What Once We Loved

  “This is not her home, Senor Kossuth?”

  “This is not her home, Chita. Shasta City is her home. And I tried to take her from it. She needed her mother, her family. That's what this is about. Shasta City. I'll go there as soon as the weather breaks, and I've got vittles in my stomach. Is that tortilla ready? This soon-to-be proud papa is starved.”

  From what Tipton could see, San Francisco was a bedlam of building and rebuilding. Blackened structures still smoked from the latest fire;

  peddlers hawked pies at the street corners, and urchins not much shorter than Tipton spread their dirty palms out asking for handouts. Fast-walking men in dusty long coats and women with faces shadowed by bonnets brushed past her, made her feel dizzy with their pace. She felt spun around with the noise and the smells. Maybe this was a little more than she'd bargained for. Maybe she couldn't do this all by herself. She turned to look back up the gangplank. No, she couldn't get back on there. She would make this a better day. That was her new motto, she decided. Make this a better day.

  Instead of being frightened, breathing fast to take her hands to tingling when something threatened to consume her, she'd remind herself that she had everything she needed to make this a better day.

  Already she was grateful she'd arrived at dawn. It would give her time to trade in her sapphire-and-silver necklace for needed cash. She was sure she'd find a buyer, and with currency, she would find a room. Then work. Then a life. For her and her child.

  Today she would pretend she walked behind a lantern at night, moving forward far enough to see in front of her if not exactly sure where she'd end up. Tomorrow she would set up her laundry business. She'd done it before. She could do it again.

  “Step aside there, lass,” a big burly man said. He motioned with a nightstick as one with port authority, giving directions. She stumbled against a man jostling behind her, pushing past. The burly man grabbed at her elbow, balanced her. “Wait for your family over there, lass. They'll be along. We've got to clear the gangplank. Move along. Move along.”

  “I have no family, sir,” Tipton said. She blinked her eyelashes.

  “Well, move anyway. There's no time for dawdling.” He motioned behind her, and the gentleman pushed past. Cabs and shays came by and picked passengers up, let others off. The Sea Gullwasrit a big ship, but it would reload and head back, stopping in places like Crescent City, then heading north to Portland and eventually Seattle. Maybe Portland would be a better place for her, less congested, she thought.

  No, she'd chosen San Francisco. She would make this work.

  When the traffic slowed some, she tugged like a child on the burly mans sleeve.

  “What, lass? You still waiting?”

  “I have no family, as yet, kind sir.” She stood sideways, so he could see the form of her. It was brazen, but she knew her baby would want to be of service.

  The big man turned a shade of red Tipton had never seen before.

  “Hush now, Miss. Missis. Sure and you're in need of help then. Have you no one to be meeting you, lass? ‘Tis not a good place for a lady alone.”

  “I'm surprising them. What I need now is an address for the nearest…banking area. So I can safely deposit—”

  “Shush now.” He put his dirt-creased finger to his lips. “Not a good thing to be sharing.” He lifted her carpet valise, handed it to her. “Carry it in front of you, Lass. Don't be talking about your valuables here in the open. There're nothing but rats and rogues waiting to take advantage. You take your valuables…and hire yourself a cab and go to Market Street.”

  “Why, thank you, sir,” she said and curtsied.

  Market Street. She'd been in San Francisco but an hour, and she already had a place to go. Tyrellie was right, the Lord did provide.

  She used some of her precious cash to hire a cab, telling the driver to take her to the banking district. “What address, ma'am?”

  “Oh, just any bank exchange,” she said.

  “You taking out or putting in?” the driver asked her.

  Oddly, his question was the last thing she remembered until awakening that evening on the wharf, her face tender and sore, her traveling skirt torn and an empty valise jammed beneath her chin. Her under-things and other dress lay strewn across the dirty street. Her fists clutched her feathered hat. Frantic, she patted for the silver necklace. It and her remaining cash were gone.

