A Clearing in the Wild (39 page)

“Why can’t I go with you to meet them? I haven’t seen my brother for nearly two years.” I bounced Andy on the side of my hip. He fussed. While I didn’t relish the trip across the Shoalwater Bay or down the Wallacut River to the Columbia, I did like the idea of standing beside Christian with our son in my arms when we greeted our leader.

“Because you and Andy will be more people to transport back and portage.”

“I could help,” I said.

“You would bounce our next child to arrive early?” Christian stopped his packing and patted my stomach. “We’ll be on the river and then the bay more than not, and you don’t like water travel, if I remember. We may have to wait for transport. Besides, who will feed the goat and that bird?”

“If needed I can take the boat,” I said. “I took it with you to look at our land not long ago.”

“
Ja
, you did,” he said and grinned, his eyebrow lifted with the memory.

We’d gone alone and marked the outline of our house with logs so I could see the view, a prairie view that bled into timber with willows lining the river and a big leafed maple I recognized as similar to trees at Bethel. We’d spread an elk hide and placed it where the rope bed would stand. Andy had stayed with Mary and Sebastian, so we were alone for the first time in years. I lay on my back next to him, looking up at a bird’s-egg-blue sky. He’d rolled on his side, his arm draped over my
growing belly. My husband then kissed me sweetly. I’d teased him that he lay down on his job, skipping away for an afternoon while there was work yet to do. He’d laughed. “Our leader will know when he sees you and Andy that I lay down more than once.” He kissed me again. “I love you, Emma Wagner Giesy. I love you and am grateful you came to this valley with me to begin a new life for us and for the colony.”

I cherished the moment, a rare respite for Christian, one I knew wouldn’t be repeated once our leader and the remainder of the group arrived. Especially now that Keil had spoken with some disdain about my pregnancy and Andy’s arrival. But I held the memory of that languid afternoon in my heart because Christian saw me as doing something worthy despite my willful ways.

I smiled even as Andy pulled on my ear and said, “Down, Mama. Want down.”

Christian brushed his beard against my cheek. “Your mind wanders,” he said. “Or do you plot?”

“Me?” I said.

He laughed, then sobered. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. We have a heavy hearse to bring and many people, and they are tired from their journey and grieving as well. It makes sense that you stay here to prepare to welcome them.”

“Imagine, bringing a hearse across those mountains,” I said. “What makes that man’s mind work? Surely he knows that Willie’s soul isn’t in that body. Do you suppose he wanted to show everyone that once he says, ‘You can ride in the lead wagon, Willie,’ that he keeps his promises, no matter what?”

“Indeed. Strong-willed is the other side of stubborn.”

“But imagine what that must have been like for Louisa. To watch this hearse that holds your firstborn rumble out every day. To follow it and be reminded every single morning that the child you loved is dead,
gone forever. Would she go to it every night and pray over him? Would she listen for the sound of the wind in the
Schellenbaum
or whatever bells he probably put on it? How could you sleep? And Michael said Keil composed funeral dirges, German songs that everyone sang each morning as they set out. For five months! Think of that, Christian. The man … spurs himself.”

“Or finds his own way to grieve,” Christian said.

“But at what cost? That’s a nearly impossible feat, to bring such a heavy thing. His success will only serve to make him think anyone can do anything if they simply set their minds to it.” That thought spilling into my words caused a grimace to form on Christian’s face. “And he names this place Aurora, for his
daughter
. How must that make Louisa feel?”

“Maybe she suggested it,” he said. Then, “You remain. Make those here on the Willapa continue to feel welcome,
ja?
As a good wife should. As the wife of a leader should.”

We’d spent so much time being equals here, me doing what I could without regard for whether it was a woman’s place to speak or stay silent, whether something was women’s work or not. I wondered if that would all change, if what we’d come to cherish in our time together would now be set aside.

“Maybe if I joined you, Keil would see that here we stand side by side to do the work we’re called to. There’s no need to separate men from women either in the worship house or in our labor.”

“That isn’t what they’d see,
Liebchen
. They’d see a foolish man who couldn’t control his wife and brought her along at the risk of her state. What kind of leader would that make me?”

“You draw out the strengths of all of us,” I said. “That’s the kind of man you are. Not one who would put an entire colony at risk by bringing the body of his son across the mountains.”

He grunted, but I saw the corners of his mouth rise up, and I knew then that he agreed with me, prideful as it might be. He acknowledged that he had led this small colony of scouts well. We claimed him as our leader, and Peter Klein’s advance group of colonists deferred to him with respect. With the arrival of
Herr
Keil would come the story of how two strong streams of men came together. I could almost imagine the froth that would rise from that joining, prayed for the settling of it in a hopeful manner.

Christian insisted I remain, but he couldn’t prevent me from meeting him first at his return with our … with Wilhelm. And so with Andy, I made my way to Woodard’s Landing to wait. Louisa rode heavy on my thoughts. I knew she’d be critical of the primitive houses here, but she’d stay silent unless her husband spoke. That was her way. But perhaps the pain of her child’s death blanketed her, too, with change on this journey west. Maybe she would speak up and influence the others in negative ways.

A west wind tugged at the braids I’d twisted into a crown at the top of my head. My cedar cape kept the drizzle at bay. My eyelashes caught droplets I blinked away. The air held a chill, and I lifted Andy to my widening hip both to rest his weary legs and for the added warmth seeping into my bones.

I’d make a treat of this day with Sarah, I decided, and set aside my worries about Louisa and the rest as I waited for my husband’s return. Christian had left spirited, pleased that soon he’d show our leader all we’d accomplished. I wanted their return to be an eventful day, and I calculated that if all went well, they should arrive this afternoon.

