Gus got up and went to her. She sat at the vanity, where she never sat. He wondered why she was sitting there until he remembered the map he had spread across the bed.
He put his chin on the crown of her head. He lifted her wild hair and smelled it. He said she smelled of prairie and lavender and told her to stop torturing the comb.
“What about luggage?” she said, on to him and his prairie-and-lavender. She knew she smelled of coyote wind and creek mud.
“Lorena cannot be allowed to bring all the clothes she owns.”
“She is not the Queen of Sheba. If she packed up all she owned, it would fit in that satchel you used to bring to school.”
“We have six people in a Willys Jeep. I am trying to impress upon you, Elise, the need to think about space.”
“Never in my life have I had to worry about space.” It was true. She’d grown up with more than her share of the world, prairie stretching away to the horizon, only the Bulgarians within walking distance. Now she could just see the smoke from Rodrigo and Juana’s house across the creek on cold days. Otherwise she saw only the high pasture leading to the bluffs of Sleeping Lion Mountain. Sandy had told her about Mexico City, where people were stacked atop one another. He had been in San Francisco just after the earthquake, seen the tall buildings toppled, even helped pull bodies from piles of bricks.
“We could take the train,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to.”
“To Illinois, then to Washington D.C., then to North Carolina?”
“It doesn’t stop at all those places?”
“We will drive the Willys. Just tell the kids to pack lightly. If they get their clothes dirty we can stop in Fort Worth where a fellow has opened a washeteria. I read all about it in the Dallas Times Herald. We can pop in and wash a load of clothes.”
“You mean along with the general public?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to see the underwear of others.”
Gus laughed. “I am going to fold up my map now and you are going to leave your hair just as it is and come to bed, where there will be no more talk of the underwear of others.”
Two days later, Elise was down at the office, proofreading the paper. It would be the last edition before their departure, and Elise did not trust Joe Dudley, even if he was being paid extra not to misspell a word. She wanted to make sure this week’s paper was without blemish.
The front door of the office opened into a room with several desks, but the real work of the paper took place in the back room, where the entire staff was gathered. The bell above the front door rang. Gus, who was laying out an advertisement for Miller’s Feed and Seed, said to Elise, “Go up and see who that is, please. If it’s Mrs. García saying she did not get last week’s paper, give her another, even though she’s been in twice this week already and I know she uses it to light fires and line her birdcage. I also know she’s getting her paper because she’s complained so many times I deliver it myself, and I put it between the screen and the front door, and she watches me do it from her kitchen window, but what I am going to do, call the woman a liar?”
“So you want me to call her a liar?”
“Yes, please.”
“Done,” said Elise.
Elise went to the front room, fully prepared to make Mrs. García feel as if she had been grievously wronged by the Fort Davis Sentinel.
A woman stood by the door, along with two children. The children were handsome and sleepy. A girl hung off the woman’s left hip. A boy, sporting more hair than was called for and big ears, which perhaps the hair was meant to hide, held his mother’s right hand. The woman wore gloves and a wool coat. None of them appeared attuned to the elements. Clearly they were oblivious to the sky and the wind of its desires.
The woman was in the process of pulling off her gloves. Slowly she performed the task, tugging with her right hand the pointer finger of her left. And then a repeat with the right. She had all her fingers. No accident had befallen her in Wyoming since Elise had laid eyes on her.
Elise said her sister’s name and her sister said yes. Then her sister said Elise’s name and they fell together, a giggly bag of bones pinned immediately beneath a blanket of sky. Their bodies were thicker, but their bones were in the same place. No words but tears, which were words not yet frozen, watery half words. The tears mixed as their cheeks touched, and Elise remembered smiling into her sister’s shoulder during long cold nights in their attic room and she remembered the smile entering her sister, causing her to laugh in her sleep.
Sandy was hitched outside and ready. Everybody’s Sunshine Crocodile at their service.
Elise was too confused to remember all the times she had imagined this very scene. She was too ecstatic to dwell on the far more frequent times she had imagined Lorena walking right past her on the street, which was what she had done every day for the past however many odd years it had been. For years, Lorena had walked past Elise in whatever hallway of whatever house she inhabited, or in the front yard, on the sidewalk, Lorena’s chin high and her eyes focused on the horizon.
“As it turns out, I have not yet had a big idea,” said Elise, and her sister said, “As it turns out, guess what?”
This led them both to laugh. It was the laughter of those who knew their limitations.
The sleepy children, perked up by laughter, smiled.
Behind them, the door swung open. Elise heard her husband’s breathing and she felt her sister’s body tighten (for they were entwined still) and then slacken slightly.
Elise said, “Lorena has come calling,” as if Lorena had strolled over from a block away.
Gus said Lorena’s name and Lorena said Gus’s.
To Elise, it sounded cordial enough. They did not get to embrace, not yet, because Elise would not let go of Lorena.
“Hello,” said Gus to the boy with big ears and more than necessary hair. “My name is Gus.”
“Uncle Gus,” said Lorena, still precise.
“Either one will do. I am pleased to meet you.” He shook the boy’s hand. A smile was blooming on the boy’s face. He seemed to Elise the son of a very serious man. It showed in the slow, cautious spread of his smile.
