No Eye Can See (44 page)

“Everyone's looking for ways to soothe their souls,” Elizabeth said.
“Coverings a fever, I'll ponder, with healing a long and wandering process. ‘Specially if what you're seeking promises just more empty hunger.”

Greed.
That was the word Mazy'd written in her journal that morning. It overwhelmed this California land. There were laws against greed, scriptural laws, yet here she sat in the midst of people driven by it, and she was powerless to stop it. The opposite of greed, what would that be?
Generosity, a
characteristic of God she'd “pondered” more than once.

“I don't understand why Adora didn't go with her only daughter,” Mazy said. “Like you did. Was she trying to be generous to Charles at the expense of Tipton? To just throw in again with that rascal son of hers seems so shortsighted.” Mazy spoke out loud as though her mother'd been part of her thoughts. “He'll just take advantage of her. I can see it already.”

“Hard to know how to help a child—send ‘em away, take ‘em back, loan ‘em money, make ‘em pay. How to forgive but not get caught up in the same old ways of doing things.” She reread the newspaper article Mazy had given her, then handed it back. “Most folks don't realize that getting money ain't the same as keeping it. They get blinded. Don't find out how the gold and the seeking of it holds them hostage. All the while they think they're hanging on to something, it's choking the air outta them. Same thing happens to anything we hang onto too tight. Keeps us distracted from what God intended.”

Mazy stared. Was her mother talking of gold or…

She bit hard on a piece of maple candy, rubbed at her cheek. “I think I broke my tooth.”

“Let me look,” Elizabeth said. She motioned for her daughter to open her mouth. “Your tooth looks fine.” Elizabeth sat back, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, patted her neck with a silk hanky. “It's hotter than a highwayman's pistol,” she said. “Or maybe older people just sweat more.”

Mazy looked over at her mother, reached to fluff a graying curl back
behind her ear. “You're surely not old, Mother. Why, you even have a suitor.”

Elizabeth smiled, “We ain't never too old to love.”

Her mother was like an acorn, Mazy decided, bobbing along in a rushing river, believing that God would plant her where he wanted in his time and she'd eventually become the oak that he intended, shading the place he had chosen.

Mazy hoped she'd live to become so strong an oak.

Zane spent the time gathering up ore from the other traps, the other cabins on his line. He had time to think, to plan. He dreamed now of what he'd do, how he could use each of them to finally get to Ruth. He was ready. He'd given Suzanne enough time to become desperate, needing him. And it was time to step up his pursuit of Ruth.

He rode back in to Shasta, surprised at the brick-and-lead buildings, the activity. More pack strings, more stages spitting out people. The trees still stood with blackened trunks, but the smells of beefsteak drifted to him as he rode past the St. Charles.

Find Suzanne. That was his focus now. Find her first.

As independent as Suzanne was, he knew she'd rebuild, make her own place. But chances were she was still at Ruth's, waiting. Stores and hotels would take precedence over some blind woman's whim.

He stopped first at the saloon and located Esty, telling her he was a friend of Suzanne's.

“If that's so, you'd know she left town,” Esty told him. She squinted her eyes in suspicion.

“I've been…unavailable,” he said, his mouth dry as he breathed through it.

“She's with a traveling group,” Esty said after a time, watching him. “They're going to the camps and entertaining. You might check with
Mrs. Mueller over at Popover. She kept pretty good tabs on Suzanne and the boys.”

He found the bakery, and using his most pleasant voice told the large woman with flour up to her elbows that he was a friend of Suzanne's. “Zane Randolph,” he said before he realized what he'd done.

“Where you know her from?”

“Back in Missouri,” he said. “I've just arrived and I'm most anxious to see her. She sent a letter telling me she was here. I…have failed to find her.”

“She's singing and playacting and probably having quite the time. Little scary, but then most all life is at some time or another, wouldn't you say, Mr. Randolph? That's what you said your name was?”

He nodded. “And you have no idea at all where she might be?”

“None. Expect her back come August, maybe later. You might ask at the
Courier.
A friend of hers works there, Ruth Martin. She might know just where about Suzanne and the troupe were headed. One of her kids is with her. You just got here in town, though? Huh. Your name sure sounds familiar.”

“All right,” Elizabeth told Sarah after Zane Randolph left. “You can come out now. I see your feet hiding behind them flour barrels. What're you doing back there?”

“Staying safe.”

“From who? Me?” Elizabeth turned now, alarmed by the sound of the child's voice.

“That man. Why'd he say his name was Zane Randolph? His name's Wesley.”

