The Ballad of Lucy Whipple Page 12

  "Sister Whipple," Mama said. Then, her eyes bright and merry, "Sister Claymore." After Brother Clyde left, Mama spent an unseemly amount of time looking off into the distance and sighing.

  I would have liked to write to Gram and tell her about the fire, Mama marrying Clyde, and my banishment to the Sandwich Islands, where I would face a future going barefoot and eating coconuts like Robinson Crusoe. But I couldn't. I had no paper, no ink, and no Snowshoe to carry a letter to San Francisco. So instead I climbed up the ravine as far as I could on the path soggy with ash and mud, and called to her: "Gra-a-a-am, it's me, Lu-u-cy. I ne-e-e-ed you." I knew she couldn't hear me, but I felt better anyway. I added, just in case, "Please send some a-a-a-pples and chicken ste-w-w!"

  July came to Lucky Diggins while Mama waited for Brother Clyde to return and I just waited. Meanwhile, a miracle was bringing books back to me, books that had survived the fire because they had not been in the boarding house but in some miner's tent far up the river, books that arrived from Sacramento or San Francisco, sent by someone who had borrowed one in the past and wanted to replace what was lost, books handed from miner to miner over the unpassable mountains. I sniffed them, read a little, packed them in a potato sack, and waited some more.

  "If we're going to go, I wish to goodness we'd just go," I told Lizzie one day while we sewed a patch on the ceiling of the tent.

  "You don't sound too happy about going."

  "Doesn't seem to matter."

  "I guess you're not much for adventures. Are you afraid?"

  "Yes, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'll never get home to Massachusetts now. The Sandwich Islands must be half a world away."

  "So don't go," Lizzie said.

  "And I sure don't look forward to another boat trip and starting all over again to make friends and settle in."

  "You know, you don't have to go."

  "Well, of course I do. I have to go. Don't I?" I said to Lizzie. Don't I? I said to myself.

  Lizzie looked at me in a way that made me desperate to change the subject.

  "Who is more handsome, Rusty or Snoose McGrath?" I asked her.

  "The Gent," answered Lizzie.

  "Well, of course you'd say that. You're sweet on him."

  "Rubbish," said Lizzie. "How about you, Miss Lucy? Who do you think is handsome?"

  "Nobody here. All boneheads and bandits." I thought sometimes about falling in love, but only late at night in the dark where no one could see me blush. I could imagine Ivanhoe and Rowena kissing and making sweet noises to each other, but Lucy Whipple and some miner? Not likely. "Anyway, I'm off to the Sandwich Islands, where I'll probably marry a coconut farmer and eat dried fish and never have a new book to read." I pushed the needle so fiercely through the dingy canvas that I near sewed my finger to the tent and faced having to stay in Lucky Diggins until one of us rotted away.

  "Those books sure mean a lot to you," Lizzie said later as she left. "I can think of lots of things I'd miss more than books if I was dragged across the ocean to some island."

  "Who's going to what island?" It was Belle Scatter-that-was, cradling a puny, red, squalling infant in her arms. Little fond as I was of Belle, hers was the first new face I had seen since the fire. I made Belle sit down and tell me about her married life and what in tarnation she was doing back in this Godforsaken ash heap and had she brought chicken or cheese or paper and pens, while I took and comforted the baby. Belle obviously still needed more practice.

  "There's some boxes over to my Pa's tent," said Belle. "Me and Mr. Rush and Fanny Melinda came to visit and say good-bye. Too many lawyers coming to California. Besides, I think it's no fit place to rear a child, so we're going east, to New York." Belle's face was as shiny bright as a new skillet. "Imagine, New York. Indoor privies and horse-drawn carriages and big hats with flowers."

  Back east. While I was heading into Robinson Crusoe country, Belle was going to New York to wear a big flowered hat in her indoor privy!

  She moved to take Fanny Melinda back, and the baby started up her squalling and fussing again. "Seems to me," I said, bouncing the little mite, "this little one is a mighty big handful. How are you going to manage her all the way across the country to New York?"

  "Well," Belle said, with a cunning look on her face, "that's why I come over here to see you. I know you been hankerin' to go back to Massachusetts since you got here. What about you leaving with us? If your mama says yes, we would chaperone and pay your way in exchange for your being nursemaid to Fanny Melinda." She smiled at the baby in my arms, and the baby started to scream again.

