Sarah's Quilt

by Nancy E. Turner

  She nodded. “You’d think after doing this ten times, I’d have recognized it. It just isn’t quite the same this time. Different from the ones I lost, too.”

  I finished my glass of water. “You’re worried something’s not right, then?”

  Her face clenched in pain, and she nodded very slowly. “Seems put wrong. And I don’t remember any pain with the others, just the nausea and tiredness. I’m worried.”

  “Oh, honey,” I said, and hugged her to my shoulder. “We’ll take you to a doctor in town and make sure. He’ll put your mind at rest, and you just concentrate on getting through the next few months. A Christmas baby. Won’t that be nice?” In my heart, I felt a terrible ache. I didn’t think it would be nice, not at all. The dry goods store in town had quit selling the Ladies’ Preventatives Savannah and I had kept at our homes since I first discovered them. Supposedly, it’s not up to some people’s morals anymore to keep from having children every year by any means other than widowhood. Just like everything else, I reckon they wear out and need replacing. I’d be afraid to face this, myself. I’ve lost enough babies already. Lands sakes alive.

  Savannah pulled her hankie from her sleeve and dabbed at her face. “Well, I do feel better, having told you. I don’t want to let on to the children until quite a bit further along. Just in case—well, the two I lost, you know, I never told the children about. Didn’t want them to fret.”

  That was Savannah. She would save her children from fear and mourning. Take it all upon herself. Tears trickled from the corners of my eyes, too. I said, “How soon can we get you to the doctor? I’ll go along.”

  “Well, so much is happening. I’ll be happy to wait until we take Esther and Josh back to school.”

  “If it can wait until after my roundup, I’ll go along. My boys are going back, too. I’ll stay in town and visit April a spell. Promise me, Savannah, that you’ll say something sooner if you feel something more is ailing you?”

  She nodded, sniffed. “I’d better wipe that table. I’ve got water everywhere.”

  I took a towel and handed one to her. We worked on it side by side. When we got it done, I said, “This will be all right, sweetie. You’ll see. With the twins gone teaching, and two at school, you’ve got plenty of chairs.”

  She looked as if she would cry again, but she smiled through it, though her face was red. “Well, I’ve gotten eight blessings on this earth. I’ll take another, as the Lord provides.”

  I said, “When mine were little, I felt so rushed and tired. Now I wish I had nine of them, too.” That much, at least, was true. I wouldn’t mind having more children, now that the others were grown and could, like April, be bringing me grandchildren soon. “Want me to walk you home? I need to stretch my legs a mite.” On the mile of dirt road between our houses, we talked about chickens and weather and little things. They have a house cat just had a litter in the pecan house. A hawk circled overhead in the distance.

  The kitchen was steamy and sweet-smelling, and rows of quart jars stood like little soldiers on a rack, cooling. Savannah’s daughters were busy canning. White curtains ruffled at the window. Mine at home were tattered calico—remnants of a skirt April wore when she was thirteen years old. They’d gotten purely shabby, but I couldn’t make myself take them down. Savannah makes new kitchen curtains every spring; says it keeps her cheerful. Her children have grown up fine, and they mind her and Albert better than mine do. Those girls were chopping and cooking and cleaning as well as any experienced wife might do. Savannah herself is pure blessing to everyone she touches, I thought. The rest of us have done precious little to protect her and show her how we care. Not near what she deserves.

  Don’t know why this news of hers has left me feeling down, almost as afraid as I felt when she told me of expecting their first baby, Clover, so many years ago. As if it will just make the current troubles of life multiply beyond bearing. Reckon it’s enough to put me on my knees tonight, at that. This ranch is calling out for work from every corner and crook. Flores got back yesterday with the new troughs for the south windmill and they’re going to get them in today. I haven’t heard from Harland, and I can’t take Savannah’s dilemma for her. Faraway troubles will have to stay far away until I know what I can do.

