He peered at Aubrey, analyzing every breath our patient drew. After we tended the poultices again, I hauled all the bedsheets that had been dropped on the floor out to the porch. Anything that had laid on the floor all night would have to be shaken out to make sure no spiders and scorpions were inside them, then washed. I went to haul my soap cauldron from the shed to the fire pit right next to the house.
First thing I knew, Mr. Hanna came and lifted it right up, taking all the weight of it. “Where’ll you have it?” he asked.
“It sits under the adobe ramada, where I usually stir the soap. Yonder.” I pointed. The brush shade had burned and gone, but the four adobe posts of the ramada stood. I kicked up the stones a little, checking for anything with more than four legs, then set to raising up a little fire pit. When I got some kindling set, he took a flint from his pocket and tapped it, lit the fire, and turned the rod so the big cauldron of water moved over the flame. One minute you’d get more fire than you needed; the next, the wood was wet. We upturned the woodpile, searching for dryer staves, then got some going. He put some wetter wood around the sides so it could dry from the heat. It would take some time for it to boil, so we headed back to the house and I made us a plate of biscuits and beans.
I sat in the rocking chair on the porch, watching as Mr. Hanna gently poured warm tea on his son’s blistered face. While he was doing it, he said, “Mrs. Elliot? How did you make out? I see the house is standing, but I admit I didn’t notice much else.”
“Not so bad as some,” I said. “Lost a chicken coop and all my chicks. A brand-new windmill. Both my dogs. Of course, I don’t know about the cattle. My stock horses and some old ones are all up the road except one, and that’n’s all right. And your place? Those little sheep—did you save the stock?”
“Not a one left. Every last dime I had, roasted in the pasture like they were stuck in a trap there. It wasn’t bad enough that every night some wild animal would take down one or two, but there’s not a one left. Nor a wall standing.”
“Not the house? Not anything?”
“No, ma’am.”
For a long time, there was no sound but the dribbling of tea. I looked toward the graveyard on the hill, and the blackened branches that had been a shady jacaranda tree. They looked like ugly fingers clawing at the sky. “Listen,” I said, “it’s raining again.”
“Day late,” he said.
Water began to course off the roof. Aubrey groaned. He whispered something, then called, “Ma? Callie? Mama?”
Mr. Hanna said, “That’s my wife and daughter. They died together.” Then he dropped his head to his hands.
Aubrey said, “Mama? I’m sick, Mama.”
I leaned over Aubrey and whispered to him. “You keep still now, son. I know it hurts, but it’s going to get well. Try to sleep. That’s it. Sleep.” I told Mr. Hanna I believed poor Aubrey had succumbed more to the tequila than to the burn on him. His skin already seemed a little better. After just a few hours, his burn was not as fiery red and open.
“I’ve buried my wife and seven children. If this boy dies—”
I said, “He’s not going to die. You need food and sleep yourself.”
He nodded, then said, “I suppose we all do.” The rain stopped, but the air was full of water, and a bright-colored rainbow circled the sky like pretty ribbons. The sun was angled low and the clouds broke. Broken pieces of a second rainbow wove in and out of the vapors higher up. Glancing light pierced the gray clouds like rays from heaven, the way the old painters used to picture God touching people on earth. I’d seen those pictures in books, and I wondered if the painters ever came to the territories. It must shine like that all over the world for some Italian man to have seen it three hundred years ago and put it down with paint. It also occurred to me that maybe God was touching the earth. Like the rain—a day late, I’d say.
I dug through my shelves and opened some jarred flat beans and some corn relish. In my bread bin, a loaf sat, waiting, but covered with dust. Well, I just shook it off and then cut off the dirty part, and it wasn’t bad inside, just stale. Every plate I owned was dirty, so I poured the beans in coffee cups and piled the relish on the bread, and we ate it together. It tasted like the best Christmas dinner.
Mr. Hanna stretched himself out next to his boy and fell right to sleep. I meant to get up and start washing up the dishes. At least I’d have hot water in the kitchen. But first, I’d just listen to the rain. Be thankful for the rain.
