All Together in One Place

  Relief, guilt, then worry churned in Ruth “Is he affected?”

  Betha nodded, her lip trembling. She pulled a handkerchief from up her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. “Just started. He moans so. IVe given him some laudanum. It may be what helped our Jessie. Someone in a new wagon saw me give it. Said I needed bismuth. Isn't that for cholera? This isn't cholera, surely. Is it, Ruthie?” She whispered the word. “We've no Asiatics here. Oh,” she said looking up, her fingers pressed to her lips. “The Celestials.” The last sounded like a wail

  “It'll be all right,” Ruth said patting the woman's chubby shoulders. She looked around, still waiting to see the children.

  Everything about Betha was soft and scented, Ruth decided, weaker than she'd hoped for.

  “You think so?” Betha turned pooling eyes toward Ruth.

  “We've got to keep our heads,” Ruth said. “Let's go tend to my big brother.”

  Bryce Cullver had died just after noon. They wrapped him in a blanket and dug a shallow grave in the roadbed after a short service at dusk. Sister Esthers brothers commented on Bryce's kindness. Prayers were said Then they drove wagons over the grave to keep the coyotes from digging—and any others that might think a treasure had been buried with this gentle man. Afterwards, people moved back to their wagons, the women avoiding each others eyes.

  Dr. Masters described it as most likely mountain fever.

  “He was just fine this morning,” Betha told Mazy. “He laughed and held his wife a moment before they rolled out. I saw them.”

  He lay dead just hours later.

  Jed died that evening, followed by one of Sister Esthers brothers. The Celestial named Cynthia succumbed too. Antone announced that they'd move on in the morning soon after the burials. Then word came back they'd wait, allow a few already feeling ill to be treated and gain some strength. Then Matt, Antone and Luras son, rode back telling them to be ready to leave at first light

  “He thinks something here might be causing it,” Tipton told Elizabeth. The girl stopped by the wagon to look at the antelope, to reach out and touch the soft black nosë and stare at the huge dark eyes with long lashes. She rubbed at her arm.

  “Has eyes as big and deep as yours,” Elizabeth said. “You eating enough, girl? Got some cornbread left Mazy boiled up some jam. Smells good.”

  Tipton brisded. “I do not resemble an antelope, Mrs. Mueller.”

  “You'd be surprised how many different animal traits humans have And please. Can't you call me Elizabeth?” Tipton nodded. “Good. Carry this for me, will you? Can't believe how my hip aches tonight and my back tooth, too.”

  She handed the girl an empty bucket off the side of the wagon, then with the dipper began filling it from their barrel. As it became heavier, Tipton set it down.

  “You think its something common?” Tipton asked

  Elizabeth turned to the tone in her voice. For once, she didn't chide the girl, actually heard the fear, saw it in the pinched look of Tipton s face.

  “We don't know what it is. Getting muddled wont help us fight it. Got to keep calm, now. Keep breathing prayers. Where's your gumption?

  Tipton swallowed.

  “Suzanne's still feverish, though Claytons better, Mazy says. Must have been your quick help to them this morning, Tipton.”

  “I didn't do a thing. Tyrell did. I hope he doesn't get sick. He tended her an awful long time.”

  “I lived through the Asiatic cholera scare in ‘32,” Elizabeth said. She shivered. “This acts a lot like that. Fast moving, that's for sure Usually hit emigrants coming off a ship, though, or people living in filthy conditions, drinking dirty water. Not like here with the open spaces and fresh air, clean streams.”

  “But all those graves we passed¨”

  “Don't know what causes it, but we need to control the bowels. Oh, I know you do hate that topic But we got to keep folks from drying from their insides out. Want to carry that to the Cullvers for me?” She pointed with her chin at the bucket, but then pulled it back and said, “Think I'll boil it first. Kill them swimming things.”

  “Cholera.” Tipton whispered. “Can we do anything?”

  “I'm fixing to reduce the woman's misery. Widowing ain't for wilting flowers.”

  “We'll have our man drive your wagon,” Mazy told Suzanne. Mazy stood inside the wagon, waiting for her mother to bring back water. Funny how fast her self-righteous anger had dissipated—how silly she'd been to be so upset by the antelope adventure when they faced this greater grief. She wiped Suzanne's forehead with a cool cloth. Elizabeth stepped up onto the boards, carrying the bucket.

