Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

“Hush now, don’t cry, talk to me.”

“It would be better, maybe. I guess I should. I can’t go on forever like this. I just don’t know. I’m so afraid.”

Wolf was crying, a thin, fretful whimpering.

“He’s hot,” Sarah said. “It makes him peevish. I think he’s coming down with something.”

“We’d better see to him,” Imogene replied, but they stood a moment longer in the wavering half-light, holding on to each other.

THE LAMPS IN THE KITCHEN HAD BEEN LIT FOR HOURS. RAIN STILL pounded against the windows. Neither Imogene nor Sarah had mentioned Nate or his proposal of that afternoon.

“Wolf’s a little under the weather,” Sarah said, removing the boy’s place setting and putting it away. “I’m going to put him to bed with a dish of bread pudding. I think he’s taken a chill. That drenching Nate put him through seems to have aggravated it. He was feeling a little peaked before Mr. Weldrick came.” She scooped a bowl half-full of pudding and took a spoon from the drawer.

“Take a candle?”

“No need.” Slipping the spoon in her pocket, Sarah left the kitchen.

Imogene pushed the fried ham to the back of the stove, where it would stay warm, and took the potatoes from the oven. She squeezed them until their jackets burst open and put a chunk of butter in each.

Sarah returned, slipped into her place at the table, and said grace. Neither had an appetite, and after making a feeble attempt to eat, they cleared the dishes and went to sit by Wolf. The only light in the room spilled in through the open door from the living room. Wolf, round-faced as the moon, lay quiet, his arms at his sides.

Sarah smiled. “He’s asleep.”

“It’s a good sign.”

At the sound of voices, Wolf opened his dark eyes. “You sleep,” Sarah said, and he closed them obediently. Imogene laid the back of her hand against the curve of his cheek. “If the fever is not gone of itself by morning, we’ll call the doctor.”

In the morning he was worse; his eyes shone with an unnatural luster, and the skin of his face was drawn and hot. The bed gave him no comfort and he complained ceaselessly that there were rocks and spiders in it.

The doctor came at midmorning. It was influenza. People died of it in the winter. He’d seen whole mining camps wiped out. “Keep him warm,” he said. “As warm as he’ll let you. Sometimes the fever breaks.”

Imogene stood over Wolf. The little box bed came scarcely to her knees, and she loomed over it like a giantess. “I’ve been out in the rain, soaked to the skin a hundred times. When I was a girl at Elmira College in New York, I used to wash my hair Saturday afternoon before chapel. In winter it would freeze on the way across College Square and melt during prayers, dripping down my back. I never once caught cold.”

“Wolf’s a baby,” Sarah replied.

“Who would think a moment in the rain without a coat could chill him so much?”

“It was more than a moment; Mr. Weldrick made him go outside before you came home.”

Imogene shook as a tremor ran down her spine, and busied herself in the kitchen making strong broth.

They took turns sitting with Wolf, replacing the covers when he threw them off, and watching the fever consume him. Sarah grew pale and dark-eyed, mirroring the face of the child. She would not sleep even when Imogene sat with Wolf, and wouldn’t stay out of the room long enough to eat a proper meal.

Near midnight on the third night of Wolf’s illness, Imogene came in to sit with her.

“You ought to try to sleep, Sarah. You’ll get sick.”

Sarah shook her head. Her hair, plaited into one long braid, fell over her shoulder. She tied it in the sash of her robe to keep it out of the way. Wolf lay quiet in his little bed, the covers tucked up under his chin.

“He seems to be resting better,” Sarah said.

Imogene looked at the hollow eyes, their pupils twitching under the lids, and laid her hand on his chest. The fragile cage of flesh and bone trembled under her palm as Wolf labored for air. “Maybe.”

“Mr. Weldrick put him out in the rain with no coat.”

Imogene didn’t comment.

“I might have stopped him if I’d said something.”

“Don’t, Sarah. Nate Weldrick did what he did. You can’t blame yourself.”

In the early hours of morning, Imogene lay awake, the lamp turned low by her bedside. Sarah was sitting with Wolf in the other room. Too tired to concentrate on her book, Imogene lay listening. The rain had let up and the wind soughed through the wet and falling leaves. A low, piercing wail started. As if that had been the sound she was listening for, Imogene threw back the bedclothes and ran to the other room.

Hands clasped tightly in her lap, her shoulders hunched almost to her knees, Sarah keened a single, wavering, high-pitched note, and rocked herself. She looked up when Imogene came in.

“He’s just gone. Burned up.” She clawed at the air, trying to drag understanding from it. “Gone.”

Sarah turned her face against the familiar planes of her friend’s broad chest, and great gulping sobs tore out of her. Imogene held her, her own tears falling into the soft halo of hair.

Wolf was an Indian and so couldn’t be buried in the Christian cemetery. The Indian cemetery was on the outskirts of Reno, and the gravediggers grumbled at having to walk so far in the rain. Drizzle darkened and smeared the wooden tombstones, and around the grave the mud was ankle-deep. Imogene stood close to Sarah, with Lutie and Fred beside her. Mac was at Sarah’s other side, his grizzled old face as soft as a woman’s around the mouth and eyes. He’d carried the coffin from the wagon, he and Fred Bone; it was scarcely half the length of a man, and its toy-sized dimensions mocked the living. Across from them, over the open grave, the bishop and Mrs. Whitaker bowed their heads. Sarah, dead calm, stood between Imogene and Mac, her face drawn and sunken around the eyes, but composed.

When it was over and the handfuls of wet earth had been dropped on the coffin, Sarah and Imogene rode home with the Whitakers. Ozi’s proud, matched bays, young and spirited, refused to suit their steps to the occasion and lifted their feet high out of the mud as if dancing. The cloud cover had begun to break and the sun came through in rainbowed fingers, touching the leaves back to gold.

“Will you come in for a bite?” Mrs. Whitaker asked as they drew abreast of the Whitaker house. “I’ll bet you’ve not had a decent meal in a while. Come in and eat.”

“Sarah?” Imogene asked.

“No thank you, Mrs. Whitaker, I couldn’t.”

“Won’t help to go hungry,” the bishop’s wife advised.

Ozi shook the reins. “Bishop?” Imogene laid a hand on the seatback. “I’d like to walk the rest, if you don’t mind. I need to get out and walk a little.”

“It’s wet. You’ll catch a chill yourself.”

“I’d like to walk too,” Sarah said unexpectedly. There was a sense of quiet authority drawn around her like a cloak, the same sad sense of self-possession that had straightened her back at the graveside. The bishop bowed to the dignity of her grief and helped them both from the carriage.

Late-autumn sunlight shone warm on their backs, and the morning’s drizzle sparkled on every leaf and blade of grass. The pungent smell of rain-washed earth and rotting leaves swelled up from the ground. A thin mist rose from the river and blew into translucent ribbons over the water. Arms linked, they walked side by side on the grassy bank, avoiding the mud of the path.

“Things aren’t real yet,” Sarah said. “Like Wolf’s not being home when we get there. No more. Something that can’t be fixed, won’t ever be better. I can’t believe that. How am I going to bear it when I do?”