Jessie

by Judy Alter

  "Papa said you were sick... and Grandpa said I must be good and quiet all the time."

  Poor child, I thought, having to be good and quiet all the time. "You did a fine job of it," I told her, "and now you may run and play."

  Saying she was glad I was better, she turned and walked out of the room with dignity. "Run and play" were not in the child's vocabulary nor in her nature.

  * * *

  Benton Frémont was born on July 24, 1848. I had hardly been up yet from my fainting sickness when the baby's imminent arrival put me again into that bedchamber, and I felt, unhappily, quite the invalid. Dr. Thurston, who had been Mother's physician for several years now, attended me through what seemed an easy confinement and a relatively short labor.

  The minute I heard the baby's first cry, my heart clutched in fear. It was a weak sound, like a kitten mewing for milk rather than the healthy cry of a newborn infant. When Dr. Thurston said heartily, "Here's your son," and laid the baby in my arms, the child was limp.

  I remembered a dog we had when I was a child—she had six puppies and one of them disappeared one day. When I wailed to Father about the missing puppy, he said, not without kindness, "It was a limp puppy, Jessie. The mother knew it would not live."

  "What did she do with it?" I demanded.

  He shrugged. "Probably buried it somewhere."

  Was I supposed to bury this child? With a fierceness that surprised me, I hugged the infant to my bosom, willing him to live.

  When John came to see us, I still held my new child fast against my chest. "Is he... is he all right?" John asked hesitantly.

  "He's fine," I replied, "just fine." But I could see by John's face that Dr. Thurston had already told him different.

  It was John who suggested we name the child Benton, "to symbolize the unity of the two families." Father beamed with pride at the idea and went off proudly to tell Mother, who hadn't the foggiest notion what he was talking about.

  In spite of my fervent wishes and the close attention of Sophie, the nursemaid, little Benton did not thrive. He seemed always hungry yet nursed haltingly and would give up, whether from satiation or fatigue, after the briefest of spells. We tried sugar tits—with a drop of brandy—and we tried oatmeal so thinned with mother's milk that it ran out his little mouth and all down his clothes. Sophie had heard that tea was good for infants, but I forbade her trying it. Benton grew no worse, but he grew no stronger or better.

  In August, Kit Carson came again to Washington. He brought government dispatches to the President from California—I thought it a delicious irony that he was now a trusted courier even though General Kearny, during the court-martial, had denied ever seeing him. "And didn't he turn me back from Taos to California, insisting I guide him for months on end?" Carson said wonderingly. No matter, Carson had not been court-martialed and now he was a hero, while John was in disgrace.

  John asked his trusted friend to stand as godfather to little Benton, and Carson declared himself honored. The service was held in the Episcopal Church, and Carson held the infant while the priest spoke the holy words. Afterward, as he handed the baby back to me, Carson looked at me solemnly and said, "I fear he won't make it, Mrs. Frémont. This baby is not healthy."

  I turned quickly away, hiding my pain, and within a few minutes I was able to block out the fact that he had ever spoken those words to me. I didn't want to hear the truth about Benton.

  "You can't, Miss Jessie, you can't take that baby off into the wilds. He has a hard enough time of it here at home." Mathilde stood with her hands on her hips, her eyes flashing real anger at me. Behind her stood Sophie, looking concerned but not quite as bold as Mathilde.

  "Mathilde, I do what I must. Right now it is important for us to be together as a family, and I am going to accompany Mr. Frémont to Kaw's Landing. The baby must go with me so that I may nurse him."

  She turned away muttering about the foolishness of some folk, but as I had with Carson, I turned a deaf ear to her warnings.

  John was about to embark on his fourth expedition, though this time it was not funded by the government. Just weeks after Benton was born, the Senate refused to fund a new expedition. He bore this rebuff with the same stoic calm that had carried him all through the court-martial.

  "It's better, Jessie," he said. "I'll seek private funding and not be beholden to the government, which, as far as I can tell, has no intention of paying its debts. I'd rather be funded by people who stand by their word."

