Tipton couldn't get the blacksmith from her mind. The tools he used, pounding hot iron, making something useful out of nothing, discarding bits and pieces that didn't fit. Was she just a bit and piece? Did she belong on the scrap pile of things no longer needed? Or was Elizabeth right? And the aching and numbing of her hand resulted from resistance. Maybe she was being pounded into something she could not yet imagine. She tightened the strings of her drawers, wrapping the excess into the waistband. She put little in her mouth—that was her agreement with herself, to eat only the food on one side of her plate. She didn't want anyone to notice how her belly pooched out. Yet her drawers fairly hung at her hips. How could she be so fat and yet her clothes get bigger?
They took the Sublette Cutoff rather than head south to Fort Bridger The discussion had been amiable among the women, the decision easily come to. Sister Esther had only half heard it. Once they reached South Pass, the air had become cooler and the bees more restful They'd stopped early to let them fly. But she felt there was no point now.
She watched the Celestials. Each had revealed unique skills along this journey, though they still had much to learn.
Naomi had fine, strong arms. Her silky dress no longer stretched across her body, now turning from soft to lean. She kept herbs in her pottery pots, seasonings that scented the quilts and the clothes. She said fond things too, offering cheerfulness especially to Tipton or Suzanne when clouds marked their days. Her herbs healed cuts and scrapes, and she'd actually rescued one of the Barnards’ oxen by giving it salt pork and vinegar after it drank the alkali water. Who would have thought ofthat?
Zilah did not look down so much either, or cast her eyes as though in shame as she had before they began. She tended Clayton, and since she'd taken on this task, the child lacked even a scratch on his face except for the scar near his eye from the mule incident. She played with him, making little circles out of colored papers, folding them until she could blow into them and they would puff up. She was not a pretty girl, with pockmarks and lacking the delicate features of Deborah, but she smiled easily around children, and they transformed her into something of joy.
And Deborah, so delicate with those tiny, damaged feet. She proved tireless, if a bit irresponsible. She did remember details not only of what the bees needed but of people as well, keeping the wagon orderly and anticipating what Sister Esther wished, often before she said the words.
But none of the women had resources, except for Deborah's bees and the paper patent she'd nearly lost. Sister Esther felt tears come to her eyes. What would become of them once they discovered they were on their own, without husbands to provide for them?
“I'll go first,” Lura said. They stood in the necessary circle. “Here are my truths and lies.” She cleared her throat. “I can play the harp. That's one And I have always wanted to run a sutlers store.” She grinned. “Mariah, if you know, dont say.”
“Oh, the harp. I think you can play that,” Adora said. “I heard that sound the night we made Kanesville, so pretty. Didn't know it was you playing”
“You carry a tune well,” Suzanne agreed.
“Not so good with valuables, though,” Adora said.
“Mother!” Tip ton scolded.
“Well, she lost those pearl combs and all, Tipton.”
“You've lost your purse, Mother.”
“Well, I'd say that one about the stores your lie, Lura, if truth be known.”
“The store's the truer,” Ruth said. “Your wagon is well organized. Boxes in little places A sutler would have that skill, shelving and stacking and keeping products from shifting.”
A few others made their guess, and Lura took in the kindnesses expressed within the guesses, knitted them into a shawl of new information to comfort herself.
“I can't play a thing,” she told them at last. “Not a single note on a traveling harp or whatever. No, it's the store I'd love.”
“I never knew that, Ma.”
“Your father thought it a foolish dream, and I never mentioned it after we were married, he being a farmer, a practical soul. Handled the books. Didn't need me, and then I got addled and all. But I might again, now Mention it to myself.”
“Well you should,” Elizabeth said. “Now ain't this fun? Who's next?”
“I'll go,” Sister Esther said.
“You gonna tell us what's in the letter now?” Jason asked. He and his brother stood outside the circle until the women finished, listening intently.
