What Once We Loved

  “Ruth was heading to a place along Bear Creek, near a pair of flat-topped rocks. Table Rocks, they call them. Southern Oregon, north of Yreka.”

  Mei-Ling nodded. “Maybe we go there. See old friends again. Maybe.”

  “I'm sure you could stop over at Mazy's,” he said. “She's got a whole passel of people staying there. Out where we camped that first night, you remember?” Mei-Ling nodded. “Calls it Poverty Flat, but its rich bottom land. Hey, maybe you and your family could go there?” he said. “Grow all kinds of things on that river bottom.”

  Mei-Ling shook her head. “Must leave California. All rumor say soon all Chinese go, take nothing. We go now. Take bees.”

  “Guess you got a plan,” he said. “But I'd wait ‘til summer, is all I'm saying. Rivers be flooded this spring and traveling not good. If you can wait ‘til May maybe. Sometime around there, it'd be better going.”

  He stood to leave, thought to offer to guide them north. But he wasn't sure where he'd be come May. “Guess I best say howdy and goodbye to your man there, Mei-Ling.” They walked to where Mei-Ling's husband bent his narrow back at work along a short row of peach trees planted. Pleasantries exchanged, they started back. Mei-Ling pointed at this and that, sometimes cooing to the baby, sometimes stopping to let the child feel the tender branches; to show him something that he otherwise would have missed.

  They had nearly reached Seth's tethered horse when he saw the woman running toward them, a bundle in her arms.

  “What's that about?” he asked.

  Mei-Ling stood on tiptoes, winced with the pain ofthat, then sheltered her eyes from the afternoon sun. The woman ran hard, looking back over her shoulder, reaching Seth's horse just as he and Mei-Ling did. “Whoa there, what's the matter?” Seth said to her. Did he know this woman?

  She gasped for air, looked behind her. “He comes,” she said. “Take baby. Go. Save baby.” She thrust the child at Seth.

  “Whoa, whoa, now,” he said, raising his hands to object. “Baby needs its mother, isn't that right, Mei-Ling. Naomi? It's you, isn't it?”

  “He kills me. He says he kills me,” Naomi said. “You help me.”

  “Well, yes, but not by taking your baby.”

  The woman sobbed, her face streaked with tears and sweat and dirt, and then Seth noticed the blackness at her eyes and cheeks, the scars at her wrists as she held the baby up again, pushing it against his raised forearms. “Save baby, please!”

  He thought he saw dust in the distance. He whistled to his big sorrel gelding, grabbed the reins at the post, tossed them up, and swung himself in. “Give me the child now,” he said and he placed the bundle on the pommel before him, holding it with his legs. Then he lowered his hand to her.

  Naomi turned to run off, but Mei-Ling blocked her way, and Seth leaned over and touched Naomi's shoulder. “You're coming too. I know a safe place for you both.” At last, something he knew how to fix.

  She was light as a feather, and he sat her up behind him. “You'll be all right?” he asked Mei-Ling.

  She looked to the field. “I go there. Husband make safe for me. You go. Go!” she urged.

  He kicked the big animal, and they sped off down the rows of trees, then through the cottonwoods that lined the creek bed. Seth looked back once to see Mei-Ling standing, her small husband running toward her just as a horse and rider broke through the dust and Seth descended over the side with his treasures.

  Mazy was at Wilsons store when Nehemiah rode in. He brought a pack string of supplies with him though most he'd delivered at Weaverville. Then he'd come on over the Trinity Mountains to Shasta City.

  She looked for Tipton and felt disappointed when Tipton didn't appear. Mazy knew it had been awhile since Tipton'd seen her mother. Adora seemed ready to mend the rip. Ruth came to mind.

  Nehemiah looked cheerful, jovial almost, as he chatted with Adora. Charles's presence paused him some, but he didn't stand off nor stand to fight. Instead he acted as though he was a knight returning from battle almost.

  “Its been a season,” he told Charles. “Good trips and bad. Now this one, this one I was happy to be making, getting to see kin and all. Place has sure built up,” he said. He looked around at the brick buildings, the heavy iron shutters on every window, to keep it from burning again. He craned his neck into the store. Was he looking for someone? “How was your winter?” he asked, turning back.

