A Clearing in the Wild (40 page)

“I’d prefer to go to our own homes now,” our leader said.

“A fresh start will be better in the morning,” Christian insisted, and to my surprise, after a hesitation, our leader agreed.

“And the others …?” I said.

“In their tents this night,” Christian said. “That’s how they’ve slept along the trail. They understand the vigor of building a new community.”

I watched as the men moved to set their tents in the potato fields. The women huddled in small groups, some waiting out of the rain on the Woodards’ porch, then moving to shelter under their canvases. I counted as I could. It looked like seventy, and with the Klein group, more than one hundred people were here already. But more than twice that number were yet to come.

The women didn’t raise their eyes to mine, busying themselves with the solidness of land after their days on the boats. They were tired, I decided. It would be better when we were together tomorrow at the stockade and they met up again with Peter Klein’s group, who would tell them of how hard we’d worked and how the land demanded more than we’d imagined. The scouts would all be here again save two, claiming as we had before that this was our promised land. We would have a gathering in worship led by … Christian, perhaps, or our leader. All would be well.

It had to be well.

“Let’s walk, then,” our leader said to my husband in the morning. “Show me this place you all chose.” His words chopped like an axe to a tree trunk. He’d grown stronger with rest under the Woodards’ feather tick. Voices echoed in the relentless rain, which I prayed would stop so they could see the grandeur of the trees instead of the misty fog veiling their tops. My teeth chattered, from the cold, I assumed. Our leader acted like a man who had to be convinced instead of a man grateful for what God had provided. I wanted him to see the possibilities here as my husband saw them; not the way I’d first seen it and only later been wooed over to my husband’s view.

Our leader impatiently grabbed at his hat while ordering Louisa to bring him a hard biscuit and jerky, as though she was a servant instead of a wife. Christian would have to win him over quickly. Something had changed from the time Michael Schaefer Sr. reported on our leader’s optimism over the journey to what I saw now.

Louisa pulled her cape up over her head and rushed out to their wagon to bring back a cold breakfast for her husband. I opened my tied
bag and gave Christian jerked meat, a piece of dried fruit, and a biscuit. “I planted and ground the wheat for this myself,” I told the new arrivals.

Louisa frowned, and I wondered if she thought me prideful.

“We’ll take the mules, Wilhelm,” Christian said. “The road is too muddy this time of year to try to walk it.”

“
Ach
,” our leader said, striking the air with his hand, but he followed Christian out into the rain to saddle the mules.

I made it my duty to raise my own spirits as well as those of the others while we waited at Woodards’. I told them stories of our time here, making the tales light, about the goat’s antics or the delight of watching bobcat kits racing in the spring sun or how moss made the perfect bed matting and it was free for the plucking. The women warmed up more, and I told them that the earthen floors of the houses were nearly as hard as the tile back in Bethel, that in summer, berries literally dropped their fruit at our doors. We’d found a wild honey tree and so had sweetness. I assured them of this land’s sweetness.

We were joined by several of the Klein group then, too impatient to wait for us, and so the gathering increased with German words chattering through the forest like chickadees. Soon both men and women were together in the warehouse Sam opened for us so we’d have a drier, though no less crowded, place to wait.

I listened more now and learned of events along the trail, and that’s when Karl Ruge told of Keil’s strange arrest and trial. The Klein group hadn’t heard of it either, and as Karl spoke, I wondered if the arrest and brief trial of our leader in The Dalles had caused the change in his attitude from one of happy assurance to what I saw as discouraged doubt.

“They accused him of disloyalty to the American government in a time of war with the Indians,” Karl told us. “He was arrested for treason.”

“For treason?” Peter said.

Karl nodded. “
Ja
, but it was all a mistake. Some Americans reported
that Wilhelm said such things when it was another, one of the Indians who befriended us, who said Americans were bad.”

“They arrested him for disagreeing with the government?” I said.

Karl blinked as he turned to me, surprised I guess that a woman raised her voice in this mixed group.

He hesitated only a moment. “
Ja
, by golly. Wilhelm sent the rest of the group ahead while he and I tried to get to the bottom. We did, though they paid no heed to what either of us reported about our loyalty. Instead, another American came to our rescue, testifying that he’d heard the exact same words spoken by this same Indian. The court took the word of that American over anything Wilhelm or I could say.”

“I’ll bet Wilhelm hated that,” I said, then clasped my hand over my mouth. Wilhelm Keil demanded recognition, acclamation almost; he hadn’t had it in this territory so far. But I didn’t need to announce it. I looked for Louisa. Her sunken cheeks burned red.

“It … grieved him,” Karl said, his eyes resting with kindness on Louisa.

Late in the day, one of the colonists who’d remained at the stockade came through the forest and said we were to bring the hearse and come to the stockade. I saw this as a hopeful sign that our leader had seen our land and approved and now we could move toward home.
Home
.

“No. I don’t think my husband would want the hearse hauled by any but our two mules,” Louisa said. “And they are being ridden by our … by Wilhelm and Chris.” She crossed her arms over her narrow chest. “I’ll wait here with the hearse until he brings the mules back.” She wrapped her cape around herself, an immovable log.

“We must take people to the stockade area,” Peter said. “We will wear out our welcome at the Woodards’. Wilhelm wants this done.”

Louisa hesitated, bit her lower lip, but then the lessons ingrained to
women, that we must follow our men, overtook her and she nodded. Peter and the other men harnessed two oxen to haul the hearse the last mile or so to the Giesy claim and stockade. The rest of us would form the funeral march that followed.

