“Do you? Well, now, you'll know precisely what I need to make my family wish to join me.” He nodded at the limestone bar she held firmly in one palm, her fingers holding the engraving knife in the other. “Such lovely hands,” he said, “ought to be holding more than stone.”
“A wise woman holds on to what she needs to,” Ruth said.
He arched a thick eyebrow. “Again, I stand in awe,” he said, revealing a single dimple when his mouth slid into a smile. He removed his dark hat, reached out his hand She set the limestone down, touched his hand, and shook it. Her action interrupted his lips on their way to the back of her palm, but he smiled, squeezed her palm like a man's handshake. “I like that,” he said.
They began a long and leisurely courting, of strolls and picnics and attendance at the theater He bought her small gifts, then more extravagant ones It pleased Zane to see earrings dangling from her ears, necklaces sparkling against her olive skin. She asked him once not to spend so freely on her, tried to tell him her tastes were simple ones.
He'd frowned like a boy told he had to put his toy up for the night.
She shouldn't be so direct, she decided. She didn't really mind making small adjustments in what she packed for picnics or wearing the jewelry he sent that was not fully to her liking.
He told her of his family, his banking interests. She told him of her love of horses, her joy in practicing with a whip. He'd frowned, but just slightly. She'd noticed, though, and didn't mention those subjects—and many others—that mattered to her, again.
“That was my downfall, Koda,” Ruth said, finishing. “I gave myself up for someone else. Never again,” she told the horse. Koda hobbled over at the sound of her voice, pulled at the kerchief tucked at her waist. “Except this short turnaround for Betha,” she said. “And the children.”
Pig's barking brought them all. Sister Esther, Naomi, Deborah, Lura, Mariah, and Zilah were walking slowly back toward the circle of wagons, having completed their necessary time together. When they heard the child wail, the dog bark, and Suzanne's yelp for help, they picked up their pace.
“Clayton's there,” Sister Esther said, able to see better than the other, shorter women. The S sizzled in her teeth. She pointed. “Beneath the wagon.”
They hoisted up their skirts and stepped through the grass and small yellow flowers that sprinkled the ground like sparse confetti.
“What is it? Clayton?” Suzanne said, her chin up, her neck stretched out like a chicken's, hands flailing before her. The rope, she felt for it at her waist. There was no resistance—he'd come untied. She had gotten down from the wagon box, her hands swinging in a wide arc in front of her as though washing off a lengthy table pushed heavily before her. Where was that goading stick Naomi used for the oxen? “Clayton? Where are you? What's wrong?”
Mazy roused at Pigs bark. Stung from her grogginess, she took long strides toward the boy, watched the child start to stand as though to wobble toward his mothers voice when Pigs gruff-gruff bask grew louder, more insistent, hair standing up at his neck. Mazy suddenly understood and shouted, stern and sharp. “Clayton! Suzanne! Stop! Tell him not to move!”
“What is it? What do you see?” Suzanne said.
“Rattler, between Pig and your boy.”
Mazy heard her mother run up beside her. “Get me a hay fork,” Mazy told her. “Just stay, Clayton We'll play a game Just sit now. Tell him to sit, Suzanne”
Elizabeth jerked at the fork attached to Betha's wagon. She was joined by Sister Esther and the others.
Behind her, Mazy heard a small wail. She looked to see Mariah, fist to her mouth, her eyes wide. “Kill it! Kill it!” she said.
“Sit still, Clayton,” Mazy ordered, turning back. “Your mamas here Sit still, now.” Mazy stretched the fork out toward the snake. “He's paying more attention to the dog than Clayton at this moment. Pig, don't get too close.”
She jabbed at the reptile, the buzz of its rattles zinging in the dusk. It struck at the fork, slithered past to the left, coiled again. “Soon as it's out of striking range, Mother, grab the boy.”
The snake swayed its head like a compass needle. Mazy jabbed and poked again, then heard the sting of a whip snap past her head. It connected between her and Pig, the lick of the leather beheading the snake.
