Faithful (22 page)

We went back outside along with a crowd of tourists to watch Old Faithful erupt. A gentle mound of white sinter belched steam, and occasionally water splashed and bubbled, then subsided. We stood a short distance from the geyser.

“Old Faithful is dependable,” said Mrs. Gale. “We shouldn’t have to wait long.”

She’d barely finished speaking when the geyser exploded in a tall, thin tower of water shooting a comb of spray to the lee.

I thrilled again at the magnificence of it all, the fear I’d felt at Norris completely vanished. “Impressive, isn’t it,” Mrs. Gale shouted. “And some geysers in this basin are even taller, although not quite as regular.”

I’d fallen in love and I could scarcely contain my desire. “I want to see them. I need to see them all.”

“I have to stay in this area a few days photographing the geysers,” said Mrs. Gale. “I’d enjoy having you stay with me to assist me, if that’s possible. We can remain at the inn rather than moving on with our tour group.”

I hesitated, thinking about what Papa might say, and about my goal, the reason I came on the Tour—my desire to find Mama. I was pulled in two directions; but somehow it felt they were both tugging me toward the same end.

“I’ll stay,” I said at last. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was meant to be here. I thought about Mama’s paintings, how they had once frightened me so. Her paintings were of all these features: the steaming amethyst springs, the swirls of amber bacteria, the mounds of white silica. She could not forget this place, nor would I, ever. And with the information I’d gleaned from Papa’s correspondence . . . If I were to find her anywhere on earth, it would be here.

“I’m glad you’ve lost your fear of the geysers,” said Mrs. Gale.

“Two brave moves in two days. Not only a western girl but a thoroughly modern one.”

I touched the cameo at my throat and felt my newly born strength. “Yellowstone isn’t what I expected.”

“I’m always disappointed when things turn out as I expect them to,” said Mrs. Gale. “Shall we go in to our rooms? We can explore the rest of the inn.”

Before dinner Mrs. Gale suggested that we observe the Old Faithful eruption from another vantage point: from the widow’s walk on the roof. On the roof! I’d managed one great fear, but this was different. She said I’d see the entire geyser basin, and only because of that did I go. I asked her to take the outside while I clung to the inner wall, trying not to look through the open log railings to the lobby below. I remembered how Mama protected me when we walked on the Cliff Walk, how I had to hug the inside wall of the path.

We wove up the steps, past the musicians, now playing the popular “Meet Me in St. Louis.” I had to move slowly and stop from time to time to shut my eyes. But I made it through the crow’s nest and out onto the broad widow’s walk that crowned the hotel.

An electric searchlight on the roof of the inn probed the dusk. We joined thirty or so tourists on the rooftop. I stepped out from the stairs, not certain what to expect, clutching Mrs. Gale’s hand. The air was cooling now that the sun had set. The widow’s walk was so large that I could stand where I had no sensation of the edge. I could breathe again.

I stared out across the landscape at the steam that rose from across the basin, from multiple hot springs and geysers. The Indians had been right: Hell would look like this. I once thought Mama’s landscapes were demonic. I was wrong. If you liked the geysers, it was heaven. And the fumes and vapors would become warm mists, the haunts of angels.

After the eruption, when we had to go back down the stairs, I clung to Mrs. Gale like a limpet and tried to stay tucked against the wall and within the descending crowd. The mass of people tempered the view downward, but still my palms grew slick with sweat and my knees wobbled. I peppered Mrs. Gale with questions to keep my mind busy. At one turn I made the mistake of looking over the rail. Mrs. Gale had to hold my arm against her side and soothe me like a baby. When we reached the lobby I fell, exhausted, into a chair and mopped my damp forehead with the sleeve of my shirtwaist. Though I was glad to have gone to see the view, I was relieved to be on solid ground again.

The company of passengers from our coach gathered before the great stone fireplace. As recompense for our having suffered the robbery, the management of the Yellowstone Park Association offered us a free dinner. Before we went in to eat, a young Army lieutenant questioned us about the experience. The thing that everyone recalled most clearly was the color of the ringleader’s eyes.

