What Once We Loved

“The cats are caged when I walk the dog and the boys,” Powder told her. “But perhaps it was all the newness…”

  “I hear that dogs sniff their way around their world. They use their noses the way we use our eyes,” Esther said. “Yes, those cats—”

  Suzanne said. “You're probably right. All the disruptions I've caused. Pig got tired of mining camps, Sacramento, boardinghouses.” Her guilt wore emptiness as disguise.

  “Now don't blame yourself,” Esther said. “Some changes are important.”

  “Perhaps Pig felt displaced.”

  “But why hasn't he come back?” Suzanne insisted. “Surely he felt our love for him. Wouldn't that be strong enough reason to return?”

  No one responded to her that day, and now as the rain pelted the roof, and she made her way to the nursery, Suzanne thought again. She'd been talking of the dog, but perhaps the words applied to something more: to her husband's leaving her as well.

  Bryce had died, succumbed to cholera. He couldn't return, of course, and yet in her grieving, perhaps she'd asked that of him, maybe even felt angry at the man for dying in the first place, at herself for not feeling that she'd loved him enough to keep him from leaving. Could that have been the case? Could she be still blaming Bryce for leaving? Blaming herself for not loving him enough to keep him here? Keeping things swirling so she'd not feel the pain?

  “Is that what I'm doing, Bryce?” she said out loud. She only halfway believed he wouldn't answer.

  She shook her head. Living with the loss of what we loved forced the strangest ways of thinking. New boundaries, she decided. She smelled a fire in the fireplace of Esther's bedroom when she passed, heard the crackle of the logs. Esther always read to her in the evening at the fire. Could it be evening? Already? She found it difficult to tell the time of day without the warmth of sunlight. Sometimes she relied on her stomach to tell her she was hungry, but if she napped as she had earlier, she was often confused when she awoke about just what time of day it was. Esther said Suzanne was more short-tempered at times, and she wondered if the missing light had something to do with her emotions.

  Esther had been reading from the book of Acts, the second chapter, a section about the disciples being all together in one place after their good friend Jesus died and rose again. Waiting, waiting. She supposed it was sacrilegious almost to compare herself to such men of God, and yet she wondered if she didn't have things in common with them. They'd had to put behind them all the old hurts and disappointments of what they'd done that failed the one they loved, that didn't keep him from dying. She felt that way about Bryce. They'd agreed to go somewhere new by faith, go somewhere he had told them to go, to take up new risks and wrap them into old routines. Here she was, where Bryce had said they should go. The disciples traveled to a new city to celebrate First Fruits, an old tradition, Esther told her, of giving of their bounty. Suzanne wondered if her not giving anything back was what kept her feeling empty, kept her from feeling settled.

  But perhaps the disciples too wondered why the one they loved had to leave them and why their love had been insufficient to bring him back.

  Theirs was the much greater loss, of course. Yet she felt a kinship with them, with their willingness to risk and wait in a difficult time. A kinship of wondering why she could not keep the people she loved. Not just people, but now Pig, too. Gone. She took her glasses off, rubbed her eyes. She had to keep her boys safe. She worked so hard to make that happen.

  “Are you getting chilled?” Esther asked her. The woman placed her warm hand on the back of Suzanne's, surprising her with her presence.

  “I didn't hear you,” Suzanne said. She shook her head. “Just missing things. People. Pig.” She smiled. “Thinking theological thoughts.”

  “Shall I get the boys for you?”

  Suzanne nodded. “If Mr. Powder is finished with them for a time.” Esther's skirts swished by her in the upstairs hall. The woman smelled of fennel. Her boweh must be bothering her again, Suzanne thought. She was always chewing on the herb. Suzanne listened to the rain and the occasional clop-clop of a buggy or shay splashing by. She heard a cow bellow in the distance. What she wanted to hear was a scratch at the door.

  But this was a new home for Pig, and even if he wanted to return, Suzanne wasn't sure he could find his way back. She'd ask Sterling Powder to please go by their old boardinghouse again, to be sure that if Pig came back there, the residents knew how to find them. He'd said he'd done it. Why did she doubt?

