A Clearing in the Wild

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “It’s a cup you made,” I told him.

  “So it is,” he said, turning the tin in his large hands. His long fingers wrapped around the cup gently, as though he held an instrument. He started to put the cup to his lips, then stopped as a wide-eyed boy stepped up beside me. Christian said his name, squatted to his height, then offered the cup to him. The boy drank, handed the cup back to Christian, then scampered off. “His mother’s a widow,” he said, as though I didn’t know. “Will you refill me?” He handed me his empty cup. I didn’t correct him; no one can fill up another. But I did replenish the liquid. “We both do the Lord’s work,” he said after he finished drinking. He turned to talk with the men, then I eased to the sidelines, watching until Mary called me back to my task.

  When I asked my father later what Christian meant by both of us doing the Lord’s work, my father quoted Scripture to me, James 1:27: “ ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’ That’s Christian Giesy for you, always serving. And you did too, offering cool water for that boy. Christian put the boy’s needs first. That’s what Father Keil wants for each of us, to serve in such ways.”

  I considered how I could serve on this trip despite the reservations some might have about my going along. Certainly, there wasn’t a rule against having fun while being a servant, was there?

  “You’ll take herbs with you,” Frau Giesy said. She became practical, accepting things without protest. She might have even enjoyed the challenge of preparing a woman for a scouting journey. She wore her hair braided three times like a crown on her head, unlike most of the women with chignons. But then her hair might have been quite curly, and such gaudiness she would want to hide behind braids. “Herbs offer a service you can provide, and will keep my son and the other scouts well.” She patted a loose hair into the braid ring. “I suppose he will worry less with you along.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I agreed. “I’ll make his long days light.”

  “Ja, I’m sure,” she said.

  “Let me show you about cold camps,” Louisa Keil told me at the storehouse one day, where I picked up flour for my mother. “You must make meals quickly for them, often without a campfire. We will prepare pemmican and jerky before you go. Many dried peaches, too. Willie I’ll send to listen carefully when men arrive to pick up their wagons. He can tell what overlanders claim as critical to take with them and what they think they can purchase in the West. Whatever else is needed, we’ll bring with us when we follow in a year or two.” She looked away, distracted. “Perhaps God wishes us to go around the Horn, travel by ship to California, then north?” She put her fingers over her mouth to silence herself. “What am I saying here? Herr Keil will decide such things. He always tells me, ‘You women stick to your Strudels, and let us men deal with travel and theology.’ ” She dropped her eyes, touched her fingers lightly to the part separating her hair, and slipped away.

  A part of me admired Louisa’s devotion and acceptance. But another part of me wondered if one day as a leader’s wife I’d need to be so docile. I pitched the thought.

  “Oh my, oh my,” Mary repeated, when we carried the milk bucket together. She’d pulled her hair back so tight it made her eyes look like almonds. “This is wise, you think? How can it be good? You with those men, those spies?”

  I wondered why some thought of us as spies, while others considered us scouts. Maybe it had to do with whether we were colonists seeking asylum in a hostile land, or whether we went ahead as foot soldiers, pioneers, making a way for our friends. I preferred the latter.

  “Our leader would not have suggested I go if it wasn’t a good plan,” I told her, already believing he had, in fact, presented the idea. How quickly our minds tell the story we prefer to remember.

  “My husband says you’ve angered Father Keil, that he sends you along … as punishment.”

  I blinked. “Maybe your husband underestimates his brother. Christian approves of my going. Our leader must trust Christian’s judgment and Christian trusts his. It’s going to be fine, Mary.” I took the heavy bucket from her to carry it on alone. “I’ll have lots to tell you when we return.”

  She followed along behind. “Once you find a site, Christian will have to stay to start clearing the wilderness, that’s what Sebastian says. I won’t see you for a year or more, not until we come west and find you.”

  “Sebastian doesn’t know everything about the future,” I told her. “Christian is the spiritual leader, and he’ll do what’s best for us all. That might mean coming back so he can safely lead all of you from Bethel.”

