All Together in One Place Read online

  “Oh, good,” Elizabeth said. “I was hoping you'd come through.”

  “Each of us should think of a truth and a fiction,” Mazy said. “Something no one would know of us just by looking at us or our having said it before. In our evening circle, one of us will tell the two things and the rest will guess which is the true thing.”

  “Make up lies?” Sister Esther said stiffly.

  “Just for a game,” Elizabeth said.

  “I like it,” Mariah said.

  “A lie. We get to tell a lie?” Jason said.

  “You have to tell something truthful, too,” Betha said. She stood, thinking. “So here's my lie I left four pairs of shoes back home that I never wore ” She paused “No, that's true.” She thought again. “This'U be something to consider. It's hard to say what I'm not.”

  “Somewhat…exposing,” Ruth said “Or could be.”

  “Good then. We'll start tomorrow after our necessary circle.”

  Suzanne listened to the muffled voices of women readying for bed. She fought back tears. She had a truth and a lie she could share. Truth— she was unable to care adequately for her child. Lie—anyone would offer to help. Truth—she would surely fail her other child on its way. Lie—she couldn't give away either child

  “I so sorry, Missy Esther, so sorry.” Deborah's face pinched in humiliation as Esther shook the parchment at her like a shaming finger.

  “You simply cannot be trusted with something so important. I will take responsibility for it now as I should have before. It goes inside my writing desk,” she said, showing the shivering girl, whose fingers pressed against white lips.

  “You take better care, Miss,” Deborah said.

  “We will lay it between linens and hope the creases will ease out so the plans can be read. You owe your future to Ruth,” she said.

  “A new debt,” Deborah said as tears pooled in her eyes.

  They made Fort Laramie on July the first. They'd crossed the North Platte, using the rickety public ferry found in working order, though requiring exorbitant prices. At least that's what Sister Esther thought. Still, it was either stay on the north side, bypass the fort, and roust a soldier to operate the ferry, or, as Ruth suggested, run it themselves. The women decided to pool their resources, though Adora and Tipton were busily looking for something in their wagon when the dollar demanded was paid.

  “Koda's foot isn't good,” Ruth said. “He'll need a bar shoe. Can you take him, Tipton?”

  “Dont you want to go?” Mariah asked.

  “No!” Then with less force she said, “Someone needs to stay with the stock. Tipton? You've been around farriers. Could you do it?”

  “I stay help with oxen,” Naomi said, an offer Ruth accepted.

  “Make a list of what we need,” Betha said “I want to check the register to see when the boys went through.”

  “And maybe Charles,” Adora said, her face brightening.

  “Thanks, Tipton,” Ruth said as the women moved out. And to Betha she whispered, “Don't register. I don't want to give Zane any help”

  “You think he's following, Ruthie? There've been no signs.”

  “Trust me, Betha. It's the one thing I'm certain of.”

  The adobe buildings set in a square, some two-story, with a thatch of green and raised from the treeless banks of the Laramie River, perked the women up. This was a place of ceremony—they were halfway to their destination.

  Mazy said, “I almost said out loud that we were ‘halfway home.’” “You did say it out loud, girl!” her mother said. “And right you are.” ”How many of you are there?” the suder asked when they'd come into the storehouse, the group of them too many for the size of the room. “A few weeks ago we were eleven wagons, twelve women, seven children,” Mazy said. “Now we're four wagons, all on the north bank, and just one large gathering.”

  “And were all filthy,” Betha said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Elizabeth chided her.

  “Baths are a twenty-five-cent piece each. You got that?”

  “The baths are on us,” Mazy said. “My mother and me. For everyone. Our gift.”

  “Nonsense,” Sister Esther said. “Each can pay their own way.”

  “Each can, but each can also accept a gift,” Elizabeth told her. “Want to keep me cleaning through Edens Gate for what my Fip did? I'm needing ways to find redemption.”

  Sister Esther pursed her lips and nodded, conceding.

  “All right,” the little man said, his white mustache like a sleepy caterpillar beneath his bulbous nose. “Who's first?”

