Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [225]
“Mesa Ranch,” Oliver said. “Model farm. Thought you might like to see it.”
She thought his eyes asked something of her, warned her, said “Wait.” But she couldn’t wait, too much was dawning on her all at once. “When did you build it? You’ve even planted your half mile of Lombardies!”
His eyes warmed, narrowed, held hers with an expression she could not read, a kind of urgent, knowing look not far from mockery. “Best foot forward,” he said. “With only the well to irrigate from, I couldn’t swing the lawn and the orchard and the wheatfield and the alfalfa patch. They’ll have to wait till water comes down the Big Ditch.”
“Oliver . . .”
“I had to start the trees,” he said, watching her. “Four hundred and fifty for the lane alone. A hundred locusts and box elders around the house. I didn’t want you to wait any longer than you had to for your grove.”
“The way you planned it.”
“The way we planned it.”
She made note of his pronoun.
“I was too late to start the rose garden. That’ll have to wait till next spring. But I did move the yellow climber down from the canyon. Never even set it back. It’s blooming right now, not quite over.”
She looked ahead, while Ollie with his eyes looking out the corners at them and his ears obviously wide open, steered the team toward the barren house squatting on the bench. She saw that the veranda was deep, with square pillars every ten feet or so supporting a broad low roof. Wherever he had planted the rose, it didn’t show. Neither did the hundred trees of his grove–well, yes, a few, staked-up, spindling saplings, hardly higher than the sagebrush. In something like despair, she cried, “When did you do all this?”
For the first time since they had met at the station she saw her old Oliver in him, loose-shouldered, humorously apologetic. “I didn’t do much of it. The crews have been working since a week after we got the go-ahead on the ditch. This’ll be the demonstration farm. The Governor loaned me the Territory’s well-drilling rig, and the boys from the canal crew scraped out the road.”
She closed her stinging eyes, held them painfully shut, opened them, said, “The Lord hates busybodies and people who do too much.” Then she burst out, “But the money! How will we pay for it?”
The children in the back were clamoring, “Is this ours? Is this our place?” and Ollie, twisting to look into his father’s face, was saying, “Aren’t we going to live in the canyon?” Both she and Oliver ignored them. He said over Ollie’s head, holding her eyes, “For a start I used the money the company paid you for the canyon place. It was the first check I signed.”
“You sold it!”
“For twice what it cost. That was the bargain. I took a chance you’d agree it ought to go into this.”
“Dad, don’t we own the canyon any more?”
“Not exactly. But you can go there. All you want.”
“Even twice what the canyon house cost wouldn’t pay for this,” Susan said.
“I sold some of our canal stock to John and Bessie.”
She was appalled. “Oh, Oliver, you haven’t led them into this! You haven’t tied them to our canal boat?”
“They wanted in,” Oliver said. “They had the money from your family’s house. I’ve filed a timber claim and a desert claim for them, down under the Susan.” His stare was level and steady. “Wouldn’t you like Bessie living out here?”
“Oh,” she said, distracted, “they shouldn’t risk their poor little money! And you never said a word. Neither did Bessie. Why?”
“I asked her not to,” he said, with his sidelong, ambiguous, searching smile. “I wanted to spring it on you that they’d be moving out. Along with the house, you know. A bouquet of surprises.”
“Well, of course, it’ll be wonderful to . . . but . . .”
“So now you have to make up your mind whether you want to camp out here in the dirt or stay in a boardinghouse in town. Because I didn’t get it done in time.”
The wheels ground in sand, dust hung over them, she saw the wind whip a whirl of dust around the bare corner of the house, and turn it into a half-formed dust devil that spun eastward past a lumber pile and a stark privy.