No Eye Can See (40 page)

Tipton said, “I don't think I've ever seen Ruth cry before.”

“Oh, people always cry at weddings,” her mother said. “You will too.

Nehemiah also brought the mail, and in it came a long-awaited letter from Sister Esther.

“Should we read it before or after the ceremony?” Mazy asked.

“Ernest isn't here yet with the ring,” Nehemiah said, looking toward the road. “So we can't begin. Go ahead and read it.”

“She'll tell us all how Mei-Ling and Naomi are,” Sarah said. “And look, a quilt square. Oh, two.” She picked up what rolled to the floor when she opened the package. “Shouldn't there be three?”

Esther's quilt square was the obvious one. An “appliquéd piece,” Mazy called it, cut out patterns stitched on top of each other. “She's placed two graves under a circle of sun,” Tipton said.

“Her brothers,” Suzanne said quietly.

“Could stand for all we've lost,” Elizabeth said.

“But she also has tiny women with bonnets bent over the graves, and a dog lying next to one headstone,” Mazy said. “It's really quite well done.”

Mei-Ling had composed a square of bees made with French knots of black thread. They flew over a green bowl with a red dragon sprawling around it.

Mei-Ling wanted the bowl to be for Naomi as well
Sister Esther wrote.
She always kept her herbs in a green bowl Green is the color of pros-perity, though I am not sure I approve of such pagan thinking The tiny “v” in the corner is for Zilah—Chou-Jou. It stands for a bat, which she said means good luck and wisdom, too.

A murmur of reminiscing filled the June air. Mazy read ahead. “Oh,” she whispered, her voice hushed, which stopped the women's talking like a hand over their mouths.

“What is it?” Seth asked.

She blinked up at him. “Just mention of some trouble with Naomis new husband. Esthers had almost no contact. Apparently he…mistreats her.” She glanced at Tipton. “I'm sure it'll be fine.”

Mazy read on. “Esthers working as a cleaning woman in a performing theater late at night. She works days, too, putting all she can into repaying the debts of the lost Celestials.”

Lura said, “She might make more cleaning up in one of the saloons. The gold dust catches in the floorboards. Little nuggets do too. I did right well, ‘til the fire, sweeping up in addition to the banking.”

“Sister Esther treated those girls like her own family,” Mazy said, looking up. “It must be awful for her. And to work around actors and musicians.”

“Those folks got paid right well too,” Lura said. “Especially the women. There's lots of choices for enterprising souls. Nehemiah, if you ever mistreat Tipton, she can—”

“Oh, thank goodness. Here's the best man,” Mazy said as she redirected the girl's startled look.

Ruth knew she should rejoin the group, but the sense of “family” gathered out there pierced her. That Jessie. Handling her pistol. And Suzanne's choosing a friend with such poor judgment. That troubled her too. What worked best was to live alone. That was what she'd done the years Zane was imprisoned, and now she knew why.

But there they all were. In her yard. For a wedding. She sighed and walked back from the barn. Mazy met her and squeezed her shoulder with one arm, pulling her close. She filled Ruth in on what she'd missed as Ruth dabbed at her red eyes.

“My daughter needs to have a joyous time,” they heard Adora say as they approached the group gathered in the shade. Blue and white
lupines dotted the low hills around them. “If truth be known, such a day is every mother's dream from the moment a daughter is born, isn't that so?”

Heads nodded, and Ruth wondered again what was wrong with her that when she gave birth to her daughter, the last thing she thought of was planning the child's marriage. She had never been a proper mother, never would be.

“Ned, you're going to sing for us, I hear,” Mazy said, a little too cheerily for Ruth's ears.

The boy nodded. “Morning Has Broken,” he said and smiled at Ruth.
How could they be so sweet and yet be so difficult to raise?
Ruth wondered.

After he sang, Preacher Hill—whose church had burned to the ground—cleared his throat, and everyone moved forward to circle the marriage couple. Tipton had asked her mother to serve as her attendant, and Nehemiah's man was Ernest the silversmith.

Tipton Wilson became Mrs. Nehemiah Kossuth, saying the vows and hesitating only once—on the word
obey.
Ruth wasn't the only woman who smiled wistfully at her stumbling. Then Nehemiah placed a silver band on her finger.

Tipton wore a white dress with a ribbon of blue at her throat and ivy Mariah had woven through the yellow braid of her hair piled high on her head. She carried a small white Bible with a blue ribbon marker she said later was
set
at Corinthians.

“Where ever did you find it?” Suzanne asked her, her graceful fingers lifting the layers of lace after the brief ceremony. “Who did you get to make something so intricate so quickly?”

