The Memory Weaver

  “I understand, sir. Shall we do this?”

  My father nodded once and we returned to the front of the church that was also the schoolhouse and the meeting room for civic discussion. I picked up the bronze baptismal bowl, and as I’d done a hundred times when traveling with my father, I went outside to fill it with water. Martha saw me and came over.

  “I’ll be finished in a minute,” I said. “We can talk then.”

  She nodded, recognizing the baptismal bowl. I turned from her and went inside.

  Andrew already knelt on the hard floor and my father was saying things over him. I saw my husband nod and heard a sob, I thought. Is he crying? I set the bowl down. My father still had not looked directly at me, but he dipped his fingers into the water and spoke the words he’d prayed over Timothy and Joseph at Lapwai and hundreds of others; over me and my siblings, as babies; and in Brownsville, over men and women alike. My father finally turned to me. “Will you work to help this man keep his vows, grow his faith?” It was a question with direction, that those present committed to the new congregant to nurture their faith. “Yes,” I said. “With God’s help.”

  My father nodded. He wrote Andrew’s name into a book and we walked outside. In the oddest way, I felt more married than I had the day in Oregon City when we’d said our vows.

  But my father had spoken to me only as a member of the faith asked to do my duty. He moved away from me, and when I called out to him, he kept walking, stopping to talk with Mr. Osborne, others cooling themselves with their hats or paper fans in the shade.

  “That wasn’t so bad.” Andrew pushed his hat back off his forehead.

  “What was it you confessed?”

  “Things.” He looked away—ashamed? “You needn’t be bothered. I’ll be better now.” He pulled my shoulder into his, held me while I stared at my father’s back.

  Within the week, while the bloom of his baptism and my father’s tolerance of my marriage was still fresh, Andrew told me he’d be going to Vancouver to get the new dog and that from there he was going to make inquiries about buying more cattle. He’d be gone several days.

  “Where do you get the money? I just wonder.” I darned one of his socks, bit off the thread. “You’re so frugal with what you allow me for household things.”

  “Don’t you be worrying over money.”

  “I have a good head for figures. We could map things out together.”

  He turned with that glaring look he could get. “Don’t you have everything you need? More than most, I’d say. Got whole sections of one color cloth for your quilting, don’t ask you to piece things, now do I.”

  He was generous about my quilting supplies. And about my sewing things for his mother and my sisters. I’d even bought needles and given them to Martha and showed her how to stitch repairs. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” I stood, brushed a smudge from his new duck pants. “I wondered if when you’re back I might take that basket to Henry Hart. I’d have to be gone a few days. Nancy and I could go together. It would be a nice outing riding my new horse.”

  “Who’d take care of things here? No. I’ll arrange for it to be taken to him. You have a home to tend to, Eliza. Best you give up childish ways of riding off into the sunset.”

  While he was gone, I arranged for his mother to look after the chickens and the hog and weed the garden for a day or two. She was happy to do it. “You’ll return the favor, child.” And I would. “Woman’s got to get her feet on other soil once in a while. I’ll like coming here. Quiet and cool and I make do for myself.”

  She made it sound so nice I wondered why I didn’t just stay home. But I did want to see Henry, so I rode off, not with Nancy, but by myself.

  Daniel Methany’s ferry crossed the Willamette, the view taking my breath away. The current was swift, the breeze cooling on the hot August day. I liked wondering what would happen along the next mile.

  It was still some distance to Forest Grove, but the landscape rolled with a copse of trees interspersed with wild roses and the sounds of summering geese chattering along the Tualatin River. Maka was a steady mount and I loved just being with this animal/companion. After the hostages were released, this landscape is where we’d come to, in rainy winter though, and my thoughts and feelings then were jumbled as the dog’s food and heavy with despair. This summer day nurtured. I spent one night at a boardinghouse and left early in the morning where an imposing clapboard building with a cupola rose in the distance. It was part of the Academy, where my mother had last taught. I found Henry sitting on a stump in a shaft of light beneath big fir trees. He sat still as a statue and the green around him looked like pictures of Eastern parks. He looked up when I called to him, stood, smiled, and gave me a long hug.

