The Belle of Eerie, Arizona - Chapter 4, Part 1

Posted 09-07-19 

Revised 12-07-19

By Christopher Leeson

Chapter 4, Part 1

Friday, December 22, 1871

As soon as the sun came up, Irene set out for her errand in town, taking most of the holiday baking with her. One of the church ladies there had volunteered to collect the parishioners' food contributions; it would be the responsibility of that person and her helpers to set up the Christmas feast. For the time being, Myra would be left at home to keep abreast of the chores.

The girl didn't mind getting out from under Aunt Irene's watchful eyes; a little privacy was what she wanted and needed.

Miss Olcott moved swiftly though her routine, making good haste so that she could have most of the afternoon to read the remaining letters. As she worked, she kept wondering why those correspondences needed to be so well hidden in the first place. Did they show Irene in some discreditable light? If so, perhaps they could provide the girl with material for blackmail purposes. Myra's anticipatory smile quickly faded. How could she extort demands from any of the three people whom she had to obey absolutely?

Damn it! Life was still kicking her around. Why couldn't it ever play fair?

After a quick mid-day lunch, Myra at last had time to deal with the letters. This time, she's decided to leave the box up in the loft and bring down just a handful of correspondences at a time. Then, if some caller surprised her, the packet would be easier to hide than would the entire box. Settling down to her task, she casually checked the clock. It was getting on to 1:00 pm and so far there had been no sign of George. It was becoming unlikely that the farm boy would be coming at all, the December days being so short. That was all to the good.

After reading several of the letters, whose contents she could hardly find interesting, Myra opened another epistle, one of the many sent by Aunt Irene, dating from the spring of 1866.

“Dear Addie,

“Your last letter has alarmed me. What has put you into such a sad and nervous state? You refer vaguely to past misdeeds. What misdeeds? And why are you so sure that God cannot forgive you and Edgar? It shouldn't be necessary for me to remind my older sister, who taught me so much about faith, that He can, and will, forgive any evil deed, as long as it is earnestly repented. Imagine! He will forgive even a repentant murder. You are a good and tender person, precious Addie, and your husband is an honest man of rectitude. The two of you could never stray so far away from virtue that you would place yourselves beyond God's forgiveness. How long have you been suffering? From the way that you refer to this mysterious sin it makes me think that it occurred not recently, but years ago. That dismays me even more. How long have you been carrying such a load of pain and sorrow? Dear beloved, why could you have not alerted me sooner, so that I could have sooner begun assisting you in redemption, and even in restitution, if necessary?

“I sincerely hope that you have overstated the direness of the situation. It cannot be as terrible as you imply. I know you so well and believe in you steadfastly. It is only a good person who beats his breast and pours ashes on his head, not the careless and consistent sinner. Help me understand what has happened, so that I may better reassure you. The Good Book names very few sins that are are beyond the pale of forgiveness, and you are surely not of the debased type that could have committed any of the most terrible transgressions. Whatever you have done, or believe that you have done, the anguish I sense in your words tells me that your moral sense remains strong and unbroken. How can you have forgotten so easily that repentance always brings the soul to salvation, and my heart tells me that Edgar's opportunity for redemption can hardly be less than your own.

“You frighten me, truly, when you say that, if the truth were known, you and Edgar would be forced to abandon your land and leave the territory entirely. And you also seem to be saying that you and your mate might both be put into jail! It is sadly true that good people may commit many wrongs. I have lived long enough to know that this is true. But even if you have fallen, and fallen shamefully, the heart that is honestly contrite never needs to fear the condemnation of the Lord. Perhaps what you are mostly afraid of is the disapprobation of your neighbors. Sadly, the easy anger of mankind has done great hard to many a repentant sinner. I well know that the heartless sorts among us can be very rash and unkind in their judgments. But it is equally true that God always sees the truth at the root of every difficult matter and ignores the calumnies of the self-righteous.

