No Eye Can See (7 page)

“I've got some,” Lura said, her voice tiny.

“You saving it for something special?” Elizabeth said.

“I was keeping it to trade. When we get to Shasta. It's not something people like to boil down, but they sure like to use it. I wasn't hoarding it. I got to take care of my Mariah, you know, case something happens to her.”

“Go heat some up, and we'll rub it on this leg soon as it's set.”

“It's part of my…investment,” Lura said, hesitating.

“Ma!” Mariah said.

“Oh, all right. I'll get it. Mariah, you help me start a fire quick, so we can melt some down.”

Finally the laudanum did its work and Jessie slept. Ruth's stomach lurched as her daughter jerked with the grinding of bone, but she and Mazy held her steady while Elizabeth and Seth moved the bone back
into place. Lura carried a tin of the warm oil, using her apron as a hot-pad. The liquid reeked, but Elizabeth swore it would keep the leg from stiffening as it healed. Ruth dabbed at the smudge marks left by the wagon wheel, cleaning the leg. Then with huck-toweling Suzanne said had been a tablecloth, they padded the leg then wrapped the bed slats for a splint held with hemp rope. “That'll hold those old thigh bones together,” Elizabeth said as she pushed herself to stand.

“Its a clean break,” Seth said. “Lucky.”

Elizabeth rubbed at her right hip, eyed the skunk oil left in the tin. “Be a couple of months before Jessies ready to walk again. And she's not going to like being bounced around in the wagon, either.” She looked at Ruth, patted her shoulder. “Now don't you be filling yourself with guilt, Ruthie. Be a good learning time for her. We'll find some things to make her giggle in time.”

“It is my fault,” Ruth said, slipping out from beneath the girl's head, folding a blanket under Jessie's neck for support. “I should have taken better care of her.”

“I recall hearing you tell those kids to quit,” Elizabeth said. “She could have fallen off your horse and broke her leg that way, too. Or any of a dozen other things that happen to little tykes. Don't let her put a corset of guilt on you.” She dipped her hands in the water bucket, shook them in the air to dry. “She likes her own way enough as it is. If Jessie finds out she can get what she wants from you by feeding your regret, you'll have a monster on your hands. She'll be trying to convince you or someone else of all kinds of things, telling them they failed her by not bringing her buckets of joy whenever she thinks she deserves ‘em.”

They lifted the girl then, into the wagon, and Ruth tied Koda to the back, prepared to ride beside Jessie.

“I am responsible for her happiness,” Ruth told Elizabeth. “That's the most important work a parent does—for their child,” she added quickly.

“I've been thinking about what you said back there,” Sister Esther told Ruth later as they stood next to each other in the necessary circle. The ring of women, their backs to the center, offered privacy in the treeless land. The Sister missed a front tooth and her
s s
zinged when she spoke. “We are responsible for the…charges, the people, we take on. But I'm not sure providing happiness is the most important task. You must be a good mama to Jessie now that Bethas gone. That means loving her no matter what. But she makes mistakes. She's just a child. She needs forgiveness. You do too.”

“It also means setting limits,” Elizabeth piped in from across the circle. “And teaching a child how to look to her own self for the cause of her goodies and miseries stead of pointing that little finger of hers toward someone else. Lots of close loving will do that, Ruthie. You can do it.”

“Goodness, Mother,” Mazy said, turning to look over her shoulder. “I hope you're speaking of raising up Jessie and not referring to me!”

“If the corset fits, you best wear it.”

They made the desert crossing that preceded the Sierras in “record time,” Seth told them. Now at High Rock, they stood and talked a time before believing they could take the oxen and wagons through such a crevice.

“Seems awful narrow,” Tipton said.

“Just walk in there and see the hub scrapes on the rocks,” Seth said. “How we did it not a month ago. Tight, but negotiable.”

Tipton leaned into the gap, then gazed up into the slit of sky. “No wider than the cleft in a sleigh bell. And so very dark.” She rubbed at her arm.

“My mules will not go in there if its unsafe,” Adora said.

“The darkness is no bother,” Suzanne told them, “if we trust our guide here.”

“Thank you, good woman,” Seth said and bowed slightly at his waist.

“He's curtsying, Auntie, ain't he?” Sarah said. “I thought only girls did that.” The women laughed.

• “Sarah, Sarah,
  

• Pretty as a rose.
  

• Pink on her cheeks.
  

• Oh! So's her nose.”
  

