She remembered holding Bryce alive, the smell of soap, the way his beard cradled the scent of sweet mown hay in the summer, the warmth of his hands as he held her face within them then bent to kiss her lips. When had he kissed her last? She couldn't remember. A deep sob reached up to choke her.
“Mama sad?” Clayton said, touching his soft hand to her cheek.
“I'm fine,” she said, taking him into her arms, burying her face in his sweet-smelling hair. She could hold her child, but she could not protect him. She could give him half a family, half a life. But he would be better off with someone else, someone sighted. So would this baby that moved inside her now.
“I think we're ready,” Mazy said. She stuck her head into the back of the wagon. “I'm sorry it's taken so long. You and the Wilsons were last to hitch, but we'll move out now. Naomi's going to follow Mother. Maybe later in the week, your wagon can lead. We'll rotate, as we did before, but include Ruth now.”
“Ruth wasn't in the line before?”
“Because she was a woman and had no teamster with her or male driver, Antone insisted she stay back. Now here we all are, just women looking after each other.”
“I failed to thank you for your help with Clayton and that snake I'll do my best to keep Clayton occupied You have things to do”
“I've had some thoughts, if you really want to be more independent.”
Suzanne stayed silent, not sure why.
“But that can wait,” Mazy said. “Until after we reach the graves.”
She couldn't see what Mazy did, just heard her labored breathing. Before her losses, Suzanne would have asked after the woman's health, said something about what they now shared. But there was no sense in forming up friendships that required the dance of give and take. All Suzanne had on her dance card now spelled take. Who would want to partner up with that?
Tipton wondered what day it was. Had she eaten? What was the rub of pain against her hip? Her mouth tasted like the bottom of the hens cage. She wondered if she should get up. Disappearing would take time, time that kept reminding her of Tyrells death, of her being alone and unworthy to live. She pulled silver hair combs from the knot of tangled hair. Chunks of blond came with it It did not matter. Nothing did, or ever would again.
As they approached the terrain that meant they'd soon come upon the graves, Mazy felt each woman tending to the tightness of her own wounds. They'd met westbound wagons, and sometimes those they encountered already knew of the reason for their silence, having greeted others heading east who carried the message that behind them came a widow's party of eleven wagons.
How incongruous, Mazy thought, that the words widow and party should be found in the same sentence.
Sometimes, the westward wagons they met pulled aside, left the trail to let them pass, and Mazy could tell by the looks on their faces that they knew. Westward travelers dropped their eyes when they caught the gaze of Mazy or Elizabeth, stared at the blank face and dark glasses of Suzanne or the still-tear-streaked face of Betha, who was walking stoop-shouldered, her calico cap with wide ruffle sagging in the heat. It was as if to look these turnaround women in the eye would somehow mark those heading west as casualties too, curse the hopes and dreams they left home for, make a mockery of the risk they'd already taken by leaving all they knew
Mazy wanted to stop and shake their shoulders, shout at them that turning back was no evidence of error. Nothing criminal lived in starting out, then later, coming to one s senses, throwing off the harness of routine and turning back. Hadn't hundreds of forty-niners been turnarounds? Hadn't a stagecoach passed them by just a day before carrying people to the east as well as letters any might send? Lewis and Clark had come back home; they hadn't chosen to stay in lands that lacked the boundaries of familiar.
These women had no reason to apologize for traveling an eastward trail. Mazy wanted to scream it at those west-facing souls who stood there, allowing them to pass, their faces reflecting the sorrow the women carried in their wagons.
A man, no, rather a boy who said his name was Ezra Meeker had looked almost stricken with disease himself as they wove their way through that group of wagons. He'd introduced himself, asked if there was any way he could help.
“No,” Mazy told him. “We'll be fine, just fine”
What could he offer? A young woman who must have been his wife held an infant to her breast. She cooed at the baby, lifted her hand over its face to shield it from the sun and the dust kicked up by their wagons.
Perhaps, Mazy supposed, she chose to shield the child from even the look of them, protecting her baby from having to view the grimness of their faces, lest he come too early to recognize the other side of hope.
