No Eye Can See (2 page)

Her mind drifted with the word.
Focus.
She remembered something about the word in Latin meaning
hearth.
The hub of home. Why that word?

She felt a pain in her side, a sharpness that irritated her. She set it aside. Instead, she gazed down at her feet, surprised to be able to see them. Then she lifted the hem of her ruffled skirt and stepped forward into the stream. Stay focused? On what? The water, the rocks, him?

She became aware of sounds around her. Mules grinding at grain. Oxen bawling. Women chattering and the scent of lavender and herbs. The sounds floated through the air as she slid down the grassy bank— no, drifted—toward her husband.

Now Suzanne could see herself as though from a distance, her tapered nails holding the embroidery of her lingerie dress, her reticule dangling at her narrow wrist. She shivered with the coldness of the stream covering her slippered feet. She longed for the warmth of Bryce's hands.

“I'm falling!” She heard the warning in her own voice. “Bryce? I'm falling. Help me.”

“You're fine. Keep coming.”

He smiled, oh, how he smiled at her, so warm, so brushed with feathery love. He pushed the shock of dark hair from his eyes, adjusted the tiny round glasses, bent, and reached for her outstretched fingers.

She could see her own face reflected in the water then, her full lips, the blush of geranium petals she'd rubbed that morning against her rounded cheeks. Wispy strands of hair the color of spun gold drifted over her eyes, eyes as warm as summer, as rich as sable. Inviting, everyone said. Water pooled in them. Could that be? How could she see herself? And in such a fast-moving stream?

Suzanne felt a pain again at her side, then the cold and something else—an ache of knowing and not wanting to, of waking and not wishing to leave. “Bryce,” she said again, a cry this time arriving on a wave of anguish that tightened her chest. “Bryce!” His name caught in her throat. She knew he could not stay in this still place while water swirled about, knew her cry could not keep her from waking to what already was.

She felt the wetness press at her
eyes
as the dream-state drifted away—taking with it the sight of the man that she loved.

Awake, she blinked back the tears. This was her life now. The sounds of the women and oxen, those were real. And the darkness—her darkness. She lay in it, resigned. She was not a wife reaching out to her husband, but a widow, a blind widow, wistful and full of desire.

1

Autumn 1852, west of Fort Laramie

The sucking in of his own breath broke the desert silence. He forced himself to relax, open his mouth slightly. Noisy, this habit of breathing. He would have to change that once he reached his destination, change the way he took in breath as he'd changed the way he dressed, the way he'd now survive. The shallow breathing had allowed him life, when he merely existed inside the smell of his own stench, inside the walls ofthat Missouri prison. Back then, he took in gasps of air. He forced his tongue against the roof of his mouth and kept from crying out when the beatings couldn't be stopped.

But now he straightened his shoulders, inhaled deeply of the dry air around him. The trail west looked long and empty, but it lured him. Enticed him.

She enticed him.

He forced his heartbeat to settle into a rhythm as steady as a guard's night stick tapping against iron bars. Back then, he had transformed his pain and humiliation into something driven, something of steel that pounded inside him like a hammer. And he'd thought of her. Every day. A woman more loathsome than what he had become. It was her flesh the canes struck against; her body he imagined would someday lie awake as he had—listening for the raspy breathing of a guard or an
inmate gone mad. Someday she'd hear her own breath sucked in with worry and confusion, hear her racing heart seek freedom. It was her world he would torment. He'd make her wonder whether the sounds she heard were rats scurrying across a floor or the steps of someone coming in the night for her as she lay unguarded.

2

1852, beside the Humboldt River

The last week in the life of the Celestial known as Zilah began as it had those past few days on the desert: hot, yet scented with hope. Trying not to wake them, Zilah pulled her trembling body from the straw mattress she shared with the boy Clayton and his mother, Suzanne. Out of habit, she looked up and scanned the narrow wagon, seeking the white shawl that held the baby, Sason, suspended in his cloth cradle from the wagons iron bow.

All fine. Baby all fine, sleep.

She swallowed, took in a deep breath. Her heart raced.

No reason, no reason heart race like startled dog.

Zilah fluttered over the unseeing mother who said two, three times a day now, maybe more: “I'm so glad you'll be with us in California, Zilah. We couldn't do it without you, we just couldn't.”

Why she say that? Not do what without Zilah? What she plan, that woman?

Missy Sue made moaning sounds but did not wake.

Neither did the boy, neither one. This was good. Once awake, the child Clayton moved like dust chased by whirlwinds, racing, racing. “Boy like satchel named desire, always looking, wanting, try fill it much,” she told his mother once after a morning crawling after the
child beneath wagons, whisking him, too close behind the tails of oxen switching at flies, too fast.

