What Once We Loved (13 page)

She stood, said, “Pig, go,” and waited for the dog to stand, heard him stretch and yawn, then press beside her with the harness she held to let him lead her. She felt for the leather, then started toward the door.

“There is one more,” Esther told her, startling her.

Suzanne put her hand to her throat. She'd forgotten Esther was in the room. For some reason, Suzanne resisted simply hiring Esther as the boys' tutor. Perhaps it was Esther's chuckle when Esty told her of the finger talking. As if it was a joke. Esther was set in her ways and came quickly—too quickly—to conclusions. But Suzanne had promised her she would officially consider her for the position. She didn't want to hurt Esther's feelings, though she knew by delaying she was.

“Would you mind terribly waiting until tomorrow, Esther?” Suzanne told her. “I'm very tired. This is more work than I'd thought it might be.”

“I wasn't thinking of my own interview.” Suzanne heard frostiness in Esthers voice. “However, there is still another. A gentleman, who has been waiting quite patiently.”

“You didn't tell me there was a male applicant. I don't think that would work at all.”

“I told him as much. He said he was hoping to ‘press his case,' as he put it. Seems he had a brother once who was a mute.”

“Clayton is not a mute! He has words! You didn't say anything like that in the ad, did you?”

“Certainly not. But I brought Clayton past him each time you had the applicants talk with the boy. And he asked me, having heard nothing come from the child's mouth. People must know something's amiss, or you wouldn't be seeking a ‘compassionate, patient, skilled tutor of young children and reliant mother.'“

“Maybe the word
reliant
threw him off,” Suzanne said.

“You didn't want ‘needy,' you said. And you aren't. You simply have specific needs. That's different.”

Perhaps she should just give in and let Esther be the one to tend her children, herd them—and her—around. It would be easier than explaining to people about her son. Yet she didn't receive a sense of peace when she thought of Esther being in her employ. That in itself would change their relationship. There'd be the effort of maintaining her fondness for the woman with the worry of offending Esther if she
had to correct her actions as her employer. Her boys were counting on her to do what was best. She'd never forgive herself if she said
yes
to Esther because she didn't work hard enough to find the perfect person. “I'd best interview the man,” she told Esther, hoping her prayers for guidance and vision would be clearly answered.

“Hey! Is anyone there?” Zane Randolph listened but heard no sounds in the room beyond his own breathing and raspy voice. “You! Surgeon! You going to cut me free? Let me starve to death? What kind of doctor are you?”

He thought he might ve heard the scurry of a rat, twisted his head to see. Beady eyes stared at him from beneath a dresser. He hissed, and the animal darted behind a cabinet that stood with glass doors open like a dead man's mouth, nothing inside. He looked around, saw the room reflected in a mirror near to him. His own image stared back, a wasted man with broad but bony shoulders. A full beard covered his face, and his throat itched of it. He squinted. White hair? Could that be possible? His hair had turned in a fortnight? A month? How long had it been? He'd heard of that happening, to fearful people.

His eyes lifted, scanned what he could from his position on the cot. The room was eerily empty. The cabinets no longer held chloroform, bandages, or scissors. A cuplike structure of leather attached to a wooden peg leaned against the bed he lay on, his arms still attached by bandages to the bedside. A spider ran up the wall. But for it and the rat, he was alone. His heart pounded, he felt hot, his chest tight.

He needed to relieve himself.

He listened for street sounds and heard none. It was morning, judging by the light streaming through the lace curtains, early morning, so few would be about in French Gulch. Surely the doctor and his wife had not just gone off and left him, not still tied as he was! “Hello! Is anyone there?”

Silence.

Yes, he'd made demands on the man, but no more than anyone would, confined as they had him. What could he actually do to hurt them? He couldn't stand alone, couldn't get away without help. So what did they have to fear? Even when he'd gotten that last drink of water they hadn t trusted him, so what was he to do now, after they'd doused him with laudanum “to keep him calm,” they said while he raged against his bonds. How long ago had that been?

He heard his raspy breathing, the sign he was starting to panic. How dare they just leave? How dare they take his leg and then leave him to starve to death, alone.
Dr. Hollis.
He'd find the man, he would. And when he did…

His body betrayed him.

He felt the warmth, smelled it, before he saw the stain against the sheet that covered him.

Suddenly he was small and young and frightened. He was at a horse race, his father too busy to hear his pleas. Blue linen shorts he wore now stained. He heard the laughter as his father doused him in the horse trough. He swallowed water and fear as he fought against the pressure of the man's arms holding him down. He struggled for breath, his fathers face distorted in rage through the ripple of water. Muffled sounds of someone—not his father—shouting, “No, no, Randolph, you'll drown the boy—” pulling him up. He gasped for air, gasped for life, scum from the trough clinging to his face. All the way home he sat beside his father in the cab. He shivered in his blue suit, dreading the sting of his father's whip he knew would finish his night.

Calm, calm. He steadied his breathing.

Dr. Hollis would pay for this, he would. No one who harmed him escaped. Not this doctor. And not Ruth.

Ruth. She put him here. She sent him to prison, kept his child from him, and ran west to escape him. She caused him to take their child, to pursue the blind Suzanne, to take the Wintu woman, too. She made his foot infected, and even now she was why he lay here humiliated in his
own stench, bound to a bed, mutilated and aged, waiting.
How dare these people abuse him! How dare they simply leave him here to rot in his own stench?

He heard a door open then, the sound of feet coming through the house.

Zane swallowed. “Hello!”

