A Sweetness to the Soul (40 page)

“I think the Lord is tapping me on my shoulder,” I told him, standing up, decided. “And I don’t want to disappoint him.”

“I just don’t like to interfere,” Joseph said, cautious. I wondered if he was also thinking of Sunmiet.

“We’re just offering help,” I said. “Temporary. Even St. Luke said we should give in order to receive.”

My husband pondered that a moment more, stirred his Arbuckle’s, added sweet milk to the black. “Francis and Archibald used to quote that verse,” he said. He thought a while longer before he said, “Let’s ride over and see what we can offer up.”

We took the buggy and loaded a second wagon full of food stuffs that Benito brought behind us with the team. The road to
Tygh Valley had good use and the frozen ground made the buggy glide across the usual ruts and ridges. At Staley’s store, we added cloth and thread and children’s gifts and five fresh oranges Art said were just delivered. Then we headed southwest, toward the mountains and the reservation and the settlement of Wamic on the way.

Such a mixture of emotion filled me as we rode, my feet warmed on the foot box newly refurbished with embers from Staley’s fire, my hands holding themselves, coiled inside a fur muff. The air was crisp, nipping at our cheeks. A hawk stared down at us from its perch on a cottonwood tree startled free of its leaves. The wind lifted my bonnet, Joseph’s beard, almost to the rhythm of the “clop-clop” of the horse. Bandit lay panting at my feet, his breathing a comfort to my ears.

Refreshing
. That was the word to describe this bracing ride to give and perhaps, receive. Refreshing and clean, the very words Sunmiet used to describe part of the mystery of the sweat! The opening of oneself that resulted in cleansing, free from the inside to the out, free to give, and to receive.

I leaned into Joseph, grateful for his generosity and God’s provision of it. “Will they want us when we get there?” I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders, his hands steady on the reins. “No sense wondering. Be there soon enough.”

But I did wonder. Would someone else have already separated them, sent two children here, two more there? Would the children wish to live with us, total strangers? Were they girls or boys?

With J. W.’s directions, we followed the Barlow Trail, twisting up the switchbacks out of Tygh and then across an open, wide expanse dwarfed by the white brilliance of Mt. Hood. There, on the edge of the flat, my wondering was interrupted.

We approached a small wood and canvas structure one could hardly call a shelter. It sat back from the road without benefit of trees to break the wind that raced across the top of the ridge. It had no rock foundation. None at all, in fact, and three sides of the structure seemed to slide into themselves while on the fourth side, a canvas flap hung
loosely. A small wisp of smoke made its way out of the top. I could see movement through the splintered walls and holes in the canvas.

Benito pulled the wagon up behind us, stepped off, and walked abreast. “I knock?” he asked.

“We’ll all go,” I announced, straightening my bonnet strings. “Bring Bandit with us. Let them know it’s a friendly visit, from one family to another.”

“You heard the little woman,” Joseph said squeezing my hand as he pulled the blanket from my lap and helped me step out. Bandit bounded past me, stretched on the frozen ground, tail wagging in readiness. Joseph took my hand and we three—plus a kelpie—walked up on the silent porch, walked up to face our future.

F
AMILY
M
ATTERS

S
ome years tumble into themselves and cannot be distinguished from another. Newspapers and archival experts well record what transpired of import. But such accounts do not stimulate the pangs of memory like the scent of fresh lumber taking on moisture in a January drizzle or the clatter of a train making its way across the country. If I had not made notes in ink to preserve the highlights of 1869, it would be lost, pushed down by the pressure of weightier years. This way, as they say, “cream rises” and so does 1869.

What better example of cream rising than to discover the depth of Joseph’s generosity or the breadth of my own capacity to care?

Chief Paulina of the Paiutes had been hunted down and killed; after months of controversy, President Johnson had barely missed impeachment in the Senate and at election time, he was replaced. Finally, we had a new president, a fighting man, Joseph said, meaner than even Paulina: an Ohioan named Ulysses S. Grant.

