5. Recalled to Life

 
“Your name’s Luisa?” Mrs. Reed had sat
propped up with pillows on her bed,
her eyes inquisitive and kind, long hair
fanned about her shoulders. “Don’t be afraid.
Come in. Sorry I have to lie abed.
Mr. Reed won’t hear me contradict
the doctor. Doesn’t matter that I feel
just fine except I’m bigger than a barn.”
 
 
She took Luisa’s hand, made room for her
to sit on the high mattress. “Young lady,
you’ll be a help, I swear. You’ve met the girls,
I see. They’re wild, but I’ve a feeling that
won’t bother you. I see it in your eyes.”
Mrs. Reed’s were lighter than Luisa’s,
her skin lighter, reddened at the knuckles
by housework, her wavy auburn hair so clean
 
 
it made Luisa feel like a dried-up stick
they’d picked up in the coal dust and brought home,
her own skin dark and callused, paler where
the loose sack of her dress had covered it.
Mr. Reed had made her take a bath
in the kitchen tub before she met his wife,
and she had been afraid, but now she sat
so high her feet were off the floor, and looked
 
 
at this kind woman’s hands. The room was cool
and clean, with curtains on the one window,
cupboards for hanging clothes, a deal dresser
with a wooden box on top, two or three
of a man’s collars lined up next to it.
“Now tell me about yourself,” said Mrs. Reed.
“I understand you’re partly Mexican
but had an English father? You can read?”
 
 
Luisa didn’t dare correct her. Welsh
was almost English, anyway, and English
the language she knew best, though her mother
spoke it brokenly. She tried to answer
but there was too much weight within her chest
as she fought back tears. “There there, Luisa.
No need to talk right now. I know the grief
you’ve had. These things are hard, and we’ve all had them.”
 
 
How could it be? How could the beautiful
and still-young mother clasping Luisa’s hand
have known—first the typhoid, then the explosion?
She tightened her lower lip but couldn’t stop
its trembling, couldn’t raise her eyes for fear
they’d fill with tears. “All right, young lady.
Why don’t you find those savages I’ve raised
and have them show you where the food is kept?”
 
 
There was so much to learn about the house,
its other bedroom for the girls, kitchen
with cookstove, cupboards, window, and a sink
with a pump handle that brought the water in,
out back a privy with a door. So much
for only six with one more on the way.
There were two upholstered chairs, electric lights,
a second little stove just for the parlor.
 
 
And books! On a parlor shelf the volumes
leaned in their cloth jackets, Shakespeare, Dickens,
and someone called Longfellow who would be,
Luisa thought, as tall as Too Tall was.
She touched the golden letters on their spines
the moment she saw them, and the oldest girl
named Daisy said of course she could read them.
“You’re s’posed to read to us when Mommy’s tired.”
 
 
Daisy, seven and severe, had no nickname.
Elizabeth was Libby. She was six.
Next came Martha—Marty—who was five,
and Katherine—Casey—of course was four.
The girls had greeted her in smocks and knee socks,
their faces smudged from playing in the dirt,
their blonde hair bound with ribbons they tied themselves
at crazy angles, giggling, rushing about.
 
 
Mr. Reed had gone to the store to work
with his brother, and the girls took Luisa’s hands
to show her all four rooms of the house, the shelves
of cans. Daisy opened the icebox door
to show her the salt-pork wrapped in paper.
“You’re s’posed to boil potatoes with the pork
for supper, and tomorrow you bake bread
and we get to help. The dough has to rise.”
 
 
“And you have to knead it!” shouted Libby.
“Like this!” said Marty, making a little fist.
“Knead, knead, kneadity deed,” said Casey, turning
circles like a dervish on the wood floor.
“Simmer down,” their mother shouted from
her room. “You’ll be the death of me, I swear.
Luisa, start ‘em playing a game outside
and then get to the supper. Daisy, let
 
 
the poor girl work. The men will be home soon.”
 

* * *

 
Two years had passed among this family.
Luisa had new clothes and shoes, a bunk
for sleeping built into the kitchen wall.
That first fall little George was born. The girls
would call him Pud, but never felt the need
to tell her where they got that name. Now Pud
was nearly two, confused, always underfoot,
sucking his dirty thumb.
 
 
The Reeds were always working, always dashing
on some forgotten errand. The telephone
inside the shop would ring, and Mr. Reed
would hitch the wagon, racing down the hill
to meet an order coming on the train.
His younger brother, Arthur, worked the counter,
and often joined the family for meals.
And Mrs. Reed could navigate the storm
 
 
of children, cooking, laundry, giving orders
and stitching a heap of clothes, holding three
conversations at once without ever
losing her temper, though often she looked thin
and had the coffee jitters.
She kept a pot warm on the stove, and drank
more than the men. She shot through a day’s work
until she nodded off before the children.
 
