What Once We Loved (2 page)

Redwing blackbirds chirped in the tall grasses drooping with their weight. Sun warmed her face. Her eyes closed.

She felt a tug. Sitting straight, she jerked the willow and set the hook. “Gotcha,” she said. Skillfully she lifted the pole up and over the horse's head, changed hands, then back again as the trout twisted and tired in the water before her. He was a big one. When it felt right, she said, “Back, Jumper.” She barely touched the reins and squeezed her knees, easing the big animal back toward the riverbank. “Just a little more,” she said. Then with perfect timing, she slid the trout out of the water and onto the grassy bank. “We did it!” The horse lifted its head up and down as though to agree.

With one leg raised over his mane, Ruth slid off, still holding the pole. She stunned the fish with the hard end of her whip that usually hung coiled at her hip, then slipped the fish into the canvas bag with the others. She had over a dozen. This one alone weighed as much as a pork roast. A good mornings catch. Plenty for them all at the big affair Elizabeth had planned. She tightened the strap of the bag, then draped it over the horse's neck. “You're a good fishing partner,” she told Jumper, hugging him and inhaling his scent before gripping his mane in her hands and pulling herself up and astride. “The best I've ever had.”

She pressed her knees and set a fast pace back to Poverty Flat. Riding always invigorated, took away any agitation or worry. It was one of the few luxuries she permitted herself, a woman with responsibilities. Today, with so much yet undone, she needed that burst of power.

A flock of geese lifted from the Sacramento as they raced by. She ducked beneath the oaks and through the pines embracing the meadow known as Poverty Flat and home—but not for much longer. She squinted.

Matthew Schmidtke and the children were pushing something on a cart. Coopered barrels. They were all laughing. Surely they hadn't already gotten all their chores completed. She didn't see any blankets on the line, and no one stood near the butter churn. What had they been doing? She squeezed her knees, and Jumper sped forward.

“Hey,” Matthew said as she approached. “Brought breakfast, I see.”

“Supper,” she said. “Have you children finished what I asked you to do?”

“We're helping Matthew,” Ruth's nephew Jason told her. His cowlick stuck straight up in the back, and he absently pressed his fingers against it as he talked.

“And it's a surprise,” Jessie, her five-year-old daughter, said. “For you.

“Don't tell her,” Sarah warned, acting older than her eight years.

“I won't,” Jessie answered.

“I don't like surprises much,” Ruth said. She removed her floppy felt hat and wiped her forehead with her forearm. Her
eyes
caught Jessie's troubled look, and she softened. “I'm sure this one will be fine. We just have a lot to do.”

“You'll like this one.” Matthew smiled at her.

“We have to be out of here this week,” Ruth said, squaring her shoulders.

“Maybe some of us wish you weren't in such a hurry,” he said, his blue eyes never leaving hers.

“Wait'll you see it,” Ned said. Her younger nephew pulled at his stockings tucking them up to his knickers. He stood with his hands at his hips just the way Matthew did. Neither wore a hat this morning. “It's gonna be real chirk.”

“Let's let her tend to her business while we take care of those fish, boys. Then we can finish up here.” Matthew sniffed the air. “Is that you or the fish?” he teased. The children giggled. “Must be the fish. You'll like our surprise for sure, if it isn't.”

Ruth grunted, never quite sure how to take his teasing. She didn't have much practice with friendships with men. Mostly they were obstacles to her finding the independence and peace of mind she sought. Matthew approached the horse, patted Jumpers neck, then lifted the canvas bag offish. A breeze brushed at the strip of white hair that faded into black above Matthews eye. He winked, then headed toward the porch. “Lets get these cleaned, boys,” he said. “Then it's back to hard labor and Ruth's surprise.”

“Surprises leave me cold,” Ruth said as she reined the horse toward the barn.

“This onell warm you to your toes,” Matthew called after her. The children's laughter only added to her irritation.

Mazy Bacon drove the milk wagon from Poverty Flat into Shasta City. It was morning, and by midafternoon she'd be riding back again to milk her cows and tend to the calves she kept at Ruth's place. She felt tired. Probably from all the people out there right now. The Schmidtkes bustled about, all three of them. And of course, Ruth and her four until they headed north. Pack strings showed up and pitched tents before heading into Shasta. Even wagon trains found the wide flat inviting, giving people a place to catch their breath before dispersing to places north and south and farther west, seeking new lives, drifting like leaves to the fall winds.

Mazy had stayed at Ruth's when her cows were calving. But then Matthew Schmidtke and the wrangler Joe Pepin arrived, bringing the rest of Ruth's mares and yearlings and the Schmidtkes' Durham cows. And they brought Marvel, the Ayrshire bull that belonged to Mazy. Or did until she'd discovered that bovine was really owned by her dead husband's brother living in Sacramento. Another of her husband's betrayals uncovered. She'd have to get the bull to her brother-in-law before long.
Ruth had even asked that Mazy move the bull out now. Find a pen for him in town.

“He could injure the mares or colts,” Ruth said. “I know you wouldn't want that to happen.”

Marvel's long horns were worthy of respect. Mazy knew that firsthand. But Ruth would be gone in a day or two, and then the bull would have free range with Mazys cows and the Schmidtkes', too, if they wanted. After they were bred, she'd take the cow brute south. Until then the pen of split rails seemed sturdy enough to hold him. Mazy had said as much to Ruth. Ruth had set her jaw, then stalked off.

Mazy pulled up the milk cart, tied the mule to the hitching rail, then dropped off the tins of milk at Washington's Market in Shasta City. “We'll take all you can give us,” the proprietor told her. “Cheese be coming one of these days?”

“I'm just doing milk and butter for now,” Mazy said. She wiped her hands on her apron, lifted another tin.

