She’s Rough Around the Edges, but She Means Well
Chapter 11 of The Ballad of Abigail Lambert
“Good lord, Abigail.” Benjamin told her. For all the times Abigail had dwelled on these memories, moments in time where mistakes bore heavy on her soul, she’d never attempted to reflect upon or even understand the continuity that stitched them together. Such a task would’ve proved too painful any other time, but now that she was no longer alone, what once she found daunting was now over before she’d even realized.
She looked over her shoulder, and spotted Esperanza as she peered into the living room from behind a wall. How much she heard was anyone’s guess, but as soon as they made eye contact, she ducked for cover. Benjamin stood and crossed over to Abigail. He took a knee in front of her.
“All of that is behind you, you hear?” He rested his hand on her knee. “You’re with family now.” Abigail caressed his cheek. “I don’t know about you,” he said as he took to his feet, “but I’m famished. How about some supper?”
Abigail attempted to help her brother and his wife prepare the food, but they were adamant in her status as a house guest and quickly kicked her out of the kitchen. The best they’d settle for was having her set the table, which Esperanza insisted on doing most of herself. It wasn’t long before they were all seated around the table for a meal. Benjamin and Suzanne took each other’s hand to say grace. Abigail took Esperanza’s hand in one, her brother’s in the other. He led the prayer, but all Abigail could do was look around at the three of them as they sat their eyes closed, thanking God for a meal she wasn’t convinced God had anything to do with. Once over, the meal began in earnest.
“So where are you two headed?” He asked them.
“Tennessee,” Esperanza said.
“You’ve still got a ways ahead of you. What’s in Tennessee?” He asked.
“My mother.” Abigail stopped chewing. It hadn’t occurred to her even once on this journey to ask what awaited them at the end of this road. She’d assumed someone would be home waiting for her arrival, why else would she be so adamant about returning home? Her brother was always the more perceptive one between them, not trapped in his own head as severely as Abigail, but for the thought to not even cross her mind? This gave her pause.
“It’s very charitable of you to take her such a long way,” he said.
“I’m not sure charity is the right way of describing it.” Had Benjamin known what motivated Abigail to go on this journey in the first place, he might do more to stop her before she could get any closer to her goal. Esperanza spied something curious in the corner of the living room, tucked away in the crevice between a drawer and the wall.
“Is that a guitar?” she asked.
“That’s right,” he said. “Do you play?”
“Oh, not at all.”
“Ben’s a natural.” Suzanne said.
“I’m fine,” he said with a smile. He reached over and grabbed the guitar, resting it on his lap.
“When did you learn to play?” Abigail asked.
“I actually found this on patrol years back.” He admitted.
“Patrol?” Esperanza asked.
“Me and the rest of the rangers rode up on a house that’d been razed by Injuns, this was one of the few things that actually survived.” Esperanza’s eyes went wide.
“You’re a Texas ranger?” It was like a real life hero from one of her dime novels had just materialized before her.
“At one point. But that’s a young man’s game.” He grabbed Suzanne’s hand, and they smiled as they looked at each other.
“Playing guitar while hunting injuns sounds like you’re just ringing the dinner bell,” Abigail said.
“I wanted them to know. If they heard our songs, they knew their time was up.”
“I wish I knew how to play,” she said.
“I can show you, if you like,” Benjamin offered.
“Why would you wanna go and learn a thing like that?” Abigail asked.
“Why not?” What was she getting at?
“It’s a stupid waste of time.” Abigail said.
“Do you think everything you don’t know how to do is stupid?” Esperanza asked. The air between them was thick.
“Do whatever you like, girl. I ain’t your momma.”
“Yeah, you aren’t.”
Silence fell upon the table. Abigail, sick of pushing peas around her plate, excused herself from the table and lumbered back to her room. She didn’t slam the door, but with the rest of the house quiet, the sound of Abigail isolating herself echoed throughout the house.
“You two are a prickly pair,” Suzanne remarked.
“She’s rough around the edges, but she means well,” Esperanza said. “At least, I hope she does.”
