All Together in One Place

  “Mules are all I've got,” Adora protested. “Grieving everything but what I can stuff in a corner of someone's else's wagon. That's what it's come to.”

  “And me,” Tipton said. “You still have me. If you're interested.”

  Adora looked startled. “Why wouldn't I be interested?” she said.

  Tipton shrugged her shoulders.

  Adora poked at the fire for a time. The women swatted at mosquitoes. Deborah brought out some muslin to drape over Suzanne and Sason, and the women made the sounds of getting ready for rest. Mazy had almost forgotten what Tipton had said by the time Adora spoke again.

  “I have a truth and a lie,” Adora said.

  “Oh, good,” Betha said. She threw the dirty sock for Pig, who chased it and trotted back to the fire with it. “I like this game.” The others assumed the position to listen.

  “I came all this way from Wisconsin, went through all this trouble to get here because I was interested in my Tipton. That's one.” She threw pebbles toward the fire, their plink causing a flicker in the flames. Pigs ears alerted. “Now two. I followed my daughter here because I didn't want to go unnoticed.” No one spoke. “Now you're to guess, isn't that right?”

  “And one of those is a lie?” Elizabeth asked.

  Adora thought. “No. I have to change one. Wait. I didnt come here to follow Tipton, that should have been the first one. Oh, I can't do this right.”

  “Then the lie is that one,” Mazy said. “You came here because of your daughter and because you didn't want to go unnoticed.”

  “Yes,” Adora whispered. “If truth be known. I would have been, back there in Cassville. You were always the honey that brought the bees by, Tipton, gave me things to talk about.” She reached across the log they sat on and patted her daughter's hand. “Truth be known, I came here for me as much as anyone. But I'm glad to have found someone more important to be with than myself. If that makes sense to you.” Tipton held her mother's hand. “And I'm worried over you, how thin you are. Scared, I am, to lose you.”

  “I'm next,” Tipton said. She swallowed, but her voice held firm. “I have laudanum hidden, I'm afraid to eat more, and I make my arm go numb.”

  “Huh?” Jason said, looking at his hand. “That's three.”

  “I've seen those fingers of yours,” Lura said. “I don't think you could cause that. But there's no laudanum around. I'm sure of that. And I've seen beans terrorize you.”

  “It's the hand,” Ruth said. “You can make it go all contorted like that.” Tipton nodded, her face turning pink. “Amazing what our minds make us do, isn't it, Tip?”

  “Any more guesses?” Suzanne asked, not being able to see Tipton's nod.

  “Elizabeth told me that someday I'd know why my hand numbs,” Tipton told them. “Why my arm ached and hurt. She made me mad when she said that. But its true. When I breathe real fast it happens. I could make it happen right now”

  “No, don't,” came a chorus of protests.

  “I breathe that way so I don't have to think about how scared I am of something else Of being alone, I guess. Of Tyrell going away, of eating too much, of everything being in a swirl.”

  “I believe if you hold your breath, it'll stop that,” Elizabeth said. “The tingling part in your hand and your nose.”

  “Tyrell said to let out long breaths And I want to, now. To stay…here, to find some other way, so my hand doesn't do that. As for the eating—”

  “We'll do it,” Adora said, holding her daughter's thin hand. “A little bit at a time. We'll sit together and just be Without our full span of mules, no wagon of our own, we still got something to hang on to we didn't know we had.”

  “I believe this is cause for celebration,” Elizabeth said. She walked to the back of Betha's wagon and reached inside. She carried the troubadour's harp to Suzanne. “Play us a joyful song,” she said, “if you feel up to it.”

  Suzanne's hands knew the instrument. She strummed an Irish melody, quick and light.

  Mazy looked at the strings, all separate but playing together, held in tension by the curve of the wood, the lines of a pleasant place.

  “I put this on the discarded pile,” Suzanne said quietly when she finished. “A harp is not essential.”

  “I brought ‘er back,” Elizabeth said, “because joy is.”