“Baker,” said the lieutenant, nodding in recognition and tapping his pencil. “Nathaniel Baker and his gang. They’ve been around the Park for years but we can’t find them. He has a canny way in the woods.”

Eliza looked up at the lieutenant. “Did they ever kill anybody?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“No,” the lieutenant replied, smiling. “Baker’s a thief, not a murderer.”

“See?” Eliza said, turning to me. “You knew.” She pointed at the cameo. “It was the magic,” she whispered, eyes round, solemn. I smiled; but I thought she was right.

We ate as a group at one of the long tables in the dining room. The wine, following our excitement, had given everyone a tipsy air. Toward the end of the meal, thin, timid Mr. Connoly raised a glass.

“I’d like to salute young Miss Bennet, who bravely held on to her jewelry under terrifying circumstances.”

I felt my cheeks color. I wanted to tell them that it wasn’t bravery. I wasn’t brave. I couldn’t stand at the edge of a window, never mind the edge of a cliff. I’d only begun to recognize the beauty of the geysers, as opposed to their terrifying unpredictability and threat. “I’ve done nothing,” I murmured. I touched the cameo. I wouldn’t give up Mama, that was all.

I was just a foolish girl, not brave at all. I followed all the conventions, obeyed the rules. Not like Mama, who obeyed no conventions except her own.

But there my thoughts troubled me. Was my unconventional Mama brave, or merely foolish—or worse, mad? No one swam in the Atlantic the day after a hurricane passed, and there she had been in her bathing costume. Ladies hardly swam at all. I touched the cameo again.

Unless her disappearance was an unexpected outcome. Her note said it: “someone I left years ago to whom I must return.” Someone she had left behind. In which case she was never mad or foolish or unconventional. Perhaps it was as simple as this: she rejected society as a place where love grew stagnant and false and she went in search of her love.

And what if Mama were here in my place, in this dining room? I knew that she would have accepted the toast, laughing and enjoying the attention and the loose and undignified camaraderie of the evening. I’d never enjoyed anything so unfashionable in my life. It was not proper. And so I did something I might not have done only a few weeks ago: I took a small sip of wine and, ever so slightly, raised my glass.

It was a rare moment of bringing my mother back, through me; of standing fearless on a peak. I couldn’t know what I’d find on the other side of this high point.

July 12, 1904

“LET’S SET THE TRIPOD HERE. I THINK THERE’S ENOUGH contrast in these algae to capture on film.”

After only three days assisting Mrs. Gale, I was becoming familiar with the language of photography. I positioned the tripod and stepped back. Mrs. Gale locked the camera in place, and when she focused the lens, I leaned to look.

All of my experience shrank to what I saw through the lens. My fears, my losses, Mama’s disappearance, and Papa’s lies all left me. The patterns made by the ribbons of algae-rich water running by my feet were complex whorls of texture—only a moment earlier these details had been lost within the huge landscape.

“You take the photo,” said Mrs. Gale. “Think about what I’ve said about exposure, now. This is not like the larger landscape. This is a miniature.”

I focused the lens and held the exposure. I removed the celluloid sheet and labeled it, sliding it with care into one of the slots in the leather box.

Everything about photography appealed to me—the soft leather, the polished brass hardware, the smooth mahogany, the sure click as the shutter locked—but most of all the feeling of being in a place so special, so pristine, that only I could see it.

Over several hours we worked our way from one geyser to another. At one point a young man ran up shouting, “Beehive’s a-goin’ off! Beehive’s a-goin’ off!” We followed, and were treated to an eruption that shot off at a rakish angle, and another almost as tall as Old Faithful. The excitement of the unexpected was contagious, and I found myself searching for more eruptions.

We walked through the basin, stopping at intervals. I stared for a long time into the steaming Beauty Pool watching bubbles slowly emerge from its depths.

“Inviting, isn’t it. It looks like a lovely place to swim,” said Mrs. Gale.

I knew full well—as did Mrs. Gale—that it was not, and again, the image of the doe rose up in my mind.

