Walks the Fire (34 page)

When the last paying customer had left, MacKenzie quickly rose from his seat to help clear the tables. When Jesse made no appearance to help with the dishes, he rolled up his sleeves and thrust his callused hands into the hot dishwater. Joseph wiped the tables, and Augusta and LisBeth dried the dishes and straightened up. Joseph and MacKenzie talked about nothing to avoid talking about what interested them most. Augusta and LisBeth set a personal record for silence.

When the last dish was clean, the floor swept, and tables were set for breakfast, the two men left Augusta sitting by the fireplace reading. LisBeth had hurried off to her own room, seemingly troubled by her mother’s outburst.

MacKenzie heard Joseph’s reassuring voice as he went out the back door. “I’ll watch for her, Miz Augusta. If’n she don’t show up directly, I’ll hitch up the old mare.”

Augusta murmured her thanks, and MacKenzie went upstairs to his room where he watched from his window until he saw Jesse returning to the hotel, walking from the west. Her graying hair had either fallen or been taken down, and she held a loose bunch of flowers in her left hand. Before she came inside, MacKenzie saw her pause and look up at the full harvest moon that hung low on the horizon. She bowed her head for a minute, and then MacKenzie heard the door creak and the sound of voices. He listened carefully. Unable to decipher actual words, he still heard what he listened for. The murmur of the voices was low-pitched. There was no anger. The tones were mellow and comfortable. The voices continued until MacKenzie fell asleep, the lamp at his bedside table still lit.

Augusta accepted Jesse’s apology with a hearty, “Nonsense! No apology necessary! I been waiting a long time to see you get mad, Jesse King. Did my heart good.” With a grin, Augusta bid Jesse “good night” and headed for her own quarters.

Jesse put the flowers she had collected in a vase, turned down the lamp, and walked down the hall toward her room. Muffled sobs sounded through LisBeth’s door. Jesse opened it quietly. LisBeth was lying in her bed, clutching the lace-edged pillow that Jesse had recently embroidered.

As soon as she felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, LisBeth quieted and whispered, “Mother, he can’t leave! He just can’t! If he leaves now, he’ll never know how much I care.”

Jesse patted her daughter’s arm and collected her thoughts. With a silent prayer for wisdom, Jesse answered. “A young man has to make his own way in the world, LisBeth. You wouldn’t want him to do anything less than to make his own way.”

LisBeth sat up abruptly on the bed, crossed her legs, and slapped the pillow on her lap to support her elbows. Resting her chin on her hands, her dark eyes earnest, she answered, “Of course I want him to make his own way, Mama, but if he goes away…”

“LisBeth,” Jesse sighed, “MacKenzie is a fine young man. I could wish for none finer for you—if the Lord has chosen him for you. But, dear,”… Jesse tried to soften her voice, “he doesn’t seem to have… I mean, he hasn’t asked my permission to court you.”

LisBeth was defensive. “Of course not, Mother! MacKenzie would never ask to court a girl when he has no way of supporting a wife.”

“He has his family’s homestead.”

“He’ll never go back there.” The young voice trembled with feeling.

“Why on earth not? Joseph says it’s acre after acre of rich land.”

LisBeth’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Mama, it’s just too terrible. It’s just so sad, but he’ll never be able to go back.” She spilled it out, her retreat to the loft of Joseph’s stable, MacKenzie’s emotional sharing, his father’s suicide. Jesse’s heart swelled with sympathy and affection for the young man who had been so early exposed to heartache and failure.

Before LisBeth finished the telling, Jesse had reached out to cover her daughter’s young hands and squeeze them affectionately. The gesture gave LisBeth courage to continue after she had told MacKenzie’s history. “Mama, I can’t explain it. Of course I felt sorry for him, but when I heard the words—when I saw how he felt—I just had to love him! Do you think it can happen like that, Mama? Can a woman really, truly love someone so quickly? Is that how you fell in love?”

In characteristic fashion, Jesse’s gray eyes looked away as she pondered her response. “I don’t know, LisBeth. I don’t remember.”

Impulsively, LisBeth interrupted her, “Oh, Mother! You’re always so, so,
analytical.
Honestly, I don’t remember ever seeing you upset—until tonight. Please don’t be hurt, Mother, but sometimes I wonder if you can possibly understand how I feel.”

