A Sweetness to the Soul

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “So the sooner the better?” he offered. “So’s you can know me?”

  “We could consider things in the spring,” I said. “Give me the opportunity to sort the seeds, store them, have a cache for planting. Give me time to paddle flax and spin thread.” I tried to think of things I needed to do to borrow time. “And court,” I offered, looking as demure as I could.

  “Child’s right about that,” Mama said, looking up. “No reason not to court. You owe us that much,” she added, not letting reference to the mule deal slip by.

  “Courting?” J. W. said as though just considering it. “What would that be, exactly?”

  “Well. Time here,” Mama said, smoothing her skirts, then clasping her hands over her needlework. “Perhaps some walks when you’ve a few days between trips. An exchange of pleasantries and some baubles. Every young girl likes baubles.” She adjusted the snood at the back of her neck, primping.

  “Not to mention baubles for the girl’s mother,” Papa said. He laughed. Mama did not join him.

  J. W. was quiet and I could see he was a man who liked to do things right even if it meant depriving himself of some pleasures.

  “It could be in spring,” J. W. said thoughtfully. “And then you could join me on the trail. I’d be the envy of all them packers,” he said. “Wouldn’t have to leave you at home. Them Mexicans take their women along and they eat real good!”

  Mama frowned. “Doesn’t seem a proper place for a lady,” she said.

  J. W. thought again. “Well, just once or twice,” he said agreeing. “So she’ll know what it’s like for a man, know what comforts he’ll be missing, and what to do to please—”

  “It’s settled then,” Papa interrupted. He seemed annoyed with all the talk of sparking. “In the spring. March? April?”

  “May,” I said putting it off for as long as I could, batting my eyelashes again at J. W. He blushed. Then I hedged again. “We could consider it again. Come May.”

  “May, then,” J. W. said. “And we begin the courtin’ now.”

  “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.’ Jeremiah 29:11-13.” Pastor Condon read the scripture at the New Year’s Eve service taking us from 1862 to ’63.

  All the people did not take the chill from the old church, but the words lifted up my sinking spirits, warmed me, as nothing had for months. Sometimes I thought God’s plan was to punish me for my judgment with the babies; sometimes I didn’t think he cared about my life at all, so small a person was I.

  The impending commitment Papa had made in my name hovered over me. I kept waiting for Divine Intervention or some worldly act to come between me and becoming Mrs. J. W. Case. I liked making things happen, not just waiting to see; but for this, the biggest change of my life, inaction crippled me. I was at a loss to make something happen.

  On New Year’s Eve I did pray. On the return from church in the back of the buckboard, with my feet resting on the hot stones, bundled up beneath the robe, I asked that what plans God had for my good and not my calamity would be revealed before May.

  J. W.—who had been christened with only initials, one from both his father’s and his mother’s father’s name—did not join us on New Year’s Day. He had business to attend to “elsewheres.”

  When he visited The Dalles, he did not always come courting. When he did, he spent more time with Papa than with me discussing their business connections, inventions such as a new barbed fence, or the gold fields. Often asked into their presence, I was then ignored, becoming part of the furniture or scenery depending on the terrain. I imagined it might be so come May and then thereafter. My mind could wander in their presence, though, as it did within the potato patch and now the corn fields that I helped tend.

  J. W. was not an unkind man, I noticed. He often brought me gifts, awkwardly handing one to me and another to Mama. She seemed more taken with her bolt of cloth or a pewter spoon than I with my hair ribbon or bright colored marbles. I decided that if I were married to this older man my life might be much the same as now. I might even remain in this house while J. W. packed every few months into the mountains. Or perhaps I’d move to another parlor where friends of my husband would gather and like now, I would simply serve. My marriage might change little of my life except who shared my bed. I’d be exchanging Baby George for grown-up snores.

  My daydreams were still filled with many children, a house large enough to have dancing in the parlor surrounded by family and friends. J. W. did not seem the fathering type and I couldn’t imagine dancing with him anywhere let alone in the parlor.

  My nighttime dreams still held a stranger with no face.