“Do you swim, dear?” asked Mrs. Gale.

“My mother was a great swimmer.” I saw Mama on that last day in her swimming costume, another dark thought to tamp down.

“Quite a woman. She was ahead of her time. Did she teach you?”

“She tried, but I was a poor student.” I stared into the inky depths of the pool. From the orange and yellow bacteria at the water’s edge, the pool graded to turquoise, then to deep blue, then to blue-black. “I had to stay in the shallows. I don’t like floating or being over deep water. I could never get used to the idea that there was nothing beneath my feet.” Mama wasn’t afraid. Perhaps she should have been.

I turned my back on that inviting but deadly pool and looked out over the hot, white landscape into the cool woods beyond. Steam from Daisy Geyser spiraled into the pure blue sky.

Satanic. That’s what I’d called her paintings. Now I thought her paintings were beautiful and wished I had one. Mama had been here and seen this. I could almost feel her presence. Since the moment we’d left Mammoth, and especially since I’d realized my love for Yellowstone, I felt that I was drawing closer to Mama with every passing day.

We were returning to the inn for a late lunch when I caught sight of a familiar, lanky figure striding in our direction. My heart leapt. Tom! I felt so many changes in me in only these few days and I wondered if he would notice them as well.

He laughed out loud when Mrs. Gale and I reached him. “Miss Margaret Bennet, are you following me?” He gestured a salute, acknowledging Mrs. Gale.

“Would it offend you if I am?” I asked, giving him a warm smile and knowing that I would follow him just about anywhere if I could.

“So, now that you’ve taken the Tour, what do you think of Yellowstone?” he asked, throwing out his arm to encompass the geyser basin.

“I think it’s the most fantastic place on earth.” I meant it, and knew that he was part of the reason why.

His smile broadened to a grin. “Then we share a great love,” he said. We walked together now, our strides matching but slow, Mrs. Gale having moved ahead of us on the trail. “I heard you had quite a time the other day on your way down here.”

“You warned me, back in the Livingston Depot.” I remembered the first day we met, and felt myself blush, partly from the memory of our meeting.

“I did. But I never thought it would happen. I’ve heard some wild tales about that robbery. One tourist said that bandits should be paid to hold up the coaches, it was so exciting. And then there’s the story of a young woman who faced down the robbers.” We stopped walking and our eyes met. He wore an impish grin. I stood straighter. I hoped he wasn’t mocking me.

“And?” I asked with trepidation.

“I wouldn’t want you to face me down, that’s for sure.” His smile grew, but he seemed sincere.

I smiled back. He wasn’t mocking me. I shrugged a little. “I suppose it was stupid.”

He reached out and took my hand and a thrill ran right up my arm. “It would only have been stupid if you’d been hurt. That would have made me miserable.”

My voice came out in a squeak. “Really?” He cared about me. I could have floated right away. I touched the cameo with my free hand. “Would it have been worth it for this?”

He held my hand in both of his and examined my fingers. “Some things are worth fighting for.” Our eyes met again and I tried to swallow but couldn’t. He still held my hand. After the longest moment—the earth must have turned on its axis at least once—he gently let my hand drop. We walked on then; or, at least, I put one foot in front of the other, since in reality I floated.

I scrabbled around in my jumbled brain for something to say. “What are you up to now?”

“We’re sampling here, and in a couple of days we’ll move on to the next site.”

“Which is where?”

“Well, where will you be in a couple of days?”

My heart took a leap; he wanted to be where I was, too. I answered honestly. “I’m on my way to Lake Hotel to find my uncle.”

“Then maybe we’ll head in that direction next.”

“That would be wonderful.” A second after I spoke, I hesitated. I liked him so much. Much more than I’d ever liked anyone. But I could not forget my mission here, in Yellowstone. What if I discovered something at Lake—what if I discovered Mama? I wasn’t sure I could share this with him. I would have to tell him about her. Her painting, her fits, her madness . . . It would mean sharing her and everything about her, about me, and about how we might be alike, her madness . . .