The Indifference of Tumbleweed

by Rebecca Tope

  His daughter-in-law, Mrs Luke Tennant, was a brawny woman with two small girls and a baby boy under a year in age, to care for. She was Abel’s stepmother, but paid him little or no attention. With Luke gone to the war, she had been required to take part in more work than she could have bargained for. It had soured her even before the old man hurt his foot and when it fell to her to tend to his dressings and anoint the ravaged flesh with balm, she did it with a poor grace. There was no prospect of her sparing any time for the little Fields children, despite the promise of sugar cake. Mrs Barty Tennant was older than her sister-in-law by several years. I had discovered that her first two children had died of diphtheria, when they were small, and the grief had turned her strange. When her twins were born, she had been well past thirty and scarcely able to deal with this late brood. The identical boys ran wild, speaking to each other in a jargon no-one else could understand. Their mother would sit watching them with a quiet smile on her face, as if they were two pixies or goblins, beyond her scope to manage. Barty, a man with a square head and a severe squint, would finally grab them and shake them like rats to force a few hours of better behaviour out of them.

  ‘I will do what I can,’ I said. Abel, Henry and Fanny all turned as one to look at me then. There was a muted challenge in my sister’s eyes, as if she mistrusted my motives and abilities.

  ‘I enticed them here with an offer of cake,’ said Henry. ‘I will fetch my mother. We have some to spare, I believe.’

  Jimmy Fields (if that was his name, rather than Reynolds, after his natural father) raised his head and Mr Tennant smiled. Fanny put an arm around the child’s shoulders in a gesture I thought rather forced. The Fields children were never very clean and Jimmy had evidently failed to wipe himself after his most recent defecation. There were brown marks on his legs, as well as his pants. Billy Franklin, only three years or so his senior, was an example he could have profitably have followed. Billy Franklin was a model for anyone.

  ‘We have cake here, I fancy. Elizabeth!’ called the old man. ‘Fetch us some of your baking, will you?’

  ‘What?’ came a harsh reply from somewhere the other side of their wagon.

  The insolence was shocking, even though we were well aware that the woman had little patience for her father-in-law.

  ‘Cake!’ he bellowed. ‘Do as you’re told, woman, and don’t answer me back.’

  There was a long silence and then the junior Mrs Tennant appeared, holding a wooden board in front of her. On it was a crumbly mess of poorly-baked fruit loaf, the edges dark brown and the middle still hardly cooked at all. Raisins were visible here and there, and I glimpsed a preserved cherry, or something of the sort. It was rare that any of the women would go to the trouble of making such a thing, with the Dutch ovens ill suited to baking anything but small plain loaves of bread, which needed plenty of yeast to make them palatable. This cake hinted at an effort that had not been properly unacknowledged; an attempt at making something pleasing that had gone awry. It lacked the necessary eggs to give it the right colour, and perhaps there had not been enough milk to bind it properly.

  But young Jimmy Fields had no reservations about its quality. He waited impatiently for a nod of permission from Mr Tennant and then seized a fistful of the soggy stuff and crammed it into his mouth. His sister was only a heartbeat after him, and between them they consumed the entire offering within seconds.

  ‘Hungry,’ noted Mrs Luke, with a softer expression. Perhaps the belated appreciation of her baking had mellowed her.

  ‘Poor little things,’ murmured Fanny.

  Mr Tennant gave her a look, appraising, almost suspicious. ‘Want them for your own then, d’ye?’ he asked her.

  My sister had the grace to flush at this and look down with a suggestion of maidenly modesty. Abel moved further away from her, scratching his chin as if thinking of other things entirely.

  Mr Tennant then looked directly at me, raising his eyebrows. ‘Never seen two sisters so different,’ he observed. ‘Not a drop of character in common, as far as I can see.’

  ‘We had different mothers,’ I said, my heart thundering as if something enormous was taking place. It was such an unusual disclosure that I found myself doubting its veracity.

