A Light in the Wilderness

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  Time for the Hawkins wagon to catch up.

  “Will you come help my ma?” A boy with freckles the size of peppercorns dotting his nose stood at their wagon. “Pilot says you deliver babies. My ma sent me.”

  “I do. I gets my fixin’s.” She slipped back into the wagon, grabbed her basket of needles, thread, lavender candle. She decided to leave the candlestick buried in the corn bin. She picked up the board with Martha in it. “I’s ready. Which wagon?”

  The boy pointed and she hurried ahead of him.

  “Missus, I’s here. How far you comin’?”

  “Oh, thank God. Bennie found you. Oooooh.”

  Letitia scanned the wagon, saw that clean cloths had been laid out, a tin basin filled with water sat beside the narrow cot. “When the pains start?”

  “Three hours. Coming faster now. Oooooh.”

  “Lord’s bringin’ you a baby, Missus. We see you taken care of, do this together.” And she went to work.

  Martha fussed during the time of delivering and Letitia spoke to the child, telling her she’d have to wait. A good midwife tended to the mother, giving her confidence that she could bring this baby forth; had to put her own family’s needs aside. Martha soon fell asleep.

  The candle Letitia sent Bennie to light and place in the brass holder burned halfway down, filling the canvas with the sweet scent. She told the boy to let Davey know he’d have to scrape up his own supper. “And tell your papa he need to fix his own meal tonight. Yours too.” There’d been a pause in the frequent contractions, and Letitia reminded the mother, Ava was her name, that this was normal. “Things go good and you rise high, then they slow and you go low, and then they rise again. You remember.”

  “Like music.”

  “Yessum. Baby music.”

  A healthy baby boy arrived to the sounds of a rooster crowing in a forward wagon. Ava Rinehart soon held the swaddled child against her breast, her finger gentle against the pink cheek. She looked at Letitia. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Letitia Carson. This be Martha.” She had taken her baby from the cradleboard.

  “That’s a fancy carrier.”

  “A gift.”

  “For helping birth a baby?”

  “No, ma’am. To salve a grief.”

  “It’s mighty fine. My husband will pay your owner for delivering Andrew here.”

  “If he’s willin’ to pay, he pay me. I’s free to accept.”

  “Oh, I didn’t . . . I’m sorry. Of course. Your husband? Well. My goodness.”

  In mid-July at the North Platte, Letitia and Davey’s company stalled again. Pawnee had stolen several horses and the men decided to search for them, and the women took advantage of a place to launder with good water close by. Meanwhile, another group spotted a bear. Letitia decided they’d be here for a day or two either awaiting the horse searchers or perhaps drying bear meat. She used the time to cut grass to refresh the cradleboard and thank God for this healthy baby who gurgled at her while she worked.

  And it was a good time to make biscuits. The air was clear and the sound of the rushing water gave a lift to her spirit. She sang “Pop Goes the Weasel” to Martha as she worked. Letitia lifted the barrel lid from the flour. It seemed heavier than before. Maybe she was getting weaker instead of stronger with all the work of helping Davey lifting the oxen yoke, the miles of walking. Maybe she wasn’t eating enough. Her clothes did hang on her. Fortunately her apron tied tight.

  Martha gazed with big brown eyes at her mother, kicked her feet and smiled. Letitia was certain it was a smile and not some kind of stomach fuss. She had Davey’s little mouth and her own small nose. Martha loved her board, would quiet down as Letitia tied the sinew strings over soft leather to swaddle the child. In the frame, Martha leaned up against the wagon wheel and watched as Letitia prepared a meal and could be out of sight for a moment without worry that the baby would topple over. And it served well to care for the child should she be called for midwife work.

  She lifted the measuring cup, scooping the flour out of the barrel. She finished the biscuits, put them into the tin oven she’d pushed into the side of the riverbank to create the proper draw over the coals. She loosened Martha from the board, nursed her, then burped her as the child’s eyes drooped. Back in her board, Martha slept and Letitia opened her sewing basket to work on a quilt block. She could hear the chatter of other women in the distance. It would be nice to be sharing a few minutes with friends. Maybe Ava would exchange a word or two with her outside of the intimacy of birthing.