  “Ja, maybe,” Mary said.

  My mother shook her head when I told her about my going and my joy in it, but she wiped the worry from her face. “I hoped you would outgrow your need to be … headstrong.”

  “You and Papa joined our leader when you were older than I am now. You followed him into a wilderness, and see what it gained you. A good home in Bethel.”

  “We followed our hearts, believing God called us to come here,” she said. “Is God calling you to do this thing?”

  I asked a question back, something I noticed men did when they wanted to avoid giving answers. “Papa’s grandmother joined the Inspirationalists at the colony at Amana, isn’t that so? Didn’t she raise her voice and say what she thought best? She was accepted and respected. Men followed her inspirations. Maybe this desire to go with my husband into a wilderness is in my blood. Besides,” I said, picking at a loose thread on my plain wool dress, “our leader did suggest that I go along.”

  The more one said a thing the more it turned to truth.

  She smoothed my hair back into its chignon. “And did you protest to him, ‘Don’t send me west with my husband, I beg you’?”

  I shook my head.

  She sighed. “I suppose he did think of this himself. No woman has ever gone on any of the outreach missions before. Ever. Why now is the question. Unless Christian asked for it, but this I doubt based on his reservations.”

  “My husband spoke with you about this?”

  She blushed then. “Ach, the walls are too tin in this house.”

  She turned her back to me, resumed rolling the pie dough I’d interrupted her from finishing. When she spoke again I could barely hear her. “I will miss you, Emma. I will miss you terribly, my daughter who wishes to be known.”

  “But you’ll come when the others come in a year or so, after we send scouts back. You and Papa and Jonathan and David and everyone else. We’ll find a place that suits you. We’ll be a family again.”

  Her shoulders sank as she kneaded the dough. “Your father has moved enough, he says. And I am tired too. Too tired to start anew in a wild place.” When she looked at me again, I saw that floured fingers had left white streaks on her cheeks when she wiped at her tears.

  She wouldn’t see her grandchild unless I came back with the scouts. Well, that would be my task then, to ensure that my child would know what it was like to be held by a loving grandmother’s hands. Christian would have to assign someone else to stay in the Oregon Territory to begin building. He’d have to bring the news back himself, and me and his child with him.

  I considered telling my mother about the baby, but if anyone knew that I expected a child, especially Christian, then everything would change. It wasn’t enough that I wanted to begin our family for Christian’s sake. I cherished something more.

  “I’ll have to be the adventurous one for us all,” I told my mother. “And hope that Grandmother’s spirit travels with me.”

  We would leave on April 23, the day after our wedding anniversary. Our plan included arriving at Independence Rock by the Fourth of July so we would miss any of the heavy mountain snowfalls. That was all I knew from my husband about the arrangements. I learned little more from the women. The scouts shared few tidbits with their wives, mothers, or sisters.

  Louisa Keil, Mary Giesy, and
I prepared beef pemmican we wrapped in canvas bags that could hang over a horse’s neck just in front of the saddle.

  “Will you ride sidesaddle all that way?” Mary asked.

  “Of course she will,” Louisa answered for me. “She wouldn’t want to disgrace us by riding like a man would. What would people think?”

  “Why would we care what strangers thought?” I asked. “We’ll ride through groups of wagons and never see them again.”

  “Oh, but you might,” Louisa said. “As a spiritual leader, Christian must be always at his best. He might recruit new members. You’ll want to put your best foot forward, Emma.”

  “You think that would be the foot that hangs over that uncomfortable hook on the saddle all the way to the Oregon Territory?” I said but laughed. Louisa smiled like an indulgent mother at a challenging child.

  We wrapped cheese in chunks and made hardtack, heavy biscuits that would go into tack boxes especially designed for packhorses the scouts would lead behind them. I wondered if I’d have one, too, but Louisa said she didn’t know about that. She’d only been given instructions about the food. I thought she might know more, but Louisa supported our leader without question. She always had a response if someone raised a tiny question. He must confide in her to make her uphold his every word, but she shared little with me.

