What Once We Loved

  “Whore you thanking?” Matthew asked.

  “What? I don't know. Just grateful,” she said. She dropped her eyes from his. He had a growth of beard. It aged him like fine leather. She looked out across the grazing stock. “Must be forty acres or so up here,” Ruth said. “No wonder the Indians wintered it. I thought it was the bottomland they coveted, but this is where the real treasure lies. Maybe I should build near the spring, just let the hay barn stand where it is down there and use the cabin for foaling.”

  Matthew nodded. “Don't know as I'd build a house up here until the foaling s finished,” he said. “Want to stay close by.”

  “I know that,” she said, irritated.

  He raised his hands in protest. “Not telling you how, just thinking out loud. Problem I seem to have with you.”

  She softened. “It's the spring that attracts. And not having the cold fog. Weather more like Ohio on this ridge,” she said.

  “Like New York, too,” Matthew said. “It still amazes me to see that fog there, that grayness,” Matthew said, “with this just above it.” He shook his head. “This is some country.”

  “Challenges a soul, that's for sure,” Burke said, approaching them, two pairs of horseshoes in his hands. He dropped them at their feet. “Looks like you people are up to it. Set your mind to a thing and do it.”

  “We're grateful for your help,” Ruth said. “In every way”

  Burke said, “In the Old Testament, there's a story of Abraham. He built an altar when he found his Promised Land. He was trying to find a place outside of Babylon where he could build a new nation, one without the idols his family had been exposed to. He named his place of belonging Bethel.”

  “No idols here,” Ruth said.

  “They come in all shapes and sizes,” Burke said. “A lot of things hold us hostage, things we think we have to have so we'll pay a high price for them. Not just cash,” he said. “But in bartering time.”

  “We still have work to do,” Ruth said, moving away. She shouted to the boys to go back down, haul up some rope to make a corral for Carmine and Ewald, so they could take the hobbles off. She walked the perimeter, counting, gauging the distance and whether this might really be the best place for herself and the children. After a full circle, she found herself back where Matthew and Burke stood and talked.

  “I'll be giving you folks back your privacy soon,” Burke said. “Might need you to help me round my cattle out of the ravines and brambles come spring.”

  “We'll be glad to return the favor,” Matthew said. “Anytime.”

  “I guess I'll slide my way back down and get my pack rolled up and my gear. Looks like I could ride out through there,” he pointed to stands of pine and fir where a deer trail disappeared. “If I travel above the fog line, I can make it south to my place.”

  “You're welcome to stay on, though the meat's getting a bit familiar, I imagine, with no flour to disguise it. Surely by the end of the week this will be over, and we can make a run into Jacksonville for some salt at least,” Ruth said.

  “Looks like the whole valleys iced,” Matthew said. “Wonder if any supplies have even gotten in.”

  “You may as well remain, Burke,” Ruth said. “You may not find such luxurious accommodations as ours on the high road. All the population is in the valley, you know.”

  Burke laughed. “Is it now? Well, I'll keep that in mind. Valleys don't usually get good promotion. It's the mountaintops people seem to long for.”

  “Can be windy up on top,” Ruth said. “Exposing.”

  “Ah, but the wind blows away the heaviness that threatens. And the view…” He spread his arms around. “I wonder if Abraham had such a view on his mountaintop.”

  “It's just fog,” Ruth said.

  “We all know what lies beneath that icy surface,” Matthew said. He looked at Ruth. “Beauty unsurpassed.”

  Ruth grabbed at the whip on her hip, squeezed it and smiled. She was happy. She'd forgotten what that felt like. She wished she could say something snappy. She wanted to honor the occasion when friends helped friends outsmart fog. She hoped more than anything that this day marked the beginning of a willingness to celebrate life's little triumphs, when she'd allowed herself to feel the touch of one good man, the praise of another, and the satisfaction of accomplishing something hard, something that consumed them all, brought them all together in this place.

  Burke tipped his hat and said he thought he'd catch up with his gelding, see what the boys were up to with those ropes they were trying to stretch between trees. He headed off.

