No Eye Can See (39 page)

“Hey, Ben, look at him.” David called the boy Ben, his fathers and his own middle name, but Oltipa used a name she said meant boy—
Wita-ek
—telling David that when he was older she would give him another name that was only his. “Well, my tongue doesn't wrap around that word too well, so mind if I call him something easy?” David had told her that cold February day of the child's birth.

“Call him what you wish,” she'd told him.
“Wita-ek
lives because you care for me.” David's stomach ached with the memory ofthat time, his worry and wonder at the arrival of this child. His eyes had gotten wet as a girl's at a wedding with the sight of Ben arriving on this earth, fully ready with his thick black hair, alert brown eyes, and all the other expected parts. Oltipa had told him how to tie the cord and to put the
baby on her stomach. She did all the work, but he was the one who danced the jig. A click of his boots as he jumped in the air—after the baby safely arrived, after the baby turned to his mother's breast and nestled there as though he'd always known just what was expected. Later, when Oltipa slept, the baby stayed watching him. He'd talked to the boy, holding his gaze, and he knew then he'd done a good thing those months back. Any risk would have been worth this. Who cared what people thought of him? What some man like Zane Randolph had done to get him fired? This was what mattered, the tending of another. He'd meant it for harm, that Randolph, but God had turned it to good.

Today Ben's smile formed in full, round cheeks surrounded by a head of hair as thick and black as the dog's. Oltipa looked…happy. David had wondered if he should buy her white women's clothes, or any dress for that matter. But she accepted the calico and a small mare, a pony almost, to keep her company when the dog ran off. He wasn't sure just why he wanted to give her things—he just knew he thought of her often on the stage run for Baxter and Monroe, his new employer. He thought of her most of the time.

“Where do you suppose he's been?” David said, petting the dog. “He looks fed. Lots of stickers and burrs on him though. He's been around some streams.” He turned the paws over and saw the scars on one leg, the tended healing that must have allowed it. “You came back just in time. Keep Oltipa and Ben company, while I head out. Maybe I should bring you into Shasta,” David said to Oltipa.

“This good place,” she told him.

“Yeah…just with the fever against Indians growing instead of getting better, I worry about you being way out here, other cabins so far away.”

David lifted the boy onto his shoulders, the dog scratching at his legs. “Way the
Courier
tells, it doesn't look good for your people. Talking removal to reservations, but they're acting like they don't want any of you left to move. Worries me, someone coming and just taking you when I'm not here.”

She nodded once in that way she had, took the boy and set him on the floor with the dog now licking his face. She turned and finished putting food into a sack, and David realized again how much he liked knowing her, what a gift she and the boy had given him by allowing his help. With the horse, she could leave anytime she chose, but she hadn't. He didn't think she'd ever ridden the eight miles or so down from this claim in Mad Mule Canyon into Shasta. Maybe she knew it wasn't safe out there for her. She was safe at home.

Home. He wondered how his father had ever left his mother in Oregon and come south, thought to make a
home for
her but without her. He didn't think he could do that.

He lifted Ben to her, felt Oltipa's hands brush his as he did. Her eyes met his, and he felt filled to the brim, warm to his fingertips, knowing someone waited for him at the end of a run, even if it was a woman whom he'd never even kissed and a fat baby who wasn't even his.

He kissed Ben on the head and held him out to his mother. He planned to pick up his saddle pack. But Oltipa changed that. She held the boy between them, then shifted him to her hip. She moved herself closer to him, nothing but her calico dress and his plaid shirt separating them. She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him. “Come back, David Taylor,” she said.

“Well, sure, I'll do that,” he told her, his face feeling hotter than it ought.

She smiled at him then, and in that instant David knew why he bought her presents, why she always filled his mind.

While Wood and Tomlinson won a six-hundred-dollar bet by being the first to rebuild their burned-up store—Tipton planned her wedding. Two weeks it took those men to put up two stories of bricks, roof it, build, then stock the shelves. The rest of the burned district wasn't far
behind, a clear message to all in California that with money as the motivation, anything could be accomplished.

Tipton developed a headache the day of the fire that hadn't gone away. Elizabeth suggested pepper on a slice of potato wrapped around her forehead. It didn't do a thing. That morning, she found Seth's stash of peach brandy and sipped some, just to settle her nerves. Medicinal.

It was all happening so fast, so many people around all the time, so much planning and changing and leaving, all pushing forward without really much of her needed at all. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, felt steadier. It certainly wasn't something she needed, Seth's brandy. But it did help, with the wedding just hours away. She slipped the flask back into his pack, then walked a short distance from where the men had been sleeping under the line of trees. The garden was over that way, at the lip of the meadow, just beyond Ruth's house. Pig chased at birds near the creek. They'd all rendezvoused at Ruth's. That was what Nehemiah called it, as though they were all beaver trappers coming together for a celebration. She wondered if he realized those events were centered around trapping more than celebration. She looked at her nails. She'd been chewing them, and she pinched her fingers into her palms, hoping no one would notice. She bent as though to check on the garden's growth. Mazy had latched onto one of the first pack loads to arrive after the fire. Sure enough, there'd been seeds and starts aplenty, and she'd planted them the same day. No sign of activity in those rows yet, but there would be. She wondered if there'd be a garden plot on their land, the land Nehemiah said they'd go to. She'd never lived outside a town— except for the time on the trail. She wasn't sure where she fit in. Wasn't sure she wanted to. “Think on the good things,” Tyrellie always said. She was helping her mother; this marriage would surely help her mother.

