddy. Problem was, you rarely saw Sharlotte’s eyes. Most of the time a cowgirl hat hid her eyes. Or she was walking away, going to work, getting things done—all you saw was her ponytail. Sharlotte would’ve cut her hair short if the New Morality allowed it and if people wouldn’t have gossiped.

  “Glad you’re feeling better,” Sharlotte said, which meant she was glad I had finally stopped crying. She went to turn away.

  “How you doing with Mama passing?” I asked.

  Sharlotte looked at me like I was crazy. Of course she didn’t answer that question. Nope. She’d rather talk about her to-do list, which was her very own gospel.

  “I still have some cooking to do. And Wren insisted on liquor, so she’s bringing it in from town. Bet you she’ll be late. I can’t believe I agreed to let Crete go with her. Both put together don’t have the sense of a good dog. I should’ve sent Charles Goodnight along to keep ’em in check. I’ll need you to make sure the tables are set, and we’ll need the old black pots from the cellar. Thanks for helping us get Mama in her New Morality dress, and I guess Wren did the make-up good, though I know she’d rather be drinking. That Wren. She’ll never change. I’m just glad Mama isn’t around to see her in jeans.”

  “Wren did her face pretty,” I said, which was kind of a lie ’cause you can’t paint the dead to look like the living.

  Sharlotte went on with the last of her list. “Most things are ready. Father Vincent can’t get here from Sterling, so Pilate is going to do the funeral, which pains me to no end, but there is nothing to do about it. Technically, he’s still a priest, though I keep writing letters to the bishop.”

  I wasn’t a bit surprised Sharlotte was trying to get Pilate excommunicated.

  Even so, I felt like I had to protect him for some reason. “He’ll do right by Mama. You know how close they were.”

  “I’d rather let a Bible-drunk Protestant bury Mama, but what’s done is done.” Sharlotte had her hand in her coat pocket, gripping something. Her voice changed. “Did Mama ever talk to you about Daddy? About his health?”

  “Well, about his cancer, but that’s all.”

  Sharlotte nodded, distracted. “I found some medical reports, going through Mama’s papers. Lots of papers to go through when people die. I suppose it’s a
ll on computers back in the World.”

  “It is,” I agreed, but right then, I didn’t care a whit about medical reports or papers. Heck, the funeral didn’t even seem all that important anymore. In some ways, me sobbing over Mama had already buried her. She was gone. So was Daddy. Now I wanted to know more about the living. From my backpack, I took out the umbrella and told her what Darla had said. “Did you really meet Tibbs Hoyt?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He didn’t even look at me. Dob was nicer. He gave me his condolences about Mama. I told him we were hurting financially, from Mama dying and from other stuff. I asked him to give us a break in Hays so we could sell our headcount there.”

  Dob Howerter and Mama started ranching around the same time, and Mama would go to his Colorado Territory Ranching Association meetings to give him a hard time about his organization. They’d been friends for a long time, until Dob hit it big.

  “What’d he say, Sharlotte?”

  My sister grimaced. “Said that he was sorry, but he wasn’t going to budge. Said his plan was to own every beefsteak in the Colorado Territory, starting with ours. He’s even making a play for Mavis up north.”

  Mavis Meetchum, second biggest cattle operation in the Colorado territory. Dob Howerter being first. We used to play with Mavis’ kids and Howerter’s nephews growing up. Wellers, Howerters, and Meetchums, all trying to tame a wild land, and trying to run each other out of business, with us Wellers on the losing side. Season three of Lonely Moon had a similar story arc.

  Now was my time to get some answers. “So with prices fixed in Hays, what’s your plan, Sharlotte? I keep asking and no one will tell me. Where are we going to drive our cattle to?”

  Sharlotte’s mouth grew small. “Let’s bury Mama. Then we can talk business. It’s what she would want. And in the end, it was her plan, not mine.”

  “I can’t believe this!” My voice rose nearly to a shout.

  Sharlotte’s lips disappeared. “I guess your big, fancy school in Cleveland didn’t teach you about patience. Or manners. Or timing.” Sharlotte’s voice came out cold as snow. “It’s not a simple conversation, and I don’t want to go into it now. Besides, we have our mother’s funeral to prepare for. Don’t you think that’s more important than our headcount?”

  I sighed. No use arguing with Sharlotte. Might as well try milking a rock. “Okay, Shar, fine. You still think I’m a little kid and I ain’t got no say in the family, but you’ll learn. I’m not a child anymore.”

  She turned away and left me with nothing but her back, strong and broad. “If you’re not a child, then quit acting like it. Weeping for hours on end. What good can that do for anybody? Nothing. We have a lot to do and people are going to be here any minute. Aunt Bea needs our help in the kitchen, and that’s what matters. The food has to be good. Has to be. Everything else can go to pot, but not the food. Never that.”

  The food was amazing, but that didn’t save the funeral from being a circus with the Weller girls in all three rings of it. Let me tell you, Sally Browne Burke might be wrong on some things, but on liquor, she is absolutely right.

  (iii)

  That afternoon the whole town filled our house, talking, hugging, complaining about Dob Howerter and whispering about June Mai Angel. Sketchy, Tech, and Peeperz were there as well. Peeperz was a skinny ten-year-old boy with a scarred-up face that pinched his eyes almost shut—ironic, given his particular occupation. He was quiet and nice and took my hand gently, like I would break. Heck, he looked like he would break.

  It’d be impolite to ask about the scars, but I was extra nice to him.

  “Thanks for lookin’ out for us, Peeperz.”