  ‘I wondered if that were it,’ he nodded. ‘The wanton and the prude, you two be.’ He laughed, not very pleasantly. ‘And who’s to say which of ye’ll get the best of it?’

  I was struck dumb, but Fanny emitted a small laugh. Clearly she felt she had the answer to that question. I was battling with a bitter sense of injustice. Prude? Was that not worse than my sister’s accusation that I lacked charity? A dried-up spinsterish word that allied me with a woman like Mrs Luke. But even she had three children and a husband, and a willingness to bake cakes for them. What would my destiny be if Mr Tennant was right?

  Young Ellie met my distressed gaze, as I sought for a place to rest it. She smiled and I blinked. Had I found an unexpected ally in this little girl? We had sometimes spent a few moments together, as we walked. Her unwashed hair now and then showed a flash of gold in the sunlight, and her large eyes were a clear nut-brown colour. She was the daughter of a stern Baptist, the step-daughter of a struggling half-breed. What was to become of either of us, I wondered.

  Then Mr Fields joined us, holding his hat in his hand like a supplicant. Mr Tennant waved at him expansively, indicating the little party at his feet. We were all sitting either on the ground or on convenient rocks. ‘Your little ones have had cake,’ he said. ‘I fear ’tis all gone now, or ye could have had some too.’

  The new widower nodded a quick thanks and sighed.

  ‘It’s sorry I am for your loss,’ the old man went on. ‘A harsh blow, after coming so far. Have you an idea what you’ll do in Oregon now?’

  ‘Work my acres,’ Mr Fields shrugged. ‘Same as before.’

  ‘First find yourself another wife, if you can. That’s my advice.’

  ‘Granpa!’ Abel protested. ‘Poor Jane is not yet buried, and you talk of a replacement. Have a heart.’

  ‘Quite right, boy. I apologise for the lack of fine feeling. All the same, it will be seen as a necessity, I fancy, if Fields is to succeed as a farmer. But I spoke too soon. When you reach my age, the future needs to come along in a hurry, if you’re to hope to see how it turns out. It’s a fault, I guess.’

  He had been trying to plan a future for me and Fanny too, I realised. His apology was disarming, to Mr Fields especially, who gave a pointed look at the injured foot. ‘Nearly finished you, that did,’ he observed.

  ‘Never thought it’d kill me,’ Mr Tennant argued. ‘But it’s a relief not to lose a foot, I can tell you. I’ve grown fond of it in the past sixty years.’

  The gentle joke warmed the mood in everyone except myself. I was still sore from the word prude, and shaken by my disclosure concerning my mother. Mr Fields patted his children indiscriminately and sighed again. ‘We should go back,’ he said. ‘Not far now to Rhododendron, where we must have a burying. Fortunate, that,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘How so?’ asked Mr Tennant.

  ‘Better to have a named place for the grave, rather than the open trail.’ He spoke as if it were obvious, and indeed it had been a topic now and then alluded to between ourselves. ‘The little’uns might wish to visit it again.

  ‘Mm,’ said Mr Fields uncertainly.

  Abel, Henry and Fanny drifted away in different directions. Mrs Luke Tennant went back to whatever she had been doing, and the sun rose higher in the sky. ‘Best get the beasts harnessed,’ said Mr Tennant with his habitual authority. ‘All the more reason to make haste to the toll place, with a body on board. By rights the burying ought to be done today.’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t see those youngsters ever coming back here for a graveside visit, all the same.’

  Nobody replied, and within thirty minutes we were ready to depart for the final miles before the end of the Barlow Road and the payment of our tolls.

  Chapter Twenty-One

>   There had been a ridiculous amount of debate concerning the payment of the toll, ever since we first set foot on the road, despite Mr Tennant’s insistence that he, as party leader, would carry the whole cost. ‘Repay me one day, when you have prospered,’ he said expansively. Mr Franklin was unhappy with this largesse, and complained that we were being cheated, no matter who paid the money, since there was no choice but to use the road. But Father pointed out that there was indeed a choice – we could have gone by raft or boat along the Columbia. The road was a private venture and the men who built it had to be paid for their labour. It was a fine instance of good American business, he said, and something we should admire.

