The Ballad of Lucy Whipple (6 page)

Mama asked at supper, "Where's Butte, girl?"

"Gall me Lucy?"

Mama frowned and said nothing.

"He's helping French Pete tote some supplies to Rocky Bar. He'll be back tomorrow," I said, looking down at my lap. I was of the opinion that lying was a bad thing to do and cautioned Prairie and Sierra always to tell the truth. But these were desperate circumstances, and money for Massachusetts was on the line, so I lied but looked at my lap in preference to meeting Mama's eyes.

The ugly boarder who was probably Rattlesnake Jake gave me his fishy cold stare but said nothing.

By next morning the rain had become a storm with thunder and lightning and a mighty wind that put me in mind of
The Swiss Family Robinson.
Mr. Coogan put on his boots and his fur-lined coat with the beaver collar and went out anyway. I stayed behind to wait for the deputy, but neither the boarder nor Butte came back that day.

The storm passed, and Butte and the deputy rode into town the next morning. Mr. Coogan had not come back. He never did come back. Seemed like he just wandered off into the storm, leaving his gear behind. The deputy, Amos Frogge, Mr. Scatter, and the Gent went out searching for him, but the rain had erased his trail and they never saw hide nor hair of him. They figured he was lost in the storm and drowned or was eaten by a grizzly. I thought he had hightailed it out of town after finding out that Butte had gone for the law.

Butte got a scolding from Mama, but I got a licking. "Tie down that imagination of yours and quit telling stories before you get someone into real trouble." I figured I had already gotten someone into real trouble. Me. I had to eat supper standing up.

"Guess his running away proves," I said to the Gent, who had decided to stay and try his luck in Lucky Diggins, "that he really was Rattlesnake Jake."

"Could be, little sister, could be, but it don't always pay to go by appearances," said the Gent, winking at me as he picked his teeth with his Bowie knife.

To this day I can't say for sure that Rattlesnake Jake was Mr. Coogan. But he could have been. Or the Gent. Or anybody. Or nobody. And I'll never know. Things like this that aren't true or false, right or wrong, really irritate me.

S
PRING
1850

In which Mama gets into a temper, Sweetheart gets
lost, and I hear something I wish I hadn't

With the spring the miners came back more numerous than ever, as if they had obeyed the biblical command to be fruitful and multiply. The tent was exploding with boarders, and that meant plenty of extra work. One Sunday Mama boiled over. She kicked my book out into the mud, slapped Prairie for eating the last flapjack, and bellowed at the Gent, "Quit mooning at me with those cow eyes of yours and go do something useful!" Finally she took a deep breath and said, "I'm going plumb crazy boiling beans and washing sheets and beating batter for flapjacks. I've got to get out for a while, take a walk, see the mountain oaks putting out their green Prairie can mind Sierra and mend those stockings sitting on my chair. Butte, fetch us some greens from along the river for eating. Miss Lucy California, you give whoever shows up his dinner, fetch us a few loads of kindling, start boiling the potatoes, and I will be home in time to eat supper with you."

Sunday supper was the one meal when all the boarders and all the family and even miners who spent the week upriver in tents but had dust to spare would gather together, crowding around the rough plank table on benches, boxes, and the barrels that had held the meat and sauerkraut salted down for winter. Mama would set the table with bowls of potatoes, maybe a squirrel or rabbit stew, or beans with salt pork and molasses, some of her hard dry bread, and strong brown butter all the way from Boston. The miners were extra hungry after a whole day spent doing such despised chores as washing shirts, mending holes in their pants, and rubbing bear fat on their boots to keep the water out.

This Sunday I wrote a letter to Gram and Grampop—
We had biscuits and deer fat and boiled turnips for dinner, and I remembered Gram's oyster stew. I thought to write and ask you to mail me some and saw in my imagination Snowshoe Ballou coming up over the pass from French Creek with his letter bag dripping oyster stew and every skunk, badger, and weasel in the Sierra on his trail.
Butte took a bath—"What do you mean, dirt? I jist got dark feet." Asa Tooney pulled out an
Illustrated Police
Gazette
he got in Marysville—"Git yer mitts off'n that so's I kin read it. Gol durn it, you wrinkled it, you son of a gun. Watch out, now the cover's torn. Take that, you—" Dag diggety, I needed fresh air, too.