 
When Arthur came to dinner the men talked
prices for flour and bacon, bullets, boots.
They ran a regular mercantile, and had
to keep the prices high, they said, or lose
all chance to profit for themselves. “A man’s
initiative is all he’s got, he can’t
give all to the C. F. & I., now, can he?”
“We’re middle-men,” said Arthur. “We feel the pinch.”
 
 
And Mr. Reed would nod agreement, adding
they would have to get out before too long.
Their supper finished, the two brothers sat
while Daisy cleared the table, Luisa washed,
and Mrs. Reed picked up her mending basket,
minding the chatter of the younger children.
“The thing I hate’s these immigrants who don’t
know how to tell you what they want,” said Arthur.
 
 
“Some of them go empty-handed. You write
the prices down and they get all confused
and leave without a purchase, walk all the way
to Berwind where they come from. What I think is
the company should give them English lessons.”
“Who’s got the time for that?” said Mr. Reed.
“We’re here to do a service, but we’ve got
problems of our own. The other day
 
 
they hired more guards to stop the miners thieving.
Know how they make them legal to wear guns?
Get them a license to be game wardens, see,
like something Sheriff Farr in Walsenburg
would do. The thing is, everybody here
is free to get around the law. The law
out West is see what you can get away with.
These immigrants know damn well how it works.”
 
 
And sometimes Arthur looked Luisa’s way,
and made some comment about the Mexicans
or Wops, and said to Mrs. Reed, “I’m sorry,
Sarah, but you don’t even want to know
the kind of animals they hire. There’s killings
in those camps. There’s thieves who would slit your throat
as soon as look at you. They say the Greeks
are worst, but some of the Wops are just as bad.”
 
 
And one day in a game of blindman’s buff
Luisa played when she had finished chores
she heard the girls discussing Wops and Chinks,
Japtown and Greektown, and as they chattered
they looked her way as if to test their words,
and she knew she was only sometimes part
of their family circle. Though Mrs. Reed
was always kind, kindness was not the same
 
 
as blood or love. She was still a Mexican.
Or was it that? Was it her darker skin,
her Indian blood, or only that she came
from the houses lined up in the canyon,
closer to the turmoil of the hills,
the shifts of miners, masons, timber men,
the noise and smoke? That night she couldn’t sleep,
remembering her neighbors in the camp.
 

* * *

 
Most days the work soaked up the passing hours
with baking, cleaning, laundry, taking the girls
downhill to school and sometimes staying there
to help the company teacher, Mrs. Carter,
or just to linger and absorb new knowledge,
numbers or geography or reading.
Some afternoons she joined the girls at play
behind the store, climbing an old barrel,
 
 
searching the shed and scrub for any eggs
the hens had laid. They were allowed long walks
behind the store, up to the mesa’s summit
where they heard the clamor, saw the fire and smoke
from up the canyon, counted cars of trains
that passed between them and the low Black Hills.
It was a home, chaotic to be sure,
but mostly welcoming. When snows blew in
George Reed came home with a crate of black boots
and sat in the heated parlor while they tried them on.
That spring, in 1912, Luisa stood
sweeping the front porch of the pluck me store
one day, hearing a coughing motorcar
come up the muddy track. It wheezed and rattled
and almost didn’t make it, tires spinning,
but finally it stopped beside the steps.
 
 
Two men got out in suits and bowler hats,
scowling at the mud beneath their shoes.
They had red faces, and where their jackets opened
she saw they carried pistols in their gunbelts.
Maybe they were the law. They tipped their hats
at her and stepped inside.
That night after supper
she washed the dishes and let Daisy dry
and Libby stack them in the painted cupboard,
 
 
then told the girls to gather in the parlor
for a book. Mrs. Reed was darning socks,
her husband having gone back to the store
with his cigar. Something was different,
something said between the Reeds, some worry.
She’d only heard him say, “I don’t like
the look of them.” A tone he took when miners
loitered about the stoop as if to rob him.
 
 
They kept a rifle in the house, Winchester,
wooden stock and heavy barrel leaning
in the parlor closet. Luisa knew
that Mrs. Reed knew how to use it, saw her
run for it more than once when trouble lurked
about the house, and as she read aloud
she felt it just beyond the door, as if
it leaned upon her brain, and on the words:
 
 
The king is kind, and well we know the king
Knows at what time to promise, when to pay.
My father and my uncle and myself
Did give him that same royalty he wears;
And when he was not six and twenty strong,
Sick in the world’s regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,
My father gave him welcome to the shore.
 
 
It was a history play. They all took parts,
hearing the rage of Hotspur at the king
who came to power after murdering
another king. And Mrs. Reed explained
that it was England and long, long ago,
and things were better in America
without a king who sent his henchmen out
to do such work. But maybe this was hard
 
 
and they should find another book to read?
Luisa opened Dickens, which had pictures
and voices she could imitate, so like
some people she had known in her other life.
It was the best of times, it was the worst
of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was
the age of foolishness, it was the epoch
of belief, it was the epoch
 
 
of incredulity, it was the season
of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter
of despair, we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us, we were all going
direct to Heaven, we were all going
direct the other way. . . . “Well.” Mrs. Reed
set down her needles and her yarn. “I guess
 
 
there’s no avoiding trouble in those books!”
 