“I suppose you're right, Zilah,” Missy Sue told her. “We all are just satchels of desire, wanting things to fill us up.” Suzanne had twisted her yellow hair then, into a roll at the top of her head as they'd sat outside in the shade of the wagon. “Still, it's desire that drives us. All of us. Why should it be different with a small boy?”

Finished, Suzanne had stood and reached for the leather halter worn by the dog that behaved as the woman's eyes. “My husband always said that desire was nothing to fear. It need only be focused.”

“Yes, Missy Sue,” Zilah told her, almond eyes dropped to the ground. Zilah wasn't certain of the meaning of the
word focused.
Keeping safe, that was Zilah's wish, what she filled up her satchel of desire with. Spiders of fear ran up her spine. Who knew what kind of husband waited for her in California? Who knew what danger lurked behind the eyes of people? So much was uncertain.

This morning beside the Humboldt, all in this wagon slept on.

This good.

Zilah dropped through the oval canvas opening, landing on the earth soft, like a bat dropping from a clinging place. The wide blue silk pants fluttered at her ankles.

No more long dress now. Not wear dress. Catch on sage and stickers. Wear legs now. Better, like Missy Ruth.

Zilah
looked for the slender woman dressed as a man, whip on her hip. Did not find her.

Must be with horses, always with horses.

Zilah, turned, listened, then looked up. Two red-tailed hawks danced above her. Wind threaded through their wings. She watched the pair rise, catching currents over the white desert sand like children catch snow-flakes on their tongues—one moment there, then gone. Zilah sucked in a deep breath, cowered.

Bird hurt me! Fly chse! Too close!

She swatted at them, swirled herself around in the dirt, batting at birds high above.

She watched then as something black with small ears and a long tail sniffed beneath a wagon.

Bear too chse! No bear. Dog. Belong Missy Suzanne. Stay away! Stay away!

Zilah shook her head, took in a deep breath. All the other women still slept, and she felt alone in this vast bowl of sagebrush and sand held by mountains with purple arms. She headed out. Hard white pebbles pressed through her thin slippers as she shuffled past the wagons. The day promised more sand and rock and uncertainty once they left the safety of the Humboldt.

Today, they headed west, Seth Forrester said, away from the sure-ness of the river trail, out across the desert. Her stomach filled with butterflies. Her arms ached and she shook.

Carrying boy Chyton, too much. Make weak, steal strength.

She scowled, her eyes squinted into a thin, dark line. She patted her face, felt the pockmarks left there from a long-ago disease. Her face felt moist.

Child Clayton cause much energy to flow. Bad child. Need too much.

He already wore three summers on his narrow frame and moved quickly, tiring her.

Boy steal strength. On purpose hurt me.

Zilah noticed a band of moisture above her lip. She wiped at it with her palm, felt dampness there, too. Noticed the scar on her hand where a dog had once bitten.

No get sick not now, not now!

She found the water bucket. The round of the wooden dipper settled at the narrow base before she tipped it slightly to cover the bottom of her porcelain bowl. She lifted the bowl and drank. Others shared the wooden dipper, but Zilah liked the bowl. Her bowl. Over the
lip, she could see the heat of the amber desert build and shimmer like agitated snakes above the surface of the sand.

The water carried a sour taste, and she wrinkled her flat nose. The liquid reminded her of the time of the graves, foul tasting, laced with death. She swallowed. Her throat hurt more today. She did not wish to speak of it to anyone, did not wish to see the fear in their
eyes
the way she'd seen it when the others had died. She'd developed a cough in the last week, a thickening that made her swallow often and yet not cough it clear. Why now, when everyone else walked well? Why now did she fear illness and what it might bring? She clucked her tongue, dismissing. So much came wrapped in the rice paper of the unknown.

Zilah filled her cupped hands with water as warm as blood. As she drew her palms toward her face, her fingers looked pink instead of their usual olive and the lines in her palms seemed to move like tiny worms swimming across her wide hands. She splashed the water at her feet, staining her blue pajamas wet. She shook her head. She tried again to bring the alkaline liquid against her pocked face.

She stared at the bowl with the yellow bat on it that sat before her. When so much had been thrown out and left behind on this journey west, this precious gift from her sister still survived, still blessed her with the assurance of home and the sacrifices she'd agreed to make. It meant good fortune, the yellow color, and the bat itself stood for wisdom. The character for the word was the same as
prosperity,
and Zilah smiled at that thought as she washed her face with water held by both wisdom and riches. So far, on this journey of wagons with women, both had been her gift. Until the return of this sickness. She dabbed at her eyes with the wide silk of her sleeve.

Still, no one knew the future, one's “lot,” as the woman Mazy called it. Mazy spoke of a Lord said to know all their lots who was a kind father who wanted the best treasures for his children, “to meet the desires of their hearts.”

But Zilah had been orphaned early in her life and was unfamiliar with kind fathers.