The Springsweet

by Saundra Mitchell

  "What?" I demanded again.

  She shook with one more giggle. Then she made note of my furious scowl and put a hand out to pet me. "Shhh, shhh, Zora..."

  Still furious, I shrugged from beneath her hand. "There's no romance there."

  "It seems like there could be," Birdie said. She leveled me with a look. "If you say you keep running, but this boy keeps turning up, maybe the Lord is trying to tell you something."

  It seemed to me that the Lord surely had more things to worry about than one new spinster in Oklahoma Territory. But I didn't say that. I got up and went back to the stove, turning all my attention to my onion cornbread.

  Her voice more serious, Birdie said, "I know what it's like to lose your heart, Zora."

  "I haven't lost it." A knot bound my throat, and I had to blink fast to keep from salting the cakes with my tears. "It's Thomas' still, and I'd like to stop talking about this."

  Birdie stood and smoothed a hand across my shoulders. She patted me gently and leaned in to murmur, "All right. For now."

  As determined as she was to delay this conversation, inwardly I killed it entirely. If she spoke on it again, I'd ignore her. She was barely my elder, twenty-two to my seventeen, so I couldn't outright defy her. But I could hold my tongue and had done so for months in my mother's house.

  Perhaps I would become another Wild West notion, a legend sent back east in the newspapers. Zora Stewart, the mute keeper of Thomas Rea's memory, first mourning lady of the plains, raiser of other women's children.

  It did not occur to me at that moment that I might in fact become part of the mythic West for something else entirely. But soon it would, and I would wonder if the Lord or the universe had, in fact, led me to this place apurpose.

  I felt no sense of destiny in myself, but my feelings would hardly deter fate.

  ***

  Come the morning, Birdie woke me before the sun had entirely risen. Pressing a finger to her lips, she motioned for me to follow her. Tugging a blanket around my shoulders, I slipped outside, leaving Louella sleeping peacefully on her pallet.

  "I'm heading into town," Birdie said.

  She wore a green calico dress, the perfect shade to bring out the color in her eyes. Tying on her good bonnet—the ironed one that spent most of its time on a peg—she nodded in the vague direction of West Glory. "I should be back by lunch, but if it's not 'til supper, don't worry."

  Worry tightened my skin. "You don't want me to hurry and dress Louella? We could come along."

  "I'll get more done more quickly if you stay behind."

  I wanted to be agreeable, so I nodded. But I struggled for words, my mind whirring. I had my tasks for the day, and they were no different than they would have been if Birdie were going to be here. But somehow, minding the baby and the stove seemed less daunting with her nearby.

  Taking my silence for agreement, Birdie said, "Put on a happy face. I'll be paid today, and that means a bit of meat for our beans and, if we're very lucky, some flour and sugar. I'll bring you a penny candy if you're good."

  Sheepishly, I laughed. "I favor cinnamons."

  "You'll get whatever Mrs. Herrington has at the general." Birdie put her hands on my shoulders, her freckled face turning more serious. "If there's any trouble, bar the door and keep the shotgun at hand."

  "I can't," I said bluntly.

  Birdie mistook my meaning. "It's already loaded. Just raise it to your shoulder and pull the trigger if you have to. It's unlikely, Zora. Before Mr. de la Croix, we hadn't had a visitor since ... well, since the funeral, and that's a year past."

  "I'm sorry," I said; my condolences came without thought, as if grief were written into my bones now.

  "Don't be." Birdie picked up her basket of sewing. Then she fixed me with a quelling stare. "Just tell me you understand and you'll take care of my Lou."

  There was no need to argue with her. Truly, if no one came here, then handling arms would be no issue. And if someone did come, I'd devise another way to protect Louella—if she needed protecting at all. So I covered my lie of omission with a truth.

  "As if she were my own."

  "Good girl," Birdie said, turning to start the long walk to town. She laughed lightly, casting a look back over her shoulder. "You might get that penny candy yet."

  ***

  After breakfast, I drew our morning water and went out back to tend the garden.

