October 1. We learn of Antietam and the twenty thousand killed there, counting both sides, and well we must. The battle moved into the north but without a win or defeat or so the telegraph tells us. Such is the news of warring.
The vine maple asserted itself through the green with its vibrant red, marking a seasonal shift. We finished harvests, dried fruits and vegetables. Colonists spoke then of the produce they’d bring for exhibit at the state fair. Sometimes in the cooling nights when I curled up with my children snuggled around me on their mats, I felt like carded wool, thick and full of tiny seeds that needed constant combing to get the blemishes out, so the wool would be useful one day. This distance between me and my parents stuck like a burr I couldn’t card out.
Begin to weave. God provides the thread. Louisa wrote out the German proverb in her Fraktur lettering and hung it in the hotel. I read it every day. My mother had shared it with me as a child. Where was the thread of my life? I wasn’t weaving a thing.
“The rats have gotten into the butter,” Lucinda Wolfer told me. She showed me a butter block from the octagon cool house, where we kept butter immersed in spring water until we took the blocks for trade. The one she showed me had bite marks and tiny scrapes I took to be where the mold had been held by the rodent’s claws. I was surprised the rat had gotten into the water, though I supposed they did swim. I wondered if all of the butter might be contaminated.
“When I have my own place,” I told Lucinda, “I’m going to build a buttery at the river’s edge, with the sides deep enough down that the rats can’t penetrate.”
“Ja, I have plans for when we build a house too,” she said. “But it’ll be some time, my husband says.” She stared at the rat bites. “We could cut it off and take the remainder to Oregon City and trade it across for butter there,” Lucinda said. “It won’t hurt anyone if they don’t know about the rats.”
I laughed. “I can see you explaining to the shopkeeper why you’re trading butter for butter. He’ll go to the storeroom, change the wrappings, and give you back the same rat-butter you’d brought. After all, ‘It won’t hurt anyone if they don’t know about the rats.’”
Lucinda laughed with me. “Ja, I could see that happening in Oregon City, all right. Well then, we’ll scrape off where they’ve bitten into it and use it ourselves. But I’ll get another today for our sauce. The idea of eating what the rats left…” She shivered.
We finished up, and that night, after the children were in bed, I imagined my house and its buttery. It would be a double house, not like the Missouri “saddle bag” houses, which were two houses built completely separate and joined by a common middle section. They called the hinge section a “dogtrot” used by both households. Keil’s house was somewhat similar to that design. Mine would have no dogtrot. It would have two entrances at the front and two fireplaces downstairs, one in the kitchen and one on the other side of a shared stairwell. The stairs would be enclosed, so people could sit in the parlor while others went upstairs or down, no one being the wiser.
Upstairs there’d be bedrooms on either side of the stairwell, and a hall wide enough to allow trundle beds or cribs for toddlers. Two families or maybe more could live in the house and come and go as they needed, without bothering the other. But they’d be close enough that if one called for help, the other would hear it. There’d be front and back covered porches. And I wanted glass windows, to let the light in and to let me see what dangers might be lurking on the porch. Maybe the Wolfers would move in with us. Maybe Brita. My parents and brothers and sisters.
I got up and found paper that had wrapped one of Ida’s birthday presents, now carefully folded for reuse. On it, I drew the plans, deciding that even if Jack never left, even if my parents never arrived, I’d push to have my house be the next one the colony constructed. There’d be a buttery, and I’d find a way to keep the rats out.
Brother Keil had a number of entries for the state fair. He’d prepared his strongly medicinal Oregon grape wine once again. He entered dried fruits too, including peaches. He’d gotten the peach trees from a French Prairie farmer who’d brought them to Oregon in the late thirties from the California missions. The leaves made fine green dye for our wool. Several of the young men had worked some of the bulls to halter, so they could show them entered under the Aurora Colony’s name.