  She groaned, then quieted. Lost it all! How stupid she was. She noticed a dark form turn. Her heart pounded as she hugged the side of the building, wood slivers pushing against the cloth of her cape. Her hand brushed across her stomach. Oh, Baby! The dark form moved toward her, and she breathed a prayer. Maybe she couldn't make this a better day, alone.

  As Ruth watched, the man stepped out of the canvas tent, slipping and sliding toward the cabin, his long arms touching the icy earth once or twice as he made an effort to keep his knees from hitting. He reached for the porch rail with one hand and sent his other out to Matthew, introducing himself as Burke Manes and saying that Burke was German for fortress and Manes—he pronounced it Man-ez—his fathers last name too. “No aliases here either,” Matthew said. He had a full head of sandy hair, and he smiled as he spoke. He stood taller than Matthew and leaned slightly at the shoulders as a man accustomed to carrying extra weight. He had a round face, short neck. He was not a handsome man. But he wore a cherubs smile.

  “Not the way a man likes to greet folks,” he said. “Coming at you in the early morning after having spent the night uninvited on your spread.”

  His eyes were hazel with white flecks in them; they were the most striking features of a wide tanned and lined face. He held his hat in his hand, reached out with the other to the boys who clustered behind Matthew, napkins stuck into the tops of their undershirts. He nodded his head to Ruth and said, “Ma'am.”

  “We've plenty for eating,” Lura said. “Might as well sit a spell. Ain't going anywhere till the sun comes out.”

  “That, my good woman, is the truth for certain. Not to mention a fine reward for making it across the ice pond there.” He bent to slip his boots off, his long coat falling open and Ruth thought then he was a man comfortable with himself, willing to be in his stocking feet within minutes of an introduction.

  The others gave their names, and his eyes granted full attention to each, even the children. Ruth noticed that his shoulders bent lower when Sarah spoke. For her he almost went down on one knee to shake her little hand. Then his eyes cast to the cot near the fireplace and stopped, looked up in question. “My daughter. Jessie. She's…ill with the ague, they say. She's still asleep.”

  “Who says? Doc McCully?”

  “Yes. And others, too.”

  “McCully s a good man. But it seems an odd time of the year for ague. Bread and milk helped her any?”

  “Some,” Lura interrupted. “Think a little whiskey might do her better.”

  “That is a common remedy for it,” Burke said, removing his black wool coat. He looked around for a peg, found one and hung it there.

  “That cure could be worse than the ailment, Ma,” Matthew said.

  “Relieves pain though,” Lura said.

  “Or gives a new one.”

  Ruth looked at Matt, detected something…singular in his voice. “She doesn't seem to be in much pain,” Ruth said.

  “That's a blessing,” Burke said.

  “Sometimes in the night she cries out. Could be dreams. She's had her share of troubles for someone so young. I don't know.” Ruth turned away, embarrassed at the ease with which she spoke of such intimate things to this man.

  “Johnnycakes are on,” Lura said. “Who's eating?”

  “I am!” both boys yelled in unison.

  “I ain't deaf,” she said.

  “Yet,” Matthew said and grinned as he directed Burke to the bench.

  Lura laughed and threatened Matthew with the three-legged spider as she served, but he ducked, and she ruffled his hair instead.

  “Join us, Mr. M
anes?”

  “Does your last name mean something special Mr. Man-ez?” Sarah asked. “You said your first name did.”

  “You pronounced it well, little lady,” he said. “Some folks think it's like a horse's mane, but it isn't. And yes. Like I said, my first name means castle or fortress. Besides belonging to my father, the name Manes is an old Latin word that means ‘revered spirit of someone who has died.' Someone you cared about, I might add.”

  “Speaking of things that've died that we might be revering, you didn't come across a dead red jack out there, did you?” Matthew asked.

  “Can't say that I did. You lose one?”

  “Revered?” Sarah asked.

  “Holding them in high regard,” Burke said, giving his attention back to Sarah.

  She blinked. “The way I hold my mama and papa?” she said.

  Burke looked over at Ruth. “She's my niece,” Ruth said. “My brother and his wife died along the trail, on their way out here in ‘52.”

