by Alice Duncan
“Er . . .”
Since I wasn’t any shrinking violet and had always been more of a tomboy than my mother thought was proper, I didn’t have to wait for Phil to help me down from the wagon. I hopped down myself, using the wheel as a step. “Phil can’t stay, Minnie. He was kind enough to bring me out here, is all.”
“Oh.” She released Phil, who staggered back a step or two. Minnie could be pretty powerful when she was in one of what Pa called her “phases.” “That’s too bad.” She rubbed her chin, looking troubled. Her gaze sharpened as she glanced at me. “Why aren’t you wearing a sunbonnet, Annabelle? You’ll burn yourself to a crisp in that frivolous hat.”
I swear, I couldn’t win no matter what. Grumpy, I handed Phil his bandanna, ignored Minnie’s question, and muttered, “Thanks.”
Giving me a grin, Phil took his bandanna. Then he turned back to Aunt Minnie and asked politely, “What’s the matter, ma’am?” I was glad he’d opted not to tell Minnie he’d asked me the same question she’d asked about the use of sunbonnets versus pretty straw hats.
“Come indoors and have a glass of tea, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Phil cast a doubtful glance at the horses, which were drooping slightly. It was darned hot. “Well, ma’am, I’d like to, but I’d best be getting the critters home. My pa’s waiting for me, you see.”
Although Minnie didn’t generally pay attention to any human miseries but her own, she had a soft spot for dumb animals, and a glance at the horses confirmed Phil’s assessment of the situation. “Well . . . all right. But you come back this evening for supper, young man. Annabelle and Libby and I are going to need help dealing with this situation.”
Oh boy, I could hardly wait. “Yeah, Phil. Please come for supper.” I suppose there might have been a trace of a whine in my voice as I made the request, but I was suffering, darn it, and anticipating further miseries to come.
Again, Phil said, “Happy to,” tipped his hat, bobbed his head, waved to Libby, who still stood on the porch, her arms crossed over her bosom, looking stern, and jumped aboard the wagon again. Jeepers woofed once more. Stupid dog.
Minnie took my arm in a grip like an iron manacle (or maybe I was only feeling the least little bit put upon) and led me into the house. It was cool and dark in there, since the ladies had drawn the curtains against the mid-day sun. Jeepers picked himself up from the porch with a grunt and limped after us, stiff-legged and with his tail drooping. Guess he had the rheumatics, like most old folks.
Minnie’s house had been built by Uncle Joe around 1900, I guess. It was big and open, with a large fireplace in the parlor and smaller fireplaces in most of the other rooms, since there were no electrical lines running that far out of town, although Phil said it was only a matter of time. Minnie’d had a telephone installed when the telephone company made them available to rural customers, but there was no indoor plumbing or anything else of a modern nature. A screened-in porch off the kitchen was used as an extra room when it was needed.
I didn’t mind that so much. In those days, the whole of Rosedale was pretty rugged, and lots of people didn’t have plumbing, gas lines, or electricity. You’d have thought we were still living in the Old West my younger brother was so fond of, except for the occasional automobile and the telephone poles. And, of course, the Pecos Theater, which showed moving pictures that usually reached us several months after the rest of the country had seen them.
Minnie’s furniture was old but well-made, and she and Libby kept the place squeaky clean, no small feat in those days when dust storms were common and there were very few trees to get in the way of whatever the wind wanted to do. Antimacassars protected the backs of chairs and sofas from anyone’s hair oil, and the rugs Minnie had braided when she and Joe were first married still covered the floors (made from pine logs Joe had cut himself from up around Capitan way). Both the floor and the rugs would probably last forever.
“I have to tell you the latest, Annabelle. The ghost was active last night. I’m so frightened it will drive my darling Joe away for good and all.”
“I’m sure there’s no chance of that.” I meant it, too. I mean, ghosts? What next?
“I’m not so sure. There’s something evil about that ghost, and I’m afraid.”
Libby, who probably hadn’t heard anything from the time Phil and I had arrived until that last comment of Minnie’s, nodded her head. “Evil.”
Wonderful. I just love encountering evil spirits. Bats, I reminded myself. It’s only bats. There are no such things as ghosts. I missed Phil already. “If you think it’s Julia Gilbert’s ghost, why do you say it’s evil? Julia wasn’t evil.”
