Cities and Throngs and Powers

by Alma Boykin

  Alicia laughed.

  “You need anything from town?”

  “No, thanks, I’m all set.”

  He nodded and pulled his hat back down. “Good. I’ve got to go check on the northwest pasture fence while it’s still halfways cool out. Have a good one.”

  “Thanks, you too.” He walked off and she carried the corn to the kitchen. On the way she got a good look at the back of the house, and what she saw reassured her. Instead of another room above hers, she saw a porch with an ornate wrought-iron railing much like the main gate. So she didn’t have to worry about someone spying on her from above. Someone had tried to make the kitchen addition and her room blend into the older building, but she could spot the end of the old walls without too much effort.

  Back in the kitchen, she found a small pot and boiled water while she stripped off the husks and silk. She pulled the corn out of the water after one minute, setting it aside to cool. That will keep the sugar in it. Alicia fixed her usual breakfast of toast, fruit, and boiled two eggs in the corn water, adding those to the menu. No point in wasting hot water, she heard her mother repeating in her mind’s ear.

  Then she ventured into the workroom in the tower. “Ooh.” She stared at the mounds of rolls of wire, the sacks and strings of beads, peg boards, skeins of thread, and all sorts of hand tools for working with wire and thread. Alicia poked around and discovered a bead loom. She also found a small carving bench, with a few half-finished projects arranged on the surface or on shelves around the bench. Alicia located a note under a string of real freshwater pearls.

  “Dear Miss Salazar, I took the liberty of moving some of the former owner’s wife’s notions and materials here for you to use if you wish. I have absolutely no need for them. I understand that some bead techniques require the use of a blowtorch. If you wish to do that, please tell Teddy what material you need, and leave a note so I can disconnect the smoke detector over your worktable.” She glanced up and saw the smoke detector hidden in the ceiling’s fancy plasterwork. “Thank you,” and his lovely signature closed the note.

  Well, she’d never had any interest in fire work and did not plan to start. She’d had more than enough of fire when Denver and Pueblo had burned, thank you very much. Alicia adjusted the chair to her liking, shifted the lamp around, and began taking inventory.

  After almost two hours she’d sorted through everything within easy reach. She’d found everything from plastic pop beads to what had to be gemstone beads, tiny seed beads and larger pony beads, cylinders and blocks, in every hue and shade she could imagine. Alicia also discovered silver, copper, and steel wire, threads and cords in different colors and thicknesses, and hardware for making clasps and earrings. A little hunting turned up a magnifier on a stand, and mats for pinning down a work in progress. The bead loom came with instructions for several styles of work and ethnic designs. At the back of the room, where the tower butted against the house, she found old books about beading. She wrinkled her nose at some of the designs, but a few others looked promising. A beaded macramé skirt? Maybe Tia Rosa’s stories about the ‘60s weren’t as wild as I always thought.

  Alicia glanced in the other rooms, then returned to the workshop and began making a simple piece, a necklace. She used one of the black cotton cords and a silver-looking sunburst pendant as the center. From that she strung black, gray, silver and then pale blue beads. It reminded her of a cloudy day, and she decided to add clasps, plain, inexpensive ones, and set it aside for sale. Dark colors seemed to be popular again. As long as ashy grey doesn’t become the color of the year. What were the designers thinking? Sooty things might sell in New York, but not on the Front Range, not now.

  Alicia decided to begin sorting the seed beads by size, since some had gotten mixed up in their boxes and tubs. As she worked, her mind began wandering. What exactly did Mr. Mills want from her? Well, there was the obvious, since she was a young woman and alone in the house with him, but something told her that wasn’t it. She’d always been good at telling friendly and harmless people from the real baddies, like Cousin ‘Sto seemed to be trying to be. Granted, she could be wrong, but Mr. Mills had given her a shotgun to use to protect herself in her bedroom. Nasty people never gave you a weapon.

