All Together in One Place (41 page)

Tipton pushed against her, toppling Suzanne from the flames, throwing dirt on the butternut-colored dress. She used her own hands to pound against the flames.

“What are you doing?” Suzanne screamed at her. “Let me be!”

“You're burning up! Dont fight me at it!”

It had happened so quickly that others barely turned to the shouting before the flames were out, the smoldering smell of wet wool now filling their heads.

“I've wanted to do this,” Mazy said, walking to help Suzanne up, touching her arms, “but I got distracted.”

“Burn me up?” Suzanne asked, though Mazy thought her usual acid tongue had been slightly diluted

“No, try out an idea.” She and Tipton brushed Suzanne off. Then Elizabeth checked over Tiptons hands to examine her burns while Deborah brought over a bowl of honey she spread on Tiptons fingers. “Using Ruth's skills,” Mazy said, turning back to Suzanne. “At converting a harness into something that'll fit Pig. With a handle you can hang onto I think he'd keep you from getting too close to things, lead you around danger. If you'd let him. Maybe even warn you of Clayton's whereabouts.”

“He'd get distracted,” Suzanne said. “Like you. By the children or Fip or whatever.”

“Might be worth a try, though, don't you think? Give you more of that ¨independence you're always saying you want.”

“Where's Clayton?” Suzanne snapped.

“Growing up,” Mazy said, adding with kindness, “now, how about you:

They had agreed to continue their gathering in the morning and had retired with full stomachs and hopeful hearts, sure medicine for untroubled sleep. Silver Bells and her man spent the evening outside the circle where the others slept too now, mostly on the ground that had begun to dry quickly with a strong west wind.

The Pawnee braced some cottonwood branches at an angle into the earth, covered them with a buffalo hide, and shortly had a lean-to, windless and warm. Elizabeth thought it a pretty fancy abode and altered the makeshift lean-to she'd prepared for herself and Mazy to a similar configuration. She returned Bethas wagon to her and her children.

She wished Mazy had agreed to spend one more night on the mattress at Bethas, but Mazy had insisted she share Elizabeths space. Both of their wagons were mangled beyond repair, making them the only family—as Mazy put it—to be homeless.

Gusts of wind struck the wagon canvases, cracked them like wet sheets. Elizabeth lay where she could see the stars poking through the windswept clouds, feet first inside the blanket-covered lean-to. Same sky that arched over her back in Milwaukee, that she and her Hans had looked up to as they stood on the porch steps. He taught her the constellations’ names, reminded her how thousands before them had studied the heavens and they had not changed, had not failed to disclose the north star where it belonged, night after night, the lip of the dipper marking its path.

“Few things are steady as stars,” he told her.

She loved the hint of Germany that sifted through his English. He always said her speech brought Kentucky back country to his old ears. His old ears. Why, he was younger than she was now when he'd said that, and she felt young as Fip. Life had too much to offer to be speaking of age. This whole journey just proved it, offering up daily doses of delight, even in the midst of misery.

Elizabeth sighed and rolled over, her bulk not enough to keep the cold from seeping into her hips. Sometimes it was as though Hans still
lived. Not the way he looked, so much. That had oddly faded. But he came to her in a voice, a choice of words, a moment in time, in the little mannerisms she noticed in Mazy, like her tendency to hold her chin in her hand while she thought deeply on some subject or the way she rubbed the back of her neck to buy time.

Mazy had his slender form, too, though the girl seemed to think she was big as a house.

“Have to find a way to let her see herself as others do,” Elizabeth said out loud.

“Hmm?” Mazy said, tossing, then resumed her sleep.

“Your father would have loved this place,” Elizabeth whispered. Mazy didn't answer. “Well, good, you re resting.” She inhaled the night air, spoke a prayer for her child, that in her grief for the baby she'd lost Mazy would find healing. Who knew what tomorrow would bring, what new way they'd discover to wash away the little chunks of dying daily that came along with living?

“I'm awake,” Mazy said.

“Are you?” She turned to face her daughter, stroked the curls in Mazy's hair.

“There's nothing left of him now, is there, Mama? Nothing. Just physical things, his eyeglasses, his clothes, a book or two his fingers have touched. But no.…baby. Nothing that was a part of his living is left in me or anywhere on this earth. Nothing.”

“Memories, Mazy. That's all we ever get to hang on to when we lose someone we love. Just the give and take of memories, living inside our hearts.”

“It isn't fair,” Mazy said. “We'd just begun. Our baby…”

“I know it. It's just what is. Got the memories. That's what'll warm us on the journey back.”

“So you think we should keep going back home too?”

“I meant in our journey back to where we began, where God sent us out from.” She said it softly, hating to disappoint the longing she
heard in her daughters voice. “He makes us new and different people here, stretches us, some beyond what we can even recollect. But he's always with us, Mazy, always gives us just what we need no matter where our feet might land. It's how he fills us up.”