“Wasn't the blameless Stephen stoned to death in Jerusalem merely for celebrating the glory of Christ Eternal? Don't you see? What is a crime in the eyes of of one is not always so in the eyes of another. But though wickedness dealt to Stephen a cruel death, we can hardly suppose that the sainted man was denied a heavenly home. Remember what is written. 'Fear not them which may kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.'

“I believe this, and believe it with unwavering conviction: Cling to God in all your troubles, sister, for He is the mighty rock that no wave can sunder. I myself journeyed into a very dark place when my dear Darby was lost in Tennessee. It seemed to me, during that evil hour, that the Lord was punishing us both together and I did not understand why. But through prayer and many days of thoughtful meditation, I found the presence of mind to grasp this truth: The Lord promises the righteous not happiness on Earth, but joy in Heaven. Grief comes to all of us while we dwell in this mortal veil. Think. Who was less deserving of grief than Christ himself, but did he not lose his step-father Joseph at a tender age? And though he embodied every virtue, was his entire life not one of painful and unjust persecution? And what of Mary, the most blessed of all women? Can you doubt that she keenly felt the daggers of sorrow at her husband's and her son's deaths? Oftentimes, our suffering has nothing at all to do with our deserts.

“You say that you can give to me no details because they would make me ashamed of you. Dear Addie, do not think that I am so faithless. My love will be unbroken no matter how far you have strayed. Allow me to help you. Whatever you choose to let me know, I will listen with compassion and shall not unkindly judge any words spoken in regret. Nor will I abandon you, no matter what your culpability may be. Until I hear from you again, my love, I will be praying for you and Edgar constantly.”

Myra blinked, amazed. She looked again at the letter's date and bit her lip in dismay. It had been written not long before her mother and father had both died!

Hastily, the girl began searching her stack for Irene's follow-up letter, the one that would have carried on the discussion. When an envelope from her aunt, postmarked in late June or any time later, was not to be found, she hurried back up the ladder to bring down the entire box of correspondences. Unfortunately, a most diligent search could not locate any later missive originating from Irene. Further, a hasty skimming of all the thus-far unread letters did failed to throw any new light on the mystery. Whatever secrets Myra's mother had imparted to Irene, it seemed that she had shared them with no one else. The girl sat back. What could her parents have possibly done to plunge themselves into such a state of self-condemnation? Only Irene might know anything more. Myra felt determined to confront her aunt for the facts, and would be in no mood to brook evasions and lies.

But it took only seconds for Myra to sink into discouragement. That letter represented a secret that Irene had been withholding for a very long time. Had she wanted the story to be revealed, she could have told it anytime during the last five years. If challenged too boldly, her aunt would most likely give Myra orders not to bring the subject up again, not with her, and not with anyone else.

So, the girl wondered, what could she possibly do? At a loss, she began to search the perplexing letter again, word by word, for clues that might inspire a useful course of action.

Myra noted that Irene had written on April 29, 1866. It would have taken a couple weeks for a letter to reach Arizona from Pennsylvania. No, it had to have taken more time than that. In 1866, the Union Pacific was still in Nebraska and mail into the West was still being carried by stagecoach or else by wagon along special postal routes. People talking about the “old days” mentioned that it required maybe three weeks for a letter to travel from the Northeast to southern Arizona, even in good weather. By her estimate, this missive would have reached Arizona in latter May. Giving her mother a week to write an answer, the reply would have been received by Irene a month later, around the last part of June. Irene's June reply, if she sent one, should have arrived at Eerie about mid to late July, after both Myra's mother and father had died.

What had happened to Irene's missing epistle? the girl wondered. In July, 1866, the newly-orphaned Myron had been taken in by neighbors. He didn't visit the empty family home in all that time, and didn't want to. His heart was aching and his mind was dulled by misery until his aunt arrived in October. Myra searched her memory. Who would have been receiving the Caldwell mail during the period that the house had stood empty? These days, she knew, the post which was addressed to the closer-in farmers was kept for them at the postal station in Eerie. 