“Of course not. She was only a little girl.”
If Minnie thought that explained the matter, she was dead wrong. So to speak. Seeking enlightenment, although from a pretty leaky source, I said, “Well, then, how come her ghost is evil if she was only a little girl? And a nice one, if I remember correctly.”
“We’re dealing with forces from the Other Side,” Minnie said ominously. “Things happen on the Other Side.”
Ah. Well, then . . .
“Can’t Uncle Joe do anything about it? Drive her ghost away or something?”
I thought it was a pretty good question, but I guess Minnie disagreed, because she glared at me. “It’s evil,” she said again, “and your uncle Joe is not equipped to war with the devil.”
Oh. I nodded, as if I understood and agreed with her. In truth, I thought she was fast descending into out-and-out lunacy. Anyhow, I wasn’t equipped to war with the darned devil, either, but she didn’t seem to care about me. Phooey.
Minnie perked up. “But come into the kitchen, Annabelle, and have some lunch. Libby’s made an excellent stew.”
The only good thing about staying at Aunt Minnie’s house, besides Jeepers, was the food. Both Minnie and Libby were wonderful cooks, and Libby’s stew was as excellent as advertised. So were the pecan biscuits with home-made butter and some of Aunt Minnie’s apricot jam. And then there was the buttermilk pie for dessert. I guess that if I had to face the supposedly evil spirit of a poor little thirteen-year-old girl who had met an untimely end twenty miles to the east of us, it was nice that I’d get to do it well-fed.
One funny point–at least I think it’s kind of funny–is that Miss Libby never sat at the table and took meals with Minnie. Anyhow, she didn’t when Minnie had guests, even guests like me, who were more in the nature of captives. Claiming she “knew her place,” she stood back, arms folded over her enormous bosom, and frowned at the diners. I was so accustomed to this performance that Libby’s grim expression didn’t put me off my food even a little bit. Guess a body can get used to most anything.
I liked Minnie’s kitchen better than any other room in her house, because it was cozy. It was large, with a wooden table in the center where the two of them prepared food and ate informal meals. The ladies cooked on a big wood-burning stove, since, as mentioned earlier, there was no electricity, and gas lines didn’t run out that far out yet. They had a deal with Olin Burgess, the ugly little man who lived about a half-mile away, to cut and deliver wood to them once a month.
Either Minnie or Libby had made curtains for the kitchen windows out of a pretty white cotton material that was decorated with apples and that Minnie had bought at Blue’s. I thought that if I ever had a kitchen of my own, I wouldn’t mind having curtains like that. There was a water pump at the sink, so you didn’t have to go outdoors to pump water to cook or wash up with, and a door led to the cellar where Minnie and Libby kept root vegetables and preserves and so forth.
I think I already mentioned the screened-in sleeping porch off the kitchen, where you could sit and work on days when you needed a breeze. The back door led to the garden, where Minnie and Libby grew cucumbers and onions and squash and tomatoes and cabbages and melons and anything else that took their fancy, including okra, which wasn’t my favorite vegetable, although I liked it well enough when it was coated with cornmeal
and fried. Both ladies were good gardeners, too.
As we ate, Minnie regaled me with tales of the ghost. Evidently, it made noises at night (bats, I reminded myself); disturbed the chickens (coyotes. Minnie ought to get herself a younger dog. One with ears that still worked); and occasionally hollered things in a language she couldn’t understand.
That last item got me. I couldn’t think of anything that might explain my aunt hearing night noises speaking in tongues. Insanity, maybe, but I wasn’t ready to relegate her to the loony bin in Las Vegas quite yet. I don’t think anyone in our family had ever gone completely nuts, although I’m not really sure. Back then, people weren’t as eager to brag about their mental problems as they are now.
Besides, she was blaming all this disturbance on a little girl who used to be a friend of mine. Didn’t seem fair. “Wait a minute, Minnie. Are you telling me you think poor little Julia Gilbert has got herself a band of foreign-talking devils to plague you?”
Minnie frowned at me. “You can’t begin to imagine what transpires on the Other Side, young lady.”