“My name is Elena May Nelson,” said the girl, who took after Lorena, obviously. Exhausted by whatever long trip they had come to the end of, the girl was alert enough to assess everything and everyone. Like her mother, she was present, while the serious boy was just along.
Elise said to Lorena, “I guess I ought to let go of you.”
Lorena said, “At some point.”
Elise said, “At some point you might want to eat.”
Lorena said, “Or powder my nose.”
Elise said, “Powder mine while you’re at it, what’s left of it,” and Lorena said, “Elise,” reminding Elise that Lorena had always hated it when Lorena mentioned her injuries.
Then she let go. Gus stepped forward as if to embrace her, but Lorena did not move.
“Well, how old is everybody?” said Elise.
“You first,” Gus said to Elise.
“I am nineteen and three-quarters.”
“That’s impossible,” said the boy. “Mother says you have a son who is about as old as that.”
“Okay, fine. I am in my fourth decade on earth, which means I am not in my forties but my thirties. It’s needlessly complicated.”
“She never paid attention during math,” Lorena said, looking at Gus.
“Goodness, y’all take off your coats,” said Elise. “You look to have come from Antarctica.”
“We live in Recluse, Wyoming,” the boy said.
“What a striking name for a town,” said Elise. “It reminds me slightly of Lone Wolf.”
“We have over six thousand acres,” said the boy.
“Sheep or cattle?” asked Gus.
“Cattle!” the children cried in indignant unison.
Gus said to Lorena, “I have heard it said that there is no love lost between the sheep men and the
cattlemen.”
“You have your facts straight,” said Lorena.
“For once,” said Elise, and Gus laughed and put his arm around Elise’s waist.
Something in Lorena shifted.
“We’ve come to see Mother, of course.”
“Of course,” said Gus, taking his arm off her.
“I want to see her, naturally, but I also feel it important for Isaac Junior and Elena to meet their grandmother.”
“You have some cousins to meet as well,” said Elise, but Lorena was pulling her gloves on and did not seem to have heard her.
“Have we far to travel?”
“Not by Texas standards. A couple of miles,” said Gus.
“We live forty miles from town,” the boy said.
“Do you have a creek?” said Elise, but Gus interrupted to say he would run everyone out to the house, that he just had to let his coworkers know.
They waited for Gus. Lorena studied the framed awards from the Texas Press Association, which hung on the wall.
“You decided on journalism over concert pianist?”
“Gus is the editor. I only work part-time. Mostly I help with the proofreading. His partner is out of Odessa and can’t spell ‘dog.’”
“He must be dumb,” said Elena, and Lorena said her full name, Elena May Nelson, in a tone that was to let her know she’d said something rude.
Elise knew she was making it worse when she leaned over and whispered, “He is dumb,” to the girl, but when she rose and saw the look on Lorena’s face, she realized that everything was not simply the way it was before Gus, then called Mr. McQueen, showed up in their lives, unpinning the blanket, saying violently beautiful things. Was it Gus’s fault? She’d never thought so, but Lorena looked at her in a way that suggested it might be.
On the ride out to the house, Lorena spoke of her husband, Isaac Newton Nelson. “He is a good man” was the first thing she said about him, and Elise thought to say (but didn’t, no she did not), You might as well have led with “He provides for me, even dotes on me, but is deaf to my true cry.”
As for Isaac Newton Nelson, it seemed his true cry was Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Elise was not shocked by Lorena marrying a pious rancher and it worried her how not surprised she was.
“How did you meet?” said Gus. Elise wanted to say, Gus! as in, Gus, just don’t. It was an inappropriate question for him of all people to be asking, since he had met both the woman he had boarded a train prepared to propose to and the woman he had actually proposed to in his classroom. (There was also the fact that the women were sisters.)
“He came to my classroom in Sheridan,” said Lorena, after a pause long enough to let Gus know it was none of his business.
What did she mean, he “came” to her classroom? Why did the rancher go to the classroom? It sounded like a joke.
The seriousness of his namesake son suggested a man too occupied to roll around in a pasture with his children.
“He is a veteran of the Great War,” said Lorena.
“I bet he has seen a lot,” said Elise, thinking that this might have been what they call a foxhole conversion.
When Lorena did not answer, Elise said, “Do y’all have a lot of horses?”
Elena May said that she owned a pony, but Isaac Newton claimed it was half his.
“Which half?” Elise turned to ask the child. He eyed her blankly.
“What does she mean?” he whispered loudly to his mother.
“Don’t whisper,” said Lorena.
Elise meant, Don’t whisper. She meant, Do you lead or are you the passenger? What she meant was, Would you give your life, lie down in front of a train, for your little shared pony?
“My father’s horse is named Newt,” said the boy.
“Is he wee in stature?”
Improbably, unexpectedly, Lorena laughed. Seemingly it was against her will, as it was like a burst of thunder on a day cloudless and bright.
“He is sixteen hands,” said Elena May.
“Goodness,” said Elise. “I would need a stepladder.”
“I would need a footstool myself, and I am five feet eleven and three-quarters inches tall,” said Gus.
