No Eye Can See

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  Suzanne couldn't remember a night like this one. She lay on the mattress stuffed with cornhusks, thinking when she got home—wherever that was—she might try what Naomi had suggested, using buckwheat hulls. The husks pressed dust out through the linen. Did that make her cough? No, probably the strain on her voice, singing so long, so many nights and often afternoons, too, in a row. She felt Claytons gentle intake and release of breath beside her. She brushed his head with her hands, remembering the color of his hair.

  Claytons bandaged hand lay on her stomach. He slept hard. She wished she could. Even hours after the performances she'd lie awake, partly still taking in the adulation; partly from the raucous noises that kept on through the night, card games and arguments she could hear in the distance. If a town had no tent or structure they called a hotel, they always pulled up and camped at the outskirts. Not so far out as to invite trouble. They were, after all, just women and children. But far enough out to feel safe.

  The fatigue must have been adding to her restlessness, she decided. Without sleep she couldn't regain what she needed for the day, gave up too much, and then couldn't get refreshed. When had she last felt refreshed? At Tipton's wedding, when everyone was there, together, and she felt a part of something worthy and worthwhile. A good mother who had kept her children safe despite a fire, despite her blindness, who had a new goal. She'd listened to Ned sing. She'd shared in Tipton's joy. What had she done to empty that fullness?

  She lifted Clayton's arm with her hands. She heard him moan, then settle back into his sleep.

  Suzanne eased her way out from beneath him, stood, checked Sason, too. He slept still in an overhanging hammock. He'd passed his first birthday. Soon he'd be just too big for that swing. Pig must have lifted his head because she heard his collar jangle. “It's all right,” she whispered, smoothing the silky head with the back of her hand. She heard the dogs tail pound against the wagons floor. She patted for the troubadour harp. The playing—just for herself—would be soothing, the song a soulful prayer.

  It was what she was doing when she heard the sound of a horse, a rider, coming in. She stopped, her heart moving faster. That persistent miner? Who? Whoever it was pulled up, called out just as Pig bounded out of the wagon.

  “Hey, there! Whoa, Chance, no! Wait.”

  Pig slobbered and barked low. Another dog barked and growled. The snarl of struggle over territory enough to wake the dead

  “Call off the dog! Please, I need help,” a man shouted. “I have a baby here. Chance. No!” A baby whimpered.

  “Pig! Down!” she commanded from behind the wagons canvas. The commotion finally came to a stop. An infant cried, then rustling sounds from Lura's tent where she and Ned and Mariah slept.

  “Please,” the mans voice said. “I'm looking for the women, the entertainers. Was that you, playing the harp? I need help. For my boy.”

  “Whatever are you talking about, young man?” Lura said. Suzanne could imagine her in a nightcap and gown, a lantern held high to see what was happening before her.

  “My boy, Ben, somethings happened to his mother. I've got to find her. I can't take the boy. Can you look after him? My name is David Taylor. I'm a driver for the stage line. I'm reliable, you can check on me. I'll come back for him; I just need a safe place for him. Now.”

  “What is it, Ma?” Mariah awoke.

  “A crazed one wanting something for nothing,” Lura said. “Kind of a yappy little dog you got there. Your boy looks Indian. You kidnapped him?”

  “No ma'am, no. I can pay,” he said.

  “How much were you thinking about?”

  Suzanne interrupted the negotiations with her command. “Pig. Come. Step.” She heard scraping, hoped the dog pushed the box with his nose so she could step out of the wagon onto it. She felt with her bare toes and stepped down, the dog close by her side now.

  “Sorry for the intrusion, ma'am,” he said as Clayton awoke, came crying to the back of the wagon box. That caused Sason to begin to wail and the man's baby, too, and then the man's dog began his yip-yip bark. Pig growled low.

  Mariah darted past her—she could tell by the scent of the girl—and went inside, apparently to comfort Sason and Clayton. Suzanne turned, patted the wagon box behind her for Clayton, touched him though he still wailed.

  “My boy, Ben,” the man said, desperation in his voice.