“I guess not.” How could she? I didn’t ask. “But . . . well, I don’t think Julia could ever be evil, Minnie. She was too nice. And she was kind of shy. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”
“So you say. I know what I know.”
As far as I could tell, she didn’t know a darned thing. Nevertheless, I heeded my mother’s words and didn’t say so. “Um . . . could it be Mexican shepherds?” I suggested without much fervor. Anyhow, I was too full of good food to get truly worked up about Minnie’s nuttiness.
“No, it could not.” Minnie gave me another good glare. “Don’t be silly, girl. Why would Mexican shepherds be shepherding at night in my yard?”
Another good question. “Um . . .” A man named Dr. Cable MacTeague was in charge of an archeological expedition from the University of New Mexico. I suddenly thought of him and offered another suggestion. “Maybe it’s one of Dr. MacTeague’s men. Some of them are foreign. I think.”
“Why,” Minnie asked me in that school-teacherish voice I was coming to hate, “would archeologists being digging at night in my back yard?”
I shrugged and smiled at her. “Guess you got me there.” I didn’t understand why Julia would be haunting her at night, either. Again, I kept my opinion to myself.
“Here are them extra biscuits.”
Minnie and I glanced up just as Miss Libby plopped a bundle wrapped in a checked cloth onto the table between us. Minnie said, “Oh, yes, I forgot.” She turned toward me, and I sensed a duty coming on. Because I wanted to stay on these ladies’ good sides, I only smiled.
“Take these biscuits to Mr. Burgess, Annabelle. I promised him some. And he’s got some Swiss chard for our supper. I’ve got to finish up some pillow slips I’ve been sewing.”
Ack! As if ghosts weren’t enough for a young woman not even twenty years old to deal with, I now had to speak to a man who scared the living daylights out of me! I wanted to bury my head in my hands. “Sure, Aunt Minnie. Happy to.” Boy, was that a lie!
Miss Libby must have heard some of my unwillingness in the tone of my voice or something, because she stabbed me in the shoulder with a sharp forefinger. “And don’t you go sniggering at him, girl.”
I stared up at her, offended. “Snigger at him? I never snigger.”
“Humph. That poor man’s endured enough nastiness in his lifetime already. Don’t you go forgettin’ that he lost his looks when he was younger than you are now, and he was on the good side of that war, too.”
The “good” side was, naturally, the Federal side. And I agreed with her since I can’t even conceive of slavery being anything but bad, but that didn’t make the errand any more palatable to me. Especially right then, since I was feeling not unlike a slave myself.
I was, however, my mother’s daughter, and Ma had taught me never to be unkind to anyone. That went double for the old or infirm, and Mr. Burgess was both. Therefore, I’m not. Unkind, I mean. I was never one of those kids who tormented poor Mr. Burgess. In fact, a couple of times, I tried to make my friends stop when they did it. That didn’t mean I wanted anything to do with him.
“Don’t worry, Miss Libby. I’m never rude to people. My ma would skin me if I were.”
“And a good thing, too,” said Miss Libby with another snort. “I swan, young people today don’t know a thing.”
Possibly, although I doubted it. I’m sure I could quote more passages from Shakespeare than Libby had ever even read, but I sensed that what she meant didn’t have anything to do with book-learning. With a sigh, I stood up and took the bundle. “Let me go to the bathroom, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Going to the bathroom” was a pretty standard euphemism back then. While Minnie’s house did have a bathroom, it wasn’t what most people today think of as a bathroom. It was a room with a tub, a pump, a wash basin, and a mirror, where you could wash up. If you were feeling particularly energetic, you could even heat your water and use buckets to pour the heated water into the tub, although usually people made do with cold water from the pump. If you had to go to the toilet, you did it in the outhouse in back of the house, behind the kitchen.
So that’s what I did. And then I girded my loins, so to speak, took the sunbonnet Minnie handed me and put it on without a murmur, and took off up the road to Olin Burgess’s shack. In order to make myself feel better, I sang. If Jeepers had been five or six years younger, I’d have taken him along for company, but he was too old and rheumatic to make the journey any longer, more’s the pity. Maybe I’d just have to find a puppy somewhere and give it to Minnie. Wish I’d done it before that day.