The animals trailed along behind us as we rode in the wagons, shaking their big heads of the flies. Brother Wolfer sat astride one of his finest horses to enter in the race. We Aurorans didn’t have much stock to speak of, so I wondered about the likelihood of an Aurora horse winning a race. I liked the calming murmur of a horse as he nuzzled his velvet nose up against mine, and I wondered why we didn’t have more of them in Aurora. I guessed that Missouri mules were our choice because they were such good workers. Always it was about work.
Louisa took her Fraktur pieces to show. Some of them reminded me of the punch paper kit patterns, models they were called, that we girls were taught to stitch. “Trust God for Every Need.” “God Bless This House.” Simple words of wisdom that our fathers would show to interested suitors as indications of our proper training. The words were drawn on paper cards with holes for where the threads should go, and we stitched right over them. I thought that Louisa’s Fraktur with letter flourishes would make a lovely model for my Kate, and she’d be ready soon to do such work. She had already stitched on a quilt with Aurora Keil. I wondered if my parents still had the paper models I’d made, which I’d hung over the main room door. Thinking of my parents saddened me yet again. I pitched the thought away.
Several women had knitted socks with actual heels in them, rather than the plain straight tube. Very inventive, and more comfortable for a man to wear inside those heavy brogans. We entered skeins of hand-dyed wool, all perfectly carded, dyed, and spun. We had well-fed sheep that offered up their wool. We. I said that often these days, we of the colony.
I’d had no time to draw or paint in these past months, nor the interest, so when Louisa asked, I told her that I didn’t plan to go to the fair, that I had nothing to enter. “You need to come with us, Emma,” Louisa told me. “As you did before. Didn’t you have a fine time at the fair?”
“But when we came back…there were problems, remember? Jack showed up. We argued…”
“Ach, ja, but he is already here now. There’ll be many of us together when we come back, and he can do you no harm. He’s staying behind. Come with us.” I must have grimaced, or maybe I rubbed my fingers as I did when anxious. “Emma. You can’t allow past things to keep you from possible pleasantries. It won’t be the same. It can’t be. You’re older and wiser, ja?” Louisa said. “You make it different this year. Have a pleasant time with your children. Listen to the band play.” She drew in her breath. “I can work an entire day of beating rugs, knowing I will hear music at day’s end.” She clasped her hands and heaved a happy sigh.
The girls were eager to go, and so were my sons. “We can’t buy anything,” I said, relenting. “We have no money.” I didn’t add that even if we did have money, Jack would decide how to spend it. They agreed they’d ask for nothing. We took Charles and Stanley and Pearl too, along with my four, and Louisa and I baked and cooked for us all. With other families from the colony we walked or rode the nearly twenty-five miles toward Salem. We’d spend three nights and be there for the entire second day, always said to be the best.
On arrival, we spread quilts on the grass where we ate and would later sleep beneath a canvas tent. I hoped we’d have plenty to feed the hungry Aurorans with some left over to share with others. Our food would attract people to Aurora, more than Keil’s medicinal wine or a winning horse. Sharing food would bring us notice. Selling sausages on a stick would bring in cash as well. Being at the fair had purpose for us colonists, more than just fun.
Women walked arm in arm, in and out of the exhibit barns, and I heard the band warming up. It always amazed me that the tiny piccolo could be louder than the large trombone, its piercing t
one uplifting while searing through the drums and bass. Being little didn’t mean being ineffective or unnoticed. Brita showed me that.
I walked through one of the tents where someone had brought rabbits in a cage to show. I had Ida on my hip. I pushed Pearl in a cart I’d rigged for her, and she slept now beneath the shady basket weave above her head. I’d seen an Indian woman carrying a child in a board with a woven shade and did my best to duplicate it. I talked to Ida about the bunnies, and she leaned into me, excited and frightened at the same time. Next to the rabbit vendor, foiling my idea that there’d be no surprises, stood a man with odd-looking chickens…without tails.
“They lay blue eggs,” he said. Several people around him scoffed when he showed us the shell. One man accused him of dyeing it with blackberry juice. “No, no,” he insisted. “This is the color she lays.”
