Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

“There’s no turning him, Mam. He’s set.”

“Maybe not,” Mam said comfortingly, but above her daughter’s bent head, her eyes were bleak. “Here,” she said after a while, setting Sarah away from her. “I got ways of doing things your pa don’t know nothing about. If you need anything, you just leave a note by Mrs. Thomas’s and I’ll get it. I’m not losing another child to that man’s mulishness.” Margaret held her close again, her wide, pillowed frame supporting Sarah easily. “You’re burning up, Sare. You’d best get yourself back to the schoolteacher’s quick like a bunny and get in out of the wind. She oughtn’t have let you go out, hot as you are.”

Sarah held on to her mother, her face buried in the soft bosom. Gently, Margaret put her arms from her neck. “I’ve got to go. Walter’s home and he’ll be wondering where I’m off to and go telling his pa. I got to go now. I’ve been gone longer than’s smart already.” She kissed Sarah and left her. “You get yourself to Imogene’s now,” she called over her shoulder.

Calliope was bustling with people and wagons when Sarah reached the edge of town. A band of boys had collected in front of the Beards’ house and played at hitting a fist-sized rock with sticks, whooping and swooping at it as though they were mounted on swift ponies. A wagon lumbered down the middle of the street and another, its team unhitched, awaited repairs in front of the blacksmith’s shop.

Sarah stood by the side of the road, the weight of her outsized garments and the wind bearing her down until it seemed she would fall. She looked from the boys at their game to Imogene’s door, to the wagon driver with his children on the seat beside him. The town was too full of eyes. Losing her courage, she crawled on her hands and knees up the dirt embankment and into the underbrush until she was out of sight.

It was after sunset when she ventured from her hiding place. A cloud cover had blown in, obscuring the early stars and warming the evening. She had secreted herself less than a quarter-mile from the school buildings, and although she was stiff from the cold and confused with fever, she was there in a few minutes. Imogene had the door open and was out on the steps at the first sound of her tread.

Sarah stopped at the foot of the walk, a dark shape swaying in the last light. Imogene ran to her, arms outstretched, ready to catch her if she fell.

“Don’t touch me!” Sarah croaked. “Please, God, don’t touch me!” Her frightened eyes darted to the windows of the neighboring houses, but they were all closely draped to keep out the night air. Imogene dropped her arms as though she had been struck, and abruptly returned to the house, leaving Sarah to follow unaided.

The place was a jumble of crates and boxes. Some were half-filled, piled on top of others already sealed and labeled. A trunk took up the middle of the floor, its lid propped open. Sarah’s clothes, dry but for the seams, hung from a line stretched from the mantel to the peg by the door. The desk was covered with old letters sorted into untidy stacks.

Imogene threaded her way through the confusion and poked up the fire. The door shut softly and Imogene put the poker away. When she turned to Sarah, the anger and hurt were gone from her face. “I’ve been so worried. I woke up and you were gone.”

Sarah hadn’t come into the room, but stood with her back to the door. “You’re packing,” she said. “You’re leaving. You’re going to leave me.” With startling energy, she grabbed things from the trunk and hurled them to the floor. She pulled the boxes of letters from the desk and dumped them over. “You sneaked all the boxes in. You were getting everything ready to go when I wasn’t here.” She laughed as tears poured down her cheeks, and collapsed in the mess she had made. Imogene fell to her knees and tried to gather the young woman into her arms, but Sarah flailed at her. “You’re leaving me!” she cried. “You’re going away.”

“No, my dear. No. Not now, not ever.” Sarah wouldn’t be comforted, but continued to cry.

Imogene left her and ran into the bedroom. She jerked a hatbox from the closet shelf and reached behind it to pull out a metal box the size of a book. She ran her hand down the length of the shelf, dislodging some half-dozen boxes and a lamp chimney that shattered when it hit the floor. Finally her fingers found what they were looking for: a small key on a nail driven into the back of the closet. Haste making her fumble, she unlocked the box and hurried back into the other room. Sarah still lay amid the clothing and papers.

Imogene knelt in front of her and spilled the contents of the box onto the floor between them. Coins rolled off under the chairs. The cat, perched on the mantel, roused herself to chase one but it settled quickly and she lost interest. Bills tumbled out in a heap. Imogene picked up a fistful and pressed them into Sarah’s hand, folding the narrow fingers around them. “The money left from the sale of my house. Take it.” She pushed another handful of money into the pocket of Sarah’s coat. “Everything I have is yours.” She unpinned the silver brooch that closed the collar of her dress and pinned it on Sarah’s bodice. “Everything. I won’t ever leave you.” Sarah stopped crying, her interest caught like a child’s. “I would never hurt you,” Imogene said. “I love you. You needn’t earn it or even deserve it, it’s just there. No matter what you do, it won’t change. If I never saw you for a hundred years. It just is.”

“Like air?”

Imogene smiled at her. “Like air.”

Sarah sat up, both hands full of money, money spilling from her pockets, her tangled hair falling over her face. Imogene held out her hands and Sarah put the money aside to take them. “I’d like to go to sleep now,” she said. “I’m real tired.”

Imogene helped her to bed.

“Will you unpack?”

Imogene settled the covers over the girl’s shoulders and tucked them smooth. “You sleep, we’ll talk in the morning.”

SARAH WAS SLEEPING FITFULLY, ROCKING HER HEAD BACK AND FORTH against the pillow. Occasionally her hands jerked and she’d cry out.

Already awake and dressed, Imogene stood by the bedside. She laid her hand on the girl’s forehead, and for a moment Sarah was still. Then, quietly, Imogene left her.

Yesterday’s bitter wind had blown itself out and the weather was mild. Imogene unbuttoned her wrap and stood for a long moment on the front steps, the sun on her face, her head to one side, listening. Birds rustled in the lilac bushes in front of the school, their subdued twittering and stirring deepening the stillness of the morning. No tardy children hurried down the main street, none of the righteous scuffled before the school door in celebration of a last minute’s freedom. With a sudden spasm, Imogene straightened her shoulders. “Bash on regardless,” she said, and smiled crookedly.

The sound of a hammer’s clanging rang from Hugh Rorvak’s forge; Imogene turned her steps toward the smithy. Sweat rolled down the blacksmith’s temples and darkened his collarless shirt. With iron tongs he held a red-hot crescent against the anvil. His hammer, swinging in short, regular arcs, pounded the end of it flat. At the back of the shop, where it opened into the stable, Clay Beard stooped, his back to a sorrel mare, holding her hoof between his thighs, plying a three-cornered rasp.

Imogene’s shadow fell across the door and Clay looked up, smiling and gesturing a greeting with the file, before bending to his task again. Hugh Rorvak had seen her as she walked up from the street, and looked away without acknowledging her. She waited quietly just outside the door for him to finish shaping the wagon shoe. For fifteen minutes he worked on, heating the metal, pounding. Occasionally he looked her way from under lowered lids and, finding her still there, worked with renewed vigor. At last he plunged the metal into a tub of water. A hiss, a cloud of steam, and the pounding of the smithy was exorcised for a moment. He pulled the metal shoe for the wheel of a wagon from the black water and held it over a wooden wheel propped against the wall; it fit close. Imogene started to speak but he turned his back, reaching down another piece of metal for the forge, and she ran out of patience. Stepping over the threshold she said, “Excuse me, Mr. Rorvak, I’ve come to hire a wagon.”