Wilderness Days

by Jennifer L. Holm

  “Jane,” a deep voice said, and I looked up to see the worried, bearded face of Mr. Swan, a decidedly curious man who had come to the bay all the way from Boston to study the Chinook Indians. His spectacles were balanced precariously on his bulbous nose as he surveyed me anxiously. He had a thick white beard and flyaway hair. This eccentric, excitable older man had been almost like a father to me in the time that I’d resided here on Shoalwater Bay.

  A father.

  I remembered at once the reason I was lying here and squeezed my eyes shut. Papa was dead. My own sweet papa. Hot tears slipped from my eyes, and I felt gasps rising in my throat.

  “Oh, my dear girl,” Mr. Swan said awkwardly, smoothing back my untidy red hair. “I am so terribly sorry.”

  But something inside of me was draining out, falling away, and although I heard the concern in his voice, my mouth couldn’t form any words. All I could think was that Papa was gone. It was too much. Too much to live, knowing that I was all alone in this cold, lonely world.

  I turned away and closed my eyes.

  When I next was aware of opening my eyes, the wind hissed softly through the tiny window, promising cold days ahead. It was September, but it looked the same as when I had first arrived in April. Nothing but gray gloom in all directions and endless rain in this soggy place in the middle of nowhere.

  The rain beat a steady drum on the roof, lulling me, like the clip-clop sound of carriages going up and down the cobblestones of Walnut Street in Philadelphia. The men moved about the cabin, their voices hushed murmurs. I heard a crackle and hiss, smelled the scent of salt pork frying. I had been in bed for three days now, or was it four? How easily time slipped away. Sometimes it felt like I had been forever in this wet, musty place. It was better—yes, better—to simply close my eyes and ignore all the voices calling me steadily, intruding on this quiet, urging me to get up, to go on, to live. Better to ignore Jehu’s warm hand holding mine, his fingers smoothing down my hair, tangling in my curls like a brush.

  If I closed my eyes, it all came rushing back. If I strained hard with my heart, I could hear the life I had left behind so long ago. It was so easy, really, to simply slip away, slip back to Walnut Street. One moment I was on the hard bunk in Mr. Russell’s cabin and the next I was on my childhood bed, the four posts rising around me like comforting sentries, the mattress soft as a cloud. Everything so very warm and dry and dear.

  A familiar voice called up to my window.

  Come on, Jane!

  Was that my childhood playmate Jebediah Parker calling me to come out and play? To run up and down Walnut Street and toss apples and chase carriages and throw pats of manure?

  And that smell, so like the warm scents that used to drift up from Mrs. Parker’s kitchen. Was she making roast pork and apples for supper? Yes, I must be in the kitchen, next to the stove, the smells so strong and sweet that my mouth watered. And what was that other smell? That woodsy smell drifting on the air? I squeezed my eyes, memory straining now, and recognized Papa’s tobacco!

  “Janey,” Papa said, leaning over me, his eyes full of laughter. “It’s time for supper.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him how much I missed him, how very much, and then Mr. Swan’s face swam into view, a pipe balanced in his mouth, the smoke rising in curls. He was holding a steaming bowl.

  “Supper. I’ve made my famous fisherman’s pudding.” He swallowed hard, worry etching lines in his face. “Please, my dear, you must eat something,” he pleaded in a strained voice.

  But how could I eat when Papa would never take another bite again? When he would never stroll down the street, or puff on his pipe, or roar with laughter, because he was buried in the cold, cold ground. A heavy, leaden feeling pushed down on my chest, and I closed my eyes and felt myself drift away, tugged like a log on the tide, the waves dragging me farther and farther until Mr. Swan’s face was a speck on the horizon.

  And then he was gone.

  All the men of the settlement worried about me.

  But there was nothing I could do, you see, except lie there and remember the pallor of Papa’s face when I left Philadelphia—how during my final months at home he had coughed and coughed, a cough that racked his chest and left him gasping for air. I couldn’t forget how unkind I had been to him, how we had fought so fiercely over my engagement to William Baldt, how I, his only daughter, had abandoned him to follow a useless man west. I had chosen my own selfish desires and left my dear, sweet papa to die alone in Philadelphia.

