Sarah's Quilt Read online

  May 29, 1906

  Chess is driving our carriage with me and my trunk, and two extra trunks full of clothes given by Albert and Savannah. Gilbert asked didn’t we want him to ride shotgun, but I said that’s what I was there for. Underneath a box, inside one of the trunks packed with patched children’s underwear, is a packet from my strongbox. Besides that, we have a load of food from Savannah’s and my pantries, canned goods, and fresh-baked bread. Seems that’s what Savannah and her girls were up doing last night.

  In the green light of the sky before dawn, the desert is still and cool. It feels good on my skin, but not on my mind. I suspect when you get to judging the seasons by the feel of the air, and you know it’s high time the mornings should be steamy and heavy with rain coming, then when it’s just clear and brisk, without a drop of dew, well, it feels wrong. The coyotes were quiet, but out in the open. You can ride right up on one and surprise it, as if they all were drunken from some devilment the night before.

  In the back of my mind I hear Chess talking a steady stream about what work needed doing on the ranch. He was saying something about how Charlie has made a good second boss, taking up the reins of Mason Sherrill, and he said I’d be doing my boys a favor to let them jump in and get a taste of the real work they want to do so much. Charlie and Gilbert have always done their share of things, but never without someone setting out the chores like tomorrow’s clothes. This time, they’ll have to dig in by themselves. He didn’t quit talking until we got nearly to the arroyo grande, halfway to town.

  The horses strained against the load we’d packed, so we got off the wagon and led them up the arroyo. We stopped for some lunch there and straightened up the boards we were keeping in the bottom so the wagon wheels could take hold. After that, we talked over this trip, and saying how urgent it was, reassuring ourselves, I suppose, that it was right for the two of us to go to California, even when the ranch was blowing away.

  When we got to town, we went straight to the depot. A train was leaving at six o’clock in the evening, headed west, and the agent said it stopped in Barstow, California, for half a day. From there, we could take one straight to San Francisco. In two or three days, we’d be there. After we bought tickets and checked on all our extra baggage, I went to make a money transfer at the bank. They could cash money and telegraph the numbers to San Francisco, and then I wouldn’t have to travel with all that cash. If Harland got the idea, he could draw from it, too. I sent a thousand dollars. The rest we’d carry.

  I’ve never wired money before, and it was hard for me to pass the cash under that brass grate to a total stranger. I figured I’d rather carry it tied into my petticoat, but Chess said if the train was robbed, we’d never get to California with it. So I passed it through the window and ignored the man behind there, who was telling me it should have been kept in their vault all along. I never did put much trust in bankers, except for April’s husband, Morris.

  We still had four hours to wait for the train, so we went by my old house in town for a bath, and to see if things were in need of repair. With Albert and Savannah’s children living there, I knew some things were kept up, but they are young, and it’s never the same as when you own a place. If Harland and Melissa needed this place, why, I’d get it spruced up for them.

  What a pure blessing it was to have a bath in a tub alone in a room where all you had to do was pump the water, not tote buckets. Then all you had to do was pull out the cork, not tote more buckets to the back porch—that kind of thing is easy to take lightly until you don’t have it. Even so, I used just as little water as I could, thinking every drop that went down the drain could have gotten my chickens by another day.

  We left early for the depot, so we could stop and see April and Morris before we left. Their house was on the north side of town, toward the university. The house was blue as a robin’s egg, with cream-colored sashes and black shutters, and the white porch was covered with more blue-and-cream gingerbread than I’d ever seen. A peering glass was set into the stained glass on the front door. Stained glass was everywhere, and gingerbread railings, too. I thought she and Morris were only staying in Tucson until the bank got some kind of business done, but surely, to create a palace like this, they must be planning to stay for good. Oh my soul, what a joy that was to me. Our visit was too short, and I longed for her as we drove away.

