When Winter Comes

by V. A. Shannon

  When we left Independence, it was as part of a wagon train so vast that, from the departure of the first wagon to the departure of the last, it was nearly a week before we were all back on the trail. With close to five hundred wagons to manage, the train was divided into smaller companies, each headed up by a wagon master.

  Our little band of German folks was absorbed into a company of close on ninety wagons, led by a Colonel Russell. What with the families and the teamsters and the single men riding out on horses, we were something like three hundred people traveling together; at the rear of us, half that number again of cattle.

  And now our journey took on a new character altogether. For beyond Independence, all was virgin land. Some adventurous spirit might have opened up a trading post here and there, but for the most part the land was as it had been since time began.

  To start with, our route lay through ancient forest, where the trees reached so far above our heads that we traveled in a hushed, cool twilight. But eventually the forest grew less, and gave way to woodland filled with birdsong. And here I had my first chance at friendship; but a poor show of myself I made.

  One particular morning Mrs. Keseberg was riding up on the wagon seat with her knitting, talking to her husband as he walked alongside, the beeves’ guiding rope held loosely in his hands.

  I was walking a little way behind, holding Ada by the hand, when running past us came Elitha and Leanna Donner with their little sisters.

  Elitha and Leanna’s father, Mr. George Donner, had married again after their mother died. Mrs. Tamsen Donner was a quiet, plain sort of woman. She had been a schoolteacher back East before her marriage, and intended to set up a school of her own when she reached California. Between them they had three more neat little girls, brown-haired and rosy-cheeked and as like to one another as peas in the pod.

  Along with the George Donners was his brother, Mr. Jacob Donner, his wife and their children, a very great number of them indeed. The two men were in their sixties, something elderly to be traveling the pioneer trail, but ruddy-faced and hearty enough, and the two families were all good friends together, as unlike my own family as could be.

  As the girls came running past, Leanna shouted to me, “Come with us!—we are going to pick bluebells!”

  I could not have said what a bluebell was, but it sounded a lovely thing to be doing. I looked to Mrs. Keseberg, should I take Ada, and she nodded, yes.

  I seized Ada by the hand, and we ran into the woods behind the rest. At first the trees blocked my view, but then suddenly before me was a river of flowers winding away through the tree trunks and into the distance.

  Leanna and Elitha were running hither and thither, snatching up the flowers and filling their skirts, with the little ones tumbling about and laughing. I hesitated. Part of me longed to join them. But I found I could not, for the scene before me was so beautiful that I was struck silent and still.

  The new leaves on the trees fluttered a soft lemon green color where the breeze caught them, and thin fingers of butter-gold sun reached down between the trees. Where the light caught the flowers, they shone a glorious purple blue, and where they pooled in the shadow of the tree trunks, they were a soft, silvery gray.

  In Cincinnati we had poor scraps of girls on the street corners selling wilting violets for pennies, and there were shops selling flowers tied into stiff nosegays for rich folks. But I had never seen flowers growing wild like this. I had never even known that such beauty could exist. I knelt down in them, and plunged my hands into their damp coolness. I breathed in their delicious fragrance. Somewhere nearby a bird gave out a chuckling note or two, before embarking on a full-throated trill of song. Then came an answering melody from an unseen companion, far in the distance.

  Leanna came running over to me. She had a smear of dirt on her cheek, and her sap-sticky hands were filled with drooping flowers. “Aren’t they lovely? Did you ever see anything so pretty? We have flowers in the woods at home, but not so nice as this!”

  Pure rage boiled up inside me. To have lived somewhere as beautiful as this? And to take it so much for granted!

  “Look what you’ve done!” Thick jealousy clotted in my throat. “Why pick the flowers? For what? You should have let them be, for you have killed them!”

  In a fury I grabbed at her and shook her as hard as I could. The stems fell to the ground, and I kicked at the poor little heap of wilting flowers and stamped them to a mush.

