Another careful breath. “Possibly the worst experience of my life. I do not know ... where to go from here. I do not know what to say in words or letters. I do not know who my friends or enemies are. I ... do not know ... who I am anymore.”
After a pause, Winter says, “We are your friends, Ivy.”
She looks up to see light eyes sparkling, dark ones focused, regretful. Ivy inhales, feeling tears streak her cheeks. At last, she closes her eyes and tells them everything.
Fortieth
Confessions
Ivy lies back with steam wafting over her face, a thick cotton towel at her head, water up to her collarbone. The copper bathtub is long, narrow, sloping gently at the back. The washroom is bright with late afternoon glow, curtains drawn for privacy while allowing in soft sunlight. The warm, quiet room smells of lye, honey, cocoa, and whitewash. A stack of towels rests on a pine shelf beside the tub, almost as inviting as the water. A fresh bar of real lavender soap, neatly wrapped in paper, sits beside these towels. Another bar, of oatmeal and lime, is already wet, lying at the edge of the bath. The water is nearly clear about her, beside soap bubbles, having already been drained and refilled. An easy matter here: Oliver apparently made friends with Winter’s family when he first came to New Mexico. Winter’s little house is equipped with not only a tub which drains to the outside with copper pipe, but plumbed with a hot water steam boiler.
As the warm scent of oatmeal and honey washes about her, Ivy closes her eyes. She would not previously have suspected it, but knows now that Winter Night is the most meritorious human being in the world. Why Grip has not yet proposed seems a baffling mystery.
A tap at the pine door. “Ivy? I have your tray.”
Ivy leans over to grab a towel and drapes it across the bath so only her head and feet are visible. “Thank you, come in.”
So alarmed was her hostess by her appearance, Winter said she must see the doctor without delay. Failing here—Ivy had a telegram to read and letter to write and Sam and Melchior were already taking up the doctor’s time—Winter insisted Ivy at least allow her, Winter, to take care of her. This, Ivy could not refuse.
After promises of food, letter sheets and pen, fresh clothes—all in undertones so as not to disturb Winter’s invalid mother in the bedroom—Ivy painstakingly removed dressings on her side and leg from the Chiricahua family. Frightened to look at the side wound, she found what had been a gaping tear across her flesh at the false ribs had granulated over with healthy, raw flesh and—most amazing—did not seem infected. The stinking, black tissue which died around the area sloughed off with the bandage and Ivy threw it away with her chemise.
“How are you?” Winter asks, resting her tray across the narrow bath.
Ivy smiles. “Clean. I already reran the water twice. I’m sorry if I used too much.”
“That’s wonderful.” Winter beams at her. “I run it twice some days in summertime when the coaches are going all day and cattle come through and dust on the road is thicker than needles on a pine tree.” Her expression grows serious as she gazes down at Ivy, nervously pushing back a long strand of dark hair. “Are you terribly hurt? I can fetch the doctor right—”
“I’m not that bad. Let him see the others first.” She cannot bring herself to say Sam’s or Melchior’s names. “Even my shin is not as bad as I imagined. A horse kicked me in the flood.”
“You were in a flood with your horse?” Winter’s eyes are enormous.
“I don’t suppose you flooded up here?”
“You could have been killed. What happened? I don’t know how you can stand to ride with them, even if they let you go along.”
Let her?
Ivy opens her mouth, closes it, exhales a long, deliberate breath. She shifts her attention to the tray, taking in rich smells of baked meat and pastry. “Winter ... where ... how did you get all this?”
Winter flushes, hands behind her back. “I keep my own garden and milk cow.”
Spread on the wood tray, which Winter must typically use to take her mother meals in bed, is the kind of feast Ivy has not seen since her aunt’s home cooking at the end of the produce season last fall.
A golden wedge of pot pie sends up curls of steam. Inside, creamy filling spills into the bowl with carrots, sweet peas, corn, onions, and chicken. On a clay plate beside this, a heaped salad of white cabbage is sliced thin as paper, drizzled in honey vinegar dressing and garnished with fresh mint and slivers of bright orange carrots. Then a broad mug of cold mint tea beside a dish of chocolate custard dusted with ground cinnamon.
