A Light in the Wilderness (23 page)

The Woman nodded. Letitia put Martha under the tent in her board. Then together the women pushed and pulled the logs toward the hillside. They should build into the bank. The earth would keep them warm; dig down too, the way the People built their lodges.

The Woman said as much. “Yes. That be a good idea. Let dirt act as walls.”

By the time they finished, the child cried from the tent, hungry for its mother. Rain fell again and The Woman took it as a sign to leave. She fingered the sapling leaves.

“Apples. One day. Today, I gives you this.” From the tent Letitia handed The Woman four biscuits and a jar of jelly. “Pear-apple jelly. Brought a long way.”

“Ayee.
Kloshe
. My grandson Little Shoot will like these with his eggs.”

“You have chickens?” The Woman nodded. “What can I trade you for a laying chicken?”

“More of this.” She held up the jam.

The Woman left, pressing her walking stick into the soft ground. She tired from the effort of dragging the logs, but grateful that here, there was nothing for her grandson to fear.

Four able men returned with Davey to help him fell more trees and set the center beam for their house, form a roof he’d make shingles for.

“You moved the boundary marks.”

“Yes suh.”

“You did this by yourself?”

She shook her head. “A woman, Betsy, come by. She a Kala . . . Kala-puya and said the meadow floods. Every spring. Where you put the logs will be swimming in two feet of water. She marked on her leggins.”

“Flooded? Every year? That creek doesn’t look to have it in it.”

“We dig into the earth and have dirt for part of the walls. Build it faster and stay warmer.”

“She’s got a point,” one of the men said.

Davey frowned. “Had my heart set on looking out at the stream, dropping a line off the front porch.”

“It ain’t that far to the hillside.” Another man took a twist of tobacco from the braided sections. “Let’s get this thing going.”

And so they built their home on the side of the hill, using the earth for warmth as Betsy advised. One of the men helping said he thought Davey had picked a fine place to claim. He planned to file on the section south. “We’ll be neighbors,” he said.

“You have family, suh?” It would be nice to have a woman close by . . . if she was a woman who’d accept the likes of her.

“Not yet. But I’m courting.”

“May you find as good a helper as my Tish.”

Davey split rails for potatoes that winter, though he announced the camas “tasty” and hoped next year they’d have a supply of their own. A chicken appeared, and while the darker days kept the chicken from laying many eggs, it was still something Letitia looked forward to, the wondering and then picking up the warm egg and carrying it to the cabin.

The following spring and summer Betsy became her teacher, showing her plants and what they did, which to eat and how to dry them. They dug out a rotten log, burned it, then planted tobacco seeds, Martha watching from her perch, outgrowing that board. They climbed Coffin Butte and Betsy pointed out landmarks with the Indian names she could remember. The view was of a splendid valley, meadows and small plots of trees, but no other homesteads that she could see. It was a vast beyond and Letitia took in its promise.

Her days, like the winter rains, found a steady joy despite the
work. Davey laughed and tickled his daughter, bounced her on his knee. They decided not to butcher any cows but build up their herd, so they lived on venison and raccoon and once an elk. When Letitia decided it was time to make cheese, they used a deer’s stomach for the rennet. She stretched and dried it, but Letitia had to experiment with amounts to make cheese. Davey helped wash up dishes and said more than once how good it was to be close to the spring, especially when the meadow flooded as it did that next spring. “You were right.”

Letitia grinned, remembering Nancy saying once how rare it was for a man to admit that his wife was right, because it always meant admitting he was wrong.

Betsy learned how to make cheese too, Letitia grateful to have something to give back to the Kalapuya woman. Little Shoot joined them, a boy with long black hair Letitia envied for its straightness and easy care. Betsy’s too. Martha’s fingers were always getting stuck in the thick nap of Letitia’s hair if she left it unbraided, which she did most often, the coconut oil and honey mixture keeping the tight kinks in check. Martha’s hair was soft fuzz, black as earth.

“First we heat the milk in a copper pot. When it warm, we takes it off the heat and puts in this itty-bitty piece of a deer’s stomach. Always save the stomach, stretch it out like a banjo.”

“A drum.”

“Dry that stomach, then roll it, and it keep and give us a piece the size of my Martha’s thumb to make the milk jell.”

