Bittersweet

by Nevada Barr

  Imogene arrested Sarah’s hand and held it. “Why now, Sarah?”

  “God lost. We won.”

  Imogene didn’t understand, but she answered the young woman’s smile. “We’ll learn together.”

  Sarah touched her lips to her old friend’s, the sigh of her breath soft against Imogene’s cheek, and the schoolteacher felt the warm rain of Sarah’s tears. “My love,” she whispered, “what is it?”

  Sarah laughed. “I think I’m melting. I have been in love with you since I was fifteen. You’ve peopled all my dreams. Your face, your dear beautiful face.” She kissed Imogene again and the strong arms folded around her. Lightheaded with the scent of Imogene’s hair and the cut hay, Sarah felt her heart lifting, light as a dry desert cloud.

  Imogene felt as though she had finally reached home.

  A sense of celebration claimed Imogene and Sarah as they moved their things from the women’s dormitory into the bedroom they would share.

  Over the next week they cleaned every surface inside the stop, boiled every stitch of cloth—the curtains, the bedding, what tablecloths there were—and dusted and polished until the freight drivers retreated out of doors with their hastily prepared meals, grumbling that Round Hole wasn’t what it used to be.

  Fresh meat was a problem; the freighters were a carnivorous lot, and beef and lamb were expensive. Beau Van Fleet had saved himself a great deal of money by hunting venison, rabbit, and occasionally duck, pheasant, or even squirrel. Nearly three-quarters of a large doe had been left when he and Mrs. Van Fleet departed. The haunch of meat hung thirty feet above the ground at night, away from the flies, like a macabre flag, and was buried in a cool earthen pit lined with straw during the day. Mr. Van Fleet said the crust that formed over the flesh would keep the meat almost indefinitely if it was kept cool. Day by day the chunk of venison grew smaller. Finally, ten days after they’d taken over the stop, Imogene steeled herself to the task and took down the rifle she had purchased from the Van Fleets. In the cool of the evening, after they had eaten and seen to the needs of the one guest—a freighter from out of Salt Lake hauling cloth goods—Imogene and Sarah taught themselves to shoot.

  The sun had almost set and the sharp smell of sage hung in the air. The road disappeared behind a ragged wall of scree twenty miles east. Above the mountains, the sky glowed sea green. About a hundred yards from the house, the fence that separated the meadow and the buildings from the desert was broken by a gate. Beyond, the world seemed more desolate and forbidding than the patch of ground they’d grown accustomed to, and they turned off the road just inside the fenceline.

  The rifle was an old Henry Repeater; Mr. Van Fleet had shown them how to load it and fire it. With some difficulty, Imogene slid open the cartridge chamber and Sarah poked the bullets into the magazine. Fumbling one, she dropped it in the dirt and both women froze.

  “It didn’t go off,” Sarah whispered.

  Imogene picked it up gingerly, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. “It looks all right, but I don’t suppose we’d better use it, it may be damaged inside.” She set it gently on the ground at a little distance from them.

  With infinite care, Sarah slipped two more bullets into the rifle. “No more will go in,” she breathed.

  “Do you think we should close it?” Imogene asked.

  “I think Mr. Van Fleet said to close it.”

  “Sarah, stop whispering, it’s making me nervous,” Imogene responded.

  Imogene choked the barrel with her thumb and middle finger and pointed it away. For a minute or two they simply stood, Sarah watching, Imogene holding, growing used to the idea.

  Imogene took a deep breath. “All right. What shall I shoot at?”

  “I could put a rock on a fencepost,” Sarah suggested.

  “Let me just try to hit the post first.” Imogene pulled up the rifle and leaned her cheek against the stock.

  “You’re supposed to hold it tight to your shoulder,” Sarah said.

  The schoolteacher pulled the Henry tight to her shoulder.

  “And sight with both eyes. Open.”

  “I can’t see with both eyes open.”

  “Well, you’re supposed to.”

  Imogene opened both eyes.

  “Squeeze. Don’t jerk,” Sarah warned.

  Imogene glanced at Sarah over the rifle stock.

