Ten Thousand Charms

by Allison Pittman

  “Yes,” Josephine chimed in. “Surely Mrs. MacGregan would—”

  “Gloria. Call me Gloria.”

  “Of course.” If Josephine was taken aback by Gloria’s abruptness, she showed no sign of it.

  “And we have two babies to wash up,” Gloria continued. “This one, and another asleep in the wagon.”

  “Oh, my,” Josephine said. “Twins?”

  “A little boy, Danny, and the girl,” Gloria said. “So you see, there’s no possible way we could join you this morning.”

  An awkward silence settled over the little gathering and stayed there until the youngest Logan child, Charles, stood up in the back of the wagon and dangled a basket over its side.

  “Wanna doughnut?” he asked.

  “Yes, please have one,” Josephine said. “I fried them last night, but they’re still rather fresh.”

  “No, thank you,” Gloria said, her eyes never leaving the basket. “I was just about to make our breakfast.”

  John William stifled a laugh.

  “Please,” Gloria continued, “don’t let us keep you any longer.”

  “It’s only an hour’s ride from here,” David said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  Gloria started to speak again, but John William strode to stand between her and the Logan family. “Give us just one minute,” he said to David, then he turned to Gloria. He towered over her, and she rose to her feet.

  “We’re not going,” she said.

  John William sensed the uncomfortable shuffle of the people in the wagon behind him. He thought he heard the oldest Logan boy giggle.

  “You do not speak for this house,” John William said, raising his voice to an authoritative pitch.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” Gloria said, shifting Kate to her other hip, “this isn’t a house. And there has never been a time when I didn’t speak for myself. So I suggest that you remember who I am and why I’m here, or I’ll just pack myself back home.”

  “You couldn’t make your own way across the creek,” John William said. “Now get yourself washed and dressed. We’re going to church.”

  “No.”

  “Gloria.” He attempted a threatening tone.

  “No. Listen, MacGregan, do what you want, go where you want. I’ll be here.”

  He bent to her, his forehead resting on hers. “Gloria, you are my family now,” he said in a voice he was certain the Logan family could not hear. “I haven’t had a chance to go to a church in years. I want to go, and I want you to go with me.”

  He sensed a change in her breath, a synchronization with his own.

  “I … can’t,” she said at last.

  “You can,” he said, reaching for her, but caressing Kate’s soft cheek instead.

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m going,” he said.

  “Go.”

  “I don’t want to go alone.”

  “You won’t be,” Gloria said, stepping away from him and offering a consoling smile. “You have your new friends to take you.” She shouldered baby Kate and turned to the Logan wagon. “It was nice to meet you all,” she said before passing Kate through their wagon’s canvas flap and following her inside.

  John William turned to face ten boldly staring eyes.

  “May I ride with you?” he asked, his tone light, if forced.

  “Of course,” Josephine said.

  “Just give me five minutes to wash up.”

  John William splashed his face with the icy water drawn from the barrel strapped to the side of the wagon. Lacking a comb, he ran his fingers through his hair, careful to keep his disfigured ear covered. He was wearing his cleanest shirt, which he smoothed with his damp hands and tucked into his pants. He grabbed his Bible from its place on his bedroll, dropped his hat on his head, and turned with a cheerful, “Let’s go!”

  When John William climbed up into the wagon box, the dumbfounded children scuttled to make room for him, and he felt enormous sharing a space with such little people.

  David Logan clicked to his team, and the wagon started its bumpy journey. John William turned back frequently to see if Gloria would emerge, but she didn’t. And after only a few minutes of travel, the rolling foothills made any sight of her impossible. When he turned back, sighing, he felt a tug on his sleeve.

  “Wanna doughnut now?” Charles asked, offering the same basket.

  John William gave what he hoped was a friendly smile and reached under the towel to pluck out a pastry. When he popped it in his mouth, the smile became one of pure joy. There was just a hint of crispness left in the fried bread. It had been dipped in sugar, and the sweetness was almost overwhelming. There was little need to chew; the morsel seemed to melt against his tongue.

