What Once We Loved Read online

  Matthew laughed. “Have you ever been around a jack? They're the most stubborn beasts known.”

  “And you'd know this because.

  “Shoot. Ask anyone from the South. They use them to farm down that way. You can hardly train ‘em to stay inside a corral is what I always heard. That's why they run wild on the deserts.”

  “I didn't know you were an expert,” she said as she brushed flour from her face. She pulled off the towel she'd tucked into the waistline of her pants, rolled it into a bunch. Sarah scrambled from the bed where she sat and took it from her, slipping out the back to shake it in the wind.

  “You'll have your work cut out for you, with or without a jack, and besides, these mares are already bred back to Jumper. So you can't start a…dynasty until next year anyway. Why not wait to find a jack in Oregon? Herding one north will just add to your misery.”

  “Who's starting a dynasty?” Lura said, entering with her daughter, Mariah, close behind. No knocking, no howdy, just walking right in. “You? Matthew Schmidtke? Well, its about time.”

  “Ma, we're not talking about me,” he said as he rose and gave her a peck on her forehead. Ruth remembered that Elizabeth always said a woman could tell what kind of husband a man might be by watching him with his mother. Why had she thought ofthat?

  Matthew squeezed his sister close, held her for just a moment, and Ruth noticed that she let him, the bond between brother and sister a tender touch. “We're talking about Ruth here.”

  “What's Ruth up to?” Mariah asked.

  Ruth filled her in while Lura sucked on her empty clay pipe. Matthew shook his head, frowned, and Ruth wondered how he could have been so encouraging of her going it alone yet act as though her ideas were more squirmy than worms.

  Mariah, familiar in Ruth's kitchen, popped the raised noodles into a boiling pot of water, then sent Jessie and Sarah out to collect tomatoes from the garden and the last of the lettuce, too.

  “Is that it then?” Lura asked when the girls had left. Ruth nodded. Lura tapped her pipe on her palm while she sat, kicking her foot draped across her knee. Her white-and-blue striped skirt bobbed up and down as though she were dancing. She was always in motion. “Let me think how that would work,” Lura said. “Exactly.”

  “She's talking new uses for stock, now, Ma,” Matthew said a bit condescendingly. Ruth caught her breath. “It's a little complicated.”

  “I know all about stock,” Lura snapped. Both Matthew and Ruth turned to look at her. “People been talking about such things at the store and before that while I banked at the casinos. Lots of talk about seeing in new ways. What you're suggesting is mixing up livestock.'“ She laid the pipe in her lap. “And you can count me in.”

  “Count you in on what, Ma?”

  “Look,” Lura told her son, standing then, quick as a hungry fox. “Best thing for us to do is to sell those Durham cows of ours to Mazy Bacon.”

  “Sell them?”

  “She's got herself a herd then, dairy or beef, and she can dump that Marvel cow brute with an easy heart. Shell get herself some good help. Maybe David Taylor, her stepson of sorts. We can take some shares in her dairy instead of cash, if need be. Then we bag that money, and we buy ourselves some stocky mares, some from that Primrose blood out of Virginia, bred back or not. Maybe a couple of heavy Quarter-Pathers, too. Then the next few days, we roam these hacienda hills for the biggest, the strongest, and the prettiest jacks anybody ever saw—maybe two or three days. We buy them up. We breed them to any open mares we have. Next year they meet up with Ruths mares, or by then you may be ready to sell them, too, Ruthie, and get yourself some of our stocky brood. It wont matter whether you like the breeding part or the training. We'll have plenty to do in this…dynasty you're proposing. We'll need to break them, and we'll need people to sell them to the army, the farmers, and cattlemen. Maybe some good buggy mules'll sell too. They'll all need tending, that many animals.”

  “Ma,” Matthew said. “I think maybe—”

  “ ‘Course we got to find land enough to house us all and the mules, too. It'll be worth investing all we got. This could become the biggest moneymaker from a common thing since…brass tacks. You're a whiz, Ruthie, a true whiz. I had no idea you carried around such innovating thoughts in that pretty head of yours.”