  “There's a window in here, isn't there? In that direction?” Suzanne said when she heard Esther and the boys approach.

  “How did you know that?” Esther said.

  How did she know? “Just something about the difference in the quality of the darkness, I guess,” Suzanne said.

  “Well, I'll—”

  A knock at the door at the bottom of the steps startled them both, the pounding loud enough to climb the stairs.

  “We'll see what it's about,” Esther said. “Come along, boys,” she said while Suzanne shuffled with her hand and cane to follow the sounds of Esther's footsteps.

  The pounding continued, and she heard the creak of the door opening and Esther gasp. Both boys squealed.

  “Who is it?” Suzanne called from the top of the stairs.

  “It's a sight for sore eyes,” Esther said. Suzanne hoped that next she'd hear the sounds of a barking dog.

  They had found a way to work side by side. The cabin, simple as it was, now had two rooms in addition to a loft with a floor patched up with tin flattened from lard buckets and old coffee cans mined from a dump Ned had found. The pitch of the ceiling made it impossible to stand up in the loft, but the children could sleep there, and it was the warmest spot in the house. The added room served as a bedroom for Lura, Mariah, Ruth, and Jessie, who resisted the ladder climb to the loft.

  Behind the cabin, the former owner had dug a spring and lined it with rocks so buckets could be easily filled and set on the porch. A dipper hung on a nail above the rail. Any unsipped water got splashed over Luras herb starts, sent along by Mazy as gifts. Mariah said maybe they should try some way to get the water to the house on its own, and Lura had laughed at her, but Ruth “pondered” that, as Elizabeth would say. And in the morning, she set Jessie and Sarah to gouging out a narrow fence rail into what resembled a dugout canoe. A flue, she told them it was called, and when it was finished, they set it at the opening of the spring. The water ran to a barrel set beside the house and filled it, spilling over and running back into the pool.

  “Hey, that's chirk,” Jason said coming back from setting fence rails with Matthew and Ned.

  “We women can solve some problems, cant we, girls?” Ruth said.

  Lura came out wiping her hands on her apron. “Good. Now we dont have to go so far to heat up the water for washing, which we best be at,” she said.

  The girls groaned. The boys, too, for washing meant all hands had a task.

  Each had their other chores too. Gathering eggs was Jessies; milking Martha the cow was Mariah's; Sarah helped with ironing. Ned and Jason worked the scythe when Ruth wasn't or when they weren't working on the three-sided shelter for the animals. Ruth hoped it would help during foaling come spring. Ruth spent as much time as she could gentling the yearlings, getting them ready to break.

  The usual doctoring of children and animals took time too. Then ridding themselves of the ground squirrels who kept trying to invade the pantry moved up on the list.

  “I bet that's why you got this place so cheap,” Lura said.

  “I wouldn't say it was cheap,” Ruth told her. She heated a curling iron in the lamp chimney, took it out to crimp curls into Sarah's hair.

  “Well, somebody was here, dug out a spring, built a house, and then they left. Now why would that be? I say it was the squirrels. Little beggars got into the flour again and the corn seed I bought. We need to dig ourselves a root cellar and line it with rock, too. Break their litde teeth when they start to chew then. Cant afford t
he ammunition to do em in.

  “I'll get us some poison next time we're in town, Ma,” Matthew said.

  “We better make that sooner than later,” Lura told him.

  “Wont be long and it'll be Christmas,” Mariah said. “Can we cut a tree? We never did that last year.”

  “Got a few treasures to buy up,” Matthew said. He looked over at Ruth.

  “Don't you children get your hopes up,” Ruth said. “It'll be a lean year for us.”

  “All in how you think about it,” Matthew said. “Buying gifts isn't the only way to celebrate. Tree's a good idea, Pipsqueak. If the weather holds, we might even make the Table Rock Baptist Church I heard was meeting in someone's house in town.”

  “You go to church?” Ruth asked. “I didn't know.”

  “Lots about me you don't know.”

