“What I really want is a baked potato and corn relish.”
“Must be feeling better. Maybe in the morning.” As I poured water for her, I saw by the kerosene lamp that the dark hollows had left her eyes.
“Don’t tell Mama.”
“I won’t tell anything you ask me not to.” I kissed her goodnight, though I felt shaken as I made my way past the parlor. Halfway up the stairs, I stopped. Could that have been only an apparition of Mary Pearl, coming to say farewell? I’d read of such things. I returned to the dining room and raised the lamp while I touched her forehead. She was warm. Satisfied, I wrapped myself in the coverlet and sat in the rocking chair, watching over her until I fell asleep.
January, 21, 1906
I have sent Morris straight to the post office to check for a letter from the folks in Illinois State. Nothing has come from Wheaton or anyplace else. I have questioned myself whether or not to discuss it with Savannah, wondered if it would matter or only cause discontent. Then I decided if the folks in Illinois State had a-wanted her to come, they’d a-said by now.
Mary Pearl has been having her tonic every three hours, and someone must provide it, so while she was wakeful, I sat with her, reading aloud. After hearing about her sickness, Mary Pearl’s town friend Monty Hershey sent over a book she loved, so Savannah reads her the Psalms and I read often to our little patient from Elizabeth Browning’s Sonnets—a book which her mother would have none of, if she knew, but it cheers Mary Pearl, and I will do all I can for her. Savannah and I take turns waiting at her bedside with the Coca-Cola syrup.
It was while we were changing the watch before dawn this morning, that she began a coughing spell.
“Mama?” Mary Pearl said. “Do you think you could make me a baked potato?”
Savannah grasped her hands to her own throat and then touched Mary Pearl’s forehead. The fever had broken. “Oh, thank heaven,” Savannah said. “Now, now, all will be well.”
“Go on and rest, Savannah,” I said. “I’ll stay. It might spread to you with her coughing, and you need some sleep.”
“I haven’t slept in three days. But I’m not really tired.”
With that, I had my own short coughing jag, and it reminded me just how badly I had felt. The sun broke over the Rincon mountains and suddenly I saw Savannah’s face more clearly. Her eyes were weary in a way I’d never seen before. If there was ever anyone who was weakened enough to ride this influenza to its last depot, she might be the one. “Go on, I’ll stay.” I said it forcefully, not as a suggestion. Savannah left the room, feeling ordered out, I suspect, but it was for her own good.
We coughed so much that by lunchtime, Savannah said Mary Pearl and I sounded like two coyotes barking at each other. Terrible as it was to hear, it signaled her returning to us, so I welcomed her coughing as if it were a song. I said nothing about the letter writing, because it seemed a lost cause and not near as important as the victory we’d won over that old Specter.
On the twenty-fourth of January, our quarantine was lifted, and the children were running us ragged, having recovered too soon for the rest. For myself, I am coming back to health. Best of all, Mary Pearl is being more ornery and feisty than the littlest children, and plum full of herself like a yearling colt, so that we constantly remind her to sit still, take time, not wear herself out and risk a relapse.
It seems the fog of illness has not drifted to the lungs of those newly arrived, Savannah and Albert and Aubrey. The smells of the sickroom have been replaced with the smells of barley and pea soup, roasted chicken, glazed vegetables, and risen bread. The rain continues to fall yet the feeling in this house is one of hope and happiness, as we have weathered the worse storm indoors.
Chapter Nine
January 25, 1907
This morning from the window upstairs I saw Udell coming up the walk before Lizzie let him in the door. I reckon I’d expected him to show up in a twelve-dollar suit, for all that booty he was supposed to bring home from Colorado, but he wore the same work clothes, same heavy lambskin coat and slightly broken hat. I heard Lizzie tell him to wait in the parlor, and heard Vallary, Lorelei, and Patricia all greeting him, him answering back, showing interest in something or other they were doing. I had seen some strain on April’s face, too, and I thought how tired she must be of all this company she had welcomed a month ago. It was time to go home. And Udell was back.
