No Eye Can See (43 page)

“Stand back,” Mazy told Jessie as she poured water over the ashes in the pit behind the house. They were making soap. That was an essential she thought Jessie should know about. They'd made the molds first, greasing the wooden rectangles with butter. Then Mazy'd found a broom handle. Soap handles seemed to get shorter through the years, the lye formed from the ashes and peppermint tea-scented water eating away at the wood. In the blue-sky afternoon, Mazy stirred, keeping her head twisted away, coughing, then taking in a good breath. She told Jessie what she was doing.

“Put your hand over the top, like this,” she said. “Don't touch it. It'll burn. Now hold your breath so you're not breathing in this stuff. All right. Feel the heat of it? When it's just right, we'll dip in the crock and slowly pour it over the tallow. Until it's like honey, creamy-like. Stir now,” she told Jessie, “for a half hour or more, or do you want to do something else?”

“Got nothing to do,” the girl said.

“Gather up the eggs, then,” Mazy told her, “or make yourself a special mold, something that'll be just yours.” Jessie's face lit up, and she headed toward the house.

The stirring gave Mazy time to think. Today, Jeremy just seemed on her mind.

Sometimes she wondered if her marriage could have survived had Jeremy lived, respect so essential in a marriage and its absence such a ravage on theirs. A frightening thought. Maybe that was why Seth's suggestions of closeness found their way to a category she labeled “later” in her mind.

Honor, that was another essential. She had promised to love, honor, and obey him, and she had. It was he who'd worn deception. Seth showed up in that thought too. Could she honor a man who liked whisky and widows? Could she trust him to be what he was and accept his good qualities without letting his other ones keep her pushing him away? What was essential in a marriage anyway?

She had wondered over that. After nearly a year here, she still didn't know what it was that kept her deceased husband more on her mind than the friendship and love offered by another. At twenty years of age, Mazy knew how to be a daughter. She'd been what she thought was a good wife. She had no brothers or sisters, so being a sibling wasn't asked of her. Maybe her relationship with Ruth fit that, a sister in spirit, at least. But this morning, when Mazy pressed at the dark circles under her eyes—eyes Jeremy had once called “fern green”—she'd called herself a widow. A young unmarried woman. She still didn't know how to be that.

Maybe that was what Suzanne was trying to discover by heading into the camps as an entertainer, trying to find her way as a woman not dependent on someone else. She hadn't even asked for Mazy's opinion, just worked it out with Lura, and suddenly they were gone. It would have been easier on the rest of them if Suzanne had allowed assistance. Even while staying during Tiptons wedding, she'd insisted on dressing her children herself, putting the dog's harness on, even if it meant the rest of them twiddled their thumbs until she was ready. She'd even told them that when she got back from their “entertainment tour” she'd be getting her own place again, without moving in with any of them. “I don't want to hold you hostage,” she told them. “So don't be planning for me.” She'd turned her head to where Mazy stood—it was almost as though Suzanne could see who would be planning the most.

“That's foolish, Suzanne,” Mazy had told her. “The fire could have been disastrous.”

“But it wasn't.”

Even Seth condoned Suzanne's plan. At least he located props for their show, costumes and such, before they left. Apparently he
had “friends” from Sacramento who performed in saloons too. Mazy wondered if Seth's shadow-life was as unknown to her as Jeremy's had been.

After they waved good-bye to the Schmidtke wagon filled with entertainers, Mazy told her mother she was thinking of building a house large enough for Suzanne and the boys, too, when they got back. “I know she doesn't see she'll need one of us, but I think I can convince her.”

Her mother had shook her head. “Haven't you learned yet that Suzanne's got her own way of seeing things? And you, you're putting off seeing what you need to, just focusing on other people's problems. Might just ask yourself who you're really helping and what it is you avoid like it was a fragrant skunk.”

Her mother's willingness to let things be, to just accept things as they came without attempt to alter made Mazy wonder sometimes if she hadn't been an orphan child picked up after being abandoned at her mother's door.