Mazy turned to see Ruth a step behind her, turned back to see her mother grab the child and hand him to Suzanne, who smothered him in kisses. The snake's body continued to wind back and forth in the flattened grass.
“He don't know he's dead yet,” Elizabeth said.
“We need to bury the head,” Ruth said. “Keep the yellow jackets from feasting. Make their stinging worse.”
“Don't want no one stepping on it either,” Ned said, still agog.
“It could poison ya even after its dead?” Sarah asked. She held Jessies hand tight.
Ruth nodded. “Should beat around the grass good before we turn in, try to discourage as many others as we can.”
“I can't stand them, I just can't,” Mariah repeated. “Snakes and spiders.” She shivered. “Spiders most.”
“Provides a little something extra for dinner,” Elizabeth said.
Mazy rubbed at the dog's ears. Pig still barked at the slithering snake but not as loud or with as much aggression. “It's all right,” Mazy said. “Good job, Pig.”
“Thank you,” Suzanne said, her chin resting on her child's head. “To whichever of you. I couldn't see. The dog…I'm just not able to look after Clayton.” She shook her head, brushed at tears, rubbing against her cheek.
“There, there,” Betha said. “Toddlers are hard to keep track of for everyone.”
“Look how long it is,” Mariah said. With the fork, Mazy lifted the form from beneath the wagon and turned toward the fire with it while Ruth dug a hole with her heel and pushed the head in with her boot. “We aren't really going to eat it, are we?”
“Enough there for each to have a taste,” Elizabeth said.
“How would we fix it?” Lura asked.
“Ma!”
“The way you want to eat rattlesnake,” Elizabeth said, “is to be real hungry. You don't want to have breakfast or nooning, not eat all day long on a day you're going to have rattler for supper.”
“I believe we can forgo that delicacy, then,” Sister Esther said, tying and retying the black ribbon at her throat “Seeing as how the Lord has provided us with two meals already this day.”
The women decided to sleep inside wagons that evening, instead of setting up tents. Perhaps they were all as tired as she was, Mazy thought, and it was easier to sink into the cornhusks in the narrow wagons than it was to set the tents and then wonder through the night if they'd be waking in the morning with a snake beside their heads. Mazy heard sounds outside by the low fire. She guessed Sister Esther hadn't yet turned in.
Tired as she was, Mazy hadn't slept. She allowed her mind to chew once again on the day. She had to make everything go without a hitch, be responsible for the ease of their turnaround. They'd have to find some way to keep closer watch on Clayton, assign someone to watch him all the time. Then she thought of the old sleighbells in her mother's wagon—she could attach them to the boy's shoes. That would help.
Had it been her imagination, or had Suzanne been less like a wasp? No, Mazy just hadn't been tending to her; her mother had She needed to change that. She must think of a task for Suzanne, something valued, not just meant to keep her occupied. She knew little of Suzanne's interests except for the sewing machine she'd seen. The Cullvers had musical instruments along, but she'd only seen Bryce play the violin. A stack of muslin and what looked like carpeting rolled into a cylinder were snugged along the wagons sidewalls. Mazy had tripped over them a dozen times while looking after Suzanne when she'd been so ill. She wondered how it was Suzanne didn't stumble on them.
Sister Esther coughed. Mazy imagined her beside the fire, writing.
Mazy tossed again, pounded the feather pillow. She should write of that, write dow
n what she experienced in this place so foreign without her husband now, without any sense that God still walked beside her Her mind, her body, her emotions, her life of prayer were all disrupted. Writing gave her words to frame the feelings that tumbled and tossed, bumped against memory and mourning, wondering and will. The act of putting lead to paper by itself had comforted even before she focused on the words of praise, placed prayer notes on the pages. But no more.