  I caught a sight of Leanna’s shocked face, and then looked beyond her to where Elitha had burst into tears. I snatched up Ada by the hand, and turned and ran back to the wagon.

  * * *

  Next afternoon when we made camp, I was sitting on the wagon step peeling potatoes when Elitha came up, leading her little sister Georgia by the hand. Georgia was of an age with Ada, and now Elitha asked Mrs. Keseberg if Ada could come to play with the other little girls. Ada and Georgia joined hands, giggling, and jumped about together. Mrs. Keseberg said she might, and then Elitha said that her mother had asked if I might go across as well.

  I said I didn’t want to go, and of course this was enough for Mrs. Keseberg to say that I should, and she would hear no different, and that Elitha must be sure and tell her mother that Mrs. Keseberg was obligated to her for her kindness.

  Elitha and I walked across to the Donner wagons in silence. It struck me she was something afraid of me for the way I had carried on in the bluebell wood—spoiling Leanna’s pleasure in the flowers and making her cry.

  I knew that Mrs. Donner was going to give me a telling-off for it. I set my mouth, and said to myself that I didn’t care. She could tell me off all she liked, but I would just stare at her, and hum a tune inside my head and not hear her. But that was not what she wanted at all. Instead, she welcomed me with a cookie, and then asked me to step into one of the wagons with her, for she had something to show me.

  I could not help but look around me with great interest. All the while that we had been traveling, Mrs. Donner had been teaching school, and this was her school wagon, and I had been mighty curious to see inside it. It had a particular smell: not dusty, but something like linen dried in the sun and perhaps the smell of fresh turned-over earth as well. It was filled with boxes of books, and I stared at them, wondering what the writing on the covers said. By me was a basket of slates, slate pencils tied to them with string. My fingers itched to take up a pencil and see what it would be like to trace something on the slate.

  Mrs. Donner showed me a place to sit on a trunk, and sat next to me with a folder of papers in her hand.

  “My girls told me how much you loved the sight of the flowers in the woods,” she said, quite as if I had been right nice to them, which I surely hadn’t.

  “I thought you might like to see my sketches. People back in the East are so interested in the adventure we pioneers are undertaking that they long to know more. Some of our fellow travelers are keeping journals, but I prefer to make drawings of all the flowers that we see on our journey. When we reach California I shall have them bound into a book for publication. What do you think?”

  She pulled out the first sketch. It was a little group of yellow violets, like the ones that grew at the sides of the creeks we had passed along the way. They were so real I thought I could have gathered them up and held them to my nose to smell their scent. There were pictures of all types of grasses, and bees and butterflies with them, like as if they could fly right off the page and round our heads. And here was a page full of those bluebells, so delicate drawn that I longed to take that page and keep it for myself.

  As if she could read my thoughts, Mrs. Donner took out another sheet of paper.

  “This is another sketch I did that I didn’t like so much. Look how my hand shook, and how I couldn’t get the blue color quite right. If you can forgive my poor skills, my dear, I should be very honored if you would accept it as a gift from me.”

  I looked from the paper to her face, thinking it to be a trick of some sort. Every time I h
eld that paper I would think of my cruel words to Leanna. I guess Mrs. Donner knew it, too. But I wanted the paper, and I knew that I deserved the lesson.

  8

  After another week’s traveling, we arrived at the Big Blue River, one of the major landmarks on our journey. I expected the Big Blue to be something like the Ohio: gray and oily-looking, and so wide that we would hardly see the other bank. But it was not more than a hundred yards across, though it was deep. It was the season of the spring gales. Swelled by days of rain, the river was risen and spilling out over its banks, and the water went rushing by us, swirling sticks and logs and even whole tree trunks with it. With it came the bodies of animals that I guess had ventured too close to the water’s edge and had been caught in the torrent. We could not cross it until the waters died down some, and so we had a very welcome holiday.

  One morning Mrs. Donner came across to our wagon and visited awhile. Mrs. Keseberg was doing some darning and she laid it aside.

