Bittersweet

From beneath a glossy cap of hair, parted exactly in the center and combed wet so it was plastered to his skull, Matthew glowered at the world. He had been squeezed into the somber black traveling suit his grandmother sent him west in. It was far too small and pinched under the arms.

They stopped at the foot of the courthouse steps and gazed up at the intimidating structure. The heavy doors swung open and the dark, polished wood flashed as two men, stiff and proper in black broadcloth suits and rigid collars, came down the steps. Karl and Sarah drew back respectfully to let them pass.

“Reno’s become such a city,” Sarah whispered. Matthew, knowing only Calliope, Pe

“Sarah?” Karl smiled, his gray eyes warm. “Shall we?” He gestured toward the open doors.

She hesitated, the color deserting her cheeks. Several dark-suited men passed, going up the steps and closing the doors behind them. “Maybe we’d better not.” She was suddenly afraid and rested both hands on her son’s shoulders to stop them from shaking.

“I love you, Sarah. I want to be with you always, in the sight of God and man.”

Sarah nodded shortly, her lips pressed in a determined line, and took his arm.

The foyer was dark and cold, with high vaulted ceilings of burnished oak collecting gloom over floors of the same dark hue. The heels of Sarah’s shoes clicked and echoed. They hurried to the less imposing offices beyond. In a drafty little room smelling of stale cigars, Sarah Ebbitt and Karl Saunders were married.

The justice of the peace was dry and papery, with the look of a man who has spent his life indoors. He fumbled a pair of spectacles from his vest pocket and read the ceremony without inflection, tired already, though it was not yet ten o’clock. An old clerk, hard of hearing and nearly blind, was the witness and he mumbled and chuckled to himself all during the vows.

Sarah had taken off the jade ring Imogene had given her, and handed it to Matthew to hold. Karl slipped it back on her hand as the justice said, “With this ring…”

The justice pronounced them man and wife and closed the book with a sigh. For a moment he blinked at them from behind his spectacles. “You may kiss the bride,” he remembered.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t!” Sarah protested and looked at the justice, the clerk, and back to Karl. He looked as uncertain as she.

“Kiss her,” cackled the old clerk imperiously.

Karl tilted her chin and studied the lines of her face as though reading a long sweet story. Then he kissed her gently and the old clerk smacked his lips with satisfaction. Karl pulled Sarah’s arm through his, and held his hand out for Matthew. “Son?”

The three of them left as unobtrusively as they had come, quiet and plain in their simple dress, but as they passed, people turned to look after them and smile.

“Can we go to the Broken Promise? Or the Bishop’s Girls?” Matthew asked as they reached the hotel, repeating names he’d heard his mother and Karl mention.

“No, honey, we’ve got to be heading back as soon as we get our things together. Next time,” Sarah promised.

“There won’t be a next time,” Matthew grumbled.

Their hotel rooms were across the hall from each other, Sarah and Matthew’s overlooking the Truckee, and Karl’s facing east, toward the mountains. In the hall, Karl knelt beside Matthew. “I’d like to be alone with your mother for a few minutes. Do you think you could find something to do in your room for a while?” Matthew agreed to try, and Karl ruffled his hair. “Good boy.”

The door closed, and husband and wife looked at one another. “We did it,” Karl said, and expelled his breath in a long sigh.

“Yes.” Sarah laughed shakily and sat on the edge of the bed to unpin her hat.

“I have something for you.” He pulled a chair up near the bed where he could sit facing her. “Something I memorized from one of the books your old-maid schoolteacher had. It’s my wedding gift to you.” He took her hands and began:

“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least-

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sing hymns at Heaven’s gate,

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

Sarah leaned over and kissed him. She was crying, and his eyes were moist. “I have nothing for you,” she said.

“You are everything to me, Sarah.”

40

THE DAY AFTER THEY CAME HOME TO ROUND HOLE, MATTHEW RAN three-quarters of a mile to meet the Reno coach so he could be the first with the news to Liam and Beaner. “Karl and Momma got married,” he puffed as Liam hauled him aboard by one arm.

“It’s about damn time,” the taciturn old driver replied, but he was pleased and paid his respects with his hat in his hand when they arrived at Round Hole.

The weeks passed and Sarah grew as quick to answer to “Mrs. Saunders” as she had been to “Mrs. Ebbitt.” Karl was slower, and suffered the good-natured teasing of the old customers when he referred to his wife as Mrs. Ebbitt.

The weather turned cold in late September, and life moved indoors. Sarah or Karl would leave the guests after supper and find a quiet corner where they could teach Matthew his lessons. Sometimes they held hands or sat close, but Karl still absented himself from the stop on nights when Sarah raised the calico flag.

The Saunderses saved enough money over the winter so that the following spring they were able to buy a bull. They hoped to have a healthier crop of calves the following year. Coby’s pay was raised to two dollars and a quarter a day. He took better than half a week off, and rode to Elko to pay his debts. When he returned, a free man, with some money left over, he settled back into the tackroom and showed no inclination to move on.

Several more of Sarah’s hens disappeared and she reinforced the wire fence around the coop. There were no more raids for a while; then, early in November, Matthew forgot to latch the gate behind him after gathering eggs for supper and in the morning three hens were gone. One was Sarah’s best layer.

Karl and Coby had gone to Standish to buy hay and firewood for the winter. Sarah, enjoying the solitude, whistled breathily to herself as she checked the roost one more time, peering into the gloomy recesses of each box and poking her arm in to feel behind the messes of straw nesting. Her missing hens were nowhere to be found, but she inadvertently discovered an egg so old it broke when she touched it and the smell drove her out into the open. The sharp November air cleared her lungs of rotten-egg smell. Wrapping her arms in her apron for warmth, she took a last look around the henyard. Her flock, small and brown-and-white-speckled, scratched complacently. Corn kernels from the morning still littered the ground near the fence. Two snow-white feathers blew by her feet, catching her eye. She picked one up and turned it over in her fingers; the end was mangled and there was rust-colored matting near the tip. She let the wind take it, left the chicken coop, and hurried across the yard. Under the porch steps, out of sight from a distance, were more feathers-half a handful. Sarah knelt by the steps and stuck her head under the porch. Shadowy and indistinct, something crouched behind the feathers.