But I endured. When I got to Mr. Burgess’s shack, around which he’d built a fence out of wood he’d undoubtedly cut himself up in the mountains, I paused at the gate, sucked in a breath of creosote-scented air that was probably hovering in the area of a hundred degrees, and pushed the gate open. I told myself that being ugly wasn’t anything Mr. Burgess could do anything about, and that my aunt and Miss Libby had lived near him for twenty or thirty years, and he hadn’t killed either one of them yet.
That in itself was a point in his favor. Most of the other people I know probably would have succumbed to the temptation to do away with one or both of them by this time.
Chapter Three
I didn’t have to knock on Mr. Burgess’s door. His two dogs–I couldn’t see them because they were in the shack, but I sure heard them–started barking as soon as I pushed on the gate, and he anticipated my approach. He was standing in the open doorway by the time I got to his shack. I’d already braced myself, but there’s no way for a body to really prepare herself to meet Olin Burgess.
We’ve all met ugly people. But Mr. Burgess was more than ugly. He was deformed. And I guess the source of his disfigurement must have entailed gun powder and fire, because his skin was stained blue in patches. He’d lost an eye, and the socket was all wrinkled and nasty and blue-black. He listed to one side, I suppose because the injuries to his other side had been so severe. What little you could see of his flesh looked almost as if it had melted and was now a mass of scar tissue. In short, he was difficult to look at, and, even though I’m sure it’s a sin of one sort or another, I didn’t want to look at him.
That being the case, and since I had to do it anyway, I forced a smile and held out my packet of pecan biscuits. “Brought these for you, Mr. Burgess. Miss Libby just made them, and I can vouch for them. They’re very good.” There. That was polite, wasn’t it?
“Miss Libby’s food’s always good,” he said in a flattish voice that scraped slightly when he talked, as if it, too, had been damaged in whatever conflagration had ruined his body. He took the bandanna, nodded, shoved a paper sack full of Swiss chard at me, and retreated into his shack.
Okay. I guess that took care of that. A little disconcerted, although more pleased than not that he hadn’t engaged me in conversation, I turned and went back through the gate.
I ambled along, thinking that it would be nice to have walked that half-mile in the blazing sun and have more to talk about at the end of the trip than what had just transpired. Maybe I’d still see a herd of wild burros or antelopes. Or maybe I’d see Phil and some of the other fellows from the Flying G Ranch herding dogies. Or maybe an eagle would swoop down out of the sky, scoop up a vole, and carry it back to its aerie in the mountains. Or maybe a tall, dark, handsome stranger, would come riding down from the hills and fall madly in love with me. Heck, a girl can always daydream, can’t she?
Since I no longer had the encountering of Mr. Burgess to worry me, I took note of the well-tended rose bushes he’d planted along his fence. That was nice. I like flowers, and appreciate people who take the time to cultivate them in inhospitable surroundings–and the high plains of southeastern New Mexico are inhospitable, believe me.
Then something green caught my eye and I detoured to my right. You tend to pay attention to green stuff when you live in the middle of a desert, as noted previously regarding the rose bushes.
Lo and behold, behind Mr. Burgess’s house, he’d cultivated himself a vegetable garden. Mind you, vegetable gardens in and of themselves weren’t unusual, since most people had them. It was cheaper to grow your own than buy them at Joyce’s Produce Company on Main Street, unless you wanted unusual fruits like bananas or oranges. At our house behind the store, we grew apples and apricots in addition to the vegetables.
And here, by gum, I saw that Mr. Burgess was doing the same thing. He hardly ever came to town, being uneasy about the taunting-kids situation, I reckon, and here was one of the ways he avoided doing so.
He hadn’t only planted a vegetable patch, either. He’d made himself a pretty little garden spot behind his house, with wood chips and crushed pecan shells lining the rows between the beans and onions and tomatoes and so forth, and flowers surrounding the whole thing, smack up against and doing a good job of hiding, the fence he’d made out of chicken wire. You had to have a fence out there, to protect your vegetables from jackrabbits and antelopes. I saw where irises had bloomed earlier in the year, and now there were poppies and hollyhocks lording it over the vegetables, as if the vegetables were their servants or something.
