My Father's World

by Michael Phillips

  Something about eating outdoors made everything taste wonderful. It wasn’t like eating on the dusty trail like we had hundreds of times in the last months. This was an official picnic, with a blanket and everything. I wish Ma could have been with us. She would have liked Mrs. Parrish.

  By the time I’d finished my apple, the urge to wander and run about had disappeared. The warm sun felt so good on my face, and the fragrant earth, still moist and warming up from the sun, was sending out so many delicious, grassy smells that I thought this must be what heaven was like. Maybe Ma was up there right now, having a picnic of her own and watching us with a smile on her face.

  Ma was on my mind a lot. Sometimes I’d come to myself and realize I’d been thinking a long while about something she’d said or something we’d done together. That happened on this day as we sat there and I was looking around at the woods and grass and trees and blue sky and clouds. Ma wasn’t really one to talk about God all that much, not like Mrs. Parrish did. But every once in a while something would kinda burst right out of her, and now that she was gone, every once in a while I’d remember something like that she said.

  It was so quiet and peaceful sitting there, I recalled a time Ma and I were out walking alone together back home. It was a day just like this one—warm, with nice smells, the grass springy under our feet. It was just the two of us, and Ma had her arm around me, and we weren’t really saying much.

  Then all at once Ma exclaimed, “It’s a beautiful place, ain’t it, Corrie—this world God made!”

  “It sure is, Ma,” I said.

  “An’ don’t you ever forget, Corrie, that God’s your father too. And you don’t need to worry none about not havin’ an earthly pa. ’Cause God’ll watch over you all the better for that.”

  “Yes, Ma,” I said, though it’s only now, with her gone, that I’m starting to realize what she meant.

  “This great big beautiful place, it’s your Father’s world, Corrie, and you’re His daughter too, not just mine. And this world’s your home wherever you go in it. Always remember that, Corrie, ’cause you won’t always have me.”

  Her words hardly stuck in my mind then, but they turned out to happen sooner than she figured. And now as we sat there with Mrs. Parrish it all came back clear as if it’d happened yesterday. And I looked around again and thought about what Ma’d said, “It’s your Father’s world, Corrie, and you’re His daughter . . .” And the memory made me feel a little more at home in this strange place, just like Ma said I should.

  I suppose the others were thinking thoughts of their own too, ’cause we all just kept lying there relaxed and cozy in the sun, listening to Mrs. Parrish tell us so many interesting things. She told us what it had been like right after the gold rush broke out, and we were full of questions. It’s a wonder she didn’t get sick of us! After a while, I saw even Zack starting to warm up to her and smile a time or two. She and Captain Dixon were like a ma and pa to us for a spell, at a time when we really needed them. I’ll never forget what they did for us. People can be mean and selfish, I don’t doubt. But then people can be nice sometimes, too, and when they are, it sure makes the world a better place. I just hope when I grow up, I can be that way to somebody who needs it—kind and understanding like Mrs. Parrish was to us.

  She must have answered a thousand questions, then gradually we began asking about her. She and her husband got here early in 1849, almost with the first group of immigrants from the East. She said her husband had been having itchy feet for a new adventure for some time, and that the minute news of the gold strike broke in the East he was talking about the opportunities to be had.

  “Why, I was practically packing up our things the next week!” she said with a laugh. “I knew from the very start that he’d have to go. It was in his blood from the first instant,” she added, and a faraway look came into her eyes, as if she was having to fight away some tears that the memory brought. I knew the feeling, because I had it almost every night when I was alone and awake after the young’uns were asleep. I’d think of Ma, and it would come over me again that she was really gone and wasn’t ever coming back. I knew the kind of pain Mrs. Parrish felt and so I asked no more questions about her husband.

  “Men are that way, you know,” she said after a little pause, looking at Zack and Tad with a different kind of smile. “Sometimes there are things they just have to do, and there’s no use trying to stop them. Conquering something new . . . bold . . . adventurous—it’s part of the way God made men.”

