All Together in One Place Read online

  She heard the sounds of birds coming alive just before dawn. She made out the soft stomping of oxen, the heavier beast that didn't like the yoke. Men from a distant camp shouted. Dogs barked. The black dog who had taken to her barked back. He must have stood close below the wagon. Why the dog had chosen her to spend his nights with she did not know. She had kicked at it, though she probably missed, and she scolded it, but for some reason it kept coming back.

  Bryce had been like that. After the accident, she pushed him away, disgusted with her stupidity. He wouldn't leave. She would have gone if he had been the one who was blind. She never would have allowed herself to be boarded in by a cripple held hostage by darkness.

  “I think of you as having limits, that's true,” Bryce told her once, “but not a cripple. You have so much to offer, Suzanne, to me, our son, to the future.”

  “Are you up?” It was the woman Elizabeth, the good-natured one who smelled of lavender and leather, an oddly comforting combination.

  “Why should I be?” Suzanne said. “Nothing to rise for.”

  “That boy of yours'll be howling ‘fore long. May as well get yourself around. We've burials to attend to, then we're heading on to Laramie. You up to that?”

  “Just leave me. Take Clayton and let the buzzards feed.”

  “You think I'm that cruel? You'd probably give ‘em indigestion.” Suzanne snorted. “No, we'll get your wagon hitched. Take a few of us to do it ‘til we get the hang of it. We'll move slow ‘til we get our rhythm. Let's get you dressed and fed first.”

  “I'm quite capable of dressing myself,” she said.

  “Thought you might be. We'll head out to the circle for our privates when you're ready, ‘less you want to use the slop jar. I'll stand right here and pat Mazy's lazy dog ‘til you're about. Or let me come get the boy and help you down.”

  “Just., leave.”

  “I'll be back with bacon.” The woman almost chirped as she left.

  Suzanne laid the covers back, patted the bed for her wrapper, fingered the buttons on the front that expanded to give her more room as the baby grew. This one was larger than Clayton. She pulled the wrapper over her head, combed her hair with her fingers and braided the strands into a tight knot at the base of her neck. Bryce had said her hair looked like spun gold.

  “Spun straw is more like it,” she said out loud, yanking at the strands coarse in her hands. She pulled until tears stung at her nose “Mommy? My mommy?” Clayton jabbered, pulled at her hair.

  “Oh!” she said. But like the color that appeared when she pressed against her eyes, the pain demanded she think of it instead of what was missing.

  “You hurt?” Naomi asked Sister Esther.

  The sturdier of the three surviving Asian women opened wide her almond-shaped eyes. She had called herself Passion Flower, but Esther had renamed each of the girls. “Missy Esther, you burn finger on spider pan?”

  “I'm fine, Naomi,” Esther said. She smiled at the round face with skin the color of millet. The girl looked healthy now, but so had Cynthia and then she'd died.

  “I get grease?” Deborah asked.

  “Not necessary,” Sister Esther said. The girl shrank. “I did not mean to upset you.” Esther sighed. “Water will do if you care to bring me a dipper. I shall drink it and also soothe the burn ” She ran her long fingers to tuck gray hair beneath the black mesh cap she wore, patted the bun at her neck beneath it, folded her hands in front of her apron as though about to make a speech, but took a deep breath instead. Such a tightness she felt, even to breathe.

  “I help, Missy,” Deborah said, taking labored steps to the water barrel. She was always the eager one, the beekeeper who knew how to tend, but her damaged feet interfered with her willingness. Esther watched the girl check the six white squares that lined the side of the wagon, their little platforms folding down to permit bee flights every other week. Deborah made sure the ventilation door with tiny holes opened to give them air. Daily, she lifted the feeder lid at the top, renewed the water supply, made sure the larva and brood stayed protected.

  Esther was glad Deborah checked the bees often They were said to be a gentle strain, but Sister Esther did not want them to break free, pour out into the wild land they moved through when they gathered up their juices from the plants and not come back. “Bees come back for queen,” Deborah had told her once, but Esther wasn't sure if such rules applied in this territory beyond the States.