“No. I am not,” she said. She had thought long and hard about this task, thought it silly at first, but liked the effort it took to clarify, keep her mind from always judging “First. I am frightened of bees, of being stung as I have been since I was a small child. That's the first statement. And second, I studied the same classes as my brother Harold, who was a divinity student in the East.” She looked straight ahead, did not want to catch the eye of anyone.
“Why, that's easy,” Adora said. “You're not afraid of bees. You've ridden with them all this way without a peep. That's silly. They're supposed to be hard to guess, like Lura's was.”
“Is she cheating, Mama?” Sarah asked.
“Shush. Pay attention,” Betha said.
“If it is the bees, if that's the truth, then you are a remarkable woman,” Suzanne said. “To live each day with a fear as that, surrounded by the thing that terrorizes you. How could you do that and still be a useful person?”
“Perhaps as you do, Suzanne,” Sister Esther said. “By faith and grace.”
“By faith,” Mazy said. “But then that would make the second statement seem the truer. I could imagine Harold training for the ministry. He was a very kind man.”
“Yes, he was,” Esther said. “They both were good men, my brothers.” She sighed heavily, the mark of hanging on to something that drained the soul.
“Are women allowed to read divinity?” Tipton asked.
“She didn't say she read it, just studied the same stuff her brother did,” Mariah corrected. “That could be.”
“I'd rather she told us about the letter,” Ned said.
“In due time,” Esther said. She smiled. The banter was a comfort she had not known she needed.
“We give,” Elizabeth said. The others agreed.
“I wish it was that I had read theology along with my brother, but neither brother did, and yes, Tipton, as a woman, I could not. Not that I didn t try to get one or the other to do it. How I badgered. My father was a minister, and he, too, pressed his sons before he died. In the end, they consented only to come with me, to help me carry out my mission.” She looked away. “And so you see what happened.”
Deborah broke the silence with her tiny voice. “So is lie you…read same like brother?” The girls left eye was almost swollen shut from her bee stings. “And truth you fear bees?”
“The truth is that.”
Deborah put her fingers to her lips, blinked quickly.
“And still you stay with the bees and help,” Mazy said. “You ride beside your fears.”
“Ride beside them, yes. As do we all who chose to make our way along this trail.”
19
filling up
Mazy sat beneath the shade of a hardwood tree. The green canopy offered rest; a book lay open on her lap. She had written a word, some quality of faith. Then she heard the agitation of wings.
They'd flown like hawks diving for rabbits, tearing toward the soft spots of her face. Her heart pounded, eyes enlarged by the sight of the black swarm in the sky.
Sit very still, sit very still, dont let them knowyoure here.
They'd swarmed onto the trunk and over her eyes, her mouth, her nose. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe! She felt her throat constrict, shut off the air that committed her to life. She'd die if she didn't move, didn't change, whether they stung her to death or not! She melded into the solid but unmoving trunk, and the bees blackened over her, made her one with the tree. She fought, knowing to move was to die of their stinging; but
to stay, just a lump on the trunk, that was a death over time.
“Wake up, darling. You're dreaming bad,” her mother said, moving the muslin cover from her daughter s face, shaking her.
Mazy fought through the ooze of nightmare, blinked to see herself on a dusty trail far from home.
“What was that all about?”
“Bees.”
“Stinging you, were they?” Elizabeth stroked Mazy's cheek, moved wet strands of hair back behind her ears.
“They didn't sting,” Mazy said. “I felt more…choked, more suffocated and sad than anything.”
“Just a bad dream,” her mother said. “They pass, in time.” The dream stayed with her through the day. She struggled to understand the meaning of the sadness, the lack of stinging. And she wondered what the word was that she had written in the book but could not read through the suffocating bees.
The ferryman stared, moved a plug of tobacco from one cheek to the other, waiting while the group of them congregated at the Green River. He spit. Betha cringed. Such filth, they were surrounded by filth.
They d come a good distance, crossing the streams that meandered, over and back again as though they had not gotten it right the first time and were forced into repetition. Here at the Green River, Betha just wished Adora would make up her mind.
