What Once We Loved (41 page)

Ruth wasn't aware she'd been holding her breath, but the sound of the iron shoe against ice clicked loud, and she exhaled. Koda dropped his nose, snorted, lifted his head and shook it once, twice, taking a tender step. If only it wasn't so steep, Ruth thought, this wouldn't be so dangerous. But it was. There was no point wishing that wasn't so. She did seem to have a habit of wanting things to be different instead of accepting what was. And it could have been so much worse, so much
farther up the ridge and so much steeper…or no place where the sun shone at all.

Time dragged its feet before she heard, “Come on, Auntie.” It was Ned, shouting from beyond the timber, calling from above the silver fog. “We can hear you.”

“Get out of the way. Once he
stes
he can get a grip, he may come charging through,” Ruth shouted. Koda stumbled and pawed, then pressed forward, back legs slipping then caught by the clawlike calk. “Come on, boy, you can do this. Just a little more.”

“We're ready,” Jason shouted back.

And so they were prepared when Koda did just as Ruth suspected. He sped up when he smelled the grass waving not with icy crystals but with a glint of sun shining against the brown. He leaped and lunged the last few feet, his neck arched, and he actually pranced when on solid ground. Still hanging to the lead rope, he dropped his head and snorted, twisting and jumping sideways. Ruth stepped out of his way as he found the top of the trail.

She whooped with him, tears of joy rising. “One down!” she shouted, not sure if they could hear her below.

“Fifteen-more-to-go,” she heard Burke yell back.

“One-hoof-at-a-time,” Ruth shouted, enunciating so they could hear her through the distant fog. One hoof step at a time. Just the way to walk through life.

Ruth had carried her whip with her, and as soon as she saw Carmine come trotting over to Koda, she handed off Koda's lead rope to Mariah, then snapped the whip around the jack's left foot.

“You're a great one,” she said to the jack when he stopped, the thin cracker of the whip laced around his foreleg. “But I can't have you chasing Koda out of here just now so you'll have to be hobbled.” She slipped the leather pieces from her back pocket and tied the two front feet together. “You saved us, Carmine. You did. I wish we'd followed your lead before this storm hit, but we didn't. And I'll give you extra
rations when they're all up here, I promise you, I will.” He brayed, the long lashes over his eye blinking, his fuzzy ears alerted forward. She slapped him gently on his backside, and he hobbled off. She signaled Mariah to bring Koda over and hold him while she lifted his foot, pulled out her nippers and the little chisel to loosen the nails and straighten them. Then she yanked the shoes free. Sweat dripped from her forehead. It would be a long, long day. One shoe at a time.

Mazy buried her head in the belly of the cow. She liked the smell of the udder, the pungent odor of warm milk. A cat sauntered by, stopped, stood on its rear legs and batted at the spray of milk Mazy shot its way. She laughed. “A direct delivery,” she said as the cat meowed for more. The cow stomped her feet, switched her tail in Mazy s face. Mazy turned back to the task at hand.

Beyond her, Oltipa worked, the woman's hands nearly as fast and firm as Mazy's. Oltipa tanned hides in the winter months, and Mazy suspected that was part of why her hands didn't cramp the way the hands of new milkmaids often did. Ben waddled up the alleyway that ran behind the two rows of cows. Mazy'd made a milking line so four could be worked at a time. Two being readied; two being milked while the first two were moved out and replaced. Organized into a routine. She loved it here, wondered again why she'd taken so much time to give herself the pleasure of Ruth's…no, her place.

Ben fast-walked after the calico cat, followed by Sula and a taller boy. Indian children watching after him, all passing through the end door into the hay shed. She heard them laugh and squeal and fully expected them all to burst back out in minutes, hay sticking out from their woolen hats, the cat no doubt still in the lead.

She took the full bucket of milk to the cart, poured it into the tin. With the milking finished, she skimmed the cream, poured it into the churn that Giles, the goat, turned into butter while he walked the treadmill.
Giles. She'd found that name in one of the books she'd bought. It said it meant “goat shield,” and she'd chuckled. She was looking for shields, all right, even a goat shield. Anything to put distance between herself and Charles Wilson.

She couldn't seem to avoid the man. He appeared to have nothing to do to occupy his time, and so he tried to occupy hers. Even with the Wintu women's help, she couldn't always escape him.

That she attracted men like Charles Wilson bothered her. Something must have been wrong with her. Jeremy had kept a shadow life from her; now a shady man pressed an interest that chilled her. Even Seth was a gambling man, though he'd at least accepted her no.

She finished her tasks and took the cart into town, letting old Ink lead the way. She endured Charles's leering, and after her deliveries she stopped at her mother's bakery, warming her chapped hands at the oven.

“Maybe you should let him think he's getting your interest,” her mother advised when Mazy told her she'd been alternating her delivery times to avoid running into Charles Wilson. “Men like Charles often run the other way if they think the chase is won. Here. Try this sugar cookie. I put cinnamon in it. What do you think?”

“It's good,” Mazy said, brushing the dark crumbs from her chin. She pulled the fingerless gloves off, laid them close to the fire to dry out. “With my luck, he'd find any interest stimulating and just come back for more. He's a loafer. I think he sees an easy way to have a steady income from my farm. Men like him miss the usual indicators—that a club beside the head means Tm busy.'“

“Not unless you marry him,” Elizabeth said. “He can't have any steady income from you without that.”

Mazy said, “I'm not the marrying kind.”

“Seems I might be,” Elizabeth said.

