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  Omnia Mutat Lux to Janet Ruth Dailey 1939–2017 Amica Vera

  There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.

  My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

  —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  CHAPTER ONE

  Arizona Territory, Summer of 1907

  I blame the beginning of the whole thing on Jane Austen. From where I was sitting on the back of my horse that morning, the only place where I could see anything clear, everything had changed once my Quaker ma found Pride and Prejudice under my pillow. Pa was raised on the back of a horse and thought of reading as something only girls did. Neither one of them had ever read the likes of Austen before.

  I’d been admitted to Wheaton College without setting foot in a schoolhouse. My aunt Sarah Elliot had a large collection of books that lined every last wall, floor to ceiling, in her ranch house. One day last fall, after having read almost every book there, I was looking for something new and discovered a nearly hidden section of novels on a high shelf. The titles, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, sounded like essays on principles of virtue and meritorious living. Well, they weren’t.

  My sister Esther and I used to read these novels to each other as whispers late into the night. Jane Austen’s books sure made us dream of finding a handsome man to make our lives good and rich, but this was the Arizona Territory. Most of the two-legged rascals we weren’t related to were cowpokes and drifters, so I never looked at any of them to make my life any different than it was. Thing was, I didn’t really like the characters or the stories. Just like so many other things I had read, the people were more tangled up about getting hitched and swooning over some lover or other than they were about the lack of rain or the cost of a new saddle. They never did anything actually worthwhile except get dressed up in fancy clothes and go to dances, but it gave us something to do on a summer night when the sun didn’t set until nearly ten. I mostly liked real stories about people who did things that mattered. Inventing and discovering, that’s what interested me.

  Even in the early morning, I could smell rain in the air. Mosquitoes tried to make breakfast of my neck, so I pulled up my kerchief. I had a city bonnet in my parcels, but for now I was wearing what suited me, a new Stetson hat and a split riding skirt.

  As Esther read aloud until she fell asleep with the book on her chest, I would lie in bed and wish my life could amount to more than just a romance. I wanted to draw pictures of people and animals and I had a sketchbook that had not a square inch left without a picture in it.

  It was a shame that for me to get to go off to school like my brothers had done was about to cost me Ma’s scorn in a way that felt as if she’d hate me forever. She’d picked me out a fellow, and I was leaving him as well.

  Sprawled on the floor in Aunt Sarah’s parlor, my siblings and I were taught the only schooling any of us ever got from that library, and it ran from astronomy and animal husbandry to skinning a snake and zebras on the African veldt. This education got my brother Joshua into medical school. Aunt Sarah’s daughter April married young and lives in Tucson, while her two boys went to the University of Arizona to study geology, but dropped out after a year due to “lack of inclination.” My brother Clover went to school for two years and he’s set on keeping up Pa’s pecan farm. My brother Joshua is off to study medicine in Chicago. Besides Esther, I have twin older sisters, Rachel and Rebeccah. Rebeccah likes to cut roses and make grafts of the stems. It sounds unusual out here in the Territory, but pretty much anything with a thorn will grow here, and so she tends her flowers and studies botany. Rachel embroiders. I hate that stuff, and the threads all tangle up in my hands. Give me the back of a horse running hell-bent, and I can stick a post with a knife or a bullet, either one.

  I was the youngest girl; always the keeper of Ezra and Zachary, my two little brothers, the rottenest and smelliest little toads ever lived. All my blessed life I’ve heard, “Mary Pearl, get the boys out of the sugar box. Mary Pearl, change Zachary’s diaper. Mary Pearl, mind those boys don’t fall into the well.”

  I wanted to amount to something more than that. I was about to turn seventeen, and it was high time.

  Often I felt so thrilled at the thought of going away to school, I could barely stand it. Then shivers would take hold of me as if I had volunteered to walk naked down Meyer Street at high noon. I thought of Ma, running off to marry Pa on their trip here from Texas, when he was just a boy from the next wagon. They’d fended off Comanches on that trip, but her mother had been killed. It was on that trip that Ma laid aside some of her Quaker notions and edged a little closer to Aunt Sarah. Aunt Sarah always carried a loaded rifle and a pistol in her pocket. I’m told, but I don’t remember, that she’s used them, too. She has a look on her face that even strangers notice and they don’t question her. Ever.

  My ma has never shot a gun, but she told me once that she was ready to do it to save her children. Those were the days our families would lay down their very lives for each other. So much has changed. My friend Elsa Maldonado’s mother died. After that, Elsa spent many days at our house. Her pa tried to woo Aunt Sarah, but when she turned him down, he soured on the whole family. Elsa loved Sarah’s boy Charlie, and we girls thought they’d be a great match together. It broke her heart the way her pa talked about Charlie after that.

