I said I would walk back into town after visiting Ezra, and I waved to Mr. Sam as he drove away slowly, the car straddling the center of the road. Only after he disappeared did I remember that he had not taken my box of plunder with him. So I turned back to go to Amalia’s room, and I noticed then that the three bottles Pickett had left on the porch were gone. Perhaps Magdalene Lott had snatched them. I glanced around the yard, then looked beyond it to the woods, but I saw no one.
Magdalene had been bold enough to enter Amalia’s room, and next time, she might steal something. So the box would have to go with me. I picked it up, adding the things from upstairs—the toys and fabric scraps and an opera program for The Marriage of Figaro at the New York Opera House in 1877 .1 was surprised that I wanted so little from this house.
Walking along the path of scattered shells, I wondered if Amalia had liked opera. I did not care much about opera, and David—I had discovered just last year—had actually disliked it. In our ten years of marriage, we attended only one opera, the opening-night performance of Camille at the Central City Opera House. That was only a year ago, and we went not so much to hear the opera as to support the restoration of the opera house.
Central City once had been a prosperous mining town, but when I knew it, the only activities were kids selling ore samples to tourists in the summer and old men sitting on benches, speculating about the price of gold. The Central City Opera House, which once drew famous performers from New York, had been turned into a movie theater, but then it closed, and the roof was caving in. The interior was filled with fallen plaster, broken chairs, and pack-rat droppings. A group of Denverites, including Mother, decided to restore it, bringing culture to Colorado and economic development to Central.
Opening night was the highlight of Denver’s social season, and everybody dressed in Victorian costume. David and I made the rounds of the secondhand shops on Larimer Street, Denver’s skid row, where we purchased a fine beaver hat and a black cloak lined with white satin for David. Then we found an antique velvet dress the color of the blue time, which was what we called the late afternoon, when the distant mountains turned blue. As we were dressing that evening, David presented me with a necklace—a gold chain with a drop of two aquamarines a few shades lighter than the dress.
We rented a little Victorian house on the Casey, a promontory just below Central, for the weekend, and after the opera and the festivities were over, the two of us, me twirling a lace parasol, David carrying the beaver hat, which had begun to smell, walked the dark streets to the Casey. Neither of us was tired, and the rented house, long boarded up, had a peculiar odor of rot and rodents. So we sat in rocking chairs on the porch in the moonlight and talked. When I shivered, David put his opera cloak about my shoulders.
He lighted a cigarette; then, holding it between the fingers of his right hand, he pointed out the star formations. Far below us, smoke curled up from a chimney, and I told David the old joke about the houses in Central, which were built on such steep hillsides that when the housewife on top threw out her stove ashes, they flew into the chimney below and thus worked their way from house to house, all the way down to the bottom of the mountain.
Then David said, “I read about the man the Casey was named for—Pat Casey. Do you know about him? He struck it rich here.”
“Hmm,” I muttered, my rocker creaking. I knew all about Pat Casey, but there was no need to spoil David’s story.
“Pat was illiterate and dumb as a clothespin. He carried a big gold watch, which he’d pull out from time to time. It was strictly for show, because he couldn’t tell time.” David rocked back and forth while I chuckled.
David flicked his cigarette over the hillside, and we watched the sparks scatter in the dark as it bounced from rock to rock. “Pat showed up at one of his mines and called into the shaft, ‘How many of youse are down there?’ A miner yelled back, ‘Five.’ Pat scratched his head, then said, ‘Well, half of youse come up for a drink.’ ”
David’s rocker stopped, and without turning his head, he shifted his eyes to get my reaction—a gesture he often made when he said something funny—and I laughed. “You’ve probably heard that story before,” he said.
“Never so well told. I didn’t know about the watch.”
David reached over and took my hand. “Could you have lived up here in those days, do you think?”
“Probably not. I’d have hated not being able to take a bath for weeks at a time and having to carry water and use an outhouse. And I couldn’t have slaughtered an ox for food. It’s much nicer to go to the butcher at the Piggly Wiggly and have him do it for me.”
