Darkness at Morning Star

by Joyce C. Ware

  These chores had been Rita’s responsibility. To eyes accustomed to Father Rogg’s precisely planted and hoed rows, her garden’s dense litter of straw seemed pointlessly untidy, but I soon realized that on this dry, windswept prairie it served a practical purpose Belle would have done well to emulate.

  “My herbs aren’t like those common vegetables of Rita’s,” Belle had protested when I said as much, after running out to help her with the bucket of water she was lugging over from the old wooden trough. “They all got needs of their own.” She pointed to the vine scrambling up one of the pillars. “That briony over there is a hardy critter, with a root reaching to just this side of China. I swear it’ll outlive you and me. But the annuals, like these poppies here, need a little cosseting. Can’t have ‘em dryin’ up before they make the seeds for next year’s crop.”

  But someone else would be planting next year’s crop, I realized as I recalled Belle’s words. Unless, of course, she intended to take the seeds with her to another house, another garden. I wondered where that might be. I had no money at all, and Belle and Bazz had intimated that even after Quinn had settled with them we’d have to watch the pennies. How much could Belle’s elixirs be expected to bring? Without the enthusiasm of my comrades to buoy my spirits, the fecklessness of our schemes overwhelmed me. Three homeless wanderers with only salves and songs to offer? Dear God, what would become of us?

  My hands stilled on the beets I had been cleaning, their juice staining my fingers, and I stared unseeingly out the window until roused by a twitter of bird song heralding the approach of dawn. I had all but decided during the night that my theory about the solstice sunrise pointing the way to Ross Cooper’s gold was fanciful rubbish, but suppose it wasn’t? One look at the plans would tell me what I needed to know. If it did, wasn’t it possible for someone else to come to the same conclusion? Someone like Quinn? Surely it wasn’t my fault if he hadn’t!

  I continued to stand there, buffeted by indecision, no longer able to tell right from wrong; not even sure if there was a right and wrong. If the gold wasn’t mentioned in Ross Cooper’s will, that meant it belonged to whomever found it, didn’t it? Belle’s childhood chant sing-songed up out of my memory again. Finders, keepers, Reenie!

  I sighed and slid the beets back in the basin of water with the carrots. I’d delayed long enough.

  Turning up the lamp I had brought down with me, I crossed through the wide hall to the parlor. Disordered when I arrived three months ago, it was in chaos now. Bazz, bowing to Belle’s demands, had produced trunks and boxes in a variety of sizes and conditions and set them down higgledy-piggledy where gaps in the piles of books and periodicals allowed. Just inside the doorway was a row of stoutly made wicker hampers, which upon inspection I found to be already half-full of jars and bottles containing Belle’s herbal concoctions, each bearing a neatly hand-printed, gilt-bordered label: Morning Star Tonic ... Belle’s Balm ... Heal All Ointment ... White Poppy Compound. I was impressed; this was no ordinary home-grown enterprise.

  As I closed the lid on the last hamper, I felt it wobble. Protruding from beneath it was Belle’s herbal, its worn black covers securely tied lengthwise and crosswise with braided cord in preparation for our journey. I slid it into the capacious pocket of my apron, knowing how anxious she would be when she missed it.

  The plans for the house still lay in disarray on the desk. I whisked away the dust with the skirt of my apron, and removed the pages detailing the facade to the dining table, where I secured their curling top edges under the base of my lamp. I turned up the wick to gain a brighter light. Moments later, the rosy glow of dawn began to pale the lamplight’s dancing reflection in the broad window above the table.

  The big stone mansion sat within a bowl-like depression whose eastern rim rose higher and steeper than the one that bound it on the west, but as I watched the sun’s first rays beaming across the high-ridged horizon I realized that from my room on the second floor its height was not nearly so apparent as it was from here.

  I looked at the sketches of the facade. It was all there: the semicircle of pillars with the pair of eyed monoliths symmetrically flanking the wide front entrance and the Palladian window—Malcolm Wilcox had greatly admired Palladian windows—at the end of the corridor above. The effect was very grand. Yet the longer I looked, the more sure I became that in actuality the pillars were off-centered. I recalled Cobby telling me they were cut and erected after the house had been built, but the plans made it clear they had not been an afterthought. Why, then, had they been placed off center?

