Walk Away West

by J. F. Collen

  “‘Unknown how many still unaccounted for’....”

  “‘Race for Life and Death’....”

  “‘Meeting of the Passengers at the Astor House’,” read Nellie, picking up the Tribune, which landed at their kitchen door every morning and had already been read by her father and her husband. “I shall attend!”

  “Read further, Cornelia,” said Obadiah.

  Nellie read, “‘The male sufferers who escaped from the Henry Clay, which was burned this afternoon on the North River, are requested to meet at the Astor House, on Thursday, (this day) at eleven o’clock, A.M. It is hoped that none will fail to attend this meeting punctually.’” Nellie dropped her arms with the paper, not noticing the newspaper’s ink left a smudge on her morning robe. “The ‘male sufferers’?” she exclaimed.

  Obadiah frowned at her. “You have tarnished your gown. Attend to it.”

  Nellie did not move.

  Anastasia reported, “‘Coroner Lawrence continues his Inquest at the scene of the disaster. The bodies still lay at water’s edge waiting to be identified’.”

  Agnes burst into tears. Everyone looked at her. “‘In the midst of the debris-littered beach lies a tiny girl, dressed in pink lace lying on a plank, the only clue to her identity is the initials ‘J.B.M.H.’ embroidered on her dress’.” She looked up, sobbing. “The Tribune has the temerity to write ‘a more angelic picture we never beheld’.”

  The men left the table immediately; some with toast still in hand, to steam to The City to attend the meeting at the Astor House.

  As he checked his pocket watch on the way out the door, Obadiah summoned Nellie to the foyer. She looked questioningly at him. He caught her in his embrace and hugged her fiercely. “Cornelia Rose, I cannot repeat oft enough the words I whispered in our bed last night. I rejoice that we were spared personal disaster. ‘Come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy, that one short minute gives me in her sight’,” he said.

  Nellie looked at him with shining eyes.

  Obadiah grinned. “When words of love elude me, I rely upon my depth of knowledge of Shakespeare.”

  “Obadiah, my truest love. My heart sings with joy at your attentions,” said Nellie. She kissed him passionately.

  “As reluctant as I am to extricate myself from your embrace,” he said, slowly pulling his arms away. “Duty calls. I must make haste. I have the skills and knowledge to help right this wrong, and use them I must.”

  “You are my valiant knight in shining armor,” said Nellie.

  At day’s end, there was still little good news.

  The men at the Astor House took a vote and agreed that many irregularities contributed to the disaster. They formed a committee and issued a formal List of Resolutions which included “...4. To adopt such measures... as to bring the offenders to punishment.”

  “‘Resolutions’ shall hardly ease the grief and horror that linger in my heart,” sobbed Agnes.

  Armistead gathered her in his arms. “I do have one consoling note, my dearest. Professor Bailey attended the meeting and told me, ‘An angel of mercy arranged my drowned wife and daughter so they looked as if in living repose, cherubic, peaceful smiles upon their faces, as if they were already reaping the joys of eternal life’.” Armistead reported the man’s words verbatim, with a tender smile for his wife.

  Agnes brightened and dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “Mercifully, I had some help,” she said. “For it was a grim task indeed. A Miss Jeannette McAdams, a resident of Yonkers, walked down to the shore and gave any aid she could.”

  Nellie wiped her own eyes and said, “Mayhap our small consolation is in the many acts of mercy performed for the distressed.”

  Chapter 9 – My Blue Heaven

  Sing Sing, New York, October 1852

  Tarnation! I neglected the milk and it curdled! How shall I ever make pudding for Obadiah’s supper?

  Nellie scurried outside to the chicken coop looking for eggs, an illogical panic mounting. I must conjure something tasty for Obadiah’s evening meal. Mr. Wright returns from his clerkship in just two short hours. I must have his supper ready, for tonight my knight in shining armor once again rejoins the prosecution team for the Henry Clay disaster. Now that the Inquest culminated in an indictment for manslaughter, Mr. Wright’s agitation and workload increases whilst he aids in assembling evidence. His evening nutrition must strengthen and fortify his endeavors.

  Not a single egg.

  Those inferior hens! What causes their malfunction?

