A Sweetness to the Soul

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “That it does,” I said, liking being referred to as “Mother.”

  April often arrived with the rain. And this year was no exception. The stages rolled, the men rode and repaired. We cooked and served and tended the garden and handled the post office. Together, we plucked chickens, prepared for spring round-up, sheared sheep, planted the garden, and added a peach cutting to the cliff orchard, just as we did every April. The rain made it all take longer, worked us a little harder. The Community Hall at Nansene, where the dances were planned, not far from Fifteen Mile Crossing, promised a respite the young people all made extra effort for, including riding through mud.

  Ella especially would. She planned to marry Clayton Monroe Grimes in July and saw this dance as the cool drink of water she needed at least monthly to survive. I had never seen her so happy, her eyes so full of sparkle. Since she’d met Monroe, as he preferred to be called, at the fall round-up, she’d been giddy and taken to daydreaming. We had no need to wonder of what. At twenty-two, she deserved some day-dreaming time.

  We’d hired on extra stockmen that year to handle branding and the several hundred head our herd had grown to. Monroe also did well with sheep and he’d stayed on at the bunkhouse for several weeks, working, and giving the spark of their relationship time to kindle to the flame it became. He’d left in February, marriage proposal secured, to work in the Grass Valley country.

  In March, following a month of separation and despite my better judgment, Ella and I rode across the Buck Hollow bridge toward Grass Valley to find him. Wind whipped us along the same route Joseph had taken his first time to the falls, nearly twenty years before. We rode up the ravine and along the ridge past what’s now the Buckley place, to intersect with the Dalles Military Road. It wasn’t much of a road, compared to Joseph’s.

  Monroe was said to be working on a ranch near a section of land that bore grass hay on nearly a hundred acres in the middle of dry hills. While I didn’t think it proper for a young woman to seek out a young man—even one she was betrothed to—Ella had mooned so, become so sad at not seeing Monroe, I’d decided to throw caution to the wind. We packed a picnic lunch and I made the day’s ride with her.

  Later, I was always glad I’d done that, taken the risk. First, because it was a quiet time with Ella, one of the last I’d have as she moved on to marriage. She was readier than I had been for that big step though I doubt she could have loved Monroe more than what I’d felt for Joseph. But her caring for him as she did reflected a woman going “to” something rather than “away” from something else. Settled in herself, she carried no animosities, no regrets. She had come to us, given us her sweetness and care and been pleased with whatever we gave in return. Initially, that had not been much, at least from me. I was startled by how selfish was my thinking, how I didn’t like to share my personal things, didn’t like the attention Joseph, as a doting father, paid to her.

  My reservations didn’t seem to matter to Ella. Daily, she found something positive to say. She thanked me often for agreeing to adopt her, accept her at Sherar’s Bridge. Perhaps that’s what I’d miss the most when she and Monroe married—her goodness, gentleness, and the changes in my own reflection I discovered because she was simply in my life.

  I had thought that with a child—any child—I would do the molding, that that’s what grown-ups did. I had not expected to be changed myself.

  Ella had done that, made me softer I think. We laughed together, shared the work, planned surprises for “our” Joseph. She took off some of my hard edges. I even considered contacting my mother, letting her know that despite her ugly reason for giving Ella up, something wonderful had bloomed.

  That would have gone too far.

  The second reason I was pleased Ella and I shared the trip seeking Monroe is because it’s how I found the Finnigan place. My “green river” I called it, even before we ever bought it.

  The ground was almost spongy as we rode down a gentle slope and crossed the green that flowed out of the rolling hills just like a wide, meandering river. It was wet, from the springs that must have fed it making the grass come on early and last until first frost. Two old brothers named Finnigan lived in a log house at the edge of the green where we watered our horses. “Put a hundred head a cows on and they can’t keep it down,” they told us proudly, as though they’d put the water beneath the ground themselves, turned it into never-ending grass.

  In the distance, along the green edges, some Indian women and children dug roots—a little early it seemed to me. Their forms looked like Kása’s and Bubbles’s and her family now grown to five children. Eight spotted ponies grazed at the green. I planned to ask about Sunmiet when we returned, but they had already gone. I couldn’t have known then I’d be seeing Sunmiet myself within a month, in circumstances I’d have preferred to avoid.

