A Sweetness to the Soul (56 page)

Anne, now twenty with children of her own, asked if she might help with laundry or cooking at the inn. “The men work,” she said. “We women too.”

“And your husband?” I asked. “He will not object?”

“He will not object,” Sunmiet answered for her. “He would like to own the cattle, like Peter and Mr. Sherar, not just look after other men’s.” Peter and George had been developing a herd of their own, taking payment each month not only in cash but in cattle. Apparently the plan was known and coveted. “Unlike her father,” Sunmiet said, “she is learning how to make the non-Indian way work for her.”

“With money, we can have our own stock,” Anne said, her eyes keen, “make decisions about when to sell and buy. Not always have to work the roads. And feed our family not just with roots and fish and berries or the agent’s beef, but with ketchup and summer fruit captured in tins.” She spoke vigorously, with a hunger.

She gave the same hunger to her work. The tall Anne joined Alice and me to wash and clean the inn, brought her ideas too. Many I adopted but not the striped blankets she wanted. “Warmer,” she said. “And made in this land.”

“Hudson Bays have done me fine,” I told her.

Anne’s little ones often came with her, along with Sunmiet whose hands seemed made of leather, always beading some design for this grandchild or that. Occasionally, I allowed myself the luxury of relaxing with her, sitting with active Inanuks, already four. Working or not, I teased and spoiled that little Otter, especially when she warmed my insides by calling me her
kása
.

While Joseph traveled in the East, I had the crews work in the orchards, one beside the inn and the one on the ledge. Both peaches and apples now filled the air with their sweet blossoms every spring. The sweet grapes extended their vines. There was the usual work: milk the cows, make butter, bake bread, keep the larder filled, along with sewing and supplying an inn that now had all eight guest beds filled each night. We served three times that number in meals each day as more and more people crossed the river, paid the tolls that John
collected in the bucket with Joseph gone. I posted the mail delivered twice daily by stage for the settlers whose small homesteads dotted Joseph’s roads twisting up the grades on either side of the river. Their visits caught me up on illnesses, weddings, new births, and trips. We chatted through the window: neighbors picking up their post, telling of their plans. On Tuesdays, the peddler’s bell jangled from his cart. We’d stop whatever we were doing to go and finger some new thread or pan or handkerchief or bolt of fresh-dyed cloth. I thought it curious that his Yiddish accent seemed so similar to Sunmiet’s speech.

Such everyday “predictable” activities always made me think of Luther when I labeled them as such. Such trivial things made me long for Joseph, too, to share with him the inconsequential events that, told of daily, form a fascinating fabric but fray when kept for weeks. I missed his quiet words prayed into my skin.

I didn’t really give much more thought to Joseph’s “surprise” until the day he stopped the buggy in front of the inn and shouted out, “Mother Sherar! I’m home!”

I left a table full of guests, ran from the ladies’ dining room onto the porch and into his waiting arms. He swung me around, kissed me. His beard may have bristled against my lips but I didn’t notice, so glad was I to see him, smell the scent of leather, hear him whisper my name in his deep, tongue-rolling brogue. He was grayer, little bags nestled beneath his eyes. I hadn’t noticed before. His white beard stuck out as though windblown.

“So good to see ye, Janie,” he said. “Never know how much I miss ye till I’m gone.” He lifted me again and said with a laugh “Have ye not eaten then for weeks? So light ye are!”

Alice joined us and I said to her, “What did I tell you? I’m never good enough just the way I am!”

“Not so!” he defended. “You could be no better.”

Just before he set me back down I noticed the buggy. There in it sat what I imagined was my surprise, one I could easily find fault with.

He had not returned alone.

With him was a dust-shrouded, quite exquisite young woman.