  Gloria would have loved this.

  “The journey is hard on a woman,” Josephine said, her voice full of compassion. “I’m sure your wife just didn’t feel at her best.”

  “I think she’s very pretty,” the small voice of Eliza Logan lisped through two missing front teeth.

  “I think you’re very pretty,” John William said, and her blushing smile warmed him.

  “I dunno,” James said. “She sure seems like a wild one.”

  John William burst out in a heartfelt guffaw, and David, too, gave a hoot and a giggle.

  “James!” Josephine turned in her seat to reprimand her son. “That was not a kind thing to say.”

  “But true, eh?” David said over his shoulder. “A real little scrapper?”

  “Brother, you don’t know the half of it,” John William said.

  As they rode, the full force of what he had taken on hit. Until now, he and Gloria and Danny and Kate had been their own little family, isolated in the middle of this huge country, owing nothing to anybody.

  But now … this might be their home. His home, anyway, and he was entering it under a canopy of lies. He wondered what David Logan would do if he knew the stranger in the back of his wagon had killed two men with his bare hands. He wondered how comfortable the Logan children would be if they knew he had once watched children through the bars of a jail cell. Would Josephine make such overtures of friendship to Gloria if she knew she was a prostitute dragged along to nurse his dead wife’s daughter alongside her illegitimate son?

  Then he looked into the earnest, clear-eyed faces of Eliza, James, and Charles as they offered to share with him their treasures of ribbons, buttons, and rocks. Periodically, Josephine would turn around to check on her children and would include him in her reassuring smile. David filled the silence with occasional details about the land, the crops, the promises of this new country. Maybe, he thought, none of it would matter after all.

  “Hey, Logan,” he called, “will you have me back before dark?”

  “Should be. Worried?”

  “Yeah,” John William said. “She doesn’t know how to start a fire.”

  Gloria watched the Logan’s wagon disappear over the horizon. As far as she could tell, John William never looked back.

  “Have a wonderful day,” she called into the wind. “Don’t you worry about me here. All alone. With two babies.”

  The far-off lapping of the Umatilla River was her only response.

  “Oh, no. I’ll be fine, just fine.”

  Both Danny and Kate were awake now. Their lusty cries declared breakfast long overdue. She lifted each child down and removed the night’s soiled diapers. She wrapped a fresh one around Kate, but allowed Danny to roll around naked on the blanket while he waited his turn.

  “I’m feeding your daughter,” Gloria called in the general direction of the long-vanished wagon. “I’m feeding your daughter and I haven’t had a bite to eat for myself yet.”

  The babble of brooks blended with the babble of babies while Gloria sat, staring and dreaming of doughnuts.

  There was no bell tower, no church bell, just a man standing in front of the small whitewashed building, shouting a welcome. John William heard the thin thread of his voice before he could make out
any discernible features.

  “Good morning! Good morning! God bless us today.”

  The voice belonged to a tall, gaunt man with a stunningly shiny bald head and gray beard.

  “That the preacher?” John William asked.

  “Yep,” David Logan replied. “Reverend Fuller. Thomas Fuller.”

  “Oh, he’s a wonderful preacher,” Josephine said. “Of course we’ve only heard him a few times, but those few times were wonderful. Just wonderful.”

  “He talks a long time,” James said. “Sometimes for hours and hours.”

  “Now stop that,” his mother said, a warm lilt to her chastisement. “You are exaggerating, and that’s as close to lying as I ever want you to get.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” James said, but he caught John William’s eye and made a face of excruciating boredom, crossing his eyes and lolling his head against the wall of the wagon bed.

  “You’ve only heard him a few times?” John William said. “How long have you been settled here?”

  “We’ve been here a while,” David said, without turning around. “But Fuller just started up the church about a year ago. And he don’t just stay right here. He goes all over the territory—preaches here once a month.”

