Chapter 13
Silas grew up with three little sisters. He witnessed the mixed emotions of girls as they grew, and he felt especially sympathetic to Lilah and Tallulah since they were raised by a distracted mother. The girls retreated in the stables away from their various nannies conducting their own makeshift school house. Lilah was bright and studious, although she never acted so in front of the hired women. She took Tallulah’s education seriously weary that their father’s illiteracy could be genetic.
Their mother revealed to them that their father was an uneducated man, a man that miraculously survived in life without proper tutelage. Dinah admired Henry’s ability to provide and make something of himself out of virtually nothing. Dinah knew that part of her appeal to Henry was that despite her abundant education and high social status in France, Dinah rather travel the world uprooted. She told the children about their father’s illiteracy to fascinate them and respect him, but it only stuck out to Lilah as yet another reason their mother was unhappy and eventually left.
Dinah hinted to them that their father worked very hard and was the reason for his frequent absences. She told them that he worked two jobs: one as a conventional cowboy and the other as a traveling desperado. She told the girls of the times she and their father traveled together working as an unstoppable team.
Lilah, precocious for her age, probed her mother for more details. “What did you do exactly, Mama?”
“We took what we needed,” Dinah explained.
Lilah was deeply burdened with guilt that her parents may be crooks. “Did you steal?” she asked carefully.
“We acquired things that we worked hard to get,” Dinah said firmly.
Lilah was unsettled with the idea and placed the blame with her father, who she reasoned must have influenced her mother. After all, it was her mother’s affections, Lilah had to work hard to attain. It was her mother, who always seemed distracted and unsatisfied. It was, in fact, her mother who Lilah wanted to love her more than anything. Her father’s affections were easy to win, and therefore must not be worth much.
Silas noticed that the girls used sticks to etch into the dirt to write for their lessons. Lilah, afraid that Tallulah’s education was slipping behind, wrote the alphabet daily in the firm earth, urging Tallulah to recite the letters. Silas bought a small chalkboard and chalk at the general store placing it in their corner of their schoolhouse. The girls found their new school supplies delighted with the gift. When they ran to Silas to thank him, Silas said he didn’t know what they were talking about and carried on with his chores.
The girls would on occasion ask Silas for help with their studies, math in particular. Silas, a natural math whiz, couldn’t pursue further than his high school education because of course, university schooling is for the very rich in Mexico. He scratched on the chalkboard simple equations for the girls and explained mathematical conundrums like why everything multiplied by zero is zero and that twelve inches equaled a foot.
The girls loved how Silas taught and cherished his lessons. Silas provided them with a practical education. They girls followed him along as he completed his ranch tasks while Silas pointed out things they came upon and told them their Spanish names. He conversed with them in Spanish, an immersive approach to language education, and the girls enjoyed the challenge of it. Silas had seen Dinah conduct their lessons in the same manner. The hired girls tried to make the girls sit at the kitchen table for lessons. Lilah and Tallulah were naughty in their schemes to drive their nannies away, but they were also unaccustomed to sitting down to learn.
Dinah was a fickle mother from what Silas saw. She was attentive and nurturing at one point of day, and then later distracted and overwhelmed the next. Dinah would habitually read to them on the porch. He would see the girls in a trance listening to their mother read in her exotic French accent. Their favorite book was “Little Women.” This was Dinah on a good day. On her bad days, Lilah took over and read while her mother sat blankly staring out into the horizon not uttering a word for hours.
Silas knew “Little Women” and the March family from how much Lilah and Tallulah talked about the book. They even acted out various the scenes in a stables with Silas as their sole audience member. Lilah was always Jo and Tallulah was always Amy. They arranged their various dolls and toys figurines to fill the roles of the rest of the characters.
Today, the girls ran back to the stables within a few minutes of Silas escorting them inside. Silas assumed this would happen as it usually did with the past hired girls. Lilah had a serious look on her face. “Mr. Silas, can you count with us? Tallulah is having trouble with numbers,” Lilah said exasperated.
Silas removed his gloves and sat down with them. “Tallulah, remember: you can always use your fingers and your toes if you need to.”
Tallulah giggled. “Really?” Silas nodded.
Lilah interjected, “She’s almost five, Mr. Silas. She is too old to be relying on her fingers and her toes!”
Silas believed in unconventional teaching. Some kids didn’t learn well in a traditional classroom setting. Why did school have to be a place of decorum? Why couldn’t it be fun?
Silas soothed Lilah. “She can use her digits for now for practice.” He counted Tallulah’s fingers tapping on each one, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! Tallulah giggled.
Silas stood and said, “Can you girls help me count the cows?”
