The Ballad of Lucy Whipple (16 page)

"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.

S
UMMER
-A
UTUMN
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 on 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:

"Beans and Bacon, Fish in Cans,
Barrels of Flour, Sacks of Yams,
Raisins, Rice, Salt Pork, and Such,
Wools and Cottons, Soft to Touch.
Tubs and Buckets, Pots and Pans,
Gulls' Eggs from the Farallons.
Kegs of Whiskey, Candy Treats,
Picks and Shovels, Pickled Beets.
We take Credit, Coins, and Dust.
Come to Scatter's, a Store to Trust."

Well, you would have thought old Henry W. Longfellow himself had come to declaim
Evangeline,
there was such cheering and laughing and carrying on. It didn't even seem to matter that some of the rhymes were wrong, that Mr. Scatter's store didn't have any of the things advertised, or that I promised credit from a man who wouldn't give credit to the archangel Gabriel. I figured it was time he did.

Mr. Scatter had to read it over and over, and I had to read it twice. Everyone but the Esteemed Author then retired to the shade of a burned-out oak to break into one of the scorched but intact bottles of whiskey found, like buried treasure, in the ashes of the saloon.

Then, on a Monday morning, while Fanny Melinda blew spit bubbles and pulled my hair, the future rode into town. The wagon trail from Marysville had finally been cleared, and here came a train of mules laden with food and other goods, wagons creaking under their loads of tools and machinery, and, at the head, like a Roman emperor leading a triumphal procession, a small bald man in a stiff black suit, sitting on a mule, puffing on a cigar, and singing "Away up on the Yuba River."

"Agamemnon Porterhouse," he said to Mr. Scatter, "at your service. I represent the Green Mountain Investment Company of Poxley, Vermont, and we have come to scout a promising location for the largest hard-rock mine north of Bailey Pines." Jimmy and the Gent stopped working, Mr. Scatter left off arguing with Snoose McGrath, Fanny Melinda let go of my hair, everyone in town, in fact, dropped what they were doing and came over to hear Agamemnon Porterhouse talk.

"Seems you hereabouts got the land and the mountains and the quartz rock heavy with gold," he said, "but no way to get to it. We propose to buy up your land, stake whatever further claims we still can, tunnel deep into the mountains, and use that there machinery to bring out the rock by the ton and crush it to extract the gold. You profit, gentlemen, Lucky Diggins profits, and, of course, the Green Mountain Investment Company profits." He took a puff of his cigar and blew a perfect smoke ring into the clear sweet air.

Waiting at the top of the ravine path—as close to Lucky Diggins as it could get—was a stagecoach, the first seen in these mountains. Jimmy and I climbed up to take a closer look. The coach was canary yellow with four enormous iron-bound wooden wheels. Even dirty and scraped and scarred, with broken seats and a team of tired horses, it was a blame sight more elegant than a mule and rickety buckboard.

The stage driver brought news: Flapjack had been shot in San Francisco by a lady gambler, Bean Belly Thompson had been bit so hard by one of his mules that he couldn't sit down and was going out of the hauling business, and our runaway boarder Percival Coogan had died in Sacramento of throat trouble.

"Quinsy?" Mr. Scatter asked.

"Hangin'," the stage driver replied.

"Told you," I whispered to Butte in my mind.

The stage also brought Mrs. Porterhouse, three small boys, and so much baggage it looked like they meant to stay a good long while. Took all day for Jimmy, Rusty, and Snoose to pack that stuff—and Mrs. Porterhouse, a stout and stately lady—down the ravine path.