  “Me neither,” Ruth said. She felt spun around like a bottle at a party. She sneezed from the flour that dusted her face. “I only wish I'd thought of it myself,” Ruth said as she sank onto the stool.

  “This came in for Miss Martin,” the editor at the Shasta Courier told Elizabeth. “You're heading out that way?”

  “Indeed. Tonights the big shindig. We hope to have a few fiddlers and plenty of food. You could join us.”

  Sam Dosh adjusted his printers cap and shook his head. “Got to get the paper out. I'm going to miss her. She was a fine lithographer.”

  “She's a fine artist,” Elizabeth said.

  “Its not polite to read another's mail…” Sam said. “But hard not to when the writing's on the outside.”

  “Well, thank you, Sam,” she said as she pulled the letter from his hands. “Ill see that Ruth gets it.”

  It was all happening too fast with too many things to sort through. Ruth listened and watched and wondered how her life had suddenly become someone else's. She looked around, wanted to concentrate on what was simple and sure.

  Elizabeth whipped the cream. Mariah scraped on a chunk of ice Mazy brought out from the butcher's cave in Shasta. The litde scoop below the blade filled up like pieces of crushed glass. She dumped the half-moon-shaped shavings on a pewter plate. Lura poured berry juice over the top. Only the whipped cream remained for the oohs and aahs to commence. “Ned, you going to sing for us tonight? Maybe ‘O Susannah.' I always liked that one,” Elizabeth said. “Helps me not miss Suzanne and Clayton and that Sason quite so much.”

  “Joe Pepin taught me one called ‘Dinah Had a Wooden Leg.' “

  “I bet that's a real foot stomper,” Elizabeth said.

  “Supposed to make cows get sleepy, that song, what Joe said,” Ned continued.

  They'd eaten the noodles with venison stew poured over them, finished off the lettuce, and sliced the last of the tomatoes that hadn't been dried by Sarah and Mazy. Fresh basil and oil covered the last slice, and Mazy ran her finger around the plate, lifting it to her mouth and sucking on the oil and herbs. Mazy'd been quiet all evening. Now she spoke.

  “So you're going to sell your cows,” she said to the Schmidtkes. “And you think I should buy them?”

  “Expand your herd fast,” Lura said. “Be dairying just like you wanted in no time. Your new kin there, David Taylor, he could stay home nights, not be driving a stage away. Protect his Indian wife better. It'd work out perfect.”

  “Maybe he likes traveling,” Mazy said. “Some people do.” She looked over at Ruth. “What about your work at Adora and Charles's store? Don't they need you there?”

  “They'll get by. I've got new things going,” Lura said.

  She certainly did, Ruth thought. What had been her own journey to Oregon had suddenly become a crowd. Ruth knew she should speak up. She didn't know why she couldn't, wouldn't. She and the children would be joined now by a man she had some confusion about, a girl who adored her, and their…mother. That was the only word she could think of to describe Lura right then that wasn't unkind. “Don't know of another good jack in these parts, do you?” Lura asked. “Ruthie picked up one named Ewald. Black as the night.”

  “My Hans always used to say of someone pigheaded that they was ‘stubborn as a German jack,'“ Elizabeth said. “He saved it for the most bullheaded, stiff-necked patients he had. Ones who refused to listen to what he told them to do, even if it killed them. Which it sometimes did.”

  “I once heard Pa say you were as stubborn as ‘a bobtailed mule,' Ma,” Mariah said cautiously. “Remember that?”

  “I don't.”

  “Jacks are that stubborn—not like you, Lura—but like
a bobtailed mule that can't switch at flies. Here, scratch some brown sugar into this cream, girls, and we'll plop it on those piles of berries and ice. I got a pie I brought out too,” Elizabeth said. She cut the slices, and each took a piece on a tin plate, putting the crushed ice on top.

  “Have you ever seen anything prettier?” Elizabeth said. “I like that new ice shaver you bought up, Ruthie. Always something new to marvel over.”

  “A frivolous luxury,” Ruth said. “One I don't deserve. You can have it, Elizabeth. My going-away gift.”

  “Oh, Ruthie, I wasn't—”

  “I know,” Ruth said. “I…” Ruth took her pie outside and sat down. Stars popped out. She really just wanted to be alone, to think.

