0800722329 (14 page)

“You all right?”

“Yes. It’s just . . . could we rest first? Have a canteen of water?”

He pulled out his pocket watch. “Sure, but they might close and we’d have to wait until tomorrow. I hate to pay for two rooms at the hotel. We need to get the license here.”

“Oh. Yes. Financially it would be better.”

He took my elbow, eased me to sit on the steps. “Put your head between your legs. My ma says that helps with fainting.”

My single crinoline puffed out as I lifted my skirts and sat, then put my head between my knees. He sat beside me, waved his hat for a breeze. “Must be the heat of the day.” I panted like
a dog, something my mother suggested could stave off nausea. “Why don’t you go in and get things started. I’ll join you.”

“Well . . . all right. If you’re sure. You aren’t changin’ your mind, are you?”

I shook my head, no.

“I’ll be back quick as a dog’s wag.” He leapt up, causing a brush of air to cool my face.

I kept myself aware of the steps against my legs, the breeze on my hot face.
I’m here. It’s a
different time.
I remembered, without going away, my father looking disgusted if I said anything to the lawyers—in depositions, they called my telling—about a kindness one of our captors offered, that they gave us water or shared a dried carrot, keeping us alive. Were they not showing us a mercy? Was I not supposed to tell? Then witnesses, the young woman who was taken every night by Five Crows, a Umatilla chief telling the priests we were huddled with that he intended her for his wife. She’d begged us, pleaded in wails as horrifying as the screams we’d heard the night the Whitmans died, to not let them take her. But the priests knew that resisting meant certain death. Her death she probably prayed for, but it did not come.

I remembered the five Cayuse who sat before us at the trial, dressed in white men’s suits, their hair cut, not looking fierce. I didn’t recognize them as those who killed anyone. Maybe they’d given themselves up so the ransom could be paid, the money, arms, and trade goods? When I heard them speak, my ears closed and I heard nothing, just watched their mouths move in silence. I couldn’t tell if they had been the ones asking me to translate, to tell Lorinda she must go. I would have recognized their throaty voices’ demanding for Five Crows, words like coal cutting hard and black.

I hardly noticed that I’d sat upright on the steps. I tried to stay present at the trial, but I could not. Even their faces faded
away. Then I was no longer in that hot stuffy courtroom nor even waiting for Mr. Warren. I’d gone back to Waiilatpu.

“Tell her she must come,” an Indian demands. “She will be wife.”

The snake Five Crows wants Lorinda Bewley, sends a guard to bring her. She is lovely, twice my age. I translate the guard’s order and she sobs, runs to the priests newly arrived in the Territory. Why are they even hostages, so new to this place? They know only about the deaths of the Whitmans and likely worry over their own. She is dragged away . . . And each night for a week I am told to tell her “You must go” and hear her wails. One time I add, “You are keeping us alive. If you don’t go, they’ll kill us. They say that. You are giving up your life for ours. Like Jesus did.” I wasn’t sure she knew how her sacrifice—that whatever they did to make her wail and sob so—was saving us, keeping us from having the same fate speared through us. “God will be with you.” Words my mother prayed when my father and brother and I left on our journeys leaving her behind. I am an empty vessel. No one to comfort me, everyone like sleepwalkers. Daily I send Lorinda to her pain.

The wind shifts and I hear the thundering falls and breathe easier. I’m in Oregon City, waiting on Mr. Warren. At the trial I had heard words of all that happened over again. Who died in which building. Who escaped. Who met their death by bullets or by hatchet. How Mr. Himble made it over the fence only to have an Indian shoot him and say, “Oh, see how I can make the white man tumble.” His daughter saw him fall.

Timothy, a Nez Perce and early convert of my father’s, and
his friend are sent by my mother to Waiilatpu to get word of us once Mr. Canfield arrived to tell of the massacre. The bodies still lie unburied when Timothy comes into the room where some of the fifty-nine hostages cower. Oh, how my heart sings at the sight of him, a friendly face, come to take me home. I send an arrow prayer of thanks.

But he bends down to me and says, “Eliza Spalding.” His eyes are kind. “The Cayuse will not let us free you. If I try to take even you or any of the captives, they will ‘scour the country’ until they find and kill us all.”

