A Clearing in the Wild (31 page)

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. When we are all here, we can more easily do the roofs, Emma. We need to keep building walls as we can.” His voice had that final note he gave when he’d bear no more protest. “You talked your way into being here. You must now make being here your way.”

“Can you talk to him,
Frau
Giesy?” Hans said. I patched the scab on his head with a paste of herbs. A light snow fell outside the lean- to while I tended him. My hands were cold even wearing gloves. I’d wrapped Andy in his board to keep him from wandering off while I helped Hans. I didn’t want my child getting wet or colder than he already was—than we all were. Even Hans’s teeth chattered as I ministered.

“Emma, Hans. It’s all right to call me by my Christian name.”

“
Ja
, Emma.” Hans had scratched until the place on his head bled nearly every day, but this day he’d scraped that spot as well when he crawled under a tree-fall looking for a deer he thought he’d downed. “It rains so hard a man can hardly see to shoot straight,” he said. “We really need two men hunting together, one to help the other.”

“That’ll mean even fewer to haul the logs,” I said, dabbing again at his wound.

“I saw some Indians out there too,” he said, his voice a whisper then.

“My husband says we’re perfectly safe here. I’ve seen only friendly Indians willing to show me how to make a spoon from a burl. They’re very kind.”

“But I hear—”

“They’re as cold and hungry as we are, I suspect.” I’d been startled myself coming upon what Christian said were Chehalis men at the river when I went to rinse out clothes before I stopped bothering. A man batted with a club at large fish coming up the river while the women with him cut them lengthwise into long filets. They’d arranged a kind of dam that appeared to divert fish into a holding pond where they were easily taken. They’d built a fire beneath a lofty cedar and skewered the filets with long sticks they poked into the ground, holding the fish’s pink flesh toward the fire. The men wore reddish-colored capes that looked like woven reeds or even bark and basket hats that shed the rain. They didn’t seem the least interested in me. When I approached, the women noticed me and offered that cedar burl spoon.

“Still,
Frau
Giesy—Emma—he would listen to you. We’ll all be getting sicker if we don’t bring in more meat and get out of this wet. Look at us!” He held up his arm and reached his hands around his wrist. “Thin as a cane and barely as useful.” He lowered his voice even more. “We should not have sent so many back to bring the rest out. Two would have been enough.”

Should I defend my husband’s leadership?
I wanted to, but Hans did look thinner. We needed fat; we had all lost weight. My wrapper ties circled twice around me now, but I assumed my weight loss came from doing my best to make sure Andy and the men had sufficient food as they were working the hardest. Opal’s milk kept me fit. Or so I thought. But I was hungry more often than not. These men must be too.

“We all think we should finish one house, cover it, and wait out this rain. Then we can start in earnest in the spring.”

“You’ve spoken to Christian about this?”

Hans shook his head. “Bring it up even sideways, and he turns us around with those staring eyes. He is a taskmaster, that one.”

“He stares at me, too,” I said, the most critical of my husband I preferred to get in the presence of Hans.

“
Ja
, but he pays attention.”

“Does he?”

Adam Schuele sought me out for his cough next. He needed something more than the boiled deer tongue syrup. I made a pepper and sugar tea, having him sip it slowly as the pepper clustered at the bottom of the mug. “It burns,” he said. But the cough lessoned for the moment.

“We don’t have much sugar left,” I said. “I hope the Knight boys don’t get that cough.”

Hans caught it, too, and Christian’s never did go away, though it wasn’t as wracking as it had been. But my husband wouldn’t hear of leaving or even roofing the hut they worked on. He’d already planned to move on to another Giesy claim, this one for Sebastian and Mary, and haul logs for that house. “Discomfort is part of our mission,” he said. “No disciples ever found following the Lord easy. It is how He works out our character, through these trials.”

“But the men—look at them.” The men stood inside a rotted tree trunk out of the rain, so Christian and I talked in private. “They’re ill. They’re tired. They’re weary of all this. You’re thin as a reed. Surely God did not intend for us to kill ourselves in pursuit of this new colony.”

“We all chose this place.”

“
Ach, ja
, I know. But things change. We have new information now. The trees aren’t easily harnessed. There are too few of us working on the huts, so you push too hard.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t have sent so many back?”

“No, I … It’s just that there aren’t people here for us to recruit or to serve, and we’re devoting so much time to housing there’s no energy left for … listening to God’s Word or bringing it to others. Even those who’ve lived here three or four years before us in the Territory are leaving. Isn’t it true you bought out their claims? Perhaps this isn’t the way we were supposed to prepare for the others, perhaps we’ve lost the heart of this mission, the soul of—”

“I’ll not hear any more dissension,” he shouted. Andy stopped his playing at my feet and looked up at his father. His eyes filled with tears. The goat scratched with her back leg at her bag. “No more,” he said, quieting. “We will do it this way and the Lord will keep us. You must not be like Job’s wife who did not support her husband in his hour of trial. You must have faith.”

