The Spoils of Sin (25 page)

‘I have not yet said so, but I fear it is true. He was trampled by the oxen, when they were set to stampeding by a bear. He did not suffer,' he finished.

Fanny sat down in a heap, unaware of anything but shock. Poor Reuben! First a horse throwing him and now the cattle had slaughtered him. It was as if fate had picked him out from the start as a sacrificial member of the Collins family – a payment of some kind for the hubris of thinking they could have everything go as they wished. ‘Poor Reuben!' she said aloud. ‘He never deserved such a thing.'

‘Indeed not,' agreed Mr Fields robustly. ‘He was a fine lad, without vice of any sort.'

Vice?
The word rang a small bell in Fanny's mind. She raised her head and looked around her. Her sister's husband now knew the secret of how she earned her bread. He would also have observed Carola's condition. He would take back a comprehensive report that would taint her forever in her family's eyes.

‘Charity is not with you?' she asked.

He shook his head. ‘She has a new babe to tend. Another little lad. We had already selected your brother's name for him. There is a second Reuben in the family.' He looked as if thought this might provide some consolation.

Carola made a small noise, and Fanny threw her a repressive look. This was most certainly not the moment – if such a moment there could ever be – to reveal the paternity of her unborn child. But there were implications swarming at her, more than she could deal with at one time.

‘How did you find me?' Fanny asked.

He shrugged, as if this were a useless question. ‘It took me barely an hour. You are well advertised.'

And he is an Indian
, she thought idiotically. Perhaps he had special tracking abilities, thanks to his mixed blood.

‘Did you know – does the family know – how we live?' asked Carola in a small voice. ‘That is - ?' she faltered. Despite their daily experiences, their familiarity with the taboo, the words some of the men used with them, it was still impossible to speak plainly.

‘Not a notion,' he assured her. ‘I confess it came as a surprise to me. Although…' he looked at Fanny. ‘Your sister has mentioned certain episodes on the Trail, which might suggest something of this sort. And she gave me some meaningful clues as to how I might locate you.'

‘Charity will find it entirely as she expected,' said Fanny drily.

‘My wife is content with the life we have,' he said, a little defensively. ‘She endured the migration with difficulty. Many times I wished I could protect her from the things she witnessed. She was never meant for adventure.'

They had already drifted away from Reuben and his terrible death, Fanny realised. It was as if they could not dwell for long on the sadness of it. But she dragged herself back. ‘My mother,' she said. ‘How is she taking the news?'

Mrs Collins had doted on Reuben from the first. She would occasionally reminisce over the delight she had found in taking on her husband's infant son after the death of his first wife. Even when Fanny arrived, barely a year after the marriage, Reuben remained her special lamb.

‘She is broken,' he said. ‘You must recall that day when he returned from soldiering, with his shoulder all twisted. Such relief and delight and celebration.'

Fanny did indeed vividly remember the muddle and bustle of their arrival at Oregon City, with every family jostling for the best parcels of land, and trying to acquire the essentials for their new lives. Into all that had ridden her missing brother, damaged but valiant. Everything had fallen into place with his return, both his parents radiant with gladness. When Charity suddenly married Mr Fields, nobody felt much sense of loss – didn't they have their boy back with them? And wasn't that the most important thing of all?

Without Reuben, the only son, how would Patrick Collins manage his acres? He was already struggling to combine farming with his business before this disaster. She asked Mr Fields what he thought would happen now.

‘Your father is talking of selling his business in town, and concentrating on producing crops. The sale would bring him income enough to acquire seed and equipment necessary to expand his endeavours. This will be the third year on the homestead, and much is already established – as you will have seen for yourself.' He sighed deeply. ‘And Reuben's shoulder had been improving in recent months. A new harness was fitted which was pulling him into a better shape. Although I believe he suffered a deal of pain from it, too.'

