Posted 03-07-20
Revised 04-07-20
By Christopher Leeson
Chapter 6, Part 2
Monday, December 25, 1871
“Myra!” Aunt Irene called up into the loft from the kitchen. “It snowed last night!”
The girl took the news with interest. She hurriedly threw on a robe and then clambered down the ladder to take a look outside.
Myra, standing at the threshold, a cold wind blowing in her face, could see that the farm had been buried under a white blanket. She noticed no break in the cottony covering, except where there were tallish stands of dry, brown weeds. The farm girl bent down, poked an index finger into the snow and estimated that its depth had to be about four inches. While she had seen heavier winter covering in Pennsylvania, she had never witnessed more than a dusting here and there in Arizona. She supposed that the newspaper was going to sell very well this week, with people buying copies so that they could clip and save the news story describing the big snow.
In contrast to the excitement provided by the weather, Christmas morning’s breakfast tasted bland. Irene had left all the fancy party food at the schoolhouse. The hostesses there would see that the leftovers would be kept in a cold room and delivered to the church in time for the Sunday Christmas service. What was left over would be distributed to the poor of the town, including the men living in the squatter shacks. Thinking about that kind of charity made Myra frown. Giveaways always seemed to be taken advantage of. The ne’er-do-wells, like Lydon Kelsey to name one, would no doubt have lingered after the party to be able to go home with a bag of eatables tucked under each arm.
Abruptly, Irene left the table and stepped into the walk-in pantry. When she emerged, she was carrying a wrapped box. The sight of what she guessed to be her Christmas gift made Myra feel awkward. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think about getting you anything.”
“Sweetheart,” Irene responded, “that's all right. I know you don't have any money.”
That was bitterly true. “Is that my fault?” Myra asked distastefully.
Mrs. Fanning shook her head. “Christmas is not the time for fault finding. Don't worry about presents. This has been a season of miracles, and I'd be ashamed to ask the Lord for more blessings than He has already seen fit to send us. Until last week, I thought I would have to pass a Christmas without you, but that didn’t happen.”
Myra pursed her lips. The “blessings” that the Man Upstairs she had been dealing her seemed like raw deals.
Instead of venting her feelings, the girl opened the parcel and found a book inside. When Myra started tearing at the paper, she was assuming that the tome might be Le Morte d’Arthur, but that wasn’t so. “Innocents Abroad? What's this about?” she asked.
Irene replied with a smile. “It's the story of Mark Twain's trip to Europe and the Holy Land a couple of years ago. I know how much you like to read about far away places. And Mr. Twain is a very good writer.”
“I've heard of him.” She hefted the book. “This one is one big sucker, anyway.”
“I hope it will give you some good reading. By the way, there'll be no unnecessary work done today. Just help me keep the animals well tended, the eggs gathered, and the cows milked. Oh, and we're both going to have to take a bath right away, since the Severins will be expecting us for dinner.”
Socializing wasn't something that the girl looked forward to, but she didn’t think that she could wheedle out of it.
Myra set her new book aside and dressed warmly for outdoor work. It would be a morning to remember, since she had to walk through ankle-deep snow while leaving distinct footprints behind. Later on, when the chores were done, the girl went back inside and found that her aunt had been heating water to fill the tub. As was the custom, the older person bathed first. It startled Myra to realize that that Irene was no longer shy about undressing in front of her. That, more than anything else, let her know that her aunt was thinking of her as another female!
A while later, soaking in her own bath, Miss Myra couldn't help but wonder whether there were any more letters hidden around the farmstead. She was much more interested in that subject than in visiting the neighbors. To make a search, however, she would need to be alone on the grounds. But that wasn’t going to happen until after Christmas.
The girl was resigned to act like nothing was going on. After bathing and donning presentable clothing, they put on their coats and went out together to hitch up the buckboard. Upon setting out, they could see that the snow wasn’t deep enough to impede their short trip.
The Serverins met them in their front yard. Escorted indoors, they found the air fragrant with fresh baking. Myra had known from childhood that Mrs. Severin was a good cook. The meal that she and Rosedale served up just a short while later was a strong reminder that this really was Christmas Day.
After the holiday dining was finished, Aunt Irene remained with Mr. and Mrs. Severin in the kitchen, while Rosedale coaxed Myra to come along into the “family room.” This was an add-on that had made the small original house more comfortable for a growing family. Besides George and Dale, the neighbors had two younger sons and another daughter. The smaller kids became as noisy as ferrets as they played with their Christmas gifts. The new whistle that one of the boys kept blowing made Myra want to throw a piece of firewood in his direction.