“You sell yourself short.” David’s seriousness surprised me. “You could deal with almost anything, if you had to.”
“Well, so far I haven’t. And with any luck, I’ll never find out.” It struck me then how easy my life had always been. The Depression, which had devastated so many people, had barely touched us. “What about you? Could you have been a pioneer?”
David lighted another cigarette as we sat in the dark and looked at the lumps of mountains across from us. I was glad for my husband’s cape around me, because a wind blew down the Casey. There were occasional sounds from up the hill—drunken shouts mostly. A motorist switched on headlights, and a car started down Eureka Street in Central. I leaned out over the porch and watched as it made its way along the twisted street far below. It reached Black Hawk and stopped, then turned onto the Denver road.
David took a long time to answer the question. “There’s something awfully appealing about being self-sufficient. Every male wishes he could be a caveman.”
“Pioneers and cavemen aren’t exactly the same thing.”
“Perhaps they are. Living in a cave is a lot closer to settling the West than taking the trolley to the office and sitting in a chair reading legal documents.”
David seemed to be working out something. He snubbed out the cigarette on the porch floor, then picked up the hat and stroked the beaver pelt. I put my hand to my throat and rubbed my fingers across the aquamarines.
“Sometimes it’s all so pointless. Last week, I listened to two women with more money than God argue over which one got the diamond brooch and which the emerald ring. And I knew damn well that neither woman cared. One just didn’t want the other to get her first choice.”
“You’re being unfair.” I reached for his hand, but he was still holding the hat. “You know that’s not what you do. You help people through difficult times, and you let lonely old women know that somebody cares. Whatever you say, you really do care.”
David dismissed my remarks with a wave of the hat. “Maybe they’d be better off if I told them to go on home and stop feeling so sorry for themselves.”
He had never talked like this before. “What’s gotten into you, David? You’ve always loved your work.”
David didn’t answer. He put the hat on the porch and leaned forward in the rocker, resting his arms on his knees.
“Is that why you go off with the boys on those dangerous outings?”
David turned and looked at me, but in the dark, I could not make out his features.
“Those dangerous things you and Arthur do, is that the reason for them, because your work frustrates you? Tell me.”
David looked down the mountain. Pinpoints of light were coming from the windows of two or three houses now. The occupants had returned home, or they had just gotten up. He sat silently for a few moments. “Nothing’s wrong. Blame the damn opera. Don’t ever ask me to go to one again, will you?”
“I never knew you didn’t like opera.”
“Neither did I.” David relaxed a little and sat back in the rocker, moving to and fro. “Do you think I could have been a pioneer?”
“We’re lucky we live in the twentieth century and won’t have to find out.” When David didn’t respond, I said, “But I suppose you would have done all right. You’re awfully good in an emergency. Look at how assured you were when we came across that mounta
in lion, and how you kept Betsey from falling off the cliff.”
“Those weren’t hardships. They were adventures.”
“You don’t lose your head in an emergency. And you’re not afraid of hard work. I think you could have been a pioneer, don’t you?”
David’s rocker squeaked rhythmically, and he didn’t reply.
Then I wondered if this might not be just an idle conversation. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, no.”
“Are you sure?”
“Everything’s all right.”
I put my feet under me and wrapped the cloak around me like a blanket.
“I could have been a pioneer if you’d been there.” David turned his face to me in the dark.
“What?”
“With you beside me, I think I could do anything.”
“Oh, David, that’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”
“I mean it.” His voice was so ferocious that I shivered. “I’d be lost if you ever left me.”
I sat upright and tried to make out David’s features. The intensity of his words troubled me a little, so I said lightheartedly, “I don’t have any plans to leave, so you needn’t worry.”
“I hope not.” David turned to look up at the stars, and at the same time, he reached over and took my hand, squeezing it so much that it hurt. “I love you, Nora. Don’t you ever doubt that.”