  “Mr. Van Fleet said.” Sarah smiled sheepishly.

  Imogene laughed. “All right. Squeeze. Here we go.” The rifle kicked a little but she’d kept it snug against her shoulder and the recoil didn’t hurt. The fencepost, twenty feet away, was unharmed, but a tiny burst of dirt beyond showed she hadn’t been far wide of the mark. After several more tries they were rewarded with a satisfying thwack as a bullet finally struck home.

  “Could I try?” Sarah asked.

  Imogene handed over the rifle. Half a dozen rounds were expended into the dirt before Sarah got the feel of it, then she, too, managed to hit the post. It was growing too dark to see, and they gave up their target practice for that night.

  After that, most evenings found them out by the eastern fence. Imogene fired with steady dependability; the weapon was a tool and she worked with it doggedly until she had mastered it. Sarah either shot brilliantly, hitting everything she aimed at, or she was unable to hit anything and would quit, frustrated, after a few rounds.

  Finally the deer carcass that the Van Fleets had left was gone, and the freight drivers began to grumble for red meat. So, on a hot afternoon when there was no one around, Imogene took down the rifle, Sarah filled her apron pockets with cartridges, and they went hunting rabbits. The smell of baked earth rose from the dust under their feet, and the sun burned through the high desert atmosphere. Sarah folded the scoop of her bonnet forward until the brim flopped on both sides of her face like outsized blinkers.

  “I wish I’d worn gloves. This sun’ll tan you like leather faster than the Pennsylvania sun. Back home I could stay out half a day sometimes and not show pink at all. If you don’t take care, Imogene, you’ll ruin your complexion. You’re already brown.”

  “I know,” Imogene replied. “I’ve never given my complexion much thought.”

  “It’s better brown, I think.” Sarah looked at Imogene critically and rattled the bullets in her pocket. “Yup, I like the way you look.”

  “As long as you like my face, I will be satisfied with it.” Pleased, Imogene blushed a little under her tan.

  “Now you are truly beautiful,” Sarah said. Forgetting she had a fistful of bullets, she threw her arms around Imogene’s neck and kissed her soundly.

  “Sarah.” Imogene put the young woman from her. “We must always be careful.”

  “This is the West—the middle of the desert. Who would care? Who would see?”

  “Once burned, twice shy, they say, and I have been burned twice. The third time might be at the stake.” Imogene smiled. “I’m overanxious. You may kiss me as long as there are no alien eyes within a hundred miles.”

  Sarah kissed her again.

  This time Imogene kissed back. “I like this neighborhood,” she said.

  A fat cottontail, slow with the heat, hopped ahead of them, his white fluffy tail catching their attention. Oblivious of the huntresses, the bunny grazed in the shade of a sage bush.

  Sarah pointed, but Imogene had already seen it. Silently she held the rifle out and indicated Sarah’s apron pockets. Sarah counted out the cartridges and dropped them into the rifle. They always loaded the rifle together as they had the first time they’d fired it.

  Imogene pumped a bullet into the chamber. At the click of metal on metal the rabbit ceased its eating and looked up at them. Slowly, Imogene pulled the gun to her shoulder. The rabbit took fright at the movement and darted into the road. Galvanized by the flight of her quarry, Imogene fired. The bullet struck the ground behind and a hundred feet beyond the rabbit, plowing a puff of dirt into the air. The rabbit scampered to safety in the high reeds along the irrigation ditch at th
e edge of the meadow. Sarah ran up the embankment and looked over the fence, her eyes raking the acres of grass.

  “It got away,” she said accusingly. “You didn’t leave both eyes open.”

  “I don’t think I left either eye open. I wasn’t even close.”

  “Let me.” Sarah bounded down the slope and took the rifle.

  “Do you think you can do better?”

  Sarah just laughed and pumped a cartridge into the chamber.

  “My, it’s exciting,” Imogene said.

  “It’s real, not just a target.”

  “Be careful, you’ve got a bullet ready.”

  “I know,” Sarah replied with a race of annoyance. “It’ll be faster.”