  Mrs. Donner accepted a cup of coffee, which I poured from the coffeepot. Then she said that she had noticed I was not coming to lessons with the others, and she wondered why.

  Mrs. Keseberg was something taken aback. Although I was of an age with the older Donner girls, still in their girlish pinafores and bonnets, I don’t suppose Mrs. Keseberg thought of me as a child at all, and she certainly did not think of herself as my mother, or as having any responsibility for my education. And indeed, it had never occurred to her that I had no learning on me—though I could forgive her that, for I had a quick wit, and she would have no reason to think I could not even write my own name.

  Mrs. Keseberg said all this, and plenty more besides, quite as if I was not there at all. Mrs. Donner looked a mite embarrassed, and looked over to me once or twice with an apologetic little smile. Eventually she addressed me direct.

  “When we are traveling, we only have time for an hour’s class or so in the afternoon. But it seems that we will be staying here for a few days. The older girls have asked if they could have drawing lessons. I thought this might be something that would interest you.”

  She smiled straight at me, but I glared at her, for the more they had discussed me, the angrier I had become.

  I longed to join in Mrs. Donner’s school. I would pass by with a pail of water, and the little ones would be learning a counting song, and I would catch a few words and find myself humming them below my breath. I would be collecting undergarments from the bushes near the creek, and the older girls would be taking turns at reading aloud, a Bible story or such, and I would get caught up in the story and linger for a while, folding and unfolding the washing. But one day one of them had noticed me, and pointed me out to the others. They had all begun to giggle, and I had scrambled away, my arms full of washing and my cheeks flaming.

  After that I had gathered up the washing as quick as could be, and walked back a different route, telling myself that I had no need of book learning. I had managed just fine on my wits all these years with no help from anyone else.

  Pa was cruel when the drink was in him, and my ma too beat down by life to do right by any of us, but in my heart I wanted to believe that they would have seen to some learning for us all, if they had the chance to do it. I was shamed by my family, but thought it no business of anyone else how we had fared. And come what may, I had no intention of sitting in class with those stuck-up giggling girls and admitting that I knew nothing of letters, and had never even held a slate in my hand.

  I should have been grateful to Mrs. Donner but I was not. I jumped up and said I had no reason to attend school and I would thank her, and Mrs. Keseberg as well, to keep their pointy noses out of my business! And I stamped off over to the creek, trembling with rage.

  Mrs. Keseberg reported this conversation to her husband, expecting him to be as mad as she, at Mrs. Donner’s presumption and my rudeness. And he took me to task over it—but not in the way I expected.

  He waited until that evening, when Mrs. Keseberg was in the wagon, settling Ada to sleep, and then he asked me to walk out with him awhile.

  We walked away from the camp and up the slope a little. It wasn’t full dark, and the first few stars were beginning to show in the sky.

  There was a little outcrop of rocks, and he sat down, and patted the rock next to him. I sat beside him chewing on my fingernail, with a sick feeling in my stomach, wondering what he would say to me.

  “I am angry with you.” This was the first thing he said, and my heart sank like a stone to hear these words. “Do you know why?”

  I shook my head, no.

  “It is because you do not realize how lucky you are. You have been born in America, the land of opportunity, and are traveling to a new place, California, where anything is possible. You can make your own life in California, and you have a good brain to do it. But a good brain needs a good education.

  “I cannot make you learn. But we have been traveling together now for some weeks, and I hope that you count me as your friend.”

  He said the last with a straight look at me. I stared straight back—I could not look away. After a moment he leaned closer, and reached his hand toward me. My heart thumped in my chest. There was the wild cry of something in the distance. A prairie dog, or some such.

  “Moth.” Mr. Keseberg showed me what he had picked from my shoulder. It was a great gray and brown moth, with a speckle of dust across its wings. I looked down and scuffed my foot in the earth for a minute or two, until I could raise my head again and meet his eyes.

