by Nevada Barr
One afternoon a week before the boy was expected, Karl found Sarah crying. She was alone in the barn, sitting on the floor in the loose hay, the gold of the afternoon sun striping her skirts. As he came in she looked up with red, swollen eyes, her cheeks streaked with tears.
He sat down beside her and waited.
“I’m afraid he won’t know me. Of course he can’t know me. I’m afraid he won’t like me.”
“There are the letters you’ve written him,” Karl said. “I don’t know how many hundred.”
“I’m afraid I won’t know him.”
“You will.”
“Do you want him to come?”
“Very much. Like Mac used to say, ‘You can’t run this country without kids.’ ”
“I want to be a good mother. I’m so afraid I won’t be, that he’d be better off with Mam or Gracie or anybody.”
“You’re a wonderful mother, Sarah.”
“Wolf died.”
Each Wednesday and Sunday in the last two weeks of the month, Sarah went to the gate to meet the stage. On an afternoon in July her wait was ended. Her son arrived on the first coach she hadn’t met. The mudwagon rolled in on a cloud of dust, and before it had settled, Liam yelled, “We got him, Mrs. Ebbitt.”
Sarah ran out from the shade of the porch, then stopped before she reached the coach door, her hands flying to her hair and smoothing her dress. “Karl…” she called, looking suddenly young and frightened.
“I’m here.” Karl walked across the packed earth from the stable. Calm and reassuring, he took his place beside her.
Sarah touched her hair and dress once again and, with a last look at Karl, opened the door of the coach. A very small boy, not yet six years old, with dark hair and light blue eyes, sat alone inside, looking smaller and more alone for the empty seats around him.
“Not much of a haul for sixty-odd miles overland, is it?” Liam asked. “Business is falling off, railroad’ll have it all by 1890. Have it all. Beaner!” The wiry, mustachioed Mexican beside him looked up without rancor, recognizing the title as his own. “You swamper or ain’t you?”
Beaner jumped gracefully to the ground, though he’d been riding for hours, and started talking to the horses in a soothing Spanish murmur.
Unconscious of the men around her, Sarah held tight to the door for support and gazed on her only child. He was slender and pale and perfectly formed. There was little childish softness to his solemn face, and his young body was firm and well defined. Margaret had dressed him in short pants and a jacket of black broadcloth. Both were rumpled and dirty from the long journey. Beside him on the seat, a large bundle of letters tied up with twine served as an armrest.
“Matthew,” Sarah whispered, her hand out in a gentle unfinished gesture.
“I’m to ask for Mrs. Ebbitt,” the child said, and pulled the lapel of his jacket forward to show Sarah the note pinned there. “Gramma T. said to give this to Mrs. Ebbitt.” At the mention of his grandmother the little boy started to sniffle.
Liam grunted. “Boy’s right as rain for umpteen hours. Show him a petticoat and he goes watery at the knees.” Karl nodded absently, his attention fixed on the odd little drama.
Sarah leaned into the coach to unpin the note, her hands trembling as she lay her fingers on the curve of the child’s cheek for an instant before grappling with the pin. She brought it out into the light where she could read it:
Sarah, this is Matthew. I’ve done the best I knew how and he’s a good boy. I saved all the letters you wrote him but I never read any to him. I felt I was doing wrong to read them, as Sam told Mattie you were dead and Sam would’ve been against it. Things turning out as they did I don’t know that I did right but it’s done. I sent the letters with Mattie.
Love, Mam
Sarah read the note again and handed it wordlessly to Karl.
The sober little face stared at her expectantly from behind the stack of letters, years of her heart drawn into lines on paper—her relationship with her son, sealed and tied up with string. She put out her hand and he took it politely.
“I’m Mrs. Ebbitt,” she said.
“After Papa died, Gramma T. said Mrs. Ebbitt was my mother and that’s why she had the same name as me.” Matthew eyed her suspiciously.
“God bless Mam,” Sarah said.
“Papa said my mother was dead.”
