The paddlers urged us past sand bars that speared the water, often poling and using ropes to pull us against the current. Occasionally, we got out so they could take their heavy canoes around fallen trees that blocked the waterway. Back in the canoe, I tried not to look at the water rushing by, grabbed the side of the canoe when a swift current caught the craft and might have sent it spinning but for the skill of our handlers. I noted how thin the sides of the boat were. I could find no seams, so the boat was formed of one continuous, long, red, fragrant cedar log.
I caught a glimpse of a huge bird with scarlet feathers that Ezra Meeker named a pileated woodpecker. “A shy bird,” he told me through Christian. “One that doesn’t like to be seen very often.”
“That wouldn’t be hard in those thickets,” I said.
“Still, you’ve seen one, so that is something to remember,” Christian said. “Meeker says that sightings are rare. A unique experience in this wilderness. You like unique things, if I remember.” He patted my hand, stopped my thumb and finger from rubbing themselves raw.
The men spoke constantly of the timber, its size and girth, how dense and how abundant. The river meandered through lush prairies while I forced myself to think not of the possible problems with the water but to watch for dots of color, to let myself be taken in and comforted by the presence of flowers whose names I didn’t know. We all marveled at the high, timbered ridges, much taller than the bluffs of Missouri; more foreboding, too. We swatted at mosquitoes, buzzing.
Wide prairies eased out from the water’s edge, and we watched deer and sometimes elk tear at grasses. Despite the promise of lush soil for kitchen gardens, I noticed few clearings in this wild.
When we reached Toledo, another small landing with a few log homes and fenced gardens, we stepped out of the canoes and Meeker left us.
“His farm is near Puyallup, quite a bit farther northeast,” Christian said. “But he thinks we should go on up to the Sound and see if we can winter at one of the forts there. They’ll have doctors.”
“But I thought we took this route because Meeker had neighbors that he knew of who had land we could acquire.” I knew I sounded irritated, but when they included me in discussions, it was to eavesdrop more than participate. Issues weren’t decided within my earshot. Within my presence they merely affirmed decisions already made.
“He’s done what we asked of him,” Christian told me. It seemed to me he bristled. “His advice has been good. We’ve seen abundance. We’ll explore yet this fall and finalize our location, then send scouts back to Bethel. You have to agree, this is beautiful country.”
Beautiful, ja, but empty of all but tall trees.
I assumed we’d walk the rest of the way to Puget Sound, to the promised “bustling” town of Olympia, but instead the Cowlitz paddlers had relatives who met us, and for another trade of red cloth bought just for this purpose back in Vancouver, we could ride their big horses behind them. We agreed, and for the first time since I was very young (when there’d been no one around to see), I sat astride a horse, my left knee no longer steadied by the lower hook. I put my arms around a perfect stranger. We were on solid ground, off of the water.
I could have stayed at Olympia forever. We spent our first night there at Edmund Sylvester’s Olympia House Hotel. I heard even more strange languages spoken, including a high-pitched staccato chatter from the kitchen, where I caught a glimpse of an Asian man, his thin long braid swinging like a metronome as he bustled about. For dinner that evening we were served an appetizer Christian understood to be pickled blackberries. “A Chinese delicacy,” he told me.
A newspaper lay on the hotel desk counter, and I read its name in English, the same as the river: Columbia.
Puget Sound lapped up to Olympia, a body of water as smooth as fine tin. Christian said, “It’s the ocean,” but it had none of the white-caps I expected from having seen paintings made by those who’d traveled west. The town stepped down from a timbered bluff toward the sea. Houses sat on flattened spots between sawed-off trunks still being pulled by horses and chains. It was a growing place. I loved seeing stumps with steps cut into them for ease in mounting a horse and the window boxes that dotted the few frame houses. Such sights promised the presence of women.
But we were not to stay here. We headed east the next day, merely checked in at Fort Nisqually, a former Hudson’s Bay site. There we received directions to the place where Christian (or at least someone) had decided we would spend the winter.
Fort Steilacoom became my home. Located about four miles from the little town of Steilacoom, and some distance from Olympia, it boasted a few log buildings, fenced-in gardens, and an orchard with chickens pecking about. A man named Heath had farmed it for the Agricultural Company, then left when the Company sold it to the U.S. Army.
Most importantly, Christian told me, a doctor remained quartered at the fort. At least I believed he’d chosen for my benefit this little clearing in the timber separated from the town. I suppose he thought that having the doctor would give me peace about this birthing, or give him peace, as he had plans he just now decided to tell me about, plans that offered me no peace at all.
14
Accommodations
A three-story gristmill in Steilacoom promised wheat and population. A sawmill on a place called Chambers Creek meant frame houses rose here in a place named for a group of sturdy-looking Indians known as Steilacooms. The Indians lived in cedar houses nestled back from the shoreline like quiet beneath trees. I noticed their presence first from the smoke rising as if from blackberry brush, then looking closer, I could see the outlines of the houses. When I encountered one or two of the Steilacooms on the paths, they kept their eyes lowered and always stepped aside. They didn’t look cowed as those at the auction in The Dalles or Wascopam or whatever they called that town that week. Neither did they look frightening or fierce. Polite. They were simply polite.
