A Clearing in the Wild (34 page)

“Mama, look,” Andy repeated.

“What is it?” I sounded harsh; I knew it and felt instantly sorry. I turned and squatted to him, apologized. “Mama’s a real trial this morning, isn’t she? Let me just finish this little dab here, please.” He leaned his head into my chest, bunting me just a bit. He pointed behind me. He probably wanted to show me yet another hole he’d poked into the caulking. My temper was frazzled as an old rope. Did the lack of food make me irritable?

“Papa. Papa.”

“Papa is a new word for you,” I said, standing and lifting him onto my chest. “Good for you!”

As I turned, there stood Christian, the hide door pushed back.

I could see his hair, a mass of wet locks, his jaw squared and set.

“Woman,” Christian said, “what have you done?”

I rushed into his arms before he could say another word, handed him his son.

“Your woman,” I told him. He grunted, but his arm closed around me while he held Andy with his other.

From behind him I heard coughing, and there stood Adam, Hans, and Joe and Adam Knight.

“Come in, come in,” I urged them. They all had longer hair and scratched at their arms.

“We have wasted days looking for you,” Christian said gruffly, stepping back from me to let the others pass inside. “Worried days.” He sounded cross, but I also heard a catch in his throat.

“We were sure you were at the Woodards’, so we didn’t even start to look until last week,” Joe said.

“Don’t ever do this again to me,” Christian said, leaning toward me. “You will remain with me to work things out. You won’t run off like a wayward child and risk yourself and my son. We will do what must be done together.”

I bristled. Did I look like I’d risked his son, whose arms draped around his father’s neck? Did I look like a wayward child running off, only hoping to be found? I started to challenge him, but instead I took a deep breath and chose to be happy rather than right.

“I’ve provided a house with a roof on it,” I said. “I’ve kept me and my son out of the rain, and I didn’t mean to—”

“You disobeyed.”

Adam coughed then, a hard racking sound. “I brought pepper,” he croaked. “Will you make us tea?”

“
Ja
,” I said. “Be dry and warmed by the fire, and I’ll fix you some. We have a roof,” I said, pointing upward. “You’ll not believe how the Lord provided it.”

They all crowded inside the hut they’d built, the men squatting on their heels, leaning against the walls, slipping their wet caps off, looking around for pegs. Their rain slickers were soaked, and the room felt humid. “No pegs,” I said. “And I haven’t gotten the walls all caulked either, but a good start.”

“Where’d you get the elk hide?” Hans asked. He fingered the fine fur at the doorway.

“Some Chehalis or Quinaults. They helped me with the tarp and then left me that hide. One took it right off his back. They acted the Diamond Rule.”

“They made your life better than their own,” Hans said, nodding.

“They’re acclimated,” Adam said. “They can handle this weather bare chested.” He wiped at his mustache that dropped nearly to his jaw line. His beard had filled in over his chin and onto his cheeks. His hand quivered. He coughed. Maybe I shouldn’t have left them; maybe I could have kept them from getting so ill.

“We’ll be accustomed to the rain in time,” Christian said.

I watched as Adam glanced at Hans, who shook his head, as though warning not to press the matter further. Christian’s tired eyes lifted to the tarp roof and the sound of the steady rain. “But for now, we will rest,” he said. “We will hunt together and smoke the meat and gain some strength. We’ll repair that split in the canvas before it grows longer.” His eyes lifted to the canvas top. “Small fractures should always be fixed before they become too large.” He stared at me when he said this. “Indeed. This is good common sense.”

Adam’s wracking cough interrupted Christian. When he’d stopped, Christian continued. “We will get well. And when the weather lets up, we’ll build another hut,
ja?
” He looked at me. “But we’ll build it where the land borders this claim, at the corner, so there will be closer neighbors and so we can come back here each night for a dry place to rest.” He lifted Andy up into his arms. Andy’s head touched the tarp, he sat so high on his father’s shoulders.

“We might even finish our next one with a wooden roof before moving on to another. The Lord led us here. He provides. This is what we must remember. He’ll make the way for us to prepare for our brothers and sisters. On time.”

“You’ve made a wise choice in coming here now, husband.”

Christian grunted. “I have a … creative teacher.”

I leaned into him, patting Andy’s legs that hung like two sausages on Christian’s chest. “And your teacher learned a lesson too,” I whispered.

He furrowed his brow but didn’t pursue what I’d said.

That night, curled into our bedroll, Christian asked me, “What lesson is it that you learned,
Liebchen?
”

“Sometimes I should act even when my husband thinks I shouldn’t, and not wait so long before I do.”

He grunted. “You could have told me where you went. I assumed you went to Woodard’s Landing and allowed you a few days to come to your senses and return. When you didn’t and when you weren’t there, then I worried. There was no need for that.”

“You’d forbidden it. And would anything less have gotten you to tend to your men, let alone me?” He didn’t answer. “You’re a good leader, Christian. You’ve set the task the men can respond to. You decided as you did about resting here, getting strong, that is a good sign.”

He grunted, then lay quiet for a time. We could hear the cadence of the men’s breathing as they entered into sleep. Andy made little wheezing sounds, and I gently squeezed at his nose that had started to run.