“Come on out now, we’ll talk later,” Sarah said. He clutched his packet of letters as she lifted him down from the coach. “You’re quite a big boy.” She held him a moment longer, then released him. “You hungry?” He nodded. “Let’s see about getting you something to eat.”
Karl followed them with his eyes, the woman and the child, walking slightly apart, neither of them talking.
“For an old bachelor you’re quite a family man,” Liam teased.
“It’s beginning to look that way, isn’t it?”
Sarah tucked the covers around Matthew’s chin. Supper was over and the sun was setting. He squirmed from under them; the evening was too hot for covers. Sarah reached for them again, nervously, but stopped herself and folded her hands in her lap. A mosquito whined somewhere in the room.
“Can we talk now?” Matthew asked.
“We can talk now.”
“Papa said my mother was dead.” It was a challenge.
“She’s not. I’m not. I had to go away when you were a baby. But I didn’t die.”
“Why did you go away?”
“I was—I was very sick,” Sarah said slowly.
“And Papa thought you died.”
“Maybe he did.”
“Papa died.”
“I know, honey.” Sarah’s voice broke and she smiled tenderly at the small face on the pillow. Her hand strayed to smooth an errant lock from his temple. “Do you miss him a lot?”
“Sometimes. I live with Gramma T. I miss Gramma and Aunt Gracie and Lizbeth.”
“I do too. Gramma T. is my mam, my mother.”
“She’s Aunt Gracie’s mother.” Suspicion clouded his eyes.
“And Aunt Lizbeth’s and Walter’s and mine. We’re all brothers and sisters.”
He thought that over for a while. “You’re my mother.”
“That’s right.”
“You were never at our house.”
Sarah looked through swimming eyes and bit her underlip until her teeth made a white crescent in the ruddy flesh. “I wrote you.” It was difficult to speak around the lump in her throat. “I wrote you a little every day because I missed you so much I was afraid I would go crazy. Imogene was afraid.”
“Who’s Imogene?”
“A friend. She died.” The tears spilled over her lashes and down the side of her nose. “Once a week I sent you the letters. Every week since I—since I got sick and had to go away. Your grandma saved the letters for you so you would know me and know I loved you. Love you.”
She was quiet for a long time, crying.
“Mrs. Ebbitt, you can read me from the letters if you want to,” he said at last.
Sarah smiled and touched his hair. “I’d like that.”
She read him two letters, the first two she had sent. One was in Imogene’s bold hand and Imogene’s straightforward sentences. The other was in such a shaky, spidery hand that she stumbled in the reading. Matthew listened, quiet and solemn-eyed.
Finished, she smoothed the dark fringe from his forehead. “I’m your mother, Matthew. I love you very much. Good night.” She kissed him lightly, resting her cheek against his.
“Good night, Mrs. Ebbitt.”
Sarah closed the door to his room and stayed leaning against it, the strength drained out of her. Through the wood she could hear the smothered weeping of a homesick child.
Karl was by a window, the sash thrown open to let in the night breeze. He wore reading spectacles and was poring over an old book of sonnets by the light of a lamp. Sarah heaved a sigh and dropped into the chair opposite. He closed the book and took off his glasses.
Sarah smiled. “I read him the first two letters I wrote, and I told him I’d written every day. Then he said, ‘Good night, Mrs. Ebbitt.’ ”
“It will take a while.”
“I know. I want to hug him. I feel like I could just crush him into me. His little face is so dear.”
Karl levered himself out of his chair. “Driving the wagon stiffens me up,” he groaned. They walked to the porch and stood together, watching the moon rise over the mountains. Floating on the horizon, it seemed to take up most of the sky.
Sarah threaded her arm through Karl’s and rested her head on his shoulder. He started to pull away. “Liam and Beaner are playing cards upstairs,” Sarah said. “They won’t be down again tonight.”
He let her stay. “You’re shaking.” He put his hand over hers. “Anyone would think you had gone up against a bobcat, not a little boy.”
Sarah laughed and pressed his hand to her heart. “My heart’s jumping like a rabbit’s. Feel.”
He pulled her to him, kissing her upturned face, her forehead, her nose, her parted lips. Her breath escaped in a sigh and he held her close.
