All Together in One Place Read online

  “Now it's how to decide,” Ruth said.

  “I always hated voting,” Lura said.

  “Because you always lost, Ma,” Mariah noted. “Matt and me and Pa outvoted you”

  “Someone has to lose,” Adora said. “We cannot all have our own way.”

  “Yes, but you had whiplash over losing your mules. If it'd been your idea or you'd agreed it was the thing to do, you'd be feelin fine,” Elizabeth said.

  “I never would have agreed. Those were fine mules, some of the best in Grant County Why, Hathaway raised—”

  “So what happens if we dont vote?” Ned asked. “Do we just stay here forever?”

  No one spoke for a time, and then Mazy said, “We listen to each other, until we understand, to see if there is some shared way to solve the problem.”

  “We'd have a better chance of things working if we all agreed rather than just be outvoted,” Betha said. “It'd feel more grownup-like to have the choice.”

  “Are we still talking about my mules?” Adora asked.

  “Not really,” Elizabeth said.

  “It will take too long, deciding that way,” Sister Esther said. “See how long we're here discussing? We need a leader.”

  Ned said to his brother, “Want to flip an eagle for it? We're the men in camp.”

  “I say head west,” Ruth said. “I never did see how to look forward while heading back. What we're doing now, trying to work out the differences in a just way, simply makes the possibility that we could reach Oregon or California that much stronger.”

  Deborah swallowed after she spoke. “It please me to bring bees to new husband.”

  “Zilah?” Mazy asked.

  “I not good choose,” the chubby girl said. Her eyes dropped as though the prairie ground held more safety than the faces of these women. “I go where taken.”

  “That makes two of us,” Suzanne said.

  Mazy wanted to say something to the soft-faced girl, to Suzanne too, something to help them understand that accepting help didn't have to mean giving up their independence; it didn't have to mean saying good-bye to all they knew. The thought crossed her mind that she might be speaking to herself.

  “Mariah?” Mazy asked.

  “Golly, no one's asked me before,” Mariah said. Her thin little back sat up straight on the broken wheel she perched on. “I guess I'd like to find Matt.”

  “Before they get too far ahead,” Ruth said.

  “We could do it, Ma, if we stuck together,” Mariah said.

  “Naomi?”

  “Some not go here, there.” She nodded east, then west. “Feet stick in sand.”

  “I thought you were satisfied with the marriage choices,” Sister Esther said. She turned her stiff upper body toward Naomi. “The man's letters have been most kind, most respectable. Surely you don't want to break the contract?”

  “Zilah believes he will break it,” Deborah offered.

  “Why would he? I think you worry overmuch. I regret that—”

  “So where are we?” Adora interrupted. “Does everyone get to have a say here?”

  A chorus of “yes,” “go ahead,” “speak your mind” urged Adora on.

  “If truth be known, I am not looking forward to facing people back in Cassville, the ones who'll say how silly we were to have left in the first place. Hathaway…dying. Charles…even though I know he left in a fuss, well, he is still my son…”

  “It will be harder to pretend everything is fine back home, won't it, Mother?” Tipton said.

  “Yes, it will,” she said, in the high to low tone that marked her speech.

  “So. Tipton,” Suzanne said, summarizing.

  “I really don't care,” Tipton said.

  “It's finding something to go to that matters,” Elizabeth said, “finding a thing to believe in, that's what'U get us through. Hard parts'U show up either direction, and we got to have something bigger than a river to ford to keep our eyes on.”

  “I want to go where Ruth goes,” Jessie said. “Are you going to feed Koda now?”

  “In a minute,” Ruth said and smiled at the girl.

  “Sarah? Boys?” Betha asked.

  “Hey, Papa thought Oregon or California was what would be good for us, so I'd like that,” Ned said. Jason nodded his head.

  “Do we have enough supplies?” Betha asked.

  “If we share and share alike,” Lura said.

  Suzanne said, “I don't hear that all have said their preference yet.”

