All Together in One Place (5 page)

“Just hang on to that pie,” Jeremy said.

“More worried about your stomach than my backside, I see,” Elizabeth said. Jeremy laughed while Elizabeth checked the cloth that hung from her sidesaddle as it flopped against the neck of the black mule named Ink. Mazy hoped she would get fed at this gathering, find something to fill the emptiness of their leaving, calm the uncertainty.

Jeremy Bacon stood in the center of a cluster of men shaded by the maples that arched over the log building. Lilac bushes threatened to bud. Tobacco smoke circled the face of Hathaway Wilson, who drew on his pipe, then used it to make some point, all eyes turned in his direction. His right hand he stuck in his paisley vest as though holding his heart. Jeremy stood taller than Hathaway and several others, even without the hat he'd left hooked over the saddle's horn.

Mazy couldn't hear their words, but bursts of laughter rose from the group and then quieter sounds, nods of heads, pats on suspender-crossed backs. Several men bore the sun marks of a hat wearer, forehead paler than cheeks. There seemed to be looks of admiration directed at her husband, perhaps even looks of longing. It didn't seem possible that so many men could want to uproot, take their families into danger and
beyond, or that so many others would admire them for it. It stretched her understanding of how different men and women were.

“This west thing is a craze, that's what it is,” Adora Wilson said. The formidable-looking woman, broad shoulders, narrow waist, now stood beside Mazy. She wore a pink bonnet with a stiff pasteboard brim that shaded a face that was just beginning to wrinkle. “You'd think they were boys discovering a new fishing hole and not sure if they want to share the news or keep the treasure to themselves. My own husband among them.” She fussed at her bonnet, removed it. “I don't know how you'll manage, Mazy. I simply could not do it.” The last words came out like hammer pounds.

“Hathaway's not thinking of going, surely.”

“Oh, the subject was raised, but I put my foot down. And Charles balked.” Adora nodded to her son, a striking man who leaned against the tree scraping at his fingernails with a knife. He wore a white, collar-less shirt, button pants. One ear had a healed-over notch, visible even in the shadow of his gray hat. Mazy never liked to have him wait on her in the Wilsons’ mercantile: Charles always came around the smooth counter to stand beside her, liked to brush his fingers over hers when she handed him the book of cloth. “But the west fever's affected us…” Adora continued. “Tipton's fallen in love with that Tyrell Jenkins.”

Mazy's eyes wandered to the man notable for his large forearms, his short but sturdy-looking legs, and his stellar reputation. He was said to be a skilled smithy, and she'd heard that in his back room, he fed orphaned kittens from a glove.

“I imagine a farrier'd be welcomed well on a westward train,” Mazy's mother said, joining the twosome, waving away flies from the table as she talked. Elizabeth had met Adora last year, had only a brief conversation, but Mazy's mother knew no strangers, could carry on as familiar as a lifelong friend “You could do worse for your daughter.”

“ButTipton's only fifteen,” Adora said, lifting her chin. “And a mite headstrong.”

“Ponder where she got that,” Elizabeth said.

Adora frowned. “She'd make any man's head turn like an owl's, but not out of wisdom, I'm afraid. She's been whittling on her father about marriage and heading west. With Tyrell. So far, he's stood firm, which he best do. We waited seven years to marry.” She straightened her broad shoulders, fidgeted with the tucks that spread across her wide bosom. “‘Til he had the store going strong. No reason she can't wait until Tyrell's good and settled. He can jolly well come back to pick her up. Hathaway told him that trail runs east just the same as west.” She fanned her face with her hands, lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “‘Course I think she'd do much better, with Tyrell out of the picture.” She leaned in. “Poor people have poor ways, you know. Did you put spices in that pie, Elizabeth? It is Elizabeth, isn't it? I never can taste a thing, but sometimes I think I can smell spices.”

Elizabeth nodded her head to the questions. “No harm in wishing good things for our kin, I'd guess,” Elizabeth said. “Best things we mamas do.”

Then Mazy's mother left to organize the food on the table and turned back to talk with Kay Krall and Janie Switzler, women watching toddlers waddling on the grass. Mazy heard the younger women laugh, noticed her mother join in.

Her mother fit like a hand-cobbled shoe, as though she'd always been a part of Cassville. Mazy guessed it was Elizabeth's backwoods upbringing, with a dozen cousins living close by, that let her turn everyone into family. It was a trait Mazy longed for in herself

“Is Tyrell leaving soon?” Mazy asked Adora.

“Not soon enough.” She opened and closed the clasp on her wrist purse without ever looking inside. “Truth is, I've a worry she might just run off. I know I'll watch her like a cornered bear the day he leaves and for two weeks after. He could have joined up before this—I wish he had. Tiptons keeping him here, in a daze, with all her flirting. Look at her,” Adora said, but Mazy heard pride rolled into the words of scold
Tipton Wilson laughed. The girls high cheekbones flushed rose, a color Mazy guessed she'd pinched into them just before she swirled open her parasol for shade. Petite and blond and draped in blue—including the stones in her ears—she was the Wilsons’ only daughter. The girl didn't just stand between her father and Tyrell, she composed the center of the circle. She stared up at her intended, flashing even, white teeth clasped together as though she posed for a portrait and had been told not to move a muscle. Tipton blinked long eyelashes, touched a gloved finger to her cheek. She spoke and the men laughed. Tyrell Jenkins's face splotched pink in the bare places free of his rhubarb red beard.

