The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

by J. Anderson Coats

  I hand my bowl to Inez. “No, I’d better take him. Mrs. Dem—Wright won’t like it if she finds out I imposed on you.”

  “Shall we let Jer decide?” Mr. W asks.

  I open my mouth to say, Jer’s too little to decide anything. He won’t care so long as his belly is full of strawberries and there’s someone to put him on their shoulders.

  “Mill! Mill! Bzzzzzzzzzzz!” Jer sings, like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world to just decide things and expect grown-ups to listen.

  Jer’s never had a father. Not one he remembers, anyway. This way is better, I think. This way, he’s always had an Uncle Charlie, just like he’s always had a Mama and a Daney. By the time Jer’s old enough to reckon what he doesn’t have, he’ll be more than happy with what he’s got in front of him.

  20

  WE MAKE IT BACK TO the cabin just as the last bit of evening is turning into night. Jer is hard asleep, and he looks like a baby again as Mr. W carries him against his shoulder all the way from Seattle to the camp landing and then up the lake trail to the cabin. Mrs. D takes Jer inside while I help Mr. W look in on the chickens and garden.

  “You’re quiet,” Mr. W says as I haul up the water bucket. “Didn’t you have a good time in town? I thought girls squealed and chattered and . . . such.”

  “I did. I reckon.”

  Mr. W peers at me. “You reckon?”

  Mrs. D hates it when I whine. But this is Mr. W, who took Jer to see the mill and thinks nothing of giving me chores like cutting kindling and skinning animals as if they’re ordinary.

  “I miss them, is all.” My throat gets stoppery. “My friends. Evie Mason and Jenny McConaha and the Denny girls.”

  “You got to spend the whole day with them.” Mr. W sounds puzzled.

  “Yes, and tomorrow the four of them will go to Evie’s and play dolls, or they’ll go to the woods fort or pick flowers in Mrs. Denny’s garden, and here I’ll be. Just me and the trees until who knows when. Next Independence Day, for all I know.”

  Mr. W pours water into two waiting buckets. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Of what?”

  “That whoever came to live here with me might miss town society.” He smiles sadly. “I couldn’t think of living in that nest of vipers. Self-important, self-interested blowhards, the lot of them, who couldn’t agree a quarter’s two bits. They’d just see a quarter and come to blows over whose it was.”

  I take one of the buckets and start pouring it in the furrow between rows of corn.

  “Your stepmother knew what she was taking on,” Mr. W adds. “She couldn’t wait to be away from a place where no one could talk about anything but how courageous and stouthearted and precious the Mercer Girls were. I thought she told you we’d be out here. I thought you’d know.”

  I can see her considering such a plan. I can even see her shouting it in a fit of rage. For her to actually quit Seattle with clear and open eyes—Mrs. D has a sturdier constitution than I thought.

  Mr. W refills my bucket, and together we water the garden. Bucket by bucket, row by row. It’s soothing, my feet in the dirt and birds chirring in the falling daylight. Already it feels like a normal chore, like checking the traps or grubbing stumps. Everything is greening up big and leafy and spry, the turnips bushy and the squash twining everywhere and a mess of carrots almost springing from the ground behind the deer fence.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it here,” I say quietly, “but I wish I could see my friends more often.”

  Mr. W nods. He doesn’t say I’m being silly. He doesn’t roll his eyes and tell me I’m just trying to shirk my chores. So I keep talking. I tell him how Nell and Flora and I had the run of the Continental, how we bounced like spinning tops from the card room to the hurricane deck, and how we wept to part company. How Evie came right up to me that first day like I was as good as anyone else and how surprised my Seattle friends were to see me today, like the Eastside might as well be back East.

  We haul and dump buckets. Mr. W doesn’t lie or soothe. He just keeps nodding till I’m out of things to say and it’s too dark to see.

  Later, I set a candle on the ledge in the privy and open my little book. Sometimes when there’s nothing helpful to say, the best thing you can do is listen.

  Mr. W and I are burning a stump today, which is also becoming an ordinary chore on account of the number of stumps we make while we cut down winter firewood and grow our clearing that much bigger as we do it.