I helped pull up tents and talked with several of the women, assuring them that there were roofs, at least a few, so we could get in out of the rain once we arrived at the Giesy site.

And we did so, many of us huddling into the log house I’d spent the last winter in, more pitching tents outside.

I’d claimed this hut as my own last winter and noticed anew the hides that I’d helped tan, the sleeping mats that bore our blankets, the moss that I’d cleaned the slugs from. It now belonged to … all of us. My stomach knotted. I wondered if Christian and I would be allowed to take the elk hide gift when we moved, or would that now remain as a part of the house rather than a part of our lives?

Louisa sat down on my blanket, pushed it back behind her so she could lean against it. She patted the soft bedding, looked around. She nodded approval. Her eyes met mine. Once again all that we had would have to be shared with everyone else.

In that moment I knew that the colony had truly arrived.

“He’s taken Wilhelm to your claim,” Adam Schuele told me. “He wanted him to see the widest prairie and where the gristmill could be placed. All our ideas Chris wants to share with him.”

“What has our leader said?” I whispered. We stood in a large tree-fall that some of the men had scraped out for a dry place to sleep. “Does he give an indication of his approval from this morning’s trip?”

Adam looked away, picked at some pitch stuck on his hand. “He spent a good amount of time on the hill behind the stockade overlooking the valley.” Adam shook his head. “I don’t know. We were all so sure …”

“Because it is a good place,” I said, certain. “I struggled at first, remember? I didn’t think this land could support us all. It took so much work just to build, but Christian assured me. You assured me. That all the scouts agreed, that’s the true sign that we have chosen well, that it was chosen for us. Surely our leader will not dispute that?”

Adam said nothing, walked over to take the blinders from the horses he said were given as gifts to only Keil’s sons. They were chestnuts with white spots spattered across their sides. Adam tied the horses at young trees far enough apart that they didn’t entangle each other. The goat ran around trying to decide if all the additional dogs were pets or peril.

Work would set my mind at rest, quell my imaginings of what occurred between Christian and our leader. I helped milk the few cows that Peter’s group had driven down the trail. I showed the new women the latrine area, commented on the berries we could eat to supplement our diet. “You can squat and eat,” I said, grateful for their chuckles. I urged them not to hunch their shoulders against the rain, as it did no good and only caused later aches. “We can weave capes,” I said. “Right from this land. What we know of wefts and warps serves us here.” I showed them where I kept food cool in the river, the large drums that we collected rainwater in for drinking and washing. They peered at the meager grain storage. “I know there isn’t much, but we can buy flour through the winter from the ships coming in.” Potatoes were plentiful. We’d have a little milk now with the few cows here, though not enough for all these people. We could perhaps buy a few more of Sarah’s eggs,
maybe even some of her chickens. “We have plenty of ammunition, so we can have game to eat. We won’t go hungry, that’s certain,” I told them.

Christian had planned well, considering he never knew how many people would actually come here or the circumstances when they did.

“It’ll be a bit squeezed in together, and we’ll need the tents still,” I told the women. And maybe a few more of these rotted logs carved out for people to stay in. “It doesn’t snow much here at all, and by February, the sun comes out more often and flowers begin to bloom. By March, this is an Eden, it truly is. Even I plowed and seeded the grain field, the soil is so easily broken.”

“Will we rotate being able to sleep under the roof?” one of the women asked.

“The doctor will need
this
roofed house,” Louisa told her. It was the first time she’d engaged in the conversations, and I noted that she referred to Wilhelm as the doctor. “Or had you planned that for yourselves, Emma?”

My faced burned. “We’ll live in a tent through this winter as we did most of the last,” I said. “All the scouts lived in this house; it wasn’t ‘ours.’ We built it for the colony.”

“
Ja
, well, you call it the Giesy place, so I assume,” Louisa said.

“Christian claimed the land in his parents’ names, as the law requires, but of course it is for the colony.”

“The land in Bethel is in my husband’s name.”

“But here, the free land needs specific people named,” I said. I was even more grateful that Christian had made it clear where our claim would be … far down the road, seven miles down the road, and we’d spent no time at all on building it at the expense of building for others. He’d sacrificed a dry home for us to make homes for others. Couldn’t they see his generosity?

“I note there is no Keil place,” Louisa said. “Or does my husband go there with your husband, and you have saved the best for last?”

She grieved; I needed to remember that, to chalk away the blemish of her words.

“This stockade, this roofed house will house you as it does all of us. It isn’t Elim yet, I know. But once we have a mill, we’ll have all the timber we could need to build grand houses just as we had in Bethel, just not with brick.” Even Christian’s parents would not assume they alone would have a roof over their heads. “There are some other structures on adjoining claims, a few, with canvas roofs. With so many of us, now we will be able to finish those.”

It flashed through my mind that with so many people here we’d also be spending more time hunting, more time handling food than we had before. I hoped that Christian had put in a large-enough order for wheat to come into Woodards’ warehouse, and I wondered if some of the party still to arrive might come up the Cowlitz and take the trail as Peter Klein had and bring sheep. Mutton would taste good, and we could use the wool to spin to replace our threadbare clothes. That reminded me that I hadn’t noticed that our leader’s group included any trunks marked with our name on them. So it would be Christian’s parents I’d have to count on. They carried the grist stones and were coming by ship. Surely they would have our trunks and bring our personal effects.