“You put your foot in the stirrup and use the pommel to pull yourself up,” said Isaac Junior. He was taking the subject seriously.
“How is Mother?” asked Lorena. It took her long enough. Elise had never minded taking care of their mother because she understood her. They were in tune. Her mother’s sadness sometimes made her sad, as you could catch sadness, especially from schoolteachers—Elise had caught it more than once from Mr. McQueen—but you had to be prone to it. It was a bit like her sock drawer habit. She knew it would not go away, but she wasn’t always off running her hands through balls of socks. She would stop herself. There were ways to stave off sadness, though at the moment Elise was hard-pressed to remember them.
“It is hard for her to see much at night.”
“What is there to see at night?” said Lorena. “Do you mean she cannot see well in the dark? That seems trifling.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Elise. She did not expect her sister’s help taking care of their mother, but just because nothing was expected of her did not mean she could be rude.
Gus, who was shifting gears, let go the shifter to cuff Elise on the kneecap. She could see why Gus would be disposed toward peace in the current situation.
“Actually, it was very easy for me to say,” said Lorena. “It is easy to say things when they are obvious.”
“It is not easy to say anything, really, if you think about it.”
“Really, Elise?” said Lorena.
“Yes. Or I mean, No. No, it is not easy to say things. See? I just perfectly illustrated my point.”
“You made yourself clear to me,” said Lorena, “after a fashion.”
“But whether or not you understand me is beside the point.”
“It is the point.”
“No,” said Elise. “The point is, Do the words line up with what you are trying to say and the answer is almost always no.”
“What does she mean, Mother?” said the boy child, and Lorena said, “She means, Don’t whisper. I think. I’m not sure, darling.”
“To answer your question,” said Gus, “your mother suffers pretty severely from rheumatism.”
“Of which joints?” said Lorena, as if she were Florence Nightingale about to offer an expert diagnosis.
“Fingers and knees?” Gus said, tentatively, posing his question in Elise’s general direction.
“She keeps her curtains closed,” said Elise.
“A local remedy?” asked Lorena.
“They are calico.”
“Ah. Calico is the best choice for those who suffer from rheumatism,” said Lorena to her confused offspring.
“We have four children,” Elise said loudly. “Leslie, our oldest, works on a ranch a couple of hours south of here.” She turned to face the backseat and said, “Boys and girls, Leslie is a cowboy!” Then she turned around and continued. “Lorena, my only daughter, is an excellent cook and everything I say embarrasses her. There is Henry next. He is fond of ice cream and dragonflies, and he has found over three dozen arrowheads on Sleeping Lion Mountain.”
“What is an arrowhead?” said Elena May.
Elise found it odd that a child from Wyoming did not know what an arrowhead was, but maybe it was against their religion?
“It is a rock of a certain shape that people like to claim is an Indian artifact,” said Lorena.
“Finally there is Mattie. He is our youngest. He has a wonderful singing voice and I expect he will be the musician in the family, but he is shy. Still, he will be thrilled to meet you children, as will they all, except for poor Leslie, whom I would so like you to meet. Maybe he can get away for a visit. He has a beautiful if stubborn stallion named Psalms.”
“Mattie,” said Lorena. “Is that not also the name of the aunt who raised you, Mr. McQueen?”
Earlier she had called him Gus. Now he was Mr. McQueen and they lacked a half mile to home.
“Yes,” said Gus.
“You named your son after your aunt?”
“His proper name is Matthew,” said Elise. “Mattie is his nickname.” And Edith Gotswegon is yours, she thought but did not say.
“What do you hear from Edith Gotswegon, anyway?” Elise asked Lorena.
“And what is your aunt’s proper name?” said Lorena to Gus, ignoring Elise.
Gus looked agitated. “You know what?” he said. “I have no idea. I never asked her.”
“Might it be Madeline, and you were to call her Maddy, but you got it wrong?”
“Could be,” said Gus.
Satisfied, Lorena turned to Elise. “What do you hear from your horse?” she said.
But they had arrived. Elise looked with pride at her house, set back among the cottonwood grove. Even though earlier in the week there had been snow in the Davis Mountains and the creek was gurgling loudly from runoff, it was nearly seventy degrees out, in late February. There were even tufts of grass growing in the sandy yard. The windows were open and curtains fluttered in and out of them, waving at them to come right on in, we have been expecting you.
Elise pointed to the casita at the back of the property. “Mother lives there,” she said.
“By herself, at her age?”
“She gets along fine.”
“I guess we are about to find out,” she said. “Come, children. We’re about to meet your grandmother.”
When they were out of earshot, Elise said to Gus, who stood beside her in the drive, “Don’t whisper.”
Gus leaned over and kissed her forehead. He was forever kissing her forehead. Her mother used to kiss Sandy on the muzzle. She called him sweet and confirmed that he knew the way.
“Well, there for a little while at least she called you Gus.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Gus.
Oh but it did. To Elise it did, suddenly and shockingly.
“We should unload their bags,” Gus said.
“A telegram would have been nice,” said Elise.
“Think how happy your mother is right now.”
Prairie Fever Page 26