“Why, Seth Forrester, you're a Lord Byron,” Mazy said.

“Are we gonna stand here and recite lines or are we gonna get this over with?” Ruth said.

Lura Schmidtke piped in, “I hate narrow places.”

“I hate bad poets,” Ruth said.

“Best we head through, then,” Mazy said. “Either that or turn back.”

“We'll go first,” Adora told them.

“We will?” Tipton said.

“No need to be troubled, daughter. Your mother's right here, and if our mules say it's all right, then the rest of you can make it just fine.”

Sounds jangled against her ears. Claytons bell jingling. Mariah calling in the distance, the young voice in a singsong pattern. “I can see you behind that rock, Clayton. I can see you.”

Suzanne heard her son laugh and felt a twinge of envy that just knowing he was seen could bring such pleasure to him. She wished she could do that for him, make him laugh and feel known. Would she ever?

It didn't seem he spoke as often as he had before that accident some months back when Mariah hadn't seen him wander up behind her horse. He'd been kicked in the side of his head. After that, they'd all agreed—he must wear a bell to be kept track of. Still, everyone said he was doing just fine, that it was just her imagination that he didn't speak as much. She felt patted on her head when she raised an issue about her children. Everyone acted as though they knew better, as though being blind made her dense as well.

She adjusted Sason in the cradle Elizabeth had fashioned for her to carry on her back even though Adora said it looked “heathen and disgusting.”

“Just like that Pawnee Silver Bells had for her little one,” Elizabeth defended. “Not so fancy, though. We got to use what we have. That shawl, some ropes.” It allowed her to vary carrying him from the shawl at her breast. Walking felt less cumbersome with the boy on her back. Everything felt cumbersome.

Zilah's death had stolen her way out, her way to live without being inside someone's control. The Celestial would have followed orders, not given them, the way Adora did, telling her how to carry her child! Even Mazy's voice sometimes suggested Suzanne made less than admirable choices with her boys.

“Let me feed Clayton,” Mazy'd said just that morning. “He's barely gotten a bite of biscuit. Can you tell? I think he's awfully thin.”

The Wilson mules twitched their ears as they entered the narrow gap. Wary, Tipton thought. The walls seemed to close in on them. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears; her breath came in quick gulps. Her skin tingled. The clatter of harness and tongues, the crunch of wheels of the wagons behind them, all worked to distract her. Her arm was numb.

“Maybe I should drive. You want me to? I can drive,” her mother babbled.

Tipton shook her head. She couldn't speak. The place felt closed in, the change in temperature from hot to cool made her hands clammy. The reins jerked, strained at the rig. The mules must have smelled the dampness, knew water was nearby. She had to hold on. A scraping sound, then, of wooden hubs against rock.

“Oh, oh,” her mother wailed, the sound echoed. “We'll be stuck. We'll never get out!”

“Quiet!” Tipton ordered. The mules stopped then, backed up. She heard the “whoas” from those behind, the mooing of oxen and cows. She felt the wagon rock. “Whoa, whoa,” she said. The mules stopped long enough for her to hold the lines with one hand while she wiped her damp palm on her skirt.

“What are you waiting for? Get us out of here!” Adora wailed.

You just got to keep going,
Tyrellie, her fiancé, had told her.
Dont get scattered in your thinking when things get tough. You can do what you need to. Just remember, you aren't ever ahne. Someone eke can see what you cant. Just trust.
She mustn't get distracted. She must never tell herself she can't. She'd stopped dipping into laudanum as a way to escape. She could stop the rising panic now.

She'd head for Seth's tall hat in front. He was nearly to the edge of the chasm, nearly to the light. Tipton took a deep breath and pressed the reins so the mules moved enough to set the wheels straight in the narrow cleft. She focused ahead then, between the ears of the two teams of mules.

“Gee!” she shouted and slapped the reins. The wagon rattled forward while Tipton ignored the pitiful mewing sounds coming from her mother.

When the mules hit the light and the opening, they spurted forward, but Tipton held them steady, her arms aching with the strain. She wanted to shout for joy at the open space. She felt a huge grin forming on her sweaty face.

“Oh, thank the Lord, amen!” her mother said, fanning a handkerchief,
dabbing at her throat.
Yes, indeed,
thought Tipton as she headed the wagon toward a spring Seth directed her to.

She nodded to him as they rattled past. And when he swept his white hat from his head and held it at his chest saying, “Ma'am,” she took it as the highest form of praise.