  The bees were Deborahs future. It was the bees her contract husband purchased more than the “damaged goods” of a woman whose feet kept her in constant pain, though the girl never complained. Well, the paper plans, Langstroth's patent for the new kind of hives, that was the real wealth. Harold said once that Deborah had been “thrown in just to sweeten the bargain.”

  “We go back? Brothers all gone?” Deborah asked, breaking into Esther's thoughts.

  “No! I…perhaps it should be considered. But if we continue through the alkali country to Laramie we'll be, as they say, ‘a third of the way to heaven.’ Perhaps closer, as I believe the term refers to those going on to Oregon territory while we will head on south. Thank you, dear,” she said lifting the water dipper.

  Sister Esther swallowed, then stuck her burned finger inside the wooden cup. “Can you girls yoke Harolds wagon? Perhaps we should stay here a day or so.” She twisted her hands together, rubbed at the knuckles. “I will go now to check on Zilah. Dont leave the wagon.”

  “Yes, Missy,” Deborah and Naomi said in unison, bowing their heads.

  Esther knew they wouldn't leave. They were like children, dependent, despite the time they'd had to get acquainted. Only Harold and Ferrel had spoken to them. Now her brothers were dead. She couldn't make sense of the illness, why it affected their wagons when they'd been pure, faithful. How would she tell Cynthia's intended of the girl's death? Explain to her parents? She forced herself to straighten her shoulders. Well, it was her penance, this additional load, for insisting her brothers come with her.

  Tipton lay in Elizabeth's wagon, her hands tingling and numb but less contorted now, less like a crone's. Something blotted out the light. Tipton shifted in the bed. “Time you were getting up, child,” Elizabeth's words were soft when she spoke. “Just got the Cullvers up. We all got to be moving on. Your mama needs you now.”

  Tipton turned to her. “We can't go anywhere.” Tipton's words sounded slurred even to herself. Probably the laudanum. Or maybe that whiskey she'd found. It helped her disappear, took the edge off things. She wanted no edges now, not with Tyrell gone.

  “We'll have the final burials and head on. It's what we have to do,” Elizabeth told her.

  “Papa and Tyrell—”

  “Can't do nothing for them,” Elizabeth said. She sat on the bed, and Tipton rolled toward her, her body a fragile stick tumbling toward a stone. “What's done is done.”

  “I can't.”

  “Truth is, you're needed. To drive this wagon.”

  “No, I—”

  “This one or the Cullvers'. Which do you want?”

  “But that cant be. Charles can drive this; Mama, the other I cant.” She could feel her heart pounding. “Let me be. Please.” She took short, shallow breaths.

  Sprigs of lavender hanging from the top ring of the wagon mixed with dried peppermint brought a sweetness to the painful place. Tipton smelled it and squeezed her eyes tight against it.

  “Lots you haven't never done before. Never been fifteen and never lost someone you loved.” She brushed the tears at Tipton s cheeks, her fingers callused but kind. “Never drove a wagon west, neither. First two you're surviving; last one you will too.”

  “But my…hands. See how they get.” Tipton held up the already contorting fingers, using her left hand to steady the right

  Elizabeth looked at her. “You do that to yourself,” she said quietly.

  “How dare you!”

  “You're not taking in good breaths. I seen it before.”

  “I lose my father
and my intended and my hands twist against me and you say it's me?” Tipton sat up in bed, glared.

  “Not saying you don't have pain, child. Just suggesting that a useless hand of yours serves a purpose. Your mind knows you need protection from something, so it lets your hands go numb, look all strange like the roots of an old tree.” She cupped the girl's contorted fingers in her own. Tipton let her.

  “It keeps you from thinking of something else. Or doing something else, I'll ponder. Least it did. Won't save you from missing your papa or Tyrell, though. Won't keep you from that. And it won't keep you from driving a wagon. If you don't, what Tyrell did to get us all this far will be for nothing. That ain't the legacy he meant to leave you.”

  The woman came too close, pierced too deep.

  “You don't want a legacy, either, that says Tipton Wilson might've come through but didn't. You think on it, child,” Elizabeth said. “ I need to talk to Mazy.” She patted the girl's hand, stood to leave, then said, “She's a widow and a mother-to-be Be grateful at least you ain't bringing a baby into the world without its papa being about.”

