What was she going to do about being alone here? G.B. Smith could come back any time. Little Shoot took Martha from her arms and then helped her dismount. “I’m thinkin’ I can use winter help.” She spoke to the boy, who was as tall as a sapling though he couldn’t be more than thirteen summers.
“You have trouble.” He stared at her cheek. “We go toward our village in this season, longer time away from you. But not so much work now either.”
“Havin’ folks here keeps the unwanteds away.”
“An unwanted hurts you.” He looked at the stitches on her face and she raised her hand to her cheek.
Maybe he gets harmed too. A shot of fury coursed through her, aimed at Davey for leaving them; at G.B. Smith for showing up after four years of not worrying about him; at the territorial government for passing such a law; at being born a colored woman without any power.
“Would your kasa let you stay here? It may not be safe.”
“Maybe you ask her to stay too.” His round face filled with his grin. He swiped his straight black hair away from his face. “More cheese, faster. You ask?”
“I will.”
“Kloshe. Good.”
Maybe she would never get Davey to secure her future, but she would do what she could to ensure her safety now. Strength came with the kind comfort of neighbors who looked after each other. She was powerless to change the law, but she could change how she defended against it, what stories she told herself, a slave of anger or a free woman. Her children required it. She didn’t know then how much.
24
Kin
Davey returned with his arms open to her as he jumped from his horse. It was mid-December and she stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, wearing her fur coat and resentment. He grabbed his saddlebag and moved into the cabin to be out of the drizzling rain. Low mists like fragile lace edged the willows along Soap Creek. He’d lost weight, his beard was shorter. His eyes held a sparkle. They would. He has himself a good time.
“’Tis longer than intended I’ve been away but I’m bringing back gold.” He pulled a small sack from his saddlebag, looked disappointed when she failed to waltz into his arms, turned into the house instead.
He dropped the leather with a clink! on the table. “Gold.”
What he values more than us.
He rubbed his hands together for warmth. Or maybe it was a sign of his greed. He opened his arms then to embrace her. She backed up.
“What, not even a kiss?” His arms dropped like branches on a snow-laden tree.
She bent to pick up Adam.
“How’s my boy?”
“He already nearly four months old.” She couldn’t keep the bite from her tongue.
She hoped her heart would melt some of the seethe as she saw the two together. And it did. Some. Martha held back behind her mother’s skirts.
“Sorry I am for leaving ye for so long. Some days I was in the field and luck was in the road. Took me a little time to get luck moved over.” He nuzzled his son’s neck and the boy cooed and grabbed at Davey’s red beard. “Ow, ow, you little Jack.” He laughed. “You can see I did good.” He nodded toward the sack. “Now we can get ourselves a bull, not have to pay those breeding fees. And I’ll get you some new duds. For the lassie too.”
“I’s fine with the duds I got. Chil’ need fatherin’, not featherin’.”
“Got lots to share with you, Tish. Where’s my Martha?” He handed Adam back and lifted his daughter, who put her arms around his neck. “Me father used to say there was no scarf so warm as a daughter’s arms around the neck.” He carried her to his saddlebag and brought out papers wrapping three round objects he gave to Letitia, keeping one box for Martha to unwrap, then spoiled the child’s surprise by telling her what it was. “Tea set. Right from England.” He set Martha down. “Lookee, two little cups and a pitcher. Fine china. Little painted flowers. So many interesting things in California.”
“Kloshe, Papa. Pretty.” She fingered the rose design on the porcelain. “Thank you.” She blew him a kiss.
“That’s more like the greeting a man expects when he brings a present.”
He came to Letitia then, set Martha down. He bent to kiss his wife’s cheek. He frowned but didn’t ask her what had happened to make the scar, merely thumbed it. She shivered at his touch. She needed to be rigid as a bed key.
“It’s good to be home, Tish. Place looks good.” He scanned the room. “You did good.”
