No Eye Can See

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “This good place,” she told him.

  “Yeah…just with the fever against Indians growing instead of getting better, I worry about you being way out here, other cabins so far away.”

  David lifted the boy onto his shoulders, the dog scratching at his legs. “Way the Courier tells, it doesn't look good for your people. Talking removal to reservations, but they're acting like they don't want any of you left to move. Worries me, someone coming and just taking you when I'm not here.”

  She nodded once in that way she had, took the boy and set him on the floor with the dog now licking his face. She turned and finished putting food into a sack, and David realized again how much he liked knowing her, what a gift she and the boy had given him by allowing his help. With the horse, she could leave anytime she chose, but she hadn't. He didn't think she'd ever ridden the eight miles or so down from this claim in Mad Mule Canyon into Shasta. Maybe she knew it wasn't safe out there for her. She was safe at home.

  Home. He wondered how his father had ever left his mother in Oregon and come south, thought to make a home for her but without her. He didn't think he could do that.

  He lifted Ben to her, felt Oltipa's hands brush his as he did. Her eyes met his, and he felt filled to the brim, warm to his fingertips, knowing someone waited for him at the end of a run, even if it was a woman whom he'd never even kissed and a fat baby who wasn't even his.

  He kissed Ben on the head and held him out to his mother. He planned to pick up his saddle pack. But Oltipa changed that. She held the boy between them, then shifted him to her hip. She moved herself closer to him, nothing but her calico dress and his plaid shirt separating them. She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him. “Come back, David Taylor,” she said.

  “Well, sure, I'll do that,” he told her, his face feeling hotter than it ought.

  She smiled at him then, and in that instant David knew why he bought her presents, why she always filled his mind.

  While Wood and Tomlinson won a six-hundred-dollar bet by being the first to rebuild their burned-up store—Tipton planned her wedding. Two weeks it took those men to put up two stories of bricks, roof it, build, then stock the shelves. The rest of the burned district wasn't far behind, a clear message to all in California that with money as the motivation, anything could be accomplished.

  Tipton developed a headache the day of the fire that hadn't gone away. Elizabeth suggested pepper on a slice of potato wrapped around her forehead. It didn't do a thing. That morning, she found Seth's stash of peach brandy and sipped some, just to settle her nerves. Medicinal.

  It was all happening so fast, so many people around all the time, so much planning and changing and leaving, all pushing forward without really much of her needed at all. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, felt steadier. It certainly wasn't something she needed, Seth's brandy. But it did help, with the wedding just hours away. She slipped the flask back into his pack, then walked a short distance from where the men had been sleeping under the line of trees. The garden was over that way, at the lip of the meadow, just beyond Ruth's house. Pig chased at birds near the creek. They'd all rendezvoused at Ruth's. That was what Nehemiah called it, as though they were all beaver trappers coming together for a celebration. She wondered if he realized those events were centered around trapping more than celebration. She looked at her nails. She'd been chewing them, and she pinched her fingers into her palms, hoping no one would notice. She bent as though to check on the garden's growth. Mazy had latched onto one of the first pack loads to arrive after the fire. Sure enough, there'd been seeds and starts aplenty, and she'd planted them the same day. No sign of activity in those rows yet, but there would be. She wondered if there'd be a garden plot on their land, the land Nehemiah said they'd go to. She'd never lived outside a town— except for the time on the trail. She wasn't sure where she fit in. Wasn't sure she wanted to. “Think on the good things,” Tyrellie always said. She was helping her mother; this marriage would surely help her mother.

  “You're looking like a waiting bride,” Lura told her, meeting up with Tipton beside the house. Lura walked with her arm at Tipton's waist. They moved slowly back toward where Ruth bent, helping Elizabeth put food on the planks of lumber set on sawhorses that made up the outside table. “Wont be long and my Mariah'll be putting on that dress of marriage.” Lura sighed. “Got any advice for her, something I should tell her? What to look for in a western man? You re the first of our little trail to take a western husband.”

  “Mei-Ling and Naomi were first,” Tipton reminded her. “Though Esther said it took extra time to locate Naomi's husband. I guess I liked Nehemiah's hands best,” Tipton said. Everyone laughed.