And it was “a fighting man” I thought of when the wild-eyed man gripped the tent flap that day. He snapped it open and we felt the blast of fury in his eyes.

“What do you want?”

His eyes were dark, set into a cow-like face dominated by his
wide, flat nose. He wore homespun pants and shirt, a weary jacket made smaller by the exposure of slender forearms sticking from the sleeves.

“We’ve brought some food for you. An early Christmas gift,” Joseph said, responding to the fear more than the fight in the man’s eyes.

“Appreciate your interest,” the man said, less hostile, “believe we’ll be all right.” He stepped back a bit, so we could see the children huddled around a small sheepherder’s stove, chimney stack poked out through a hole in the tent. His wife, suckling a child, sat toward the back, a thin blanket draped over the shoulders of her dark linsey-woolsey. From the shadow of the lean-to, she smiled at me. Her eyes flashed the pride and sparkle of a new mother tempered by the wisdom of the status of her brood.

Putting her finger to her lips she signaled “sleeping” and lay the child in a bundle of blankets kept warm by the fire. The baby, eyes closed, sucked at an imaginary nipple, rooting at the blanket that nestled close to its face and then slept soundly.

“Is it a girl?” I asked softly, slipping gently inside, concerned about the cold draft our presence brought. The man hesitated, then let me pass. “Such lovely eyelashes,” I said. Her mother nodded, smiled again, tucked the blanket from her infant’s face. “What’s her name?”

“Eleanor,” the man answered. He looked on kindly at his wife who blushed as she examined her hands, clasped and unclasped them, fidgeted with the baby’s thin blanket. To one of her other children, she signaled and a boy smudged with soot on his nose snuggled into the crook of her arm. A gathering of tenderness circled parents and child, held them safe, together, despite the desperation of their circumstances.

“We’ve little to offer,” the man said, still standing not far from the opening. His voice had softened some with his introduction of his daughter. “You’re welcome to warm yourself a bit at our fire before you leave.” He opened the flap farther and Joseph followed
me inside, ducking considerably. Benito hesitated a moment but the man urged him on into the smoky dim, having reconciled himself to our intrusion. He dropped the tent flap behind him so that we now all huddled inside, including Bandit who dropped at my feet.

Tidy and compact, the family nonetheless looked as poor as Job’s turkey. The shelter held little else, save the children, their parents, smoke and a steamer or two stacked in the back and being used as a table and child’s bed. One, I noticed, was covered with a threadbare Hudson’s Bay blanket, the black and red stripe faded into the grey. On it lay a toddler staring at us, scratching his leg against the wool with one hand, sucking his thumb with the other. They were barefoot. Old quilts covered the dirt floor.

Five children, counting the baby. Five, well-loved children, to look at their faces: they all lacked the doe-eyed stares of children nurtured only with food.

Joseph spread his wide hands before the fire, rubbing them to warm, accepting the man’s hospitality. He nodded toward the wagons outside and said: “Appreciate it if you’d take those stores off our hands.”

The man shook his head, said quickly: “Not necessary.” I noticed the woman watched Joseph when he spoke, a quizzical look on her face. Her husband continued. “Gustauf, my oldest, already nine,” he ruffled the boy’s hair and spoke with obvious pride, “has shot us a good-size buck which we’ve skinned and cut. It should hold us through the week. The game remains ample thanks to God’s generosity. Not much after the month,” he said, shooing two children out of the way so Joseph and Benito could sit. “It will be spring. We’ll plant corn first thing and vegetables next and be fine.” He motioned me to be seated on the steamer beside the toddler. “And we’ve seedlings. Apples and pears and sweet grape starts we’ve brought with us. Shall I fix some tea, Eleanor?”