  I recognized most of the vegetables there—the peas were the most obvious, because they had already shed their blossoms to produce their fruit. Long, leafy blades marked the row of corn, and beside that, two sad tomato plants withered on their stakes.

  There were vines that I guessed would become pumpkins, and green tufts flush to the ground that would surely become carrots. Birdie claimed there were Irish potatoes and onions down there too, but I saw no evidence.

  "Do you know what's funny?" I asked Louella as she squatted in the pea row to pick the ripe pods. "My mama has a garden just like this one at home. Smaller, but everything's in the same order. Can you believe it?"

  Louella looked up from her pan. "Your mama knows my mama?"

  "Yes! My mama is your Aunt Pauline."

  Considering this, Louella sat down in the dirt. "My mama's Beatrice."

  I smiled, carrying my bucket to the outside basin, dipping the last of the water up for the possibly imaginary onions. "I know."

  "My name's Louella." She pulled another pea, holding it up to the sunlight. The thin skin glowed green, the shadow of peas nestled inside it. "Louella. And Aldith. And Neal. I have three names."

  Though I'm sure I'd heard her whole name at one time or another, it delighted me to have her put it all together. "Our grandmother's name was Aldith. You're named for her."

  "Is she dead?"

  Putting the bucket back on its hook, I went over to pick her up. "Yes. A long time ago, before you were ever born."

  "Oh. Did she get sick?"

  Stroking her darling curls, I shook my head. "No, duck. She'd lived her entire life, and it was over, that's all."

  Louella curled an arm around my neck. "My papa died."

  She said it as easily as I would have said The sky is blue or You're three years old. My heart ached, because a year must have seemed like a very long time ago indeed to such a little girl. But another pang came, not for grief but Louella's curious lack of it.

  "Yes, he did," I finally agreed.

  Louella moved on easily. "Let's go on a 'venture."

  Relieved, I carried her back to the house. Those peas needed to go inside, and I had to consider her request. Without committing myself to anything in particular, I asked, "What kind of adventure?"

  Louella shrugged, waiting for me to make the plans.

  While I put the peas away, I wondered if there was a single adventuresome thing to do nearby, and couldn't think of one. Well, besides chasing the chickens, and it was my sworn duty to get Louella to leave them in peace.

  My gaze fell on the shotgun beside the door, and I shivered. Well, the best way to avert trouble at the soddy would be to leave it, I supposed. "Come on outside. Let me see what I can find."

  Taking my hand, Louella stood beside me as I peered toward the horizon. The dust had risen again, hazing the world, but I wasn't looking for something with my regular sight. I breathed deep, searching inside myself for the earth's pulse, waiting to taste the clarity of nearby water on my tongue.

  Whispering, Louella rubbed my hand against her face. "Whatcha doing?"

  "Shhh," I said.

  I felt a bit foolish, straining to see something that should have been beyond my gaze. What if I'd imagined everything? What if this really was a touch of lingering madness, a way to keep my dear, departed friend in my heart?

  Thinking about it in daylight, it seemed quite rational that I would hallucinate an affinity to water. It made me not the opposite of Amelia's fire as I'd supposed, but her salvation. She had seen in fire and succumbed to the heat of a fever. If I had been water then, I coul
d have saved her. However late my fantasy, it was made to save her.

  I had very nearly talked myself out of the search when I caught sight of a glimmering in the grass. In the daylight, the threads of water weren't nearly so easy to pick out. But they were there, and once more, I could feel them fanning across the prairie, the blood in this earthly flesh.

  "This way," I said, tugging Louella along. "We're going wading."

  ***

  Louella dropped into the grass, a little rag doll with no bones at all. Though her point was quite clear, she felt it necessary to explain. "Tired, Zora."

  The stream that seemed so very nearby when it was a light on the horizon was nearly two miles off by my best guess. Butterflies and pretty flowers had ceased to amuse Louella, and now I was stuck. I could drag her the rest of the way and then home again, or just home again.

  As if to decide for me, a haunting cry filled the air. A low, musical moan surrounded me, and the hair stood up on my arms. It sounded very like the melody Papa had taught me to make by blowing in a conch shell. But there was no seashore here. And the lowing sounded all around us.