  She got inside the wagon for more red thread and stopped when her eye fell again on the flour barrel. The iron cooper’s ring wasn’t rusted in that spot before, was it? They weren’t in rust weather. Maybe it had gotten turned around when Davey refilled it. She checked on Martha, then removed the barrel lid. She reached down inside, her hand seeking the rolled up material that held her papers.

  Nothing.

  She put both hands in deep, the yellowish grainy fluff puffing up to her elbows. Nothing. Maybe she’d put her papers in the rice barrel. She clawed in that barrel, pushing the grains up against the side, the dusty scent tickling her nose. Don’t worry. Had she moved it? She dug into the corn barrel, felt the candlesticks there but nothing else. She returned to the flour. She always had the rolled papers in the flour, didn’t she? When was the last time she’d looked? Long before Fort Laramie. Could Davey have moved them? But did he even know that the papers were rolled up in the flour barrel? He would have told her if he’d moved them. If he’d remembered. Did he put it somewhere else when he filled the barrel in Fort Laramie? She chewed her lip, the palms of her hands damp. She rubbed them on her apron. Freedom. Her freedom and security. Missing.

  She jumped down from the wagon. Where would Davey be? He’d said he and several others were going to hunt a bear. She checked the biscuits. Paced. Held Martha. Couldn’t concentrate to stitch. Where could the papers be? Davey understood more than anyone what the words meant to her. Would anyone steal them? No one knew of them but she and Davey. Give me peace. Give me peace.

  Dusk rode in with the men when they returned bringing a bear if not all the missing horses.

  Davey unsaddled his mount, began rubbing Fergus down. She didn’t wait to ask, coming up behind him. “Did you . . . my papers, they’s missin’.” She spoke low so others wouldn’t hear her.

  “What? Your papers?” Davey frowned.

  “My freedom papers. Your agreement.” She tried not to sound frantic but her chest felt tight. Her cheeks were hot.

  “Oh, those. Not seen them since you kept ’em in the jar in the rafters back in the states. Or in that box.”

  “I puts them . . . I rolls them in a cloth and bury them in the flour barrel.”

  “I didn’t take ’em out.” But then his eyes got a faraway look. He stopped brushing his horse. “Flour barrel?” He returned to brushing, harder. “That’s where you had them?”

  Letitia nodded. “Down deep. Top peekin’ out when we got low on flour but enough to cover. Covered more when you resupplied.”

  “When I resupplied. Sure now, I did.” He cleared his throat, turned sideways to her. Kept brushing the horse.

  “Where they be?”

  “Sure ’tis a tragedy, Tish.” He spoke into the horse, cleared his throat. “But ye see, I–I didn’t fill our barrel. I exchanged it for a full one.”

  “The barrel ain’t the same?”

  “I didn’t know, Tish. I didn’t.” She stumbled backward.

  She couldn’t breathe. Blood pounded at her temples. She held her head with one hand. Martha fussed in her board lying on the wagon seat. “My papers!” A wail of pain rose from her.

  “Lookee here. It’ll be all right.” Davey reached for her. “You won’t need those papers in Oregon. It’s a free state or will be, everyone says so. No one will ask. I’ll defend you.”

  Her mind spun, seeking solutions. Could she go back? No. Would the Hawkinses already have passed Laramie? Yes. Even i
f she could get word to them to ask about the papers, they’d be tossed aside or in a barrel now filled and in someone else’s wagon. Then she refocused on his last words and pushed her question out swift and sure.

  “And will you write another agreement, about takin’ care of your kin if somethin’ happens to you?” It had taken weeks to get him to ask Doc Hawkins to do it, but she could get him to do that again. She could. But no one could replace her freedom papers. No one.

  “Sure and I will. I’ll find someone to write it for me. But you won’t need it. Oregon’s not like Kentucky or even Missouri. They won’t have no patrols there. You’ll be safe. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Oregon would be an extension of these overland companies with people like the Hawkinses who welcomed free Negroes but people like Greenberry Smith who didn’t. She didn’t see great acceptance of her color on this trail nor any who’d believe what she told them if something were to happen to Davey. The Bowmans would remember that she had free papers. Doc Hawkins had written the agreement down. She’d have to find them all in Oregon if anyone ever asked and Davey took sick and . . . she wouldn’t let herself think of him dying.