“Yes!” the girls cried in excitement. The three of them walked out holding hands to where the cows grazed. On the way, Silas talked to them about the sun and how the grass needed the sun and rain to grow. The cows needed the grass to eat. Lilah and Tallulah were eager for Silas’s science discussions. Their studies lacked greatly in science. It wasn’t their mother’s strongest subject.
Silas knew little of what Henry and Dinah did before he came on as a ranch hand. Henry had picked up new business opportunities, what Henry called them, that forced him out of town for long periods of time. During those journeys, Silas was not needed. He didn’t press Henry further for an explanation to what he must be doing.
When Dinah left, Henry hired young women to serve as both as caregivers and teachers. When Ms. Fiona quit, Henry asked Silas to help him write a letter. It pained Henry to admit that he couldn’t read or write, but he had to do it. He was out of options. He asked Silas to write to the marital matchmaker inquiring about a mail order bride. Silas wrote what Henry asked him to without further discussion. Henry took the written letter gratefully from Silas’s hands. Silas was glad to help.
A few weeks later, Henry asked him to respond to a young woman’s letter. Silas read Daisy’s letter aloud to Henry. Henry struggled over what to say; his words stumbled out of his mouth. Silas embellished a little of what Henry told him to write. Daisy seemed eager to please in the letter and her ability to speak French would do the girls a great service. Silas wanted Daisy to accept his marriage proposal just as much as Henry did. The girls needed a stable motherly figure. So he lied a bit. He exaggerated Henry’s wealth and the state of the ranch. Besides, he believed that Henry and he were at the start of something that would eventually grow into something bigger. They’d only been in the cattle business together for a couple of years. The letter wasn’t an outright lie. The house was a work in progress; that was true. Undoubtedly, the house would have been further along and Henry would have had more money if Dinah hadn’t been an avid gambler.
When Henry sent the letter, Silas also waited in anticipation hoping the girl would say yes. Her letter arrived a few days later. Henry handed Silas the letter with hope in his eyes. Silas tore the letter open and read aloud that Daisy agreed to the marriage. Silas congratulated Henry while wondering inside if finding a wife was actually that easy for everybody.
Silas had never been married and only fell in love once with a girl in his town. Anjelica was buxom with a deep brown complexion. Her black hair hung down to her waist. They were classmates in their town’s one room schoolhouse. Anjelica was two years older than Silas, but he was an exceptional student. Anjelica used her charms and big brown eyes to ask Silas for help with her schoolwork. He was a patient tutor with Anjelica and helped her learn math. Anjelica rewarded him with kisses when they were children that later lead to much more when they were teenagers.
Anjelica owed her success in school to Silas. When she self the town for university, she thanked him handsomely. Anjelica was frisky sphinx blazing with passionate heat. On their last night together, Anjelica climbed on top of him; her black hair falling down around her caramel breasts. She bucked on top of Silas as if it were the last time they’d be together, because it truly was.
Afterwards, Silas held Anjelica burying his nose in her thick black hair. It smelled like vanilla. For the rest of his life, he would associate that scent with Anjelica. “You are going to be a great nurse one day,” Silas assured her.
Anjelica’s eyes filled with tears. “I won’t survive without you.”
Silas squeezed her, “You will.”
“I won’t. I love you.”
Silas’s eyes watered. “I love you, too. But you will do so much good as a nurse. You will survive. You will flourish. Trust me.”
“What will you do?” she asked.
That night, Silas didn’t know. He said to her, “I will be fine. Don’t worry about me. I will find something.”
Silas spent his childhood hopeful and dreamy that his life would work out as long as he studied hard. He held onto that dream all the way until that night. In the end, his dreams of becoming a schoolteacher would not come true and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen would slip through his fingers. Silas was the second born son, and money for higher education was only allocated to his older brother, Robbie. When Anjelica left, Silas stopped living in his cloudy dream world and accepted his fate.
He became a ranch hand, which offered him steady hard work. He’d worked on several ranches from Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California. His life didn’t end up exactly as he dreamed when he was a young boy, but since coming to work with Henry, Silas got to teach the Baker girls a little here and there. He was happy working for Henry and the girls brought him joy. The only thing nagging him like most men in the West was: if only, he too, could find a woman. Women in California were more rare than gold.
He thought about writing to the same marital matchmaker Henry had done. He was on the letter’s eight draft. He couldn’t find the words for the kind of women he wanted. He didn’t know how to convey it properly without sounding like a creep. He wanted a woman like Anjelica: feisty, impassioned, and erotically combustible, but he couldn’t put that in a marital request.
On the ninth draft, Silas came up with this:
“Tall bronzed cowboy looking for a wife to imbibe in romance. Must love to dream. Must be passionate, fiery, and intrigued by love.”
He sent the letter off to mysterious Ms. Beechtree wondering if she could find him a viable match. It couldn’t hurt to try. Silas was terribly lonely.