Rosedale and George were full of questions, wanting to know about Myra’s impressions of Eerie so far. They also wished to learn more about her New Jersey home. Spinning a yarn about an imaginary home taxed her imagination, forcing her to make up everything on the fly. She stitched together a plausible story based on her male boyhood, while holding back as much detail as possible. Myra described a farm girl’s life vaguely based on Myron’s experiences, but made it sound better and less impoverished than it had really been.
Rosedale, inspired by the local weather, wanted to know about the snowy winters back East. Myra claimed that she had liked them and then threw in a few flourishes, mostly taken from incidents from past reading, such as playing fox and the goose with friends and making snow angels. Then Dale coaxed their young visitor away to the little room which the Severin girl shared with her smaller sister.
She proceeded to show off her favorite girlish do-dads. Myra had a hard time pretending that she was even remotely interested, but by calculation kept her demeanor friendly. The ginger took care not to ask too many questions about the display, so as to not show off her ignorance regarding the daily lives of girls of Dale’s age.
The visiting continued until the mid-afternoon, when the elder Severins sent Dale and George outdoors to begin their end-of-day chores. Myra was left alone with the three younger children while the adults carried on their conversation for a while longer. After another hour, the Nettie and Walter Severin left the table and started dressing for their own accustomed chores. At the same time, Myra and Irene got ready to leave, having a couple hours of work waiting for them back home also. The light, after all, would not last forever.
#
Once home, they changed again and set to their chores. The drudgery that followed drained away all the lingering magic of Christmas Day. While at work, Myra thought ahead to Monday, when there would be a church service held for Thorn Caldwell, as if he were really dead. The author of the hoax wished that she could avoid the agony of it all, especially since staying home would have given her a needed opportunity to search the house. But women like Irene Fanning put great stock in keeping up appearances. In her aunt’s mind, their attendance at the memorial was an absolutely necessary.
With the sun down and the lanterns turned off for the night, Myra lay quietly in the dark loft, still wondering where Irene might have concealed a box containing keepsake letters. She clung to the possibility that the important missives had, in fact, been preserved, if only because of her aunt’s hopeless sentimentality.
The cluttered pantry, with shelving climbing so high that they required a stepladder to look at, would be a logical place to start a search, or so Myra reasoned. Myron hadn’t been a snoopy child and had not explored every corner of the home nor opened every box in it. There was, to be honest, a lot that he could have missed. And it also occurred to Myra that her guardian might very well have moved things into new places over the last year, maybe even making use of the loft for storage. After all, her nephew had gone away without any promise to return. It was therefore conceivable that a box containing what she sought might lay only a few feet away from her bed. That would make things easier.
The mystery concerning her family nagged at the girl fiercely, but she knew she needed to brake her impatience. Sometime, soon, there would come an opportunity to search the house thoroughly. In fact, during the upcoming week, Irene would have take their fresh milk and eggs into town to resupply their customers, which now included the Eerie Saloon.
Myra gritted her teeth at the mere thought of that den of witchery. The very sound of its name made her angry.
The wind had picked up outside, blowing noisily through the farmstead. With so much on Myra’s mind, sleep didn't come swiftly. She couldn’t help but think about the old days, back when she had been living in a normal way, a way that would never come again.
Some memories made her wonder. Why had her parents suddenly started mentioning the Grimsley name more often at a certain point? And why did they usually do it in such a sneaky way, oftentimes looking around to make sure that they couldn't be overheard? It didn’t fit in logically. They had been cordial with the Grimsley family, true, but had always kept stronger ties with the Severins.
Personally, Myra had not liked Matt Grimsley. It had been the Grimsleys who had taken Myron in after his folks had died. He had gone there because the family had the larger house, especially since the Severins had not as yet constructed their expansion. Mrs. Grimsley had been gracious and welcoming, and so was Kayley, but the head of the house had treated Myron like an indentured servant. He was always being reminding that the chores he did would pay for his bed and board. And, later on, Mr. Grimsley had offended him even more severely. He'd been caught trespassing upon the Caldwell land a number of times, mostly prowling about the margins of the property. Whenever Myron had encountered him in the act and asked what he was doing, the man would avoid a straight answer and instead ask to know what the big fuss was all about.
Trying to remember bygone times was like stepping into a dark room and lighting a lantern. With effort, she recalled bits and pieces, but oftentimes Myra could make no sense of the random details. Like, there was that spring day when Myron had walked home from school and discovered a strange horse feeding in the corral. He had asked his pa about it and was told that it belonged to a traveler. According to him, the man had fallen sick as he was riding by and was unable to continue. Ma had led him to a mound of hay in the barn where he could rest warmly, covered by a spare horse blanket. Then the girl remembered something else, that her dad, right off, had ordered Myron not to go into the barn to get a look at the stranger, explaining that he might have something catching. “We don't want to be taking any risk, not until we're sure we know what's ailing him.”