I didn’t, not then.
Chapter Nine
AUNT POLLY SAT ON A white-painted bench in front of the quarters, a wooden bowl of green beans in her lap. She seemed in no hurry as she picked up the beans one at a time, broke off the ends, tossed them aside, and then snapped the beans in two. She dropped the broken halves into the bowl and picked out another bean, sliding over on the bench to make room for me. Placing the box of Amalia’s things on the ground, I sat down beside her.
“Ezra sleeping now ’cause he feeling all punylike. I dress his wounds with spiderweb. Them that bleeds too much, I put on sweet apple-tree bark. Then I bind ’em up. Before you know it, he as good as he was, though Ezra never ain’t goin’ be good as new. He too old.”
“How old is he?” I wanted to help with the beans, but Aunt Polly seemed to be enjoying the rhythm of snapping them. Besides, I knew my place.
“Lemme see.” She paused with a string bean between her old fingers. “Ezra born eighteen and fifty-eight, so he seventy-five now, ’cause this nineteen and thirty-three. I ain’t never studied about how old I is, but I expect I been ninety for one or three years. I got no desire for one hundred, so I stay ninety. I about sixteen when Ezra’s born, maybe twelve when Welcome comes. Maybe less.”
Aunt Polly stared off in the direction of Shadowland. “My mind rest easy if I knowed Welcome growed up. But I ain’t ever goin’ know ’bout some things, and there’s no use wrecking my mind over it.”
“Aren’t there any records?”
Aunt Polly shook her head. “None I ever knowed about. Even if there was, who’d keep track of a darky after the War’s done with. ’Sides, it’s a long time gone. By now, Welcome’s most likely passed.” Aunt Polly had grieved for her child for almost eighty years.
We sat quietly for a few minutes. A goat came out of the bushes behind the quarters, and Aunt Polly stroked her affectionately, muttering, “Look at them goat legs. They got a wood-keg look to ’em, just like Miss Magdalene.” Since Miss Magdalene had worn a long dress when I’d seen her, I wondered how Aunt Polly knew about her legs. The goat wandered off. “I milked the goats and paid a boy a nickel to haul that milk to town. I go a piece of the way to make sure he done it right.”
I hadn’t thought about the goats. “Ezra must have done a good job of defending himself last night.”
“Oh, he good at that all right. Ezra ain’t easy scared. He’s a fighter when he’s young. He was a good-looking man back then—still is, if you asks me—and had all the girls pursuing after him, and that make all the mens mad, so Ezra have to fight ’em. Then when he marries with Sukey Pea, he’s got to defend her. I try to keep it out of his ears about what that fractious girl is up to, but he find out anyways. If it still been slavery days, the captain sell him just ’cause all the trouble he make round here. Once, the captain say he put Ezra off the place if he don’t behave, but Miss Amalia beg for Ezra to stay.”
She paused. “There’s times when Ezra the only one can protect her. She need him. When she look at her brother, fear stares her down.” Then Aunt Polly added quickly, “Miss Amalia not afraid of much else.” She ran her hands through the beans to feel for any she’d missed, found one, and snapped it hard.
“Why was she afraid of her brother?”
“I don’t get no full understanding about it. You like these beans? I cook ’em up for supper with a little piece of pork.”
“That sounds tasty.”
“I hoping Ezra don’t have no backsats with his healing.”
I pondered the word backsats, then decided Aunt Polly meant setbacks. “So the captain didn’t force Ezra to leave Avoca after all.”
“There ain’t nothing the captain won’t do for Miss Amalia. He cherish Young Miss, love her better than anybody, even Miss Emilie. Miss Emilie sick all the time.”
“He took Miss Amalia to New York.”
“Oh my, yes, after slavery done gone. He take Miss Amalia and three, maybe four servants to look after her. I don’t go ’long, but Ezra done. He think maybe so he stay in New York. Up there, he a pass-for-white man. But he come on home instead, and after a while, he marry up with Sukey Pea.”