  “We are,” Adora said. “We look a fright, my daughter and I. She's been ill, and on the trail it's just so difficult, truth be known.”

  “Costs extra if someone else hauls your water,” he said.

  “I'll pay the extra,” Adora said. “Tipton, you did find my purse?”

  Tipton stared at her. “I haven't done anything with your purse. Haven't even seen it.”

  “Weren't you looking for it? Where could it be, then? You're so addled these days you could have put it somewhere and not even known.”

  “Did you have it before we went back to the graves?” Elizabeth asked.

  Adora thought. “I think so. Oh, my. I can't exactly remember.” Her eyes looked pinched. “There was so much to think about. Hathaway's dying…if it got lost in the storm…maybe my other wagon.” Her eyes opened wide. “Tipton, are you sure you didn't just misplace it? What'U we do without money?”

  “Nothing you can do now. We can check in the wagon—”

  “You ladies bathing or not?”

  “I carry water for you,” Deborah offered.

  “Why thank you, dear,” Adora said, accepting. “Lord knows I'm in need of pampering.”

  She didn't notice Tipton roll her eyes.

  The world did look better after a bath, Elizabeth decided. And tonight they'd sleep on a regular bed following a meal that included fruit and whipped, sweetened cream. This was quite a place what with all the folks who'd arrived a few days before still staying on, resting up animals and all. Wagons coming in after them. The register included Charles's name a good two weeks ahead of them, the little weasel. Good news for Ruth, too. The boys had been here, resupplied and headed out, leaving a note for Ruth and Lura, assuring them they'd meet up in Oregon City if they didn't catch up before then.

  One night here and they'd move on. The boys and the stock weren't too far ahead. Elizabeth heard music, a fiddle and harmonica. The suder said there'd be a dance later. Elizabeth thought that she might go, not to dance so much as to people-watch, catch the glances from one to the other that said more than words could ever, watch skirts swirl, and feed on fixn. They could all use a litde dancing to push the losses away, have fonder memories, though she didn't expect to see anyone else she knew there.

  Tipton stood before the sign that read BUcksmith Shoppe Earlier in the day, she'd helped Betha bring Cicero and Koda here, one leading the horse by a halter and the other prodding the ox gently with a goad, both talking as they moved.

  “Got the foot in time,” the blacksmith said. “Greased it when you shoulda. Nice work, whoever did it.”

  “It was all of us,” Tipton said, liking the truth of it.

  “Horse needs a bar shoe, all right,” he said. “I'll put a little vee-bar on it. Marks my style.”

  “Look at you,” Adora told Tipton when she got back. “Already dirtied up after your first bath in months. We've no money for another, not until we search for my purse again.”

  “I just wanted to help the farrier,” she'd told her.

  She'd come back that night. She felt a closeness to Tyrell here as she stood beneath the sign, watching the blacksmith work. It was how she'd met Tyrell those months ago back in Wisconsin. This was where Tyrell would have spent his day, fanning the big bellows, bending and shaping the iron, forming and tapping it across the anvil. Tipton rubbed at her arm, willed herself to breathe evenly, without quickened breaths.

>   They'd kept the anvil and the tongs and the hammer, some iron shoes, too. Tipton had been unable to part with them. Everything here was twice as large as what they carried, twice as hot with the coals burning red. The steady clank of a hammer reached her ears, the clink of a tong each time the blacksmith shifted the shoe. She loved the sound, the smells of hot metal, and the sizzle of steam when the blacksmith stuffed the shaped iron into water to cool it down, turn it, and clank again.

  Timing and shaping. Tyrell had been shaping her, too, though he would have said it wasn't him at all, but God's work with Tyrell as the tool. She wondered, for just a moment, what all the hammering and shaping would force her to become.

  Elizabeth led Suzanne to a covered porch surrounding the largest building of the fort. The older woman insisted that she come inside, but Suzanne drew the line at the porch.

  “I'd prefer to be here,” she said. “I can hear the music and listen to the laughter without having to negotiate being a part of it.” She patted her stomach. “Negotiating is no easy task these days. Besides, Pig would be hard to manage. I can smell the food they have in there spread on a table I'm assuming is just that dog's height.”