“Suzanne's Wesley?”

Sarah nodded. “I seen him there.”

“Ponder that.” She tapped her floured finger to the side of her cheek.

Not back until August? How dare she be difficult. He should not have to wait. He was tired of waiting, of playing her games. A blind woman with no more sense than to turn his proposal down and set herself for the pawing-on of slobbering miners. She used him, did this on purpose, coming and going, pretending weakness, just as Ruth had done. Ruth probably knew where she was.

Ruth. She had done this! Her refusal to be herded as a woman should, spreading like disease to Suzanne. Ruth, luring him west, just to humiliate him using a blind woman. She was evil, Ruth was. Deserving of what she would get. Never mind Suzanne. It was Ruth who needed tending. He should go to the newspaper, see her sitting there, holding a lithograph. Was this now the time to take her, to make real his image of her dressed in white inside her coffin? She was so sure that he would follow, so sure she was in control. That was why she lived out in the open, in her old ways, drawing pictures on stones. His breathing rasped. He had to calm himself, to think. She had done this to him.

He could take Ruth. She probably knew he was watching her, had known it all along and didn't care. He hadn't made her weep and wonder. She laughed at him, talked with Suzanne about him whenever she had the chance, talked with the baker woman, too. Hadn't she said his name was familiar? Ruth made this happen, lured him here, made him come after her with her lies, her tricks, her judgments, then deliberately got in his way. His mouth dried from his breathing. He swallowed.

Ruth had to pay now. The time had come.

He wanted it over. Not at the newspaper office. He would have to do it on the road between the meadow and town. Five miles to find the perfect place to take her. Close to home, so she'd think that she was safe.

Zane spurred the horse, headed east, rode to the tree line that surrounded the meadow. He found a higher, well-hidden place, and there he pulled his telescoping glass from its leather holder. He scanned the
road behind him, then turned to Ruths farm. He saw the privy. Nearby, someone stood on a stump, throwing clothes over a rope. He could see feet beneath the sheets and towels. He couldn't tell who it was. A child. The cabin stood partly shaded by oaks and a smattering of yellow pines. He moved past the house, the barn, to the meadow.

He saw milk cows. A black mule. Some oxen. A long-horned bull. Two horses. A herd of deer. No! Not deer. He counted—ten, fifteen horses. And Durham cattle. More than he'd ever seen there before, still coming, being pushed by drovers.

Someone rushed out of the barn now, running like a woman, but wearing pants. Ruth! He was sure it was her. He could tell it was Ruth as she bounded up to one of the drovers, patted at the lathered horse. The man swept his hat, held it to his chest, bent forward to her.

Zane removed the glass. His eye caught another movement. He looked again. A woman kicked up her skirts as she ran. A boy whooped and shouted, then looked up at a skinny man riding a good mount near the back. Behind him rode another and another. Too many men. Dust and the milling of horses and cattle. The men all smiles. Ruth's stallion and gelding kicking and whinnying at the presence of so many mares. And there came Jessie. Zane's Jessie. Limping a bit as she hurried from the back of the house. She must have been the one hanging clothes. Ruth pointed at the girl. The child stomped back toward the house, toward the clothesline, throwing more garments over the rope. The towels and skirts on the line formed a perfect barrier between the activity in the meadow and what Zane now had in mind.

Suzanne knew it might not have been best idea she'd ever had. But how else could she bring up two boys without a father—one of whom hadn't said much more than “Mommy” for the past six months? She'd taken a gift and turned it into a way to be responsible for her family—and she
was having the time of her life. They were well treated by the crowds. Was it wrong to have a fine time and still serve her family well?

“We're almost ready,” Mariah told her. “Can you hear them pounding? I think its their gold pans. They dont seem to go anywhere without them.”

Hear them? The stomping and pounding was music to Suzanne's ears, salve to her soul, misplaced as their adoration might have been.

“Your hair looks like twists of gold dust laced with the night,” Mariah said. She was a sweet child. “Even if I did fix it myself. The little tin stars we made catch the lamplight.” She pressed her fingers against Suzanne's hair. “They'll love it out there.”

“Thank you.”

Suzanne reached out and, with the palm of her hand, gently cupped Mariah's ear, brushed her cheek with the flesh of her thumb. Her skin was smooth as a piano key, and she imagined it as white. She felt the girl's face smile. Suzanne could localize sound well enough that she could imagine where her face was, could “see” Mariah's ears and eyes and the brush of her hair, so that when she reached out for a familiar person now, she was certain and sure. Like the photographer she'd been, she could aim, focus, then touch.