Fruit trees grew here—propagated they’d have to be because they couldn’t be so large grown from seed. People hadn’t been here all that long, at least not white people. The trees promised apples and pears, and I could taste the Strudels I’d bake. This would indeed be a good landscape for all of us. Not unlike Olympia, it boasted storefronts and a wagon maker and a church, and women with children walked on the board streets while white birds, seagulls Christian called them, dipped and cried overhead. Christian said there were two settlements here: a Port Steilacoom near the bottom of the bluff and a Chapman’s Steilacoom farther up, though I couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. It was how I’d begun to think of our journey here, too. Had it ended? Or were we just beginning the next phase?
The scouts remained at Chapman’s Steilacoom, talking to locals, I assumed, gathering new information with Adam Schuele to translate.
But Christian said that he and I needed to walk on through the cedars and blackberry bushes along a narrow trail to reach the fort before dark. We found it clearly defined not by fortlike walls, but by the split-rail fences surrounding large cultivated fields. This garrison didn’t match what one might expect at an eastern fort. It consisted of a few log structures, one frame building under construction, barns, small outer buildings, and clothes hanging limply on a line.
Captain Bennett Hill once served as commanding officer, having taken over the land after the death some years earlier of the man who cleared these fields, 106 fenced acres planted in wheat, peas, and potatoes. That commander had been recently replaced by an Irishman, Captain Maurice Maloney. It seemed no one stayed at Fort Steilacoom for long.
Captain Maloney knew not a word of German. His dark blue uniform, frayed at the cuffs, merely heightened the red of his hair and the verdant green of his eyes.
“The accommodations aren’t much for ladies,” he told Christian. “But you’re welcome.” He said this with his eyes on me while Christian translated.
“It’s the physician we’re interested in most,” Christian said.
The captain pulled at the
sleeves of his military jacket, straightened his shoulders as he responded to my husband’s words. “Aye, we have one. Frame building will be completed before long, and he’ll have a surgery. Meantime, he’s housed in that log one, along with his wife.” He pointed to a structure that looked sturdy and stable, with moss growing on its wooden shakes.
“There are women posted here?” Christian asked.
“Aye. A few of the officers have their wives here. Even a child or two.”
The captain led us to what I assumed would be our new home. We passed small log houses, and I could see easily that this had once been a farm, though someone’s vision of a fort in the future rose too. Soldiers cleaned the barns while others carried buckets that frothed white with milk. Chickens scattered like seeds as we walked.
“What about the rest of the scouts?” I asked Christian. “Are they coming later? Will there be places for them to stay?”
Christian didn’t answer. Instead, he took my arm in his and patted the back of my hand. I thought he might be pleased that I thought of someone other than myself.
We met the gut doctor, as I came to call him, at his office that was also his home. Christian explained our “circumstance,” and I once again suffered an examination—with my clothes on, thank goodness. “November,” the gut doctor said when he stepped from beneath my wrapper and I stepped down from his stool.
“Indeed. November,” Christian said. He pointed his finger at me to remind me of his rightness.
“It should be sooner,” I said. “Tell him it will be in October.”
“Twice now these men of experience have said November, Liebchen. I think we can trust this. And it’s good. You will have time now to rest, to settle in before the baby comes.”
“I don’t want to settle in. I want the baby to come and for us to stay the winter in a civilized place.”
“Father Keil often said it is not wise to want or desire, Emma, but to accept what we’re given.”
“As if he ever did,” I mumbled. If he had, we would still be in Bethel instead of here.
At the third log house, we were introduced to Nora, the gut doctor’s wife, a tiny woman with dark curls peaking beneath a cap that otherwise covered her head. She had small eyes that sparkled like a kid goat’s, with the same quick movements as she opened the door, invited us in. She wore a skirt full as a bell, and I wondered how many petticoats the material covered to make it sway so as she walked. Beside her, a child stood with hands akimbo; another, Nora balanced on her hip. I wished I’d known what all she said as she talked with quick, crisp words spoken through a mouth with all of her teeth. I deciphered only baby and room.
Nora led us to a windowless enclosure at the back of the cabin. A bed and bed stand marked the space. Still with the toddler on her hip, she picked up a ball and a small wooden horse from the floor, and I realized this must have been her son’s playroom we’d now taken over. The baby leaned out as she knelt, then pulled in at her mother’s neck when she stood up.
“Danke,” I said. When she motioned for me to sit, I nearly collapsed onto the bed as Christian removed the pack from my back. We’d left Fort Nisqually early that morning, walked through the two towns of Steilacoom and the final four miles uphill to this fort, encountered Indians, met the commander and doctor and now his family. It was late afternoon. My limbs felt shaky and weak. The pillows, filled with feathers, were soft as lamb’s wool on my cheeks.
“This will be a comfort while I’m gone, Liebchen,” Christian said, looking around the room.
I yawned. “Are you going somewhere?”
“To arrange things,” he said. He kissed my forehead and left, closing the door behind him.
I was too tired to ask for details and must have known by intuition that I wouldn’t really like his answers.