  "Up, Lou," I said, grabbing her arm.

  Instead of rising up, she resisted. A wobbling weight on the end of my wrist, Louella showed no concern about the eerie call that encircled us. My skin stung with cold—a frost come early. How could she be so carefree? I picked her up forcibly.

  Old fear fed new. The men who robbed the stagecoach, what if they'd been watching—waiting to catch me alone to finish me off? What if I had wandered onto someone else's land or stumbled into an ancient burying ground?

  A black geist flew at me. It was a beating wave of dark, and two furious orange sparks for eyes. I screamed. The hollow note of it rang on and on, but I wasn't entirely useless. I struck the phantasm. Then I scrambled back, dragging Louella with me. In my sudden strength, she felt light as feathers.

  Feathers.

  "You hit the birdie," Louella said. She giggled, laying her head on my shoulder.

  And, dear God, I had.

  Though my heart still roared, my head filled with sheepish realization. At my feet, a large bird staggered. It looked rather like a primordial chicken. Its feathers were black and gold striped, with bright, burnished spots on either side of its head.

  It reeled drunkenly and made a sound I could best describe as a crackling. And in that instant, I didn't see a poor creature in want of care and deliverance. I saw supper: fried chicken, or stewed; roasted or barbecued. Something savory to make up for a week of beans and peas and cold beans and cold peas.

  Sliding Louella to her feet, I leaned to whisper in her ear, "Don't go far, but see if you can find a nest."

  This was a better adventure than walking to eternity, and she immediately dashed into the prairie. Which left me alone to suck up my courage to wring the bird's neck without an impressionable witness.

  I was kind and quick as I could be about it, and all I wished for was a good piece of twine to make a brace for carrying it home.

  "Eggs," Louella shouted. "Zora, eggs!"

  Taking my prize along, I followed the sound of her voice and found her crouched over a little nest built in the grass. It held ten fat eggs, each the color of toasted meringue. Quickly, I took in the land around us—there was no hen nearby, though I heard a new conch-wail in the distance.

  "Take four," I told Louella. One for each of us, and one for the pot. That was my thinking on it, and it left six for the bereaved hen I'd likely just widowed. "Gather up your skirt and carry them gently."

  She did as I told her, and it was only halfway back to the soddy that she turned her face up at me. "No wading?"

  "I'm afraid not," I told her. And as the wind rushed through the sunbaked prairie, I had to laugh at myself. It was no desert, this piece of the Territories, but it was no oasis, either.

  I had been a mad, impetuous thing to promise her wading at all. Still, considering our reward for my madness, I was glad to take the blow to my ego.

  A hot dinner tonight! A hot breakfast tomorrow! We were rich!

  Seven

  The next day, I felt rather less wealthy when I made Louella's hot breakfast and Aunt Birdie still hadn't come home. Her promise to return by supper at the latest had slipped into dusk, then into the night, with no sign of her.

  It was frighteningly easy to lie to the baby, to coax her to sleep. But it was impossible for me to find sleep myself.

  I kept going into the yard, peering into the dark for any sign of my wayward aunt. My head cried with unfortunate possibilities, one worse than the next. Finally, though I knew candles and oil were dear, I lit the tin lantern and left it outside to be a beacon.

  By morning, the oil was gone, and we were still alone. Louella smacked her spoon against her breakfast, not a bite of egg passing her lips. She drew her head back like a turtle, her chin disappearing into her neck, and her eyes nothing but sullen green dots that followed me as I straightened the soddy.

  "You need to eat, duck," I told her, folding up our bedding. I stole peeks at her over the top of the quilt. "It's a long walk to the well."

  She answered with another smack of her spoon.

  I continued, cheerfully. "And we might have another adventure today. You never know. You'll want a full belly for that."

  Eyes darkening, Louella said nothing. But she kicked the legs of the chair, making eggs dance in her plate and filling the soddy with a sharp, steady beat. I kept to my chores, hoping this tempest would pass as quickly as any of her moods.

  When I gave her no response, she kicked harder, making the chair rock. I turned my back to her, surprised by the great well of temper that filled me. Every thump reverberated on my spine. The tap of the tin spoon on her plate dug right into my ear.