13
sudden rush
They stopped when they sighted the hills that overlooked the graves. The grass proved inferior, and they drove a distance off the trail, ending up at the base of a ravine that made a perfect V between two treeless mounds. They carried water to the oxen and mules before unhitching, which put them late again into unharnessing.
“I'll take the riding stock down to the river to water,” Ruth offered. She walked toward the animals, passed almost by Bethas wagon, her mind on Koda, when she heard sounds beside her.
“I wanna go along,” Jessie said.
Ruth paused. “What do you think, Betha?”
“It'll be dark before you get back,” Betha said. “And you're bound to get dirty. I don't know.” Bethas head shifted from left to right like a chickens pecking and stretching. Had it always done that or was this something new? Ruth wondered.
“Auntie Ruth will watch me. And I'll stay very, very clean.”
“Yes, that's true, but…”
“Can't we all go?” Ned asked. “A fellow'd like to go to the river.” He looked around. “This place looks like a river ran right through it once, right out of those hills.”
Ruth looked in the direction the boy pointed. “Just a dry ravine,” she said.
“Don't let nobody go but me,” Jessie said. Her lower lip pouted out.
“She always gets to. You let her ride Koda when Papa died, and—”
“Now, Ned,” his mother said and patted his head. “You and Jason are the men in the family now. Ruth'll have her hands full with more than one along.” She sighed. “I need to cut your hair anyway. Getting so it turns up at your collar.”
Jessie grabbed Ruths hand and skipped, her brown curls bouncing.
Behind them, they heard a ruckus. Ruth thought it might be Ned kicking up a fuss and decided she could just as well take the boy. But when she turned, she saw Fip being chased by Pig and Clayton. Antelope, children, and dogs toppled the iron bracket that held Betha's, Ruths, and the children's supper.
“You catch that thing,” Betha shouted. “Go along, Ned. You help, Jason. You boys wanted something to do. Grab that overgrown goat, and we might just eat it for supper.”
Ruth turned back, shortened her stride to allow Jessie to keep up. “You've got to stay off to the side,” Ruth told the child, “where you can see me, but out of the way in case one of the mules decides to jump ahead. I dont want you to get hurt.”
“I know,” she said. “I know everything, Auntie.” She looked up at her with eyes so wise. Ruth swallowed
“About horses and mules and all such things?”
“That too. But I know ‘bout you.”
The skin at Ruth's neck prickled. “I'm sure your papa and mama have talked about your auntie. I came from far away, in Ohio.”
Jessie kicked at a rock, skipped backwards in front of Ruth and the animals she led. “I know things I member hearing. But Papa said I couldn't.”
Ruth heard her own heart thud in her chest.
“Sometimes we dream things but they aren't real, Jessie,” Ruth told her. She watched Jesses eyes squint in concentration. Her little brow tensed, but the skin, so young and supple, did not furrow, so she looked distant more than troubled.
“It was like a dream, but different, Auntie,�
� she decided after a pause. “And Papa said I could only know if I had been there. Want me to tell you?”
“No!” Then more gentle, “I'm sure it was a dream, and I don't wish to honor such fragmented thinking by listening to you recite it. Lets concentrate on the stock, Jessie, taking care of them.”
This time Jesse s face did expose a pinch as she turned and stomped off toward the river.
Elizabeth bent under the wagon, luring the antelope, her skirts hiked up so she could crawl. “Come on, now, you little thing. Lets get you outta there.” She reached for the rope attached to the halter she'd had Ruth manufacture. Fip was slippery as an eel. Her fingers grazed the rope. She almost had him when something cold and wet butted against her backside. She jerked up, and when she did, she knocked herself cold beneath the wagon.
Betha just wanted to be alone, to tidy up the area around the wagon and then to walk the distance to where she thought Jed's grave would be. “Why'd you have to leave me,” she told him, “tending kids and cooking in a faraway place and you just hang up your hat! After all I did for you too.