“Think of why you're always giving advice,” Elizabeth told her, patting her daughter's shoulder. “People got to solve their own troubles, Madison. You can't always be ‘Mazy fix-it’ even though it's natural to you.”

She had felt her face flush. This, from her mother who would offer hospitality to a stranger from her own deathbed.

“You do too much for someone, Mazy, and they start to eat the idea that they can't do it for themselves. They wonder if you're maybe wanting something back from them. Or worse, they accept it, come to count on your giving. Then they just wait and open their mouths like baby birds expecting others to do for them. Then folks resent it if you don't. What we intend ain't always what arrives.”

“Oh, Mother,” she'd protested, but a flicker of recognition came wrapped within Elizabeth's words. Mazy didn't want to end up as the period of a sentence that always read:
You coulant do it without me.
She'd resent that herself, she guessed, which was probably why she spent so much time making her plans, making sure no one ever had to help her.

On the trail, when she'd miscarried, then she'd accepted help. But the trail wasn't life. The journey west was a pause, a hesitation, nothing more. All of what she'd learned along the way—like looking forward just a bit to the pleasant places God had in store for her—was more difficult to apply in everyday life, harder to hang on to in any new moment. She wondered if that was why she spent so much time in the past or in other people's lives and couldn't seem to settle on what she should do about her own.

Jessie interrupted her reverie. “Is the soap ready?” The girl puffed as she rolled a heavy stone, stopped it at Mazy's feet. The center had been smoothed out into an almost perfect oval several inches deep.

“Where'd you find that?”

“With some baskets and stuff. Buried off over that way,” she pointed to an area in the tree line. “I dug ‘em up.
Auntie
Ruth says they're old Indian things. This'll make a round soap, won't it?”

Mazy nodded, kept stirring. Ruth was right. The girl did have a funny emphasis on the word
auntie.
“Help pour the lye and tallow mixture into the mold,” Mazy said “Keep your head to the side so the fumes don't sicken you. Looks about right,” she said then. “We'll stir in a little sugar. Makes the soap lather.”

Together they lifted the pottery crock and poured the creamy substance into the wooden molds making sure there was enough left for Jessie's stone one. “After it sets for a bit—no, don't touch it. It'll still burn you. After it sets, we'll use a knife and cut lines for breaking it later. That'll be the size we get. Then we let it dry in the shade. In a month or so, we'll wrap them and have a daily treasure that makes us clean and smells nice, too. Good work, Jessie,” she said.

The girl beamed, and Mazy squeezed her thin shoulder. “Your mold has the most interesting shape. You have your auntie's eye for art.”

Jessie looked at her, cocked her head to the side, and opened her mouth as though to speak. She didn't. Instead she bent to push the stone into the shade of the back of the house.

Making something practical out of discard, that was how Mazy saw making soap. Maybe it said something essential about the remaking of her life.

They gathered for a meal at the newly built St. Charles Hotel, as they'd agreed after the fire to do weekly. On Sunday, the widows worshiped together at Reverend Hills Methodist Church, continuing “stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship,” as the verse in Acts said to do, “and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.” On this Wednesday, the fellowship had broadened from the wagon train women to some new additions.

“The St. Charles still has the best food in town,” Adora said.

“My baked goods and candies are much improved with Mrs. Muellers charms,” Gus said. He owned the rebuilt St. Charles, along with the Popover Bakery Elizabeth ran. He sat next to Mazy's mother, his short, fat fingers covering the dots of brown that speckled the backs of Elizabeths hands. “I am sorry Mr. Kossuth did not rebuild. Competition is good for the soul.”

“If that were true, this country'd be made of saints instead of all these sinners,” Mazy said. “Present company excluded—or almost,” she said.

“One cant live on bread alone,” Adora said.

“No, you need sweet things, too,” Elizabeth said. “That's why I'm so proud of Mazy's cows. Cream makes such a difference in cooking.”