  "Belle! Truly?" I danced Fanny Melinda around that tent as if we were at the Governor's Ball. "When? Oh, when would we go?"

  "After trekking in on that measly, burned-out path, I don't hanker to trek on out again. We'll wait until wagons can get through; should be soon now. Week or two or three."

  Didn't sound so soon to me, but it was the best offer I had got in a long time. We shook hands on the deal and I danced all the way home. I was going back to Massachusetts!

  "Hallelujah and good-bye, California!" I called. "Good riddance to ash and dust and mud. Good-bye, yellow hills and dry, cracked earth, pinecones and acorn cakes, evergreens, mountain peaks, and blue blue sky! Good-bye, Goldometers and Rattlesnake Jake," I added, laughing, "and the dag diggety miner in his union suit. Good-bye long soft autumn nights and the smell of pines and the hills ablaze with poppies." My dancing got slower and quieter. "Good-bye, Jimmy and Lizzie and the Gent..." I sighed and went the rest of the way in silence.

  When I got home, there was Brother Claymore back, sitting on the floor of the tent, head in his hands. Mama was saying, "It don't matter, Clyde. We don't need to go anywhere; we can get married and open the boarding house again." He looked stricken, so Mama took a breath and said, "Or we can wait until you raise the rest of the money. I know there aren't many people around, and those that are can't give like they used to, but we're not old. We can wait a year or two." And at that they both looked stricken.

  "Mama," I said, "you don't need as much passage money as you thought. I'm not going with you. I have made arrangements to go back east with Belle Scatter. I'm finally going home, Mama!"

  It was quiet as spring rain. You couldn't even hear breathing. I finally said, "Mama?"

  "Clyde will get the rest of the money. He can sell Apostle. When he comes back, we must all be ready. Now Lucy, have you—"

  "Mama? Didn't you hear me?"

  "I heard wind stirring the trees, squirrels chattering over nuts, the river rippling through the rocks. I did not hear a foolish thing like you saying you're not going with us."

  "What about my standing like a tub on my own bottom?"

  "You can stand like a tub just fine in the Sandwich Islands, thank you very much. Now no more talking about it."

  "But Mama..."

  "But Mama nothing. I swear when I die that will be carved on my tombstone. 'But Mama.'"

  "Mama, sit down. I want to say something."

  "Lucy, I don't have time for your wobblies."

  "Mama, sit!" And which of us was more surprised when Mama obeyed I couldn't tell. "Going west again is Brother Clyde's dream, and yours, not mine. I am going home."

  Mama opened her mouth to speak again but nothing came out.

  "Never thought I'd see you speechless, Mama."

  "Never thought I'd see you turning your back on your own family...."

  "Now, Mama, it will be all right. Prairie is big enough to help you, and Sierra is nearly six, and you will have Brother Clyde, too. I'll give you the money left from my pickle crock. I won't need it. Go west and find your heart's desire. And let me find mine."

  "But California..."

  "But California nothing, Mama."

  After a supper of rabbit and acorn mash and cheese from Belle, we all sat around the tree-stump table while Mama counted out the nuggets and coins in the pickle crock and added it to what Brother Clyde had collected. We figured the dust at a dollar a pinch and added
it in. Not enough. Mama sighed and counted again. Still not enough. Brother Clyde put his arm around Mama, Prairie cried a little, and Sierra did too, because Prairie did.

  Jimmy Whiskers took Mama's hand and said, "Listen, Arvella, I think you counted wrong. Let me have a try." So he picked up the dust and coins and tiny nuggets in his dirty brown palm and counted again. And, like the miracle of loaves and fishes in the Bible, lo, there was enough!

  "Now how did I miss counting those big nuggets there?" Mama asked as Prairie and Sierra jumped up and down, shrieking in glee.

  Jimmy just shrugged and smiled. His front teeth were gone. He winked at me.