Betsy nodded, seeming to memorize as they worked. While they waited for the milk to heat or cool, Betsy told stories. She reminded Little Shoot to listen and to sit. “If you stand, you will get a hump back. We should have three storytellers.”

Letitia handed her the spoon.

“That way they correct my telling. But there are few storytellers left so I teach Little Shoot. And with your baby, there are three to listen. I tell today of pine squirrel and deer and of hope and fear.” She gave a little cackle and Martha giggled.

“Now we waits until the milk gets thick and jiggles like a fat man’s belly.”

Betsy shared a story of a boy becoming the moon and another of how a coyote outsmarted a frog. The stories reminded Letitia of days before her mother was sold when they sat around a fire pit in an evening while men and women sang and swapped stories to make the children laugh and sometimes the parents cry.

“I cuts the thick milk now into small pieces and then breaks it.” Letitia liked the squishy feel of breaking up the cheese until it was the size of grains of corn dribbling over her dark fingers. She could transform milk. A woman was always transforming. “It like a custard all broken apart. Now we heat again. Keeps stirring. Don’ let it boil. Good.” She hovered behind Betsy. “Now we lets it cool and hears more stories. Or I teaches you to pun jab, tell stories with pats and claps of hands.”

Little Shoot laughed as Betsy tried her hand at the claps and slaps. She shook her head. “No good!”

Letitia strained the cooled milk, then let it drip through one of her old petticoats before returning it to the pan and kneading in the salt. When she pulled out her quilting hoops, Betsy’s forehead furrowed.

“I gots cloth and this be the shape of our cheese. Wrap this cloth around and we store it in the firkin I bring all the way from Missouri. Keep it cool and dry. It gets a hard crust and tastes
kloshe
.” She was proud of her use of Betsy’s word for “good.”

“You trade it.”

“Sell it to the trappers and anyone else achin’ for a good bite of cheese. Closest neat cows are in Fort Vancouver, Davey says, so we good. We very good to have our cows. We wily as your coyote changing milk to butter and cheese to money.”

Davey went to town alone. Letitia preferred the shadow of Coffin Butte, singing hymns and trail songs to Martha as she skimmed
cream, transforming milk into cheese. At the cabin, Davey appeared settled, happy to be splitting rails to mark his property, keep the cows from wandering. They’d bred Charity and her heifer. Old B was fit to the plow and they broke ground for a garden. “We’re not raising wheat, nothing like that. We’re stockmen.”

A lean-to kept Letitia dry while milking cows. She called each in by name. “Here, Charity.” She’d milk, then with a gentle slap, send her out, her bell clanging, then call in Blue, Charity’s calf, now with one of her own. Martha could say “cow” and worked on “baby” as though she knew that was her name too.

The days rode up and down, filled with the ordinary: stuffing a mattress with bedstraw, examining a plant Betsy shared with them, eating watercress near Sulphur Springs. Little Shoot learned to aim with Davey’s pistol, the two males laughing together. Martha took her first steps. Cheese crumbled off their chins on a frosted morning. This was freedom both inside and out and Letitia relished it, even letting herself stand out to the passing trappers who bought her cheese and butter, gave her security in her earnings.

Davey’s citizenship papers arrived in the fall of 1846. He did a little jig outside the store housing the post office in Oregon City.

When he arrived home, he shouted, “Tish! Guess what? My papers are here!”

“What papers be those?” She wiped her hands on her apron, walked out to where Davey grinned.

“Why, my citizenship papers. I was waiting on . . . Oh.”

How could he have forgotten that she never knew?

“You just now getting those papers? How we have this land then?” She spread her hand to take in their homestead. “You lie?”

“No. Now, lookee here. They knew I’d applied. Came all this way. Only a fool would come to claim land without being certain he could.”

She stared at him. Was that disgust he saw on her face?

“Now Tish—”

“You risk this land, this place you leave us if something happen to you?” She narrowed her eyes, her words a hiss.

“But see, everything worked out fine. The sparrows are being looked after.”

She shook her head and went back inside. So much for sharing a happy thing with someone committed to loving you. He led Fergus into the barn. Might be a good place to stay the night.