  Did Mr. Mills need a cleaning lady? Alicia set the first box of tiny glass beads aside and started a new one. That made more sense, given the size of the house and yard. Not a cleaning lady, but a housekeeper. Maybe he wanted her to work through the end of canning season and would credit her father for the cost of the labor. She could see that, except for the beads and jewelry makings. Well, if Mr. Mills wanted help with canning, she certainly sympathized. The first year she and her sisters had helped their mother, the summer of 2015, they’d collapsed into bed at the end of the day cursing the man that domesticated the tomato. It didn’t help that her mother had not canned for almost a decade, and had to relearn things as she went. They’d ended up cleaning green beans off the ceiling after one escaped and clogged the vent on the pressure canner. I’m not cleaning the ceiling. I’ll freeze the beans, if it comes to that, but I’m not cleaning the ceiling.

  Or did Mr. Mills want to sell her jewelry? Why not, since she also wanted to sell it. Mona had been about to apply for college when everything fell apart. No one had scholarships that covered living expenses, even in state, and without a car or the money to pay for an apartment, Mona couldn’t even work and take classes. Caritas wanted to start a clothing shop, but that took money and no one could get credit and loans anymore, unless they already had so much money that they didn’t need the credit. Alicia snorted, then sat back and studied the boxes. Everything looked right, and she covered them and set them at the back of the worktable, where she wouldn’t accidently send them flying when she reached for something else. She’d need years to fish the seed-beads out of the cracks between the floorboards if she spilled them.

  By the fourth day, Alicia settled into a routine. She got up around six and worked in the gardens if needed. Then she ate breakfast and tidied, or started the wash if she needed to. Then she worked on her jewelry until late afternoon, fixed supper, and read or designed pieces or just sat on the porch above her room and watched the stars. Teddy ran to town once or twice a week, bringing back milk, eggs, flour, toilet paper, and other supplies. Alicia realized with a start that she liked the quiet and solitude. Even though it belonged to Mr. Mills, Illif House felt more like home to Alicia than the crowded rent house ever had, even though she missed her family. E-mail helped, as did the new mystery of Mr. Mills.

  One afternoon Alicia sat on the roof porch watching a big storm as it lumbered down from the mountains. Of course the power company had browned them out just as she needed access to weather information, she grumbled. The storm looked mean and she’d unplugged the computer and cleared out a cleaning closet on the ground floor, in case she needed to take shelter. The air felt sticky and heavy, and as she watched, the Flatirons disappeared behind a blue-gray wall of rain. A gust of wind blew through the pasture behind the house and up to her, carrying the scent of rain and a little hint of smoke. She studied the storm, trying to find the wall cloud. Should she go to shelter? The rain hid anything at the back of the storm. A cold blast of wind hit her, and she froze, then ducked inside, pelted down the steps and took cover in the closet.

  She waited there until the thunder stopped shaking the house. Alicia eased out of the closet and peered out the back windows. “Oh no.” The vegetable garden looked flat, battered into the mud by heavy rain and hail. Alicia pulled on the rubber boots that she’d found and now kept by the back door, and squelched out to see how bad the damage was.

  “Oh drat.” The beet leaves looked as if they’d been used for target practice. The green beans, pumpkins, and squash leaves seemed to be more hole than leaf, and a few tomatoes had splattered on the ground, threshed off the vines. Several of the tomato and bean cages lay flat, and Alicia struggled to get the awkward mass back upright. As she did, calling the storm a rude name under
her breath, she felt someone lifting some of the weight. “Left,” she told Teddy, and the plants shifted to the left. “A little more, there, hold that, please,” and he did as asked. “Thanks. Help me with this other one, please,” and he followed her, lifting as she steadied the roots, piling the wet soil back around them and tamping the roots down again. “Thanks.”

  “You are most welcome, Miss Salazar,” a voice, not Teddy’s, replied. The man enunciated carefully, as if English were foreign to him. Alicia looked up to see a lean man, his face hidden by a stained, tan felt cowboy hat and blue bandanna, turning away from her. She caught a glimpse of deformed pink fingers on his hand before he strode away, disappearing around the corner. She heard the kitchen door shut. By the time she got the worst mud off her hands and reached the kitchen, all she found was a note. “Thank you for looking after the garden. The windows and roof appear to be intact, thanks be, so you do not need to enter the attic or look for other leaks. I apologize for intruding, but I took the liberty of glancing into your bedroom and study and saw no water. Yours,” and she saw the familiar signature.