  He nodded. Then to Sarah he said. “I suspect just like that.”

  “Kind of nice carrying a name that says you hold people in high regard,” Jason said.

  “Even if they are dead ones,” Ned added.

  Burke laughed, a full belly laugh that made his eyes sparkle and the little lines like streams flow to the pool of them. He wasn't very old, Ruth thought. Maybe thirty at the most. “Nothing wrong with revering those we loved,” he said. “As long as they don't hold us hostage to a memory that never was.”

  “What's that mean?” Mariah asked. “Pass the syrup, will you, Sarah?”

  “Only that we don't remember things the way they really were. At least I don't think we do. We kind of form our own experience of it later. We think we remember it exact, but I'm convinced we don't. We get to have two experiences that way, for the price of one: what really happened, and what we remember. Most of us improve on the original, if it was one we didn't like. ‘Course that means we've no excuse for carrying around bad memories because they can always be changed to better ones.” He grinned, then broke into an elocutionary voice as though he stood on a stage and declaimed.

  “What once we loved is memory now, tangled up with time.

  Rooted deep.

  Cradled through experience, it seeks to warm us;

  Stay off erosion of the wounded heart.”

  They all sat staring, Matthew with his fork halfway to his mouth, the boys not chewing. “I'm still working on it,” he said. Lura had turned from the fire, spatula in hand, squinting as though to hear it all. Even Mariah had dreamy eyes.

  Burke brought his hand down, cleared his throat, then stuffed a piece of Lura's johnnycake in his mouth. “There's more to it,” he said. “But I digress. So early of a morning.” A crumb made its way onto the day-old growth of his stubbled beard.

  “That's lovely,” Ruth said.

  “Who wrote it?” Jason asked.

  “I take full blame, I do.” He wiped at his face now with the back of his hand, and Mariah quickly handed him her napkin.

  “It makes me think of…” Ruth hesitated then continued, “my friend, Mazy Bacon. She's always been fascinated with words and what they mean. And with putting them together in interesting ways. It sounds to me like her. What you just said.”

  “Manes means good then,” Sarah said. “A good fortress.”

  “So it does,” he said. “So it does. Like a solid home.”

  “That's fitting for Mazy, too,” Mariah said. “Home means a lot to her.”

  “Where does she live then, this friend of yours?”

  “In Shasta City,” Ruth said. “But she came there from Wisconsin. With some reluctance. She's a widow.” She'd have to ask Mr. Manes to write his poem down. It might be good to send it to Mazy, a way to open a gate a bad bull once closed.

  They finished the meal, and Ned stepped out onto the porch to see if there was any change in the silver storm. If anything, the ice had grown thicker. Even the haystack had a sheen to it.

  “Good thing we fed heavy yesterday,” Jason said.

  “Horses don't look too hungry right now,” Mariah noted. The animals stood tails still, heads down, their backs a crystal mist and their noses white with ice. Ewald hadn't moved from where his head buried into the food bag. The paddock had been somewhat stomped down by the mares, but wherever they didn't stand, the ice had built up. The area between the cabin and the barn and lean-to shimmered in the foggy white. “It's getting colder,” Mariah said. “See my breath?”

  “Silver thaws usually don't last much more than a day or two in this country. But that's because it rarely stays cold. This one looks to hang on,” Burke said.

  “We can hold out for a week or more,” Lura said. “Plenty of supplies.”

  “Feeding stock in this could be a trial,” Ruth said.

  “One we'll have to enter into tomorrow whether we like it or not,” Matthew said.

  “You'll have an extra hand at it, if you don't mind my staying a bit. Can't get far in this stuff.”

  “Where was it you were heading?” Lura asked. “Folks going to be expecting you?”

  “Wherever the Lord leads,” Burke said. “And folks rarely expect me. Actually, I'm your neighbor down a piece or two. Took a wrong turn.” He smiled, whispered to Sarah, “I wasn't lost, mind you. Just powerful turned around for a day or two.” To the rest he added, “I run some cattle. They're grazed out. And every traveling parson knows we're not really expected anywhere.”