  Tipton lay on after she left, staring at the twisted hand attached to her wrist. She lifted the limb to her eyes, moved it this way and that in a kind of slow and mournful dance.

  Bearing Tyrells baby would have been a reason to live. Now she had none. Tears pressed against her eyes. What were you thinking of, Tyrell? To die so uselessly, so unfulfilled. She sat up in bed, her heart pounding. It hadn't been his fault, the accident, but hers! She had sent him away, clinging to him as she did He went to hunt to get away from her! Tyrells death was her fault. She'd killed him as sure as if she'd blasted the cap; and she'd sent her father with him.

  She reached for the bottle, pulled the glass stopper from the laudanum, and placed her mouth over the opening. Then she tipped her head back and swallowed. The warmth rushed through her just before she stuffed the stopper back and sank into the pillow.

  Esther lifted the tent flap, relieved to see Zilah sitting up.

  “I better, Sister,” Zilah said “I leave Ferrel's tobacco, not chew.”

  “What?”

  The girl dropped her narrow eyes “Ferrel say make me feel better some.”

  “I did not know he…imbibed.” Esther yanked on the bow beneath her own chin, pulling the tight cap so the outside ribbing pressed against her bony cheeks. “It is not good for you. Now you know. Are you up to helping hitch ol’ Snoz?”

  The girl nodded. “He walk to not trouble bees.”

  “My favorite as well,” Esther said. “The bees are bothered by steps?”

  The girl reached for the bag of buckwheat kernels and popped a palmful into her mouth, chewing with motions like a mouse nibbling. “Mei-Ling—Deborah,” she corrected, “she say bees tell voice and know name of thumping feet. If they unhappy, they fly away” She munched. Her lips formed an upturned smile in her oval face. Her skin bore the color of soft dust, marked with pocks from a previous illness, long before they began this journey west. She was not a pretty girl, but stout and until now sturdy, and her contract husband had written enthusiastically about the match after he'd seen the photographic likeness the girl had sent.

  “I strong like ox,” Zilah said, unwrapping her legs from beneath her. She burped the buckwheat kernel, pressed tiny fingers to her lips. “Do what we do not before. That where courage live My grandmother say this long time ago.”

  “Best we believe her,” Esther said and helped the girl from the tent.

  Mazy s eyes hurt, she couldn't think straight. She wanted to comfort the others but had nothing to give, anger and loss, leaving her as drained as a shattered pitcher

  “I'd give anything for you not to be feeling this, darlin,” Elizabeth said. “Losing someone you love, it's the worst ache known to humans, worse than being cut on or suffering from sin.” She hesitated “Maybe not worse than suffering sin, but we all got to live through that When your father died, I thought I'd die too. But then your heart keeps beating, you keep taking breaths and getting hungry and needing sleep, so you know you're not dead. One day, something makes you laugh and you're ripped with guilt because you can. A month passes and then a year, and you've gone on with your life even knowing you couldn't, but you do.

  “A morning comes and you wake up and the sky is blue and you smell flowers you'd forgotten you liked and the dog bumps his head beneath your hand and you take him for a brisk walk beneath budding oak and maple. It's like a garden coming back in spring after a long, tough winter.” She lifted her daughters arms. “You're like a rag doll,” she whispered then pulled her daughter to her breast.

  They held each other for a time, then Elizabeth removed her daughter s wrapper and replaced it with a laundered one.

  Mazy smelled the lye soap and river water on her dress as it slid over her head, brushed against her face. “It seems so long ago we were stopped, doing laundry, and I was irritated with you for leaving.”

  “I didn't leave you,” Elizabeth said She placed the combs back into Mazy s hair and found the splinter of mirror and held it before her daughter. “I think Jeremy d want you to keep going on. For you and his baby. Dont imagine he'd want you to just sit here and waste away.”

  “I'm already holding water,” Mazy said, taking the mirror from her mother and laying it down.

  “Got to stay healthy. Come along now, Mazy. Let's see if the two of us can yoke the oxen by ourselves. Give this grief train some direction.”