  “Got to go again,” Suzanne said, her throat sounding scratchy and parched. She pushed up onto her elbows, her straw-colored hair in tight, wet rings capped around her face. Even in the poor light, Mazy could see the puckered lines of scars that marked her damaged eyes without the dark glasses to protect them.

  “The slop bucket's here,” Mazy said, “on your left, next to your foot. Stand. That's good. Just bend if you can and I'll push it beneath you. Mother, hold up her skirts for her. We'll take them off, I think, keep her drawers on. Make it easier.”

  The scent of sickness filled the air. A small moan rose from the mattress behind Mazy. “It's going to be fine, Clayton. Mommy's going to be fine.”

  “Don't lie to the child,” Suzanne said, her voice breathy. “I'm not now nor will I ever be fine.” She spit the word, and a small amount of spittle glistened at the corner of her bluish lips “You'll take him when I die.”

  “Shush now. Here you go, little one,” Elizabeth said. She raised the toddler to her shoulder, folded him into her breast, rocking.

  “Don't talk that way, Suzanne,” Mazy said. “The sickness is slowing some. You're holding down the stew.”

  “But if I don't, you take him. Please,” Suzanne said. Her fingers gripped Mazy's bad arm as though clinging to a cliff.

  “If need be, I will,” Mazy said and felt Suzanne's fingers weaken. “But he needs you most, he does. A child needs his mother most.”

  Mazy took a soft cloth and gently tended to Suzanne's backside. She felt the woman shiver and held her elbow to balance her when she realized the shivers carried tears, tears pressed out of scarred, unseeing eyes.

  “Can't even wipe my own bottom,” Suzanne said, her voice a wail, then a whisper. “Do you know how useless I am? How despicable a woman? I should have died in the river.” Tears streamed down her face. She brushed at them, hard, with her hands, her white cheeks stinging to pink. “Its wrong, just so wrong, that the last act between Bryce and me on the day he died should be tangled like this, with sickness, with being so needy, its so, so—”

  “Essential,” Mazy said, wiping Suzanne's cheeks with her fingertips. “Needing is a part of being, just like loving is. So essential.”

  9

  in this place

  Something moved among them, a sharing of the grief and yet relief, a distance separating those now suffering from those not yet afflicted. It prickled the balmy air that fluttered freshly laundered aprons over wrappers worn by women bowed before shallow graves Every adjustment, hardship, and disappointment that had gone before now paled in the piercing, exposing light of loss The living threatened to pull apart, as stringed and shattered as old silk.

  Ruth held her arms around Betha, her strong hands sinking into the soft flesh of her sister-in-laws shoulders Jed, gone. Sarah leaned against her mother, silent while her brothers stood stone-faced, staring straight. Only Jessie spoke, though in a whisper loud enough to break Ruths heart, “Whys Papa not paying attention? Whens he coming to his senses, Mama?” She pulled on her mothers apron. “Isn't he coming with us?”

  Betha stared, did not respond.

  “Hush, child,” Ruth said and brought the girl into the folds of her skirt while they listened to Sister Esther speak the blessing over Jed and one of her own brothers.

  Ruth didn't even know the brother's name except in relation to his sister. She made a mental not
e to learn it, as though knowing that detail would somehow salt his once living presence in her mind, help sisters share their grief.

  The wagons moved away from the morning burial site, dust whisked away by wind The missing spaces the dead left filled up with reluctant shifting, the way an unborn baby forced all a woman's organs into places they would otherwise never go

  “Does Papa hurt?” Jessie asked.

  “No more,” Betha said. Jessie walked with her beside the oxen now, Ned on the other side. “Everything stops working when you die. You don't get hungry or sleepy and you don't hurt anymore. You're just…dead”

  “Does he dream?”

  “No. No dreaming. It's not like sleeping.” The girl shivered against Betha.

  “‘Cuz I was bad?”