  “He's a nice man,” Ruth said. She pulled at a string of loose sinew on the whip's handle.

  “Knows when to exit,” Matthew said.

  “Does he?”

  Matthew lifted her chin. “Maybe this is too soon. But I've been thinking. We could build our house here. Yours and mine. Together. Make this our Bethel.”

  She hesitated. Did she always hesitate when her heart felt full?

  “We could. Maybe.” She swallowed. “We've got foaling to get through. Breeding…1 haven't heard from my lawyer yet. I'm still a married woman.”

  He straightened her felt hat, pushed it back on her forehead. “You've already made that decision. You're not going back on it?”

  She shook her head. “I am still his wife. And until that's finished, I can't take another step toward matrimony. I can't. Won't.”

  “But you can take the next step toward us. Let the we that might be begin.”

  “And what would that look like?”

  He smiled, then bent nearer to her face. “Like my grandma said, just admitting that this is ‘one good thing that is.'“ He put his hand at the small of her back, pulled her to him, and kissed her.

  “One good thing that is,” she said as he released her. “Yes. One good thing that is.”

  17

  Tipton located a Chinese doctor in Sacramento in no time at all. “They make excellent midwives,” she told her baby. “Gentle hands. Isn't it funny how I once didn't want to have anything to do with Celestials and now, what would I do without them?” She patted her stomach. “I'll tell him about you, of course, but for now, his medicine really helps my headaches. It does, Baby, it does. And he thinks I'm just a chubby one. Do you hear how he says it? That I am a ‘clubby lady' “ She laughed.

  Except for the headaches and the occasional blurry vision, she was feeling so much better these days, not feeling alone, no longer wondering why she was here. She was taking charge of her life, doing for herself and her child just what she thought best. She weathered storms, all kinds of them, without the help of anyone, except her own wits.

  Well, Esty had been a help. Tipton would pay the woman back, she would. Esty had gotten the steamer's doctor to sew up Tipton's head, and then she'd allowed Tipton to remain in her back room for a time. Tipton watched her twist the feathers, tie ribbon, and work the felt on her hats. She thought it a skill she could learn. A little like making a drawing, something she was once good at. But she wanted to be on her own. She'd accepted Esty's loan and now had found an abandoned shack near the Chinese district, though not in it. She would wash clothes. She'd done that before. And she didn't want Sister Esther or Suzanne to see her in this state.

  The shack had four walls and a roof, a single window and door. She could tell that the whole window frame came out, which would be good when the days grew hot and she needed ventilation. A stove with a chimney would heat her irons and water in the two big pots she bought. She purchased two bars of Castile soap and a stick for stirring. One of her first customers, an actor named Flaubert, saw her need and brought her a table and two stools to go with her single bed. She felt richer than a queen.

  Being near Chinatown meant she could divert miners and others making their way there from the Chinese launderers. They'd choose a pretty “chubby” American girl offering to clean boiled shirts and sheets, as well.

  The room was all hers. It had a hook on the door, and she'd replaced the car
petbag for a buckwheat stuffed pillow for the cot. Her cape served as a blanket, not that she needed warmth once the tubs of water for washing heated up. She'd even grown accustomed to boiled dinners, which she supplemented with pressed fish imported from Canton. The actor had introduced her to that as well, and her Chinese doctor gave her incense that sweetened up the room.

  And, oh yes, that opium. That white powder that took the edges off anything that felt rough.

  Esty had promised to say nothing to Suzanne or Esther when she saw them; and she didn't hover once Tipton borrowed the money to secure the room. Tipton would pay it back with her first earnings. Well, part of it. The opium was a cost she had not expected, and she needed to save enough for it.

  Ho Lin, the Chinese doctor, had given her herbs for her headaches, and she always tried to take them first. But the effects didn't last as long. Besides, in the hot room with steam rolling off the tubs and her back aching and her arms sore, she felt she deserved the gentle reprieve the powder gave. It took away the ache above her stomach that came when she lay still and tried to remember why it was she'd done this, gone away, what longing it was she truly sought to fill.

