Backlands Page 25

  She pointed at a tree. “What’s that?

  “Árbol.”

  “Árbol,” she repeated as she pointed at the church. “And that?”

  “A church,” Matt said.

  “A church,” Beth said with perfect elocution.

  “Actually, it’s iglesia in Spanish,” Matt said.

  “Iglesia. There, I know three more Spanish words besides tía, señora, and adios. My vocabulary has doubled with your help. Uncle Gus says you live alone. Are you a rich orphan?”

  “What else has the professor told you?” Matt asked snappishly.

  “Oh, please don’t hate me,” Beth pleaded, reacting to his tone of voice. “I don’t mean to be rude. Sometimes people think I’m ill-mannered when I’m only trying to be amusing. It gives my mother fits. It happens when I try too hard to be liked.”

  The notion that Beth wanted Matt to like her brought a smile to his lips. “It’s okay.”

  She hooked her arm in his. “Thank you. You must understand that Gus and Consuelo feel they must do everything possible to protect my virtue, safeguard my welfare, and promote my speedy recovery while I’m here. They are worse worrywarts than my parents. I think they spent days before my arrival arranging and planning every itty-bitty detail of my life in Las Cruces, selecting the sanatorium, deciding on the best doctor to treat me, and picking the perfect, most trustworthy young man to squire me around when it is allowed. You may be my only chance for any freedom.”

  “I’ve promised the professor not to help you escape.”

  Beth smiled jubilantly. “See? You’ve made my point exactly. But I’m glad they picked you to be my escort.”

  “So am I.” Matt slowed at an empty bench away from the noise of the speakeasy and the viejos. Beth immediately sat down.

  “It seems so much like a foreign country here,” she said, gazing around the plaza. “So different from Cleveland, I hardly believe I’m in the United States. Do you dream of traveling the world?”

  Matt sat beside her. “Sometimes, but mostly now I concentrate on my studies. It’s a promise I made to my mother. You asked if I was an orphan. I’m not.”

  Beth put a finger to Matt’s lips. “Hush. I’m sorry I asked such a thoughtless question. You don’t have to answer.”

  He took her hand away, held it for a second, glancing at her eyes. He reluctantly released her hand and said, “I don’t mind telling you.”

  He told her about Emma, her defective heart, which had ended her life much too soon, how she parlayed her divorce settlement into smart investments that put enough money in a trust to support him for years, and his home in town, where he’d lived mostly since the day he was born. He saved for last the tale of the short story Eugene Manlove Rhodes wrote about his mother making a hand on a Double K cattle drive back in the days before statehood.

  “I know I would have loved her,” Beth said emphatically.

  “And she you, I bet,” Matt allowed.

  “Are you a cowboy as well as a scholar?”

  Matt laughed. “Some might disagree with that notion, but I can sit a horse fairly well and know my way around cattle. I have a pinto named Patches. He’s a fine pony.”

  “You must take me riding, and out for a jaunt in your motorcar. And will you lend me the story to read?” She stopped, out of breath.

  Matt laughed. “Of course, whenever you like.”

  “Wonderful. You haven’t mentioned your father or if you have any brothers or sisters.”

  At the far end of the plaza in the last light before dusk, Augustus and Consuelo Merton appeared, arm in arm. Matt stood to greet them, glad to be distracted from her sobering inquiry. “We’ve been spotted.”

  Beth sighed. “By my kindhearted jailers. When will I see you again?”

  “I’ll bring the Gene Rhodes story to you tomorrow, if you wish.”

  Beth stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips on his cheek. “Perfect.”

  Matt silently agreed as they strolled to meet the professor and his wife. The evening had been perfect.