  “Yes,” Josephine said. “It’s a pity, too. I do miss having church every Sunday.”

  “Guess I was lucky to make camp when I did,” John William said. “Else I might have missed it.”

  “Mama says luck is man’s word for God’s perfect timing,” Eliza said with a heavy lisp.

  “I think your mama’s right.” John William looked at Eliza and wondered what his own Kate would look like, all grown up with ribbons and shiny shoes. “I think every day we find ourselves right where God wants us to be.”

  “Well, today,” David said, pulling his team to a halt and setting the brake, “God wants us to be in church. And if we don’t stop all this gabbing, we’re going to be late.”

  The last flicker of the breakfast fire lost its will to live, and by the time Gloria thought to fan the flames, there was nothing left but a pile of cooling ashes and charred sticks.

  Her stomach rumbled as she thought about the little plate of last night’s cold beans, the remnants of the morning coffee, yesterday’s rock-hard biscuits. Furious and starving, she muttered a furtive curse.

  Instinctively she looked up, looked around, awaiting the glare of disapproval. But there was no one to disapprove, just Danny and Kate who were too involved with their little feet to pay her any attention.

  Gloria stood straight and cursed out loud.

  No sense of reprimand.

  She reared her head back and screamed profanity to the vast Oregon sky.

  No response, although Danny and Kate were jarred enough to tear their attention from their toes and give her a four-eyed blinking stare.

  “Do you see?” she said, granting the infants a bitter smile. “They’d never let me in a church.”

  Reverend Fuller stood on the step of the little shack-of-a-church house. He spoke to the milling crowd in a voice that proved to be much gentler than the one used to summon his flock.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he said, “we have a new member here with us this morning. Please join me in welcoming John William MacGregan to our church.”

  Each member of the congregation greeted John William before entering the building. It wasn’t an arduous process. There were three other families besides the Logans. The children mixed and mingled so much it was impossible to tell which set of parents each belonged to. And while John William tried to concentrate on names, he found himself distracted having to repeat the story of Gloria, back at their camp, with two small children too young to come this morning. His mind scrambled around the word wife, answering questions with nods rather than statements, careful not to lie outright, hoping his representation of the truth would satisfy even Josephine Logan’s intolerance for untruths.

  There was an abundance of bachelors—he counted five—in the congregation. Some, he would learn, were homesteaders.

  Others lived in modest cabins and hired out their labor on neighboring farms. However, there were two women there who seemed to be alone.

  The first was a tall woman whose copper-colored hair was arranged in a complicated fashion that made John William think of a massive coiled rope. She had full lips, tinted to match her hair, and a look that he recognized from his boxing days. It was the look shared equally by hungry opponents and hungry women, both itching for a victorious encounter. In the old days, he would have answered such a look with a grin that said, “You don’t stand a chance with me.” But now, facing such a look from this woman in this place, he found himself scrambling for a defense.

  “I’m Adele Fuller,” she said, her voice husky with promise. She’d peeled off a glove to offer John William her bare hand. “Reverend Fuller’s daughter.”

  “Not his wife?” John William said, amazing himself at the stupidity of the statement.

  Adele Fuller brought a slim hand up to emphasize a short, coy laugh. “Oh, no, I’m not anybody’s wife. You here all alone?”

  “No, no. Gloria … she’s back at camp, with the babies …” His voice trailed off as he searched within the tiny room for David Logan to come and rescue him.

  “Adele Fuller,” came a sweet, bird-like voice from somewhere near his elbow, “you just leave this man alone and take your seat before your father sees you behaving so shamefully.”

  Adele gave John William a slow smile. “We don’t have many hymn books, so you’re welcome to share with me if you want.” She walked past John William, allowing the skirt of her dress to glide against his leg.

  John William turned to meet his savior, saw nobody, then looked down and saw a mass of wild gray curls surrounding a soft smiling face.

