Bittersweet

Sarah served the men lunch as the clanking of Karl’s tools on the metal windmill sounded in the distance. She served a second meal an hour and fifteen minutes later, when the coach down from Fort Bidwell arrived. Liam and Ross traded passengers, except for Jensen, who was returning to Reno.

Sarah stood on the porch as the coaches loaded passengers and switched luggage from one rack to another, enduring the crush of strangers for Mr. Jensen’s benefit. Karl was nowhere to be seen; he’d finished with the windmill shortly before Ross rolled in, but hadn’t come into the house.

“You’re staying on?” Jensen asked her.

“Yes.”

“With Saunders?” His lip curled in a knowing leer.

Sarah looked up the hill toward the broken earth of the new-made grave and didn’t reply.

36

THE REST OF THE WINTER PASSED UNEVENTFULLY. SARAH MET THE incoming coaches as Imogene had done in the past. She’d watch them coming over the desert, and just before the wheels stopped turning she’d take a deep breath, pat her lips with the tips of her fingers, and say to herself, “They’re people just like me.”

Karl worked hard, and when there were no guests, he spent his evenings in by the fire and his nights with Sarah; when there were guests, he kept to himself in the tackroom.

The only physical difference in the stop was an old clothesline ru

Karl scratched his shoulders against the beam, unconsciously aping the movement of the horse in a stall next to him. Liam and his swamper, a quiet young Mexican whom Liam called Beaner, curried the tired horses and rubbed them down. Karl sat on a bale of hay against the wall, watching them work. His arms were folded and his long legs stretched out in front of him. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled halfway to the elbow, and his long underwear was pushed up to expose hard, stringy forearms baked leather-brown.

The masculine, horse-smelling tranquility of the shed was chased away by the sudden intrusion of sunlight and fresh air. Sarah threw open the wide door and ran in, flushed and breathless. “Karl, there’s been a letter from Mam!” She waved several sheets of paper until they cracked. “Sam’s dead and Matthew’s coming home. Listen.” She sat down beside him on the hay and spread the sheets on her knees, oblivious to the uncomfortable glances of Liam and the swamper. The two men mumbled quick excuses and left Karl alone with her as she began to read.

“ ‘Dear Sarah, there isn’t a way to come up on this slowly, so I’ll just put it as best I can. Sam passed away the day before yesterday. He’d had a lump on his neck big as a goose egg and it seemed to suck the life right out. Sam was a little man when he died, I could’ve lifted him in my two arms.’ ” Sarah stopped and pressed her palms against the page. “I never loved Sam. I wish I had now.” There were tears glimmering in her eyes and she took a deep uneven breath to steady herself. Karl held out his hand and Sarah laid hers in it for a moment. “I’m okay. I’ll go on. ‘He was buried in the churchyard. It was a nice funeral, too, and took the last of the money Sam had-he owed from trying to get the farm back on its feet. The land will be auctioned off Saturday next.

“ ‘Gracie’s young man sent for her finally and she’s gone out West. All I got is Lizbeth home now, and Walter and little Mattie. Maybe you’ll see Gracie. Is Oregon anywhere near Reno?’ ” Sarah smiled. “Mam’s got no notion how big the West is.” She went back to the letter. “There’s some about Pa; his cough’s no better and I guess some worse, from what she doesn’t say. Here’s the part: ‘I think Mattie should come out to be with you. You’re his Ma. He’s a good boy and I’d want to keep him by me but things aren’t like when your Pa was well. Mattie will be better off to come West. Lizbeth looks to be marrying soon and I’m feeling my age more. I’ve saved some money and the church managed a little and I’ve bought the ticket. I’ll put him on the train as soon as I can get things settled here-maybe three weeks.’ ” When Sarah looked up from the page, her eyes were shining even in the dim light of the shed. “Matthew’s going to be here. My son.” Cool tears of joy ran down her face.

No girl ever prepared for the coming of her lover with more care than that with which Sarah readied the house-the entire stop-for the coming of her son. Every day she tied her hair back in a clean rag and, with her sleeves rolled up and a wooden scrub bucket in hand, cleaned and polished. She rearranged Imogene’s old room half a dozen times and moved the schoolteacher’s clothes out of the closet and drawers. It was the first time they’d been disturbed since Imogene stopped needing them. Sarah consigned some to the mending heap to alter for herself, and some to the ragbag. One of Imogene’s summer skirts became curtains to replace the sun-bleached drapes. Sarah mixed whitewash and repaired and painted the chicken coop; she trimmed back the withered limbs of another group of doomed saplings, and watered the cottonwood posts around the spring. The fenceposts, with the perversity of nature, had begun to sprout, and a living fence circled the water.

Karl, Liam, and Beaner, and freighters on their regular runs through Round Hole, watched the whirlwind activity with bemused tolerance. To ease her load, Karl took over the cooking, withstanding the gibes of the men with quiet good humor.

One afternoon a week before the boy was expected, Karl found Sarah crying. She was alone in the barn, sitting on the floor in the loose hay, the gold of the afternoon sun striping her skirts. As he came in she looked up with red, swollen eyes, her cheeks streaked with tears.

He sat down beside her and waited.

“I’m afraid he won’t know me. Of course he can’t know me. I’m afraid he won’t like me.”

“There are the letters you’ve written him,” Karl said. “I don’t know how many hundred.”

“I’m afraid I won’t know him.”

“You will.”

“Do you want him to come?”

“Very much. Like Mac used to say, ‘You can’t run this country without kids.’ ”

“I want to be a good mother. I’m so afraid I won’t be, that he’d be better off with Mam or Gracie or anybody.”

“You’re a wonderful mother, Sarah.”

“Wolf died.”

Each Wednesday and Sunday in the last two weeks of the month, Sarah went to the gate to meet the stage. On an afternoon in July her wait was ended. Her son arrived on the first coach she hadn’t met. The mudwagon rolled in on a cloud of dust, and before it had settled, Liam yelled, “We got him, Mrs. Ebbitt.”

Sarah ran out from the shade of the porch, then stopped before she reached the coach door, her hands flying to her hair and smoothing her dress. “Karl…” she called, looking suddenly young and frightened.

“I’m here.” Karl walked across the packed earth from the stable. Calm and reassuring, he took his place beside her.

Sarah touched her hair and dress once again and, with a last look at Karl, opened the door of the coach. A very small boy, not yet six years old, with dark hair and light blue eyes, sat alone inside, looking smaller and more alone for the empty seats around him.

“Not much of a haul for sixty-odd miles overland, is it?” Liam asked. “Business is falling off, railroad’ll have it all by 1890. Have it all. Beaner!” The wiry, mustachioed Mexican beside him looked up without rancor, recognizing the title as his own. “You swamper or ain’t you?”