  May 26, 1906

  No rain. No word yet from Harland. I’m so torn about their strife. I can’t stand not doing something when something needs doing. Not that our days need filling out, for we stay busy hauling water, and every day we count more dead cattle. Rudolfo came home yesterday, and he says the news from Tempe is not good. It’s too early to get anything but the lowest prices, and he will not agree to go rounding up the herd yet. I can’t do it by myself, that’s certain. So I’ll have a talk with him later and see if I can convince him to round up now.

  The air is dry as tinder and itchy. The prickly pears have curled up and are falling over like heaps of old tortillas. The boys found another three steers with our brand, died of thirst out on the hill. Everyone is touchy, even the dogs. Chess, Mama, Mason Sherrill, all the old folks on this place, snap like wildcats at anyone near them, myself included.

  Last night, the sky seemed to open up with thunder and lightning, but it was a dry storm, with nothing but our battered ears to show for it. My head aches like I’ve been hit with a hammer from listening to thunder most of the night. I have had three large loads of hay brought down from town and stacked so I can feed my animals. It is sorry stuff, and costs dear.

  I got my supper cooking in a big pot and some bread rising, then took a ride to Rudolfo’s house. All the way there, I added figures, trying to plan how long I can keep on buying hay and dragging water. My old buckboard isn’t going to stand up to this hard use forever, either, and a new one would cost at least two hundred dollars. Maybe more now, for it’s been near fifteen years I’ve been using it.

  Once again, it was all I could do to get Rudolfo to talk about the reason I’d come. I told him the roundup must be done the first of next month. The cattle can wait no longer. He smiled warmly and motioned me toward a chair. “The Bakers are selling out. I made him an offer on his land. He said he had family to think of, but if no one in his family accepts his price, I will own that land, too. But, for you, there is a simpler solution. The combination of our rancheros with Baker’s will make this one of the largest holdings in the Territory. Sarah, I have agua. Grain and grass. This house is enough for you and your sons. Here, I have more men to do the work, to get us both through this drought. All I own will be yours. I have plans. Grand plans for the future.”

  “Life … ,” I began. I was going to say how life had just not dealt me any good hands lately, and how I didn’t plan on adding to the commotion by planning a wedding or taking on a husband and five more children. I had come to talk about rounding up our herds. All I said was, “is hard.”

  “We’ve been friends a long—at least tell me you’ll think of it.”

  I rubbed my eyes with both hands. Baker was selling out for good? If there was one thing I didn’t want to add to my load of things to think about, it was this. Glory, maybe I’d be forced to sell out eventually, too. Maybe I’d be forced to marry Rudolfo just to keep one foot on my land. And then, like other times in the past, I found myself lying to Rudolfo just to avoid hurting his feelings. “All right,” I said, “I’ll think about it.”

  Rudolfo grinned broadly. “Will you stay for supper?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got stew in the oven and bread rising—it’ll be over the side by now.”

  “May I tell my son and daughters you’ve decided to consider my offer?”

  “Oh, Rudolfo, please don’t.” I watched his face drop in disappointment, almost like a child’s. I said, “Only because I don’t want them to have—well, expectations either way. I love your girls. I don’t want them to be hurt if the answer is no.”

  “Is the answer already no?”

  I fiddled with my hat, then stood abruptly, putting it on my head. “I have to think, is all.�
� I’d already said far too much, is all. Digging myself a hole I’d never be able to back out of. I cleared my throat and adjusted the tie on the hat. “About the herd gathering? When do you want to drive north?”

  “Another two weeks before we go. Baker said he’ll be ready by then. Some cousin is coming to see the place.”

  On my way home, I let the horse meander slowly. I had some serious thinking to do. Marry Rudolfo? Lands. He’s the best neighbor anyone could want. I tried to picture kissing Rudolfo, loving him the way I loved Jack. I pictured Savannah, too, discovering she is yet again with child. Could I really bear having more children? I missed the times when my small brood was little, and there are times I wish there were eight of them, but to begin over now with diapers and three-day crying jags? And women die in childbeds far more at forty-three than at twenty-three.

