What Once We Loved Read online

  Chita laughed out loud.

  “What?” Tipton pulled the cloth from her neck.

  “Is all right, all right,” Chita said, her palms defending. “You have other story maybe to tell why you have no flow for two months.”

  “Chita!” Tipton stood now, started to pace.

  “I wash clothes. I know this. Two months. You tell Sefior Kossuth you have bad beans. Give you time, but Chita knows.” She touched her finger to her temple. “How you will explain why your estomago grows, that will be different.” Chita laughed again as she left to empty the bowl.

  Insolent girl Tipton thought as she gathered her skirts up around herself and curled onto the divan. Had it been two months? Her face was a little fuller and her corset actually hurt a bit, pushing up against her breasts. But even on the trip across, her flow had changed, stopped for a time. Elizabeth said it was because of how she ate. So, there. That was the explanation again. Beans, nothing more.

  Tipton lay listening to the wind sighing in the huge redwoods standing as a sentry around the cabin, allowing her mind to drift. A baby. How that would change her life! And not for the good. She turned over, not wanting to think of such a thing. Too intimate. Back home, she had had to hang her father and brothers unmentionables and her own underdrawers up at night, and her mother would rip them from the line before first light. “No one should see such things,” Adora would say. Maybe that was why her mother resisted Tiptohs doing laundry for the miners last winter in Shasta, even if it did allow them to survive. Tipton sat up. Maybe that was why her mother was so anxious to marry her off. Not for Tipton's happiness but to avoid the embarrassment of her daughter tending strange men's unmentionables.

  She moaned and lay back down. She couldn't be with child. She just couldn't be. A baby meant hours of paying attention, something she wasn't up to, not right now. She rubbed her arm in that achy place that meant she wanted to escape. That was what Elizabeth told her.

  A baby. There'd been those times, in the quiet of the night, when she'd felt loved and tended as Nehemiah lay beside her, his hand stroking her hair, his kisses soft and lulling. She'd fallen asleep, hadn't she? No. Gone away, more likely. She'd had frantic dreams after, she remembered now, full of wildness and unfamiliar scents. She sat up straight in her chair. Perhaps it had happened then?‘There had been that one night…

  How could she be sure? She couldn't ask Chita. She couldn't discuss it with her husband. She'd never even undressed in his presence, had always insisted the lamps be put out before she stepped out of her underdrawers and donned the white muslin she slept in, covered from head to foot.

  A baby? No, it had to be something she'd eaten. She was hungry now, her stomach fluttering with the foreign thoughts. Roasted apples, that was what she wanted, or something fresh to bite into. She rose, made her way to the back porch, and reached into the barrel. She lifted a smallish Maidenblush apple that Nehemiah said came by ship all the way from New Jersey. Well, originally from that far but now there were trees bearing the waxy yellow-skin fruit in Oregon. She found the corer and stripped the apple of its seeds, then took a bite. Her stomach felt better already. The queasiness came from how she'd been eating.

  She wished she could ask her mother. She snorted to herself. What would Adora care? She could ask Elizabeth. She'd write to the older woman, find a way to get the information without telling her what she needed it for. Just curious, she'd tell her. She'd describe the beans and the effects. That woman knew everything about food.

  She took another bite of the round fruit. It would make a good cider, she thought. Something better to put into her stomach instead of that stale beer. She picked up two more apples and began slicing them. A baby? She couldn't be expecting Nehemiah's child. She still wasn't sure how she felt about him.

  “Honest. Creative. Warm-hearted. My three adjectives,” the man told Suzanne with no hesitation. She wondered if Sterling Powder had overheard her question to each of the candidates or if he was just inventive. He said he was creative, after all. Suzanne would have added charming. She hadn't even wanted to interview him, but she felt sorry for his waiting all day and then having Esther ask him to return. She'd told him as much, and his interest must have been great since he had come back.

  “I understand fully your reluctance. The propriety of a manservant for a gentlewoman would certainly be questioned, Mrs. Cullver. However, I would not be your servant in the usual sense.”

