Bittersweet Read online

  Bittersweet

  NEVADA BARR

  For Barns

  Contents

  1

  A rawboned woman nearly six feet tall pulled on the…

  2

  A willowy girl in a thin dress darted out of…

  3

  Imogene walked out onto the windswept platform and, squinting against…

  4

  Sarah clambered out of the carryall, keeping an eye on…

  5

  Though the tree branches were bare in November, the forest…

  6

  Saturday night before Christmas, the street outside the schoolhouse was…

  7

  Studying hard to earn time to watercolor, and to please…

  8

  Early in June, Imogene packed two valises and left for…

  9

  Mam looked up from her bread dough, her face flushed…

  10

  That autumn was a landmark time for the gossips of…

  11

  Sam never raised his hand to Sarah again, and she…

  12

  Through the summer and into the autumn, Sarah’s pregnancy progressed.

  13

  “Not a thing, Miss Grelznik.” Jackson poked his yellow-stained fingers…

  14

  Every day, in the evenings, when the miners streamed down…

  15

  Sunrise burned outside the bedroom curtains, throwing a patch of…

  16

  Sarah was sleeping fitfully, rocking her head back and forth…

  17

  The train rattled through the countryside, the night terrain invisible…

  18

  Sarah thrashed in a private nightmare, sometimes recognizing Imogene but…

  19

  Within a month, Imogene had five students and was paying…

  20

  Weeks passed and there was still no word from William…

  21

  Sarah’s fever seemed to have burned up with the paintings;…

  22

  Over the winter, Sarah grew stronger. Bad weather and wolf…

  23

  Summer stayed long into September and came again for a…

  24

  Snow was falling in tiny dry flakes, a dusting of…

  25

  Elms and oaks were frostbitten to red and gold, and…

  26

  The lamps in the kitchen had been lit for hours.

  27

  Having swept up the shards of broken pitcher, patched the…

  28

  Heads bowed over their books, braids and curls tumbling over…

  29

  Dust motes danced in the sunlight and the rooms were…

  30

  Mr. and Mrs. Van Fleet remained at round hole for…

  31

  The chickens arrived, a robust, stringy lot with particolored feathers.

  32

  “Ho, ho, ho!” There was a crash and a gust…

  33

  “Where in the hell is Mac and Noisy?” A gnarled,…

  34

  By that evening, Karl was worse. He had curled himself…

  35

  The next day, Sarah watched the mudwagon from the window…

  36

  The rest of the winter passed uneventfully. Sarah met the…

  37

  Summer blew by, hot, dry, and windy. Every day the…

  38

  Matthew turned six and grew an inch. He ranged through…

  39

  It was mid-July, and at six o’clock the sun was…

  40

  The day after they came home to round hole, Matthew…

  41

  Months passed, a year, then two. Matthew thrived and grew;…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Nevada Barr

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  A RAWBONED WOMAN NEARLY SIX FEET TALL PULLED ON THE BRASS handle; the door was wedged against the lintel and wouldn’t close—the fog that had lain over Philadelphia since late September had swelled the wood. Kicking a duffel bag out of the way, she grasped the knob with both hands and yanked. With a screech the door slammed shut. “Try opening that, Mr. Neff, you little, little man.” She turned the key and the bolt clicked home.

  It was a brass key ornate with scrollwork; the initials AMG had been engraved on the lemon-shaped head. The woman ran her thumb over the worn letters. “Amanda Montgomery Grelznik,” she said softly and hurled the key over the porch railing into the fog. She listened for it to hit, but the thick mist swallowed the sound.

  “Imogene.” An angular man, all in gray, stood at the gate watching her. His head was bare to the cold and his hands, knotted with arthritis, rested on the pickets of the fence like gnarled winter branches.

  “Mr. Utterback!” She picked up her suitcases and came down the steps to meet him. “I didn’t hear you. With the fog I feel both deaf and blind.”

  “I see thee are packed. I might have known thee’d be ready.”

  “I sent most of my things ahead. The new owners, the Neffs, can have what is left.”

  They looked back at the house in silence. It carried its age with dignity; the fine woodwork on the porch had been newly painted in summer and the yard was immaculate. “Mother and Father bought this house in 1842. I was born in that room nine months later to the day.” Imogene pointed to the gabled window above the porch. “Come April, I would have lived here thirty-one years.”

  “I am sorry, Imogene.”

  “No need, Mr. Utterback.” She laid her hand on his arm.

  “I think thee might call me William.”

  She laughed. “My tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

  “Thou art the best teacher I have ever known,” he said simply. “I shall miss thee.”

  Imogene’s narrow lower lip trembled; she pressed her fingers against it and coughed.

  “Well.” He cleared his throat and looked away. He cleared it again. “Does thee have the letter?” She patted the leather duffel bag she had put on top of her suitcase. “Thee can read it. Joseph was a student of mine. I’ve told him of thy merit as a teacher and made no mention of the other.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Go on teaching, that is thanks enough.” He dug into the folds of his gray coat until his arm disappeared to the elbow, and pulled out a sheet of paper. “This came. I thought thee might like to read it. Isabelle Ann was a friend of thine.”

