What Once We Loved Read online

  She stumbled, caught herself on the tree roots washed up onshore all stripped and bare and stacked like a witch's knotty canes against the sandbanks. Tomorrow, in a wash of storms, the beach could be swept clean as Chita's kitchen. Chitds kitchen. The Mexican house girl who worked for them owned that room. Tipton felt displaced even in her own house—it was as though her mother had come with her.

  Her mother. The wind picked up swirling leaves and twigs. Tipton walked with her back to the wind then, letting it push her from the beach toward their cabin. Grass refused to grow beside their home, the salt and rain pelting it, leaching it of life. Maybe it was the constant shade of the tall firs that pierced the sky over their home that made her feel…closed in, somehow.

  She did love the tangled foliage, the huckleberries and elderberries that tasted sweet and the flowers that bloomed soft pinks even in the fall as it was now. It was all so lush and humbling, this ocean place. She felt so small here. So very small.

  That was what she'd wanted her husband of three months to understand.

  She changed direction again, walking the other way now, facing the sea. The fog bank moved closer, tightened her chest. A steamer cut the horizon. Tipton wondered if it was the Cameo and if it would dock in Crescent City or head on north to Portland and Vancouver. She could use a new issue of Goody's to peruse. That brightened her spirit. And maybe there would be a letter from Mazy. She'd heard nothing from her mother, and she probably wouldn't. Her mother had Charles now. Nehemiah would get his newspaper from the ship too and disappear inside it. He kept on top of the political news in New York and Washington, sometimes reading to her of subjects like the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed earlier that summer. He got agitated by some law being repealed, something in Missouri that had happened thirty years before. And abolitionists. What on earth was that? It sounded like a sneeze or the stomach ague, what she was sure she'd suffered from herself this past week.

  “Nothing more than eating seafood when you're not accustomed,” Nehemiah told her, patting her arm in that gentle way he had.

  “Chita's hot sauces more likely,” she'd countered.

  “Now, Tipton,” he'd said. “We are the foreigners here. Remember that. We need to learn the newer ways, not them.”

  She didn't like that part of California at all, the foreign influences. California had dozens of them. Why, Nehemiah had informed her that five nations' flags had flown over California. “Do you know which countries they were?” he'd asked as if she were a dolt.

  She guessed Spain and Mexico right off. Then thought of the United States. But she never did guess the other two. He'd been almost smug, twisting at his red beard when he said, “Russia and the Bear Republic. Yes, we were once our own little country, not unlike Texas.”

  She just never got used to hearing the languages spoken on the muddy streets, and unlike Mazy, Tipton didn't find them the least bit interesting to listen to. She just marched right on by if she encountered a Celestial or one of the native people with their solemn faces. Or were the Indians the natives, she wondered? That made the Mexicans, what, foreigners just as she was? It was all too confusing.

  Which made Nehemiah's request all the more difficult to understand. Why did these California people use so many foreign words still? They'd been a state for nearly three years. Yet half the things Chita said ended in an o. Pronto. Pequito. Gordo. She'd heard that gordo meant fat, a word she'd also overheard and hoped had not been meant for her. Tipton had been diligent about what she ate. She was very careful to stop at the first sign of pressure against the whalebone busk, taking small bites of any new thing offered. She could never be sure what those people put into foods anyway.

  So why did her husband want her to learn their language? That was the frustration. She didn't need to actually learn the language outright to be able to converse with their Spanish neighbors. They were all learning English. That was as it should be.

  “You'll feel more at home if you know some Spanish, Mrs. Kossuth,” Nehemiah insisted. He always used her full name after she'd asked him not to call her “Tip.” She hadn't told him Tip was the name Tyrell had called her.

  Tyrell. The man she'd come west for. The man death had cheated her of. She wondered if Tyrell would have made such a request of her. He spoke of kindness, of treating people as good neighbors, expecting the best. He seemed more concerned that she have a good heart than that she be able to talk to the maid, not that they would've had a maid if she and Tyrell had married. But she didn't think he'd have said, “Learn to talk the way the Mexicans do.”

