Boston Jane (25 page)

James G. Swan was characteristic of the typical nineteenth-century white man in that he subscribed to many of the attitudes of his time and the prejudices that came along with them. However, in other respects he was a surprisingly open-minded and unbiased observer, who genuinely seemed to care about the Chinook way of life and their fate. These contradictions were what made him so interesting to me, and were why I couldn’t resist writing about him. I think the James Swan in
Boston Jane
is a little romanticized compared to the real man, but I hope I’ll be forgiven a bit of poetic license.

Although this is a work of fiction, I have incorporated several real-life incidents in
Boston Jane
, specifically Mr. Swan’s ill-fated experience with the chimney and the canoe, the smallpox
outbreak, and the Fourth of July celebration. The character I have tried to bring to life in this book was inspired by some of his own remarks, for example: “This is the best method of traveling in any Indian country; that is to say, always have some Indians in the company …” Swan never once hinted at why he was willing to leave his family alone in Boston for three years: this is perhaps the greatest mystery in
The Northwest Coast
, and I have entirely invented Mrs. Swan’s motivations in this book.

I was so excited by my research that I named many of my characters after other historical residents of Shoalwater Bay, including Chief Toke, Suis, Mr. Russell, Father Joseph, Champ, M’Carty, Dolly, Jehu Scudder, and William Baldt. I have fictionalized these characters in all instances. In real life, Father Joseph Lionnet was actually a missionary at Chinook, Washington. By all accounts, the real Father Joseph was equally unsuccessful at convincing the Chinook that his ways were better than theirs.

Brandywine the dog was entirely made up, but bears a remarkable resemblance to a certain animal I know who is always begging for food. However, the
Brandywine
was a frigate that gave the real M’Carty his nickname, Old Brandywine.

Incidentally, conditions aboard brigs sailing around Cape Horn were often every bit as bad as I have described them. I ran across an account in which a paying passenger suffered so much that he actually jumped ship at Valparaiso and signed on as a working hand on another ship bound for San Francisco.

Finally, I based Miss Hepplewhite’s teachings and Jane’s etiquette book,
The Young Lady’s Confidante
, on a popular
nineteenth-century etiquette book,
The Young Lady’s Friend
by Mrs. John Farrar. Mrs. Farrar was such a respectable lady, and writing a book was so unseemly for a woman of her times, that the first few editions of
The Young Lady’s Friend
had only the words “By a Lady” on the cover. In some instances I have used the actual instruction from
The Young Lady’s Friend
in Miss Hepplewhite’s dialogue and in
The Young Lady’s Confidante
(will you believe it!).

“There is more to be learned about pouring out tea and coffee, than most young ladies are willing to believe.”

Chinook Tribal Office, Chinook, Washington.

Pacific County Historical Society and Museum, South Bend, Washington.

The Northwest Coast, Or, Three Years’ Residence in Washington
Territory
, James G. Swan, University of Washington Press.

Skulduggery on Shoalwater Bay
, Willard R. Espy. Illustrated by Nancy Lloyd, Cranberry Press.

Jennifer L. Holm
is the author of two Newbery Honor books,
Our Only May Amelia
and
Penny from Heaven
. She is also the author of several other highly praised books, including the Boston Jane trilogy,
Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf
, and the Babymouse series, which she collaborates on with her brother, Matthew Holm. Jennifer lives in California with her husband and their two children. You can visit her on the Web at
www.jenniferholm.com
.

It was a sweet September
day on the beach, much like the day I’d first sailed into Shoalwater Bay that April. The sun was skipping across the water, and the sky was a bright arc of blue racing to impossibly tall green trees. And for the first time since arriving on this wild stretch of wilderness, I felt lucky again.

You see, I had survived these many months in the company of rough men and Chinook Indians, not to mention a flea-ridden hound, and while it was true that my wardrobe had suffered greatly, one might say that my person had thrived. I had made friends. I had started an oyster business. I had survived endless calamity: six months of seasickness on the voyage from Philadelphia, a near-drowning, a fall from a cliff, and a smallpox outbreak. What was there to stop me now?

Although a life on the rugged frontier of the Washington Territory was not recommended for a proper young lady of sixteen, especially in the absence of a suitable chaperone, I intended to try it.

After all, I did make the best pies on Shoalwater Bay. And striding up the beach toward me was a man who appreciated them.

“Jane!”

He had the bluest eyes I had ever seen, bluer than the water of the bay behind him. A schooner, the
Hetty
, was anchored not far out, and it was the reason I had packed all my belongings and was standing beside my trunk. The same schooner had brought Jehu Scudder back to the bay after a prolonged absence. Indeed, when Jehu left, I had doubted that I would ever see him again.

“Jane,” Jehu said gruffly, his thick black hair brushing his shoulders, his eyes glowing in his tanned face. I had last seen him nearly two months ago, at which time I had hurt his feelings, and sailor that he was, he had vowed to sail as far away as China to be rid of me.

“Jehu,” I replied, nervously pushing a sticky tangle of red curls off my cheeks.

He shook his head. “You’re looking well, Miss Peck.”

“As are you, Mr. Scudder,” I replied, my voice light.

We stood there for a moment just looking at each other, the soft bay air brushing between us like a ribbon. Without thinking, I took a step forward, toward him, until I was so close that I breathed the scent of the saltwater on his skin. And all at once I remembered that night, those stars, his cheek close to mine.

“Boston Jane! Boston Jane!” a small voice behind me cried.

Sootie, a Chinook girl who had become dear to me, came rushing down the beach, little legs pumping, her feet wet from the tide pool in which she had been playing. She was waving a
particularly large clamshell at me, of the sort the Chinook children often fashioned into dolls.