I woke up an hour later with a crick in my neck from sleeping with my head bent. The rain had quit and the air was damp but cool. If there’d a been no one there but me, I’d have stopped and admired the pretty sky for a while. A little sleep had changed my attitude with the Almighty. Maybe there was some truth in those paintings at that. I wondered at the beauty of it, feeling new strength in my bones. There was much to do, and I was determined to sleep in a bed and eat off clean plates.
Mr. Hanna was sleeping near his son, and though it was time to change his dressings again, I decided rest would do them a world of good, so I slipped into the house.
I’d gotten a load of plates clean and stacked when I heard voices. My menfolk had bathed at Rudolfo’s house and were wearing some poor-fitting clothes, walking slowly. Directly behind them came Shiner. It’s odd, how relieved I was to see my family, but how touched I was to see that old dog following them home. Willie was not with them. Must have stayed there, no doubt eating his weight in Luz’s fresh, hot tortillas. But seeing these three, it was hard not to cry. I pushed with my fingertips against my chin, forcing the tears away.
Charlie was the first one on the porch. He nodded to Mr. Hanna. “How’s the old man there?” he asked.
Mr. Hanna said, “I think he’s asleep. Your ma says he’ll live.”
Chess reached the porch by then. He said, “If she says so, he’ll live. She’s pretty stubborn. You all ’scuse me, I’m going to go in and put my feet up.”
I poured some more tea in a bowl and took the can of soda ash under my arm. When Chess opened the door, I said, “Stubborn woman passing through,” and smiled, and he held the door for me.
Charlie and Gil pulled up some old chairs we keep on the porch, then sat by Aubrey’s cot. Charlie said, “Mr. Hanna, did you hear how he came to be in this shape?”
Mr. Hanna said, “No. I was chasing the fire line at one side and thought he was behind me. I lost him in the smoke.”
Charlie said, “Story has it that he came upon one of those wild bunches of rampaging steer. They were bearing down on Gilbert. Aubrey cut in front of them, but they twisted and forced his horse right up against a barbwire fence we were trying to cut so they could run from the fire. By the time Aubrey’s horse got untangled, it ran off and tossed him into heavy brush. We had to put the horse down.”
Gilbert took up the story from there. “The brush was aflame. See that, where his neck is so bad? It was the kerchief he had on to keep out the smoke. It had dried and a spark caught. It went up like a firecracker. Still burning when he ran from the brush.”
“Lord a mercy,” I said.
“Here,” Gilbert said, then reached in his pocket. Pulling out a folded packet of paper, he said, “El Maldonado sent him the last of the quinina.”
Mr. Hanna said, “What’s that?”
“Quinine powder,” I said.
Mr. Hanna nodded and said, “Ah. For malaria.”
“Among other things,” Charlie said. “He also sent this to wash it down.” He pulled forth a clay jug with a cork in the top. “Tequila terapéutica.” Charlie grinned at me, saying, “Pure-D, grade-A nectar de maguey. For medicinal purposes only. It’s the reason he’s sound asleep now.” He put the jug down with a thump. “Ah. Just remembered. Aunt Savannah is sending Rachel and Rebeccah with some food. Mary Pearl told us not to let you start fixing supper, even if we have to tie you down.”
“Savannah used those words?” I asked.
“Well, not precisely,” he said.
I shook
my head. “Well, tuck that jug out of sight before they get here.”
“The other thing is, El Maldonado asked us to come back. The boys watching the herd need someone to spell them. Everybody’s good and tired. We figured to head back soon as we have supper. We’ll be home at midnight, when the watch is through.”
“Where’s Willie?” I asked.
Gil said, “Stayed put. He’s going to eat with the hands down there.”
“You all didn’t let Mary Pearl stay there, did you? It’s getting dark.”
Charlie shrugged and said, “Sure. Why not?”
“A girl alone with all those cowpunchers?”
Charlie said, “She’s not just a girl. Mary Pearl can take care of herself. And when we left, she was in the house. I’ll be back there before nightfall anyway.”
“Fine, then,” I said. “When you get home, wake me up, if I’m not already.”