‘Oh, poor Reuben!' Fanny howled again. The misery of it was still sinking into her consciousness, the inescapable truth of it not yet quite rooted. Never to see him again, to laugh and remember their early years, to watch him turn to full manhood. Never mind that such meetings might be barely once a year – it had been enough to know he would always be there if she wanted him.

Carola had said nothing since her incoherent question. Only now did Fanny remember that they still had something of Reuben, a permanent reminder, due to be born in another three months or so. And this would surely be a comfort to her parents, if they knew. How could they conceal it from them now? She opened her mouth to explain to her brother-in-law, sending him back with news they might find consoling, quite changing her earlier opinion that to mention it would be both ill-timed and unwise. But then she saw her friend's face, and knew she had read her mind and was very much against making the revelation. At some point their positions had been reversed, and Fanny took due note of the uncertain implications of disclosing the truth.

‘Well – I should be getting back,' said their visitor, somewhat awkwardly. ‘It is a long ride.'

‘Oh! How remiss we have been,' cried Fanny. ‘Stay and eat. Refresh yourself. How long have you been travelling? You must stay here for the night. Of course you must. You cannot ride directly home in the dark. We can fashion a bed for you here on the couch.' She began to bustle around, uselessly tugging at a cushion, trying to think where there might be a coverlet for him.

‘Fanny,' said Carola. ‘Let me.' With unnerving efficiency, she collected bread, cheese, fruit and beer, and arranged it on the table. She prepared fresh coffee and set it to heat on the stove.

Fanny and Moses watched her wordlessly. The situation was one that neither had experienced before. They did not know each other well, and Fanny found herself wondering how much detail Charity had revealed of her sister's debauchery. Did all wives disclose everything in their minds and hearts to their husbands? Did they discuss and analyse and comment on every small detail of their experience? She suspected not – but it seemed to her that her story might well make for entertaining conversation in the privacy of the bedchamber.

None of this mattered, of course. The man had undertaken the arduous task of riding fifty miles to take tragic news to a little known sister. He had earned gratitude, at the very least.

‘I can warm some water for you,' Carola offered. ‘So you might wash.' He was dusty, but otherwise fairly clean. He held out his hands like a child offering them for inspection, indicating that he believed a wash might wait until a later time. Basins and ewers were kept in the upstairs rooms. Only a shallow tin bowl stood on a box in the back scullery, holding cold water for sundry uses. Hugo regarded it as his personal drinking bowl.

The dog had been shut out by Carola when Mr Fields first arrived. He was now pawing insistently at the back door, and Fanny went to let him in. ‘You remember our Hugo?' she asked. ‘You met him at the homestead.'

The half-breed paid the animal little attention. ‘You admit him to the house,' he observed.

‘He acts as a guard and protector. Our work has its hazards,' Fanny told him.

‘I imagine it does. But we must not speak of your work. I am under the strictest instruction.' He smiled and scratched his head. ‘My wife is afraid I might find myself…tainted.'

‘That is precisely what she would fear,' said Fanny drily. ‘It surprises me that you were spared for the errand at all.'

Again he smiled. ‘There were reasons,' was all he said.

Carola bade him sit at the table and eat. The front door had been closed behind Fanny's customer, and nobody had come to bang on it. The procedure was well enough understood that the Misses Francesca and Carlotta were not receiving visitors if both doors were closed.

Mr Fields had made not the slightest acknowledgement of Carola's pregnancy, by word or look, and yet there could be no doubt that he was aware of it. So many men had joked about it, seeing it as a risk that such women took, and having not the slightest idea that the man who had of necessity shared in the conception might carry some responsibility for the consequences. They took it as self-evident that the identity of the sire could never be discovered, unless the resulting child showed the most extreme likeness to a man they remembered. Such an eventuality was so improbable as to remain unvoiced or even unthought.

Carola herself never hinted that she saw any justification in seeking any assistance in the expense and inconvenience of rearing a child. Knowing who to approach, as she did, made no difference. The child was hers, and hers alone.

