It took nearly two hours to reach Benson. There, Maldonado’s men saluted us, and one of them crossed himself and said he would pray for Ezra. We dragged our papoose through the streets of town and asked for Dr. Pardee from everyone we saw. Finally we found a sign for Dr. Pardee’s office and I groaned aloud to see it was up a flight of stairs over a store. That didn’t matter. The men untied the wide runner at the foot and raised Ezra over their heads, keeping him level. They marched him up the stairs and Brody, first in line, hollered through the door. I followed.

  Inside was a storm of its own, for people had been there waiting to see Dr. Pardee for first one thing and then another. They all scooted out when they saw our bloody procession.

  “Bring him this way,” the doctor said. Zachary followed like a dirty old caboose as we all trailed into the treatment room. It smelled of ether and alcohol and plenty of other sharp chemicals.

  I marched right in with the rest of them, and helped with unwinding all the wrapping of blankets and ropes. Finally, the doctor raised the wrapping off Ezra’s head. I reached over and held Ez’s left hand.

  “Papa, he squeezed my hand,” I whispered.

  “No, I’m sure he didn’t,” the doctor said.

  I frowned. Squeezed Ezra’s hand again. Felt him squeeze back. Glared hard at Pardee, who’d lost plenty of footing in my estimation by calling me a liar. I looked toward the door because I heard some racket outside. In came Mama, Rebeccah, Aunt Sarah, Charlie, Clover, Rachel, and Aubrey.

  “Folks,” said Dr. Pardee, “I’m sorry, but you all have to leave. Immediately. Everyone go. If you care about this boy, find a seat in the other room. No one in here but my nurse. Go on, please. Wait with the others.”

  “But he’s my brother.” I held Ezra’s grimy hand to my cheek and whispered into his fingers, “Stay alive, brother. I’ll take care of you always.” My anger at Pardee flared into pure hatred.

  When at last I entered the waiting room, our family filled it to overflowing. I stood next to the door to the treatment room and held on to the door jamb. I started to shake all over, hard, harder than having a chill. My teeth chattered and my knees felt weak. My sisters all looked so clean and perfect. So … not murderers. I’d pulled a trigger on an old woman and shot her dead. Put a knife in an old man. I’d never in my life have thought older people capable of evil like those two were. I just figured by the time you got gray hair and grew wide in the middle, you softened up and quit being vile and horrible and cruel.

  Even Maldonado had softened in my mind. He had not been the one to take our boys. He had not caused Duende’s death. He was just down in Mexico farming. No longer a threat. At least we knew he was not coming after us. He’d sent these men to straighten things out. I would never, ever forgive that old woman for shooting my brother. If I knew her name I’d find a bruja to put a Mexican spell on her. I hoped she turned on a spit in hell for eternity, that’s what. This Territory was full of motherless, blasted, blackhearted, mean—

  “Mary Pearl?”

  “Hmm? What, Mama?”

  “Aunt Sarah was speaking to you. Don’t be rude.”

  My face felt as if it had turned to stone. I stared at my aunt and my mother as if I were invisible, no more alive nor capable of rudeness than if they’d asked a question of the door jamb that was serving me as a spine. “I didn’t hear you,” I said. “What? I’m only just now able to hear at all. Please repeat the question.”

  “I thought I’d rent us a hotel room. Maybe two, if they’re small, and get you a bath. Why don’t you come along with me? There’s plenty of people here to wait for Ezra.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll stay right here.”

  Rachel offered, “Mary Pearl, you look exhausted. I know you’ll feel better if you clean up and rest.”

  Aubrey brightened at that and added, “I’ll see you to the hotel.”

  I glared at him as if he’d proposed to assault me right here on the floor. “I don’t need rest,” I said. “You go to a hotel. I’m staying with Ezra. Where’s Zachary?” My littlest brother was sleeping in the corner of the room, just leaned against the wall. He did, at least, have a dried mustache of milk around his mouth, so I figured he’d gotten something decent in him at last. “I’ll sit here by him, then. We aren’t in your way.”