  “Isabelle Ann Close?” Imogene came to his side to look over his arm.

  “It’s Englewood now. She married a boy from Virginia and went west. This is all the way from Nevada Territory.” He shook out the letter and held it away from him in the manner of farsighted people. “She writes there are no qualified teachers there, and she asks after thee.” He handed Imogene the letter.

  Imogene folded it up and put it into the pocket of her skirt. “I’ll read it on the train.” She looked at the little silver watch pinned to her coat. “I’d best be going.”

  “Did thee leave the key for Mr. and Mrs. Neff?”

  “I threw it away. It was Mother’s. There’s another on a nail just inside the back-porch door.”

  “I wish he had offered a fair price, but he knew thee had to sell.” He smiled. “Thee really threw it away?” She nodded. “I’ll walk with thee to the train station.”

  Imogene took up her suitcases abruptly. “No, please. I appreciate the offer, Mr. Utterback, but I’d rather go the last by myself. I have so much to look at on the way, I’m afraid I shouldn’t be very good company.” She set the suitcases down again and extended her hand. “Thank you again. I’ll write often.”

  He took the hand and
pressed it warmly. “Good-bye, Imogene. Give my regards to Joseph.” He preceded her out of the yard to hold the gate. “Thee are sure I cannot walk with thee?”

  “Yes.” Her voice broke and she turned away.

  The street was empty; people were closeted in their homes, with curtains drawn against the cold and fires lit against the damp. Windows showed yellow in the October afternoon. Imogene walked quickly down a footpath that was separated from the rutted street by a line of trees. Their branches vanished above her into the fog. Her breath came in clouds and beaded on the soft down of her upper lip.

  The front door of the house on the corner opened as Imogene was passing, and a middle-aged woman muffled in a fur-lined cape emerged with a ten-year-old boy in tow. The child saw Imogene and snatched his hand free. He ran across the yard to where she walked by the fence.

  “Miss Grelznik!”

  Imogene stopped and smiled at him. “Where are you and your mother off to, Barton? You are dressed fit for a king’s coronation.”

  He smeared his hands down over his dark wool suit, endangering all the buttons in their path. “We’re going to Uncle Herbert’s for dinner.”

  “Barton Biggs!” Careful of her shoes, his mother picked her way over the frozen yard and clutched his arm. “Come away now.” She never gave Imogene a glance.

  “Ma, Miss Grelznik asked—”

  “Never mind.” She pulled at him until he let go of the fence and clumped along after her. He resisted, crying “Bye” over his shoulder, until she slapped his face.

  Imogene watched them walk away. Her cheeks, already stung pink by the cold, deepened to scarlet and her hands shook when she picked up her bags. “Good-bye, Barton,” she called to his retreating form. “Take care.” Mother and son turned out of sight around the corner, and Imogene went on. A door slammed shut somewhere and she walked faster, keeping her eyes front.

  A quarter of a mile brought her within sight of the train station—an imposing edifice with a cascade of shallow steps ending at a row of cabs parked in the street. A few of the drivers sat hunched on the seats, as dumb as their horses; the rest had crawled inside the cabs to await their fares in relative comfort. Imogene set her bags on the ground and rubbed her hands together. Her cotton gloves were the black of fall fashion, but too thin for warmth.

  Several young men loitered at the top of the stairs. As Imogene threaded her way through the horse manure between the cabs, the eldest of the men—a slight fellow in his early thirties—pointed, calling the attention of the others to her, and said something. Imogene looked up when they laughed. He stepped out from the group and stood in front of her. “Just seeing you caught your train.” Imogene started to walk around him. He sidestepped and stopped her again. “Mary Beth ain’t here to see you off. I seen to that.” Imogene stepped to the right; he moved with her, blocking the way. Finally she looked at him, and though he stood on the step above her, they were eye-to-eye.

  “As you said, Mr. Aiken, I have a train to catch. Be so good as to let me pass.”

  He pushed his face near hers. “You stay clear of her.” His breath stank and Imogene stopped breathing.

  “Don’t you go writing her none of your talk, neither.”

  Imogene tightened her jaw until her lips and nostrils showed white against her windburned face. “Get out of my way.” She spat the words at him and he stumbled back.

  “Darrel, come on.” His fellow loafers had grown uneasy.

  Imogene pushed by him.

  “Don’t even think about Mary Beth,” he yelled as the doors swung shut behind her.

  Imogene bumped the big suitcase along the floor and dropped it in front of a wooden bench. She sat down stiffly with the smaller bag on her lap and rested her forehead against the back of her hands, listening to the somber tick of the station clock as its pendulum paced out the minutes. The clock had just struck four when the doors at the end of the station opened a crack and a man shouted through the narrow opening: “Now boarding, three-twenty-eight to Harrisburg. All aboard.”

  Imogene hauled herself to her feet and hefted the bags. As she stepped out onto the platform she handed the heavier of the two to a boy in a scarlet uniform. “The train is running late. I have a connection to make in Harrisburg for Calliope. Am I going to make it?”

