Over the following days the fever worsened; Sarah lay back against the seat, breathing shallowly, her lips white and dry. Imogene took money from her dwindling purse to procure a sleeping compartment.
As the train crept across the Midwest, Sarah lay in the sleeper with the curtains pulled close. The stale air, smelling of sickness and unwashed bedclothes, sometimes forced Imogene to the somewhat fresher air of the sitting cars, but mostly she stayed with Sarah, reading or staring out the window at the endless prairie. Occasionally, herds of buffalo dotted the green and brown expanse. Whenever they passed a herd of the shaggy creatures, shots cracked from the windows of the train; puffs of dust would explode from the rough hides and the great beasts would crumple. The train never slowed; only carrion-eaters and sportsmen enjoyed the kill.
The train’s last over-night stop was Elko, Nevada. Imogene booked a room in the Grande Restaurant, Hotel, and Chop House. The train wouldn’t be leaving for Reno until morning. Their room was simply furnished with a bed, a chair, and a washstand; homespun curtains of faded cornflower blue hung over the single window, and no wallpaper or paint softened the bare walls or floorboards.
Before Imogene would let Sarah lie down, she made a thorough inspection of the mattress and bedclothes. Pronouncing it “clean enough,” she helped Sarah out of her gown and fetched water to clean her wounds and change the dressings. The unhealthy red was fading from the skin around the whip cuts across Sarah’s back, and the shallower marks were beginning to close.
“You rest,” Imogene said as she tucked Sarah in the bed. The middle sagged and the frail girl looked as though she were lying in a trough. “I’m going down for our suppers. I won’t be long.”
Sarah said nothing. She hadn’t said more than a dozen words in three days.
Imogene left one candle burning and descended the narrow stairs. Everything was new and bare. Downstairs, a single room ran the length of the building; trestle tables with rude wooden benches were set in rows along both walls, an aisle between. The schoolteacher paused in the doorway. The eating house was filled with coarse-looking men, indifferently bathed and shabbily dressed. Neckerchiefs took the place of shirt collars, and strange tricks of thread and bits of odd-colored cloth attested to inexpert mending.
As Imogene made her way down the central aisle, she was assailed by the smell of hearty stew. A stocky man carried the entire pot and a ladle from table to table. The miners, each with his own tin plate, often dented in a dozen or more places from years of packing, shoveled the food in rapidly, taking huge mouthfuls. They ate without speaking, and the scraping of spoons on plates was loud. When the men finished, they wiped up the gravy with bits of bread or their fingers and held the empty dish upside down out over the aisle if they wanted more.
At the far end of the room a woman with thick, light hair and a red face was handing out baked potatoes from a basket; they were so hot that even the callus-palmed miners tossed the potatoes from hand to hand and cursed under their breath.
When Imogene returned with the food, Sarah couldn’t eat. Imogene finally gave up coaxing and ate her own supper, the tray balanced across her knees. Near the bowl was a periodical with a worn cover. “The proprietress loaned me this.” Imogene indicated the paper-covered book. “She thought we might like to read it, since we are going to be living in Nevada. She’s never read it herself-she speaks English moderately well, but she never learned to read it. She’s from Vienna. A man from the East left it here six months ago and she set it aside for him in the event he should ever come back for it. That’s nice, don’t you think?” She waited hopelessly for Sarah to reply. “I want to read you something,” she went on. “It’s by Mark Twain. I used to read Mr. Twain to the class sometimes, remember? It’s about Virginia City, that’s near Reno. ‘How they rode! The Mexicanized Americans of Nevada. Leaning just gently forward out of the perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown squire up in front and long riata swinging…”
“Tell me about Mary Beth,” Sarah said suddenly.
Imogene put aside her tray and wiped her hands on the towel that served as her napkin. Fear was souring the food in her stomach. “She was a student of mine. A lovely girl,” Imogene began carefully. “She was about your age. What do you want to know about her?”
“Is it true what the letter said?” Sarah stared at the bare wood of the wall. “Please tell me,” she whispered.
To gather her thoughts, Imogene carried the remnants of her supper across the room and set the tray in the hall, her mind running through the quiet year she had spent in the company of Mary Beth Aiken.
Mary Beth was sixteen when they’d met; it was her last year in school. She was outgoing and pretty. Students had had crushes on Imogene before and she had come to recognize the symptoms, but this time it was different. Mary Beth had fallen in love with her.
What first drew Imogene to Mary Beth was her obvious intelligence and the eager way she had devoured life, wanting to know everything, to experience new sensations. At sixteen, Mary Beth knew things that Imogene, at twenty-eight, never even guessed existed. Much later she told Imogene that she had loved a black servant girl. They’d been lovers until they were found together in the back pantry of the master’s house. Half-dressed and shrieking, Mary Beth had been chased into the street by a knife-wielding cook. The fracas had brought the mistress downstairs, and Mary Beth’s lover was sent away. Both girls had been fourteen.
Imogene closed the hall door and looked back at Sarah’s slight form, hardly noticeable in the hammock of the old mattress. Sarah reminded her of Mary Beth. She was shy but pretty, and there was the same quality of need, a hunger for love and touching.
“I was infatuated with her at first,” Imogene said to Sarah’s back. “Then slowly it ripened into love. I think Mary Beth was the only person who ever truly loved me. Loved me for exactly who I am, and what I am not.” Imogene smiled unconsciously, remembering her seduction. Mary Beth had decided that they were to be lovers. “One evening, just before fall term was to start, she invited me to picnic with her on the bank of the river. When we met near the water, on the outskirts of town, I sensed a peculiar excitement in her. She was wearing a new dress, borrowed for the occasion, and she was still damp and rosy from a bath.” The scent of lilac and soap came strongly to Imogene’s nostrils and she leaned against the splintery door of the hotel in Elko, remembering.
“I took the picnic basket from her. I remember being startled at its weight; it contained more wine than food. I followed Mary Beth to a secluded clearing, close to the water and screened by trees and underbrush. There was enough breeze that the mosquitoes didn’t bother us. The night was full of stars and the murmur of the river.
“I was very naïve,” she said, “though I was twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine. I had never felt the stirrings that Mary Beth did. But that night we became lovers. I was lost in her. Obsessed. I would have done anything to make her happy. That fall we were together was one of the happiest of my life. We walked for miles through the hills, watched the leaves change color and drop from the trees. Mary Beth was very bright, like you, and read. We talked about books.
“We were together all that winter, too. We’d sit by the fire in my house, doing needlework or just being quiet together. For nearly a year I was happy. We laughed a lot, and talked. And made love.