They rode at a fast pace toward Shasta. From a distance, Main Street looked like an ant colony, people moving here and there, carrying shards of burnt boards, people standing in clusters, the scent of wet wood and smoke still punching the air. Chinese locust trees—the ones the Celestials planted and called Trees of Heavenly Light—stood with blackened trunks along with the oaks that once promised shade.
Mazy felt anxious, nervous. Not the loss of things she feared, but for her mother. Her mother, who wouldn't be in Shasta at all if not for her.
They rattled the wagon to a stop in front of what had been the Kossuth Hotel, Confectionery and Bakery. The sound of hammers pounding greeted them.
“Can that be? They're already building?” Mazy asked. “Things are still smoldering.”
“ ‘Coming back’ is ground into a Californian like dust,” Seth said.
Bent over a small pile of burning embers, Elizabeth stood with a shawl around her shoulders. Hers was a planned fire, and her shoulders shook as she dried out small pieces of cloth in its heat. She turned, her face smudged with soot when Mazy called her name. Tears pooled in her eyes and streaked her wide face as her daughter held her. “I'm glad you wasn't here,” she said. “It was awful.” She held her daughter with her elbow, not her hands.
Mazy held her close, then said, “What's wrong? Let me see.”
“I saved these snippets of quilt,” Elizabeth said, turning away. “They're not looking too good. Got fired and scorched, and then I dumped them in a bucket. Just trying to dry ‘em out now.”
“Mother, you're hurt. For heaven's sake, let me help.”
Elizabeths palms were scorched, the skin already turning black.
“Butter,” Mazy said. “I brought some in.”
Elizabeth groaned. “Waiting all this time for sweet butter and it ends up on my hands. Wish we had some of Mei-Ling's honey.” She let Ruth spread the white gold—as Seth called it—on palms Mazy held, chattering as the women worked. “I went back after the Bible and your lawyer letter, Mazy. Saved those. Glad you took your writing with you out to Ruth's. Happened faster than an otter hits the river. Never saw anything so fierce or hungry. Oh, I saved the currency too, but not much else. Not your Wisconsin seed gourd. Our vegetable patch is trampled worse than when the cow brute did in yours back home. I'm sorry, child,” she said.
“No need to be,” Mazy said. “You did better than most would have. I wish I'd been here to help.” She patted her mother's back, then bent to gather the quilt pieces. Touching her elbow, she led Elizabeth to the wagon. “You get in,” she said gently. “Put this blanket around you. You're so shaky.” It felt strange to be tending her mother. “We'll go find Suzanne and the Wilsons, and Lura, too, and see how they've fared. You'll get practice now, Mother, in letting someone else help you.”
Zane skirted the meadow, coming from around the butte as he'd become accustomed to doing. He pulled up the horse, less edgy now that they were away from the noise of the fire, though the smoke hung like a layer of fog above them. Bits of ash rode with the stench of it, dropped on the pines. The slick leaves of the oaks and the thickness of pine needles would fuel the fire and—chaos, maybe for days. He watched the cabin and barn to see activity. Milk cows grazed, their calves close by. He noticed two mules and a horse were gone. The wagon he'd seen next to the barn was gone too. The house looked deserted. Good. They'd all headed in. He'd simply step inside the house.
He wondered if she had felt his presence there yet, or if she had told herself the little things were all the children's doing. He liked the pace of this, a slow building up to knowing someone else controlled her thoughts. He wanted her to feel the confusion, a tiny tendril of foreboding that would grow until it was a rope of fear, tightening until it choked.
Zane had wanted to run himself, once. In that moment of lost control with his own son, he had wanted to run. But he'd stayed, for her sake; she had seemed so needful with the child's death. And then she'd turned on him, her and that brother, and his life had been ripped and whipped at the whims of others—sheriffs, then wardens, then inmates and guards. It sickened him, that powerlessness. The pain had nearly killed him, made him want to take his life until he'd found a purpose, a reason to get through.
