The Memory Weaver

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  I packed a lunch for them, patted the saddlebag as I pulled the leather down. It surprised me that resentment seemed to leave with them.

  Henry made ready to leave, too, but saying good-bye didn’t seem as final as when I’d last seen him at the Academy.

  “You left without ever telling me,” I said. “It seemed forever before Father told me where you’d gone.”

  “I didn’t see a future in Brownsville. Father and Rachel were settled and there I was with them, the girls having moved in with you.” He shrugged. “And maybe I was still a little mad at you that you didn’t find a way to go to school.”

  “And then there was that incident with the ring, your taking the blame.”

  He frowned. “Oh, pshaw, I’d forgotten about that. You should too. Do you still have it?” I nodded. “Maybe it’s time to give it back to Father.”

  I shook my head. “No, Mother wouldn’t have wanted him to marry again as he did. She wouldn’t want that ring on Rachel’s finger.”

  “You can’t be certain.”

  “A daughter knows those sorts of things without being told.”

  “Huh. That intuition thing is beyond me.”

  “At least now you’re within a week’s ride of us.”

  “If you ever need anything, send word.”

  “By . . . ?”

  “The Indians, of course. They travel here and there and everywhere, even ones supposed to be on reservations. They’ll help you, too, if you treat them square.” We hugged and then went out to talk with our father, working in my garden. Together they walked over to Timothy’s camp.

  My father and sisters had other plans too. They had no intention of remaining with us, or at least my father didn’t want to stay. Millie would have joined us. Even Martha mellowed.

  “You have a roof over your head and a fireplace,” Martha said. “We’ve got a leaky tent.”

  Father approached as she whined.

  “You have a cookstove,” I pointed out, wishing my father had brought mine. Mr. Warren had not kept that promise, at least not yet.

  “But when it rains—”

  “With Nimíipuu hands we’ll have our own cabin before snow flies.”

  Mr. Welch, my father’s driver, had moved on before my father’s cabin was even built, seeking work at a settlement growing upriver they now called Walla Walla.

  My father spoke his ruling as law and Martha stomped away, defeated.

  “Any letters you want to send, best get them ready.” My father cinched the horse Millie would be riding. I thought again that the girl would cinch her own horse, but my father just liked doing things for her, his “little invalid,” he sometimes called her to her rolling eyes, though she did complain about her aching back after she rode. “I’ll take them when I go to meet the steamship and bring Rachel here in October. Meanwhile, my girls are staying with me.”

  “Here though,” I clarified. “With us. You’ll build a cabin on this site.”

  “No, not here. Why would you think that? There’s nice acreage south, just a few miles. We’ll build there. Starting tomorrow. Henry’s going to help before he leaves. I told him that was the least he could do after deserting us like he did all those years ago.”

  I didn’t ask for the story. There were things that had happened under my father’s roof that I had no knowledge of. I’d thought my brother finding an occupation was my father’s wish. Apparently not. There were so many issues never discussed in our family. I wanted to talk with him about Timothy’s offer to take me to Waiilatpu, but now didn’t seem the time.

  I’d have to travel a bit to bring that subject up.

  Martha Jane was not happy about them heading south. I wasn’t sure why she was so adamant about staying with us, especially since our altercation when I foiled her wedding. I would have welcomed her assistance. That’s what I told my father.

  “She’s fourteen,” he growled. “I will decide where she lives and where she doesn’t. Until Rachel gets here, I need her more than you do. Millie, bless her, can’t cook up vittles like her sister.”

  “Maybe she’d learn if Martha wasn’t there to do it for you all.” I pulled the iron bale from the sidewall near the fireplace and stirred the potato stew I brewed. Sweat beaded on my forehead. The August heat sweltered.

  “I’ve spoiled her, but she’s sickly.”

  I’d seen her riding that horse like she was born to it. She danced with the Nez Perce girls without a hitch and giggled with the Nez Perce boys. “Sickly?”

  “You don’t see it, but I do. She has her discomforts.”

