All Together in One Place (33 page)

Sister Esther coughed. Mazy imagined her beside the fire, writing.

Mazy tossed again, pounded the feather pillow. She should write of that, write down what she experienced in this place so foreign without her husband now, without any sense that God still walked beside her Her mind, her body, her emotions, her life of prayer were all disrupted. Writing gave her words to frame the feelings that tumbled and tossed, bumped against memory and mourning, wondering and will. The act of
putting lead to paper by itself had comforted even before she focused on the words of praise, placed prayer notes on the pages. But no more.

She couldn't bring herself to write, to use it as a healing gift. For that would mean she'd have to think of prayer, and prayer was lost, as lost as Jeremy. What was the feeling? She wasn't sure. Confusion? No, betrayal. Not from Jeremy; he was mortal, after all, someone entitled to human error. But God permitted this to happen, allowed the deaths and disappointments. What part of perfection required such disasters? What part of her had failed in prayer? She didn't know, and now she could not ask.

She just wanted to be refreshed, to start over again without losing her place.

Sister Esther began singing, the low song they had sung at the gravesite.

“O Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land!
As on thy highest mount I stand,
I look away across the sea
Where mansions are prepared for me,
And view the shining glory shore—
My heav'n, my home, forevermore.”

Home. The thought of it pulled at Mazy. Home held her happiness, it always had. Happiness settled on some pleasant place, now lost. Tears pooled at her
eyes.
She blinked them away.

Ruth lay on the ground near the stock. She stared up at the stars, so grateful nothing had happened to Clayton. Children were precious, treasured, and fragile. Her own loss came back to her. She sighed She'd pulled blinders on herself, the same kind she used with the horses to keep them from becoming distracted.

What began with Zane as a courtship of joy had moved into pauses: pauses in her conversations, pauses that drifted in like flotsam on the
Ohio River after a summer storm. Pauses she avoided acknowledging. She hadn't wanted to see the bursts of temper her fiancé displayed with a dog who chewed on his shoe or with a green-broke horse that failed to respond to the quick confusion of the big mans instruction.

“Hes just a fervent man—intense,” was how she responded to her fathers concern “He's just nervous about the wedding, the responsibilities,” Ruth told him and believed it herself.

“There's something not right there, Ruth. You're deceiving yourself,” her father said. “Yes, yes, he can keep you in good stead financially. But that's not all there is in a marriage. Little of it, to be exact. Will he be kind, fair, just? Can he be counted on? Those are the questions worth asking”

It was the first of many insights she discounted from those she loved.

She'd planned for Zane's family and her brother, Jed, and his wife, Betha, and their children to arrive for the ceremony; the rush of wedding plans would pass and then all would be well with her and her new husband.

Ruth's family arrived. “My parents send their regrets,” Zane told her. “Illness. My father's sister. They extend their blessing.”

So Zane and Ruth did marry, but all was not well.

When the babies came, then it would be better, when they were settled in, she told herself.

She'd been careful not to voice her worries, not with anyone at all, and when they rose as troubling thoughts and not just anxious irritations, she rubbed them out as carefully as she used the abrasive to correct drawing errors made on the expensive limestone plates. In fact, she no longer drew the pictures that illustrated the news accounts of fires or celebrations. Z. D. Randolph suggested she find other pursuits for such pretty hands.

“It reflects on me, Ruth, that you're not happy as my wife.”

“But I am happy. I love the lithography.”

“Others don't understand,” he said. “And being with all those men
all day, you might find someone more enchanting.” He'd grinned, and she'd been charmed at his insecurity.

Never mind that her days dragged without human bond. Never mind that Zane worked long hours and couldn't often be with her. Never mind that she saw more of the stablehand and housemaids than her husband. When she told him she carried his child, all that changed. His attention to her was complete. “I'm in awe,” he said, rubbing his hands across her abdomen. “And I created it.” He relished her, savored her, spoke of her beauty, her grace as a mother-to-be. Then the babies had come. Twins Ruth turned over and looked at the stars, blinked back the tears of remembrance.

It was afterward that Ruth indulged her love for horses, found them safe and willing listeners. Their discretion unimpeachable, their constancy never failing.

Koda stomped close to her. She heard Jumper nicker and was glad she'd kept the two back. Horses. They'd kept her from insanity after the twins were born. After she came too late to her senses and slept through her young son's death.