  “A hope” as scripture promised, appeared in March. The sun warmed a wet earth. Yellow bells bloomed early, the winter having been so light of snow. I should have seen then the promise that always comes with spring. I saw it sure when J. W. said in passing to my Papa that he had heard the Californian had been located after all and “would recover.” I had not known he was even lost and the thought of it punched a hole in my stomach.

  “Staying with who?” Papa asked. We three were standing at the corrals, the men conversing, me listening, standing straight like the corner post I’d become.

  “Some mudlark family with a passel of kids,” J. W. said. He spit a stream of tobacco into the dirt. “Woman is a good-looker even if she is sickly. She and the Chinaman doc tended him all winter.” He leaned on the corral fence, chewing a long arc of old grass the winter wind had not destroyed. It hung over his thin lip, bouncing beneath his mustache as he spoke. “Month before anyone knew for sure where he was. Almost lost his leg. That dog hates you helped somehow. Lucky, that’s what he is.”

  “Not so lucky,” Papa said. “You got my mules.” I noticed he didn’t gloat over the observation as he might have the year before. I believe that being elected to public office buoyed Papa, made him less likely to stand on another in order to be taller himself. Perhaps his new perch as the county’s commissioner permitted him to appreciate Joseph some. After all, he had not pursued the failed mule deal which might have brought to Papa both embarrassment and loss. Papa seemed only to have continued irritation with his actions to contend with still.

  J. W. nodded. “His Mexicans—I know you don’t think much of ’em, George—but they kept his string going, like always, even before they knew Sherar lived. Just trusting, I guess.”

  My ears perked up at his name.

  “You’ve talked with him?” Papa asked.

  J. W. nodded. “Rode out to Turner’s last month, looking at scrubs he’d corralled. Pitiful place.” J. W. shook his head in amazement. “Kids running around chasing that funny-looking dog Sherar eats with. Dog worried their shoats some, lying in wait for them pigs then snapping at ’em. Woman looks puny but still carries a glow. Looks to me like she’s the glue holding what little they have together. Turner don’t give her much to glue that’s for sure.”

  J. W. was thoughtful, remembering his visit. He took the grass he’d been chewing from his mouth, rolled it between his fingers. “Walks with a stick cane yet, but moving around. Funny thing is, he asked about my intended when I told him who it was.” J. W. looked at me for the first time in the hour. “I told him she don’t say much, but she’s spoken for, come May.” J. W. had a quizzical look on his face as he added, “Said a curious thing then.”

  “Yes?” Papa asked, looking at me.

  “Said, ‘Wonder what she’d think of April?’ What’d you suppose that means?”

  He wasn’t asking me, but I blushed, knowing my answer was “grand.”

  Joseph’s words to J. W. rolled around, repeated in my thoughts along with the few other times we’d shared a word, a look or two. Sometimes I wondered if I was dreamin’ into make-believe, like I did when I was little; sometimes I knew exactly that his words meant he’d be coming for me, wou
ld find a way to save my May.

  “It seems too early,” Francis said between coughs. “More time will make the leg stronger. You’ll have less limp.”

  “Don’t care about the looks of it. Just need it to work well enough to hold me up and let me ride. It’s good enough for that,” Joseph told her. The Turner children circled his horse; Archibald Turner held the bridle and the gelding steady. Francis let Joseph steady himself with her frail shoulder before he eased himself from the tree stump onto the saddle. “Be awhile before I can mount without a step,” he said, as he landed with a hard thump onto the gelding’s back. He grimaced. “I’m here. Just have to plan ahead where I’ll be getting on and off for awhile.”

  Francis wore a worried look. “Just seems too early. We could send word through Benito. There’s no need to rush.”

  Their discussion was familiar, tenderized by need and time. Over the antler-chip checkers, Joseph had told Francis much about himself and about me those months while he recovered. At the stump burned black in square patches, he’d won and lost the checker games. He’d shared his fears and joys. He even talked of the empty space that would be filled up when he reached the falls and whatever it was that called to him there.