“Did Miss Amalia’s brother go to New York?”
Aunt Polly nodded. “Miss Amalia don’t want him to, but he did.”
“And Miss Emilie?”
“No, Miss Emilie too poorly. She tell the captain take Miss Amalia, get her out of dis bad house.”
“Bad house?”
“Sick house, I guess. Miss Emilie say Miss Amalia deserve her fun. She tell the captain make sure she have the time of all times.”
“And did she?”
“I ain’t the one to ask.” Aunt Polly stared hard at me, then returned to Ezra’s marriage. “None of us didn’t care if Sukey Pea run off, most especially me and Miss Amalia, and maybe Ezra, too, after he get used to it. The leaving was the best thing she done for him. He put all his badness behind him after she gone. Folkses say he met up with a gospel bird and that the reason he give up the fightin’ and the drinkin’, but I know better. Ezra wasn’t never much for religion, not like some that wears out their knees crawling to the cross, then wears out the seat of their britches sliding back. It was Sukey Pea what made him crazier than a betsey bug, and he never have peace in his mind till she gone.”
I changed the subject back to Amalia. “There was an opera program among her things. It’s dated 1877. That was the year the captain took her to New York.”
“I don’t study too hard on years, ’less they has to do with me and mine, ’cause I ain’t got no learnin’. Now Ezra, he read and write. Miss Amalia teach him when he’s a chap, before the War’s over. The captain beat Ezra if he know about it back then, but Ezra do trick him. One day, marster see Ezra with a book, and he reach for the whip, but quick as a mouse in the flour bin, Ezra turn that book over, so when old marster come up close, he see Ezra look at it upside down. Marster laugh so hard, Ezra don’t get no whipping.” Aunt Polly chuckled and leaned her head back against the brick wall of the quarters, closing her eyes. “He never say he read till freedom come. Then marster glad, ’cause Ezra help him with the lumber company. He better than Miss Amalia’s brother at figurin’. If the captain give Ezra the lumber company, instead of Mr. Frederick, it still be hummin’.”
“Did Miss Amalia like New York?”
A shadow crossed Aunt Polly’s face. “She come home full of misery for a long time. Then Miss Emilie get sick and they boat the river to New Orleans, and I never see Miss Emilie again. I ain’t never talked to Miss Amalia about New York.” She paused, then sat
up straight and looked at me. “How come you wanting to know so much into Miss Amalia’s business?”
“Because she was my aunt,” I replied, then added slowly, “Or my grandmother.”
A muscle twitched in Aunt Polly’s face, but she leaned her head against the bricks and closed her eyes again. “That’s something I ain’t never paid no attention to.”
The old black woman was silent then, and her face was so serene that I thought she might have fallen asleep. Perhaps she had been through so much in her life that my prying questions meant nothing to her. I felt drowsy myself, sitting there in the afternoon sun with the sounds of birds and insects flitting about. There was a noise from the direction of Shadowland, but I had no way of telling if it were Magdalene or a goat in the underbrush. I put my head against the wall and lifted my face to the sun, closing my eyes, and I might have gone to sleep had Aunt Polly not asked suddenly, “What gatherin’s you got from Miss Amalia in that box?”
“The things I want to keep. I was afraid someone would come back and steal them. They’ll be safer with me at the hotel.”
Aunt Polly leaned over me and peered into the carton with her good eye, the eye closest to me.
“There’s her workbasket and some silver, a quilt and a sampler, this and that,” I said. “And her jewelry.”
“Her jewelry the best there is. It never need no polishin’ up nothin’. I proud to see her wear it.”
I took out the jewelry boxes, opened them, and lined them up on the bench.
Aunt Polly looked at the pieces and smiled as she recognized them. “That belong to Miss Emilie.” She touched the sapphire ring and added, “Just like that one you got on belong to Miss Emilie one time.” She picked up the diamond earrings tucked inside the tortoiseshell box and held them to my ears and laughed, then put them back.
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