All Together in One Place (49 page)

“I don't know what I'll do without Tyrell, if truth be known.”

“That sounds like your mama, now,” Suzanne said.

“It's a step up to your room.” Tipton released Suzanne's hand. “She says that often, doesn't she, my mother? ‘If truth be known,’ like it was something that could be.”

“And wouldn't we all like to have truths known and be known for who we are?” Suzanne said. “Thank you, for helping just now, not trying to tell me how I ought to…feel, earlier. I get so tired ofthat, people treating me like I was a child who didn't know what she wanted”

“It's all right,” Tipton said and shrugged.

“Bryce used to say that was what all humans long for, to be known, truly known and just accepted by another.”

“Can't say I ever wanted that,” Tipton said.

“Oh?” Suzanne said. “Now would that be one of your truths, or a lie?”

Ruth bent beneath one of the Bacons’ cows and checked the bag. “Good work, Naomi. Do you want to do the other or feed Fip?”

“Milk Mavis,” she said.

“I don't blame you,” Ruth laughed. “That pet of Elizabeth's is more work than it's worth. The children love the thing, though. Don't know what she'll do when it gets big.” Ruth listened to the antelope's bell,
located it, and shook grain in a bucket to gather its attention. It came running, and she fed it warm milk, dribbling some from her fingers into the soft mouth. She wished Jessie had decided to stay back with them instead of going to the fort. She would have liked the quieter time with the child. Jessie would have enjoyed seeing the Indians camped not far away too.

She wasn't sure how Betha did it, cooking and tending and still mediating the children's squabbles with fairness.

“Do her eyes work?” Jessie had asked her one day, pointing at Suzanne.

“She's blind, dummy,” Ned said.

Jessie handed Betha the dreaded buffalo chips to be added to the cooking fire. “Then why does she have eyes that open and close?”

Betha scowled at Ned and said to Jessie, “There was a time that she could see by looking out through them, just like we do,” Betha told her. “But then something happened, and now she
sees
through her fingers and her ears and through what she can smell. Here”—Betha put her spoon down and took the chips from Jessie's hand—”close your eyes. We'll play a game. What do you hear?”

“Birds,” Jessie said

“Anything else?”

“Horses dancing their feet Cows spittin. Wind. Going in and out my nose.”

“Breathing, yes, the sound of your breath. It's restful, isn't it, to see with your ears? Anytime you're feeling scared, you can listen for your breath and make it come slowly in and out. Now keep your
eyes
closed, but tell me what you taste. Just trust me now,” Betha'd said. “I won't hurt you. Open wide.” She placed something on Jessie's tongue.

“I know that. It's a berry,” she said. “Huckleberry”

“Look again,” Betha said, “no, no. Not with your eyes.”

“Oh, currant.”

Jessie beamed when Betha announced her correct. “See how much you can see without looking? But you have to pay attention, not let your
mind wander too far. And find people you can trust. That's what Mrs. Cullver does, and its not always easy when we are here in a place none of us has ever been before. She's got to learn to trust her little Clayton, too.

“Can she see buffalo chips?” Ned asked.

Betha laughed. “They do still have a bit of scent, but I suspect you children are going to have to pick at them for your supper, even if Suzanne could spot them.”

Ruth had listened to the interchange first with curiosity but finally with admiration. Ruth tended to be stiff with the child, and often found Jessie's questions annoying, distracting even, taking her from her chores. But then chastising herself was nothing new to Ruth.

Ruth brushed Koda, looked at her hands. The nails were broken, and she had blisters and calluses too It was almost as she was when the twins came. She hadn't tended herself, after. Her hair wasn't done in the upsweep Zane liked so well; the house wasn't the welcoming home he had come to expect. He hadn't an inkling of the work two small babies took, to keep them fed and bathed and diapered—she never told him, of course, and he'd pressed her for another right away. “As majestic as a Madonna,” he'd said

Then John had taken sick, his three-month-old body turning wrinkled and pinched. Ruth took in a deep breath as she remembered. The horse nickered as if in comfort, twisted his neck to tug at her light-colored neckerchief stuffed in her waistband. “Not now, Koda,” she said and wondered how he knew when her thoughts turned to that time so frazzled of hope. She had hoped the child would eat and drink that night, fall asleep as she paced; that she could quiet the crying baby arching away from her breast; that she could give him all he needed. No one had told her it could be like this, that a mother could not soothe her own child.

