#bea griffith

March 1912

Paradise Run, New Caledonia

They’d gotten the assignment to draw something for class, and chores done for the day, she finally turned towards it.  Put it off in favor of assignments that felt easier, and that even included math.  But math was simple enough.  It was or it wasn’t, matter of fact.  Draw something.  Sounded easy, but it wasn’t.  So many possibilities out there, and all of them running through her mind, ideas examined and picked over, and nothing seemed right.  Looking out the window of the farmhouse, seeing the endless sea of white snow under a heavy leaden grey sky, Bea had to think the long, long winters here on the edge of the Canadian prairies didn’t help either.  Nothing much to see until you went into the forest, and there was a beauty to that, but she didn’t want to draw that either.

Sitting by the fireplace, hearing the wind roaring outside and rattling the frost-dusted windowpanes, she found herself picking up the pencil and starting to draw what felt like the furthest thing from.  

She’d been born all the way down in Nuevo Paraiso.  Gone from Mexican desert to Canadian prairie, and that seemed like one heck of a jump to her.  Didn’t remember much about Chuparosa, because they’d left that house when she was only two, gone on the move with the circus for the next few years, before settling down here.

All the same, there were wisps of images in her mind, and something in her wanted to try to put them on paper before maybe even they faded.  So she sketched, sitting there with her hot cocoa, and ended up with a sweeping rock formation on her page, a hole in its underside, turning it into an arch.  Cactuses and the like dotting the landscape, she imagined.  They must have been there.  She started to draw one, not remembering them too clearly.  She looked at it and hated it, seeing it looked more like the winter-bare maple tree in their front yard than anything, and moved to erase it.  But redrawing it, trying to make it stockier, just made it look like a shapeless blotch of nothing.

“There’s a face,” Dad said, passing through the parlor, and obviously having glanced her way.  “You’re looking at that page like you want to cuss it out, just about.”

“I’m drawing,” she said, scowling at the stupid tree-cactus-thing.  “But it ain’t working.  I don’t see it clearly enough and it just looks stupid.”

Coming over, he leaned over, gave a low whistle.  “Ojo del Diablo,” he said.  “No, you got that right, pretty well.  You remember that, huh?”

“A little.  Just got a picture of it in my head.  Not sure why, but it’s there.”

He smiled at that.  “Your momma and me used to take you out there for picnics sometimes if the weather weren’t too bad, and we had a day off from whatever work we was doing at that point.  Took both you and Mattie after he came along.  Guess you remember a bit of that for it to have stuck.”

That made sense of it, and when he said it, she felt like there was a flicker of memory too, of Mom sitting on a blanket, laughing and reaching up to take Bea in her arms.  “Don’t remember what them plants in the desert looked like,” she admitted.  “And so my cactus just looks dumb.  And there should probably be other things there and I ain’t…”

He gave her a quick pat on the shoulder, and gestured for her to hand over the pad of paper and the pencil.  Headed over to his chair near the fire and flipped to the next page of the paper, sat there, one booted foot crossed over the other knee, pencil scratching in quick, confident strokes she could only envy.  She knew he drew some too, had seen little doodles and the like that he made, and wished she could get something to look like that.

Sitting there sipping her cocoa, she could only wait, wanting to go and peek, a bit fascinated at seeing the look of intent focus on his face, caught up in whatever he was seeing in his own head.  After a good while, he handed it back.

He’d drawn a whole page of plants for her, a few strokes somehow giving the look of them in a way she could almost see them in her mind, alive and real.  Labeling them too in his neat handwriting.  Cactuses, trees, even flowers–she hadn’t thought about there being flowers in the desert, but there had been.

Barrel cactus

Desert paintbrush

Chuparosa

Desert sage

Saguaro cactus

Desert chicory

Ironwood

Nuevo Paraiso thistle

Buckhorn cholla

Prickly pear

Mesquite  

She looked up at him, unable to help a grin.  “Those are real fine.”

“Well, I had more years than you to study plants in the desert,” he said teasingly, reaching out and tapping the tip of her nose with his finger.  “Sadie had even more than me, growing up in New Austin as she did, but unfortunately you’re stuck with me as the one scratching out drawings.  But maybe that helps, all the same.”

It helped.  It helped more than she could say, and it made her eager to get back to the drawing now.  “Thank you, Daddy,” she said, already studying the buckhorn cholla intently.  

Spotted some caballos. Seems my little girl is as horse crazy as I was at that age. Perhaps I still am.

December 1902 Ramita de la Baya, Nuevo Paraiso

On occasion, Sadie had to rethink the wisdom of being pregnant again in a small house with a dog, a cat, and a very energetic eleven month old daughter and ten month old nephew constantly underfoot.  Especially with the babies more than old enough to crawl, that meant she and Karen kept busy watching them.

But today was a break from all that, and they’d all left Chuparosa.  Karen had taken Danny to Escalera for a few days just to themselves, and to do some Christmas shopping.  Being as it was Sunday, she and Arthur had taken Bea for an afternoon here beside the river.  They’d set up in the shade of an ironwood tree, eating dinner and enjoying a fine sunny winter day.  Christmas was coming soon, and Chuparosa would be ready for a fine fiesta for that.     