  The storm’s lashings failed to discourage the tomatoes, which responded with a flurry of fruit. Alicia found herself in a canning frenzy, especially once the green beans and peppers decided to join in. Finally, one afternoon, the knife slipped and she cut herself. She stared at the blood oozing from her fingers, felt the sting of the pepper juice starting to burn, and burst into tears. “I can’t do this!” She wailed to the heaps of veggies and the rows of jars.

  Behind her, she heard someone clearing his throat. He asked, hesitantly, “May I help you?”

  Two: Stories

  “May I help you?”

  She sniffed, started to wipe her nose with the back of her hand and caught herself just in time. Hot pepper up the nose never improved anything. “Yes, please. Could you take the tomatoes out of the canner and add water if necessary? The jars go on the towel over there,” and she pointed with her head at the table.

  “Most certainly, Miss Salazar.” Alicia rinsed her hand and set the hot peppers aside for a batch of red and yellow bell peppers. As she cut the veggies into manageable strips, she heard Mr. Mills removing the glass jars from the water and setting them on the dry towel. He got more water and added it to the canner. “And I presume these jars go in once the water boils?”

  “Yes, please, and then set the timer for ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes,” he repeated. When he finished that, he began washing the next set of jars, rings, and lids sitting on the other side of the large sink. Then he found more dishtowels and laid them out, ready for another batch of jars. Alicia listened for the “ping” of a good seal, and heard six, meaning that every jar was safe. “I will put the cool ones in the pantry. Do you prefer to remove the bands or leave them on?”

  “If we have enough bands, please leave them on.” She finished the bell peppers and returned to the hot peppers. She’d already blistered them and cleaned them, and all that remained was seeding the peppers and packing the jars.

  She heard footsteps coming up beside her and she turned a little, making sure not to wave the knife too much. Mr. Mills, she realized, was not lean, but skeletally thin. He wore a blue cloth over his head and face, wrapped like the pictures of the North African men in her old geography book. Without thinking she blurted, “Oh, are you from Africa?”

  He shook his head. “No, I am not, although many of my ancestors were, and I take my first name from an African language. If it is not an inconvenience, might I make some salsa with those peppers and the rest of today’s tomatoes?”

  “Please, go ahead. I’ll sterilize the next batch of jars.” She also got a quick bite to eat, finishing the leftover rice from the day before. They worked quickly, or as quickly as the canning process allowed. Mr. Mills asked her to sample the salsa and adjust the spices if necessary, so she trotted out and picked fresh cilantro, adding a little more to the mix. “Perfect,” she declared. They decanted the finished salsa into the jars and set them to boil, and she checked on the peppers in the pressure canner. As she did, she heard a hiss and pop.

  Mr. Mills stood by the table, shaking out a match and setting the glass down over the flame. He adjusted the wick. “It appears that once again the power company has chosen to make life interesting,” he sighed. Alicia reached over and flipped the wall switch. Nothing. “It is fortuitous that the stove and oven remain gas heated, instead of the new electric and induction system.”

  “Yes, sir.” She flopped down into one of the two chairs not draped in drying towels. She’d been so busy that she’d lost track of time.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Just water, please.” The well provided cold water in plenty, so she didn’t need to open the freezer for ice. He handed her the glass. “Thank you.”

  He sat down as well. “The house has a generator for winter, should the wind charger fail to provide enough power, but I prefer to keep it in reserve. You will hear it run in a few days, however, because it needs lubrication and use.”

  “Papa has one as well.” She drank some water. “I liked the days when the power didn’t go out all the time.”

  Mr. Mills nodded, then rearranged his scarf. “I quite agree, Miss Salazar. In an ideal world, we would have our current government with the former economy, but we must live in this world.” He got up and she thought she caught him wincing. “I will clean up what you do not wish to, Miss Salazar. Thank you for your work, and I bid you good evening.” He bowed and walked out of the kitchen into the main house, leaving her blinking.