  Her monthlies. Yes, those could be troublesome. “But only for a few days a month.”

  “It goes on longer. She needs rest and not cooking for an old man, his wife, and her sister.”

  I didn’t say that he’d never granted me that luxury when my heart was breaking over Mama’s death, those lost times after Waiilatpu. And what about Martha Jane? She had taken my place in looking after them all.

  “Millie can stay here with you if you like. Just until the baby gets a little older.”

  Millie would whine about doing the work. I thought of Martha Jane who would likely grow more morose if her sister got to remain and she didn’t. “No, you know Millie best. When Rachel arrives we can talk again.”

  “Sensible girl. I see you’ve matured some, despite choosing Warren against my will.”

  I sighed, then walked outside to tell Martha Jane what had transpired.

  “I want to stay with you. They’re like children sometimes, Papa and Rachel and Millie too. They seem so needy.”

  “I’d be asking you to work here, too, if you stay.”

  “Yes, but if I did, then I could see Bill when he arrives.” She clasped her hand over her mouth.

  I lifted my eyebrows. Then, “I won’t say anything. You’re fourteen. I never should have interfered. I thought I could prevent heartache from hitting you. But I can’t. Any more than ‘saving’ you from disgrace—”

  “It’s not a disgrace to marry someone you love!”

  “Keep your voice down. Father will hear you. I meant that I had no right to say anything. I was trying to protect you, to keep you from making a mistake.”

  “As you did with Andrew?”

  “No.” I struggled to find words. “My shame is living when so many didn’t.”

  “’Liza, you don’t have to—”

  “For not saving them, the ones who died, the ones like Lorinda who were used up. Even having Father send Matilda Sager off because seeing her made me go away in my thoughts. Those were mistakes. Marrying Andrew wasn’t.”

  “I don’t remember Matilda Sager.”

  “But you do remember some of it.”

  She nodded. “I remember Mama’s eyes filled with terror and I didn’t know why. What was I, three? What I said to you the night after Papa followed Bill and me, about all I remembered, I really didn’t. It was just stories other people told me later. I think that happens sometimes, our memories get tangled up with other people’s. But I could still tell there was trouble. And the Indians rushed us away, upriver, and we waited. Mama prayed and prayed.”

  “She always did.”

  “Not like then, though.” Martha sighed. “I wish I was more like her.”

  I looked at her. “That’s a hope of mine as well. Maybe we could do what she and the other missionary women did—pray each morning between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.”

  “We could try that.”

  “I’m not sure we’re meant to be as good as Mother was, but knowing you’re thinking of me at the same time would bring a comfort.”

  “She figured out how to live with Father.”

  I laughed. “She did. Can you forgive me for keeping you from Bill?” I’d asked around after the attempted elopement, and people said it was too bad because Bill was a good man.

  “Only if you don’t do it again,” she whispered. “He’s coming here next spring. I’ll be fifteen in March and Father won’t be able to s
top me then.”

  “I’ll keep your secret.”

  And I would, my silence knitting a thread of closeness to my sister.

  I sent letters with my father when he rode to pick up Rachel at The Dalles that October. Nancy would receive one from me, and Matilda Sager who had moved just south of Weston, a town only a couple of days’ ride from Touchet. My father knew that Matilda had married a year after Mr. Warren and me. She already had three children. I hoped she had a happy life and wanted to tell her of my sorrow that, when she lived with us, I had become so inward my parents sent her away. I was glad she’d found someone to love with the courage to receive it back. That was the greatest healing balm, I decided. Someone to love and, if fortunate, to love you back.

  Mr. Warren was gone often that fall, and after the Nez Perce moved on, I was alone with my girls. I was almost glad then that the Ruckers and even Little Shoot hadn’t remained. Each day I could read the Scriptures and pray at our allotted time, thinking of my sisters. I kept my children safe, put up my garden harvest, carded and spun and tended the sheep and the two piglets my father sent over for us. Meadowlarks serenaded, their slender bodies weaving on a single blade of grass. The smells—dry earth, the cook fire, my laundry soap—pieced the morning. I drew strength from this landscape, strength I didn’t know I needed.