  “You better watch that one,” the tiny woman said, her dancing brown eyes following Adele. “Her mother died about ten years back, and her father’s so busy travelin’ he don’t have much time to look after her.”

  “That so?” John William said.

  “I’m Maureen Brewster, and if you’re going to share a hymn book with anybody, it’ll be with me.”

  The basket was oval shaped, nearly four feet long and two feet deep. A gift from Jewell, something she used to haul washing. Gloria remembered when both Danny and Kate seemed to get lost in the vastness of it. John William had attached a handle made of rope, and these days it served as a mobile cradle. Now Kate protested its confines as she rode, jarred and bumped against Gloria’s leg, on a trek to the river’s bank.

  Gloria struggled with the basket in one hand, Danny clutched in the other arm. John William had not set up camp right at the river’s edge; there was a brief thicket of trees between the clearing where the wagon rested and the song of the lapping water. Gifted with the rare opportunity of time alone, one thought crossed Gloria’s mind.

  A bath.

  Nestled in with Kate was a blanket, a relatively clean change of clothes for each of the babies, Gloria’s cotton sleeping gown, and the only intact linen towel. A small wooden box held the remains of what had been, at the beginning of their journey, a substantial cake of soap. Much of it had been used laundering the endless supply of diapers, stretched across the wagon’s cover to dry in the daily sun. But there was a small cake of it left, and Gloria had mixed in with it the last drops of her lavender oil, intending to pamper her and the children with a full all-over bath.

  The first bare step into the cold river water sent painful jolts up Gloria’s legs. Her breath was stolen by the initial shock, and a sharp squeal accompanied each step toward submersion. Kate remained within the basket on the river’s bank; Danny was clutched firmly in Gloria’s arms. His sun-warmed soft baby skin felt delicious in contrast to the icy water lapping around her legs. He cooed, his tight, toothless grin creating a face of pure adoration. The expression changed to one of wide-eyed gaping surprise when Gloria brought a palm full of water to dribble down his bare back.

  “I
s that cold, baby?” she said in response to his swift gasps. “I’m sorry, Danny,” she continued in a soothing voice. “It’ll get better.”

  As she lowered herself into the water, Danny’s little feet hit the surface, then his chubby knees. Each inch converted his initial shock and discomfort to squealing joy. He kicked wildly and slapped at the river’s surface with his hands.

  “Well, you’re a regular little water rat, aren’t you, Danny boy?” Gloria said, enthralled with his joy. She wondered if her own mother had ever held her like this, exposed together in a moment of pure happiness.

  She’d placed the wooden box of soap on a large rock jutting from the shore. Now, Gloria moved in slow bobbing steps over to it. She held Danny tight in one arm and with the other hand reached in, scraping off a layer of soap with her fingernails and used it to cleanse the glistening folds of her son’s soft skin, then gave him a final rinse with the river’s clear water.

  After allowing a few more minutes of playful splashing, Gloria brought Danny to shore and dressed him in a clean, sun-warmed shirt. She laid him down on the outspread blanket. She draped the waist of her discarded skirt over the lip of the basket and extended the material out, creating a makeshift tent to protect the babies’ sensitive skin from the sun. The pleasure of the bath met the warmth of the afternoon, and by the time she finished taking Kate through the same process, Danny was fast asleep. Kate, too, succumbed to the ritual, and soon Gloria found herself looking at her son and daughter—no, his daughter—sleeping like angels.

  She thought about the Logan children—clean, combed, ribboned—and wondered if she would ever see these two so groomed and proper. Quite the little family. Gloria sat on a river rock, her hands folded demurely in her lap.

  “Children, time for church,” she said out loud, trying to capture the soft sweet cadence of Josephine Logan’s voice. “Come, Kate, let mother comb your hair. Why, Danny, how handsome you look!”

  Gloria pictured the stark comb marks in the Logan children’s hair. Such discipline. Such cleanliness. So prim and pure. The product of a lovely perfect mother.