Buried Seeds

by Donna Meredith

  The three of us entered the hotel lobby, waiting until we’d greeted the doorman before resuming our conversation.

  Solina wrinkled her nose as she bounced with youthful enthusiasm toward the grand staircase. “Mama, I liked your friend Miss Mindy, but that Lydia Underwood seems stuck up. I didn’t much care for her. She wasn’t kind at all toward Mindy’s helpers and barely had two words for me.”

  Never let it be said that my daughter was a poor judge of character. Miss Lydia had grown up to be every bit as witchy as her mother. Alexandra had aged since I had last seen her, crow’s feet near her eyes, creases at the corners of her mouth, yet she had put on none of the weight that girded Nellie’s middle. She and her daughter had their hair bobbed fashionably short. Alexandra’s style secured bangs to one side of her face with a stretchy headband. A red silk flower was attached on the left. In slight contrast, a fringe of bangs hovered just above Lydia’s large blue eyes. They both looked low-class, if you asked me.

  Nellie spared me the necessity of a response. “Lydia was born a child of privilege and sometimes forgets the virtue of kindness toward others is cherished above all others.” Nellie ventured to take her leave. “I’ll expect you for dinner, then.”

  We hugged and she returned to her auto.

  As we climbed the stairs, Solina looked thoughtful, puzzled. “What happened to the baby, Mama?”

  I sighed. That poor little creature. “Two weeks after Jack left town, I delivered a baby girl, far too soon for her to survive.”

  Solina reached for my hand. “My sister. How sad.”

  Yes, I had been heartbroken. And where was Jack? In El Paso or Seattle or Timbuktu. What did particulars matter? He wasn’t at my bedside when I nearly bled to death.

  “I’m so glad you had Aunt Nellie, that you got to stay on with her.”

  It had fallen upon Nellie to comfort me, a pattern that repeated itself oft en in my life. “Sometimes nature knows best,” she said, refusing to let me see the baby, insisting it would only upset me. I could read in the creases around Nellie’s eyes that something was terribly wrong with my little girl. She gave the tiny body to Val Martin to bury while I was still packed in ice to stop the bleeding.

  Years later Val confessed the child had horrible deformities, the details of which he refused to disclose, thinking to spare me further distress. I’m not sure it was a kindness, since my imagination leapt from one nightmarish vision to another. The reason for the deformities was something I couldn’t bring myself to explain to Solina. Not yet.

  I had stood in front of auditoriums full of women and lectured on delicate health issues. But this talk was so much harder. So personal. So degrading.

  No matter how many times I told myself I had nothing to be ashamed of, nonetheless I was.

  My reticence to tell my daughter the truth, ugly as it was, illustrated the problem. If no one spoke frankly, if we kept seeing disease as sin, as shame, nothing would change.

  “It’s time to tell you Jack’s story, what I know of it.” Some was supposition from receipts I’d found. “I’ve pieced together fragments of his life from what he told me and what I learned later from your papa and Lourdes.”

  Solina frowned. “Who’s Lourdes?”

  Courage, Ro, I told myself. “I’ll tell you all about it once we are in our rooms.”

  Jack

  October 1904

  Lourdes stomped her foot. “I bet you would buy it for her, your Ro-zell-uh. I bet she doesn’t have to beg for necessaries.”

  Jack would hardly call a hat with a real stuffed hummingbird nesting on top of gaudy silk flowers a necessity. More of an abomination. The hat was inordinately expensive, but he supposed he was going to have to buy it. Ever since he’d gotten married, Lourdes had been difficult. She was always demanding money and had conveniently forgotten he first met her in a saloon across the border in Juarez. She had vindictive brothers who already looked at him as if they were sighting a snake through a rifle. Not that their dislike surprised him. Women had always loved him, and men begrudged him for it. Been that way all his life. But her brothers were crazy if they thought she was pure. She was hardly a virgin when they’d met three years ago, even if she was only thirteen then. In fact, he’d gotten a sore and rash soon after they first became intimate. She’d scrunched up her face and shrugged. “Bed bugs, big deal.”

