No Eye Can See (35 page)

She'd written about that in her ad, but the
Courier
editor Sam Dosh had toned it down. She guessed she'd crossed some boundary of “proper-ness.” Well, so be it. A woman was allowed that kind of fence crossing, here in California.

Suzanne could be pushed into needing him. Zane could create a crisis, a little chaos that would make her come to him and ask for his assistance. Something about Clayton, perhaps. He might come up missing, and Suzanne would ask for Zane's help. Or perhaps the baby could be injured, not badly, but enough for her to see how damaging it might have been if he hadn't been there to intervene. He'd insist she move into a home large enough for him and her children so he could keep her safe, manage her day, provide daily what she needed.

And Ruth would come to visit.

Yes, he must create a crisis, be there to pull her from it. He'd think of something. It was like a new trap line being readied.

Mazy and Ruth bent to their tasks, cleaning the stalls in the barn. The milk cows, curious, found them in the old building, the June light coming through the roof slats to catch the confetti of dust. Both of Mazy's cows had had calves. One heifer and a sturdy bull calf, both with reddish spots and deep, brown
eyes.
On spindly legs they'd stood, their mothers licking them to life.

Mazy'd stayed on at Ruth's after the March arrivals, waiting three days before beginning to milk the cows, all of them then celebrating with a drink of “white gold.” That was what Seth called it when Mazy lifted the tin of milk cooling in a nearby stream. Foam fuzzed at their lips. They talked of fresh, sweet-tasting butter. But something in Seth's eyes said he'd prefer another subject.

“Now that you have your herd going,” he'd said to her, “I'll never get you to myself.”

“You have plenty to occupy your time,” Mazy said. “Always have, as far as I can see. Didn't even hear from you since December ‘til now.”

“Giving you room in this house of cards you're building. Poor use of words,” he said and grinned. “What would it take?” he asked her, taking the tin from her hand, wiping the foam from her lip with his finger. He let his hand linger, wiping at her lower lip when she knew it held no drops of milk.

His touch had startled her, warmed her more than she cared to admit. “To what?”

“Allow me to officially come courting.”

She bent to place the larger milk container back in the stream, put the cover on the tin she was taking back to Ruth's house. “We're so different, Seth. You like…excitement. I like…calm. You like fixing things. I like to keep them from being broken.”

“There's joy in taking a little risk,” he reminded her. “Look at Suzanne. She's lit up like a new candle, being on her own. Who would have thought in her blindness she'd be the one to see that?”

“Last time I was there, I saw a house riddled with danger,” Mazy said. “She needs routine more than anyone, and she's got three kids running around, four with the Chinese boy, so nothing is ever back in the same place. I'm not sure what Ruth was thinking of, sending Sarah off to Suzanne. She isn't sorting the dirty clothes from the clean any better than Suzanne did. Johnnie must be doing all the washing and cooking, but it still isn't safe.”

“Tipton does some of the laundry. Suzanne told me.”

“Well, then you've been there, seen it. Food scattered all over the floor like a fete for roaches. I worry about her, I do. Her independence just may cost her more than she wants to pay.”

Seth smiled. “Led you right into a change of subjects, didn't I? I'm not very good at this.” He stepped in front of her. “Mazy. Let me be a part of what opens up your life. Give us a serious chance. There's something special between us, I know that.” He pulled her to him.

“Oh, Seth, I—”

She still held the milk tin between them, but she let herself sink into the strength of him, felt herself melting like warm butter, her heart like the thumping of a fast churn.

“Maybe,” she whispered into the leather of his vest. His finger touched her lip as she stepped back. “What'll it look like, your courting me? Different than what you've been doing?”

“We'll talk of us. Of what we hope for with each other, not just about the cows.” With his thumbs, he pushed wispy strands beneath her kerchief.

“So that means I can talk about my hope you'll find a more…respectable occupation?”

Seth smiled “Not exactly the hope I was hoping for.”

He bent as though to kiss her, but she raised her hand to halt him before he crossed a boundary she wasn't sure she wanted crossed.

14

Zane smelled smoke through the windows open to the June night. He heard the rip and crackle of the flames he couldn't place at first. Then someone in the big room he shared shouted, “Fire! Next door!” Despite the confusion, Zane still grabbed for his telescoping glass.