  “You'll miss so much by not being inside,” Elizabeth told her.

  “I can't see people, I can't read their lips, so listening is what I have. And the scents of things and the vibration of their feet on the floor. And I can feel the shaded area we just stepped up on, and that's bound to mean a bench.”

  “There's one here, all right,” Elizabeth told her. “Suit yourself.”

  She'd settled herself on the wooden slats, which felt cool against her cotton wrapper. Suzanne found her fan and waved the air before her face. “I'm leavin ya,” Elizabeth said. “You want to join me later, just follow your nose.” She stuck her head inside, then stepped back out. “You're right. There's plenty of food covering the side tables.”

  The cooler night air drifted around her, joining the vibrations of the dancing feet, the clapping. She'd never spent much time on those sensations until she lost her sight. She'd paid attention to what she could see; that's what a photographer did. One looked for the subtleties of light and shadow, of shapes and angles. There were no angles in sound, no shapes wrapped in scents.

  She could smell yeast coming from the bakery She listened and thought she detected someone walking across the square. Pig growled low. She heard the shuffle of leather against the worn Spanish brick steps and then a quietness broken by breathing.

  “I am in awe of your beauty, good woman,” a man's voice said, deep, controlled. She smelled cologne and something antiseptic. She gripped the leather handle on Pig.

  Suzanne smelled the sweet scent come closer. She stiffened. Pig barked once, stood, and lunged against her hand. Pig didnt like him! K wash of cold swept down her spine.

  18

  volition

  The thump of a Virginia Reel with hands clapping and whoops and hollers drew Tipton, not that she planned to go inside. That would be disrespectful to Tyrell's memory and to her dream, one they'd shared of how they'd dance together when they reached Fort Laramie. She did not believe she would ever dance again.

  Above the music, Tipton heard Pig barking and Suzanne's protest and a man's melodramatic cajoling And while Tipton couldn't see Suzanne, she knew the sound and conversation came from somewhere near the well-dressed man on the porch.

  “Is something wrong? Suzanne?” Tipton asked.

  The man turned. “I meant no harm,” he said. Light from inside the paned windows flickered against a diamond stickpin in his neck scarf. He wore a white suit that deepened the bronze of a face furrowed with what looked like concern.

  White White hat, white hair—in all this dust, he wears white

  “I merely wished to introduce myself.” He wore a short beard, cropped around a firm chin. It, too, looked white, with black streaks.

  “Oh, Tipton. Good. Pig, it's all right,” Suzanne said.

  “Pig?” the man said.

  “Tipton. Could you walk me back?”

  “I'd be pleased to perform that task,” the man told her, “if your dog allows. To amend myself for having startled you, Madam ¨”

  “Tipton?” Suzanne ignored the man.

  “I'm right here,” the girl told her. She stepped onto the porch, put Suzanne's arm through hers, and said, “If you'll excuse us.”

  Suzanne's hand trembled. Pig growled low.

  “Please,” the man said. He swept his tall hat off and bowed at the waist to them both. “Could I start again. I'm—”

  “She has no interest, and I'm sure that neither do I,” Tipton said She twirled her skirt wide with her right hand, leading Suzanne out with her left “There're steps here. Two,” she told Suzanne. “We're walking straight away.” Tipton looked back over her shoulder to see the man still staring, hat in hand. “Did he hurt you?”

  “He assumed I wanted my glasses off and didn't bother to ask if that was so,” she said. “And his words, how Wesome’ I was. It was…seductive, almost I hadn't thought about anyone…about even a gentleman approaching…I…it was frightening.” She swallowed. “I'm not wanting¨how will I…?”

  “You're pretty,” Tipton told her.

  “Big as a barn, too,” Suzanne said.

  “Say, big women are pretty,” Tipton told her. “Look at Miz Bacon. Oh, sorry. Guess you can't.”

  “Describe her, Tipton.” Suzanne breathed deeply, and Tipton sensed a calm she was pleased to be a part of.

  “She's taller than most. Has lots of hair, kind of tilled earth colored. Eyes like emeralds, green and real round, that peer into you”

  “She doesn't strike me as invasive,” Suzanne said.

