Imogene smiled at her. “Like air.”
Sarah sat up, both hands full of money, money spilling from her pockets, her tangled hair falling over her face. Imogene held out her hands and Sarah put the money aside to take them. “I’d like to go to sleep now,” she said. “I’m real tired.”
Imogene helped her to bed.
“Will you unpack?”
Imogene settled the covers over the girl’s shoulders and tucked them smooth. “You sleep, we’ll talk in the morning.”
16
SARAH WAS SLEEPING FITFULLY, ROCKING HER HEAD BACK AND FORTH against the pillow. Occasionally her hands jerked and she’d cry out.
Already awake and dressed, Imogene stood by the bedside. She laid her hand on the girl’s forehead, and for a moment Sarah was still. Then, quietly, Imogene left her.
Yesterday’s bitter wind had blown itself out and the weather was mild. Imogene unbuttoned her wrap and stood for a long moment on the front steps, the sun on her face, her head to one side, listening. Birds rustled in the lilac bushes in front of the school, their subdued twittering and stirring deepening the stillness of the morning. No tardy children hurried down the main street, none of the righteous scuffled before the school door in celebration of a last minute’s freedom. With a sudden spasm, Imogene straightened her shoulders. “Bash on regardless,” she said, and smiled crookedly.
The sound of a hammer’s clanging rang from Hugh Rorvak’s forge; Imogene turned her steps toward the smithy. Sweat rolled down the blacksmith’s temples and darkened his collarless shirt. With iron tongs he held a red-hot crescent against the anvil. His hammer, swinging in short, regular arcs, pounded the end of it flat. At the back of the shop, where it opened into the stable, Clay Beard stooped, his back to a sorrel mare, holding her hoof between his thighs, plying a three-cornered rasp.
Imogene’s shadow fell across the door and Clay looked up, smiling and gesturing a greeting with the file, before bending to his task again. Hugh Rorvak had seen her as she walked up from the street, and looked away without acknowledging her. She waited quietly just outside the door for him to finish shaping the wagon shoe. For fifteen minutes he worked on, heating the metal, pounding. Occasionally he looked her way from under lowered lids and, finding her still there, worked with renewed vigor. At last he plunged the metal into a tub of water. A hiss, a cloud of steam, and the pounding of the smithy was exorcised for a moment. He pulled the metal shoe for the wheel of a wagon from the black water and held it over a wooden wheel propped against the wall; it fit close. Imogene started to speak but he turned his back, reaching down another piece of metal for the forge, and she ran out of patience. Stepping over the threshold she said, “Excuse me, Mr. Rorvak, I’ve come to hire a wagon.”
With unnecessary clatter he hefted the tongs over the lip of the furnace. “Got none. They all been let.”
“What about that one?” She put herself between him and his anvil. Forcing his attention, she indicated a small wagon visible through the stable door.
The blacksmith never looked where she was pointing. “It’s busted. Nobody can take it.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“All been spoke for.” He pulled the iron from the forge. One end glowed a dull red. “Better stand back. You’ll get yourself bad burned.”
Imogene retreated toward the door. “Is there nothing you can let me have? It’ll only be for an hour or so in the evening.”
“Sorry.”
Imogene watched him as he laid the metal on the anvil. He seemed to feel her eyes on his back. “Sorry,” he said again.
Clay hailed her as she crossed the stableyard, motioning her to him. “Didn’t mean to go flapping my arms at you like that,” he apologized. “I was afraid Mr. Rorvak’d see us together if I was to come over to you.”
“That wouldn’t do, would it?” Imogene said sarcastically.
“No, ma’am. Wouldn’t do at all. You be needing a wagon?”
“Yes.”
“That one there,” he jerked his chin at the wagon Imogene had pointed out to the blacksmith, “ain’t hardly broke. Mr. Rorvak’ll be up to the mine late this afternoon. Maybe five, six o’clock, I could bring it by. I’d like to do it for you, ma’am. And little Mrs. Ebbitt.”
Imogene’s eyes softened and she laid a hand on Clay’s arm. Hard muscles met her gloved fingers. “Thank you, Clay, you’re very good. But won’t you lose your situation here?”
“I’m not smart, Miss Grelznik, but I’m real strong. Stronger even than Mr. Rorvak. When comes something he can’t lift, he calls for me. But I’m not so smart and maybe I don’t know no better’n to let you have that wagon for a bit.” He tapped his temple with a sooty forefinger, and a look as close to cunning as he could muster sparkled in his guileless blue eyes.
Imogene laughed. “Thank you, Clay. You are a strong man.” Bright blue skirts and running steps caught Imogene’s eye. Her hand fell from Clay’s arm as a gawky girl in her early teens flitted from the side door of the Beards’ house and down the street. She was wearing a blue-checkered dress and carrying an armload of clothes. Imogene looked from the girl to Clay. “Your sister, Jillian, is wearing Sarah’s dress.”
Clay shifted uncomfortably. He stared at the ground and squeezed his cloth cap in both hands. “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Ebbitt brought ’em before dawn this morning. Gave them to Ma to give out. Said there was no sense decent women going cold. Ma saved some things for the girls, but they’re pretty little yet. And Karen, though I see her pretty as she ever was, well, she likes her food and she’s not the little spit of a thing Sarah Ebbitt was.”
“Is.”
“Anyway, Ma’s given the dresses and whatnot to folks as can use ’em.”
Imogene inhaled slowly through pinched nostrils. She sucked in her cheeks and nodded to herself. “The baby?”
“Ma’s looking after him.”
The clash of the smith’s hammer stopped and Clay looked nervously over his shoulder. “It won’t do to have Hugh see us talking, he’ll sure tell me how I can’t let you have that wagon, and as it ain’t mine, I couldn’t take it then.” Clay put on the cap he’d been mangling, and hurried back into the stable.
In the street, people turned away, whispering, as Imogene passed. It was after ten o’clock when she reached home. As he opened the door, Sarah flew at her, Imogene’s voluminous nightgown trailing over her hands, the hem dragging on the floor.
“Where were you?” she wailed. “Where’ve you been?” Laundry, strung across the room on a makeshift clothesline, got in her way and she became entangled in the line. “You left me alone!” Sarah cried, and broke into noisy sobs.
Imogene went to cradle her in her arms, but she threw her hands up, warding the schoolteacher off. “Don’t touch me.” Then, “You left me alone!”
The schoolteacher caught her by the shoulders and shook her. When the frenzied look left her eyes, Imogene held her close and Sarah clung to her.
“You left me alone,” Sarah said again, when she’d quieted. They were sitting together on the hearth, Sarah resting her head on Imogene’s shoulder.
“I had to. I’ve got to take care of us now, don’t I? I wanted to let you sleep. You feel a little cooler now than you did this morning. Would you like something to eat?” Sarah shook her head. “Maybe you’ll feel like eating a little something tonight.”
“Maybe.”
Imogene stroked her hair. “Where’s the cat?”
“I put her out.”
“We’ll have to find something to carry her in. Why don’t you go lie down now, I can finish up here. Clay’s coming by for us around five o’clock.”
