Deep Purple

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Catherine discussed what the children would need to study before they went off to boarding school, but he interrupted her midway, saying in a tight voice, “Catherine . . . are you leaving because of me?”

  She glanced at Abigail, who was asleep, her head bobbing on Catherine’s shoulder, and Brigham, who lay stretched out in the wagon’s bed, his body wedged between Catherine’s trunk and carpetbag. “No," she said quietly, “I’m leaving because of me. I want what every woman wants, Sherrod. A husband and children of my own to love. That’s something I would not find at Cristo Rey.”

  Sam Hughes’s house seemed as crude as the other adobes that fronted the narrow streets inside Tucson’s presidio walls, only perhaps a bit larger viewed from the outside. Inside it was airy and cool with gray jerga rugs on the hard-packed dirt floors and brightly colored blankets piled against the whitewashed walls for sofas and later for sleeping.

  Atanacia ran out to greet Catherine and led her into the tree-shaded courtyard. She pressed a glass of limonada on Catherine and the children, saying, “Sherrod and Sam, they say they will go to the store, but, bah!” She snapped her small fingers. “They go to the cantinas to drink, I betcha!”

  Contrary to Atanacia’s predictions, the two men returned early enough to enjoy a dinner of stewed mutton and baked pears prepared quite expertly by the thirteen-year-old girl. It was difficult for Catherine to believe Atanacia was only a little older than Abigail, who still played with dolls.

  When Catherine commented on this fact, Atanacia said, “But I am the oldest of eleven children. I had to learn early. At nine I was going to Sam’s store and myself cutting a pound of beef from the slabs he hung on the timbers outside his store.”

  As usual the talk turned to the latest Apache depredations and the Union soldiers' trade that improved business before Atanacia rolled out the blankets for the men, who would sleep in the main room, which was also the kitchen. Catherine and the children would sleep with Atanacia in the bedroom.

  The next morning was almost as difficult for Catherine as the day she had parted with her mother and Margaret. She hugged each of the children and gave Abigail a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and Brigham Washington Irving’s Sketchbook.

  Before Sherrod climbed into the blackboard, he took her hand. That early in the morning, people were already out and teams of freight wagons crowded the streets leading to the plaza and were backed up outside the city’s walls. “I don’t think you fully realize that Tucson is a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said, his blue eyes dark with concern. ‘‘If you looked the world over you couldn’t find a more degraded sort of villains than Tucson society, Catherine. Please, be careful.”

  He lowered his voice then, so Brigham and Abigail would not hear him. "You know how I feel about you won’t change, my darling. If you should need me, you know I’ll come.”

  CHAPTER 13

  It was not much, the adobe hut, a jacale that faced flush with Calle de la India Trieste, the Street of the Sad Indian Girl. But Sam had let her have the adobe for almost nothing, leaving Catherine still with a little savings.

  Though the jacale set outside the presidio's walls, thus presenting a long walk to the plaza’s stores, it was close to El Ojito, an artesian spring: so she would not have to pay ten cents a bucket for fresh water as the citizens inside the Old Pueblo did.

  A long main room in the front of the jacale was buttressed by a minuscule bedroom and another room which was really an open kitchen, since there was no roof and only a partial wall on the north side. But it was a beginning. It was her own home.

  Together she and Atanacia worked to clear the rubble from the main room, where Catherine would teach her students. Except for the beehive fireplace in one corner, the room was bare. Atanacia had taken her to Solomon Warner’s general store to purchase blankets and tinware, and Juan Elias had donated from his store a hemp bed that Atanacia covered with a flax bedspread.

  When the hard-packed earth was swept clean with the mesquite brush brooms bought from a Pima Indian woman and burlap was spread for rugs, Catherine stepped back, hands on her hips, and surveyed the first day’s work. “It doesn’t look half bad, Atanacia. Rather beautiful, in fact, wouldn’t you say?”

  Atanacia tilted her head to one side, her eyes shining with mischief. “Si, both you and the room.”