“Mama sent it with me when I left Wisconsin,” Tipton said. The girl gazed at her mother in a look Ruth would've described as adoration. “She made sure it was one of the…essentials when we had to sort things on the trail.” She touched her fingers to her mouth to cover a giggle, the way Mei-Ling often had. She hiccuped.

“Kept it in the trunk that got carried out first from the fire,” Adora
said. “If truth be known, I'd rather we saved it than any other thing. Nothings more essential than a daughters wedding day.”

Elizabeth—despite the throbbing of her hands—had earlier in the day directed the other women in preparing the wedding feast. And then she herself had stirred the white cake, the brown age spots on the back of her hand looking like a single fluid line from the speed of her stirring. After the couple was married, they cut the cake and served it with glasses of milk—compliments of Mazy's cows.

When everyone had eaten, Suzanne said, cake crumbs scattering down her front without her notice, “In Michigan, a couple is shivareed on their wedding night. People ring bells and blow horns and whistles and hit pans and kettles,” she said, “and keep it up until they're invited in for cake and lemonade or whatever is left to drink.”

“Wont be necessary here,” Ruth said. “The bride and groom are sleeping on the floor surrounded by all of us. And these kids and Pig'll keep the noise up all night without whistles being blown.”

“I think we'll take a spot beneath a tree,” Nehemiah said. “Let the sky and coyotes shivaree us. In the morning, Tipton, we'll head home.”

“Let's have one last song,” Elizabeth said. She dabbed at her cheeks with a linen napkin. “Send you off to music. Suzanne? I'll get your harp.”

To Suzanne's accompaniment, Ned sang “Home Sweet Home,” and people slowly joined in the way stars fill up a night sky, taking empty dark to a corner of comfort. Jessie came to stand beside Ruth. The child looked up as she dabbed at her eyes, and then leaned against her. The touch of the girl both startled and soothed her. What was she going to do with this child?

“What did you think of the wedding?” Seth asked Mazy. They walked through the meadow, Seth and Mazy and the children, even Jessie,
herding the cows toward the barn for their nightly milking. Considering his question, Mazy watched the older children raise bugs in the meadow grass.

“Women usually put that thought to men,” she said. When he didn't answer she added, “I thought it was lovely; Tipton did seem a bit distracted. Maybe the unhappy talk about Naomi…I shouldn't have read that part out loud.”

“She's been into my peach brandy,” he said.

“Why'd you bring that with you?” Mazy asked.

“Medicinal,” he told her.

“I'm sure.”

• “Mazy turns the tables,
  

• Faster than an otter.
  

• Talk about a wedding,
  

• She'll tell you what you oughter.”
  

“That's a terrible rhyme,” Mazy told him.

“But true. Look. You've had time to settle in, put down roots, and you haven't. Now with your rooms gone to fire…” he coughed. “I'm not doing this well. Why don't we just get married?” He stood in front of her, lifted her chin to him. “We'll build ourselves a place. On a good chunk of ground. I've been thinking I'd like that. Now as ever. I might even learn to milk.”

“Oh, Seth. I…” She couldn't look at him. Wouldn't. Her
eyes
searched past him toward the cows. “Mother needs me more…and I still have to find out about Jeremy's business.”

“Then let's get that over with. Maybe that's what holds you back. Go now, before I head back to bring in another train.”

She pointed to the cows they herded. “These. Twice a day. Milk deliveries. Especially now with people not having much. Who would I get to milk them?”

“Ruth?”

“I could ask. But I think she has other plans. She's been after me to take the house and…for you to take on Jason.”

“Me? I'm not fit to raise a boy.”

“Well, thank you very much for the proposal of marriage, Mr. Forrester, coming in the same paragraph with the news that you're not fit to be a parent.”

“No! I mean yes! You know what I mean.”

She poked him in the ribs, then started walking faster. “I'll work on it, Seth Forrester.”

“The marriage part?” he called after her.

“Asking Ruth to milk the cows,” she shouted over her shoulder from a safe distance.

Suzanne stayed in the wagon with her boys while they napped, just as she had on the trail. She thought of the ceremony, Tipton a little nervous, putting on this great change in her life. She sensed a hesitation in the bride but none in Nehemiah. He loved her enough for both of them, she'd heard him say. He would keep her in the safety of his heart.

She was glad Wesley hadn't been there. She didn't want to have to explain his…ways to others. She couldn't explain it to herself, his walking like that into Ruth's home. Being here without him, she felt…relief. She'd been thinking of something Lura had said about the entertainers, and knew he wouldn't understand that at all. He'd…find fault. He said the right things, but the words didn't ring true. In the presence of the women she could see clearer, it seemed.

Esty had told her once that some of the groups traveled from camp to camp, receiving pay in gold dust. “Many are women and children, and they put on little plays. The miners cry like babies when a child sings. No one has ever been harassed. If I had a single talent, that's what I'd do.”