  “Hollow out a hole in the side of the stump and we’ll light a fire in it.” He hands me a hatchet. “I’m going to cut from the other side.”

  As we’re chopping, Mr. W clears his throat. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About missing your friends. How would you fancy having your own canoe?”

  My hatchet goes kerthunk so hard I struggle to free it. “I . . . what?”

  “Like mine,” Mr. W says, and he’s all stammery again, the way he gets when he’s nervous. “Only yours. Made for you, so it’s not too heavy for you to pull.”

  “But that . . . I’m not . . . is that allowed?”

  Mr. W snorts a laugh. “Allowed? Of course it’s allowed! You think anyone gets anywhere walking in these parts? The lake’s the road here, or the bay, or Puget Sound. A dock’s the same as a front door.”

  When I was very small, I’d look out my window in the farmhouse and imagine where the road went that ribboned past our door and out of sight. Lowell had a crazy quilt of streets and alleys, and New York was Lowell but ten times taller, forty times busier, and a hundred times dirtier.

  Roads, always. Cobbles and more cobbles or hard-packed dirt.

  A canoe would change everything.

  I could finish my chores and walk down the lake trail to the dock. To my own canoe, where I’d climb in and paddle till I got to the camp landing, then it’d be a manageable walk to Seattle and my friends.

  Mrs. D would never allow it.

  Mrs. D isn’t the only person who can allow me to do things now.

  I grin at Mr. W across the stump. “I’d love one! Only . . . we don’t have money for a canoe. Do we?”

  “We don’t need money.” Mr. W holds up his hatchet. “Just time and sweat. You’re going to make your canoe yourself.”

  A day goes by, then two. Mr. W and I burn stumps and check the traps, and there’s no more talk of a canoe.

  My wooden fish weighs down my pocket along with my hopscotch stone and my shiny blue bead from Rio. I rub it constantly while I water the garden and gather the eggs and remind Jer to fill the woodbox.

  On the third day, I’m kneading bread when Mr. W calls for me from the top of the lake trail. I turn the dough over to Mrs. D—she’s less than happy—and find him on the edge of the clearing where we’ve left the biggest, toughest cedars alone. There’s an Indian man with him, and they’re squinting at the trees.

  “This is Lawrence,” Mr. W says. “He’s going to help with the canoe.”

  I’m all kinds of curious about Lawrence. Perhaps he’s a friend or maybe a relation of Mr. W’s old sweetheart. I also know it’s rude to pry, so I just smile and say, “Kla-ho’w-ya?” which I hope means How do you do? like Felicity said to Prince Pierre and not something silly like Are there fish in your britches?

  “Kloshe.” Over his shoulder Lawrence is carrying a rucksack that clanks like it’s full of tools.

  Mr. W waits, but when I hold out my hands palms-up to show I’m out of Chinook, he chuckles. “He said he’s doing well enough.” Mr. W nudges me. “See? I knew you’d pick up some words. Shall we get started?”

  The first thing we do is choose the right tree. Actually, Lawrence and Mr. W decide on the tree. They hammer in the springboards and chop from either side, and it’s down by the time Mrs. D has dinner ready. Jer is so used to trees falling that he knows to run into the house or next to the garden when Mr. W calls a warning.

  The tree is bigger than I thought it would be. Lawrence marks it in two places with a stick he
blackens in a stump fire.

  “That’s where we’ll cut,” Mr. W explains. “We’ve got to make the canoe long enough that it balances, but not so long you can’t pull it. You ready to saw?”

  After all that work on the woodpile, I’m decent with a handsaw. Mr. W does one cut and I do the other. The length of cedar we end up with is about twice my height and as thick as my arm is long.

  “Tomorrow you’ll take the bark off,” Mr. W says. “For the rest of today, I’ll be fishing with Lawrence. You’ve got firewood to cut and stack, and see if you can’t chop the burned part out of that stump and set it smoldering again.”

  Split, carry, stack. We’ll be warm all winter because of me. My hands have long since gone blistery, then rough. It’s not like when they were washwater-wrinkled, though. Now they feel powerful.

