What Once We Loved (50 page)

“You're right about that,” Mazy laughed. “But then negotiating is important in any relationship. I hope we can use Poverty Flat to help Esther out,” Mazy said.

“It's still in California,” Seth said. “Esther seems to think Oregon's better. They need to be out of this state, if what I hear is true.”

Mazy agreed. “Before they create a ‘Chinese Protection Act' like they did for the Indians. And we can all see how the federal protection is keeping tribal people safe—genocidal neglect, I call it. Pretend they
want to take care of the Indians, then let them die of disease and starvation.” She pursed her lips in disgust. “Making widows and orphans nearly every day. I hear the tribes in Oregon are resisting being removed to reservations.”

“Think the uprisings there are finally slowing down; they're more willing to talk.”

“That's good. A sign that they still have hope.”

“The resisting or the talking?” Seth asked.

“Both.”

“Naomi's lagging behind some,” Seth said. He reined up. “Don't think she's used to riding. Why don't you take the baby basket for a while? Give her a break.”

They chose to ride rather than go by stage, stopping at hostelries for the night. At least their horses were well cared for there. More often than not, when people saw Naomi, they turned them away, told them they could grain the animals if they wished before moving on. They even saw a sign at one cabin beside the road: “Dogs and Indians stay out.”

“I don't suppose they'd make an exception for Naomi or Pig then,” Mazy fumed.

Outrage bubbled to the surface more than once, until Naomi touched Mazy's hand at a livery near Yreka and said, “It does no good for Chou-Jou to hear badness.”

“I'm only defending you,” Mazy said.

“You ride horse of good intent,” Naomi said. “It does not arrive at destination.”

Mazy knew her face burned red, but the woman was right. Her indignation didn't always get what she wanted, and it left Chou-Jou trembling, something none of them wanted. Who would have thought that such a little person could sense someone else's anger? Mazy vowed to keep her upset under her hat.

At Cottonwood Creek, in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains, they stopped to water their horses and met up with one of two Cole
brothers, formerly of New York. Mazy played the “do you know?” game, asking about the Schmidtkes who had come from Putnam County, too.

“Cant say as I know them,” Rufus Cole said. “Lots of folks changed their names, you know. Cant always say unless you meet them face up. Me and my brother only came out in ‘52.”

“Why, that's when we came across,” Mazy said.

“They farmers?”

Mazy nodded
yes.
“Had lots of Durhams. You might remember Lura Schmidtke. She's a little wiry woman who sharpened knives for a time, I guess. And she always wanted to open up a restaurant.”

Rufus Cole smiled. “Thought of doing that myself. Right here.” He gazed out over the low valley, prelude to the rapid rise of the Siskiyou Mountains. “Someday the stage'll come this far and farther. Go on into Jacksonville and up to Portland. They'll be needing swing and stage stations. Last year we had a local company bringing sporadic wagons in and over to Jacksonville from Yreka, but only when it's dry and only when the snow's out. You'll see. That trail's pretty rugged up and over, even for horse travel. Times like this, with the creek rising, wagon freighters make themselves scarce. Only pack animals make it. Big mules like you're riding there, ma'am.” He nodded his chin to Mazy s mule, Ink. “We'll need the big boys to get into the act before we get a jehu to handle a Concord over these mountains.” He looked to the road Mazy and Seth and Naomi would be taking.

“I know just the man who could drive it too,” Seth said. “Used to drive for Baxter and Monroe.”

Mazy said, “I think he's given up the rush of the road. For the sake of his family.”

Mr. Cole tipped his hat at Naomi. “Might want to come into the house for a bit and let that little one have a taste of shade.”

“Wish all our stops were like that one,” Mazy said as they moved north after their respite.

Leaving Rufus Cole's shanty required a creek crossing of some challenge.
Naomi's eyes grew large as she tried to kick her mount forward toward the rushing freshet. “Wait,” Seth told her. “I'll go across, find the footing, then come back and lead you. You want to wait too, Mazy?”