  A few days and Mama and Clyde, Prairie and Sierra, would be gone, heading for San Francisco, where Brother and Mama could be married by a preacher before they all boarded a ship carrying hides, calico, lumber, and missionaries to the Sandwich Islands. Although wagons couldn't get through yet, the paths were clear enough for folks and mules, so they made plans for crossing the mountains to Marysville with others who were leaving: Poker John Lewis and Milly from the saloon, who were going to San Francisco to marry and open a card parlor; Ripley Gurgins, who had his eye on a German widow and her farm over near Colusa; Billy and Beppie Parker, going home to Indiana, and Amos Frogge on to Colorado. Even Flapjack, who said he had been in the mountains longer than God, left, saying with a smack of his empty gums, "I'm going to find me some gold easier to dig." It looked like Lucky Diggins was plumb closing down.

  The morning of their departure I walked with Mama, Clyde, Prairie, and Sierra to where the group waited at the foot of the ravine path. The girls were lifted onto Apostle's back, and Mama carried what little she owned in a sack made from a tent that had been made from a blanket that had once most likely been something else. How could they venture over the burned-out, pathless mountains and the unknown sea like this, so vulnerable and so poor? I kissed Clyde on the cheek and said, "Take good care of them."

  Clyde tipped his hat and said, "God and I will both watch over them, Sister Lucy. With the help of Bernard Whipple from Heaven."

  "Prairie," I said, hugging her, "help Mama like I did."

  Prairie's eyes twinkled behind her spectacles.

  "You're right," I admitted. "That wouldn't be hard. Help Mama better than I did." I hugged her sturdy little body.

  "And you, Sierra..."

  "We're going on a boat, Luthy." It was Sierra's turn to lose a tooth. I felt so old. "We're going to thee whaleth and gullth and pick bread from treeth."

  Jimmy Whiskers kissed Sierra and Prairie and even Mama, saying, "Sorry you have to go, Arvella, just when your bread was gettin' fit to eat."

  Mama hugged me and we both started crying. Then she stood back and looked at me. Really looked at me. "I've never known quite what to make of you, girl. I was so afraid you were weak and dreamy like your pa."

  "Mama! Pa wasn't weak—"

  "Lucy, allow me to know something. You're not the only smart one here."

  "But Mama," I said, as much for old times' sake as for the argument, and we both laughed while we cried.

  "You're just like your pa in some ways, my girl. Many of them good." Mama hugged me again. "But mostly you're like me. Isn't that a corker?"

  I grabbed Mama then and held on like I was drowning. "Mama, when will I see you again?"

  Tears ran down Mama's face. "We're going to the Sandwich Islands, Lucy, not dying. We'll see you again. We got to. We're family."

  Mama turned to head up the path, then turned back to me and opened her mouth. I stopped her, straightened her sack, and said, "Go, Mama. I'll cry sometimes and miss you like anything, but don't worry. I'll be fine." That was mostly to reassure Mama, but as I said it, I realized it was true. I'd be fine. Soon as the way was clear, Belle and Mr. Rush and Fanny Melinda and I would be getting in a wagon, heading east, going home.

  When the group had struggled up the ravine path and disappeared into the trees, it was all I could do to keep from running after them. Mama, gone! And Prairie and Sierra! And Bernard, Snowshoe, and Amos Frogge! I felt so alone, I went out to the meadow and had a long talk with Butte and a good cry.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SUMMER-AUTUMN 1852

  In which I am home at last

  It was so quiet with Mama, Clyde, and the girls gone. I decided to move in with Belle and her family so Jimmy and the Gent could have our tent. Other than trying to keep Fanny Melinda dry and quiet, I had nothing much to do, no miners to feed or quilts to patch or sisters to mind, so I wandered often through the hills yellow in the summer sun, looking and thinking.

  Then, the last week of July, Belle said that her pa had asked Mrs. Flagg to marry him and she, still silent, had nodded, and the wedding was to be on August 1. Mr. Scatter, as self-proclaimed mayor of Lucky Diggins, named Jimmy a justice of the peace so he could do the honors.

  August 1 dawned so hot and dry the ground cracked, and there were more ants and lizards at the ceremony by the river than guests, but a good time was had by all. Or almost all. I kept thinking about Mama and Clyde and the wedding I was missing: Ma in a new flowered hat, her hand in Brother Clyde's big paw; a smiling Prairie and Sierra standing by Apostle, who'd be decorated for the occasion with flowers and maybe bells in his bridle. I had to think hard about Gram and Rocky Flat and the lending library to keep my eyes dry.