  “All right if I sit beside you?” Mazy asked.

  Ruth moved over stiffly, and Mazy sat down on the shallow stoop, her knees in front of her. She fumbled balancing her plate, then moved behind Ruth, giving her back a solid rest. Ruth supposed that leaning over cows to milk two times a day must put some strain on a woman so tall.

  “I always like seeing the stars come out,” Mazy said. “Remember that night Mother took off and we didn't know where she was? I felt like we became friends that night. You even washed my hair. Remember?”

  Ruth nodded.

  “After that was when all the deaths came. That was the last night Jeremy put a quilt around my shoulders. But he didn't stay awake with me. You did. And I'm grateful, in case I never told you.”

  Ruth heard her set the tin down on the stoop and decided her own back could use a rest. She pressed crumbs on her finger, licked them clean, then sidled her way beside Mazy, setting her tin on top of hers. Crickets filled the night air.

  “I miss fireflies. Something they don't have here in the West,” Ruth said. She sighed. “I wish this hadn't come between us, but it has,” Ruth said. “I know Jumper's death wasn't your fault.”

  “Oh, Ruth. Thank you. For understanding. I am sorry beyond description.” Mazy touched Ruth's hand, felt the woman stiffen and pull back. Mazy brushed at her apron, picked at imaginary lint. She cleared her throat. “Funny thing is though,” Mazy continued, “I think I know now what Jeremy might have been feeling, watching people ready to head out into something new, something they thought would be better. There's something…seductive in anticipation, looking forward. Scary, yes. But a little like that crushed ice, all fresh and new looking scraped away from something old and familiar.” She picked up a pebble and threw it.

  “You're putting off the inevitable,” Ruth said finally. “Not wanting to accept what is.”

  She heard Mazy swallow, her voice develop a quiver. “Some of what is' I can accept. Everything bad that happens isn't my husband's fault. It's not always my fault either.” Ruth looked at Mazy and saw moonlight glistening on the wetness of her cheeks. “But I don't want to accept that our friendship has a strain on it that can't be buttressed. I mean, what kind of friendship can't endure a stone or two thrown against it. Won't it make it stronger in the end, like stitching up a tear in a quilt? It just gives it another…story.”

  Ruth grunted.

  “I can't accept that people come into our lives and then leave,” Mazy said. “I just can't.”

  “You may have to,” Ruth said.

  “Just say it's not forever. Tell me that you'll forgive me for having a mad bull around, for imposing myself on your place all this time, for not moving along the trail a little faster. I am so sorry,” she whispered then. “You know I am.”

  Ruth wished she could take them back to before it all happened, bring Jumper back, return to the safety of a relationship with Mazy. Maybe this was why she didn't have many friends. Keeping them rubbed her raw, took her inside places she didn't want to visit.

  “Can't we just pretend we're still good friends?” Mazy persisted.

  “I'm not sure what that would look like,” Ruth said. She picked up another pebble and threw it into the darkness, listened for its plop.

  “Just acting like you believe it's so, I guess,” Mazy said. “Maybe agree to answer my letters when I write—you wouldn't have to tell me all that's happening inside you, but around you. The daily things. Maybe let me tell you what's inside me. Let it be all right for me to hold you in my prayers.”

  “So you can convince yourself everything is all fixed?”

  “No. Because it's what friends do. Even over years and miles. Families, too. I guess it's what loving requires. Finding ways to close the spans that open when we least expect them.”

  The two women sat without speaking, a mooing cow, a coyotes howl, and the chatter of people in the cabin behind them filling the silence. The evening turned cooler, and Ruth heard Elizabeth saying that she needed to be leaving, then looking for something, wondering where she'd left it.

  “It'll be all right. It will, Ruth,” Mazy said.

  “Maybe. In time.”

  “We don't have time, do we?” Mazy said. Ruth heard a catch in her voice. “You're leaving, and we may never even see each other again, not ever. I don't know if I could live with it like this, you gone and our… not… settled.”

  Ruth shrugged. “You'll have to.”

  “Can you ever forgive me?” Mazy whispered. “I guess that's what I want.”