  Tears sprang to her eyes before she could stop them. Lately every little thing made her weepy. She shook her head, swiped at a straggling clump of hair, and scolded herself. How could I be so irresponsible and neglect supervision of my dairy provisions? Obadiah shall be justifiably furious at my waste of his hard-earned money. My inadequate judgment is deplorable—over-purchasing necessities and now, through careless husbandry, abandoning them to rot. Would that we had a cow!

  She foraged in the garden, in search of vegetables to compensate for the loss of pudding. My garden flounders pitifully! Must I now squander his income on store-bought vegetables? Why have I failed so miserably in tending my crop? She was so distraught that even her fine view of the Hudson did nothing to cheer her. The river’s shimmering, glass-silvery color, licked by a touch of orange from the last vestiges of the sun, was usually a sight she cherished.

  She found some withered plants where her green beans grew. I do not recall picking the last of the crop. Mayhap that pesky cottontail hopped in, and gobbled them! The two remaining pumpkins were not yet ripe. Nellie dropped to the ground and sobbed. Focus on the task, she scolded herself again. These theatrics border on the absurd. There must be some recipe in my cooking repertoire that requires only the ingredients remaining on hand.

  She gathered herself together and marched back to the kitchen. But once she stormed through the door, she felt winded and lost her new resolve. Nellie flopped down in a chair and put her head on the table.

  Suddenly, the door opened and Mrs. Entwhistle appeared. “Just making my rounds, Cornelia my love, checking on my newly wedded daughter, ensuring alles ist im ordnung, everything is in order,” she announced. She took one look at Nellie and her face softened.

  “Cornelia Rose, what plagues you? You must cease this unduly taxing fixation with the disaster of the Henry Clay.”

  Nellie looked at her mother, startled. A picture of the little girl with the gash on her head, bleeding profusely, flashed before her eyes. A fresh sob caught in her throat.

  “Or is it a new hardship that precipitated your state of distraction?” Mrs. Entwhistle stopped in mid-motion, hand poised on her half-removed hat, and scrutinized her daughter with concern.

  “Alas, Mutter, I have spoilt the milk through my careless husbandry. I do not know how I shall conjure a single dish for my husband’s supper,” Nellie confessed. “My husband’s pro bono assistance with the investigation into the Henry Clay disaster, interviewing survivors, finding experts on steamboat engineering, in addition to his usual endeavors on behalf of Judge Urmy and the local Sing Sing judicial system, have overtaxed him to the point of agitation. Inadequate nourishment betrays lack of wifely capabilities and reneges my midwifery oath to preserve health.” She looked down at her hands and burst into tears again. “Furthermore, I have exhausted my supply of lye for the washing.”

  “Ach du Liebe, nonsense, my child. It is always darkest before the dawn. You must throw all your laundry into your old cart and avail yourself of my copper kettles. We shall invent a ‘washing bee’. All the womenfolk will help.”

  Nellie brightened visibly at the thought of her mother’s sparkling clean laundry room. Eight huge kettledrums gleamed in a row for various stages of washing, like a platoon of polished soldiers. The first seven handled everything from cottons to calico; the special eighth drum, reserved for the finest silk fabrics, stood aloof from the rest like a rich socialite at a commoner’s tea party. The room was rin
ged with four sinks, one kept exclusively for bluing and bleaching white fabric. The next room sported gas heated pipes to warm the clothes until they dried. Mercy, what a contrast to my one tub and solitary washboard!

  “‘Twould be laundry heaven Mutter!” exclaimed Nellie, but burst into a fresh shower of tears. How shall deluxe conditions for washing fix my spoilt supper?

  “Ach, now, let us apply ourselves to the more immediate difficulty and see what we can fashion for an acceptable repast.” Mrs. Entwhistle pulled a freshly ironed apron from Nellie’s cupboard, tied it briskly around her matronly waist, and tossed her shawl and hat on the plain wooden chair next to the small table.

  “What is in your larder?” Gertrude Entwhistle asked, but before Nellie could tell her she was already poking around the corner. “Where are your vegetables? What herbs do you have growing in your garden? Wunderbar, wonderful, some fine potatoes.” She pulled four potatoes out of the basket in the pantry, turned and bustled over to Nellie.