  A hot rock settled in her stomach. She couldn’t be angry with him. He didn’t know. She’d been in the Indian village when he made the exchange. Why hadn’t she stayed behind, taken care of the restocking herself? She should have known better, should have told him. She had no papers. A snake made of cowers worked up her neck, threatening to choke her.

  “Now things get rough,” Zach Hawkins told Nancy. “We’ll start up the mountains soon. Been a gradual climb but it’ll get worse.” They stood at the top of Independence Rock watching the sunset over the Sweetwater River. They’d made the climb together, Nancy’s sisters watching the baby and younger children so the two could stand on the rounded outcropping high above the dusty plains. A hot wind carried voices of other travelers who’d made the high trek. Some chipped their names with a knife.

  “Much as I hate to say it, we’ve got to dispense with some of our weight.” Zach cleared his throat. “The oxen are tiring. It’ll only get harder for them.”

  “Disperse? As in, leave behind?”

  Zach nodded. “Some of the men call them lev-er-ites.”

  “Do they.” She turned her face from him. “Haven’t we already left enough behind?” Her thoughts went to Laura and the lone cross Zach staked at the river site. Why had he chosen this moment with such grandeur before them to bring up yet more loss? “I don’t want to think about it now.”

  “Has to be done, Nancy.”

  “I know it does. I’ll do it. Don’t I always?” She turned aside, not wanting to look at him, fearing she’d have words with him about more than dispersal of belongings. She’d gone from blaming herself for Laura’s death to blaming him—for wanting to take them west, for not being there to help as he had been back in their homesteads, for being excited and anticipating the future while the past held her hostage.

  “Hate to say it but the quilt frame doesn’t rise to the level of being saved.”

  “If you ‘hate to say it,’ then don’t.”

  “Nancy.”

  She shrugged off his touch to her shoulder, her arms crossed over her chest.

  From atop the rock the world looked so vast, like a giant quilt stitched with the blue of the Sweetwater River and green shrubs like embroidery knots to highlight the borders. Peaceful and comforting. Yet traveling through it they’d lost a child and maybe each other. Nancy scratched at the bonnet ribbon at her throat, then loosened it, letting tendrils of her hair catch the warm wind.

  “We don’t have to leave anything here,” Zach said. “But I wanted you to get used to the idea of the quilt frame having to go.”

  “And your anvil? It weighs three times my quilt frame. You’ll leave it behind?”

  “Man needs an anvil to fix things and to form new things once we’re in Oregon.”

  “A woman needs her quilt frame too. Good, solid oak. We may not find that in Oregon and then what would I do? I haven’t heard of another woman who got to take her frame with her, one her husband made for her, then used a portion for a grave marker.” She glared at him. “There must be a hundred anvils heading west.”

  “Which proves my point. Frames aren’t essential; anvils are.”

  “You can borrow one. Who will loan me a quilt frame?”

  “Nancy—”

  Nancy’s stomach roiled. She hadn’t told him yet about the young one she carried. She wasn’t ready yet to see Zach more happy, resenting that he had found solace before she did. What kind of woman am I becoming?

  “You’re always so certain,” she said.

  “Man has to be certain, Nancy. It’s how I get through the tough times. I trust that we’re here for a reason and right now I think it’s to start a new life, to build a future for my family—our family. I thought you wanted to come.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Even if you’ve changed your mind, there’s no turning back.”

  There was, though. She could go back with the dragoons or the trappers they kept meeting heading for St. Louis. They’d met some discouraged travelers returning east too, with faces as beaten down as their wagons. She shook her head. He was right. She couldn’t leave the children or him. She suffered from addled thinking.

  “I’m not ready to give up the quilt frame, Zach. Other things maybe, but not that. Last quilt I worked on that frame was for Laura. I just couldn’t.” Her voice caught and a gust of wind pushed, and instinctively she protected her abdomen.

  Zach stared. “Nancy? Are you . . . ?”

