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His friends, with Irish accents, began waxing on about their evening, about how Andrew arrived at the saloon with words of “happiness about your impending kin.” I frowned. “Your wee one coming. Sure and he’s a happy lad.”

“Happy, yes indeedy.”

“Uncle burped,” Millie said. “And he didn’t say sorry.”

“That’s the least of his social lapses. Get the syrup from the larder and put it on the table, would you, Millie? Thank you, child.” I loved it when she did as she was asked without a protest.

Eggs arrived. I grabbed striped meat (as Andrew called bacon), mixed up johnnycakes, spread them on the round griddle as soon as the woodstove heated. With my other ear I heard the story of the night, how they played cards and Andrew had lost. (Which explained his friends’ great “kindness” to him, taking him to the doctor, bringing him home. If he’d won they likely would have left him to the cold and wolves, a just recompense for having taken all their funds that night.)

“He usually holds his liquor well, Missus, but he was harborin’ visions of grandeur with a son beside him on that cattle ranch he’s always talking ’bout.” These men were no strangers to Andrew; only to me.

“Needs riding lessons. Man’s got to both hold his liquor and his seat.” This from the skinny one, slender as a bacon strip, his comment causing all three men to howl with laughter. Both of my husband’s comrades sported broken blood vessels across
their noses, and for the first time I noticed my husband’s face in a new way. At that moment, his cheeks were scraped but there was that telltale sign of liquor consumption. Over time. I’d never acknowledged it before.

“How did his face get so scraped up?”

“He fell into a pile of rocks, slipped right off the horse and then whooped so that the gelding pulled back and his leg was still in the stirrup. He got dragged a ways.”

“Right into a boulder where his horse deposited him and left him with an arrow-looking thing pushing against his leg. Took us a bit through his wailing to see that it was bone trying to break free.” This so-called friend had reached into the cupboard and handed cups around, poured hot coffee from the kettle he’d grabbed. I must have frowned at his intruding in my kitchen. “Just being helpful, Missus. You got your hands full there.”

“Almost lost my supper.” The skinny one continued. “Never seen bone like that come up.”

“So we took him to the doctor. What are friends for?”

“Doc weren’t none too happy to be woke up at that hour. He patched it, pushed it back, and wrapped it good, but he says infection’s likely. Said he’d be by later today to take another peek. Gave us laudanum to give you to numb his pain when he starts to really come out of it.” The helpful coffee-serving friend pulled a bottle from his pocket. “Laudanum.”

“Thank you.” I grabbed it from him with more vigor than intended, plopped it on the table. “Don’t mistake it for syrup,” I said. “Breakfast’s ready.”

The men pulled up chairs and ate, quiet for a moment. Andrew moaned once or twice but no longer participated in any part of the discussion. I eavesdropped, learned of how regularly these men saw my husband, how much they knew about us, and how only when they let others join their games had the
friendliness waned into real distress. A favorite horse lost. A promissory note written, giving up future profits when a beef was sold. How grateful the men were when Andrew played, as “he always brings the best whiskey.”

The stories were told with too much detail. They were still under the influence themselves, I decided, or they never would have been so open with their words. They were in the enemy’s camp sharing secrets and they didn’t even know it.

My sisters sat wide-eyed, listening, patting a leavings doll. I’d have to explain later what all those stories meant and ask that they not repeat any of this to our father or Rachel or they’d be whisked from my care in a second.

Andrew’s friends left after eating their fill, glad to see “Warren’s in the tender hands of such a lassie.” I fed the girls and myself then, checking on Andrew, whose snores rumbled like water over river rocks. I attacked my own chores, cleaning the griddle, heating the irons. Cooled, the iron’s weight might keep the bone pressed so it would mend. I thought I’d seen my mother do that once with a young Nez Perce boy. I chopped wood for the fireplace, brought in an armload to put in the firebox beside the woodstove. At least we’d be warm.

Together the girls and I slopped the hogs, fed our two sheep, opened the paddock so the oxen could meander in the fenced pasture. Back in the barn, I filled the manger with loose hay for the horses.