  “We are attracted to strange things,” Lura said. “Now me, I like a man with a sense of humor. My Antone, he could make me laugh. He didn't do it much, mind you, after we married, but it was his laugh I noticed first.”

  “Marriage isn't a laughing matter,” Ruth said. She set a platter of biscuits near the edge to keep the breeze from lifting the tablecloth. Mariah brought out pitchers of sun tea.

  Elizabeth said, “It can be.”

  “And I like his beard,” Tipton added.

  Lura nodded, chewed on a smokeless pipe.

  Tipton knew she spoke of meaningless things, as though those were all her mind could hold. Maybe it was having nearly everyone right there all the time, all mushed into Ruth's house. Maybe it was knowing that this was the last day of her life as a…girl, as a woman not dependent on a father or brother—not dependent on herself. A sudden tightness seized her chest.

  She had hated the work of the laundry, but now what she'd done there took on bigger proportions. She'd taken care of herself. It made her want to cry, the changes. Everything made her want to cry. The smell of the pines, the sight of the calves, the scorched quilt pieces Elizabeth kept piled in the corner. No one understood it, least of all her mother. They all just looked at her with big cow eyes, as though this was what happened to a woman on her wedding day, the bride got all addled and strange. She had to button up, to pull herself together, to be firm about this decision. It was done. It was made. She had made it. She ran her tongue over her lips, remembered the strength she could draw from the taste of the peach brandy.

  “Tyrellie had wide hands too,” she said. Her lower lip quivered.

  “A craftsman's hands,” Elizabeth said, patting her shoulder. “A good thing to remember.”

  “Not necessarily a good predictor of a husband,” Adora said. “And you better be thinking of your new fiancé stead of your old one.”

  “It was a year ago last week he died. He could make things—and made things happen,” Tip ton said.

  “A year passed,” Mazy said. “So long ago and yet it feels like yesterday.”

  “Don't go getting morbid, Mazy. Can't think about back then. Nehemiah'll make things happen. He did here in Shasta,” Adora said.

  “Don't you miss Papa?” Tipton asked.

  Adora looked away. “ ‘Course I do. Too many years together not to. But life moves on. You need to too.” She fussed at the tucks on Tip ton's dress, gave her daughter a peck on her cheek. “It'll be all right.”

  Tipton nodded, straightened, and took a deep breath. “I have a secret to share,” she said.

  “Won't be much of a secret if you tell all of us,” Ruth said.

  “Nehemiah won't mind. He's going to run for senator in a year or so. First from the district to the state legislature but then eventually, from California, to the United States of America. That's what he told me. He said he'll need a wife to stand beside him.”

  “Should be a lawyer or a judge first.” Lura said. “Or a sheriff. That's the election to win. Sheriffs appoint the jurors.” She jabbed the air with her pipe. “That's why lawyers do so well. They get to know the sheriff, stack the jury, and they always win their cases.”

  “You'll have to share him with a lot of people if he becomes a senator,” Ruth told her. “Are you ready to stay at home al
one while your husband travels and mingles?”

  Tiptons voice quivered as she continued, “I'll go with him.” She clasped her hands so the heavy ring she wore glittered in the afternoon light. “I know how to deal with strong feelings. I've grown quite a bit at that.”

  “With your mother beside you, there'll be lots to do when Nehemiah isn't about, won't there, dear?” Adora said. “A mother just never loses her influence.”

  Reverend Hill and Nehemiah arrived along with a copy of the Shasta Courier carrying news that Main Street was now widened to one hundred ten feet. “Paper must be operating out of a tent to get an issue out so fast. Look, Ruth,” Mazy said. “The editors used a lithograph. Do you ever miss doing that work?”

  Ruth shrugged. “Sometimes. It was my first love. Well, after horses.”

  “Oh,” Mariah said. “We forgot. A man came by, Ruth. That day you left me and Jessie here. The day of the fire. He was looking for horses. And he came right inside the house. Jessie pointed your pistol at him ‘til we knew he was safe.”

  “You promised not to tell.”

  “You shouldn't be handling my pistol,” Ruth said.