  The men took turns trying to entice me back to the world of the living.

  Jehu recited tales of sea voyages taken before he had ever met me, how he had traveled across the seas to China, and how he had seen women in the Sandwich Islands who wore grass skirts. Mr. Swan read from his diary, describing the medicinal properties of plants and the pattern of the tides on Shoalwater Bay. Chief Toke, Sootie’s father and the kindly chief of the local Chinooks, brought Sootie, who bounced on the side of the bunk, discussing her doll collection earnestly. And Father Joseph sat by my side, head bowed, whispering soft prayers in French, the words low and comforting like a nursery rhyme. Even Brandywine, Mr. Swan’s plump, flea-bitten hound, took time off from begging for food around the campsite to sleep curled up at the foot of the bunk, his cold, wet nose pressed against my feet.

  But it was my dear friend Keer-ukso who almost lured me back. His musical voice snaked into my dreams and tugged at me. Maybe it was the sorrow, the deep, aching emptiness that he carried around with him that I recognized, so like my own. He alone, who had recently lost loved ones in the summer outbreak, seemed to understand how difficult it was to hear the sound of life continuing, moving forward so effortlessly, as if Papa had never lived at all. As if the world could go on without his booming laugh or kind eyes.

  Keer-ukso sat quietly beside me, chanting softly in Chinook.

  “Halo moosum,” he whispered, and it sounded like the wind whipping through the cedar trees, the sound washing over me like the fog on the bay.

  But then his voice drifted away and I couldn’t hear him; it was as if I were too far away.

  And maybe I was.

  “Dang gal, ya stink worse than a beaver rotting in the sun,” a voice said loudly, and I heard the distinct sound of spitting, followed by the soft wet noise of tobacco hitting the floor.

  I blinked my eyes open to see Mr. Russell towering over me. When I had first arrived on the bay, this filthy, buckskin-clad, ill-mannered mountain man, much given to spitting tobacco in my general direction, had spent his days ordering me about the cabin as if I were a maid. But as time passed, I had grudgingly come to respect, and, I suppose, admire the gruff, long-whiskered man who ate whatever I placed before him.

  “What’s going on here, gal? I go away hunting for a few days and come back and find ya lying in bed like a lump when there’s mending to be done?” Mr. Russell barked impatiently. “And all these here men have been mollycoddling ya while ya stink up the place!”

  I flipped over and stared out the window, watching the rain drop in a steady patter, his voice lost in the swirl of the wind.

  “You hear me, gal? I said ya stink!”

  Suddenly my blanket was whipped away and the world tilted. Mr. Russell threw me over his shoulder unceremoniously and carried me, dirty blanket in hand, out of the cabin. He dropped me on the rickety front porch in the pouring rain with a resounding thump.

  And then he closed the door with a bang and locked it. I lay there in my soggy blanket, stunned.

  For the first time in all those long days, I felt a faint glimmer of something rush through me. A hot feeling. Hot and furious.

  Anger.

  The loathsome man had locked me out of the cabin in the middle of a rainstorm!

  I started to pound on the door of the cabin. “Let me in!” I shouted, my voice hoarse from disuse.

  I heard him guffawing on the other side of the door. “Gal, ya been rottin’ in that bed for nearly two weeks and ya smell worse than Bran
dywine. Ya ain’t coming back in here until yar scrubbed up!”

  Even in my dark mood I hardly thought that he should be one to complain of such things. Mr. Russell was notorious for his lack of bathing.

  “You horrible man!” I pounded on the door, but all I heard was laughing.

  “I see you’re finally up.”

  I whirled around to see Jehu standing there, shaking his head, amusement in his eyes. I clutched my dirty blanket to me and glared.

  “That, that—blasted man threw me out of the cabin!” I sputtered furiously.

  Jehu squinted at me through the rain dripping from his wet hair. “Seems he did.”

  Just then Mr. Swan and Keer-ukso appeared.

  “Capital! You’re up, dear girl,” Mr. Swan said in a relieved voice. “We were on the verge of taking Toke’s advice and tossing you into the spring.” His smile slipped a little as he took in my ratty, tangled hair and my filthy woolen nightdress. “But really, my dear, perhaps you ought to consider a bath.”