That’s when I noticed I’d lost my wedding ring.

Frantic, I pushed back grass hay, dug into the manger. Nothing. I might have lost it anywhere. I stomped back into the house to heat water for our Saturday baths. Abby sat on the porch, brown eyes pleading.

“Dogs aren’t allowed in the house,” I told her.

But when I opened the door and smelled the liquor and the
laudanum, thought about my ring lost to the hard labor, I turned back. “Dogs might not be allowed in the house, but if drunks are, then you are too.”

In the afternoon, Andrew roused. I wasn’t aware he had wakened until he moaned. “What have I done, ’Liza? What have I done?” His faced flushed red, chin dropped to his chest. His shame pricked my heart toward softness. It didn’t last.

“’Liza, darlin’—”

“Don’t you ‘darlin’’ me! You, you’ve lied to me, misled me, you’ve been drink—”

“I have not.” His voice rose. “Last night, the first time in a long time and I am sorry. I am real sorry.” He rubbed his forehead with his fingers.

I wasn’t ready for apologies. “Sorry? Sorry that you’ll be laid up for weeks, if not months? Sorry that you brought men into our home and asked me to feed them, also drunk, I might add, in front of my sisters? Sorry that you what, aren’t free to do what you want without a little . . . guilt?”

“You’ll always best me with words, ’Liza. Mine are small. Just, I’m sorry, for everything.”

“Everything? For marrying me?” I jabbed at him. “You were baptized. You took a vow.”

“I don’t need you to tell me.”

“But why? You’re smart. You’re inventive. You’re a hard worker. Why?” I paced, paused to look at him and saw tears pooling in his eyes. “What is it? I want to know . . . even my . . . my part in this.”

“You have no part. Well, you’re in the hope I had for healing an old wound, but I seem to keep opening it with liquor and the rush of card playin’. Or maybe I’m trying to drown
it.” He looked away.
Embarrassment.
That’s what I saw in my husband’s eyes.

“Tell me.” I sat beside him on the feather tick and he winced. His physical wound demanding we remember.
Is it the
laudanum speaking?
I didn’t know. “Just tell me why you do this. Do you even know?”

His shallow breathing filled the silence. Then, “The same reason you try to control the world, ’Liza, or disappear inside your mind where no one can reach you. I do it to stop the pain. And so do you.”

“What pain?”

But all the wishing and probing brought nothing. Instead of relieving his burden, he returned to sleeping, the bridge to our healing broken. No laudanum could remedy that.

14
Learning the Language of Marriage

We managed the summer, neighbors helping as they could. The O’Donnell brothers—I’d learned their names—showed up, sheepish but willing to haul in water, chop wood, while Andrew healed. The doctor said it was my nursing that accounted for his progress; nursing and taking on the tasks my husband simply couldn’t do. Oddly, once I let go of my anger, accepted the challenge before me, we became a family, of sorts. Andrew said I was happy because I controlled the household and him, knew where he was each moment. He said it with a smile, but I heard truth in that.

In the evening we read Scripture and the dictionary, too, learning new words together.
Extenuate
.
Lassitude
.
Fortuitous
. My sisters giggled and didn’t even realize they were learning too. We made the best of our turmoil.

“You do what you have to.” That’s what I told Nancy when
she brought me a wooden box of staples from the dry goods store. I didn’t get to town much now. “Remember when I wondered how Andrew spent his time? Well, he rode, trying to keep the cattle close where he could see how they fared, pushed them through trees, hoped to keep them from a wildness gained from never seeing humans.”

“And kept wolves away? I hear them howl, even in town.”

“Yes, especially during calving. I’m suddenly an expert in cattle-raising though I’m not very good at it. There are wolf signs. I wonder if I should carry a gun.”

“You’re riding astride?” Nancy placed the bolted flour in the bin, wiping up the slightest dust of it before she took the salt from the box and put it in the cupboard. “Would you mind if I straightened up your shelf?”

“Mind? No. I just haven’t had time. And yes, astride. I can’t believe my mother rode sidesaddle all across the continent. Of course she wasn’t riding while carrying a child, but still.” My father’s mention of “babies” before I arrived made me wonder if what I’d just said was true.