  “Fine,” Adora said. “Truth be known, our worst was ‘52, the year we got here. Nothings been as bad since.”

  “Only been one winter since then, Mother,” Charles corrected.

  “And it was a mild one. Oregon folks didn't fare so well, I hear. Had a silver storm that lasted nearly a month. They had to send out an advance party to buy up the salt and set the price so it wouldn't be so inflated once they made Jacksonville. Heard that folks broke it open and ate it right there on the spot.”

  “I had trouble getting into Jacksonville myself,” Nehemiah said. “So I'm glad for you that folks could make it over here, being milder and all.” He craned his neck again toward the back of the store, turned back.

  “How's Tipton?” Mazy asked then, and the look that crossed his face told her she'd asked the one question he hadn't wanted to answer.

  He cleared his throat. “Fine. Just fine.” He looked off to the side. “Oh, she hates having to wait alone while I'm gone, but in time, she'll be traveling with me on the campaign trail. Going to the state house for gatherings will tickle her fancy.”

  “I certainly hope you haven't forgotten about this store,” Adora told him. “My Charles is just pushing himself to run it, and it could use a man accustomed to commerce, truth be known.”

  Mazy thought the vein in Charles's neck throbbed fast.

  “That might be difficult with us living where we are, Mrs. Wilson,” he said.

  “Reason enough for you to move back over here.”

  “I'll consider it,” he said. He cleared his throat again. “Might be good with the baby coming and all.”

  “A baby!” Adora clapped her hands to her face. “Charles! Did you hear? It's about time. Well, why didn't you say so? My goodness. I'll have to get some things together. Send it right on back with you. No wonder Tipton didn't join you. Goodness knows, travel for a woman in that condition wouldn't be wise. Not wise at all.”

  Mazy watched Nehemiah's face change like a man watching a mountain storm: moving from anticipation to dread, to an acquiescent calm.

  “We wanted to…surprise you,” he said. “You know Tipton.”

  “My little sister always did want to make an entrance,” Charles said.

  “Not unlike you,” his mother chided. “You were the prissiest little boy, always wanting to dress meticulous and show off for us at the store. Must be some of the dramatic flair you both get from me,” she said and pushed the hairpin into the bun at the base of her neck.

  “I have to be getting back,” Mazy said. “I hope you'll stay a day or so. Come out to the Flat.” She had a second thought. “I'm going by Mother's first, if you'd care to join me.”

  “I would,” Nehemiah said.

  “Now you stop back by,” Adora cooed. “Ill have a carpetbag of goodies for my little darling. A baby, Charles,” she said again as she scurried back inside. Mazy shivered at the look on Charles's face before he saw that she was watching.

  Nehemiah led the horse as they walked. Mazy ignored the hole she was sure Charles's stare was making in her back.

  “She's gone, isn't she?” Mazy said. “You don't know where Tipton is.”

  He shook his head. “Left a month or more ago. Gave me a note saying she had to do things on her own. Didn't know anything about the baby until our housemaid told me.” He took a deep breath. “I've been such an old fool.”

  “You're far from old, and Tipton never was one to do the predictable, except to be unpredictable,” Mazy said.

  “I thought she'd come here. To be with her mother.”

  “That does say something ab
out what you don't know about that family. She might have made amends with her mother, but there's bad blood between her and Charles I doubt will ever be cleansed.”

  “Having to do with her first love,” he said quietly.

  “Even before that, I suspect. Charles didn't seem all too pleased to have Adora talk about your taking over the store.” Mazy shivered.

  “Tiptons so confused. Blames herself, I think. She's scared about this baby, she must be. Why else would she run away?”

  “Paper is full of men seeking runaway wives,” Mazy said. “Haven't you noticed? Most are ads from mean husbands or poor ones wanting their share of their wife's assets.”

  “Mean…” he said.

  She stopped. “If you laid one hand on her—”

  “I didn't. But I…we were distant. And I never talked of it. Never spoke of what she meant to me. She couldn't know. Something made her snap, and she left. She signed the letter she left with ‘love.' Anything could happen to her.”

