Boston Jane (24 page)

Did my happiness lie in pleasing William and being the wife he wanted?

Suddenly Papa’s voice spoke loudly in my ear:

Speak up, Janey. Say what’s on your mind
.

“There you are,” William said, sitting down next to me on the log and sighing heavily.

I didn’t look up.

“I’m terribly sorry if I upset you,” he said, a contrite expression on his face.

Miss Hepplewhite always said that a lady should be gracious about accepting apologies.

“Apology accepted,” I murmured, although perhaps not in the most gracious manner.

He smiled broadly. “I knew you were a sensible thing. Perhaps we should discuss our wedding ceremony.”

“Certainly,” I said, forcing a bright smile. Sensible thing?

“Now Jane, I was thinking that Father Joseph …”

But I wasn’t listening to a word he said. For standing by the bushes, in plain view, was the Makah girl. She stood there as if she meant to be seen, and when my eyes met hers they returned my stare challengingly.

“That girl’s been following us all week! Who is she?”

William clenched his jaw. “No one.”

“William, I demand an answer.” I wasn’t going to back down this time, lady or not. “Obviously she knows
you
, because she’s a stranger to me.”

“She thinks she’s my wife,” William said evenly.

“Your wife?”

“Yes.”

I felt faint.

“You have to understand, Jane, I thought you weren’t coming. I thought you’d changed your mind,” he said quickly.

“So you married someone else?” I managed to sound calm, but my mind was shouting. William was already married! Married!

He tried to put his arm around my waist, but I pulled away with a jerk.

“It doesn’t change anything. It’s not a real marriage in the eyes of God and church. She’s just an Indian. I’ll send her away.”

I looked at him wordlessly. How long had he fooled me?

“Then why did you marry her?”

“The
land
, Jane,” he said urgently. “I told you. When you didn’t come I thought you’d changed your mind. I get to keep all six hundred and forty acres of my claim only if I’m married. I have to give back half—three hundred and twenty acres!—if I’m unmarried.” He took a deep breath and plunged on. “Governor Stevens suggested I marry her.”

I shook my head, speechless.

“It’s complicated. Anyway, she’s a half-breed. Her father was white. That’s why I could marry her and legally keep the land.”

“I see.”

William shook his head. “I had no choice.”

I flinched. They were the same exact words I had said to Jehu.

“You are the one I want, Jane,” William said.

I knew that he meant it. I knew without a shred of doubt that he would put the girl aside for me. I thought of his clever letters, wooing me, playing on my girlish desires. Had he only ever intended to marry me to get his precious land? Had he changed or had I never seen his true character?

Papa had. Papa had known all along, and I had been too young and foolish and stubborn to listen. All those years I’d spent dreaming of William, dreaming of becoming his wife, flashed through my mind and all I could think was,
What bad luck
.

“She’s just an Indian,” he repeated. An edge had crept into his voice—or had it always been there? “She’s nothing to me.”

I thought of Suis and shook my head. Jehu was right.

I did have a choice.

“She may be an Indian,” I said quietly. My throat was so tight I could barely speak. “But she’s still your wife.”

“My dear girl, I’m so sorry,” Mr. Swan said.

I sat at the sawbuck table in Mr. Russell’s cabin with my face in my hands. My cheeks were wet, my eyes puffy. I had been crying all morning. Poor Mr. Russell had been so discomfited by my tears that he had taken one look at me weeping in Mr. Swan’s arms and fled the cabin as if being chased by a pack of wild dogs.

William and his wife had left, too. My future—no,
my life
—had left.

“What am I to do?” I asked. “I don’t know if I can survive another voyage like the one it took me to get here.”

Mr. Swan sat down opposite me and said earnestly, “You could stay.”

“Stay here? In the middle of the wilderness?”

“Yes, Jane. Stay.”

The word hung on the air, hummed in the still of the cabin.

“But there’s nothing for me here.”

Mr. Swan’s face fell.

“I can’t, Mr. Swan. You must understand. I don’t belong here. I’m—I’m a lady.”

A gleam entered Mr. Swan’s eye. “A lady who has an oyster business?”

“Yes, but—”

“A lady who dives into a raging river for an old man’s canoe?”

“But—”

“A lady who carves up a whale?”

“There are rules!” I said, exasperated.

“Jane, there are no rules here. And you
are
a lady, the finest in all Shoalwater Bay.”

“What kind of future would I have here? You of all people must understand. Your wife and children, back in Boston …” My voice trailed off, but there was no mistaking my point. His own wife hadn’t wanted to come to the wilderness.

Mr. Swan was silent and I knew I’d hurt his feelings.

“Papa said there are plenty of eligible young men in Philadelphia,” I said in a small voice, realizing at once how very much I missed the sound of Papa’s laughter. “And besides, I miss him. I miss Philadelphia. I miss Mrs. Parker and her cherry pie. I miss everything. I want to go home.”

Mr. Swan nodded.

“Well, we’ll miss
you
, my dear. You are like a daughter to me,” he said heavily, his eyes watery.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Swan, but really, this is the most sensible decision. I must go.”

The
Hetty
was due back in Shoalwater Bay in two weeks’ time, and I would be on her.

It seemed no coincidence that the day of my departure dawned fair and bright.

A sweet September breeze was blowing across the water, much like the day we’d first sailed into Shoalwater Bay. The sun bounced off the smooth surface, and everything looked so beautiful and green that I almost believed that Shoalwater Bay was luring me to stay. But it was too late. I was packed and ready to go. I looked like a respectable young lady for the first time in months in the new blue dress I had stitched.

“Very well then, my dear,” Mr. Swan said sadly.

Handsome Jim had refused to see me off.

“Boston Jane leave?” he said dully.

