What Once We Loved (36 page)

“Soon. Very soon,” he said and then stopped himself. He had gotten into this by not telling the truth. He looked at the woman who stood before him. She had kind eyes, had been good help. She didn't deserve his lies. “I…don't know, Chita. When she'll be back.”

“She goes far away?” Chita turned back to her cooking. Her hands moved quickly as she turned the flat bread, then laid it in the hot spider. Grease spit back.

“The truth is, I don't know where she's gone or if she'll even come back.”

“Oh, she will come back. The little one will bring her back.”

“Little one? Little one what?”

Chita turned then, her face reddened against the natural cashew color of her skin. Her large brown eyes stared at him. “Does the letter not tell you? Is that not what you wanted me to see?”

“The letter says she's gone away. That's all. Nothing more.” He picked it up, his hand shaking. He tried to hand it to her again, but she shook her head.

“It does not say about her baby? She does not tell you?”

“Baby? Tipton has a baby?”

“Not yet,” Chita said. “But soon. She makes me say I will not tell you, but I think you know. You do not know?” Chita wailed, her floured hands squeezed on her cheeks. “She will be very unhappy with me when she finds this out.”

He stood, almost knocking the lamp on the floor. He caught it and stared at Chita. “You're sure. You're sure she is…with child?”

“Si.
She does not know it herself until I tell her. Two months ago and then she fires me. I think she wants me to stay with a baby coming
soon, but she says she wants to do things herself, for you. Take care of you and be ready for her baby. But she does not say she never tells you. Oh,
Madre, Madre.
She will never forgive me.”

“She was afraid you'd say something. That's why she wanted to do everything here herself.”

“And I do that,
si?
Just what she doesn't want me to do.” Chita looked nearly as bereft as he felt.

“She must have thought it her fault, that she'd done something wrong,” he said. “That's why she wanted to go away. She signed the letter, ‘Love, Tipton.' See here?” He pointed at the letter, then laid it down. “Never mind, Chita. Never mind.” He straightened his shoulders, rubbed at his red beard. “I'll explain everything to her. Thank goodness, you told me. I have to find her, have to bring her back, let her know it's all right.”

“You do not know where she goes?”

“Where would she go?” He wondered if he knew her well enough to know the answer to that question. He paced the room, feeling the heat from the stove, from the warmth inside him. Tipton carried his child! Where could she have gone? How far could she have gotten in the storm? She might have left a day, maybe even more, before. “Home,” he decided. “I'll bet she's headed home.”

“This is not her home, Senor Kossuth?”

“This is not her home, Chita. Shasta City is her home. And I tried to take her from it. She needed her mother, her family. That's what this is about. Shasta City. I'll go there as soon as the weather breaks, and I've got vittles in my stomach. Is that tortilla ready? This soon-to-be proud papa is starved.”

From what Tipton could see, San Francisco was a bedlam of building and rebuilding. Blackened structures still smoked from the latest fire;

peddlers hawked pies at the street corners, and urchins not much shorter than Tipton spread their dirty palms out asking for handouts. Fast-walking men in dusty long coats and women with faces shadowed by bonnets brushed past her, made her feel dizzy with their pace. She felt spun around with the noise and the smells. Maybe this was a little more than she'd bargained for. Maybe she couldn't do this all by herself. She turned to look back up the gangplank. No, she couldn't get back on there. She would make this a better day. That was her new motto, she decided.
Make this a better day.

Instead of being frightened, breathing fast to take her hands to tingling when something threatened to consume her, she'd remind herself that she had everything she needed to make this a better day.

Already she was grateful she'd arrived at dawn. It would give her time to trade in her sapphire-and-silver necklace for needed cash. She was sure she'd find a buyer, and with currency, she would find a room. Then work. Then a life. For her and her child.

Today she would pretend she walked behind a lantern at night, moving forward far enough to see in front of her if not exactly sure where she'd end up. Tomorrow she would set up her laundry business. She'd done it before. She could do it again.

“Step aside there, lass,” a big burly man said. He motioned with a nightstick as one with port authority, giving directions. She stumbled against a man jostling behind her, pushing past. The burly man grabbed at her elbow, balanced her. “Wait for your family over there, lass. They'll be along. We've got to clear the gangplank. Move along. Move along.”

“I have no family, sir,” Tipton said. She blinked her eyelashes.

“Well, move anyway. There's no time for dawdling.” He motioned behind her, and the gentleman pushed past. Cabs and shays came by and picked passengers up, let others off. The
Sea Gullwasrit
a big ship, but it would reload and head back, stopping in places like Crescent City, then heading north to Portland and eventually Seattle. Maybe Portland would be a better place for her, less congested, she thought.

No, she'd chosen San Francisco. She would make this work.

When the traffic slowed some, she tugged like a child on the burly mans sleeve.

“What, lass? You still waiting?”

“I have no family, as yet, kind sir.” She stood sideways, so he could see the form of her. It was brazen, but she knew her baby would want to be of service.

The big man turned a shade of red Tipton had never seen before.

“Hush now, Miss. Missis. Sure and you're in need of help then. Have you no one to be meeting you, lass? ‘Tis not a good place for a lady alone.”

