A Sweetness to the Soul (4 page)

That’s when Mama appeared in the doorway. She had words with him that made my stomach burn and reminded me he’d brought no present as he’d promised. Cheated out of scolding Rachel, tired with milk left yet to strain, I added my sharp tongue to Mama’s. “Only thinking of yourself,” I told him and rushed past Mama to the inside, Rachel trailing me.

Lodenma held Pauline, and it was here I found my refuge. Tiny, wrapped in cloth once bathed in sunshine, I fell in love with that small, noisy infant in an instant. She needed me, could not even find her thumb! I stuck my finger into Precious’s milk and introduced it to the mouth of the newest child who lay squalling in Lodenma’s arms. When she tasted my milk-coated pinkie, she quieted, sucked like a cat’s tongue on my finger.

“You’ve a gift with little ones,” Lodenma said. “Not everyone could bring quiet to a toddler or soothe an infant with a milk-dipped finger to her mouth.”

I’d done both that first night of my remembrance and felt good about it. I even imagined the kind of mother I’d someday be. All my life I’ve remembered that night when what I did for the babies worked. I protected them, stopped their crying, and what I had to give, someone wanted.

After the tragedy, I wondered more why the Lord would give me such a wealth of gifts, only to later take them back.

Some questions are hard answered.

P
ANAMA
L
OSS

I
n the sultry steam of Panama’s Isthmus, Joseph sweated his way toward me though we didn’t either of us know that yet. It was the August following his encounter with Frederic and that fluffy man’s ice. Joseph arrived in the Isthmus of Panama in 1855 and could have taken the newly completed railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific—once he gave up the lazy days of New Orleans and the late-night feasts at Frederic’s table.

But once in Panama, Joseph found himself drawn to the stock corralled close to the docks and felt he would rather be there with the mules and the Indios than riding the rails with the rich.

Once they began the trek across the narrow strip of land he had second thoughts.

First of all, it was late in the traveling season. (When Joseph told me he arrived “late” in the season, I should have been forewarned. It is an issue we have argued about often as he becomes distracted by whatever passes before his mind, totally forgetting that I might like to arrive someplace on time.) Traveling late meant partaking of a much smaller mule train across the land bridge. The smallness allowed for better conversation with the natives but opened the group up for bandito attacks.

Joseph said it was also early in Panama’s rainy season which meant downpours for several hours each day. In early evening, the rain abruptly stopped revealing steamy forests marked with illusive views of pumas and ocelots and white skies sliced with streaked sunsets and colorful toucans. The mountain trails after the rains were as slick as dog-licked plates and the mud promised to stick tighter than horsehide glue to any traveler straying from the trail. Joseph rode the largest mule, his being such a big man, over six foot plus two.

The Donario family handled the mule string. Stocky Benito Donario moved like an efficient chicken, his head bobbing as he checked here and there for loose packs, frayed ropes, replacing and repairing. Broken teeth flashed a ready smile against a brown face as smooth as a baby’s. I don’t think I ever saw a wrinkle on his forehead. Even years later only tiny ones finally formed around his eyes. His front teeth were separated by a space wide enough to spit through, a skill that always charmed the children.

The sparkle in Benito’s brown eyes defied their droopy appearance. When Joseph met him, Benito wore the bright striped wool serape of his people and a flat-brimmed leather hat that was not. “Gift,” he told Joseph when he asked. “Of Californio man.” Benito wasn’t much younger than Joseph, around twenty or so when they met, but he was three years older than his wife.

After what happened on that trip, I was surprised that Benito made the choice he did, immigrating with Joseph. Benito and his young wife, Maria, had made the trip through the Cotillierra Mountains several times leaving the ocean beaches, rising slowly up through the mangrove thickets into the leafy trees of the mountains.

Joseph thought the Donarios good handlers and after the second day he was surprised when Benito moved Maria into the middle position with her horse leading a string of two mules, allowing the “gringo” to ride drag. Usually, gringo clients rode the safer, center slot in a mule string, where the experienced drag could watch to see that nothing went awry.

Joseph said Maria was exceptionally skilled. Quiet, wearing her long traditional dress and wide-brimmed hat, she carried herself regally, had gentle beauty. Once he started to signal her that a rope had drawn up between one of her mule’s legs but she had already noticed. She stopped her string, got off, and wove them into a tight circle that permitted her to untie the rope, pull it through the animal’s legs and reattach it, then unwind the string without a single mix-up all done as easily as his mother wound yarn around her peg.

But it seems Maria was with child, a fact Joseph noticed while she sang her quick-paced “Punta” as she and her husband playfully prepared the evening meal. The three were dry inside a stone hut just off the trail the second night out. Mules were staked in the lush foliage close to the trail; the trio prepared for the night.

Flour from the flat pancakes Maria patted out for supper dribbled onto her stomach and as Benito playfully brushed it off, Joseph saw the telltale mound.

It bothered him. “It was no place for a woman and not a pregnant woman surely,” he told me. He was always of a mind to protect females and didn’t understand that in doing so he sometimes did not act in ways that showed respect for the strengths of the weaker sex. He once told me he could never see any woman he was bound to performing such tasks, a thought which always made me laugh as I remember what we’ve endured together through the years, and what we would have failed to accomplish if he had “protected” me from what I chose to do instead of learning to respect my wishes.

He dared not discuss his reservations about Maria being on the trail. In those days—and perhaps still—it would be unseemly for a gentleman to broach such a subject with another man, especially one he did not know well. But Benito saw Joseph’s look of surprise and told him: “Is better she with me now than to be alone.” Benito didn’t seem the least bit alarmed that his wife might deliver there in the mountains.