I tried to remember the name of the bird Brita had said: Araucana. I must have said the name out loud because the man turned to me. “That is the name!” He pointed. “The woman knows this is true! Yes! The bird has blue eggs, sometimes green.”
People moved closer then. I did too. The eggshell was sky blue with tints of green. The chickens strutted. They wore their rust and ebony, ivory and turquoise feathers as though they knew they were unique. The vendor had three birds, and just as Brita had said, their tails looked chopped off. The vendor said they came from South America and were for sale.
“How much would one be?” I said.
“Maybe twenty dollars.”
Someone said, “You aren’t in the gold fields now.”
The vendor responded with a sheepish grin. “Maybe fifteen?”
The eggs would be interesting things to show people and to serve at our hotel table. We’d save the shells for Easter etching…
“I’ll buy one,” I offered. “But for five dollars, no more.” I fully expected he’d come back with ten, but he didn’t.
“Sold,” he said.
I swallowed at my success. I didn’t know how I’d pay.
People wandered away. The vendor pulled up a basket of reeds, opened the cage, and put one of the chickens inside it, laid the flat strands on top. I could see the chicken through the separation in the reeds. Her tiny eyes met mine. I decided to call her Clara. She’d fill that empty place in my heart that Opal, our goat, had left when I’d come to Aurora with nothing but my children.
“You have coins?” the vendor said.
“I don’t.” He frowned. He’d be upset if our transaction had sent a paying customer away when I couldn’t come up with what I’d offered. “I intend to pay with…food.” The word came into my head. “I’ll bring you food for the time you’re here, baked myself. Berries I dried myself. Strudels.”
“Fresh bread?” I nodded. “Hmm. I don’t really need food,” he said, moving to put the chicken beneath his vendor bench.
“Everyone does. That’s how your chickens work for you, ja? Keep Clara for me. I wouldn’t name her if I didn’t intend to pay for her, would I? And before the afternoon is over, I’ll bring you a basket of food.”
“Five dollars’ worth,” he said.
“Five dollars’ worth.”
The chicken would be a communal one. Her eggs would only add to the notoriety of the colony. Keil would like that. She’d pay her own way. And since I’d baked the goodies I planned to trade, I’d pay my own way too. I put Jack’s claim aside. Such are the ways we tell ourselves stories. I gave this one a happy ending.
Louisa and Brother Keil wandered over the fairgrounds, Louisa a step or two behind her husband. She didn’t appear to mind. I wished she did. I watched to see if he took special notice of the women in their finery and he did, tipping his hat at them with a smile. He was always the showman. A few tall, handsome Indians rode fine horses toward the racetrack, followed on foot by women in their regalia. Young girls strutted by, pretending not to notice the boys who stared at them, as if they hadn’t come to the fair just to walk by those boys. One of the colony musicians strode past me carrying his Ophicleide, a wind instrument that twisted like a snake up into a bell, running from the ground to well up past his dark hat when he sat to play it. The brass finger keys gleamed in the setting sun, like buttons on a uniform, against the smooth wooden horn.
My boys ran with a kite, Charles at their heels; enough breeze lifted the diamond fabric high in the air. While Ida and Pearl slept, I took out my sketchbook to capture the boys’ exuberance.
The act of moving lead across the paper soothed me. I’d forgotten that I took joy in capturing what lay before me. In my mind rose my mother’s sharp words about my drawings—she said they had no practical value—Jack hadn’t liked my drawings either. Not here, not now. I must think on good things.
I kept drawing. I smelled stick candy stiff with peppermint that someone carried past me. I wished that I could bring that scent to paper. I listened to the rhythm of voices around me. I heard a Spanish-sounding man—Portuguese, someone said he spoke; French and English. Brits and Scots and Irish, mostly men, and the clicks and swishes of the Chinook language spoken by the natives gave a mix that made me feel as though I belonged in this interesting if not always predictable world. My sons laughed, and my heart caught in my throat with the sheer joy of it. To see them happy, healthy was a gift beyond measure. I can see God in this.