“I don't suppose I could talk you into selling your milk through my store,” Charles said.

Mazy still found the sound of his voice jarring, thinking of the hurt he'd given to his sister and his mother. They'd just been healing of it too, looking forward to a new adventure when his finely etched face with those tight Roman curls showed up, chopped ear and all.

“Its mostly spoken for,” Mazy said. “Until I expand my herd…” She raised her hands as if to say it was out of hers. “Maybe you can drive one or two cows down from Fort Vancouver,” Mazy said then, aware of the chill in her voice. “You being such a well-traveled man.”

“Now, Mazy, my Charles is just taking care of his mama,” Adora defended. “With the money I got for the mules, we didn't have to borrow any to stock our shelves. Unlike some folks building a herd on borrowed funds. We're contributing to the community, Charles and me.”

“And what he could have had in Wisconsin, if I remember right,” Mazy said.

“Well, we had to follow dear Tipton now, didn't we?” Charles told her, sitting up quickly enough that Mazy blinked and moved her head back. Charles sucked on the stick he used to stir his gin-sling, eased back into his chair.

Mazy couldn't understand how Adora had simply let him slither back into her life, shatter the fragile relationship she'd restored with her daughter, and then act as though this was what was always meant to be. She'd hated seeing the tears pool in Tipton's eyes as she hugged her mother good-bye. Nehemiah had borrowed Mazy and Elizabeth's oxen to haul the wagon, leaving the mules behind. Mazy hadn't even had time alone to talk with Tipton and couldn't imagine the betrayal she felt.

But Mazy ached too, seeing Adora treat her boy as though he were the prodigal son returning. He was hardly that. He hadn't a repentant bone in his body. And his return, riding high on a good horse, his shoes polished and his hair cut by a barber's scissors, told them all he'd done well, despite what he said, while his mother and sister had suffered terribly from their losses on the trail. He would do anything, Mazy suspected, to achieve his ends.

But who around here wouldn't?
she decided as she and her mother walked back to Elizabeths new little two-story bakery after their St. Charles meal. Everyone in Shasta seemed engulfed in the drama of becoming rich overnight, regardless of the cost. Seth wasn't unique in that
either, she guessed. And who was she to say she wasn't just like them, in her way? Thinking about how much money she could get for milk, how she'd expand her herd once the cow brute arrived, what alternative she had if it didn't. Oh, she provided food for the orphans, had placed a few in worthy homes. She tried to offer a way out for the women like Esty too. She'd even invited two or three to tea, but they'd declined.

And she'd had no help from the press with her concerns, even after she took out ads, even after Ruth began work there. Instead they'd printed an article rousing people to more killing of any remaining Win-tus and Shastas. Mazy cut the article out of the
Courier
and showed it to her mother.

“Well, ponder that,” Elizabeth said, pinching her nose with her fingers, shaking her head. “What have we come to, then?”

“It isn't the kind of place I hoped to make my home in,” Mazy said. “Not a very pleasant place at all.” They sat for the evening on the porch at the Popover, shaded by a spreading oak that had survived the fire. Smells of ginger drifted from Hong Kong and dogs barked in the distance. Mazy missed Pig anew. Sarah worked on her samplers, and Mazy would soon head back to Ruth's, making the early evening ride on Ink, taking less than an hour to do it.

“This can be a pleasant place,” Elizabeth said. “It's all in what you make it. I like the mix of Celestials and Portuguese and trappers and loggers and sweet-smelling women, stagecoaches bringing in new folks and wagon trains heading this way more now. And miners coming in with nuggets, listening to others soothing the wounds of those who've spent their last dust. The swirl of things don't have to be all you see of this place. It ain't the landscape so much as it's your eyes, the way you see. Why—”

“Reverend Hill said people actually justify their accumulation of wealth through this hostage-taking and slavery, by giving a tithe! Can you imagine?” Mazy said.