“She'll be a handful for any husband,” Adora sighed.

“Desserts are fixing to spoil,” Mazy's mother interrupted. “And my stomach's agrowling.”

The women signaled their men, who headed for the tables. Tipton and Tyrell walked as though weighted, their heads bent in conversation.

Mazy noticed Tipton's brother loitering behind, his gartered shirt sleeve pressed at his shoulder against the tree. That odd notch out of his ear silhouetted against the light. He tossed something shiny in his palm, coins it looked like, clinking upward without his watching His eyes stared at Tipton instead, a glare until he noticed Mazy watching. A half smile formed at one corner of his pursed lips. He made no move to join the others.

Hathaway asked the blessing over the brown betty pudding, cobbler, cookies, and pies. Elizabeth had baked Mazy's favorite raisin pie; the plump fruit had been carried in spring water in a crock jar all the way from Milwaukee. Light conversation filtered over the eaters, in between bites and batting at horseflies, gentle chastisements of children. Toddlers scampered beneath the lilac bushes, the ribbons on the girls’ dresses limp and the boys’ knees covered with grass stains. A half-dozen dogs lay
beneath wagons. Pig panted in the shade of a buckboard while food and well-wishing were washed down with sun tea. Mazy thought of the pleasantness of this place, these people, and swallowed back tears.

Finally filled, they said good-bye, hugs and hands patting on backs. The women expressed good wishes with a
sense
of relief, Mazy thought, relief that it was she leaving and not any of them. She looked around her. These were good people, but she'd become close to none these two years past. Perhaps that was a blessing.

“I've made a decision,” Jeremy said.

The three of them rode home through the timber, the mules clop-clopping like a grandfather clock on the packed road. The squeak of the leather and the swish of the mules’ tails gave Jeremy a moment to think about what he needed to change to make this come out differently than the last announcement given to his wife. He wiped at his nose with the handkerchief Mazy had embroidered with the letter /, stuffed it back under the rim of his hat, and cleared his throat.

“Am I to be surprised?” Mazy asked.

“I'm speaking about it beforehand. Tyrell Jenkins wants to go west,” Jeremy announced

“Another man with a wild idea.”

“Hathaway's fearful his daughter'll run off after him when he leaves,” Jeremy said “She's threatened that—”

“And probably will if Adoras words prove true.”

“Quite.” He plunged ahead. “With your arm so bad and you so sore and still healing, we could use someone to drive your mother's wagon. And a blacksmiths skills would be of value.”

Pig yawned in the road far in front of them, stopped and sat to scratch.

“We'd just need to take the girl along, too,” Mazy said.

“Quite,” Jeremy said. For someone so young and untested, Mazy could surprise him with her quick conclusions. She could see what other people yearned for, when she wanted to. He couldn't believe she hadn't sensed his need to leave, to try new vistas.

“You're proposing that we mother hen that one?” Elizabeth asked. “Wouldn't be a spree.”

“She could be a help to you, Maze, especially with your arm as it is,” Jeremy said. “Hath's willing to pay for her passage, which would help us secure Tyrells wage for driving. But it would mean having another around, not exactly your porridge.”

“Maybe we should wait until I'm healed before we leave. We could do it ourselves then. Alone.”

“No,” Jeremy said. “This is the perfect time. Good grazing, before big herds come through. We'll be well over the mountains before any threat of early winter. No, April's the best time to leave so we're there by October. Tyrells strong arms and skills are a gift, if we decide to take it.”

“The true gift is that you're actually asking me,” Mazy said “Before you've committed. Or have you?”

“I haven't”

A robin chirped in an oak as they rode past a mound of grass shaped like a bird. “Old Indian burial spot, Mother,” Mazy said, pointing. “There're several back in the trees.”

“I told Hathaway I'd have to talk it over with you,” Jeremy persisted.

“That must have taken some tongue biting on your part,” Mazy said.

“Hath said he knew it was like herding cats getting a woman to go down the trail you want.”

“Oh, did he?”

“Never wanted this to be torture for you, Maze.” He reached, lifted her hand and cupped his over it as he held the reins, felt the pull of the leather against her palm, the coolness of her fingers. “Wanted it to be our journey together. Just didn't know how to…to bring it up, without
you getting all agitated. And then you've been so off your feed, as your mothercl say.”

“Would I?” Elizabeth said.

“That confirmed I made the right choice in waiting, just doing it all on my own.”

Mazy started to pull away. He held her hand firm.

“All I want is some say in my own life,” Mazy said.

“Its what I want too. It is, Maze. To decide things together. When we can ” He was never sure how much to tell her or when.

“I still don't understand why we have to go at all, why you need such a change.”

“Life is just that All it is, and adjusting to it”