What Once We Loved

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  No wind rattled the shutters. The storms that had shut down all the coast's mining activities leaving the miners in town, spending freely in Crescent City, had ceased for the night. But she could still hear the drums. She pictured the faces of the angry men she'd seen in town.

  The paper had called the men “exterminators.” They would rid the country of Indians. “There've been some uprisings of late, but mostly Indians defending themselves,” Nehemiah had told her when he came back. “That fellow named Tipsey keeps his people riled up and yet in hand. Just get through the winter now and we'll be all right, I think. They're just celebrating. No reason for the exterminators to interfere.”

  She picked up the pistol he'd given her for when he was away. She'd expected the stock to feel like a snake, be cold and slimy, but the wood felt warm in her hands, firm. And when she'd later commented about it, Nehemiah said, “Snakes are warm-blooded, too. They're quite fascinating. They molt, you know. Give up their entire skin every year. Most vulnerable then, to predators, though they have few. I have a book on them here somewhere, if you'd like to read more. Can never know too much.” Always teaching. That was their marriage: Him always teaching, her a student who didn't like paying attention.

  11

  Oltipa Taylor laid her hand on her husbands damp head. She'd just washed his face with a brew of laurel leaves, hoping it would soothe away the headache he complained of. David s head nestled into her lap as she sat. Oltipa drifted the backs of her fingers across his forehead like a dragonfly skirting the water. She loved this David Taylor. It was not the love she'd shared with the father of her son. That love had been fiery, made full following the union of their Wintu families. But this love had been plucked from the strands of a broken dream, formed anew through one stranger's helping of another. This love had been sewn into the fabric of a friendship until finally, now, it was a filling-up love of a husband to a wife.

  Still, she could not seem to comfort him after his time with the Randolph man. She grimaced with even the thought of that one. She shook her head. David sighed. “You feel better now, na?” she asked.

  “A little,” he said. He opened his eyes to stare at her. “Doesn't pound quite so much.”

  “You think of the Randolph man?”

  He nodded. “And…the restlessness of people like the exterminators, people like that.” He pinched his eyes closed. “Worried more about them right now. You won't be safe here. I don't know how to make that different.”

  He lay silent a long time, and she wondered if he would talk further. She liked this talking thing he did, this speaking of his heart. The father of her son had never done this thing. Perhaps he had thought it made him weak. She did not find it weak to make such talk. A heart that could be shared must be strong to risk such wrenching and giving away and yet remain whole.

  “I felt so stupid,” David Taylor said. “He made me ornery. I lost my temper.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Didn't avenge you or Ben or Ruth neither. Made things worse. The man looked even more mean-spirited, if that's possible. Arrogant and pitiful all at once.”

  “I do not know this word, arrow-gant.”

  “Scrappy and acting bigger than he really is. Like he doesn't have a bone of regret over what he did to you and Jessie and Ben.”

  “Nothing whips him still?”

  David snorted. “Nothing whips him. That's right. I wouldn't put it past him to just show up here. Try to right what he thinks went wrong.” He pressed her hand against his eyes, held it there. She could feel the throbbing at the side of his head.

  “It is no good to poke at a fire gone out,” she said.

  He lay thinking, she decided. He thought of things often, turning them around and around the way the dog turned before it plopped down to sleep. It had been weeks since he'd gone, and still he let this Randolph man sting at their family like a hungry wasp. She wished she could take away his worry, take away his head pain, give him new things to think of. “You make yourself weary,” she said. “Old wounds need wrapping, tied tight in rawhide so they do not get out to spoil what lies around them. They heal then. Leave no scar.”

  He opened one eye and cocked his head a bit to look at her. “Well, aren't you the wise one,” he said. His face held a smile.

  “I only want what is good for you, David Taylor.”

  He reached up and pulled her head, rubbed her nose with his. “And that's just one reason why I love you,” he whispered. “Only one of many.” He kissed her then, held the back of her head with his hand.