“Look what I found!” she said, eyeing Jehu.

“Sootie,” I said, smoothing back her thick black hair. “You remember Captain Scudder? He was the first mate on the
Lady Luck
, the ship that brought me here from Philadelphia.”

Sootie clutched the skirts of my blue calico dress and hid behind them shyly, peeking out at Jehu with her bright brown eyes. Her mother, my friend Suis, had died in the summer smallpox outbreak, and since then Sootie had spent a great deal of time in my company.

Jehu crouched down next to her, admiring her find. “That’s a real nice shell you have there.”

She grinned flirtatiously at him, exposing a gap where one of her new front teeth was coming in.

Jehu grinned right back and squinted up at me from where he knelt. “I see you took my advice about wearing blue. Although I did like that Chinook skirt of yours,” he teased, his Boston accent dry as a burr.

The cedar bark skirt in question, while very comfortable, had left my legs quite bare. “That skirt was hardly proper, Jehu,” I rebuked him gently.

At this, his lips tightened and a shuttered look came across his face. The thick angry scar on his cheek twitched in a familiar way. He hunched his shoulders forward and stood up, deliberately looking somewhere over my shoulder. “Ah, yes, proper.”

I bit my lip and stepped back. I had little doubt as to what
was causing this sudden transformation. I had rejected his affections, as I had been engaged to another man.

“So tell me, how is your new husband?” he asked in a clipped voice.

“Jehu,” I said quickly.

He turned from me and stared angrily out at the smooth bay. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got supplies to deliver,” he said tersely, and then he turned on his booted heel and strode quickly down the beach away from me.

I took a step forward, Sootie’s arms tight around my legs. What was I to do? Miss Hepplewhite, my instructor at the Young Ladies Academy in Philadelphia, had a great number of opinions on the proper behavior of a young lady. I had discovered, however, that many of her careful instructions were sorely lacking when it came to surviving on the frontier. There was not much call for pouring tea or embroidering handkerchiefs in the wilds of Shoalwater Bay. And I certainly didn’t recall any helpful hints on how to prevent the only man one had ever kissed from storming away for the second time in one’s life. So I did something that I was sure would have shocked my old teacher.

I shouted.

“I didn’t marry him!”

He froze and then turned back toward me, walking fast. He grabbed my shoulders and looked down into my eyes.

“You didn’t?” Something indefinable flickered across his face.

“It seems that Mr. Baldt already had a wife.”

Jehu slapped his thigh triumphantly. “I knew he was no good!”

The difficulties of this year, 1854, had culminated in the sad discovery that the man I had sailed around two continents to marry, William Baldt, had married another before I could arrive. Papa would not have been surprised. Like Jehu, he had a very poor opinion of William Baldt.

“Janey,” my white-bearded papa had told me firmly when I declared my intention to accept Mr. Baldt’s proposal, “you are transfixed with William for the wrong reasons. There’s nothing for you out on that frontier. It’s dangerous. There are plenty of eligible young bachelors right here in Philadelphia. There’s no call to follow one out west, especially one with no sense.”

I confess that I couldn’t help but wonder what Papa would think of Jehu. My sweet surgeon father had always been fond of sailors. Why, they were generally his best clients, considering the number of cracked heads that required stitching from drunken bar brawls.

“You’re leaving then?” Jehu asked quietly, gesturing to my trunk on the beach.

That morning upon waking I’d had every intention of leaving Shoalwater Bay and all of its inhabitants behind me. After my engagement to William Baldt had fallen apart two weeks earlier, I had arranged for passage back to San Francisco on the schooner
Hetty
, which was due to arrive with supplies. I had bidden my farewells and taken my trunk down to the beach that morning fully expecting to depart the shores of the bay forever.

But as I had watched the
Hetty
sail in, and considered all I had been through—and survived—I had realized that I could
follow my sweet papa’s advice, and make my own luck right here in Shoalwater Bay.

“Are you going away, Boston Jane?” Sootie asked anxiously, clutching me fiercely around the legs, as if by force alone she could prevent my departure.

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

I looked into Jehu’s clear eyes, and said to Sootie, my voice shaking slightly, “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

Papa, I thought, would be so proud of me.

Jehu’s shoulders seemed to relax. Was that a hint of admiration in his eyes?

Sootie smiled up at me. “Oh good! Now I can show you how to make me a dolly.” She tugged at my hand.

Jehu snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot. I’ve got something for you,” he said, fishing in the leather satchel slung over his shoulder and pulling out a letter. The handwriting was familiar.

“It’s a letter—” he began.

“From Papa!” I cried, snatching it from his fingers.

“Picked it up from a passing ship. Got a few letters for Swan, and one for Russell, too.”

The mail was a random enterprise, with letters generally delivered by passing ships. I had not received a letter from Papa since arriving on Shoalwater Bay. Then again, I had not written Papa for several months now, and as I turned the letter over in my hand, I felt a rush of guilt.

Although he had not prevented my trip, Papa had made it clear that he did not think highly of William Baldt, and I had
delayed writing him from shame when William had not met me upon my arrival. I had intended to write him after William showed up and we were married. Then the engagement had been broken, and as I had thought to return home, there was no need for a letter. Now perhaps I would write and persuade Papa to join me. The settlement could most certainly use a proper physician.

Papa. How I missed his booming laugh. His warm eyes. His ability to finish off one of Mrs. Parker’s cherry pies in a single sitting.

I recalled the way his mustache turned up at the corners when he smiled, and how he never turned away patients, not even when they stumbled onto our doorstep in the middle of the night.