Nancy chattered on about her brother’s latest love, how her mother had pneumonia but had recovered with the summer heat. Her father said there was talk of bringing a woolen mill to the area. “They’d employ a lot of people, girls too. I might get a job there.” Nancy was sixteen and pretty with that flaming red hair. I said as much to her as she finished up organizing my shelves.

“Oh, maybe I am.” Then, “I’ve met a lad.” She blushed.

“Of course you have. It was only a matter of time.”

“His name is Andrew too. Andrew Kees. He came from Pennsylvania. I told him about what happened and how I absolutely seem to take so long to do things. He said he didn’t mind ’a-tall.’ That’s how he says ‘at all.’ A-tall.” She looked wistful, her busy
hands stopped as she spread the words out with her fingers as though writing them in the sky. “He’s a cooper. A good one. He has contracts for barrels with the store and blacksmith too. The only thing is . . . he’s nearly forty.”

“Forty years old?”

“Next year.” She fiddled with her red curls. “But he’s really good to me. And when I told him what happened, how frightened I’d been and how we survived, he said I was very brave to keep on living, to not let that past tragedy hold me like the hostages we were, that life happens and we have to move on.” She sat down, straightened the chair pillow, but this time let our teacups rule the table without intervention. “He says sometimes, after a bad time, we form new habits. That’s what my organizing is.” Her fingers reached to turn the teacup handle toward her, but she stopped, put her hands on her lap. “It’s just a way to fit things into tight places, when I’m not sure I can. So I look for things I
can
do. That’s what my Andrew says.”

“He sounds very wise. And kind. Absolutely kind.” I grasped her hand, squeezed it, let it go. I wondered if I might find another way to control my life besides imagining terrible things, being a shrew to my husband. My efforts to control the world weren’t really working anymore. And being self-righteous with Andrew didn’t advance our marriage either.

“When you lose things, kindness fills the spaces, he says,” Nancy continued. “He lost a wife and child already. And his farm back in Pennsylvania.” She straightened the handle on the sugar pot. “We have nice conversations. He hasn’t said anything of marriage. I mean, we’re just friends.”

“Friends make the best marriages.” I knew I sounded wistful.

“Any more sassafras tea, darlin’?” Andrew shouted from the front porch where I’d helped him hobble, placed his leg up on a pillowed chair, and handed him his leather-working tools and
the saddlebag he worked on, stamping roses in the leather with his mallet while Nancy and I tended to things inside.

“I’ll get it for you!” This was Martha Jane who swooped in and brought him a cup of the cooled tea I’d taken from the spring just before Nancy arrived. The best thing about Andrew’s recuperating was that the girls entertained him, scurried to get him water when he was thirsty, made him sandwiches when I was out for the day on horseback, even stewed a hen we’d have for supper. Andrew was good with them, complimenting their cooking and baking. He didn’t bark at them the way he did at me.

“Can you feel the baby move?” Nancy brushed away crumbs from the tablecloth. I nodded. “Isn’t it funny? We were just girls not so long ago and soon you’ll be a mother. Your mama would be proud.”

“I could never be the kind of mother she was, so loving and a good wife too.”

“Sure you could. She was your model. You’ll do good, I know it.”

“I’ll do well.” I laughed when she frowned. “Ignore me, Nancy. Grammar is a specialty of mine. And forgive me. I just have to correct, fix things whether they matter or not.”

“I’ve been in that horse race.” She grinned.

Nancy rose to leave and I hugged her, grateful to have a friend who didn’t need explaining to. After she left, I sat for a moment on the porch beside Andrew. The girls and I had picked blackberries in the late July morning, and I could smell their ripeness even though the branches we’d plucked were well beyond the barn. I kept them chopped closer to the buildings, as they took over a place. I wished more than once that the Molalla and Kalapuya Indians, who had been on this land first, still burned the underbrush. But with split rail fences marking
“territory,” the settlers forbade it. Instead, we chopped vines and shrubs, working twice as hard than if we’d monitored flames doing that work for us.