  ***

  Matt saw Beth twice more before she entered the sanatorium. As promised, he dropped off “Emma Makes a Hand” the following afternoon and spent an hour in her company before Consuelo whisked her away to shop for essentials she would need at the sanatorium. To his relief, not once did Beth question him any further about Pa or his family. Early the next morning, he took her for a jaunt in his Studebaker to see some of the countryside before she had to report to “jail.” They drove to the base of the Organ Mountains, skirted along the foothills over rocky dirt roads to the state highway, crested the San Andres Pass, and stopped at a turnoff that gave a panoramic view of the Tularosa Basin. Beth took it all in with eyes wide in wonderment. Under a clear blue sky, with the desert in full bloom from the recent rains, the white gypsum dunes sparkled like diamonds and the Sacramento Mountains rose in sharp relief, hard and foreboding against the horizon, with the distant Sierra Blanca shimmering through the heat waves rising from the basin floor.

  “It’s magical,” she proclaimed in a reverential whisper. “I want to see all of it. Why, you could drop Cleveland in the middle of it and it would be lost forever. Is there any water?”

  Matt shook his head. “Hardly any.”

  “Can we drive on a bit farther?”

  “A little ways, before it gets too hot.”

  At the bottom of the Chalk Hills he stopped again to point out the distant alkali flats that pressed against the north-south rib of the rugged eastern face of the San Andres Mountains. He described the winding, tortured pass through Rhodes Canyon, the high-country forests that capped the faraway peaks, the vast valleys and wide pastures hidden in the mountains, and the narrow canyons, musical and moist from live water trickling down rock streams kept cool by the shade of supple desert willows.

  Without pause, he told her how the Double K sat poised in a low valley overlooking the basin, the toe of the rangeland touching desert scrub, the headlands rising to the tall pines, and how the ranch house with its wide veranda perfectly perched on a shelf gave a view that seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth.

  “My ma is buried on a hill above the house,” he concluded. “It’s about the best spot in the whole world to be laid to rest.”

  “Does your father still live there?” Beth asked.

  “He does,” Matt answered shortly. “He’s pretty much a loner who doesn’t cotton to folks easily.”

  “Is that the nicest thing you can say about him?” Beth asked pointedly.

  Matt hesitated. “I guess so.”

  “Will I ever meet him? Or see the ranch?”

  “Someday, maybe.” He wondered if a city girl could thrive in such a remote place, far from everything modern, no matter how beautiful the sunsets and the azure skies.

  “Promise you’ll take me there before I leave.”

  The notion of Beth someday leaving New Mexico felt like a stab wound. “I promise.”

  On the drive back to town, Beth told Matt about a pamphlet she’d been given that explained all the services at the sanatorium. She called it “The Rule Book for Inmates.” She was to have no visitors for the first thirty days, take an hour a day of natural sunlight, practice breathing exercises to strengthen her weak lungs, take special vapors to refresh her sinuses, and read for no more than thirty minutes at a time, so as not to exhaust herself. X-rays would be taken routinely, her doctor would examine her weekly, and most important, she would be required to take the salubrious desert air twice a day on the veranda, once in the morning and again in the evening.

  “Will you drive by on the road once in a while, honk the horn, and wave so that I know you’re thinking of me?” she asked.

  “As often as I can,” Matt promised.

  ***

  It took all of Matt’s willpower not to drive by the sanatorium twice
a day or more. He kept to a once-a-day routine, alternating between mornings and evenings, driving very slowly past the whitewashed adobe building with a high-pitched roof that had once been the private residence of a prominent Mexican merchant who had made a fortune in Juárez. The front porch was deep and screened, making it difficult for Matt to see in. But every time he passed by, Beth would be stationed in the same lounge chair waving madly at him as he tooted his horn.

  At the end of Beth’s first week of confinement, a note from her came in the mail complaining about the gruel her keepers passed off as food at mealtime and warning him that she would likely waste away from starvation long before consumption claimed her. She ended with a caveat not to write back, as she would miss him too much if he did so. After that, a new note arrived every few days containing humorous vignettes about her fellow inmates. There was Miss Lucy Monroe from Boston, who blushed at the mere mention of Dr. Brandt, the senior physician; Abigail Landis, who started a glee club for the inmates and sang contralto badly off-key; and Susana Martinez, a housekeeper who had taken to teaching Spanish to an old soldier everyone called Captain Mighty Fine because of his constant use of the phrase at every possible opportunity.