  Rebeccah looked at me with sad understanding in her eyes. “Mary Pearl, honey, you and Zachary are filthy dirty and you’re covered with old blood. You both need a bath in hot vinegar and salt water. As long as Ezra is still breathing he has a chance, but if infection sets in, he won’t last more than a couple of hours. We have to clean this room and that means the people in it, too.”

  When she finished talking, I felt as if someone pulled the corners of my mouth into the saddest face in the world. “I can’t let that happen.”

  “Please go with Aunt Sarah and clean up, honey.”

  “I have no clothes to change in to.”

  “We brought plenty. Search through anything of mine, too, if you want. All kinds for Zack, too.”

  “What about Ezra? He’s the dirtiest of all of us.”

  “The doctor will cleanse the wound area and all around it. Ma and Pa will sponge him off when the doctor says they can. The hotel is only one door down on the right. You won’t be far.”

  I bowed my head. Then I jostled Zachary. “Come on, Zack. We’re going to go take a bath.”

  “I hate baths,” he said, without opening his eyes.

  “I know you do. But give a hand here, stand up, and I’ll carry you. I’ll buy you some candy when you’re clean. Then we’ll have a nice dinner at a table, and Mama will sing you to sleep. Come on. Stand up. I can’t lift you off the floor.”

  To my amazement, Zachary stood up like he was sleepwalking, raised his arms, and clung to my neck.

  Brody tapped my shoulder. “You can’t carry him down those stairs. Here,” he said, and pried Zachary from my arms and took him. Brody wasn’t a tall fellow but he had wide shoulders and he was strong from working horses his whole life.

  Aunt Sarah led the way. Brody went ahead of me down the stairs. I followed into a drenching rain. As they moved across the street, I lagged behind. The rain felt good. As if the sky were weeping the tears I couldn’t shed. I turned my face upward and let it wash over me, felt the drops hitting my eyelids, realizing how hot and blistered they felt with tears unshed.

  By the time I entered the hotel lobby, I was more drowned cat than human. My long hair hung like a mat against my back. The bulky chaps I’d pulled over my split skirt were heavy as lead and seemed to stretch downward, making me stumble as I walked. Aunt Sarah turned to me and held forth a key. “The maid will pull you a bath in room two, down that hall. Clover will see to Zachary in bath number one. You go ahead, and I’ll bring you clothes in a while. Take all the time you want. Can I help you take off the chaps so you can walk?”

  “No, ma’am. I believe my legs will show, I’m so wet.” Silly to worry about public decency after everything else, but I did.

  The hotel maid looked me over with no expression whatsoever, not even a sneer at my dreadful appearance. Her arms were laden with a stack of towels and a new bar of soap, plus a jar of something blue I couldn’t identify. Brody walked behind, carrying my little brother. Clover followed him with towels and soap for Zack’s bath. I had to do some talking to convince the maid I didn’t want her help undressing. I knew it would be hard to pull off the wet things. I knew how to get in and not slip. I knew how to wash my own hair. Finally, I said, “I’ll give you two bits to go away,” and she left.

  I peeled off my clothes and sank into the warm water. She’d poured the blue stuff in, and it smelled like flowers. The soap was fancy and really hard, not like the soft homemade kind we used. Once I felt like I was clean, I just leaned back and stared straight ahead at the edge of the tub, listening to the rain outside. Strange how a warm bath was nothing like being drenched with rain. Strange how everything felt different. Like I’d changed into another person and was watching someone named Mary Pearl sitting in a tub. Strange how I’d had a bath almost every day in Illinois and now I was having a bath in a place where I didn’t live and it felt unnatural. I was losing my mind just like my dead Aunt Ulyssa.

  A knock on the door and Aunt Sarah entered when I said, “Come in.”

  I stood and began to towel off; she had her back to me, setting out petticoats and a camisole, drawers, and stockings, even my best shoes with thirteen buttons up the side and kid leather ankles. She even brought a burlap potato sack to put my dirty things in.

  Then my aunt turned around. And then her mouth opened in shock.

  My hand went to my rounded belly.

  “Mary Pearl!”

  “Yes. What you’re wondering, is yes. I am.”

  “Merciful heavens. Are you secretly married?”