Jesse got up abruptly and crossed the room to look into the mirror. LisBeth noticed for the first time that her mother’s hair streamed loosely down her back. Jesse reached up with one hand and began to wind one graying curl through her fingers.

“You think I don’t understand how it feels to be young and in love. Well, perhaps I
have
forgotten some things. But, just now, do you know what I was thinking?”

Jesse turned to face her daughter. “I was looking in the mirror and wondering, ‘Who
is
that old woman come to interrupt my talk with LisBeth?’” Jesse searched her daughter’s eyes and found willingness to listen and try to understand.

“You see, LisBeth, when I think of myself, I don’t think of that woman I just saw in the mirror. Sometimes, I am a young child, running out to the well to pump fresh water for
my
mother. Then another time, I am a young wife, shopping to fill a wagon for a trip across the prairie. I’m scared to death, but I’m doing what I have to do. Sometimes, I am a sad woman, grieving the loss of her husband. But never, LisBeth, never do I think of myself as the old woman you see. It just seems so short a time ago that I was young. Oh, I was never so beautiful as you, and certainly never so impulsive, but I was young. And I am still young—inside. Yes, dear, I
do
remember what it was like and, yes, I do have strong feelings. I’ve just had lots of practice at covering them up so that others won’t see them.” Jesse hesitated before she added, “So that others won’t see
me.
LisBeth, dear, don’t always accept what you see, because if you do, then you won’t see
me.
I know that I’m usually soft-spoken and very private, but I remember quilting a hope chest full of quilts… and waiting… and waiting… and no one came to fulfill my hopes. I remember hurting and then learning to love someone I never chose for myself, and then hurting again, more than I ever thought possible. I learned to trust the Lord in all those things. There’s a Bible verse, LisBeth. ‘He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.’
I’ve learned the truth of that verse, and now,” Jesse’s hands trembled as she parted and loosely braided her thick hair, “now, I think it’s time that you learned about your mama—and yourself. Wipe your tears, and wash your face, and meet me in the kitchen.”

Jesse left and LisBeth splashed her face, went to the kitchen, stirred up the fire, and settled into one of the rockers, her heart pounding.

When Augusta answered the soft knock at her door, Jesse whispered, “Thank the Lord,” and then said quickly, “Augusta, I’m about to do something I may regret, but I’ve got to do it before I lose heart. Will you come to the kitchen with me and just be there while I tell LisBeth something?”

Augusta saw fear in her friend’s eyes. She grabbed her duster and followed Jesse into the kitchen where LisBeth waited.

Jesse cleared her throat, and then courage failed her. “Wait here,” she said, and left again. Augusta and LisBeth exchanged quizzical glances and waited. When Jesse re-entered the room, she was carrying the ragged quilt that had always covered her bed. LisBeth had tried to replace it countless times, but Jesse would not have it. “It suits me,” she would say, “and don’t you ever do anything with this quilt. It’s more than old fabric and thread. These stitches know secrets, the blocks all tell stories, and someday I’ll share them.” The quilt remained on the bed, fading more and more, tearing until it was nearly beyond repair. Still, Jesse clung to it.

Now, she stood trembling before her only child, and she clung to the quilt and said, “LisBeth, I know you’ve wanted me to get rid of this thing for years, and I never would. Well now, you’re going to hear why. I’ve told you that the stitches know secrets, and the blocks can tell stories, and now, I think—” Jesse paused and took a deep breath, “—now, I think, it is time for you to hear the stories.”

Jesse spread the quilt on the floor between them, and LisBeth and Augusta leaned forward in their chairs. The firelight cast a warm glow over the room. No one had lighted a lamp, so the three women sat in the half light. Reaching across the quilt to lay her hand on the center panel, Jesse began.

“It starts, here, LisBeth. The log cabin blocks are for my home place in Illinois. There was Mama and Papa and my sister, Betsy, and me.” Jesse described her home—the trees, the barns, the fields—to LisBeth. She stopped abruptly. “But, LisBeth, your knowing about where I grew up and what it looked like—that doesn’t tell you about
me,
does it?” Her voice trembled a little as Jesse went on to tell of her own hope chest, the disappointments of her youth, and how she had married Homer King.

“But Mama,” LisBeth interrupted, “all those stories you told me about how much you loved Papa, and how…”

“Hush, LisBeth, or I’ll never get through it,” her mother ordered. “You’ll hear it all, but it’s hard for me to talk about it. Sometimes it hurts to remember.”