Currently, Aaron Silverman was the postmaster and his dry goods shop served as the local post office. She asked herself, what happened to any mail that wasn't picked up? She understood that it was normally returned to the sender, but that didn't always happen. Sometimes unclaimed mail was handed to the main surviving heir. So, shouldn't those letters have been turned over to Myron? But the only mail that he'd gotten between July and October had been a letter from his aunt, telling him that she was coming West to join him at the farm and would be leaving for the West as soon as her affairs at home were settled.

Myra thought hard. She recalled that it had been neighbor Severin who had brought Irene's letter to Myron at the Grimsleys' house. Where had Walt Severin gotten it from? Had the Severins written to Irene and received a reply from her directly? Or had the Severins been handling all of the Caldwell mail? They were the closest friends that the family had in the area. Even if Mr. and Mrs. Severin didn't already know the Fanning address, surely would know the name of Irene Fanning, which would have come up in the course of the many talks they must have had with her parents. Most likely, it would have been they who had reported the bad news back to Pennsylvania.

But wait, if Irene's earlier letter had been collected by the Severins, had they also read it? If so, how much did they know about the family's secrets? On the other hand, maybe they knew nothing, unless they had stooped to reading other people's mail. Anyway, it seemed reasonable that if Walt Severin had the mail, he would have given it to Irene when she came West in October.

At that moment, Myra heard the clopping of shod hooves outside. She went to the window and espied the neighbors -- Singer, Severin, and Grimsley -- dismounting. She growled like a hound dog approached while devouring a killed chicken. This was not a time when she wanted to deal with visitors.

The ginger went outside. “What news, neighbors?!” she called out, trying to make her voice sound even and controlled.

“Bad news,” I would say,” said Tully Singer. In his forties, Singer sported a wide brown mustache and chin beard. His hair was worn longer than his goatee and was held down by a slouch hat sporting a large gray feather. He had on garments fit for the brush country – an antelope-skin jacket and stiff jeans. “We searched high and low,” he said soberly. “There's been no sign of your cousin's body.”

Myra took in his words without reply, unable to believe that her family's most disagreeable neighbor would truly regret any bad luck that befell the Caldwells.

Walt Severin spoke up next. “Is you aunt at home, Miss Myra?”

“No, sir. She's in town. She'll probably be home before dark.”

“Well, then you can fill her in. We're sorry we can't bring better news, but it's a big country out there. At first, we followed the hunch that Thorn was probably killed at the holdup site and the outlaws took his body only a short distance away to hide it -- not wanting it to be identified, but also not wanting to be seen carrying a dead man.”

“Where did you look?” Myra asked.

“The way we figured it,” said Grimsley, “the best direction that the outlaws could have taken would be West, cutting south of Phoenix to avoid the law there, and then moving on to Yuma, maybe. We think they wouldn't have wanted to go East, which would have taken them by Eerie. Heading north would be foolish, because the mountains would have made for hard going. The way south is pretty rough, too; there's only desert, Indians, and Mexico. To move fast and find food, their best route would have lain in the direction of California. The Gila River could have provided the three of them all the water they'd need.”

“But when we didn't find anything among the rocks and ravines to the West, we circled back and rode a ways toward Mexico,” put in Tully Singer. “Same story. No trace.”

“Now we're coming around to think,” remarked Walt Severin, “that you might have been on to a good hunch. Maybe Thorn was still alive when they fled. Maybe he went out a good distance with the outlaws before he died. Or maybe he's still living.”

Grimsley shook his head. “From here on, I don't think anyone is going to find that boy, except by accident. If dead, the animals will soon make his traces disappear. Oh, I guess I shouldn't have said that.”

“All this sounds really bad,” Myra returned. “But dead or alive, you can bet that he'll never be coming back into these parts again. Everyone knows his face around here. It would make no sense for a man to show up at a place where he'd be arrested in two shakes.”

“We're inclined to agree,” said Singer. “We're durn sorry that we weren't able to bring you ladies better news for a Christmas present.”

“Well, as long as there's no body, we can still hold onto hope,” the girl replied. “You've done all anyone could expect from good neighbors. I thank you, and my aunt thanks you, too. Just get on home and rest up. It's the exact right time of year to be with your families.”