“You’re smiling,” Lucinda Wolfer said as she plopped down beside me, her skirts billowed out enough to make me wonder if she’d reinforced her petticoat with wild rose limbs. We Auroran women didn’t wear hoops as did women on the outside, but we weren’t averse to being inventive in our effort to be fashionable.
“Jack is more than twenty miles away. That’s cause for smiles.”
She nodded. “Watching the Kinder, that’s restful too, ja?”
Kate ran over and plunged without asking into the food basket. “Ach, no,” I said. “You wait until we’re all ready to eat.”
“But I’m hungry, Mama.”
Kate’s constant state of hunger probably explained why Jack’s comment about her being a “fat little Kate” had so buttressed my resolve against him.
“Come here,” I said, placing my drawing things beside me. My days were well-sewn patterns, and we had scant time for impromptu tying of loose though important threads. I opened my arms to her, and she fell into them. I nuzzled her neck, knocking her straw hat from her head, and in her effort to retrieve it, we both fell backward onto the quilt.
“Mama,” she laughed. “You bottom-upped me!”
“So I did,” I told her. I helped her stand, brushed at the hem of her dark dress. Her stockings had begun to slip, but she didn’t seem to mind. Once I’d wondered if she’d ever laugh again, ever feel safe again, and here she giggled like a normal child. If Brita had been able to come, perhaps she could have set aside some of her bad memories of fairs too. There was no bearbaiting here, and with new friends present, perhaps the memories of that devastating circus fire could have healed a bit.
Beyond our quilt, Andy and Charles had their heads together now, looking at something they held in their hands. A frog perhaps, or maybe a grass snake. The kite lay askew, leaned against their knickered knees. Charles’s presence had tempered my son, and while I saw less of Andy when he was at school, following Martin, or off rolling hoops with Charles, I enjoyed hearing his laughter. Now they gathered string for another run with their kite.
I was glad I’d come. Hesitation didn’t always mean that what followed would be worrisome. Plans could prevent some difficulties. I should have hesitated more before I married Big Jack; I knew that now, but I hadn’t. At some point I’d have to forgive myself for that.
Christian called to Kate then, and she grabbed at her hat, bent to kiss my head, and went running, all thoughts of food forgotten.
“If only all our hunger could be assuaged so easily,” Lucinda said. She patted my hand.
“I’ve some biscuits and strudels I need to deliver,” I said. “Some of my preserves and a few things like th
at. Would you care to come with me?”
“Where are you taking them?”
“I’ve made a trade for us.”
“We could use some Buena Vista pottery. Are you trading for a kraut jug?”
“Nein. Colony food for a chicken who lays blue eggs.” Lucinda raised her eyebrows. “Ja, blue eggs. Think how lovely they’ll be on Easter.”
“Are you trading rat-tasted butter?” she asked, her eyes laughing.
“No butter. Some beans, but mostly our baked goods. Five dollars’ worth,” I said.
She never asked if Brother Keil had approved such a purchase. She knew no woman would propose such a thing unless she’d been granted our leader’s permission.
When the wagon pulled up the grade toward the Keil house, I had a moment’s hesitation yet again, remembering our return from the fair last year. Big Jack had been waiting for me. He’d struck at me then, in front of everyone, and Brother Keil had sent him away. As we walked up the steps to the gross Haus, I wondered if Jack would be there this time. It’d be like him, to recall the same event and maybe even attempt to reenact it. Maybe take any earnings from me he thought I might have.
I had to set aside these loathsome thoughts. They did nothing to improve my life and kept me from enjoying the new memories from the day.
Martin met us on the steps. “We need to talk,” he said.
“What’s happened?”
He shook his head, nodded to the children as though they ought not to hear. He helped unload the wagons and carried Ida in while I brought Pearl. Charles and Stanley chattered to their mother about everything they’d seen. Martin returned, lifted Christian, who had fallen into a sleep so soundly that he could be lifted, carried, and laid down without missing a beat of his snoring.
“Did you have a good time?” Martin whispered to Andy. Martin sounds so calm. He can’t have bad news.