  “You came all alone?”

  “Yes. Alone. To bring you this.” From my saddlebag I handed Henry a cloth filled with fresh-baked goods, cheeses, a new shirt I’d sewn him.

  “Andrew had a basket sent down too.”

  “Did he?” He followed up on his word. “I wanted to bring something myself. And see the school. They’ve built new buildings.” I turned around. “I remember the old log one.”

  “Everything changes.” He picked through the basket, pulled out a hunk of cheese that he broke, handing me a piece. “You should be here instead of me. You’d shine.”

  “It would have been nice if we were both studying here,” I said.

  We walked the tree-lined campus of one brick building and then outbuildings where the students stayed. This place had been one of my mother’s hopes for me. Attending again would honor her legacy, but my father had changed his mind about furthering my education and then I’d married instead. “You can stay over at Mrs. Brown’s boardinghouse. You remember her?”

  “My intention.”

  I didn’t remember our old teacher well. But I remember after the hostages were ransomed and we were whisked to this place, she was a kind presence while I stayed close to my mother, clinging, really. This place had been a refuge. I’d attended classes; Mama taught one. Then Mama had taken ill with her coughing; my father moved us to Brownsville where we knew no one. I’d endured the trial, and my mother had died. Maybe that’s why I’d wanted to see Henry Hart at Forest Grove where we’d all been together, safe. “We’re all just spokes in a wheel,” I told my brother. “A wheel that keeps moving along.”

  I had a new wheel and Mr. Warren was its hub.

  I circled around his needs, just as I once had for my father. I wasn’t certain I liked the direction this wheel moved. By coming to Forest Grove on my own, I’d taken it a new direction.

  The Diary of Eliza Spalding

  1850

  They are back, my daughter and husband. Praise God. Eliza looks as though she is in another place, her eyes distant. She is changed again. She follows orders but answers only in one or two simple words. Mr. S assures me she did not need to testify, that her answers to the lawyers were too “sympathetic” to the Indians. What strangeness is that? Mr. S tells me the Indians never confessed, that they never claimed to be the ones who committed the deeds but were found guilty just the same. All Oregon City was on edge, fearing reprisals from other tribes if the death sentence was imposed. He prayed for that, he told me. Prayed for death. Dr. McLaughlin, once head of all Hudson’s Bay and the Northwest Territory, testified he tried to warn Marcus to move, that their lives at Waiilatpu with the Cayuse were not like what we had at Lapwai with the Nez Perce, but they had waited too long to change, Mr. S reports. Waited too long.

  There being no jail, Sheriff Joe Meeks held the convicted men in a locked shed. His own daughter was one of those who died of measles at the Whitman site and was never buried because of what happened afterwards. In the aftermath, he found his own child’s body and I think of this more often than is wise. How I feared for Eliza all that time.

  Mr. S says the convicted Indians were visited by two Catholic priests who baptized and confirmed them before their deaths by hanging. S should have offered that forgi
veness, especially if they claim to be sacrificial lambs to those actually committing the crimes. Does not our Lord promise redemption for every soul no matter how dark? S tells me he and my Eliza stayed for this “carrying out of justice.” Hanging. Oh how I disagreed with him! Both that he announces that justice was served and that he brought my child to witness such. Has she not seen enough death? Where is the Reverend Spalding I fell in love with, the compassionate man who understood humanity, our vileness and yet our ability to be turned around? God forgive S that he seems to gloat in this tragic outcome where death begets more death and the Catholic priests are there to offer comfort while my husband rails against them as new enemies.

  I must find a way to comfort Eliza. Maybe Horace can. I’ve failed so greatly in the protection of her spirit.