He surveyed the cabin and Letitia looked too, seeing with his eyes. A cow’s stomach was stretched wide and drying by the fireplace. A cabinet held dishes and pitchers and butter molds, purchased for her by Nancy when her friend went to town. Wild onion and parsley hung drying from the rafters. She’d washed clothes that colored the drying rack. Out the glass window she watched the herd graze with her brindled Charity clanging her bell in the distance. Deer hides were stretched on the split-rail fence. Betsy would work them in the spring, soaking them in the creek, then turn the hides into leggings and gloves and moccasins for the children. “I has good neighbors.”
“Who’s staying in the huts?”
“Kalapuya. Little Shoot and Betsy, they living in one of those.”
“Good, good. You got everything under control.” He opened his arms. “Now come to me. I missed you, Tish.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say she’d missed him too. She didn’t move toward him, and after a silence thick as river fog, he went outside to tend to Fergus and his pack animals, took a fair amount of time cooling his horse.
That evening after supper, he told her stories of the gold fields, how he could make more money by packing her cheese and bacon south, selling it there. How his claim had been jumped and how he’d fought to get it back. That he’d run into the sheriff. “G.B. Smith and I met up last month. He told me he ran into you over that exclusion law and that he had to disarm you. Did you really pull a gun on him, Tish?”
“You didn’t come back to see if we’s all right?”
He swallowed once or twice. “I figured he’d a told me if you were hurting any.”
“He tells you what he did to me, to Rothwell?”
“No. Where is Rothwell?” At the sound of his name the dog crawled out from behind a cupboard, his head lowered on one side. Sheepish, he slunk toward Davey.
“He think he at fault for it.” Letitia patted the dog’s head. “Smith struck him into this—wayward walk as Betsy call it.” She scratched the dog’s neck as he leaned into her leg. “He struck me too.” She held her hand to her cheek.
“He did that? Why, if I’d knowed that, I’d a—”
“What you do?” It was the opening she needed. “You leave us to be struck by any man who care to. Keepin’ us safe?” She laughed, hated the sound of her own anger.
“No, now. If I’d known, I’d have taken that man down a peg.”
“He damage your . . . property.” Fury like a geyser rose up through her, turning her insides hot.
“Oh, now, you’re not my property. No, he had no right to hurt you or any woman.” He reached for her, but she recoiled.
She touched her cheek. “Sulphur Springs and Nancy Read heal this.” She ran her fingers then across the ribbed scar that jagged like lightning across her cheek.
“I am so sorry.” His eyes watered. “I thought my going for gold would set us pretty and it will. But you did good without me.” He looked around. “Say, where’d you get that cupboard?”
“You wants to talk about furniture?”
“I want to talk about something that won’t rile you none, Tish. Surely sorry I am for what happened to your cheek. And to Rothwell.”
“Joseph Gage.” She answered his question. “They our neighbors north, in Polk County. With all them kids—double ones too—he needs beef and bacon. I gots that, so we trade.”
“You done right well without me around. Probably wish I hadn’t come back.”
She didn’t know what she wished. She’d worked hard thes
e past months with a newborn and all alone. She was better off than some. The stories of men deserting their families and fields for a taste of gold were common as horseflies and just as irritating.
“Why you come back?”
Rothwell lay on his side, scratched the floor, chasing rabbits in his sleep.
“For you, of course. And they passed the Donation Land Act. I got to re-register this land with the surveyor or someone else could claim it. We get the land free.”
“Not for the likes of me or even Betsy and Little Shoot. Their people here longer than any from the states and they gets nothin’.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Well, I’m not letting anyone get their hands on this fine farm. And it’ll be finer yet with this gold. Here.” Davey opened the bag and dumped the ore on the table. He handed her two nuggets the size of his thumbnail. “You can go anywhere you want with that much gold. But I’m hoping you’ll stay.”
She stared at him. “Why you think I go somewhere? This my home. Maybe you take the nuggets and go.”