  “No. A tutor is what I'm hiring. But I did hope to have a second value met in that person becoming a part of my…family.”

  “The word family in Latin comes from famalus, a word meaning servant, this is true.”

  “You knew that? I'm…impressed.” Details and facts were important for a teacher to retain.

  “Still, you yourself will have need of a personal caretaker, if I may be so bold to suggest. Someone to assist with your morning toilets.” Suzanne had nodded. “And perhaps keeping the…functions separate, a man to tutor your boys, a woman to assist you, would ultimately help yon focus.” His use of that word surprised her too. It was almost as though he'd been eavesdropping on her life. “And any tutor you employ must have a way with children. Quiet children, as it appears your son is.”

  “Quiet.” She liked that characterization. Not mute.

  Pig had been whining at Suzanne's feet, and she thought once she heard what might be the dog sniffing and then the shuffle of a smooth boot where Mr. Powder sat.

  “Is the dog a bother for you?” she asked.

  “Not at all. I'm sure we'll become good friends. He seems well trained.”

  “Thank you.” Suzanne reached to pat Pig's wide head. “He saved my life once. Before I knew I wanted that.” Her fingers brushed at her throat. “I've thought of perhaps training other dogs. Be a teacher myself, of sorts. We've done well together, haven't we, Pig?” The dog made slobbery sounds into the silence.

  “I see you like lavender. I can smell the scent,” Mr. Powder said.

  “And you, rue,” she said, becoming more formal. “Have you been in court lately then?”

  “Aha,” Sterling Powder told her.

  “My sense of smell is quite acute.”

  Sterling said, “No, no time in court. I do not hold as some do that the rue herb wards off the plague or evil spirits. The plant does, however, bear full foliage and looks ominous on a judge's desk. Touching it, as you may well know, leaves a red lesion on the skin, it s said. So perhaps it does ward off defendants who might otherwise get too close to a judge's throat. I would never have such a plant where children are about. For that reason.”

  “Your use of it?”

  “Aha. Boiling rue with gun flints improves accuracy, you may have heard.”

  “You're a marksman then?” Suzanne asked. It would be good to have someone about who might be able to protect the boys if need be.

  “I'm more taken with the manufacture and design of firearms than the function,” he told her. “I find them lovely works of art, even those without elaborate carvings. The designs, history, engineering, the selection of wood, all intrigue me.” I see.

  “But nothing intrigues so much as seeing children, young boys, become competent young men. That is truly important. Your boys will have need of a man in their lives, Mrs. CuUver. A good man. To show them how to be respectful of a mother, how to use their minds and skills to become good citizens, to someday care for a family of their own. To demonstrate strength. These are important values built into my lessons.” His use of the word “important” sounded like “im-pour-dent” the way people from North Carolina would say it. It soothed her somehow, reminding her of an aunt of long ago, and comfort arrived on the lilt of his words.

  She wished she could have talked with his former employers, but they were back in the States. She had to trust that the letters he read to her were accurate portrayals of his skills. And he confirmed what she'd been struggling with: how to meet both her own needs and Clayton's. Hiring a tutor and a personal assistant would d
efine and separate those two roles, would help give Clayton all he needed without sacrificing her own care. Perhaps he'd hit upon the way she could avoid disappointing Esther, after all.

  “If my friend Sister Esther finds you suitable and my son begins to develop some words after a trial period, we can then discuss a permanent position for you. And of course, we'll discover if you are truly creative, honest, and warm-hearted.”

  “What about the dog?” he said.

  “The dog is a part of this family,” she said, alert to something besides his gentle voice. “I thought you found no objection?”

  Sterling laughed. “Not at all. Though my cats might.”

  “Cats? Neither he nor I fancy cats much. Cats? Plural?”

  “Cats. Three.”

  Mazy moved to Poverty Flat.