  A roadrunner skittered before us, shaking a skinny lizard, running alongside on the bank of the road for a good quarter mile. The August sun baked my back and Duende, my horse, danced and jostled high on his hooves. Brody Cooperand rode with us, too, since Clover was coming on the train with me, and so he could drive the wagon home once my sisters were finished shopping in town. He was one of the hands from Aunt Sarah’s place, too, and I figured he might be sweet on Rebeccah. We got along down the road and found the summer rains had made the river run, so we rested for a bit at the muddy bank and let all the animals drink while Clove and Rebeccah set up a picnic lunch.

  While we got ready to leave this morning, Mama wept in the rocker on the porch, and when I waved my hand, she up and went into the house. I knew Pa was there, and while he wasn’t necessarily taking sides in this dispute, he’d allowed me to go and wrote checks for my tuition and my horse’s board, joking that said horse had better keep his grades up as well, since he was being sent to college. When Mama fumed over that, he said, “Well, she’s got to have transportation.”

  I figured Ma was actually more upset about Esther than about me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Esther was older than me and for all our lives we shared an upstairs bedroom over the kitchen pantry. Many times Elsa, Esther, and I would camp on the floor and read aloud to each other, trying to act out how fancy and often silly those girls in the books were. One day last fall Esther had left Pride and Prejudice on my bed, and I couldn’t find that book for three days, and then Ma ordered me to return it to my aunt, unread. I didn’t have the backbone to admit to Ma that Esther and I were reading it for the fourth time. We knew every line by heart, and though I was ready to get out Macbeth just for a change, Esther was as in love with Elizabeth Bennet as if she had been her best friend. I resolved to do a better job of hiding Austen.

  It was during Aunt Sarah’s cattle gathering last summer that we began to find love notes on the windowsill. Mama reckoned they were put there by some two-bit drifter helping with the gathering. Esther and I shared many a night giggling under the covers and talking about what kind of fellow was writing poetry to us and which of us the notes were meant for. She’d say I surely was the one, but I saw in her eyes she wished the rose petals and hair ribbons were meant for her. Finally, we learned from one of the hands that this Romeo’s name was Polinar Bienvenidos. One day just to make her smile I told Esther I hoped his love notes were for her, but she knew right away I was lying. I’d never felt that silly over a cowhand before and I told her I was sorry, but I did have a strange feeling of giddiness every time we found another ribbon.

  One night Esther slipped out the window, leaving a letter on her pillow. Papa was angry, but he keeps his fires banked pretty well and was of a mind to let things be since Esther’s letter said they would marry when they reached Benson. Mama was beside herself.

  A few days later the sheriff tracked down a crazy water witch who admitted that he’d murdered them both for the sake of Polinar’s only possession, a white mule. Esther’s Bible was still in the saddle pack. Their bodies had been buried in a shallow grave under a mesquite tree. It was more like Shakespeare’s tale of tragedy than any of us could bear.

  We all mourned, but Mama nearly died of grief.

  Not long after, we t
ook a visit to my uncle’s house in Tucson. I sat and drew pictures from the front porch while Uncle Harland showed Rachel and Rebeccah around the house. The longer I sat there, the more I heard the sounds of the town and the house and the people in it. I snuggled down in a quilt on the porch and imagined I was soaking in the place. It was a different kind of peace than we had out at the farm. A busyness that seemed alive. I could see myself living in town. Maybe having an art studio. My brothers romped with their cousins and planned to go down to the Santa Cruz River. For once, I didn’t have to go along with them. They didn’t take fishing poles, just walked off without a care in the world. It was cold but they weren’t even wearing shoes. Boys had it so easy. No one had to chaperone them when they wanted to get up to something. “Hey,” I hollered. “I’ll come with you!” They took off running.

  I sat there with a new sketchbook in my lap and four new pencils before me. I sharpened them with my skinning knife. I worked slowly until I could put a nice point on without breaking the lead.

  We stayed there two weeks before my little cousin got a fever. Before long, all of us had caught it, Ma and Pa and Aunt Sarah, too. I remember Pa carrying me to the kitchen. I remember a doctor looking down at me and shaking his head. The hours lingered along with the fever, and I began to believe I would die, that it was only a matter of time.

  Then one day—or night, I couldn’t tell—Aunt Sarah and Mama came to me with an envelope and some papers. “See, here, Mary Pearl,” Mama said. “Sarah found this advertisement in the paper that they want girls to go to college back east. A place called Wheaton College. She sent off your picture you drew from the front porch, and they’ve written to let you come. Please get well, honey, and you can go to school and study art. The price is reduced for girls. Won’t you get well now?” Then she waited awhile until I opened my eyes, and gave me the sternest order I’d ever heard from Ma: “I’ll give you anything, but don’t die, girl!” Then she walked away.

  I remember waking up later, holding the envelope to my chest, and looking at it as if it had been a dream. Art school. I let it sink in for a while. It was real. It was only six months away. I held that envelope in my lap like it was a baby, dreaming of the things I’d learn. First thing I did was write a letter to my old friend Elsa Maldonado, who now lived in a convent in Tucson. I didn’t know if she’d get my letter, but we’d grown up together, and I wanted her to know I was leaving.

