Bittersweet

“Two days ago-she was feeling poorly Sunday, she hurt here”-Sarah pressed her hand to the side of her abdomen-“so bad she couldn’t stand up straight. The next day, Monday, she…” Sarah’s throat closed, choking off the words.

“No need now.” Mac patted her shoulder clumsily.

“No, I want to tell it. Monday it was read bad, sometimes she didn’t know who we were.” Sarah spoke in the monotone of a schoolgirl reciting a lesson she’s committed to memory. “Monday, late, she died.” Turning her face to Mac’s shoulder, Sarah cried, then abruptly stopped.

“We-K-Karl and me-buried her. We-had to take a pick to the ground to break it.” She cried again and Mac stood miserably by patting her arm.

“Karl was under the weather too. Is he up and around?” Mac asked.

Sarah stared at him dumbly, then stammered, “Up and around. Yes. He is. Up and around,” she repeated. Then she cried, “Oh God!” and fell again to sobbing. In time she stopped and raised her eyes. “Do you want to see the grave?”

Mac nodded and she led him from the gloom of the stable. After the close, animal-warned air, the west wind cut like a knife, brittle and clean and so cold it burned to breathe. Holding tightly to his hand, Sarah went across the yard and around behind the house. Fifty yards away, in a small clearing in the sage, a broken rubble of clods bristling with sparse brown grass was heaped in a mound. At one end, a rough cross of two-by-fours had been driven into the earth. There was no name on it.

Moss Face was curled up near the unpainted cross, his nose buried under his tail. He whined as they approached, and Sarah gathered him in her arms and hugged him close. He’d grown long and rangy, a faded red banda

Mac pulled his hat off, his hands red and white with the cold. Sarah stood at his side, looking past the grave to the dark Fox Range. A narrow wedge of blue showed above the mountains. Pale rays of a cold sun shone through the break in the clouds, firing the snow on the peaks.

After a time of silence, Mac dug his knuckles into his eyes and spat carefully downwind. “Where’s Saunders?”

Sarah jumped. “Karl? Karl has gone to Fish Springs for a wagon part.”

He stared at her incredulously. “Now is a hell of a time to be going for wagon parts,” he barked. “Why that goddamn, blockheaded, numbskulled, knucklebrained son of a bitch. If he had half the sense he was born with-”

Sarah started to cry, wailing loud and frightened like a child, and like a child, she clung to his arm. “Please don’t. Please.”

Subdued to a grumble, Mac walked with her to the house. Sarah’s nose was strawberry-colored with crying and the cold, and her teeth chattered. Mac took her to the warmth and privacy of the kitchen, where she recovered herself somewhat, the necessity of seeing to the guests making her dry her eyes and stiffen her back. When he left, she was tied into her apron and tending to a savory venison stew.

Mac let himself out by the back door to avoid the clutch of people warming themselves with fire and whiskey in the main room. His grizzled head bent against the wind, his collar turned up around his ears, he walked to the barn.

Gaps between the boards, widened each summer as moisture was sucked from the already parched wood, moaned as the wind blew over them. Hard white light filtered through, draining color until the straw, the worn wood, the horse blankets on the wall, the leather harnesses, the coils of rope, the cans lining the crossbeams-all the contents of the barn-looked dull and lifeless. Mac, too, looked bleached with time and life, his shoulders stooped under his sixty-odd years; his sparse, wiry hair was almost white, and the furrows that seamed his face made him look less gnomish than simply tired. He slumped down on a half-filled nail keg and the sharp, tearing sounds of grief, sobs robbed of tears from years of being strong, grated from him.

In the murky half-light of the loft above, a shape shifted and the faded red plaid of Karl’s shirt rose from the bales, the battered felt hat pulled low. For a moment, sympathetic gray eyes looked down on the grieving old man, then soundlessly ducked down behind the barrier of hay.

Sarah managed to show the guests to their rooms and get di

Mac joined her after supper. He knocked timidly. “Sarah, it’s Mac.”

“Come in, Mac.” She lifted her eyes from the congealed mess of stew on her plate and managed a weak smile. He sat down heavily opposite her, and for a while neither spoke.

The sounds of feet on the stairs, as the guests said their good nights and carried their candles up to bed, roused Mac from his thoughts.

“You go on back with Liam. I’ll stay on till Jensen gets a new boy.”

Sarah stared, openmouthed. “Mac! I can’t leave Imogene.” Confusion clouded her face, and tears welled up in her eyes.

“Jensen was going to put you out anyway. I was to tell you. Soon as he found somebody else. He’d always pretty much known Mr. Ebbitt never showed, but there weren’t no complaints and he was satisfied to leave things well enough alone. But your friend Harland Maydley make a stink. Said he’d go over Ralph’s head if he had to. Since the lease was signed by two women, it ain’t legal.”

“Karl could take over, couldn’t he? Sign a new lease or something?”

“And you’d stay on?” Mac gave her a long knowing look, and she bridled a little.

“It’s not that, Mac.”

“I wouldn’t be pointing the finger if it was. A woman could do a hell of a lot worse’n Karl. He don’t say much but he ain’t stupid. Some fellas don’t say much and you figure they’re just duller than a hoe, and when they do speak up, sure enough, they ain’t much sharper. But when Karl talks, he’s not just beating his gums.”

“It’s not that.”

“Not much company for you out here; there’d be folks your own age in town. Women.”

“I’ll stay. You’ll be here sometimes.”

Mac shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m too old for swamping, been too old for fifteen years. This’ll be my last winter. I don’t mind telling you, Miss Grelznik’s going’s took the heart out of it.” Sarah reached out for his hand and held it. “ ’Course, I’d be more’n happy to stay on here if you need me,” he added.

“No, don’t stay,” she said, a bit too quickly, and Mac looked both hurt and relieved.

The house was still, the fires burned down to embers. Mac sat alone in front of the hearth, the only one besides Sarah who was still awake.

Sarah had gone to bed and, warm under the wool, swathed in a heavy fla

A long, eerie howl made her shiver. There was a moment of silence, deeper for having been so recently rent, then another cry. Sarah pressed her plans over her ears. Another quavering call went up into the night, this time close to the house. Snatching up her shawl from the bedpost, Sarah lit a kerosene lamp and tiptoed through the house and out the back door into the winter night. Pellets of snow stung her face and neck. She pulled the shawl over her head and squinted into the blackness. The howling came again and she shoved her fist into her mouth to choke off her own crying. Steadfastly she made her way out through the gate and to the clearing in the brush.

Moss Face perched on the freshly turned clods of the grave, his narrow face pointed at the blind sky.