What Once We Loved (34 page)

Never intended any disruption in routine,” Seth said. With a sinking feeling, she heard him usher himself out.

Tipton shivered, wiped her face of the spew she'd just deposited in the brass spittoon in front of her. She couldn't remember ever feeling so miserable. She leaned back against the wainscoting, pushed a mildewed pillow beneath her back, then pulled her legs up under her on the narrow cot. She sipped a canteen of water, hoping it would stay down.

She could do laundry. She'd have competition from the Chinese, that was sure. But she'd had that back in Shasta City, too. Some miners wanted only white women to do their wash. How odd that was, when she thought of it. What possible difference could one's skin color have on the cleanliness of a shirt?

She leaned forward, upchucked again.

Still, lifting the hot water, hauling the heavy loads of boiled shirts back to their owners, all would take a toll on her small frame. But as she huddled in the small cabin of the steamer making its way from Crescent City to San Francisco, it was the only thing she could think of doing. She would have to do the only thing she knew how. She had all she needed. Wasn't that what Tyrellie told her? He'd added something about God giving her resources enough to serve others, but surely God would want her to take care of herself first.

She'd been ill through most of the voyage, the seas being heavy with
the storm. Or had it been sickness that came to those carrying an infant? There was the real truth she had to face, the real reason she couldn't wash clothes for long.

She tried to calculate how much time she had. Chita said it took nine months, and she'd suspected a pregnancy for at least two, and it had been two more since Chita had been sworn to secrecy. That meant—she counted on her fingers—May She could perhaps do laundry through March. After that she would have to find other work and a place to birth her baby. She'd have to worry about getting food enough, a doctor or midwife who could help… Tipton heard her breathing change, the rapid intake of breath. Her fingers started to tingle.
No! She
had to stay here, not go away. That was how she'd gotten in this condition, pretending not to know or feel, not wanting to upset Nehemiah, and so she'd allowed herself to drift away inside his passion for her, disappeared inside compliance.

She couldn't afford that now, couldn't risk going away or using precious strength worrying over her hand growing numb. Elizabeth had said she'd stop doing that to herself when she understood what disappearing took from her, when she found a better way to get what she wanted.

What did she want? She'd left a safe, warm hearth to huddle in a damp ships cabin, and she'd be deposited in the morning on the wharf in a January chill. All she had to do to be warm was get back on and go home. Maybe Nehemiah would follow her. Was that what this was about? To be pursued, wanted? To have the happy reunion she could never have with her mother? With the fiancé who had died? She heard a rat scurry in the corner. No. She didn't want Nehemiah to follow or find her. She wanted to do this on her own.

This baby was really Tyrellie s and hers, the baby they would have had. She still had his memory, his tender advice ringing in her ears to help her raise it. She didn't need anyone else. Not her mother's love, not her brother's wretched approval, not her husband's fatherly protection.
She needed none of it. And if she was truthful—and she was learning to be—her baby would provide her with all she needed: love enough, approval enough, and even protection enough. After all, who would harm a woman bearing a child? Who would harm a mother with an infant at her breast?

Tipton smiled and rubbed her stomach. This wasn't so bad. A baby was such a little thing to give so much, but that was what a baby did: mind its mother s mind, keep its mother happy so its mother would be sure its little frame would grow and learn and change. This baby was totally dependent on her. Just her. She sipped some water. It stayed down. They'd dock before long. She wouldn't be seasick again. She'd be fine. She was having a baby. She didn't need anything more.

“Your rotten jack,” Matthew said, jabbing his finger toward Ruth, “almost lost us the whole herd.”

“What are you talking about?” Ruth sat up, wiped at her eyes. She must have fallen asleep beside Jessie. She turned out of habit to see if the small chest still raised and lowered itself. It did. Then she gave her attention to the madman pacing the room before her.

“That cussed Carmine just kicked off the corral panels, that's what he did. Crazy floating eye should have told us to let that…that…tarnal jack stay where he was.” Matthew kicked at the ash tin set beside the hearth. A dusting of snow drifted up.

Ruth had never seen him like this. She felt her stomach tense, her shoulders stiffen. She looked at Lura, busy darning a sock. Neither she nor his sister seemed to notice.

“He ran around, stomping at the poles that held the mares,” Matthew said. “Tarnal thing!”

Ruth watched Matthew tug at his gloves, hunch his shoulders up, yank at one that resisted his hands. That irritated him more. He gritted his teeth, jerked, then threw the snow-wet glove across the room.

He was having a tantrum, for heavens sake. She'd never seen him like this, a huge bear marauding around the room, stomping and snarling. Why, he'd scare Jessie if she woke. Sarah huddled off to the side casting furtive glances at Ruth. Mariah yawned.

“Got them all riled. Storm wasn't enough to agitate them. No, your jack had to add his two eagles to the fray.” He stopped, looked at Ruth as though she'd just shown up from nowhere. His shoulders dropped. “How is she?” He nodded toward Jessie.

“She's…the same.”

“Maybe better give her some of that rum and add honey and the glycerin Doc McCully gave me. Ma, you got honey, don't you?”

“Traded some with a pair of Rogues,” Lura said. “They use fire to burn out the bee trees, did I tell you that? I've got a mind to be trying that myself, come summer.”

They mixed the ingredients, and Ruth gave her child small sips. Jessie coughed from the smoky room and begged to be held, which Ruth did. She patted the girl's hands in her own, saying words to both soothe her daughter's soul and bring some settling to her own.