“More if you need it,” Winter says. “It’s a bake day for me and I’ve had fence builders in and out all morning. I saved a custard for Mother, but it’s easy to make more. You have this one.”
Again, Ivy opens her mouth, swallows, tries to tell Winter ... anything. She cannot find the words.
After dinner and removing herself from the bath, donning a summer dress and shawl from Winter, Ivy’s thoughts run circles around her planned letter. Winter already has a space for her at the table with letter sheets and a handsome Perry & Co. pen with ink. Here, her telegram also rests. The answer to her own. One message, solid, real, from the outside:
Received yours and return assurance of love and survival plus promises from each to the other of remaining thus.
To Miss Ivy E. Jerinson, Santa Fé. From Dr. Arthur H. Jerinson, Boston.
Ivy still thinks more clearly of chocolate custard than words in ink. How many dozens of letters home has she written in her mind on the trail? To her father, her mother, Kitty. And now...?
She stares at paper, distracted by Winter washing dishes without assistance. No words appear. She has only until morning to come up with at least one note. So many words inside, all she sees are jumbles of heaped, piled, twisted letters like mounds of scrap metal. How could her few feeble sentences ever mean anything? How could they stand up to her life since she was last able to send a letter in the autumn?
She cannot tell him how things are, how they have been. She cannot tell him how she is. She cannot ask questions expecting an answer. What more is there to a letter home? Best wishes?
So much to say, she can say nothing at all.
Rosalía appears in the doorway. She refrains from asking Ivy anything when she sees paper before her. After helping Winter finish, Rosalía tugs her from the sweltering kitchen to the slightly breezy front room and long sofa of timber frame and stretched cowhide. Winter perches like a bird at the edge of a dilapidated upholstered chair, clearly brought from back East many years ago.
Ivy lifts the pen, sets it down. Still blank. Only hours remaining.
She leaves the task to join Winter and Rosalía, moving at a limping shuffle.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Rosalía is saying. “He’s not going anywhere tonight. El Cohete is beat. So is he, even if he won’t admit it.”
“I worry—” Winter catches sight of Ivy and leaps to her feet. “Ivy, sit down. What can I bring you? Rosalía spoke to Mrs. Hintzen. The doctor will be along just as soon as he can.”
Ivy nods, feeling dizzy.
“You look improved.” Rosalía smiles at Ivy from her place on the cowhide sofa.
“It would not have taken much. Nothing, Winter, thank you. I’m fine.”
“Take this chair and I’ll get you more tea.”
Rosalía shakes her head at Ivy as Winter dashes for the kitchen, so Ivy desists in trying to stop her.
She sinks to the chair.
Rosalía gazes out the front window, her hand in her hair, elbow on the back of the sofa, legs crossed at the knee under her crimson circle skirt. She looks back as Ivy settles herself carefully, but Ivy delays her questions.
“How is your own injury?”
She looks back out the window. “It was mending.”
“Was?”
“I rode south a few days on my own, trying to warn Grip before he ran into Everette. Did you know Albuquerque was attacked? Never saw sign of you. I s
uppose you all were trying to get yourselves together after the rain. Grip said you were caught in a riada? Anyway, I had a few scrapes myself on the trail and reopened the wound.” She looks quickly around. “Don’t tell Grip that. He’ll tell my father and my father will try to chain me home like a wandering dog. He doesn’t know I went. My family is already enough ashamed of me.”
“I won’t say anything.”
Rosalía goes on gazing out the window.
Ivy watches her. She has never heard Rosalía sound bitter before. Other than when she is shouting at her adopted brother, Ivy has found her almost irritatingly cheerful, even on the trail. Why is no one she knows being who they should? Who she needs them to be. Or, as Grip not-so-subtly suggested, is Ivy the one who is opening her eyes?