  “Invasive? I wouldn't say that Those eyes let you sink inside them, too. Her mouth turns up so you think she's smiling even when she isn't. Her forehead's wide. My mother says that's a sign of intelligence.”

  “Is yours wide?”

  “Ha!” Tipton said. “Not mine. Anyway, Miz Bacon has this habit. She rubs the back of her neck when she's thinking. She walks real determined, never meanders the way my mother says I do. She has a little waist. Smaller than mine, I think. When she wears bloomers they show her shape real fine”

  “You've a photographers eye for detail, Tipton.”

  The sunset sprayed pale light behind distant mountain peaks. It lingered like a woman's longing.

  “My baby's due near August first,” Suzanne said. Tipton swallowed. Such a personal thing to say. “I thought earlier after the storm…but the pains didn't last. I don't know what I'll do without Bryce.”

  “I don't know what I'll do without Tyrell, if truth be known.”

  “That sounds like your mama, now,” Suzanne said.

  “It's a step up to your room.” Tipton released Suzanne's hand. “She says that often, doesn't she, my mother? ‘If truth be known,’ like it was something that could be.”

  “And wouldn't we all like to have truths known and be known for who we are?” Suzanne said. “Thank you, for helping just now, not trying to tell me how I ought to…feel, earlier. I get so tired ofthat, people treating me like I was a child who didn't know what she wanted”

  “It's all right,” Tipton said and shrugged.

  “Bryce used to say that was what all humans long for, to be known, truly known and just accepted by another.”

  “Can't say I ever wanted that,” Tipton said.

  “Oh?” Suzanne said. “Now would that be one of your truths, or a lie?”

  Ruth bent beneath one of the Bacons’ cows and checked the bag. “Good work, Naomi. Do you want to do the other or feed Fip?”

  “Milk Mavis,” she said.

  “I don't blame you,” Ruth laughed. “That pet of Elizabeth's is more work than it's worth. The children love the thing, though. Don't know what she'll do when it gets big.” Ruth listened to the antelope's bell, located it, and shook grain in a bucket to gather its attention. It came running, and she fed it warm milk, dribbling some from
her fingers into the soft mouth. She wished Jessie had decided to stay back with them instead of going to the fort. She would have liked the quieter time with the child. Jessie would have enjoyed seeing the Indians camped not far away too.

  She wasn't sure how Betha did it, cooking and tending and still mediating the children's squabbles with fairness.

  “Do her eyes work?” Jessie had asked her one day, pointing at Suzanne.

  “She's blind, dummy,” Ned said.

  Jessie handed Betha the dreaded buffalo chips to be added to the cooking fire. “Then why does she have eyes that open and close?”

  Betha scowled at Ned and said to Jessie, “There was a time that she could see by looking out through them, just like we do,” Betha told her. “But then something happened, and now she sees through her fingers and her ears and through what she can smell. Here”—Betha put her spoon down and took the chips from Jessie's hand—”close your eyes. We'll play a game. What do you hear?”

  “Birds,” Jessie said

  “Anything else?”

  “Horses dancing their feet Cows spittin. Wind. Going in and out my nose.”

  “Breathing, yes, the sound of your breath. It's restful, isn't it, to see with your ears? Anytime you're feeling scared, you can listen for your breath and make it come slowly in and out. Now keep your eyes closed, but tell me what you taste. Just trust me now,” Betha'd said. “I won't hurt you. Open wide.” She placed something on Jessie's tongue.

  “I know that. It's a berry,” she said. “Huckleberry”

  “Look again,” Betha said, “no, no. Not with your eyes.”

  “Oh, currant.”

  Jessie beamed when Betha announced her correct. “See how much you can see without looking? But you have to pay attention, not let your mind wander too far. And find people you can trust. That's what Mrs. Cullver does, and its not always easy when we are here in a place none of us has ever been before. She's got to learn to trust her little Clayton, too.

  “Can she see buffalo chips?” Ned asked.

  Betha laughed. “They do still have a bit of scent, but I suspect you children are going to have to pick at them for your supper, even if Suzanne could spot them.”