No Eye Can See (9 page)

Suzanne's heart beat in her throat, and she felt a throbbing at her temples. It wasn't fear, exactly, something else. Fury at their hovering over her, mixed with what? Her heart raced and her mouth got dry the way they did when she was asked to perform before an audience. There was no audience here—except herself. Her children and herself. She counted paces.
Three hundred fifty-one, three hundred fifty-two.
She fingered the cuts she'd had Mazy make on Pig's harness, each slice indicating one hundred feet. She wouldnt go farther than five marks before turning back. She'd be calm by then.

“Mommy?”

“Mommy can see you walking, Clayton. You're such a good walker.”

“Mommy?” the boy said.

“You're pulling on my hand making Mommy walk really fast. Can you see the baby on my back? Is he smiling?”

“Baby?” Clayton said.

He should have been saying yes and no and two or three words together for his age, she was sure of that. She remembered being told that she carried on conversations with her mother when she was two,
and he was nearly three. “Yes, the baby's there. On my back.” She mustn't let her mind wander. Count. Talk. Walk. Calm.

“Back?” She felt Clayton tug on her hand.

“No, we dont have to go back yet.” She could hear the women in the distance, a horse snort and the oxen chomp as they ripped at grass. Seth said tomorrow they'd see clover, red top, blue joint, bunch grass, all kinds of feed. And they'd have fish for dinner. Her mouth watered. She swallowed just as Clayton broke free.

“Clayton, come to Mommy,” she said not loudly, not wanting to alert the women.

“I'll get him for you,” Mariah shouted. She heard horse's hooves behind her then.
Would she never be left ahne!

“I'm fine.” Suzanne turned toward the sound of the hooves, making sure she stood square. “You'll just make Clayton run faster. Stop, Mariah!” Suzanne heard the horse trot past her on Pig's side. She turned around and heard Clayton squeal. She felt her face flush with frustration. Then Mariah gasped. A grunt. A screech of hooves. Thumps. Then silence. She heard the sound of a horse trotting toward her.

“Mariah?” No answer. “Clayton?”

She'd have to let go of Pig in order to stop the big horse. Could she? Should she? Where was Clayton? She released Pig's harness and plunged her arm into the unknown.

“Whoa, now,” she said. She imagined the animal, tried to remember where to grab. The horse bumped close, and she reached for whatever her hand could grasp. She held a clump of mane. She felt herself pulled along, her slippers skipping at the dirt. Pig barked. She hoped Sason stayed in the contraption. Dust billowed up to her nose. Dragged along, she pulled on the mane, yelled, “Whoa!” The horse stopped, so abruptly Suzanne's head jammed into its side. Sason hiccuped. “It's all right, baby. It is.” She patted the horse then, found the reins hanging from the bridle. She held them. “Mariah? Pig?”

Silence. No bell sound. Her heart began to pound.

She should call for help. But she so wanted to tend things herself.

She heard a moan. “I hurt my ankle,” Mariah wailed. “Got the wind knocked out.”

“Can you see Clayton?”

“He's right here, patting my head,” she said. “I'm all right.” She started to cry then.

Sason made sounds in his cradle, and Suzanne felt her own shoulders sag with relief. “We'll be right there,” she said and soon was. “Pig, stay,” she directed, feeling in the air for Mariah. With her other hand, she held the reins of Jumper. When she touched Mariahs head, she said, “I'm going to help you stand and hold my hand so you can step up into my cupped palms, like a stirrup. Can you do that?”

“I think so. Oh, it hurts.”

“Does it look broken?” Mariah must've shook her head. “Use words,” Suzanne insisted.

“No. Oh, it's so sore. I think Clayton startled him. He shied away!”

“Last time, Jumper startled Clayton. Here. Take my hand. Ready? Up? Reach up now and take the reins. That's right.” She felt Pig at her side.

Suzanne heard the girl's labored breathing, then her plop onto the horses bare back. “Good work! Clayton. Take Mommy's hand now.”

“If you can lift him to me, he could sit in front. And you could lead us back.”

“So I could. Clayton.” She lifted the boy at his ribs, pressed his right leg up and over the horse's withers. “Got him?”

. “Yes ma'am.” They started walking back toward the camp sounds. “Thank you, ma'am. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. I didn't think you should be out here without help.” She sniffed, her words thickened. “I'm the one who needed it.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about, asking for help, Mariah,” Suzanne said. “Here.” She stopped, dug in the sleeve of her wrapper for a handkerchief. She heard Mariah blow her nose. “All ready?”

She imagined the girl nodded as she stepped back away from the horse. “You re only thirteen, Mariah. You 11 need lots of help yet to get you grown. Isn't that right, Pig?”

Suzanne shuffled along the desert floor, smelled smoke from a fading fire. “Clayton,” she said. “I can see you riding.”

“Mommy?”

A smile grew at the corner of her mouth, not one she put there consciously, but one that arrived of its own will. She kicked her skirts out a little higher.