  I must seek forgiveness for my admonishment of my husband in this entry. A wife must defer to her husband except when physical pain is obvious. S has never hurt me—though my mind and heart at times are wounded. Our lives were blessed with friends and good work and a joy in each other. His ordination was a day of celebration and we applied for the Osage mission field shortly after. Our life’s pursuit moving forward as Presbyterian missionaries. I wonder what might have happened if we had gone to work among the Osage instead of the Nez Perce. But I was with child and the Osage option went to other missionaries. Then, I lost the child, and Marcus Whitman found S and within the year we were on our way to the Nez Perce, a choice that changed everything. God gave us the greatest blessings and brought us to the greatest despair. But perhaps that is what change entails, the lofty and the low of living.

  12

  A Full House

  Everything changed the afternoon Andrew came home and told me he sold Maka.

  “Why? She’s a good horse. Sure-footed. She doesn’t startle at birds or flying debris. Why would you—”

  “You ride off too often. You’re needed here.”

  “You’re gone half the time.”

  “I’m making a life for us.”

  He was doing that. I shouldn’t complain. There was ample supply of meat. The garden had produced well, and I’d dried fruit and strung up beans, and he’d even brought me a box of apples from the Aurora colonists just north. The apples were smallish, but I sliced them and dried them and they’d be good in pies this winter. I’d hoped I might be with child by now, but I wasn’t, a good year and a half into our marriage. One of the joys I had was riding Maka. And he’d just taken that from me.

  “If I promise not to ride without your permission, could I please keep her? I miss Nellie and you were so good to buy her for me in the first place.”

  “I won her. Then lost her.”

  “You . . . won her? At cards?”

  “What else? You think I know how to play your Indian stick games?”

  When had I even mentioned the stick games to him? Maybe when I talked of the early years at Lapwai, before The People let my family down. Maybe I spoke too often and too freely of those times watching the games, riding on fast horses, letting my hair blow free in the wind. My childhood had begun and ended there among The People. But I hadn’t imagined Andrew would find resentment in those comments. I’d thought with the smell of liquor no longer on his breath, all was well. Yes, there was another sweet smell but not whiskey.

  “But cards? Gambling, with the gift you gave me?”

  “It was that or one of my good beef cows, and frankly, those are more valuable than your horse. I’ll get you another. Maybe even win her back. What’s for supper?”

  He was so cavalier about it, so abrasive in his ability to simply say, this is how things will be. Was that what happened in a marriage? That men set all tones and women must either play their tune or the instrument of their partnering would be taken away?

  “Can there be no discussion of this? I could perhaps sew in exchange for what you owe for the horse. Or trade some of my dried vegetables and fruit; agree to make pies each week for the winner.”

  “No one cares about that kind of trade. He wants the horse. It’s what I put up, and now, a man of my word, I’ll deliver. We’ll talk no more of it.” He patted the dog and I had a moment’s ire burn like a too-hot stove. He might have offered the dog. For what he’d paid for the cattle dog, the horse would still be mine.

  Andrew wanted no part of the proposal I gave to him the day after he lost Maka.

  “But I could teach school then, earn extra money.”

  “We’re fine, I tell you, just fine. No, you need to be here.” He kissed me. “A married woman go to the Academy? Of course not.”

  “My mother attended college after she was married. She sat beside my father. You could go too. We could sell the farm and you could become a businessman, a lawyer maybe. One day a judge.”

  He pulled me to him. “And one day, hopefully before too long, we’ll have a child. I wouldn’t want you working so hard you’re too tired for tryin’.”

  I let him hold me. Truth was I liked the quiet talking that followed our intimate time, especially when he shared his plans with me, his hopes, just as he had when we’d first met, about doing something big one day. He still wanted that ranch, but I thought of other things for him. He was a smart man, and up until this gambling away my horse, I’d always thought him wise with his money.

  But I had hopes and dreams too. If I wouldn’t be allowed to go to school as my mother had always hoped for, then I had another plan. It was what I wanted more than schooling; I’d offered the Academy up first as a diversion, a chance for Andrew to say no, making it more likely he might later say yes.