  As the sun is going down, I write a reflection: Being the invigilator of the woodpile takes both a broad mind and a sturdy constitution.

  Several days later Mr. W hands me a tool that looks like a knife blade set between two wooden handles. “This is an adze. Here’s how to work it.”

  He puts the blade against the canoe-tree, just under the bark, and pulls back in one long, even swipe. A curl of bark follows. When I try it, the blade catches and jutters, and I nearly take my thumb off.

  “Push down while you’re pulling back.” Mr. W flutters his hands near mine on the tool like he wants to help but isn’t sure what I’ll say. “Like that. Exactly. There you go!”

  A stubby curl of bark comes off the log. It’s the length of my hand and nowhere near the sleek slice Mr. W made.

  “Try again,” he says. “Make it as smooth as you can. You’ll get it.”

  Once I’ve made a few cuts, Mr. W goes to check on the stumps we’re burning. On the other side of the clearing, Mrs. D hangs laundry on the washing line, pegs to the seams, stiff with starch. Just the way she likes it. Just the way I struggle to make it and have to redo again and again till it’s right.

  “Well done!” Mr. W peers over my shoulder. “Keep that up, all right? Try to take the bark off as evenly as you can, but don’t worry if it’s not just so. I’m going to check the traps.”

  All the rest of the day I take uneven hacks of bark off the log while Mr. W skins three muskrats and a beaver. By afternoon my pieces are longer and smoother, and I don’t have to go back over the log with the blade to even it. I shave bark the next day too, all day in the rain, and by suppertime my curls of bark are so long and delicate that Jer starts collecting them and hanging them on bushes like horses’ tails.

  When all the bark is off, Lawrence comes by to show us how to shape the bow and stern. He gestures with the hatchet and talks in Chinook, but I don’t know enough words to follow.

  “He’s saying you should be gentle,” Mr. W explains. “You can always take more off. You can’t add it back on.”

  Lawrence comes up the lake trail every few days to discuss the angle of the sides or the shape of the bottom. After he’s gone, Mr. W tells me more stories about the Fraser River gold rush.

  We can’t work on the canoe all day—more’s the pity—but we do some every day before we cut down trees and burn stumps and tend the garden and check the traps. I forget what it’s like to wear a dress. I keep a pail of water by the door so I can wash my feet before going into the cabin.

  In the falling daylight, I write a reflection: Ordinary is in the eye of the beholder.

  When the canoe is finally the right shape, Mr. W and I heave it over with something called a come-along. It sits there heavy and lumpen, looking like a canoe that’s been filled with sand.

  “She’s lovely!” Mr. W grins. “What do you think, Jane?”

  “Um . . . it’s pointy at the ends.”

  What I’m not saying is that the thing in the clearing might be pointy at the ends, but it’s still pretty much a log. It’s going to take—forever to hollow all that out chip by chip with a hatchet. I’ll be as old as Nell by the time it’s lakeworthy. Perhaps even as old as Mrs. D.

  Only, I don’t want to hurt Mr. W’s feelings when he’s put as much sweat as I have into this so-called canoe. Good thing I have a whist face convincing enough for the card rooms of San Francisco.

  Mr. W only smiles and nods at the hatchet I’m holding. “Chip out a trough a hand wide and a finger deep right down the middle.”

  When it’s done, he tells me to collect rocks about the size of my fist and put them into the hottest stump fire. Once they’ve heated, I pour water in the little trough and lay the hot rocks in one at a time with a big pair of rusty blacksmith tongs.

  “Now we let it simmer, just like a stew,” Mr. W says.

  We go check the traps, and by the time we come back, the wood simply peels away. We slice as much as we can before the wood cools, but we get enough that I realize there won’t be any painstaking, hand-blistering chipping. We just need to have the patience to keep up this rocks-and-water routine for days and days.

  While we’re setting the rocks back in the fire, Jer comes over. He’s holding his favorite stick in one hand and a baked wapato in the other. “Can I help?”

  “Sorry,” I tell him, “but this is hot and—”

  “Sure, son,” Mr. W cuts in. “Find us some smooth rocks to put in the fire. Big ones. Like those.”