5

Mazy and her mother walked up the twisting trail through tall timber. In his mouth, Pig, the dog that once belonged to her, carried an old sock he bumped at Mazy's knee. Absently, she tugged on it, barely hearing the dogs slobbery sounds. Ned called to him, and the dog bounded off. Mazy's hands smelled like fish when she brushed at a tickle of dog hair on her nose. They'd had trout for dinner and breakfast more than once in the past three weeks. Yesterday, Tipton surprised them all by catching the biggest and the most—so far. They'd marveled at the honey-colored lake and seen a majestic, white-topped mountain Seth called Lassens Peak. Their tired eyes had gazed into valleys and ravines pocked with granite boulders larger than a stack of wagons. And while they'd puffed in the higher altitudes, the terrain had not challenged them as it had those months before. This was a gentle route to California. The only complaint Mazy had heard about the landscape lately had involved the water frozen in the wash basin that morning. Even Mariahs ankle didn't bother her. Elizabeth said it must have been Lura's skunk oil she rubbed all over that joint. Elizabeth dropped back then, to ask if she could put some of it on her own hip that evening, leaving Mazy alone with her thoughts.

Mazy felt like a dragonfly skimming the surface of her life, afraid that if she touched the water she'd be sucked in. Flying higher terrified her too. A wind could whip her into the unfamiliar. So she hovered just above the waterline, appearing to be part of the life of the pond, but she wasn't. She might never be again.

Seth had led them well these past weeks, and she'd relinquished guidance to him seemingly without effort. Relieved almost. But without the weight of deciding when to hitch up, when to rest, what to do, what was next, her mind was freed, emptier than it had been since Jeremy died. The weightlessness kept her hovering, unwilling to light for fear she'd be consumed by the churning inside.

“Getting on winter,” Seth told Mazy. He led his horse now and walked beside her. She was almost as tall as him, but had to look up to see his eyes. “Got to husde ourselves along, get settled before the rains start.” He squinted through pines to a blue sky. “Could happen any time.”

“You like doing this, don't you?” Mazy asked him.

“I like a little uncertainty,” he said. “Maybe another train 11 be willing to take the cutoff and I'll get another commission from the city fathers. It's an honest living. This trip's had a nice reward, bringing you ladies to a new land. I like my gambling time, too. All I need is just one good game with the right stakes and I can set my sights on more predictable things.” He patted his vest pocket as though looking for his writing kit.

“Something inspire a poem?”

He shook his head. “Thinking to stop smoking.”

“I didn't know you did.”

“Don't now. Clouds my mind at the poker tables. Need to keep bright as a tack.”

“I believe that's ‘sharp as a tack,’ “ Mazy said. She smiled.

• “Mazy Bacon,
  

• Tall as a tree.
  

• Eyes like a wise cat's,
  

• Watchful and green.”
  

“Poems I don't need writing tools for anyway. Especially when the inspiration's right in front of me.”

Mazy blushed. “I don't feel particularly wise,” she said.

“But you are. All you've had to contend with? Boys without their fathers, sisters without their brothers, wives without—”

“We've all had losses. I don't know that I've done anything wise to help us through it.”

“Mazy Bacon. From the first, I liked your honesty, your lack of flashing eyes to get something wanted without asking for it up front. So I dont think you're expecting a compliment with that comment. But I'm going to give you one. And you listen to it and you remember it. Someone had to lead. Ain't no gathering of folks ever achieved a goal without someone reminding ‘em of where they were headed, of what mattered, of getting ‘em outside of themselves and thinking of others. Someone has to fill the holes left by the men. Got to inspire people to do more than they thought they could, to get back on the trail. They don't even know yet what they've accomplished. That'll come years later when they tell their kin. And, oh, the stories of all they did will grow bigger than a bullfrog's belly. They may forget what you did, but you best not. A good leader is ninety percent inspiration and the ability to spread it like a welcome blanket across people cold and scared and uncertain. You did that or these people behind us would never have been here, sassy and snappy as they are. There's almost no defeat in their faces. That in itself's a miracle.”

Seth swallowed, and Mazy realized his face was red and his eyes were pooled.

She didn't think she'd ever had a man sing her praises so—or anyone, for that matter. “Why, Seth, I—”

He turned to her then. “Mazy,” he said. His gloved hand pressed a lock of hair behind her ear. He brushed his lips against her forehead, light as a butterfly fluttering a blossom.

She had no idea what the rest of them would think. She wasn't sure what she thought herself.

They'd moved northwest, bypassing some tree-darkened buttes, but the rise through the Sierras felt gradual. The grass and water supply held
steady. Around Black Butte, they turned at last southwest. At a slight incline, Seth suggested they lock brakes, but it was only for a short distance and the animals handled it fine.

They crossed creeks and watched clear, rushing water flow out of the sides of buttes. Yellow flowers bloomed, and the grass leaned out over stream banks like green waterfalls.

“It's beautiful here, isn't it?” Mazy asked her mother as she picked up a pine needle and used it to push some breakfast fish from the back of her tooth. It is.

They walked without talking, the silence broken by the wagon chains clattering and chatter of birds and the shouts of the children pushing Jessie in the little wheeled barrel they'd made for her, her leg sticking out in front.

“Do you suppose Sister Esther spoke with Zilah about…you know, what's beyond?” Mazy said.

“What made you think ofthat?”

“Oh, just all this splendor. It's like the Garden of Eden, I imagine. And I wonder if we're given places like this to remind us of what will yet come. I don't know. Just thinking.”

“Don't know that Sister Esther's the only one assigned to talk of spiritual things,” Elizabeth said.

“It seems like not just anyone should talk about heaven and hell. I'm not trying to avoid it. I just don't know how to say things right. I wish I'd known how to talk about…you know, when Jeremy died.” She shook her head, remembering. “It couldn't have helped him to have me talking about cows and calving times and not the state of his soul.”

“Comforted him, I'll ponder.” Her mother put her arm around her daughter's waist, pulled her to her as they walked. “He'd made his own peace, from what you said, about his saying he was going on home, alone.”