  “Of course we'll keep him,” Suzanne said.

  Suzanne felt movement beside her and she reached out, expecting the man to hand her his child for safekeeping. Only cool silence filled the space between her arms.

  The man almost whispered, “You…you're blind, ma'am? Out here with little ones? Oh, I can't.

  It was in that moment of an empty place inside her arms that Suzanne truly accepted, truly understood her limitations.

  “We'll look after him,” Lura said. “Just what were you thinking would be fair?”

  “You can't charge the man when he's in such need,” Suzanne said. “We have the ability to help him, and to make him pay for it—when it would be easy for us to give—that would be sinful.”

  “Listen,” Lura said. “Mariah can't be looking after all these kids without compensation. You're not able to do it for yourself. Now, you know that's true. You pay with your earnings, so this man's being treated same as you. Not sinful at all. You won't even give us a figure?” Lura said. “That's what gold country's all about, bargain or bribe or do without.”

  Suzanne blinked back tears. She felt Mariah step into the wagon box, heard Claytons little feet pat back inside. “Let me help you,” she said to David Taylor, “please.”

  She so hoped he heard generosity offered, not pleading in her voice.

  “Ma am,” he said. “My thanks, but this isn't the best place for my boy. It'd be a crime, me adding to your troubles.”

  She could tell he was Mazy's height, and the worry in his voice told her he was desperately in need and not unkind. And yet his words cut her as cleanly as one of Luras newly sharpened knives.

  His voice sounded as though he'd turned away. “Got to get help for Ben. Get help.”

  “Wait,” Suzanne raised her voice to him. “I know someone. In Shasta. She runs the Popover Bakery. Elizabeth Mueller. You look for her. Good with children, kind. You can trust her. She has a helper named Sarah who once helped me. Your boy'll be safe. Trust me. Tell her Suzanne Cullver sent you.”

  Silence met her act of generosity. He would never know how much it cost her to send him to someone more…capable.

  “Thanks,” he said at last. “Elizabeth Mueller. Thanks a lot.”

  He rode off, and Suzanne listened until she couldn't hear the hooves. He'd known in an instant what it had taken her months to discover, and finally accept: she could not help him until she truly helped herself. She could not care for his child when she could not protect her own.

  Ruth missed them. She missed seeing Ned's little cowlick early in the mornings, watching him try to flatten it with spit and his hand. She missed the splash and squeals as Sarah stepped into tepid water in the bath barrel, always the last one to use up what little water her siblings had left. Even Jason she missed, having squelched his questions and sent him to spend time with Matthew or Joe, Seth and Mazy. She was in their lives, but had never really been present.

  Most of all, she hungered for Jessie, for her sass and challenge. Jessie was just curious, as curious as a raccoon left alone in the cabin. She had her thoughtful ways, she did. Like her care for Miss Kitty, the striped cat, and her nudges to Ned to lead the table grace they d begun singing after they moved into the cabin on Poverty Flat.

  She wanted all of them around, even if it did make life less than ordered, did challenge the meaning of harmony. Didn't harmony have something to do with balance? Her life was out of balance, that's what it was. She stood in the middle of the cabin she'd kept from becoming a home.

  Mazy was right. How could the children realize how much she valued them? She'd held back not because of their bad behavi
or but because of her own—her own fears of unworthiness, of being sent away. And so she'd left first.

  If Jessie came home… no, when she did, she'd tell them the truth. Jessie had to come back. She had to! To keep torturing her, Zane would dribble information to her, pound at her powerlessness to make her insane. To become what he was, had become. And when he did, he would leave clues. Just one clue was all she needed to find her child. She combed the backyard for clues, rode a wider and wider circle, reading tracks or signs. But nothing.

  And yet Ruth believed she would find Jessie. Her friends would help, and the children. And when she did, she would tell them all the truth. There would be no secrets. Secrets just ate away at a family, chewed on the core of things, kept people distracted from what ought to matter, the loving and care for each other. It had taken her this year to see that, maybe the arrival of Matthew—a man who adored his sister, who loved his mother. It had taken that to change her vision; that, and the disappearance of her daughter.

