All Together in One Place (42 page)

Esther and Betha walked on either side of Suzanne to the place in the road where their men were buried. A hundred or more wagons had rolled across the site since the graves had been dug.

“I hate leaving him here,” Betha said. “But it does ease me some that your brothers lie here too. And Bryce.”

“And Cynthia,” Esther reminded her.

“I'd just like to leave something here, maybe a rock we could scratch their names on or—”

“I can smell the cottonwood trees,” Suzanne said. “And is that columbine?”

“Yes,” Esther said. “We will memorize the hills and the river and the sounds of wind in the trees and the scents in the air. And when we reach the West, we will set a marker in a place to remind us of them. It will be better.”

“Mazy says that
columbine
means ‘I will not give thee up,’ ” Betha said “It's good for Jed to know that, that he won't be given up.” Betha sighed. The wind whipped at her flounced hat. She pushed it down with one hand; the other still held Suzanne's elbow. “So you plan to head west?”

Esther nodded. “It was to comfort you and Mazy, too, that I turned around. The girl seemed so…needful of securing her purpose. But our
future is west, not east. It will be different without my brothers, without Cynthia. But it will still be what I believe I'm called to do. If I just lis-ten.

“And you, Suzanne?” Betha was never sure if the woman would stay silent, bark back, or bite, but it was rude to talk around her, as though she wasn't there.

“I don't have the luxury of a calling.”

“Oh, but you do,” Esther insisted. “We all have such a plan. We must just be open to seeing what it is.”

“Seeing. Well then, there's the problem.”

Something made Betha risk. She lifted Suzanne's hand and leaned into the taller woman, not meaning to touch her, but when she did she felt Suzanne's stance first stiffen and then soften. “I'll help you see it,” she said. “We all will. That's what friends are for.” Betha felt her own tears come again and watched two others ache down Suzanne's cheeks, too. Esther put her arm around Suzanne's shoulder, and the three stood together overlooking what some might say was only an empty stretch of trail but which Betha would always remember as the place of cotton-wood and columbine, a place where Jed—and Bryce and the others— would not be given up.

“I don't see why we have to leave one of our good wagons behind,” Adora complained. “First you give away my mules, and then you say I get only one wagon.”

“Because we're all leavin something behind,” Ruth said. “We didn't get all of the stock back.”

“I got all of mine.”

“If we were part ofthat Rough and Ready Company or the Spring Rangers group, we'd have been forced already to pair up in fours and fives. They would have fined us if we hadn't,” Betha told her.

“That wasn't Antone s way. He didn't want so many rules,” Lura said She'd found her clay pipe and had taken to chewing on it without tobacco

“We don't need many rules, either,” Ruth said. “But some.” She looked at Mazy. “Like hobbling the mules and horses when we camp. Might have saved ourselves this stampede if we'd done that. We'll make better time with fewer wagons.”

“Some have either stock or wagons, is that right?” Suzanne asked.

Mazy felt her heart start to pound. She'd known the group had been circling around a western tent. And she knew within that moment she was too tired, too beaten and defeated to talk them into going east. If only she had the courage to go that way herself.

“In addition to beginning all our gatherings with prayer,” Sister Esther announced, “we must stop on the Sabbath and rest ten minutes of every hour we travel, to preserve the animals.”

“I don't mind prayer and preservation,” Elizabeth said.

“While heading west,” Ruth said.

Elizabeth looked out of the corner of her eye at her daughter, expecting protest.

“Setting aside an entire day each week when we're already so far behind seems a little risky,” Ruth said. “Let's rest when the terrain permits.”

“Oxen work hard with rest. We too,” Naomi said. “Mei-Ling— Deborah's bees fly out without fear of being lost.”

“It will be a part of our witness to God's wonderful provision,” Sister Esther said, clasping her hands in a ball before her, “if we can say we arrived safely and still we rested each Sabbath.”

“Do we vote?” Lura asked. “What did we decide about that?”

“I'd still like an explanation about why we can't take our two perfectly good wagons with us,” Adora said. She chewed her lower lip, and her voice had risen an octave.

“Because the wagons we brought are not as sturdy, Mother.” Tipton sighed when she said it, as though the words were as weighty as the
wheel she and Mariah had been struggling to pull off of one of the Bacons’ wagons. Grease smudges streaked both girls’ faces. They'd hang the good wheel underneath the box of someone's wagon as a spare.

“They survived the thrashing taken by the rest of the wagons,” Adora argued. “Seem pretty sturdy to me.”

“Only because they were on the near side, opposite where the animals bolted,” Tipton said, “Otherwise—”

“Fine. Fine,” Ruth said. “Let's just decide what we're taking and who's going with us.”

“So we're not voting,” Lura said, almost to herself.

Something in the bickering, the quarreling in circles, each person clinging to her own ways, to what she knew best, pressed against Mazy s temples, ached at the back of her neck. She searched for something to say that would get at what they were struggling with, tried to identify the feelings that were bouncing off the arguments like water on a hot three-legged spider frying pan. It wasn't the words they were saying; it was what wasn't being spoken of that drove the dissension; she wished she could grasp the meaning. Perhaps make sense of it for herself.