The raspy breathing brought him back into this tree-lined meadow. He swallowed, calmed himself. He'd have to leave something of himself in the cabin this time, something she could not blame on the brats but that would puzzle her. He liked to imagine her uncertain, waking in the night wondering. He'd liked finding the photograph. Felt a kind of lightness as he scraped away her face. To move her like a chess piece. Soon, he would take her to the place he'd come to all those months back, that decision place, where ending his life or someone else's had carried equal weight.
The house looked still. A striped cat sunned itself beside the door and didn't move when he pushed the plank open with his foot. He ducked his head to enter, let his eyes adjust, then scanned the room.
“You better say your prayers,” a girl's voice said behind him.
He jumped, his heart pounding, his face hot in an instant.
“Don't turn around. Just put your hands…on top of your head.”
“Now, young lady, no need to be alarmed. I'm here to find out about a horse,” he said.
“Where we come from, people knock before they enter.” It was a second girl's voice.
“I should have. You're absolutely correct. Its just that it was so still I assumed I'd arrived when no one was home.” He had a flash of brilliance. “I'm a friend of your Aunt Suzanne's. She lives in town? She's blind.” He turned.
“We know.” The first one seemed to do most of the talking. “Picks poor friends.”
He laughed easily, used his most charming voice. “I would have left a note. May I?” He motioned to his vest pocket. “I've a pencil. I can still do that. From Wesley Marks. Or perhaps you could leave your mother a message from me.”
“She's not our mother,” the girl without the pistol said. She didn't look like one of Jed's kids, too tall and skinny for that. He wondered who she was. The other one was smaller and had familiar looking eyes. Jessie! The child was his, and she didn't know him! She hadn't claimed Ruth was her mother!
“Just someone interested in horses,” he said.
“We don't have many,” said the taller girl. “Not ‘til my brother trails in Auntie Ruths.”
His heart skipped a beat hearing her name spoken right here in her house!
“And when will that be?”
“Ain't none of your business,” the little one said.
“Jessie!” the taller one cautioned. “If he wants to buy a horse.
“Oh, I do,” Zane said. “I do. Perhaps I'll wait until then, when your Aunt Ruth, is it? When she has more horses to choose from. I'll just be backing out now. You be sure to tell your aunt. Tell her a man stopped by. Suzanne's friend.”
The taller girl nodded. The little one just stared, as though she looked right through him. She never wavered, though the pistol looked heavy.
“Pig barked and barked,” Suzanne told them. They stood all together next to a pile of clothes, toys, some tins of tea, a mattress, quilts. Pig panted at her feet, and Sason slept on a blanket placed in the Wilson wagon. “I could smell the smoke. I couldn't focus. I knew it was close, but I couldn't find Clayton. I'd just fed Sason. I had him on my shoulder then laid him down. So stupid! I heated water for tea. Pig barked and barked. I had to wake Sarah. She's a sound sleeper, Ruth.”
Mazy thought she told her story rapidly the way people did when they were relating a disaster and their own escape from it.
“He didn't have his halter on,” Suzanne went on. “I'll have to keep that on him all the time. I swung my arms trying to find Clayton, trying to get Sarah to take Sason. She's so young, but you did all right,” she said, turning her body to where she thought Sarah stood. “Once she got going.” She swallowed. “Then Wesley came. I thought the house must be gone, but Johnnie, my Chinese boy,
started pulling things out. A gift from God. He was wonderful. He shouted in Cantonese all kinds of rushed things. I could hear him slapping at something then dropping things next to me, breathing hard, coming and going. Then I really smelled the smoke and a roar, almost like fire going up the chimney when the wind draws, and my face was so hot.” She coughed. “I thought Johnnie might be in there.”
“How lucky he happened along,” Tipton said. “And your friend, too.”
“Not luck, Providence,” Suzanne corrected. “He got most of my things out. No furniture, but the important things.” She felt the pile next to her, lifted the troubadour harp. “See?”
Adora said. “Did the fire start from the cookstove we all worked to buy you? Explode or something?”
“You bought the cookstove?” Suzanne said. She frowned.
“Mother,” Tipton chided. “That was a secret.”
“I thought it went with the house,” Suzanne said.
“You can be blind as a bat sometimes,” Adora said. “Who would have ordered a stove when he was leaving town?”