  “This was Mexico once. All of it, Mrs. Kossuth,” Nehemiah had said. “Just a courtesy to remember that. It's for your own good I ask it. I want you to have friends.”

  She couldn't imagine being friends with Chita. Besides Chita could understand her English perfectly well. That was what she'd tell Nehemiah. That she'd given it her “ocean thought,” hated to disappoint him, but she was her own person as his Mrs. Kossuth. She would learn to manage the household, give orders and directions so his needs were tended, but she would do that in her own way, in English, and make her own friends. Yes, that was what she'd tell him. She inhaled deeply. The ship looked larger on the horizon. Good. It was coming onto shore. Something to look forward to. She turned her back and headed for their home.

  Reality was what happened when one started to hope. Ruth had allowed herself pleasure. Morning fishing. A shower in the middle of a fall day. She had considered something besides preparing for the worst. She'd even decided to move forward, to do something different, not just wait to react to the trials she attracted like dead vermin enticing wasps. See what it got her? She'd lost a dream that would've sustained her through difficult days. She'd lost the sureness of reaching for something, not just batting something bad away.

  It was the second day after Jumper's death. Ruth wanted to go to the barn, saddle Koda, and just ride out into the timber and never come back. But Mazy was there milking her cows, and she didn't want to talk with her or see her. Her fists clenched with the thoughts. Even if Mazy hadn't been there, Ruth wasn't sure she could give herself permission to ride Koda, for fear she would find joy in that moment.

  There'd been other things to occupy her time anyway. First, there'd been the settling of Jessie and Ned, discovering what had happened, how the brute had gotten loose—not that it mattered now. The morning after, she'd tried to tell them that she was glad they were both safe and had not somehow gotten between the cow brute and the horse. Her eyes ached from crying, and her voice was as stiff as new leather.

  “We was just feeding grain to Jumper, and he must have followed us when we fed Marvel,” Ned had told Mazy when she'd come that night.

  “But why did you grain the brute?” Mazy said. “Why were you in his pen?”

  “We were just being nice,” Jessie defended. “He's always been nice to us. He just watched us and chewed his mouth. He didn't mean no harm. He was all alone in there while all the rest of the cows got to be together.”

  Even in her grief, Ruth noticed the child kept looking at her, seeking assurance, Ruth imagined, wondering if all the goodwill they'd been storing up would now be washed away like yesterdays dirt.

  “Being nice,” Mazy scoffed. “You were told to never, ever go inside his pen.”

  “We closed the gate after we left, Aunt Mazy, we did,” Ned said. “And we just poured a little bit of grain on top of his hay. That's why we had to go in the pen like that. To put the grain down. In the manger. So it wouldn't get all stomped on. I couldn't pitch it over the rail, so we went inside. I'm sorry. I am. But we slid the latch just like you always said.”

  “Somehow it got opened,” Matthew told them, “and I don't think it was the bull or horse that did it. You kids deserve a good lick—”

  “I'll handle them,” Ruth had said.

  It was no one's fault, not really, and they'd suffered enough. Remorse rode their little shoulders hard. Even in her own despair, Ruth could see that. And she didn't like the
way everyone thought they could just discipline her children. Her children had a guardian. Maybe it was just from habit, from when she'd pulled back and let others do the raising up of them. Well, things were different now.

  The horse had obviously followed the grain and, after the children left the corral wandering toward the freighter's bells, somehow the latch had worked loose—or was worked loose by Jumper's nudging at it. She'd known Koda could unlatch a gate; she didn't think Jumper could. But it might have happened that way.

  Jumper had gone inside, snuffed around in the hay. The bull defended, possibly coming from behind with his horns lowered, gouging then twisting into Jumper.

  The morning after, Ruth'd found herself still there, sitting beside him, talking and petting Jumper.

  Mercifully Mazy had not tried to talk with her, but had stood beside her for a time, then touched her shoulder. Ruth felt cold as iron. She couldn't bring herself to nod or sink into her good friend's touch. Instead she'd continued the ritual of hand over hide, laying Jumpers hair smooth, flattening the rough spots, the tiny nicks and scars that marked a horse's life.