  John was still legally responsible for thousands of dollars of debt incurred in the service of the government while he was in California, but as yet those debts had not been paid.

  We spent days talking about this new expedition, and always the talk came back to the railroad.

  "It's what we must have, Jessie. I feel as strongly about a transcontinental railroad as your father does about westward expansion. Can't you see what it would mean to be able to go from one coast to the other by train?"

  Holding little Benton and coaxing him to suck on a sugar tit, I smiled up at John and told him I could. "But the Senate has voted against funding." To me the whole thing seemed to have run into a blank wall.

  "The railroads," John exploded, scaring the infant into a crying spell, "the railroads are more interested in a pass through the Rockies than the government will ever have the sense to be. They'll fund my expedition."

  And that's just what happened. John secured private funding for a fourth expedition to find a pass through the Rockies. He planned to leave in the fall, deliberately timing his departure so that the worst of winter would find him in the mountains. "A pass," he said, "is no good if it is not passable during the winter."

  I knew that this was no temporary trip to California. John intended to stay there—had he not already told me that Thomas Larkin had purchased land for him, and had he not arranged for a sawmill to be shipped around the Horn? "John, the children..."

  Exuberantly, he pulled me to my feet, took the baby gently from me and set him in his crib, then spun me about the room at a dizzying pace. "The children," he said, mimicking my voice, "could not stand a trip across country." Then, dropping to his own dear voice, "And neither, my dear Jessie, could you. You will come by steamer around the Horn."

  "By steamer?" My first thought was one of terror as I imagined myself with two children going so far from all I loved and held dear. And yet, if John were at the end of my journey....

  "Yes, my darling, by steamer. It's a perfectly safe journey these days, and any captain would be honored to have Senator Benton's daughter—and my wife—as his passenger. You can leave in the early spring, when the storms will have died down around the Horn." Then his expression became positively triumphant. "We will have our home by the sea, Jessie, we will have it!"

  "Yes, my darling," I said, "we will." I began to let myself dream a little, envisioning, I confess, the proverbial rose-covered cottage, only mine was on a great cliff and commanded a royal view of the ocean. And in that dream John came home for supper every night, and he slept in my bed every night. Suddenly my sense of chronology caught me up short.

  "If you leave in August or September... to leave Kaw's Landing in October... how long will we be apart?"

  He laughed aloud. "Not long, Jessie, not long. You're so familiar with Kaw's Landing now, you can bring the children and go that far with me."

  And that, in spite of Mathilde's warnings, is just what I did. We took Sophie with us, though she, too, disapproved of taking Benton on this long journey. She was, blessedly, still not as vocal about her feelings as Mathilde. And Benton seemed as content as he could ever be in her care.

  In September we took a steamboat—the Saratoga—westward toward Buffalo on the first leg of our journey. We traveled as any other family on that steamer, save that people kept recognizing John and coming forward to express their indignation at his conviction, their admiration for his explorations, their wishes for our happy future. John regained some of his old confidence from all this atte
ntion and treated each newcomer graciously, explaining that we were going to California as poor ranchers, hoping to be able to make a living and contribute to the new territory.

  We reached St. Louis at the end of September, and the early days of October found us on the steamboat Martha, headed up the Missouri. John had put together an expedition of thirty-three men, with sufficient horses and pack animals, and was anxious to be off, though he tried to hide his impatience around me.

  "The baby?" he asked. "Does he seem to be thriving?"

  I shook my head and looked toward Sophie, who sat patiently rocking Benton. "No, he is a little worse yesterday and today. He is... limp." I had begun to hate the very word.

  John frowned. "Lily?"

  "She is delighted with all she sees," I replied with a smile, "and runs about the boat telling everyone who her father is."

  That pleased him, so I never told the truth: Lily told everyone she wished she were back home with her grandfather, who was her best friend.

  In the middle of the night Sophie pounded frantically on our cabin door. "Mrs. Frémont, Mrs. Frémont, you got to come quick. The baby... he's not breathing good."