  “I didn't like him,” Jessie said. “Even if he was your friend, Aunt Suzanne.”

  “My friend? Wesley? How odd.”

  “He said he'd come back when your other horses got here.” Mariah bit at the edge of her finger. “It was scary, him just walking in.”

  “It's the bride who's supposed to be shaky,” Adora said. “You getting sick, Ruth?”

  “If I ever leave you alone, any of you again, you bar the door from the inside, you hear? Didn't I tell you that? Didn't I? I'm just no good at this, I'm just not!” She walked backward, then turned and ran to the barn.

  Tipton said, “I don't think I've ever seen Ruth cry before.”

  “Oh, people always cry at weddings,” her mother said. “You will too.

  Nehemiah also brought the mail, and in it came a long-awaited letter from Sister Esther.

  “Should we read it before or after the ceremony?” Mazy asked.

  “Ernest isn't here yet with the ring,” Nehemiah said, looking toward the road. “So we can't begin. Go ahead and read it.”

  “She'll tell us all how Mei-Ling and Naomi are,” Sarah said. “And look, a quilt square. Oh, two.” She picked up what rolled to the floor when she opened the package. “Shouldn't there be three?”

  Esther's quilt square was the obvious one. An “appliquéd piece,” Mazy called it, cut out patterns stitched on top of each other. “She's placed two graves under a circle of sun,” Tipton said.

  “Her brothers,” Suzanne said quietly.

  “Could stand for all we've lost,” Elizabeth said.

  “But she also has tiny women with bonnets bent over the graves, and a dog lying next to one headstone,” Mazy said. “It's really quite well done.”

  Mei-Ling had composed a square of bees made with French knots of black thread. They flew over a green bowl with a red dragon sprawling around it.

  Mei-Ling wanted the bowl to be for Naomi as well Sister Esther wrote. She always kept her herbs in a green bowl Green is the color of pros-perity, though I am not sure I approve of such pagan thinking The tiny “v” in the corner is for Zilah—Chou-Jou. It stands for a bat, which she said means good luck and wisdom, too.

  A murmur of reminiscing filled the June air. Mazy read ahead. “Oh,” she whispered, her voice hushed, which stopped the women's talking like a hand over their mouths.

  “What is it?” Seth asked.

  She blinked up at him. “Just mention of some trouble with Naomis new husband. Esthers had almost no contact. Apparently he…mistreats her.” She glanced at Tipton. “I'm sure it'll be fine.”

  Mazy read on. “Esthers working as a cleaning woman in a performing theater late at night. She works days, too, putting all she can into repaying the debts of the lost Celestials.”

  Lura said, “She might make more cleaning up in one of the saloons. The gold dust catches in the floorboards. Little nuggets do too. I did right well, ‘til the fire, sweeping up in addition to the banking.”

  “Sister Esther treated those girls like her own family,” Mazy said, looking up. “It must be awful for her. And to work around actors and musicians.”

  “Those folks got paid right well too,” Lura said. “Especially the women. There's lots of choices for enterprising souls. Nehemiah, if you ever mistreat Tipton, she can—”

  “Oh, thank goodness. Here's the best man,” Mazy said as she redirected the girl's startled look.

  Ruth knew she should rejoin the group, but the sense of “family” gathered out there pierced her. That Jessie. Handling her pistol. And Suzanne's choosing a friend with such poor judgment. That troubled her too. What worked best was to live alone. That was what she'd done the years Zane was imprisoned, and now she knew why.

  But there they all were. In her yard. For a wedding. She sighed and walked back from the barn. Mazy met her and squeezed her shoulder with one arm, pulling her close. She filled Ruth in on what she'd missed as Ruth dabbed at her red eyes.

  “My daughter needs to have a joyous time,” they heard Adora say as they approached the group gathered in the shade. Blue and white lupines dotted the low hills around them. “If truth be known, such a day is every mother's dream from the moment a daughter is born, isn't that so?”

  Heads nodded, and Ruth wondered again what was wrong with her that when she gave birth to her daughter, the last thing she thought of was planning the child's marriage. She had never been a proper mother, never would be.