“I want you with me tonight,” Sarah said.
“I want to stay, but we have guests. No eyes for a hundred miles, remember. Dizable & Denning could cancel the lease on moral grounds if they wanted to—the widow Ebbitt living in sin with the hired man.”
“Damn them!” Sarah muttered.
“Who?”
“Everybody.”
He kissed Sarah again, and suddenly it was Karl who was trembling. He held her away from him. “I’d best go to the barn before I forget I’m a gentleman.” Sarah put out her hand but he was already down the steps.
37
SUMMER BLEW BY, HOT, DRY, AND WINDY. EVERY DAY THE WIND CAME up around noon and blew until sundown. Matthew was used to the humidity of Pennsylvania summers, and his nose and lips dried until they cracked and bled.
Two of Sarah’s chickens vanished one night in July. A talon and a handful of bloody feathers were discovered behind the sacks of barley in the barn several days later. Circumstances hinted at the possible guilt of Moss Face, but by tacit consent the hints were ignored.
On an evening in August when there were no customers at the stop and Karl and Sarah were playing cribbage on the porch, Matthew amusing himself with a wad of paper and the dog, a herd of deer came to drink at the spring. Entranced, the three of them stopped to watch. Mule deer, their great long ears turning to catch any sound of danger, their small heads held high and still, gathered around the watering trough below the spring and drank. Moss Face crept forward on his belly, a low hunting growl reverberating in his chest, but Karl sealed his muzzle with one hand and held him prisoner.
For a long time the deer drank and grazed; the light went from the sky, and the first stars of evening appeared over the mountains before they started away. Moving in twos and threes they headed down across the meadow, bunched their muscled haunches, and flew effortlessly over the fence. There was no sound, no thudding of hooves, as the animals came to earth and trotted off into the purple shadow of the sage.
The cards lay forgotten, and with a quiet good night, Karl and Sarah put the boy to bed and slipped off, hand in hand, to share the magic.
Business was good, there was money saved, and at the end of summer Karl made the trip to Standish to buy cattle and a saddle horse. Fifteen head—a humble beginning, he said, but a beginning. Karl had never herded cattle and had to hire two cowhands to bring them back to Round Hole. For so few head there was grazing nearby, but when the herd grew, as Karl and Sarah hoped, they would have to range for miles. It would take a hundred acres of the Smoke Creek Desert to support one cow.
In September the nights grew colder, and though it often reached eighty degrees during the day, there was usually frost on the meadow in the morning, and the air was crisp and buoyant. Karl and Sarah shared the task of giving Matthew lessons in the evenings from Imogene’s books.
Matthew missed his aunts and his grandmother but accepted his new life with a natural resiliency and formed a fast friendship with Moss Face. Sarah forbade Matthew to sleep with him on general principles, but late one night when she couldn’t sleep, she got up and went to the kitchen to get something to eat. She found that Matthew had deserted the warmth of his bed and lay curled up on the kitchen floor with his dog. Sarah carried him back to bed, and thereafter Moss Face slept with the boy.
Sarah poured coffee into a thick white mug, the aroma filling the warm kitchen. “Sun’s coming up,” Karl observed. Red fingers probed over the eastern horizon and squares of rosy light appeared on the wall behind the table as dawn reached Round Hole. Matthew made shadow rabbits with his fingers and tried to persuade Moss Face to bark at them. Ignoring his young master, the coyote retreated under the table, leery of being banished from the kitchen. Sarah poured another mug half-full and filled it the rest of the way with milk and a tablespoon of sugar for her son.
“How many, Matt?” Karl asked.
“Twelve,” came the reply.
“He won’t eat twelve, Karl. Make him six.” Sarah got out of the way as Karl spooned batter onto the griddle. “Was it too cold in the tackroom?”
“Not too cold. I built a fire, and with the extra blankets I’m warm enough.”
“If it gets too cold—”
“Sarah, I can eat twelve.” Tired of shadows that couldn’t elicit a bar, Matthew concerned himself with breakfast.
“Can you count to twelve by twos?” Sarah said to divert him.