  Whether it was her tone or my own intuition, I knew that I was about to lose Benton. Yet I had the feeling that if I could just make it to him in time, I could will him to live—as I had been doing ever since his summer birth. "John!" I called over my shoulder. "Come! I need you."

  "Wha... what's the matter?" He rose foggily from a deep sleep.

  "Benton!"

  He was still breathing when I ran into the adjoining cabin and scooped him from the large drawer that served as his crib, but it was a labored, difficult breathing, each gasp seemingly a great effort for the tiny body.

  "The ship's surgeon," I demanded. "Get him at once."

  But before that man arrived—in disheveled nightdress and looking as bleary as though he'd taken a draught too many—little Benton suddenly went totally limp in my arms, limp in a new way from that which I'd hated but grown accustomed to.

  Fiercely, I held him to my chest, breathing deeply as though the movement of my chest would inspire life into his. Lily cowered in her bed, watching from under the covers, and Sophie stood silently by, her head bowed.

  John and the doctor arrived at the same time, but it was the doctor who said, "He's gone, Mrs. Frémont. I... I am terribly sorry."

  I only clutched him the tighter.

  "Here," the doctor said, "let me take him for you."

  At that I stood up, the baby in my arms, and turned my back on the doctor.

  "Jessie! For God's sake, the child is..."

  "Don't you say it, John Frémont, don't you ever say it!" John knew the meaning of my words without asking-—if we had not accompanied him on this fool's errand of a journey, Benton would be alive and well in Washington. In my grief I was perfectly willing to overlook the fact that he had never been well in Washington either.

  Lily began to sob quietly, and John, one wary eye on me, went to comfort her as best he could. The doctor, after another halfhearted attempt, bowed himself out of the room, with many expressions of sympathy. Only Sophie stood perfectly quiet, never trying to approach me.

  I stayed that way the whole night, clutching my baby to me, crooning softly to him. Suddenly, at daybreak, I began to cry as I'd never done in my life. Great wrenching sobs racked my body, and tears flooded down my face, soaking my clothes and those of the baby I held.

  Without a word Sophie came and took the infant from me. I relinquished him, without ever realizing that the tiny body had grown cold and a little stiff. John and Lily watched me warily, as people watch a crazed person, but I merely walked out of the room and returned to my own cot. John followed me.

  "His body will have to be returned to St. Louis for burial," I said. And then—my crying over, though my grieving not yet begun—I went fast asleep.

  John and I never talked of the child's death again on that trip, but I was filled with a great sadness as I watched John and his men make their final preparations at Kaw's Landing. The Indian agent, a Major Cummins, had with gracious hospitality given us quarters in his log house, but during the days Lily and I preferred to be in camp with John and his men. John rigged a tent for us under a tall cottonwood tree, and from there I watched the preparations, dreading with all my soul the day that preparations would be final and they would leave.

  The day came in mid-October, and I, ever my father's daughter, rose to the occasion, bidding John a cheerful farewell and waving brightly to the men who had become my fast friends in the week or more we'd been together. Holding hands, Lily and I watched them ride west, and then, forlornly, we returned to the log house. The trees were bare, and winter was in the air. I shuddered with foreboding and wished John had left in August.

  I had trouble sleeping that night. Major Cummins had been troubled by a wolf killing his sheep, but he had discovered the wolf's den and killed all its pups. That night the mother came looking for her young ones, and unable to find them, she howled in misery. As though echoing her grief, the wind seemed a shrieking voice as it tore around the flimsy cabin. Those eerie sounds, full of pain and rage and grief, echoed my own misery, and I was nearly driven to go outside to join the wild beast. Instead I lay rigid in my bed, too anguished even to know what would bring me relief.

  I thought I had dozed off and was dreaming of wolves, for a great huge beast seemed to be approaching me, as though to smother me. This was no wolf! It was John, come for one last visit. His beard, newly regrown and therefore prickly, scratched my face as he kissed me hard and long. And then, before I had really roused from my half-sleep state, he was in the bed with me, and in a quick few movements our clothes were gone, and the strength of his body was pressed against mine.