  “No. Not even openly married. The only thing I ask you is to give me until Ezra is well so I can tell Mama and Papa myself. It should come from me. I can’t wear that corset. I’ll leave my dress open and wear a shawl and a slicker for the rain. Would you please promise to let me tell my folks? Please?”

  “I won’t ask you if you made a slip at college. Sometimes girls do if they reckon themselves in love.”

  “I didn’t make a slip. I wasn’t in love and I wasn’t persuaded. I didn’t have any choice. Just like you told me about my aunt, Ulyssa Lawrence, I was set upon while I slept.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, child. Why haven’t you told anyone?” She handed me my drawers and camisole.

  “Because I was planning to run away. I meant to leave college and go live somewhere else. I can make my living taking photographs. Mama and Papa would never have to know. Never be ashamed of me. But I couldn’t leave without knowing Ezra and Zack were safe. Now, I suppose, I will go once Ezra is out of danger. Ma and Pa will probably want me to go.”

  Aunt Sarah sat down, hard, in the chair she’d laid my things on. “Oh,” she said, and stood again, lifting the petticoats to her lap as she sat once more. “I don’t ever keep things from your ma and pa, you know that.”

  “I know. But this would be a terrible time for Mama to find out, with Ezra at death’s door. If you won’t keep my secret just a bit longer, that’s up to you. Granny knows, too.”

  “Hmm. Life has thrown some hard stuff at you, hasn’t it? That explains why your ma told me you wanted to go live in Albuquerque. You were going to have the baby there?”

  I felt my lower lip tremble. Perhaps the tears would fall at last. I couldn’t even nod. I felt like a stone had replaced my whole body. “I believe so.”

  “I’ll keep your secret, I promise. Until or unless your mama asks me straight out if you are carrying a child. Long as she doesn’t ask, I won’t reply. Let her worry over Ezra for now.”

  “Thank you.” After a pause, I said, “I will tell them.”

  “I know you will. Here. I’ll fix the back of your dress loose. It really doesn’t look like anything if you’re wearing the slicker, and maybe it will keep on raining.”

  Back in the waiting salon in Dr. Pardee’s office, I entered and took a chair next to a window. Raindrops still rattled the window glass and a dribble of water came down inside the room from the bottom of the window frame.

  * * *

  We changed watch as regular as soldiers on a wall, waiting around the clock for Ezra to either succumb or wake. During one of my times to sit by him, I kept my face toward the wall as Pardee fastened a curved bowl, a dish formed of flattened silver dollars, on to the bone on his skull. I moaned and hid my face against the wall while Ezra cried out in pain as Pardee used a hardware store screwdriver to fasten that down.

  Pardee sewed the skin shut over the plate, and Ezra quit hollering. I wept buckets when he was quiet at last. That doctor had done all this with his other nurse and, of all people, my sister Rebeccah helping out, while I stared uselessly at the wall and cried. I ain’t any good with that kind of patching up, and I don’t pretend to be, nor would I ever want to be. It’s the sort of thing I’m very thankful for: that there’s doctors and nurses, and even more thankful that I’m not one of ’em. Surely, I have gone lunatic.

  Three weeks we waited there in Benson. The day came when Pardee said we could carry Ezra home; that he wasn’t in any more danger of dying now than ever, and had wakened up that morning.

  I was swelling like a mare. My secret would not be secret much longer. My baby wiggled all the time. There were too many people around to think I could keep this up until I could run away, and it didn’t rain enough for me to keep the slicker on day in and day out. Everywhere I went, I carried bundles and baskets draped with blankets or sheets, piled with food or something I could carry, just to hide the shape of me. Plus, it was hotter than blue blazes and I wanted to lie in a tub of cool water, not dress in a rubber raincoat.

  Of course, Rachel and Aubrey had returned to Tucson. He couldn’t stay away from his practice for weeks on end, he’d claimed. Rachel said she might be expecting a child, so she, too, needed to get home to rest. Aunt Sarah, Aubrey’s father Udell, my cousins Charlie and Gilbert, and sometimes Brody came and went and, of course, they had a ranch to run.

  One day it was my turn to take watch and Zachary came along with me. On our way there, Zachary looked at me with his head cocked to one side and remarked, “You’re getting fat.”

  “Well, that is rude of you to say.”