  The train ride started hot. It felt as if the inside of the cars had been heated up. With every breath, I hoped and prayed that Barstow was a place cool and pleasant in the summer. Cooling fans operated in the car, but the air they pulled in from outside was warm, too. It wasn’t until we’d been going at least an hour, and the sun got low, that it finally got comfortable. People talked here and there, but Chess and I pretty much stayed quiet. After all, we’d said to each other what we were come for on the way here. Strange how private a conversation can feel when you are out in the middle of the desert, compared to being in a moving train car, hidden behind the bench seats but surrounded by other people who might overhear as well as I could overhear them.

  I thought about my quilt waiting for me at home as I pulled out the sewing I intended to do on the train, just mending of clothes we’d all given. My sewing box is an old cigar box. Inside it, there is a little folded pouch where I keep needles ; I put that in my lap and took up a spool of white thread, cutting off a length with my teeth. When I went to open the pouch, though, I dropped my spool. Someone had sewn it completely shut with black thread. I could feel the needles still inside, but a tiny seam ran all the way around it. Who would play such a silly joke at a time like this? I took off the knot and pried loose the new stitches. A tiny slip of paper was inside it, along with a ten-dollar gold piece. On the paper was such a tiny handwriting, it almost seemed to be from a newspaper.

  We’re sorry we don’t have more to send, but our new boss is frugal. We traded greenbacks for this coin. I (Charlie) earned eight dollars cutting weeds at the college, and Gilbert gave two he got from delivering milk in town. He didn’t have hardly time to do naught but study, so he’s going to show off his best medical school stitching, which will be his proof that he did study and would have been a fine addition at any ladies’ quilting bee. Our love to our cousins, and good travels, Mama and Grandfather.

  He hadn’t signed it. English composition had never been one of Charlie’s favorite subjects. I smiled at the word grandfather, for I’d never heard it used in our house. I’d raised a couple of upstanding fellows, even if they were a touch ornery.

  The car swayed on the tracks, and once it slowed down at a small hillside, puffing and churning steam. I wondered if they’d make all the passengers get off to lighten the load while it crested the hill, but Chess said more than likely it was the freight holding us back. A few dozen passengers couldn’t weigh near as much as the goods they were hauling. After that hill, the rocking of the train felt like a cradle. I slept a good long time. I dreamed of rain and cool wind. I dreamed of having ice just like the icehouse in town makes, and setting it around the room to cool us, even having the animals all come in the house to cool off. They licked the ice like they do at salt licks, and smiled at me. I woke up, tickled at the pictures in my head of a smiling cow and grinning chickens. It felt purely silly, but it was good to smile.

  A porter announced that an evening meal had been prepared and was now ready. The train had a fine new supper car, with waiters in stiff white jackets, tiny tables and chairs fixed to the floor, and food that smelled as good as homemade but didn’t taste worth a plug nickel. When we got back to our seats, Chess said, “That there was about the finest dinner I’ve et since I left the Confederate prison camp.”

  An old man turned in his seat across from us, smiled, and gave Chess a quick salute. “Sir, did I hear you correctly? You were in the Confederate camp? Which one? Could it have been Andersonville, where my dear brothers died? Bless me. I’m proud to salute a fellow soldier, sir. Perhaps you knew them? William and Charles Brown?”

  I held my brea
th for a few seconds. Chess had spent three weeks before the end of the war in a Kansas prison for Confederate soldiers, not the one run by them. I sensed him stiffen up all over. I went to looking for my bag and my clutch, expecting Chess to get riled, and then we’d have to change seats so as not to have a two-man reenactment of Gettysburg right there on the train.

  “Can’t say as I did know anyone by those names,” Chess said.

  The man leaned forward and whispered, “What was your regiment? Ohio Sixteenth Regulars myself. Corporal Stephen Brown, here. Say, did you know Captain Richard Thomas—what a gentleman he was—fought like three men the day the bloody Johnnies ambushed our whole unit on the road to Vicksburg.”

  “Yes, I was at Vicksburg. But let’s not talk of war in front of the lady,” Chess said. “My daughter-in-law, the Widow Elliot.” I nodded at the aged Corporal Brown—without smiling. Chess said, “My son was a cavalry officer on the Indian frontier.”