But he had cried for no reason, nothing the doctor could find. Once or twice his piercing sobs drove her to want to shake him, to
startle him into quieting, and one desperate day she'd laid him down abruptly, terrified that her fingernails had sunk into his skin. Terror flashed across his eyes for just a moment before his shrieking escalated, and she had shoved him back into the cradle and rushed from the room, holding her ears and sobbing.

She told no one How could she?

That evening, Zane had looked at her and said, “You're ill. Don't expose the children.”

And while a still, small voice told her Zane too lacked patience, her fatigue shamefully asked if he could tend John if he cried in the night.

“Of course,” he'd said. “It will be magnificent to spend time with my son.”

Ruth checked the hobbles on the horses. Walked out among the oxen lying and chewing in the distant twilight. Naomi made up their bedrolls in the grass, first beating the ground to ward off snakes. A coyote howled, and the long and plaintive wail reminded her of what became a blur of agony and loss.

From the nursery, John crying, crying; her own body so tired she could not lift her head, the baby screaming then, high-pitched and frantic, hour after hour. She'd buried her head under the pillow, didn't want to hear Zane's words sounding sharp and short. She should get up, relieve him. It was so hard, the boy's crying

And then quiet, the eerie, welcome quiet. Zane had comforted him.

Everyone does it better than me
Those had been her last thoughts before she'd fallen into a fitful sleep. She'd awakened to a nightmare.

In the morning, the women bought up a few supplies at the fort, purchased maple candy for the two left behind. Lura had taken extra beans in and exchanged them for flour. Adora asked Mazy for a loan to
purchase laudanum and whiskey for medicinal purposes, then asked, her eyes darting to where Tip ton stood out of hearing, if Mazy would be sure to keep them with her as “we Wilsons and Schmidtkes have a few too many baubles taking up space.”

When she saw the supply of tobacco, even at the outrageous price of a dollar a pound, Lura reached into her wrist bag for her coin purse. “Mariah, did you put my pearl combs somewhere? I declare I'm getting addled in my old age. Or do you remember me telling you what I did with them?”

Mariah looked confused.

“I was sure I put them in the dresser drawer, before your father ¨passed on.” Lura shook her head. “I know I had them when I passed money to the boys. This is so distressing.” She patted her hips, checking her sewn-in pocket

“You want the tobacco?” the sutler asked.

“No. Just thinking about those missing combs takes away my appetite for luxury,” Lura said. “They were so special.”

“Perhaps it is the Lord's way of urging you to put aside that demon,” Esther told her.

“Tobacco? Demon? Why, it keeps the mosquitoes down.”

Just before crossing back over the Platte to where Ruth and Naomi and the stock waited, they pawed through the bushelbasket of letters at the end of the store counter. They didn't really expect to find any mail for themselves, but it was what emigrants did, register their presence at one end of the sutler's store and press their fingers against pages at the other end.

Mazy read the addresses, pronounced the names out loud, and imagined the writers sending thoughts all these miles hoping to catch some loved one, someone held dear, to let them know they were thought of even though they weren't near.

She nearly choked, then stumbled over the words: “Sister Esther Maeves.”

“You have a letter, Sister Esther!” Mariah squealed.

“Nonsense.” The woman bent at her waist to secure the missive from where Mazy squatted at the baskets edge.

“Oh, it isn't bad news, is it?” Adora said.

Esther turned the battered envelope over in her long, bony fingers.

“Open it,” Mariah said.

“Is there one for me in there?” Jessie asked. “Is there a letter for me?”

“Hush, child,” Betha told her. “Its for big people.”

Betha lifted the quill pen to register, then became distracted by the discovery of letters. Jessie slipped her lower lip out, looked around for Clayton and Zilah, then headed off toward the ferry.

Sister Esther stared into pairs of expectant eyes. “I'll review it later,” she said.

“Oh, drats,” Lura said. “I was hoping for something exciting.”

“Just getting a message way out here's that,” Elizabeth said, “no matter who its from. Let me paw through that basket some more.”

“Here's one,” Mazy said, standing, her voice distant to her own ears. “For Jeremy. From California.” She held the envelope in her hand. It was fat and looked official. Her heart began to pound and her fingers shook.

Betha bought a bushel of dried apples for twelve and a half cents, and all agreed she'd made the best bargain. “Good for you,” Ruth said.

“They weren't grown local,” Elizabeth said. “Looks like nothing grows here.”

“They must have some fresh vegetables,” Mazy said. “See that plowed field above the fort?” She pointed.

“Some rosy-eyed thinker living there,” her mother said. “Thank goodness the world seems full of'em.”

“The soldiers looked kind of puny, if truth be known,” Adora said.