“I must. There’s nothing to keep me here now that I’m not marrying William. I’m going back to Philadelphia and my family and friends there.”

“No! Boston Jane not leave.”

“But—”

His eyes were dark. “
We
your friends, Boston Jane!” he said. He stared at me angrily for a moment and then stormed off into the woods.

Mr. Swan and Mr. Russell carried my trunk down to the beach where I would wait for the
Hetty
.

Mr. Russell spat loudly.

Truly I was going to miss dodging his tobacco.

“There you go, Jane,” Mr. Swan said, trying to put on a cheery face as he put down his end of the trunk with a small wheeze.

Brandywine was darting around the beach, chasing gulls, and Sootie sat on the trunk, like a queen on her throne. She didn’t quite understand that I was leaving for good. She thought I was moving for the winter, the way her family left Shoalwater Bay in winter. I didn’t try to correct her.

Mr. Russell took off his cap, scratching his head. Would the man ever be rid of fleas?

“Good luck, gal,” Mr. Russell said. He seemed on the verge of saying something else, but then simply shook his head and turned and walked over the dunes.

Mr. Swan was trying to be jovial, but it was clear that he was still quite unhappy with my decision.

“Now you will be sure to keep in touch. We have business, you and I,” he said, his throat catching.

“Yes, of course,” I said stiffly.

He held out a bag. “A small present for your leave-taking. There is never anything decent to eat aboard a ship.”

Small clusters of strange-looking fruit attached to branches rested inside the cloth.

“They’re crab apples. Quite tart, but I’ve acquired a taste for them,” he said with a forced smile. “Perhaps you can make one of your famous pies.”

“Thank you,” I said. “The food was certainly terrible on the voyage here.”

He swallowed hard. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t see you off. I’m not very good at farewells,” he said, and turned and strode away.

The previous day, Father Joseph had stopped by as I was packing, a packet of letters in his hand.

“For the bishop,” he explained.

I nodded and took the packet.

He regarded me silently. I remembered the outbound voyage on the
Lady Luck
and everything that had happened since. Father Joseph was woven up in all my memories.

“I’ll miss you, Father,” I said, and hugged him impulsively.

Father Joseph swallowed, his eyebrows knitted in concern.

“God watch over you,
ma chère
,” he said.

The
Hetty
sailed into the bay, its white sails fluttering. A sudden wind rose and blew over me, gentle as a kiss, the air smelling sweetly of salt and the sea.

Jehu
.

I wondered if he still hated me, halfway to China.

Brandywine nuzzled his cold nose expectantly in my hand.

“I have no food, Brandywine,” I said. “But I shall miss you.”

Sootie was playing in a shallow tide pool, splashing about. I slipped off my new boots and joined her. The water was cool, the sand hard beneath my feet. She made a face at the water.

“Pretty Sootie!” she declared.

I studied my reflection in the water. The sunburned face, the round cheeks, the nose dotted with freckles, hair unbound and fluttering wildly in the wind. The girl looking back at me bore no resemblance to the thin, pale, quiet, tidy, proper creature that had departed Philadelphia so many months ago.

The
Hetty
dropped anchor, and a rowboat was being lowered.
I put on my boots, picked up my case, and stood patiently on the sand. I looked at the sack in my hand and pulled out one of the odd little crab apples.

And the strangest thing happened. Will you believe it?

It all came rushing back.

Being eleven years old and laughing with Jebediah Parker. The sun shining down as if it would shine forever. The feel of a rotten apple, heavy in my hand. How at that moment the future seemed full of possibility, the whole world stretched out like Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie, just waiting for me to take a bite.

How I was the luckiest girl in the world
.

“Jane!”

I looked up. Jehu was waving to me from the rowboat.

And he was smiling!

I stood on the beach, my heart thudding in my chest. My life felt as tangled and messy as my red hair. How had I gotten to this sorry state? I had been such a happy girl. Had my life truly been determined by the unlucky flight of a rotten apple?

Certainly not
.

I was Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia. I was also Boston Jane of Shoalwater Bay.

By any name, I had a choice.

I took a deep breath and smiled at Jehu.

Papa always said you make your own luck.

And maybe you do.

The End

I was inspired to write
Boston Jane
after reading
Skulduggery on Shoalwater Bay
, a book of poetry by Willard Espy, about the nineteenth-century pioneers and Indians on Shoalwater Bay. One of the pioneers he wrote a poem about was James G. Swan.

James G. Swan, an enigmatic and self-proclaimed adventurer, abandoned a comfortable middle-class life and family in Boston to go and live on Shoalwater Bay (now known as Willapa Bay) in the Washington Territory in 1852. He wrote a fascinating account of his stay at Shoalwater Bay entitled
The Northwest Coast, Or, Three Years’ Residence in Washington Territory
that was published in 1857 by Harper & Brothers.

James G. Swan was very interested in the Indians residing at Shoalwater Bay and spent much of his time learning their languages, sleeping in their lodges, and living and working alongside them. In fact, he went on a fishing trip with a group of Chinooks on the Naselle River, the setting of my first book,
Our Only May Amelia
.

The Chinooks residing at Shoalwater Bay spoke both the
Chinook language and the Chinook Jargon, a trade language that was used for generations by many Pacific Northwest tribes to communicate with each other and with the Europeans when they arrived. Both the pure Chinook and the Jargon were spoken languages, not written, and so different spellings exist in varying accounts.

In keeping with the spirit of James Swan, I have generally used his spellings in
Boston Jane
. Also, like Handsome Jim and Suis, some of the Indians spoke English fluently, the children generally more so. However, Swan took pains to point out in his book that many Chinook felt they already had a perfectly good, extremely flexible trade language in the Jargon, and therefore had no use for English. Thus quite a few Europeans made regular use of the Jargon, and several dictionaries of the Jargon exist.