After a stop at the general store, where I traded gold dust for some of last year's licorice, hard as rock candy and twice as dusty, I lay luxuriating in the afternoon sunshine, skirt hiked up to my knees, making up stories about magic and miracles and singing "Amazing Grace," "Turkey in the Straw," and "Woodman, Spare That Tree." Tree! Dag diggety! I had forgotten the danged wood! Mama, already hopping mad, would likely skin me.

I bit my lip and tried to think. I didn't have time to make the three or four trips up the ravine necessary to fill the kindling box. Butte wasn't back yet. Prairie was watching Sierra. Well, then, I would take Sweetheart and some baskets. The work would go faster, and I'd be home in time to start the potatoes.

I got Sweetheart from her shed, threw the rope halter around her neck, and tied a basket on each side. Sweetheart switched her ears one at a time, first the brown one, then the white one, and let herself be dragged up the ravine path.

The path twisted and turned, reaching high enough so the air was cooler, the gnarled oaks dripped with mistletoe, and the meadows were blotched brown with mud and green with the promise of spring. I threw sticks and twigs and pinecones into the baskets, humming to myself as I pushed and pulled the mule along.

In a small clearing wild strawberries bloomed. I dropped Sweetheart's halter and, sitting cross-legged on the new grass, wove the leaves and flowers into wreaths, one for myself and one that I looped over Sweetheart's white ear. Sweetheart laughed or complained—I couldn't tell which, since she always sounded like a parlor organ out of tune—and then ate her wreath.

Through the brush I could see a small tower of interlaced branches and grass. I walked around it, looking carefully. A tower for a tiny Rapunzel, I decided, and spent a while imagining the prince climbing up Rapunzel's hair and the witch coming. But neither the prince nor the witch showed up, and I soon moved on.

Coming down a rise, I saw there to the left, as plain as day, a tree branching in a Y—what we called back home a wishing tree, for if you sat in it and wished, you would surely get your heart's desire. With a big smile I clambered up into the crotch, closed my eyes, and wished:
My heart's desire is to go home to Massachusetts.

From my perch in the tree I looked around. The sun was low in the sky, and there were trees as far as I could see. Some were pink or white with blossoms, others were the soft green of new leaves, but most were the near-black evergreens that grew so densely up here. In the distance I could see a small clearing and a mule walking its stubborn slow mule's walk.... Sweetheart! Was it Sweetheart? Where had I left her? Where was she now? And where was I?

I looked around again. There were the same pines as at Lucky Diggins, but no river. The same bramble bushes, but no creek. The same oaks, but no tents. I better go back, I thought. Trouble was, I didn't know where that was. The trees all looked alike, large leafy arms reaching for me and above all that huge bottomless bowl of a sky.

I jumped down and ran around awhile, getting more and more confused. From time to time I'd hear a gunshot and shout, "I'm here, Mama, over here," sure that Mama was back and worried about me and had set out with a searching party, which was signaling. "Here, Mama, here," I called as the sun got lower and the gunshots fainter and fainter.

Finally I flung myself down into the dust and cried. I am as good as dead, I thought. I'll starve or die of cold or be killed by a grizzly. All they will find are bones. And a bit of yellow hair, clinging to my skull.

"What you crying about?" asked Prairie.

Prairie! "What in Sam Hill are you doing here?" I asked, wiping my nose on my hand and my hand on my skirt.

"Mama thent me. You're late for thupper," Prairie said. Her front tooth had finally fallen out.

"How did you find me?"

"Took the path up the ravine, turned left a thpell, and there you wath. Let'th go."

"We can't go. We're lost."

"Luthy," Prairie said, "you are the thilliest girl. We're barely two treeth and a hill from home."

I explained about being lost and wandering and losing Sweetheart. We looked around for the mule awhile, calling her name and trying to make mule noises, but got no response. So I followed my little sister back to Lucky Diggins, head hanging but heart glad I wasn't lost or worse. Mama will be happy to see I'm not dead, I thought.

"Here we are, Mama," said Prairie. "She wath jutht out back a wayth."

Mama turned to me. She didn't look happy. "You forgot to start the potatoes."