He slid it into his saddlebags pouched with gold dust as the first sound of the fire alarm clanged the town awake. He took the rickety back steps two at a time, pushing off smaller men from the St. Charles making their way bootless to the water wagons. The whole street blazed. Zane headed for the livery where hay stored in the back already burned. Horses reared, screamed, eyes wild with fright. He grabbed a rope, and in the guise of helping pull horses out of the building, yanked at the nearest bay, led him out, then tied the gelding to an oak. Raced back in for a saddle.

He could hear shouts and cries, a fire wagon clanging. The whole town flamed. The St. Charles Hotel, Washington's Mercantile, the bookstores, the silver shop, Kossuth's. From roof to roof the fire moved like squirrels, carrying the flame to the residential area. It was light as day, black smoke rising high into a dark sky. He yanked the bridle onto his horse, threw the saddle, tightened the cinch. He swung up, then kicked the animal. Chaos, that was what he called this. A fortune could be made in chaos, if a man kept his head. He pulled up the horse. Yes, if a man kept his head! This was it, what he'd been waiting for!

Suzanne woke with a start at the sounds. Pig, scratching? One of the children up early? “Sarah? Is that you?”

The girl moaned, still inside sleep. It wasn't the boys. She heard their sleeping noises. The branches of the huge pines outside, brushing against the shake roof, that was what it was. She calmed herself. She'd ask Johnnie to chop off the limbs. Surely he was large enough to do that. She might ask Wesley. No, he'd think she was relenting, giving in to his constant conversation about her need for him. Bryce had done many things for her, but he'd never made her feel as though she couldn't do them herself. Something about what he did for her felt temporary, as though in time she'd learn the new routines and eventually take over again. But Wesley's tending cloyed, like the heavy scent of flowers at a funeral.

She'd ask the boy. Or maybe Seth. His assistance didn't come with hidden obligations either. He was a friend. Perhaps she'd get Seth to sweep the needles from the roof, at least. Squirrels, was that what the sound was? The little things racing from branch to roof and back. Did Shasta have squirrels? No one had ever said. Raccoons. Maybe that. She should get up and serenade them with her troubadours harp, sing a tune. That would drive them away.

She heard a sound like someone crunching nut meats.
Squirreh. It must be.
She smiled, felt herself snatch at a moment more of sleep.

Mazy and Seth had sparred weekly, for a time. They'd argued about where Mazy might live and about the wisdom of Seth's new plan to invest in a lumber mill or build a warehouse near the river. “Still speculative,” Mazy said.

“You think only dairying is stable,” Seth answered. He thought she
put too much time and energy into her “feeding and reforming” activities, and she thought he didn't care enough for human causes. Now he talked of going out to meet the first wagon trains in a month or two, taking Jason with him. “Maybe we both need time to think,” he told her. His visits had been fewer since then.

In the June warmth, the cows pushed at Mazy with their noses, tipping their big horns so Mazy could scratch at their heads. She patted Mavis, the sun warming the heifers fat side. The smell of cows and earth punched the air while red-winged blackbirds dipped then disappeared into grasses close to the river. The last of the orange poppies faded on the side hills.

“I ve no grain for you,” Mazy said. “Soon as I want to touch your babies, you turn on me.” She wore gloves with no fingers that circled the fork handle. “At least the winter here was nothing like Wisconsin,” Mazy told Ruth. “The cows handled the cold well.”

“Cold? Are you cold?”

“No. I swear, Ruth, sometimes I think you can't hear. I'm always repeating half of what I say. I was remembering the winter and thinking that the snow is less wet here, not as cold.” She pushed Mavis out of the way, went back to her shoveling. “Go,” she said when Mavis stepped closer. She watched the cow amble toward its calf, barely visible in the leggy grass.

In the distance, Mazy watched Ruth's horses, their heads down as they ripped at grass. She heard the boys laugh near the swing they'd hung in a tree and saw a stray cat make its way across the muddy paddock, stepping close to the new calf's nose. Not intimidated by the calf's larger size, the cat stood its ground when Bumper startled backward. Mazy smiled. She liked this place. Liked it a lot.