  21

  where we love

  They awoke with renewed vigor, Mazy in the pattern of her past. She found her journal and began writing. She read a Psalm, then thought of a quality of Gods character “Anticipation,” she wrote. Expectation, foreknowledge As though something has been planned ahead, prepared.

  What they'd needed on this journey west had been prepared for.

  They needed to laugh, and Elizabeth had provided the occasions, even if sometimes Mazy felt older than her mother She looked forward to how joy would appear. She anticipated something pleasant.

  She wrote it down, surprised at what words and quiet brought to question.

  Betha swept the ground around the campfire. She nodded at Mazy. “Good to see you writing in the morning again.”

  Had everyone noticed?

  Mazy finished, then headed toward the cows. Ruths independence, her handling the stock so skillfully with never a complaint—they needed that commitment, to see it every day, this woman doing what she knew best while she struggled inside.

  Mazy bent her head to Jennifers udder. It felt different. One last milking, then no more til she delivered a calf More changes. Mazy thought of her traveling companions, how they had changed, as her hands stripped milk into the bucket Lura had offered to alter the silk dress that Zilah wore, after Mazy expressed concern that the loose cloth would catch on one of the oxen's horns when she leaned over them to adjust the yoke. Suzanne described a way to take the tucks in that gave the girl a look of curves when everyone knew she leaned slender as a bean. Their joint efforts cheered her, and the other Celestials came forward asking for ways to salvage their hems shredded by walking through stickers and sage.

  Even Tipton—having given up her parasol to the discard, her combs to Lura, and absent the laudanum—displayed new spirit, biting back at the now gentle jibes her mother gave her about her still needing “Tipton-watching,” only now because she'd stumbled over Fip and nearly squashed the pronghorn.

  And they needed her, Mazy decided as she swung the bucket at her side. Yes, they did. They needed her own good mind, her ability to bring independent spirits together into one place. She could make decisions. She smiled at that. She did that “deciding thing” well for other people. She just had trouble making compassionate choices for herself.

  But she'd changed, too, unveiled herself—as had they all—like petals of flowers unfolding to light Maybe in her life with Jeremy that unveiling had not existed. He had never unfolded himself to her. The letter just confirmed it, telling her of things she neither knew nor imagined. Had she wanted him to be elusive? She realized that she, too, had been elusive—in her way. Had it been too painful to know herself and so she'd let him define her boundaries, kept herself so privately engaged at pleasing him—and other people, too—that she had failed to recognize who either of them was?

  The guidebook said they would encounter another difficult mountain within the next two days, but instead by midmorning, they were given the choice of paying a toll for using a road “just completed the end of July,” said a young man who introduced himself as Buck.

  “McAuleys cleared it round so you dont have to go over. Get some service berries along the way/’ he said and grinned. They paid the toll happily, shortening the journey through the efforts of others.

  Rain fell on them that night while the mules munched on good grass. “We're supposed to have no water now for seventeen miles,” Mazy said. But they were blessed with fast-flowing rivulets throughout the next day and arrived at Soda Springs where they camped near what Jessie called “fuzzy water.”

  A Mormon up from Salt Lake stopped at their campsite, loaded with two bas
kets of fruits and vegetables, and everyone splurged and sank their teeth into onions and even corn.

  “Corn,” Mazy said. “Mine would be ready back in Wisconsin.” They boiled it and spread the last of the butter over the plump kernels, marveling at this feast.

  “My mama told me once that all the little silk of corn is connected to each little kernel,” Elizabeth said. “God made ‘em so the silk catches the light and brings it inside the husk. And where they're missing kernels—that's where a silk got pulled out to the wind and that little thing didn't grow up, didn't get to play its part.”

  Lura pulled her cob back to stare at it. “Could that be true? God attending to detail like that?”

  “Think of his planning for us, if he's put so much thought into each kernel of corn,” Esther said, licking her fingers.

  “He anticipated,” Mazy said. “Gave each of us a place.”

  “Hunger makes a good sauce,” Betha said, butter oozing over her palm. She looked around, then wiped her hand in the grass. “My mother used to say that.”

