“So,” his father said in that broad way that he used at holidays and with guests, “your name is Miss McKenna. Tell us a little something about yourself. How old you are, for instance, and where you come from.”
The young woman seemed to realize that the slower she spoke, the better she was understood, so with deliberate slowness she told them that she was twenty-two years of age, had been born and raised in Scotland, and had been most recently living with her married sister, Eileen, in New York, which was how she’d come upon the advertisement in the paper. She had applied for the position in Kansas because she’d liked poetry and music in school and thought she might be able to visit her sister on weekends now and then.
“In New York?” Charlotte said. “From here?”
Clare hated how Charlotte was nearly laughing at the girl. It was a big mistake to make, certainly, but not a funny one.
“I know,” the girl said. “I see now that I was ignorant. At home things couldna’ be so far apart.”
She suddenly bowed her head, and when she looked up again, her expression was of resolve. “I would have come anyway, for all the distance. You see, my sister and her husband and the people in the church in New York wanted to find me a husband, and they found one, but I didna’ like him that way.”
Everyone was looking at her and leaning ever so slightly toward her, or so it seemed to Clare, everyone except his mother, who did as she usually did, which was to sit back and listen with a judging silence. He said, “It’s like Jane Withersteen. In Riders of the Purple Sage, except she didn’t want to marry a Mormon named Tull.”
The young woman seemed confused by this, so he said, “It’s a Zane Grey book. There’s a swell movie of it with Tom Mix.”
“His glorious wounded hero,” Charlotte explained, and Clare dropped his gaze and thought the subject was over, but the girl in her funny accent said, “Was there something wrong with the Mormon then?”
Clare laughed. “There was something wrong with all the Mormons then. They had lots of wives and were mean to all of them. That’s how it was in the book, anyway. We don’t know any Mormons personally.”
Some moments passed and his father said, “We got just your first letter. I’m sorry we didn’t have someone there to meet you. We should have.” He’d let his eyes fall on the girl and now he left them there.
“I could’ve come on our neighbor’s horse,” Clare blurted, and immediately wished he hadn’t because Charlotte countered with a quick, derisive snort. “Oh there’s a picture for you—our white knight, Clare, on his black nag, Sally,” which prompted Neva to say, “But Sally’s not a black nag!” and Clare’s father in his calm voice said to Charlotte, “Don Quixote rode a skinny barn horse, Lottie, but it always got him there.”
The Scottish girl made a pretty sound, and everyone looked at her.
“Rocinante,” she said again, in a tone that suggested apology. “I think that was the name of the horse.” She let her eyes fall again to her plate, which allowed everyone to consider her.
Something seemed to be happening at the table, Clare thought, some kind of shift that couldn’t be seen. It was like watching a play you didn’t understand. He nearly began proclaiming about wanted criminals just to dispel the silence, but Charlotte beat him to it.
“Well,” she said, “Mr. Tanner’s wagon is luxury itself compared to a ride behind Clarence on Sally’s bony rumpola.”
Charlotte followed this with a high laugh, and Clarence again felt his face color. Only the Scottish girl’s presence kept him from remarking on Charlotte’s own rumpola. And he wasn’t making himself out as a knight in shining armor. More like Tom Mix riding in on Tony the Wonder Horse.
Charlotte turned to Aldine. “Did Mr. Tanner talk a lot about Ed and Billy?” she asked.
Aldine looked up as if startled. “Not a very great lot, no,” she replied slowly, “but more of them than anything else.”
His father gave out with one of his up-from-the-stomach laughs. “He likes two good mules,” he said, and shook his head, smiling. “The question would be who he would choose if it came down to his mules or his wife,” he said and laughed again.
“Mules, no question,” Clare said, glad to have something adultlike and cynical to say.
“What about Yauncy?” Neva said. “Who would he choose then?”
“Oh, Yauncy of course,” his father said. “I was just joking, Nevie. Mr. Tanner’d save his wife, too, if it came to that.”
A silence developed. Spoons clinking on soup bowls. Aldine dipped away from the bowl and sipped quietly from the side of the spoon, and soon Clare was doing so, too. Neva ate her roll and jelly, then began running her tongue in and out of the empty space where her front teeth used to be. Clare broke open his pan roll, spread it with butter, and filled it with plum preserves, and almost before he knew he was doing it, he’d reached past Neva to hand it to Aldine. “Here. Try this. It’s just as good as dessert.”
“But . . .” Aldine said, and now she was looking at him, which he liked so much it nearly paralyzed him. “I’m full,” he heard himself say, though he wasn’t. His face was hot. “I had a potato earlier,” he explained, which he knew was more or less the same as declaring himself the king of idiots. “A raw one but we cooked it,” he said, and then he added, “We took them out with us.”
Everyone was staring at him now and he could feel sweat beading on his forehead. He could’ve kissed Neva when she diverted attention by saying, “Daddy has the best way of cooking potatoes!” and then their father was explaining his method of digging a small hole, covering the potatoes, building a fire above them, and letting them bake from the fire burning down while they worked. He smiled at Clare. “It’s something to look forward to, isn’t it, Clare?”
Clare nodded. “Yes sir. It is.”
“Which goes to show that those two”—Charlotte grinned and nodded toward her father and Clare—“can find some lunatic thing to look forward to no matter how dire the circumstances.”
When Aldine sampled the roll and jelly, her whole body seemed to slacken. “Oh, my,” she said. “Isna’ that splendid then?” As she said this, she looked at his mother, but his mother would have none of it. She became busy with her soup.
“Didn’t your folks worry about you traveling alone?” Charlotte said.
No, Aldine told them, her parents were no longer of this earth.
Because nosy Charlotte was nosy Charlotte, Clare expected her to go on asking things, but she didn’t. She just nodded and drank more water. A magazine that her friend Opal had given her recommended cold water steeped with mint for shedding weight, but so far the only result he’d noticed was an increased number of trips to the library, which was what she called the outhouse.
“So did you teach in a big school in Scotland?” his mother asked.
“No,” Aldine said, and looked down at the oilcloth. “I haven’t taught in a school at all before now.”