No Eye Can See (14 page)

“Actually ma'am,” Seth said, “there are a few such establishments in Shasta already. Chinese have moved in pretty quickly. Have their own little Chinatown, working the mines, running laundries and eateries and such; sending money back home.”

“Yes, well, they will do so without the benefit of Naomi's fine skills as she is going south. As is Mei-Ling. Will you take us, Mr. Forrester?”

“Yes ma'am. Said I would.

• “Travel east.
  

• Travel west.
  

• Going south.
  

• That's my best.”
  

Ruth stood closest to Suzanne, and she heard a grunt of disgust from her. She wasn't sure if it was Seth's poetry that bothered Ruth or just his being a man.

“I'm hoping you'd at least take a day or two in town, though. Let the animals get rested and fed. Us too. But I'll take you. I'm a man of my word.”

“Even if you do exaggerate it a bit,” Mazy said. She laughed.

“Let us set the day, then,” Esther said. “Two days to rest, get you all settled for winter, and then south. By mid-October.”

“Bees need warm time,” Mei-Ling said. “Air cool here.”

“Then we'll cover them with quilts,” Esther said.

“Take them to bed with us?” Sarah asked. Suzanne guessed the girl blushed when everyone laughed.

“Whatever we don't need for our own old bones,” Elizabeth said. “A quilt's a treasure, that's sure. And we want to get Mei-Ling where she's headed in good shape. It'd reflect bad on all of us if she don't.”

“Mei-Ling hope new husband as kind as this family,” the girl said, and Suzanne imagined that she bowed then, to honor everyone. She wondered what Naomi thought. The girl had not spoken a word.

Sacramento City

He heard the words
blind woman
and
beauty
and turned even before he heard
horses
and
whip
. Zane Randolph dropped the eagles as payment
on the table and stood, eyeing the crowd and the miner who spoke, huddled close to the stove. Smallish, the man had a beaked nose too large for his face. He chewed peanuts, exposing broken teeth and pelting the air with bits of peanut meat as he talked. His face seemed almost buried beneath an unkempt beard he pulled with his fingers toward his chest during the pauses filled with laughter. “Yessiree, she was a beauty. Gold hair piled up around the prettiest face. Didn't even notice she wore the dark glasses, first. Blind and beautiful. And smart, too. Kept a dog with her. She smiled even though she couldn't see my fine physique.” He caught his breath in the laughter. “Fine addition to our State. Wasn't none of ‘em bad looking. Oh, a few China girls I saw peeked out of the back. S'pect they're daughters of joy, welcome in most parts.”

“You didn't take advantage ofthat, Greasy? Them with no men riding with them?”

“Didn't say that. There was one. Big, tall fellow. Seemed happy enough.”

“With a gaggle of women to himself, why wouldn't he be?”

“First, I thought there was another,” the man named Greasy continued. He rubbed his palms on dirty pants and lowered his voice so Zane was forced to lean closer. “Yessiree, she wore men's pants and a black floppy hat, made her look like a skinny boy, ‘til I saw her eyes. Hazel and still as a hawk's. Wore a whip on her hip too. Don't guess any take her on easy. Riding a right smart horse too, and trailing a big gelding. Quite a sight, that many women at once.”

Zane heard his own breathing, his mouth slightly open. He didn't want to ask where the man Greasy had seen the blind woman or where he'd encountered a woman with hazel eyes sporting a whip and trailing a horse. And she wore a dark felt hat. Zane wondered if it was his.

“Too bad you had to come south,” someone said.

“Hitting the sale, then expanding my…interests,” Greasy told them. “Besides. From the look of ‘em, they was tired and beat enough
to be staying on right there near Shasta City. I could find ‘em when I head back. Might even take a bath first.”

“She finds out you're sweet on her, she'll make herself disappear.” The men roared again; one man slapped Greasy on the back.

“How hard could it be to find a blind woman traveling with one who dresses like a man?” Greasy said.

Shasta City

So here it was at last. The first separations. Most of the women had already set their tents and turned in for the night. Mazy tapped her pen on her writing book. She watched the sparks from the fire go up then flatten out with the smoke. No one but her had even tried to keep them all in one place, as though they all knew how it would end: Esther and her Asians heading south, the rest seeking their own homes. It did seem they were more cantankerous than usual, though, snapping and nagging at each other. She wondered if that was a phase people went through when they had to say good-bye, needing grumpiness to remember instead of the empty place in their hearts.

“Looks like you went to your saddle bag and found it empty,” Seth said. He squatted down beside her, his white silk neckerchief hanging away from his neck as he poked at the fire with a stick.

“Does it?” She couldn't decide whether to talk further with him, not sure if it would imply an intimacy she wasn't ready for. But, she decided, she could talk with him as a friend. “It's just that I still resist change, even when I can see it coming and know it has to be. I can't seem to think about what good might be on the other side.”

“Not everything around the bend is worrisome,” Seth said. “May I sit?”

“Oh. Sure. I'm sorry. I should have said.”

“You
shouldn't
have done anything,” Seth said.