  Mr Fields had adopted an oddly wistful manner over the past week or so. More than once I found him staring intently into the vegetation bordering the road, apparently lost in thought. At last I approached him. ‘It seems so mysterious,’ I murmured. ‘And dangerous. It must be full of Indians and bears and cougars. I feel them watching us.’

  ‘Forty years ago, my father was here. Perhaps on this very spot. Already the changes are immense. The area was thronged with Indians, who bartered willingly with the white explorers. They supplied meat, saving the strangers’ lives. They behaved like true Christians.’ He said this last with a cynical grimace.

  ‘Venison?’

  ‘Dog. Lewis and Clark ate scores of dogs. It became their preferred meat.’

  ‘Don’t tell my sister Lizzie that!’ I was myself sickened at the idea. ‘How did they kill them?’

  He shook his head. ‘Knife, I presume.’

  ‘Of course.’ The harshness of that epic journey in the first years of the century was a legend to us all. Huge bears that refused to die; endless raging rapids overturning their canoes and rafts; sickness and confusion – all miraculously survived. And here was a man who had heard the stories first hand. ‘Did he tell you a lot about his experiences?’

  ‘Some. I saw little of him. He was seldom with us. But perhaps I already mentioned that there was a summer month, when I was in my first years of manhood, that we spent together. He taught me to use a rifle, to set traps and catch fish. And he talked to me about his life every evening. He was a wise man, though entirely unlettered. He saw the future for this land. You have it right, Miss Collins, about our being watched. The Indians have drawn back into their wilderness, wary of us now, where before they were open and friendly. They felt themselves superior then, the white men weak fools knowing nothing of the place. Since then the balance has tipped the other way, and they are afraid of us.’

  I thought of the man at the crossing. ‘I fancy not all of them fear us.’

  He nodded. ‘Many have understood that their best hope is to become businessmen. The Nez Percé – the tribe with the pierced noses – are a good example. But the spirit of most tribes has already been broken. They steal the white man’s livestock as a pathetic gesture of revenge, knowing the coming flood of emigrants with overwhelm them.’ His expression contained a medley of gloom and anger. ‘Even the bears are learning to keep their distance.’

  It was men rather than women, I had discovered, who dwelled on the implications for history of what was happening in the present. Henry and Mr Fields had both drawn pictures of how the world would change in years to come; the gains and losses; the great movements of humanity across the American continent. The women contented themselves with the details of keeping warm and fed, and maintaining moral standards.

  Except for my sister Fanny, I realised dourly. Fanny had an eye to the future, while ignoring the conventions of behaviour. But even Fanny was thinking like a woman – planning to supply the comforts of the boudoir to lonely deprived men.

  I could not permit my mind to rest on Fanny for more than a few minutes together, before I became agitated. I was powerless to alter her plans, having no influence over her. If I marched up to my parents and informed them in the plainest language of what she had told me, I feared that they too would find themselves unable to affect her. Short of keeping her a prisoner, I could see no means by which she could be prevented from pursuing her goals. She had said nothing about requiring any help in the form of good or money. The hordes of single men who would eagerly buy her services would quickly render her independent of her parents.

  Unless, as I half believed, it was indeed nothing more than an idle fancy. I could envisage a scene where I betrayed Fanny to our parents, upon which she would laugh hilariously and mock me for taking her seriously. I would be tainted simply by giving voice to such a disgusting notion, while Fanny escaped with all the sympathy. At worst she might be reproached for letting me run away with such very unacceptable ideas. I was the elder – they would assume that it was I and not Fanny who was the originator of topics to do with men and fornication, even though Fanny’s sinfulness with Abel was no real secret. Had she mentioned to them that there was no longer an engagement? Nothing had been said in my hearing, and it was difficult to initiate a serious conversation without the whole family knowing about it, especially on this road where we could not get far from each other.