Sarah and I spoke of my baby coming, and she smiled wistfully when I teased her that she’d have one before long too.

“I lost a child this spring,” she said, her voice as quiet as a pine needle falling to the forest floor. She’d never told me of her loss, nor had
I noticed, always consumed with my own life. My face flushed with regret. “We’ll wait now, my husband says, until I’m stronger.”
Stronger?
She was one of the strongest women I knew. She shrugged, then added, “All things happen for a reason, don’t you know? We don’t always see it in our time.”

She didn’t equate suffering with evil, or pain with sin. The wisdom from someone so young humbled, left me unsure how to comfort her.

“There’ll be a midwife for you next time,” I said. “Or you must tell me. I think I could midwife. My mother did.” Andy played with the Woodard dog that rolled a ball with his nose, back and forth between them.

“Will your mother be here for you?” she said.

I sighed, picked up needlework, and began to stitch on her sampler. Apparently, she didn’t have a chatelaine to hold her needles, as she kept her needle stitched onto the cloth. I missed using needle and thread for pretty things, and not just to mend a shirt or draw bear grass through cedar to make a basket, but who had time for such? “My parents already said they wouldn’t come. But my brother’s with the colonists. So that’s almost as good, though not for midwifery.”

She smiled. “Things will all change now, Emma.” Her doelike eyes dropped to her hands clasped in her lap. “You’ll have your German friends to speak with soon, women and children to fill your days. You won’t come this way so much.”

Would we be pulled into a ball of colony yarn wrapped tightly around one another, never letting our threads roll out toward our neighbors? “I will,” I promised. “Once we finish the houses, it will be like a real village. You’ll have more neighbors, not fewer; more people coming for the mail boats. We’ll travel in for supplies and to ship things out. We’ll have big picnics and our band will play again.” I was surprised
by the joys I could name from my time in Bethel and equally pleased that I hoped they’d be repeated here.

Then in a moment, I wondered if they would. No clearing stood wide enough to make a town here, such as we had in Bethel with room for house-lined streets. Worse, Wilhelm might insist we not associate with our neighbors except in commerce for fear they’d corrupt us the way one bad potato can spoil the lot.

Ach
, no. I couldn’t let myself worry over such thoughts. With all the people here at last, the building would go more quickly, and each family could work on its own house. We’d be constructing ours, and now I liked the idea of its separation from the others. I could visit Sarah as I wished without colony eyes watching. I wondered why I’d fussed at Christian about the distance. Except for the river passage required at certain times of the year, and the river crossing when we wanted to travel north, we’d be out from under the scrutinizing eyes of our leader, Christian’s parents, everyone. It would take more effort to visit friends like Sarah. But if Mary and Sebastian took a claim close to ours rather than on the Giesy site, where the blockade house sat, I’d have friends close. We’d have our own lives and yet have the advantage of giving to and sharing with the colony. It would be better than when we were in Bethel, each looking over the shoulders of another, each feeling guilty when our eyes might move from the pull of our leader to something of our own interest.

“Will the new families be disappointed that they must build their own homes?” Sarah asked.

“Only some,” I said. I looked away, poked the needle into the cloth, and set it down. “They’ll see that even our home is left for last and that we put the needs of the elders first. They’ll understand.” I said the last as a hope as much as a promise.

Toward the end of that afternoon, we spied Christian’s boat. Tears of hope welled up inside me, though a drizzle welcomed their arrival. I stood on my tiptoes at the wharf, Andy’s hand gripped in mine, looking for Christian and my brother. I found my husband’s hat bobbing above the others, but it was our leader who stepped off first, his brow furrowed.

His scowl reminded me of Andy when he did not get his way.

“Jonathan?” I asked Christian when I caught up with him. I peered behind him.

“Wilhelm sent him back to Portland with most of the wagons,” Christian said. “Wilhelm said we needed the money we’d get for them there, and we have little need of so many wagons here.” His voice sounded cheerful within the earshot of others; but a caution formed in the lines of his eyes, a pained look that only an attentive wife might notice.

Then Louisa walked down the gangplank, her hands carrying an infant, holding on to a toddler. Next came Aurora.
Aurora
. The child had grown. Kindly, she tended to a younger brother. Louisa nodded to me, then stood to the side while they harnessed the mules and pulled off the hearse carrying their Willie.

The casket was massive. I marveled again that something so large and cumbersome could have come all the way from Missouri. The challenges must have been immense.

“He can rest now,” I told Louisa, walking up beside her and patting her arm. She held her brown cape tight around her. “And you, too.”

She nodded her head. “It’s been a long journey.” She looked around. I hoped Woodard’s Landing appeared inviting with its tidiness behind
the picket fence Sam built. How organized and civilized it all looked to me with the small warehouse, store, and post office all under one roof. Prosperous, I decided. Large sunflowers still bloomed beside the Woodard house, though it was nearly Thanksgiving. Surely Louisa and Wilhelm would see the promise here; surely being thankful for all we’d done would come as easily as the autumn rains. “My husband is tired and weary,” Louisa said then. “I must help him find rest.”

“Where are our lodgings, Chris?” our leader asked.

I saw in Keil’s eyes that engaging intensity that brought people to him. But I also saw the tiredness mentioned by his wife. Something else, too: sadness perhaps, which sloped onto his shoulders and showed in the downturned lines around his mouth. He looked older than when we’d left him, while Christian appeared carved by the elements and stood leaner and more muscular than when we’d left Missouri.

“We’ll take advantage of the Woodards’ hospitality and spend the night here at their request,” Christian said. “In the morning, we’ll make our way to the claims I’ve purchased.”