RUNAWAY ROSE
Chapter Sixty-One
Rose kept her end of the bargain, fixing up
Esther’s dilapidated house. She started on the roof, which leaked badly whenever
it rained, tearing out rotten sections and replacing them with new wood and
tiles. She had never taken on such an extensive repair job before, but her
natural creativity and problem-solving ability enabled her to figure out how to
fix things.
When she was nearly done with the repair job,
Rose inadvertently found the most rotten part of the roof. With a loud cracking
noise, she fell through it, landing on Esther’s bed below and bringing rotten
bits of wood, dust, and bird nests down with her. She was fortunate to have
such a soft landing, but she still succeeded in spraining her ankle, catching
it on a stronger piece of roof as she fell and twisting it badly.
Esther moved into the small room that Rose
occupied until the roof could be repaired. It was a couple of weeks before Rose
could climb up on the roof again, so she gave Esther the cot she had been
sleeping on, moving to a pallet on the floor herself.
While they waited for Rose’s ankle to heal,
Esther showed her the broken airplane, pointing out where the wing had been
torn off and how the wheels on the plane had been twisted into a mass of broken
metal.
Rose looked the problems over carefully, her
mind already going over ways to fix the plane, but she had to fulfill her end
of the bargain before Esther would teach her how to repair the broken machine.
As soon as her ankle was healed enough, Rose was back on the roof, mending the
collapsed section, taking care not to fall through again.
One she had finished repairing the roof, she
drove the wagon into town, bringing back glass to fill the broken windows and
fresh paint for the walls, which were still in good condition. By March, she
had the house looking almost as good as new. To finish it off, she gave it a
thorough cleaning, one that Esther remarked it hadn’t seen in years.
With the warming weather, Rose started in on
the yard, bringing a neighbor’s sheep in to clear out the weeds, then pruning
back the perennial shrubs and trees, removing those that had died and chopping
them up for firewood. Under Esther’s supervision, she planted new shrubs and
trees, native plants dug up and transplanted from the surrounding valley and
hills, and planted flowers and vegetables. In all of her years in the upper
class, in all of her years spent traveling from place to place, Rose had never
planted a garden before, and Esther had a great deal to teach her—how to dig up
the soil and dig in rotted cow manure for fertilizer, how to plant the seeds
and irrigate, and which plants would survive in the heat of a Southern
California summer. When Rose brought out the seeds that Esther had taken from
the previous year’s garden and put away, she learned that such things as
lettuce, spinach, and peas would not do well in the heat and needed to be
planted in the fall, while crops such as chilies, tomatoes, melons, corn,
beans, and squash would thrive in the summer. Starting a garden was hard work,
but Rose found it amazingly satisfying, planting seeds in the ground and
watching the plants come up and grow and bear fruit. She planted flowers around
the porch, building a trellis for the vines to climb.
When she had time, Rose walked into the
surrounding hills, bringing back samples of plants that she had found. The year
that she had spent in Alaska had left her with a deep and abiding interest in
the natural world around her, and she often pestered Esther to tell her what
the different plants were and what uses they had. Before long, Rose took up one
of her old habits from Alaska—gathering wild vegetables and berries for the table.
Esther looked at some of the foods she brought back skeptically, but was
willing to try them. Rose had already learned never to eat anything she
couldn’t positively identify, and never poisoned either of them.
While wandering across the wide ranch lands,
Rose met some of the ranch hands. Most were polite, having seen her on their
occasional trips to the house, and her aloofness put off those who might have
had other ideas. Many talked to her when they met, but her aloofness and
reticence, even to those who were friendly towards her, soon caused them to
nickname her Stranger. She didn’t mind. She had felt like a stranger in a
strange land for a long time, even when she grew accustomed to her
surroundings. For a long time, since Robert’s death, Rose had felt as though
she didn’t really belong anywhere, and all the time she had spent traveling,
trying new things, had been a part of that. She had lived in many places, but
was at home in none of them.
When the work of fixing up the house and yard
were finally completed, Esther showed her how to repair the plane. The broken
wing was in several pieces, so Rose had to travel all the way to San Diego to
get the parts to mend it, but she was determined to put the airplane back into
working condition and to learn how to fly it. She spent hours making the
repairs, often arising at dawn and becoming so involved in her work that she
didn’t stop until sunset. The landing gear, she found, was irreparable, and
after another trip to San Diego to get more parts, she completely rebuilt it.
Esther watched over every repair that she made, pointing out that the
difference between repairing a house and repairing a plane was that the house
was not likely to crash, while an improperly built airplane might well do so,
and a plane crash was likely to have much worse consequences than a simple
sprained ankle.
It took months to completely repair the
airplane, but Rose enjoyed the work, looking forward to the day when she would
learn to fly, and by July of 1916, the plane was back in working order.