But he had taken the precaution of changing Maria’s riding position, moving her and her mules in between the men on the string, a
fact he pointed out to Joseph who counted it as wise, but insufficient. “You do well, so we put you last,” Benito told him. “I watch Maria. Have delivered many babies. Brothers and sisters,” Benito said, his wide-sleeved poncho swinging on his short, stocky arms as he motioned, palms down, “not to worry.”

Joseph hadn’t expected Maria’s time to be close enough to warrant the delivery discussion or consider long the thought that the young adventurer from New York might become a mid-wife! But before he could protest, Benito suggested they head outside where he changed the subject to California.

“Will you look for the gold there?”

“My brother brought home a dish pan of nuggets and it did not bring him peace,” Joseph answered indirectly.

“
Las mulas son corrajudas
,” Benito said then translated his Spanish. “ ‘The mules are bad tempered,’ but you are happy with them. They like you.” And while Joseph agreed with that observation, it seemed not to follow in the discussion until Benito added: “Maria and me, we take mules to California, bring supplies to gold fields. Make good money. Send some home, but have Maria and bambino here,” he tapped his heart, “and by side. Like you, seek different treasure.”

Joseph said he watched Benito swat at bugs, stunned at the enterprising suggestion just when he’d confined Benito to predictable—and truthfully, maybe a little dull. Benito’s simple appearance deceived my Joseph. But to his credit, he let new information in and changed his mind. Joseph heard a mule pawing impatiently near the cabin, just out of reach of the lamp light. Joseph said that was the first time he’d considered combining his interest in the mules with his brother’s facts and figures about the gold fields. For Benito was correct: the men in the fields needed everything and would pay top prices for muslin for their tents and baking powder for their biscuits. Better, they would pay to have their gold taken out, but only with a skilled handler willing to take risks. And only with a man of impeccable integrity who would risk himself for their fortunes.

He had decided to explore this idea further when Benito
abruptly suggested they retire. He said good night and took his leave around the corner of the stone hut.

Joseph lifted his leather-bound sketch book from his vest pocket and made some notes. I have that little book still scribbled full with his thoughts of California, Benito, bambinos, and gold. He brushed the gnats from before his eyes, grateful for the lull in the daily downpour. He smelled damp wool and knew the steamy heat had saturated his red wool vest. He smelled his own scent. Returning his leather book to his pocket, he stood, planning to enter the hut to offer Maria the bed she and Benito had so graciously prepared for him as the “gringo client.” Perhaps he was distracted with the innovative thought Benito raised, or perhaps he was just tired—whatever the reason, Joseph didn’t notice the restlessness of the animals until later, thinking back. So before he could make his chivalrous offer to Maria, he heard the scream of a woman, a scream that sent him plunging through the hut door to her side.

It was no woman.

Maria stood inside, shaking, but the scream rose again from the far side of the hut, where Benito had gone to relieve himself. “Benito?” she said, her brown eyes full of worry. Joseph said he grabbed his Sharps rifle and ripped a lantern from a post. He headed toward the sound trying to place it. Woman? No. Benito? Not likely. Familiar? Yes.

Then he remembered: Cat! Cougar! Like he’d heard in the mountains of New York in the late winter when food was scarce and the felines slinked their way like fallen women down the ravines to the pastures and corralled cattle.

Joseph raised his rifle to his shoulder when yellow eyes flashed in the lamp light. Too quick for him! As he rounded the hut, cursing Maria’s independence and unwillingness to stay inside, he stopped in time to see the dark streak stretch its length toward the back of the smallest mule standing not five feet from Maria. He shot once and the cat skittered into the dark and denseness of the foliage.

Maria did not cry or scream but went immediately to soothe the
frightened animals, her eyes searching for Benito who appeared, flushed from his own encounter with the cat. “I smell it, but could not see it,” he said, making his way to Maria.

“And I saw it, but could not kill it,” Joseph told him. He felt bad about missing the animal or worse, that he might have wounded it and thus would make it more dangerous than it was.

“Hungry. Old and toothless or would not have attacked so close to man-scent,” Benito said. “Is too dark to track.”

In the morning, the rain had washed any signs of blood away and the trio left early after an uneasy night. Joseph said he did not sleep even when his watch was over, and he was pleased that at sunrise, they were all ready to head on down the rain-slicked trail.

What happened next stays with Joseph years later though he is older and has cared for many, is wiser and accepts that he has been forgiven. But he still holds himself at fault.

The first time he told me of it, tears welled into his soft eyes, and I held his broad shoulders in my arms and let the wetness from his eyes dampen the tucks of my calico while I stroked his hair over and over the way a mother does a child she knows has wounds so deep no one can heal them. Of all the gifts he ever gave me, his willingness to share his tears I count most precious. It was a gift I held with tenderness despite how frightened his crying made me. No man had ever laid his feelings on my shoulder. It was only later that I understood how a man of strength must be yielding too or he will surely break. I was pleased to be a person he chose to bend with.

He told me that in the morning, following his missed shot, the trail was slick but the rain had stopped. A blue heron lifted its legs, heavy against the thick morning sky. Joseph said he thought of a hundred things that could go wrong: banditos, slipping on the trail, Maria giving birth, and of course, the return of “el gato,” so he kept himself and his Sharps ready and alert.

Maria rode before him wrapped in her bright serape, her wide-brimmed hat pulled down over her dark braid. He thought her a capable and pretty girl, he told me, and Benito a lucky man. Almost
before he finished that thought, he saw the form from the corner of his eye and believed at first it might be a bird lifting in flight or a snake dripping from the branch beside him. But the general restlessness of his horse and the mules ahead told him it was not.