  Mr. Brown let his jaw hang slack for a second, then nodded. “My deepest apologies, madam.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I hate being introduced as “the widow” anything. I know why Chess said it, but it still catches me up, as if he’s talking about someone else. I stared down at my hands. I still wear my wedding band. Someday, I’ll take it off, I reckon. A callus keeps it in place. Whether it is the one on my finger or the one on my heart, I couldn’t say.

  After a while, Mr. Brown took up a newspaper to read, and shortly after that, it slumped over his face. Soft snoring came from under it. I nudged Chess to get his attention, then whispered to him. “Vicksburg indeed. I have to say, Colonel Elliot, you showed amazing calm there. Time was, you’d have finished the job as General Lee meant to do.”

  “I’m getting older, too. Seen enough fighting. I just want to ride this train and get where we’re going. Long as he didn’t get insulting, I figured I’d just let it be. War’s over.”

  “I don’t reckon I’ve heard you call me a ‘lady’ before.”

  “Well, you don’t hear a lot of things I say.”

  “Some of them I’m better off not hearing.”

  “Reckon so,” he said. Then he leaned into the corner made by the seat back and the windowsill and put his hat over his face. He said, “It was meant as a compliment.” Almost as soon as he’d said the last word, he drifted into sleep.

  I was surely thankful Chess had come with me. All this time, he’s been there for me to count on. I felt a swell of affection for this man, Jack’s papa, so I reached over the distance between our knees and patted his arm. He startled and sat up, dropping the hat to his lap. “Just wishing you a good nap,” I said. “And thanks.”

  “Are you so dry for compliments that that’s all it took to have you bothering people out of a nap?”

  “Ornery old cuss. Take your nap, then,” I said.

  He settled back in his corner. I took out some sewing I planned to get done on the trip, patching up knees in little britches. Mama always told me to save the mending for home and do some “pretty” when you’re in public, some embroidery or tatting lace or such. I wished I’d brought my quilt squares, for I imagine she’ll have hers done before I return. Still, I’m on my way to some kind of refugee camp that would be no place for quilting, and Savannah’s little boys are hard on the knees of their clothes, so I’ve got to get these fixed for Harland’s children before we get there. I fixed holes in the knees of little pants, reattached pockets to a pinafore apron. Trouble was, with the train switching back and forth and the lights low, setting my eyes on the stitching was hard.

  Dry for compliments, he said. Maybe so. Jack’s been gone a long time. Even his compliments came few and distant, but they were powerful. Chess didn’t have call to be so cranky. Maybe he’d spent all his patience holding himself back from a fistfight. I had to smile at the thought of these two old men going at each other out of some long-carried sense of righteous dignity.

  One thing I know from living with Jack is that war, any war, stains a man deep, and nothing can get the stain out. They can wear clothes like a rancher or a banker, but the stains are under there, never far from the surface of their skin. I stared at the whiskered old man opposite me, trying to picture him in a uniform, forty years younger.

  I pushed the needle through the cloth again, trying to patch this pair of little pants so that it didn’t look like it belonged in the ragbag, and drove the needle straight into my middle finger so hard, I had to tug to get it out again. Blood poured from the stab. I held it to the side so it wouldn’t stain my dress or the pants I was fixing. By the time I found a handkerchief, three large drops had hit the floor. I wrapped the finger, but red seeped through the handkerchief, blooming like roses over snow. Just like that, I was back in Jack’s hospital room, holding him as blood bloomed on the white sheets, pleading with him not to leave me. I leaned my head against the back of the seat.

  Then, I was further back, seeing against the inside of my closed eyes images of myself that I’d purely laid aside—things that were no longer of any use. The word war must have caused it. I wasn’t the only woman around who had fought a different kind of war. There were no uniforms, no medals, no rank and file. Reveille was a baby’s cry—or worse, an Indian raid before dawn. Our battle hymns were lullabies, and field strategy was simply to preserve the living at any cost. I’ve seen so much bloodshed, I can hardly stand to butcher an animal for food. I make the hired men do it.