  Suddenly it all came clear. If the architect had never visited the site, he couldn’t make exact calculations; his sketches could show only what was intended. By all accounts, Ross Cooper possessed a keen intelligence. Supplied by the architect with instructions on how to figure the angles, and able to command enough manpower to both erect and shift the position of the pillars as required, I had no doubt he was equal to the challenge. A man had to have a rough knowledge of a number of skills to succeed as a rancher, including the uses of a compass. The builders of Stonehenge had accomplished a more daunting task without one. I leafed again through the brittle papers, studying the diagrams marked with angles and degrees and sighting lines, trying to make sense of a note about “the obliquity of the ecliptic” which appeared to have something to do with the slow change in the tilt of the earth’s axis over time.

  At length, my eyes aching from the effort of tracing out the faded spidery writing, I straightened up, stretched, and blew out the lamp. The sun was well above the horizon now, a blazing orb of white in a cloudless sky. Today, the twentieth of June, would be just another hot day; tomorrow, at the dawning of the summer solstice, we’d soon know whether the golden promise of these yellowed drawings would be fulfilled. Even if Ross Cooper had failed, he had at the very least provided his bride’s grand house with the most imposing entrance in the territory.

  Belle walked into the kitchen just as I was taking cornmeal muffins out of the oven.

  “Mm-mm-m, I swear nothin’ smells as good as somethin’ fresh-baked.” She hugged me from behind, hitched herself up on her stool, and gave a tremendous yawn. “Bazz and me were up ‘til all hours sortin’ and packin’. Looks like you’ve been busy, too ... guess your headache must’ve gone.”

  I wondered if that would be her only reference to our discord the night before. I decided to follow her lead.

  “Slipped away in the night,” I said, smiling. I cleared a space on the table in front of her and set down the muffin tin. “We have fresh eggs this morning; would you like one with your muffin?”

  “I would!” Bazz called from the doorway. “Fried, over easy, if you please.”

  “Sunny-side up for me,” Belle said.

  Bazz lifted a corner of the cloth on the rising loaves I had set on the back of the stove. “Eggs, muffins, fresh bread ... and isn’t that pea soup I smell? You see. Belle? Now that you moved those messy concoctions of yours out of here some real home cooking can be done!”

  Belle bridled. “You’ll be glad enough for the money my concoctions will bring on the road.”

  “Pay him no mind, Belle,” I said. “What I saw in the hampers looked very impressive. If I had any money, I’d buy some in a minute.”

  “No need for you to buy any, Reenie, no need at all.” She began to laugh, great hearty peals which set us all off, although I hadn’t the least idea what she found so funny.

  I crossed to the cupboard for plates for their eggs. As I reached up, my apron caught on the drawer pull below. I heard something drop to the floor.

  “Belle, look here! Isn’t this that herbal journal of yours?” Bazz waved it aloft.

  The color drained from Belle’s face. “You had no right, Reenie.” Her voice was flat; her mouth hardly moved. I’d never seen her so angry.

  “I saw it under one of the hampers; it must have slipped off the top ... I meant to give it to you as soon as I saw you ... it’s tied just the way you left it, see
?” My beseeching words tumbled out in a disorderly rush. Too many words. I stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “You’re always sorry.” Her narrowed eyes slid past me. “Give it here, Bazz!”

  Bazz loped around the table holding the book just out of reach of her upstretched grasping hands. “Finders, keepers,” he chanted. “Isn’t that what you always say, Belle? She calls it her bible, Serena,” he said in a loud aside to me. “Any prophecies or revelations we should know about? What do you say to a reading or two from the herbal gospel according to Saint Sybelle?”

  The eggs had begun to sizzle. “Stop your teasing, Bazz,” I said. Actually, baiting was more like it. “Give Belle her journal and me your plates.”