  His passion was not gentle that evening. His hands were firm, his movements insistent, and I rose to meet him each time, carried away by the power that I felt coming from him. Later I would wonder if his intensity came from the anticipated time apart or was somehow tied to the need to prove himself, a need I prayed this expedition would meet. Or did he want to leave me pregnant, as compensation for little Benton's death? But none of those thoughts were in my mind, as passion, at once painful and pleasant, carried us beyond the confines of that rude log cabin.

  When once I cried out in pleasure, he clapped a hand over my mouth and laughingly whispered, "The major will come to rescue you."

  "No," I panted, "I don't want him to."

  And then we were at it again. Carried away by John's needs and my own, I made no comparisons between this and other leave-takings. Later I would realize the difference: always before we had lain like boards next to each other, I anticipating the agony of parting, and John probably thinking ahead to the fame and glory the expedition would bring him. Never before, as this time, had he been desperate. Now, disgraced and a soldier no more, this expedition was his chance, his only chance, to prove himself. And the desperation of that challenge somehow bred a fierce passion. Perhaps I responded because my own desperation for him was as great.

  Daybreak found us sitting decorously in Major Cummins's kitchen, sipping coffee which that good man had risen and made.

  "I heard you stirring around," he said apologetically, "and thought you might want a bit of coffee before John has to gallop off."

  And how much stirring did you hear? I wanted to ask. I think I only blushed.

  His coffee gulped down, a quick and distant kiss planted on my forehead, and John was gone. He looked full of life, alive for all adventures that might come his way, and I, exhausted from the night's activities, marveled at his stamina. "They'll have broken camp and begun to move," he said as I walked outside with him. "I'll have to ride hard to catch them." Then he was mounted and gone, calling over his shoulder, "Give my love to Lily."

  "I will," I said to myself, for he was long out of earshot, even if I had yelled. And I won't, I thought, tell Lily that you came back and never even came to her bedside. But, then, if he had s
pent a minute with Lily, it would have been one minute less spent in my bed, and I was uncertain I wanted to make that trade.

  Lily and I returned to St. Louis to the dismal task of seeing poor little Benton buried in the family plot. I was anxious to be gone and did what little packing was required as quickly as I could.

  One morning a knock at the door surprised me. I had not thought any but my relatives knew that I was in the city. "Yes?" I said, opening the door.

  A young black boy stood there, dressed as a house servant. "Mrs. Frémont? I brung you a message from General Kearny."

  I stiffened as I heard that name. "Yes, what is the message?"

  He held forth an envelope. "I'm to wait for yo' answer, ma'am."

  I ripped open the envelope and read, written in Kearny's own hand, a plea that I come to see him. He was sick—dying, probably—and wanted to make peace with his enemies, particularly, he wrote, "the Benton family, who have meant so much to me in years past."

  Quickly I grabbed a sheet of foolscap and a pen, while the young boy waited.

  "I cannot come," I wrote. "A tiny grave stands between us, and there is no forgiveness in my heart."

  I gave the message to the boy, and he, having no idea of its contents, went happily on his way. Afterward I was bothered with fits of guilt—should I have gone to a dying man? But then Lily's presence made me realize again how precious children were, and how much Kearny had to do with Benton's weak entrance into the world and early departure from it. No, I had made the right decision.

  General Kearny died shortly after Lily and I left St. Louis.

  * * *

  Once Lily and I were back in Washington, with my intention to follow John to California clearly announced, I was subject to all kinds of campaigns to keep me from what some called "this bit of folly" and one journalist—I was never sure who—referred to as "Frémont's latest bit of self-centeredness."

  Not that I didn't have doubts. I was twenty-three years old, a sheltered young woman more used to being with my family than most. I had read with marvel and disbelief of women leaving all they loved behind to follow their husbands west. How, I wondered, could they go so far, knowing they would never see their mothers and fathers again, never bicker with their sisters and brothers, never set foot in the houses where they had been raised? I was too anchored to the house on C Street and the people who lived there. But I put all that firmly behind me in my determination to start anew with my husband, who was, to my view, a lonely and proud figure who had no one else in the world, save me. And, of course, Lily.