“You talking to us, Ma?” Jason asked, looking back over his shoulder. His hair was slicked tight to his head, folded behind ears that stuck out from his head like open barn doors.
At least she had good children, Betha thought. At least he left her with fine, healthy children.
Elizabeth came to in seconds, Mazy hovering over her. “Are you all right? I couldn't find a drop of anything, not smelling salts, nothing.
“Need something for the lump on my head,” Elizabeth said, rubbing it as she sat in the dirt. “Ain't nothing to give me for my stupidity.”
“Pig came by.”
“Well, I know that. He's what knocked me out. Silly thing. Just surprised me.”
“Ned caught Fip, and I've resettled the cauldron, cut up new potatoes, and added beans and water to the pot.”
“Go lie down,” her mother said. “I'll finish getting supper.”
Mazy shook her head. “I'll eat something cold later if I feel like it. Otherwise in the morning. Sure you're all right?”
“Just give me some stew,” Elizabeth said, standing. “Lucky Fip's not in it!”
Mazy dozed inside the wagon, tossing and turning in the twisted sleep of discomfort and disillusion. She woke to a gush of wind that billowed out the canvas. She wondered if she should lower it, heard it settle down with a sigh. Sister Esther and her mother talked low outside.
“We have every reason to honor the Lord's day,” Sister Esther said.
Mazy heard a wooden spoon clink against a tin cup and knew her mother had brewed tea and stirred honey in it. She could smell the sweetness.
The Sabbath? Which day was that? Had it been that long they'd traveled? Yes, tomorrow.
“Mazy's the one you'll have to ponder with over that, I imagine,” Elizabeth said.
“And it does make one consider why your daughter is the one to establish rules,” Sister Esther said.
“Nothing written says she does. You got something you itch to say, just say it. Call a meeting same as any.”
“Well, I believe I'll do that, then,” Sister Esther said. “Now that we have come this way, had some time to gather up our thoughts. But I believe it was wise to return to the graves.”
Mazy smiled.
“And thus refreshed, we can turn again west. On Monday.”
No! Mazy's mind reeled. They couldn't go west. They were going home. That's what Mazy needed to remind them of, the importance of going home. She should get up and tell the Sister now, not wait, tell her that home was where nurture lived, where strength thrived. Home was that place that fed the soul, healed the broken pieces of a life. Home was where she'd find what she was seeking, had been seeking when she passed it by to go with Jeremy.
Mazy started to get up but felt dizzy. She lay back down, trying to regain her equilibrium. It would have to wait. She would talk of it in the morning. She listened for the sounds of Ruth rejoining the circle, of the children quieting, of Adora calling loud for Tipton to please have something to eat. She smelled the tobacco smoke of Luras pipe. They would all rest, yes. Tomorrow they would pray at the graves, and then she would convince them to go home.
Disaster struck at dawn.
The shout woke Mazy, and she sat up, breathing hard. Who had yelled? What was it she heard? Wind howled and the wagon shook, but no human sounds broke through.
She decided it must have been inside her dream. Yes, she'd heard the words within her sleep. What was it? You dont listen to me! You dont listen to me! She'd been home in her dream, screaming those words at Jeremy She leaned back into the pillow, recalling the detail, the fury in the words, the frustration.
The wagon shook, resisted a blast of wind.
He'd had his back to her in their bed, his face to the chinks of their cabin that had been tight and white in her dream. She'd shouted at him, crying in desperation to have him hear her, to know that she spoke, not to feign indifFerence. At least she hoped he pretended it, she prayed that his apathy hadn't been real
He had not turned over. She willed herself to see movement in his shoulders, willed them to announce that Jeremy would be turning over so they could talk, so she could look into his eyes and know he loved and listened and lived. He had not moved.
In her dream she had shrieked at him, You dont listen to me! You dont listen to me!Then she woke, all sweaty and scared.
Her heart stopped pounding. It had been a dream. And what had she always found about her dreams, vivid and colorful as they were? That she always spoke to herself within them, regardless of who or what character called out. Sometimes objects had voices, sometimes it was a feeling that would stay after she woke, like the residue of milk on an unwashed mug.