  Jehu raised his eyebrows slightly.

  “Oh!” I huffed, and stormed away through the mud.

  CHAPTER THREE

  or,

  The Most Disagreeable Man in the Territory

  The next morning found me sitting on the rickety cabin porch attempting to compose a letter to Papa’s solicitor. It had continued to rain during the night, and everything was damp. The ground had turned to mud, and the sky was as gray as a chimney sweep’s hat. Another perfectly dreadful day on Shoalwater Bay.

  The men’s snoring had kept me up most of the night, and every shrieking animal sound startled me. Even Brandywine’s light waffling dog snores made me twitch and turn in discomfort. I had lain for hours staring at the ceiling of the cabin on my hard bunk, unease running through my blood like ice. I felt myself adrift in the world. Already motherless, I now had no father, no house to call home, and no kindly Mrs. Parker to dry my tears on her apron. I had nothing at all.

  A chunk of black, chewed tobacco landed at my feet with a wet slap.

  “Now that yar up,” Mr. Russell announced, one gray whisker twitching, “ya can start mending again.” He held aloft a crusty-looking shirt with a torn sleeve.

  I had done the mending and some cooking around Mr. Russell’s cabin in exchange for my board, although considering the shabby conditions, it was clear that he was getting the better bargain.

  “Is that all you care about? That you lost your seamstress?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I reckon I missed the cooking, too. Ya don’t have much of a hang for it, but I’ve et worse.”

  “I’m not your maid!” I shouted.

  “That don’t shine with me.” He pointed at me sharply. “Ya work if ya want a roof over yer head.”

  He flung the torn shirt at me, but I deliberately stepped back and watched it fall on the muddy ground. “Yar gonna have to wash it now, too, ya stubborn gal. And supper best be on the table tonight,” he said. Then he shambled away. “And make one of them pies,” he added over his shoulder.

  I waited until he was out of sight before grabbing up the shirt and stomping into the cabin to prepare supper.

  “I should make him a mud pie,” I muttered to myself, sorely tempted to do just that.

  As I measured and sifted and stirred, I fumed. Mr. Russell was plainly the most disagreeable man in the entire territory. He was everything I despised in this foul, wet place. He spent every waking moment spitting his filthy tobacco. He guzzled whiskey and spoke in grunts. Not to mention, I was convinced he was the principal reason there were so many fleas in the cabin.

  He wouldn’t know a good manner if it ran up the leg of his disgusting buckskin trousers and bit him. And to think that I had once considered him a good-hearted man! I had been fooled by his small kindnesses to me, such as the time the bar of lavender soap mysteriously appeared among my belongings shortly after Mr. Russell had returned from Astoria. But I saw the truth now: he was just a mean, selfish, ignorant man who cared for no one but himself. After all, what kind of man throws a young lady into the rain in little more than a woolen nightgown? What kind of a man—

  “Are you trying to kill that dough?” a voice asked mildly. “I’ll shoot it if you want me to put it out of its misery.”

  It was Jehu. He took two long-legged strides over to the table and eyed my handiwork. I had been so consumed by my anger toward Mr. Russell that the piecrust I had been fashioning had been rolled flat as a pocket-handkerchief.

  “Blasted Mr. Russell,” I muttered, gathering up the beaten dough and patting it back into a ball.

  Jehu dragged up a chair and watched me.

  “Do you know that I have a bruise from where he dropped me on the porch?” I exploded.

  Jehu’s mouth turned up in a small grin. “Really? Where?”

  “You’re just as bad as him! There is not a single decent gentleman in the whole of this wretched territory!” I seethed, flattening the dough again with the rolling pin, as if the act alone would smooth out all the wrinkles in my life. “I hate this place. I don’t even know why I’m here. I’ll never be dry again, not to mention I’ll never get a moment’s sleep from all the snoring, and—”

  “I haven’t seen my father since he laid open my cheek with that horse harness,” Jehu said quietly.

  My hands went still.

  He rubbed the thick, angry scar on his cheek. “That was, well, nearly ten years ago now. Don’t really know for sure if he’s even alive.”

