A Clearing in the Wild

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  Back at the tarp, I would roll it onto a flat cedar bough, which seemed to reduce the muddy drag. Cedar needles were softer, not as prickly as the fir, but the bark still chaffed against my hands as I dragged. When I would reach Andy again, I’d rest for a bit, say a prayer, take a breath, then put my son on my back, place the bag around my neck and grab for the goat, leaving the canvas behind. If I began to think about how far I’d have to go like this, I’d make myself concentrate on something else. Reality would strip me bare, and I might simply stop. All I would think about was the next step and conserving energy for my work, wasting no effort on future foes I faced nor past disasters. My soul kept me awake.

  Carrying my son ahead helped me find the best path and gave me short respite from the aching of my shoulders and my legs that hauling the tarp induced. I’d settle Andy down while I could still see the slug, as I called the canvas; then when I returned for it, I was never far from Andy should danger work its way toward him. We made enough noise with my grunting and his crying out for me “Mama, Mama” off and on that I couldn’t imagine any self-respecting cougar or bear would even be in the region, let alone curious enough to try to find us or do us harm. I did once wonder if the goat might attract them as a perfect noontime meal. And once when Andy cried, I remembered Sarah telling me that Indian children are kept quiet during berry-picking because their cries sound much like bear cubs, and a mother bear might seek out the sounds.

  I pitched those thoughts away.

  I pitched many thoughts away. Thoughts about what my action might mean to my marriage, thoughts about where I was and what had I done. The trees did offer solace as I made my way through them in the mist and rain. Their stillness and stability made me almost worshipful. We hadn’t had a church or any fellowship or any time to even read the Scripture because we all fell wet and tired onto our moss beds. I vowed to change that once I reached my destination.

  Near the riverbank, Andy and I fell into a mud hole up to my knees. The goat bleated as he jerked the rope out of my hand. The weight of the mud and its sucking felt like a too-tight cape around me. I thought then that maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe we were meant to endure hardships, and it didn’t matter where we endured them: in a lean-to or in a mud hole. Maybe Christian was right about trials gouging out our character and that avoiding them just made the next carving more grievous.

  Would we be stuck here? Would Andy and I sink, then be consumed by bears? That thought gave me new energy, and I grabbed at shrubs and vines at the river’s bank, yanking at them until I pulled myself free. I lay on my stomach, panting with effort, the sound of the river rushing behind me.

  There had to be more than one way to carry out God’s plans. That’s all I was doing: finding another way. It had been my way that once set upon a course I found turning back a trouble. I believed Christian and I shared that trait. I was doing this not just for the men but for my husband. I, too, like Job’s wife, was duty-bound.

  Dusk greeted us as we made our final approach toward the four walls of the first hut of the Giesy place. When I’d left that morning, after the men headed into the woods, I thought I’d go to Woodard’s Landing. But once on my way I believed going to the Giesy place would make more sense. It was the same distance from where the men worked, and it offered opportunities to redeem myself once my husband came after us. I hadn’t yet entertained the idea that he might not.

  I’d come three miles from where the men worked, though I’d walked it twice, pulled myself through knee-deep mud carrying Andy, found a different route back for the tarp. Even the goat stayed close to Andy, and by the last half mile or so, I didn’t have to take the time to tether it; it trusted I’d be returning.

  “At least they weren’t working on our site, Andy, or we’d have had to come seven miles or more through brambles and trees.” Opal bleated and butted, jerking both Andy and me to my knees. “We’re almost there,” I scolded.

  When I arrived, I stood in the doorway of the hut, the sound of my own voice an icy slice into silence. It was not the quiet that invigorated, I decided, that tingled one’s toes or lightened the spirit. It was heavy and dense, as weighted as an anchor. Dark trees towered over us, filling the sky except for the clearing where the hut stood, its uncaulked walls and open rafters making it look like an animal carcass of ribs more than a possible home.

  But we’d made it.