Ivy glances from inkless letter sheets at the table to Rosalía. “Rose? What do you do when you ... don’t know what to do?”
“Go to confession.”
“What?”
Rosalía looks at her. “Do you confess? Where you come from?”
“That’s ... two questions. There are certainly Catholics back East. But I have never personally been to confession.”
“If you don’t know what to do, it’s because something inside is unsettled. Confession can lighten the burden, which brings clearer frame of mind.”
“I would not know what to do.”
“I’ll take you to the cathedral. Father Flores is always in. You might wait until after the doctor’s visit though. And what about your letter? You haven’t much time.”
“Letters are part of the problem.”
Rosalía smiles. “If you confess, you lift the weight of needing to confess. Then you only have to tell your father the important things: you love him and you’re all right.”
“You make it sound simple. I thought confession was only for sins? What should I confess?”
“How about pride?”
Ivy frowns. “What?”
“Or envy? Don’t you envy people in the States, no matter the trouble they’re in from Plague? I always confess vanity. If I didn’t have vanity, I wouldn’t have chosen my skirt for my favorite color. Any old sack would do. I would likely crop my hair as well. It’s only extra work. Don’t worry though. You and I are nothing compared to the vaqueros. There is a group truly presumido.”
“I never realized that kind of pride was a strong enough sin to take to confessionals.” Ivy notices Winter has returned, though too polite to speak, and thanks her for another cup of tea.
“You can tell Father Flores anything,” Rosalía says. “He’s a good man. Silent as a summer breeze, patient as the seasons. You should see him smile when Grip walks in—sweet as anything. You’d never notice him flinch unless you watched close.”
“I did not know one saw the priest at all.”
“Not usually. I suppose we’re still rather small town around Santa Fé, but there is a real confessional. Don’t worry. He won’t sit you down on the front porche. I’m sorry, Winter.” Rosalía sighs. “You know I mean no offense.”
Winter’s bearing has grown stiff. She averts her eyes, hands clasped.
“Surely you can see it Father Flores’s way?” Rosalía asks her. “It’s awfully vexing for him to answer Grip. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been nine weeks since my last confession. In those weeks, I lied three times, indulged in the consumption of alcohol, killed two men, took the Lord’s name in vain ten times in English and twelve in Spanish, and have not attended Sunday Mass due to never being in town on a Sunday.’”
Is self-righteousness a sin? Apparently not or Rosalía would surely have mentioned it.
“What’s the poor man to advise? ‘Say the Act of Contrition and ten Hail Marys, and come back more often so you take less time’?”
“Grip does not blaspheme like that,” Winter says to her hands. Is she actually tearing up?
“Not in town,” Rosalía says under her breath. “Do you have more diners today?”
Winter shakes her head. Rosalía waves her over to sit. While she tells Winter she is sorry and meant no disrespect about Grip, sounding more exhausted than sorry, Ivy feels caught up on Winter being hurt by Rosalía saying he swore rather than saying he murdered people.
“What’s wrong, Ivy?” Rosalía asks at last.
“Is the dress all right? It seems to fit you,” Winter says. “It’s old, I do apologize....”
They sit side by side on the cowhide sofa. Rosalía leaned back, looking spent. Winter forward, knees and ankles together under her skirts, hands clasped at her knees. Anxious green eyes and tired chocolate ones watch Ivy, waiting.
“I....” Ivy can get no further without her voice breaking. She swallows, looking at her own knees through cream and blue cotton.
The trip south with Kiedrid, the horrors of Silver City, the endless ride back in silence, interrupted by a nightmare which nearly killed all.
Ivy takes several long, deep breaths before speaking slowly. “We ... had a difficult journey. It was....” A long pause as visions fill her mind: the Great Fire, the endless nights of terror with Boston under blackout, her mother screaming at her to run, that awful day her father put her on the last train, the lonely year on the ranch, the horde.
Another careful breath. “Possibly the worst experience of my life. I do not know ... where to go from here. I do not know what to say in words or letters. I do not know who my friends or enemies are. I ... do not know ... who I am anymore.”