  It was of that kind of sharing that I both loved to hear about, years later, and at the same time envied Francis for having had instead of me.

  Joseph had even told Francis of J. W.’s passing comment about a planned May marriage.

  “I heard him say it,” Francis said, “and thought the dog must have jumped on your leg, you look so pained.”

  “Felt as though I was back in that rock tomb Archibald pulled me out of,” he told her. “My chest was so heavy.” Francis handed him some straw for the skips, continuing to cover the wild bee hives as they spoke into the unusually warm February morning. “Guess it was the thought of that girl marrying someone else come May that choked me up.”

  “Pay attention to that,” Francis said, coughing as she moved on to the next hive. “Some folks don’t hold much with Archibald, but I knew first time I saw him that he’d be for me. And so he has been, through thick milk and thin.”

  They’d talked together, eaten together, and as he healed, walked and worked together. The Turners had taken no pay for their care though Joseph offered. They did accept the food stores Benito brought out when he conferred with Joseph. That was all they’d accept. Archibald was adamant that what they gave to Joseph Sherar was only a small return for his generosity to them the year before. “Besides,” Archibald told him one evening, “Scripture says ‘give and it will be returned to you, a good measure, pressed down and shaken together.’ You gave and now you’re receiving.”

  “Helps explain the ‘pressed down’ experience of the rock tomb then,” Joseph said, smiling.

  Archibald gave him an irritated look, one allowed between men of shared respect but where one finds little humor in Scripture.

  It was Francis who gave him real encouragement, helped heal his physical wounds and permitted him to look farther inward, to wounds he’d hung onto, some about his oldest brother and his father. “Keeps you from trusting, from knowing your own feelings and wishes when you give such power to others,” Francis told him. Their bond was unique, bred freedom in their thoughts and discussions.

  “Will she have you?” Francis asked one day as she rippled the flax seed in the late afternoon cabin light. She lifted her eyes to supervise Susan Ella paddling the dry threads with the brake. The child was young to be so skilled, to take on so much work that her mother couldn’t.

  Joseph picked up the silky thread, rolled it between his fingers, knew Francis spoke of me. He said the threads made him think of my dark hair with a hint of chestnut and the fact that he’d never touched it, might have died before he could. “Believe she will,” he said. “If I can get her past her sass.”

  “She’s young?” Francis asked.

  Joseph nodded. “But wise, I think. I’ll know, of course, if she takes me.”

  J. W.’s unsettling news had the advantage of hurrying Joseph’s healing, so by March, he not only walked, but rode.

  On that first crisp day Archibald handed the reins up to Joseph where he steadied himself on the horse Benito brought out for him. Archibald said to his wife, “You’ve done all you could. He lives, he walks, and now he rides, all from your care.”

  “And God’s,” Francis answered looking up at Joseph. “God did the healing,” she said, and she coughed.

  Archibald nodded agreement, slipped his arms around his wife’s thin shoulders, pulled her head to him, stroked her thick, gold hair. “Come on around now,” he said to the children. “Ella, step out of Mr. Sherar’s way. He wants to take a ride ’round the yard here, get a feel for it ’fore he leaves us in a day or two.”

  “Take me?” Susan Ella asked, refusing to move from her stand beside the gelding’s withers.

  “Susan Ella!” Francis scolded, pulling away from her husband, reaching for the child.

  “In a bit,” Joseph said to her, not even thinking it a promise. “Move aside, now. Don’t want you getting hurt the last days of my stay.” Sweat from the exertion beaded on his forehead. He felt shaky in the saddle, concentrated on Ella to keep his mind from the discomfort.

  He adored the child, her dimples sewn like tiny tucks taken in her plump cheeks. “Let’s try the kelpie first,” he told her and with that he slapped his thigh and the little dog squeezed through the legs of the Turners and leaped. “Hey!” Joseph said as the dog licked his master’s face, safe and secure once again from his perch on the horse. “You remembered what to do even though it’s been, what, five months?”

  Then to the Turners he spoke of me and of our future and a hope: “My only prayer right now is that she remembers too.”