“So there's nothing there then, at home. That's what you're saying. Back in Wisconsin. Just the memories of what was.”

“Memories you carry with you. You don't need to go back for them. I'd say you got to long for something different, to recognize the new trail God's put you on—then you'll be truly headed home.”

In the morning, Adora awoke to see that the Pawnee family had departed. Just as well. She didn't want to seem ungrateful, but there was still that question in her mind of where the disease had come from, the disease that had taken her Hathaway and the rest. The Pawnee woman had funny marks on her hands and face, scabs almost. And she'd given the roots to Elizabeth. After that, the sickness had begun.

It was never wise to mingle with other races. Those little women with Sister Esther presented enough of a strain. She made sure she didn't sit too close to them either. It was probably good also that she couldn't smell much anymore.

Adora stood, stretched, and arched her back against the morning. She looked at the corset and cast it aside; slipped on her dress and apron, splashed water onto her face. Tipton seemed to have slept better, even with her burnt hands. She'd seen no evidence that her daughter had imbibed laudanum or whiskey lately. Couldn't find any, even to relieve the pain of Suzanne's legs, which had turned red as beets after the flame. She didn't hold with that honey, but Tipton said her hands didn't sting.

Adora noticed the Pawnee had left behind their buffalo hide laid gently over the lean-to Elizabeth had crafted. Hairy old thing. She stuck
her head out of the wagon back and scanned the stock. The Bacons’ riding mules were there. She looked for her eight. She could only count six.

“You had no right to let them have my mules,” Adora said. Her shrill voice left no late sleepers, though Elizabeth was surprised to see that she and Mazy were the last to rise.

“There's no way you could keep your two wagons going. You were depending on Zilah to drive one as it was,” Ruth said. The younger woman poked at the fire, requiring Adora to talk to her back. “And we wouldn't have gotten any of the animals back without their help.”

“I'd have found those mules,” Adora said. “They'd have come home.”

Ruth scoffed. “Not without the herd. At least I know few mules likely to come back to a spot they'd only barely been to except to join up with a bell horse. Which we don't have.”

“Mules are smarter than some people, if truth be known. You overstepped your boundaries, Ruth Martin,” Adora said.

“I'll pay you for them if it comes to that. But you won't even need them, probably.”

“Money doesn't settle things,” Adora said. She slammed her tin cup against her plate, spilling her coffee down her apron. “There, now see what you've done?” She spoke louder. “They weren't yours to give away. You should have handed over one of your fine horses if you wanted to be generous. Why didn't you do that?”

“Because my horses aren't worth much out here. They wouldn't survive without grain the way Pawnee ponies do. But mules will.”

“She is right, though,” Elizabeth said. She sat on a wagon tongue, watching Clayton play hide-and-seek with Jessie and Sarah around the wounded wagons. “It wasn't your decision to make without conferring.
You robbed Adora of the opportunity to be generous instead of quarrelsome.”

“I fail to see what s quarrelsome about defending my rights,” Adora said.

“You might have agreed if you'd been allowed to have a say. Wouldn't you, Adora?”

“Almost nothing worse than having someone take away your choice,” Mazy added.

“Both of our wagons are intact,” Adora whined, “and we had all our mules back.”

Ruth said, “I just know other Pawnee have come begging, and some Sioux have harassed wagons Remember hearing about that? We witnessed a major battle…” She paused. “They'd could've just taken what they wanted, maybe all of the mules. Those two did nothing but help, and they deserved something for it.”

“Give them beads then, or baubles or something, but not my mules!”

“Do you want Ruthie to go get them back?” Betha asked, patting Adoras hand. “I'm sure she could.”

Ruth frowned at her sister-in-law.

“What do the rest of you think?” Mazy asked.

“So we vote?” Ruth asked. She spit the words out She stomped toward the cooking fire, pulled off her neckerchief and picked up the coffeepot with it, poured herself a cup.

“It's no one else's decision but mine,” Adora said. “They were my mules.”

“You might be right, Adora,” Mazy said. She tied her thick hair back with a piece of rawhide. “But it's been done now. We have to decide what to do from here, maybe learn from this about talking with each other before we just act.”

“So we don't let you push us into things?” Ruth asked, addressing Mazy “Maybe we wouldn't be in this fix now if we hadn't turned around.”

“Didn't see anyone doing what they didn't want,” Elizabeth defended.

“I just wanted a marker for Jed's grave. That's why I came back,” Betha said

“They were my mules,” Adora whimpered.

“But they were a part of this gathering,” Mazy said. “And things are different now. Our decisions may look like they're drawn individually, but they're colored by each other.”