I didn’t wait to be summoned, but went right down to the parlor, although I set my face to be stern. Part of my heart wanted to run down the steps and rush to his arms, as if I were a girl, young enough to be not Mary Pearl’s aunt but her sister. April’s children were playing with a set of colored wooden animals in one corner of the parlor, and they ought not to be witness to some wanton spectacle. After all, that rascal had been gone more than a month and hadn’t written a single line.
When I came in, there was a flurry of greeting by the children again, aimed at me as if I’d been gone a week rather than upstairs for an hour, then I sent them to their toys.
“ ‘Morning, Mrs. Elliot,” Udell said. He held his hat in both hands, moved with the stiff solidity of a fellow who worked hard and close to the ground. Unlike the lanky, sword-swinging horseman Jack had been, Udell’s shape and gait was nothing that would draw him a second look anywhere. His brown eyes were not sparkling with mysterious laughter, but frankly honest and easily read. He watched me with a bit of hesitation, as if I somehow might not have recognized him after a month and three days.
“ ‘Morning, Mr. Hanna,” I returned.
“Heard you been sick,” he said. “Mighty glad to see you up and around.”
“Thank you.”
“I got home two weeks ago. I couldn’t call, you see, folks being quarantined and all. Been working on the house. It’s just some scaffold and rocks now. It’s going to be pretty good, I think. Your brother Harland is helping me.” His face flushed deeply as he said that last, though the words had nothing I could see to make a man blush like a girl.
I couldn’t help but see we were about five feet apart. All the times I’ve leaned against him, kissed the lips he spoke to me with now, pressed my face against that face, and at this moment it felt as if we were hollering across a canyon. Ignore the children and sweep me into your arms. One touch might convince my stubborn head how my heart truly felt. I said, “Harland is a pretty good architect. Did he draw you a house?” Little voices giggled across the room. My heart banged like a drum. “I’d like to see the picture.”
“Oh, better than that,” he said. “He’s out there hauling buckets of cement with his own hands. Nice fellow. Oh! Forgot to mention. Got my well in yesterday, so I finally had a bath—well, that isn’t a proper thing to say to a lady. So I finally got dressed up to come calling.”
April appeared at the door that came from her conservatory and called the children to lunch. She smiled at Udell and me, and said, “We’ll serve luncheon in the dining room for the grown-ups in half an hour.” Then she closed the great, sliding door behind her.
We were alone. “Udell,” I said, “was it a good trip? Weather all right?”
He took one small step toward me, saying, “I headed north through the Salt River Canyon but I couldn’t bring a wagon back through that. Came down through Santa Fe and Lordsburg. Sent three wagons on ahead. I’ve been ten days, starting to build a shed and all, to shelter the goods.”
I nodded.
He said, “Got the well in,” again.
“I should have asked you to sit. I’m all flustered.”
“Y’ look fine to me.” He smiled, a move that made the corners of his eyes tighten around lines deeply etched there. “The children are gone.”
“It’s broad daylight. And my daughter’s house. I wouldn’t—”
“Kiss me, here in the parlor?”
“Mr. Hanna!”
“You are some kind of woman, Mrs. Elliot.”
“Is that so?” I felt myself almost simpering at his attention, and couldn’t keep
my face straightened out for anything. I could hear him breathing, and I was suddenly aware that he was listening to my breathing, too.
He drew a deep breath and said, “Mrs. Elliot? Ever hear tell of a bower bird?”
“It’s from Africa, I think. The fellow builds a house for his lady bird.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He took two steps closer to me. Dropped his hands to his sides. The hat to the floor. “Mrs. Elliot, Sarah, I plan to build my love a bower. I—I know I haven’t known you very long. I spent some time thinking on this trip and decided it’s not a thing to take lightly. Different than with Frances. Loving a different kind of woman, someone who takes my breath away and keeps my head spinning and makes me feel so simple that it’s a wonder she even looks my direction. Makes me proud and humbled at the same time. I’m going to build it strong and safe on the outside, with gardens and trees and plentiful water, and put every kind of pretty in it. Just like one of those bower birds. I’ll fix it up until you like it enough you’re willing to come there.”