Except that now, Fanny saw all too clearly that this need not be so. Her parents would be overjoyed to discover a grandchild, ready to adopt and raise him as a replacement for Reuben. And Carola had very likely understood this an hour past, and be fiercely determined not to be separated from her babe.

The dilemma thus recognised grew larger and more insistent in Fanny's mind. She herself had no wish to share their home with a squalling infant. There were people – people of the same blood – who would gladly take it. Naomi and Lizzie would take their share in the care and nurturing required, and the open air and freedom of such a life would be incomparably better than growing up in a whorehouse, however civilised and careful it might be.

But she said nothing, climbing the stairs for an early night, and sadly thanking her brother-in-law for all the trouble he had taken.

Mr Fields left early the next morning, visibly eager to return to his family. The girls were barely awake, still too shocked by the news to trust their own reactions. The answers to a few further questions had increased their dazed condition. Reuben's death, which Fanny had imagined took place only a few days past, had in fact happened in the early days of July. Not until the Fields family drove over for the burial and to help with the trouble arising from the unforeseen tragedy, had someone thought of the necessity to inform Fanny. A letter, they agreed, would not do. It had to be a gentle personal encounter. Only two possible messengers could be identified: Patrick Collins and Moses Fields. Collins, the patriarch, had far too much to do to be spared. Moses, never fully accepted by his wife's parents and sisters, had offered himself without hesitation. But it took time to return his wife and children to their own homestead, arrange for his work to be postponed for a few days, and adequate provision be made for Charity, who would be left without any means of transport. ‘We only have the one horse, you see,' he explained.

Fanny's gratitude expanded with every word of this modest account. ‘I have no words for how thankful I am to you,' she breathed. Privately, her respect for Charity increased, at her insightful choice of husband. The man was evidently a greater treasure than anyone had appreciated.

While Carola made coffee, Fanny conducted her usual routine of tidying and cleaning the house. There were necessary tasks to perform: food to purchase, the veranda to sweep clear of the everlasting dust that seemed to accumulate magically overnight. The hot weather was breaking up, and rain was predicted by those who took note of signs and portents. A wind had got up from the west, which could only bring ocean damp their way. ‘I need new boots,' she muttered to herself. She had hoped to get a pair made by a recently-arrived man who had set up his own store across the street from their boudoir. Week by week, Chemeketa was more closely resembling the cities back East, with specialists of many kinds finding their way there, and settling down to create a source of fancy cakes, quality notepaper, iron gates, furniture, china, lace and a hundred other items not thus far available in the pioneering west. The newfound gold had a patchy effect on this rise in the provision of merchandise. Successful prospectors were not yet thronging the town streets, but there were a handful who had been astute enough to profit from the free spending there had been in California in the last few months of 1948. They had left the crowded frenzy that followed and dispersed to other areas with their fortunes made.

Like Marybelle, Fanny realised. The woman had capitalised handsomely on her good fortune to be in the right place at the right moment. From her own account, she had worked strenuously for perhaps three or four months, and come away with untold wealth.

These and allied thoughts served to slowly return her to a better balance. The death of her brother was a terrible calamity for those who had lived with him, but for Fanny herself, it made no practical difference. It was a sadness, a hole in the fabric of her essential self; where she had once possessed a brother, now she did not. But her house and work and place in Chemeketa society remained the same.

It was quite probably not like this for Carola. Whatever she might insist, her child had lost its father, even before it was born. And in Carola's case, this could make a material difference to the future. Any girl, however rational and self-reliant, must surely dream now and then of a reunion with the father of her child, creating the little family that God and nature alike seemed to prefer over any other arrangement.

The veranda temporarily pristine, she went back into the house and drank a large mug of coffee. ‘Rain coming,' she said. ‘There are clouds over the western hills.'

Carola grunted, as if this were far beyond her concerns. ‘That man – your sister's husband – he is a real gentleman. I hope he does not think badly of us. Of me,' she added with a grimace. ‘He never let his gaze linger on my belly, but he could not fail to observe it. Will he take a report back to your family that includes mention of a forthcoming infant, think you?'