  She took a deep breath, and glanced away, probably trying to push back the memory, and then looked back with a fresh smile on her face, just as Tad asked:

  “Did you and your pa come on a wagon too, Miz Parrish?”

  She laughed. “No, honey, we came in a ship around Cape Horn. But I came with my husband, not my pa. Do you know where Cape Horn is?”

  Tad shook his head. I didn’t know exactly where it was either, but Ma always said it was a way only the rich could afford.

  “Cape Horn is at the very bottom of South America,” Mrs. Parrish went on. “We got on a ship in New York and sailed all the way down the coast of the United States, through the Caribbean, down past Brazil and Argentina and the rest of South America, around the Cape, and then up the other side, past Peru and Panama, then Mexico, and finally here to California and San Francisco.”

  “Wow!” exclaimed Tad. “That musta taken years!”

  She laughed pleasantly again. “No, Tad, but several months.”

  Mrs. Parrish never said much about her life in Boston, but she must have been rich. The only thing she said was that she was one of only a handful of women in California in 1849, and that she had to forget her genteel Boston ways mighty quickly.

  “Mining was hard work back then,” she said. “It still is, of course, but methods were so primitive at first. That’s why we wanted to bring in newer and better equipment for the men to use.”

  “Did you mine for gold, Mrs. Parrish?” asked Emily.

  “I didn’t much myself,” she answered, “though I tried my hand at the pan a few times and helped my husband with the sluice box. We were mostly here to set up the business, but Mr. Parrish couldn’t keep from trying his hand at anything that struck his fancy. We made a pretty good strike, too, that first spring after we were here. But then he came down with tuberculosis the next winter and couldn’t keep up with the work. That’s when we decided to get into the freight business to go along with selling supplies. ‘If we can’t get it out of the ground, Almeda,’ I remember him saying to me, ‘then we’ll haul it over the ground for those that do. We’ll sell them the equipment to mine with, let them do all the hard work, then transport it once they’re done. It’s an ingenious scheme!’ And it was, too. I’ve made a good living these three years. I’m only sorry my husband couldn’t have lived to see his scheme, as he called it, materialize.”

  Again that faraway look came over her face, and she looked away.

  After a few more questions we started talking about the town. She told us that two years ago Miracle had a population of over two thousand.

  “It was mostly men, and almost every one of them a miner with a dream of getting rich in a month or two. Most of them didn’t live right in town, of course, but on their claims in the surrounding foothills, in shacks and cabins and whatever they could throw together. They weren’t concerned with their living quarters, only their search for gold. But after a winter or two, with most of the men working eighteen- and twenty-hour days, and not finding the riches they dreamed of, a good many left. There’s probably only a thousand or so left around Miracle now. There’s still gold here, and the town’s still one of the active ones in the foothills, but only a few really find much.”

  We’d been so absorbed in everything Mrs. Parrish was saying that we didn’t even notice when Becky wandered away. Mrs. Parrish had been telling of a fellow who had come from the East with a box of “California Gold Grease,” expecting to rub it all over his body and roll
down a golden hill while a fortune stuck to his skin. Zack laughed and was about to tell Becky, who was always getting into a pile of dirt, that that kind of gold mining would suit her, when we suddenly realized she wasn’t there.

  We looked around nearby, but she was nowhere in sight and none of us had any idea when she’d slipped away. Usually Becky’s presence was plainly noticed by everyone. But I recalled Ma saying more than once that when Becky got quiet, trouble was brewing. We called and yelled, but all our shrieks brought no response.

  Mrs. Parrish told me to stay with Tad and Emily while she and Zack went to go search in the woods. The little clearing, surrounded by trees and that wonderful stream, had seemed so inviting an hour earlier. Now all of a sudden it appeared dim and dangerous. This country was not like the little wood at the edge of our farm near Bridgeville. This was the frontier, the wild West, vast and unexplored.

  Then my mind started thinking about Indians. The Indians around here were supposed to be friendly, but my imagination immediately conjured up images of the Sioux, Comanche and Apache we’d heard so many awful stories about coming across the plains.