  She finished the days order and wrapped it in canvas, carried the heavy load to the back of the hotel where she collected her coins. She varied her path through the shanty-lined streets, not wanting anyone to notice her routine. They might realize she carried cash and take it from her, the way the cab driver had back in San Francisco. At least that was what she assumed happened. It was strange that she could not remember. Only details up to that time when he had asked for an address. After that, nothing. She'd asked Ho Lin about that. He said such memories were often lost close to the time of a blow to the head.

  “Do they ever return?”

  “If needed,” he'd told her. “Mind protects and offers rescue, too.” She'd frowned at him and wondered if he and Elizabeth Mueller might be kin.

  Memory was strange. She could recall with great detail the last time she'd seen her fiancé, Tyrellie, but couldn't remember something that had happened just weeks before.

  The scent of ginger oil marked her closeness to the board shacks. Pigs snorted in low pens nearby, their scent mixing with sweet smells of cooking. She had a sugar tooth and had thought herself fortunate that her arrival in Sacramento had happened before the Chinese New Year celebration. She'd collected sugared candies and watched a game of fantan. This year the Chinese had given all the women bracelets of smooth wood, and Tipton wore hers now as she approached the dirt-floor shanty of Ho Lin.

  “Clubby Lady eary,” Ho said.

  It took Tipton a minute, then, “Yes, I'm early.”

  Ho turned back from a shelf he bent over, his thin queue still braided with the red and black silk ribbons worn to mark the New Year and to signal that all his debts were paid. The rest of his hair was shaved, but he wore a flat-top silk hat of red and gray when he saw patients.

  He'd been standing before a glass cage filled with amber liquid and what looked like a piece of uncooked beef. Tipton stepped closer, squinting, then jumped back. “Is that a snake?” She squinted, leaned in again. A fat rattlesnake lay coiled inside, its head resting on a chunk of meat while malt whiskey swirled around.

  “Is it…dead?” Tipton asked.

  “Vely dead. You drink cup for aching bones,” he said. “Make you move then vely fast, vely fast.”

  “I have no doubt,” Tipton said. “You're not suggesting that for my headaches.”

  “No, no. For bones,” he said and patted his own hip. “Vely good for bones. You got bad bones? I give.”

  The room felt hot and duskier today as Tipton sat on the small stool, declining his offer of the amber stew. A lily bulb perched in a jade pot on the floor beside the glass case, poking its green nose up through the dirt. The doctor examined the scar at the side of her head. He lifted her eyelid. His brows furrowed.

  “What?” she said. “What is it?”

  “You see? Eyes see good?”

  “I'm fine,” she lied. “Why. What do you see?”

  “See Clubby Lady not say truth. Clubby Lady not clubby. Clubby Lady carry baby.”

  “You can tell that through my eyes?”

  He scowled at her.

  Tipton fidgeted. “I was going to tell you. I just didn't think it mattered. Yet.”

  “Baby come early.”

  “How would you know that? I've felt fine. Except for the headaches. Which the powder helps.” He raised his gray eyebrow. “It does.”

  “Not good, Clubby Lady. No more. No more.” He moved his hands before him as though wiping off a schoolgirl's slate.

  “But you have to give me more. I have to work. The powder takes the ache away, so I can. Those herbs barely dull the throb. I need the powder. How will I work? How will I sleep?”

  She felt her heart pound fast. How much powder did she have back at her room? Enough for one, maybe two days at the most, if she rationed it carefully, if she took her time.

  What did he know? “The powder…it helps me.” She stood up, knocked the stool over. “You've got to give it to me.” She saw a pewter pipe. “I'll smoke it. It'll go slower, it won't hurt the baby that way. Please, don't do this now. Not when everything is going so well!”

  He shook his head. “No good, Clubby Lady. No good. I fix for you. No powder. No more.”

  “I'll find it somewhere,” she said. Hadn't she seen it sold in the Chinese apothecary? She took in deep breaths. She could weather this, too.

  “I know what's best for me,” Tipton said, and she pushed her way past him, kept her eyes out toward the street. Through the blurring and her heads throbbing, she failed to recognize the Chinese woman she bumped into carrying a frail baby in her arms.