I remember the word “scour,” such a kitchen word carrying grating certainty, cleaning up a mess, debris. We are that mess. Timothy does not apologize. The Nez Perce do not say those English words “I’m sorry.” They give a gift instead. One day he will give a gift.

At that moment I begin to cry. I’d held myself together, weaving threads of faith and hope. But Timothy’s words bring down my tears. We are all powerless and betrayed, by everyone: the Cayuse who killed; the Umatilla people who took advantage; the Nez Perce who let them do it and force me to remain. Outside my body I do not plead, but inside, my whole being begs him to rescue me, us. He squats down beside me, lifts my bloody apron to wipe away my tears. His voice cracks when he says, “Poor Eliza, don’t cry. You shall see your mother again.”

I think he means in heaven.

But I never talked at the trial. I keep my then twelve-year-old eyes staring straight ahead at the judge, only briefly glancing at the accused and the others who’d been held with me. A French interpreter, Jean Toupin, relayed what happened once the British arrived to negotiate. I sank into the background at
the courthouse, tried to forget what happened at Waiilatpu. I think making me attend the trial was more for my father than me. As was our being witness to the hangings, all night hearing the construction of the gallows, the hammer blows like bullets against bone. When the day came, I held my apron up before my eyes just as I’d held it when it seemed we all would die, the scent of starch still brimming with the memories.

“Here.” Mr. Warren placed a cool handkerchief to my hot face, the wet bringing me back. “You all right? Wasn’t sure you’d still be here.” He smiled his relief. “You better?”

I stared, then nodded.

“Good. Hey, you cryin’? What’s that about?”

“I’m all right.”

“Let’s get this signed.” He showed me a paper. “You have to come inside. Then if you want to marry somewhere else, there’s a JP just down the street.”

I let him pull me up, hold me just a moment. We entered and I clutched Mr. Warren’s arm. We signed the three-folded document they kept, received a second document just like it to take with us to show the justice of the peace. The walls closed in but I stayed there, in that place, made myself feel the cut log counter, experience the heat of the day, smell tobacco smoke clinging to the clerk’s coat. I stood beside my future husband, then let the sunshine flood my face outside.

It took few minutes to change my status in the Territory and, yes, within my heart. I was a wife now, as my mother had been.
I did it, Mama!
My husband’s first insistence was that I call him Andrew.

“My mother always called my father Mr. Spalding or Mr. S. It’s a moniker of respect. He called her Mrs. Spalding.”

“I don’t know a moniker over a molehill. I just know I’d like to hear my name when I’m with my wife. You can call me Mr. Warren when you’re with your friends but at least with me, I’m Andrew, that understood? And you, Mrs. Warren—” he bent to kiss me as we stood outside the log house of the justice of the peace—“you I’ll be calling Eliza, wife, beautiful one, little lady, sweet pea, darlin’, and whatever else comes to mind. Oh, and Mrs. Warren too.” He had half a dozen names for me. I took them as a gift. He was kind about his request, but insistent. I vowed to work on what he wanted. He’d keep me safe in case my own imaginings failed me.

The vows we spoke had been followed by words of Scripture and I was grateful. We signed that paper folded three ways and while I knew the folding aided in the filing system, I still liked the idea that the Trinity showed up that day. We walked the town and Mr. Warren showed me where he’d worked. I suspect he looked for some of his mates but didn’t find them. I didn’t recognize any of the streets so saw them as though for the first time. I didn’t even remember the boardinghouse where my father and I had stayed during the trial.

“That’s where I worked on the steamboat.”

“You build boats?”

“Just the one.”

“Must have been quite a great day at the launch.” Men crawled over a hull, hammering.

“Must have been. They’d let me go. Too many late arrivals, they told me, as if showing up late is a reason to let a man go.” He patted my hand linked within his elbow. “I always stayed long after to finish up what was started.”

“I’m sure they were sorry later to be without your skills.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sure they were. Let’s stop here.” He opened the door to a mercantile. “Darlin’, what do you think about this?” He held up a golden ring, the twin of my mother’s. “Spare and elegant, just as you are.”

His voice was a baritone, deep and resonant. He held my hand then, tugged at my gloves, one finger at a time, staring into my eyes as he did. I felt my face grow warm. My hands free of their binding, he slipped it on my finger.