  I remember the first time I pulled a trigger against a man. I remember the blood on Savannah’s sister, Ulyssa Lawrence, and the blood on the ground where those two men who hurt her lay after I’d finished with them. My one regret was that it took so long on foot to get to the rifle that I hadn’t been able to prevent their tormenting her. And I remember Savannah’s mother dying at the hands of the Comanches so soon after. Then my Papa, buried near San Angelo, Texas, died of an infected bullet wound, and nary one of us have ever been back to the spot.

  I unwrapped my finger. The flow had stopped, leaving just a tiny red dot. I squeezed the finger again, forcing more blood out of it. I watched it make a bead, perfectly round and deep red. I never really saw the others I’d killed. In the heat of a battle on horseback, dust obscures your aim so much that you have to hesitate to be sure not to shoot your own horse. Indians always pulled away their dead before anyone could see them. But there had been a man on the road once, threatening my children, holding a pistol to Harland’s head, planning to steal Melissa away and abuse her. I suppose that was one I saw up close, eye-to-eye. That one I’d kill over again, too. Thinking back on all of them, there wasn’t one I’d undo, given the chance.

  That must be different from men fighting a soldier’s war, side by side, pushing up some hillside with bullets flying around them like bees. They’d have to believe in something awfully big to go on doing it, I reckon. To shoot, and go on shooting at some man who was following the same orders as you, and who, like Mr. Brown, would salute and shake your hand on a given day forty years hence. A man who could look like you, think like you, who was not ready to rob or kill you any more than you yourself would rob or kill him, just a man with a family and an idea he thought he was serving.

  Chess was sleeping rough, fiddling with his hands, twitching like a tired dog. The grinding of the train’s big locomotive seemed loud, and just for a moment, Chess was a young man, on his way to a war, and Jack was a little child, younger than Albert and Savannah’s boy Zachary. Across from us, Mr. Brown’s paper had slid downward, showing his face, eyes closed, mouth open, peaceful. Maybe that was the easy sleep of the ones who claimed victory. Chess rambles about the house so often at night, I don’t wake any more. Jack used to do the same thing. Called out, even in his sleep. When he was awake, he often stared into the distance for an hour or more at a time, feeling some kind of huge sadness for all he’d seen and done.

  Chess shook himself awake, then settled again. He slept quietly this time. Life in the territories has never been genteel. Men who have been chased away
from every lawful place in this country still come here to hide, to steal and kill. Until we get statehood and government of a higher caliber than the outlaws they’re supposed to corral, that war will not be over. The sentries, most likely, will never step down. It’s a hard place to live. Don’t know why I’m bent on all this reminiscing. Must be just the luxury of sitting down for a spell with nothing to do but ride.

  I never pictured myself being like Chess, until now. Nor like Jack, neither. Reckon, though, we were two of a pair. He kept going, strong and healthy, as long as he could keep up his battle. I’d known from just about the first time I saw him that he was fighting something inside just as dark and frightening as the Indians and bandits he fought with sword and carbine. I’d asked him to lay it down, quit soldiering, and within a couple of years, he’d been killed in an accident. Maybe we all have to go on fighting our wars to stay alive. I reckon my war will be over when the boys plant that marble stone over me and six feet of dirt. I put the pair of children’s trousers back into my carpetbag. Tucking the bag at my feet, I leaned into my own corner.

  Savannah’s children used to sing a little rhyme: “Niddy-noddy, knitting needles, busybody, butter beetles. When will I meet my fair true love?” When there’s a string, or ribbon or such, on a finger, as you unwind, for every time it circles your finger, that’s how many years until you find your true love. The point, I suppose, being the faster you can say it, the sooner you are in love, and it’s near impossible to say it quickly. Childish nonsense. A true love, though, isn’t nonsense. Pure aggravation sometimes. And great joy. I tried to think about Rudolfo, tried to imagine feeling passionately in love with him. But the face that came to mind was Jack’s. My handkerchief was short and folded over. It hardly crossed over itself, so love should come this year. I smiled at the silliness of that. If it were supposed to be Rudolfo, well, I’d met him long ago, and if it were Jack, I’d known him and buried him, and—oh, nonsense. Just a child’s game.