  “You didn't do it, no, no.” Betha knelt to Jessies pinched face. “And we'll keep you safe.” She pulled her close, looked up at Ruth. “Those who love you will keep you safe”

  Betha would have left a marker of some kind on Jed's grave; Suzanne said she didn't care about marking Bryce's; but Sister Esther dissented, said hiding the graves proved a better testament to honoring the dead. So they left them, unmarked. But it still troubled Ruth. She noted the lay of the land, the sound of the river rush across rocks, and decided maybe someday she'd come back.

  “It's not finished,” Betha said. “When we passed all those other graves, I didn't realize. How hard it is to just…leave him there.”

  Ruth patted her pudgy shoulder. “It'll be better the farther away we go,” she said “Trust me, it's always better away.”

  Tyrell had hitched up Suzanne's wagon while Elizabeth hovered over the boy, chattering, letting the blind woman know without requiring the woman to ask. The baby, Clayton, showed no signs of illness now. Suzanne still looked pale and weak and needed help to walk. Odd, how the disease raged through some unharmed while inhaling others.

  They rolled west, slowly. The “doll lady's” chatter lilted in the morning air. Had the antelope caper just happened yesterday? No, the day before.

  Elizabeth's daughter lacked such daring, but the two shared a commodious heart. Despite her still healing arm, Mazy offered to drive her mothers wagon, freeing the farrier, Tyrell, to drive the Cullvers'.

  “Just ‘til Laramie, yah,” Antone agreed. “We got to make other arrangements there.” Charles condescended to drive Jed s wagon—for a fee Ruth paid. He had extracted a goodly sum from her, sentiment carrying no part in the bargain.

  “Its a poor businessman who gives away what he's got,” Charles said. He'd stood there slapping leather gloves against his smooth palms, the repetition an irritating rhythm against the background sobs of grieving women. Ruth had difficulty keeping her eyes from that missing chunk of his ear.

  “And you're not a poor businessman,” she said.

  “I'm not a poor anything,” Charles answered, a grin slithering onto the chiseled hardness of his face. Except for the ear notch, his face reflected perfect proportions, a masculine version of his sister's. “If you've the courage, you might want to test my veracity in that.”

  Ruth stared at him. “I've been challenged by better than you,” she said, “and find I haven't time to waste on little men.”

  He'd reddened but pulled his gloves on with the slowness of a slug, tipped his hat, and stepped toward Betha's wagon.

  She might have gone too far. Some men were piqued and not put off by a woman's retort. Unfortunately, she had a habit of mixing liberty with provocation when men sought to master her.

  “If truth be known, I don't think Charles should have offered to drive that woman's wagon,” Adora told her husband as they stopped for the noon break.

  “He's not driving it,” Hathaway said. “Walking beside it.”

  “You know what I mean. Disease there and all. And now Tipton and I are required to drive. That's not right.”

  “Do Tipton good to have a purpose,” he said. “Mules aren't too hard to manage. I'll ask Antone if his boy can help some. Let Charles be. Does him good too, doing for someone else.” He shook his head.

  “You all right?” Adora looked at her husbands pale face.

  “Fine. Just tired.”

  Tipton chewed her bottom lip until it bled. Her hands ached from holding the reins. Tyrell said she could do this, but why did she have to? Four mules. How could someone handle four large, pushing animals? What if they took off? What if they refused to go? The dust gagged her. She couldn't even take a deep breath. Tyrell should have been driving their wagon, not Suzanne's. Charles should be serving his family, not that Martin woman.

  “Think on the good things,” Tyrell had said. “You'll do fine.”

  The good things Charles stayed occupied some distance from her. Distance from him was good. He'd taught her that lesson when she was no older than that Jessie child, hanging on to dolls and being told by her mother that older brothers were protecting and kind. How blind her mother had been, blinder than Suzanne.

  The color of his dark character had been unveiled that long-ago day.

  “Got yourself a private place, hey, Tip,” Charles had said, greeting her as she crawled inside a branch-and-leaf house she'd made in a dimple of Wisconsin forest floor. Tipton was six years old, and she had brought only one friend there, ever; Corinda, and no one else.

  Now here lounged Charles, his lanky sixteen-year-old body smelling of tobacco and his boots muddying up her private place. Tipton shivered, remembering. Think on good things But pleasant thoughts flitted like butterflies; awfuls and terribles rode in on fast horses.