  “Ned, you're going to sing for us, I hear,” Mazy said, a little too cheerily for Ruth's ears.

  The boy nodded. “Morning Has Broken,” he said and smiled at Ruth. How could they be so sweet and yet be so difficult to raise? Ruth wondered.

  After he sang, Preacher Hill—whose church had burned to the ground—cleared his throat, and everyone moved forward to circle the marriage couple. Tipton had asked her mother to serve as her attendant, and Nehemiah's man was Ernest the silversmith.

  Tipton Wilson became Mrs. Nehemiah Kossuth, saying the vows and hesitating only once—on the word obey. Ruth wasn't the only woman who smiled wistfully at her stumbling. Then Nehemiah placed a silver band on her finger.

  Tipton wore a white dress with a ribbon of blue at her throat and ivy Mariah had woven through the yellow braid of her hair piled high on her head. She carried a small white Bible with a blue ribbon marker she said later was set at Corinthians.

  “Where ever did you find it?” Suzanne asked her, her graceful fingers lifting the layers of lace after the brief ceremony. “Who did you get to make something so intricate so quickly?”

  “Mama sent it with me when I left Wisconsin,” Tipton said. The girl gazed at her mother in a look Ruth would've described as adoration. “She made sure it was one of the…essentials when we had to sort things on the trail.” She touched her fingers to her mouth to cover a giggle, the way Mei-Ling often had. She hiccuped.

  “Kept it in the trunk that got carried out first from the fire,” Adora said. “If truth be known, I'd rather we saved it than any other thing. Nothings more essential than a daughters wedding day.”

  Elizabeth—despite the throbbing of her hands—had earlier in the day directed the other women in preparing the wedding feast. And then she herself had stirred the white cake, the brown age spots on the back of her hand looking like a single fluid line from the speed of her stirring. After the couple was married, they cut the cake and served it with glasses of milk—compliments of Mazy's cows.

  When everyone had eaten, Suzanne said, cake crumbs scattering down her front without her notice, “In Michigan, a couple is shivareed on their wedding night. People ring bells and blow horns and whistles and hit pans and kettles,” she said, “and keep it up until they're invited in for cake and lemonade or whatever is left to drink.”

  “Wont be necessary here,” Ruth said. “The bride and groom are sleeping on the
floor surrounded by all of us. And these kids and Pig'll keep the noise up all night without whistles being blown.”

  “I think we'll take a spot beneath a tree,” Nehemiah said. “Let the sky and coyotes shivaree us. In the morning, Tipton, we'll head home.”

  “Let's have one last song,” Elizabeth said. She dabbed at her cheeks with a linen napkin. “Send you off to music. Suzanne? I'll get your harp.”

  To Suzanne's accompaniment, Ned sang “Home Sweet Home,” and people slowly joined in the way stars fill up a night sky, taking empty dark to a corner of comfort. Jessie came to stand beside Ruth. The child looked up as she dabbed at her eyes, and then leaned against her. The touch of the girl both startled and soothed her. What was she going to do with this child?

  “What did you think of the wedding?” Seth asked Mazy. They walked through the meadow, Seth and Mazy and the children, even Jessie, herding the cows toward the barn for their nightly milking. Considering his question, Mazy watched the older children raise bugs in the meadow grass.

  “Women usually put that thought to men,” she said. When he didn't answer she added, “I thought it was lovely; Tipton did seem a bit distracted. Maybe the unhappy talk about Naomi…I shouldn't have read that part out loud.”

  “She's been into my peach brandy,” he said.

  “Why'd you bring that with you?” Mazy asked.

  “Medicinal,” he told her.

  “I'm sure.”

  “Mazy turns the tables,

  Faster than an otter.

  Talk about a wedding,

  She'll tell you what you oughter.”

  “That's a terrible rhyme,” Mazy told him.

  “But true. Look. You've had time to settle in, put down roots, and you haven't. Now with your rooms gone to fire…” he coughed. “I'm not doing this well. Why don't we just get married?” He stood in front of her, lifted her chin to him. “We'll build ourselves a place. On a good chunk of ground. I've been thinking I'd like that. Now as ever. I might even learn to milk.”