  “I shall confide a well-known secret of seasoned, frugal cooks: mashed potatoes actually taste better when prepared with curdled milk.”

  Nellie looked skeptical. “Truly, Mutter?” she asked. But she dried her tears on her apron and scrubbed the potatoes her mother handed her. Listening to her mother’s chatter, she picked up the paring knife, still sniffling a bit. She cut off a long peel of potato skin.

  “Ach, surely I have taught you, only pare the eyes, and the bruised part of the potato. No need to peel the entire skin. ‘Tis more economical—moreover, the skin contains nutritious vitamins, thus providing a more substantial meal with a truer flavor, when mashed with garlic.

  “Now, I shall impart a little anecdote that shall revive your smile,” her mother continued, as she lit Nellie’s potbellied stove and scalded the milk. “Little Theodora parroted the most adorable....”

  Suddenly, her mother interrupted herself and looked at Nellie sharply. “Thrice this fortnight, Cornelia, I have witnessed you in tears!” She charged around the table to her daughter, took her hand and looked her in the eye. Gertrude Entwhistle’s face relaxed with comprehension. She drew Nellie to her in a tender embrace.

  “I was with meine Mutter, when I first realized I was with child,” Mrs. Entwhistle said into Nellie’s hair.

  Nellie drew in her breath. Was it obvious? How could Mutter be so certain when I am so unsure?

  As if in answer to her unspoken question, Mrs. Entwhistle had a smile in her voice when she said, “Meine Mutter recognized the signs in me before I myself knew. Oft times the young woman herself is the last to suspect. You might recall a certain series of discussions we Entwhistle women enjoyed, speculating, and opining when your brothers’ wives were first in their state of confinement.

  “No more sniffles,” her mother continued, pulling out her beautifully embroidered lace handkerchief, and gently dabbing Nellie’s eyes as if she were still a child. “Or we shall both be sobbing too joyfully to prepare your husband something that shall warm his stomach and sustain him when you divulge the news!”

  Chapter 10 – That’s the Way of the World

  Sing Sing, New York, April 1853

  Nellie was up to her elbows in suds, tears streaming from her face as she scrubbed Obadiah’s white shirt up and down on the washboard and threw it into the bluing.

  “Was ist los, mit du?” Mrs. Entwhistle suddenly appeared at Nellie’s sudsy elbow. “What is the matter?” Her mother pulled Cornelia Rose’s hands out of the water and folded her daughter into her arms. “Why do you labor at the washing here? I have told you time and again to have your brother Matthias pick up your washing and bring it to my house when he returns from his milk delivery route.”

  She drew back to arm’s length and looked at Nellie.

  “Ach, you have started. We must send word to Midwife Rafferty!” Mrs. Entwhistle pulled Nellie back into her warm embrace.

  “Thank you Mutter for acquiescing to my wishes and summoning the midwife and not that vile Doctor Dudley Depew. What unmitigated gall! Denouncing the midwife’s value, then horning in on her birthing business, as soon as Depew ascertained delivering babies was a cash cow.”

  She drew an unsteady breath and groused into her mother’s shoulder. “The questionably accredited doctor doubles his bonanza from this new sideline—more coins in his pocket from the purloined work, which coins remain pocketed longer since the new work limits time spent ‘bending his elbow’!” What care I of stupid Doctor Depew? It is as if I can only utter angry words whilst enduring a contraction.

  “On the subject of our town physician’s drinking habits we are in complete accord,” agreed her mother in her usual matter-of-fact tone. As if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, talking to her daughter, watching her suffer the throws of contractions. But she found it rather comforting. Gertrude Entwhistle continued, “Tsk-tsk. He does not do his profession any service by frequenting the many local taverns. Nor does he inspire confidence in the soon-to-be mothers.”

  She dragged Nellie with her as she bustled to the linen closet for one of Nellie’s freshly ironed aprons. “The women of the Pffernuss, and even the Entwhistle clan know the old-fashioned method of lying abed anticipating the onslaught of pain worsens the suffering to the point of unbearable.”

  Nellie smiled outright at her mother’s reluctant acknowledgement of the wisdom of her female kinsfolk in-law. Surely an ‘admission against interest’ if I ever heard one, she thought, borrowing one of Obadiah’s legal phrases. Her mother commanded, “Continue with your daily business whilst I ensure all is ready for the precious infant’s arrival.”