  A second rabbit came into view as she spoke, not fifteen feet from where the first one had been grazing. Sarah sucked in her breath, stealthily pulled the rifle up, sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked and the rabbit toppled onto its side in the dirt.

  “I got him!” she cried, and Imogene clapped her hands. They ran down the roadway. Sarah reached the rabbit first and stopped just short of it. The bunny lay on its side, panting shallowly, its open eyes covered over by a milky membrane. Its lips were pulled back from its teeth and a ribbon of tongue showed pink between the blunt incisors. Blood ran from a neat round hole in the little animal’s side, pulsing out with the rapid beating of its heart. Sarah fell to her knees with a cry. Frightened by the sound, the cottontail kicked its hind feet, the blood gushed out suddenly, and it was still.

  Imogene stopped behind Sarah and rested her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. Sarah looked up. “I killed him.”

  “That was the object.”

  “I guess so.” Flies had found the wound, and made a frenzied buzzing in the hot air.

  Imogene urged Sarah to her feet. “You go back to the house. You got dinner, the least I can do is prepare it. Go on now.” She watched as Sarah walked back toward the welcoming shade of the buildings. The gun was left on the bank; Imogene picked it up and balanced it over her arm. The rabbit stared sightlessly up at her. She grasped its hind feet, lifted it, and holding it as far from her as possible, she too walked back to the house.

  By suppertime the rabbit was stew, and Imogene served it with pride.

  Two wagoners had come in that evening, one tall and lanky, with a horse face and a head as bald as an egg, the other of middling height, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a spiky shock of black hair. They shoveled the stew down in complacent silence and asked for seconds. They were regular travelers through Round Hole and loudly appreciated the reappearance of meat on the supper table.

  Sarah managed a small bowlful but was withdrawn most of the evening. When supper was over, Imogene led her out onto the porch, away from the murmur of the freighters. The summer night was cool and the air so dry and clear that the stars seemed to hang within reach of the distant mountaintops. Imogene pulled two weathered chairs, used for sitting outdoors, close together and they sat quietly for a time, enjoying the soft sounds of the desert night.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” Imogene said after a while.

  “I just feel bad about the rabbit.”

  “We have to eat.”

  “I know. I’m being silly.”

  Imogene smiled at her earnestness.

  “I don’t want to hunt anymore. Is that okay? I’ll cook.”

  “Of course.”

  The door banged behind them and the tall angular wagoner joined them on the porch. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to hit the hay. Dan’ll be up awhile longer, but he said to tell you he won’t be needing nothing. Good night, ladies.” He ambled down the steps and out toward the barn.

  “Good night, Curley,” Imogene returned. “When are we going to have the honor of having you as an overnight guest inside?”

  “When Farmer’s Feed and Grain pays their drivers a decent wage and pigs fly,” he called back good-naturedly.

  They watched his lanky silhouette fold down out of sight in the high grasses beyond the spring as he bedded down for the night.

  “I don’t mind killing chickens,” Sarah said suddenly. “I used to wring their necks better than Walter, Mam said. And I had some chickens at Sam’s. They were all mine, I took care of everything. Chickens are different, they’re just to eat.”

  “We’ll order some chickens from Reno tomorrow when the stage comes,” Imogene decided. “Is there a time of year for chickens?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll want grown ones anyway; baby chicks might die on the way. Some hens and a rooster. Do we have money?”

  “No. We’ll ‘run our face,’ as Mac says. We may as well order some saplings too. In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m hungry for trees, shade trees.”

  “Are we too poor?”

  “No, dear. I just worry. We’re doing quite well. We should have most of the equipment I took over from the Van Fleets paid off by next year.”

