All Together in One Place (34 page)

“Ruth wasn't in the line before?”

“Because she was a woman and had no teamster with her or male driver, Antone insisted she stay back. Now here we all are, just women looking after each other.”

“I failed to thank you for your help with Clayton and that snake I'll do my best to keep Clayton occupied You have things to do”

“I've had some thoughts, if you really want to be more independent.”

Suzanne stayed silent, not sure why.

“But that can wait,” Mazy said. “Until after we reach the graves.”

She couldn't see what Mazy did, just heard her labored breathing.
Before her losses, Suzanne would have asked after the woman's health, said something about what they now shared. But there was no sense in forming up friendships that required the dance of give and take. All Suzanne had on her dance card now spelled
take.
Who would want to partner up with that?

Tipton wondered what day it was. Had she eaten? What was the rub of pain against her hip? Her mouth tasted like the bottom of the hens cage. She wondered if she should get up. Disappearing would take time, time that kept reminding her of Tyrells death, of her being alone and unworthy to live. She pulled silver hair combs from the knot of tangled hair. Chunks of blond came with it It did not matter. Nothing did, or ever would again.

As they approached the terrain that meant they'd soon come upon the graves, Mazy felt each woman tending to the tightness of her own wounds. They'd met westbound wagons, and sometimes those they encountered already knew of the reason for their silence, having greeted others heading east who carried the message that behind them came a widow's party of eleven wagons.

How incongruous, Mazy thought, that the words
widow
and
party
should be found in the same sentence.

Sometimes, the westward wagons they met pulled aside, left the trail to let them pass, and Mazy could tell by the looks on their faces that they knew. Westward travelers dropped their eyes when they caught the gaze of Mazy or Elizabeth, stared at the blank face and dark glasses of Suzanne or the still-tear-streaked face of Betha, who was walking stoop-shouldered, her calico cap with wide ruffle sagging in the heat. It was as if to look these
turnaround women in the eye would somehow mark those heading west as casualties too, curse the hopes and dreams they left home for, make a mockery of the risk they'd already taken by leaving all they knew

Mazy wanted to stop and shake their shoulders, shout at them that turning back was no evidence of error. Nothing criminal lived in starting out, then later, coming to one s senses, throwing off the harness of routine and turning back. Hadn't hundreds of forty-niners been turnarounds? Hadn't a stagecoach passed them by just a day before carrying people to the east as well as letters any might send? Lewis and Clark had come back home; they hadn't chosen to stay in lands that lacked the boundaries of familiar.

These women had no reason to apologize for traveling an eastward trail. Mazy wanted to scream it at those west-facing souls who stood there, allowing them to pass, their faces reflecting the sorrow the women carried in their wagons.

A man, no, rather a boy who said his name was Ezra Meeker had looked almost stricken with disease himself as they wove their way through that group of wagons. He'd introduced himself, asked if there was any way he could help.

“No,” Mazy told him. “We'll be fine, just fine”

What could he offer? A young woman who must have been his wife held an infant to her breast. She cooed at the baby, lifted her hand over its face to shield it from the sun and the dust kicked up by their wagons.

Perhaps, Mazy supposed, she chose to shield the child from even the look of them, protecting her baby from having to view the grimness of their faces, lest he come too early to recognize the other side of hope.

13
sudden rush

They stopped when they sighted the hills that overlooked the graves. The grass proved inferior, and they drove a distance off the trail, ending up at the base of a ravine that made a perfect
V
between two treeless mounds. They carried water to the oxen and mules before unhitching, which put them late again into unharnessing.

“I'll take the riding stock down to the river to water,” Ruth offered. She walked toward the animals, passed almost by Bethas wagon, her mind on Koda, when she heard sounds beside her.

“I wanna go along,” Jessie said.

Ruth paused. “What do you think, Betha?”

“It'll be dark before you get back,” Betha said. “And you're bound to get dirty. I don't know.” Bethas head shifted from left to right like a chickens pecking and stretching. Had it always done that or was this something new? Ruth wondered.