“What happened to Wesley?” Mazy asked, changing the subject.
“He…left to help fight the fire, of course,” she said, irritation in her voice.
“Maybe it's a sign you should stay with one of us now,” Mazy said.
“Why would I do that?”
“Might be tempting fate too far,” Seth said, “trying to do this all on your own again.”
“Imagine that comment coming from a gambling man,” Suzanne said, “and from people who claim to be my family but who keep secrets from me.”
“Now, Suzanne,” Mazy said. “We had good intentions.”
“That's not how they arrived,” Suzanne said. “I did fine running things myself. I can rebuild by myself, just like everyone else.”
“That's what friends are for, helping out,” Seth said. “You don't let us do that much, Suzanne. It's all right to admit when you're beaten.”
She turned her body toward him. “I feel blessed,” she said, emphasizing each word, “not beaten.”
Adora snorted. “Standing here with little more than what's on our backs and she says we're blessed. Warped religion. The whole town looks like when we came across all the discards on the trail. Look at my Tipton here.”
“I look like a toss-away?”
“No, no. Just everything around us having to start over, find out what's essential. Again. And poor Nehemiah, losing his hotel, everything. Probably a pauper now.”
“We'll think on the good things. That seems to have worked in the past,” Tipton said. She said it lightly, but she rubbed at the crook of her elbow as though it ached.
“Were you hurt?” Mazy asked, nodding toward her arm.
Tipton dropped her hand. “No,” she said. “I'm fine. I think maybe I strained it when we pulled the trunk out. Didn't expect our hotel to go. Everyone worked so hard…”
“Now your Nehemiah'll have a dozen directions to go and he'll have no time for courting. Who knows how long we'll wait for a marriage proposal. We needed him—or someone—to be looking after us.”
“You've been needing help?” Mazy said. “You haven't asked.”
“We don't need anyone, Mother,” Tip ton said. “We still have the mules. And I'm not exactly sure how I feel about any proposal of marriage.”
“Of course, you're sure,” Adora said. “What if Nehemiah spent his time and what money he has left on rebuilding? You'd be disappointed then, truth be known.”
“Mother, keep your voice down. I'm not interested in Nehemiah for his money, I'm not sure I'm—”
“That's the best news I've had today,” Nehemiah said, making his way with Johnnie from the rear of what was left of Suzanne's house. Removing his hat, he slapped ash from it against his thigh. He put it back on, brushed at the dust on his red beard. Tipton blushed, fidgeted from foot to foot. “I lost my hotel,” he said, “but as long as I have you considering me, Tipton, I'm wealthy indeed.” Nehemiah put his arm around her shoulder then and squeezed. “And I'm not headed for the paupers prison just yet, Adora.”
“My baby'll be waiting just as long as it takes, won't you, Tipton?”
“The mules look good,” Tipton said as she stepped away from Nehemiah and patted the neck of the nearest. “I'm glad we didn't sell them before. We'll need that money now.”
“What're your plans?” Seth asked Nehemiah.
“Rebuild,” Adora answered for him. “Has to.”
“I've been considering that,” Nehemiah said, walking to the other side of the mule. “But maybe Shasta isn't the place for us.” Tipton looked across the neck of the mule at him. She smiled a little, and he grinned as if she'd given him a drink of water on a hot and thirsty day. “I've been thinking to take a new wife—if she'll have me—and if her mother'll let her marry before she turns seventeen.”
“A proposal of marriage! Truth be known, this is a fine, fine day!”
“Why not rebuild right here?” Tipton asked, flashing her mother a look to silence her. “Couldn't you take a loan to rebuild the hotel? People will be counting on that.”
“Place'll burn again, is my bet. Town's burned twice in six months. That's not a good sign.”
“They'll widen Main Street. Heard already they want rebuilding with fireproof buildings,” Seth said.
“It's always been my belief that a door doesn't close that another isn't opened. Nothing says it has to be on the same street. I'd take you both,” he said, speaking to Tipton then, as though they were alone. “A young girl might like having her mother with her, farther west, in Humboldt County. That's where I'll head. That's where my father always said I should settle, near the coast. Cattle country.”