Mazy felt her face get hot. “You and Gus?”

Elizabeth directed her daughter to sit down at the small table. “He's asked me to be his wife, Mazy. Ponder that, at my age.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What would you expect?”

Mazy swallowed, fidgeted with a ridge in her nail. “You're not that old, Mother. And your heart has always been young.” She sounded stiff, even to her own ears. “It's your doing,” Mazy said finally. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Mazy.” Her mother reached over to her, lifted the girl's chin, and looked into her daughter's eyes. “I was worried how you'd take this. It dont mean I love you less; just that I've grown to love Gus, too. And it don't mean I didn't love your father. I did. I do yet, in my way. Once we love, I think we always do, even if what later happens shatters us like an old crock that never looks the same.”

“Is that what death does? Shatters an old crock?”

“Shatters like a crock. But so can misunderstandings. Betrayals. Disappointments. People living under the same roof are bound to suffer those hurts no matter how much we love them. That's why we can't hope to do the mending by ourselves.” Mazy nodded. She was one to want to do things alone and her way. “There's every likelihood you'll wed again, Mazy. And nothing that happened the first time means it's the way it'll be the next. Each loving is new, its own little traveling trunk waiting to be opened.”

“I know,” Mazy said. “It's just…1 don't know what it is. I like Gus. He's a good man. I…”

“I don't need your approval, darling.” She brushed a strand of hair behind Mazy s ear. The scent of yeast lingered. “I'd just like it. Same as I'd guess you'd like mine when that day comes again, if I'm fortunate enough to be around for it.”

“Would you keep the bakery?”

“We'd own everything all together,” she said.

“You could have an agreement about it. Beforehand.”

“Gus isn't after my bakery,” she said. “Beside, our agreement's in the Lord's hands. If he gives the nod of approval to the union, I suspect he's big enough to tend to each of us should something happen to the other.”

“Gus is older than you. Quite a bit, isn't he?”

“He's nearly sixty.”

“Don't you worry?… I mean, would you want to go through it again? His dying, leaving you a widow? The grieving and all that?”

“No guarantee I'd outlive him,” Elizabeth said. “And besides, what's the choice?”

“Stay back. Don't step into it,” Mazy said.

“And miss what love's been promised? Turn aside the filling up just because it might someday be emptied? Oh, Mazy,” Elizabeth pulled her daughter into her arms. Her mother's shoulders felt thin, still firm. “That's what living is. Friendships, marriages, partnering, becoming a mama or a papa. Those kinships expand us like a yeast cake, and they drain as a dance. But it's where meaning lives.” She took a bite of the cookie. “Too much spice,” she said. “The only dance that don't deplete us is the one we choose with God. He don't ever step away.”

“We do though,” Mazy said.

“Think we all do at some point. That must grieve God great. But he never leaves. Always there when we step back. In this living we stumble and step on each other's toes, sometimes choose a poor partner. The partner walks outside, don't come back, and we have the choice: stay at the eggnog table or step back out onto the floor and try again.” She gave Mazy a squeeze, held her hands around her daughter's waist. “I'm just pondering over you, my only child. Wanting the best for you.”

“I've got the best,” Mazy said. “A farm I can give myself to, children surrounding me, and my mother's love. What more could I need?” She kept her voice light.

“A little distance from Charles Wilson, from the sound of it,” she laughed, patted Mazys hand, and returned to her work. “Maybe you should fix him up with someone else so he'd leave you be.”

“There's no one I dislike that much,” Mazy said

Mazy wondered what held her back from fully embracing her mother's blissful state. She looked at her through new
eyes.
Elizabeth
looked younger than she had in years. She'd bought new clothes. Had her old ones gotten large? Even her apron strings could go almost twice around her middle now. She wasn't ill, that was certain, not with that high color and her eyes full of sparkle. And she'd certainly chosen to dance again. That step onto the floor might be a little risky, but it brought a joyful spirit to her mother's life. Mazy envied her that. Maybe that was it, envy. Could she actually be jealous of her own mother? Was she wishing she had someone to tend to her as Gus tended? Was she missing companionship? How could she be? She had Ben and Oltipa and David Taylor close by. She could see her mother daily. It couldn't be jealousy.

Or could it? Perhaps she wasn't jealous of her mother's relationship with Gus but of her mother's willingness to risk, to keep her dancing slippers on the floor.

Ruth and Matthew and Burke and the crew finished half the horseshoeing and moving of mares on the first day. Tired and aching, they rose earlier for day two, figuring they'd be sore and slowed. And so they were.

Burkes gelding had gone up much as Koda had, pushing himself with the encouragement of Burkes voice. Once he hit the grassy slope, the animal had kicked his hindquarters, twisted and snorted and ran.

The last mare, a smallish bay, proved easiest of all, nearly running up the trail that was still iced over despite the tramping that had gone on by dozens of hooves before her. By the time they were finished and finally sat down at the top, horses stood contented, head to hindquarters of another, happy from their feasting. It was as though they'd always been there, sucking up the water pooled below the spring.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Ruth heard herself say.

“Whore you thanking?” Matthew asked.

“What? I don't know. Just grateful,” she said. She dropped her eyes
from his. He had a growth of beard. It aged him like fine leather. She looked out across the grazing stock. “Must be forty acres or so up here,” Ruth said. “No wonder the Indians wintered it. I thought it was the bottomland they coveted, but this is where the real treasure lies. Maybe I should build near the spring, just let the hay barn stand where it is down there and use the cabin for foaling.”