  She was probably right. His skin cleared up, but there were still times he worried about that rash. One evening over cards, his boss, Mr. Whiting, told a story that gave Jack some assurance he knew the cure even if he had contracted an unspeakable infection: “Being with a virgin is a sure-fire remedy for anything untoward you catch in a whorehouse, if you get my drift , Jack.”

  Leroy Whiting had never steered him wrong, so soon after their talk, Jack had married Rosella, as pure a girl as ever was.

  Jack chucked Lourdes under the chin. “I would prefer you didn’t cover up your beautiful tresses, that’s all.” Especially with a dead bird.

  She arched her back, raised both hands to her thick tresses, and fanned them away from her neck. “You like my hair?”

  “I’ve told you so a thousand times.” He liked her dusky skin, too, the way it contrasted with the white she always wore. This dress was one of the new straight silhouettes with dozens of little tucks across her full breasts. Another one of the “necessaries” she insisted he buy for her.

  Her smile fell away. “I still want this hat.”

  Jack knew when he’d lost an argument. He told the vendor he’d be back to buy it the next day, even though it cost enough to feed a family of four for a week.

  Then she had the nerve to demand five dollars for more necessities, unspecified.

  “Sorry, I can’t spare any more, Lourdes, not on top of the hat.”

  Soon, he would finish engineering this spur of the railroad and he could steer clear of El Paso for a while. Let Lourdes find someone new to warm her bed and feather her head.