* * *

 
That summer, when Luisa turned fourteen,
the family took her on the southbound train
to Trinidad. The car was full of people
in their best clothes, eating, smoking, pointing
to the bluish steps and far-off tabletop
of Fisher’s Peak. They rounded the bend at Forbes
where crowds of immigrants were marching toward
the canyon with its mine. The best and worst,
 
 
Luisa thought, so maybe nothing changes.
Like the day when Too Tall walked up to the store
to buy some fuse—they had run out and sent
for more that wouldn’t come until tomorrow—
and stood there with his hat off, hair pressed flat
with sweat, talking only to Mr. Reed
while she was right there stocking shelves. And she
had not known what to say
 
 
but cried out anyway, “Mr. MacIntosh!”
And how the blush of pleasure crossed his face,
making him stammer, “Lass, ye’ve grown so much
I hardly knew ye.” And how she’d known right then
it wasn’t fuse he wanted, but to see her
and convey his wife’s regards and tell her
all was well, or mostly well, in the shacks
with Mrs., and the boys, Señora Robles. . . .
 
 
“Of course there’s more new families all the time,
more folk who don’t know proper English.”
The latter said as much for Mr. Reed
and Arthur, meaning, I’m one who knows his place.
“I hear some grumbling,” said Mr. Reed,
“talk of agitators. I’ve seen more guards.”
“Aye,” said Too Tall, “well, I wouldn’t know.
I keep my muzzle out of politics.”
 
 
And how before he left he touched her hair
and wished her well, and she could hardly stand
to see him go but also hardly stand
to have him mixing with the Reeds like that.
Among the immigrants at Forbes she saw
whole families lugging their worldly goods,
men at tables taking names. Then the car
had turned, the mesa had cut off her view.
 
 
What was it made the heat rise in her cheeks?
Some shame she felt at being intimate
with all those strangers, knowing what they felt
and knowing she could never tell the Reeds?
It was so hard to have a secret life
beyond the secrets Mrs. Reed had known
and helped her with, the whispers about men
and blood and private dangers. Torn in two
 
 
by what she saw both far and near, outside
herself and deep inside, as if to witness
feelings she could never speak aloud,
Luisa knew that something of herself
was gypsy and untouchable and never
to be saved. The birthday dress they promised her
because they were the Reeds and they were kind
was something she would never quite deserve.
 

* * *

 
In Trinidad they strolled Commercial Street
as it wound downhill to the riverbank.
Some streets were dirt, this one paved with red bricks
stamped with the town’s name, and jammed with people,
wagons, horses, cars. They looked in windows,
paused to watch the masons cutting stone,
the window washers at the bank, a man
who tried to beat his horse for misbehaving. . . .
 
 
Beside the river Mr. Reed declared
it had the longest name of any river
he had known: “El Rio de las Animas
Perdidas en Purgatorio—The River
of Lost Souls in Purgatory—a mouthful,
ain’t it? Goes back to the conquistadors.
Some got killed by Indians in a raid,
so the river’s haunted by them. So they say.”
 
 
Already Casey and Marty were dragging sticks
in the muddy water, and overhead
the giant cottonwoods were swaying leaves
as if to fan them. They saw an Indian
walk by in his sarape, a group of men
burst laughing out of a nearby tavern,
a family in dustcoats, hats and goggles
crossing the plank bridge in a motorcar.
 
 
“Well,” said Mr. Reed, turning to his wife
and tipping his straw hat back on his head,
“should I tell ‘em?” Daisy and Libby took
his hands and tugged. “Tell us what, Daddy,
tell us what?” And just then it was like
the street had turned, no more than half an inch,
and there were all the Reeds becoming one
small circle while Luisa stood outside.
 
 
“Yes,” said Mrs. Reed,” no harm in telling.”
Luisa held the stroller where Pud slept
and watched the gathering Reeds,
their nervous vigor and their happiness.
“Well, sometimes hard work comes to something good.”
He turned to Mrs. Reed, who said, “You’re hopeless.
Children, what he means is that we’re moving.
By September we’ll be living here in town.”
 
 
Squealing with delight, the four girls hopped
about like birds in a downpour. Luisa
stared into the buggy at Pud’s round face
and felt the city whirl around that space
as she became another nameless creature
on an empty road. But there was Mrs. Reed’s
hand on Luisa’s hand: “Of course we hoped
you’d move with us, young lady.” Small brown weeds
 
 
poked from the bricks. Luisa stared as if
she might deserve this luck. Recalled to life.