Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher)

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  Instead I saw the rock wall behind the house through the hole Mrs. Sherar had placed there with the gun still smoking in her hand. Sung-li hung from Mr. Sherar’s tight hand like one of his kitchen dolls behind the oven. On the floor lay a thousand shards of dishes.

  “That’s one way to steam the dishes,” I heard Mr. Sherar tell his wife as he lifted the pistol from her hand.

  “Yes. Well. My daughter always did do things a little differently,” a woman behind me said, startling us all.

  We turned as one to see who had spoken and found two women dressed with dark pelisses meant for calling.

  By then, a dozen other buckaroos and Peter’s men had gathered like metal to magnets at the sound of the gun. Mr. Sherar handed Sung-li to them, ordered the small man off to The Dalles with final words of warning to those traveling with him: “Make sure he leaves the cleavers!”

  Mrs. Sherar’s face had been flushed pink, but now she paled. She spoke with precise words to me but in front of the two women: “Alice M. Please take Miss Turner and her companion to the parlor.” The shaking in her voice seemed to come more from their presence than her encounter in the kitchen.

  I led the women to the darkened room used only rarely, waited while they floated around the room with their smooth-soled shoes swishing on the carpet. I watched the oldest one look through a handheld circle, peering inside a cabinet holding “fine china” or so she said. I stepped back outside where I was told to go by Mrs. Sherar. “Outside, dear. Help clean that kitchen, would you?”

  I left, wondering about the women.

  My hands were stacking dishes, puzzling over what I’d seen and heard. Something felt familiar, though I had never met these women. I memorized each person, the look on their faces, the color of their hair. Then I remembered. The younger woman wore a necklace of a dozen beads or more, similar to one once worn by Sarah.

  Ella, as the younger woman was called (though her other names were Susan Turner), remained with us when the older woman left. They spent some time in the parlor, and when they emerged, Mrs. Sherar’s face flushed again and carried another layer of sadness. The woman left, and I watched Ella step outside the inn.

  She gave directions to some men, and I saw wet spots beneath her arms that darkened her jacket the color of choke cherries. Tucks of slippery cloth of her blouse ended where her lighter-colored skirt began flowing over humps and hoops that cascaded like the water falls to the floor. Two hired hands lifted her trunk from the back of the buggy while she watched.

  Mr. Sherar helped the older woman maneuver herself onto the buggy seat. She made a little bow with her head, the green plume of her hat dancing forward in the wind. She nodded at him as though they’d met before and once shared deep conversation, then slapped the reins against the bay’s rump and rode away. Mrs. Sherar did not even wave to the older woman when she left, and I wondered if she didn’t say good-bye because she planned to see her soon again.

  “Mrs. Herbert is her mother,” Ella told me speaking of the woman who left, “not mine.”

  Ella had invited me into the bedroom that would be hers, placed sweet-smelling clothes into the dresser drawers. Her blond hair curled softly around her face. She had probably lived fewer years than I, but she seemed at ease in this place, acted older and wiser.

  “Mine, too, these past years. I don’t remember much about my real mother.” She bent her slender body to her trunk, lifted out lace and freshly laundered skirts. When she turned, I saw the bulk of her yellow hair bound beneath a circle of cordage not unlike a duck net. She saw me looking at her in the mirror.

  “It’s a snood,” she said, patting the netting. “I can do your hair like this, if you’d like.” She shrugged her shoulders when I did not answer.

  She removed a dried herb spray still fragrant from between the folds of a red and black striped dress with a frayed hem. Tiny petals barely visible fluttered to the carpeted floor. Fingers with chewed nails picked them up.

  “Tidy, tidy, the sisters always say.”

  She sprinkled the petals back into the trunk, looked up at me, embarrassed, a perfect dimple forming in her cheek as she smiled.

  “You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?” she asked, looking at me in the mirror, and for a moment I wondered if we might come to know each other, might share fingers pressed to each other’s face in friendship.