The next morning, Esperanza and Suzanne were just about wrapped up corralling a cattle herd one of the ranch hands had driven over from another farm. Abigail limped around the ranch with Benjamin. She spotted Sable, a former slave who managed to find work on Lambert Ranch alongside her husband Jebidiah, as she loaded up barrels of wheat onto a cart meant for the nearest trading outpost.
“Daddy would be proud.” Abigail said to Benjamin.
“About what?” He asked. She pointed at Sable. He laughed. Their father was vocal on several occasions throughout their childhood on the symbol of status that came with ownership of a slave. He’d always dreamed of being successful enough to afford his own to ease the workload the family had to endure, but every time he came close to saving up enough to buy one of his own, providence would strike and sap his reserves, forcing him to begin all over again. Benjamin however, approached it differently.
“She ain’t no slave, Abby.” He clarified. “That ain’t the world we live in no more.” It hadn’t been many years since the Civil War had ended, most of the country was still in a state of reconstruction but despite Benjamin’s Texas heritage, he abhorred the practice as a slight against God. This was a mindset, admittedly, he only adopted after meeting Suzanne who helped him to see Godliness in places he’d never thought before to look. “Sable works the ranch, just the same as her husband, Suzanne, myself and everyone else who lives here. Think he might’ve had more of a problem with that than anything else.”
“Abigail!” Esperanza shouted from atop her horse as she approached.
“What, girl?”
“Can I ride with Sable into town?” She asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“It don’t matter why! You ain’t to leave the ranch under any circumstances.”
“But, I—“
“This ain’t no discussion.” Abigail limped away beside Benjamin. Esperanza bit her lip and breathed deep through her nostrils. She looked to the back of Sable’s wagon, and noticed some of the supplies covered by a tarp. She dismounted her horse and lifted the tarp. There was enough room to squeeze in between the barrels, if one were so inclined. The prospect of being told what to do without so much as a discussion as to why lit a fire underneath Esperanza that refused to subside. She made sure Suzanne and Sable witnessed her leave the cart, only to patiently wait nearby for them to turn their backs and be presented with an opportunity to slip onto the wagon sight unseen.
Sable made it half way to Stillwater, the little trading outpost where the Lambert ranch often sold most of its output, when she hit a bump in the road and one of the barrels cried “Ouch!” She brought the wagon to a stop and saw curious movement beneath the tarp. She lifted it to discover Esperanza hiding beneath.
“Girl, didn’t yo momma tell you not to leave the ranch.” She asked her.
“She ain’t my momma.” Esperanza climbed over onto the bench from the bed of the wagon and took a seat beside Sable.
“Oh, Missuh Lambert gon’ be mad as hell!”
“Why?”
“That I’s came all the way back with nothin’ cause I got’s to take you back.”
“Are you closer to the ranch, or the outpost?”
“Somewhere’s in the middle.”
“Then you’re halfway there. No sense in not finishing what you started.” Sable bit her lip. The girl had a point. They were burning daylight every second she toiled over what to do next. She shook her head, prayed for an expedient journey, took the reins in hand and continued onward.
As they arrived at the general store, Sable met the gaze of a pair of old white men sitting on rocking chairs on a porch across the street, neither too keen on seeing her holding the reins of the cart. One of them spit as the girls unloaded the cart. Sable did her best to mind her business, making conversation about Mrs. Lambert with the shopkeeper as both girls loaded the crates they’d come to trade the wheat for into the wagon. After exchanging good byes, the two of them mounted the wagon, and Sable looked over her shoulder. The old men had disappeared.
They rode out of Stillwater and headed back for the ranch just as the sun was beginning to set. They didn’t make it far down the road at all before a gunshot rang out from the trees and destroyed one of the wagon’s wheels. Sable fell off the cart; Esperanza barely hung onto the wagon as it skidded to a dead stop. Out from the trees on both sides of the dirt road emerged the old men who’d been staring them down back in town.
Both sporting rifles, they approached the girls on the dirt. Esperanza tried to fight back, but the man smacked her across the face with the butt of his rifle. She fell to the ground. The other one tied Sable’s hands behind her back, Esperanza’s captor doing the same to her. They dragged the girls by the wrists toward a pair of horses a few yards within the trees, and threw them up on their backs. The old men spoke no words, not to them or between each other. They merely mounted their horses and nodded as they rode off together in the same direction: deep into the forest.
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