  Ruth, who liked justice and truth, didn't like to put a slant on things, was doing just that with her very own child, with all of her children. There would be risks in the telling. Jessie might scream at her to go away, that she didn't want her to be her mother, that Betha was the mother she loved. And Sarah and the boys could hold her accountable for their parents’ deaths—coming west to help her stay ahead of a husband just released from jail. That was a risk she'd face, stepping into this wilderness of relationships.

  She would tell them anyway. And let them know that their parents had loved Jessie enough to risk all for her, to keep her from someone dreadful. Families did that for each other when they saw danger. They listened, they grieved, they sacrificed, and they acted. That was what their parents had done, and that was what she had done for Jessie all those years ago.

  And out of that grieving and aching, came meaning. Out of those stories that she had stifled when the children asked, out of those memories came meaning.

  She'd tell them and then they'd have a real family, a real settling in. She'd add on to the cabin. Maybe Matthew would stay on to help. They'd make a life here, not just drift through it. She would tell them, the firmness and focus of her decision giving her relief, filling her up almost as much as the ride on Koda did each morning, rides that since Jessie's disappearance left her empty and hungry for more. She looked again at the lithograph.

  She'd been a fool to think she could run from her past. She needed to face it.

  What had Sister Esther said hearth meant? From the word focus, the center of the home. It wasn't only lineage that bound people, but experience and walking together, building a hearth, having a focus, together.

  She'd tell them all when Jessie got back. Jessie just had to come back. Her child just had to come home.

  Ruth headed for the barn then, mending her heart with that prayer.

  19

  David Taylor knew his eyes looked red. His face felt drawn and haggard, and he hoped he wouldn't frighten Elizabeth Mueller when he knocked at the Popover Bakery's back door.

  He hoped Elizabeth Mueller had kind eyes, compassionate, too, and was curious without being a gossip. The kind of older person not yet willing to let down and just wait to die.

  The word die made him press the horse faster. The animal had done well even though now its head hung low. Travel back to the cabin then to the entertainers, and then here, had taken its toll. What if Oltipa was dead? He couldn't let himself think that. Randolph wouldn't have left a note. He'd sell Oltipa, be losing money if he didn't. The auction! Sacramento was the closest. That was probably where he was headed, south. But he might choose The Dalles's auction block just because it was farther away. He had to find her trail. Just as soon as Ben was settled, he'd go back and check the tracks, see if Zane and Oltipa headed south. That was his plan, and it kept his head clear, forced back the bile that rose in his throat each time he let his mind say how hopeless this was, how he'd probably never see Oltipa again. He shook his head, spoke out loud to himself: “Don't think that. Just keep your head. Just keep your head.”

  If only the entertainers had been more satisfactory. The blind woman was kind enough, he could see that, but she looked as tired as he felt. The way her shoulders sagged when her arms went up for Ben and he'd refused to hand him over made his heart ache. But the younger girl was doing all the running after the babies and it seemed to him her mother was more concerned about adding to her purse than what her daughter was about. He hated to see how the kind woman interpreted his decision, but he couldn't leave her with yet another child. The boy had a bandage on his hand, both of them sobbing. It just wouldn't be safe. “Would it?” he said to the dog whose head panted out from his vest.

  The sun rose as they came down the Red Bluff road into town. People were already up and working. Packers unloading, masons stacking bricks and rocks. Expanding, more people moving into Shasta than anyone ever imagined. Why, they had so many people now they'd set aside plots for cemeteries. They were up to four, not counting the Chinese one. David heard the Chinese kept the bodies there just until they had money enough to send the bones back to China. Even in death, people wanted to just go home. Even in death. He shivered, not liking the train of his thoughts.

  He tied the horse at the hitching rail, then picked up the basket with Ben. “You stay here, Chance,” he said and walked around to the back. The ground was wet, the springs that had first caught the founder's attention seeping out no matter the rainfall or the weather. A butcher shop next door had expanded a cave and kept the meats there, cooled by the water and rocks. He eased the baby over the sluice-boxlike arrangement taking fresh water into the hotel next door.

