The Star Garden Read Online Free Page B
Author: Nancy E. Turner
was the pure truth. Reckon there wasn’t any more to say anyway.
Chapter Two
December, 10, 1906
Completely separate from the newcomers to our house, from the family busting at its seams, and from the ranch barely earning feed for chickens, apart from all and weighted by it all, I live my life in a state of hushed desperation these days. Under my skin I feel an urgency, a need for hurrying through everything I touch, while on the surface, I work as calm as ever, moving through each day, doing one thing at a time. I used to take pride in what I accomplished, but now each chore is little more than a task to put my hands to, with no meaning of its own.
We weren’t planning yesterday to travel to town, but now with a day’s hard travel ahead of us, there followed the usual commotion of packing up clothing and setting up who’d stay to feed animals and deciding what food we’d take along. With the extra folks to carry, we’d have to borrow the big surrey from my brother Albert and his wife, Savannah, who live up the road a mile. While Gilbert went to do that, I checked off the morning’s chores with no more thought to my overnight guests than if they were a few stray cats roosting in the courtyard.
This past fall has been a season of great changes for me. My old house was torn down by a tornado, the new one built and filled with all its new occupants, then adding to it, the loss of the familiar faces of my son Charlie gone to be a Ranger, and my nephew Willie, hung for cattle rustling and murder. Charlie left to find Willie and took up with the Arizona Rangers, and he’s been gone ever since. Maybe that’s why I feel so all-fired rushed, as if so much is happening so fast, and I can barely stay equal to each day.
There is one thing that slows me down and settles my troubled soul. One person, that is. He came to this area out of the blue, last summer, bringing my brother Ernest’s remains home from the war in Cuba to rest here in my graveyard on the hill. From the beginning, Udell Hanna seemed like a decent man, and lonesome, and the two of us have sheltered our lonesomeness more and more in the comfort of our clasped hands.
Where my Jack had been all fire and storm and tumult, Udell Hanna is slow to rile as a pool of still water. Savannah keeps asking me if I plan to settle down with him, as I confessed to her that I’ve kissed him. Savannah is mighty pious, in all the best ways, and she believes all kissing should be reserved until after betrothal. I don’t know about marrying him, though. I like keeping company, is all. I really like keeping his company. I figured Udell ought to know we were driving to town. There might be some tool he’d need, a sack of baking powder or gunpowder or such. I closed the latch on the chicken coop, my apron holding four dear eggs. It’s winter and my “ladies” are slow laying. I put two under the setting hen and counted a dozen in there she’s warming, plus got a whale of a peck on my arm for checking.
I put the remaining two eggs by the tin sink to clean them off. I called out to the house, “I’m going for a ride.”
Granny looked up from snoozing by the stove in a chair and said, “Is that the parson from town?”
“Who, Mama?” I said.
“The one with the black hair. He’s sweet on you.”
“No he isn’t, Mama. He’s some professor of letters from the university and a rapscallion I’ll be glad to be shed of.”
“You said suchlike before. About that soldier fella.”
To compare Professor Fairhaven to my dear Jack Elliot was like putting a three-legged mule next to a racehorse. I felt instantly cross and was about to tell her so, but the tumult I felt under my skin has also had the effect of numbing my tongue when I’ve felt any lack of patience toward her. My mama could barely see at all, much less discern some attraction between me and that flapping, sputtering Californian. “I never got shed of Jack,” I said. “I married him.”
“I’ll be
Chapter Two
December, 10, 1906
Completely separate from the newcomers to our house, from the family busting at its seams, and from the ranch barely earning feed for chickens, apart from all and weighted by it all, I live my life in a state of hushed desperation these days. Under my skin I feel an urgency, a need for hurrying through everything I touch, while on the surface, I work as calm as ever, moving through each day, doing one thing at a time. I used to take pride in what I accomplished, but now each chore is little more than a task to put my hands to, with no meaning of its own.
We weren’t planning yesterday to travel to town, but now with a day’s hard travel ahead of us, there followed the usual commotion of packing up clothing and setting up who’d stay to feed animals and deciding what food we’d take along. With the extra folks to carry, we’d have to borrow the big surrey from my brother Albert and his wife, Savannah, who live up the road a mile. While Gilbert went to do that, I checked off the morning’s chores with no more thought to my overnight guests than if they were a few stray cats roosting in the courtyard.
This past fall has been a season of great changes for me. My old house was torn down by a tornado, the new one built and filled with all its new occupants, then adding to it, the loss of the familiar faces of my son Charlie gone to be a Ranger, and my nephew Willie, hung for cattle rustling and murder. Charlie left to find Willie and took up with the Arizona Rangers, and he’s been gone ever since. Maybe that’s why I feel so all-fired rushed, as if so much is happening so fast, and I can barely stay equal to each day.
There is one thing that slows me down and settles my troubled soul. One person, that is. He came to this area out of the blue, last summer, bringing my brother Ernest’s remains home from the war in Cuba to rest here in my graveyard on the hill. From the beginning, Udell Hanna seemed like a decent man, and lonesome, and the two of us have sheltered our lonesomeness more and more in the comfort of our clasped hands.
Where my Jack had been all fire and storm and tumult, Udell Hanna is slow to rile as a pool of still water. Savannah keeps asking me if I plan to settle down with him, as I confessed to her that I’ve kissed him. Savannah is mighty pious, in all the best ways, and she believes all kissing should be reserved until after betrothal. I don’t know about marrying him, though. I like keeping company, is all. I really like keeping his company. I figured Udell ought to know we were driving to town. There might be some tool he’d need, a sack of baking powder or gunpowder or such. I closed the latch on the chicken coop, my apron holding four dear eggs. It’s winter and my “ladies” are slow laying. I put two under the setting hen and counted a dozen in there she’s warming, plus got a whale of a peck on my arm for checking.
I put the remaining two eggs by the tin sink to clean them off. I called out to the house, “I’m going for a ride.”
Granny looked up from snoozing by the stove in a chair and said, “Is that the parson from town?”
“Who, Mama?” I said.
“The one with the black hair. He’s sweet on you.”
“No he isn’t, Mama. He’s some professor of letters from the university and a rapscallion I’ll be glad to be shed of.”
“You said suchlike before. About that soldier fella.”
To compare Professor Fairhaven to my dear Jack Elliot was like putting a three-legged mule next to a racehorse. I felt instantly cross and was about to tell her so, but the tumult I felt under my skin has also had the effect of numbing my tongue when I’ve felt any lack of patience toward her. My mama could barely see at all, much less discern some attraction between me and that flapping, sputtering Californian. “I never got shed of Jack,” I said. “I married him.”
“I’ll be
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