  They calculated, and then eyes turned to Mazy.

  Elizabeth reached her hand and placed it on Mazy's as it rested over the tin cup. Her mother's hands felt warm against her cool ones. “What would you need, child, to go west? What would make it your own choice and not because you had to, or because someone made you, or because not going would mean you'd broken up a family?”

  Mazy heard her heart beating. Their looks frightened, the way they put such weight in what she'd say She wanted to do what would make them all happy, wanted to please them so. She recognized the feeling. It was who she was, giving up her wishes, lacking courage to stand firm.

  “A little time,” Mazy said. “That used to drive my husband crazy, how long it took for me to decide a thing. But I still wonder if we could finish this discussion first thing in the morning?”

  The women turned in for the night in their tents. Tomorrow would be soon enough to settle into the new wagons, say one last good-bye to the treasures and trunks they were leaving behind.

  Tipton pulled a muslin sheet over her shoulder, her back to the side of the wagon. No one was all that interested in her. She could tell. They talked around her as though she wasn't there. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe the laudanum had transformed her into a wagon tongue, something still and straight that could be sat on, stood on, made to drag around, but could break under pressure She hadn't found any more laudanum. Her mother must have hidden it. The whiskey, too. Not that she needed them. They took the edge off her hunger was all, and she liked knowing she was in control. Ignoring the gnawing in her stomach encouraged her, even if she did have to rely on the laudanum to do it. And the lightness in her head? A sign she could disappear even in the center of the women's circle. She could go where nothing could touch her. No pain, not ever again. Deep inside she went, refusing to feed the knot of fear that made her stomach puff out like a pumpkin. Still, she'd have to get spare laudanum laid up somewhere; that was just planning ahead.

  They carried spares of wagon tongues. Her mother could even get a spare daughter. What would it take? Mariah was about her age Her mother could hover and worry over her if she chose, or even Miz Bacon. She wasn't that much older than Tipton herself. She'd make a much better daughter for her mother. So much brighter, so much kinder, so much less likely to make mistakes, less likely to hurt others. She was more lovable, that was the truth of the matter. And in California or Oregon, Tipton's mother would have lots of motherless daughters to choose from, lots of spares to make everything work the right way.

  Her arm ached. It had been numbing up less with the laudanum. Lura kept a whiskey bottle for medication. Tipton hadn't tapped that yet, but the aching might demand it. Breathe, hold your breath when youre frightened, that's what Tyrell had told her. The very thought of him gone made her swoon.

  “What?” Tipton said.

  Someone had called her name. She sat up. “I didn't hear what you said.”

  “I wondered what it would take for you to agree to stay with us each day, be around?” Mazy asked. “Not go away in your mind quite so much.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It matters to me,” Mazy said. “We've both lost something, Tip. Something important and someone essential too. Now we have to find a way through the empty spaces. I'd feel better, if I knew that before you did anything foolish, went any farther away, that you'd come to me, as someone winding my way through it too. At least tell me…if you just can't stand it any longer.”

  “So you could talk
me out of it?”

  “So you could know that someone cares. And because you're a good person, one Tyrell loved dearly. He believed in you. And I believe you'd keep a commitment to someone else almost easier than to yourself.” Tipton stared, surprised that she didn't turn aside. “So what would it take for you just to stay?”

  “Someone wanting me to,” Tipton heard herself say.

  Mazy had never been good at decisions. She tried to think of those she had made for herself, made without pressure or thinking of others, to please her father or her mother. Had she ever made any just because it was what she wanted? There hadn't been many. She had expressed an opinion about the log home, a piece of furniture they might make, where it should sit in the main room. Jeremy had such strong opinions on everything that hers came out as tentative, frivolous almost.