  In that heavy silence I unrolled the small canvas that held our personal things as rain dribbled off my cape hood. I found sticks to hold the canvas up enough to keep the rain from our faces through the night. We ate jerky and I milked Opal, and both Andy and I drank our fill of sweet milk. In an odd sort of way, it felt homey here. The accomplishment of a thing, even so simple as milking a goat, could give pleasure.

  My mother’s face came to me, her standing at the doughboy preparing bread, a fire in the fireplace, my brother bent over his studies awaiting my father’s return for the day, my sisters chattering as they tied one another’s braids into loops that hung at their backs. It had been a simple life in Bethel but a good one.

  A dry life too.

  What was the point of our being in this Willapa place so far from those we loved, so engaged in a labor that even when completed would seem primitive to those who led orderly, tidy lives back in Bethel? Our brick homes there seemed luxurious compared to these humble dwellings. And where were the people we hoped to influence with our ways? The Woodards thought we were stubborn, maybe even Dummkopf. People lived in Bruceport off the bay, Christian said, but we wouldn’t go there much except for supplies now and then. We rarely saw anyone else, rarely took time to know what filled the lives of our distant neighbors. We focused only on “the mission,” securing an isolated place where we’d be safe when God brought about the destruction of the world. But what if we destroyed ourselves in the process? What if we only saw one another and never touched the world around us at all? If this was the site chosen for us, then where were the people we were to touch with our lives?

  I quickly tossed that disloyal thought. My husband would find a way to make sense of this work—if he didn’t die of consumption or exhaustion first. I pushed aside the ache of his absence.

  One of the true blessings of physical work is that it presses a body to the point of fatigue, so sleep falls upon one like a brick against the hearth. Andy snored softly, our first night alone inside four walls since we’d left Fort Steilacoom. I laid my head down with images of my family dancing in my dreams and, blessedly, fell asleep.

  In the morning, I shoved aside the tarp and looked up through the open rafters of the log house. I wondered if Jonah felt like this inside that whale, the rib cage arching over him, his fate to wait.

  To wait was a luxury I didn’t have. I lifted my arms above my head to stretch and felt my shoulders protest. My whole body ached in new places, my sides, my forearms, my thighs. All the dragging and hauling told this morning story. Maybe I should rest today, I thought. But no, the muscles would only groan again when I began the work of covering the ridge pole, and I wanted it finished when Christian found me. I knew he would; just not when. I’d left a note to say I’d gone to a drier place and for him not to worry. He’d assume the Woodards’ but he’d be wrong. I wouldn’t take the feather tick Sarah offered either, but I’d make a home in this wet weald, and in so doing maybe Christian would see that resting until spring made sense.

  While Andy slept, I milked the goat who’d bedded down beside us. The elk bladder Hans had given me to hold water and milk held most of what Opal gave, and it would stay fresh until we could drink it later. For now, I needed to see what it would take for me to get the tarp up onto the rib cage of this hut to form a roof.

  As I stepped outside the four walls, I pulled my mother’s cape around my shoulders, surveying my task. The goat followed me out, butted against the back of my knees, but I kept my balance. At least my physical balance. Imagining the work ahead threatened my emotional one. Begin to weave / God provides the thread. I smiled t
o myself at that thought. Weaving was about balance. I had to find that kind of equilibrium in my life.

  21

  Just a Woman

  The drizzle continued as I worked to find two poles. I wanted them ten to twenty feet long. Surely it won’t keep raining every day until Christmas. Even angels’ tears had to stop sometime. But I couldn’t let the climate change my course.

  Andy wailed to be set free, but I kept him in his board. He drank his milk, which quieted him. “As soon as I figure out what to do about the roof,” I told him, “I’ll put dough on a stick and cook it.” I thought about trying to bat at one of the big fish, as I’d seen the Indians do, but the river ran high and swift with rains, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near it.

  A strip of venison jerky quieted Andy as I freed his arms from the board, tying the rawhide across his chest. He chewed. I roped Opal to a tree near some brush she promptly ripped at. “I wish our keep were as easy,” I told the goat.