  The fire having taken everything, the Flagg-and-Scatter wedding was not the world's fanciest. Mrs. Flagg wore the old blue dress that used to be mine. With a pink ribbon of Belle's around her waist and wild roses in her hair, she looked pretty and summery and happy. Lizzie and Ruby Ramona were clean and tidy and relieved about not being "all ragged out in fancy doodads." They stood hand in hand behind their mother, trying to look ordinary and unexcited, but the big smiles on their faces when she whispered "I do" lit up the foothills all the way to Marysville.

  Afterward folk hollered, "Speech! Speech!" and Rusty fired his pistol into the air.

  "Shut up, you coyotes, and give a man a chance to talk," said Mr. Scatter. "I have something important to say." He looked at Mrs. Flagg—Mrs. Scatter, that is—and they smiled at each other. "We been talking. Seems like after all we've been through here, this place is home—in adverse circumstances right now, but home. And we don't aim to see it go down without a fight." He picked up a piece of charcoal and wrote on the lone wall of the saloon, OPEN FOR BIZNESS. "We got little to offer but hope, a few boxes and barrels, and a case of Professor Terence O'Hare's World-Famous Pile and Humor Cure," said Mr. Scatter with a grin, "but we ain't leaving Lucky Diggins. Why, I ain't even rich yet."

  Folks cheered again, although I myself could not see cheering about staying put in Lucky Diggins. Jimmy lit the torches along the riverbank, the Gent played his homemade fiddle like a devil was in him, and there was dancing and tomfoolery.

  I kind of hung around the edges, missing Mama and feeling too lonely to celebrate, but Jimmy Whiskers insisted, so I twirled with Jimmy and Snoose McGrath and even the new bridegroom, Mr. Scatter, who said he was "so peedoodled before the ceremony I near put my pants on upside down."

  Finally the Gent gave his fiddle to Rusty and commenced dancing with Lizzie, and it seemed like they would never stop. Sure enough, next morning Lizzie told me that she and the Gent were getting married in the fall, and they were going to farm in Live Oak Valley, right across the river. "The Gent can't mine no more with his bad feet and rheumatics and all, but we ain't givin' up on this town neither. My brothers are going to stay and help us, and someday our kids." She had a gooney sort of look on her face that reminded me of Mama looking at Clyde. A rush of loneliness nearly overwhelmed me.

  "When's this wagon going to be arriving?" I asked Belle next day, mighty sick of sitting around and bouncing Fanny Melinda. "Been longer than a week or two, hasn't it?"

  "Guess it'll get here when it gets here," she said, which was no help at all. "I just hope it comes before the rains do, or we'll be stuck until next year. No mule will be able to cross the mountains o
n those wet, gummy paths, much less a wagon."

  Next year! I wished then I was more of a one for praying, but I feared God hardly even knew my name by now.

  One morning Mr. Scatter stopped to talk to me. He wanted a sign for the new general store ("Lucky Diggins General Store, Mr. and Mrs. Leon Scatter, Props."), and he wanted me to write it so all the words would be spelled right.

  It seemed to me the rebuilding of the general store after the conflagration we had endured called for more than just "Mr. and Mrs. Leon Scatter, Props." Perhaps a heroic poem, something like "Old Ironsides" or "Excelsior."

  I labored long and hard, writing and rewriting, crossing out and scratching in. When it was finished, Snoose McGrath helped me paint it on a board with paint made from red clay and tree sap. After most of three days, it was finished. I wrapped the sign in a potato sack and carried it to Mr. Scatter.

  "Whatcha got there, little sister?" Jimmy called as I passed him.

  "A sign for Mr. Scatter's store."

  "Whoo-ha! This I gotta see!" Jimmy fell in behind me.

  "Where you goin', Jimmy?" asked Rusty, carrying water back from the river.

  "Unveiling a great work of art," Jimmy answered. Rusty joined us, as did a group of miners standing jawing in the shade. We looked like an Independence Day Parade, only poky and more shabby.

  Mr. Scatter was so excited over his sign, he ripped the sack right off and read it out loud, stopping for words he didn't know and whispering those he wasn't sure of. He looked at me, snuffled, and read it again, in a loud ringing voice: