Jack Giesy showed himself one day, tipped his hat and said, “Mary Giesy says you maybe could use some help.”
“I’m not in a position to hire anyone. I have no cash and—”
“Well, let’s just see what we can work out,” he said. He didn’t push past me as he stood, hat in hand. He stomped his feet in the wet. It was November and the rains were with us. I’d have to invite him in. It would be the neighborly thing to do. “I’m flexible,” he said. He blew on his hands to warm them. Why won’t I invite the man in out of the rain? “About pay, I mean. We maybe could get … creative with the books.” He added a grin, one that slid its way from my eyes down over my body to my toes. It made me want to slap his face.
I didn’t, but it did confirm my instinct to send him packing, which I did.
“I’ve no need of wood chopping,” I said. “I know how to do it and in my own time. I thank you for the offer. Let me give you some cheese to take back to Mary.”
Fortunately, he didn’t step inside or follow me while I got the cheese. I held the bag out to him and he put his hat back on and took it from me. “Danke,” he said, still wearing that grin.
I watched him saunter down the path with an axe over his shoulder. Something about his swagger told me he’d be back. I just hoped I’d be ready, and able to hold fast to what really mattered.
11
Catherine
BETHEL, CHRISTMAS 1857
My Dearest Emma,
Papa tells us that you have seen Jonathan but for sad reasons, as we learn of Christian’s death. Jonathan tells us you saw your husband last on the Fourth of July. While the Aurora Band played in a town called Butteville, you were at the Bay having your last days with Christian. I’m so sad for you, Emma. We celebrate Christmas here and wish that you and your children were with us so we could put our arms around you and warm you in the cold of your suffering. To lose a love, oh, how tragic that is. How do you ever stand it? But we are grateful he was acting the hero in saving another’s life. That must bring you comfort.
Herr Keil writes to our teacher, Herr Wolfer, so we learn of his traveling to your remote country for the funeral. How that must have comforted you to have him there to stand beside you, to speak last words over Christian’s grave. We miss him here. Papa says the spirit of the colony is missing something without Wilhelm, so the men are talking now of when they’ll take the second wave out from Bethel to Aurora Mills. Sometime in 1862 or 1863. That’s still five years away! I’ll be an old maid by then.
Do you ever see Jack Giesy? I just wonder.
Mama says I should write of everyday things, that talk of thread and harvests bring comfort more than other words. So I will tell you that the hops harvest was good this year. “Never let September winds blow across your hops,” Papa says, and so the men spent August bringing in the harvest. Mama says the hops poultice is what saved her bad tooth, so it is good for something besides making beer. I always think it grand when something can be useful for more than one thing.
Women in Shelbina are wearing puffs and pads under their skirts called bustles! I’ve seen them. You could hide a child inside one they’re so big. Mama says we girls can’t wear them. It would make our sister Lou look less like a chicken leg, all straight up and down, though. I don’t need one. I carry the bustle God gave me, or so Mama says.
We heard word of a terrible massacre not far from where Tante Mary lives in the Deseret country. Mama is worried, as Indians killed an entire wagon train of people heading to California out of Arkansas. She worries about her sister and wishes Tante had never married a Mormon saint who took her far away, especially if it means they might be in the middle of an Indian war. Tante Mary says it was a terrible thing, the people being killed in a beautiful meadow in the mountains, and that more terrible things may come from the story. She doesn’t say what, but the army is sent to investigate because it was Indians against Americans. A few children survived and the Deseret saints who came upon the train and chased the Indians off found them and took them in. Mary and Uncle John Willard took one in. A girl. I don’t know her name.
Does Uncle Jonathan write to you from France and Germany and England? Our cousins write too. How different their lives are from mine here in Bethel! But they learn of wars too. There is a war with other Indians in a country called India. Uncle Jonathan says they are warring against the British even though both have lived side by side there many years. Uncle Jonathan has returned to France and Papa’s pleased he is not being sent to that India to negotiate a peace.
There are uprisings everywhere in this wide world. I wonder why. There are rumblings about slave and free states here, and Papa says a war will come and Missouri will be the black powder that starts it. Is anyone fighting in your Washington Territory? I just wonder.
There is not much more to tell you. So I will write you these words even though Mama says everyday mentionings bring more comfort than Scripture when a wound is wide open and needs more time to heal. I try to imagine what it must be like to have had love taken away like a boat drifting out to sea. Oh, I should not use that image. I’m sorry. (I can’t erase on this thin paper.) Maybe it is more like having a leaf blown from a tree. A red maple leaf wider than Papa’s palm, one that would cling for a long time to the branch, resist the winds and make one think it would stay through the winter and hang on forever. Then in an instant, it waves like a limp hand and is gone. I think if I’d been watching the leaf and loved it and came to expect to see it there every day, well, when it was gone, I’d be very sad. I think I might even be angry at God for having allowed it to happen. God is all-powerful, so why not stop the wind? Why not let a young girl enjoy the beauty of that leaf? It means nothing to hear someone say it is just the way of things, that leaves form, cling for a time, then die and go back to the earth. But why? That’s what I ask.
I think I’m not supposed to ask such questions, but I would if it was my husband. I would ask and would grieve for the answers.
Mama says it is a sign of maturity when one can form the questions but not be frustrated by the lack of answers. She says wisdom is when we have gratitude in the midst of all uncertainties.
Since there are so many unanswered questions, every question must not have an answer. I just thought of that. Maybe that’s what confuses people, that belief that there must be an explanation for all things. It makes me feel defenseless to not know things, though. I don’t like living as though I’m standing in my crinolines with all the world to see. I don’t want to fear something happening as it did to those Arkansas travelers who ended up dead. I don’t want to have to decide what to do next if I survived that. How would those children understand that all they’d loved had been taken from them? Maybe living with Tante Mary and Uncle John Willard will be their answer on this earth.
Papa says you never should have talked Christian into staying at Willapa and instead should have gone to Aurora with Father Keil. I wouldn’t say that to you because if I were you, I’d feel badly for having encouraged Christian to stay. And the others stayed too, so poor Keil doesn’t have all the help that he needs now, and he urges us to come from Bethel soon.
Lou and Johanna and David Jr. are helping William with egg scratching for the Tannenbaum. He has a nice eye for detail and holds the blown egg as though it was a young rabbit about to hop out of his hand. We will hang the ones you made as a young girl. William looks at them as though to copy what you’ve done and Mama says that’s good, for you always did make scratching pictures well. We boiled the eggs in onion skins longer than usual and they have a chestnut hue, nearly the color of a tintype picture, Papa says. We will put Christian’s name and date of death on one, Emma, as a remembrance that he will be forever in our lives. We’ll hang it on the tree.
I found this verse to give you from Isaiah, who says there is light to follow, that your face may be like flint, hard and firm and ready to make a spark when touched by the loving hand of God. Be like flint, Emma, and not like one who makes her own flames. It
is best to rely on God for the fires of your life. Father Keil will help you. Please don’t be angry if the words are not what you want to hear. I just felt I had to tell you.
Your sister, Catherine
12
Louisa
My husband the doctor preaches today. Every other Sunday as is his way. Whether it will be on simplicity, humility, self-sacrifice, or neighborly love none of us knows. Even I don’t know, though some might think I do. The doctor doesn’t share his views with me before he expresses them. Like the others whom he serves, I pull out the threads of his weaving that speak to me. I don’t mean to suggest that he has anything to say just for me, only that today he preaches and it will be well with us all when he is finished and I will take a tidbit away that will help me learn to live better.
It is February, a month here balanced like a good quilt with warm days of sunshine backed with rain showers and occasionally snow. The snow never lasts. It merely covers things up for a time until light and heat melt it or the clogs and boots of workmen walk the snow into mud.
The men work hard at building yet more houses. They will not be set close to each other as they were in Bethel but instead will have a block of area around each one, giving room to build a barn and a summer kitchen later. Each will have a small garden, a smokehouse, and pens for hogs and our sheep. This is a new concept that my husband adopts. I think he might have seen the merit to the Willapa sites being somewhat separated. Or maybe here in this Oregon Country he could see that we didn’t want to make our “community” appear too tight-knit, so that people from surrounding areas fail to come here to buy our goods. All things change in new places. It troubles me at times to know what few things one can expect to remain the same.
This land is an Eden. We’ll have fine crops to sell to the hundreds of settlers who arrived last fall, many in poorer shape than when our colony reached Willapa. We may have walked across the country, but we had enough food, thanks to my husband’s good planning and the Lord’s provision.
Yet as hungry as those settlers looked, they recovered with the help of friends. They plan a dance. Our men practice, for the band will play for the Old Settlers’ Ball at Oregon City, which should be a grand affair. We won’t attend, of course. But our musical men will get to watch the candles shimmer against the finery of the dresses requiring yards and yards of cloth. One can only hope they’ve sewn such gowns with easy seams so all that material can be put to good use later making clothes for their men and their children. Imagine leaving such a hoard of cloth sewn up in a dress worn but once a year, and then just to dance!
Still, I do love to dance.
Neighborly love. That is what the doctor spoke of today. It always makes me think of Emma Giesy and her struggle with being a good neighbor. She was such a giving girl back in Bethel. Oh, self-centered as young women are, but kind too. It’s been some months now since the doctor traveled north to attend the funeral of Chris Giesy, yet we have heard not a word from Emma, his widow. Oh, I know, one does not always behave as expected when in the swirl of grief, but I did think she might have sent word by way of her brother, perhaps thanking the doctor for his sacrifice, traveling there in the heat of summer. It was a fine service, the doctor told me. The men played a Beethoven piece. Beethoven followed by one of our German family tunes familiar to all of us, lighthearted, the doctor said, for a service commending a body to the grave should be a joyous time. A man’s soul has already left and gone on to a better place. We bury but the body.