I turned from his earnest face to where a Regulator on the wall started to chime noon. Not even Jack had made such an offer. Jack let me build my own house and came and went as it pleased him. I loved him with every fiber of my being, but he never once considered building a nest for me. Suddenly, I felt very much afraid of Udell Hanna. Afraid of how much I could love him if I let go of the reins and just gave over to the feelings that were turning my neck scarlet. I peered at him from the corners of my eyes, and startled myself when my voice wouldn’t come out louder than a whisper when I said, “I don’t know what to do with you, Udell Hanna.”
“Come see it, that’s all, when I get it built.” He leaned toward me, raised his hands, and I reached out with mine. I could almost feel his kiss on my lips while we were still far apart. At the moment our fingertips touched, the conservatory door slid open on its grumbling rail.
“Mother? Mr. Hanna? It’s already done.” April said. “Won’t you come in?”
At lunch, we told Udell about the quarantine we’d endured and he told of the travel he’d done. He said he was surely happy that Mary Pearl was not going to leave us so soon, and that Aubrey would certainly have come apart at the seams if she had. Then he said he had come back with some furniture his wife’s mother left, and the sale of her house had brought cash, too.
Udell offered to take me shopping before driving home. I’d gotten the doctor to write us a note to the druggist so I got some of that Coca-Cola tonic for influenza, with directions how to use it. It was pretty much settled that we’d leave for home on Monday. Mary Pearl was going to stay another week with her folks in town so she would be recovered enough to go home. I would go back to Albert’s home and relieve Clover of taking care of Ezra and Zachary, and move the three of them to my place. I’d been gone long enough that Charlie and Elsa may well have gotten the notion to go on their own to seek her papa’s blessing. If I know my boy, it’s the kind of thing he’d have done. A year spent as an Arizona Ranger has put iron and steel where his backbone used to be. I told Udell about Charlie and Elsa, too. He didn’t have good feelings about Rudolfo’s daughter being on my place, either.
January 23, 1907
Udell drove his old freight wagon, loaded with lumber and bags of nails and hinges. I sat next to him wearing my old coat and one of his warm shearling ones, too, with a big woolen blanket across our laps, binding us together. Behind us, Gilbert drove the wagon I’d come in, filled high as we could get it with food and goods. Udell had insisted on adding things to my pile of goods, niceties I didn’t usually go in for, like fine white flour and white sugar, raisins, and plenty of extra coffee and oats and ointments for horses. He even bought me a whole bolt of fine muslin and half a bolt each of a summer sky-colored calico and a green-and-black plaid.
I watched Udell’s strong hands driving that team of mules he’d come home with from Colorado. As I sat next to him, so close our knees sometimes bumped, my heart had lost the fire that I’d felt in April’s parlor. Tempered by a morning in a church meeting yesterday, discreetly sitting on either end of a pew with Savannah and Albert between us, the feeling today was a familiarity as gentle as if Udell and I had already been married for years and were just returning from town—as if we’d made this trip seated close on a wagon seat a hundred times before. It was a feeling of simply belonging, and that, too, made a ripple of fear run through my spine. And I never quit thinking that Gilbert drove a second rig right behind us. That influenza had taken the starch plum out of me. Before we reached the arroyo, I felt weak as a bale of loose string.
After a while, he said, “You seem tired.”
“I’m all right,” I said. “Just wrung out. Tell me more about your trip.”
“Pure-D lonesome, most of it. Rode through some snow that like to kept me from making it by the end of the year. Or the century. I got there in time, though.”
I nodded.
“Fixed up for the future a little better than before. Don’t suppose you had a chance to think on anyone or anything except the sick ones at the house there?”
“Only to wonder if you were coming back.”
He didn’t say anything for a good while. Quail scurried in front of us as we interrupted their steady march to forage. We had a sorry time crossing the arroyo, with the wagon loaded as it was. The ground was wet and the mules ornery, and we had to let off some of the lumber for them to make it up the far side. After we got to the top, when it’d seem like a fellow would let off some steam, all Udell said was, “The other day in the house, I’d a-thought it was … well, then. What led you to think I was leaving for good?”