  One evening, Jeremy suggested that the quilt she'd gotten for their bed might be better replaced with another or filled with less down; or that the amount of water she'd added to the venison stew could be cut back—though when she did that, he complained that she had too many added for the volume of liquid or shouldn't have added the potatoes at all. She began to question everything she did, even when he wasn't near her, to anticipate what objection he might make to whatever she chose to do. Sometimes, when she was tired or felt as large and as lumbering as a cow, she failed to act at all, certain of her incompetence, certain of his chastisement. Gentle chastisement, of course; he never struck her, never shouted at her. But still her decisions felt awkward under his scrutiny, and so did she herself.

  Then after, she made biting comments even when he sounded pleased and nice. She didn t know why she did that, but she did, snapping about the fence not getting finished or his constantly running nose. She wanted to see herself as kind, but the price she paid for harmony was the tension inside herself.

  Mazy tried to remember something she had decided without giving in to Jeremy's wishes. She wanted the garden plot made, she had pushed for that. And when he traveled to Milwaukee to get the brute, she had insisted on staying home. Looking back, he had agreed without effort. Still, he must have approved of both of those decisions, or they wouldn't have happened.

  If she was honest, she would have to admit that at some moment— she didn't know when—she had been sucked into the cool place of the river and had stopped deciding for herself. She didn't ask what the right thing to do was, the best thing, or even what God would wish. She didn't decide because something would make her happy or more content or because it would give her new information or make her feel stronger or even more sure of who she was. No, she simply made her best guess at what Jeremy would want—or anyone else involved in the matter—and then chose that. Harmony. Then sometime later she made them pay for stripping her of her wishes.

  Perhaps her insistence on going back to Wisconsin was because she had said she'd return, said she'd “make Jeremy pay” for making her leave. Hadn't the voice in her dream demanded that she listen to herself? But not if she headed back just to spite someone else. Mazy shook her head. She didn't do well with choices.

  Bacon sizzled, the coffee perked in the old pot. Everyone gathered around the fire and commented on the glorious morning, the eerie music of the coyotes that had serenaded them in the night They enjoyed light talk and chatter. Pig chased the boys and barked until Betha urged them to stop. She shook her head when Sarah gave her tin plate to the dog to lick. Fip s bell tinkled as he ripped at the stiff grass. Then a silence cloaked the group, and Mazy knew it was time to answer the question put to her the night before—in some ways, to answer the very question she had put to Tipton too.

  “Shall we bow our heads?” Mazy asked.

  “I'll say a prayer,” Mariah said. Mazy tried to organize what she'd be saying and didn't listen, but Elizabeth said it was “so loverly” that several asked Mariah to repeat it.

  “’Tis a gift to be simple,

  ’Tis a gift to be free,

  ’Tis a gift to come down

  Where we ought to be

  And when we find ourselves

  In the place that's right

  ’Twill be in the valley

  Of love and delight.”

  Mazy inhaled a deep breath, the phrase “find ourselves where we ought to be” still ringing in her head. Longing overwhelmed Mazy in an instant. She wanted to go back, more than anything, to what was, to what had been. But it was not there. It no longer existed.

  “I said I'd go back, even if no one else wanted to. But some new dream,” Mazy said, “digging into some new plot of life rather than attempting to retill the old one, I think that's what we're all wanting. I saw the brightness in your eyes last night when you talked. A kind of passion filled your face, Mother. It washed away that blank and empty look that's clouded our eyes like an old dog's. Maybe it's what we need to wash away the tedium of greasing the wheels or ease our aching arms and backs from cracking whips. Maybe it's the inspiration of going toward something, of doing something that seems right regardless of how it comes out, that's what'll keep the ache in our hearts at bay.”

  If she told them no, that she wouldn't go west with them, would they all turn back with her? Was she prepared to deprive them? She liked these women. They were good people, enduring. And they'd been kind to her. She wanted to please them, hoped it would also please herself.

  She took a deep breath. “I can plant a garden in Oregon or California,” she said. “Or places in between, I'd guess. I never wanted to come at all, not ever; and what would please me most would be to have what I left at home, do what I wanted back there with the husband I loved. But that's gone. It will never be.”