  “I doubt we'll be reading about her in the National Police Gazette” Mazy said.

  “Those lurid crimes? You don't think—”

  “No, no. I meant I think she's more resourceful than we know. Maybe than she knows. That could be what she's trying to discover— her way.”

  “If I just knew where she was, I'd leave her be if that was what she wanted. I just hope to tell her that I'm sorry. For not owning up to…some things.”

  “She should let you know she's all right.”

  “Don't condemn her, Mrs. Bacon. Please. You don't know all the details, all the things I did that sent her away.” He lifted his hat, ran his hands through his reddish hair. His eyebrows lay like red caterpillars over troubled eyes. “How will I ever find her?”

  “Allen Pinkerton finds people,” Mazy offered.

  “I was sure she'd be with kin.”

  They reached Elizabeths bakery, looped Nehemiahs horse at the hitching posts, and stepped inside. Elizabeth greeted Nehemiah like a long-lost son. She embraced him, sat him down, gave him food and drink, and pulled a chair right beside him, giving him her undivided attention. It was another quality Mazy found she admired in her mother, always ready to embrace what was before her.

  “So you're looking for Tipton,” Elizabeth said after he'd filled her in, gave more details than he'd shared with Mazy. “Well, let me think.”

  “I just thought she'd go to family. To people she knew. Isn't that what people do, even when their family isn't always the most inviting?”

  “Tipton marches to her own tune,” Elizabeth said. “And if it wasn't for her carrying a wee one, I'd say let her be until she finds what tune she's hearing. But she might get addled with the changes a baby brings, her being high-strung and all.”

  “You're willing to meddle, Mother?” Mazy asked.

  “To a point. Not always wise to stand by and just watch.” Elizabeth drummed her fingers on the table. “I say we write to both Suzanne, south, and to Ruth, north. Both could be places she'd make her way to. If not now, as her time gets closer, I could see her seeking out a friendly face. She might even show up back at home. Which is where you best be, Nehemiah. There and doing what you intended doing. Wasn't you going to run for Congress? Ain't that what we heard?”

  Nehemiahs face reddened. “County commissioner. That, too, might have pushed her off, my having to be gone a lot to campaign and more if I won.”

  “Why, I'd think she'd love the pomp and circumstance of all that folderol,” Elizabeth said. “You give her a chance to go with you?”

  He shook his head. Elizabeth patted his hand. “Never mind. We'll find her if she wants to be found. After all, didn't that Zane Randolph find his wife in the middle of the fastest growing state in the union?”

  “But we were all together in one place then, Mother. Easy to find eleven widows traveling together, one wearing pants, and one blind, led by a black dog.”

  “Tipton'll stand out. You mark my word. Well put our fishhooks out and see what we can catch.”

  Nehemiah said he'd finish up at Adoras store, then bring the string out to Mazy's, spend the night there at what Elizabeth said was fast becoming some kind of “stage stop” even without a stagecoach changing teams. “People just like coming to that place and camping out a night or two before heading on to the next phase of their journey. That bend in the river sure lured us to it.”

  Mazy drove the team with the empty milk wagon back down the Shasta road, puffing up reddish dust as she drove. Tipton on her own. Maybe the girl wasn't addled but just wanting to try living without a dozen people hovering, to see if she could make it. Sad she had to hurt Nehemiah to do it, but she had at least left him a note. Unlike what Jeremy had done to her. No note, no explanation, no nothing to help her understand why he'd lived a lie with her. Mind mumbling. She sighed. She'd loved him, and he had kept a secret he knew would hurt her. That was an act of love.

  It wasn't so terrible to have loved him. She loved what she thought he was, and he tried to live up to that, in his way. Maybe he would have told her in time, and then she'd have had to contend with putting the lie away while he still lived. Testing her ability to forgive.

