All Together in One Place (28 page)

The bees were Deborahs future. It was the bees her contract husband purchased more than the “damaged goods” of a woman whose feet kept her in constant pain, though the girl never complained. Well, the paper plans, Langstroth's patent for the new kind of hives, that was the real wealth. Harold said once that Deborah had been “thrown in just to sweeten the bargain.”

“We go back? Brothers all gone?” Deborah asked, breaking into Esther's thoughts.

“No! I…perhaps it should be considered. But if we continue through the alkali country to Laramie we'll be, as they say, ‘a third of the way to heaven.’ Perhaps closer, as I believe the term refers to those going on to Oregon territory while we will head on south. Thank you, dear,” she said lifting the water dipper.

Sister Esther swallowed, then stuck her burned finger inside the
wooden cup. “Can you girls yoke Harolds wagon? Perhaps we should stay here a day or so.” She twisted her hands together, rubbed at the knuckles. “I will go now to check on Zilah. Dont leave the wagon.”

“Yes, Missy,” Deborah and Naomi said in unison, bowing their heads.

Esther knew they wouldn't leave. They were like children, dependent, despite the time they'd had to get acquainted. Only Harold and Ferrel had spoken to them. Now her brothers were dead. She couldn't make sense of the illness, why it affected their wagons when they'd been pure, faithful. How would she tell Cynthia's intended of the girl's death? Explain to her parents? She forced herself to straighten her shoulders. Well, it was her penance, this additional load, for insisting her brothers come with her.

Tipton lay in Elizabeth's wagon, her hands tingling and numb but less contorted now, less like a crone's. Something blotted out the light. Tipton shifted in the bed. “Time you were getting up, child,” Elizabeth's words were soft when she spoke. “Just got the Cullvers up. We all got to be moving on. Your mama needs you now.”

Tipton turned to her. “We can't go anywhere.” Tipton's words sounded slurred even to herself. Probably the laudanum. Or maybe that whiskey she'd found. It helped her disappear, took the edge off things. She wanted no edges now, not with Tyrell gone.

“We'll have the final burials and head on. It's what we have to do,” Elizabeth told her.

“Papa and Tyrell—”

“Can't do nothing for them,” Elizabeth said. She sat on the bed, and Tipton rolled toward her, her body a fragile stick tumbling toward a stone. “What's done is done.”

“I can't.”

“Truth is, you're needed. To drive this wagon.”

“No, I—”

“This one or the Cullvers'. Which do you want?”

“But that cant be. Charles can drive this; Mama, the other I cant.” She could feel her heart pounding. “Let me be. Please.” She took short, shallow breaths.

Sprigs of lavender hanging from the top ring of the wagon mixed with dried peppermint brought a sweetness to the painful place. Tipton smelled it and squeezed her eyes tight against it.

“Lots you haven't never done before. Never been fifteen and never lost someone you loved.” She brushed the tears at Tipton s cheeks, her fingers callused but kind. “Never drove a wagon west, neither. First two you're surviving; last one you will too.”

“But my…hands. See how they get.” Tipton held up the already contorting fingers, using her left hand to steady the right

Elizabeth looked at her. “You do that to yourself,” she said quietly.

“How dare you!”

“You're not taking in good breaths. I seen it before.”

“I lose my father and my intended and my hands twist against me and you say it's me?” Tipton sat up in bed, glared.

“Not saying you don't have pain, child. Just suggesting that a useless hand of yours serves a purpose. Your mind knows you need protection from something, so it lets your hands go numb, look all strange like the roots of an old tree.” She cupped the girl's contorted fingers in her own. Tipton let her.

“It keeps you from thinking of something else. Or doing something else, I'll ponder. Least it did. Won't save you from missing your papa or Tyrell, though. Won't keep you from that. And it won't keep you from driving a wagon. If you don't, what Tyrell did to get us all this far will be for nothing. That ain't the legacy he meant to leave you.”

The woman came too close, pierced too deep.

“You don't want a legacy, either, that says Tipton Wilson might've come through but didn't. You think on it, child,” Elizabeth said. “ I need to talk to Mazy.” She patted the girl's hand, stood to leave, then said,
“She's a widow and a mother-to-be Be grateful at least you ain't bringing a baby into the world without its papa being about.”

Tipton lay on after she left, staring at the twisted hand attached to her wrist. She lifted the limb to her eyes, moved it this way and that in a kind of slow and mournful dance.

Bearing Tyrells baby would have been a reason to live. Now she had none. Tears pressed against her eyes. What were you thinking of, Tyrell? To die so uselessly, so unfulfilled. She sat up in bed, her heart pounding. It hadn't been his fault, the accident, but hers! She had sent him away, clinging to him as she did He went to hunt to get away from her! Tyrells death was her fault. She'd killed him as sure as if she'd blasted the cap; and she'd sent her father with him.

