The Snake River (25 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

Early that morning Miss Jewel wrote a poem in her journal:

Face thine enemies—accusers;

Scorn the prison, rack, or rod!

And, if thou hast truth to utter,

Speak and leave the rest to God.

Dr. Full was waiting for her outside the Indian boys’ schoolroom. He greeted Sima pleasantly, and asked to speak to Miss Jewel alone. Sima went on in.

Miss Jewel was amazed at how even-keeled Dr. Full seemed. The minister had lost his wife. His children—stepchildren, actually—were without a mother, his bed empty. Yet he carried on his duties seamlessly. She wondered what his inner strength was. Then she caught herself and felt embarrassed. His inner strength was the Lord God Jehovah, of course.

“At noon will you please give the students some assignment and meet with the deacons, Miss Jewel?”

“It won’t help, Dr. Full.”

“Nevertheless.”

She shrugged.

“At my house, then, at noon.”

He smiled, perhaps making a point of being agreeable. He walked the path toward the church, to go forward a little with God’s endless work, she supposed.

She had come to an odd conclusion about that unalterable smile. It was his way of treating people equally when they behaved well and when they behaved badly. He often said men were sinners in their natures, raised at moments by the grace of God. By treating everyone equally at all times, he was directing himself to that sinful nature. It never changed. The way he treated them never changed. His sympathy for them as sinners never changed. His offer to help them toward grace never changed. Probably he was right.

Miss Jewel went into the schoolroom. Right now she didn’t give a damn about Dr. Full’s meories or his deeds. The only people she gave a damn about in this entire community were her Indian students. She looked at Sima and Lisbeth. They were sitting together, until teacher separated the girls and boys for domestic learning and book learning.

Miss Jewel loved to look at them. She thought what they felt for each other—excitement, concern, generosity, desire; in a word, love—that was truly the gift of God.

They lived in a world of love. She lived in a world of loneliness and despair.

“Miss Jewel,” Dr. Full began, “we come here this afternoon in the hope that you have something new to say to us.”

There was Dr. Full and Parky and Reverend Leslie, who disliked her, and four others she didn’t know well. She looked around at them. Three men of God, indoor men, and four with the weathered faces of men who worked outdoors. Big, calloused, worn hands. Some knobby knees, big ears, big bellies. They were of all ages, occupations, temperaments. She supposed they had devotion to God in common. And a commitment to a way of doing things, which included establishing man’s sphere and women’s sphere and so holding on to man’s rule over woman. Dr. Full was addicted to ruling women. Leslie had tried to turn her into a domestic servant. Even Parky expected deference.

She hated being here. She shouldn’t have come.

“What can I tell you?” she said helplessly. “A man has made accusations against me. He can’t back them up. They aren’t true. Everyone in this community listens to him instead of me. Everyone assumes I’m guilty without any way to know. My character is worth nothing. No fair trial, but I’m condemned.”

“Your character is considered,” said Dr. Full. “Your fallible, human character. And it is loved.”

She just looked at him. “I did right.”

“Isn’t this just a lovers’ quarrel?” asked Leslie.

She stared him down, then looked at each of them, man for man, in the eye. “There’s nothing more to say.” She tried to hold their gazes. They looked at their knees. “Truly, do you want me to lie? What would be accomplished by that?”

There were no answers but nervous hands, shifting feet, downcast eyes.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Perhaps we’d best ask it the other way,” Dr. Full put in gently. “What do you want us to do?”

“Let Billy Wells and I tell our stories in a formal way to the community—say, like a debate. I will tell exactly what happened.”

“I think this community already knows what happened,” said Dr. Full.

Miss Jewel felt the rage rise in her throat, hot and vile. She swallowed it and went on. “Billy Wells won’t stand up in public and tell those lies to my face,” she said. “I don’t think he has the courage.” She also thought that when the women heard her story, heard just the way he sidled up to her week after week, how he’d angled, how he’d begged, they’d know. Women knew.

“Billy is gone to the Dalles,” said Dr. Full. “We’ve sent him to start a new mission there.”