  He shrugged. Sketchy talked for ’em all anyway. Lord, could she go on about nothing at all. I got a long hug from Tech, who was wearing a dress—not New Morality, but close enough for a tough girl like her. Tattoos decorated every bit of skin showing.

  Three o’clock in the afternoon, our numbers swelled from out of town visitors. Mama was pretty much a celebrity in the Juniper. Mavis Meetchum wanted to come, but couldn’t. She sent a nice card and expensive flowers instead.

  In a crowd, we walked to the gravesite, down the hill from our house by our east fence. It was sweaty in the sunshine, but when the wind blew off those Rocky Mountains, you could feel every snowflake that had fallen that winter. In the distance, the windmill well creaked as it spun in the breeze.

  Pilate looked like he had just stepped out of the Chhaang House. Same priest collar. Same black slacks and polished black cowboy boots. But now he wore his waterproof duster, so big, stiff, and thick you could stand it up in a corner and swear it was a man. The only thing missing was his black cowboy hat that looked like it had outlived a dozen gunfights and would outlive a dozen more. His long black hair hung free.

  At the sight of Pilate, Sharlotte scowled so bad I thought her face would turn blue and fall off. She was standing on my right. Wren was on my left. Keys, Breeze, Crete, and Aunt Bea walked out with a simple pine-box coffin on their shoulders and work gloves on their hands, contrasting their nice Sally dresses. They needed the gloves to hold the ropes stretched across the hole they had dug. Centimeter by centimeter, they reverently laid my mama down into her grave right next to Daddy’s. Both had stone Celtic crosses as grave markers.

  The dead babies were there as well. Placards set in marble dotted the ground with only their names and the year they died. Elwyn, Fern, Willa, and Avery. Not one had lived to see a dash on their markers.

  I had been cryin’ so much, I was numbed down to my bones. What wasn’t numb, the wind took care of.

  Petal stood by herself, away from everyone. She kept her head lowered, but every once in a while, she’d lower it a little too far and catch herself with a jerk. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn she was sleeping on her feet. She sure was a strange one. Why was Pilate with her?

  Speaking of which, once all eyes were on our wayward priest, he swept his hair out of his face, bent and picked up some dirt. “Y’all know what this is?” He twanged it up a little, but that was only for our benefit. He generally talked straight-up Yankee.

  He let the dirt drop from his fingers. “That’s dirt. They say ashes to ashes and dust to dust because we come from dirt, and we go back to dirt, and I won’t get graphic because I don’t want Sharlotte to shoot me.” He paused as we all chuckled.

  “Abigail Weller is gonna be dirt before too long, gone, back to the earth. I could read from the gospel, but I would imagine many of you would be getting your own guns out if I made my eulogy too long. I know Wren would.” Another bout of laughter, this time a little more uncomfortable.

  “But I always liked the story about the empty tomb. They rolled away the stone. They looked inside. It was empty because Jesus had risen from the dead. He was resurrected—checked out before noon, took off for greener pastures, gone to Texas.” He let out a deep breath, like he was steadying himself. “Like all of us, Abigail had her broken places. Like many, she escaped into the Juniper because of a troubled past and a wounded heart. And some of the things she had to do in the Juniper wounded her even more. So much pain. Hard to get to the other side of it.”

  His voice cracked, and I couldn’t believe it, but the smile was gone, and there were tears in Pilate’s eyes. With him crying, I started crying, too. I glanced at Wren. She was stone-faced.

  Pilate talked through his tears. “With death comes sorrow, but also there comes healing. In death, Abigail has found the other side of her pain. If she had a soul, it’s at rest. If there is a God, she’s with Him now. However, if heaven is empty and we’re nothing but our brain chemistry, well, she’s gone regardless. Either way, her body will become dirt, and that dirt will grow hay to nourish her headcount. Even in death, Abigail found a way to keep working. I’m not sure about the molecular science behind death, decay, and the minerals in the dirt, but I bet you Cavatica could tell us because she’s a smart one. Too smart for guns or violence.”

  He gave me a teary
little grin. I blushed and looked away. How could he have doubts about Mama having a soul? How could he have doubts about the existence of God? What kind of a priest was he? Sharlotte frowned, just itching for Pilate to stop, but powerless to stop him. She was far too proper to make a big scene.

  He went on. “So Abigail has found peace at least, and the tears we cry, we cry for ourselves. We lost a fine woman, a true pioneer, tough as winter beef jerky, but sweet as spring wine.” His voice broke down completely and tears coursed down his cheeks. “She was the finest woman I have ever known.” And dang me, but if he didn’t smirk and say, “And as many of you know, I’ve known my fair share of women, so that is saying something.”

  Sharlotte let out a hiss, loud enough for everyone to hear. My mouth dropped open. Last night he seemed so sad with Betsy, and today he was making a joke out of it in front of everyone, including Betsy. Right then, I thought maybe Sharlotte was right about Pilate.

  He smiled brightly up at the sky. “Say hello to heaven for us, Abigail, or so the old song goes. Now, let’s get out of this goddamn wind.” Even after blaspheming, he crossed himself, as we all did—in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

  Breeze, Keys, and Aunt Bea did the final work, covering Mama’s coffin with dirt. The rest of us went inside, and it wasn’t long before the circus started. I got all the answers I could ever want about the cattle drive. It wasn’t Sharlotte’s plan, no way. It was Mama’s.

  And what a plan it was.

  Chapter Ten

  There has been talk that the greatest battle women still have to fight is the battle against drugs and alcohol. I don’t think it’s the government’s job to teach temperance. I believe that such lessons should be learned in the home. However, from what I’ve seen, AA also makes for a wonderful classroom.

  —Sally Browne Burke

  On the 120th Anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous

  June 10, 2055

  (i)