Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

Imogene stopped working and leaned on her shovel for a moment, the sweat shining on her brow and upper lip. “I love it here. It’s a hard land, but it’s clean. Clean of people.”

“You haven’t much use for people once they’ve turned twelve, have you?”

Imogene laughed. “Not much. I do love the children, they are so full of what people could be. But they almost never make it. The humanity is shamed or beaten out of most of them before they have turned twenty. They plod down the same narrow track their parents did, and never see the sky.”

“We have got to go back,” Sarah said softly. “We have to, now that Karl’s gone. Back in among the people. Out here, we made the rules.” A sad howl echoed up the hillside, adding finality to Sarah’s words.

Imogene plied her shovel in silence.

After another hour the grave was dug. The two of them dragged the body, shrouded in its blue-striped envelope, to the edge of the hole. They tried to lower it gently, but it got away from them, and the remains of Karl Saunders tumbled the last few feet. In the pocket of her coat, Imogene carried the Bible. As she read the words over him, the wind snatched them from her lips. Sarah hoped that if they were blown to where Karl could hear them, they brought him comfort.

Working with both shovel and pick, they filled in the grave and, stone by stone, made a small cairn to keep the animals from digging it up. Imogene promised to build a cross.

Finally all that remained was to clear away the few personal effects Karl had left behind, the work of half an hour. “I guess we’ll be packing our own things next,” Sarah said, and Imogene crumpled as though she had struck her.

Sarah ran to her, clung to her, patting her back and shoulders. Imogene burst out in fresh cries, the dry sounds of a person unaccustomed to tears. “Please, Imogene! Please!” Sarah rubbed her neck and held her, kissed the rough cheeks.

“I’m going to lose you,” Imogene cried. “I cannot bear it. We’ll leave this desert and I’ll lose you.”

“My love, my love,” Sarah murmured. “No. Never. Don’t cry. It’ll be the same. Just you and me. I promise. People won’t make any difference. I promise they won’t.”

Even as she said it, Sarah knew it wasn’t true and Imogene only sobbed harder, her face buried in her hands.

“Imogene!” Sarah cried frantically. “Please, stop it! Listen to me, Imogene!” Sarah tried to pull the schoolteacher’s hands from her face. “We’ll stay. Here on the Smoke Creek. I’ve got an idea. We can stay, honest to God. Damn you! Listen.” Sarah swore fervently and tugged at Imogene’s wrists. Imogene quieted a little. “We won’t tell anyone Karl’s dead,” she went on hurriedly. “We’ll sign the lease for him like we did for Sam last time. We’ll pretend he’s not dead, that he’s still here.”

Imogene shook her head, but she wasn’t crying. “We can do it,” Sarah pressed. “Noisy’s quit the run and Mac would never let on. The other people that come through here are mostly strangers going someplace else, they’d never know a thing. Jensen never comes, and after the licking you gave Maydley, I bet he wouldn’t dare. If somebody asked, we could say Karl had gone here or there and wouldn’t be back for a few days, Karl didn’t have any people, so there would be nobody to tell.”

A momentary light showed in Imogene’s eyes, but it faded quickly. “It wouldn’t work, Sarah. Word would get back that there was no man here. Freighters would talk. Even Mac. Mac is as transparent as glass. You know he couldn’t hide a thing.” A bleak emptiness settled over Imogene’s mind and, sad-faced and silent, she succumbed to it.

“No!” Sarah grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “I won’t give up, not yet. We’ve got to try.” She took Imogene in her arms and the big woman hid her face in Sarah’s soft hair. Sarah hugged her close. “We won’t give up Round Hole without a fight! ‘One holy hell of a fight,’ as David says.”

They tore down the stones that marked Karl’s grave and put his belongings back where he’d kept them. Imogene wrote a note to Ralph Jensen. She didn’t apologize for deceiving him the first time, she simply stated that she and Sarah would give up without a fuss if he would agree to lease the Round Hole stop to Karl Saunders and, if Karl agreed, let them stay on. She asked that he send the lease out with the next stage. She would see it was returned to him with Mr. Saunders’s signature.

They posted the letter with the next wagon through, and waited. The reply came back with unexpected alacrity. A freighter, bound for Oregon with a load of cheesecloth, brought it to them late Saturday afternoon. It read: The hell you will. I’ll be out on the Wednesday stage to see Saunders sign it his own damn self.-R. J. Jensen .

THE NEXT DAY, SARAH WATCHED THE MUDWAGON FROM THE WINDOW of the tackroom as, tiny and toylike in the distance, it wound its way down from Sand Pass. It was Sunday, four days since Harland Maydley had left Round Hole with more threats than teeth in his mouth, three days before Ralph Jensen was due.

“You’d better get to the loft now,” Sarah said without turning from the window.

“You’ll tell Mac?”

“I’ll tell him.”

The door between the tackroom and the barn swung shut. Sarah pulled her thoughts from the oncoming coach and went back to sweeping the floor. As the coach arrived at the inn yard, she finished and emptied the dustpan into the barrel stove. The smell of burning hair made her eyes water, and she sank down on Karl’s cot, dabbing at them with her dresstail.

“Sarah, coach is in!” came the call from inside the barn. She ignored it and hid her face in her hands.

Mac hollered for Imogene, then for Karl. There was no reply. He lowered himself gently from the high seat of the coach and stomped the life back into his legs and feet. Liam, looking like a man of ice, his chapped face colorless and his lips blue with the cold, steadied the team. Steam rose from the horses’ hides and puffed from their nostrils. The sky was low and leaden overhead. Hobbling and stiff, Mac opened the coach door. “Watch that first step,” he cautioned. “The ground’s froze and liable to jar your teeth out.”

The coach was full. Groaning, the men helped one another with the women and the baggage. A slender, handsome woman and her two pert teenage daughters, traveling with their elder brother, were handed down last and stood in a tired, unhappy cluster, small and out of place in the desert landscape.

Helpless under the distraught glances of the women, Mac looked around the deserted yard. “Gals are usually out to meet the coach. Miss Grelznik, at any rate. Miss Grelznik!” he called. “Coach’s in.” Smoke curled placidly from the chimney and the stovepipe behind the house; chickens, daring out of their coop in the bitter air, pecked the ground in a desultory fashion. But there were no faces at the windows nor Imogene’s usual call of “Company!” to warn Sarah.

“Karl!” There was no answering shout. “What in the hell…” Mac muttered. “Begging your pardon, ladies. Go on inside, the gals must be tied up some damn place. Looks like they got a fire lit, anyway. Just make yourself at home.” Relieved to get his unaccustomed duties over with, he hurried back to the company of the livestock.

In the dining room a fire burned high, holding winter at bay beyond the windows. A homey smell of onions and roasting meat permeated the air, mingling with the mellow smell of old wood and old whiskey. Cold enough to risk impropriety, the misses pulled their chairs close to the wide hearth and lifted their petticoats to toast their feet on the grate. Their mother hovered near, keeping a watchful eye on their modesty and on itinerant sparks. She had ventured a few hellos, but no one had come.