  THE GIFT HIDE OF MY HEART

  Koosh sat at the drums, beating with the hide-covered stick while beside him his father, uncles, and three cousins pounded the stretched hide and sang their high-pitched songs. The spring Root Feast had been celebrated for two days and the dancers and drummers and singers switched off to give themselves rest.

  Sunmiet and I lounged together on the fur hide set in the shade of the old juniper near the Simnasho Longhouse. Our fingers were stained black from peeling the skin from roots. It was afternoon, April, the shadows growing longer. We were several miles from the falls, in the oldest encampment on the reservation. Kása lived here, away from the agency and its boarding school, Indian agent, and his meticulous wife. Morning Dove had grown up in the little cluster of buildings nestled in the dimples of sagebrush and juniper-dotted hills. Sunmiet spent her winters here and the Root Feast was always held here, where the elders announced that the earth said the roots were ready for digging.

  Once again, Papa had consented to my time with Sunmiet. It would be the last for awhile. Mama said it was “unseemly for a wife to spend time with Indians. Better for her to be with her own kind,” she’d said, “teaching her own children and not gathering wild ideas from Indians.”

  Papa surprised me by saying: “Warm Springs Injuns are all right. Peter’s a smart man, peaceable. George is good. Their folks volunteered as guides for the army to bring those Snake Paiutes down. Puts them in good stead. Not like those Yakimas, always arguing about this and that, squabbling over the treaty terms. Been almost ten years! They forget they’re lucky just to be left alone in their defeat. No. Warm Springs are all right.”

  I had arrived in the company of Peter and George just as the ceremonial roots had been gathered by the seven selected to dig first. The blessings complete, we’d feasted and then the rest of the tribe could gather roots for their own family and for storage for winter. Kása had consented to taking me out with her after Sunmiet had pleaded with her to show me what to do.

  “She has no grandmother to teach her these things,” Sunmiet told her sweetly.

  “Oh, hayah!” Kása said, shaking her head in disgust, but she had taken me.

  “Why did I agree to this? You stupid
girl. Hold the kápn this way. As I tell you!” The old woman held the root digger made of antler and pushed the sharp point of it into the soft earth. “See. It is not so difficult even for an old woman. What is wrong with your hands?” she asked. “They don’t look puny.”

  I had learned that she gave her tongue-strapping to everyone and did not sass her back. It was good practice for getting along with cantankerous people. That day, I simply picked up the antler and pushed again against the earth beneath the slender leaves.

  “Deeper! Deeper!” Kása cackled. “Yes! Yes! That’s it, piaxi,” she said reverently, naming it as she reached down into the upturned earth to pluck the deep brown tuberous roots. “That is what we look for! Good!” She ripped the green from the roots I handed her and stuck the tubers into the woven corn husk wapas bag hanging from her skinny waist. “Maybe you are not so useless,” she cackled again.

  Hearing a compliment from her was almost more frightening than bearing her irritation. I must have stood before her, dumfounded. “Oh, hayah!” she said, irritated. “Here.” She handed me the dark roots that stained my fingers the color of walnut. “We take some skin off in the bubbling water,” Kása said, teaching, “and dry in hot sun for four days. Did you taste ones we had for feast? You liked those?”

  I liked their taste with the pinch of precious salt added and herbs. I liked the smell of spring earth and the companionship it took to gather them up. I had eaten my fill of the roots at the feast and now, on this second day after feasting and digging, I was ready to rest with my friend.

  Sunmiet had not danced at all during the feast days. Her time for delivery was only a few months away though she was as large as some due soon. Instead, she watched the little ones, laughing when either “Same-As-One” ran by, their chubby legs carrying them through spears of blue lupine. Furballs of dogs chased after them into tall grass. When they were older, the twins would have their own names so the “wind will recognize them,” Sunmiet told me. “It will be a special ceremony to name them with Indian names, maybe even with names of the ancestors, if the family agrees. I have some names to recommend, when they pester me like ants,” she added, laughing.