  The braided cord must have loosened during his horseplay, because presently a smaller book, finely bound in smooth red leather, fell to the floor. Belle lunged for it, but Bazz was too quick for her. He snatched it up and read aloud the ornate gilt lettering on the cover. Charlotte Wohlfort. May her life always be as sweet as her scented herbs.

  Bazz ceased his cavorting and stood stiffly erect, both hands grasping the little red book. His mouth thinned to a red slash. “This was Mama’s. Grandfather had it specially bound for her sixteenth birthday.” He leafed through the pages. “The Wohlfort herbal,” he muttered. “Lord knows how old some of these receipts are.” He pressed it to his heart. “I looked for it after she—” His voice broke.

  Belle’s herbal, its pebbled black covers shoddy in comparison, lay forgotten on the table where he had tossed it. Her attention was riveted on Basil.

  “Your mother wanted me to have it. You know she did, Bazz.” She leaned forward, her hands gripping the edge of the table so hard her knuckles turned white. “All our notes are in it, hers and the ones I made before she died. /can’t work without it.”

  To my surprise, he turned to me. The oddest look overspread his face. He had never questioned Belle’s authority in my presence before—could he be seeking my forgiveness? My approval? I could not tell.

  “Bazz, please,” I whispered.

  He waited a long moment before he nodded, as if satisfying some internal doubt, then silently relinquished the book to Belle’s outstretched hand. Without a word she slipped it into the pocket of her skirt, buttoning the flap to secure it.

  I slid the eggs out of the pan onto their plates. They ate in brooding silence, eyes downcast, each waiting for the other to make amends. It looked to be a long wait. I decided a change of subject was in order. The choice was easy.

  “I know where the gold is,” I announced.

  They gaped at me. Bazz’s fork clattered to his plate;

  Belle blinked, then frowned. “This is no time for jokes, Reenie.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not a joke. I know where it is—that is, I’ll know where to look for it tomorrow morning at sunrise.”

  Belle’s eyes narrowed. “What in hell are you talk—”

  “What’s so special about tomorrow’s sunrise, Serena?” Bazz cut in.

  I twisted my fingers together tightly. How could I make them understand? “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

  I showed them the architect’s sketches, told them about the arrangement of the great upright stones known as Stonehenge, and explained as best I could the significance of the sunrise on the morning of the summer solstice. The conclusion I had drawn did not impress them.

  Belle giggled. “I think the prairie sun’s scrambled your poor brains, Reenie.”

  “Why would Paw do such a damn fool thing?” Bazz scoffed. “Mama told me she suspected he built this house not so much to please her as to outdo her father, and I guess he did that, all right. Grandfather and everyone else in the territory. If this were my house, I’d pull those pillars down.”

  “Even granting what you say,” I said, “according to Cobby, although the pillars were cut and hauled up along with the blocks used to build the house, they weren’t erected until the following June, months after the house was finished. He said the pair with the slits gave the most trouble because of your father fussing with his compass, ordering them skewed first this way, then that. ‘Drove us all loco,’ he said. Cobby could see no reason for it; but there must have been one, otherwise why go to all that trouble? And why wait for June to come around again?”

  “Morning Star was just starting up,” Bazz said. “There were a lot more important things to do!”

  “But winter is the slack season on a ranch,” I countered, “so why delay all that pulling and hauling until one of the busiest months of the year? Don’t you see, Bazz? He had to wait for the summer solstice in order to place them properly!”

  Bazz and Belle fell silent, still skeptical, but no longer scoffing.

  “Let’s go outside,” I suggested. “Maybe your eyes will convince you.”

  The air, hardly stirred by a listless breeze, was stifling. Except in the garden Belle so lovingly tended, the earth had dried to a fine dust that puffed up from beneath our shoes as we walked. Unless it rained soon, I feared the prairie grasses would offer Quinn’s cattle little nourishment during the long, hard prairie winter. We paused in the opening of the low stone wall that marked the perimeter of the house lot and turned toward the facade. The blaze of the sun above it made me throw up my arm across my eyes. From here, the height of the eastern ridgeline as depicted in the architect’s sketches impressed me anew. I wondered aloud how Ross Cooper had been able to supply so accurate an estimate.