  At the ranch beyond, we found young Grimes. Ella thought after drinking in his face and form, that she could last the spring—if she could see him once a month until they wed in July.

  Tonight would be one of those nights if the rain didn’t keep him from riding down the hollow, stopping at the falls, picking up Ella on his way. They would drive to Nansene, dance and have a midnight meal, and dance some more. Along with dozens of other couples as was the custom, they’d spend the night and return weary from all that dancing by mid-morning. At the very least, Monroe would spend the night here, at the inn, if the weather worsened. Either way, Ella looked forward to her reunion.

  Perhaps it was because of Ella’s preoccupation with Monroe that we all failed to see Alice’s growing up, her early grieving over her soon-to-be-loss of Ella. Perhaps it was because Ella was so happy in her wedding preparations that Alice took special interest in what marriage was about. Or perhaps it was Dr. Crickett himself who carried the spark that kindled the flame of interest of a sixteen-year-old young woman. Whatever the reason, Alice had noticed Dr. Crickett.

  He also noticed her. For though he and the cat left in the rain on the stage, before the afternoon passed, he was back. Cat, cage, and valise in hand, slipping in the rain down the slope Dick’s stage had just gone up. As a man on foot, he did not pay any toll as he walked across the bridge. The sun came out briefly as if to put a blessing on their connections. Meadowlarks hopped from rock to rock fluttering their wings of the rain. Water pooled on the bridge lumber, already starting to dry in the sun. Everything smelled as fresh as ripe watermelon. Except for Dr. Crickett, whose wet wool suit in the sunshine released vapors strong enough to make a lady faint.

  He walked through the gate of the stone fence we’d built around the inn, stopped at the porch. Alice, Ella, and I all came out, surprised by his presence.

  “I decided, don’t you know, that since I am on vacation, I can vacation where I am.” His voice was higher than his height and girth predicted, giving meaning to the term “high strung.” “So often one loses sight of what’s important by spending too much time focusing on being somewhere else. One forgets to enjoy getting there, don’t you know.” His hat didn’t fit. It perched on the top of his cantaloupe-shaped head. A cat’s breath would topple it. He set the cat cage on the porch next to his valise and caught his hat as it slipped from his rain-slicked hair. “I didn’t properly introduce myself earlier. So much was happening, yes, yes it was. I am Dr. Crickett of the Thomas Cricketts of Salem. My name is not Thomas, of course. That’s a family name. My mother named me Harrison but that’s so stuffy, don’t you think? So I go by Spike. You’ve heard of me?” he asked us, his hazel eyes looking at each face, pausing on Alice’s. Seeing our blank expressions overlaid with wonder, he answered his own question. “No, no. Of course not. My work is quite isolated. Being with the unfortunates of that fine city.”

  I thought he referred to the state’s legislators who convened in the capital city, but he continued on, barely taking a breath, and put me straight.

  “They come from so many places, with so many pains and miseries. We do our best to put them straight, give them back their stren
gth and courage, send them home, relieved of the demons that possess them, help them instead to behave in marvelous ways, return them to their familiar spirits.” He lowered his voice. “We all have spirits, don’t you know.” Then at full voice added, “We wear troublesome and strange spirits, too, of course. We take them all in. Some get no better.” He clucked his tongue in shame, then brightened. “Most do, making one wonder what insanity truly is, where our spirits really emerge from, yes, indeed.”

  His speech was rapid. His movements jerky. He hadn’t given us a moment to respond and I suspected the cat was not the only reason his fellow passengers had encouraged him to walk.

  “In my valise is a lovely take-down bamboo rod, and your river here, this lovely turquoise water racing through ancient lava rocks—I’m sure it’s lava—beneath the Clarno formations—I’m sure it’s Clarno—must have some smooth, backwater pools, some places where a red-sided trout could hide and rest in shade and might take up my little flies I’ve packed along. And so I have returned, sure that I can afford a day or two in your fine establishment. And in your fine company, if you’ll allow it.” He focused on Alice again, clicked his heels together and bent stiffly at the waist sweeping his hat and arm in a wide arc before his bow.