  The design of the Indian board with its woven shelf out over Andy’s head acted like the brim of a hat and kept rain from his face. His eyes followed my movements, and I could see both my brothers in them and Christian, too. “Mama, look,” he’d say, and I’d turn to his pointing. “What’s that?” he’d ask, and I’d tell him in English and German, sometimes even using Swiss words. But mostly I told him to wait because I was busy. And I was.

  The axe weighed heavily against my legs as I walked. I’d taken the tool with me, though I risked Christian’s upset. But I needed it for the windfalls I hoped to find, something slender, maybe a tree pushed over or snapped off by a larger one. I entered the edge of the forest, then heard the rustling, though I couldn’t see it. No snorts, just the sounds of something moving through the trees. Maybe Christian had already caught up with us!

  I eased my way back, picking up Andy with the goat following as we returned to the inside of the log walls to wait.

  When Christian didn’t appear, I began to worry about the noise. The activity of the men working each day kept the bears and other would-be predators away. Safety lived inside that colony corral. We were alone here, at my choosing.

  I considered praying for our safety. The colony teacher, Karl Ruge, had told us we could pray for anything, that we didn’t need a priest, as in times of old, to intercede. But surely God would frown at my putting ourselves in injury’s clutches, then asking for reprieve.

  “You’ll have to stay in here, Andy. You too, Opal,” I said. I piled sticks and boughs up against the doorway that lacked any other kind of covering. Building a permanent door would be a new task too, but first, a roof. That’s what we needed.

  I reentered the forest. To make more noise, hoping to stave off unwieldy beasts, I sang old German songs and hymns my mother taught me, though all singing stopped when I spotted a fallen tree I thought I could manage.

  I chopped at the side branches and then began the work of pulling the log through the woods toward the cabin. I looked for the axe marks on the trees I’d made to note my way in and then back out. It was noon when I dragged the log to the cabin and let it lie. One log, really just a branch. A half a day. I pulled away the branches from the doorway and set my son free from his board. Then I took my flint and burned some cedar duff, establishing a cooking fire.

  I took water from the small canvas set to catch the rain. After drinking hot tea, I returned to my work. By the time I got that slender log braced up against the wall of the cabin, I hungered for food. I told time by my stomach rather than any sight of the sun. Andy screamed his protest at being confined for so long, but I had to put him back into the board. I wondered how Pap had taught her child to be so quiet in his. A better mother she was than I. Hearing my son’s wails, I knew that wouldn’t be hard.

  I untied the rawhide strips that kept him secure and lifted him from the board, holding him close to me. His cheeks felt cold, and I realized the fire had died while I’d been dragging in the tree. I may have been successful at one of my tasks, but the second long branch I needed would have to wait until we were warm once again.

  The work fatigued, reminded me of how weak I had become. I puffed hard as I braced the second log at an angle up against the wall of the cabin, felt my legs wobble as I headed back into the trees to look for a third. This one would be longer, and by the time I found it and dragged it close, dusk had fallen and I collapsed. We’d have to spend another night beneath the small canvas.

  I’d never ached so much nor been as tired. Tears squeezed from my eyes, and I hoped as I fell asleep that the branches filling the doorway would be enough to keep us safe. Andy coughed once and I held my breath. Please don’t let him get sick. Please just let him sleep.

  In the morning, it snowed, the flakes falling through the open rafters and covering the muddy floor. I felt defeated until Andy stuck his tongue out to capture them and he giggled. His joy tweaked my own. “It’s not often it snows inside a house, is it?” I asked. He laughed again and raised his hands to catch more.

  I could see my breath as I puffed to build up the fire that had stayed through the night. Such small blessings gave me joy, and I decided that was how I’d restore my vigor, reminding myself of what God had provided and what I’d already accomplished, and that I did this thing for the good of the colony, for the good of my husband.