  I had hoped for more consolation from Mr Fields, who while saying little, could give me a smile or a nod that would often make me feel I had a friend in him. I debated with myself whether I ought to speak to him about Ellie, but that too might be construed as a betrayal. I could not advise him to be more demonstrative with the child, for reasons of basic embarrassment. His distance was born of integrity, I guessed, and a determination to respect society’s edicts concerning such relationships. A stepdaughter was natural prey to certain kinds of man, as even I dimly understood, and Mr Fields was never going to allow himself to be viewed as such a type.

  The little boy had an easier time. His stepfather romped with him, once in a while, throwing him around and pretending to be a bear. Such moments seemed to come as a relief, even to Ellie, despite Jimmy being a trifle old for such cavorting. She would stand to one side, smiling. Partly wistful, admittedly, but also genuinely pleased at the normality of this aspect of family life.

  And within five days, perhaps, it would all be over anyway. We would go our separate ways, letting the experiences of our journey settle into our memories, looking back at our former lives with wonderment. What could happen in that brief time to upset our complacency at the success of our migration? At the very worst, if the wagons rolled into a river and all the goods were lost, we were still within reach of civilisation and rescue. We had horses enough for a large party to ride on to Oregon City and summon assistance, or we could walk it if we had to, carrying enough food and coverings for survival. Illness, injury, loss, utter exhaustion – none of them would undo the achievement now. And, I was convinced, none of those disasters would happen in any case. We were weary, yes, but we had sufficient strength to complete the final miles and face whatever came next. Nobody in the entire train seemed to have any doubt about that.

  There were birds as big as full-grown laying hens to be glimpsed amongst the trees, and there had been some success in shooting them for the pot, in the past week or so. Mr Fields, as always, was the keenest shot with his Indian bow. He never forgot Mr Tennant’s edict from so many months before, and made a great point of sharing the meat from anything he killed. The Tennants, always well provisioned with dry goods, milk and ale, were at pains to make a fair exchange with him, the rest of us less able to do so. Mrs Bricewood’s eggs were our greatest asset, the birds laying steadily, even into the colder weather, with more than enough for the whole party.

  Grandma did not like the Barlow Road at all. Her boots had worn thin and she did not have a pair to spare, so that walking over the mangled surface mile after mile tired her more than she would admit. Her balance seemed awry and her pace grew slower. On two afternoons already she had admitted defeat and ridden in the wagon, jesting that her weight would go quite unnoticed by the oxen. She was indeed a little woman, with no flesh to spare. But she felt it as a failure, I could see, and as a sort of penance she sat inside the vehicle at her spin
ning wheel, and somehow managed to spin half a fleece in the bumping lurching wagon. Grandma’s spinning was normally very fine, the yarn soft enough for a baby’s shawl, but the product of those afternoons was of a different calibre – thick and knotty, and fit only for weaving into a hearthrug or horse blanket. Nobody criticised, however. It was a relief to be rid of much of the fleece, where it had hung in a hessian sack since we left Westport. It emitted a strong smell in hot weather, and Mother said the moth would be in it by winter.

  Five more days, I repeated to myself, as we finally approached the toll gate that was in fact a well-made gate across the road, with a small shack beside a large painted notice giving all the different prices for having used the Barlow Road. This last milestone was a disappointment in one way at least: there was nowhere at all for Mr Fields to bury his wife. Forest grew densely on all sides, with our way down into the Valley a simple track such as we had known for so many miles. The river was close by, as well as large creeks and the towering Mount Hood, now behind us to the east, watching over our activities.

  A second disappointment was the absence of foodstuffs for purchase. There was none of the general mingling and assemblage that we had found at the many forts along the trail. We stared around at the meagre provision of camping space, and began lethargically to erect tents and set fires going. It was a gloomy night for the whole train, perhaps for no very good reason. We were so nearly at the end, it was all we could abide, to go through the same monotonous procedures, eating the same dried food and seeking out sparse pasture for the beasts.