  The winter turned out to be mild with only a few dustings of snow, and grass aplenty fed the herd. Rain fell in sheets in November, gouged the ridges, but lasted only days, not weeks as in Brownsville. Without mishap, we rode to my father’s for Christmas that year, celebrated the New Year in our own cabin with the drovers eating at our table before heading back into the hills. After we rounded the cattle up and branded them—something Mr. Warren insisted we’d need to do—they’d drive a portion of the herd into The Dalles in the spring and sell them. At least, that was the plan.

  Spring came on balmy and early. I planted my garden seeds inside potato skins and squash hulls, kept them by the hearth, waiting to see if we’d have a spring freeze. In March we all rode over to my father’s to celebrate Martha Jane’s fifteenth birthday on the twentieth. Bill Wigle had already arrived. I recognized his sorrel horse as we rode up.

  There wasn’t much of an argument, which surprised me. Bill was firm and clear about his intentions. Martha Jane was old enough to decide things for herself. “You, sir,” he told my father, “need to accept her choice as well.”

  “He’s right.” Rachel patted my father’s arm. “They can make it work. We made it work.”

  “We had experience, years on us. She’s so young. Too young.” He opened and closed his fists at his side.

  “Martha’s had her share of living as well. Frankly,” Rachel nodded to Martha Jane, “I’d like to protest the marriage because she takes such good care of us. But I must not be selfish. You must not be either, Husband.”

  His fists sank into open palms he raised, begging, something I’d never seen him do. “At least do it officially. Don’t go running off like your sister. Let God be the primary witness and the rest of us too.”

  Martha kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Father.”

  “What would you say about you officiating?” Bill had a baritone voice that carried authority with it.

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” I said. “Then you can go to The Dalles and repeat the ceremony officially. Traveling a hard thirty miles a day, it would take us five, maybe six days to make The Dalles. The same distance back.”

  “You’ll repeat the ceremony in The Dalles?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “Fine. Might as well do it today. After you plant the garden. I’ll see then how hard you work.”

  Martha Jane’s pink cheeks set off the sparkle in her eyes as she stood before our father twenty days after her birthday, Bill at her side. I felt all teary, almost as though a daughter of my own was marrying. I had helped raise her and I wanted to believe the bigness of her heart—loving and forgiving me for interfering—were also traits I passed on. They also came from our mother; and yes, I was beginning to see, from our father too.

  25

  A Studied Change

  The dry summer heat visited all season, without a drop of rain for more than sixty days. The girls played inside, out of the hot sun, as the willows offered little shade. We were wary of snakes making their way from the foothills to the river and keeping the girls inside prevented my being constantly on patrol. Still, a coiled rattler might appear on the doorstep where the porch offered cool. Or in the privy. Or anywhere in between. The ground proved hard and drier than was good for a garden, so I hauled more water than I had the year before. And the herd’s grasses sprouted early too, but without the rain nor a preceding season of snow, the grass didn’t grow to the heights that welcomed us the previous summer. At this rate, there’d be little feed for the cattle without pushing them far. If even then. But maybe inland things were better. Rain did fall, but in hard bursts, too fast to soak the earth and discharge its life-sustaining force little by little.

  In September, Mr. Warren drove one hundred head to The Dalles where they were purchased, slaughtered, dried, and sold, much of the beef shipped downriver to the Willamette Valley, where Martha and Bill lived. They stayed with his brother, farming on fertile land. Our house in Brownsville stood empty. I hoped my woodstove was still there and more than a nest for mice.

  My brother bought several head for butchering and sale at his post and to freight in to the miners, more coming in to look for gold.

  “Didn’t get the price I really wanted.” Mr. Warren pulled his gloves off upon his return from The Dalles. “Seems lots of people are selling out because the feed’s so poor. We need a good, wet winter to keep the price up.”