  “Beautiful widow’s peak,” she said to me, then bent to straighten clothing in the drawer.

  “ ‘A clean person has a clean heart.’ That’s one of their favorites,” she said next, “along with ‘cream rises.’ And about adversity and trouble they’d say, ‘Rise above it, child’ or ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone.’ ”

  She held her hand to the air as though speaking to a group, the way Sarah did when she spoke of San-fran-cis-co.

  “They had a hundred of them. Funny how they pop into your head at the strangest times.”

  She did not seem frightened and yet her pace and pitch reminded me of magpies, chattering.

  “Here, sit beside me and tell me about yourself,” she said. She patted the bed next to her, smoothed the yellow stripe of the Hudson Bay blanket as a place for me, and I wondered if she really wanted to know or wished through her words, instead, to buy distance, cover who she was with words the way I did through silence.

  “Of course they also made us memorize dozens of scriptures,” she continued as though she had not just asked me to sit and talk. “ ‘God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith,’ Romans 12:3. Or how about ‘nothing shall by any means harm you.’ I like that especially, myself.” She stood, placed some lace squares in one of the two small drawers at the top of the dresser then stopped, hands widespread in the air before the mirror. “ ‘Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.’ Luke 10:20.”

  Half of what she said escaped me, her words running together like a team of unbridled horses. But I heard the word spirits and something about names. Still, before I could ask further, she had moved on to other thoughts, other actions.

  “I guess I’m ready for what comes,” she said. “Neither work nor worry can keep me from the future.” She sighed deeply looking into the mirror, leaned into it to pinch already rosy cheeks marked with a dimple, then turned. Fingers with red knuckles smoothed her skirts over narrow hips, clasped each other in front.

  “And I promise after supper to slow down enough to let you talk. You’re sure a quiet one, Miss Alice M. Interesting clothes you’re wearing, too.”

  She was true to her word and following a meal of corn bread, fried locusts, and some of my fresh-caught trout seasoned with joyous smiles and hugs between Ella and Mr. and Mrs. Sherar, we did talk. Or she did, mostly, back in her room.

  I learned her mother once nursed Mr. Sherar back to health following an accident near Canyon City while Ella was a toddler. And some years later, Ella’s mother died leaving a wish for her and her sister to join up with the Sherars.

  “Not to be,” she said, circumstances with the name of Mrs. Sherar’s mother, intervening. And so her sister lived with a family in Eastern Oregon while she lived instead with Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, Jane Sherar’s parents.

  “Our Lord bounced around some, too, as a baby,” she said. “Sent to live with Egyptians for years. Guess that means we can live in strange, new places, too. Sometimes when we feel we’re in the wrong place, that’s where we’re really supposed to be. While he was hiding with his parents, evil men killed babies just to find him.” She shivered with the thought. “Glad I don’t have to live with someone’s death on my conscience!” She giggled then covered her mouth, dropped her eyes in a look of shame. I did not know where her look came from, but the words reminded me of my own.

  “Mrs. Herbert is a good woman, though demanding,” she said, changing the subject. She lifted the necklace of glass beads from around her neck. “It’s sad she and her only living daughter do not ge
t along, and I know it’s all over me, but I’m powerless to do a thing to fix it. ‘All in the Lord’s time,’ as the sisters would say. And now Mr. Herbert has passed on. He was good to me, like a father. And she plans to marry once again and does not need an older daughter just returned from St. Mary’s school hovering over honeymooners. She has a son to hover over, anyway. I’ll miss Baby George, all right,” she added, her fingers twirling the beads. “He’s actually almost grown, just hates being called ‘the baby,’ don’t you know. But this will be a good place for me until I marry. I suppose that’s what you’ll do here too?” she added almost as an afterthought. “I notice you’re staying in the family quarters …”

  I wondered if she thought we might be rivals over the Sherars’ affections or of some same man; I hoped she might become my hitse. It had not occurred to me to wish to marry, find someone here who might form with me together. I had other things to take my time.