  After months of hovering like a dragonfly over the pond of her life, always trying to get back to what had been, Mazy decided. While she packed her few belongings into trunks, finished digging up herbs for transplanting, brushed the linsey-woolsey dresses and folded the new underdrawers her mother had made her, she assessed this new step in her life. She was no longer Jeremy Bacons wife. She was a milkmaid, a businesswoman, someone indebted to another, a woman hoping to serve. She had made some good decisions and some poor ones. It was part of living. She was a widow, yes, and a stepmother and a young woman. Perhaps she wasn't totally dependent on herself, but neither was she dependent on a husband, father, brother, or son. She was her own person for the first time in her life, and at this moment she was strong and firm and stepping forward with a plan not to avoid or intrude but to advance. At last, it felt right.

  After delivering the morning's milk, Mazy loaded the milk wagon with furniture in Shasta City including the trundle bed and the linens and her settings of herb plants and the backing for the quilt squares, her Bible and tools for writing. She drove Ink, their family mule, out to Poverty Flat.

  “I can help you move your things in,” Seth had told her the day before, his hat pushed back on his forehead. She'd declined.

  “The only heavy thing is the bed,” she'd said. “And even that can be moved in pieces, so I'll be fine. I'm looking forward to just taking my time. If you come help, I'll need to be fixing up a meal afterward and deciding right off where to set things. I suspect I'll be cleaning awhile before I even move the canvas from the wagon.

  “You got frame houses nearly built, I hear.”

  She nodded. “Yes. It surprised me how far that lumber I'd bought for my house could go.”

  “I imagine those Indians are pretty pleased to get the shelter. How many do you have out there now anyway?”

  “Maybe twenty,” she said.

  “That many?”

  “Mostly children. They're safe there. I didn't know about all the… bounty for scalps or that the Shasta longhouse had been burned.” She shook her head. “They're good help, they and their mothers and kin. At least they all seem to get along like kin. Even a little scolding at each other. And it isn't just their long-tailed dogs.” Seth grinned. “They won't milk though. The cows scare them.”

  “It's a good thing you're doing anyway, Mazy.”

  She shrugged. “I'm not doing it to be good. It's almost like I'm doing it because I'm not good. It's my own self-interest that keeps them there, so I can sleep nights without worrying over them. Sula started it. Her name means “trout.” Did I tell you? She's the little feisty one. But they all have more light in their eyes now. Does that make me…condescending, that I enjoy seeing the light in their eyes and feel as though I have some part in it, however small?”

  “You're asking me?” Seth said.

  “Is anyone else here?”

  Seth laughed. “I'd never describe what you're doing as condescending. Caring would be a word I'd use. Taking action. Making love a verb.” Mazy looked at him, and he turned away.

  “That's the poet in you,” she said. “I hadn't thought about love being an action. I saw it as just a feeling, a passion. But it is something we do, now that you mention it. What good is the passion if we don't act in some way.”

  “Can you feed them through the winter?”

  “If I don't panic and think everything is up to me! People at the church have been helping. Several women have agreed to come out to finish the women's quilt. I always thought of them as kind of snooty,” Mazy said. “And not all that anxious to help last year. But now, without my even asking, they've offered. Some of them are…well, a few work at the saloons. One was a friend of Esty's.”

  “So you're opening some other doors.”

  She nodded. “I guess.”

  “They'll help you unload if you need it,” he said.

  “I'm looking forward just to doing this all on my own.”

  Truthfully she wasn't sure how she'd handle this being alone, not waiting for her mother to share tea, not “doing” every spare moment. Maybe it was just as well David and Oltipa hadn't taken her up on moving in with her. She could use their help with the milking, but with the women and boys doing so many other chores, she found the milking itself not as tiring. She was already up to ten cows now, morning and night.

  “It'll give you time to find pleasure in your own company” was how her mother put her moving, adding that people who could do that were their own best friends.

  “Kinships take a little tending,” her mother told her. “Got to stake ‘em up before the winds buffet. Goes for taking care of you, too, Daughter. This'U be good, this time with your own place without others sharing your roof.”

  “You just want to take your baths without feeling rushed by my waiting for the water,” Mazy'd laughed.

  “That, too,” Elizabeth told her, as she brushed a tendril of Mazy s hair back behind her daughter's ear.