Jesse’s hand slid across the quilt to the next row of blocks.

“These are still log cabins, but they’re all cut in half. I made them that way to show that when Homer decided we were leaving Illinois, it seemed to me that my home was all broken up. I felt sort of broken inside too.

“And these,” Jesse said, tracing the wheels that had been quilted into the next border of wide, plain strips of cloth, “these are the wheels that took me away from everyone I knew and everything I loved.”

Jesse’s voice evened out as she recounted the weeks on the trail, the river crossings, the broken axles, and Jacob’s death.

LisBeth gasped, “I had a
brother,
Mama?! You never told me! What’s the next row mean, Mama? The diamond pieces…” Jesse sent a lightning quick plea to heaven for courage. She cleared her throat and then plunged into the next chapter of her life. “Those are about the part of my life it’s hardest to tell about. I always knew I should. But every time I tried, I just lost courage.”

LisBeth’s eyes grew wide with her imaginings of something horrible.

“LisBeth, the diamonds are sewn together to make a triangle, and the triangles make tepees. Indian tepees—tepees I once feared but came to call home after Homer died, and I was taken in by the Lakota… and met your pa.” Jesse looked up at her daughter. LisBeth abruptly sat back in her chair, mouth agape. A furrow appeared between her eyebrows as she tried to grasp what her mother had just said.

Augusta leaned farther forward in her chair, and it creaked as her weight shifted. Jesse jumped at the sudden sound, and rushed forward with the story, telling all she could, trying to tell years in a few moments, trying to tell it before her courage failed her or LisBeth stopped her or Augusta interrupted. But Augusta had no intention of interrupting, and LisBeth was speechless. Exactly what emotion kept her speechless, Jesse could not tell, for she was afraid to look up.

She directed her attention to the quilt, telling its story. She described Rides the Wind and Old One, Two Mothers, who became Soaring Eagle, and Prairie Flower. Finally, she told about Howling Wolf and his dragging her to Pierre Canard’s cabin.

“That’s the day you were born, LisBeth. That day, in Pierre Canard’s cabin.”

Jesse continued by telling her daughter about the difficulty she had in naming her. She explained that the
W.
in her name stood for
Wind
and that she had almost become Daughter of the Wind. And she shared the depression she had battled, the loss, and finally how finding Suzette Canard’s quilt pieces and making the quilt had helped her grief heal. She moved on to the last border.

“And this last border, LisBeth,” Jesse said in a hoarse whisper, “this vine is the True Vine, my Lord Jesus Christ, who has wrapped himself around everything that’s ever happened to me and made it all beautiful, in his time.”

At last she had told every stitch. Jesse was exhausted. Pulling the quilt to herself, she sat on the floor of the kitchen and cuddled it and did not weep.

LisBeth stared in disbelief at the patchwork that spilled from her mother’s lap onto the floor. Her eyes followed its pattern upward to the wrinkled hands that held it. They twitched nervously. Finally, LisBeth looked into the solemn gray eyes of the woman who had borne her.

Jesse King was no longer just Mama. With the telling of the quilt she had become a woman who had loved and hurt and kept her faith and grown and triumphed in her own, quiet way.

The silence became too heavy. Jesse broke it. “So, LisBeth, that’s how you came to be.” As she spoke, Jesse’s eyes searched her daughter’s face anxiously.

LisBeth’s expression revealed a storm of questions raging inside. Part of her was angry. She wanted to accuse Jesse of lying. But as she thought back over the memories, she knew that Jesse had never lied. She had always stopped just before the whole truth came out. But she had never lied. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid.”

“You were ashamed!” LisBeth retorted.

Jesse stood firm. “I was never ashamed. I’ve tried to be true to the Lord and true to your father. But I wanted to protect you from what others might say to hurt you.”

A flood of questions began.

“What was he like? What was my father like?”

The aging face shone with love. “Everything I have ever said to you about your father was true. Everything about his kindness, his character, his love. It’s all true. But his name
wasn’t
Homer King. His name was Rides the Wind. That’s the only thing I didn’t tell right.” Jesse’s voice broke, “And maybe it was the most important thing for you to know.”

“The woman at Fort Kearney—that was Prairie Flower?” Jesse nodded and LisBeth began to understand her mother’s eager conversation that night.