P
ASSIONS

A
perfect heart-shaped face framed by hair the color of obsidian looked out at me from the shadow of her Shako hat. She was the picture of style. Her hat’s narrow brim and high, military-like top was decorated with yellow silk flowers to match the canary of her dress. I saw Joseph’s taste in the black silk ascot that flounced at her throat under a jacket cut with narrow lapels pulled into two black buttons at her tiny waist. A pair of black half-gloves covered her hands wrapped around an ebony parasol.

Her eyes matched the obsidian and she met mine straightforward. She blinked long eyelashes, removed her gloves. I thought her some young wealthy, Portland debutante until she took Joseph’s hand to help her out and I noted the redness of her knuckles.

And when she said, “Hello, Aunt Jane,” I was stunned.

“Caroline?” I asked, mystified. I had only seen her once or twice and then as a child. The photograph we had of her showed a stocky girl with a petulant look, dark sausage curls clustered at her shoulders, a scowl on her face. This person before me was quite different.

“I prefer ‘Carrie,’ ” she said, her voice pleasant. “It seems less formal.”

“Isn’t she just a jewel?” my husband said, bubbling. “Bet you didn’t expect me to bring her back, now did you?”

“I didn’t know you’d gone to New York,” I said, a little irritated about not being apprised of his change in plans, or something more.

“Well, I wasn’t sure I would. But when things went so well and I was already mostly there, I just took the chance I could see everyone.”

“Mother sends her regards,” Carrie said. “And Henry, too. And all the cousins and aunts and uncles.”

“Whole passel of them!” Joseph said. “Henry’s already ten and Carrie here is twenty-four. And just a beauty, wouldn’t you say?” He grinned at her blushing.

“How long can you stay, dear?” I asked, friendly, yet becoming formal as I did when presented with things I did not control.

“She’ll be with us indefinitely,” Joseph answered for her. “Just as long as she wants.”

“I won’t be a burden, Aunt Jane. Honestly.”

There was a kind of desperation in her voice which contradicted her stylish outfit, her smooth presentation. It fit more with her knuckles. And the calluses I felt on her hands when I took one and we walked into the inn.

“Of course you won’t, dear,” I said. “We won’t let you.”

“Why didn’t you just write me?” I said to Joseph later. “It would have been no problem to have known.” We were curled together beneath the maple headboard. A picture of my father and one of Joseph’s hung on the side wall, staring at us.

“I wasn’t sure how you’d take to it.”

“How could you even wonder?” I said, thinking of Alice and John and a number of others who had joined us and become like family. “I just don’t like surprises of this magnitude. Her being here is fine.”

“I hadn’t planned to bring her back. Just to see them, make sure
they were doing all right. James didn’t leave them with as much as he hoped. Or else they’ve a skill in spending because Eliza’s sold their home. She and Henry are living in a small one. And Janie,” he paused in remembering, “Carrie wasn’t even there. I found her working at this boarding house. Not a place you’d write about. Porch untended. Rats digging about. Workers from the garment factories live there, if you could call it living. She made less than twenty-five dollars a month for cooking and cleaning. Had to pay her room and board out of that. Owner took in mending and ironing and when she wasn’t cooking she had Carrie doing that. Girl looked a wreck when I saw her. She’s actually put on weight coming across country, if you can imagine that. She was embarrassed to have me see her like that, I think. Her hands are still a mess.”

It was a long speech for my husband. “Her hands are red,” I said. “That’s what I noticed.”

“It seemed the thing to do. She wants to work here, fine. At least she’ll be with family.”

“James would be proud of you,” I said. We lay like spoons, me with my back to his chest. He squeezed me gently.

“Truth is, when I saw her I felt this terrible pit in my stomach,” he said into my ear. “The same empty well I felt when we reached Canyon City and Ella was already gone. It was like I’d lost something I didn’t know I had or even wanted. And I took it as a sign, that if I ever felt it again I would act on it, do what I thought I should however odd it might seem, and maybe next time I wouldn’t be too late.”

I turned over, looked up at the ceiling. “What did Eliza say about it all?”