  I turned the horse off at the cemetery and dismounted, looping the reins around a limb of the jacaranda tree. I tiptoed between the markers and stood in front of the only one I needed to see at that moment. Jack’s stone was dusty. The cholla that had sprouted behind it looked withered. I winced as if I’d been stung, and I put a hand over my mouth as a grimace of pain took over my face. A whisper of a breeze tussled at my hair, my skirt, and at the dangling fingers of the cholla. It made a scratching sound against the back of the stone. The corners of my mouth turned down hard against my chin.

  There I was, a stickery woman, trying to shade a headstone. Trying to keep all this going for the sake of a memory. And there down the road was Rudolfo, offering me water. My sight was blurred with tears. “Jack?” I said. “What should I—” Then I stopped. I looked down the hill at my house. A warmth ran through me from my toes to my hair. The very ground I stood upon fed life into me. How ridiculous to let Rudolfo make me feel sentimental and weak. To think I’d run to him before I’d hardly dug in for the fight. We weren’t under attack. No one was gravely ill. It was all about needing water.

  “I’m not licked, yet,” I said aloud. It will rain someday. And the well is still putting out. This ranch will go on, even if I sell the whole herd. Even if I have to sell part of the land. Heaven knows I’ve bought so much in the good years, it wouldn’t be as if I were admitting defeat just to unload some of it. I straightened my hat and moved my shoulders around. The sudden call of quail sent a cottontail bouncing across Jack’s resting place. He’d been hiding under the cholla as I stood there. There was work to do. I’d best go do it.

  I headed for my kitchen. My sons were out working, Chess and Mason Sherrill gone, too. The house was quiet except for a mourning dove sighing from the chimney top. It’d been lean for four summers now, and having the cattle moved out of their regular grazing meant hauling hay and feed would be that much harder. Charlie said he was going to torch off the nopal thorns and let the cows have those.

  As I laid my bread dough in three pans, I admired the soft, alive look of it. Making dough in this weather, it all but takes over the kitchen before you can get it cooked. I remember telling my little April a story about a loaf of bread that a farmer’s wife forgot to bake, and it grew and grew, until it got up and walked out of the pan, sat down at the table, and demanded to be served like a king.

  I took my knife and cut the shape of a crown in the top of each loaf—just like April always wanted ever since I made up that story—to show that dough it would indeed be served in a kingly style. Next time I see April in Tucson, I’ll bake her some bread, tell her babies the story, and let them eat the bread with the crown on top.

  Chapter Four

  May 28, 1906

  I haven’t laid eyes on Rudolfo for two days. Maybe I don’t need to. Maybe I don’t even need to gather my herd, but just wait for the rain. Seems like the well will give about a foot a day, which, along with carrying water from the south well, the neighbors’, and straining and boiling some, will keep the hands and the yard stock alive.

  My morning passed pleasantly, for Granny and I have a little game going. We sorted our quilt scraps last Christmas and divided up the pieces, and she and I have both pieced a quilt top. We are seeing who can get done first, and whoever does gets to keep both quilts. I’ve been making a nine-patch with flying geese on every other square, and she’s started one of nothing but hexagons. Says she is going to call it “Granny’s Garden” because most of the calicoes are flowered. I thought I’d get mine put on a stretcher before she did, as I have a sewing machine Jack bought me, and I keep it oiled up and humming till my feet nearly come off at the ankles. I told her to come use it anytime, but Granny said it would take her longer to learn to use the machine than it would just to run up a quilt top. Well, there hardly comes a time when I don’t have a quilt stretched across the ceiling of my parlor, ready to let down to lap height by a rope, but this summer has been a hard one for work. I haven’t gotten three rows of blocks together, and I think Granny may have hers nearly done. I’ve asked her about it, but she just smiles and talks about the weather. Then she asks me how mine’s coming, and she grins like a cat with a mouse in its paws when I tell her. I strung my nine-patch squares across the kitchen table this morning and matched up cloth until I liked the result. I was just starting another row when Shorty came up with the mail.

