Bittersweet

“Do you love me?” Imogene asked softly.

“You know I do,” came the reply.

“We’ll stay. We’ll keep the stop. I’ll think of something. Let’s try to get some sleep now.”

Morning brought no answers. At sunup they bundled into their coats and scarves to see to Karl’s remains. A kernel of anger lay hard in Sarah’s chest. “We’re going to have to leave the stop,” she said, knowing the words would hurt. “Maydley will tell Mr. Jensen. You know he will. We may as well start packing our things now. We’re going to have to leave on the next stage.” Imogene said nothing. She pressed her lips into a thin line and jerked mittens on over her gloves. Sarah felt mean and little. “Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve been chased from my home.”

Imogene looked at her sharply. “Are you sorry, Sarah?”

The hurt in her old friend’s face took the bitterness out of Sarah. Gently she said, “No, Imogene, I’m not sorry. It’s been a long time coming and it’s right. I no longer believe in a God that rations out love only where the neighbors see fit.”

Imogene nodded shortly.

A wind had risen with the sun and blew steadily from the northwest. Moss Face was standing guard before the tackroom door. Sarah scratched his ears as they slipped past him and inside.

Karl’s room was as spare as a monk’s cell. Against the wall, opposite the narrow cot where Karl’s body lay, was a nail keg containing the entirety of the hired man’s estate: a jackknife, a silver chain with a silver nugget, a faded photograph of a middle-aged woman, and, tucked in a tobacco tin, every pe

Sarah looked at the shrouded figure of Karl Saunders. “Somehow I expected to find that he was all right this morning, not to see him just like we left him.” She started for the bed to turn back the cover from his face, but changed her mind.

“We haven’t the lumber for a coffin,” Imogene said. “We’ll have to bury him in a shroud.”

“I read somewhere that they sew sailors into sails before they bury them at sea,” Sarah replied. “Could we do that for Karl? A horse blanket-a sheet is so thin it wouldn’t keep out the damp.” Her eyes strayed to the feet of her friend, thurst out from under the cover, so human and vulnerable in their mended stockings.

“Karl’s too tall for a horse blanket,” Imogene said kindly. “We would have to sew four of them together.”

“We couldn’t spare four.”

There was a long silence while the cold seeped through their clothes and the coyote whined at the door.

“The best blanket in the house,” Sarah declared finally. “The one the bishop’s wife gave me.” It was of fine wool and brightly colored. Sarah felt good for the small sacrifice.

Moss Face squeezed in as she opened the tackroom door, and was across the room like a shot. He stopped short of Karl’s bed as though someone had jerked an invisible leash. A low moan built in his chest until it broke free in a howl. Imogene reached for him, soothing words forming on her lips, but he growled and darted under the bed. Imogene murmured and coaxed, but though he whined and thumped the floor with his tail, he wouldn’t come out.

Sarah watched from the door, the wind whipping her skirts into the room. A gust caught up a handful of ashes from the stove and scattered them over Karl. “Let’s go on with it,” Imogene said as she stood up. “Moss Face is all right where he is, I guess.” While Imogene fetched the long needles and strong waxed thread from the harness-repair kit, Sarah ran to the house for the blanket. When she returned they spread it on the floor beside the dead man’s bed so they could lower the body down onto it.

Tentatively, Sarah pulled the cover back. Karl was gone; only the pale, lifeless husk remained. She looked at the bloodless face, the stiff shoulders, and knew with a rush of relief that she could bury him.

The moment they laid hands on Karl’s corpse, the coyote went wild. Snarling, he exploded from under the cot like a wolverine defending its whelp. His usually soft brown eyes were narrowed, and hackles ridged his back. Crouching by Karl’s body, Moss Face bared his teeth in silent warning. The women retreated to the far side of the room. Immediately Moss Face sat down, the hair along his spine settled, and he looked up at them sheepishly, the picture of canine remorse.

“Look at him,” Sarah marveled.

The coyote crept toward them on knees and elbows. In the middle of the blanket he laid his chin on his paws and wagged his tail apologetically. Sarah started forward but the older woman stopped her. “We’d better give him a wide berth for a few days,” she said. “He is pretty upset.”

“We’ve got to get him out of here. We can’t just leave Karl.” Sarah lowered her voice and glanced furtively around the room. “Mam says till you’ve been buried and last rites said, the spirit wanders. It can do people harm.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Moss Face feels it,” Sarah insisted.

“If you don’t stop, I’ll be feeling it.” Imogene resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. “Still, it isn’t suitable to leave Karl any longer. Take the far corner of the blanket, I’ll get this one. At the count of three we’ll wrap Moss Face in it. I’ll lock him in the house until he settles down.” Their stealth put the coyote on the alert, but they were too quick for him. They folded him in the heavy wool and Imogene scooped him up. Inside the bundle, Moss Face fought, but the blanket was thick and Imogene held him tight.

Karl was so tall they had to lay him on the blanket corner to corner and fold it into a triangle like an apple turnover. The lack of dignity disturbed Imogene, but Sarah knew the big taciturn man would have enjoyed the joke.

The sewing finished, Sarah brought the wheelbarrow from the shed and they loaded the body onto it. The grave was to be on the shoulder of the hill behind the house, and they trundled their sad cargo up through the sage. Tools were fetched and Sarah was sent back to the house, out of the cold.

Imogene broke through the frozen ground with a pick. When the crust lay like paving stones by the side of the grave, she took up the shovel and began to dig. It was slow going in the rocky soil. Once, Imogene’s spade struck a stone the size of a man’s head. “Alas, poor Yorick,” she said, and smiled a little as she threw the rock into the sage. Two hours later the grave was four feet deep and just over six feet long.

Sarah came up the hill with hot tea and stayed on to keep Imogene company and to avoid being alone. In the house, by herself, she kept hearing things. Looking down over the weathered buildings and gray alkali flats to the blue of the Fox Range beyond, Sarah sensed the emptiness of leaving and pulled her coat closer around her throat. “I’ve gotten so used to it here, I even like the alkali water. I don’t smell the rotten-egg smell anymore.”

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.