  What made Seth decide to head out to Mei-Ling's, he didn't know. Restlessness, he supposed. Avoiding talking with Suzanne because he didn't know what to say. She'd risked her thoughts and feelings with him, asked nothing in return, and he'd stood speechless. When he'd initiated a kiss, that had been fine. But when it was her leading a horse to water, the old mount just didn't know whether to drink or gallop away. He was procrastinating. It was already February, and he'd decided nothing. Except to ride out to see the little Celestial and her child.

  “You do not come with Missy Suzanne or Missy Esther?” she said, her eyes looking past him.

  “They had other plans,” he said. He ran the reins through his hands, feeling the leather. “And I hadn't seen you for a spell. Got to stay in touch, or that baby of yours'U be walking and wearing pants before I even get to know him.”

  “Many moons before he walks,” she said, lowering her lashes and blinking in that way she had. She'd invited him inside, served him tea as she knelt.

  “You like Miss Suzanne?” Mei-Ling asked then.

  “Well, sure.” He fidgeted as he sat cross-legged on the rice mat covering the floor. “Doesn't everyone?”

  “Ah. You do not tell yourself the truth yet, Seth Forrester.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Truth. You look for reason not to find Missy Suzie special like a sugared nut. You afraid you not good enough for Missy Suzie.”

  “These are sure good,” he said. “What'd you say it was?”

  “Nut. Comes from China.” She paused, poured a cup of tea. “Missy Suzie's baby is well?”

  “Good as expected. That little Clayton's talking pretty good.” He felt a twinge of…something. Powder was working hard as ever, and the man had been more than civil to him. He didn't think Suzanne held any special fondness for him, other than as a tutor. Of course she didn't. She'd told Seth as much when she shared her thoughts with him. And what had he done? Nodded his head. Shoot. To a blind woman, a nod was as good as a grimace and no help at all. She wasn't pushing at him. That was sure true. Maybe he just didn't know what to do with a woman who wasn't running from him.

  “Seth Man is troubled,” Mei-Ling said. She touched the back of his hand, light as a butterfly.

  “When'd you
become such wise counsel?”

  “I see how you look at her last time you here. Missy Suzie see it too if her eyes work. But she sees it here,” she said, patting her heart. “She does not tell you?”

  He pulled at his collar. “Say, how're your bees doing? What are you and the mister up to?”

  “We make plans. Leave soon,” she told him as she served him dried abalone across the bamboo table. “From China too,” she said, as he tasted it. “Very good, yes?”

  “Different,” Seth said. “So you're leaving? Where you going?”

  “Oregon. Maybe.”

  “I hear Ruth has headed up that way, she and the Schmidtkes. You going to work mine tailings or what?”

  “We plant gardens there, good ground. Here, Chinese not wanted. Even Indians not want us. Call us ‘Chinee-Winto.' Chinese mine what others leave, pay big tax. They only collect from Chinese. No money to send home. No money to buy vegetables. No money to put into ground, plant trees.”

  “How're your bees doing?”

  “Need many blossoms.”

  “Be a shame to leave what youVe done here,” Seth said.

  “Home is where you warm,” she said, touching her small fingers to her chest.

  “You dont say.” He chewed the abalone, evaluating the new tastes. “They say you'll need your umbrella in Oregon. Rains up that way.”

  “Here umbrella wards off rocks thrown when just walking with baby. Baby needs to grow where family honored.”

  “That doesn't happen much anywhere,” Seth said.

  “Wrong word chosen,” she said and bowed, revealing more of the ivory sticks that held her hair in twists at the side of her head. “Need place where child sees parents live without lowering heads in shame.”

  “I hear you,” Seth said. He picked up a little candy, unrolled the paper wrapper. “Every kid needs to see others looking up to their parents. Makes ‘em feel valued.”

  “This is word I mean to choose. Valued.” She nodded. “We are not valued here. Husband s work. Not valued. Our people. Not valued. In China, family greatest treasure. Here, gold greatest treasure.”