RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Sixty
December 15, 1915
Rose strode down the rutted dirt road, Tripper
trotting along in front of her. It had been over a month since she had left Los
Angeles behind, traveling first to San Diego and then exchanging her suitcase
for a rucksack and heading east on foot after two weeks.
She had been on the road ever since. She had
no particular destination in mind; instead, she wandered wherever the road
seemed inclined to take her. People looked at her oddly when she passed through
towns and by ranches and farms, wondering what a young woman was doing alone on
the road with only a large dog for protection. Rose didn’t worry—not often,
anyway. She had traveled alone, on foot, from the Alaskan tundra to the coastal
town of Juneau only months earlier, and the back roads of Southern California
were child’s play compared to that.
It had been warmer in San Diego than in Los
Angeles when she had arrived. San Diego was much farther south, a subtropical
coastal city. It wasn’t a large city, but it was a pleasant one, and Rose might
have been inclined to stay if she hadn’t been so restless. But after two weeks,
she had realized that she didn’t want to stay in San Diego, either. Loading her
belongings onto her back, she had set out to the northeast, heading into the
often warm and dry inland valleys of Southern California.
It had only rained twice since she had set
out. The first time, she had waited out the storm in the shelter of some
overhanging rocks, shivering against the chill autumn night. The second
rainstorm had been three days earlier, and she had been near a small farm when
it had hit. She had convinced the suspicious family living there to let her
stay with them while the rain fell, rewarding them for their hospitality by
fixing a leak in the roof after the rain had ended. After that, she had headed
on down the road.
After the last rainstorm, the weather had
turned suddenly cold. When Rose awoke in the mornings, wrapped in her bedroll
with Tripper curled up at her side, the brush and grass sparkled with frost,
and the standing puddles of water had thin sheens of ice on them. The ice
melted quickly once the sun rose, but the temperatures remained cool.
In spite of the cool weather, the sun was
bright and shining, the sky a rich, deep shade of blue. Rose hitched her pack
higher on her back as looked into the distance, spying a small ranch house set
some distance back from the road. This was cattle country, and she had walked
past great herds of them, belonging to the various ranches in the area. Some
were fenced in by barbed wire, while others roamed freely, to be rounded up in
the spring.
Rose turned off the road and headed towards
the house, looking around to see if she could find a well or spring. She needed
more water, and would have preferred to get it herself rather than disturb the
occupants of the house, but she didn’t see the water source.
Rose approached the house cautiously, knowing
how some people reacted to strangers. A fat dog growled at her, then decided
that she wasn’t worth the effort, and rolled over and went back to sleep.
Tripper ran over to investigate, but the fat dog simply slunk off the porch and
crawled under it, growling and showing his teeth to Tripper whenever the mutt
approached.
Knocking on the door, Rose leaned casually
against the wall, wondering if anyone was home. The house wasn’t well kept up,
and she would have thought it abandoned were it not for the presence of the dog
and the sight of strings of chilies hanging from the porch rafters.
At last, the door opened and an impossibly
tiny old woman looked up at her. "Can I help you?" she asked, her English
thickly accented.
"Could I possibly get some water
here?" Rose asked, trying to enunciate carefully as the woman put her hand
behind her ear, indicating that Rose should speak up.
"Water? Of course. This way." She
led Rose around the back of the house, her step amazingly spry for one so old.
There was a well with a slightly rusted water
pump behind the building. Thanking the woman, Rose took out her canteens and
began to fill them.
"We don’t get many travelers out this
way," the woman spoke to Rose. "What might you be doing out
here?"
Rose shrugged. "Just...traveling, seeing
what’s out here."
The woman looked at her sardonically.
"Are you planning on taking up ranching? Because cattle are about all
you’ll find out here."
"This land is beautiful—all the
mountains around it, the wide valleys, the warmth and sunlight. Still,"
Rose added, "I think I’m just passing through."
"Well, do you want some lunch while
you’re here? I don’t get many visitors, and certainly not many with good
manners."
Rose smiled. She had met a few of the less
well-mannered individuals in her weeks on the road, including one man who
assumed that her presence on the road, alone, made her an easy target. He was
quickly disavowed of the notion when Rose fought back, nearly braining him with
a jagged chunk of granite, and he had fled even more quickly when Tripper had
materialized out of the brush and lunged at him. He had run off, back toward
town, holding his aching head and mumbling to himself about ungrateful women
and rabid coyotes.
"Sure. Lunch sounds good," Rose
told the woman. "By the way, I’m Rose Calvert."
"I’m Esther Henke."
Rose set the table as Esther served ham
sandwiches, frijoles, beer, and dried elderberry pie—a grand mixture of
Mexican and American cuisine.
Rose was reluctant to say too much about
herself, but Esther was not at all shy about talking about her ranch, her late
husband, her three daughters, and her grown grandson, who had been living with
her until he had gotten it into his head that he wanted to go down to Mexico
and be a Villista.
