The Indifference of Tumbleweed (29 page)

And yet it was an appealing practice in many ways. Somehow Henry had freed himself from the trouble and turbulence of bewildering emotions that beset most people. He had, I suspected, suffered so intolerably as a boy from mockery for his small stature that he had devised a means of protecting himself. Perhaps, I thought, he could teach me how to do the same. Perhaps I could quietly marry Henry and sit beside him reading books and discussing the meaning of words for the rest of our lives.

‘I know what you're thinking,' he said in a low voice. As so often before, we were walking side by side, with two oxen between us – one of his and one of mine – and there was no exchange of looks.

‘You do not,' I said sharply. The foolish word
marry
hovered in my mind's ear.

‘You are thinking I lack proper feeling. That there are so many sorrows and trials, even when we have been so fortunate in general, that I ought to be less…unmoved.'

I melted with relief. ‘Well, Mrs Fields is sick and Susanna
died
,' I agreed. ‘And Mr Tennant's foot is permanently deformed. Even your dog might wish to remind you that he has suffered.'

‘Poor Melchior! He would not have willingly chosen to emigrate, I am sure.'

‘And our brothers have been taken from us.' I recalled with shame how infrequently I gave Reuben and the others a single thought, despite my mother's abiding grief and worry for him.

‘I cannot claim to miss Benjamin,' he admitted. ‘He ate too much, for one thing.'

‘Reuben too,' I said. ‘But the firewood has been sparse without his skill with the axe.'

My breast was swelling in a strange way during this banter. Feelings that had been held in tight was now loosening, and there was something threatening to leak somewhere. A tear ran down my face. I dashed it away and Henry never saw it. It was a warm tear, born of something good. Perhaps it was some inner self telling me that I could indeed do worse than marry Henry Bricewood – if, indeed, he ever asked me.

3
^rd
September

We have left Fort Nez Perce with new oxen and a heavy grief for our faithful team left behind.. We have more mountains yet to traverse, but the whole distance is barely three hundred miles, which seems quite little after so far already covered. The temperature remains clement, and we have stores in plenty. There will be good hunting, they say, and we might slaughter more of the cattle, keeping the best cows for our new homesteads in Oregon. Mr Tennant is walking with the help of a crutch, his foot still mis-shapen. He is quite cheerful.

‘Thirty days at most,' said my father with great buoyancy. It was as if these final weeks were nothing at all, an attitude that everyone found infectious, after the mysteriously restorative effects of the Indian fort. We had rested and revived tremendously, with much more talking and even some singing. Mrs Fields appeared in better health, and my grandmother opined that her malady had been chiefly a manner of mourning for her lost daughter.

My father began to discuss crops to be planted in the coming spring, and my mother took to opening some of her trunks and shaking out precious rugs and curtains, checking them for moth or damp. My grandmother squared her shoulders in a display of triumph at having come through such an adventure without the slightest difficulty.

The scout assured us that there was very little chance of frost and none at all of snow. The closer we got to the coastal region, the easier everything would become. All we had to do was stick to the bank of the Columbia until the final twenty miles, when we would divert southwards down the Willamette River to the mythical Oregon City.

‘Methodists and Freemasons,' said Mr Bricewood, when someone asked him what sort of people we might expect to encounter. ‘And precious few Indians.'

We were sitting in a loose circle around our fires, noting how the evenings had grown much shorter and darker, and exchanging ideas about our futures. Mr Bricewood had, as always, taken every opportunity at the fort to acquire information. His son was like him in that respect at least. He spoke to scouts, trappers and Indian traders with a great eagerness. ‘The Methodists have got a church at Willamette Falls already,' he elaborated. ‘And the Masons have opened their first Lodge these past few weeks.'

‘Will you join them, Pa?' asked Henry.

‘No and yes,' grinned the man. ‘Masons I can profit by, but I never did relish those Methodies.'