Miss Jewel stared at him. “Unbelievable,” she said at last.

“Billy is a child of God, as you are, Miss Jewel. Like every human being, he is within the reach of God’s redemption.”

She understood. The rage lashed out. “
Damn
convenient for you.”

The men looked at each other. That word. Well, they were understanding men, but this was the woman they’d chosen to teach children!

Miss Jewel stood up to leave. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m sure you want me under your thumb. But not this much. What is it you really want?”

Wringing hands and shuffling feet.

She started out.

“Miss Jewel,” Dr. Full put in quickly, “the deacons are obliged to tell about a decision they’ve come to.”

She stopped and looked at him. She enjoyed towering over him and looking down.

“As of this date, you will no longer be teaching the Indian children.”

She felt dizzy and faint. “I don’t believe it.”

“The deacons feel that you are a questionable moral influence on them.”

She looked her anger at them, one by one.

“Not only have you cohabited with a man all winter—”

“You approved that! You suggested it!”

“—you also shared your cabin last night with one of the Indian boys. One who is sexually mature.”

Oh, Lord. She couldn’t mention Lisbeth being there. That would get the child in trouble. She rose. She tried, “Sima is a son to me.”

“Miss Jewel, I assure you, we take this action reluctantly. I invite you to return this evening to pray with me, and with the Lord’s help—”

She slammed the door on his voice.

She stood outside, trembling.

She wanted to fight. By God, she wanted to fight. But who, how, was she supposed to fight?

When Miss Jewel left the schoolroom, she said she wouldn’t be back today. They would have another teacher this afternoon.

Sima and Lisbeth looked at each other, their hearts in their throats. This was a better chance than they’d hoped for.

They looked around at the other kids. A boy was reading, two girls were knitting and chattering, the rest were staring at the walls. Lisbeth got the cloth sack out from under her sewing materials, the sack full of corn bread and side meat. They looked at each other and stood up, and looked at each other, and daringly walked toward the door. When they got outside, they ran for the trees in a burst of delight.

As though sworn to silence, they didn’t talk, didn’t laugh, just set off fast for the cave.

It wasn’t really a cave, more of a big overhang, a recess in the bluff. It had a seep. Sima had brought firewood there, bit by bit. It had pieces of rope for snares. It had blankets. Though less than an hour’s walk from the mission, it was well hidden.

This was Sima’s special place. He came here when he got worn out with the mission people. Except for Lisbeth and Miss Jewel, that was all the time these days. He fantasized about living alone here, snaring and shooting game, drawing, spending his days in beauty without the encroachment of another human being.

For some reason, they whispered, like they were on a secret mission. Sima built a small fire—the March day was cool but not cold. Lisbeth stuck the strips of side meat on forked sticks and broiled them in the small flames. The fire made the recess cozy.

They ate. They sipped at the cooling run of water on the rock wall. Sima spread the blankets, and they lay on their backs. Sima nervously began to tell her about his fantasy.

He wanted to make a huge painting on this slanted ceiling. A painting done with strong, vibrant colors made from red and ocher and white clay, and the black of ashes, and other more modulated colors made from bitterbrush, lichens, raspberries, and blueberries. When you faced the rock wall, he pointed out, you were facing east. Where earth met gray rock, he would paint the beginning of every day’s sunrise, a molten, red, bubbling….He made gestures to show how the red would flow and undulate.

Next to the sun, near the ground, the figure of Magic Owl, flying. Hesitantly he opened his shirt, holding her eyes with his, and showed her one of the two owl claws tied against his inner arms. She would understand.

Above Owl, like the sun itself, a wheel of the four directions. Black for the west, where the thunder beings live. White for the north, the home of the white buffalo and the cleansing winds. Red for the east, whence beginnings come. Yellow for the south, where we are always looking.

When you slept here, ate here, sat here, and looked out on the forested hills of the Oregon country, you would be sitting in a place made sacred by the painting.