  They strolled arm in arm down the street, the October air so stifling at midday it felt to Jack as if he were inhaling cotton. Unseasonably hot, especially compared to San Francisco. He had never liked El Paso. North Franklin Peak was visible in the West. No matter where he stood in the city, he could see the mountain, a reminder of Rosella waiting for him, the baby due in February. To think, he would be a father. It made him smile. His kid would have an easier life than he had growing up. He would make sure of that. He couldn’t wait to ride the tracks home. San Francisco was never this hot. Never this complicated.

  ~~~

  The cowboy and banker took a quick peek at their cards and folded. Jack palmed his two replacement cards up, fanned them just enough to glimpse the additional queen, and snapped them closed. Aces over queens—a winning hand if ever there was one. About time his luck turned. Jack leaned back in his chair and eyed the pile of coins in the center of the table. Enough to make up for everything he’d lost so far this evening. And then some. Enough to pay for Lourdes’s dead bird hat. He shoved the last of his silver into the pot and called. He threw back a shot of whiskey and signaled for another. The rancher—went by the name of Parsons, just Parsons, no first name—was the only one left now. Cocky bastard was obviously going to see it through to the end.

  Jack laid his cards down and reached for the pot. Parsons crushed his hand. Once Parsons eased up, Jack jerked his hand away. Under the table, he massaged the bones. What a freak! Jack wouldn’t be surprised if his hand bruised. There weren’t many men who could best Jack, but Parsons was a regular Paul Bunyan. One by one, Parsons laid down his cards. Son of a gun. Jack couldn’t believe it. Four kings. What were the odds these two hands could occur in the same deal? A million to one, he guessed. If there was a God, He had it in for Jack. Maybe this was punishment for Lourdes, for adultery. He pondered the possibility for a moment, and then decided Nah. It was all a matter of luck, and he must have used up every lick of his when he persuaded Rosella to marry him.

  They’d met when he visite
d his aunt in West Virginia. He noticed her in church, an angel singing in the choir. Then, to his surprise, later in the week she came to his aunt’s home to help pick and can green beans. He remembered how she looked that day. A fine-featured face and brownish hair that gleamed almost golden in the sunlight. When she entered a room, she filled every corner as if no one else existed. And she did it not because she was chatty, not because she put herself forward, but because she glowed with loving kindness, with a feisty goodness he was hard-put to define. Even so, it was her curiosity about the world, her way of observing details he overlooked—like a crumbling autumn leaf that resembled lace or a witch-shaped cloud—that stoked him until he had no choice but to marry her. Unlike Lourdes, it was the only way to get her into bed.

  Lourdes, too, dominated a room when she slipped along with cat-like steps. If she and Rosella were in the same room, he wondered what would happen, whether Lourdes’s feline ways would get the best of Rosella’s feisty goodness. The two were nearly the same age. But what a difference—Lourdes, already granite-eyed and womanly, while Rosella was sheltered, barely formed.

  He thought it would be fun to shape the woman Rosella would become, but to his surprise, she was shaping him. For the first time in his life, he knew fear. Used to be, he would have faced the Devil down. He scaled cliffs, braved the desert, shot rattlers. Now, he worried every time he rode the rails, wondered if this would be the time some faceless, nameless brakeman would forget to set his fl ag to warn of a stopped train ahead. Or a dispatcher in a far-off city would make a miscalculation and two trains would meet head-on round the bend. Or any of a dozen other human or equipment malfunctions might occur and boom—Jack’s train would smash its way into railroad history. With single-track roads, collisions were bound to happen. More often than the public knew. But railroad men like Jack knew. And it was clear to him his luck wasn’t what it used to be.

  The worst fear was that Rosella would find out about Lourdes or one of the other women who kept him company. He was afraid his wife would leave him. He was afraid she’d die in childbirth. Fear, he thought, ruined luck. Fear made you fold when you should hang in there.

  He threw back another shot while Parsons raked over the coins, the silver pieces clinking merrily as if they mocked Jack. He shoved away from the table and staggered through the door into the street. The moon was nearly full, and North Franklin Peak towered above the city to the West. Now he had to explain to Lourdes why he couldn’t buy her the hat. Worse yet, how was he going to explain lost wages to a pregnant wife? A voice called out, and he turned, his eyes trying to adjust to the dark. He couldn’t make out who it was. By the time Jack saw the face, it was too late.

  Lourdes’s brother Hernando crashed a fist into Jack’s jaw. “So you don’t got any money?”

  Another brother—Jack couldn’t remember his name—pinned Jack’s arms behind his back while Hernando searched Jack’s pockets.

  “Hey, Hernando, what the hell?”

  “You stick it to one of my women, you pay, you got it?”

  One of his women? “Wait just a doggone minute—Lourdes said—aren’t you her brother?”

  Hernando laughed. To the beefy fellow restraining Jack’s hands, he said, “He thinks I’m her brother.” He laughed again. “Her brother, yeah, sure, we’re all brothers, all us Mexicans look alike.”

  Two more hits: one to the gut, one to the side of the head. “You think I’d let my sister sell herself to a gringo—is that what you think?”

  The next blow plowed Jack’s chin skyward and that was it. All he could remember.

