A Clearing in the Wild

by Jane Kirkpatrick

Christian shook his head no. “But there is a time to disagree, Emma, and a time to keep silent.”

  “I’m not well-versed in keeping silent,” I said. I pulled my brush through the long strands, rolling the loose hair from the brush into a tiny ball that I could later weave into a wall hanging. Maybe I’d tie a ribbon around it and slip it into Christian’s saddlebag so he’d remember me after he’d gone. I forced myself to stop thinking that way. He just had to stay here with me.

  “Your words bring suspicion and discord where it need not be, Emma. Will you stop it, for me?”

  “Stop talking about the virtues of owning one’s own land?” I said.

  “About your view of life here. It … unsettles people to hear you speak such things while I’m away.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t go, then,” I said. “Or maybe in my own house, I’d find a better way to see things.”

  “Any new home must go to the new recruits, Emma. You have a fine place to reside. It would be selfish to live in your own home alone, a waste of colony labor to build for us when we are leaving.”

  “That’s the point, though. I’m not leaving. You are.”

  His galluses hung loose at his side, exposing his shirt, his wide chest. He took in a deep breath and clamped his jaw shut. His fists rolled up tight, then released. He exhaled a long, slow breath. I stepped back from the force of him. “You will stop talking in the way I’ve asked, Emma.” He’d never given me a direct order before.

  “Or?”

  “Or face consequences I do not wish to name.”

  “Because?”

  “Because you are the wife of the leader of the Oregon Territory scouts. And you must act accordingly.”

  As leader, he’d remain behind in the Oregon Territory once they found the new land. That meant more than a year before I’d see him again, more likely two. Here’s where I’d stay, beneath my father’s roof, never in a home of my own.

  Pray? I suppose I might have tried that route. But our leader always led our prayers during worship; at home, my father did. We read the Scriptures and did discuss them, but most of Bethel lived content to let our leader set our spiritual tone and be the intercessor for our needs. Our leader would hardly offer prayers for my contentment. I was on my own and beginning to wonder whether my prayers, like my voice in the colony, were ever heard.

  I’d have to make Christian want to take me with him. I imagined what miracle would make him do this, what intervention would cause him to set aside the dangers or demands of such a journey so he’d include a woman in the undertaking, one woman, his own wife.

  I’d have to press the shared goal we had to begin our family. He’d turn forty this year, 1853. It was time he had a son. I needed to remind him of his mortality and his duty to his wife. Ruth’s words from Scripture came to mind: “Whither thou goest, I will go.” Perhaps he’d listen to that.

  I packed a basket of food. We’d taken a horse cart to the center of town, which offered a kind of park. Keil had laid out Bethel beautifully, with wide streets and trees planted on either side. At the park, a bandstand offered a sheltered place for concerts in the summer. It was deserted in March except for an early crocus poking up through the earth and a wild goose or two. Sheppie trotted on behind us, chased at the geese. Then he panted, waiting for Christian to finish chewing on the chicken leg, sure my husband would toss the skin to him.

  Christian wiped his beard with a napkin. “No women on this journey,” he said when I raised the issue.

  “But you said yourself that more families headed west last year than ever before. Whole families. Including women and children.”

  “They took wagons, Bethel wagons, sturdy and well built so they had plenty of supplies. And there were others in the party, other women. Ours will be a fast journey of all men, horseback. We’ve had special saddlebags made to carry what we need. It’s not a trip for a woman.”

  “Those missionary women, that Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding, they rode sidesaddle all the way to Oregon,” I said, “years ago. They had no wagons.”

  “They hooked up with a fur trading group from Hudson’s Bay for protection. We’ll travel as light as we can to move quickly, act as our own protection. Indeed, God as our protector.” He chewed again. “No, Emma,” he said to my open mouth. “No women.”

  “But that will mean another year or more before I bear a child for you. Another year of my dawdling as though I’m married without any of the accoutrements of marriage: no home, no child, no husband at my side. What am I to do?”