He jerked back. “Why, Tish, I ain’t going nowhere. We’re married. I’m here to stay, to work with you like we did before. My wandering feet are ready to settle down. It was only a few months I was gone.”
“’Cept you heading back to California.”
“For us, Tish. Two weeks at a time, maybe a month, then I’ll be back. Can make more supplying those miners than hunting up gold. Here, take the nuggets. Think of ’em as safety nuggets. Then any time you want out, you can go.”
“What about that law? What if they come to send me away?”
“That ain’t going to happen. You got to trust me in this.”
“We gots to change how things are between us. You say, ‘I doing something this way.’ And if I have another way, you go in your mind and say to yourself, ‘Well, that ain’t a worry’ or ‘I can fix that,’ but you don’t say that to me. You just walk over me and do it your way, leave me sittin’ in the dust. I tired of being trampled on. That’s the way you went to California against my wishes.”
He nodded.
“What that cost you, you suppose?”
He tugged at his beard. “A contrary woman when I got back.”
“But what it cost you, inside?” She touched her heart. “It cost me, being contrary. Why I let it up, in time. But what it cost you?”
He was thoughtful. “I guess I miss out on things. Don’t try things your way if I can’t see the merit in it. End up feeling responsible if my way doesn’t work out.”
She nodded. “It cost you too, to not be the husband you promise to be. I ain’t the wife I imagine either when I carries contrariness past the words that might settle our disputes.”
She rose from the table and went to the cupboard, opening the tin-lined door. “I don’t want your gold, Davey Carson. I wants you to consider my words even though you think they don’t carry weight. That’s what a partner does.” She turned with a paper in her hand. “Micah Read. He write the words of our agreement. I knows you think it a waste of time, but I don’t. You sign now?”
He seemed to be taking her words in, stroking his bearded chin. “It’ll make you happy?”
“It make me happy knowing if somethin’ happen to you, I gets paid for the work I do and for my property, like the cows. We got a contract. We gets something and our chillun be safe.”
“Beside the nuggets, you mean?”
“Nuggets not make up for what I scour over, leave my sweat for. I worth more.”
“Yes, you are worth more.” He smiled at her then. “You are quite a woman. Get me something to sign with. I’ll show you my better self and do the deed.”
And so Davey slid back into her days like a mouse stealing past a sleepy cat. He did sign her paper. That night he stroked her arm as they lay side by side and whispered words to pluck her heart, sing songs of joy begging sweet forgiveness. Through the days that followed Letitia was surprised that she didn’t feel the satisfaction she thought she’d have by squirreling away papers in a tin. Maybe because she’d spent all the years living with the uncertainty and had found a slender thread of trust apart from paper and men’s words. Maybe watching how many things Betsy and her people got by without—expensive things like candlesticks to feel wealthy or guns and papers to feel secure. Like the sparrow, the good Lord would take care of them as he had all along. If only she could hang on to that hope.
“Junior? That be my son? Sure and it is!”
David Carson Junior sauntered out of the drizzling rain in time for Christmas. Chile like showin’ up for holidaying. He didn’t remove his hat when he passed through the door until he saw the dog. “Rothwell, isn’t it? Good dog.”
He tossed the hat onto Letitia and Davey’s bed. It would have been the respectful thing to do, remove his hat for the lady of the house and not just her dog. The young man had thickened at the waist and his cheeks wore the red of a man who liked his liquor. He was clean shaven but for a bushy mustache he twirled at the ends. Letitia suspected he used beeswax or an oil, not unlike what she used to smooth her hair sometimes.
“Yup, it’s me, Pa. Came on board ship like I said I would.” He looked around. “Nice place you got here.” He looked at Letitia. “See you still got your . . . woman.”
“And a good one she is. You visiting or settling?”
“Depends. Partial toward settling.”
“You’re in time then. You can put in for 160 acres, being you’re a single man. I’m gonna try to get my full 640 but not much chance of it.”
“Why not?” Junior squatted to stroke the dog’s head.
