Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [234]
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.
“Here, I should think,” she managed to say. “There’s no sense in spending money on a boardinghouse when we have our own place.”
“It’s pretty primitive yet.”
“Is that anything new for us?” she said.
Her tone was sharper than she intended. But he did not reply– only studied her a moment and then heaved around to say, “Nellie? How does it strike you?”
“Why it seems nice,” Nellie said comfortably. “With all of us to help it shouldn’t take long.”
“Is Patch here?” Ollie said, and Betsy, hammering on her father’s shoulders, said, “May I have a pony too, Father? I’m nearly eight,” and Agnes stood up in Nellie’s grasp and said, “Me too! I’m four!”
“You’ll all have ponies,” Oliver said, and took the reins out of Ollie’s hands and stopped them in the raw yard.
Susan sat with her hands tight in her lap, knowing she should force some enthusiasm, however false. While she held herself apart in Victoria he had driven himself every spare hour to prepare this place for her–the place they had sketched and erased and redrawn through dozens of shut-in evenings in the canyon. She knew with precision, to a decimal point, what he hoped to make it, and she could have wept for the premature trees and the transplanted yellow rose that had put out its first blooms the summer Agnes was born. Yet the exposed yard, a scab on the sagebrush mesa, made her feel like weeping in another key. In homesick hours she had dreamed of the soft dry wind of this valley, but she had dreamed it clean, not with these dust devils that whipped across skinned land, and the haze of dust that she supposed arose from the ditch construction along the edge of the mountain. She had dreamed the valley clean and wild, not made ugly with such raw beginnings as this. So many years must pass before it could be made into anything beautiful or civilized, so much of their lives would have to be spent in the hard preparations to live. The canyon house had been one thing, a temporary camp. This house was where she would spend the rest of her life.
Oliver hopped down. Over the wheel, a little grimly, he said, “You might as well see the worst. She’ll be dirty in the dry and muddy in the wet, and there’s nothing to break the wind. But I call your attention to the view.”
She did not look at the view; she looked into his eyes. “Yes,” she said, almost under her breath. She was aware of the children, still sitting uncertainly as if unwilling to get down in this totally strange place.
Then a ranch dog came wagging out from a shed, and after her four fat puppies. The children piled out and went to her and squatted down where she cowered and wagged in the dust. The puppies attacked their fingers and rolled on their backs, exposing naked bellies to be tickled.
Tentatively, Agnes put out a hand to one of the pups. It seized her fingers in its mouth, and she yanked her hand back, frowning. The pup got hold of her shoe buckle and tugged, backing, with fierce growls. Agnes let him tug, her face breaking