  They ordered the chickens and the saplings the following day, and as soon as the passengers off the southbound coach for Bishop had been fed and settled into their lodgings, they set about constructing a chicken coop, assisted by two young men. Neither was yet thirty years old, adventurers from the shattered South, cadging rides from freight wagons to try their luck in California. One was lean and blond, his eyes aged by the war; the other was shorter, darker, and spoke very little. Attracted by Sarah’s fragile good looks and a chance to break the tedium of an idle summer afternoon, they had offered their assistance with the building project. Dubbing Sarah “straw boss” because she was the chicken expert, they carried the motley assortment of lumber Imogene ferreted out from the piles of refuse behind the stable and shed. The Southerners would have built the coop by themselves if Imogene hadn’t insisted they instruct her and Sarah in the fundamentals of carpentry, in return for which supper would be on the house. By evening an adequate coop was erected, Imogene and Sarah wielding the hammers, the two boys looking on and shouting directions and encouragement.

  When it was finished, Sarah patted the corner of the low, sloping roof; she’d been too busy to be shy and now the new structure took her mind up completely. “We’ve done it,” she said with delight. “And next time we’ll be able to do it by ourselves.”

  Long after supper was over, while Imogene was still tending bar, Sarah sat by the window of her bedroom, looking out at the dark mountains and the small black hump on the north end of the stable that was her chicken coop.

  Imogene came to bed after midnight, walking softly so she wouldn’t awaken Sarah if she was sleeping.

  “Imogene?” Sarah called softly.

  “It’s me.”

  Sarah pulled herself up and made a place for Imogene on the bed. “You’re up so late.” She took Imogene’s hand and kissed it.

  “Those boys stayed up drinking. I don’t like to see young people drink so much.”

  “Maybe they’re homesick.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ve been looking at our little shed. I haven’t built anything before. It’s easy.”

  “I sometimes think women are discouraged from doing men’s work because they’re afraid we’ll discover how easy it is.”

  “I like it. Imogene, I don’t hate it here as much as I think I should.”

  Imogene laughed. “Well, that’s good. Maybe we’re getting used to it. It’s late, we’d best get some sleep.” She slipped into her nightgown and crawled under the covers. “How did I stand a cold bed all those years?” she asked as Sarah snuggled close.

  Before dawn, a wagon driver was banging on the counter in the bar and bellowing Imogene’s name. Pulling on a heavy wrapper, she came quickly. It was still dark, with only the barest glimmer of light in the east, but Imogene recognized him by his barrel shape and low-crowned hat.

  “What is it, Cracker?”

  “Those reb boys I give a lift in? They fell in the drink last night. Too drunk to get out, what with the high sides and
the grass slippery.” Blunt and angry, he poked his finger into the air. “Fence that goddamn hole in! I mean it. I told Van Fleet and now I’m telling you.”

  “The boys drowned?” Imogene asked stupidly.

  In the face of Imogene’s horror, his anger dissolved somewhat and he mumbled a gruff affirmation. “They did. Me and one of the boys heading out Susanville way fished them out. They must’ve staggered into it when they went out to bed down for the night. I don’t expect they had the price of a bed between them?”

  Imogene shook her head. She stood silent for a moment, looking past him, then said, “I’ll get dressed.”

  The young men lay side by side in the grass by the spring. The Round Hole yawned still and dark in the half-light before dawn.

  “You can see where they tried scrambling out.” Cracker pointed to where the grass was torn and pulled down. “The bank’s high, and what with the grass growing out over the water the way it does…”

  “Why didn’t they call for help?” Imogene cried. “Didn’t anyone hear them? I’m sure it would have awakened me. I’ve always been a light sleeper…” Her voice trailed off.

  “No sense worrying it now, ma’am, maybe they were just too drunk, thought it was all in fun till they was spent. Maybe one passed out and tumbled in and the other got dragged down, trying to fish him out. There’s no telling.”

  Another man, round-headed and thick-shouldered, arms soaked to the shoulders, searched the two dead men. Cracker jerked his chin toward him. “Lyle here pulled them out.”

  Lyle rocked back on his haunches, resting huge hands on his thighs. “They got nothing on them to say who they was,” he said. “Just drifters, I guess. Like as not didn’t have any folks to speak of.”

  The boys’ faces, so animated and young the night before, were gray and old, wrinkled by water. Imogene held herself against the chill, rubbing her upper arms as the sun topped the mountains.

  “If you can point us to some shovels, we’ll bury them,” Lyle offered.