Shepherds Abiding in Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ wouldn’t have recognized the house today, either. Even in their cheap apartment in Los Angeles, the paint had managed to stay on the walls.

      Marla didn’t want anyone from this small town to look past the fence and into her windows until she was ready. There wasn’t much inside her house and, what was there was shabby. On the long drive up, she’d promised herself she would make a proper life for her children in Dry Creek, and she didn’t want her relationship with the town to start off with the people here pitying them.

      Somewhere around Utah, she’d realized that the ethnic difference was only part of what she needed to worry about. After all, her parents had raised her to be more Anglo than Hispanic, anyway. They’d even given her an Anglo name. She and the children might be able to fit in that way eventually. The fact that they were also poor was another problem. She knew that from the welfare days of her childhood. A lack of money would be harder to hide than anything.

      Marla planned to get the house in shape before she did more than say a quiet hello to anyone. She didn’t want her children to feel shame for either their heritage or their lack of possessions. First impressions were important.

      That’s one reason she had hung the plain khaki-colored blankets over the windows and left the Mexican striped blankets as coverings for the sleeping bags.

      Maybe if Sammy had had neighbors who expected good things from him back in Los Angeles, he wouldn’t have been drawn to the 19th Street gang. Of course, the neighbors were only part of it. She knew she hadn’t given him what he needed, either. She had been so preoccupied with taking care of Jorge that she hadn’t paid enough attention to Sammy.

      It was Sammy who most needed a new start.

      Marla took a deep breath of the cool winter air. Despite the fact that the air was tinged with the scent of vinegar and mothballs, it still smelled clean and fresh when she compared it to what she’d breathed down south.

      Dry Creek promised a new life for all of them and Marla intended it to go well. Even though she’d had car problems on the way up and hadn’t had much money left after she’d paid for the repairs, she was determined she and her children were not going to be charity cases. Charity was never free; one always paid the price by enduring the giver’s pity. She didn’t want that.

      She wanted her children to feel proud of who they were.

      Besides, they didn’t need charity. Any day Marla expected to get a check in the mail refunding the deposit on their apartment. Her rental agreement gave the landlord twenty days to refund the money and he’d probably take all that time. Once she had that check, she would have enough money to buy paint for the walls and a good used sofa. And that was after she put aside enough money to support her family for a few months while she looked for a job. She knew she needed to spend some time with her children before she started a new job, though. Too much had happened too fast in the past year for all of them. They needed time to be together.

      At first Marla had worried that she would not have enough money to support her and the children for those few months. It seemed as if the cost of heating the house would take what little money she had, but then she had discovered that the fireplace in the living room worked and that there was a seven-foot-high woodpile half-hidden in the trees behind the house.

      At last, something was going her way.

      It looked as if, during the years when the house had stood empty, the trees had grown up around the towering stack of log chunks back there. She hadn’t paid any attention to the stack until the children told her about it one day and she had gone out to look it over. The pile had good-sized logs meant for long winter fires. If need be, on the coldest nights, she and the children could camp in front of the fireplace to sleep.

      At least heat was one thing that wouldn’t require money for now.

      Which was a good thing, because the refund check was going to total only around a thousand dollars. There wouldn’t be much money left for extras. Christmas this year would be lean. She’d explained the situation to Sammy and Becky and they seemed to understand. Wall paint and a used sofa might not look like exciting Christmas presents, but it would make their house more of a home. She was letting each child pick out the color of the paint for their bedroom and she was hoping that would be enough of a Christmas present.

      Besides, they could make some simple gifts for each other this year. That could be fun for all of them. And she’d make the sweet pork tamales that were the children’s favorite. It was her mother’s special recipe and that, along with the traditional lighted luminaries, always meant Christmas to Marla.

      Marla had brought dozens of corn husks, dried peppers and bags of the cornmeal-like masa with her when she moved to Montana. She remembered the words of the neighbor who had bought her lamp and she didn’t want to take any chances. Christmas without tamales was unthinkable, and not just because of the children.

      By the time Christmas was here, she hoped to be able to take the blankets off the front windows of her house and welcome any visitors inside. By then, she might even be comfortable offering visitors a tamale and explaining that she and the children had a Hispanic heritage.

      Marla saw movement and stopped daydreaming about the future. The door of the café had opened and a man had stepped out. She had recognized the pickup parked next to the café when she first looked out the window, and so she figured the man standing on the café porch was Reserve Deputy Sheriff Les Wilkerson. He was probably getting ready to patrol through Dry Creek and had stopped at the café for coffee. Marla had seen the deputy walk down the street of Dry Creek every morning since she’d moved here and it made her nervous.

      She hadn’t heard of any criminal activity around, but she kept the children close to the house just in case. She’d called the school when they’d first arrived in Dry Creek and they had agreed, since it had been almost time for the holiday break, that Sammy could start his classes after Christmas. Becky was even more flexible. When she’d first noticed the sheriff patrolling the town, Marla had been glad she’d arranged to have Sammy close by for a few weeks, but maybe if the children were in school she’d at least know more about what was going on.

      There must be something happening if a lawman was doing foot patrol. In Los Angeles that happened only in high crime areas. She hadn’t heard any gunshots at night, so she doubted robberies were the problem. The deputy must be worried about drugs.

      Marla had briefly met the man last Friday when she was at the hardware store looking for paint, and she had wanted to ask him about any local drug problems. But he had stayed only long enough to scowl at everyone and do something with an ashtray.

      The two older men sitting beside the woodstove talked about Les after he left. They made it sound as if he was somebody special. She supposed the older men wanted to reassure her that her children were safe here in Dry Creek with a lawman around, but, truth be told, the reserve deputy didn’t make her feel better about the isolation of the small town.

      She was used to lawmen, even reserve volunteer lawmen, who had a certain amount of swagger to them. Les didn’t strut around at all. He looked strong enough, but he wasn’t exactly brawling material. Not only that, he didn’t even carry a gun.

      She doubted there were any lawmen in Los Angeles who didn’t carry a gun. There were certainly none the few times she’d visited her aunts and uncles in Mexico. Marla supposed Les would have to talk a criminal down, but when she’d been introduced to him, he hadn’t seemed to be much of a talker. He’d only nodded and mumbled hello to her that day. He was even quieter than she was, and she was perfectly able to carry on a conversation. She’d do fine with talking when she had her house ready for visiting.

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