  Catherine blushed and wiped at the dirt on her face, smudging one cheek. She glanced down at the dust on her hands and wiped them on her apron. “I guess I look a mess.”

  Atanacia studied her new friend critically. The cotton handkerchief about the young American woman’s head emphasized the fine bone structure and the large, luminous eyes that dominated the pale, camilla-like complexion. “No, amiga, you are muy bonita, truly. Why have you never married?” She clapped her hand over her naturally pink lips. “Oh, how malcreado! How ill-bred of me!”

  Catherine laughed at the screwed-up face, the face of the child Atanacia was. “Honestly. Atanacia, I’m glad someone asked. Always before I could sense the stares and felt people’s pity, and no one bothered to ask. The fact is, I have never met a man whom I wanted to marry . . . and who wanted to marry me also. It takes two to make a wedding.”

  “Burros, the men are! But there are so many hombres in Tucson. Look!” She grasped Catherine’s arm and pulled her over to the small window, moving aside the fringe of leather strips. “There, see! ”

  Catherine’s gaze swept over the randomly scattered adobes on the other side of the street, their windows like tired eyes closed against the brilliant sun. To the left, past the far cornfield, three Indian women washed clothes in the acequia running from the Santa Cruz River. Beyond was Solomon Warner's stone flour mill and Sentinel Mountain.

  Off to the right of Catherine’s adobe, two Mexicans, smoking their cornhusk cigarillos, sat propped against a wheel of one of the many freight wagons that camped on the outskirts of town, near the Tully and Ochoa corrals.

  Directly in front of Catherine, four or five men, adventurers if their scrubby beards and grease-blackened buckskins were any clue, lounged beneath the semi-shade of Juan Bueriel’s Mescal Saloon. “What are you talking about?”

  "Idiota!” Atanacia exclaimed with affection. “At this time of afternoon they would usually be asleep under some wagon or up at the plaza drinking the mescal and playing the monte. But no, they are here, waiting for you to come out. To only see a white woman is enough. Soon they will be at your door, courting you.”

  Catherine pulled the handkerchief from her head with a smile. “Well, in that case, I had better make myself presentable.”

  Atanacia prophesied accurately, for within the week three men, a prospector and two cavalrymen, called upon Catherine, ostensibly to ask if she needed any help in “settling in.”

  She politely thanked them while mentally making a file of each man’s name and appearance and explained that at the moment she required no help.

  Her plans for tutoring were working out just as successfully. Already she had twelve students coming each morning (all Mexicans and all boys), thanks to both Sherrod’s and Sam’s propaganda. Out of her own pocket she supplied the slates at twenty-five cents each. She charged the parents of each student three dollars a month, which barely covered her cost of living, for supplies in Tucson were ridiculously high because of the cost of freighting from the East.

  After one o’clock, when school was recessed for the day, she attended to the myriad tasks that a servant otherwise would have performed—filling the lamps and cleaning their chimneys, buying the scuttle of coal for the day's cooking, and, last, sprinkling the earthen floors with water to keep down the dust that was as fine and gray as talcum.

  Often she had dinner with the Hugheses. She never had time to be lonely, for almost daily she would have a gentleman caller who would sit on the crude bench made by Sam and padded with fuchsia cushions sewn by Atanacia. The gentlemen who called would twist their hats in their hands and mumble polite phrases about the nice weather (
warm days and cool nights now that October was upon the little mud city). Soon thereafter the gentlemen would make their departures, leaving her in a state of amusement. Not even the beauteous Margaret had ever received so many callers!

  With her days filled, Catherine found herself lonely only at night when, after she had reread Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe for perhaps the fourth time or one of Lord Byron’s romantic poems, she went to bed. For a while she lay there, the darkness encouraging her loneliness. She could imagine herself growing old and lonely, the spinster schoolmarm.

  And always with that thought, she would think of Law. A bitter taste would fill her mouth—a taste that did not prevent her lips from remembering the pleasure they had known beneath his lips. She really must stop reading that romantic literature!