“Odd thing. Just that whatever Carrie wanted was fine with her. Said Carrie was old enough to stand on her own, had to when her father died.” He paused. “Didn’t she write us saying James had left them well off? I’m not sure she even knew what conditions Carrie was living in. Or if she did, she didn’t seem to care or be able to do anything about it. Anyway, Eliza said Carrie always got what she wanted and this would be no exception.”

“That’s what Mama said of me, remember?” I rose up on my elbow, faced him. “That I always got what I wanted. She said it in anger, out of jealousy.” I sat, then, hugged my knees. “Papa didn’t give me everything I wanted, but it must have seemed that way to her, maybe been more than Mama thought she got. Or needed.” I sat awhile, then lay back down, thinking of my life, its richness since I risked my parent’s wrath and told J. W. no, said yes to Joseph, all those years before.

“I’ve had a good life, Joseph, had more bounty than most.”

“That’s cause you learned to cope, Janie,” he said, pulling the covers up to his chin, “being both a strong blade and flexible.”

“Yes, and letting faith do the building instead of trying to control it all myself; maybe that’s what’s made the difference, do you think?”

He yawned. “Too philosophical for my taste,” he said. He kissed me gently then turned over to sleep.

Through the window, I watched the moon come up over the rocks, cast a glow onto the river making its route to the sea all shiny and sure. And I believe now as I write this that what made the difference in my life was trusting. Trusting that God took steps beside this river, knew what was coming, and led me here with these people and these challenges to let go of being bitter, to hang on to what is love. Trusting, and letting a man ease into my life.

“It was the right thing to do, Joseph,” I said, “bringing Carrie into our family. I suspect the two of us have traveled similar roads.” My traveling man was already sound asleep.

Caroline Sherar became a resident of Sherar’s Bridge the summer of 1885. And while she was not of my womb, she was my daughter just the same. As much as Ella; more so than Alice who still kept in her private place.

With the Sherar women, Ella and Carrie, came a bond, a closeness though each arrived to live with us relatively late in their young lives.

It struck me, too, as I sat watching Carrie embroider in the
lamplight, that both of the young women we claimed as “Sherars” had been brought into my life by Joseph. He had been touched by them first, saw in them their needs and matched them up with mine—ours. He reached beyond what might have been convenient to bring them to our hearts as surely as if he had fathered them himself.

I did have family. Carrie only made it fuller.

She bubbled with interests, her passions. She was dramatic, poured the coffee from a distance, making it a game to hit the cup. She cascaded a stream of honey from two feet above the biscuits. When she hit her targets, she bowed to pleased applause. We marveled that she never missed. Visiting children, especially Anne’s and Sunmiet’s Inanuks, were charmed by her stories.

As with me, Sunmiet’s family delighted her, and Carrie relished any part of Sunmiet’s life—being invited to a powwow, name-giving, or a sweathouse. Many is the evening we’d walk to the Indian camp, sit and talk. Or with Sunmiet, be drafted to hold the eel bags, hoping the fat snakes the consistency of liver would stay in them, not slither through holes to wiggle at our feet in the dark. Carrie loved the adventure of it!

While her sense of style, her flair for living, attracted her to others, it was Carrie’s diligence and her ability to listen to you fully, without distraction, that most endeared her to me.

Probably the same thing that kept her many suitors coming back. Though she danced with several stockmen and sheepmen at Nansene and at Grange Halls around the area, she was finally won by Samuel Holmes.

A stockman and teamster, Sam drove often through Sherar’s Bridge, even worked for us, some. We moved him back and forth across the bridge to the Finnigan Ranch as needed. After Carrie came, he preferred his time at Sherar’s, working cows with Peter, helping Joseph on the grades.

Though twenty-five years younger, Sam shared the same visionary qualities as Joseph. And anyone who looked could see the valued
way he handled stock. His efforts and good planning on his preemption claim near the Grass Valley area, not too far from Finnigan, would someday put fine wool suits on his muscular frame, make him wealthy.