Sisters of Grass (14 page)

While the men discussed the agenda for the meeting of Thistle and the Bonny Prince, Margaret went to the barn to visit the mare. She was in one of the roomy box stalls, at the opposite end of the barn from the stallion. She was damp with sweat and kept moving from one side of her stall to the other, breathing heavily and showing the whites of her eyes as Margaret approached her. She let her neck be stroked and listened nervously as Margaret spoke gentle words in her ear, telling her how she'd love the trip up Hamilton Mountain, maybe next year when her foal was weaned. If there was a foal. Occasionally a mare would miscarry or give birth to a stillborn foal or else have such difficulty with the delivery that the foal would be sacrificed to save her. Or the other way around, depending on the amount of damage.

As Margaret started for the house with her bag of camping gear to sort and clean, her father called to her. They would introduce the two horses in the next hour, since there were enough strong men around to assist, and he'd need her help, too. Could she make sure her mother could spare her?

I have driven to Astoria with my family in the wet spring weather, looking to find something that I had no name for — a glimpse, a flicker in the trees. On the road from Longview to the bridge at the mouth of the Columbia, I knew I was approaching the answer to the riddle of a life abandoned suddenly, on a morning in autumn, a note left at dawn, the girl who would come, in time. Through Grays Harbour and Skamokawa, detouring to look at a covered bridge in farmland where a three-legged dog raced our truck to the narrow entrance, where cattle stood up to their slim ankles in mud. A boy drifted in a red canoe on Grays River towards the dark Willapa hills, not noticing us as we paused to take our bearings.

I remember stately houses in Astoria, turreted, pilastered, standing serene in the rain on the slope of land overlooking the river. A boy walking up from the river, the memory of high waves and calmer swells in his gait, fish scales drying on his hands. We followed directions to the Astoria Column, modelled after Trajan's Column in Rome and decorated with events celebrating the winning of the West, “commemorating the westward sweep of discovery and migration which brought settlement and civilization to the Sunset empire.” It looked like an enormous penis atop the aptly named Coxcomb Hill, and that in itself was symbolic of the westward sweep of migration — though hardly discovery — which brought smallpox, venereal disease, fishing restrictions, loss of land, and ultimately a kind of extinction to the original inhabitants of that Sunset empire.

The next morning, still hoping for a glimpse of a life, a notion, we went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, chronicling two hundred years of ships and history. I found the boats haunting, the gillnetters rigged and positioned in the great hall, their planks dry and gaping after too many years of indolence, the pieces of shipwreck, harpoons from the whaling boats poised in their cases. Who would have given up a boat to stand uselessly in a hall, its very ribs longing to feel the breaking of a wave, its planks dried forever of blood and scales, the solace of kelp. You could almost smell the salmon, but the woman in the shop told me there was no longer a fishery, and little wonder when I remembered the dams upriver, the early ones lacking even fish ladders, the fish throwing themselves against the enormous concrete faces and dying with their bodies full of eggs, the fish-wheels at The Dalles that “scooped salmon from the river by the ton.”

At the small museum of quilts and textiles, I talk to the curator about climate control and insect damage and examine the collection. Wonderful quilts from the women who came west over the Oregon Trail, the pattern names singing a ballad of migration — Wandering Foot, Flying Geese, a variant of Drunkard's Path called Oregon Trail, Birds in Flight, Star and Compass — and echoes of hardship in the fabrics themselves: mourning prints and the tiny scraps of dresses worked into crazy quilts.