  But I wasn’t as worried about Indians as I was about cliffs and gulleys and rock slides and deep pools in the streams. Becky might get herself into any kind of danger, even as tough and brave as she was, in this rough, foothills country.

  In the distance, the calls of my brother and Mrs. Parrish floated through the air unanswered. Growing afraid, sensitive Emily wrapped her arms tight around me and Tad snuggled close.

  About half an hour passed, and Zack and Mrs. Parrish’s beckoning voices grew dimmer and dimmer as they went farther from the clearing. I wanted to get up and go help them, but I knew I had to stay with the youngsters. Just when I thought I could stand the uncertainty no longer, off in the distance I saw a man on a horse approaching.

  I hardly had time to know whether to be glad or afraid, because when the rider got a little closer, I saw that it was none other than Uncle Nick’s partner, Mr. Drum.

  He rode into the clearing, sitting proud in the saddle, so sure of himself.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked in a gruff tone that made me tremble a little inside.

  “We came for a picnic with Mrs. Parrish,” I answered timidly, just staring up at him. He looked about ten feet tall from where the three of us still sat on the ground. “But Becky’s gone and got lost.”

  “A picnic . . . in these parts?” he half-exclaimed, shaking his head grimly. “Blasted woman! Where are they lookin’?”

  I pointed to where I had last seen Zack and Mrs. Parrish. Without another word, he wheeled his bay mare off in the opposite direction. I couldn’t tell from the look of annoyance on his face if he was going to join the search or was fed up with the lot of us and had taken off again—this time for good.

  More time passed. Pretty soon, as the quiet around us seemed to get deeper and more eerie, I started to think maybe Zack and Mrs. Parrish had gotten lost, too. I had no such worry about Mr. Drum. Finally Zack came trudging out of the brush all covered with dirt, followed in another minute or two by Mrs. Parrish, who looked especially dismal. She knew better than any of us what getting lost in this country could mean.

  I told them Mr. Drum had come, but neither of them seemed too excited. Maybe they had no hope he would take up the search. But I tried to keep faith. And when I saw the bay mare nose its way through the bushes, I couldn’t help grinning real big. There was Becky perched up on the saddle in front of Mr. Drum, his strong arm around her chubby frame.

  “This who you’re lookin’ for?” he said, reining in his horse. He then lifted Becky out of the saddle as if she weighed no more than a feather and set her down. He was looking very stern, his mood made all the worse by the delighted look on Becky’s face. She didn’t seem the least remorseful for all the stir she had caused.

  “We were at our wits’ end, Mr. Drum,” said Mrs. Parrish in a more helpless tone than I had yet heard from her. “It is providential that you came by when you did.”

  “Providential’s what you call it, is it?” he replied in a tone full of meaning that went far beyond my years.

  Mrs. Parrish just looked at him and wrinkled her brow, as if she didn’t have any notion of what he was talking about. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re sayin’ it’s just pure coincidence that you came up this way?”

  “I assure you, we were just out for a picnic.”

  “And you didn’t know me and Nick’s claim was up here?”

  “I have no idea where your claim is.”

  “Is that so, Mrs. Parrish?” he said suspiciously. “Why, I’m real surprised that a woman of your moral and religious reputation would stoop to lies, especially in front of children.”

  He might have been riled, but I also thought maybe he enjoyed putting Mrs. Parrish on the spot. The two of them didn’t seem to like each other much.

  She looked down at the ground, pink flushing her cheeks. I couldn’t tell at first if she was angry, and about to shout something back at Mr. Drum about his nerve at making such an accusation, or if maybe she was embarrassed at what he’d said. I guess I would never really know. At least she didn’t yell at him.

  “Well,” she said after a moment, “I don’t know exactly where your claim is.”

  He continued to nod skeptically.

  “And even if perhaps I did hope to encounter you or that missing partner of yours,” she added, the heat rising in her voice, “it was a precious small hope that I would discover any help for these poor children from that quarter!”