“Can’t say. Just thought that, is all.”
“I’ve got all my teeth,” he said with a grin. “See here? Sound as a dollar.”
I laughed at him. “What’d you say that for?”
“I believe you to be a clever horse trader, and you’d naturally like to know, that’s all. You aim to only throw me a bone for the rest of my days?”
“I expect more of a man than I do of a horse.”
“I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to winning your affections, besides the house. Bought books on cattle husbandry, farming processes, fertiliz-ers.
“Udell, I’m looking at my boy Gil, and thinking of Charlie and your Aubrey and Mary Pearl, and, well, marriage is for young folks. What would be the sense for you and me? And what about children? Have you thought about children? Why, you’ve got a boy older than mine, and I’ve got grandchildren already.”
His face was red and he turned his head, shocked, I suppose, at my brazen talk. Then after a bit he said, “But Sarah, you’re young yet. And beautiful. What would be the matter with children? Maybe have a chance to raise some whose pa’d had the sense knocked into him by then. And not have their ma fighting Indians like you did. Children brought up safe and whole, just like your girl April is bringing up hers. With the better things of life, that’s all.”
“I’m trying to be practical.”
“Ah. I thought you were trying to bedevil me. I’ll tell you a poem I made up while I rode that nag to Denver. There was an old feller from down by San Pedro, who turned on a road headed north. He waded through waters and canyons on foot; though lonesome and fool he might be …”
Without conversation, Udell began a tale that rhymed and went along just as perfectly grand as if it came from a book, about a sad and lonesome cowboy who went to Denver to dig up a treasure chest, so he could buy his lady love a golden ring and take her to his castle in a land where the sun shone ever after. I smiled at it, but squirmed inside as the story went on. It was surely about him wanting to marry. He’d made up a tale that made me seem like some exotic princess in a far-off land, too proud to love a poor cowpoke.
In every stanza of the poem, the wanderer did a new and wilder thing to get the girl to love him. Every so often he mentioned that word “bower,” too, as the perfect home for the princess. Udell recited it all patiently, as if he were a boy in school
doing his recitations. When he came to what seemed to be the finish, he said, “… and his heart it soared like a cloud on high, to his Maker he loudly called ‘bless!’ when with the lady’s dainty sigh, she happily, truly said …” Then he left off reciting and didn’t look at me nor ask me anything again, the rest of the way. I felt so disappointed at wanting to hear the end of the story, I plum forgot it was about me. He left it unsaid to bedevil me.
Why in heaven’s name would I want to spend more of my days ironing some old rusty fellow’s shirts? I was purely put out by the man, and when we got unloaded at my place and Gilbert took his team to the barn, I felt almost glad to see Udell Hanna crossing the horizon heading away from here. Bone-deep wished him to stay, too.
Chapter Ten
January 29, 1906
I was glad as I could be to be at home again. At least it was away from the bustle of Tucson. I put the tonic on the highest shelf in the pantry, behind other jars where it can’t get broken. Nice thing to have a receipt that actually seems to do a person some good when so many of them are nothing but moonshine and kerosene.
Elsa and Charlie were quiet, blushing, and every few minutes looked for one another and made signs with their eyes—just happy as two ducks in a pond. She cooked and cleaned as if she had something to prove, and the place hasn’t looked this sparkly since it was built. Even the glass in the windows had been scrubbed. Well, soon enough, her hands will be full of children and the windows will go back to the way I generally keep them—dusty prints of doves who had no sense of direction making a crazy-quilt pattern between crusted and dirty rain splatters.
First thing they said was now that I was home, they wanted to invite Rudolfo to come here for supper. To celebrate their wedding, and let him see how happy his daughter was. I thought of his other girls, especially Luz, now passed over as lady of the house by the new wife, Leta Cujillo, and how angry she had been, thinking I would come to their house instead of Leta. I told Elsa this would only do if we invited Rudolfo and all Elsa’s sisters. And, Leta. Lord a-mercy. Son familia, my kith and kin.