In the years since the Great War, patriotism ran high in Dalhart. That, combined with rain and rising wheat prices, gave everyone a reason to celebrate the Fourth of July. In town, store windows advertised Independence Day sales and bells clanged merrily as folks went in and out of the merchants’ stores, stocking up on food and drink for the festivities.
Usually Elsa looked forward to the celebration, but the past few weeks had been difficult. Since her night with Rafe, Elsa had felt caged. Restless. Unhappy.
Not that anyone in her family looked closely enough at her to see the difference. Instead of voicing her discontent, she buried it and went on. It was all she knew to do.
She kept her head down and pretended nothing had changed. She stayed in her bedroom as much as she could, even in the ragged heat of summer. She had books delivered from the library—suitable books—and read them from cover to cover. She embroidered dish towels and pillowcases. At supper, she listened to her parents’ conversation and nodded when she needed to. At church, she wore a cloche over her scandalously short hair and made the excuse that she didn’t feel well and was left alone.
On the few instances when she dared to look up from a beloved book and stare out the window, she saw the emptiness of a spinster’s future stretching out to the flat horizon and beyond.
Accept.
The bruise on her jaw had faded. No one—not even her sisters—had remarked upon it. Life returned to normal at the Wolcott house.
Elsa imagined herself as the fictional Lady of Shalott, a woman trapped in a tower, cursed, unable to leave her room, forever doomed to watch the bustling of life outside. If anyone noticed her sudden quiet, they didn’t remark upon it or ask the cause. In truth, it was not so different. She’d learned how to disappear in place long ago. She was like one of those animals whose defense mechanism is to blend into the landscape and become invisible. It was her way of dealing with rejection: Say nothing and disappear. Never fight back. If she remained quiet enough, people eventually forgot she was there and left her alone.
“Elsa!” her father yelled up the stairs. “It’s time to go. Don’t make us late.”
Elsa pulled on her kid gloves—required even in this terrible heat—and pinned a straw hat in place. Then she went downstairs.
Elsa stopped halfway down the stairs, unable to keep going. What if Rafe was at the party?
The Fourth of July was one of those rare events where the whole county gathered. Usually the different towns celebrated in their own halls, but for this party, people came from miles around.
“Let’s go,” Papa said. “Your mother hates to be late.”
Elsa followed her parents out to her father’s brand-new bottle-green Model T Runabout roadster. They climbed in, squished together on the heavy leather seat. Although they lived in town and the grange hall was close, they had a lot of food to carry, and Mama wouldn’t be caught dead walking to a party.
The Dalhart Grange Hall had been decorated in layers of red, white, and blue bunting. A dozen or so cars were parked out front. Most belonged to the farmers who’d done well in the past few years and the bankers who had financed all that growth. Great care had been taken by the women of the Beautification League, so the lawn out front was a lush green. Flowers grew in bright profusion alongside the steps that led up to the front door. The grounds were full of children playing, laughing, running. Elsa couldn’t see any teenagers, but they were here somewhere, probably sneaking stolen kisses in shadowy corners.
Papa parked in the street and turned off the engine.
Elsa heard music. Party noise drifted through open doors: chattering, coughing, laughing. A pair of fiddles played along with a banjo and a guitar: “Second Hand Rose.”
Papa opened the trunk, revealing the food Maria had spent days preparing. Food Mama would take credit for making. Family recipes, handed down from her Texas pioneer ancestors—molasses stack cakes, Aunt Bertha’s spicy gingerbread, upside-down peach cake, and Grandpa Walt’s favorite ham with red-eye gravy and grits—every item designed to remind people of the Wolcotts’ deep place in Texas history.
Elsa fell into step behind her parents, carrying a still-warm Dutch oven toward the wooden grange hall.
Inside, colorful quilts had been used for everything from decorations to tablecloths. Along the back wall were several long tables filled with food: pork roasts and rich, dark stews, trays full of green beans cooked in bacon fat. There would undoubtably be chicken salads, potato salads, sausage and biscuits, breads, cornbread, cakes, and pies of all kinds. Everyone in the county loved a party and the women worked hard to impress each other. There would be smoked hams, rabbit sausage, loaves of bread with freshly churned butter, hard-boiled eggs, fruit pies, and platters full of hot dogs. Mama led the way to the corner table, where the women of the Beautification League were busy rearranging the offerings.
Elsa saw her sisters standing with the women of the Beautification League. Suzanna was wearing a blouse made from Elsa’s red silk. Charlotte wore a red silk scarf at her throat.
Elsa stopped; the sight of her sisters in that red silk made her heartsick. Papa joined the men clustered in loud conversation beside the stage.