“I'll follow you,” she said. “I've got Chou-Jou with me.”

Mazy watched Seth's big black gelding he'd picked up in Sacramento. The horse switched its tail once or twice, lowered its big head, snorted, then began his clop-clopping across the rocks and surging stream.

“He doesn't like it much,” Seth shouted back over his shoulder. “But its got a rock bottom. No quicksand. We'll be all right.” Mazy followed. Ink didn't balk at all as they splashed quickly beside Seth.

“Why don't you lead Ink back and put Naomi on her,” Mazy suggested. “Then go back and lead her horse.”

“Good idea,” Seth said as Mazy dismounted. As she waited for them, she looked around. She stood beneath a granary tree where woodpeckers congregated to store acorns for the winter. Upstream, broken tree roots and branches collected at rocks. Leaves and twigs from a season washed their way through the rushing water. There'd be more of these crossings, she suspected. If they were to truly transport Celestials safely out of California, they'd need sturdy, steady mounts, maybe find routes where people repaired bridges. And accomplices, people sympathetic to their cause.

Their cause.
How quickly she'd taken it on. A wrong needing to be righted, that was what called her, that was what would fill her longing. Whether she found someone to share her life with as a partner or not. It was a good boundary. God knew her lot.

With Naomi safely across, they started up the twisting road, Pig's tail wagging in the distance. Yellow, jagged rocks with springs squeezing and dribbling black against them formed the inside ridge. Deep canyons pitched off to treetops below. Sometimes the ravines opened to the west, sometimes to the east. They could hear the roar of larger creeks rushing beneath them. More than once, huge sections of the road disappeared, the snowmelt pushing dirt and rocks and changing ridges in its wake.

“I hadn't thought about water being so strong,” Mazy said. “It gouges and carves like a sculptors knife.”

“‘The noblest of the elements,’” Seth said. “Pindar, I'm quoting now.”

“You read Greek classics? Will wonders never cease?”

“My mother did,” he said. “Water'U heal you, and it can kill you. Too little and you die, too much and you drown. But it's what we need for growing.”

“Just the right balance of it,” Mazy said. “So much of living is just the right balance.”

Tipton had heard someone moving about upstairs the very first night she stayed, the night of Charles's assault. Stuffed into the bottom of the heavy oak wardrobe, she'd been crying, holding herself in sobs of self-pity. She was covered with crinolines and slippers and boots so that if anyone thought to look there, they would not see her cowering. She prayed, but they were words of questioning, filled with fear.

Then noise had startled her. She had crept up the stairs, surprised to see candles lit and someone, a woman, bent, picking things up off the floor. A broom leaned against the wall. A bucket of water sat inside the door. The cleaning person. Tipton backed out slowly and returned to her hiding place. She'd had to be extremely quiet. The night could be so exposing.

Then tonight she'd heard slippers on the stairs, whispering and shuffling sounds. Her heart pounded as she scrunched, hiding. Whispers. Silence. She creaked open the door, peeked out beneath her refuge of costumes. Bathed by a single candlelight, she stared into almond-shaped
eyes.

The woman, well, girl almost, was smaller than Mei-Ling. She knelt, but Tipton imagined her feet were tiny like Mei-Lings and her
hands, if they hadn t been cupped inside wide silk sleeves, would surely have been small, too.

Tipton opened her mouth, but the girl quickly pulled her hand out of the silk and pressed her finger to her lips. Tipton nodded, lay back down, staring into the darkness. What had Nehemiah said once? That God often finds us in the morning darkness when we're less distracted. She was half asleep. Maybe it was a dream. But the girls breathing could still be heard, raspy and wounded. Tipton winced, remembering the sores on her face too. And the Celestial was so thin, so alone. Tipton led a charmed life by comparison. She'd only been ill from her own poor choices, only been displaced by the imaginings of her distant mind. Even her brother would be no real threat if she would allow Nehemiah to truly be in her life, to love and protect her.