I said nothing about the mule while we ate our cabbage soup and salt pork stewed with turnips and Butte's wild greens and cowslip pickle and a batter pudding, but no potatoes.

After supper, after the dishes were washed and the pots scoured with sand and the dirt floor swept with a corn-husk broom, the Gent pulled out his fiddle and the newest boarder, Rusty Hawkins, his mouth harp, and we had music. I had a talk with Mama and then sat down to write a letter by the light of a lard-oil lamp.

Dear Gram and Grampop,

Sometimes I wonder whether your daughter ever was a child herself. The Bible says we should strive for perfection,
not be perfect all the time. I know it was my fault that Sweetheart is lost—a long story I will tell another time—and our extra income with her, but I think taking my money is beyond justice.

After supper, I told Mama about losing the mule. I expected she would holler and maybe even cuss, she's so Californiaized, but instead she said calmly, "Sixteen dollars.
"

"
For what?" I enquired.

"
For the cost of the mule.
"

"
Where am I to get sixteen dollars?
"

"
From that smelly old crock you're hoarding dust and money in.
"

I told her that was my going-home-to-Massachusetts money, and she just sniffed and said, "Well, you'll likely never get there if you keep on doing bob-stupid things like losing our mule. Sixteen dollars.
"

So my pickle crock is a blame sight lighter tonight and I have been sent in disgrace to my bed, and I am angry as a horned toad on a fry pan, as Jimmy would say. How did nice people like you ever get such a daughter?

I put this letter under my straw mattress until I could decide whether to send it. I could hear the sounds of music and laughter, and although I was not about to give Mama the satisfaction of seeing me watching, I peered around the blanket curtain.

They were dancing. The men who weren't dancing with Mama or Prairie danced with each other, arguing over who would lead and who was stepping on whose feet. I loved to dance, all by myself in the meadow outside the house in Massachusetts on a warm summer night, but clunking around the boarding tent in the arms of a miner in need of a bath was not my idea of dancing.

Soon the Gent put down his fiddle and swung Mama around to the music of Rusty's mouth harp. She laughed and looked very young, like she forgot for a minute about lost income and lost mules. If I hadn't been so dag diggety angry, I might even have felt bad about adding to her troubles.

Finally, when everybody was danced out, they rested their blisters a spell while Mama boiled molasses down for taffy. Greasing up their hands with lard, the boarders took turns pulling the candy into long strands and doubling it and pulling it again until it was a consistency to eat. By that time it seemed there was more of the gray, sticky candy on their hands and mouths and shirt fronts than in the pan. Some of the miners commenced playing dominoes while others drifted off to bed or to the saloon to drink too much and sleep in a drunken huddle on the saloon floor until morning.

I heard the Gent say: "I sure do fancy that woman."

Who? I thought, moving closer and picking up mugs and plates, the better to listen.

"Who don't?" said Rusty.

"Yeah. Well, I aim to marry her." Who? I thought again. Belle Scatter? Milly from the saloon?

"You polecat, what makes you think she'd have you?"

The Gent said, with a smile in his voice, "My charm, my good looks, and my money."

Rusty slapped him hard on the back. "If that ain't the beatingest thing I ever heard. Why, you got the charm of a mosquito, the good looks of a hog's butt, and less money than a greenhorn in a gambling house. I think she'd do better to take Jimmy."

"Nevertheless," said the Gent, "I aim to marry Arvella."

I dropped the stack of plates, and the rattling of tin rumbled like thunder through the tent. Mama? They were talking about Mama? The Gent wanted to marry
Mama?
As if Pa were just worms' meat and not Pa anymore, now he was dead!

Mama was all I had left, and I sure didn't want to give her away to some man, even one with curly hair and a fiddle, like the Gent. My heart beat like rain on a canvas roof as I went looking for Mama.

Mama wasn't in the front tent or in the big tent the boarders slept in. Thinking maybe she'd gone to the necessary out back, I took a candle and stepped into the night. A moving wisp of mist uncovered the face of the moon, and for a minute I was transported back to Massachusetts, where Pa was whispering, "California, get up. Come and look. Come," and there right outside the door, under a midwinter moon, a group of cottontails, freed by the clear weather from their underground burrows, were frolicking on the crusted snow.