No Eye Can See (32 page)

She sat up with a gasp, knocking the cane off the chair she had pulled beside the bed. She threw the covers back and, with her bare toes, patted around for the smooth walnut cane. Once found, she tapped it against the side of the bed as she shuffled her way to check on the boys. She breathed easier as her fingers felt Claytons chest rise and fall in sleep. She gently reached for Sason's little back. He always liked to sleep on his stomach. She heard the intake and release of breath. It must have just been her own breathing in the dream, that sucking sound, that woke her. Or maybe Pig's dreaming. She listened for the dog's slobbery sounds from the corner of the cabin. She often left him out now, with the nights not so cold.

She tap-tapped her way to the table, bumped it, found the teapot. She would give anything for a cup of hot tea then, but she didn't want to wake the boys as she fussed with the pot on the warming oven. Her hands shook.

She heard—no, sensed—something out of the ordinary, but she
couldn't place it. “I'm just an old scaredy cat, aren't I, Pig?” she said, just to hear the sound of her own voice.

Back in bed, she lay awake, letting her heart calm. A dream, full of anticipation followed by fear all wrapped up in the previous afternoon.

She'd lost Clayton. He'd hidden from her—on purpose—and try as she might, she could not get him to come out of his secret place, wherever it was. Then he'd unlatched the door and slipped outside.

She could hear him giggling. “Come to Mommy, Clayton.” She thumped with the cane, stumbled at the ironwork surrounding the grave of the former owner's wife. The metal felt cold and sharp with the little arrow designs marking the perimeter. Was Clayton dressed warm? Had he hurt himself? No, he giggled! She heard him scuffling near her. She grabbed for him but couldn't catch him. She was getting cold—he must be too. Sason was alone in the house. Why wasn't Clayton letting himself be caught? She headed for the house, counted, but she didn't reach it. She'd miscounted! She felt the cold air on her face, pulled her shawl around her, called again for the child, headed back to his giggle. She shivered, confused.
Focus. Think.
She sat down on the damp ground and wept. Only then had her son made his way to her, patting her back. “Mommy?” he said, and she grabbed at his thin little body and held him, making his shirt wet with tears of both relief and anger—at him and her own failure to keep him safe.

She carried him in on her hip, her other hand tapping with the cane. She sniffed the air for the smell of fire from her hearth. Yes, follow that! She prayed that she was walking in a straight line, and would find either the house or the fence and follow it. Then she'd bumped into a sugar pine, her nose bruised, she was sure, but she knew where she was then, and focused on the smell of the fire. Clayton's feet were cold, and she'd wrapped him in a quilt and held him close. Sason cried, needing her, and she wondered if she had what it took to raise one child let alone two.

Now she couldn't sleep for thinking of the bad dream, scared and exposed. Maybe she should ask Ruth to let Sarah come and stay with her. Sarah could tell her if the boys had slipped out or if Clayton had thrown cold mush under the table or stuffed his bowl still half full in the bed—which he'd done more than once. He was becoming a sneaky child, with no one to hold him accountable.

Sarah was kind and gentle with the boys and could help tend them—and give Suzanne straight answers. Suzanne would still make all the decisions.

She remembered expressing a similar thought out loud to Wesley near the Chinese New Year, about bringing someone in, no one specific. “Does that mean you're ready to surrender to the direction of another, my dear? I'm certain I know a candidate who would find that of interest.” He'd touched her chin with his hand, with firmness. “Otherwise why ever would you want others pawing through your things? Now that would be a violation, I should think.”

She didn't like the way he used her words back at her, or his presumption that she should surrender. She'd gone down the next day to Hong Kong, and when she picked up baked eggs, she also asked if there was a boy who might come to start the fires for her in the morning, maybe set soup on. Those were still her hardest tasks and the most worrisome. In February, Johnnie came. “Sent to serve lady,” he said, bowing low.

She told him to make a grate of sorts around the fire opening, so Sason could not crawl too close, and put a latch high on the door, so Clayton couldn't undo it. Though she often forgot to latch it after he left. He bought food and prepared it so she had meals for the children. He took the laundry and brought it back.

Wesley had spoken as though through clenched teeth when he arrived, and Johnnie was already there one morning, fixing the fire, preparing rice.

“Having them around is risky, my dear. They'll steal from you, servants
will.” Had he spoken in front of Johnnie, as though the boy couldn't hear? “They learn your habits, where you keep your money.”

“What do you suggest?” Suzanne asked.

“I could stop by each day and tend your fire. It would please me.”

“And when you have to be gone, with your investments, what then? Doesn't that take you two weeks or more, you said?”

“Do what you've always done. Make do. Practice your independence.”

“I am practicing my independence.”

She remembered that Wesley said nothing for a time, then, “Don't blame me when things come up missing.”

There ci been other pricklings of discomfort with Wesley. Little suggestions he'd made that came out threatening almost, as though if she did what she wished, she'd be unwise. She'd told him of her interest in photography and that she might set up a studio in the spring.

“My dear, you can't possibly have someone working
for
you. They'd rob you blind, the pun intended. Your best hope is to permit some loving man to treat you with the dignity and respect you so deserve. When you're ready, I know just who.”

She knew what he wanted. And when he held her face in his warm hands and kissed her, she did think that surrendering to his care might be what she should do. Her boys would have a home, a life. They'd all be safe. It was selfish of her not to just accept.

Something held her back.

Maybe it was his reluctance to accept her invitation to meet Mazy or his always being unavailable on Sunday when she dressed the boys for church.

“It's probably my independent streak,” she said out loud to the darkness. “Stubborn. If I squelch that, I'll wish I were dead. Just like back on the trail.”