  My son and the goat settled, I rolled the canvas out full, laid the log at one end, then rolled the wet canvas up around it. It lay as a crossbeam on the ground, against the two logs leaned against the wall of the cabin. Now the work truly began. My goal was to somehow push the rolled tarp up onto the leaning logs, and when it reached the roof edge, to unfurl the tarp which was wrapped around the log, pushing it up over the ridgepole and letting it fall down over the far side, unfurling the canvas with it. It would be my roof. If I could make it work.

  Early efforts frustrated. I rolled it halfway up the leaning poles with little trouble. But once it hit a certain pitch, it slid back down, and my weakness prevented me from stopping it. I had to start again. I didn’t want it unrolling onto the leaning poles, and that became a problem as well. A Greek myth came to mind, of a god sentenced to push a piece of dung up a hill and having it roll back over him so he had to start again. I even tried to pull the rolled tarp up by wrapping a rope around the cylinder I’d formed, climbing up the leaning poles to the top of the walls, and tossing the rope over the top to pull it from the other side. But it was too short. Some tasks needed more than one person to complete them.

  After the fourth try, this time using another short log to push up against the tarp only to have it nearly reach the edge before it fell back against me, I simply sat in the melting snow and cried. Maybe I wasn’t large enough to do this; maybe I wasn’t strong enough. Every muscle protested. I kept looking in the direction I’d come from, hoping Christian would soon figure out where we’d gone.

  “Mama, look!” Andy said, spying something out through the uncaulked walls.

  “Your papa?” I said.

  But it wasn’t Christian.

  Two Indian men appeared, dressed well against the weather with bark capes that draped over their shoulders and hung down to their knees. A fur of some kind showed beneath the cape. They wore hats the color of cedar and simply appeared through the mist. I moved away from the hut, hoping they’d follow me and not find my son.

  But Andy shouted again. “Ja,” I whispered, “I see.” I tried to keep my words calm, though my heart pounded.

  They stood at the cabin’s edge. “How can I help you?” I said in German. “Maybe some biscuits?” I had a little more flour and could mix it with water and bake it in the fire. I’d have to go inside the hut for that, and then they might take Andy or the goat. I looked at my makeshift door. They could dismantle it with a sneeze.

  Instead, their eyes moved to the tarp. “Oh, please don’t want that, please,” I pleaded. If they took my tarp, this would all be for nothing!

  One said something to the other. “I need it,” I said, wishing I k
new Chinook or Chehalis or Shoalwater or whatever language they spoke. Words could be such bridges, but the lack of them built walls.

  They moved toward the tarp and I wailed. “Nein, please!” They squatted at the tarp, each at one end, and they lifted. They are taking my tarp! But instead of walking off with it, they lifted the tarp rolled around the log, and the two of them hoisted it up over the top, then let it finish rolling over the other side. I heard my long branch drop with a thud on the soft ground. One of the men held the tarp near the leaning poles to keep it from being pulled up and over. It was just as I’d imagined it would work.

  The taller of the two men said something to the other, who disappeared into the trees for a time, then returned with long strands of some kind of vine that he’d cut with a knife he carried at his waist. I hadn’t noticed the knife before. Sometimes it’s good to be blinded by fear.

  Then they did something I wouldn’t have thought to do: they lifted one of the leaning logs up onto the roof the length of the tarp. With the vines, they lashed the tarp to the edges of the outside rafters and used the log to secure the length of the tarp. It would prevent the wind from lifting it up, and it hadn’t occurred to me to do that—not that I could have by myself. They repeated their effort on the other side, and I stood back when they finished, amazed at this gift in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t mind in the least that I hadn’t done it all by myself.

  “How can I ever thank you?” I said, smiling, bowing, hoping my actions told them how grateful I was, how embarrassed that I’d thought they were thieves. “Kloss,” I remembered. “Good. Danke. I’ll fix tea for you, ja?” I motioned with my hands as though to drink, and they looked at each other and the taller one shook his head. They both had round faces, their woven hats arched out to keep rain from their eyes.