  “That's only half of that story,” she said. “The other half is I don't necessarily want to know more.”

  “Ah, you're missing a whole mine full of intelligence,” he teased.

  “I've had enough of mines in California,” Ruth said. “That's one reason I came north.”

  He laughed.

  “Speaking of intelligence,” Lura said. “When you go into Jacksonville the next time, best you find out about their school term. Getting Mariah started again was part of our reason for coming to Oregon, if I remember.”

  “Can we all go?” Jason asked.

  Ruth frowned. “Not this term. We've got so much to do before spring. So many animals to keep healthy—”

  “We can check it out,” Matthew interrupted. Ruth noticed Jasons smile. It wasn't enough to overlook Matthews habit of intrusion.

  Matthew and Ruth saddled up, rode to town, made their purchases, some with a secretive flair. When they'd left Jacksonville, Ruth allowed herself to feel restful. That was what she called it. She had a safe place for her children; she'd made progress on her property. So far all the mares looked good, and the yearlings she worked with were gentling well to a halter and lead rope. She'd left some cash at Little's Mercantile, set aside supplies they'd come by with the wagon to pick up later. She'd even located a goat as a gift for Lura. Ruth had a vision; a plan. She smiled to herself. Those were Mazy words, planning and moving toward something. Her friend had often inspired that in Ruth, encouraged it. “A clear goal helps you keep going on the days you feel discouraged,” Mazy'd said. Ruth grunted. She missed her.

  Just then a band of seven Indians on horseback came out of the myrtle and oaks, interrupting her thoughts. The braves surrounded them not a few hundred yards from Ruth's ranch and her family.

  “What do they want?” Ruth said, turning in her saddle as the men kicked their ponies in a circle around them, close enough that she could smell their sweat, see the pocks of their skin beneath the white streaks of paint.

  Matthew signed something with his hands, and they stopped, one man lifting his chin and saying something back. “They're Rogue River Indians. Takelmas, I think. Maybe Klamaths. Seems we're approaching land that belongs to them. They pointed toward your meadow, Ruth.”

  “Tell them we've bought it from Smith,” Ruth said.

  Matthew smiled and nodded his head but said, “Keep your voice even. I don't think your purchase agreement matters much to them. Nice and easy, Ruth. It's a war party of some kind. Don't look alarmed.” The one with eyes that reminded her of Zane as a young man said something more, motioned with his hands again. “Seems they've always come through here.”

  Ruth heard her heart pound louder in her ears. They had black streaks of paint beneath their eyes, too; and red on their cheeks. They kept their ponies moving back and forth, circling them, kicking up dust. She could smell a strange scent. Grease maybe, on their slick hair. A leather parfleche held their arrows. She put her hand on her whip handle. “What's he saying now?”

  “Winters his horses here, he says. Wonders what you'll trade to use his grass and…camas, bulbs they eat, come spring.”

  “Tell him we don't want the roots. He can have them,” she said. “But I don't understand this about the grass. Didn't I just buy this land from Smith?”

  Matthew nodded his head, still maintaining the smile. “Yes, yes, but Smith probably never talked to these folks. People are unsettled right now. That Crescent City outbreak. Deaths in the Illinois Valley, according to the talk in town. We're probably lucky we still have our heads for talking. Don't want to start a war here.”

  “What could they want? The horses?”

  “Offer cash,” Matthew said. “They're going into the winter same as us and could buy grub and such with it. Ammunition. Miners are using up the streams, and I haven't seen all that much game around either. Offer cash. Maybe the cow. But cash first.”

  “I don't have much cash left,” she said quietly. She felt herself begin to sink back into that place where she stashed hope. She couldn't let it fade.

  “I've got cash,” he said. “I'll hand it to you, slow like, or you let me give it to them. Don't let this offend you, Ruth. There's a time to take help.”

  “Your mother'll think we're daft, paying twice for the same thing.”

  “It's possible,” Matthew said. “But if she could see the look in their eyes and the quiver full of arrows there, and the rifles they could just as easily point at us as shake in the air”—he nodded with his chin—”she'd think different. Just go slow, and well show them what you've got.”