She heard scratching against the plank floor. She felt a gentle movement of cool air and assumed the dog approached, awakened by her
talking. She reached her hand out into the darkness, moved it back and forth. She touched nothing. For a moment, she thought she heard the door creak, cool air again. She gripped the cane Seth had given her, swallowed. It was just the dream making her edgy, just the wind pushing through the cracks in her wall.

13

“I ve been writing letters to the editor,” Mazy told Ruth. “But he doesn't print them. I guess they dont want people to know that some of us think this Indian policy is appalling. You used to work for a newspaper, didn't you? Any suggestions for getting myself heard?”

Ruth shook her head. The two made their way through the spring-fed meadow, stubby grasses now spearing the March air. They carried buckets of grain out to Ruths horses while Mazy checked her cows. “I never understood the politics,” Ruth said. “It had to do with advertising. If you took out ads, they paid attention to your point of view.”

“Maybe I'll do that, then,” Mazy said. “Take out an ad. For the orphans. Then I want to find an old, abandoned shed, so they can get in out of the weather. Find real homes for them instead of people just taking their free labor.” She pulled at a strand of oat grass and twirled it in her fingers. “They huddle in the back corners of buildings, sleeping next to garbage. It's dreadful.”

“What about the elders?”

“They help as they can.”

“No, I mean using the building. For an orphanage.”

Mazy looked at her, surprise on her face. “That's a great idea. And maybe we could raise money to hire people to care for them. In Wisconsin we fixed pretty baskets with food and sold them. All it cost a woman was her time and a little bread.”

“And spending an hour with someone you might dislike,” Ruth said.

“Maybe some of the women who work with Lura could help,” Mazy said. “Well, they dont actually work with her. They need help too. I mean—”

“I know who you mean,” Ruth said. Sometimes Mazy's charity-talk could get on her nerves. She shook the grain, held the bucket up so the horses could see it. “They might not be attracted to the drop in pay, though, even if the working conditions were better. That hat Esty wore visiting last week must have cost a fortune, all feathery and wide.”

“She made that hat,” Mazy said. “Needed seven pins to hold it, she said. Esty has other talents. She just doesn't use them.”

“You write with passion. Pen an ad about that—the orphans.”

“I should.” The ground felt damp and soft as they walked, and the earth smelled of spring. “Mother says I keep busy so I wont have to feel the old hurt. She says my ‘causes’ get in the way of true service.”

“What do you think?” Ruth asked.

Mazy shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. My mother has lots of advice. I'd forgotten how much. Not that I'm complaining, you understand.”

“You could move out,” Ruth said.

“I could.” They stood watching as the horses made their way from across the creek running full with spring runoff. “Have you heard from Seth? I'm sure he's back, but I haven't seen a thread of him.”

“Suzanne has, but she didn't say what he was up to.”

“The pickings in the Sacramento gambling houses must have been pretty good to keep him south so long.” Mazy snorted. “He's probably out at the amphitheater at the bull and bear fights.”

“Thought you were wanting a little distance from him,” Ruth said.

“He needs to make some changes before anything could really go on between us. I was just curious, is all. Mother says there's no sense trying to change a man. I've just got to accept him as he is. She thinks I'm looking for perfection. But my everyday life looks pretty boring to a
man like Seth. Looking after orphans, milking cows, and planning gardens are tame things to do. I dont see him finding satisfaction in those kinds of things. I'm glad he looks in on Suzanne.”

Ruth turned, wondering if Mazy was really that generous—or that unaware of her own longings. Ruth guessed Mazy really meant it. “She's being so independent,” Ruth said.

Mazy laughed. “That's funny coming from you.”

“All of us like to walk our own way,” Ruth said. “I've gotten into trouble being strong-willed, even back in the States, but I wonder if the others were independent before. Tipton didn't seem the type, but she's come around.” They walked in silence for a time. “Maybe Seth got an inkling of
my
plan, and he's staying away from all of us
but
Suzanne.” Ruth laughed uncomfortably.

“Your plan?”

“To have Jason and Ned spend more time with him. And to get Sarah and Jessie into good homes. With good people. Competition for your orphans, Mazy.” She laughed again but without humor. Koda and Jumper made their way running and bucking toward them. “I thought Jason could be a Seth helper. And that maybe Sarah could stay with Suzanne. Does your mother need help at the bakery? Ned would be good.”

“Why deprive yourself of their company and of being that important person in their lives?”

A gust of wind came up, and Ruth turned her head against it, her long braid catching at her neck. “Wish those kids would tell me what they did with my hat,” she said.

“That black felt one you like?”

“I don't really like it. It just fits good and it keeps the sun and rain out. And it isn't confining like bonnet strings. When I asked the children about it, Jessie just sassed, ‘Your favorite? We'd never touch that.’ The little scamp. I told her I was glad to see her learning about respect for other people's things, but none of them claimed to have touched it. I don't believe them one whit.”

The horses munched on grain, and Ruth led them back toward the
corrals, skirting the edge of the meadow. Mazy's cows grazed in the brush of standing grass, the last skiffs of snow piling in dips of land while the Wilson mules dotted the landscape in the distance.

“The oat hay here is abundant,” Mazy said. “I've heard no one planted wheat. They were all looking for gold. We were fortunate.

“Horses had good pasture. I couldn't have picked a better place to winter, if I'd tried.”

“You made a good choice,” Mazy said.

“The house is small, though. You'll understand tonight when we bed down. And the privy needed lots of work. Cobwebs everywhere, and the stench. We threw some ashes down before Jessie would even go close. That child…I thought about talking Lura into another occupation, see if she'd be willing to take the children on if I provided the house. There'll be a school before long. They could all attend if they lived in town.”