With Endless Sight

by Allison Pittman

  But that morning, sitting with all of them in the warm little kitchen, I longed to join in the conversation. These women were telling stories—grand adventures in exotic places full of colorful characters. I longed to tell my own stories, to breathe some life back into my parents by telling of their love for each other or to ask if my brother and Del had journeyed through this place. I couldn’t, however, simply launch into speech after so many weeks of silence. I wanted some invitation, some indication that I was accepted here, not as a mere foundling but as a friend.

  “Girl? Girl?” Jewell’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Now I can’t just keep on callin’ you ‘girl.’ It’s time you had a proper name.”

  A hush fell at the table; Sadie gave Jewell a most hateful glare.

  “You’re a tiny little thing,” Jewell continued, unfazed by Sadie’s look. “I’m gonna call you Biddy.”

  “No, Jewell,” Sadie said, surprising me with the anger in her voice. “This one is not yours to name.”

  I snapped my head around to glare at Sadie. This was my home now, my refuge. There was no place for Belinda here—not for the little girl who knew God only as a character in Bible stories, who sat mutely through Sunday school classes ignorant of His power. I was alive because of Him. This new life deserved a new identity.

  “It’s all right,” I said, as surprised as they were to hear my voice. “I like that name.”

  23

  And so I became a part of the household. I learned that this was a place called Silver Peak, a little camp tucked away near a fledgling silver mine. It seemed almost cruel to think that through all those months trapped with Laurent I had been this close to warmth and women. In some way it reinforced the danger of the mountains, knowing that just a few peaks and valleys could keep this haven so well hidden.

  Even though I settled in comfortably, it was a while before the true nature of Jewell’s home dawned. At first I thought they were just women like me—older, yes, but abandoned by their families and brought here to make a life together under Jewell’s loving care. Indeed, for weeks nothing untoward or improper happened at all. All the while I had convalesced in Sadie’s room, and during my early forays downstairs, Jewell, Sadie, and Mae were the only people I saw. They made me feel cushioned, as if none of the evils and pain from the past could ever touch me.

  Little by little I told them my story. Just snippets at first—how my father had dreamed of coming out West. How beautiful and elegant my mother was. I made them smile with stories of my brother’s exploits. Jewell said Chester sounded like he needed a good whipping. Mae smiled coyly and said she would have different plans for him entirely, at which point Sadie elbowed her so hard she nearly fell out of her chair. But when I told them about what I’d seen that last night in the barn, when Chester held Phoebe so tenderly, assuring her of her beauty and worth, all of us sighed, swept away with his promise.

  I told them about Del too, though I kept the memory of his soft kiss to myself.

  Of course they had to know the dark parts of my story too. My brother’s disappearance. The murder of my parents. I tried to paint Laurent in some flattering light, befitting his redemption. How he clothed me, fed me, crafted rabbit-skin boots to keep my feet warm. I recounted the months of cold, dark hunger in Laurent’s tiny cabin. They wept when I spoke of Phoebe, and I did too, having finally come to a place of safety and warmth that would allow such emotion.

  But I couldn’t tell them everything. Not about the end, or what happened that last day.

  Until it was happening again. Not to me, but to someone in the house. It was late at night, and I was already asleep when the sound woke me. I didn’t hear any screams, but then I hadn’t screamed either, not after the first movement. Who could scream while your very life was being ripped away? Here, even with the sage green ruffle of my quilt pulled up to my nose, I could still feel him. Feel that awful weight. I closed my eyes and kicked off my covers. Then, both relieved and terrified to find myself alone, I grabbed up the quilt, wrapped it around myself, and ran downstairs.

  Sadie was sitting on the sofa in the parlor; Jewell sat with a hand of solitaire dealt out on the little card table. Both women jumped when I ran into the room, and I must have looked like the face of fear itself, because Sadie immediately held her arms open for me. “Come, come, little one. What is the matter?”