  “A’right!” Jer crams his wapato into his mouth and rushes off to the end of the clearing closest to the lake path. In moments he’s back, and he drops a rock at our feet and grins up at Mr. W. “Here y’are, Daddy!”

  Mr. W flusters. Harder than he usually does. He’s got the biggest, silliest grin on his face too. Bigger and sillier than when he said I do in the white church.

  Then he pets Jer’s hair gently and says, “Th-thank you, son. Go get some more. As many as you can.”

  Jer beams and hustles off.

  Mr. W glances at me sidelong, like he wants to beg my pardon and isn’t sure how. Or perhaps like he thinks he should beg my pardon but really doesn’t want to.

  I reckon I see why, but Papa was dead months before Jer was born. He’d want Jer to have a father. A boy needed his father from the beginning, Papa said, but girls didn’t need their fathers till they started courting. The farm needed him more than I did, so he was always behind the plow or the harrow or in the tavern for a mug of ale and a song or two, and the wheat grew up tall and strong and not at all lonely.

  I look down at the stump fire full of rocks soaking up heat. At Mr. W’s boots and my own, and beyond at the canoe we’re making, both of us together, with our own hands.

  “I’m glad,” I say. “Jer needs a father that’s here. Not one that’s passed on and can’t do anything for him.”

  “I never thought I’d actually have a family of my own.” Mr. W makes a vague gesture at his potato-shaped self. “Sometimes it’s hard to think of you and Rose and Jer as my family. You were all together for so long, then along I came. Grafted on.”

  I peer at him. He can’t really think he’s the one who doesn’t belong.

  “We are a family, though,” Mr. W goes on, like just saying it makes it so, “and I don’t exactly know how to . . . do that. How to be a father. Mine . . . taught me what not to do. The best thing I can think to do for you and Jer is what I wish my father—or anyone—would have done for me. And that’s show me things. Anything. Everything. It’s bone-tiring to learn every single lesson the hard-knock way.”

  “Like a sea dad,” I say. “That’s how you learn things on a ship. The deckhands on the Continental told me that. Because so many of them run away to sea when they’re just boys, the older sailors show them how to climb rigging and move sails and such. Different than their actual fathers, of course, but like fathers when it comes to seafaring. It’s why the deckhands were so willing to show us things.”

  Mr. W smiles as he nudges the rocks with a blackened poker. “Must have been a marvelous trip.”

  “Only, I reckon you’d be our homestead dad,” I go on thoughtfully, because there’s so
many things that make our homestead go—from cedars to traps to drying racks down on the long bank—that Mr. W is an expert on and broadening my mind with.

  It’s only when Mr. W goes from flustery to completely still that I realize what I said. He’s standing in this awkward frozen way, like if he makes the slightest wrong move, I’ll take it back.

  I don’t want to take it back.

  All those months ago in New York I hoped Mrs. D would meet a man who stepped straight out of Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet and gave her whatever she wanted so she’d be happy.

  Mr. W did one better, though. He stepped out of my pamphlet. The one I made with my own hands.

  “That’s all right, isn’t it?” I ask quietly. “I mean, I had a papa. He’s gone, though, and right now I could really use a dad.”

  Mr. W comes around the fire to stand beside me. He shifts like he thinks to hug me but isn’t sure if it’s right. “Can I tell you something? I’m not sure I’ll say it properly, but here goes. A lot of men want sons—and I’m glad of Jer, I really am—but I always thought a daughter would be better. With a daughter, you can just enjoy her company. You’re not worried about . . . helping her become a man. Because she doesn’t need that from you. She just needs you to be a good man. That’s something I know I can do.”

  Jer runs up, a rock in each hand, grinning so big you’d think every carriage in the whole of back East was parked right in front of him.

  My brother is easy to love. Sweet and helpful and mostly sunny-natured. Healthy and strong. Everyone’s honeydarling.

  I never thought for a moment there could be a downside to being a boy, that I might have something he didn’t just because of who I am.

  “More rocks, Daddy?” Jer throws down the ones he’s got.

  “Yes, please,” Mr. W says, big and cheerful, to cover up the catch in his voice.