  “You need to take time to find the miracles in the pages along the way and not just go rushing through your book to find the ending,” her mother said.

  Hadn't that been the most important lesson Mazy'd realized after nearly a year of avoiding the journey south to see the solicitor about her husband's wayward ways? She'd kept herself from pleasures that lived right down the road from her, if she had only known, if she had only risked letting go of the past so she could grab on to the ring marked “future.” She might have avoided still having the bull, would have avoided Ruth's terrible loss. She shook her head. Mind mumbling again. She would not think ofthat now. She would save bad thoughts for a certain time of day and give herself over fully to them then.

  The cabin at Poverty Flat still held a scent of Ruth and her brood, something of lemon and leather. Well, the leather scents might have come with the Wintus and Yuroks now bedded down in the frame houses. She scanned the two little rooms of Ruth's cabin wondering how Ruth ever housed four children, plus Mariah, herself, and then the whole brood out here after the fire. And other guests from time to time, like the night Seth brought the new wagon train in. Today that quiet room breathed…spacious with just her few things there.

  It took her very little time to drag in the trunk that would serve as a table until she could build one. She pounded a board into the log wall and stacked on it Johnsons Dictionary of the English Language, Uncle Toms Cabin, The Scarlet Letter and several little books she said were “written by men in a hurry” that she bought at Romans Books. The words weren't well phrased, but the stories romped, and Mazy could lose herself inside them on a rainy night. She found an old sock slobbered by Pig, and she smiled, stuffing it into her high-button shoe to keep the leather at the ankle from sinking in and cracking. In no time at all, it seemed, she was finished, and she turned slowly around in the room. Her room.

  She felt more than heard the stillness: her quiet breathing, the rusde of her hands fidgeting with her apron, even the pound of her heart. A cow bellowed in the distance. Lemon scents drifted to her. The silence comforted like a quilt.

  She should go out and see how the children were doing, check on those cows, the weanling calves. Or transplant the herbs into the window box,
or perhaps now was the time to read that chapter of Acts suggesting she go out to serve without worry of where food or shelter would arrive from. She could write down the thoughts that scripture brought to mind. Her eyes scanned the room. She'd placed the Bible beside her bed lantern.

  Perhaps she could make notes about that dream, about what people were carrying in their carpetbags that would allow them to arrive prepared once they reached their journeys end. It reminded her of Ruth, and she wondered if her friend had reached her destination. She should write a letter to Ruth, offering one more time to bridge the darkness but telling her she was strong enough now to live knowing she'd once had a friend like her and that doing the work to make another was a worthy effort.

  No. She was doing it again, running off to fill the silence, using study or service or other distractions to keep her mind busy so she couldn't be touched.

  Couldn't be touched by what? she wondered. The silence? She made herself sit down on a maple chair she'd purchased from a newcomer arrived on Noble's Trail. She put nothing into her hands. She took in deep breaths, the way she did as a schoolgirl before having to stand and recite in front of the class. It was not laziness to be staring out at the world from a comfortable place, she reminded herself. After all, she wasn't going to sit forever in that chair. She was just stopping for a moment, to savor the quiet. There must be a reason she was here alone. Now. There were things she was meant to learn by experiencing what she could smell and see, what sounds she heard or didn't, how her body fit into her clothes, what space she filled up with her being. Hadn't she read in the dictionary that experience meant “to be present”?

  Her mother's comment about kinship came to mind, about tending it for friendships. Perhaps that was why she'd developed closer ties on the wagon train than at any other time in her life. The women saw each other every day. They survived difficult times together. They adjusted what they ate, when they slept, how they tempered their tongues, and they laughed together. Yes, those friendships had taken a toll. She'd found qualities inside some of the women that she would never have given a second thought if she hadn't been forced to see them the next day. Qualities she guessed that she needed to pay attention to in her own life. She'd have shared a meal with Tipton or sewn something for Suzanne, but she never really would have known them. Nor let them get to know her. She swallowed, fidgeted again with the thought.