I glanced at Mr Fields, who was sitting near me, with Ellie on his lap. To a Catholic, there was little to choose between Methodists and Baptists, and I knew he had a softness for the latter, despite his claim to have no truck with any church.

‘Few Indians?' I queried, in a quiet voice.

‘They've been killed off with smallpox and cholera, I hear. A whole bunch of tribes there were, but they've dwindled to a few hundred now. Gives us a free hand, anyways.'

I felt nothing but gladness at this news until I caught Mr Fields' eye and remembered the cause of his pock-marked face. It was wrong to rejoice in such devastation and anguish, even if the victims were the Indians I now feared so much.

‘And they'll have been converted to the ways of Mr John Wesley, most likely,' said Henry. From the expressions on all sides, nobody understood his reference any more than I did myself.

There was something curious taking place between Fanny and Abel, I noticed, in the first few days along the bank of the Columbia. They were much less concerned to stay out of sight, and had once or twice let themselves be seen holding hands. Where there had been nothing but a determined indifference between them in public, they now behaved like a couple in love. A normal young pair of sweethearts, who drew smiles from anyone noticing them. I told myself I should be delighted at this, that it meant that there was no further need to worry about my sister's fate. But there were too many unanswered questions for any unalloyed satisfaction.

Ought not the affection to have come first, before the lustful fornication? Had they not broken some implacable law, whatever might happen next? If the story ended happily, I anticipated a sense of being cheated in some way. Where I certainly should be pleased, all I expected to feel was jealousy and resentment.

But it was not long before external considerations took precedence over such unprofitable thinking. Although a trail had been forced all the way to Oregon City three years previously, the route ahead promised to be very much more arduous than we had expected. There had been reference to rafts being needed for a very rocky stretch that wagons were expected to find impassable, which we had chosen not to
examine too closely. Far beyond the point where we might turn back or attempt a cut-off, we could only press ever westwards and remind ourselves that thousands of people before us had accomplished it.

We had two more weeks or thereabouts before reaching a spot named The Dalles. With every passing day, this place was talked of more and more. A man named Sam Barlow was quoted by our scout, to the effect that this man had promised to cut a way through the thick forest, which wagons could use. Nobody knew whether this project had begun yet, and if so whether it would achieve its purpose. We had glimpsed the sort of forest involved, along our way, often pressing in on the trail like a hungry animal. It was thick with saplings, creepers, leaf mould and burrows. The task of creating a road through such vegetation was breathtaking to imagine. Even maintaining such a passage would require constant vigilance.

But the first days after the fort were no more difficult than the previous few weeks had been. The ground began to decline to a lower elevation, and the fresh oxen made good progress. I reluctantly made friends with them, but never gave them names. One was an ugly thing with a crooked horn, but he worked well after an initial day spent trying to turn back to his luxurious pasture. All the new beasts were doing the same, and we struggled to urge them westwards, some people beating them with stout sticks, others trying kinder methods.

Mr Fields and his children were treated with a new kindness, due to the continuing sickness of his wife, and help was offered and accepted. Everyone had come to understand that the woman would not recover, despite a brief rally at Fort Nez Perce. Anybody with an hour to spare would fall back to the battered wagon and set to putting right whatever struck him or her as most urgent. The canvas, which had been far from robust back in May, was increasingly tattered and torn. New patches were stitched over the worst of the holes, on top of the efforts the Fields had made now and then, so that it looked more like a badly-made quilt than a wagon. Food was donated and the oxen given ample grass. This last was important because they were the same beasts Mr Fields had had all along. He did not possess sufficient funds to purchase fresh ones from the Indians. His poor scrawny animals looked all the worse by comparison with the beasts we had acquired at the fort. They only survived thanks to the lightly-loaded wagon. The Fields family had brought little by way of household goods, and it had become clear from early on that the only reason they had a wagon at
all was to offer security to their children. Couples such as they were would otherwise have travelled by steamboat or horseback, making much faster time than in a wagon train.