As he was laboring past six, the sound of hoofbeats distracted them. A lone rider on a mud-caked draft horse trotted up the road from the direction of Pyramid Lake. Frost glittered on the ground, and the clopping of shod hooves on the frozen earth rang loud. The rider was bundled in the heavy woolen overcoat and cloth cap of a farmer, and his mount was better suited to pulling a plow than bearing a horseman.
“Better put on some more bacon, Sarah. I’ll go bring the poor sod in out of the cold.” Karl handed her the spatula and took his jacket from the hook outside the door.
“We’ll bring the poor sod out of the cold,” Matthew echoed and, aping Karl’s movements, he too got down his coat.
“Watch yourself,” Sarah warned mildly. “There’ll be no ‘poor sod’ in front of our guest.”
Griddle cakes were on the stove and more were in the oven, keeping warm when they returned. The newcomer introduced himself as Loony Wells, late from Virginia, Oregon-bound. Mr. Wells was overweight but hard-muscled, with a tired, weathered face. He, his wife, and two daughters had pulled their wagon off the road to camp by Pyramid Lake. He’d rolled the wagon over a sinkhole and mud had claimed it up to the axles. During the night the mud had frozen iron-hard.
After breakfast, Karl harnessed his team and two horses belonging to Wells Fargo, and headed back toward the lake with Mr. Wells.
By the time the breakfast dishes were washed and the chickens fed, the day began to warm up. Sarah went humming about her morning chores; she carried herself with a firm step and matronly calmness. Since she had come to the desert, Sarah’s delicate good looks had roughened a little, though she was meticulous about wearing her bonnet. Her face had fleshed out and her back and arms had grown stronger. Four hands were left to do the work of six, and the chores around the house and yard had fallen to her.
The sun gathered strength as it climbed, burning mist off the pond. Matthew perched on the railing around the spring, watching a pair of mallards resting on their southward journey. Sunlight caught the boy’s hair and clear skin. He was as agile as a monkey. Sarah watched him playing along the rail, his mind on the bright water birds, and pressed her hand over her heart, smiling.
“Matthew,” she called, “come help me with the upstairs laundry.”
“It’s not Tuesday, Sarah.” The ducks took flight, running first across the water, leaving momentary tracks on the glassy surface.
“It’s Tuesday. All day.”
Lost in t
he face of logic, Matthew jumped from the railing and ran before her into the house, bounding up the stairs two by two. Together they pulled the sheets from the cots and wrestled the bedding out of the windows to air.
It was early afternoon before the wash was done and ready to be hung out to dry. A long rope was strung taut between two T-shaped uprights planted in the backyard. Sarah draped a sheet over the line, holding clothespins in her mouth. In the distance a plume of dust announced the day’s first freightwagon. The desert would dry the sheets long before the driver had any desire for bed. She finished hanging the wash and automatically scanned the yard for Matthew. He’d been quiet too long. He was settled by a corner of the stable, fashioning an intricate harness for his dog out of scraps of leather. She left him to his task and went indoors to start supper preparations.
Through the kitchen window she watched the wagon grow larger and finally take shape within its cocoon of dust. Over the months she’d come to recognize most of the teams and wagons that traveled the route through Round Hole. This was a new one: six horses, the lead team a mottled pair of browns, the others colorless with alkali. The wagon was loaded with wooden crates, BERTH-FARMINGTON FARM EQUIPMENT stenciled on the sides in black. The load was heavy, and the tired animals strained in the harness. As she watched, the wind changed and the dust blew out behind the freighter. All the horses threw up their heads at once, their ears suddenly forward, nostrils wide. The scent of water imbued them with new life, and the wagon came on at an accelerated pace.
Three hundred yards from the barn, the horses broke into an uneven trot. In an instant the driver was on his feet, the lines curled through his hands, leaning back on the reins and shouting. Sarah dropped her paring knife and ran outdoors, a half-peeled potato clutched in her hand.
Matthew had left the stable and was playing down by the spring, the soft blue of his shirt barely visible above the weeds. Oblivious to everything, he poked twigs into the ground, making tepees for his growing encampment of Paiutes.