  I curled up beside her and laid my head on her breast. She wrapped her arms around me and drew me closer. Her breath held just a hint of whiskey, and after all her nights of nursing, the scent was now as familiar to me as my mother’s perfume.

  “There’s a man. Upstairs. With Mae. Oh, Sadie, he’s got Mae! You’ve got to help her.”

  “Hush, hush.” Sadie rocked me just a little. “He is just a man. And he is not hurting Mae. He is just … visiting her.”

  Jewell gave a little chortle, and I felt Sadie stiffen.

  “But it’s awful,” I said. “It’s terrible. He shouldn’t be allowed—You shouldn’t allow—”

  “You are safe here, you know,” she said. “Nobody will touch you. Nobody will hurt you ever again.”

  “Aw, don’t tell her that.” Jewell licked her finger and turned over a card. “There ain’t never a guarantee not to get hurt. Don’t matter what you do. Only thing I can tell her for sure is that if the monster that did that to her ever stepped where I can get a whiff of him, he’ll be lucky if he ever walks again, let alone—”

  “Jewell, that is enough. You are going to frighten her.”

  I peeked up from behind my quilt and caught Jewell’s deep-set, narrowed eyes looking at me like someone who’d just found the stash of Christmas candy. Suddenly I felt like a treasure, and as long as Sadie held me dear, I would have no reason to be frightened.

  “Was it that Laurent fellow?” Jewell asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Friend of his?”

  I nodded.

  “Would you know him if you seen him again?”

  How could I ever forget that face? I could see him now, twisted into unimaginable ugliness above me, disappearing as I closed my eyes, then disappearing as Laurent tore him away from me. Disappearing over that ledge, falling—silent—into the crevasse.

  All of these visions, all of these memories filled my mind as I nodded again.

  “Well then,” Jewell gathered her cards in one swoop, “don’t you worry. You ain’t goin’ nowhere till I know he ain’t around to harm you.”

  I smiled at Jewell and snuggled deeper into Sadie’s arms, determined to keep my secret for as long as it would keep me here.

  Jewell considered everyone a suspect. As spring gave way to summer and more men came to Silver Peak—and, ultimately, to Jewell’s—she brought every one of them to my attention and asked, “Is this one it?” Sometimes she was just that bold, and I would be in the clearing next to the house hanging out the wash and some poor fool would be dragged in front of me, his elbow gripped in Jewell’s ring-encrusted fist. After I shook my head and pronounced him innocent, he would slink away, tossing a suspicious look over his shoulder at me. Other times I might be in the kitchen and Jewell would find me, hold the door to the parlor open just an inch and direct me to the tall fellow in the black hat standing by the fireplace. Once I was in my room, tidying up, when her voice summoned me from the yard below where she, with as much subtlety as Jewell could muster, gestured to a handful of men standing around.

  “Tell her no,” I said to Sadie, who was helping me with my afternoon chore. “In fact, I don’t think he’ll ever come here.”

  I did keep a constant vigilance for Chester and Del, even though none of the women recognized them from my descriptions. On one or two occasions I managed to find the courage to ask the men relaxing in Jewell’s parlor if they had seen my brother, but based on the reaction, it seemed Jewell had drilled an absolute fear of me into them. One man held his hands up as if defending himself against me and backed into a wall; another turned and ran out of the room.

  By t
he end of June, I’d stopped asking. In July, I turned fifteen, but I kept my new age to myself for fear that being one year older would make me more suitable prey. Then came August, and it was more than year since I’d left my home in Belleville. That anniversary I did share with Sadie one afternoon as we sat on a blanket under the summer sun.

  “It is time to get you back home.” Sadie picked a petal off a pretty, pink wildflower and chewed it thoughtfully. “Away from here.”

  “Maybe I could just move into one of those.” I gestured toward the two small cabins being constructed in the yard behind Jewell’s larger, red-roofed house.