  He took pity on me and held me. “You’re young,” he said. “You have plenty of time to have things go your way. There are many who need your help while I’m gone. You can serve them; prepare yourself for when the whole community crosses the plains. Let your kindness rise like cream.”

  “Cream sours,” I said. “I don’t just want things to go my way. I want you to have what you said held meaning for you. A wife and family, both.”

  “Ja,” he said. “I have a wife. A generous one. I’ll settle for one out of two.”

  By early April, having made no progress with Christian, I took my case to a higher authority, asking for an audience with our leader. I was visiting Mary Giesy when Willie stopped by and said his father would see me then.

  “We’ll talk later, Mary,” I said. Her face blotched from the tears she still shed daily over the loss of her son. Just a few more weeks and he might have lived. So small, so tiny, smaller than the palm of her husband’s hand. Being with her reminded me of my mother’s outrage at our leader’s condemnation of this woman. She’d done nothing wrong that I could see. While I believed that our leader had God-inspired visions that led him to the faith and the way we practiced it in Bethel, I also thought his humanity clawed through sometimes, tearing up what God intended. Finding Mary and Sebastian Giesy responsible for their infant’s death tore at my sense of fairness and the image I had of God. The God my parents shared with me offered hope rather than the picture of One who stunned His followers with tears over unknown sins so powerful they could cause their child’s death.

  They would try again, Mary told me, but she worried. “If I can’t name what I did wrong to cause the early birth and neither can Sebastian, it will happen again to us.”

  I wanted words to comfort her. “All we can do is ask forgiveness for whatever sins we commit, even the ones we can’t name,” I told her.

  Mary’s purest desire was to live her life so her children would be healthy and well and grow up strong. In my years of knowing her, she’d been close to that perfection, much closer than I’d ever be. She worked hard, lived cleanly, always sat attentively at the sermons, unlike me. She was even more generous than my mother, and my mother gave her all. She actually believed it important not only to give to others so they’d have what they needed, but also that in sharing into the common purse, what we gave became not just someone else’s, but ours.

  Unfortunately, considering Mary’s virtues highlighted my less-than-angelic ways and our leader’s dire warnings about childbirth. I might well be storing up some trouble of my own, when that day came, with my headstrong ways.

  I pitched those thoughts aside while Willie walked with me to his father’s home. He’d brought Gloriunda with him, and we held the child’s hands between us, lifting her every now and then into a swing. My arms ached, and I felt tired from all the nights of sleepless turning, trying to find a way for Christian to stay at home.

  “My father said he only had a moment,” Willie told his sister as we walked. “So not much time for swinging.”

  His sister giggled and leaned back, knowing we would catch her, knowing we’d both lift her up. “There’s no sense in fighting it,” I told him. “When a girl sets her mind to something …”

  “Ja,” he said. “Especially a German girl.”

  I had one chance, I knew, one opportunity to convince our leader that I should be allowed to go along. I was certain such a request had not occurred to him. He’d be expec
ting me to beg him to let Christian remain behind. My husband would never raise the issue of my going west. He’d only do so if our leader thought it wise or if he ordered Christian to do it. Christian would not directly disobey an order. If our leader had forbidden our marriage, I’d still be Emma Wagner with Christian a husband lost to me forever.

  “So. We talk again, Frau Giesy,” our leader said. He wore his long coat for the occasion, but he bent to work at his plants, mortar and pestle in hand. He hadn’t motioned me to sit, so I came to stand across from him at the high table. Dried plants lay like corpses between us. “You have news to share with me?” he said. “I hear you share news with many.”

  I swallowed. “No, no news.”

  “Ja, you tell our new families it would be better to live elsewhere than at Bethel.”

  “I only discussed what people already spoke of,” I defended, “after one of the Kentucky families left. I didn’t know them and had nothing to do with their leaving.”

