No Eye Can See (54 page)

Suzanne gasped, her fingers to her throat. “This is my fault,” she said, her newfound focus blurred by the errors of her past. “I had to do things on my own, didn't let you all help me as I might have. We would have found out. We could have warned Ruth. Instead, for a man like…him, a blind woman alone was…an invitation to invade.”

“Don't be blaming yourself, now,” Elizabeth said.

“I just…I need to go away. To Sacramento, and take my children with me.”

They'd ridden into the city, easily locating the boardinghouse where Sister Esther stayed on J Street. The woman bent over tomato plants growing up along a picket fence, newly painted, the green against white and the woman's dark skirt a contrast fit for a painting to even Mazy's unpracticed eye. Seeing her gave Mazy's heart a lift. They shared a love of words and a living faith, both things Mazy had neglected of late. Esther turned at the sound of their call, her little black cap still tied tightly beneath her chin. The woman smiled, revealing that missing tooth.

“Mazy. A fine sight, that's certain,” Esther said as Mazy released her from an embrace. Esther brushed at her apron, clasped her hands before her in that way she had. A Mexican man led Seth's horse and Mazy's mule to the stable around in back. Esther lifted her long skirt with her gnarled fingers and guided them toward the porch.

“Come have cake and iced tea,” she said stepping straight-backed up on the steps. “Margaret makes the best there is. She's got fresh eggs daily and cows.” She turned, one hand on the porch post, her index finger pointed to Mazy now. “Milk costs two dollars a gallon in Sacramento, but she lets her guests have all they can drink for free.”

“Bet they pay dearly for the food,” Seth said. He removed his tall hat and held it in his hands, his blond hair matted by the heat against his head.

Esther nodded. “Yes, but they'd pay dearly at any hotel and still not have the satisfaction of milk foamed against their mustaches. Milk is essential. But I'll serve you tea.”

Esther brought a tray out, and they sat on chairs of pine stumps cut out with tall backs. Small cushions softened the seats, and Mazy wondered if Esther had made them. She gazed out at a street busy with wagons and freighters and women walking in newly dyed dresses. She took off her own hat, a bonnet tied with wide strings at the throat, and fanned herself with it. “I thought the city would be cooler, so close to the river,” she said.

“Tell us what you know about Naomi,” Seth asked.

Sister Esthers eyes pooled, her chin lifted. “So little. Only that she's gone back to her husband. Again. I don't know what to do. Marriage is a scared trust, not to be broken, but no woman deserves poorer treatment than stock.” She pulled a hanky from the sleeve of her dress, wiped at her eyes, then dabbed at her neck above the white collar.

Mazy reached across and patted the woman's hands. “My only prayer is that Naomi knows she always has a home with me,” Esther said. “And that she knows she has not been forgotten. Perhaps he will change. People do,” she said.

Mazy cast a quick glance at Seth, then said, “And the other contracts?”

“Are being repaid,” Esther said. “My night work at the Jenny Lind Theater permits me to pay a little extra, and my day work at the academy allows me a way to live. Mei-Ling is happy. I am well blessed, despite the losses. And you?”

“At long last, I'm here to face whatever I'll discover about Jeremy. And myself. Sometimes I think I've been blinder than Suzanne, waiting so long.”

“I'd hoped that one would come visit and bring those boys,” Esther said. “I held this secret wish after Zilah died, that Suzanne would find a refuge with me. The dreaming of an old woman.”

“Did you ask her? Say something to her?” Mazy asked Esther.

Esther shook her head. “I didn't want to intrude. And then, I didn't think I deserved such a gift, not after my poor showing with bringing the Celestials to safe harbor.”

“It's funny how we deprive ourselves of things we might enjoy,” Mazy said. She considered her own words as she stirred her tea. Maybe her avoidance of language and Scripture these months were just one more way she had of getting “busy” so that she had no time for the things that gave her nurture. Perhaps, like Esther, she believed she just didn't deserve them.

David's only hope was that someone might have seen them, a man and a woman and maybe another, he didn't know who. But they'd be resisting. None of the packers he met heading south held any hope for him. Instead, they warned him about riding out alone with the Pit Rivers restlessness. “I haven't much for them,” he said. “A little grub's all, and I doubt they'd kill me for that.” One packer had shaken his head, mumbled words about David being blind to the facts, then moved on down the trail.

David knew it was crazy to even think that the dog could follow their scent. Chance was probably just chasing a rabbit or squirrel. Still, he'd camped out beneath an oak, and in the morning the dog had acted as though he knew what he was being asked to do. David had no other plan, nothing else that looked like the next step.

But on the third day, Chance stopped, stood in the middle of the main trail, dozens of hoofprints in the dirt. David watched the dog whining and panting, stopping, looking up and back, scurrying back and forth across the wagon tracks, horse droppings, barefoot markings. David swallowed. He knew they'd lost the trail.