  “Absolutely not! Those are for—well, never mind what they are for. Just know that Jewell is looking for other girls to live in those cabins.”

  I lay back flat on the blanket, loving the feel of the sun on my face. I would tan, I would freckle, and I didn’t care one bit. The voices of the working men merged to a low, steady rumble. The faintest breeze carried the scent of newly cut lumber and fresh green growth. I wanted to open my eyes and stare straight into the sky, scan the endless blue heavens for a sign. This day marked, after all, a new year, and here I was reconnected with the sun. But to open my eyes, I’d need to lift my hand to shield them, and right now my arm was just too heavy.

  “So what do you think?” Sadie was saying. “About going home.”

  “I am home.” My words were slow and lazy, falling out of my mouth as I lolled my head to the side.

  “This is not a home, Biddy.”

  “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

  “Not by my choice.”

  I opened one eye to see her tying the flower’s stem in and out of a little knot.

  “You have a family, people waiting for you, who care about you.”

  “And just what should I do?” I rose up on my elbows and looked at her through squinted eyes. “Just show up back in Belleville all alone and say, ‘Hello, everyone! Looks like I’m the only one who survived! Now, who’s gonna be the lucky ones to take me in?’ ”

  “Those are your people. They would be more than happy to—”

  “No, they wouldn’t.” I sat up fully and drew my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “Not if they knew. Not if they knew everything I did.”

  “Oh, child.”

  She reached out for me, but I turned my shoulder to escape her embrace.

  “I stole from my father. I wasn’t there when he—Maybe I could have saved them.”

  “Surely they would understand. You cannot help what happened.”

  “You don’t know that!” I spoke so loud, one of the men turned to look at me before doffing his hat to Sadie and returning to his work.

  “I know that you cannot underestimate how much your family loves you. And how worried they must be about you.”

  “They won’t care.” I picked a flower and set upon ripping it apart. “They thought Daddy was a fool. They’ll just think he got what he deserved, and I’ll just be some charity case. For all I know, Chester’s already there, whooping it up, laughing at all of us.”

  “And worrying about you. Tell me, Biddy, have you ever sent any word home? Does your family even know about this tragedy?”

  I shook my head. “There hasn’t been time.”

  “Well, there is time now.”

  Sadie stood, and I felt myself draped in shadow. I looked up and saw her standing over me, tall and strong. Her head blocked out the sun, creating something like a halo with thin strands of her blond hair dancing within it. She reached down, and I took her hand, relying on her strength to pull me to my feet.

  “You are going back into the house, young lady, and you are going to write a letter. The next time the supply wagon comes, we will send it off.”

  “All right.” I fell into an easy step with her. “But I’m not going to tell them I’m going back. God brought me here, and I’m going to stay here until He decides to take me someplace else.”

  Sadie laughed. “And just how do you suppose He is going to do that? Just pick you up and drop you?”

  “Yes,” I tossed my denuded flower stem to the ground. “Just like He did when He brought me here.”

  Later that evening I sat on my bed with Jewell’s little lap desk and stared at a sheet of blank stationery. At the top I’d written the date, August 11, 1862, and nothing else. My hand gripped the pen and wafted it in circles, then tapped it on the corner of the desk, then made circles again before I finally took a deep breath and touched the tip to the paper.

  Dear Uncle Silas and Aunt Nadine,

  It is my sad duty to tell you that your lovely daughter, Phoebe, has gone to be with the Lord. She took ill in the harsh frontier winter and passed away quite peacefully after a bout of fever.

  Take comfort in knowing that her final words were of her love for you and that she left this earth eager to see you again when you all gather in the presence of God in heaven.

  Your loving niece,

  Belinda

  Of course, they would wonder why I and not Mother had written the letter. They would question why the letter contained no other news of our family. But I had lived with the loss—all of them gone with such bitter swiftness. I would give them the chance to mourn one life before losing another, the chance God hadn’t given me.