  “You're a preacher?” Ned asked.

  “I help lead the little Table Rock Baptists' meeting up in town. You're welcome to join us.”

  “We almost did,” Matthew said. “Before Jessie got sick.”

  “Folks just seem to accept that a preacher will find his way to a hungering hearth.”

  “Wonder what God thinks you need to be feeding us here?” Ruth said, then turned when her daughter awoke and called out.

  15

  Seth hadn't thought that his presence in Suzanne's life would be anything but temporary. He'd looked for a dry place to stay on a wet night, a friendly voice in a distant town. That was all. He should have located a hotel or simple boardinghouse and just stayed there. But when he arrived at Sister Esthers house where he and Mazy had visited earlier that year, he'd surprised himself with the level of disappointment he felt that Sister Esther wasn't there. Nor Miss Suzanne and her boys either.

  He and Mazy and that bull had made their way with the directions given. He hadn't remembered Suzanne being so lovely as she was when Esther opened the door and Suzanne descended the stairs, inquiring who was there. She was still “seeing with new eyes,” and her enthusiasm somehow framed her face with a deeper beauty than he'd seen before. He shook his head. He hated thinking he'd done something to take that serenity away, just by staying on, just by stealing that kiss. And with the women doing good work like they were and him acting like a stream of water dousing a going fire.

  He took his writing set out, tried to put his thoughts into words. Only dull and callow lines came out. He put the ink pen down, stared into the lamplight. How had he gotten to this?

  He'd dragged the bull south as a favor to Mazy, mostly, and hadn't expected it would give him anything back. Life was fiinny that way. Elizabeth Mueller had told him that once, that giving away was the yeast in life. “It always raises more than it takes,” she'd said. “You get a whole loaf of bread from just a little tiny cake of yeast. That's what we're asked to do in life, Seth Forrester. Take what we've been given, give it away, and wait for more to come back. That's what you did in bringing us to safety. Now the good Lord will bless you by giving back. If you let him. You independent men don't much like receiving. Always on the giving end, wanting to fix things.”

  He'd scoffed at her, good-naturedly. Giving was easier than receiving. Any man knew that. It was a catalyst, she'd said, the way kindling built up a roaring fire or the way losing at poker for a few hands early could sweeten the final pot. No, not like that. He
suspected Elizabeth would not approve of that analogy. That old woman with her baking heart had more wisdom wrapped up inside her pretzels than most padres in their catechisms. But she couldn't have known about his heart and how far away he stood from goodness, from being a worthy receiver.

  See, here he was, bringing distress to Suzanne, all his “giving” meaning nothing. The man was just jealous, that was what Sterling Powder was. No need to be. Seth didn't intend anything. He was just a man helping a friend. And defending an unfair accusation of another. Still, what else could the man think but that he had intentions for Suzanne? Seth swallowed. Now where had that come from? A widow with two kids had no wish to intercept his wayward trail. Did they? And what about Powder?

  Powder. Just a fluff of a name, but maybe the man himself had more substance. He had gotten Clayton to talk, after all. And the arrogance could camouflage a wounded soul.

  Here it was well into January. He should have moved on. Maybe he was still reeling from Mazy's portrayal of their relationship. More like a brother and sister. That was what she'd said. If that was true, then what was this with Suzanne? There'd been something more in Suzanne's response to him than mere sisterhood. It was a passion. Had he drawn it from her? Or was she the yeast in what was yet to bake inside his own heart?

  He stood up, paced the small guest room that held a bed with white flannel sheets and pillows with lace borders. A small writing desk sat beneath a window, and the light from the lamp flickered, a sign that the wick needed to be cut back. Seths mother always told him that the quality of the light depended on the wicks being cut back. Why had he thought ofthat?

  He heard Esther go out. She was a hard worker, that Esther. He could put some of his money into what they were trying to do. The investment would be a better use of it than sweetening a poker pot. And it would give him cause to connect with Suzanne more too. So what stumbled him, kept him from jumping in with both feet free?