She couldn't bring herself to write, to use it as a healing gift. For that would mean she'd have to think of prayer, and prayer was lost, as lost as Jeremy. What was the feeling? She wasn't sure. Confusion? No, betrayal. Not from Jeremy; he was mortal, after all, someone entitled to human error. But God permitted this to happen, allowed the deaths and disappointments. What part of perfection required such disasters? What part of her had failed in prayer? She didn't know, and now she could not ask.
She just wanted to be refreshed, to start over again without losing her place.
Sister Esther began singing, the low song they had sung at the gravesite.
“O Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land!
As on thy highest mount I stand,
I look away across the sea
Where mansions are prepared for me,
And view the shining glory shore—
My heav'n, my home, forevermore.”
Home. The thought of it pulled at Mazy. Home held her happiness, it always had. Happiness settled on some pleasant place, now lost. Tears pooled at her eyes. She blinked them away.
Ruth lay on the ground near the stock. She stared up at the stars, so grateful nothing had happened to Clayton. Children were precious, treasured, and fragile. Her own loss came back to her. She sighed She'd pulled blinders on herself, the same kind she used with the horses to keep them from becoming distracted.
What began with Zane as a courtship of joy had moved into pauses: pauses in her conversations, pauses that drifted in like flotsam on the Ohio River after a summer storm. Pauses she avoided acknowledging. She hadn't wanted to see the bursts of temper her fiancé displayed with a dog who chewed on his shoe or with a green-broke horse that failed to respond to the quick confusion of the big mans instruction.
“Hes just a fervent man—intense,” was how she responded to her fathers concern “He's just nervous about the wedding, the responsibilities,” Ruth told him and believed it herself.
“There's something not right there, Ruth. You're deceiving yourself,” her father said. “Yes, yes, he can keep you in good stead financially. But that's not all there is in a marriage. Little of it, to be exact. Will he be kind, fair, just? Can he be counted on? Those are the questions worth asking”
It was the first of many insights she discounted from those she loved.
She'd planned for Zane's family and her brother, Jed, and his wife, Betha, and their children to arrive for the ceremony; the rush of wedding plans would pass and then all would be well with her and her new husband.
Ruth's family arrived. “My parents send their regrets,” Zane told her. “Illness. My father's sister. They extend their blessing.”
So Zane and Ruth did marry, but all was not well.
When the babies came, then it would be better, when they were settled in, she told herself.
She'd been careful not to voice her worries, not with anyone at all, and when they rose as troubling thoughts and not just anxious irritations, she rubbed them out as carefully as she used the abrasive to correct drawing errors made on the expensive limestone plates. In fact, she no longer drew the pictures that illustrated the news accounts of fires or celebrations. Z. D. Randolph suggested she find other pursuits for such pretty hands.
“It reflects on me, Ruth, that you're not happy as my wife.”
“But I am happy. I love the lithography.”
“Others don't understand,” he said. “And being with all those men all day, you might find someone more enchanting.” He'd grinned, and she'd been charmed at his insecurity.
Never mind that her days dragged without human bond. Never mind that Zane worked long hours and couldn't often be with her. Never mind that she saw more of the stablehand and housemaids than her husband. When she told him she carried his child, all that changed. His attention to her was complete. “I'm in awe,” he said, rubbing his hands across her abdomen. “And I created it.” He relished her, savored her, spoke of her beauty, her grace as a mother-to-be. Then the babies had come. Twins Ruth turned over and looked at the stars, blinked back the tears of remembrance.
It was afterward that Ruth indulged her love for horses, found them safe and willing listeners. Their discretion unimpeachable, their constancy never failing.
Koda stomped close to her. She heard Jumper nicker and was glad she'd kept the two back. Horses. They'd kept her from insanity after the twins were born. After she came too late to her senses and slept through her young son's death.
The hitching up in the morning took four hours Tempers and time tangled, and midmorning arrived before the wagons began lumbering east. Two parties heading west had already passed by them on the trail while the women struggled with the heavy neck yokes, moving oxen into place and then losing one or two, having to bring them back into the lumbering arc. The animals stomped impatiently; tails swatted at flies as the women took so long to hook the braces shaped liked a smoothed-out letter U Help was offered and they'd accepted it, but then those in the westward parties moved on.