  “Mine always said this little poem,” Lura remembered. A kernel dropped off her chin. “Ich bin klein Mein Herz ist ganz rein. Wiemand wohnet darin Jesus allein.”

  “What's that?” Jessie asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “Well, if I remember, it means, ‘I am little. My heart is all pure.’ She patted her heart with her buttered fingers. “ ‘Nobody lives there, except Jesus alone.’”

  “Nobody's home except Jesus?” Jessie asked.

  “Hadn't thought of it that way, but yes. When we love, pure in our hearts, then nobody's home there but him.”

  They made good distance the next day. Rain, heavy at times, slowed them but also settled the dust. The trail moved steadily uphill on these traveling days, but the oxen had good grass and water when expected.

  This was good, Mazy thought. She knew that, once they reached the deciding place and beyond, they'd face expected miles of barren, burnt earth without water. Night travel, too. Then they would reach the place on the Council Bluffs trail where each would decide whether to go north to Oregon or south to California, the parting of the ways. They should have discussed it earlier, but Mazy put it off and the others let her Maybe they thought they'd never really get this far.

  But Mazy knew: Like the desert and the Sierras ahead, it would take all their strength and effort, all their faith together, to get them up and over and then onward to the place where they belonged.

  Ruth walked Koda more than rode him, still protecting his foot. She could pull the bar shoe, but it had been nailed well back at Laramie. Laramie. She shivered. Had it been Zane? Had he recognized Koda there? She wished she could shake this feeling of dread, that someone rode with evil intent along the trail beside them.

  She walked up on Lura, doubled over in laughter.

  “She's got an easy gait/’ Tipton told her. “All mules do. Better than horses It'll help your legs.”

  “I've never been a-horseback before,” Lura said. “Just walking and in a wagon or a buggy since I was a little tyke.”

  “We're all doing new things now, Ma,” Mariah reminded her. “Come on. You can ride back with Ruth and me.”

  They'd made a stirrup of their hands and helped Lura step in, then attempted to flop her onto a Wilson mule The jack stomped. Lura soared. She crumbled into a heap on the other side of the mule, the animal gazing in seeming disgust at her backside.

  “Don't get scared now,” Mariah told her, covering her smile.

  “You talking to me or the mule?” Lura asked, straightening her bonnet.

  “You have one steady mule, Adora,” Ruth told her.

  “I told you they were good ones,” Adora said. “The ones you gave away were…” She stopped herself. “If truth be known, they're the”— she looked at Tipton—“the second best thing I got.”

  Lura rode to Sinking Creek on the mule and talked Betha, too, into riding a mule off and on, if Adora allowed “Save your shoes,” she told them.

  “We look like pumpkins on a rail,” Betha said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Lura told her. “My Antone would be proud I learned something new. Well, at least Mattie will be.”

  They covered good miles, and then Mazy halted the lead wagon.

  “Why you stop?” Zilah asked. She walked beside the oxen, talking to them, and did not often look ahead, her eyes accustomed to watching her feet.

  “It's almost noon,” Mazy said. “We've got good grass here. And up ahead is the junction to Fort Hall or California. We either head south toward the Humboldt Sink, maybe the Applegate Trail or Sacramento, or we make our way north to Oregon. We can't go farther without a decision, and I, for one, dont plan to make it by myself.” She heard Sason cry and smiled. “Besides, we've a baby that needs tending.”

  Ruth wanted Oregon. That's where her horses were, that's where the Schmidtkes’ cattle were. North, to Fort Hall, then along the Snake River into Oregon and free land. Three hundred and twenty acres. That's what she needed. That, and to be in as a remote a place as possible from Zane. Yet she had to lure him after her, not the rest.

  She watched Jessie hold the drinking dipper to Suzanne's lips. The girl was kind. Kind but small and young. She suspected that the California trail, though it crossed a great desert and the Sierras, would be the better route for Jessie and Betha, Sarah and the boys. The relief stations were well established if they had trouble, and opportunities greater in the gold country, in a state already added to the Union. There were posts along the southern route, trails made by the gold seekers, traders willing to supply them. They'd have a better chance to make it south with three wagons. Certainly the occasional people arriving out from the camps with their vegetables and newspapers told her civilization stirred a good stew in the south

  They would make it without Ruth.