August 6, 1906
I’d always expected it to be the other way around—that eventually parents would get through to their children and they’d quit balking at every word. The older my children get the less inclined they are to mind me. I had told them to wake me when they got in at midnight. Said I’d take a turn changing the dressings on Aubrey Hanna. As it turned out, I slept the whole night away and they did the doctoring while I laid abed.
In the morning, I had to stop every other step and take accounts, as if my body was awake but my mind was back there on the pillow. Aubrey was up, not minding at all that Rachel and Rebeccah were ministering over his burned face. He managed to keep his moaning trimmed to a few hisses, no doubt for the sake of the girls nursing him. Rose was walking with all four feet around the corral, like her old self. Shiner was under the porch, exhausted. We hadn’t found Nip.
For breakfast, I cooked everyone a stack of Indian-flour flapjacks, served up next to a side of bacon with a jug of sorghum syrup. It made my heart lighten up, watching everyone enjoy the food I laid on the table. While we ate, we talked. Mr. Hanna had been paying on a farm with planted pastures, fruit trees, barns, sheds, and a good-size house, not to mention the trainload of sheep and goats he’d had delivered the week before the fire. What he had to make payments on now were a few hundred acres of burnt scrabble without a living thing on them. Although he’d just told us how he’d lost everything, I saw how he kept eyeing his son, and how when Aubrey began eating, Mr. Hanna’s spirits lifted. Even a wasted farm, in the light of day, tempered with a full stomach, didn’t seem as bad now that his son was on the mend. I made two batches of flapjacks, then had to quit because I was out of eggs. We laughed at Aubrey, too, because before we were done, he’d eaten eleven flapjacks before he came up for air. When nothing was left but the smell hanging in the air, I pushed them all outside and said I wanted to clean up the dishes all by myself, since they’d done the doctoring through the night. I told the boys to get that fire going before they mounted up, and we’d rinse out the bedclothes at last. The smells of breakfast lingered and made the house smell good again, instead of like ashes and burnt feathers. The rain had cooled things, but the air was heavy and close. Mr. Hanna went to tend Aubrey’s sores another time.
I was alone again, but not lonesome. No longer in a hollow house. In fact, I was glad to have them all busy working outside. It is especially good to have none but your own company when you plan to act a fool. I wept from the bottom of my soul.
While I washed and wiped and stacked, I cried. I reckon I cried first for the love of my family and the fact that they were all still alive. Then I cried for my dead chickens and missing dog. I wept over the thought of having to shoot my favorite horse, even though I hadn’t done it in the end. I cried for things I didn’t know, like who’d gotten hurt or maybe killed in the stampedes, people we hadn’t found yet, and for animals that had suffered in ways Providence would never have intended. I cried for the Hannas and all their burned sheep in the field. I cried with thanks for the Maldonados, for Savannah and Albert and their children, and for any people I didn’t know who might have lost their land, too. I let tears run right down into the basin. Then I dropped a big spoon, which splashed the wash water a little. I wiped my eyes with my arm, a coffee cup in my hand and soap running from my elbow. Someone took hold of the cup and pulled it gently out of my fingers. I turned with a start. Mr. Hanna.
I was still feeling skittish about having odd men slipping up on me, but he wasn’t questioning or threatening me. He wasn’t even looking at me. He plopped the cup into the rinse water and took the dish towel from the table and started wiping it dry. Then he took other things setting there clean and wiped and stacked them. All that, he did without one word or without ever looking toward me. Each dish I finished, he took from me without a sound and dipped and dried it. Finally, they were all done. By that time, too, my tears had dried, though my shirtwaist was dark and wet. I chanced a peek at him, and he looked up as if I’d startled him. I said, “Thank you Mr. Hanna, but, as I said, I didn’t mind doing them myself.”
He said, “Soon as I started, I figured out you wanted to be left alone. I’d already stuck my nose where it didn’t belong, but I figured to help a little. I’ll leave you be.”
“Reckon you don’t have to go. I’m done … being alone.”
“Thank you for what you’ve done for Aubrey.”
“Glad to do it. Glad it worked, too. My mama told me about the tea. Never tried it firsthand.”
