Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

“No!”

Lugging a protesting Wolf, Sarah ran from him.

Imogene left school just after four o’clock; she had stayed late, working on a fitted wool coat of soft robin’s-egg blue-Sarah’s Christmas present. Mac had donated two white rabbit pelts to line the hood and cuffs.

Columns of smoke rose from chimneys all over town, particles of soot and ash catching the thin sunlight. Above the railroad station, black smoke billowed from engines coaling up for the haul over the mountains. Walking quickly to keep warm, Imogene passed through the quiet residential neighborhood and across Virginia Street to the railroad station.

“I’m expecting a parcel from Philadelphia,” she said to the clerk. “Books.” Tired of waiting the many months it often took for books to arrive after ordering, Imogene had taken to sending William Utterback lists of materials she needed. He bought them for her in Philadelphia and sent them out. If Kate felt that the school could use them, Imogene was reimbursed; if not, she paid for them out of her own pocket.

The books had arrived in two big boxes. Imogene pulled one over the counter and cut it open with a single-bladed jackknife she took from her purse. There was a letter from Mr. Utterback inside; she took it out, then tied up the box again and lifted it experimentally. “I can’t carry both by myself. Is there someone here who can help me?” she asked the clerk on duty.

“It’s an off time; I’m the only one here. I can’t leave or I’d do it myself.” The clerk leaned on the counter and sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Might try over to the Wells Fargo. Judge Curler’s got an errand boy over there not good for much.”

Imogene thanked him and sat down to read her letter before walking the short distance to the Wells Fargo office.

3 November 1877

Dear Imogene ,

Here are the books thee ordered but for The Old Curiosity Shop. I shall keep looking and send it when I can. Mrs. Utterback is in as good health as our years will allow, and sends her best .

Kevin Ramsey has remarried, to quite a nice girl, Mrs. Utterback says, and is moving west to Illinois to be a farmer. It will be a better life for Mary Beth’s child .

I have news of an old friend of thine, Mr. Aiken. He left Philadelphia with Friend Oakes’s cashbox and the hired girl-the young woman was just turned fourteen and a very slow thinker. The girl is back now, heavy with child; he left her just outside of New Orleans. No one has heard from Mr. Aiken .

I hope that this finds thee well and content, and that the books are all in order .

Peace,

William Utterback

Imogene folded the letter and put it in her purse. “I’ll be back for my parcels,” she informed the clerk.

She proceeded to the Wells Fargo office. Judge Curler sat at an oversized desk behind a railing, steel-rimmed glasses pinched on the end of his nose, poring over a pile of receipts. By the woodstove lounged an ungainly fellow in his early twenties, his pimpled cheeks covered with fine, sparse hair. He was thick without any evidence of strength, the flesh heavy and slack. A second desk in the back was empty but for a sign reading R. JENSEN. DIZABLE & DENNING. In one corner stood a telegraph apparatus.

The judge looked up as Imogene opened the door. “What can I do for you?” He removed his glasses and laid them carefully beside the book he was working on.

“The clerk at the railroad station said you had a boy here who might be able to carry some parcels home for me. It’s not far.”

“Harland!”

The young man toasting his feet swung his chair around.

“This is Harland Maydley, ma’am. He’ll get your things home for you. Harland, make yourself useful for a change; give this lady a hand with her boxes.”

Harland pushed himself laboriously from his chair and pulled on his coat with a lethargy that bordered on insolence.

Imogene walked quickly, with long clean strides, and Harland Maydley, with his shorter legs, had to skip every few steps to keep up.

“You’re Miss Grelznik, ain’t you? Teacher up to the school?”

“I’m Miss Grelznik.”

“Mac McMurphy told me when I pointed you out once. That girl your daughter?”

“No.” Imogene closed her mouth behind the word with a finality that would have daunted even an only slightly more sensitive individual.

“She’s a looker, in a hoity-toity kind of way,” Harland went on.

“The young lady is married.”

“Yeah? I seen her out riding today with Nate Weldrick and that half-breed kid of his.” The sneering insinuation brought Imogene up short, and he stumbled to avoid bumping into her. They were several hundred feet from Addie’s house.

“Thank you, Mr. Maydley, that will be all.” She dug in her purse, took out a nickel, and tipped him. “Just set the boxes down. I can take them the rest of the way without your assistance.”

He looked her up and down impertinently in an attempt to regain face, but she was too tall, too unbending. He dropped the boxes in the dirt.

“You tell that married lady that Harland Maydley said hello.” And with the air of an unanswerable wit, he turned and sauntered down the street.

Imogene watched him go, her lips compressed, two white dents on either side of her nose appearing and disappearing as she breathed. “I so detest little men,” she muttered, and without taking her eyes from Maydley’s back, she bent down to grasp the twine of the boxes, clenched her teeth against the bite of it, and carried them the rest of the way home.

The smell of cornbread baking and beans simmering on the stove met her at the door. She shouldered her way in and set down her burden.

“That you?” Sarah called from the kitchen.

“It’s me.” Taking the chair by the stove, Imogene pulled off her gloves. Dark red creases marked the places where the twine had bitten into her fingers. Across one palm, the scar from the burn she’d received in her confrontation with Sam Ebbitt showed ridged and redder than usual. Imogene made a fist and then slowly spread her fingers; the hand no longer opened completely. She turned her hands palms down so she needn’t look at them, and held them near the stove.

Sarah came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. The heat from the stove pinked her cheeks prettily. “Look what Wolf and I did,” she said, pointing to a small feathery wreath over the bookcase. It was of pine, and the long needles thrust out in all directions, making it far from round. Nestled in the needles were bright scraps of fabric sewn into fat butterfly bows.

“You’ve had quite a busy day, haven’t you?”

Sarah ignored the edge in Imogene’s voice. “I asked Mrs. Glass, and she said that big old pine would never know me and Wolf had taken anything.”

“Wolf and I.”

Sarah looked dubious. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Anyway, do you like it?”

“It’s lovely,” Imogene said without much enthusiasm.

“You don’t like it.”

The schoolteacher heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, my dear. I’m just tired, I suppose. I like it.”

Sarah walked to the window, rubbing her already dry hands with the towel. The sky was the clear gray of winter twilight, the bare elms etching it with black. Through the dark branches an early star twinkled. The yard had already gone into night, and Addie’s Victorian home loomed up out of the darkness like a lighthouse on the shore of a dark sea.

“It gets dark so early now.”

Imogene didn’t reply.

“Nate Weldrick came by to see Wolf today.”

“Ah. How paternal. Where is Wolf now?”

“Napping.” Sarah came over to perch on one of the boxes beside Imogene. “We went out for a ride with him. He gave me those.”