The kindnesses were provided with a matter-of-fact demeanour that preserved the cool attitude the party as a whole preserved towards Mr Fields. He had never been fully accepted into our circle, for the dual reason of his race and his poverty. He was a misfit in two important areas, and I was quite aware that the other families all wished they had never permitted him to join us.

My grandmother had done most to soften this feeling. Ever since Mrs Fields had lost her unformed infant, there had been an awkward dash of sympathy amidst the irritation that verged on animosity. Grandma had made a point of associating with Mrs Fields and her children, and looked approvingly on my few exchanges with her husband. She and I between us kept the channels open, and ensured there was no open ostracism of the family, as would otherwise have been all too likely. There was evidence of such behaviour in other parties in the train, giving rise to gossip and questions. We had noticed a wagon more heavily laden than most, falling back from its party, some way behind ourselves, and enquired as to what was going on. It seemed that they had a son of fourteen or so who had been caught pilfering from another wagon, and narrowly escaped severe punishment. He had been judged by their party leader, in an unusual private hearing, and found to be wanting somewhat in his wits and therefore spared a thrashing. All the same, he was warned if he did it again, he would be expelled from the train and required to make his own way, with or without his family. Such a threat would terrify anyone, of course. The family reacted defensively, pulling themselves away from their fellows, while yet remaining part of the train.

After so many months together, the original declaration of how law and punishment would operate amongst us was fading from memory. There had been no crime committed serious enough to justify a large public trial, to which every member of the train would gather in witness and judgement. The very thought of the penalty of expulsion or at the last resort, execution, had served to keep everyone on the right side of the law. Except, I still believed, for my sister and her lover. They had committed the sin of fornication, and had gone unpunished. While it might be less wicked than adultery, and technically within the law, according to Henry, I still carried a hard
nugget of anger and indignation that nobody but me seemed to feel this was a matter of any import.

And then events hurtled ahead of me, from one moment to the next. Three days out of Fort Nez Percé, having released the new oxen for the first time, hoping they knew me and my father well enough to come back next morning at a call, I overheard my mother and Fanny talking.

‘You are too young yet,' my mother was saying. ‘At the soonest it must wait until you are eighteen.'

‘Mother!' Fanny wailed. ‘That is a year and a half hence.'

‘An engagement will have to suffice. There will be too much happening for a wedding, in any case. A new homestead, building work, crops to be sown. We shall need you with us for all that. And perhaps Reuben will be returned to us by then, too,' she added wistfully.

‘Abel will not be pleased,' Fanny complained. ‘With a wife, he can obtain his own land, and not have to live with his family.'

‘We must hope it's for more than that he wants you.'

‘Oh, Mother!' Fanny flounced away, brushing past me without even noticing. Such histrionics worked poorly on the open trail, without a door to be slammed or a bed to hurl oneself onto. Instead, my sister strode away towards the river, which was some distance away, beyond a line of rocks. It was not at all unusual to see disaffected youngsters perched on such rocks at the end of a day, staring moodily at the water and throwing small stones into it.

‘Wedding?' I said to my mother. ‘Is Fanny to have a wedding?'

‘So she tells us.' My mother had none of the traditional sparkle of a bride's parent. She sighed and picked at the knitting on her lap. ‘'Tis good news, I presume. Just a little…soon.'

‘She and Abel have been together for some time,' I ventured.

She flinched as if fearing a blow. ‘I know nothing of that,' she said quickly. ‘No-one has mentioned it to me. If 'tis true, they have been discreet, thank God.'

‘Discreet!' I burst out. ‘They have been wanton fornicators.'

‘Charity, be quiet!' she ordered me fiercely. ‘Never let me hear you speak in such a way again. What are you thinking?'

‘You deny the truth? You ignore the plain facts?' I was gasping with the effrontery of it. My mother and Fanny, and any number of others were all in a conspiracy to conceal the reality, to avoid shame, I supposed. ‘I
saw
them. I saw his nakedness.'