  He jumped over a muddy spot and took the steps two at a time, Ben still in tow. He wiped his boots on the backs of his calves, smoothed back his hair. He took a deep breath, knocked on the door, opened it.

  “Mrs. Mueller? Are you in here?”

  From a small room that must have been a pantry, the woman came out carrying a clay crock. She set it down on the floor with a grunt. “Kraut,” she said. “I love it.”

  David moved the basket carrying Ben from one hand to the other.

  “What can I do for you? Fresh bread?”

  “Fm David Taylor.”

  “And this is?”

  “Ben,” he said, lifting the basket to her eye level. “Suzanne Cullver said you'd help me, with my boy. Look after him. Just a short time.”

  “Well, he's a cutie, all that black hair and those pretty brown eyes.” She leaned toward Ben, but not too close or too fast.

  “He's a little over six months old. He's an easy keeper. Likes balls and dogs. His dog's outside. I could bring him in.” He set the basket on the table.

  “Why would you want to do that?” she asked, eyeing him with curiosity.

  “Just to make it easier for you to keep him, Mrs. Mueller. Elizabeth.” His words rushed now, he couldn't slow them. “I need you for more than just an hour. Might be weeks. His mother, something's happened. She's a Wintu. A man bought her last year at one of the Sacramento auctions and I, well, I helped her escape. Fm paying it off, so it wasn't like I cheated him. But he isn't a good man. And he's taken her. He left Ben, just left him at the cabin. If the dog hadn't come after me, I wouldn't have gone back for a week. Bend have.

  He swallowed, his nose stung with welled-up tears at the thought of the slim and fragile distance between life and death, between turning back and keeping on. The image of Ben left alone squeezed at him, threatened to take his breath. “He's not my boy, Mrs. Mueller, just hers, but I signed on to help her out those months ago, and Fm responsible now. They're like my…family. I didn't find a good way to deal with the man.”

  Elizabeth came to him, patted his hand. He realized then that his shoulders had dropped with the ache of fatigue and worry and wondering if this woman would be right for Ben, do right for them. Elizabeth put her hands, palms out, to the boy. As she did, he saw that they were pink as a baby's tongue. Smooth, too.
He wondered why he noticed. Maybe to keep from letting what he felt come rolling up and out.

  Ben kicked in his basket chair, cooed and babbled, reached out his arms. David bent to loosen the tie that held him in, lifted him out. Good. The boy felt safe with her.

  “Been through a wilderness, have you?” Elizabeth said, lifting the boy from his basket. She bounced him gently, ran her hands through his hair dampened in dark strands stuck to his forehead. “Maybe it's all a mistake,” she said. “Maybe your mama stayed out later than planned and—”

  “She wouldn't have left him alone. Not crying, sobbing on the floor like he was. Not unless she was made to. And my dog was shot at too. Will you keep him?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “Thanks. Thanks. Look, I've got to get back, to pick up their trail.”

  “Any idea who? Why?”

  David pulled the paper from his pocket, used the move to wipe at his eyes with his thumbs. He handed it to her. “He left this.”

  Elizabeth read the words. “He says possessions,’ like he had more than one. Know what that means?” She handed it back to David, still patting Ben's bottom. “Did he mean to take the baby and then change his mind?”

  David shook his head. “I don't know. I only know he took her and if he doesn't hide her in some remote place, then he's headed to a major auction site. Sacramento, San Francisco, or The Dalles.”

  “Be good to change that law.” She turned to the baby then, wrinkled her nose. “And we've got to get you a change too.” She lifted his hair with the back of her fingers and frowned. “That's an ugly swelling forming at his temple there,” she said. “I know for certain babies won't bruise on their own.”

  “You see the kind of man I'm dealing with here? Ben needs a safe place. I'll pay you back, I will.”

  “No need to worry over that. You just do what you got to.”

  He bent his head to the boys and rubbed. “You be good now for Elizabeth. I'll be back just as soon as I can.”