The woman nodded and I realized she and the baby shared a name. I marveled that this father of five had found the place in his heart to assist his very quiet wife with her household obligations.
Eleanor nodded and started to rise to help him, but he pressed his hand on her shoulder as he stepped past her and she sat back down. He pushed aside a sack of eye-pocked potatoes as he reached for the tea tin. His pants hung from him; worn thin at the back. A respectful grace flowed between husband and wife and their children, all of whom were beautiful despite their pale and paper-thin faces. Two middle children pushed next to me on the steamer trunk, patted Bandit still at my feet. I felt their warmth, smelled their clean bodies, which was no mean feat considering I could see no hand pump and the nearest water would be some distance to be hauled for bathing.

The man dipped water from a crude bucket and heated it in the pan on the stove. The children remained attentive, subdued. Still, only a blind man would have missed the easy way this family stayed at peace with each other and their circumstances. I watched my hopes for the presence of any of these children living in my home disappear.

“Surely you’d accept some fresh oranges for the children,” I said. “And Eleanor needs variety and fat to make the baby’s milk.”

“And shelter,” Joseph said. “Not to add insult to your agony, but a place like this is good for old miners, not families. Why, these walls are so thin any fat doe just sneezing as she walked by would give your whole family a shower. And doesn’t look like you’d have linens to spare to wipe yourselves up.”

The man did not take offense as I thought he might. Instead he nodded agreement with my husband. “We have little but enough to share and so we lack nothing. Truly. We’re fine just as we are. Though some take issue with it,” he added, frustration sifting through his words.

“That should be a worry to you,” Joseph said.

Again, Eleanor stared at my husband.

“It is,” the man said. “We’ve learned there is a move to take the children from us.” Then for a moment his face formed a loathsome look. “It’s not you been sent?”

“No,” Joseph assured him, “though we would invite you to have the children stay with us until the winter or this crisis has passed.”

Despite the stove’s fervent heat, I felt a cold chill on my face as a blast of air hit the tent side. Into the awkward silence that followed I said, “You’ve chosen good land. What made you decide to build your shelter here, Eleanor? It seems so far from water. And into the wind.”

Her husband answered for her. “It’s a distance from the stream over the side but we like the openness, the mountain to watch over us. And there’s little timber in this clearing so it did not seem to matter where we set the tent and built the lean-to. We have five years for a permanent structure; plant and harvest and then it will be ours. You probably know that Missus … Why, I’ve forgotten to ask your names,” he said.

“And we to offer them or find out yours,” Joseph said. “Joseph Sherar. My wife, Jane, and our friend, Benito.”

Eleanor’s head jerked, she stared openly at Joseph. I thought I saw a flicker of recognition on her face as her husband gave us their name, “Blivens,” he said, offering his hand. Eleanor signaled something to her husband using her fingers and he answered back, surprised. “Really?” He turned to Joseph. “She says she knows you. Both of you,” referring to Benito.

Eleanor looked delighted, excited, nodded and again spoke with her fingers.

“You were in San Francisco some years ago? Ate pasties near the wharf?”

Joseph narrowed his eyes to look at Blivens and then to Eleanor. He turned his head left, then right, the way Bandit does when he is considering. Joseph studied Eleanor’s lines and angles and then he burst out a gasp of held air. “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “Eleanor O’Connor. You look warmed and happy so I hardly recognized ye! And you were about to walk!”

“It’s Blivens now,” her husband said, “But you’re right about the O’Connor part. She does look happy, doesn’t she, now?” He looked
at her feet. “Made her wooden shoes and she walks just fine. First thing I ever made of wood,” he said proudly.

“Eleanor-with-her-writing-pad O’Connor. No wonder this tent looks familiar! Did Strauss make it for you?” Joseph asked, delight on his face. He looked at the seams and the lighter patch at the top. The woman nodded, her face aglow. I vaguely remembered Joseph and Benito mentioning the woman who could not speak or walk and the little German who sewed up one of Joseph’s ideas.

Eleanor signaled again and her husband laughed. “She says the tent aided her escape or she might still be sitting at some wharf slicing potatoes and carrots surrounded by difficult brothers. Instead”—he improvised for her, looking at her with kindness—“she is living happily among her children, loved dearly by all of them and their father.”