  Riding home under a blanket in the buggy instead of on horseback, I thought long and hard about what all this growing up was about. My sisters, Elsa, and I had been so happy, so easily looking forward to spring, or new clothes, or a good pair of gloves. Now suddenly we were “marriageable” and it seemed the world had lost its grip on us. Like we’d become parcels instead of persons. We girls were just things to tack down and hobble, as if the whole family was afraid we’d sally around and act a fool, instead of that we’d grown into young ladies who might have a notion of their own. Made me simmer, thinking of it.

  Spring came by the end of February, and by the second week of March the hills were covered with salvia and penstemon flowers in red and purple swords, and over everything lay a carpet of golden orange poppies. It was a fine time of year—still a little cool and downright chill at night, but a good time to open windows and deep clean the house. When Rachel was here, we sisters all complained about it, but now that she was caring for Uncle Harland’s children and there was only Rebeccah and me, we helped each other and sang while we worked. The only time Ma fussed at me was to tell me to rest because of my illness a few weeks ago. I felt so good and happy I wanted these days of spring cleaning to go on and on.

  One night, I knocked on Rebeccah’s bedroom door. A light came from under the bottom. “You awake?” I whispered.

  “Come on in,” she called. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  “I came to ask you again to go to college with me. You’d like it, too. Besides, I’ve never gone anywhere except to town.”

  She smiled, and looked so much like Ma. “Miss Jane Austen believes a girl ought to seek out ways to further her accomplishments in life. It’s a chance for you to learn new things.”

  “Well, come along then. Please?”

  “I think I’m bound to be an old maid. I don’t truly want to go, honey. But you’re more adventurous. You’re brave.”

  I sighed. Didn’t feel brave. “Reckon I’ve been told too many times to be afraid lately. Too many people around that don’t belong here in this Territory.”

  “You’ll make friends there in Illinois. It’s a real state, not just a territory. They’ve got more law and order. Likely most girls don’t even own a pistol.”

  “That’s ludicrous.”

  “Mary Pearl, they dress like the pictures in a Godey’s Lady’s Book.”

  “No place for a gun belt or a scabbard on that rig.”

  “Nope.”

  It wasn’t many days after that we got a visitor. A man and his grown son came down the road looking for Aunt Sarah’s place. They were carting a wagon and in it was a coffin.

  Turned out it held my uncle Earnest’s remains, brought back from where he’d been buried in Cuba after the war a couple of years ago. The fellows were the Hannas. Said they were looking for a place to settle maybe. Only, the younger one, he wanted to live in town. He made me plumb weary, watching me like a coyote does a rabbit, ready to spring at any second. He was polite and all, and fairly nice-looking, but he was older than my oldest brother Clover, and I was too busy planning my wardrobe for college to mess with him. I thought of the younger Hanna as someone who might take an interest in Rebeccah, and as we held Uncle Earnest’s little burial I clung to my sister’s arm any time he came near, and I made sure my skinning knife was on my boot every last second.

  Then in a couple of weeks, here came Aunt Sarah saying Mr. Hanna senior and she would like to take a buggy ride, and Mr. Hanna junior, Aubrey was his name, wished me to accompany them as the two younger of us would be their chaperones. Ma fetched me from the pecan barn and said to wash up, I had a caller. Pa shut down the rolling machine and put Ezra where I’d been standing at the sorting table.

  This fellow I was to sit beside was mighty well-dressed and handsome in a city way. I reckon Ma and Pa trusted Aunt Sarah with their very lives and the lives of all of us, or perhaps things might have been different, but since I’d been asked for, I cleaned up my face and hands and put the work apron on a nail on the porch.

  Off we went with a picnic Aunt Sarah had made, and we drove in her four-seat buggy down through the hills to a pretty area where we could see far and wide across the desert. Aubrey Hanna, sitting next to me, said, “Usually it’s the young people who get chaperoned,” and he smiled with a genuine and pleasant expression. I liked his marble white teeth and his bright eyes.

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” I said.

  “Are you cold? Sit closer to me and I’ll cover us with this blanket.”

  I moved closer, but soon as I did it felt too close. Too near his whole self, as if he’d grown twice the size he’d been.

  Mr. Hanna stopped the buggy, then he and Aunt Sarah got out to stretch their legs, walking up a hill. I moved back to where I’d been, but that place had been taken up suddenly by his big arm. Then after sitting quietly for a few minutes, it didn’t seem so strange when that arm circled around me. It was nice. Comforting. I let out a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holding in, and when I did, Aubrey took my hand in his.

  “I suppose you’re spoken for,” he said softly, his eyes trained on something in the distance.

  “Me? No. No fellas around here to speak of, except my brothers and cousins.”

  He kept staring off, and I took the opportunity to study his features close up. He had different hair than I’d ever seen and smelled of finery and starched linen. Next thing, he asked me if I’d ever kissed a fellow, of course I told him no, except for my brothers and Pa. He asked didn’t I know what he meant and I said I expected so, and so he did. Kiss me, that is. Sort of turned me to face him with that arm wrapped around my shoulders, and planted his lips plumb on mine.