“I suffer from sorry-itis, I guess. A condition.”

Seth laughed. “Old habits fade slow. Take my…anticipation of good things to come. Maybe not four bookstores yet, but I like believing good things'll happen up ahead.” He took the writing kit from his pocket, inserted the pen into the tip, then pulled the cork from the bottle. From the inside band of his hat, he unrolled a piece of paper and spread it across his knee. “ ‘Looking for Hope’ “ he said as he wrote. “By Seth Forrester and Mazy Bacon. We've got a title, now what?”

“Oh, you,” she said and tossed a piece of bark at him. The light from the campfire flickered against his face.

“Looking for the hope that Mazy will want Seth to return after taking the good Sister and her charges on to Sacramento. There's one hope I have.” He looked up at her and smiled that engaging smile, his eyes with a question. She looked away, brushed at mud on the hem of her skirt. Seth poked at the fire again, and the sparks shot up into the night sky. “It's too soon, isn't it?” he said then.

Mazy nodded. “I haven't really said good-bye yet. I haven't gotten the old field put away for the winter, so I can't begin to think about tilling new soil and replanting.” She pulled her shawl around her tighter, moved the log she sat on closer to the fire. A cow mooed, and beside the wagon where Suzanne prepared herself for bed, Pig slobbered in his sleep.

“It's a long time ‘til spring,” Seth said.

“I don't know if I can do it,” she said, almost talking to herself. “Though I suppose I will. What choice do I have? But just the thought of where I'll get hay to last the winter for the cows and stock, of where we'll put up. Should I save that money? Use it to build a cabin? Stay at a hotel—there is a hotel?” Seth hesitated, nodded. “Where to live, how to live. Taking care of mother, finding out more about Jeremy, his child…”

“A bleak place you've come home to, that's how you see it?”

“A bleak homecoming. Yes.” She shivered.

“Let me get a blanket,” Seth said, and he rose, took his bedroll and unfurled a quilt of colored stars against a dark background. He draped it around her shoulders, the fibers molding over her back. She nodded her thanks. He sat back down, beside her. “I'd like to shoot a little hope into that bleakness,” he said. “You're not alone in it, you know. Got friends.”

She patted his hand. “I didn't have that many friends back in Wisconsin. Jeremy and the farm were my whole life. Well, and mother, too. Now half of that is gone and there's a pit of uncertainty in the middle of my heart: that I'll make more mistakes, spend my life looking back and curse myself for my stupidity. I almost want to stay cooped up inside this wagon and do nothing until I feel a little more hopeful about the future.” She wondered if he could understand what she meant.

“Hope isn't everything coming out the way you want,” Seth said. “None of us is assured ofthat. Still, what's the choice? Pretending life's a sack of misery or that nothing has any meaning at all? Is that what you want?”

“No. There's meaning. I believe that. There's a pleasant place waiting, if the Psalm is right. I just don't know how to get there.”

“Some things are just worth doing, worth trying, even if fifty years from now we look back and say, ‘That didn't work out well, now, did it?’ But that'd be better than not doing anything at all. We're fashioned to risk, Mazy. The way I see it, God's a risk taker for sure, putting us here, hoping wed not forget how we arrived. I'd rather have a saddlebag of mistakes to look back at than sitting in an old Hitchcock rocker with an empty mind because nothing worthy'd been risked. Memories are certain. Can't see what's ahead no matter how you try.”

“But if you think a thing through well before you act, there ought to be no errors. If things fail, it must be because you didn't plan well.”

“That's a high standard you've given yourself.” He put his arm around her and pulled her to his side. “But it does make you responsible
for everything that is. Guess I dont think that's rightly so.” She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of a friend. His jacket felt smooth on her cheek. “Lots not in our control. Cant see ahead, Mazy.”

“Can't see behind you, neither,” a new voice interrupted, and Seth jumped, “Oh, didn't mean to startle you, Seth.” Elizabeth sat down on the other side of Mazy, who lifted her head and smiled as she felt Seth drop his arm and sit up a little straighter. “‘We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.’ I like to think that verse puts us all on equal footing with Suzanne.”

“It does promise that same hope, I guess,” Mazy said, “that we'll see through uncertainty if we keep our eyes looking high.”

Ruth placed the buckwheat husks inside the flannel bag and held it close to the morning fire. The heat sent up a distant scent mixed with memories of Ohio farmers entering the newspaper office, the smell of corn and turned earth on their pants. Did buckwheat grow like grain? No, Naomi said it was a bushy plant with white flowers. It bore heart-shaped seeds that gave up groats for toasting. Naomi said they saved the hulls when the grain was milled and that was what she stuffed her pillows with. “It is ancient way,” Naomi told her. “Old way, good way.”

When the bag felt warm enough, Ruth carried it to the cart where Jessie sat, surrounded by goose down pillows and covered with a dark quilt.

“Can you raise your leg, honey? I'll put this under. It felt good before, didn't it?”

“It stinks.”

“Jessie, please. Naomi took her own pillow apart to make this little one for you.”