That night I dreamed that my soul woke up. The stretching of my stomach seeking food elbowed it awake. My heart pounded fast, then slow, pushing blood into my head to get my brain to work, feeding it thoughts. My bones ached but exerted strength as they poked at my organs, swimming around inside me until my soul awoke. It had been asleep too long while the other parts of me took over. It was the oddest dream, but when I awoke I knew what I needed to do.

The tarp must have weighed fifty pounds or more, and as I dragged it, it began to collect mud, adding to my effort. “We’ll find fir boughs to lay it on, and I’ll haul that,” I told my wide-eyed son, who sat staring back at me from a distant tree. I’d wrapped him in a larger board I’d made, liking the security it afforded me at times, tying him in. With my small axe, I chopped a bough from a fallen tree. I did imagine Christian’s look when he returned to our lean-to and found us gone. But he’d
roll in with Adam Schuele and the others so he’d not sleep in the wet, though they could all cough together once they consumed the pepper-and-sugar tea I’d left for them. And maybe, just maybe, then he’d follow me, and if nothing else, the men would have a few days’ rest while he searched.

My routine involved walking ahead through the mud with Andy on my back while I tugged at the goat. Christian once said the goat would follow me anywhere, but I couldn’t take that chance. I would set down the small pack I carried around my neck, lean Andy’s board against it, tie the goat, then head back to the tarp that lay like a giant gray slug in the rain some distance behind me.

Back at the tarp, I would roll it onto a flat cedar bough, which seemed to reduce the muddy drag. Cedar needles were softer, not as prickly as the fir, but the bark still chaffed against my hands as I dragged. When I would reach Andy again, I’d rest for a bit, say a prayer, take a breath, then put my son on my back, place the bag around my neck and grab for the goat, leaving the canvas behind. If I began to think about how far I’d have to go like this, I’d make myself concentrate on something else. Reality would strip me bare, and I might simply stop. All I would think about was the next step and conserving energy for my work, wasting no effort on future foes I faced nor past disasters. My soul kept me awake.

Carrying my son ahead helped me find the best path and gave me short respite from the aching of my shoulders and my legs that hauling the tarp induced. I’d settle Andy down while I could still see the slug, as I called the canvas; then when I returned for it, I was never far from Andy should danger work its way toward him. We made enough noise with my grunting and his crying out for me “Mama, Mama” off and on that I couldn’t imagine any self-respecting cougar or bear would even be in the region, let alone curious enough to try to find us or do us harm. I did
once wonder if the goat might attract them as a perfect noontime meal. And once when Andy cried, I remembered Sarah telling me that Indian children are kept quiet during berry-picking because their cries sound much like bear cubs, and a mother bear might seek out the sounds.

I pitched those thoughts away.

I pitched many thoughts away. Thoughts about what my action might mean to my marriage, thoughts about where I was and what had I done. The trees did offer solace as I made my way through them in the mist and rain. Their stillness and stability made me almost worshipful. We hadn’t had a church or any fellowship or any time to even read the Scripture because we all fell wet and tired onto our moss beds. I vowed to change that once I reached my destination.

Near the riverbank, Andy and I fell into a mud hole up to my knees. The goat bleated as he jerked the rope out of my hand. The weight of the mud and its sucking felt like a too-tight cape around me. I thought then that maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe we were meant to endure hardships, and it didn’t matter where we endured them: in a lean-to or in a mud hole. Maybe Christian was right about trials gouging out our character and that avoiding them just made the next carving more grievous.

Would we be stuck here? Would Andy and I sink, then be consumed by bears? That thought gave me new energy, and I grabbed at shrubs and vines at the river’s bank, yanking at them until I pulled myself free. I lay on my stomach, panting with effort, the sound of the river rushing behind me.

There had to be more than one way to carry out God’s plans. That’s all I was doing: finding another way. It had been my way that once set upon a course I found turning back a trouble. I believed Christian and I shared that trait. I was doing this not just for the men but for my husband. I, too, like Job’s wife, was duty-bound.

Dusk greeted us as we made our final approach toward the four walls of the first hut of the Giesy place. When I’d left that morning, after the men headed into the woods, I thought I’d go to Woodard’s Landing. But once on my way I believed going to the Giesy place would make more sense. It was the same distance from where the men worked, and it offered opportunities to redeem myself once my husband came after us. I hadn’t yet entertained the idea that he might not.

I’d come three miles from where the men worked, though I’d walked it twice, pulled myself through knee-deep mud carrying Andy, found a different route back for the tarp. Even the goat stayed close to Andy, and by the last half mile or so, I didn’t have to take the time to tether it; it trusted I’d be returning.

“At least they weren’t working on our site, Andy, or we’d have had to come seven miles or more through brambles and trees.” Opal bleated and butted, jerking both Andy and me to my knees. “We’re almost there,” I scolded.