  “I don't know if I want to, Mother,” Mazy said as she let Elizabeth help her down the wagon stairs. She looked around at the stream and the cattle and horses clustered toward the back. Ruth already at work. The cows and cow brute lay chewing their cud. “What would be wrong with our staying right here?”

  “Ain't our place, for one,” Elizabeth said. “Indian Territory. Don't think the Pawnee nor the Sioux'd take our being here as some kind of pleasant party. This ain't even the States. We're in a foreign country. Besides, what'd we do if we stayed?”

  “Raise a garden, sell the vegetables to people coming across, people like us. We've bought up a thing or two along the way. Sell them milk and cheese and eggs. Do like the Mormons have, run ferries and such. Buy time; then turn back”

  Elizabeth said, “I say we go on to Oregon, get the land Jeremy spoke of. Three hundred twenty acres each. Can't hardly beat that.”

  Mazy turned, taking in the stream and the Platte and the folding slopes and the rich loam of the earth. “I think there are better choices than simply going on.”

  They gathered around the bodies wrapped in blankets, Antone s in what must have been the extension boards from the Schmidtkes’ table. A survivor of her first night as a widow, Mazy leaned against her mother. Mazy had insisted that they dig graves and mark them with rocks and wooden crosses. “I dont see any sign of Indians or coyotes or anything else interested in digging up old bones,” Mazy said. “Someday I'll make a marker, a real one, and come back here, to this place I'll need to know exactly where they are.”

  Sister Esther spoke the words, about dust to dust and ashes to ashes.

  They heard the clatter of a wagon, and the group turned to see Dr Masters rolling out, his shoats squealing after. That left the women and a few sons to lay their men to rest.

  “He's leaving?” Adora wailed, leaning against Charles, who stiffened at his mother's touch. “Now?”

  “Didn't do anything for us,” Ruth said “Good to see him go.”

  Following the prayers, Mazy pounded the simple cross between the rocks she'd carried to cover the grave. She thought of what she'd come through, where she'd been, and what the future held. Then she made up her mind.

  Lura Schmidtke hadn't spoken since they'd prayed over Antone's grave. For more than twenty years, she had not moved until her husband told her, had not fixed a breakfast without him saying first that he preferred buckwheat pancakes that morning rather than a mess of eggs. She was what, forty-five years old, forty-six? Yet she felt older than her gra
ndmother who had died the day she turned seventy-nine.

  For twenty years, Lura had seen the world before her always filtered through the shadow Antone cast. Yet here she sat She knew she should move. The rest of the women had.

  “Mama?” Mariah said. The child's voice still sounded weak. “Its time to go now.”

  Lura sighed. She let herself be lifted by the shoulders, her short cape sliding upward along thin arms. Her legs ached from the sitting. Mariah picked up the high-back chair and scooped it to her elbow while, with her other arm, she helped her mother balance as their toes scuffed up loose dirt.

  “Where's Matt?” Lura asked, looking around. Her voice sounded flat like a piano key out of tune.

  “He's back checking cattle. Likely Joe Pepin needs a little help. He'll be back to drive Pa's wagon. I can do the other. Joe'U have to take the stock alone. Don't see how he'll handle that many,” Mariah said.

  “Is that what Matt thinks best?”

  “Just what needs doing.”

  “You're a good girl,” Lura said and patted her daughter's hand. “But I'm so tired now. Just so tired.”

  “Pa said walking's good for the back.”

  “Yes. He knew everything important,” Lura said.

  “Sometimes I worry that I gave it to Pa,” Mariah said, no longer sounding like a competent young woman looking after her mother but as the thirteen-year-old she really was. “I drank from the river, on my belly, just like Pa. I heard someone say that's where the sickness came from. I had it.”

  “I think I'd do best if we just rested a day or so right here. We need to know what Matt thinks we should do.” Then she remembered something. “It was likely those Asians,” Lura said, her voice lowered, “not you. Likely them what caused it.”

  From her position beside the oxen, Mazy watched her mother feed the antelope, a last task, she said, before they started out. The little black nose jabbed for milk, pushed against the rubber bottle her mother had fashioned from the rain gear sleeve. Fip, they'd named it, for its small size. Even Pig joined the act, barking his gruff gruff sonna, his tail wagging the whole time. A simple, everyday thing that seemed out of place.