“Right you are there,” agreed Grimsley. “Take care, Miss Myra.”

“Just a moment,” said the girl. “I was wondering. Would any of you gents know about what happened to all the mail that must have come addressed to the empty Caldwell house before Aunt Irene arrived in '66?”

The men looked at one another. Walt Severin took the question. “That's a long time ago. Why do you need to know, missy?”

“I'm interested in family history,” replied the red-haired girl.

“Well,” said Severin, “we let Aaron, the postmaster, know that we were taking care of things for young Myron – tending to the animals and all – and that we wanted to get into contact with the family back East. I asked him to give us the addresses appearing on the incoming mail that might be from people who should be notified. Aaron gave me a list of names and I right off recognized Irene Fanning as Mrs. Caldwell's sister. My wife wrote her a letter. When Mrs. Fanning wrote back, I delivered the reply to young Myron over at Matt's place. Once Irene arrived, I reminded her that the post office was holding some of the family's mail. I assumed that she would have picked it up right quick. Doesn't your aunt remember handling those letters?”

“Everything's been in such a mess around here since I arrived, the topic never came up,” Myra said.

“I remember the day that Mrs. Fanning hit town just like it was yesterday,” offered Grimsley. “You're aunt looked so young, and was darn pretty, too. We didn't think she'd last a week out here, an Eastern girl trying to farm a difficult country like this. I offered to buy her out a couple times, but she held on to the land and seems to have made a go of things.”

“Yeah,” Myra said indifferently, “she's a pretty one, if she fixes herself up.”

“That's a trait seems to run in every woman in your family that I've seen,” remarked Singer. Myra only frowned.

Without much more ado, the neighbors wished the girl and her aunt well, and then moved off toward their own homes.

When she couldn't see more of them than their cloud of dust, Myra returned all the letters to their hiding place, but held out the important piece. It was the one epistle that she had to keep safe. Why in tarnation had her parents done whatever it was that they'd done? And what could they have done that was so bad that years later it could still bring her mother to tears? All her memories about her folks were good ones, and that was exactly the way that she wanted to keep on remembering them. But that damned letter had left muddy footprints all over those comfortable recollections. She absolutely had to find out the truth, so that she could put to rest the ugly doubts that the mystery had raised up.

Myra took a warm, sunny spot by the corral and then tried very hard to remember everything she could about those long-ago days. As far as her memories ran, the war had still been on when her parents had started acting differently. The noticeable change had come at the same time that people were talking about General Lee whipping the hell out of Grant at Cold Harbor. That was in the summer of 1864.

The deepness of her thinking made the time pass swiftly. A breath of cold wind caused the girl to notice that the sun was hanging low. Myra got up; she didn't want to chill herself and get the croup. In a bemused state, she went inside, eager to lose her chill beside the warm fire.

Myra piled a couple sticks of mesquite into on top of the little blaze and sat down on one of the two available stools. Her delving into the past reminded her of how her folks had never cared when young Myron listened in on their conversations. They'd complain regularly about how expensive things were, how they couldn't buy this or that. They also discussed how much “red ink” they were running up at the stores in town. They wondered how they would ever pay it all off. And she remembered how glum they got whenever they had to go into town and talk to the banker. Suddenly, though, things changed. They'd started keeping mum about the important things when he was around.

From that point on, in 1864, Myron no longer heard conversations about debts and bankers. He would instead hear talk about bills being paid off, and about improvements they wanted to make -- like putting in the windmill. And something else had changed. The food had gotten better; Ma was buying more canned goods and even fresh produce from Ortega's grocery. The rusty and beat-up tools that his pa had been using were replaced with newer ones. Also, at the same time, the blackened pots and rusty pans that his mother had been cooking in mostly became pans for feeding the hens. The kitchen shelves got loaded down with kettles and utensils that were shiny and new. Most memorable of all, more than once, when they saw Myron leaping with excitement over some toy that he'd see in a store window, his folks would sometimes go in and buy it for him. Thinking back, it seemed like those were happy times. So, why had her folks grown so gloomy?

