No Eye Can See (23 page)

She'd stick with men's clothes from now on—and her own plan. She'd find a place for the horses and farm the children out. She'd had time to think of that, at least. Jason might like to help Seth when he went back out to bring in another wagon train—though that might not be until next year. It'd be nice for the boy to have time with a man about. Ned might assist…Elizabeth, what with her bad hip and all. He could run little errands for her. He was a helpful child. Sarah? Surely Suzanne would be needing someone. Why not Sarah? Or maybe Lura and Mariah would make a good home for young Sarah. And then there was Jessie. Only Mazy would be strong enough—and kind enough—to take that one on. Ruth knew one thing for sure: They'd be best off with someone else. Jed and Betha would have understood. It wasn't as though she was keeping her own child with her. They all had to go. For their own protection. Hadn't her mother said exactly those words to her all those years ago?

“Just picking him up,” Zane Randolph said to the agent who came up behind him and pulled on the boy's scarf until he sat. He had acted in haste. A momentary lapse. “Heats too much for him. Perhaps you need another driver.”

“David?” the agent said. “He's one of our best.”

“He lost a valuable of mine, and now he appears to be unable to continue. If that's your best, this California is poor indeed.”

“Just go inside and describe your lost baggage and catch yourself a bite to eat. Stage'll head out in fifteen minutes.”

“That I doubt,” Zane said as the man slipped past him, headed toward the jehu.

This could work out well. He could develop it into something lucrative. Pick up vagrants, set them on a stage as luggage, arrange for their untimely departure and file a claim. Yes, it had possibilities, something to add to his string of
investments
as he was beginning to think of ways of building up California treasure. The boy might not do it, but other drivers could be convinced—for a percentage of the profits. The boy would likely try to pay the claim back; he was that naive.

This piece of luggage had cost him, though. He'd paid high for her, and now she was gone, along with his plan to hire her out to a needy woman, take her wages while she cleaned and tended someone—like the blind woman. For that inconvenience, the jehu deserved something. A bad word dribbled here and there that the boy couldn't counter, like an untreatable cough turning into a fatal pneumonia. Soon, it would seem the boy had always been irresponsible, wasn't trustworthy. Zane knew how to slowly undermine a soul.

Once inside, Zane signed his name on the complaint with a flourish of the pen. He wrote his address down as Shasta, where he'd like the money for his loss sent. He'd be meeting Greasy near there in a day or two. Then, his appetite whetted, he ate a full lunch, remembered the delicacy of the blind woman, thought of Ruth and the way he'd chisel at her. Soon. He must be patient. He smiled, then stepped back into the stage.

Missy Esther beamed. Mei-Ling could see the older woman's broken tooth when she smiled large as a porcelain bowl. They sat around the fading fire, repeating little stories. Spoke kindnesses. Crises reached and crossed. It was late, maybe midnight, and still they hadn't found a way to say good night. Mei-Ling's thoughts fluttered like a butterfly lighting on a flower, beautiful yet soft. Soon, she would meet her husband. Soon,
the bees would be home. This was their last evening gathering as a group of widows and women who came together across the plains. Mei-Ling had suggested Sister Esther look after her drawing of the beehive frame, once almost lost on the desert, once stained by Esther's ink.

“Despite my poor care of your patent drawing—and after I made such a fuss about
your
not keeping it secure—I find your trust in me miraculous and redeeming. Thank you. I will keep it safe until we reach Sacramento and you hand it over to your new husband.” The tall woman bowed at her waist, enough so Mei-Ling could see the top of her little black cap, and then the strings, when she straightened, tied tight beneath her chin.

“I just don't like this, truth be known,” said Adora, the whining woman who sat on a chair taken from the sideboard, the pointy toes of her feet facing the fire. Darkness as black as the dog named Pig surrounded them. The dog lay on his side, snoring.

Only the firelight danced across their faces. All of the women had pulled out capes and blankets and shawls to wrap around themselves. October came on wet wings, quiet, like a bat.

“We all went into Whoa Navigation and pondered the town. Had our fete at the confectionery, didn't we, Sarah?” Elizabeth spoke. “We knew we was all needing to split up. Celebrate what we have and then move on. Just hard to go to bed now and know tomorrow'll be all different.”

“One of us found something worthy,” Tipton, the girl with yellow curls, said. She nodded toward Missy Sue.

“I wish things could stay the way they are,” Lura said.

“You're always wishing, Ma,” Mariah said.

The whining woman wiped at her eyes with a lace-edged hanky. “When we turned around way back there, after the storm, I thought we'd all make our homes right together. We could live in the wagons ‘til we got a house built big enough for us all.”

“Adora, I can't believe you'd want to live with me and my brood,” Ruth said.

“Well, I—”

“You come a ways, Adora, thinking we could all live in the same house. That's hospitality with a capital
H.
”

“We can give that to each other no matter where we lay our heads to sleep,” Elizabeth said. “We'll always be family, won't we?”

“Nothing stays the same,” Mazy said.

“I'm just glad we had what we had when we had it,” Elizabeth said, patting her daughter's shoulder. “What makes a home is not letting yourself get all distracted with what don't matter much, just remembering things to be grateful for. Pile up enough gratitude and it'll spill out. Then you get to give it away. That's when you're truly at home, when you got enough to give away.”

“People could accommodate a little, and we could live in the same house,” Adora persisted.

“Accommodation House,” Elizabeth said.

“Sounds like a sign for a boardinghouse.” Mazy smiled at her mother.