"I don’t see why it is he had to abandon
his old grandmother and join those rebels down in Mexico," she told Rose.
"His whole family is here, and he’s set to inherit this land when I die.
Why, when I married his Americano grandfather, he was able to keep my family’s
land intact instead of it being broken up and sold off like the lands of so
many Californios. He’s got an American father, too, and he’ll own all this when
I’m gone—if the young fool lives to inherit it."
"Why is he in Mexico? Shouldn’t his
loyalties be American?"
"His hot-headed friends from Mexico,
whose families came here to get away from the revolution, talked him into going
down there and risking his life. They think they’re going to change the whole corrupt
system." She snorted indelicately. "More likely, they’ll get
themselves killed or thrown into prison. Besides, all revolution does is give
the oppressed a chance to oppress someone else. I’m eighty-five years old, and
I’ve seen this happen over and over. Mexicans, Americans, Indians—whoever they
claim to be—a pack of fools, the lot of them." She took a swig of beer.
Rose stared at her. "What’s the matter? You’ve never seen an old woman
drink like a man? I have to do something to amuse myself out here. I smoke,
too."
Rose smiled, liking Esther better and better.
She took a swig of beer herself, making the old woman laugh appreciatively.
"Do you smoke, too?"
"Not anymore," Rose told her,
looking a bit sheepish.
"Smart girl. It’s a nasty habit—but at
my age, I don’t need to worry about what anyone thinks anymore. I just do what
I want, and damn the consequences."
Rose laughed, getting up from her chair to
clear away the dishes. Esther stopped her.
"You don’t need to do that."
"Of course I do. You were kind enough to
give me water and lunch, so the least I can do is wash the dishes."
Esther sat back, not protesting too hard, as
Rose cleared the table and scraped the remains of their meal into a garbage
bucket.
"Just throw that outside," Esther
told her. "Señorito will eat it."
"Señorito?" Then Rose realized she
was talking about the fat dog. Little Man, indeed, she thought. The dog
could probably cause a small tidal wave if he ever wagged his tail near the
ocean.
She took the bucket out front, tossing the
contents to the dog. When Tripper rushed forward to steal the food, Señorito
crawled out from under the porch and chomped down on the husky mix’s ear,
sending Tripper running to Rose, whimpering.
Rose let him lick out the bucket, then
checked his ear. He wasn’t badly injured. The other dog’s bite hadn’t even
broken the skin. Patting him on the head, she went back inside.
As she washed the dishes and set them aside
to drain, Rose looked out the grimy kitchen window. There was a wide view, as
far as the eye could see, of winter-brown brush and grass, but that wasn’t what
held her attention. What had caught her eye was a dilapidated shed with the
wide doors half-open, revealing what appeared to be the tail end of an
airplane.
"What is that?" Rose asked Esther,
pointing to the shed.
"It’s nothing," Esther told her
quickly. "Just an old shed."
"Not the shed. What’s inside it? It
looks like an airplane."
"It is an airplane, but it doesn’t work.
It hasn’t worked since my grandson landed it too quickly last year, breaking
one of the wings and twisting the landing gear out of shape. It’s a miracle he
didn’t kill himself."
"Could it be fixed?" Rose wanted to
know.
Esther could see where this was going.
"Oh, no. You’re not going to try fixing it. That’s my grandson’s job, if
he ever comes back."
"Wouldn’t he like it if he came back and
found it as good as new?"
"Do you know how to fix a plane?"
Esther challenged her.
"No," Rose admitted, "but I
can learn." After all, she thought, I helped to build a sturdy
sod house on the Alaskan tundra, with no knowledge of what I was doing. It
had been an engineering feat in itself, so how much more difficult could it be
to put a damaged airplane back into working condition?
"Do you know anything about
airplanes?" she asked Esther, her mind already going over the problem.
Esther didn’t answer, but Rose could see by
her expression that she did know.
"You could show me," she told
Esther. "You know. I know you do."
"Do you read minds?" Esther
snapped. Then she relented. "You’re right. I helped him build it in the
first place."
"Then help me put it back together. I’m
sure your grandson would appreciate it."
"You don’t want to help my grandson. You
just want to work on that airplane."
Rose looked at her sheepishly. The old woman had
read her motivations clearly.
"All right," Esther told Rose.
"I will show you how to put it back together. God knows, someone has to do
it before it rusts away to nothing. But," she added, "there’s
something I need for you do in return."
"What is it?"
"I need you to help me fix this place
up. I can’t keep up with it myself anymore, but someone as young and strong as
you could put the place to rights in no time. If you will help me repair this
place, I will teach you how to mend that airplane. I’ll even teach you to fly
it, if you want," she added, her eyes twinkling impishly.
Rose’s eyes lit up. She didn’t mind hard
work, and helping to fix the dilapidated buildings and grounds would be a fair
exchange for such an opportunity.
"You have a deal," she told Esther,
reaching out to shake her hand.