When she said she hadn’t, he explained how a visitor to the White House had caught the president on the back stairs, putting new blacking on a pair of boots. When the surprised visitor had said, “Surely you don’t black your own boots, Mister President!” old Abe was said to have replied, “Well, sure I black my own boots. Who’s boots do you black?”
She didn’t laugh. It reminded him of that time a real Russian lady had tried to translate a Russian joke into English for him. He felt a slight twitch below the waist as he idly wondered where that sort of warm-natured Russian gal might be right now as the sun declined in the west.
Helga’s cast-iron range ran on coal oil, which she said she was running low on. She said there might be some left in the cellar across the yard. She hadn’t poked about down there because it smelled so bad.
Longarm said, “I noticed. Airing it out only seems to make Heger’s quarters upstairs smell worse. You did say you’d never met that wife of his in the flesh. Do you know anyone in town who might have really seen her leaving with that mysterious stranger?”
Helga shook her blond head with her back turned to him as she replied, “I am nothing knowing about Herr Heger’s troubles mitt seiner Frau. When she in the door walk I would not know her. I don’t think there will be oil enough for coffee also here.”
He got up from the cot, saying he’d go see if there was any to spare in or about the shop. As he was leaving she gave him a key ring and suggested he lock up for the night on his way back.
He said he would and asked about all that stock, only guarded now by some hasty boarding-over. She said she’d left such stock as shells and cleaning fluid to the mercy of any prowlers, but hidden the more valuable guns in a broom closet with her fingers crossed, seeing she had no way to open the vault.
Longarm spied a bucket in the carriage house as he descended the steep steps. So he took it along and filled it with water from the garden pump before he went on over to the back entrance to the shop.
He sniffed uncertainly as he carried the bucket of water and that lantern back down to the cellar. He’d noticed in both the war and some Indian fighting that what folks ate the day they died had a lot to do with how they stunk afterwards. He still recalled the horrid shape a bunch of dead Na-dene had appeared to be in after a shootout down by Apache Pass a spell back. An army surgeon had finally figured out why they’d rotted so strangely. The hungry Indians had been eating desert buckthorn berries, which tasted insipidly sweet and contained a vivid dye that turned your blood vessels the color of black cherries without hurting you otherwise. Those dead Indians had sure looked odd.
Setting the bucket of water down, he rummaged about through cobwebs and old mason jars filled with ominous blackness until, sure enough, he found a square can of that Standard lamp oil of Ohio. He set it on the steps with the lantern before he slowly and thoroughly slopped well water over every inch of the dirt floor. Then he hung the trimmed lantern up, put the oil can in the bucket, and went up to lock the back door and head back to the carriage house.
He left the bucket where he’d found it and carried the lamp oil up to Helga—just in time, she said. He started to warn her to put out her stove burner before she poured more oil. But despite the odd way she talked she was a smart as well as industrious housekeeper.
She served him warm pork and beans and what she called Bratkartoffein at a small table near her dormer window. They tasted like fried spuds to him. They were both hungry enough to let the coffee Catch up with them. As they ate, he didn’t tell her about soaking the dirt floor across the way. It was a trick army looters and Mexican raiders used. But he didn’t think he ought to mention anything buried under a dirt floor while they were eating, and it was going to take a spell in any case. You dug where you still saw a damp patch after the rest had dried. Soil that had been disturbed sucked up and held far more spilled water. But even with the cellar door ajar it would take hours for any such pattern to show down there.
They had coffee with a dessert she improvised from canned tomato preserves, brown sugar, and bread crumbs. It tasted better than her droll recipe. The light inside was getting tricky as, outside her dormer window, the sky to the west was turning ominously lovely.
Helga said the sunset was wunderbar after all the cloudless and sudden sunsets they’d been having. He found himself humming a few bars of an old trail song.
She dimpled across the table and asked him to sing the words to such a schene Melodie.
He smiled sheepishly and said, “It’s just a verse allowing how it’s cloudy in the west and looking like rain, whilst I left my slicker in the wagon again. Such songs go on forever without saying a whole lot. Riders make ‘em up as they just keep riding with no end in sight.”
She commenced to softly sing in High Dutch. It was a haunting old melody, but of course he couldn’t follow a word of it. She sang a spell anyway, and then she explained it was about this soldier boy in her old country who’d warned a fair maid he only meant to love her a short spell. Longarm said he’d heard some soldier boys were like that. Helga said this particular one loved the fair maid just one year, then decided it wouldn’t hurt to love her another year, and before he knew it he’d loved her forever.
Longarm cautiously said he’d heard some fair maids were like that.
Helga wrinkled her pert nose and said the song must have been made up by a man, because it took so many things about maidens fair for granted. She said it would have served that soldier boy right if the gal had sent him packing when they’d made love as long as she’d said he might.
Longarm laughed and marveled, half to himself, “She cooks too!
She didn’t follow his drift. It was odd how some of the folks from her old country could speak English like everyone else while others, try as they might, sounded like vaudeville comics making fun of the poor Dutch greenhorns.
There came a low rumble across the sky. Longarm sighed and said, “If that ain’t the Ruggles sisters, I’m facing a moist midnight out on the lone prairie. I’d best see if I can scout up another hayloft here in town.”
She murmured, “We shall donnerwetter before midnight have, Custis.”
Then she reached across the table to timidly place a hand on his wrist as she added, “Don’t leave. I have fear, even if it wasn’t so wet outside going to be!”
He shot a thoughtful glance at the one cot across the room. Helga followed his glance, fluttered her lashes, and murmured, “There is for me alone more than room enough. So what if both of us in the middle tried to sleep?”
He took her hand more warmly in his own as he said he doubted either would get much sleep that way. Then he felt he just had to say, “About what that soldier boy told that fair maiden in that old song …”
But she was already on her feet, holding his one hand in both of her own, as she tugged him away from the table, gasping, “Forever is for human flesh so short, and one hour is better than never. Why are you teasing me so, Custis? I will better try to understand your jokes if you will better try to understand a woman’s needs!”
So they soon discovered she needed it most the old-fashioned way with a pillow under her already ample padding. He’d noticed she seemed to have a romantic streak before he’d gotten the two of them undressed and ready to get down to brass tacks. But she kept hugging and kissing like they were in a porch swing with her legs crossed instead of wrapped around him tight, as she combined the innocent schoolmarm kissing of a country gal with some bumps and grinds that would have made one of Madame Emma Gould’s gals envious.