  “It’s not so surprising considering how well my father knew it,” Bazz said. “He must have ridden over that ridge a thousand times when he was range boss for my grandfather, good weather and bad.” He shook his head. “It’s a miserable occupation, but it teaches a man the lay of the land better’n any map I ever saw.”

  I lined myself up between the eyed pillars. As I suspected, they violated the symmetry of the mansion’s classic design. The big front door should have been centered between them, but it wasn’t. The shaft on the right had been set just enough off-center for its top to intersect the flanking right-hand side light of the Palladian window gracing the western end of the corridor above. A window of the same design had been similarly placed at the eastern end. Exactly opposite, in fact, if my theory was correct. Ridgeline to window, window to window, window through eye. .. .

  “Let the blessed sunshine in ...”

  Startled, I turned to look at Belle. She was staring up at the eyed pillars. “What did you say?”

  “Remember that hymn old Maltby taught us at the orphanage, Reenie? Something about opening our hearts to let the sunshine in?”

  I nodded, recalling a perky little song played with great chord-thumping enthusiasm by the Reverend Maltby’s wife.

  “I guess I’ve passed by these old stones a jillion times, but just now, lookin’ up and studyin’ on ‘em like this, I remember Ross and me coming up to the house from the corrals. Years ago it was, not long after I came to Morning Star, and I stopped, and I looked up at ‘em and recited what I just did, and I asked him, ‘Mr. Cooper’—he wasn’t Ross to me yet— ‘Mr. Cooper, does the sun ever shine through those holes?’

  “Lord knows what put the idea in my head, but he whipped around and looked at me real fierce, then muttered something about everything having a season. Then, seein’ me looking so ignorant, he began to laugh, and, oh, he just laughed to beat the Dutch. I never did know what he was talkin’ about,” she added resentfully.

  I knew. Raised by churchy people like the Roggs, how could I not? “He was quoting from the Bible,” I said. “I guess his folks must have been God-tearing people. As I recall, the passage reads, ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.’“ I looked at Bazz. “What do you think about my theory now?” I asked.

  “I think,” Bazz said, reaching out to squeeze my hand, “that the last laugh will be on Quinn.”

  Belle and Bazz exchanged satisfied smiles and started slowly back toward the house. I linger
ed, turning to look at the wide expanse of prairie stretching out beyond the old trough and windmill, dotted clear to the western horizon with posts cut and hauled over thirty years. My eyes soon tired of counting them: short posts set in rows along the ranch road; stout posts encircling holding pens; tall posts hung with gates; posts that served no easily recognizable purpose. Hundreds of them, all of them stone, their solid contours wavering in the heat-shimmered air. My breath caught in my throat. What if my theory proved as insubstantial?

  As I brooded thus, I became aware of a curious silence. It was almost as if the blanketing heat had fashioned muffs for my ears. Then I realized that the screech of straining metal that had accompanied my every waking hour at Morning Star had stilled. The windmill, its blades at rest, seemed to sag beneath its rusty burden; the green-slimed surface of the wooden trough it served glistened with a sickly iridescence.

  Perspiration dewed my brow; I could see it darkening the bodice of my dress. All those stones. ... I closed my eyes to blot out the sight of them. If the sun’s first rays failed to point the way tomorrow morning, we would have to admit defeat: we could not survive an unguided search for the gold in this scorching heat, and with the return of Morning Star’s hands in the offing, we could not postpone it.

  No point in fretting about tomorrow, I scolded myself, not with all there was to do today. I started up the path behind Belle and Basil. The sun, almost at its zenith, blazed down mercilessly, without even a passing cloud to offer relief. Dead ahead rose the massive stone house, its soulless perfection accentuated by the shadowless light. Set in this vast, parched, treeless saucer of land, it seemed more tomb than shelter, its monstrous garden a funerary planting. No wonder Quinn chose to live elsewhere.

  Ahead of me, Belle’s and Bazz’s silver and auburn heads bent close as they talked. Adjusting their plans to fit the exciting hypothesis I had offered, no doubt. I trotted up behind them.