We didn't go on the walking tour of heritage houses (and anyway, would he have been there in a window, a boy behind a hedge, a shadow turning in a swing?) because it wouldn't stop raining. Only for a few minutes, while we were looking out from the top of the Astoria Column, did the rain let up enough for us to see how the town stood in relation to the Pacific and the rivers feeding into the Columbia. It was as though the town ended suddenly and completely just southwest of where we leaned over the railings, the forests taking over and the rivers winding their way back like grey silk to the skein of their watersheds. No roads or settlements that I could see to punctuate the green expanse, no organized farmland. I'd read David Thompson's journals of his trip down the Columbia and knew that his Astoria entries were mild observations of weather and the manners of Mr. Astor's company. I wonder if he came to Coxcomb Hill, on a day such as “July 17 Tuesday A very fine day” or “July 19 Thursday A fine hot day” and looked at this same view. He'd have noted coordinates and wind direction, but I wonder if he looked at the quattrocento gathering of rivers and felt where he was, not in terms of longitude and latitude, but in eternity, and if he felt as though he'd arrived, finally, after years in canoes and winter camps. Or whether he thought only of the next turn in undiscovered rivers, waiting to be drawn in and correlated, the sound of them gathered in quiet pools near where a man might sleep in the open, dreaming of another life.

ITEMS CONTINUE TO COME IN, and I enter each in my book and make a plan for its display, taking into consideration the condition of the piece and what it has to say about its maker and use. To my delight, an elderly Native woman brought in several baskets and spent a few hours telling me about their making. Two were her own work and a third had been made by her mother. One was made of slough sedge and imbricated with a design of cherry bark and maidenhair fern stems, representing the long canoes of the area. Another was an open-work basket of cedar withes, used for clams and other things that might drain as you carried them. The one I liked best was a beautiful basket of coiled spruce root, generous and wide and so tightly woven it could be used to carry water. And in speaking of the baskets, the woman shared with me the narrative of women's work, which had more than a little to do with the marriage of beauty and utility. I thought of how her hands had been shaped by her mother's hands to harvest and prepare the materials for baskets, to shape them and decorate them and preserve them. And how the hands of the women who'd embroidered the tea towels, pieced together fabric for quilts, dyed and printed plain cottons for clothing, had in turn been shaped by their mother's hands. The shadows of our mothers and grandmothers are forever over our shoulders, their arms over ours, their hands ready to help us find our way in the materials.

“Father wants me to help with the mare, Mother. I know I've just come in, but can you spare me? I'll clean up the camping gear when we're finished outside.”

Jenny was agreeable, wanting only to know how the camping had gone. She told Margaret to let the others know there would be food when they were finished.

At the barn, William and August were getting the equipment for the covering together. Because they were uncertain how Thistle would behave during the mating, they were going to use a twitch and hobbles, and these were brought out to the breeding chute. William asked Margaret to prepare Thistle, since the mare was accustomed to the girl saddling her. He had a bucket of warm water ready and a length of clean cotton for wrapping her tail. Margaret carefully bound the upper portion of the black tail, talking and stroking the tense muscles of Thistle's rump and back while she did so. Then, once the tail was bound, she carefully washed the mare's haunch and vulva. She would be holding Thistle during the mating, trying to keep her calm and cooperative.

Outside, William had the stallion haltered with the breeding halter, which had a special band that could drop to put pressure on the Prince's sensitive nose if he needed to be restrained. He had been washed with warm water and was clearly excited as he waited near the chute, dancing around, his upper lip lifting and twitching as he smelled Thistle in the air. Twice he gave a high-pitched scream that had the range stallion screaming back from a corral on the other side of Culloden.

William led the stallion away while Margaret walked Thistle into the breeding chute, August waiting to help her with the hobble and twitch. A flock of magpies had gathered on the big cottonwood near the barn, muttering and eager not to miss a thing. Later Margaret would remember the way everything was washed with golden light, as thick and limpid as honey. Each sound was articulated clearly — the chickens clucking as they made their way into the shed, one of the dogs groaning as he scratched an ear with his hind paw, the crows calling as they flew above Culloden on their way to some new carrion.

Margaret brought Thistle right up to the bar. The horse was nervous, but still she let August fasten the hobble from her near front foot to her off hind foot. Then he gently applied the twitch to her upper lip while she tossed her head until Margaret brought it down and held it steady. August put the neck guard over her shoulders, adjusting it so that her withers were covered, buckling it under her neck.