“I must have shouted out loud,” she said “Woke myself up.”
Mazy lay back down, pulled the quilt up to her chin. What wasn't she listening to? Who wasn't she listening to? Maybe this was about Jeremy after all. She'd been so frustrated with him, so angry when he failed to include her in his silences. She'd begged him to share her hopes; at times, she believed he had. They'd cleared trees and burned the stumps and made the place for her garden. She had loved the days they spent working side by side with the promise of something tangible waiting at the end.
She recalled a fallen tree near the garden plot; it held a swarm of bees. “You have to destroy it to get the honey out,” Jeremy told her.
“There ought to be some way to leave their home intact,” she told him.
“‘Less you're willing to tear it up, you're stuck without honey.”
“I'll wait, then,” she said and plotted the garden so the bees would flourish beside it.
No, the voice wasn't about her and Jeremy. It had cried with too much desperation, a voice squelched for so long that it had screamed to make sure it could be heard at all.
It was her own voice. She wasn't listening to herself.
The skin at her ankles chafed, and she threw the covers back and reached for the glycerin to spread on them, to stop the itching that plagued her. Her face had broken out too with tiny bumps. Her mother said it was the pregnancy, that everything inside changed to make room for this new and ever-changing being. “Its what life's about, girl, all the change. Starts with the first seed planted. We live and breathe it our whole life through.”
Mazy rubbed her ankles. The glycerin intensified the cold of the wagon box It had been so hot yesterday as they traveled, but now the air harbored hidden snow.
She heard a horse neigh, a mule answer, and a blast of wind hit again, this time shaking the wagon. Something about the fierceness of it frightened her. She grabbed the side board, balancing herself against the blast of wind. Pig barked close outside. A pan tossed by the wind rattled and clanked against the wheel. She was about to get up and call Pig in, check the flaps to see if they were secured, when the first shower of hail pounded the canvas, ripping the top, shredding it in seconds. Ice pitted against her like rock
s thrown by an army of bullies.
Mazy put one arm over her head, her elbow tight against her ear, the other arm over her stomach. She tried to remember in the darkness if she had anything hard she could put over her, a board from a table, a bureau drawer she could lift out and get under. Then she decided the wagon would be the safest spot. She should get under it.
She grabbed for a shawl and scrambled in the dark. Lightning lit the rubble around her. She started to cry out to her mother. The wind blasted and shook the wagon, which pitched as though at sea, lifted up on two wheels, paused for what seemed a lifetime, and then…the wagon dropped back. With a gust of wind so brutal it took her breath with it, the wagon rolled and pitched on over.
Esther heard the howling of the wind and then hard chunks of ice pitted against her skin. At first she thought the bees had somehow gotten free and were stinging, but they only did such things if the hive was threatened or if they'd been hurt. Had they been either? She looked for the lantern. Sleet struck the side of her head. For an instant, she floated. Something sticky as the propolis of the bees oozed beside her eyes.
“Missy Esther? Missy Esther?”
Esther moaned as the soft hands of Deborah pushed against her, the rough rub of the tiny callus of her fingers pressed against her arms.
“Go under wagon. Storm very bad!”
The girl tugged at Esther, who moved like thick batter on a sloped bowl while she let herself be lowered down the ladder. Cold rain and hail pounded their backs even as they knelt in the mud, hunched and shivering beneath the wagon box. The sound of the wind roared in her ears, roared like a storm she remembered as a child, huddled in a potato cellar with her brothers and parents.
“Move, Missy,” Deborah said, pressing her knees against Esther. “Make room for friends.”
Esther thought she heard the Bacons’ cows mooing, maybe oI’ Snoz with his high-pitched bellowing. She could hear the black dog barking. She didn't feel well. Her head throbbed like a drum. Deborah's paper! Where was it? She heard loud cracks of thunder. Voices shouted, and though the hours promised dawn, the night was as black and slimy as seaweed coughed up from the depths of sea.
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