  Then she yawned so hard that she felt her jaw trying to pop. “Ow.” The instant the last batch in the pressure canner finished, she turned off the stove, put out the lamp, and dragged herself up the stairs, locked the bedroom door, and fell into bed.

  Alicia slept late. When she ventured down to the kitchen, she found everything clean and back in its place, a pot of beans at a slow simmer on the back of the stove, the morning’s produce on the counter, and a note. “Dear Miss Salazar, again I thank you for your labors. Unless a pressing development arises, I believe tomorrow will be soon enough to prepare the next batch of vegetables.”

  She laughed. “Oh yes, Mr. Mills. Tomorrow at the earliest!”

  The note continued, “Are you familiar with canning meat? If not, I will teach you once deer season arrives. Despite the claims of urban wildlife fanciers, deer are not our friends. They are, however, excellent in pasta sauce and sausage, or served as slow-cooked roasts and stews.

  “Would you care to sell some of your beadwork at the Colorado Springs art fair? I took the liberty of sending pictures of your work to a friend who has a booth there, and she is quite willing to sell your pieces, under your name, alongside hers. Please let me know as soon as possible. Teddy will ship the items, if you so desire.”

  The ‘Springs art market? Alicia reread the note and did a little dance across the kitchen floor. She’d dreamed of getting into the Colorado Springs Art Fair. It fell the weekend after the big combined New Mexico show in Santa Fe, and drew buyers from around the region and even a few from farther away. But that meant she had to have things to sell, and Alicia started rushing to the workroom. “Oh, stop that. Eat breakfast, then go sort and decide.”

  Alicia settled on two necklaces and three sets of earrings. Then she set to work making newer, fancier pieces. Everyone had been displaying big, heavy “statement” jewelry the last time she’d sold things at a craft fair, but Alicia decided to try something different. She used fine wire and threads, and the smallest beads she could, to make some very light, delicate pieces both in bright colors and in pastels. After finishing two necklets, Alicia got out the bead loom. She’d strung it a few days before the canning frenzy, so all she only needed to select beads and a design.

  As she wove the beads, she fell into a half trance, not really thinking about the work and letting her hands select beads and shape the pattern. A sense of calm and contentment s
ettled over her as the piece grew longer and longer, and at last she blinked, surprised because her fingers had reached the end of the loom. The strip now featured a pattern of ripples in golds, oranges, pinks, and reds, very much like a cloudy sunset. “Did I do that?” She must have. “Well, it wasn’t the bead fairy or one of mi abuelitas little angles, so I guess I did.” As she tied off the ends and removed the piece from the loom, she felt an odd sensation, as if someone approved of the work. Alicia tried to look behind her and her neck kinked. “Ow. I didn’t think I was that stiff.” She rolled her head and flexed her fingers, feeling the little neck cramp pulling. “What time is it?”

  The kitchen clock showed well after two. Her stomach grumbled, and Alicia made a small batch of tortillas to go with the beans. The lard bucket felt lighter than she liked, so she added lard to the grocery list.

  She’d asked her mother once about using something else. Mama had brandished a wooden spoon, making Caritas duck as she washed the dishes. “No, no, no, nothing cooks as well without lard. You use less of it than with plant fat. If you work in your chair all day, maybe lard is bad. Your Papa would be skin and bones without lard in his food.” Alicia flipped the tortilla. Maybe Mr. Mills needs more lard. He certainly doesn’t have any meat on his bones. It was easy enough, and she made a second tortilla batch, leaving them under a towel with a note.

  A week later, all the corn ripened at once. Alicia, already grumpy from a bad night’s sleep and from cutting her finger on the lid of the fresh can of lard, went out after breakfast to find Mr. Mills testing the corn. “I do believe this is ready, Miss Salazar.” He looked down, shaking his head. “All of it seems to be ready. I believe I should have staggered the planting and varieties more this past spring.”

  Alicia tried to guess how many ears they’d have to pick and gave up. “Well, I suppose we’d better get started.” She didn’t want to. She wanted to go inside and sulk.