She let herself just enjoy the breeze and the sunshine, relaxing around the bulk of her belly, and cuddling Bea to her shoulder.  Two months to go for this child, and she knew from last Christmas pregnant with Bea that she’d grow bigger and more uncomfortable yet in that time.  But she was worth every bit of it, she thought, caressing Bea’s petal-soft cheek with the back of her finger.  Every bit of discomfort, the hours of labor, and all the effort for both her and Arthur since Bea’s birth.  Because the joy far outweighed the hardship.  They’d waited so long for this, both been through the ashes of a dream destroyed and believing they’d never have it again.  They’d been so lucky to have a daughter already, and luckier yet to so quickly give her a sister or brother, the second child they’d agreed they both wanted so much.  And you’ll be worth it too, baby.  I know it.

She must have dozed off with Bea still in her arms, because she woke up to feel the little girl wriggling her way free like a determined eel, and calling happily, “Dada!”  Pushing up to sit, she watching Bea crawling towards Arthur, coming back from down at the river bank with a fishing pole and wicker creel in hand.

Setting the fishing gear down, and crouching down to Bea’s level, he said, “Yeah, sweetheart, it’s me.”  He glanced over at Sadie.  “Got us some supper.  Catfish.”

“Good.  We got plenty of cornmeal, that’ll be nice.”  Cornmeal was cheaper than wheat flour, and they still had some money left from the stash from the train robbery three years ago, but that couldn’t last forever.  Not with no steady work for Arthur, and few people willing to hire a woman to begin, and certainly not one with a baby, so that meant she and Karen were mostly out of luck.  The few months she and Arthur would do seasonal work at MacFarlane’s after the turn of the year would be the bulk of their income.  That would keep things going.  Give them time to keep looking ahead.

Until then, they did what they could, in the same way that Sadie had grown up.  Cut costs where they could, managed to stretch a peso and the contents of the pantry, hunted or fished on days there was no work, turned the sound parts of worn out clothes into diapers and baby smocks.  She and Karen took in mending and seamstress work, much as she chafed at it sometimes.  Arthur found what odd jobs he could.  He’d come home yesterday exhausted from helping build an addition to the bank, covered in gypsum dust from mixing and applying the white covering for the adobe brick to the point he looked like a ghost, except for the awkwardly tied green rag bandage and pinkish smears of blood on his left forearm where he’d cut it.

The cut was bad enough that she’d had to stitch that arm up last night by lantern light at the kitchen table after putting Bea to bed.  Some fool slipped with his trowel, that’s all.  Almost a shame we’re out of the bank robbing business, Daisy.  All them years, I never figured out the best way to know a bank was to help build it.  

Even now, he had another bandage tied around the injury, visible below the rolled-up sleeves of his purple shirt.  It wasn’t a life they could continue forever.  But they’d figure it out.  Besides, even right now, they had so many joys.

Bea giggled, reaching up and getting her hands on Arthur’s knees, using them to haul herself upright, peering up into his face.  “Hi.”

“Hello, Beanstalk,” he said, reaching out and gently caressing her hair.  “You behaved while I was gone fishing?”

“She did.  I notice you didn’t ask if I behaved, Art.”

“Shit, I know better than to expect you to behave.”  He gave her a wink and a grin.  “Happily for us both, might be that I prefer you that way.”

“Happily for you that you prefer that, cause I ain’t intending to change.”  She gave him a wink in return.

“Mama!”  Bea let go of Arthur’s knees with one hand to look at Sadie, grinning in delight.  She let go with her other hand, taking two stumbling steps back towards Sadie before promptly falling flat on her diaper-clad bottom and giggling.

God, there were so many joys to this life.  This second chance she never could have believed she’d get when Jake had been killed.  Being with Arthur, living every day trying to make each other better versions of themselves.  She’d seen Bea grow so much in almost eleven months, and here was one more thing.  Clumsy and lurching as they were, those had been steps, her first ones.  Another marvel in watching Bea continue to grow up, and she cherished it so much.

She looked over at Arthur, and saw the intent way he watched Bea, the smile that seemed to carry an edge of wistfulness.  She’d seen that look before, and from his explanations before of what he’d been thinking at the time, she knew what it meant.  Knew he was living in the happiness of this moment but also thinking back so many years to his son.  Usually when it was that particular expression, it wasn’t the sorrow of memory.  It was because this was something he was experiencing for the first time as a father, because he hadn’t been there to see it with Isaac, and he realized how much he’d missed back then all over again.

It would pass.  It always did.  And she watched it do so, and that smile and the look in his green eyes became nothing but pure joy and pride.  “Got to say, Bea, you looked like your daddy after a bottle of whiskey, just about.”  

“Babbling, stumbling around, but curiously enough, still sweet as anything?  I’d say so.”

Arthur hitched up to standing, not even needing to take a step himself to go to Bea.  He stooped over, gently hauling her back upright, holding her tiny hands within his large, rough ones.  “I got you.  Now, you try it again.  Go to your momma.” Rolling up clumsily to her knees, Sadie held her arms out, heart suddenly beating faster.  “Come here, baby.  You can do it.”

With Arthur bracing her up, Bea managed the dozen or so slow, cautious, baby-sized steps back to Sadie.  As Arthur let her go into Sadie’s arms, she scooped the little girl up, sitting back down with Bea in her lap, kissing her soundly on the cheek.  “Oh, ain’t you a clever gal!”    

“That’s my girl,” Arthur said, beaming as he sat down beside the two of them, leaning in to give Bea a congratulatory pat on the shoulder.

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