  Charles had followed her once, discovered what she'd tried so hard to hide. Her books and drawing pens Papa brought back from Chicago lay scattered like sticks. She couldn't see her doll. “What have you done with it?”

  “Your precious gift from Mama and Papa? You can wheedle another from Pop. He'll give you anything.”

  His eyes had a glassy look, and he smelled of spirits. Her stomach lurched as he sat up, a ferret, quick and sure. He grabbed her hair, pulling her in, laughing.

  “I want Mama! Let me go!”

  “What's the matter, Tip? Afraid to fight for what you want?”

  Her heart pounded; she smelled his sweat, her own. He pushed her back, throwing her hard, her head striking the ground. She smelled a burst of pine; a flash of pain like lightning shot behind her eyes. He forced his knee onto her chest, leaned over her so that she couldn't breathe. She gasped, her arm lay crooked, pinned behind her. She tried to tell him to stop, but he laughed.

  Thinking, thinking, just surviving, she signaled to him to come closer, as though to speak.

  “Got something to say?” he grinned. “Can't talk?” He bent his ear to her.

  His first mistake.

  She bit, hard and firm, the outer flesh like fish bones mixed with salty sea. He jerked back, his second mistake.

  Her teeth held tight. She felt it rip, the petaled flesh of his ear threatening to choke her; that and the warmth of his blood.

  He screamed and grabbed for his ear, surprise for the first time registering in his eyes. Blood spurted between his fingers. Gasping, she scampered backwards, her palms wet on the pine needles sticky with blood, throwing herself out through the side of her makeshift fort, gasping for air, rubbing her arm, her heart pounding, still clutching at breath. She spit out the knuckled flesh in her mouth. Sobbing and running and stumbling, branches caught at her face, her dress and her hair.

  “I'll get you for this,” he screamed.

  She turned back, sickened by two things: his blood-streaked face; and her once friend, Corinda, now clutching the doll Tipton loved.

  “Youre gripping the reins too tight,” Adora said. “Tipton?” She shook her. Tipton slowed her breathing. She was safe here.

  Charles had told his father he'd caught his ear on a nail in the storeroom while standing to stock the top shelf.

  “Good lesson for you to learn, then. Pound those nails in firm,” her father said.

  “A les
son learned,” Charles said, tossing coins in his palm, glaring at his sister.

  “Betrayal is not the only ending to one's tendering of trust,” Tyrell reminded her when she'd confided in him. “Your friend betrayed you. Charles betrayed you too, that once. But don't be seeking treachery everywhere with everyone or you'll likely find it.”

  Betha must be trying to cool herself in the shade, Ruth thought, watching her sister-in-law walk beside the wagon. Betha's face blotched red, as dazed as if she'd been struck with a post. Perhaps she had been, a woman who lived her life as dependent on Jed as any grown woman could be on a man. “A marvel of a man,” Betha repeated, “providing home and furnishings, even picking out the family linen. Jed handled all the details, Ruthie.”

  In return, Betha tended him, cooked and cleaned, gave him children, and covered for his lapses into drink by taking in laundry for small coinage, a fact she concealed from him so as “not to hurt his pride,” she told Ruth, “when he comes to his senses, dear, which he always does.”

  It was odd the things coupling forced a person to do. And now here Betha was, on a journey she would never have chosen for herself, the anchor of her life no longer stabilizing her in unfamiliar waters “What'll I do now, Ruthie?” she asked later. “What would Jed want me to do?”

  “Keep going. That's what he'd want.”

  “Think so? It was you I think Jed went west for.”

  Ruth swallowed. “Was it?”

  They walked beside the wagon without talking for a time, Ruth checking back to see that her oxen plodded close behind. They lumbered past marked graves and even an abandoned wagon. Birds flitted in and out of the torn, silent canvas as through a dead man's opened mouth. A meadowlark warbled, landed on the broken wheel.

  “What a story it could tell,” Betha said out loud.

  “What?” Ruth asked.

  Betha nodded her head to the still wagon. A torn section of canvas swung in the breeze Nothing inside marked it as unique. “Just wondering what happened there, to make them leave their things behind. Like us, you suppose?” Her eyes pooled with tears.