“The coast? That's a little…out of the way,” Adora said.
“First white woman arrived there last year.” Nehemiah never took his eyes from Tipton's. “I suspect she'd like a little company by now. I served with General Taylor in ‘47 when we defeated Santa Anna. There's talk of a Bounty Land Grant for us old soldiers.” He grinned at Tipton. “That comes through, we'll have quite a spread. Even without, we'd do all right. Together. I've got some holdings there.” He moved around the mule and lifted Tipton's hands in his. “Wasn't what I'd planned for you, Tipton, but circumstances being what they are, will you accept the change of venue I'm suggesting and become my wife?”
“What do you say, dear?” Adora asked, hovering close. “Mother will be with you.” Tipton bit on her lower lip.
Nehemiah should have known better than to put the question to her in front of others, Mazy thought. The fire must have rattled him more than he realized. Rattled them all. Suzanne felt blessed by surviving but hurt by their of Fers of care. Elizabeth worried more over Mazy's losses than over her own wounds. And poor Tipton was getting a marriage proposal surrounded by ashes and eavesdropping ears.
“I love you enough for the both of us,” Nehemiah whispered to Tipton, but they could all still hear it.
“Maybe she needs more time,” Mazy said. “Or privacy.”
“Now you just stay out of this, Mazy Bacon. This is Wilson doings, and unlike you, we dont need wallowing time before we come to a decision.”
15
“Hey, look at this!” David Taylor reached down to lift the dog, one hand on the bucket, the other trying to manage the squirming black body whose front paws grabbed at his pant legs. Its tongue now licked his face, his ears, the feathered tail wagging, the little bells rusty on the collar. David took it off and scratched the dogs neck. Oltipa! Bring the baby and come see this! Our little mutts come home.”
Oltipa, dressed in a blue-and-white calico dress David had given her, came to the doorway, a child on her hip. When she recognized the dog, she set the boy down. He leaned forward, rocking with delight, his face full of laughter. “Chance comes back,” Oltipa said.
“Hey, Ben, look at him.” David called the boy Ben, his fathers and his own middle name, but Oltipa used a name she said meant boy— Wita-ek??
?telling David that when he was older she would give him another name that was only his. “Well, my tongue doesn't wrap around that word too well, so mind if I call him something easy?” David had told her that cold February day of the child's birth.
“Call him what you wish,” she'd told him. “Wita-ek lives because you care for me.” David's stomach ached with the memory ofthat time, his worry and wonder at the arrival of this child. His eyes had gotten wet as a girl's at a wedding with the sight of Ben arriving on this earth, fully ready with his thick black hair, alert brown eyes, and all the other expected parts. Oltipa had told him how to tie the cord and to put the baby on her stomach. She did all the work, but he was the one who danced the jig. A click of his boots as he jumped in the air—after the baby safely arrived, after the baby turned to his mother's breast and nestled there as though he'd always known just what was expected. Later, when Oltipa slept, the baby stayed watching him. He'd talked to the boy, holding his gaze, and he knew then he'd done a good thing those months back. Any risk would have been worth this. Who cared what people thought of him? What some man like Zane Randolph had done to get him fired? This was what mattered, the tending of another. He'd meant it for harm, that Randolph, but God had turned it to good.
Today Ben's smile formed in full, round cheeks surrounded by a head of hair as thick and black as the dog's. Oltipa looked…happy. David had wondered if he should buy her white women's clothes, or any dress for that matter. But she accepted the calico and a small mare, a pony almost, to keep her company when the dog ran off. He wasn't sure just why he wanted to give her things—he just knew he thought of her often on the stage run for Baxter and Monroe, his new employer. He thought of her most of the time.
“Where do you suppose he's been?” David said, petting the dog. “He looks fed. Lots of stickers and burrs on him though. He's been around some streams.” He turned the paws over and saw the scars on one leg, the tended healing that must have allowed it. “You came back just in time. Keep Oltipa and Ben company, while I head out. Maybe I should bring you into Shasta,” David said to Oltipa.