  Every morning she awoke early to find some stranger sleeping outside her doorway. After this happened four or five times, with a different slumberer across the doorstep on each occasion, she began to realize that the male society of Tucson had apparently taken it upon themselves to protect their fair neighbor.

  Some mornings she would maybe find an old white-haired Mexican, his face covered by a floppy sombrero and his body draped with a Papago blanket. Other mornings would bring forth a hulking cowboy with a mountain of a hangover. Catherine would awaken her protector, give him a breakfast of bacon and tomatoes or, if he was lucky, potatoes and chiles colorados (eggs were almost impossible to obtain), and send the man on his way.

  As October passed into November and November into December and the days and the nights turned only slightly more chilly with still the day’s bright sunshine, she began to receive two gentlemen whom she actually could consider marriageable material.

  One, Lionel McCrary, was an attorney who had read law in Pennsylvania until the lure of the West’s opportunities had seized him fifteen years earlier. Though the slender wiry man was almost as old as her father, approaching forty, he was the first man in Tucson she found she could converse with intelligently.

  After the first three or four times Lionel called on her, she allowed him to escort her to Tucson's only restaurant comparable to those in the States, the Shoo Fly, so called because the Mexican boys always carried fly swatters with their trays. For Catherine the outing was a special treat, and she found herself laughing at Lionel’s anecdotes about the town’s citizenry, especially the American men who inhabited the Old Pueblo—twelve Anglos with the exception of the transient army personnel.

  “Take Mark Aldrich,” Lionel told her over dinner one evening. “He’s Tucson’s first American alcalde—that is, justice of the peace. He’s married to Margaret Wilkinson, who is living in your hometown, Baltimore.”

  “I believe I’ve heard the name,” Catherine said.

  Lionel grinned and leaned closer over the table. “But have you heard. Miss Howard, that the sixty-two-year-old Aldrich has a six-year-old daughter, Faustina, by his Mexican wife, the beautiful Theofila?”

  Catherine’s other eligible caller was Jeremy Rankin, a lieutenant of Company G of the California Volunteers, stationed at Camp Lowell. While not possessing Lionel’s extroverted personality, Jeremy was nonetheless a charming companion. Quiet, well-mannered, he treated her with a respect that bordered on the near reverence of a Southern gentleman. And he was, in addition, a rather attractive man of medium height with a handsome set of side-whiskers.

  The two men naturally crossed paths as they came to call upon her, each giving only a curt nod of the head to acknowledge the other, though neither ever mentioned the existence of another caller to her.

  On Saturday mornings, Jeremy would call to escort her for a stroll. Since Tucson’s streets were unpaved with no sidewalks, in order to avoid the strewn garbage, they would walk through the Plaza de Las Armas, sometimes buying a pie from John “Pie” Allen’s shop. North American adventurers from everywhere flooded the plaza, lured by stories of free land and mining bonanzas.

  On one such Saturday, a chilly but sunny one in mid-December, she was walking with Jeremy and lamenting the fact that Tucson’s citizens did not think their daughters needed an education. “Do you know, Jeremy, one father told me when he brought his son to my house that all a girl needed to know was how to cook and sew. Imagine!” she said with an indignant toss of her head. "How would I ever support myself if I had not received an education?”

  Jeremy, who looked dashing in his blue uniform with the yellow stripe of the cavalry, took her hand in his. “Miss Howard, you wouldn’t have to worry about supporting yourself. It would give me great—” The young lieutenant halted as he realized that she was not listening to his stirring address but was gazing with rapt attention just beyond his shoulder.

  “Catherine,” Sherrod called, “I was just on my way to see you!” He paused as he noticed the officer standing with her, and she made the introductions. The two men looked at each other in a stand-off.

  “Lieutenant Rankin was accompanying me to Sam’s store,” she contributed in the uneasy silence. “I needed a paper of pins. How is everyone at the Stronghold?”

  “We all miss you terribly. Brigham and Abigail are bored restless, and Lucy is at her wits’ end with no one to talk to. Father is even grumpier than before.”

  “And Law?” she could not help asking.

  Consternation clouded Sherrod’s deep-blue eyes. “Why, he’s in and out of the Stronghold, as always. The proverbial will-o’-the-wisp.”