  There had been many good things he'd done for her. He'd bought a farm for her—well, perhaps not for hen but for them. He'd insisted she stop her jam-making to walk through the woods, collecting morel mushrooms beneath blue columbines. He'd held her hands while they looked across the bluffs above the Mississippi, watching eagles weave through birches while grass waved in the wind. The sumac in the fall in Wisconsin turned red as her bloomers. Jeremy always made it a point too, on a dark night, to lift her needlework from her hands, and lead her out to the back stoop to stare up at the stars together.

  “The Milky Way,” he said. “North Star. Orion's Belt. See there?” She had actually found the stars that marked the constellation when he'd stood behind her, moved her head and held it with his hands so her eyes were guided perfectly to what he wanted her to see. She let herself be led, and he'd wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. Somehow that closeness had disappeared into the everyday routine of cooking and working and taking for granted. Oh, if she had it to do again, she would do it differently, she would.

  She'd love a man who loved the stars…and her. He had loved her. That he loved another first did not mean he had loved her less. Who could explain or ever understand what made people do what they did? He had loved her, and she had loved him back. That was the truth of what was.

  She turned down the lane to her farm. Between Ink's ears, she saw skiffs of snow marking the muddy track. A flock of geese had chosen to winter at the Flat, and they lifted now in the distance. People gathered near the barn, a few of the children squatted low as though clustered in trouble. What now? she thought.

  She sighed. It was just what life was, she guessed, this deciding and sorting and responding and learning to love. She took a deep breath, asked herself what she wanted to experience with whatever challenge lay ahead: To be used up or invigorated? She guessed the choice was hers.

  She pulled up around the far side of the barn, giving herself time to wresde with the upcoming commotion.

  Oltipa joined her, reaching up for the yoke at the mule's head. “You have visitor,” she said.

  Mazy took a wrap around the brake. “Another traveler?”

  Oltipa grinned. Behind her, coming at Mazy as though out of a broken dream, trotted a dog. He was emaciated, dirty, covered with stickers and burrs, but she still recognized him as a gift her husband had given her for their first anniversary: a black dog she loved named Pig.

  18

  In March, lilies sprouted along the walkways of Shasta City. Each year the Chinese gave the imported bulbs as gifts, and when they bloomed, Mazy found herself reminded of the generosity of others. She stood at the window of the bakery, the window box full of the stalks her mother had planted, the buds promising blooms. Pig pushed against her knees. “The lilies make me remember our first year here,”
Mazy told her mother.

  Elizabeth said, “Bring him on in.” She motioned toward Pig. “He can eat lots. He dont have to worry over ruining his figure. Now his memory,” she tapped her temple with her finger, “that's right up there with the best.”

  “‘The warder of the brain.’ That's what Shakespeare called memory,” Mazy said.

  “Did he now. Ponder that. Memory may be the warder of the heart, too,” her mother said. “Keeping good things from reaching us.”

  “I hadn't thought of that.” Mazy stepped inside, looked back over her shoulder down the street, leaving the door open to the spring breeze.

  “Charles Wilson sniffing around you this morning?” her mother teased.

  “I think I've slipped into town early enough he isn't up yet. That's my new plan. It's working well. Deliver while Charles is still getting his beauty sleep and always have a pitchfork to hand him when he comes out. He is a strange one, Mother. And it bothers me how Adora puts up with him that way. Cant she see he uses her?”

  “It might be good for Adora to push that rooster from the coop,” Elizabeth nodded, “though I doubt she will.”

  Mazy shivered.

  “You chilled?”

  “Just by the likes of him.”

  “We need to remember, Daughter: Adoras getting something from tending him, or she wouldn't be doing it, I'll ponder. We all got needs. It's how much of ourselves we're willing to give up to get ‘em met that matters. How far astray we'll go.”

  “I don't think I know what you mean,” Mazy said. She sat down, Pig at her feet.

  “Adora likes being needed.”

  “Tipton needed her mother, and Adora refused to go with her.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Adora saw her daughter was taken care of. Or maybe she didn't want to find out that she wasn't going to be the center of her daughters life from then on. Takes a bit of getting used to, letting a child go.”

  “And Charles? What's he giving up to be taken care of?”

  “Oh, he's worse off than most,” Elizabeth said. “He gave up growing up.”