“You did better than I could've.” He sat with his hands crossed over the saddle horn, staring ahead at the twist of dirt winding through the timber, rocks, and streams beyond a few orange poppies huddled in the shade. Should he just keep on, believing he could make Oltipa appear before his eyes? He turned the horse and looked back in the direction they'd come. He got off and picked up the dog, leading the horse over to an oak. He leaned against the tree, scratching his back on the bark. “We're at the end of the line, Chance,” he said. “Only a fool would keep going on into Oregon Territory with no more evidence than a dog sniffing.” He set Chance down.

David eased himself down the tree then, hung onto the reins and let his horse graze. He'd have to live with the emptiness either way—that he
should have headed south first, had wasted time coming north. Or if he turned back and never found her, he'd live with the thought that he should have kept going, that she might have been just around the bend. No good answer, no sure thing waited at the other end. He guessed that was all of life, no sure thing.

“Your faith need not be large enough to finish,” his mother always said. “Only adequate to embark.” He guessed it was adequate back at the cabin. Just not now.

What to do next?

He closed his eyes. “Help-me, help-me, help-me,” he said.

Back south, he had Ben waiting. That was the surest thing. That was where his embarking should head now instead of on this wild chase into Oregon. Accept defeat. Head home. That decided, he fell asleep.

20

Mazy watched the buggy pull up in front of Margaret Franks boarding-house, saw Seth speak with the driver, adjusting his tall silk hat as he did. The men looked toward the house, and she knew they were speaking of her, probably saying something about waiting after women and then moving on to the weather, both looking up now, to a cloudless blue sky.

She tied the ribbon of her bonnet, spreading it out at her throat as she watched, then turned to the oval mirror. She'd always liked green, a color her mother said brought the chestnut out in her hair. At least her hair had shine to it now, the spring water of California restoring what the alkali had once taken out. She turned sideways, noted the burgundy sash that circled the back of the poke, stepped back, then stood full face. She wore the best dress she'd been able to have shipped up to Shasta. Before their appointment, Seth suggested they go shopping in Sacramento, but she was content with what the packers delivered. The whale bones of the busk held her stomach flat, and as she swirled, the skirt kept moving over the five petticoats, even after she stopped. She covered the green taffeta with a paisley shawl, straightening the fringe with her lace-gloved fingers.

Last evening, Seth had shined her shoes—he'd asked if he might— and she accepted. They were the last thing he handed her before he leaned just slightly and kissed her more than good-night.

“It isn't a good time, Seth,” she said when he stepped back. “If you press me…”

“I'm not,” he said, both hands up in protest. “That was just a kiss that says ‘I love you,’ in friendship now; more if you allow. I thought you might like to hear it before you face whatever you will tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It is nice to hear those words, especially with no intent to…bundle me.” He smiled, tipped his fingers in salute, clicked his heels, and backed away to the door. After she latched the knob, she wondered whether he was headed out to the gambling halls.

That was last evening; this was the new day. Mazy inhaled. Head to toe, she was ready. She picked up her reticule and the thick envelope she'd made sure was never far from her sight. This was it, the day she'd anticipated and put off for over a year. This was the day she would find out what kind of man she'd married those three years ago, what kind of man could woo her, win her, fool her parents and herself, then lift her from the familiar and set her feet on a westward course. She'd discover his story and, in it, hope to find herself.

She couldn't concentrate on the sights the driver pointed out to them, the buildings going up after Sacramento's own fire the year before. This history of the West could have been written by its embers. She noticed brick buildings, a few iron doors, and several buildings with metal roofs and a foot and a half of dirt on top for extra fire protection.
Just like at home,
she thought and shook her head.
Home.
So Shasta was becoming home. Seth reached over to pat her hand.

“I'm sorry,” she said, turning to him. “Did you say something?”

“No,” he said. He removed his hand. “I saw you shake your head. Thought you might be biting at your lip that way you do. Just offering comfort, is all I'm doing.”

“Oh,” she said and turned away, watched the brick buildings fade into wood-framed ones, then to houses with a rose climbing here and there and pies setting in windows. More than one yard had a goat bleating
from the back, chickens scratching in the gardens. The clop-clop of the horse along the hard earth formed a soothing rhythm.

Seth reached to hold her hand again and she allowed it. She wondered if she should have let him come along. Perhaps these requests provided him a level of intimacy and assumption she didn't intend. It was too late now, but she decided she'd have him remain in the waiting area when she went in to meet the solicitor and Jeremy's brother.

“Sometimes two people can hear better than one, when the words are hard to hear,” he said when she told him.

“I know. But I don't want the lawyer or Jeremy's brother to make any assumptions as men can do, about whether I make my own decisions. He might easily start talking to you, not to me.”

Seth nodded agreement. “Maybe he'll have more sympathy for you if I'm not there. Tell you more than he otherwise would, about the child and all.”