  Matthew left briefly to get biscuits, and as the sun rose higher, he returned, squatted beside her and suggested softly that they'd need to do something about the animal. She could see herself that the flies were gathering.

  “I want his tail hairs,” she said then, “and mane. For a mecate.”

  “Joe and I'll do it,” Matthew said. “It'll make a good rope. Good idea, Ruth. A way to take him with you.” He'd cleared his throat. “Do you want us to bury him? The packers would help, I think—”

  She shook her head. “Haul him into the woods. Cut him up.” Matthew frowned. “For the dogs. The freighter's dogs.”

  “Ruth, I—”

  “Jumper'll go on living that way. He won't have died for nothing.”

  “You're a remarkable woman,” Matthew said then as he pushed against his knees to stand. “A remarkable woman.”

  “The raccoons and coyotes and bees'll clean the bones,” she said knowing she sounded…callous, cold maybe, but it was her way of holding on, of keeping herself together. “Only the bones'U be left. You can bury those. After I've gone. I'll get the shears and cut the hairs myself.”

  “Ruth, you don't need to—”

  “You can help,” she said, her voice softening. “You are.” Her eyes met his.

  She'd let him cut the mane but had pulled on the tail hairs herself, scraping mud and manure from the long copper, black, and brown strands with her fingers. She felt the tightness in her chest and the sobs rise up from a place that felt empty already. She wondered if she'd cried this much for her brother or for her baby when they'd died. Yes, she guessed she had. The thought relieved her, somehow, reassured her.

  Elizabeth arrived then, as the drover Joe Pepin and Matthew and the freighters placed ropes around the big animal and towed Jumper into the woods. Ruth couldn't watch. Someone must have told Elizabeth, or maybe she'd been headed this way on her own. No. She'd been out there the day it happened, Ruth barely remembered. There'd been no going-away gathering. Someone must have cancelled it. She had let Elizabeth put her arms around her, and she had cried, embarrassed by the flow of tears. “The children are fine. No one was hurt,” Ruth told her.

  “I know, Ruthie, I know.”

  “I can't wait for Jeremy's brother to come claim that brute,” Mazy'd said. “I'm so sorry. I should have just sold him off. But no, I was wanting to build a herd, had a plan—”

  “It wasn't the bull's fault,” Elizabeth told her. “No one's fault. Always easier if you can lay blame but don't do you no good in the long run. Miserable results are still there, looking up at you.” She patted Ruth's back. “You just got to move on.”

  Elizabeth's presence today would be soothing and would be a buffer between herself and Mazy. She had to refocus, as Suzanne would say. Begin the thoughts of moving on though they were confused now. What was the point of leaving without a stallion to sire a dynasty? What was the point of staying?

  Mazy loaded her milk tins on her cart, carried the butter molds, and emptied them into damp linen for transport. Ruth watched her friend snap the mule's harness and drive away, relief and sadness mingling in her mind.

  She stepped into the shade of the barn now, pulled halters and bridles from the tack area and placed them in a box.

  “Ah, Miss Martin?” It was Joe Pepin, the wrangler with an active Adam's apple. He fingered the brim of the hat in his hands. “I know this is a poor time, ma'am, but I'm here to tell you that I can't be taking you north today.”

  Ruth blinked, tried to concentrate. “I expect we'll need a few more days before we're ready,” she told him. She motioned to all the tack and tools still not loaded.

  He coughed. “See. I can't be taking you and the young ones at all. I'm…1 got me a stake in a gold mine, and soon as the rains come, we'll be sluicing. I ain't getting any younger, and digging gold's got more promise than wrangling.”

  It almost didn't surprise her. “I'm sorry to hear that, Joe. But you made a deal with me.”

  “Yes ma'am. But as Matthew says, sometimes the wind changes. Guess people do too.”

  She stared at him, then waved him away. She shouldn't have counted on him in the first place, she thought. She watched with disinterest as he left and Matthew approached.

  “So he told you.”

  “How long have you known?” she accused before turning back to lift a silver bit.