  Frau Giesy wrapped dried herbs inside flat tins with tight covers. “Remember,” she told me as I worked beside her, “ashes are a good way to stop blood flow from a cut.”

  My own mother gave me a sewing kit with several leather laces. “They can mend most anything,” she told me. We sewed pockets into my skirt hems and placed in them soap cakes the women of the colony had made together the previous fall, following the rendering of hogs. “I see your crinoline has ruffles stitched to it,” she said, raising an eyebrow. I started to explain, but she shushed me with her hand. “They’ll make good bandages should you need them, as they’re already cut in narrow strips.”

  “The underslip was a gift from Christian,” I told her.

  She patted my hand. “Even frills and needless adventures can be turned into something useful, Emma. If a person is willing to adapt and let the Lord lead.”

  Christian rose on Easter morning, then left without waking me up. I slept more soundly than I had before, and I wondered if dreamless rest helped me push away the little “strand of fear,” as I called it, sinking in to sleep whenever I thought of telling Christian he’d soon be a father.

  I dressed and met my parents downstairs, and with my arm wrapped through my brother’s, we all left together in the dawn for the Easter service. Crows lifted against the pink sunrise as we walked toward the church, and the smell of wet earth and freshly turned soil rose to my nose, a comforting scent. My parents moved on ahead as a slight breeze blew, and I stopped to tighten my dark bonnet.

  “Our last walk together for a while,” Jonathan said, “and you make us late.” He scolded, but when I looked up at him, he brushed at his eye. “Something blew in it,” he said, turning away.

  “I’ll be back,” I told him, catching up to him and grabbing at his elbow. I skipped out in front of him, all of them, and walked backward. “Next summer. After we find a place and return to get everyone here ready to come, we’ll walk again then.”

  Jonathan shook his head, no. “Something will happen. It always does.”

  “You might marry by then,” I said. “That would be a good something. We can write in between.”

  “The letters will take forever,” Catherine piped in. “It won’t be the same without you here, Emma. It just won’t be.”

  I couldn’t disagree with that.

  “You have Willie and Jack Giesy and Rudy and each other. The boys are full of fun, Jonathan, and those terrible rhymes. You can make them up too. You’ll be in the men’s band before long and—”

  He pushed past me, rushing ahead, leaving me behind to cover a distance that suddenly loomed desperately far and lonely.

  Our leader chose texts for his sermon that told the Resurrection story, of the new life that each of us has and how Christ’s ancient followers did not believe at first in the sighting of Him, or that He was no longer dead. Our leader even mentioned that a woman took the message first to the men, a fact of Scripture I had read but an admission that surprised me coming from our leader’s lips. “Ve must always look for Him, alive,” our leader concluded, “as Mary did.”

  It was a joyous sermon, one that reminded us that the Lord went before us and made our way, even when we sometimes had difficulty seeing His work within our lives.

  Then he spoke of Joshua being sent out to discover what kind of land awaited the Israelites and urged those he sent into the wild to trust in Providence to guide and protect us. “ ‘As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,’ ” quoted our leader.

  Then he invited each of the scouts to stand before him. I started to stand, but my mother held me back and shook her head. “Nein,” she whispered. My face felt hot. I hiccupped once.

  I wasn’t really a scout; I understood that then. I was merely a guest on this journey, not one who had anything to offer, not one whose journey needed a blessing.

  Our leader invited elders of the church to come forward. The men, my father included, placed their hands on the shoulders of the scouts while our leader prayed for their safety and safe return, referring to them all as spies going into the wilderness. I thought Christian would turn toward me, invite me up, but he didn’t. I felt my shoulders droop. My mother put her arm around me and whispered the same words directly into my ear after our leader said them. When I looked across, Jonathan stared at me, but I couldn’t read the message on his face.