“I wont pay that,” Adora said, arms crossed over her chest. “Six dollars a wagon is too much! Only paid fifty cents to cross the Desmoines.”
“Its either pay or find our own way, “ Elizabeth told her. “He's already come down a dollar.” There were shouts from other wagons yelling about “holdups.”
The ferryman smiled a tobacco-stained smile. “I got lots of time, ladies,” he said, “but you ain't. Winter's coming.”
Adora dropped her arms. “I haven't any money,” she said in a whisper. “We never found the purse.”
“Tipton! Your mother needs you,” Betha called to the girl, gazing at the swirling water.
“Could you have left it in Laramie?” Lura asked. “I'm just terrible myself about misplacing things.”
“No, I had to borrow money for laudanum and whiskey, and—”
“I didn't know you bought lauda—”
“I couldn't find my purse, remember?” Adora snapped at her approaching daughter.
“When did you have it last?” Betha asked. “Let's go back to that.”
Tipton rolled her eyes. Adora turned to Lura. “I guess when your Matt and Joe left.”
“We were both giving out money that day,” Lura said. “Charles was there, too.”
“I doubt it has anything to do with Charles,” Adora said. She turned to Lura and glared.
“You surely can't think my Matt had anything to do with it. Not Joe either. They're good boys. Don't point your finger at them.”
Such a dirty finger it was, too, Betha thought, dirt all caked beneath the nails She looked at her own. She could plant a garden in the dirt residing there.
“That leaves just one explanation for your lost wealth, Mother,” Tipton said.
Adora frowned, replaced her arms across her chest. “I do believe you're right, if truth be known.” She took one step forward and pressed her long finger against the chest of a very startled Zilah
“Aiee, no!” Zilah said. Her eyes were huge, and she backed up, her bare feet catching on the shredded hem of her dress She pushed Clayton to her side, safe behind her.
They had to find a way past this, Betha thought. She knew that small bites of distrust not spit out would starve them of all they needed to complete this journey. Where was Mazy?
“What's happening?” Suzanne asked. Pig pressed against the woman's leg.
“My mother thinks Zilah took her money,” Tipton said. “It's easier to believe than that her son betrayed her.”
“And we're crossing the Green,” Mazy said, arriving from the back of the line
“On the ferry?” Betha asked hopefully, looking at Adora “On the ferry only if Adora—or someone—pays the ferriage,” Mazy announced “Adora, I don't believe Jeremy ever repaid you the Tipton-watching money, so I'm doing that now, beginning with the six-dollar ferriage. Agreed?”
“Charles wouldn't. I know him,” Adora whined. “Zilah had time. Tipton wasn't watching—”
“Adora? Will you take the money or not?” Mazy said.
“What? Oh yes, I suppose.”
“We can attend to your charge against Zilah later,” Mazy added, pulling coins from her own purse to get their party moving.
“My money would certainly set her up nicely in California,” Adora mumbled as the wagons rolled onto the ferry.
Mazy realized she shouldn't have offered the money to Adora, now that she suspected that the “extra” Jeremy left did not belong to her or to her mother, either.
Too much time to think. That's what the monotony of dusty travel offered up. War had its monotony, that's what Mazy's father once told her, after the glorying turned morbid and real. They were in a war to survive, to endure. But they lacked a rallying force to spur them. Mazy's mouth tasted of grit. Should she endure it or rinse with the putrid water? She questioned everything, even something so basic. After the letter, she questioned most of all what she knew of her husband.
The official-looking missive from the lawyer said he represented Jeremy's brother and his wife. She didn't know Jeremy even had a brother. How could she not have known? It spoke of money, money sent Jeremy to purchase cattle for “their operation.” So Marvel the cow brute might not even belong to her, nor the cows. How had she lived in such a fog beside this man who claimed to love her? Was she blind in what mattered between people? Was she just safer with dogs? Perhaps this was why she didn't form friendships; she misread people. Mazy shook her head Perhaps Tipton was the wisest of them all, just slipping away. Perhaps that was why in her dreams Mazy felt choked and blinded by bees.