In the past, the women had helped husbands or sons, but the men had always assumed the lead, been the ones to give the orders, anticipate the difficulties with the animals or tack.
Adora felt a flash of anger at her husband for having left her. How dare he die and leave her here with these beasts and bugs! She pushed the thought away to concentrate on the mules.
She and Tipton had the only wagons pulled by mules. They were sturdy and made better time than the oxen, which was how she, Hathaway, and Charles had caught up with Tipton and Tyrell. A pang of guilt punched her stomach. Adora grabbed herself and rocked a bit, closing her eyes. She was not a strong person. Others thought she was, but they did not know she played a part. She had always had a leading man to play against; standing alone on life's stage made her feel exposed, as if she were undressing in front of a night candle.
The mid-June morning hung hot and humid, and with the extra effort of harnessing, sweat dribbled down the inside of Adoras corset, dampened her chemise, and wet the drawstrings of her drawers. She dabbed at her forehead with her apron, took a deep breath, then stuck her head in the back of her daughters wagon.
“Tipton, you have got to get up here and help. I cant do this all alone. Zilah is just too inept.”
“I lift harness, Missy Adora,” the girl said, straightening her pointed bamboo hat.
“Yes, youre doing your best, but we need extra hands. To hold the mules steady until we get everything settled. Tipton!”
“I'll be there, Mother ” Her daughters voice sounded dreamy and soft.
“She's had a terrible time, losing two she loved so,” Adora said, then clucked at herself for explaining anything personal to this foreign child. “Perhaps you could drive that wagon again today? I can pay you.”
“In pandowdy like Missy Tipton say, or coin?” Zilah asked.
“Why, whichever one you prefer.”
Suzanne held her son close while she listened to the grunts and heavy breathing of Naomi working beside Mazy to lift the yokes onto Breeze and Blow. She could hear the clank of wood, the creak of wheels and wagon tongue as all got pulled together and held by smoothed leather.
She could smell everything, hear everything, even imagine how it would feel to touch the leather, the cold, forged rings that kept the oxen attached to the tongue. These were all familiar things, things she'd known, had seen through clear and studied eyes. Bryce had been her guide. He'd described life to her, wind in a hawk's wing, the Missouri River, the look of red bloomers. He used references to objects and events, sights and sounds that she had
known before. That was a rare gift in a person, to take something unique and unusual and give it depth and texture for someone who had never been there, never visited in that place It took away the fear
She heard the bells jingle on Claytons feet. She tugged on the rope. He was close. Still, fear wormed back. Even worse were the other feelings that fluttered to the surface, those old songs of incompetence that Bryce had silenced were now given new voice.
“Anger usually isn't the real emotion,” Bryce told her after she'd screamed at him about something. “It comes…it's second, I think. First, there is something else .a loss, some feeling of incompetence. A harsh judgment…we make about ourselves. The loss is too much to bear so we ¨skip over it…go directly to…outrage.”
“Such a philosopher,” she had spit at him. “One who stutters.”
But she had remembered what he said and considered it. So much loss pushed her into anger. And here she sat, while others did her work, chords of unworthiness clanging against the dark.
That's what she was—unworthy. She had been since the day she'd spilled the mercuric chloride in the developing room, had sloshed, slipping and falling, the liquid splashing into her eyes. It had startled her more than pained her at first, then stung. It was useful as an antiseptic, she had heard, so she didn't expect it to really harm. But she couldn't see through it, couldn't find water to rinse her eyes. She expected no one to hear her shouting. She and the baby were alone in their studio, Bryce having gone out to photograph funeral flowers.
Funeral flowers. How ironic. She had photographed and developed hundreds of them for the fine people of Cape Girardeau, but none for her own husband s death.
At Bryce's funeral, she'd been led by someone she barely knew, told where to stand so as not to slip inside the hollow, and laid yellow larkspurs on his body, taking someone else's word that those were what she held.