“Ah, so you're awake,” a man with an Irish brogue said as he came to the side of the bed. “Let's be a good one then, Beckworth, and I'll cut you free. Doc said you could flail a bit in your delirium and to advise you what I was about afore doing it. Are you ready to be moving then? Getting something to eat?”

“Who are you?” He made each word a sentence.

“Michael O'Malley, former pit boss and miner. Can't say which wore me out more.” He laughed as though he often made the joke. He looked at Zane's soiled sheet. “Ah, and I was getting here too late for you to relieve yourself like a man. Sorry then. But well have you cleaned up in no time. Me uncle had a wooden leg. Got around right smart with it. Took it off and threatened the wee ones with it when he wanted a rest. Never hurt ‘em, mind you. Just waved it about to get him some peace. Let's cut you free now. I got me knife here.”

“Dr…. Hollis…”

“Headed out as planned. Never meant to be remaining this late. Surely he would have been in New Orleans and married by now but for your needs. And then on to Oregon, so he says. Near death, you were, as I hear tell. He paid himself from your funds and my wages, too, for a time. Thought you wouldn't mind paying for your care.” He cut the bonds. “There. That's better.”

Zane lunged for the man, his breathing raspy and raw.

O'Malley coughed, pushed his hands up under Zane's, and pushed himself away.

“Here, here. No reason for that now. I've been left to help you. You won't be making it without me.”

Zane flopped back onto the narrow cot, his heart pounding. He was
weak as a kitten. He rubbed his wrists. “Cut my leg free,” he ordered. He scratched at his face, the beard, winced at the pain in his leg when the bonds on his good foot were set free. “Help me up.”

“Going to sting a bit, you not having weight on it for so long. Your good leg'll feel worse than the bad, but it'll come along.”

The Irishman was a big man, and he lifted Zane's arm over his shoulder, then swung his leg over the side of the bed.

The weight of his leg and both thighs dropped down, sending shards of pain so great Zane wanted to cry out. But he imagined Ruth instead. Focused his venom on her. He gasped with the effort. The Irishman twisted him back up onto the cot.

“Fortunate you still got the knee,” he said. “When you're ready, we'll attach the harness and peg. You'll be hopping about like a young lamb in no time. You rest a bit. We'll try again. I've a crutch made for you.

“Why would you do this?” Zane asked.

“You're paying me, sir. Good wages. A gold eagle a day from your gold pouch. No need to be thinking you're taking charity. You're paying. I hope we made the peg the proper length. We'll be bringing you food and tending. You'll be taking baby steps. It'll take time, mind you. You've got to strengthen your good leg, get your muscle back. You'll be walking alone someday. There now. Steady. I'm sure a lad like you has places to be going.”

Oh, yes. He had places to be going.

Chinatown, outside Sacramento

Sometimes, the Celestial known as Naomi dreamed she was Chou-Jou, became that woman who had once been her friend. Naomi remembered the dead girl's pocked face, her wide, flat nose; a Celestial who longed to be accepted as she was but who succumbed finally to living in another
world where she was not herself at all. Chou-Jous world turned wild and full of angry outbursts just before she died on that wagon train of women. But before that she had been quiet and sweet. Thick cords and bonds of silk must have kept her tied inside her heart where no one could see but Chou-Jou.

In her dreams Naomi felt the warmth of the Seth man s hand as he helped Chou-Jou from a wagon, the smile of Ruth who wore a whip at her hip. A breeze brought the softness of the woman named Elizabeth who held people in their hurts. Perhaps they saw Chou-Jou as she was. No, no one could do that, except perhaps The Heart One Sister Esther often talked of. She could not recall the name inside her dream, only remembered him as The Heart One, who could see through everyone and loved them just the same.

Sometimes in her dreams as Chou-Jou, Naomi felt seen through, the way the sunlight flashed through a butterfly's wings. Known inside and out and yet loved fully. She would rest when that happened, feel light and purposeful and safe. Then she'd stop the dreaming and fall instead into a deep, deep sleep.

After those sleeps, Naomi would wake, no longer Chou-Jou on her way to dying but as Naomi, wife of a disappointed Chinese miner, living inside a hovel not fit for his goats, let alone his wife. Naomi would wake as a Chinese woman longing to die, but for the mewing sound coming from the corner. A mewing sound that was her child. A girl child considered useless by her husband. She was her mother, a failure, not having given him a son; the husband seeing through her to who she really was.

She had hidden the fact of the coming infant from him. He had work for her to do—washing laundry in steaming tubs, scraping dung and blood and mud from the clothes the white miners brought her. She made her husband more money than his other slaves, her countrymen whom he forced to sift gold from the once-deserted mines until they paid off the cost of their passage.

Once she had asked to spend a small amount of his gold dust to
visit Sister Esther and her friend Mei-Ling. He had struck her face and hissed like a snake over her cowering on the floor.

The pains had begun after that. Naomi dreamed that the child floated in the water of her womb despite its pressing early to come into life. Aching, she kept her legs crossed, inhaled long and deep though the infant pushed, demanded to breathe the California air. And then Naomi could hold back no longer, and the wetness and the scent of life had filled the room. With the sight of the girl child, Naomi knew their lives would be no better, no better.

“You stupid girl!” Dow Yuk had charged when he saw the infant, tiny, suckling as she could at Naomi's breast. Naomi raised her arms across the baby's head to protect it from the blow she knew would come. He struck Naomi's cheek. “Get rid of it,” Dow Yuk demanded while her face still stung.