  “You've come to the wrong place for that,” Ruth said. “Forgiveness isn't something we humans grant anyway, isn't that right?”

  “We have a part in it,” Mazy said.

  “Not me,” Ruth said. “I live alone.” Ruth's tone sounded stiff as a wagon tongue, even to herself. “We're on opposite sides of a cliff, and if either of us move, we'll disappear inside darkness,” Ruth said.

  “We're friends,” Mazy whispered. “Surely friends—”

  “People come into our lives for a reason, and then they go away. Maybe we came together to help each other on the trail, and now it's time to move beyond that. Maybe it'll make my leaving easier, this way,” Ruth said.

  “You've withstood so much, Ruth. I admire you so. You've found a way to live with loads I don't think I could have carried.”

  “Maybe now I'll find out who I really am,” Ruth said.

  “You don't have to leave now,” Mazy said, almost pleading. “I mean, without Jumper, you might take the season here and find another stallion. Maybe at the hacienda you visited last week. Maybe yours was supposed to be a California-bred herd. And surely one of your mares will foal a stud colt in the spring. There are even some nice-looking yearlings you could hold back, see if one of those would turn into another stallion of high hopes.”

  “Don't…don't say it that way.”

  “Why risk leaving when you have everything you need right here?”

  “You're taking over this place,” Ruth said.

  “We could all stay. There's room. I was thinking.” Mazy turned to face her directly. “We could build the house I told you about. Lumbers coming down in price. Share the lease, maybe buy the old man out. I'll get Marvel south. I will. I'm going to ask David and Oltipa and Ben to come live here. Mother, too. We could be all together, just like we were. Once. You could spend time with Mariah. She so adores you. And we'd have time to mend this. Why go now? The maple tree we brought from Wisconsin is here. We've celebrated here, Jessie's return, all kinds of good things.”

  “I can't get past it.”

  “Mother always says cant means won't.' It's a way of avoiding choosing,” Mazy said.

  Ruth felt herself stiffen. “Your mother was speaking to you, Mazy, not to everyone in the universe. Not to me anyway. I…can't get past the image of your bull, nose high in the air while my Jumper…” Ruth shuddered. “Look. Things change. We change. And I'm not going back on what I said I'd do. It was a good decision, my choosing to go north. I think it's best we just learn to say good-bye.”

  “Oh, Ruth,” Mazy said.

  Ruth stood and walked toward the corral. She knew Mazy couldn't come after her, wouldn't.

  4

  Poverty Fht, near Shasta City

 
Elizabeth Mueller's hip ached, her brain felt fuzzy, and she found herself more than a little irritable. She knew she shouldn't eavesdrop, but she'd heard their conversation, then watched as Mazy stepped inside, her cheeks streaked with tears.

  Well, she couldn't fix it. She could only offer solace. Every wound healed at a different rate, despite the salve placed on it. Why, her own palms that burned when Shasta did were still tender, so she could just imagine what Mazy struggled with, her heart being scorched so and nothing but time to cool it.

  This commotion at Ruth's had tired her, she realized. Maybe she was just getting old and couldn't take all the hubbub of children anymore. That'd be sad, she thought. She was still wondering what she'd be when she grew up, and now here she was thinking she was older than dirt.

  Elizabeth looked around for her small bag, found it and the letter, and walked to the corrals to find Ruth.

  “Here's the post I was bringing you, Ruthie.”

  Ruth read quickly, the color draining from her face.

  “You seen a ghost?”

  Ruth showed her the poster—a drawing she had made herself of her husband when he'd kidnapped Jessie. “Zane's in French Gulch. Some doctor's treating him. I'm not running,” she told Elizabeth.

  “I know that. Still its wise you leave. No one needs to know just where, exact, unless you let us. That way, he cant find you.”

  “I'll have to risk his knowing where I am anyway, so I can have divorce papers filed. I just want to be a distance north before its done.”

  “I could take them for you. What could he do to a tough old woman?” Elizabeth grinned.

  “He could do more than I'm willing to risk.” Ruth shook her head. “No. I'll let my lawyer do it.”

  “You might ask David Taylor. He has some unfinished business with that man.”

  “I imagine he does.” Ruth stood quietly.