  Harland has written again. His letter filled me with such sorrow, I had to carry it to Granny. He says Melissa has taken very ill, and this time, he says, “Sarah, please come quickly.” Soon as I finished reading her the letter, I walked across her yard to Albert’s place to show it to them. I begged their cast-off clothes to carry to Harland’s children. All I can see to do is to go to California and get them.

  It will probably take near a fortnight to get to California and back. Chess says he will go along. My boys think I should just wire Harland to come here, and wait. All I can say is that it’s been ten years of writing letters to my brother, and never has he said “Please come quickly.” Besides, staying here worrying isn’t going to put a cloud in the sky or a drop more in the well. Part of me is terrified to leave this trouble behind, and part knows there’s not a blessed thing I can do about the weather.

  The one thing I can do is fetch Harland and Melissa and their children and get them to a safe place. I’ll take Melissa to the hospital in Tucson, and they can surely use my house in town until she gets over what ails her. Then they can come here and stay as long as they like. After supper, I spent a good hour giving the boys instructions as to what to do, depending on what might happen, while I’m gone. Plum wore out their ears. Then I made a list, too, and put it on the wall by the pantry.

  A chill seeps up from the land after the sun goes down—a sure sign that the air is still dry, and the rains are yet to begin. The rocking chair on my front porch allows me to see a great deal of the horizon surrounding this place, as the porch turns on a northwest corner. By pulling the chair to the edge, I can watch the stars and moon. It is a place I can think. Pleasant and cool, too, until the time of the summer rains, when it will get dank. I can see the faint orange glow of a lighted window off to the east, at Albert and Savannah’s house. Someone there is still awake, too.

  I feel for the string around my waist, for the scissors and the key, holding them in my hands without trying to see in the darkness. I know to the very penny what is in that strongbox. Three thousand eight hundred, seventy-six dollars and eleven cents. Cash to last me a year paying wages to the hands, buying dry goods and yard goods, fence wire, and horseshoes. Hard currency, too, for I don’t trust paper bills to the termites. I read where someplace a widow hid her insurance money in a coffee can, but when she went for it, it had turned to mold from the damp in her cellar. Well, damp doesn’t happen here, though the termites we have would eat a whole man if he stood still long enough to let them. I had to decide what might be needed here, and how much to take to Harland.

  Under the candle stand on the end of the shelf behind the stove was a twenty-dollar gold piece, two five-dollar pieces, and six tenpenny bits. After I take out the mercy money for Harland in the mornin
g, I’ll put the key to the strongbox under there in case anything happens and the boys need more than what’s under the candle stand.

  I’ll have to take cash, too, for two round-trip tickets, and six more for Harland’s family to come here, plus food and medical care. If I wire Harland a thousand dollars from Tucson and hold fifteen hundred here for expenses for six months, there’ll be only eight hundred left once I’ve paid for the tickets and such. Not enough to pay for a new well if we need it. Nothing extra if anyone gets hurt or sick, either. No tuition money for the boys. And all that is if things run smoothly, according to my calculations. The thought crept up on me that I might end up having no choice but to marry Rudolfo. I can’t think of that now. I won’t think of it. I haven’t told him no yet. Reckon I’m feeling cowardly about it. Or maybe I’m not ready to close that door. Best thing I can see is that if everything goes bad, I could sell out to him and move home to Mama’s.

  A deer came on tiptoes into the yard. They usually won’t come this close, afraid of yard dogs. This one stepped warily toward the trough by the gate. It peered all around, and without any sound—it must have made some signal that all was well—it was joined by three little does. They slipped from the shadows across the yard and nosed at the trough, where I knew barely an inch of murky water lay in the bottom. If I got up to draw them a drink, they’d run and probably never return. I let them lap up the rest of the mud, and when they had all they could take of it, they turned and fled as if something frightened them.

  I added to my note for the boys’ chores to put a bucket and a half of water in the trough each night. The stuff was precious enough, but we still had water, and I won’t begrudge a creature a drink. As I changed clothes for bed, all I could think was that what we need is the one thing we couldn’t buy with a barrelful of gold eagles—rain.