  Jeremy rested his hand on the hilt of his curved saber, and she knew he was annoyed at Sherrod for monopolizing her time. “Give my affection to your family, Sherrod,” she said, reluctant to end the conversation but knowing to continue would have been impolite to Jeremy.

  Sherrod tipped his planter’s hat in farewell. “Lieutenant Rankin.”

  Jeremy did not press his suit that day, and she realized she was glad. She was not certain she could have accepted, not after seeing Sherrod and being reminded of Law. Sherrod was every girl’s dream of a husband . . . as in the fairy tales, tall, dark, and handsome and with the wealth to match. But Law—what was it about him that captured her thoughts? He was so self- contained, so sure of himself with a quiet strength that seemed to belie his lackadaisical approach to life.

  She was not surprised to find Sherrod calling on her the next morning when she opened her door. “Catherine,” he said, catching her hands in his, “I can’t stand it with you here, so far away. I worry about you constantly. And then the sight of that officer—”

  She touched her fingers to her lips. “Sssh,” she said, stepping out of his reach. Outside the door a bewhiskered miner snored.

  Sherrod flicked the old man an impatient grimace and sighed. “All right, Catherine, but say you’ll come back with me for Christmas. It would mean so much to the children and Lucy.”

  “Dear Lord,” Catherine breathed, “is it Christmas already?” The importance of time no longer held any significance where everything came manana in Tucson’s lazily moving society.

  She had even ceased wearing the small watch pinned to her dress. “I can't, Sherrod. There’s the students.”

  He nodded grimly. “I suppose ‘tis best.” Then, in an outburst, “But God help me, I'm tired of doing what’s best!”

  He opened the door, and the street dust filtered in. Before he closed it, he half turned. “Catherine, will you marry that officer—Rankin?”

  She hesitated while the dust settled on her skirts and suffocated her heart. “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Christmas of '64; how desolate and lonely a time in Tucson. Catherine put down her pen, wondering if she should worry her mother with such a confession. She nibbled at the pen’s tip, then resumed her letter.

  With nine-tenths the population of Catholic persuasion, Christmas is not celebrated here until January 6, El Dia del Tres Reyes—the Day of the Three Kings. The other tenth spend this time in drunken revelry in the multitude of saloons and gambling establishments.

  Despite such a dreary description, please
believe I am quite happy in this little outpost on the edge of the world. Here beneath the eternally sunny skies I believe I have found my niche in life. My health continues good. For the first time this year the Santa Catalinas had a very light drift of snow to mantle their peaks. Tonight I shall attend a New Year's Dance—a baile in one of the older Mexican homes; a very formal affair, I understand.

  She finished the letter and, dipping the pen in the precious ink, affixed her signature. Her mother would most likely receive the letter as late as St. Patrick's Day, if she did receive it at all.

  With so little time left to dress for the baile, Catherine hurriedly slipped into her one good dress, which did not have quite so worn appearance as the rest of her clothes. The lilac velvet bodice was cut low off the shoulders with a pointed waist and a fall of lace to cover her cleavage and upper arms. The dress still smelled of camphor, and she sprinkled the remainder of an almost empty bottle of jasmine cologne over the material.

  Wanting a change in her coiffure for the important evening, she left the center part but divested her chignon of its net; instead she pulled the hair atop her head into a mass of plaits, since curling the heavy tresses was nigh impossible.

  Though she was going to the baile with Sam and Atanacia, she knew Jeremy would be there. And she knew he would ask her to marry him that night. All day she had been brooding over her decision. She told herself she did not have to accept his proposal. There were many more men now who called upon her—a Mexican hacendado from as far south as Magdalena, Mexico, and a merchant named Goldwater who came from as far north as Prescott.

  Catherine paused in draping the heavily fringed purple silk shawl about her shoulders and put her fingertips to her temples. She closed her eyes to shut out the image of Law’s passion-inflamed face hovering over hers. Could she lie in bed the rest of her life with one man . . . while her body ached for another?