Shame flooded over her. She had been given so much, and still she put herself and her baby at risk, just because she thought she deserved more. What a mess she'd made. Nehemiah would be a fool to take someone like her back.

She crept out of the wardrobe. After making her way upstairs, she brought the water bucket and some rags back down. “Let me help,” she told the Celestial, whose
eyes
widened in fear when Tipton kneeled beside her. Weak, the girl eased back, nodded yes. She wiped blood caked at the side of her face and tan flesh in the palms of her hands. Tipton began washing the girl's wounds.

Eventually Tipton returned to her wardrobe and slept. When she awoke, there was no sign of the Celestial, nothing at all to indicate she'd had a visitor in the theater. But somehow Tipton knew there would be more. Someone brought her, and someone else came to whisk her away. Many needed tending. She saw their presence as a gift.

She filled her days sewing buttons on costumes, repairing flounces on dresses, hemming men's pants. The thick wax makeup used to make the actors'—and sometimes actresses'—faces look larger so their audiences could see their expressions, also caked onto their collars and cuffs.
She scraped it off with a slender knife, even rubbed spots clean with sand. She'd planned to launder them, she would. But the thought of a steaming tub of water still made her ill.

Once or twice she'd watched a production, was captivated by the costumes and characters. “What did you think of our little play?” Flaubert asked her later.

“Lovely,” she said.

“Maybe you will perform sometime?”

“My whole life's been a performance,” she said. “I'm learning it's what goes on backstage that really counts.”

She'd met Mrs. Henry Ray, the co-owner of the theater company and so far, the proprietress had found her work for Flaubert so satisfactory, she had hired her as “the official wardrobe keeper.” It meant a wage. It meant meeting and talking and helping the actors. Her tending them kept other thoughts at bay.

The Rays would take the troop to San Francisco soon. Tipton had heard them discussing it when she watched them rehearse
The Wife
and
Charles II
, two plays that won them recognition when they'd performed them in San Francisco four years before. Tipton listened to the actors rehearse their lines, watched in fascination as the costumes and makeup and sets transformed not just the actors and actresses but the audience as well. Dozens of spectators hovered in the pit down front, hung over the balcony, or squeezed in with their glasses of ale on the wooden benches avoiding drips of candle wax on hats and capes as the night wore on. They listened, totally consumed by the extravaganza.

“Everyone needs to be transformed, to forget one's woes, if only for an evening,” Henry Ray said. “That's what the theater does. And so they leave refreshed, the lowly and the royal, refitted to perform their tasks anew. It is the essence of art.” His wife had nodded her agreement.

They spoke of things in front of her as she pinned a waistband or mended a tear. It was as if she wasn't there, as if she had gone away and yet she stayed. Listening, she learned. Mrs. Pay complained one day
about the European actors. “They absolutely falter if the audience cheers or claps,” she said. “'Tis the strangest thing.”

Flaubert told the woman, “In France one only receives applause as a prelude to tomatoes.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Ray had said.

Tipton thought of that, how an action in one place could mean something quite the opposite somewhere else. No wonder people who came from different countries had trouble understanding each other. No wonder husbands and wives did too, she considered. They came from different families, different places. Only talking about their differences would lead to understanding. Only staying mattered, or coming back, giving, taking, simply holding.

She hoped the Rays would take her with them when they went to San Francisco. The trip was scheduled for late May. So was Baby's arrival.

She knew the Rays would not be pleased to know their “chubby wardrobe mistress” not only worked there by day and helped with the performances at night, but used the theater for her living quarters. She was always the “last to leave,” Mrs. Ray commented, commending Tiptons dedication. Once Baby came, Mrs. Ray might have other words for it. She was rarely at a loss for words. Tipton wouldn't think about what word the arrival of Baby would prompt.