“What's that pad for?” asked Nicholas, who had come to the front of the chute in case Margaret needed help to hold Thistle.

“Stallions usually keep their balance with their teeth while mating. This way, he can grab the guard and not poor Thistle. We know what he'll be like for this, but not her. I feel bad about putting all these restraints on her when I think she'll be fine, but it would terrible if she kicked the Prince or one of us. She seems so anxious.”

“She's had foals,” commented August, “so she's not maiden. This won't be new to her.”

William was bringing the stallion to the chute now, the horse prancing and snorting eagerly on the lead. He was well-trained and didn't ignore his handler, but he was fully drawn and eager to mount Thistle. William brought him to the near side of the breeding chute to tease the mare and prepare her. She urinated and then lifted her tail, almost sitting down as she moved her rump back and forth. The stallion's neck steamed with sweat, and he was blowing hard as he entered the chute, William helping him to mount the waiting mare and to position his penis at her opening by lifting her bound tail right back. August released Thistle's hobble so that she could brace herself under the stallion's great weight.

“Could you hold her head a little higher?” William asked, and Margaret lifted the mare's head, speaking calmly to her as she did so. Thistle's chest pushed hard against the bar and the stallion repeatedly thrust into her, August and Nicholas helping to steady her and keep her as still as they could. The Bonny Prince snorted and grunted, rolling his eyes, as he thrust violently against Thistle's damp rump. Margaret held her breath as she felt the weight of the two bodies driving against the breeding chute. The stallion was gripping the neck cover with his teeth, his mouth was so close that Margaret could see where the long teeth left his gums, the fierce strength with which they clenched the leather. Yet there was beauty in his great shape covering the sweating mare, his shoulder muscles rippling with the exertion of his movements and his jugular groove contracting. And then it was over, William was backing him off to the mare's near side and swinging him away from her hindquarters, then leading him away to cool down before taking him back to the barn.

August quietly removed Thistle's twitch and neck-cover and took the loosened hobble from her foot. She was trembling, and Margaret backed her out of the chute, leading her down to walk along the creek. Nicholas walked beside them, quiet after the drama of what had taken place, wondering at the shock and radiance of the huge bodies moving together in that narrow space between weathered boards. He brushed a fly off Margaret's arm and felt her flinch.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you.”

“It's fine, you surprised me, that's all. I wonder if Thistle is cool enough to put away now. My mother wanted you to come in for something to eat before you left.”

“I've never seen anything like that before,” said Nicholas, still thinking of the horses. “I had no idea how involved a process horse-breeding is. I suppose I just thought horses would be turned out in privacy, not brought together like that. Do you always help?”

Margaret looked at him steadily and replied, “Well, Nicholas, as you saw, several people are needed, and I'm the likely one, aren't I? Our range horses are allowed to mate in privacy, as you put it, but with the Bonny Prince and Thistle, we have a big investment, and we can't take the chance of one of them getting injured.”

He realized that she'd taken his comment as criticism of her complicity in the procedure, and that was not what he had intended. She was murmuring to the horse now, telling her they'd go to the barn and get her some oats and a bucket of water. She didn't look at him.

“Margaret, I only meant that I keep finding out how little I know about anything, even relations among horses. Please don't think I was questioning how your father manages his ranch. I thought you were both marvellous, the way you knew exactly what to do, and how you were so matter-of-fact about everything. I'm twenty-two years old, the product, you might say, of a fine university, and I must confess I was somewhat embarrassed when that stallion approached your mare. The universities don't even pretend to touch on life, it seems.”

She smiled at his admission. “On a ranch we see more than most people, I suppose. I think my father might be unusual, too, because he's always assumed I would help with these things, and he hasn't felt it would hurt my character to see animals doing what it is in their nature for them to do. But I was embarrassed, too, today. I thought I was going to cry at one point, I can't really say why.”