“Shasta's a growing city,” Washington reminded her, taking the milk from her hands. “We need your busy cows to supplement the food shipped in from Oregon. How else we going to feed the hordes of miners spackling this country like flies on tent canvas?”

Mazy smiled. “I'm doing my best.”

Mazy finished her delivery, taking some tins to the St. Charles Hotel, another to a new boardinghouse, which had sprung up almost overnight. She accepted the final payment for the day, wrote down new orders, and promised to bring more butter tomorrow. She stuffed the coins into a bag kept beneath her seat and caught a scent of her own perspiration. The work was hard but invigorating. She had a strong back and firm hands. “Formed of sturdy stock” her husband had always said. She needed to be sturdy to survive as a widow in this West. Fragrant sturdy stock, she thought, as she unhitched the mule from the rail. A bath would feel good.

Back at her mother's small room above the bakery, Mazy dabbed at
her upper body with water from the flowered washbowl with a rough huck towel, her eyes glancing at the quilt pieces. Ruth had drawn the design Suzanne had described, and Mazy had promised to sew it for their blind friend. Each of the women had made a block to symbolize their experiences together coming across from the States to California last year. Mazy hadn t even decided what her own block would say, but she liked the idea of making a story out of the pieces, making it look like the pages of a book.

A dream she'd had the night before came to her mind. Usually her dreams were like hiccups, disrupting without rhythm. This one had actually been a story. It had a beginning, middle, and end. Even color. Her bath completed, she dried, then treated herself with a cup of spring water. She sat to stitch, remembering the dreams sequence.

She was in a schoolhouse, taking lessons. The teacher was her old pastor. He wore his long frock coat and on his feet the mud-stained boots of a farmer. Someone had a photo book they shared, and across the room, people carrying carpetbags on their arms bought tickets to take a stage somewhere. Mazy knew she belonged at that schoolhouse, was there to learn something. Yet she was suddenly striding out, kicking up the hem of her dress, the fringe of her shawl tickling her bare arms as she walked, her shoulders square and sure. She felt happy knowing where she was headed, the wind blowing her auburn hair. She met a wagon loaded with candle tins and wooden buckets and trunks like those the women had brought across the trail. A woman stood from the still-moving seat. She remembered her now; it was an acquaintance from back in Wisconsin, Kay Krall! Kay pulled the red-seated Studebaker wagon to a stop. She spoke to Mazy, “Are you in service?”

Mazy had answered with great joy, “Yes! I am!”

The woman had smiled and moved on, saying as she waved goodbye, “That's good. Because it's my job to make sure that everyone is in service.”

Again Mazy had hurried on, sure of what she sought as she made
her way through fields of buttercups and purple birdbeak blooms. At a log cabin she'd stopped, knowing this was where she was meant to be. She knocked on the door. When it opened, there stood a young man with a wife and child. “Do you need service?” Mazy'd asked. “Yes,” he'd told her and invited her in. They'd walked through the house to the back, and Mazy was so happy, so pleased to be doing just what she was meant to do in life. He opened the back door, and they stepped into the blazing sunlight. Mazy looked down. They were in a hog's pen. “Can you clean up this mess?” the young man had asked, and Mazy had smiled, nodded yes, and then woke up.

She was still shaking her head when her mother walked in. “What're you smiling about, Daughter?” Elizabeth Mueller asked. The older woman puffed a bit, from the stair climb, Mazy imagined.

“Oh, one of my crazy dreams,” Mazy said. “But this one told like a story.”

“Something to ponder,” her mother said. “What was it about?”

Mazy thought. “Travel, I guess. Securing tickets, going somewhere. Arriving. There were old photographs and some new ones in it too. And pigs.” She laughed. “And a woman from Wisconsin, Kay Krall.”

“Ah,” her mother said.

“Ah, what?”

“You're missing Ruth, I'll ponder… Dreaming of old friends left behind and someone going on a trip. Here, I brought you a biscuit. Feed your tummy, and maybe your heart wont feel so empty.”

“I don't feel empty,” Mazy said. She put the quilt piece down. “I'm happy for Ruth. Glad she's doing what she always wanted to do and feeling strong enough to do it. I'm doing what I want now too. I'll be expanding the dairy. I'm a…businesswoman.” She thought of her stepson recently met. “Maybe I'll even see if David Taylor has an interest in what was his father's idea.”

Elizabeth's voice quieted. “You can be happy for Ruth and still feel sad she's leaving you behind.”

“I'm looking forward to living there, closer to my cows,” Mazy said. “We're both getting something we said we wanted.”

“It don't hurt much to tell yourself the truth,” her mother said.

“Ouch,” Mazy said, realizing she'd poked herself with the needle. She sucked on the bleeding finger and said, “Now see what you've made me do?”

“Not made you do anything except notice you've started saying good-bye,” her mother said. “And that can bring a body some pain.”

Ruth watched the performance of the changing California sky as she shivered inside her wooden cubicle. Her husband's old pants, her shirt, and drawers hung over the rough-sawn boards. Dozens of details awaited her before she could head north to Oregon with the children, but something Elizabeth Mueller had told her clanged in her ears right then, as loudly as a cowbell. “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. If you want something different to happen, you've got to make the change, not wait for someone else. Some folks just never get that figured out.”

Ruth swallowed. What she had always done was take life seriously and assume it was best lived alone with work as its hub. What she anticipated daily was not the delight Elizabeth seemed to bathe in, but the delivery of bad news sure to come. Ruth'd decided to let today be different. Maybe she was worthy of richness. She'd had a good morning fishing, had made progress on gathering things up, and had given in to the children's lament that she close her eyes and let them lead her to these four walls that made up the shower, their surprise.