  “So what's your pleasure?” Elizabeth asked as her eyes scanned the wagons. They'd pulled off to the side to allow room for others to pass. The parting of the ways, as it was known, would cut into a dusty, treeless area, and both roads led forlornly from each other, like dance partners separating to opposite sides of the hall. Through sage and dust, the roads disappeared toward different horizons. Here, near water and grass, they would talk.

  “Seems like we could use a prayer, maybe,” Tipton said.

  “Who'd like to offer one?” Lura said.

  “I would,” Ned said. He spit on his hand, slicked his hair back, then offered up, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”

  “Well said,” Sister Esther said, and she smiled.

  Mazy hadn't often seen the woman smile. “Suzanne, would you like to summarize for us?” Mazy asked. “Keep us on track if we get off?”

  “If Sason doesn't keep me too distracted.”

  Clayton poked a finger toward his little brother, but Zilah's hand gently touched the toddler's finger to her own. The boy looked up, and Zilah kissed his pudgy hand.

  Wispy clouds like angel's hair wafted across the sky. Few natural sounds could be heard, though Mazy thought she recognized the high-pitched cry of a hawk lifting in the distance, smelled something dry yet fragrant from the grass. She adjusted her bonnet and looked at the women settled like colored squash in the shade of the wagons. Her mother fanned herself with her hand.

  “Let's see if we have any agreement,” she said. “If you're Oregon bound, raise your hand.”

  Ruth and Adora raised their hands. Lura did too.

  “Does that mean the rest are for California?” Ned asked. “This voting thing is chirk.”

  “Not if it goes against you,” Betha said. “Just wait.”

  “Who voted?” Suzanne asked.

  “Three. Ruth, Lura, and Adora. Oh, four. Tipton just raised hers. Oh. And Betha, too. No? Yes. So, California then?” Mazy asked.

  Sister Esther raised her hand as did Deborah, though so timidly Mazy almost missed it. Naomi and Zilah
raised theirs. Elizabeth's hand went up for California as well.

  “Really, Mother?” Mazy asked. “I thought you wanted the land claim?”

  “Not strong either way,” Elizabeth said. “Just thought when you didn't vote for Oregon, I…”

  “No. Lets each vote our hearts.” She gave the totals to Suzanne.

  “Lots of people didn't raise their hands, Mommy,” Jessie said. “They're not paying ‘tention, are they?”

  “No, they aren't,” Betha said.

  “It doesn't matter to me,” Mariah said. “Pa said we could get into Oregon by way of California and wouldn't be nearly so rough a trail. Avoid the Columbia that way. Mattie might've gone that way to Oregon City” Both Ned and Jason nodded in agreement “Suzanne?” Mazy asked.

  “I…no.” Suzanne swallowed. “I would like to go to California, but I anticipate needing help.”

  “There is way I help?” Zilah's voice carried desire across the landscape in a way none had heard before.

  Sister Esther clasped her hands before her apron smudged with bacon grease and dirt. “You are committed,” she said. Zilah dropped her almond-shaped eyes. “The contracts ” She cleared her throat “There is a problem. Of course, Cynthia's must be redeemed, and now there is another unwilling to accept his bride. I have not shared this earlier. He will want his payment back. I do not know who or why. I have no way to know until we reach Sacramento to make the matches, or somewhere I can contact the Agency. But I know I must go into California. There is no choice for me in that”

  For the first time, Esther realized she needed the Celestials. If they changed their minds and went another way, she would be spending her life finding a way to redeem their contracts. Worse, living with failure and loss, all alone.

  “But you may not need to,” Suzanne said, her voice high with infrequent joy. “If Zilah wishes to go with me, I'll pay her contract, send the money back to her family and she'll have worthy employment.”