  “You want to leave yourself, Frau Giesy?” He raised both bushy eyebrows at me. He reminded me of a horned toad.

  “I go where my husband goes,” I said. “ ‘Whither thou goest, I will go.’ I’m a faithful wife.”

  His voice softened. “Ruth of the Scriptures went with her mother-in-law, not her husband, Emma. Those are a widow’s words you speak.”

  “I fear I might become a widow,” I said, “should something happen to Christian on this journey west.”

  “Ah. You are fearful. This is why you ask to speak to me.” He motioned for me to take a chair, and then he put away his plant musings and pulled a chair up before me. Not the inquisition format, but one of a father to a child. He acted the kindly Belsnickel who granted gifts at Christmas. He was the “Father Keil” my own father referred to, someone loving who cared for each of us as though we were his own. So many loved this man. Why was I so suspicious? “Tell me what is on your mind.”

  “I … I think it would be good for Christian, my husband, if I went with him on this journey west.”

  He raised his eyebrows again, assessing me as though I were an object in the distance he wasn’t sure was friend or foe. “This is not even worth considering,” he said then and started to rise.

  “No, wait. Please, just entertain the possibility,” I said. “You always tell us to think creatively, to use our God-given abilities to solve a problem. Remember when you came up with the plan to make a drill to go through the pine logs so they could act as pipes with seams tarred tight? No one had ever done such a thing before.”

  “It was ingenious, that plan for the fields.”

  “Yes. So just consider my going along. Please.”

  He took it as a puzzle, I think, a small challenge from a mosquito buzzing at his ear. “Vell, then. You’d slow them down, I think. This is one reason you cannot go.”

  “I’d cook their meals. It would free them to make better time.”

  “You’d tire and they would have to stop for you. You’re tiny, Emma. Now your sister Catherine is a big girl—”

  “I’ve never been ill, not once. I know remedies, too, so if one of them became ill, I could minister to them. Perhaps even help others we meet along the trail. Wouldn’t this extend our Christian love, our Golden Rule, to serve strangers we find in need? We could even tell them of our mission. They might wish to join us. A woman’s presence would suggest family, safety.”

  “Our mission,” he said. “You assume much, Frau Giesy.”

  “Only that we are all communal here, so it is our mission whether we go or stay.”

  He stared at me. “The separation will make you grow fonder of each other, you and Christian, so your hearts will be fuller when you meet again.”

  “As it did this past year,” I said. I paused. “You may be right. Our love just grows stronger as we’re apart. Perhaps we should be separated and never discover each other’s faults. We will always be on a bridal trip.”

  He considered that, tapped his finger against his thigh. “Where there are women, there is dissension. How would you explain away this fact, should you go with the scouts?”

  “There’d be only one woman.”

  “And what of the others? What if all the spies wish to bring their wives or sisters or mothers, someone to take care of them, because you are going?”

  “Have they brought this to you? No? Then it is safe to say they have no interest in traveling with their men. I do. My husband has been taken from me—sent out in service, I mean—for more months of our marriage than not. I miss him, Father Keil.”

  “What does Christian say of this?”

  “He thinks you would not approve.” I ignored the fact that Christian also thought it wasn’t wise and that I was not to bring the subject up, ever. “But you know he wants a family and while he is your age, Father Keil, he is well behind you with your nine loving sons and daughters. How will we populate the new colony if not with the children of your loyal followers?”

  He adjusted his glasses. “We will populate it by taking more than two hundred people from Bethel with us when the site is found out west and by gathering new followers to our way.”

  He had that finality to his tone, and I could feel myself losing him to some prepared text. I’d have to put my last ladle into the dutch oven.

  “How am I ever to experience what God wants of my womanhood if my husband is never with me?” I wailed it almost. “It’s what you said God required of a woman, to conceive so she can know such pain as to be reminded of her sins and save her soul.”