  Following the Easter sermon and prayers, the children looked for baskets of hardboiled eggs several of us had hidden in the churchyard the day before. The women baked ten-inch-long rabbit cookies, and I heard Louisa’s youngest and my sister Louisa laugh in delight when they located the sweet treats. My mother said it reminded her of Easter celebrations in the old country: rabbit cookies and eggs, the laughter of family and friends. I’d miss this next spring, but I would plan an Easter hunt of my own for our child.

  At the community meal held later, some outsiders came by. Having heard about our large meals on special days, people from Shelbina often rode in and were invited to stay. We welcomed curiosity seekers—or at least we had. We always made guests feel welcome. Our leader said they were all potential recruits, though when they later declined involvement, he often blamed outsiders for bringing into our midst moral decay and the longing for lavish ways. This day, the two young men ate well and talked with the colony men about horseflesh and tack. No one spoke about our impending journey with outsiders present, so it was not until late that evening, after Christian’s final meeting with the spies, that I was alone with my husband.

  Christian hardly spoke a word as he undressed in our room.

  “Which horse will I ride?” I asked as we lay beside each other on the feather bed.

  I received no answer. Instead, I heard the soft breathing of a man taken in sleep.

  Is he angry with me? Will he be like our leader and share little with his wife? I told myself his silence grew from the journey’s weight, but it occurred to me that I had much to learn about my husband’s moods. Discovering them in the presence of eight other men on a cross-country journey might not be the place most young wives would choose to learn of their husbands’ dispositions. Well, so be it. It was not my fault I knew so little of him; our leader had kept us separated from the start. At last, we’d be together, I the only woman on the journey west.

  I pulled the quilt over my shoulder. I’d wanted to be singular and here I was. My husband snored softly, and I thought then as I drifted off to sleep that the schooling I’d just signed onto might be more than I had bargained for.

  8

  So Many Questions

  We prepared to leave early, to the melody of songbirds and crows. That
morning, I learned I’d ride sidesaddle on a sturdy chestnut-colored gelding named Fred. My father thought mules might be wise for the pack animals. Christian agreed and thanked my father for the suggestion, one we had no way of knowing would later serve us well.

  I savored the flushed faces of friends there to see us off, knowing our leader approved of their delaying the start of their workday in order to celebrate this adventure. Well, he didn’t call it an adventure. To our leader and his spies we performed the Lord’s work, undertook a serious and purposeful activity. I tried to remember that, but the sweet scent of spring and the profusion of faces there to see us off kept bringing me back to joy.

  Christian’s somber face reminded me of the concern expressed by our elders about why we were making this journey. The evils of the outside world pushed us into it. Outsiders lured Bethelites away. The railroad threatened to steam through our town, bringing strangers from even farther off to wash away the established colony routines. Our leader worried that we young people were losing our piety and ability to follow God. Hadn’t there been rumors of an unplanned infant born into the fold? Hadn’t that young girl and her family moved away? These intrusions brought us to this day, not the adventure of a journey into the unknown. Yet that uncertain unknown called to me.

  I took deep breaths, tried to soak up every sight and sound and smell of this stepping-off place. I would see things and hear things and know news no one here would learn of unless we told them. I coughed into my handkerchief to veil the grin that would not leave my face.

  I learned then of more details worked out in advance by the many meetings Christian held with the others. Fred, my horse, would walk in front of Opal, a white mule I had sometimes walked behind when spelling my brother in the fields. Opal’s packs carried a dutch oven and ten tin plates and cups that Christian, one of the colony’s finest tinsmiths, had made himself. We scouts—as I preferred to think of us—packed pemmican made not of buffalo meat, but of beef cut into thin flakes and hung to dry before a smoking fire. Papa pounded it into a powder, then packed it into skin bags and poured grease in it to make it solid and sound. We could eat it raw or boil it with a little flour and have a nutritious meal quickly prepared. Flour, tea, sugar, biscuits, Edward’s Preserved Potatoes, and cooking grease were packed in canvas bags, enough to take us all across, we hoped, knowing that as we moved west, the prices for products would go up.