  Ella’s eyes drifted over the room, took in the starched lace curtains, the flower-painted water pitcher and bowl, the glow of linseed oil on freshly polished wood. She touched her snood again, opened the little bedside drawer, fidgeted finally into the silence.

  Still, it was her wondering what my plans were, why I stayed here at this place that caused her to pause and me to bravely take the next step in my journey.

  Some might say it foolish to ask a magpie important questions, that they do not listen well and give poor answers. But looking back, I think we shared a bond—two without mothers, two on a journey somewhere else—that let me trust this woman-child.

  Into that silence of a young woman on the verge of change, I put my question, hoping she would answer.

  “I wish to know your Spirit’s name, the one people speak of when they wear the crossed bars and beads,” I said, nodding toward the drawer where she had placed her necklace.

  “Land sakes!” Ella said, then slapped her hand over her mouth as though she’d bitten her lip. “I do apologize for my profanity.” She removed her fingers. “It’s just that I didn’t expect such a considerable question from someone who looks so, so …”

  “My mind isn’t,” I answered, not wishing to be discounted.

  “No. Of course not, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that I thought you were much younger, wouldn’t be thinking about such things. At least I’m sure I didn’t until not long ago, not even with all that influence of the sisters. It was just a place to go to school.” She smiled, “Or so I thought.”

  “So what is the name? That Spirit?”

  “I guess you’d say his name is Christ,” she answered, said in a tone as though he were a close friend not yet introduced to someone new. “But people call him by lots of names. Holy Spirit, Savior, Son of God. He is God, too. It’s like he’s all in one.” She patted my hand as she continued, warming to her subject. “Confusing at times, I’ll say that. I just call him Lord.”

  “What do you have to promise so he will talk to you?” I asked. “What does he demand if you make mistakes, cause another person harm?”

  She looked at me, hesitation on her face. “He doesn’t demand anything. Oh, he wants you to put him above all others. But I mean, I don’t do anything except believe in him. Anyone can talk with him. Once, long ago, I told him I was sorry for all the mistakes I’d made. Listed them on my fingers. Well, my toes, too,” she said and smiled. “All the bad things I’d done and things I’d said that hurt people. And I asked, ‘Can you take all that on and free me up?’ I didn’t have to sacrifice anything, not really.”

  “You did not wait for him to find you?”

  “I thought of it as someone held captive and then told to leave. All the old things were forgotten and forgiven. And future, too, as long as I kept talking to him.”

  “This is not within my understanding.”

  “Doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

  She began unlacing the high-top boots she wore, so her next words were spoken into the floor, muffled. “Oh, I don’t mean to say I don’t still do regretful things. I still hurt people’s feelings with my tongue. And I get discouraged. And I often feel lonely, do you?”

  She didn’t wait for my answer.

  “But this Spirit, the Lord,” she continued, “he can’t be pleased by just making perfect decisions. He isn’t interested in that. Boy that feels good!” she said wiggling her black-stockinged feet, and I was unsure if she talked about her toes being freed from her shoes or the generous nature of her Lord.

  “He gave us this gift, see,” she continued, pointing with her shoe as she talked. “He was dead three days. That’s why the crossed bars have a man hanging. It’s him. How he died. But then he came alive. That’s the other cross, an empty one.”

  “My chain had an empty cross,” I said, the memory coming from nowhere.

  “Did it! Where’s it now?”

  “The crossed bars are gone, but I have the necklace. I hope it will help me find my mother or father.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “I do not even know who they are. Or were.”

  “I know where my mother is,” Ella said, quietly, “and that I’ll see her again someday because we both believed in the same things. It helps me when I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I know she’s there making me a home.”

  The discussion had gone into a place unplanned. I had not meant to discuss my longing with a stranger, had not thought her words would touch that thirsty place inside my soul. Maybe the gold chain I wore was a bridge not to my parents anywhere in this world, but assurance for finding them in the next. I think that’s when my searching for them really shifted, when I began another journey.