  In the middle of a painful pull on her abdominal muscles, Nellie actually laughed in response. She took the kettle out of her mother’s hands. “Perhaps, since I am the one skilled in the business of midwifery, I should make ready the birthing space and you can go about the business of seeing that my husband has sufficient food prepared for both his noontime dinner and his supper.... Unless you think my business shall be concluded before then?”

  “Ach du Liebe,” said her mother, but with a loving smile as she smoothed Nellie’s recalcitrant lock of hair from her eyes. “Such wishful thinking!”

  They set about their respective tasks. Completing the preparations for her birthing space, Nellie stopped more and more frequently as the contractions intensified. Soon they were less than five minutes apart, and she had trouble concentrating on her knitting.

  Obadiah came in, so preoccupied with a letter he held in his hand that he failed to notice Nellie’s altered state, or hear Mrs. Entwhistle bustling about in the kitchen. He sighed and twirled his mustache as Nellie set a plate of soup before him. “The trial of the officers of the Henry Clay proceeds in fits and starts. We attorneys for the plaintiffs have made quite a convincing case through our witnesses before the Westchester grand jury, but we contest a formidable foe. McMahon, the defense attorney for the ship’s officers, revealed a foretaste of his style when he questioned witnesses at the Inquest. His merciless attack on the integrity of our witnesses tipped his hand on the nature of his own character. I anticipate a ruthless, dirty-handed, cockfight of a trial.” He took several hurried gulps of soup, still not looking at Nellie.

  After a long slurp, just as Nellie was about to mention the onset of her labor, Obadiah continued his stream of thought. “Jessup, the clerk who functioned as acting captain that fateful day, is a wily jack-a-naps, already giving us conflicting statements. Yet, our county prosecutor’s feeble efforts at cross-examination fail to elicit the truth from the crew. We need a proper officer-of-the-state with the ability to outmaneuver that bigwig McMahon.”

  “Why not call upon your acquaintance, the finest ‘Philadelphia lawyer’, Mr. J. J. Speed?” asked Nellie. “Or mayhap, is he conflicted out of handling the case, as he was a passenger on the Henry Clay?”

  “Would that we could,” replied Obadiah, with a grim expression on his face. “Do you not recall, his body washed up weeks after the disaster, som
ewhere down river?”

  Nellie blanched, but not entirely from sadness at the memory, or its lapse, as Obadiah supposed. She felt another contraction.

  “I know,” said Obadiah. “‘Twas a sad day, and I fear the press did not give his obituary the space it was due, surrounded as it was by the unfolding saga of this disaster. Truly, they gave many details of the process by which Mr. J.J. Speed, Esquire was positively identified, but few particulars of the great man’s lifetime of accomplishments.”

  “Tarry a moment. Did not Thomas Collyer confess to my father he was commanding and racing the Henry Clay? Can you not have my father swear his testimony and thus establish culpability? I am quite certain I recall Mr. Collyer boast words to that effect. Would that I could testify!”

  Obadiah shook his head, looking down at his spoon chase a carrot in the soup. “As I have attempted to explain, the intricacies of court procedure often obfuscate the simple truth. I offered this discussion of the facts of this case in the strictest of confidence. Do not worry your pretty little head. We attorneys have our strategy well in hand.”

  Nellie opened her mouth to reply, but Obadiah threw down his spoon, drank the rest of his soup in one gulp, picked up a roll from the basket and stood up from the table. “I must dash if I am to be home for supper.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and hurried down the hallway. “You must rest, you look a tad peaked.” His voice floated back.

  Nellie burst into almost hysterical laughter. Mid-laugh, she caught her breath as the severity of the next contraction overwhelmed her. Gertrude Entwhistle ran out of the kitchen and helped Nellie back to the settee in front of the fireplace. “In between contractions you must either rest, or otherwise occupy yourself. Our hard work barely begins.” She paused and looked at Nellie’s expression. “As you well know,” she acknowledged Nellie’s expertise and soothed Nellie’s back with her hand.

  Mollified, Nellie submitted to her mother’s care.