She was looking at him over the halter rope, shy again as she had been in the kitchen, at the marsh, on the road to Spahomin with the blooming bitterroot between them. He leaned forward to kiss her mouth, his hand on Thistle's neck for balance. They returned the horse to the barn, Nicholas going to the pump to fill a bucket with water while Margaret scooped oats out of the feed room and rubbed the horse down with a soft cloth to soothe her. Unwrapping the mare's tail, Margaret used an end of the cotton to wipe a stream of mucous from her inner flank. Closing the stall door, Margaret led Nicholas to the warm kitchen, where William and August were sitting at the table, eating hot biscuits and fried chicken. After their meal, the men sat on the porch in the dusk, drinking a dram of whiskey while Margaret helped her mother to put away food and wash dishes. The bats were coming out, darting between barn and cottonwoods, where a new hatch of mayflies hovered in the gilded air. Two nighthawks hunted over Culloden, their shrill cry and buzz, cry and buzz sounding over the ranch yard. And in a small corral, the stallion that had not been given the opportunity to mate with Thistle voiced his frustration to the first stars.

After August and Nicholas had left to ride back to Spahomin, Margaret scoured the skillet and plates from the camping trip. She took kitchen leavings out to the chickens and listened for coyotes. She could hear horses stirring in their stalls; the roan gelding in the yard neighed once for reasons known only to him, and the Bonny Prince answered. It was lonely to be the only one standing in the yard, listening to the world going on in its intimacy. Margaret returned to the house and said her goodnights to her parents. Then she took a jug of warm water to her room. Tipping the water into her wash-bowl, she took off her shirt and chemise and washed her arms and breasts, using a bar of scented soap she'd been given by her Astoria grandmother (“Hard milled with the flowers of Provence”), drying herself with a rough towel that smelled of spring air. She washed her ankles, her feet and her knees. Taking off her underpants, she crouched over the bowl to wash between her legs. The warm water felt welcome. Margaret also felt something else, a feeling she didn't have a word for, but suddenly she knew how Thistle had felt in the hours before the stallion mounted her. She must have yearned for him, the consolation of his body in the golden air, waited for him, restless in her solitude. Was this what the poets meant when they spoke of longing, this physical ache which felt like hunger and pain, like the beautiful complicity of fire?

Nicholas was glad that August was a man of few words as they rode home in the darkness, the horses jogging surely on the dusty road. He was full of astonishment at the way this sojourn was unfolding beyond any expectation he could have had. He was beginning to think he had fallen in love, not just with the girl he had left behind in her mother's kitchen, but with the entire valley. After they'd unsaddled the horses and made conversation with Alice, August's wife, Nicholas read a little by the light of his kerosene lamp and worked on his notes. Moths fluttered around in the weak light, and one or two entered the transparent chimney, briefly flaring, then turning to soot against the glass. Lying on his back, he thought of Margaret riding down from the hill in starlight that first night; he remembered kissing her while summer lightning crackled in the sky. He had known girls before, the daughters of his father's associates or the sisters of classmates at Groton, then Columbia. He'd escorted them to parties, the opera, for Sunday outings to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, making witty conversation by the roses. Yet none had made as singular an impression as the sight of Margaret Stuart, her hair dishevelled and her clothing dusty, cooking grouse over a fire of sweet pine. Or holding Thistle steady while the stallion copulated with her, bracing himself with his teeth. Nicholas turned his face into the pillow and said her name to the darkness, quietly.

Nicholas received permission from William to take Margaret to a dance in the Nicola hall the next weekend; they would go with August and Alice and their oldest daughter, Eliza. William provided the buggy, August driving it to Spahomin the day before the dance, and it had been arranged that Margaret would be collected late in the afternoon. She had hung her rose-coloured dress in her window that morning so that the creases could ease out during the day. Her mother heated the sadirons on the stove and helped her to press it, the kitchen redolent of damp muslin and steam. Margaret washed herself and brushed out her hair, dabbing a little of Aunt Elizabeth's perfume from Grasse on her wrists and the hollow of her neck. She was very excited and nervous, never having attended a dance without her family and certainly not on the arm of a young man.