  “Well . . . if you do”—he turned his gaze away from me, looking out over the sea of grass that surrounded us, rippling in the breeze with a gentle shushing sound—“if you do think of me as a friend, I hope you will listen to what I say. I would be proud of you, if you were brave enough to go and apologize to Mrs. Donner, and take the help she is offering you. With some schooling, you could do anything you liked when we get to California, and make a good life for yourself.

  “Tell me: What would you like to do, when our journey is ended?”

  * * *

  What I wanted, more than anything, was to stay with him. Not for love—indeed, I told myself that such thoughts on my part were pure and simple foolishness, for he was a married man and a deal older than I. No—it was for another reason entirely.

  That first smile between us, when it seemed to me that we knew each other somehow, was never repeated. I had come to wonder if I had imagined it. He spoke to me right curt, and for the first few weeks of our journey I thought him unpleasant and standoffish. Many others in our company felt the same. It was clear he had no patience with the gossip and idle chitchat that made up the greater part of our entertainment along the route. But I couldn’t forget his little act of kindness, in buying me the kerchief to cover my head; and despite what others might say of him, Mr. Keseberg had friends enough, close friends, indeed, among our band of German folks. So he confused me, and I had begun to study him. And my first understanding of him came from listening to his conversation with his friends, round our fireside of an evening.

  All spoke of their dreams, and what they wished to do with their lives once they reached California. Some folks thought of little more than to buy land and grow crops enough to sustain them. Others had ideas to open stores or run cattle. But Mr. Keseberg had an ambition like nothing I had heard before, and I listened to his speech as greedily as I listened to the fairy stories he told the children.

  He had grown up in a place called Westphalia, known for its wine, and now he wished to grow grapes in California, and make wine that would be sent all over the world. And his words made me long to stand, myself, in the sunshine among those grapevines, which I imagined to be something like beanstalks, thrusting up into the sky and growing across the land as far as the eye could see.

  Mr. Keseberg said that in some countries the grapes were put into great vats when they were picked, and a fiddler played while folks danced on the grapes with their naked feet to make the juice flow. I thought for c
ertain sure he was jesting, but if it was true, well, I longed to see that, as well, and dance on those grapes myself, with the soft squelch and ooze of their juices between my naked toes.

  I wanted to stand in the great cold cellars filled with barrels up to the ceiling, and see the wine come gushing out of those barrels, pouring endlessly into row upon row of slender green glass bottles, and to pack the bottles into boxes, and watch those boxes being loaded onto the ships that would take them to all those distant lands I had heard him speak of. And maybe one day, I would travel on one of those ships myself, and go to the other side of the world, barefoot on the deck, with the salt wind blowing through my clothes and the sea spray tangling my hair, and hear the great whales singing to each other in the iceberg seas, and watch dolphins diving through the green waves in the warm oceans.

  It was the most ridiculous of notions, and I knew it, of course. I would never speak a word of it to him or anyone else; but when Mr. Keseberg spoke of his dream it was with such passion that he seemed hardly older than I was myself.

  He presented one face to his friends, and another to the rest of our company. I had concluded that he was no more than shy. He hid this shyness behind a cloak of indifference, and fended folks off with clever words and a sarcastic turn of phrase which made them feel foolish. He was, as folks say, his own worst enemy. Somehow I found this strangely comforting, for I had come to think the same could be said of me.

  Of course, I could not say any of this. Instead, I told him I would go and speak to Mrs. Donner and say I was sorry.

  He smiled a little, and said, “Good. I am very glad to hear it.” Then he put his arm around me, and hugged me, briefly. His waistcoat was of some prickly material that scratched my ear, and he smelled of tobacco and the bay rum oil that he used on his hair.

  Next afternoon I went along to school, unwilling enough. It was an agony to me, even worse than I thought. Great lump of a girl as I was, I was put to sit with the little children and spent my time scowling through my alphabet, knowing less than little Frances Donner, half my age. Mrs. Donner was kind, and patient with me, though little thanks she got, but Elitha and Leanna sat well away from me, and my face burned with shame each time I passed them by.