She reached for the bottle, pulled the glass stopper from the laudanum, and placed her mouth over the opening. Then she tipped her head back and swallowed. The warmth rushed through her just before she stuffed the stopper back and sank into the pillow.

Esther lifted the tent flap, relieved to see Zilah sitting up.

“I better, Sister,” Zilah said “I leave Ferrel's tobacco, not chew.”

“What?”

The girl dropped her narrow eyes “Ferrel say make me feel better some.”

“I did not know he…imbibed.” Esther yanked on the bow beneath her own chin, pulling the tight cap so the outside ribbing pressed against her bony cheeks. “It is not good for you. Now you know. Are you up to helping hitch ol’ Snoz?”

The girl nodded. “He walk to not trouble bees.”

“My favorite as well,” Esther said. “The bees are bothered by steps?”

The girl reached for the bag of buckwheat kernels and popped a palmful into her mouth, chewing with motions like a mouse nibbling.
“Mei-Ling—Deborah,” she corrected, “she say bees tell voice and know name of thumping feet. If they unhappy, they fly away” She munched. Her lips formed an upturned smile in her oval face. Her skin bore the color of soft dust, marked with pocks from a previous illness, long before they began this journey west. She was not a pretty girl, but stout and until now sturdy, and her contract husband had written enthusiastically about the match after he'd seen the photographic likeness the girl had sent.

“I strong like ox,” Zilah said, unwrapping her legs from beneath her. She burped the buckwheat kernel, pressed tiny fingers to her lips. “Do what we do not before. That where courage live My grandmother say this long time ago.”

“Best we believe her,” Esther said and helped the girl from the tent.

Mazy s eyes hurt, she couldn't think straight. She wanted to comfort the others but had nothing to give, anger and loss, leaving her as drained as a shattered pitcher

“I'd give anything for you not to be feeling this, darlin,” Elizabeth said. “Losing someone you love, it's the worst ache known to humans, worse than being cut on or suffering from sin.” She hesitated “Maybe not worse than suffering sin, but we all got to live through that When your father died, I thought I'd die too. But then your heart keeps beating, you keep taking breaths and getting hungry and needing sleep, so you know you're not dead. One day, something makes you laugh and you're ripped with guilt because you can. A month passes and then a year, and you've gone on with your life even knowing you couldn't, but you do.

“A morning comes and you wake up and the sky is blue and you smell flowers you'd forgotten you liked and the dog bumps his head beneath your hand and you take him for a brisk walk beneath budding oak and maple. It's like a garden coming back in spring after a long,
tough winter.” She lifted her daughters arms. “You're like a rag doll,” she whispered then pulled her daughter to her breast.

They held each other for a time, then Elizabeth removed her daughter s wrapper and replaced it with a laundered one.

Mazy smelled the lye soap and river water on her dress as it slid over her head, brushed against her face. “It seems so long ago we were stopped, doing laundry, and I was irritated with you for leaving.”

“I didn't leave you,” Elizabeth said She placed the combs back into Mazy s hair and found the splinter of mirror and held it before her daughter. “I think Jeremy d want you to keep going on. For you and his baby. Dont imagine he'd want you to just sit here and waste away.”

“I'm already holding water,” Mazy said, taking the mirror from her mother and laying it down.

“Got to stay healthy. Come along now, Mazy. Let's see if the two of us can yoke the oxen by ourselves. Give this grief train some direction.”

“I don't know if I want to, Mother,” Mazy said as she let Elizabeth help her down the wagon stairs. She looked around at the stream and the cattle and horses clustered toward the back. Ruth already at work. The cows and cow brute lay chewing their cud. “What would be wrong with our staying right here?”

“Ain't our place, for one,” Elizabeth said. “Indian Territory. Don't think the Pawnee nor the Sioux'd take our being here as some kind of pleasant party. This ain't even the States. We're in a foreign country. Besides, what'd we do if we stayed?”

“Raise a garden, sell the vegetables to people coming across, people like us. We've bought up a thing or two along the way. Sell them milk and cheese and eggs. Do like the Mormons have, run ferries and such. Buy time; then turn back”

Elizabeth said, “I say we go on to Oregon, get the land Jeremy spoke of. Three hundred twenty acres each. Can't hardly beat that.”

Mazy turned, taking in the stream and the Platte and the folding slopes and the rich loam of the earth. “I think there are better choices than simply going on.”

They gathered around the bodies wrapped in blankets, Antone s in what must have been the extension boards from the Schmidtkes’ table. A survivor of her first night as a widow, Mazy leaned against her mother. Mazy had insisted that they dig graves and mark them with rocks and wooden crosses. “I dont see any sign of Indians or coyotes or anything else interested in digging up old bones,” Mazy said. “Someday I'll make a marker, a real one, and come back here, to this place I'll need to know exactly where they are.”