Those troubling memories brought back other recollections. Pa had started to go into Phoenix quite often, though it was darn far away. Unless he pushed himself hard and wasn't encumbered by a wagon, he'd have to overnight it in the town. For some reason, Phoenix seemed to become his favorite place for doing the family's serious shopping. When he returned from the big town, he always had something flashy to show to his son.

Oddly, at the same time, his folks almost always talked about having a hard time of it whenever visitors dropped in. Also, her his ma and pa kept their new things out of sight as much as possible. If ma fixed something for the guests on the stove, she'd show off a worn-out coffee pot or skillet. And they had also made Myron promise not to leave any of his nice bright toys in plain sight either. “Visitors'll think we're spoiling you,” was the only excuse they ever gave him.

What did all these bits and pieces mean, Myra wondered? Her folks had suddenly gotten prosperous. Even a boy of eleven or twelve could notice the improvement, but they always acted secretively about it. Was it possible that her elders had started profiting from doing something dishonest? Was that why they didn't want their neighbors to know how much money they were spending?

The girl didn't like to imagine that her parents had been involved in thievery. How could they be? What was there to steal in such a miserable, burnt-out countryside? Well, sure, there was gold around Eerie. Myra knew that prospectors had occasionally been robbed up in the hills, and that some of them had been killed.

A shiver run through the seventeen-year-old. Though she could imagine herself being an outlaw without feeling shame, she didn't like to think such a thing about her own parents.

#

Myra, by now, was feeling sleepy; sinking into a mental fog, she sat staring into the flames inside the firebox. Of a sudden, Aunt Irene came in though the door.

“Haven't you started anything heating for supper yet?” her aunt asked after a quick look-around.

Myra shook her head to clear it. “I – I was sitting by the fire and fell asleep.”

The woman put her packages on the table. “Well, we'll have to make up for lost time. Have you milked the cows yet?”

“No.” The girl got up, a bit unsteady. “I'll do it now. But there's something I need to tell you.”

Irene glanced over her shoulder. “What's that?”

“The neighbors came by. They've given up on the hunt for my body.”

“What exactly did they say?”

“What do you think? They said they couldn't find anything.”

The older woman shook her head. “It's too bad that we had to let them waste their time. But I couldn't think of what else to do.”

“Don't worry. They all came back alive. Oh, and even though George promised to show up to finish his work, I haven't seen hide nor hair of him. That one seems pretty quick to make promises, but then he'll do the slow-walk when it comes to putting in a day of hard work.”

“Well, maybe he'll be here tomorrow. Everyone is extra-busy near the holidays. But I have something else I need to tell you about.”

“Will it make this day even worse?”

“It depends. I was approached by one of the Ladies' Society from church. They've already taken a plan to Reverend Yingling about having a memorial service for you after Christmas.”

“More tomfoolery!”

“I couldn't come up with any good excuse to dissuade them. I did offer the idea that some of our neighbors were searching for the body. I told them that before we have a memorial, we ought to wait to find out if the body is going to be found. But now that excuse isn't going to carry any load. Our friends at church want to help us get closure on Myron and I'm supposing that we should go ahead and let them do it.”

“Why can't people just forget about that shooting and leave me be?”

“Their hearts are in a good place, Myra. They want to honor us, just as they would honor any other decent family in Eerie.”

“We're not such a decent family.”

“Are you talking about yourself, or me?”

“They didn't like me alive and they can't possibly care about me dead. Did they ask you to provide the food? Maybe getting another free lunch is the thing that they're really after.”

“I doubt that. I think it's best that we handle this affair with good manners. We've come a long way toward fitting you comfortably into this community and we must not let ourselves stumble now.”

“Yeah? Well, how much grief over what happened are you really feeling?”

Irene stared at her niece. “I don't know what you mean. You're not dead.”

Myra looked deeply into the fire again. “I'm not quite so sure about that as you are,” she remarked.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4, Part 2.