Even though Prohibition made liquor illegal, there was plenty to be had for the men, who were a tough, sturdy group of immigrants from Russia, Germany, Italy, and Ireland. They’d come here with nothing and made something out of that nothing and they didn’t cotton to being told how to live, not by each other or by a government that hardly seemed to know the Great Plains existed. Although they tended to look a little worn, many of the men had plenty of money in the bank. When wheat sold for a dollar thirty a bushel and cost forty cents to grow, everyone in town was happy. With enough land, a man could become rich.
“Dalhart is on its way,” Papa said loudly enough to be heard above the music. “I’m gonna build us a damn opera house next year. Why should we have to go to Amarillo for a little culture?”
“We need electricity in town. That’s the ticket,” Mr. Hurst added.
Mama continued to rearrange the food, which had never yet been done to her standards in her absence. Charlotte and Suzanna laughed with their pretty, well-dressed friends, most of whom were young mothers.
Elsa spotted Rafe, standing with the other Italian families in the corner by a food table. His black hair, floppy on top and shorter along his ears, needed cutting. The pomade he’d used made it shiny but couldn’t quite control it. He wore a plain shirt, worn at the elbows, brown pants, saddle- leather brown suspenders, and a plaid bow tie. A pretty, dark-haired girl clung to his arm.
In the six weeks since she’d seen Rafe, his face had been further tanned by hours in the fields.
Look this way, she thought, and then: No, don’t.
He would pretend not to know her. Or, worse, not even to see her.
Elsa forced herself to move forward, hearing her heels click on the hardwood dance floor.
She put the Dutch oven down on the white-clothed table.
“Heavens, Elsa. Ham in the middle of the dessert table. Whatever are you thinking?” Mama said.
Elsa took the pot up and carried it to the next table. Each step took her closer to Rafe.
She set the pot down as quietly as possible.
Rafe looked over, saw her. He didn’t smile; worse, his gaze cut worriedly to the girl standing next to him.
Elsa immediately looked away. She couldn’t stand here, longing like this. It was suffocating. And the last thing in the world she wanted was to be ignored by him all night.
“Mama?” she said, moving in beside her mother. “Mama?” “You see I am speaking to Mrs. Tolliver?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just…” Don’t look at him. “I’m not feeling well.” “Too much excitement, I imagine,” Mama said, glancing at her friend. “I think I should go home,” Elsa said.
Mama nodded. “Of course.”
Elsa was careful not to look at Rafe as she walked toward the open door.
Couples spun past her on the dance floor.
She opened the door and stepped out into the warm, golden early evening. The door banged shut behind her, softening the strains of the fiddle music and the stomp of dancing feet.
She made her way through the collection of parked cars, past the horse- drawn wagons that brought the less successful farmers to town for events like this.
Main Street was quiet now, bathed in a butterscotch glow that would soon melt into night. She stepped up onto the boardwalk.
“Els?”
She stopped, turned slowly.
“I’m sorry, Els,” Rafe said, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry?”
“I should have spoken up back there. Waved or something.” “Oh.”
He came closer, so close she could feel the warmth emanating from him and smell the trace scent of wheat.
“I understand, Rafe. She’s lovely.”
“Gia Composto. Our parents decided we would marry before we could walk.” He leaned closer. She felt his warm breath on her cheek.
“I dreamed about you,” he said in a rush. “Y-you did?”
He nodded, looking a little embarrassed.
She felt as if she’d just edged toward a cliff; below was a fall that could break her bones. His look, his voice. She stared into his eyes, which were dark as night and soulful and just a little sad, although what he could possibly have to be sad about, she couldn’t imagine.
“Meet me tonight,” he said. “Midnight. At the old Steward barn.”
 |
ELSA LAY IN BED, fully dressed.
She shouldn’t go. That much was obvious. The bruise on her jaw had healed, but the mark of it remained beneath the surface. Good women did not do the thing Rafe had asked of her.
She heard her parents come home, climb the stairs, open and close their bedroom door down the hall.
The bedside clock read 9:40.
Elsa lay there, breathing shallowly, as the house quieted. Waiting.
She shouldn’t go.
It didn’t matter how frequently she said it in her head, because not once, not for one moment, had she considered following her own advice.
At eleven-thirty, she got out of bed. The room was still stiflingly hot, but her window looked out on the Great Plains night sky. Her childhood portal to adventure. How often had she stood at this window and sent her dreams into those unknown universes?
She opened the window and climbed out onto the metal flower trellis. It seemed as if she were crawling into the starlit sky itself.