Letitia listened with a hollow pit in her stomach.
“People of color don’t qualify for land. And since we ain’t married under the law . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “Our neighbors’ wives, they’ll get property in their own right under this claim. Add 320 acres to their husband’s acreage.”
Excluded. Betsy’s people were excluded too. Couldn’t claim the land they’d lived on for generations.
“So the 320 acres you’ve been fencing you can’t have, I can file on it?”
Davey hesitated, like he might ask Letitia’s opinion. “Don’t know why not. It’ll be good to have you around. Look after things when I pack into California. Or maybe come with me. You’ll have to reside here for four consecutive years to get title, but traveling south now and then won’t count against you.” He patted his son on the shoulder. “Tisha, rustle up some grub here for Junior. Sure and it’s a fine, fine morning when a man’s son comes calling.”
In February, Davey and Junior rode together to Oregon City to meet with the surveyor general to make their claims. Letitia suspected that was the real reason Davey came back when he did. Micah Read also went so the men could be witnesses for each other about how long they’d been in the Soap Creek Valley and the boundary lines they’d honored. He came home and said he’d met up with a David Davis who had property northeast of them. He’s courting Sarah Bowman. Her husband died last year.”
“Miss Sarah’s widowed?”
“That she is. Seems to be an epidemic. Sure hope you don’t catch it any time soon.”
Neighbors came to help Junior raise his cabin late that fall. At last Letitia would be freed of cooking for Junior and cleaning his clothes. They fed his horse. He didn’t seem to have much in the way of supplies to farm, so he borrowed their plow and spades and extra dishware too. Nancy offered a quilt; Frances Gage brought berry pies.
“What about those beds the Indians are using. Can’t a man have one of those?” This from Junior the day after the raising.
“Make one for yourself.” Letitia slammed the spider a little harder than intended, broke eggs for breakfast into the three-legged pan.
“Now, Tish. A man gets tired sleeping on the floor,” Davey said. “Maybe Betsy’d give up that hammock she made.”
“You give away my things but you’ve no right handin’ off Betsy’s.”
“I’d ask first.” He sounded wounded.
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“They got no right being here anyway,” Junior said.
“They here before any of us.” She heard the biting tone and took a deep breath. Holding resentment was like stoking a fire while waiting for rain. “I makes you a hammock.”
Junior scratched at his full mustache, his brown eyes held a hint of glee. “Sure and that’d be a kind thing, then, for a mother to give her son.”
Davey smiled. “Good to see the two of you getting along.”
Junior wasn’t a grateful man, sour even when he appeared to have everything he wanted. Land. A cabin. A cow and pig given to him by his father—and her, which Junior did not acknowledge. His father’s love and attention. He scowled whenever Davey bounced Adam—whom Davey started calling Jack—on his knee or had a tea party with Martha. At least if she made Junior a hammock it might be a little harder for him to make their home a place for every meal, carrying with him his poor disposition as a hearty appetite.
For the next two years, each spring Davey loaded the pack mules and took their goods south to sell. Junior went with him, and Letitia and Rothwell stood watching while the pack animals trotted after the men down the trail. It meant more work for her and Little Shoot to look after Junior’s hog and cow, but she adjusted to the time without Davey or Junior around. She set her own schedules, made decisions that didn’t have to be negotiated with him nor have surprises of plans he’d made with Junior he hadn’t bothered to mention to her. She visited Frances Gage and quilted while Martha and Adam slept on the Gages’ large bed. Her son had the same pecan color as his sister and he had Davey’s high forehead and strong chin. The apple trees bore fruit. Letitia was asked to midwife more than once. At Nancy Read’s, she marveled at the new additions she’d helped deliver.
“I thought Perry would be my last, but now here’s Clara. I wouldn’t have missed meeting her for the world. But really, Clara is my last.”
“Wild carrot grows here. Using them keeps Clara your last. Or that sponge. Betsy tell me that.”
A Light in the Wilderness Page 23