  Oltipa heard the dog squeal. “Put the sookoo down,” she told Ben, breaking the kiss with David. “Come. Sit beside me now, na?” She patted beside her as she moved out from under David s head still in her lap. She laid his head gently on the furred hide, and the dog hopped up onto the bed. Ben whimpered, but Oltipa gave him her silencing look.

  “Bens feeling left out,” David said. “Takes it out on the dog.”

  Oltipa nodded, not liking the biting tone in his voice. She wished the tension between him and her son could be lessened. Perhaps if he could have more time with Ben, more time to play as he once talked of. He worked always, keeping them safe. She worried that he worked too much; worried that the boy could be taken. He needed her, needed her. Now, even more.

  David Taylor had learned of the massacre near Crescent City. Another on the Smith River. Exterminators, they said. White men seeking revenge and bounty.

  People…her people, others from the coast and lands in the shadow of Shasta Mountain, had traveled for the dancing, a time of joy and celebration. Instead they had been slaughtered while the pileated woodpecker feathers from their headdresses bobbed in the breeze. Killed while they danced. Men, women, children, even babies asleep in their boards were taken, babies asleep between their parents in their lodges, their heads set onto sticks like salmon roasted at fires.

  She shivered, gazed at her husbands face, made herself see only his eyes of kindness and not the faces of so many of his race that hunted, wounded while they laughed. David Taylor was not like this.

  She knew he wanted safety for her and that he could not take them with him to ensure it. She did not wish to live in Shasta City where she would be alone while he was gone. And she knew he wished to drive the stagecoach, the tall Concord, as he had before so he could be with them every two or three moonlit nights.

  Mazy Bacon had once asked them to live with her, to milk the cows, but David had resisted. Who was she, a mere Wintu woman, to suggest that this was a way to keep them safe where he could still travel? Who was she to contradict what had been his answer once? “I'm no cowhand,” he'd told Oltipa.

  “Maybe we go visit Elizabeth Mueller soon,” she offered. “Maybe she will find pleasure in Ben and offer something for your headaches.”

  David nodded.

  “We could take Ben and visit Mazy Bacon, too.” There, she'd risked it.

  David grunted.

  “There are Wintus there.”

  “So I've heard.” He paused. “Say, do you know some of those women?”

  “It is likely. We all know someone who knows another until we find out who is family, who is friend. It is good to know this so a young man does not choose to love someone who turns out to be his cousin. This was not our concern, you and me,” she teased.

  “No. It's pretty certain I ain't your cousin.” He grinned. “Families sure are made up of strange batches. I wrote my sister, and it's as though I didn't exist. She doesn't write back or come to visit.”

  “Maybe she does not get the letter.”

  “I didn't think of that,” he said. His face brightened. “You're good for me, Oltipa. Keep me from always just seeing the worst. My mother used to do that. Always had a verse or two to help me through the hard places. Seems to me my father tended to the miserable at times too. I don't remember that he was, but I mostly remember him working and working, until that day he left.”

  Ben shouted from across the room. He was crawling near the baskets where
Oltipa kept her dried fish and ground acorn flour. He pounded his flat fist on the basket, turned to see if he had her attention. Oltipa scowled at him, telling him to wait with her eyes. “I need to be up and doing,” David said.

  Oltipa was sorry they'd moved from the place in their conversation where they spoke of heart things. It had happened before. And now that she thought of it, it usually followed something Ben did.

  “We go to visit?” she said. “To Mazy Bacon's?

  “You really want to go there? Well, sure. We could go see some of your friends. Probably glad they're safe there, after what happened.”

  “They are safe there,” she said. “As we are safe with you.”

  “I hope so.”

  He worried over them, she knew. A good wife would help ease his burden.