  “Just since we dragged…handled Jumper,” he said. He then leaned against the manger, tipped his hat up higher on his forehead, and found a strand of wild rye grass to chew. “I've been thinking since.” He cleared his throat. “If you're wanting a guide to southern Oregon, I've been there too, you know. I know the way.”

  “Matthew, I—”

  “And together, we could get twice the free land.”

  “Haifa section will be enough for me,” she said. She polished at the bit with her shirt sleeve. “And I need a guide and wrangler, not a partner.”

  “It's not given to single women,” he said quietly

  “What?”

  “Maybe…Ruth, maybe there's no reason to go at all now.” He stood straight, looking tall and older than she knew he was. He was five, maybe six years younger than her. All of eighteen. Maybe nineteen. “You cant build a herd with no sire. Why not wait a year, see if one of those yearlings look promising. Put your hopes on that.”

  “What do you mean single women cant—?”

  “Oregon doesn't give land unless you're married. Or male. I thought we'd hitch up maybe… that s why so many young girls are. Shoot, Marian's old enough if we were to let her…which we won't. Fifteen is just too young. But I heard about a gal just eleven. Played outside with the neighbor's kids while her husband took care of the dishes and parched the coffee beans up.”

  Ruth's ears burned, and she wondered if her neck blotched. How could she not have known that she couldn't expect the same rights as a man? Now she'd have to use what little cash they had left to buy land. Or she'd have to sell some of the mares. Or maybe Matthew was right, just not go at all. And then what? Stay on here with Mazy and her…bull? Let Zane Randolph, Ruth's husband, just walk right up and find them all again? And just what did Matthew intend with his suggestion that they could have twice the land together?

  “It's pretty country. Good soil, black not red like here. Orchard country. Good for cattle and timber. With California growing as it is, there's plenty of folks to buy all that Oregon's rich soil can grow: apples, grain, hogs, beef, even horses a man…or woman could raise up.” He cleared his throat again. “Partnering isn't such a bad idea.”

  “I already did that once in my life. Officially, I still have a husband.”

  “Talking business here,” Matthew said. He cleared his throat, then grinned. “ ‘Course I'm willing to take it up a step or two if you'd like. Anything to please a little lady.”

  Ruth felt her face grow hot. “If your offer
is to guide us, I'll consider it, Mr. Schmidtke.” She emphasized his name. “But I prefer to decide my own future, not just fall into someone else's idea of what a little lady needs.”

  She stomped out of the barn even though that was where her work was. She heard his boots on the ground, felt him follow her out. “Ruth, I didn't mean—”

  “It's Miss Martin,” she said, her words gouging like a hoof pick. “I think—”

  “Look. I have this habit, like my Pa, saying things in ways that come out wrong. I didn't mean nothing…anything. I wouldn't want to say or do…you've had enough bad times. I…”

  She didn't hear him, had already closed her ears to whatever he might be saying. It was all a fog anyway—something said to get back in her good graces, not meant for her but for him.

  She heard a wagon freighter's bells jangle as the rig turned off the red road into the meadow. He drove a two-span hitch, four mules, and sat high on top of his wagon. Maybe she should try freighting, sell all the mares and buy up mules, and just go back to farming the children out. “If you always do what you've always done…” the words echoed. No, the children had to come first. She'd already been through times when that hadn't been so. She'd missed them too much. They were a team, a family. She just had to find a way to raise them well and still not do what she'd always done that kept her distant.

  The freighter driver waved to her, and she welcomed his invitation. “Got lots of baubles for the ladies in Shasta City,” he told her. “Even a few feathers for hats.”

  “I'm sure they'll be pleased,” Ruth said. “Mine doesn't appear to need any.”

  He laughed. “That floppy felt of yours is still becoming, Miss Martin. Say, where's that big stallion of yours? He always liked my maple candy.”

  Ruth winced, her eyes watered. “He…there was an accident. He—”

  He swept his hat and held it at his chest. “Sure sorry, Miss Martin. Indeed I am.”

  She wondered how long it would take before she could talk about it without fighting the tears. At least in Oregon no one would know about Jumper. That alone was a good reason to leave. She walked around the far side of the wagon box. “Need help unharnessing?” she asked.