  “If not being trained to teach school, if that’s not going to be permitted, then I want to bring my sisters to live with us.”

  “What? Where did that come from?” He held me at arm’s length. I was tall enough I almost looked directly into his eyes.

  Abby, the kelpie dog we’d acquired, barked outside, and he stepped out to see what bothered her. Apparently he couldn’t see anything so he stepped back in, bringing the dog by her collar with him. “Your sisters?”

  “Henry Hart’s gone and Rachel, well, you know about her abilities. My sisters miss me, and if they were here, my father and Rachel could travel together more easily. And there’d be fewer people for him to look after. It would assist.”

  “I wonder if he sees it that way.”

  “I’m not sure. But I’d like to talk with him about it. If he’ll talk to me.” I might still be dead to him. “He surely wouldn’t allow it unless he knew that you approved.” It had struck me somewhere along these marriage months that my father, while still hostile to me, acted pleasant toward my husband. He’d forgiven him. Not me.

  He shrugged then. “That Millie takes a lot of chances. Runs everywhere.”

  “She falls down a lot, it’s true. But she gets back up. That latter, by the way, is a Spalding trait.”

  He harrumphed. “They’ll have to go back home when school’s in session. Too far to take them every day.”

  “Maybe by next term there’ll be a new teacher at the north end.”

  I had to walk south through North Brownsville, across the covered bridge, and then a mile or so farther southeast to my father’s home. I decided not to rile the girls with my offer before my father consented. He’d be angry if I went around him, but I hoped he’d see the practicality of it.

  He worked at the small table in the front of the church/school, his Bible open and foolscap paper filled with notes beside him. It looked as though he wrote a letter. Probably to the Mission Board. He was nothing if not persistent. He looked up when I came in, then put his head back down. I could hear Millie and Martha talking briefly on the back steps.

  “You can’t ignore me forever,” I said. “I did not die, though you would have me so. Am I so horrid a person because I chose a man to marry you find unworthy?”

  A long silence followed. I let it. Flies buzzed. I swatted at them. Finally, into the months of distance, he spoke. “I had hopes for you. One day you’
d teach with me, as your mother did. We’d go back to the Nez Perce. The Board will succumb eventually. How can they deny the work we did? After all we did, Eliza.”

  He is speaking to my mother.

  “Father.”

  He turned back to me with eyes glistening. “We worked so hard. She had so much grief. Losing the baby. And then a second and then you almost dying that first month. You were so sick and Marcus so long in coming to bring medicines. So frail.”

  “There were other babies?”

  “You were so weak, couldn’t hold down your mother’s milk. We thought you’d die, but you lived and with such promise.” He lowered his head to his hands. “And then you married.”

  “It didn’t remove my promise, Papa.” I knelt beside him, looked up at him. “I’m still capable.”

  “But not to travel with me to do the Lord’s work.”

  “Rachel supports you.”

  He sighed. “She does as best she can, but not what you accomplished with me.”

  “Perhaps if I had the little girls with me, she could be of more assistance.”

  He looked at me then. “What?” Would he be affronted or see it as a gift? So unpredictable. So like Andrew. “You would do that? Take them?”

  “If you’d allow.” Anticipation like a butterfly lifted my spirit.

  “Warren, he is . . .”

  I didn’t end his sentence but repeated its beginning. “He is . . .”

  “Stable?”

  “I see no evidence of drink.” I didn’t mention the gambling.

  My father tapped his cheek with his finger. “Then yes, it would be of great help for you to take the girls with you. I’m certain they would like that. But I’ll miss them, both of them. Henry’s gone to school.”

  “I know.”

  “You could have gone too.”

  “When?” I bristled. Don’t ruin this.

  “If only your mother hadn’t died.”

  “Yes, our lives would have been greatly different if Mother hadn’t died.”