“I’m no doctor,” he said, “but it’s healed like a miracle. Mrs. Elliot, I can’t repay—”
“Hush.”
“Mrs. Elliot?”
“Hand me that towel.” We dried our hands. Then I put the coffeepot under the pump. Before I could reach for it, he took the pump handle, started moving it up and down, and filled the coffeepot. “What did you do in the war?” I asked. Then I felt ashamed the minute the words cleared my mouth. I knew what men did in war. “What I meant was, were you in the army before the war?”
He handed me the heavy coffeepot, saying, “Oh, no. I was a shepherd before, too. Wyoming is good sheep country. There’s nothing like a sheepskin-lined coat when the wind is howling and the ice is coming in sidelong. Figure I’m all done with that now. What I can’t figure is why they just stood there and died. Didn’t run.”
My lip started to shake and my chin tightened. If there was one thing I wanted, it was not to start in weeping again. I clung to that heavy pot of water. I said, “Did your people always run sheep?”
“I never thought much about it, but I figure they did. Way back to the old country. Of course, they came here before the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence, so ‘the old country’ is just a saying. Still, they’ve always been shepherds. My pa used to say it was the first calling of King David, and that every time you put out your hands to shear a sheep, you are reaching back through the ages.”
“That’s pretty romantic talk for a sheep rancher.”
He nodded. “He was a man of poetry. He wrote songs. Maybe that’s why he always considered King David when he worked the lambs. And his name was David.”
I said, “What about you? Do you write poetry?”
“Aw. Most of what I ever thought or meant to write … well, I figure it sort of got ‘lost in the noise of war.’”
I smiled, and said, “I reckon Plutarch understood war, but he was talking about law, not poetry.”
He smiled. “Mrs. Elliot, you are most certainly right,” he said. “I reckon he was at that. Are you going to make that coffee now, or is it for later?”
“The reason I filled it was to heat some water and take a bath. It’s the easiest thing to heat it and carry it hot, because of the handle. Unless you’d care for coffee?”
He said, “I’m full up, thank you kindly. Will you let me haul the tub for you?”
I felt a quiver in my chest. It was a boylike request, and it pulled a girl-like flutter from me, which immediately turned to anger. I have no use for female fluttering. I pulled the coffeepot closer to my chest and wra
pped my arms about it. “I believe I will manage by myself,” I said.
He said, “Well, there’s plenty to do. Can’t help my own, but I can help the rest. Thank you again for the meal.” He left my kitchen.
I took the water to the stove and stoked and poked at the firebox. Then I dragged the bathtub down from where it hung on the back porch. I felt the strength in my arms as I did, and the rawness of my hands. I was certainly able to get my own bath. None of us on this ranch needed some stranger to help. None of us wanted some man in the kitchen wiping cups. I set another pan of water on to heat, too. Then I took a quick walk up to the cemetery while it did.
My heart was near in my ears and I could feel sweat running from my collar down to the middle of my back. “Jack Elliot,” I said, “if you’d a been here where you belonged, none of this would have happened. And if I need someone to wipe my dishes, I’ll lasso someone who belongs in that kitchen. Which I’ve got plenty of. Plenty! You hear me? There’s no reason—” I stopped fussing, because I didn’t know what I planned to say next. No reason for Mr. Hanna—the sheep man, for goodness sake!—to be wiping cups in my kitchen. No reason for my heart to flutter because he did. You’d think I was as dry for a helping hand as Chess said I was for a compliment.
“Jack,” I said, “everything is near lost. If you were here, you’d probably choose now to go hunting some claim jumper in Cochise County or someplace. It’d still be all left up to me. Well, you’ll just have to hear about it later. I didn’t ask for all this work to do. Sure don’t need someone else’s problems on my hands. Some strange man and his son. I’ve got no time for the likes of you, any of you. You hear that?”
Another rain came in the early afternoon, rumbling and complaining like a spoiled child who then cries great sobs that disappear quickly when some new toy is chosen. At least it left a peaceful and cool dampness. It would have been nice to smell the greasewood and sage, too, but all we could smell was the odor of fire.