The hitching up in the morning took four hours Tempers and time tangled, and midmorning arrived before the wagons began lumbering east. Two parties heading west had already passed by them on the trail while the women struggled with the heavy neck yokes, moving oxen into place and then losing one or two, having to bring them back into the lumbering arc. The animals stomped impatiently; tails swatted at flies as the women took so long to hook the braces shaped liked a smoothed-out letter
U
Help was offered and they'd accepted it, but then those in the westward parties moved on.

In the past, the women had helped husbands or sons, but the men had always assumed the lead, been the ones to give the orders, anticipate the difficulties with the animals or tack.

Adora felt a flash of anger at her husband for having left her. How dare he die and leave her here with these beasts and bugs! She pushed the thought away to concentrate on the mules.

She and Tipton had the only wagons pulled by mules. They were sturdy and made better time than the oxen, which was how she, Hathaway, and Charles had caught up with Tipton and Tyrell. A pang of guilt punched her stomach. Adora grabbed herself and rocked a bit, closing her eyes. She was not a strong person. Others thought she was, but they did not know she played a part. She had always had a leading man to play against; standing alone on life's stage made her feel exposed, as if she were undressing in front of a night candle.

The mid-June morning hung hot and humid, and with the extra effort of harnessing, sweat dribbled down the inside of Adoras corset, dampened her chemise, and wet the drawstrings of her drawers. She dabbed at her forehead with her apron, took a deep breath, then stuck her head in the back of her daughters wagon.

“Tipton, you have got to get up here and help. I cant do this all alone. Zilah is just too inept.”

“I lift harness, Missy Adora,” the girl said, straightening her pointed bamboo hat.

“Yes, youre doing your best, but we need extra hands. To hold the mules steady until we get everything settled. Tipton!”

“I'll be there, Mother ” Her daughters voice sounded dreamy and soft.

“She's had a terrible time, losing two she loved so,” Adora said, then clucked at herself for explaining anything personal to this foreign child. “Perhaps you could drive that wagon again today? I can pay you.”

“In pandowdy like Missy Tipton say, or coin?” Zilah asked.

“Why, whichever one you prefer.”

Suzanne held her son close while she listened to the grunts and heavy breathing of Naomi working beside Mazy to lift the yokes onto Breeze
and Blow. She could hear the clank of wood, the creak of wheels and wagon tongue as all got pulled together and held by smoothed leather.

She could smell everything, hear everything, even imagine how it would feel to touch the leather, the cold, forged rings that kept the oxen attached to the tongue. These were all familiar things, things she'd known, had seen through clear and studied eyes. Bryce had been her guide. He'd described life to her, wind in a hawk's wing, the Missouri River, the look of red bloomers. He used references to objects and events, sights and sounds that she had known before. That was a rare gift in a person, to take something unique and unusual and give it depth and texture for someone who had never been there, never visited in that place It took away the fear

She heard the bells jingle on Claytons feet. She tugged on the rope. He was close. Still, fear wormed back. Even worse were the other feelings that fluttered to the surface, those old songs of incompetence that Bryce had silenced were now given new voice.

“Anger usually isn't the real emotion,” Bryce told her after she'd screamed at him about something. “It comes…it's second, I think. First, there is something else .a loss, some feeling of incompetence. A harsh judgment…we make about ourselves. The loss is too much to bear so we ¨skip over it…go directly to…outrage.”

“Such a philosopher,” she had spit at him. “One who stutters.”

But she had remembered what he said and considered it. So much loss pushed her into anger. And here she sat, while others did her work, chords of unworthiness clanging against the dark.

That's what she was—unworthy. She had been since the day she'd spilled the mercuric chloride in the developing room, had sloshed, slipping and falling, the liquid splashing into her eyes. It had startled her more than pained her at first, then stung. It was useful as an antiseptic, she had heard, so she didn't expect it to really harm. But she couldn't see through it, couldn't find water to rinse her eyes. She expected no one to hear her shouting. She and the baby were alone in their studio, Bryce having gone out to photograph funeral flowers.

Funeral flowers. How ironic. She had photographed and developed hundreds of them for the fine people of Cape Girardeau, but none for her own husband s death.

At Bryce's funeral, she'd been led by someone she barely knew, told where to stand so as not to slip inside the hollow, and laid yellow larkspurs on his body, taking someone else's word that those were what she held.

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.”