  Her notes had him start counting the days until her mandatory confinement ended and he could see her up close, talk to her, be with her. The world seemed dull without her. He was more than besotted. In spite of her admonition, he wrote to her anyway, reporting on his horseback rides along the river, a recent dinner with her uncle Gus and tía Consuelo, where her company was sorely missed, his busy days clerking at Sam Miller’s store for an employee who’d taken vacation. He didn’t dare try to turn a clever phase or attempt to be witty. He feared that he lacked the necessary ingredients to be an entertaining correspondent. His best hope, he decided, was to remain attentive and pray it might compensate for his lack of sophistication.

  On the first day Beth was allowed visitors, Matt went to the sanatorium with Gus and Consuelo, as they insisted he call them. After hugs for her aunt and uncle and a warm smile for Matt, Beth took them on a quick tour of the building and grounds, including the enclosed pool house, used for hydrotherapy treatments, and a lovely green lawn where patients who’d been approved for physical exercise could play croquet and badminton. She had a private room with big airy windows that gave a pleasant view of the lawn and several large cottonwoods and a private entrance that led to the flagstone walkway around the lawn. The room was furnished with a twin bed, a writing table and chair, and a tall chest of drawers. On top of the bureau were framed photographs of Beth’s parents and her younger sister, Emily, along with a half dozen books, mostly novels.

  Consuelo raised an eyebrow. “Let me bring you a few things from home to brighten your room up.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Tía, but please don’t,” Beth replied. “I don’t expect to be here that long. In fact, I’ve improved so much I’m now allowed to take my meals in the dining room with the other inmates and play croquet, in which I’m undefeated.”

  “Have all your symptoms abated?” Augustus asked hopefully.

  “I haven’t had a fever in weeks, and my appetite is back.” Her sunny look turned stubborn. “All that’s left to do is gain a few pounds and banish my cough. It’s worse at night but getting better.”

  Consuelo smiled and hugged her. “Maravilloso.”

  They visited for a time on the porch, interrupted every few minutes by curious patients stopping by, including the contralto who sang off-key, the old soldier, who shook Augustus’s and Matt’s hands and said it was “mighty fine” to meet them, and the Boston spinster who pined for Dr. Brandt and wanted to know if Matt was Beth’s “young man.” Both of them blushed, Matt a shade redder.

  As they were leaving, Beth pressed a note in Matt’s hand. He stuck it in his pocket and didn’t look at it until after he said good-bye to Gus and Consuelo and drove away from their hacienda. It read:

  Meet me under the cottonwood behind the pool house at 8 tonight.

  At ten minutes to eight, he parked the Studebaker a hundred yards from the sanatorium. In deepening darkness he skirted the lawn to the cottonwood tree. Disappointed that Beth wasn’t there, he waited. One by the one the lights inside the patients’ room went out. After what felt like an eternity, Beth finally arrived, breathless and coughing into a handkerchief pressed against her mouth.

  “Thank goodness you’re here.” She grasped his arm to steady herself.

  Her touch electrified Matt. “I’m here,” he managed.

  “I am so tired of being banned from this, prohibited from that, prevented from doing something else.” The words spilled out of her. “There is no one my age to talk to. I’m going insane. Take me for a ride in your car, please. I need to break the rules and feel like an outlaw, or I’ll just shrivel up and turn to dust.”

  “Are you sure?” The notion of an illicit summer’s night drive with Beth enthralled him.

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  They drove out of town into the desert, a million stars above in the sky, Beth with her head out the window and the wind blowing through her hair. He slowed the car at the turnoff to the Arrington Ranch.

  “Don’t stop,” she pleaded.

  “Okay.” He drove on. “There’s a place nearby called Sleeping Lady Hills. You can’t see it at night, but from a certain angle it looks just like a woman sleeping.”

  “Can we go there someday?”