“I know you'd like to take everything you brought along, Adora,” Mazy said. “We all would. The thought of leaving a chest of drawers or the dishes that were my grandmother's is—”

“Or Hathaway's picture,” Adora wailed. “How can I leave any of the little I have left of him? You tell me that.” The last words had come out shattered, splintered. “You tell me how I'm to live without my son, gone off to who knows where. With a child that's aching and so far away I never will get her back. I can't…” She dropped her hands to her sides, the palms up in defeat. “I just can't. The wagons and mules were the last thing Hathaway bought.”

She turned aside, reached for her apron, and held it with both hands to her face. She stood alone, her shoulders shaking, speaking grief, catapulting them back to their own.

Betha stepped beside her, put an arm out to reel her in. The woman
allowed it, sank into Bethas arms and, with the movement, gave permission to release the hard, racking sobs of powerlessness, of mourning what was no more, pushing the world away while reaching for connection, begging not to grieve alone.

Like an eagle comforting its young, Elizabeth pressed against them both, her face to their backs. “So hard,” she whispered. “So hard.” Soon Lura moved across the circle, eyes glistening. Tipton, too, pricked out of her sighs, stepped before her mother, and the two held each other. Mazy reached for Suzanne's hand.

“What's happening?” Suzanne asked.

“They're overpowering pain,” Mazy said. “And it's time we joined them.”

Mazy led the string of clasped hands, Clayton now on Ruth's hip. The Celestials and children joining in, the women circled Adora and Tipton, Betha and Elizabeth. It occurred to Mazy that these women wept over the lost leaves of their lives, leaves that had dropped never to be recovered; not yet believing those leaves could nurture life.

“We've lost our bearings,” Mazy said. “We've been too busy pushing. My pushing as much as anyone's. We never took the time to give our loss its due.”

Sister Esther sniffed, and tears dampened her large nose. “We've acted selfish and quarrelsome. Shame on us.”

Mazy put her hand on the woman's shoulder. “No, Esther.” She spoke without scolding, with a gentleness Mazy knew she seldom used within herself and whose tenderness she suspected might be foreign to Sister Esther, too. “This is no place to find fault. Don't let blame live here, not between us and not inside ourselves. We might wish that we had done something differently, lament the mistakes, but then we have to forgive ourselves, accept what's happened, and move on.”

Suzanne's hands were cool inside Mazy's palms, but the woman didn't jerk away.

“I don't think of anyone here as cruel or shameful because the
wounds are so deep and we stopped to tend them, or because we needed others to help We are just women, after all, just human. Our being together can be a place where we can cry and remember and take care of each other.”

Adora dabbed at her eyes, moved into the wider circle. “I'm making such a fuss.”

“Thank goodness,” Betha said. “I've craved a good cry with someone who wouldn't tell me how to fix it.” A few of the women ventured a chuckle.

“We do not hold hands this way before,” Deborah said “It is nice thing. I will tell bees. They like to know family secrets.”

“So we are, now Family Thank you for that, Deborah. And, Adora,” Mazy said, “for helping us remember that we have so much: our lives, each other, and a warm place to be.”

Suzanne squeezed her hand. Mazy looked at each woman and each child around the circle and thought she recognized something in their faces. A look of profound loss and trauma faced, but of compassion and determination too. They were more than a group of surviving women; they were stronger people because they stood beside each other, all together and no longer alone.

16
flux

Betha stood not far from Ruth with red eyes, staring at the ground, Ruths arms around her sister-in-law. The boys placed an old picture frame, gilded and gold, and leaned it on a pile of rocks and greasewood branches off from the trail. Esther thought the photograph of the somber family a fitting memoir to the way they clustered now, the breeze blowing Betha's apron corners out from her dress, her children clustered at her knees.

“Someone'll come along and pick that up,” Ruth told them. “Its a good frame.” Ruth fidgeted with her whip.

“No matter,” Betha said. “I like Jed knowing we left a bit of ourselves here”

“Jed,
yes
, but others—someone might recognize you all,” Ruth said.

“Wouldn't that be a miracle, to meet up with old friends from home through the photograph? I should write on the back of it, where were headed.”

“No!” Ruth said. Betha stared at her. “Someone could use that later to take advantage of you,” Ruth offered an explanation, “a widow.

“I don't see—”

“Can I leave my wind sock?” Jessie held a mud-caked toy she'd raced with the wind on a stick. “So Papa can run wind through it up in the stars?”

Betha nodded, distracted, now not able to speak.

It bothered Ruth all day. It wasn't like her to be impulsive or disrespectful, and yet she had not hesitated to give Adoras mules away. It came to her that they would be the best gift, and she couldn't imagine the group not being so grateful to get the oxen back that anyone would object. Still, Elizabeth was right—her arbitrary decision robbed others of being generous, especially Adora and Tipton.

It had robbed her, too. She'd been so happy to be spared by the Sioux warrior, to have her fumbling prayer answered. People sang her praises, had been grateful to her and Mariah, and she felt that way herself: so powerful, so giving.

Then she gave away what wasn't hers, and now instead of carrying with her the memory of doing something wonderfiil and wise, she bent here over Koda's foot, digging out the small stones and caked mud, feeling empty and alone She'd been given a lovely moment in life, and she had robbed herself of it by doing something stupid. It was the story of her life.

“Do you want to keep these things?” Betha asked her, holding up the pair of Zane's pants she'd worn riding the day before. “Seems like something we could leave behind.”

Ruth stood and stared. “No. I'm going to wear them instead of this dress.”