“Just give the child the broth, some stew broth,” Lura said. “Not the meat or nothing.”

“I know,” Ruth answered. Even then she wondered why she couldn't just accept what someone told her, without assuming they were making a correction.

Lura made up a new batch of onion juice, heated it, and insisted it would make the child sweat. “That's what'll break this new fever, you ask me,” she said.

Ruth had nothing to lose. She dribbled the strong-smelling liquid into Jessie's mouth. The child did not resist. Her eyes fluttered some as she opened them. She even attempted a smile when Ruth brushed the damp hair behind her ears. “You'll be all right,” she told her daughter, whispering it as a prayer. “You'll be all right.”

“Where is Carmine now?” Ruth asked, hoping enough time had elapsed for Matthew to talk rationally about the jack.

“Dead, I hope.”

“Well, of course he's red,” his mother chastised. “She didn't ask you what color he was but where he was.”

Matthew swatted at his felt hat, brushed off the snow melting from it as he stood before the hearth. “Ma. I said I hoped he was dead, not red. Your hearings getting worse every day.” He slowed his pace, spoke louder.

“You mumble,” Lura said, laying the socks down and picking up a venison ham bone. She started to slice.

“Why didnt you get the boys to help catch him?” Ruth asked.

“Oh, they did.” He brushed the water from his coat, hung it on a wall peg near the stove. The smell of wet wool filled the room. His shoulders sagged, and he took a deep breath. Tension eased out as he exhaled. “They did the best they could with that…beast.”

He had immense patience, Ruth had always thought. At least with people. But animals and objects, he apparently got upset with them. Or maybe it was just this being cooped up, not being able to make any real progress through these winter months. It was too bad the school term got cancelled because a Negro child had enrolled. Except for this current storm, it would have been the perfect January for the children to go to school.

“The boys got the mares back in,” Matthew continued. “But that Carmine would have nothing to do with the corral. He just ran back and forth, seducing them, I swear. Talking to ‘em like he had things worth saying. Ewalds all riled up too. Don't know what's gotten into them.”

“Maybe it's the weather,” Ruth said. She rubbed at her arms to warm them. Rain pelted the shake roof, but it sounded like ice when it struck. “I'll go out in a bit to see if I can lure him in.”

“Probably freeze good tonight, from the feel of it. Bucket handle is already iced up. Rope is fat as a well-fed snake. Which is why I don't want those mares out there. Be safer for them closer to the lean-to where we can at least keep the feed dry,” Matthew told her.

“You did well to get it built when you did,” Ruth said. Matthew nodded.

“Hopefully the sun'll come out in the morning and melt this all away, and your crazy mule will settle down.”

“Have some coffee,” Mariah told him, handing her brother a mug.

“Thanks, Pipsqueak. Best offer I've had today.”

Ruth stood and peered out through the door. Next to it a scraped hide that served as a windowpane let in light. Glass would be nice, she thought, so she could see out and not just have the light. She shivered both from the cold that chilled her bones and from Matthew's earlier intensity. She liked that he could be as absorbed as a sponge in what he did—building, tending the horses' hooves, looking after all of them— but she hadn't expected his anger to carry the same kind of weight. Such stomping and shouting belonged to drunken men, not to upstanding though frustrated souls.

Zane had certainly never lost his temper like that, direct yet over with quick. No, his outrage seethed and consumed.

She closed the door, watched Matthew set his boots down, pick up his gloves to dry them by the fire. All calm. Oddly calm.

It was dusk, but from the four-paned window over the dry sink, Ruth could see Carmine in his quick-quick steps racing back and forth. “Did you try roping his left leg?” Ruth asked.

“I tried everything. He doesn't want to be caught. He didn't get caught.”

“That's odd,” Ruth said.

“What? Did the danged thing just wander into the corral like he was waiting to be asked?”

“Not exactly,” Ruth said.

Matthew stood and followed Ruth to the window. Then they opened the door to the porch. He eased beside her. The jack paced, kicked once more at Ewalds corral despite the boys' efforts to throw a rope at Carmines leg, and then he headed off, up through the pine outcropping and out of sight.

“What? He took off?” Matthew said.

“Just watch,” Ruth told him. “He comes back.”

Within a minute, the red-dirt-colored jack did just that. He trotted out of the darker timber, back toward the corral, pacing again, kicking at the poles, and eluding the boys and their ropes. “He'll do it again. Just a few seconds and then he's gone. You can almost count it. One, two.

“Like a danged dog wanting you to chase him,” Matthew said. “Some sort of crazy game he's playing.”

“Ten, eleven. All right, he'll be back any second.” They waited and Carmine arrived, kicked a few times, paraded before the mares whose backs steamed from the ice hitting their thick winter coats. Carmine squealed and bawled, then left, repeating the sequence.

“That jack is absolutely crazy. Needs one good sockdolager between the ears. That would fix his flint.”

“Nobody's going to hurt him, are they, Ruth?” Mariah asked, shivering beside her brother, her arms wrapped around herself.

Ruth shook her head. “Get back inside. Your brother's just upset that he cant think like a jack.” Ruth called to the boys, encouraging their efforts.

“Don't know as I'd breed anything to him,” Matthew said. “You'll probably end up with a…mad dog rather than a mule.”

“Well, if it's a game, he'll tire of it.”

“I don't know. I once saw a mule slide down a hill covered with snow. Kind of on his back, his feet up high. He'd get stopped by a tree, pick himself up, shake off, and run back up and do it again. They play, those mules do. Must get that from some part of their breeding.”