“Auntie Ruth will watch me. And I'll stay very, very clean.”

“Yes, that's true, but…”

“Can't we all go?” Ned asked. “A fellow'd like to go to the river.” He looked around. “This place looks like a river ran right through it once, right out of those hills.”

Ruth looked in the direction the boy pointed. “Just a dry ravine,” she said.

“Don't let nobody go but me,” Jessie said. Her lower lip pouted out.

“She always gets to. You let her ride Koda when Papa died, and—”

“Now, Ned,” his mother said and patted his head. “You and Jason are the men in the family now. Ruth'll have her hands full with more than one along.” She sighed. “I need to cut your hair anyway. Getting so it turns up at your collar.”

Jessie grabbed Ruths hand and skipped, her brown curls bouncing.

Behind them, they heard a ruckus. Ruth thought it might be Ned kicking up a fuss and decided she could just as well take the boy. But when she turned, she saw Fip being chased by Pig and Clayton. Antelope, children, and dogs toppled the iron bracket that held Betha's, Ruths, and the children's supper.

“You catch that thing,” Betha shouted. “Go along, Ned. You help, Jason. You boys wanted something to do. Grab that overgrown goat, and we might just eat it for supper.”

Ruth turned back, shortened her stride to allow Jessie to keep up. “You've got to stay off to the side,” Ruth told the child, “where you can see me, but out of the way in case one of the mules decides to jump ahead. I dont want you to get hurt.”

“I know,” she said. “I know everything, Auntie.” She looked up at her with eyes so wise. Ruth swallowed

“About horses and mules and all such things?”

“That too. But I know ‘bout you.”

The skin at Ruth's neck prickled. “I'm sure your papa and mama have talked about your auntie. I came from far away, in Ohio.”

Jessie kicked at a rock, skipped backwards in front of Ruth and the animals she led. “I know things I member hearing. But Papa said I couldn't.”

Ruth heard her own heart thud in her chest.

“Sometimes we dream things but they aren't real, Jessie,” Ruth told her. She watched Jesses eyes squint in concentration. Her little brow tensed, but the skin, so young and supple, did not furrow, so she looked distant more than troubled.

“It was like a dream, but different, Auntie,” she decided after a pause. “And Papa said I could only know if I had been there. Want me to tell you?”

“No!” Then more gentle, “I'm sure it was a dream, and I don't wish to honor such fragmented thinking by listening to you recite it. Lets concentrate on the stock, Jessie, taking care of them.”

This time Jesse s face did expose a pinch as she turned and stomped off toward the river.

Elizabeth bent under the wagon, luring the antelope, her skirts hiked up so she could crawl. “Come on, now, you little thing. Lets get you outta there.” She reached for the rope attached to the halter she'd had Ruth manufacture. Fip was slippery as an eel. Her fingers grazed the rope. She almost had him when something cold and wet butted against her backside. She jerked up, and when she did, she knocked herself cold beneath the wagon.

Betha just wanted to be alone, to tidy up the area around the wagon and then to walk the distance to where she thought Jed's grave would be. “Why'd you have to leave me,” she told him, “tending kids and cooking in a faraway place and you just hang up your hat! After all I did for you too.

“You talking to us, Ma?” Jason asked, looking back over his shoulder. His hair was slicked tight to his head, folded behind ears that stuck out from his head like open barn doors.

At least she had good children, Betha thought. At least he left her with fine, healthy children.

Elizabeth came to in seconds, Mazy hovering over her. “Are you all right? I couldn't find a drop of anything, not smelling salts, nothing.

“Need something for the lump on my head,” Elizabeth said, rubbing it as she sat in the dirt. “Ain't nothing to give me for my stupidity.”

“Pig came by.”

“Well, I know that. He's what knocked me out. Silly thing. Just surprised me.”

“Ned caught Fip, and I've resettled the cauldron, cut up new potatoes, and added beans and water to the pot.”

“Go lie down,” her mother said. “I'll finish getting supper.”