  “Yes.” She knew she sounded angry. “I am. Morning sickness and all. When I swore I wouldn’t let that happen. You always talk me into things.”

  “You were willing, if I recall.” He grinned.

  Tears spilled onto her cheeks.

  “Ah, Nancy.” He took her into his arms. “It’s a good thing, you having new life now. A reason to take care of yourself and for us to look forward to a new baby come spring.”

  Was it? Was it God’s way of bringing her back from the brink of the sinking well? She wasn’t certain about life the way Zach was. Laura’s death eclipsed her heart. Nothing could cleave it back.

  Zach thumbed tears from her cheeks, then pulled her to him again. “Let me think about that anvil.”

  Letitia poured coffee into Davey’s tin and put the cover onto the flour barrel. Her stomach pinched as she did. “I’s sad my papers are lost.”

  “Feel terrible about that, I do.” He looked away.

  “You rewrite our agreement? Say again you care for me and Martha by leavin’ us whatever we build together. You still agree?”

  “Oh sure. I’ll get something writ up soon as we get to Oregon.”

  “Better before.” What if he died on the trail? Would they take the wagon and Davey’s money from her? Sell her to someone? She couldn’t put that worry in her bucket, couldn’t carry it around.

  “Little time for such as that, Tish. Can’t bother a man to write such down until winter. We’ll meet up with Doc and he’ll be able to write it from memory.”

  “I knows what it say.”

  “You worry too much. Any more fish?”

  She served him and they ate in silence.

  “We’ve been lucky so far, Tish. We’ll make it through, and like I said, you won’t need to worry about papers telling that you’re free. I’ll defend ye.” He grinned. “I plan to live forever so we have plenty of time about the other.”

  They were six hundred miles out from Fort Hall and the oxen with their sore feet and sparse forage became harder to harness. In the distance Letitia saw mountain peaks, and though the oxen pulled the wagon long hours each day, no longer even stopping on the Sabbath, it seemed as though they never got any closer to the snow-dusted ridges. At the headwaters of the Sweetwater Letitia heard before seeing the roiling river with its cooling mist and thundering sounds. Davey said these were “young rivers” full of drop and gouge, not l
ike the meandering rivers of the Missouri or Platte. Days more and the world opened into a meadow with wild strawberries ripe for the picking. Six miles across and they encountered a stream flowing west. They’d crossed the divide.

  Letitia spoke a prayer to Martha, then described what she was seeing. “Such grand creation, Baby.” Maybe she ought not to worry about Davey’s signing a new paper. The God who created sweet strawberries in the middle of nowhere, who controlled the flow of the rivers to the sea, surely such a God would tend to her child and her.

  “I needs to lean.” Letitia kissed Martha’s tiny nose. Martha blew bubbles between lips as tiny as sunflower seeds. “At least today, I’s feelin’ blessed with a chil’ safe in my arms and a husband whistlin’ his happiness as he drive along.”

  Though they knew now the rivers flowed west, the way was not easier. Tall mountains loomed on either side of their travel and still more rivers greeted them, more mountains to cross. This land made Letitia sigh in awe. She told Davey she’d never seen such vastness, such tall trees straight as spears. They encountered bighorn sheep and plenty of elk and venison whose flavors tickled the nose while they fried and satisfied stomachs when eaten. At the Green River, swollen from snowmelt in the mountains, the company took four days to cross. They built raft-like structures, then floated wagons, one at a time. No lives were lost and Letitia enjoyed the days of rest while they waited their turn. They encountered a family heading back to the states, and Letitia grew courageous and asked if they might take a message to friends behind them.

  “We can try.” The woman wore a faded bonnet that matched her sun-washed cheeks. “Give me the letter, dearie.”

  “I . . . don’ write,” Letitia said. “Can you take my words?”

  “Who’s to get them?”

  “Doc Hawkins and Nancy. Just tell ’em the Carsons are well and hopin’ they catch up soon.” Then as the woman nodded, Letitia added, “And that we keeps ’em in our prayers.”

  “The best kind of friendship.” The woman pushed her bonnet back. “When things aren’t going right, prayer’s the only thing to keep them from going more wrong.”