  Mr. Drum opened his mouth to reply—a response which was bound not to be too nice, because what she said made him mad. But before he could, their conversation was interrupted by Tad’s voice.

  “Did Uncle Nick come home yet?” he asked, “Are you here to take us to his house?” It was an awfully bold question from such a high-pitched voice. I wish I could have taken it back for him.

  “Now look, I ain’t—” Mr. Drum began. Then he stopped and got down off his horse. Slowly he walked toward Tad, then knelt down beside him on one knee. Tad’s eyes were huge as he watched the man approach.

  “Look, boy,” he said softly. “I’m doing everything I can to find your uncle. I rode clean out to Soda Springs yesterday, but he wasn’t there. Tomorrow, I’m going to get up before sunrise and ride down to Gold Run, Yankee Jim’s, Coloma, Shingle Springs, and Placerville. And if I still ain’t found him, I may go out to Grizzly Flats. Them’s all places he sometimes gets a hankering to see. But until I can find him, there just ain’t much more—”

  Mrs. Parrish’s voice interrupted him before he could go any further. “I have to leave morning after next myself,” she said, first to him and then with an apologetic glance at me. “I was trying to find the right time to tell you.”

  She paused, then looked back at Mr. Drum. “These children need a guardian, Mr. Drum. Today’s near mishap is further evidence of that.”

  He rose and walked back toward his horse.

  “Wouldn’t have happened at all if you hadn’t got the fool idea of bringing them out into this wilderness!” he retorted.

  “Be that as it may, the fact remains that in another place, in New York where they came from, they might possibly have been able to fend for themselves. But such cannot be expected of them in this land. And I’m afraid their claim to an interest in the stake you and your partner, their uncle, share, binds their fate inextricably to yours—whether you find Mr. Matthews or not.”

  “You just don’t understand, Mrs. Parrish.” He was not arguing now. In fact his voice sounded almost contrite, pleading. The large, tough-looking man seemed to be struggling with some feeling inside which he wanted to keep from showing anyone.

  “I do not know you well, Mr. Drum,” said Mrs. Parrish. “You have been an enigma in these parts ever since you and Matthews came, so folks tell me. But one fact has always come through as part of what people say about you—your reputation, as I believe me
n call it. And that fact is that you are a man of honor. I simply cannot believe that you would be so derelict in your duty as not to step in if their uncle cannot be found. These children must not be left unprotected.”

  “It won’t do them no good to have a man—especially one like me—carin’ for them.”

  “I disagree,” said Mrs. Parrish firmly. “In this country, I might even go so far as to say they need the care of a man more than a woman.”

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am, I just don’t see it your way. They need a ma right now, and since they ain’t got one—” His voice seemed to quiver momentarily. “Then I figure they need a woman, and you seem to be it. If you ask me, Ma’am, it’s you who’s hidin’ from your duty to the kids. And besides, like I said before, you don’t understand nothin’ about me, and I’ll thank you to keep your nose outta tryin’.”

  He turned and swiftly mounted his horse, and that was the end of their talk. I almost felt like the man was hiding something, and that if he kept talking one minute more he might . . . but that’s plumb silly! Grown-ups, tough men like him, don’t cry.

  He glanced around at each one of us kids, with a look that said he hoped we might understand, even if she didn’t, then dug his heels into the bay’s flanks and was off.

  Chapter 9

  A Surprise for Us All

  Two days after the picnic, we got more than one surprise. The first came when Mrs. Parrish called us for breakfast.

  I honestly couldn’t tell if she was the same lady—except for her feminine figure, I might have even thought she was a man. She had on well-worn buckskin breeches, and a tan leather jacket with long fringe on the bottom and sleeves. On her feet she wore a pair of high leather boots. And when breakfast was over, she grabbed a dusty, wide-brimmed hat, a pair of heavy gloves, and led us outside.

  We walked with her down to the freight office, and waited while she brought one of the empty wagons around. She had already gone over everything with us at her house, what we were to do while she was gone. Now we just waited to say goodbye.