“I'm surprising them. What I need now is an address for the nearest…banking area. So I can safely deposit—”

“Shush now.” He put his dirt-creased finger to his lips. “Not a good thing to be sharing.” He lifted her carpet valise, handed it to her. “Carry it in front of you, Lass. Don't be talking about your valuables here in the open. There're nothing but rats and rogues waiting to take advantage. You take your valuables…and hire yourself a cab and go to Market Street.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” she said and curtsied.

Market Street. She'd been in San Francisco but an hour, and she already had a place to go. Tyrellie was right, the Lord did provide.

She used some of her precious cash to hire a cab, telling the driver to take her to the banking district. “What address, ma'am?”

“Oh, just any bank exchange,” she said.

“You taking out or putting in?” the driver asked her.

Oddly, his question was the last thing she remembered until awakening that evening on the wharf, her face tender and sore, her traveling skirt torn and an empty valise jammed beneath her chin. Her under-things and other dress lay strewn across the dirty street. Her fists clutched her feathered hat. Frantic, she patted for the silver necklace. It and her remaining cash were gone.

She groaned, then quieted.
Lost it all!
How stupid she was. She noticed a dark form turn. Her heart pounded as she hugged the side of the building, wood slivers pushing against the cloth of her cape. Her hand brushed across her stomach.
Oh, Baby!
The dark form moved toward her, and she breathed a prayer. Maybe she couldn't make this a better day, alone.

As Ruth watched, the man stepped out of the canvas tent, slipping and sliding toward the cabin, his long arms touching the icy earth once or twice as he made an effort to keep his knees from hitting. He reached for the porch rail with one hand and sent his other out to Matthew, introducing himself as Burke Manes and saying that Burke was German for fortress and Manes—he pronounced it Man-ez—his fathers last name too. “No aliases here either,” Matthew said. He had a full head of sandy hair, and he smiled as he spoke. He stood taller than Matthew and leaned slightly at the shoulders as a man accustomed to carrying extra weight. He had a round face, short neck. He was not a handsome man. But he wore a cherubs smile.

“Not the way a man likes to greet folks,” he said. “Coming at you in the early morning after having spent the night uninvited on your spread.”

His eyes were hazel with white flecks in them; they were the most striking features of a wide tanned and lined face. He held his hat in his hand, reached out with the other to the boys who clustered behind Matthew, napkins stuck into the tops of their undershirts. He nodded his head to Ruth and said, “Ma'am.”

“We've plenty for eating,” Lura said. “Might as well sit a spell. Ain't going anywhere till the sun comes out.”

“That, my good woman, is the truth for certain. Not to mention a fine reward for making it across the ice pond there.” He bent to slip his boots off, his long coat falling open and Ruth thought then he was a
man comfortable with himself, willing to be in his stocking feet within minutes of an introduction.

The others gave their names, and his eyes granted full attention to each, even the children. Ruth noticed that his shoulders bent lower when Sarah spoke. For her he almost went down on one knee to shake her little hand. Then his eyes cast to the cot near the fireplace and stopped, looked up in question. “My daughter. Jessie. She's…ill with the ague, they say. She's still asleep.”

“Who says? Doc McCully?”

“Yes. And others, too.”

“McCully s a good man. But it seems an odd time of the year for ague. Bread and milk helped her any?”

“Some,” Lura interrupted. “Think a little whiskey might do her better.”

“That is a common remedy for it,” Burke said, removing his black wool coat. He looked around for a peg, found one and hung it there.

“That cure could be worse than the ailment, Ma,” Matthew said.

“Relieves pain though,” Lura said.

“Or gives a new one.”

Ruth looked at Matt, detected something…singular in his voice. “She doesn't seem to be in much pain,” Ruth said.

“That's a blessing,” Burke said.

“Sometimes in the night she cries out. Could be dreams. She's had her share of troubles for someone so young. I don't know.” Ruth turned away, embarrassed at the ease with which she spoke of such intimate things to this man.

“Johnnycakes are on,” Lura said. “Who's eating?”

“I am!” both boys yelled in unison.

“I ain't deaf,” she said.

“Yet,” Matthew said and grinned as he directed Burke to the bench.

Lura laughed and threatened Matthew with the three-legged spider as she served, but he ducked, and she ruffled his hair instead.

“Join us, Mr. Manes?”

“Does your last name mean something special Mr. Man-ez?” Sarah asked. “You said your first name did.”

“You pronounced it well, little lady,” he said. “Some folks think it's like a horse's mane, but it isn't. And yes. Like I said, my first name means castle or fortress. Besides belonging to my father, the name Manes is an old Latin word that means ‘revered spirit of someone who has died.' Someone you cared about, I might add.”

“Speaking of things that've died that we might be revering, you didn't come across a dead red jack out there, did you?” Matthew asked.

“Can't say that I did. You lose one?”

“Revered?” Sarah asked.

“Holding them in high regard,” Burke said, giving his attention back to Sarah.

She blinked. “The way I hold my mama and papa?” she said.

Burke looked over at Ruth. “She's my niece,” Ruth said. “My brother and his wife died along the trail, on their way out here in ‘52.”

He nodded. Then to Sarah he said. “I suspect just like that.”

“Kind of nice carrying a name that says you hold people in high regard,” Jason said.

“Even if they are dead ones,” Ned added.

Burke laughed, a full belly laugh that made his eyes sparkle and the little lines like streams flow to the pool of them. He wasn't very old, Ruth thought. Maybe thirty at the most. “Nothing wrong with revering those we loved,” he said. “As long as they don't hold us hostage to a memory that never was.”