  The boy looked blank.

  “Calliope, Pennsylvania.”

  “You’re meaning Cally-ope?”

  “Yes. Yes. I expect. Calliope.” Imogene mispronounced the word carefully.

  “Yes’m. Train’s considered to be on time today.” He thrust out his lower lip and nodded smartly as if it were his doing. She pressed a nickel into his hand and climbed the steps into the car.

  The floor was slippery with tobacco juice and the air thick with the stink of the rancid animal fat used to grease the axles. Imogene pulled her skirts as high as she dared and trod carefully down the narrow aisle. At the far end an iron stove roared; its door was red-hot, and fire flickered behind the grille in its round belly. She settled herself into one of the hard wooden seats near a window in the middle of the car—far enough from the stove to be comfortable but near enough to keep warm—and set her duffel bag next to her to discourage company.

  The peanut butcher, a grimy boy of indeterminate age and race, waded down the aisle hawking his wares. He tossed an apple and a dog-eared novel into her lap. The man across from her was already reading, so the boy expertly lobbed a pouch of tobacco between the newspaper and his chest. Imogene set the book and the apple on the edge of the seat, where the boy could get them on his return trip, and turned her face to the window. Outside, people were laughing and crying, taking leave of friends and family. She leaned her head on the cold glass and put her hands over her ears.

  When the train lurched forward, Imogene opened her eyes and wiped a space clear on the pane with her handkerchief. A light rain had started to fall, mixing with the cinders that poured from the engine’s stack. The fog had lifted, drawn up into the storm. Her breath began to steam up the window again. As she turned away, a spot of bright red caught her attention. A girl of about sixteen, bundled up against the damp in a worn red cloak, stood at the summit of a treeless knoll near the tracks. Her pinched, childish face peeked out of a film of brown hair blowing forward in the wind. The girl held her cloak around her with one hand and waved to the train with the other.

  In desperate haste, Imogene wrenched at the window; it was stuck fast. She pulled her gloves off with her teeth and banged her fists against the frame. The window came open all at once. Imogene twisted in her seat to put her head out. The wind snatched off her hat and tore her hair loose from its pins. “Mary Beth!”

  The clatter of the wheels drowned out her voice, and the girl went on waving to each car as it passed.

  Imogene closed the window. She had skinned one of her knuckles, and she dabbed at it with a clean corner of her sooty handkerchief. “Little Mary Beth Aiken came to see me off,” she laughed, and wiped the tears from her face.

  2

  A WILLOWY GIRL IN A THIN DRESS DARTED OUT OF THE HOUSE, ACROSS the yard, and through the open door of the cowshed. She dragged the shed door shut behind her and threw herself up onto the hay piled in an empty stall. The stall next to it was occupied by a brown and white milk cow. The cow rolled one dark eye toward the source of the disturbance and lowed softly.

  “Moo your ownself, Myrtle.” She poked her hand between the slats and stroked a ragged ear. Myrtle went back to her cud and musings.

  The girl rolled onto her back and scooped handfuls of straw over her for warmth, piling it up until there was nothing of her showing but her face and straw-colored hair. The shed smelled of Myrtle and leather and apples. She ran her hands up her bodice until they rested over her small breasts. Then, with a shiver, she snatched them away and covered her face. She peeked at Myrtle, but the cow was chewing contentedly and hadn’t been watching. Digging in the pocket of her housedress, the girl drew out of stub of charcoal wrapped carefully in brown pape
r. With sure, light strokes she sketched the cow’s profile on the time-bleached wood of the stall. A few lines, and the soft curve of Myrtle’s jaw and liquid eye emerged.

  The shed door slammed open and shut. The girl ducked and lay still, hidden in the straw.

  “Damn him to hell! Goddamn him!”

  An ox yoke smashed into the wall above her head and fell into the straw.

  “David?” She sat up quickly before he could lay his hands on anything else. Startled, he yelped.

  “Sarah, you could scare a body to death, creeping around the way you do!”

  “I wasn’t creeping. I was hiding from you and Pa’s bellowing.”

  David, scarcely twenty, stood six foot two, a wild red beard and a slightly receding hairline belying his age. “Damn!” he exploded again, slamming the flat of his hand against the beam that ran the length of the roof. The shed shook and Sarah shrank down into the hay. He spat then and wiped his mouth on his upraised arm. “I’m getting out.”

  “David?”

  He looked over at his sister, half-buried in the straw, watching him from round, frightened eyes. The muscles of his jaw relaxed and he dropped his hand from the beam. “What, Sare?” he asked gently.

  “Pa whup you, Davie?”

  David laughed shortly. “I’ve been bigger than Pa since I was sixteen.” He looked past her, his eyes darkening. “I’d like to see him try.”

  “What were you fighting about this time?”

  “The mine—that bung hole!” He burst out. “If Pa thinks I’m breaking myself in that mine for the rest of my life so he can buy hay for a horse nobody rides, and then break my back for asking for a couple of dollars of my own pay—my own pay for Christ’s sake, I wasn’t asking him for nothing I didn’t earn—he’s got another think coming.”