  “’S a truth.”

  “Maybe so, but some things a person has no control over and those things are not polite to mention.”

  “Yer my sister and I can tell when yer fat or not.”

  “What’s got into you today, Zack?”

  “There’s nothing to do here, no one to play with, and Ezra just lays there dying. I want to go home and I want him to get up and act like a brother again. Why’s he got to die? No one shoulda shot him in the head.”

  “True.”

  “You sure popped that old lady fer it.”

  “I didn’t want her to shoot you, too.”

  “I’ll tell you sumthin’. You got no call anymore to tell me yer gonna squeal to Ma and Pa about me saying words like ‘dammit to Caledonia’ when I get mad. Not after what I heard you saying that day. Not even cousin Charlie ever cussed like what you said.”

  “You best forget what I said.”

  “Cain’t. You done, like Ma always says, ‘left a impression on my mind.’”

  I stopped on the boardwalk in front of the doctor’s office stairs and turned to him. “I’da done anything to save you. Are you saying you don’t appreciate it because I let some hard words fly while I was in high oats?”

  “No, ma’am. Just that I see you different now. Used to think you were kin to the Virgin Mary. Thought that’s why they named you that. Now I see yer just kin to me. Kinda ornery.”

  “Reckon the Virgin Mary woulda got you out of there?”

  “Reckon not. Least not with a lariat and a pistol.”

  “Then stop being so cranky.”

  “If I feel like it.” He bolted up the stairs ahead of me. “I got sumthin’ to say to Ezra Nehemiah fiddle-faddle Prine, first.”

  Ezra looked just as unconscious as he had the whole time he’d laid there. Every single day, every one of us patted and hugged him, but he didn’t move. At least, I thought, he no longer looked pale and sunken. We’d been feeding him teaspoons of beef broth and strained vegetables. It was Rebeccah who first saw him try to chew the vegetables. Yesterday, Mama said she was certain Ezra had pointed to his head with his left hand. His right hand didn’t move at all, except for a twitch now and then. Mama whispered to him, sang to him, mopped his face, and fed him. I believe she changed his diapers, too, but none of us were around when that was going on. For now it was just me and my two younger brothers, like always.

  Zachary asked Pardee, “Are you sure he’s awake? He don’t look awake.”

  “The patient is responding in obvious ways to stimuli. He’s able to move his left hand, and seems alert. Now you two sit here with him while I see another patient in the next room.”

  I hated the way he called my brother “the patient.” He was a real boy with a name. Pardee stepped into another room and we could hear him talking to some other patient.

  “Hmm,” Zack said, then went to his brother’s bedside and shoved Ezra’s arm, and asked him in a loud voice, “Hey, Ezra, you smelly old galoot, did you take my wheeler? I can’t find it. I’m tired of waiting for you to wake up. If you took my wheeler I’m gonna knock you into next Thursday.”

  Ezra’s lips curled into a smile on the right side.

  The left side, under the bandages and padding, was still. But the right side of his face smiled. He moved his lips. We couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, but he was trying to say something and that was all we cared about.

  Zachary wouldn’t let up, though. He leaned close to his brother and said, “You don’t stink as bad as you did a couple of days ago. Did you know Mama and Papa together gave you a bath, buck nekkid, right here in this room? Girls was looking in through them windows. You better wake up or they’re gonna do it again. I’m gonna sell tickets. It was a comical opera like they tell about in the papers. Open yer eyes, knothead.”

  Clear as day, Ezra said, “Tell Mary Pearl we got loose.”

  Zachary, with the vinegar of a little boy not given to indulging his brother in any way at all, said, “She knows it. She’s the one pulled you out. Then she took care of business, just wait until I tell you. She’s sitting right here. Everybody’s been waiting on you for days and days. You been lazying around in bed like you think yer some kinda king. I’m telling you, here comes Mama with a bucket and lye soap and she’s gonna scrub the fur off you with a hide brush, like a dirty old chair.”

  “Zachary,” I said, “what’s got into you?”

  “I’m sick and tired of him just laying there like a lizard all day. Get yer hide up from that bed, Ezra.”

  Ezra raised his arm up and said the distinct word, “Help.”

 

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