  I folded the letter and sealed it in an envelope, then printed the address in careful letters on the front, leaving them to wonder—perhaps forever—just where it had come from.

  24

  It didn’t take long—even with my limited knowledge—for me to realize that, brothel or not, Jewell’s house was not nearly as packed with sin as she would have liked. She frequently complained to Sadie about the state of their business affairs, bemoaning that the clientele here was far more interested in playing cards than anything else, forever tainting my memories of Chester’s late nights out at the poker tables.

  “What we need to do is pack up and move on,” Jewell would say.

  “I am not going anywhere,” Sadie would reply.

  “Then maybe we just need to get some new blood workin’ up there.” At this point, Jewell would send a glance my way, and I would feel my very blood freeze within me.

  “No, Jewell. Not her.”

  I’m not sure exactly when Jewell’s attitude toward me changed. One day I was the weak little girl found in the forest; the next, an interloper not earning her keep. I used to catch her looking at me, her eyes wistful and sad. She would reach a tentative hand toward me and touch my hair, my shoulder, as if reassured that I was alive and whole. Then, almost overnight, her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. When she touched my hair, she did so with an air of primping; when she touched my shoulder, she told me what a pretty girl I was, with such a nice, slender figure.

  “You know,” she said on more than one occasion, “some of them young men workin’ the mine ain’t much older’n you. An’ I know for a fact they think you’re awful pretty.”

  Last summer, the idea of even one young man having eyes for me might have sent me into a swoon. Now it made the bile rise to the top of my throat as my nose burned with the memory of stinking, rotten breath.

  Jewell never said such things if Sadie was nearby, so I worked whatever excuse I could to keep myself in Sadie’s presence. Failing that, I tried to ingratiate myself by doing little chores—fetching, carrying—anything to make myself indispensable. Except in the evenings. Once supper dishes were cleared away and the men started trickling into the parlor, I took to my room and shut the door.

  Until that crisp autumn day when Gloria arrived.

  By far, my least favorite chore was hanging the freshly washed laundry on the line. The thin rope was suspended high above my head, requiring that I step back and launch each garment over it—rarely achieving success the first time. The wet fabric slapped my face until I was lost in a flapping sea of lace and linen. That’s why I didn’t see her coming up the path. If I had, I would have run to the main house to find Jewell and announce the fruition of her greatest
dream. Instead, I was fighting a losing battle with one of Mae’s billowy petticoats when Jewell’s deep voice summoned me to the kitchen door. When I got there she was grinning like the child who had just snagged the last piece of Christmas pie.

  “Now you go on into the parlor an’ tell that woman in there to make herself at home.”

  “What woman?”

  She gave me a broad wink. “Oh, you’ll see.”

  I walked into the parlor and was stopped speechless. Perhaps it was because there were so few of us, being the only ones within miles, that the women at Jewell’s house tended toward extremes. Jewell was extremely fat, Sadie tremendously tall, Mae incredibly sweet. Now, here in the parlor, was perhaps the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Despite the layer of dust covering her skirt and skin, she looked as if she had stepped straight out of a Godey’s Lady’s Book. Her figure was proud and perfect, even if her hair was not, as rebellious curls threatened escape from what was once a flawless chignon. Her skin was pale—perhaps pallid with exhaustion from an arduous journey—but flawless. Her nose, exquisitely shaped and slightly upturned, sat atop a mouth that seemed poised to break into a smile, and the cornflower blue eyes made it clear that she might be the only one who knew the joke.

  All this I took in the minute I walked into the room. So struck was I that I could barely find my voice to ask, “Would you like to sit down, miss?”

  “Some water would be nice.” She plopped down on the sofa, obviously used to being obeyed.

  “Nothing to eat?” Closer inspection showed a hollowness to her cheeks, and I offered her everything in the house, including the bounty of a migrating goose one of the men had brought down earlier in the day.