  Rain fell on the newly shaked roof, patting against it as persistently as an orange Flicker tapping out his territory. Suzanne found the sound soothing, a new noise helping her know a different place. The even rhythm blocked out the scruff and scrape of Esther s efforts to put the room in order. Suzanne supposed that if she could see things she'd feel differently. She imagined trunks and toys in various stages of finding their places. She indulged in that picture for only a moment, returning instead to the comfort of the rain while it lasted, a momentary reprieve from a gnawing emptiness.

  Esther had been the one to locate the house, just beyond the burned area that had taken Sacramento the year before, a ravaging fire that threw flames into the sky so high people said it could be seen for a hundred miles. Their new house had been scorched from the heat, but its owners had dumped buckets of dirt on the shakes and had spent the night on top of their house, flapping at sparks with their blankets and shirts. Suzanne imagined them standing triumphant with soot-blackened faces in the morning, joyous for having saved their home.

  “Is the house next door made of clapboard or brick?” Suzanne thought to ask as Esther worked.

  “Brick. The new ones are all of brick,” she said. “Came in by ship, I hear. Ballast, then sold to the highest bidder.”

  “So Californian,” Suzanne said. “Making something go twice as far.”

  “For twice the cost,” Esther said. “It's a tragedy that they put so much work into saving their home only to leave it a year later.” Esther clucked her tongue in that way she'd begun, and Suzanne imagined her shaking her head. “Gold just keeps drawing people from one thing to another.”

  “I've often thought of it as their Devil's Mill, the thing that lures them in, looking like a treasure but turning quickly to ruin. I know a song about that Devil's Mill.”

  “When will it all stop?”

  “Does change ever?” Suzanne offered. She noticed again something more in Esthers words, some underlying meaning she hadn't translated in her mind. “It can be good for a person, change can.”

  “I certainly hope this one satisfies you. At least for a while,” Esther said. She continued quickly, “It tires you to have to learn new routines and where things go and memorize the room with your hands. It will certainly be simpler if we can get settled now and stay.” Suzanne smelled the scent of lavender probably once folded into a linen. A snap of cloth and a fragrant breeze moved the air. Esther must have been making up the bed.

  Suzanne had surprised herself by defending change. She'd actually convinced them all they needed to move so she could have things set forever in certain places. That was what she told them. And yet she'd found that she liked anticipating the disruption: The new sounds and smells and wash of breeze across her face felt… invigorating. She liked having to sort and decide.

  “Didn't you tell me once, Esther…” Suzanne reminded her as she patted for the bedpost, feeling the smooth walnut, “Didn't you say that I had to learn to accommodate if I was to survive?”

  “I can't imagine being so blunt,” Esther said.

  Suzanne laughed. “Moving reminds me to adjust. I haven't thought of it before, but I actually find all the chaos rather…stimulating. Ouch!” she added, having just walked into the side of a dresser. At least she assumed it was that with the sharpness of the edge and the smooth marble top she ran her fingers across. She rubbed at her hip, imagined it would turn black and blue soon. Just something else ugly she wouldn't have to see. She giggled to herself. Amazed that she recognized advantages to her blindness.

  “That bureau was change reaching out to grab you,” Esther told her. Then with words more quiet than scolding she added, “If only that black dog were here. He kept you from such edges.”

  “Well, he's not,” Suzanne said. Had it begun with Pig's leaving? No, she'd been restless before then. She sighed, listened to Esther tug on the teardrop drawer pulls followed by a silence while she must have gathered items from a trunk. In many ways, these times of disruption in Suzanne's physical space made her feel…useless, too. She really couldnt do much to help, couldn't say, “Put the dresser here or there or hang that picture next to the doorway.” No one asked for her opinion until after things were settled and she received “the tour” as she called it now, from Esther. So why did she persist in creating disruption in her life? In their lives?

  Maybe she'd go find the boys who were being kept safely out of the way, tended by their tutor. Sason had taken to the man, that was true. The child giggled and wiggled on her lap whenever Suzanne heard him enter the room. Often Suzanne felt Sason's arms lift up and away from her as if the boy couldnt wait to go play, couldnt wait to be out of her presence. She missed his little curls.