  “And that nothing God wants to have happen,” Ella had continued to talk, “can be ruined by other spirits or people or events. He’s in control of everything. But for now, we have to live in this life.” Her eyes gazed around the room. “And it could certainly be worse.”

  She looked me in the eye, then, and I did not lower mine in shame. “He’s there,” she said. “But don’t ever talk to someone that doesn’t sound like him.” She whispered, as though she shared a secret, “That could be trouble.”

  “How would I know?” I asked. I thought of Wuzzie’s power, the water babies, the spirits of the rocks and trees, the marshes, the spirits of the dead who hovered or came back when names were spoken out of mourning. The possibilities for error were as endless as the cotton fluffs falling from the trees.

  She sat quiet for the longest moment. She put her shoes together in a tidy row beneath her bed, clasped her hands in her lap, and sighed before she answered. “I guess you just ask him to let you know, hit you upside the head like an ornery mule. Get your attention in case you wander off listening to the wrong ones. And keep near, of course, so you’ll recognize his voice when he calls your name.”

  “Keep near?” I could not imagine that such a powerful Spirit would call me by name.

  “You know. Sing your songs. Or pray. That’s how he turns you around. And you listen to him, to his words and the ones written about him. And the sisters say he speaks through places and people and troubled times, too. Why, coming to live with the Sherars was something I had prayed for, for just years! Something I wanted so much and figured I’d never have. Then when I least expected it, here I am! Maybe just for this conversation.”

  She smiled, patted my hand gently. “Just be a good listener. Mother Superior would have my hide for not remembering the exact words of one of her favorites, Romans 8:28. But it’s another promise that if we listen and do what he asks, everything will turn out well. Just find the purpose he has for you and trust him to help you accomplish it. That’s all.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, put her palms out as if to say, “It’s as simple as that.”

  I was stunned by the magnitude of the gift that Ella spoke of. And while I added only silence to the conversation that continued about her plans for the next day and beyond, I remembered what she told me as the most significant of the knot o
f leather memories I still wore around my neck.

  THE SIXTEENTH KNOT

  ATTRACTIONS

  For six years, I have lived at Sherar’s Bridge, watched it grow, gain a flour mill, warehouses, a toll bridge to pay for work the Indians do each day on the road. At times, I surprised myself as I blended old ways with new, was reminded of Lukwsh’s pot fired with old shards and fresh clay. In the pot I was becoming, I recognized flakes of uniqueness if not beauty; a keen edge if not wisdom; strength, despite the broken chips that marred my past.

  By day, I helped with simple things such as making beds, weeding tender vegetables I planted in a plot beside the house. Peach trees planted near the inn announced spring with their fragrance and a gentle rain of blossoms. In a natural ledge high up in the rock wall, Mr. Sherar directed men to carve out a wider space and filled it with dirt so after climbing tall ladders, we planted a sweet grape arbor halfway up the rocks, safe from curious deer and chewing rabbits. At the far end, Mrs. Sherar permitted me to cultivate and harvest herbs and special plants that eased toothaches, brought poisons out of boils, helped sleepless people find rest after a long day’s travel. My hands were helpful. My longings lessened, and my pot felt full.

  The Sherars invited me to leave the river some, join them and Ella on buying trips to Tygh Valley, The Dalles. Once or twice we steamed to Portland, making our way along the Columbia. For the first time, I heard the swish of wheels that lifted a thousand pounds of fish to canneries that dotted the wharves like sticky flies to uncovered salmon. On board the ship, a few women nodded their heads of plumed feathers, treated me as though I did not look awkward or out of place wearing a tibo’s dress over a beginning bustle. Total strangers tipped their hats to me and smiled. Ella and I both blushed at this gentle state of being noticed.

  “You’re eligible young women,” announced Mrs. Sherar. “Careful who those smiles attract.”