  Alice giggled, charmed. Ella rolled her eyes and I shook my head. A bit dramatic I thought, but said, “You’re welcome to stay. Alice, please show Dr. Crickett to the far bedroom, where his cat will have some quiet. While she stays in her cage.”

  Alice started off with Dr. Crickett following her. She hesitated then said, “I’ll show him the backwater holes. I know all the best ones.”

  Before I could even respond, Dr. Crickett was off and running again. “Delightful!” he crooned. “A natural gift it is to lure a species of the ichthyosis family to the fine line I have prepared to place on my bamboo. It would please me no end to be guided by such a lovely lass.” To me he added as though reading my mind, “You’ve not a worry in your head. I’ll take special care of her. Nothing will befall her. We’ll be back by dusk I’m sure.”

  I wasn’t sure how he could possibly know how far away Alice might take him, but he was engaging, seemed harmless enough, and I saw no reason not to let Alice enjoy his company, however brief.

  Monroe arrived in the late afternoon, coming down the same trail we’d used the month before to visit him. He met the last stage of the day at the bridge, crossed, and with open arms kissed his betrothed who met him before he even stepped afoot his horse. Monroe had an old, serious face that defied his youth and gentleness. He was of medium height, slender. He buried his bearded face briefly against Ella’s neck. “Camp on the west side,” he said as he walked, arm draped around his betrothed’s waist, into the inn. “Indians must be arriving. They’re farther up, toward the White River. Could see them from the ridge.”

  “Must be Standing Tall and Sunmiet,” I said pleased. “They like to camp on this side now that the bridge brings so many. Avoid the traffic downriver and still face the morning east. I’d have thought they would have waited for the Root Feast. I’ll be pleased to see her.”

  When they returned at dusk, Alice and Dr. Crickett confirmed that the Indian camp up river belonged to Sunmiet and her family. “Her belly is big again,” Alice said quietly to me. I nodded. This would be her sixth. “Her eyes, sad.”

  “Just tired,” I reasoned. “Five children and another on the way will do that to you, they say.” I said it without a tinge of sadness for myself as I might have in years before. Now, I felt only for my friend.

  I introduced Dr. Crickett to Monroe and the good doctor began at once to babble on about the quality of fishing, the size of the red-sided trout, the risk of the scaffoldings and the wonder of dipping nets into the froth for the big salmon. Monroe bobbed his head trying to keep up with the steady running of Crickett’s words and finally managed to mention the dance to Ella.

  “A dance! How delightful! It’s been years, don’t you know, since my residency, that I have spun a lovely lass around the room. Alice,” he said as though the thought had just occurred to him—“would you join me?”

  Alice blushed. Ella might have wished to have her time alone with Monroe at the dance, but her heart was large, like her natural mother’s, and when she saw Alice’s delight at being asked, she suggested more. “Mama will pack a lunch for us,” she said. “Come with me and we’ll fix up together for the occasion.”

  Alice arrived back in the dining room, lovely. Ella had given her one of her own dresses that flounced blue out over the bustle. A contrasting pale blue bodice rose up tightly to Alice’s slender throat. Her hair was swept back, high on her head, exposing her tiny ears. A cascade of curls—one of Ella’s own supplements she’d dyed in henna for the occasion—draped from the back. “I planned to have her wear it at my wedding,” Ella said. “This seems the perfect occasion to try it out.”

  She was pretty as a painting.

  Off they went, kerosene lamps bouncing from the side posts should they need them. Ella and Monroe in one buggy, Dr. Crickett and Alice—and the cat—in another. Crickett had prattled on about renting the buggy from us for the evening, but Joseph had insisted he simply take it, his Alice deserving to arrive in elegance, and we’d settle up whatever the following morning.

  So we were alone in the dining room, my husband and I, for the first time in years. Tai brought in two bowls of clabbered milk with corn bread, handed them to Joseph before bowing, backing out. “Maybe I should revive my whittling interest,” I said, thinking of the way I once spent my evenings as a child the summer after my sisters and my brother died. The box with special knives was somewhere in the storeroom. It needed cleaning out anyway. Something to put on my list.