“But you have to notice others, what they need. It can’t all be for the colony,” I said. “Men work harder and longer when they know the task has meaning and gives to others. We can’t just say that’s so; we have to act it, even here so far from home.”

“You defied me,
Liebchen
. You risked our son and your own life. This is not the way to be heard.”

“You risked us, too,” I said. Then added quickly, “You’re here now. Let’s let it end there.”

“
Ja
, because the men tell me I’m foolish to give up a bed warmed by my wife.”

“That’s the reason you came to find me? Because you wanted a convenient bed warmer?”

“Shh. I came because I love you and our son. But I carry with me
the knowledge of a failing.” It took a strong man to admit a mistake. “I need to believe that God’s Spirit speaks not just to me but to you as well, though you are just a woman.”

“I am just a woman,” I said. “But I’m a dry woman lying beneath a roof. And I’m a woman willing to share her bed with a stubborn husband.”

“And I with a stubborn wife.”

We celebrated Christmas with a goose Hans brought down, whose feathers I stuffed into a dried elk’s bladder that I softened with the animal’s own fat. No
Belsnickel
brought gifts by as he did at Bethel, but I had enough sinew thread left to sew the elk bladder into the perfect pillow for Christian’s head. I took my precious needles from the chatelaine that hung around my neck. Christian winked as I did.

A couple of the men had whittled toys for Andy, which he played with now, the wooden horse in one hand chasing after the wooden goat of almost the same size in another. I did not expect nor did I receive any tangible gift from my husband. That we were all together with food in our stomachs and aware of the Lord’s presence in His provision was present enough. That and our own Christmas service reading from the Bible. Christian ended the day saying we must make more time for prayer and worship. Our lack of such, he said, explained why our efforts moved so slowly and with such turmoil.

The Knight brothers surprised, saying that if they left now they could return to Bethel in time to help bring the larger group out. Joe wanted to go by ship to San Francisco.

“But we need help here,” Christian said.

“You’ll do little till spring. Then in summer, maybe you could hire the Indians,” Joe replied.

I thought,
It must’ve been hard for boys Jonathan’s age to be isolated for so long
.

“Indeed,” Christian grunted. “And if I say no?”

The brothers looked at each other.

“Maybe we’d leave anyway,” Joe said.

That night, I knew Christian lay awake, his Bible open in his hands. In the morning he gave his consent to the Knights, who headed back after the first of the year, the tide taking them out to sea.

Through January the men hunted together, once bringing home a bear whose hide became a welcome blanket on the coldest nights. We had meat we smoked inside a branch-covered lean-to. The smell of meat made my mouth water sometimes, even in the night. Stews were frequent, and all of us regained some strength. We read together, finding Scriptures our leader had never preached on, wondering if we had the right to say what we thought the words meant. We were not learned, after all; we merely lived and hoped our lives reflected what we loved.

One day when I went into the woods to graze the goat, I startled several Indian women gathering cedar root and bark. I motioned to ask what they’d do with their bounty, and one of them made a pounding motion against the bark, then pointed to her cape. I could pound it into a mat to cover the floor or perhaps make a cape for Andy, even for the men. This might be the last winter when we were so wet because we lacked the proper clothing.

I nudged Christian into making a trip to Woodard’s Landing.

“We’re not asking them for anything,” I said. “We’re just being good neighbors to visit.” He finally agreed, and we spent the day in each other’s company, talking and singing. Sarah had an angel’s voice, and her singing taught me new English words. I considered her my friend and overlooked her clucking tongue when I told her of my leaving Christian for a time and living in the woods alone.

“The Indians …,” she said. “You took a terrible risk.”

“Either way,” I said, “if I hadn’t gone, I’m not sure we’d all still be alive. The men needed rest.”

“You are overly dramatic, Emma,” Christian said, overhearing us.

“You were all sick. I made a way for us to have a roof over our heads.”

“No,
Liebchen
. That was God’s work, not yours.”

How I hated it when he defined anything good I did as something brought about by intervention. Did I offer nothing? Did I not at least act in concert with God, sometimes? Or was that route only possible through the works of men?

At times, there were slight breaks in the rain, or it drizzled more than poured. After the men began to feel better, on those still days with the weather offering fog rather than rain, they’d work in the woods, bringing out the logs they needed and stacking them. When it drizzled, they’d work on the structures, Christian still bent on having three dozen houses roofed and ready by the time the larger group arrived.

I still didn’t see how we could accomplish this. The Bethelites might not understand the primitiveness of this place. What had the Knights and Michael Sr. and John Genger and George and John Stauffer said to them by now? Would they be enthusiastic? What would they say about a place where horses bogged down in mud and people used the river if they wanted to truly go somewhere? Would the promised
richness of the soil and the bounty in the woods be enough to overcome the challenges?

I calmed my unease about the arrival of the others by remembering that the more experienced colonists had been through this all before. Helena Giesy, Christian’s sister, would likely say this was an easier creation of a colony than when they moved to Missouri, conquering hardwood trees and plowing meadows. Missouri was a wilderness of sorts in the 1840s, and there were Indian scares there, too, with Andrew Jackson’s Removal Act forcing the natives onto reservations far from their home lands.

I’d arrived in my parents’ home well after those early years. I didn’t know the trials they might have lived through. Maybe all new adventures had missteps and trials and, as Christian said, I was merely being dramatic.