“You're looking like a waiting bride,” Lura told her, meeting up with Tipton beside the house. Lura walked with her arm at Tipton's waist. They moved slowly back toward where Ruth bent, helping Elizabeth put food on the planks of lumber set on sawhorses that made up the outside
table. “Wont be long and my Mariah'll be putting on that dress of marriage.” Lura sighed. “Got any advice for her, something I should tell her? What to look for in a western man? You re the first of our little trail to take a western husband.”

“Mei-Ling and Naomi were first,” Tipton reminded her. “Though Esther said it took extra time to locate Naomi's husband. I guess I liked Nehemiah's hands best,” Tipton said. Everyone laughed.

“We are attracted to strange things,” Lura said. “Now me, I like a man with a sense of humor. My Antone, he could make me laugh. He didn't do it much, mind you, after we married, but it was his laugh I noticed first.”

“Marriage isn't a laughing matter,” Ruth said. She set a platter of biscuits near the edge to keep the breeze from lifting the tablecloth. Mariah brought out pitchers of sun tea.

Elizabeth said, “It can be.”

“And I like his beard,” Tipton added.

Lura nodded, chewed on a smokeless pipe.

Tipton knew she spoke of meaningless things, as though those were all her mind could hold. Maybe it was having nearly everyone right there all the time, all mushed into Ruth's house. Maybe it was knowing that this was the last day of her life as a…girl, as a woman not dependent on a father or brother—not dependent on herself. A sudden tightness seized her chest.

She had hated the work of the laundry, but now what she'd done there took on bigger proportions. She'd taken care of herself. It made her want to cry, the changes. Everything made her want to cry. The smell of the pines, the sight of the calves, the scorched quilt pieces Elizabeth kept piled in the corner. No one understood it, least of all her mother. They all just looked at her with big cow
eyes,
as though this was what happened to a woman on her wedding day, the bride got all addled and strange. She had to button up, to pull herself together, to be firm about this decision. It was done. It was made. She had made it. She ran
her tongue over her lips, remembered the strength she could draw from the taste of the peach brandy.

“Tyrellie had wide hands too,” she said. Her lower lip quivered.

“A craftsman's hands,” Elizabeth said, patting her shoulder. “A good thing to remember.”

“Not necessarily a good predictor of a husband,” Adora said. “And you better be thinking of your new fiancé stead of your old one.”

“It was a year ago last week he died. He could make things—and made things happen,” Tip ton said.

“A year passed,” Mazy said. “So long ago and yet it feels like yesterday.”

“Don't go getting morbid, Mazy. Can't think about back then. Nehemiah'll make things happen. He did here in Shasta,” Adora said.

“Don't you miss Papa?” Tipton asked.

Adora looked away. “ ‘Course I do. Too many years together not to. But life moves on. You need to too.” She fussed at the tucks on Tip ton's dress, gave her daughter a peck on her cheek. “It'll be all right.”

Tipton nodded, straightened, and took a deep breath. “I have a secret to share,” she said.

“Won't be much of a secret if you tell all of us,” Ruth said.

“Nehemiah won't mind. He's going to run for senator in a year or so. First from the district to the state legislature but then eventually, from California, to the United States of America. That's what he told me. He said he'll need a wife to stand beside him.”

“Should be a lawyer or a judge first.” Lura said. “Or a sheriff. That's the election to win. Sheriffs appoint the jurors.” She jabbed the air with her pipe. “That's why lawyers do so well. They get to know the sheriff, stack the jury, and they always win their cases.”

“You'll have to share him with a lot of people if he becomes a senator,” Ruth told her. “Are you ready to stay at home alone while your husband travels and mingles?”

Tiptons voice quivered as she continued, “I'll go with him.” She
clasped her hands so the heavy ring she wore glittered in the afternoon light. “I know how to deal with strong feelings. I've grown quite a bit at that.”

“With your mother beside you, there'll be lots to do when Nehemiah isn't about, won't there, dear?” Adora said. “A mother just never loses her influence.”

Reverend Hill and Nehemiah arrived along with a copy of the
Shasta Courier
carrying news that Main Street was now widened to one hundred ten feet. “Paper must be operating out of a tent to get an issue out so fast. Look, Ruth,” Mazy said. “The editors used a lithograph. Do you ever miss doing that work?”

Ruth shrugged. “Sometimes. It was my first love. Well, after horses.”

“Oh,” Mariah said. “We forgot. A man came by, Ruth. That day you left me and Jessie here. The day of the fire. He was looking for horses. And he came right inside the house. Jessie pointed your pistol at him ‘til we knew he was safe.”

“You promised not to tell.”

“You shouldn't be handling my pistol,” Ruth said.

“I didn't like him,” Jessie said. “Even if he was your friend, Aunt Suzanne.”

“My friend? Wesley? How odd.”

“He said he'd come back when your other horses got here.” Mariah bit at the edge of her finger. “It was scary, him just walking in.”

“It's the bride who's supposed to be shaky,” Adora said. “You getting sick, Ruth?”

“If I ever leave you alone, any of you again, you bar the door from the inside, you hear? Didn't I tell you that? Didn't I? I'm just no good at this, I'm just not!” She walked backward, then turned and ran to the barn.