  “Just sit with me,” Joseph said, patting the seat beside him on the horsehair sofa. He handed the bowl up to me. “Eat your sweet milk. Rest a little. You push so hard, always moving. Sunmiet’s right, you know. You do rush about like a sandpiper racing the waves to the sea. Slow down a little. Put some meat on your bones.”

  I settled beside him, ate. Finished, I rested my head on his shoulder, sighed. He smelled of leather and lumber, good smells, of a man doing what he likes. “They’ll both be gone before long,” I said. “It’ll just be you and me, alone all the time.” I started to stand, to put the bowls on the sideboard.

  He pulled me back. “Alone with a dozen guests, twice the hands.” He laughed. Then serious he asked. “Would that be so bad? Time was, before it got stuck under my shirt collar, when just you and me was enough. Sixteen years. Who would have thought it?”

  “Sixteen years … week from Tuesday,” I said, surprised that it had crept up. “Almost forgot it.”

  He was thoughtful for a bit, quiet. “What do you say we head out to Nansene, too?”

  “This late? What about tomorrow, all the work to do?”

  “Tai can handle the morning. We’ll be back before midday.”

  “Think you can dance all night? You’re an old man.” I punched him gently in his side. No give, solid.

  “The one thing I could give ye I haven’t yet,” he said, thoughtful. “A place big enough to dance in. So I’ll borrow Nansene’s for a time. Come on. What do you say?”

  Why not? I thought. Wouldn’t it surprise our girls to have us appear? And we could keep an eye on Crickett at the same time.

  “If you bet I wouldn’t, you lose,” I said. “Just need a minute to freshen up.”

  He kissed the top of my head, adding as he stood and pulled me to him, “This is one bet I don’t mind losing. Let’s go. You’re fresh enough.”

  BEGINNINGS AND ENDS

  We both heard the commotion at the same time. It came from in front of the inn. A horse, run hard. A woman, crying, screaming almost. Both of us turned with a start, headed out to the rock wall. Joseph grabbed a lantern at the door, night having fallen. He shouted, “Who’s there?” and started moving toward the woman before he even heard her answer.

  “Sunmiet!” the woman said, sobbi
ng. I saw her slide from the horse, holding her stomach, leaning, steadying herself with the mane of her mount, one arm hanging limp.

  “What is it!” I said, reaching her, my heart pounding.

  Joseph passed me up. He handed me the lantern and lifted her. Blood oozed down her arm. In the arc of the light, I could see white bone beneath red muscle and I was instantly furious.

  “Who did this?” I demanded as I followed them inside. She sobbed again.

  “The children … Aswan.”

  “It was Standing Tall, wasn’t it?”

  Sunmiet cried, didn’t answer.

  “Get Tai,” I told Joseph. “I’m going after him.”

  My husband, to his credit, did not attempt to stop me. Tai would tenderly care for Sunmiet. Joseph planned to ride with me, but he had to order up his horse, get John to saddle the big gelding, while I could simply throw myself on Sunmiet’s cayuse. I did just that, grabbed my pistol on the way out.

  The night air burst cool on my hot face. Rain sleeted in patches. I didn’t care. Their camp was on our side of the river and I could ride right to it. My outrage masked my fear. He had finally done it, finally injured Sunmiet so severely she could no longer bend.

  The horse responded, moved faster with my knees pressed to his neck. I rode low over him, to speed him, and he made the mile in record time, stopped in a slush of mud in front of Sunmiet’s tule lodge. I spun off the horse, cocked my pistol, and opened the flap, willing my eyes to adjust to the pale light I expected before Standing Tall could react.

  Both his eyes were droopy, not just the one he was born with. From the dirt floor, both looked up at me, a mixture of anger and confusion. His hand held the dark bottle loosely. Aswan, tall like his father, and Anne, nearly thirteen, sat with arms around Ikauxau and Ikawa and Baby Ida, all huddled in the corner, eyes large. Blood stains darkened a wide swath beside the center fire.

  “My mother, she is safe?” Aswan asked. “I stood between them, sent her to you.”