  Ignoring her, it seemed, made the tantrum worse. Slowly, I put the bedding away and collected myself. I would be calm in the face of this obstinance. Turning toward her, I pasted on a smile. "Now let's finish-—"

  But I didn't finish.

  She kicked so hard that the plate leapt from her knees. It was impressive that she managed to break Birdie's only china plate on a dirt floor. It was infuriating, too. I would have eaten that breakfast gladly. I might have even picked it off the floor, if it weren't full of shards.

  I flew over to remonstrate, pointing at the mess. "Look what you've done! That plate is ruined!"

  Louella's mercury turned. She looked up at me, stricken, and burst into tears. And though I had only raised my voice to her—in truth, wished very much to shake her, but resisted—she tried to climb into my arms for comfort.

  Taking her up, I smoothed my hand over her hair, letting her soak my neck with the slick effluvia of her tears. What an awful, cruel thing I had become.

  Crooning to her, I choked on a sob of my own, then cut it off viciously. The wideness of the plains had never seemed more desolate to me, but I had no right to cry.

  My fears were stupid and childish—if someone had set on Birdie, I wouldn't be left alone in the prairie with a baby.

  I'd take her home to Baltimore, where Mama would know how to make her eat a plate of eggs without shouting. I'd have a clean dress and a corset, hot meals thrice daily, and water that ran from a pump in the kitchen again.

  "Shhh, shhh," I whispered to Louella, rocking her, though she had stopped crying in earnest. I rocked her so hard, it seemed the earth floor trembled beneath us. "We'll sweep it all up. It's no matter at all."

  Suddenly, someone knocked on the door, and Louella started in my arms. "Mama!" she cried, wriggling free and running to throw the door open. But the shape in the doorway frightened her, and she ran back to my skirts.

  "Mr. Birch," I said.

  He was so tall he had to lean a bit to see inside, his broad shoulders casting a wide shadow. I stepped in front of him, ashamed to let him see the terrible mess Lou and I had made of the house. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

  Tipping his hat back, he looked from Louella to me and asked, "Where's your
aunt?"

  "In town," I said airily. "She'll be along anytime now."

  "I brought you something."

  Then he turned and walked away, an invitation to follow him. This time I did, for it was a relief to see proof that we weren't forgotten out on Plot 325.

  Louella kept one arm tight around my neck. "Who is?" she asked around her finger.

  "A friend," I told her.

  Emerson strode to his buckboard and lifted a parcel from it. When he turned, I realized it was my muddied silk scarf, and it hung heavy with something wrapped in it. Instead of simply handing it to me, he cradled it in his arm and folded back the corners.

  Peppers. Dark green capsicum peppers, nestled beside two fat tomatoes and a striped turnip, on a bed of white and yellow corn. He shifted the pack, to give account of its contents. "Some beans and some onions, too. I wanted to bring carrots, but they weren't ready yet."

  My mouth watered, but I hesitated. "I haven't got any money. I lost everything on the coach."

  Emerson tied the bundle, then handed it to Louella, who didn't know any better than to take it. "I don't have any money either. That's for the well."

  "I ... all right."

  With a deep breath, he started to speak but thought better of it. He tipped his hat to Louella, then to me, making as if to take to his buckboard again.

  At that, I should have said thank you and bid him goodbye. But he seemed full, round with some kind of anticipation. Against my own best judgment, I wanted to uncover it.

  "Wait! May I ask you a question, Mr. Birch?"

  He smiled at that, a crooked tilt to his lips. "Why so formal, Miss Stewart?"

  I hefted Louella up on my hip and lifted my chin. "It's not formal, it's polite. You have heard of manners, haven't you?"

  "I was thinking I might ask you the same thing."

  His gaze trailed from mine, and he made the oddest expression—eyes rounded and nose pinched. I realized he was trying to make Louella laugh. Warmth flooded my skin, touching me with an unexpected fondness.

  Nuzzling against Louella's hair, I gave her a little kiss, then asked, "How do you make your garden grow so prettily? Ours is struggling."