  “You remember our discussion, then, that you were meant to bear the turmoil as penance for Eve’s sin?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You are wise, Father Keil.” I bit my lip against the bile I felt rising in my stomach for my demure demeanor when what I wanted to do was shout.

  “Perhaps you have learned something in these past months. I’ll think about this,” he said. “Then let Christian know.”

  “NO, no!” I grabbed at his arm as he stood. “If your answer is no, please don’t tell him I’ve come to you. Please. He’ll be distressed that I’ve disobeyed him.”

  “He told you not to come here?”

  “He told me not to even think about going with him. He never dreamed that I’d bother you with my concerns.”

  He pursed his lips, pressed his palms against his thighs, elbows out, and held them that way.

  “Perhaps I erred in preventing you from knowing all that a woman’s lot entails. Perhaps Christian needs to understand why I could not bless your marriage.” He stood, paced back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. I sat still as one of his discarded stems. Then he said, “I will send you out with them. You will have the chance to bear him a child, though such a hard journey might cause you to … but both of you believed you were meant to be together. Now you will have the chance to know for certain.”

  Would Christian blame me for my manipulation? Or would he celebrate that we now had what we both wanted with the direction, if not blessing, of our leader?

  “I wouldn’t consider it if Wilhelm hadn’t suggested it himself,” Christian said when we lay in bed that night. Our leader had called him into Elim, he told me, and with the others scouts gathered he’d affirmed Christian’s leadership of the journey. “Then he said that you would be going with us. It’s as though he read your mind, Liebchen. His kindness and his vision know no end.”

  “You don’t object, then?” I asked.

  “It’s an answer to my prayer. He said we’d waited long enough to begin our family. This is a double blessing.”

  “The first being?”

  “That Wilhelm thought of this on his own, that he understood then that ours is a marriage ordained by God.” He kissed me. “Still, if you were already with child, I’d make you stay behind even with Wilhelm’s suggestion that you could prepare meals for us and minister to any ills we have.” He stroked my face. “The trial of the journey might make it difficult for you to conceive, but it will be good to trave
l with you, to share what we’ll discover there together.”

  “Once in Oregon, we’ll find shelter and the promised land our leader says is there, and all will be well,” I said.

  So Wilhelm had let a lie stand, or at least had let Christian think my going with them was our leader’s idea. I wasn’t sure I liked conspiring with our leader against my husband, nor discovering that our leader and I had something like a deception in common.

  “All will be well, Liebchen,” Christian said and snuggled close to me.

  Within minutes I heard his breathing change to a man in restful sleep, but I lay awake for hours and wondered how far along the trail we should be before I told him we could expect an infant in October.

  7

  New Schooling

  I enjoyed the attention offered me by this journey’s twist. Some of the looks came with clicking tongues, as from Helena and Frau Giesy, though neither dared protest too much, since our leader had proposed this idea of my “being sent” as one of the scouts.

  “Even ordered that you go, I heard,” Helena said. “What strangeness. No woman has ever been told to go with scouts. Men have much to do to carry the message of our religion. Women will be in the way.”

  Her words reminded me of a time when I was thirteen and Christian Giesy had just returned from one of his journeys south. Perhaps I fell in love with him that hot September day, now that I think of it. We were all in the vineyard harvesting grapes, as the nights had been cool. Our baskets were full of the purple fruit, and several children swatted at bees to keep them from devouring our harvest. That was my task, too, to swat at bees.

  Christian rode by on his big horse, and as people recognized him, they stopped working and shouted hellos, welcoming him back. He shook hands with the men, and I remember their grips left purple stains on his wide, soft palms. He dismounted and wiped his wide forehead with the back of his arm, adjusted his hat and pushed it back on his head. His teeth were naturally white, not yellowed as my father’s, and his big smile seemed just for me when I handed him a tin cup of fresh water. “It’s pleasant to be served on a hot day, Fräulein Wagner,” he told me, treating me as though I was someone. “A traveler misses such tending when he has to look after things for himself day after day.”