The “perfect arrangement” is what Christian called it. A physician nearby; a woman to be with if trouble arose; a military fort safe and secure, set within timbered land in a climate so mild I almost felt as though I’d taken a fresh bath when I hadn’t had one in weeks. I would have one this day, though, and that made the day seem blessed.
Then I learned what Christian was really up to, and no amount of my wailing or disagreeing budged him an inch. “You have miscalculated, Emma. I will make every effort to be back by the middle of November. That is your time. The captain says that the weather is rainy but mild well into December, so you are not to worry. All will be well.”
“But why you? Can’t Adam and the others find the place?”
He shook his head as at a recalcitrant child. His words were singsong, a repetition. “We are a team sent out, Emma. Finding a place for the colony, that is what matters most. You must remember this. I’ll be back in due time.”
I’d been a part of that team too, though he said nothing about that.
“I can’t even make them understand me,” I said. “How will I ever tell them what I need?”
“A good opportunity for you to learn English.” He sat beside me on the narrow bed we’d slept one night in. One night! He hadn’t even chosen to stay a week here, so anxious was he to complete his precious mission. “You said you could adapt, Emma, could make do, so we wouldn’t have to turn back, wouldn’t have to send someone chosen for this work on a detour. This is what you wanted, ja? You get what you want, now.”
“You’d leave me? With strangers? In this … fallen world? What about my possible corruption? Aren’t you worried about my becoming envious of the luxury here, unable to give it up when the time comes?”
He frowned. I realized I’d never mocked one of the reasons given for our needing to find a new site.
“Are you worried about people here making you do something you shouldn’t? I don’t believe this of them. They are soldiers. They’ll protect you. You’re safe here, from all kinds of harm. Even families are here.”
I wept then. “I have nothing for the baby when he comes, no swaddling cloths. My own dresses are thin as spider webs.”
“Ach,” he said, patting my shoulder as we sat side by side on the bed. “I’ll ask John Genger to leave an account with the captain. So you can purchase cloth to make a new dress and clothes for the baby. Purchase food for yourself, too, though the captain has said you can eat at his table. It will give you something to do while you wait for this one to arrive.” He rubbed my belly with the palm of his hand. “You will contribute now to the Lord’s work by waiting.”
“I don’t want to wait without you. It’s why I came in the first place, so I wouldn’t need to be alone when the baby came.”
He leaned back. “You said you didn’t know—”
“I meant when we talked about sending me back,” I corrected. “Does the Lord call you to leave your wife behind like this? Isn’t there a proverb about an unloved married woman being one of the three things no one can abide?”
“Liebchen, you are loved. You must learn not to rely on others to make you happy. Happiness comes from knowing what God calls us to and doing that. All else is false.”
“So that’s part of your, your … theology, deserting your wife in her hour of need? I thought our leader taught us to treat our neighbors as ourselves. This is not how to treat neighbors, Christian, deserting them when they need you most.”
He stroked my hair as I leaned into his chest. “What one comes to believe, one’s theology, is in large part what gets written on one’s own heart in ways that are hard to describe to another. Like poetry it becomes. Like a beautiful dream that loses its depth in the daylight. Think of Martin Luther. Of John Calvin. Their everyday lives changed who they became and changed what they came to believe. And what others came to believe as well. Ask them about their theology, and they would talk to you of the struggles they had and the choices they had to make in their everyday lives, ja? Indeed. It’s how they came to know that each of us can speak for ourselves to God.” I nodded and sniffled. “I’m not called to abandon you and I don’t. I’m called to do what is asked of me, to take care of you a
nd to continue with the other scouts to accomplish what others are counting on us to do. It is why we are here, Emma. Because others are counting on us. You must do your part now.”
“But what’s wrong with all the scouts staying right here in Steilacoom? Why can’t we find donation land claims near here? It’s perfect, as you said Ezra Meeker described it. There are already people here and towns and the climate …” I breathed in deep. “It is perfect.”
“Well, it may be, but we will not know until we survey more, look beyond what has already been carved out. We look for our own clearing in the wild, Emma. As each of us must do in our own hearts. Perhaps this time without me right at your side, where you are asked to do new things that might frighten you unless you lean onto the Lord, perhaps this is how you will begin to clear your wild.”
“The baby really will come in October,” I whispered.
“The doctors all say November, and I will be back in November. I always keep my promises to you, Liebchen. You can count on this.”
My tears did not stop him. My prayers were rarely answered of late, so when he walked through the door away from me, I didn’t bother to pray he would stay. Instead, I turned my back on him on the seventh day of October and buried my head in the feather pillow. I didn’t know when I’d see my husband again.
The day darkened with rain that fell from a pewter sky. No one knocked on my door to see if I was alive or dead. I lay on my bed, staring up at the peeled logs, watching a spider weave its web. I tried to imagine what the scouts would be doing, how Christian would get along without his wife at his side as I’d been these last months. They’d see, those scouts, how much harder it would be to search for the right site without me along. They’d see. I pulled the wool blanket up around me, feeling suddenly chilled.
Who would fix Christian’s corn drink on the trail?
The Knight brothers would.