  “And if we don’t get it?” I put tooth powder on Lizzie’s brush.

  “That’s the gamble, darlin’. Ranching is all about the gamble.”

  “And trying to decide what we control and what we don’t.”

  We didn’t get the wet winter we wanted. Never had I prayed for the rainy season as I did that year. I hoped something would sell—our home—or we should sell more cows. The wheat we planted looked neglected. Without rain, it was. When I wasn’t tending my family, piecing quilts, scaring off raccoons from the chicken yard, and considering our future, I had time to think about the future and the past. About what Timothy had said, and my father. And how I might have mixed up what happened at Waiilatpu and Lapwai all those years before.

  In the spring of ’61, I raised the issue of the dry winter and my concern about the cattle surviving this new year. My husband frowned.

  “This isn’t any problem, Eliza. A fellow has to weather the ups and downs of the market. We still have a large herd, and yes, we drive them farther to get them feed, but we find it. And no one’s told us we can’t be where we are. Where would we go with two hundred fifty head of cattle?”

  “But you risk danger, being on Indian lands.”

  “From who?”

  “Whom,” I corrected. “From the government if they find out we’ve been using the land set aside for Indians.”

  “They adjusted usage for the miners. They’ll do it for cattlemen too.”

  “But they haven’t yet. And what if we don’t get the rain again? Or we have a hard winter, what then? I think we should sell out and go back to Brownsville.” There, I’d said it. Blunt and pushy.

  “What’s your father say?”

  It surprised me he would ask. “I haven’t talked with him about it.”

  “See what he says. I bet he’ll argue for staying.”

  “Timothy thinks it wise to sell and leave.”

  “He would. He’d be happy to have us So-ya-po gone.”

  “Maybe he would, but he would be honest with me of his assessment.”

  “What? Are you crazy?” This from my father when I told him of my concerns. “Sell out? No. Why, we had hard times, your mother and me, and we stuck it out.”

  “But you had no choices.”

&nb
sp; “We did. We could have gone to Waiilatpu or Fort Vancouver and rode out the season, returned when the weather improved. But we’d have left behind all the Nimíipuu and our sheep and the orchard. No, we had to stay and God gave us a way.”

  “You didn’t have two hundred fifty head of cattle to feed.”

  “I don’t have that many now. My small herd can find feed through the winter. No, you’re mistaken and you do your husband a disservice insisting that he leave. Doesn’t she, Rachel?”

  “A wife must share her concerns, Husband. She would be derelict in her duty if she did not.”

  “Eliza’s stubborn. A wife needs to defer to her husband when she’s wrong.”

  My sister Millie expressed no opinion verbally, but as I left, she raised her eyebrows and showed me clapped hands barely lifted above the waistband of her apron.

  I did caution myself, to see if I was pushing Mr. Warren because I’d been left out of the decision-making; or if I was trying to think the worst, as prevention. Or if I didn’t like him being gone so much chasing after cattle. But I didn’t believe I filtered this solution through fears or old patterns. I could see signs. The cattle hadn’t gained as much weight as the previous year. The grass had not grown back in all its flourish. The kelpie walked as though on coals in response to the hot ground that never cooled. My own garden even well-watered couldn’t resist the hot sun that stayed warm even when it was near ten o’clock in the evening. The land needed respite, too, and would achieve it however it must.

  “I’m concerned enough that I will move back to the valley. Without you, if need be.” I told him this in late summer of ’61. He’d been back less than a day after being gone with the herd for two weeks.

  “What?”

  “Not as a threat, Mr. Warren. But to prepare, as I believe you’ll come to my thinking by next year. But it may be too late then.”

  “You would just leave me, take the girls, and poof?” He snapped his fingers.

  “We’d just be waiting for you ‘down the lane,’ so to speak.”

  “A couple of months down the lane.” He paced, his agitation a surprise. Then, “I need to imagine you’re waiting here. It’s part of what keeps me going.”