“Won't Ma be catching what he got?” young Myron had asked.
“She knows how to be careful,” was his pa’s only answer.
What happened then? When happened then? Myra demanded of herself.
Still gripped by sleeplessness, Myra dredged up another kernel of memory. The folks had not let Myron go into the barn for the next couple nights after that, for safety’s sake, they said. Finally, on the third day, he had come back from school to find that the stranger’s horse was gone. The boy asked his ma about it and she said that the man had ridden away on it.
“Is he all right now?” Myron had asked.
“He just had a flu. Don't worry about it anymore,” she told him.
Slowly, bit by bit, other memories floated to the surface, odd recollections from Myron's school days. But they all added up to a very incomplete puzzle. Even so, among all the ragged memories, one thing stood out. It was at about the same time that the man had gone away that Ma and Pa had started to act sad all the time.
With a sigh, the tired girl snuggled deeper into the meager comfort of the straw-stuffed tick under her, one ear pressed to the goose-down pillow for warmth. Because the other side of her face felt cold, she covered it with the woolen blankets, leaving only a gap for breathing. The snow, obviously, had summoned in colder weather and a howling wind. She supposed that there was going to be a good share of frosty nights coming, now that winter was settling in.
#
Though Christmas had regrettably come and gone for another year, the next morning was a busy one. She and her aunt worked hard to finish the chores in time to attend the memorial. Dinner had to be taken a little earlier than usual, to give them time to wash and scrub. Irene didn't insist that the two of them take another bath, since they’d had one the day before. By the time they had dressed for church, it was time to leave.
Despite it being Tuesday, school would not be resuming until after New Year’s Day. Myra noticed that the neighbors were all in attendance. The Grimsleys had brought the kids along, but Tully Singer and his wife were alone. All the Severins had come, even the youngest. When George tried to catch her eye, she glanced away.
Not far from the Severins was a cowboy that Myra recognized, Carl Osbourne. Sitting beside him was his sister, the schoolteacher Nancy Osbourne. Myra had always thought that Nancy was pleasantly pretty and only now did she recall that the young schoolmistress hadn’t been at the Christmas dance.
Mrs. Cullings, who had taught in the school before her, had always gone to festivals and parties. The difference was that she had been married and could decently avoid gossip by dancing with her husband. A single school teacher, folks always said, shouldn’t be socializing, lest she set a poor example for the children. While conducting class, Miss Nancy had come across as being smart and firm, but not mean; she smiled a lot and regularly gave good answers to the children’s questions. But away from the schoolhouse, she was hardly to be seen at all.
Still, at the moment, Myra Olcott was more concerned with her own problems. What riled her most keenly was the fact that none of the people around the room had ever cared so much as a dog's hair for Thorn Caldwell. Almost everyone had considered him a bad kid. So why were they piling into his memorial service now? There wasn't any food being served, after all. It frustrated her that no one, not even the Severins, were apt to miss the person whom she had been. Maybe coming to a funeral was just something that people did to make themselves look compassionate. Did any of them really care that the entire Caldwell family had been erased from the earth with the supposed death of Thorn?
She shook her head. It seemed like the family name was doomed to be forgotten. Some families were large and extended, but her pa had not talked much about having any relatives other than his parents. The Caldwell line had, as far as she knew, ended, really ended. What was most galling of all was that it had ended in a way that was so insane.
Who was this new person that she was supposed to be? What was she anyway? A ghost?
What a depressing thought! Myra felt like the last of the Mohicans. Why was she still on the earth? What did she have to live for any longer? What part of her life had, in fact, ever been worth living? Aunt Irene, on the other hand, seemed to think that every life had some God-given purpose. Well, Myra wished that someone could spell out to her, in understandable language, exactly what that purpose happened to be.
When the service got underway, Reverend Thaddeus Yingling went to the podium and offered up a prayer for the soul of the departed. Previously, Thorn had kept as far away from the Eerie preacher as he possibly could. What Yingling was saying now made it sound like he didn’t know much about the man he was memorializing. His recollections about Myron Caldwell were so sketchy and unspecific that they could have been spoken about any saddle tramp who had lately wandered in, or about some nameless transient found in the dirt, dead of snakebite.
The whole experience came across for her as something awful. Myra wished it would just get done with, so she could go home and feel bad all by herself.
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 7, Part 1