And then the second half of the letter—she hadn't even told her mother about that. There was a child, it said. Jeremy's child. Now residing in Oregon.
“If you can't stand something, you'll pass out,” her mother'd once said. Mazy was getting ready to pass out.
Suzanne made her way beside the wagon, the first in the short line. Still the dust billowed up, and their neckerchiefs muffled their words. Wild roses and the last of tiny pink carnations grew as though fed by reddish rocks. Pig walked in service with Suzanne's fingers gripping his harness. Mazy stepped back to check the chickens’ cage. No eggs. When she turned back, the oxen had stalled. She walked to the front to confront a fat rattler. It was bigger than those in Wisconsin, and by now Mazy knew the thing to do was to let it pass, not try to kill it but let it make its way.
“What's the holdup?” Suzanne asked, Pig keeping her back by the chickens.
“Just a snake,” Mazy said. “Take a breath. He's moving on and so will we.”
“I'd feel useful doing it,” Suzanne said when they'd resumed. “Are you listening?”
“We're all so tired,” Mazy said, turning her face toward Suzanne.
“Zilah, Deborah, they all liked it before.”
“You got to speak up so I can hear you over these ox tails swatting at flies,” Elizabeth shouted coming up from behind. “Liked what?”
“The English classes,” Suzanne told her. “I want to resume them, as we walk along. It would destroy the monotony of this trail, if nothing else, and give their fiancés English-speaking wives.”
“Like the classes Sister Esther and her brothers taught with that white-collared man,” Elizabeth said. “Seth something. I remember. What ever happened to him?”
“Went on to Oregon, didn't he?” Mazy said. “Or was it California?”
“South, I suspect. Greater gambles to be had down there,” Elizabeth said.
“We could do it while we walked,” Suzanne said. “Just take a few nails and a little time.”
“Maybe after we cross over this next mountain,” Mazy answered. “Until then, I think we need to conserve everything we
have for that big push.”
“A good challenge has a way of removing tiredness,” Suzanne said. Her mouth turned upward into a smile, revealing dimples Mazy hadnt seen before.
“Only if its met,” Mazy added.
In the evening Jessie begged for cookies, and the boys aided and abetted, as Betha called it, as they made camp in a wide grassy area. Several others heading west had chosen the spot to camp at as well. “You dig the hole and gather up the firewood by the river bank there, I'll see what we can rustle up,” Betha told them. In a day or two, they'd begin the heavy crossing up two miles of steep hill. They needed something homey to nurture them.
“Put your stitching down and help,” Ned told Sarah.
“You don't have to be mean,” Sarah said.
Betha took out her brass matchbox with a boxer dog on the lid. “Go ahead, Sarah,” she said.
Sarah laid her stitchery down, and Betha wondered how she grieved, whether the aching legs the girl complained of in the evenings were somehow related. She'd never complained before her fathers death.
Betha set the fire, and while it burned she gathered up her last eggs from her flour barrel, handling them like fine porcelain. She cracked the eggs into a bowl and forked them, then fluffed them with Mazy s butter. She added sugar and stuck her finger in. “The milk gave it a strong taste,” Betha said quietly so as not to sound complaining.
“Probably all the alkaline water,” Ruth told her. “They may not give much more milk until we reach good grass and water country. Best we enjoy this while we can.”
Flour, dried apples, and raisins went into the batch. The pan set over the trench the boys had dug to be just the right width. Ruth shoved a rifle ramrod into the dirt at an angle. When she pulled it out, the empty shaft formed a natural draft. Just the scent of baked goods drifting over them brought smiles to the bonnet-shaded faces.
Should do more of this, bung a little flavor of the usual to the journey, Betha thought.
The cookie aroma drifted in the breeze.
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