  His eyes met mine across the emptiness of the cabin, and I felt myself bite back tears.

  Oh, Papa.

  Just then the door banged open. It was Keer-ukso.

  “This is not a barn!” I shouted, my grief turning to fury in a rush.

  The two men exchanged a look, and Keer-ukso closed the door carefully, then sat down on a bench near Jehu. Keer-ukso meant crooked nose in Chinook. As was the Chinook custom, he had changed his name after some of his family had died in the summer outbreak. The Chinook believe that the ghosts of the dead can’t haunt you if you change your name. Still, in my mind he would always be the name I first knew him by and which suited him so well, Handsome Jim.

  For, you see, he was truly the most handsome young man I had ever been acquainted with in my entire life. He had long, thick black hair, lovely eyes, and a muscled body. He was also a kind, sweet friend who always managed to make me laugh. Well, usually he did. For I found nothing amusing about him reaching into the bowl of berries I had set aside for the pie. I slapped his hand away.

  Jehu rolled his eyes.

  “Mr. Russell say you cook pie, Boston Jane,” Keer-ukso said, looking affronted.

  “Oh, did he?” I asked in a tight voice.

  “Jane’s a little frustrated with Mr. Russell right now,” Jehu explained helpfully.

  “Frustrated!” I huffed. “Frustrated is living in a cabin where fleas are permanent residents! Frustrated is being surrounded by filthy, snoring strangers! Frustrated is being stuck in this infernal wilderness where it never stops raining. Believe me, I am frustrated by a great many things, but Mr. Russell is not one of them.”

  “So if you’re not frustrated, what are you?” Jehu asked, reaching for a berry.

  I grabbed the overworked, gray lump of dough and flung it in the men’s general direction. It struck Jehu’s chest with a thump before landing on Keer-ukso.

  “Is this pie?” Keer-ukso asked, an astonished look on his face.

  “Yes! It’s the blasted pie,” I shouted, and stomped to the door of the cabin. “And for your information, Mr. Scudder, I’m not frustrated with Mr. Russell.” I paused for effect. “I’m furious!”

  And with that I slammed the cabin door, and practically ran down the path alongside the slender stream that led to the Chinook village, my blood racing. I passed by Father Joseph’s small chapel and saw him raise a hand in greeting, but I didn’t stop. I kept walking fast, my heart pounding, and it wasn’t until I saw the large wooden buildings rising from the trees th
at I felt my heart slow down to a reasonable thump.

  Chief Toke’s village consisted of several large cedar lodges. The lodges were quite comfortable dwellings, and much more spacious, not to mention cleaner, than the pioneer cabins. As I entered the village, I saw the Chinooks going about their daily routines. They were a copper-skinned people, with thick black hair. Some of them, like Sootie, had slanted foreheads from having been placed in a cradleboard as a baby. A slanted forehead was a mark of distinction.

  The men wore the same style of clothes as the pioneers, although some of the older men wore blankets. In addition to wearing calico dresses, the women sometimes wore skirts constructed of strips of twisted cedar bark.

  Some of the Chinooks shouted my name in greeting.

  “Boston Jane!”

  Although I was from Philadelphia, the Chinooks referred to the Americans as Boston tillicums or Boston people, as the first American ships to arrive on the bay were from Boston.

  I discovered Sootie finally behind one of the lodges with two boys, ensconced in a game. The little girl had often turned to me for comfort in the weeks following her mother’s death, but now I found that our roles were reversed. From the grin on Sootie’s face, it was clear to see she was holding her own with the two lads, who, I should say, looked particularly annoyed.

  One of the boys stood up and walked away in disgust. He was followed a moment later by the other boy, who had a rather dejected expression on his face.

  “You won, Sootie?” I asked.

  A bright smile wreathed her face. “Boston Jane!”

  “What did you win?” I crouched down next to her, surveying the small pile of treasures.

  Sootie held up pretty smooth stones, glass beads, and a glossy black feather. I admired them dutifully and couldn’t help but notice that her face had the same satisfied look that her mother’s had had when she’d made a good trade. The Chinooks were great traders, and wealth was a sign of status. The tyee, or chief, was generally the wealthiest person.