After a pause, Winter says, “We are your friends, Ivy.”
She looks up to see light eyes sparkling, dark ones focused, regretful. Ivy inhales, feeling tears streak her cheeks. At last, she closes her eyes and tells them everything.
Forty-First
What Is Most Important
Dearest Father,
The people of Santa Fé have this single opportunity to send letters by cavalry escort; praying they shall bring return post as well.
Please know I am safe for now in the city. Though the ranch is gone, along with my dear aunt and uncle, my cousin and I made it north alive. Hundreds of others now stream into Santa Fé, as it is the only city in the Territory building defenses against Daray’s disease. These engineered by the only maker in New Mexico.
I think of you and pray for you every day. The nation prays for you, for a remedy, though they may not know your name. I do all I can to return to Boston. Until then, know I am as protected as can be under the circumstances. If you are able, please send news from home: a whole tablet of it. You may write to me in care of Miss Winter Night with the address below.
Until we meet again, know I love you, miss you, will return to you and our home.
Love from your daughter,
Ivy
Dear Father,
Though I wished to get letters off to Kitty, Mrs. Cloutier, and others, I haven’t the words or minutes. In Kitty’s case, I am not sure I could reach her with the border to Canada closed. I beg you overlook the rushed manner in which this document is written and forgive all therein which I shall regret saying the moment I have sealed the envelope.
In the past two months I have written hundreds of letters to you in my mind. Under pressure of time and risking getting no letter off at all, I could not say any of these things when the moment arrived. What is most important is what must go: I love you and am all right.
Yet my whole self rebelled against sending off only the last. I rushed back to the desk at a friend’s home (also loaning me letter sheets I now defile) after dispatching the former with another friend who rightly told me a short text was better than none.
If there is time, if there can be any chance of getting this through, I cannot fail to express at least some of what shapes my existence these days.
Risers caught us at the ranch in a horde—never have I seen so many at once. We burned the place as we fled, yet Aunt Abigail and Uncle Charles were so bewildered by the business of risers, we were sorely delayed. They died in a mob and blaze while Melchior a
nd I rode away. I knew they were doomed and did nothing, never turned back for them, never warned him, though I saw she had been thrown from her horse.
We rode to Santa Fé with warnings for the populations of both Albuquerque and the former, however, no one seemed much alarmed: they were too ignorant to understand they should be alarmed and too conceited to listen to a young lady from “the States” who claimed danger drew near.
Never could I have imagined being so denigrated, mad to tears, by an entire population. You are no “young lady” in this godforsaken abyss. You are a child until you are a woman. If you are a woman, you are an object of slave labor, meal fixing, and child rearing. Many Mexican wives will not meet their husbands’ eyes, they are so cowed and obsequious. I can draw little comparison to Anglo American women as there are few to speak of in Santa Fé or the region.
By the time my cousin and I arrived, the city was half-abandoned, nearly anyone of note having fled while warning others to do the same. Once we brought word that there were indeed risers in the Territory, we reported the news to an idiot sheriff—never officially appointed to the job and thicker and more self-important than any man has the right to be.
Besides a few people, such as business owners and the one maker in town, we are left with dregs of the hot, dry, airless city of flat adobe structures and nearly no decent food. Now they are (at last) pouring in from all about, so we may introduce a higher (or lower) quality through town.
On our ride here, my cousin won enough cheating at cards to pay bail on a friend out of jail in Albuquerque. The two have traveled in my company ever since. Although this man—Samuelson, an English gentleman from Bristol—was guiltless of the crime for which he was sentenced, he recently confessed to another, giving rise to implications upon Melchior as well. I thought them good friends, having ridden together on a trail drive in which “cowpunchers” moved cattle north from Texas to the railheads before the shutdown. I would never have guessed they were, even my own cousin, flesh and blood, unsavory in their natures.
Lightfall Three: Luck, Lost, Lady (Lightfall, Book 3) Page 6