  Her stomach hurt, and she wished Jeremy were there beside her so she could tell him of the trap she'd closed over her soul, blame him for what was. But he wasn't, and blame wasn't hers to deliver. It was a lesson she was coming to learn. Blaming just got in the way of her seeking what she wanted.

  “So you'll go west with us?” Mariah asked.

  “Yes,” Mazy said, “I'll go. I'm sorry it isn't with more joy, but I'll do everything I can to get us all there together. So we'll find that place for all of us that's a valley of love and delight.”

  17

  being guided

  Sister Esther had insisted that her brothers come with her, badgered them both into submission. They'd obliged, the younger following their elders’ lead, done as she bid, until dead. Now she stood alone, staring at the place that marked her second brother's grave. After two days of travel the women were back where they'd started, back by the stream where her brother, Jeremy, Antone, Hathaway, and Tyrell were buried.

  The boy Clayton giggled and chased that antelope near Jeremy's grave. Sarah and her brothers followed close behind. Had they no respect for the dead? There was something incongruous in laughter beside these lonely graves. Yet what was disrespectful about loving life, celebrating the end of earthly disappointment and betrayal? Esther watched Mazy standing beside her husband's marker of stones. Mazy motioned to the child as he passed Jeremy's grave, called out his name. He waddled toward her, and she swung him upward and around, then pulled him to her breast It looked as though she wept on the child's blond head.

  Esther shook her head, unclasped her hands. Grieving. Done in so many different ways. She took long strides back toward her wagon, her skirts swishing limp around her aching knees. She wished she knew for certain, when bad things happened, whether it was part of God's guidance or just a consequence of one's own will.

  Ducking inside her wagon, she dampened a handkerchief with warm water and dabbed it on the back of her neck. Rested, she stepped out into the sunlight looking back toward the graves. What she witnessed soothed her aging eyes. Adora walked with Tipton. Mariah bent to her mother s head, too. And there stood Zilah, the sunlight fading the depressions on her cheeks so that her face looked almost smooth. She leaned over the area where Ferrel would have lain. When she walked away, wildflowers bobbed inside a mint green vase. Esther recognized it as one of
the Asian girls few possessions.

  “First real grieving you've had,” Mazy told Tipton later. They stood alone at the pile of rocks. She rubbed circles with her palm on Tipton's shoulder, talked as though soothing a child The two leaned into each other. “It's easier to go away, I know, but it keeps coming back unless we look it in the face.”

  “Are you?” Tipton asked between shuddered breaths.

  “Facing things? I turned west. My life has changed. Me, who likes everything to stay the same.” She sighed. “Like Suzanne said, life as we knew it ended. All we have left are the things we choose to remember.”

  “Yeah,” Tipton said, pulling away. “And the misery of learning to accept what is.”

  Life moved into routine, the physical movements of milking the cows, hitching the oxen, bringing the mules to harness became familiar as pulling water from a well at home. Who did what at dawn, which oxen snubbed behind which wagon at noon, who hobbled the horses at night, all became expected.

  Pig walked beside Suzanne, who gripped hard leather that stood up like an upside-down letter £/from his harness. Deborah rubbed honey onto Suzanne's burned legs once when they stopped. Mazy even heard Suzanne say “thanks” and saw her touch the girls arm with tenderness. Over the sounds of the mules and oxen, she heard Adoras voice rise as if meant to rouse her daughter, who rode, eyes glazed, beside her. Mazy tried to memorize the landscape and in her mind imagined a grassy mound made in the shape of a bird over Jeremy s grave.

  The routine fed their need for familiar in a foreign land.

  And while the patterns gave them confidence, recognition of their bent, they also gifted them with time: time to think and remember, reevaluate and wonder. Time to live with the loss birthed by long hours of lament.

  They were a few days out of Laramie—again—by Mazy s calculations when they pulled up earlier than usual for the evening. Deborah made her way in her quick-quick steps to the wagon Mazy walked beside.