When she dropped onto the thick grass, she paused, waited nervously to be detected, but no lights came on inside. She crept over to the side of the house and retrieved one of her sisters’ old bicycles. Climbing aboard, she pedaled out to the road and down Main Street and out of town.
The world at night was big and lonesome in a way that locals had become used to, illuminated only by starlight, pinpricks of white in a dark world. There were no homes out here, nothing but darkness for miles.
She pulled up to the old barn and dismounted, setting her bicycle in the blanket of buffalo grass beside the road.
He wouldn’t show up. Of course he wouldn’t.
She could remember every word he’d said to her, few as they were, and every nuance of expression on his face as he spoke. The way his smile started on one side and kind of slid slowly into place. The pale comma of a scar along his jaw, the way one incisor poked out just a little.
I dreamed of you. Meet me tonight.
Had she answered him? Or had she just stood there, mute? She couldn’t remember.
But here she was, standing all alone in front of an abandoned barn. Fool that she was.
There would be hell to pay if she got caught.
She stepped forward, her brown oxford heels crunching on tiny stones on the road. The barn loomed up before her, the peak of the roof seeming to get caught on the fishhook moon. Slats were missing; fallen boards lay scattered.
Elsa hugged herself as if she were cold, but in truth she was uncomfortably warm.
How long did she stand there? Long enough to begin to feel sick to her stomach. She was about to give up when she heard a car engine. She turned, saw a pair of headlights coming down the road.
Elsa was so shocked she couldn’t move.
He was driving too fast, being reckless. Gravel spit out from the tires.
His horn blared: ah ooh gah.
He must have jumped on the brake, because the truck fishtailed to a stop.
Dust rose up around him.
Rafe jumped out of the car in a hurry. “Els,” he said, grinning, producing a bouquet of purple and pink flowers.
“Y-you brought me flowers?”
He reached into the cab and produced a bottle. “And some gin!” Elsa had no idea how to respond to either.
He handed her the flowers. She looked into his eyes, and she thought,
This. She would pay any price for it. “I want you, Els,” he whispered.
She followed him into the back of the truck.
The quilts were already spread out. Elsa smoothed them a little and lay down. Only a thin thread of light came from the scythed moon.
Rafe lay down beside her.
She felt his body along hers, heard his breathing. “Did you think about me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Me, too. About you, I mean. About this.” He began unbuttoning her bodice.
Fire where he touched her. An unraveling. She couldn’t still herself, couldn’t hide it.
He pushed her dress up and pulled her bloomers down and she felt the night air on her skin. All of it aroused her, the air on her skin, her own nakedness, the way he was breathing.
She longed to touch him, taste him, tell him where she wanted—needed
—to be touched, but fear of humiliation kept her silent. Anything she said was bound to be wrong, unladylike, and she wanted so much to make him happy.
Before she was ready, he was inside of her, thrusting hard, groaning.
Seconds later, he collapsed on top of her, shuddering, breathing quickly.
He whispered something unintelligible into her ear. She hoped it was romantic.
Elsa touched the stubble of beard along his jaw. Her touch was so soft and tenuous that she didn’t think he felt it.
“I will miss you, Els,” he said.
Elsa brought her hand back quickly. “Where are you going?”
He opened the bottle of gin and took a long drink, then handed it to her. “My folks are making me go to college.” He rolled onto his side and rested his head on one hand and stared at her as she took a stinging, fiery drink and clamped a hand over her mouth.
He took another drink. “My mom wants me to graduate from college so I’ll be a real American. Or something like that.”
“College,” she said wistfully.
“Yeah. Stupid, huh? I don’t need book learning. I want to see Times Square and the Brooklyn Bridge and Hollywood. Learn by doing. See the world.” He took another drink. “What do you dream of, Els?”
She was so surprised to be asked, it took her a moment to answer. “Having a child, I guess. Maybe a home of my own.”
He grinned. “Heck, that don’t count. A woman wanting a baby is like a seed wanting to grow. What else?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“I want to be brave,” she said, almost too softly to be heard. “What scares you?”
“Everything,” she said. “My grandfather was a Texas Ranger. He used to tell me to stand up and fight. But for what? I don’t know. It sounds silly when I say it out loud…”
She felt his gaze on her and hoped the night was kind to her face.
“You ain’t like any other girl I know,” he said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
“When do you leave?”
“August. That gives us some time. If you’ll meet me again.” Elsa smiled. “Yes.”
She would take whatever she could get from Rafe and pay whatever price there was for it. Even going to hell. He’d made her feel more beautiful in one minute than the rest of the world had in twenty-five years.