  But Sterling was a good teacher, and that was the priority now. Every high-flying kite had an occasional dip in the wind, so who was she to demand perfection from that man in all areas of his life? He was diligent in his teaching. And he did take direction, though sometimes she would have liked him to seek consultation first before he simply acted on his intentions, good as they might be.

  It was for Clayton that she swallowed some of the things she might otherwise have said. The child not only showed her hands how to form the words he wanted to say, but just that morning he had actually used two new words, putting them together, not repeating something someone else had said. A special marker on this journey.

  They had been said with a kind of breathy rasp, low but still distinct. “Good. Food.” The child sounded like a baritone inside a tenors body. He'd said it just as Suzanne's tongue tasted the eggs and melted cheese seasoned with hot spices Esther had prepared.

  She'd nearly dropped her fork.

  “Was that Clayton?”

  “Indeed,” Esther said.

  “Good food! Yes, Son,” Suzanne said setting the fork down. She reached to pat Clayton's head then quickly made the sign for wonderful or good or something of merit. She said the word too, making herself smile wide as she did. The boy laughed and repeated the words “good food, good food,” so deep he sounded like a little man. “Good food. Good food,” he repeated over and over as she laughed. She noticed tears wetting her cheeks and had been surprised that she hadn't felt the wetness first in her eyes.

  Her child had spoken. On his own. At last. She knew that for the rest of her life she'd think of this moment whenever she tasted hot peppers and eggs.

  Perhaps it was all the newness that stimulated his learning too. If she told herself the truth, disruptions in routine gave her things to think of, kept her mind from simply dwelling on what she “couldn't do.” It forced creativity, the way learning to play a harp had. Maybe that had happened for Clayton, too.

  She'd always created challenges for herself. That was why she'd learned about photography when Bryce suggested it. Why she'd chosen the house away from the other women when they first moved to Shasta City. Perhaps a reason she'd let that Zane Randolph become a part of her life. Maybe the rush out of routine was even why she'd joined up with Lura to take her music to the mines. Suzanne liked the tingly feelings of pushing herself. She always had, and becoming blind hadn't changed that basic part of her, she decided. She just had to be sure she didn't push hersel
f or her children toward unmerited risk.

  Maybe it was even why she liked training Pig to do new things. It required all her thought when she'd worked with the dog, kept her always from feeling sorry for herself. She'd grown quite fond of the animal that had once belonged to Mazy. He'd actually chosen her, way back on the trail, even when she'd resisted him. Such devotion, staying and caring even when she said he should go. He'd never left her back then. So she just couldn't understand why Pig had taken off now.

  As she padded her way down the hall railing to the stairs, she lifted her skirts to ascend. She retraced the incident in her mind, to see if there was anything at all that might have been a lapse of some kind on her part, on anyone's part, that would account for the dog's running away

  Pig always slept inside the house, never had to be out in the cold or the rain. He'd made a sleeping place beside her bed. She could always hear him breathing in comfort, ready to stand up when she dropped her toes against the fur of his back. Why had he taken off when Mr. Powder had walked him that day?

  The tutor had been genuinely grieved, even more so when she'd brought it up later, wanting clarity. He'd had an agitation in his voice, annoyed almost that she persisted. She could tell he was alarmed and distressed by what had happened.

  “He simply tore from my hand, Mrs. Cullver. You can see the burn marks in my palm. Oh. I'm so sorry. You can't, but they're there just the same. Here.”

  He'd reached for her wrist and pressed her hand onto his open palm. She felt the raised skin of a wound, and she pulled back. Had he resisted freeing her hand?

  “Was one of your cats around?” Esther had asked accusingly. Suzanne hadn't realized she was in the room with them and she felt… grateful for Esther's watchful eyes.