  “We can get to it by horseback through the Rough and Ready Gap.”

  Beth laughed. “I love the names you have for places. Promise you’ll bring me.”

  “As your riding buddy or your beau?” He was startled by his boldness.

  “I think I’d prefer beau,” Beth replied as she scooted closer to him.

  21

  Matt started the fall 1929 term of college in love. Beth’s thirty-day quarantine had ended with her health so improved, the doctors allowed her to take weekend furloughs and gave her permission to have occasional evenings off the grounds during the week. Although she stayed at the hacienda on the weekends, most of her time—much to his delight—was spent with Matt. He kept his promise to take her horseback riding through the Rough and Ready Gap to the Sleeping Lady Hills, and when they weren’t out roaming the countryside in his Studebaker or ahorseback, they attended an occasional evening concert in the park, went to a Sunday movie matinee at the Rio Grande Theater, and dined frequently with Gus and Consuelo at the hacienda. When they could, they slipped away to Matt’s house, where they would pet so passionately it left them trembling and breathless in each other’s arms. More than once they almost went all the way, but Beth’s hushed no always brought Matt to a stop.

  In early October, the local newspapers began running Associated Press stories from New York and Washington about falling stock prices caused by a speculative orgy on Wall Street. The papers also published editorials quoting financial experts who argued low interest rates and strong retail trade were proof the economy was growing and there was no need for investors who stayed the course to worry. When the market plummeted and many rushed to sell, bigwig eastern millionaires stepped in to shore it up. That caused talk of a panic to subside, although stocks continued to sink in value.

  Far removed from the financial shenanigans of Wall Street, most New Mexicans—other than the bankers and a few fat cats—were more concerned about the lingering effects of drought and lower prices for livestock and farm produce than the ups and downs of the stock market. The news was interesting but not very relevant to folks who’d never had a bank account and weren’t exactly sure what a share of stock was anyhow.

  When the stock market plunged again and the deep-pocket millionaires did nothing to stop the bleeding, Augustus Merton predicted that millions of people would be thrown out of work. He recalled seeing tough times in Mexico during the height of the revolution, with peasants begging for food on the streets and whole familie
s wandering the countryside, homeless and destitute. That experience had impressed on him the need to always be prepared for an emergency. He suggested that Matt would do well to keep some cash on hand to weather any uncertainties.

  “Unless you can take care of the basics, you stand to lose everything,” Augustus counseled. “Food, shelter, and cash money are essential in good or bad times. Never forget that.”

  Matt didn’t disagree with him but figured Augustus was being overcautious. After all, living through a bloody revolution in a foreign country and surviving some economic hardship in America were two completely different things.

  Later that evening, at home and alone, Matt thought more about Augustus’s advice. If hard times came, the house was his, free and clear, he had enough firewood to get him through the winter, and his tuition was paid for the full year. Still, the idea of keeping some cash on hand for emergencies made sense. Ma had always done that, and so had Pa. They also made sure the cupboards were well stocked with victuals. He decided to take some cash money out of the bank and go grocery shopping at Sam Miller’s store tomorrow. That would cover the basics Augustus had talked about.

  The next morning, after a trip to the bank and Sam Miller’s store, Matt put the groceries away, hid his emergency cash in an empty coffee tin, and promptly forgot about the economy, his mind occupied with his course work and Beth. But in early November he was brought back to reality by an early-morning telephone call from a clerk at the bank asking Matt to meet with Mr. Worrell as soon as possible.

  He arrived at the front door an hour before the bank was due to open and was let in by a worried-looking cashier who directed him to Worrell’s office. After a tight-lipped greeting, Worrell wasted no time giving Matt the bad news: a margin call had been issued on the stock owned by the trust, which had completely wiped out all the cash assets. Worrell was in the process of calling in the mortgages on the rental properties, which needed to be sold to help cover the remaining market losses. It likely wouldn’t be enough to cover everything the trust owed, but Worrell guessed the creditors would take what they could get and be happy with it.