“The Warm Hearth.” Elizabeth formed a square in the air with her hands. “ ‘Friendly Accommodations and the Hospitality of Home.’ It could work.”

“Too long,” Lura told her. “Won't fit on a sign. What the sign says is real important, Elizabeth. I'm pretty sure about that. Did you notice that one store in Shasta? ‘Good Goods and Right Prices.’ Now there's a sign.”

“My Hathaway always said that too, about selling things.” Adora blew her nose. “ ‘Course selling in this California country might be a little different. Seems like everything has a little shading to it here. Even bowling. I guess that's another reason why I hate to see us separating. We all know what we are here, what we got and what we don't have. We know each other's little quirks and such. Now we've got to start again, with new people, new places.” She sighed. “I don't know if I have the strength.”

“We came to appreciate what each one had to give. It'll be hard to find that anywhere else,” Mazy said.

Adora nodded. “Every one of you has become important to me. I never thought that would be so. Even you Celestials.” She nodded at Naomi and Mei-Ling. “I just thought you were too different to ever be people I'd invite into my home. I mean, you still hardly ever sit. You just kneel, if truth be known. But now, I'll make sure I got a good pillow for when you come to visit me.”

“Will we be invited to the wedding?” Sarah asked. “Yours and Mei-Ling's?”

“If husband consents,” Mei-Ling said, “it will please me and bees.” Naomi nodded.

“Still, you'll be finding your place there, and we'll be several days’ ride away, right, Seth? So it may not be practical.”

“If not, you'll know our thoughts are with you,” Mazy said. “And you'll each stay in our hearts.” She touched her chest with her fingertips.

“You think that's true?” Adora said, and she started to cry again. “I wonder if Hathaway will always stay in my heart.” She wiped her eyes.

“I do.”

“But aren't you scared?” Adora asked the question of Sister Esther now.

“The Lord has taken me this far. I must fix my eyes not on what is seen but on what is not seen. All else is temporary.”

“Some faith,” Ruth said.

“You could have it, child.”

Ruth scoffed, pulled a blanket tighter around her shoulders, held it closed at her chest.

“Faith is merely ‘the substance of things hoped for,’ “ Esther continued, “‘the evidence of things not seen.’“

“I always thought of it as the distance between what you believed and what you had evidence for,” Ruth told her.

Esther clucked her tongue. “How I wish I had more time with you,
Ruth,” she said. “You have evidence that you are cared for here among us, that we see you as a loving aunt, a mother in the making. And yet you do not believe. Is it lack of faith that makes the gap so large you cannot cross it into comfort? Or do you just need a new set of eyes through which to see?”

“I hadn't intended for this to turn into a theology discussion,” Ruth said.

“All life is that,” Esther said.

“What better place to discuss it than here among kin,” Elizabeth said.

A wind rustled the low branches of the digger pines. A few dried needles dropped toward the crackling fire. Mei-Ling had trouble understanding all the words and thoughts, but she could see the shine on Sister Esthers face, as she talked of words of
faith,
and she let herself be warmed by them.

“Perhaps we should do something to commemorate our time together,” Mazy said then. “So, like Mei-Ling's bees, we will always recognize the home we've found inside the shelter of each other.”

People sat silently around the fire. Even Seth leaned forward toward the flames with his forearms on his thighs, pitching peanut shells into the heat.

“What about making a sampler?” the wide-eyed Sarah asked.

“We could design it ourselves. Ruth draws and so do I,” Tipton said, her voice sounding excited.

“What about something larger?” Missy Sue offered. “Something more…comforting. Like a quilt.”

Mazy said, “Yes. Made of old pieces of wrappers and capes and blankets—”

“We could make squares about what this dusty old trail meant to us,” Tipton said. Her blue eyes were sparkling as they had when she once walked arm in arm with the blacksmith she'd hoped to marry. Mei-Ling had not seen that brightness for a long time. She would have to tell the bees.

“Ponder that. Memories stitched by the hands of friends and placed over solid backing. A thing to keep us warm that we can set aside in the morning when we've rested but still be wrapped in comfort.”

“Would we make a dozen quilts?” Lura asked. “Or a dozen squares or what?”

“No, no. That would take us forever,” Adora said. “We'll make just one quilt and send it around. Each year, another woman will get it.”

“And each year we don't have it, we'll get to anticipate,” Mazy said.

“What about us? Are only girls allowed to have memories?” the sharp-tongued boy, Jason, said.

“Oh. Well. Sure you boys can do a square. Truth be known, Seth could make one up too.”

“Ma said tentmakers had to make patterns and such,” Jason said. “That sewing wasn't just a woman's task.”

“The best tailors are men,” Seth said.

“Only because women aren't allowed to earn the good money. They get to mend,” Ruth said.

“Everyone should design their square and sew it,” Esther said. “We'll put them together and once a year, maybe at Advent when we await the celebration of the Virgin Birth and prepare ourselves for a new beginning, then we'll pass it on.”

“It'll warm us to our toes, all right. Remembering back to this night, when we thought it up, all of us together, that'll be warming. There'll be a sadness to ponder, but a hopeful place, too.”

“If you want, you can give your squares to me,” Mazy said.

“Why not to Suzanne?” Ruth asked. “It was her idea.”

“I'm sorry,” Mazy said. “Of course. It washer idea.”

Missy Sue laughed. “The idea belonged to all of us,” Suzanne said. “I certainly can't sew the squares together. But I'd be willing to help however I can. You could do it at my place.”