  When he came to, he smelled vomit. His own. And something else—hay, manure, musk? A swaying sensation and sound of metal scraping told him he was in an empty freight car. One used to transport animals, he surmised. He lay still a few more moments, and then crawled to the half-opened door. Slightly to the east towered North Franklin Peak. He was headed out of El Paso, thank God. He hated that city. He would telegraph the copper refinery to go ahead with the spur as planned. Local yokels could finalize details like exact elevations as they built the track. Jack’s plans provided a good start. He would have left in a few days anyway.

  At the next station he cleaned up as best he could in the rest-room. He assessed the damage in the mirror. One eye badly swollen. Jaw beginning to purple. No money. He couldn’t go home, not like this. The solution was to lay up in Tucson for a few weeks. He knew a woman there who might take him in. This was the last time. He was giving up loose women and poker for good. Soon as he scraped up a respectable sum of money, he would head on home.

  November 1904

  A thick mist hung in the air, not quite rain, the sort of evening when chill seeped into your bones, yet Jack lingered outside the boarding house, reluctant to face his wife. He knew from Mr. Whiting she had called the railroad office in El Paso and was told they didn’t know where he was. For days now, he’d chewed around several fabrications and was still unsure of their relative merits. The trouble with a lie is you never knew which detail was going to trip you up. What exactly had the office manager said to her? Had anyone seen him in Tucson who might have reported his whereabouts to her? Unlikely. And she was sure to have called the hotel he usually stayed at, so she may expect an explanation of where he stayed these past two weeks. At least he’d made back some of what he’d lost at the poker table.

  He shivered—not only from the damp cold—and entered the boarding house as quietly as possible. He would rather not encounter Nellie Priester if he could help it. Censure too often showed plainly when she directed her gaze on him. He expected she’d heard gossip concerning his less savory activities, but as far as he could tell, she hadn’t repeated it to Rosella. That old woman ran her mouth all day long, her and her uppity friends.

  He hung his wet coat and hat on the rack near the entrance and mounted the creaky staircase. When he reached the second floor, Nellie’s bedroom door cracked open long enough for her to scowl and shake her head, before she ducked back inside.

  Throwing open the door to their sitting room, he declared in a hearty voice, “There’s my girl!”

  Rosella set her needlework aside and clumsily rose from the chair, leaning backward slightly to balance the weight of her abdomen, expecting again, against Nellie’s advice, the old busybody.

  “Where on earth have you been?” she demanded. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

  Thankfully, she spoke in a heated whisper so her voice wouldn’t carry through the bedroom wall to the old biddy’s ears.

  Jack tried to stroke Rosella’s cheek with the back of his fingers, but she jerked away. “Honey, you know I have to work.”

  “If you think you can waltz in here and ‘honey’ me a few times and make everything okay, you have another think coming. I telephoned the railroad office in El Paso and they said you’d left over a week ago.”

  Jack paced across the room in bear-like strides that Nellie could surely hear. “What a mix-up! Somebody’s going to get a royal chewing out for this mistake, I can promise you that. I was out working on a site. They knew how to reach me. Wait until I get hold of that fool in the office.”

  The doubt on her face as she sank back into her chair made him flush with guilt. He wasn’t sure she’d forgiven him for not being by her side when she lost that first baby. Jack had to come through for his wife this time.

  Rosella’s arms were crossed, never a good sign. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. I imagined all sorts of terrible things. That you were kidnapped by Indians or shot by bandits or robbed and beaten by thieves and left in an alley to die. There’s no reason you couldn’t have telephoned or sent word. You have obligations now.”

  “It’s not easy to get to a phone out at a work site.”

  She shot him a warning look: Not good enough.

  “I’ll do better from now on. I’ll find a way.” He crossed the room and knelt beside her. One side of her face was lit by the glow of the lamp; the other, shadowed. He placed a hand
on the sleeve of her dress, a silent entreaty. “I’m here now. I’ll stay until the baby’s born—and I’ll ask to stay in the area for a while after.”

  He leaned closer, intending to kiss her if she was amenable. At first he sensed a stone in her heart, but eventually she softened.

  One knee still on the floor, he straightened his back leg to move closer. “Rosella,” he whispered into her hair. Her name sounded like a poem. Or a prayer. He did love her, he did. He cradled her head between his hands and traced fingers around the backs of her ears.

  With half-gasp, half-giggle, she moved his hand to her belly. “Feel that? The baby’s kicking.” She smiled, teasing. “I think he’s jealous of sharing attention with you.”

  “He?”

  “I think it’s a boy.”

  The kicking spree was quite vigorous. “What’s that little rascal doing in there?” Jack asked. “Square dancing?”

  “I think he forgot to take off his spurs.”

  Jack relaxed. Everything was going to be okay. She would forgive him. She had to. With each little flutter kick, he felt more fused to her than ever.

  ~~~

  True to his word, Jack asked Mr. Whiting to stay in San Francisco for a while after the baby was born. Not only that, the boss gave him a raise and more responsibility.

  Benjamin Roosevelt Joyner was wrinkled and red, and if you asked Jack, rather ugly, but when he discreetly asked Nellie about the baby’s condition, she pronounced Benjamin perfect.

  “All babies arrive a little disgruntled. Give him a week, you’ll see.”

  Nellie was right. Benjamin’s skin became smooth and white as a hard-boiled egg—bald as an egg, too, Jack thought. The baby’s face lost that squeezed look it had on the day of his arrival. Jack’s only complaint was that the child woke up in the middle of the night expecting to be fed. Rosella only laughed at him when he commented on the oddness of the hour.