He saw this painting in his mind as clearly as a dream. He used that word consciously, knowing she would understand that he meant waking dream, vision through power. He was not yet sure this was the cave Power meant him to paint. When he saw more clearly, he would begin.

He looked at her. She seemed to be paying more attention to him than his imaginary painting.

He pointed to both ends of the recess, where the rock walls curved in. These he would populate with smaller figures, another Owl there at the south, War Eagle at the west, Magpie at the north, Meadowlark in the east. Then still smaller figures, Coyote and Spider, and maybe….

She leaned over him, smiling impishly. She touched his lips with a finger. She kissed his lips, ever so gently.

His body tingled. He moved his lips against hers, exploring. Sensations rose in him like waves, lifting him, swirling him.

He held her face with his hands and looked at her. He kissed her eyes and eased her back onto the blanket.

He kissed her—hard, soft, with passion, with tenderness, more ways than he could imagine.

After a while he put his hand on the top button of her cotton blouse. He undid that button and kissed her collarbone. He undid the next button, and the next, and kept kissing, farther down, between where her breasts would be.

At last he folded one flap of her blouse to the side. He looked at her breast, a warm brown with a rose-colored nipple, small, exquisitely shaped. He kissed delicately around the outside of it, then around the nipple, then the nipple itself, gently, sweetly.

He had never felt anything like he felt here, now, touching Lisbeth. He was tremulous with…fear? Excitement?

He lay her blouse completely open. He nuzzled her breasts.

He stripped off his shirt, pulled her against him, felt her breasts warm and sensual against his chest. He kissed her lips.

After a while, perhaps a very long while, he took off the rest of her clothes. And his own. And came over her.

She wrote it blindly, in haste and rage. Otherwise she knew she wouldn’t have written it.

St.Patrick’s Day 1838

Dear Dr. McLoughlin:

I write to ask you formally for a position teaching Indian children at Fort Vancouver. I am trained for this work at the Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts, and have for some years regarded it as my life’s work. My commitment to bringing these children the light of civilization is complete.

You will wonder why I do not wish to continue in my similar position here. The fact is that I am falsely accused of indiscretions. That has made my situation intolerable, as I’m sure you will understand. I believe it would be more acceptable were I not innocent.

As I wish to leave this community immediately, I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Yr obdnt servant,

Margaret Jewel

Miss Jewel took the letter to French Prairie and found a Frenchie who would take it to Vancouver for twenty dollars.

Lord, twenty dollars. That was more than half the money she had in the world.

What would she do if Dr. McLoughlin said no? Walk to St. Louis? Alone?

Sima and Lisbeth went to the school at noon. They’d stayed at the cave all afternoon, all night, all morning enjoying what they’d discovered, exploring its textures and dimensions.

Sima was happy. And amazed. He felt like a wall had crashed to the ground and a new world shone behind it.

Through the window they saw that Miss Jewel wasn’t doing the teaching. Miss Upping was in there.

Sima didn’t know what to think of that.

They were probably in trouble. The families they stayed with had surely reported them missing. The trouble seemed trivial, like some people scurrying about, seen from high on a mountain.

It would be just as well, though, to see Miss Jewel first. They went to her cabin.

She told them she’d been dismissed as the teacher for the Indian children. In the blankness of her face Sima saw her pain.

“Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.

Sima told her they’d been out all night together, at a place he liked to camp.

They put their arms around each other’s waists, and looked into each other’s eyes, and let Miss Jewel see.

It wasn’t necessary to say more.

Miss Jewel felt a pang of joy. Strange—feeling joy, through the awfulness.

She took them both into her arms. She smiled at herself. If she hugged them, they couldn’t ravish each other in front of her. Which they were aching to do.

“I love you both,” she said.

More briskly, “Now. You’re in trouble.” She thought. “Don’t let anyone see you, and get out of here. I’ll say you went to French Prairie yesterday. You told me you were going. Lisbeth is staying at—what’s the name of your neighbors there?”

“Langlois,” Lisbeth said.

“Lisbeth is staying at Langlois’. Sima is staying at Nicolette’s.”