  There wasn't much choice, Ruth thought.

  “I won't charge much interest,” Matthew told her.

  He handed them a roll of bills. One of the braves grabbed for it. Then the steel-eyed one took it easily from the first.

  “What's he saying now?”

  “He wants to graze his horses there tonight.”

  “Didn't I just pay to have them move on?”

  “They'll move on.”

  “It'll terrify the children,” she said. One of the braves leaned over to finger the whip at her hip. Hoping he couldn't smell her fear, she smiled as though she were at a tea party with kin.

  “I'll tell them to bed down near the barn. I think it's wise, Ruth. I do.”

  She could just see the children's eyes when they rode in followed by seven braves in full paint. “All right,” she said.

  Matthew talked more with his hands, and then they turned into the trees toward the sloping ridge and the valley below.

  “Could be we were just held up,” Ruth said.

  “Oregon style,” Matthew answered.

  “How much did you give them?”

  “Not all that much,” Matthew told her. “Bought us some neigh-borliness, maybe. And you're now beholding to me for life. You'll have to give up your firstborn.”

  “I've already done that,” she said quietly, her son's tiny face flashing through her mind.

  “My mistake,” he said, chastened. “I was trying to ease things up. Let's just say I gave them enough so you and I will have another subject to talk over during the long winter nights.”

  Ruth swallowed. His words touched a place in her she'd forgotten existed.

  The stillness of the forest floor softened with fir needles, and fallen leaves moist from recent snows made their horses' hooves thud as they rode. Ruth shook her head. She was down to her last gold eagle, had just paid ransom for her land.

  They rode into the pine patch, down the slope to the house. This was her place of belonging. She'd found it. Not something she'd stumbled into and just stayed at as she had at Poverty Flat. But a place of her choosing when she was living free, aboveboard, no longer held hostage by Zane Randolph. She felt held hostage now.

  She'd signaled quickly with her eyes when the boys came outside. They reined their horses to the house, and Matthew said, “Just keep it easy, boys. They're spending the night at the barn.”

  “They'll steal the horses,” Jason said.

  “No. They won't. We'll stay up watching. Take turns. But so far, they're doing just what they said.” The boys slipped back toward the d
oor. Ruth got off her horse, pulled off the cinch saddle and blanket, and set them upright under the porch eave.

  “Keeping these close,” she said. “Jason, water the horses. No quick moves. We'll stake them out in back. Let them eat at the grass there.”

  “Should we offer them some biscuits?” Sarah asked.

  “Horses don't eat bread,” Ned told her.

  “Not the horses. Them?” Sarah said, nodding to the braves. “It's almost Christmas.”

  “We're just gonna let them be,” Lura said. She gathered them like chicks to get them back inside.

  “None of us will be the worse for wear if we just keep our heads,” Matthew said.

  No worse for wear. Ruth almost believed that.

  And then she saw the look in Jessie's eyes.

  12

  Suzanne had almost forgotten about joy. How strange that was when she had a son named Sason whose very name meant joy. Even when she'd thought about the first-century Jews as Sister Esther read to her in the book of Acts, she'd forgotten about their joy. The joy of being with friends. The delight of eating together, of supporting each other while they waited. And then the Holy Spirit had touched them, and others who saw them accused them of being drunk! At nine-thirty in the morning! Why, they were just happy, ravenous with delight at the power they'd been given, the power of friendship and compassion and hope.

  Then, it had come back to her, God's gift of joy, a thing she'd never conceived she could have again as a woman blind, a widow in mourning.

  Oh, she certainly didn't speak in any unknown language as those disciples had. Unless words of endearment coupled with dreams about one's future lifting like bubbles from a bottle of champagne counted as strange language. But she felt the fullness of the joy just the same, feasting with friends and food and being loved beyond measure. She believed again that all could be accomplished with faith and power and a worthy focus. Focus. Hearth. That which warms us, the center of our being. And she'd felt that in a way she had never imagined she ever would again. She'd given her heart to it. She'd believed.