I know this is a terrible thing to admit, and I would never tell the doctor this, but I am grateful that my Willie will not have to lie alone now on that hilly site so far from us. Chris Giesy lies beside him and that’s a comfort to me. His mother will visit the grave and as she does, she’ll be there for Willie too. No one wants to be alone, not even in death, though of course we are. For the living, there is a comfort with two graves there. I hope Emma sees it as such. We placed a stone for Willie with a willow tree on it, weeping for him always.
We prosper here in Aurora. We women work side by side to feed the men, who work long hours to build more homes. We’re readying our fields to plant, though spring will not find us until all the Easter eggs have been eaten. That was the rule in Missouri. The Pudding River runs full but within its banks, and there is the smell of spring in the air, that scent of a Missouri root cellar sprinkled with birdsong that marks the ending of a long winter of despair.
The almanac says today it will bluster and blow so I should work inside, on my Fraktur, perhaps. I’m to make the letters perfect for writing special papers and documents so they look as they did from the old country, when our German printer of renown, Gutenberg, printed the earliest books. It is one of the things the doctor does not object to. The lettering is beautiful when completed by one who works hard to make the w just so or the m look like a lightning-split hickory tree. It might be that I could earn money by making baptismal certificates with the lovely letters so they might be hung on the walls of our neighbors, who are mostly Methodists and Catholics. Our colonists could hang them as well. Not baptismal certificates, no, we do not celebrate that sacrament. But perhaps a marriage certificate could be written out with the Fraktur. I’ll ask the doctor if this might not be an act of neighborly love, to commemorate a marriage day. The doctor will likely tell me there’s no time for such foolishness. He still does not think marriage is what young people should put their hopes in. “We have too much to do to be ready for our neighbors from Bethel,” he’ll say.
I have clothes to mend, more to wash, food to prepare, and the young ones who fall in love, well, they are of no good for getting things done.
At least I can sing while I work. There may be foolishness in singing or playing in the band, but at least it can be done while one is being useful. Perhaps that is what the doctor objects to in my suggestions: they do not appear useful, only pleasurable, like enjoying the look of the lettering on a page. Being useful is what the doctor says God calls each of us to be, though I’m not sure how the band is useful. Oh, it raises money.
Rudy Giesy arrived this past week. He has bought a farm in our country from a man named Anderson. It’s close to us in Aurora, and Rudy will raise any sheep that the colony wishes to keep. He’s also going to take a sheep or two back with him to Willapa, where Henry will now keep the pigs. Rudy says he’ll give a ewe to Emma Giesy as she harps on it so.
Forgive me. He did not use the word harp. He said she asks for one. I imagine that means repeatedly. She knows what she wants. I must be kinder especially now that we learn she is with child again. This must be a trial for her, long and odious, to grieve her husband’s death while tending his children and then to learn another comes. Or perhaps she sees the child as the gift it is, sent by Chris from beyond the grave in a way. Some of us count, but we have not seen her so we don’t know when this baby might be due.
Karl Ruge too visits with Rudy. It’s been months since I’ve seen the old teacher. Karl and Rudy brought fence posts of yew wood all the way from Washington Territory. They’ll surround the farm that Rudy bought.
I am hopeful Rudy is the first of many who will leave Willapa and come here to stay. It is what my husband prays for.
They brought news of Big Jack Giesy too, that rascal. He’s been working at the Bay, helping where Chris Giesy died. Chris made good money there, the doctor tells me, and paid off the Colony loan. Chris left his widow a landholder in her own name now. She should be happy, though I do wonder what makes Emma happy.
When he’s not oystering, Jack stays with Mary and Sebastian, along with Karl. It must be the season as he didn’t come to help with the yew posts. I don’t know why this matters. He’s just a young man but he so reminds me of what my Willie might have been if he had lived, though without Jack’s lust for liquor. Still, he is a joyful, unpredictable soul, and any sin can be forgiven if one can be made to laugh.
Gloriunda and Aurora are a big help to me and the other women. Rudy brought a big spinning wheel
for us to use, almost as big as those we had back in the textile mills in Bethel, where we had to walk the thread to and fro. With this one, we can sit and use one foot to move things forward. It was a gift from the Giesys. Well, what is a gift when one shares everything essential with one’s neighbors? Was it theirs to give, or did it belong to all of us?
We’ve been finding what we need for dyes. That is a gift! God provides even the smallest things. Red from the madder root that flourishes in the garden. We’ve found black walnut trees, and since it stains the fingers, it stains wool brown too, and when left long enough, black. Peach leaves brought with us from Bethel give us green. And thus we weave the cloth for quilts or clothes.
Some of us are excited that there’s to be a harvest fair this fall at a place called Gladstone. We plan to take our woven goods with the colors of the earth and trees to be judged. We can take baked goods as well. They welcome essays and music entries too. Perhaps the men will earn certificates for their baskets. Perhaps we women will.
Maybe I could make up such notifications of award with my improved Fraktur letters. Ja, this would be a good thing for the Aurora colony women to be working toward. It is good to have a goal to look to. The men have theirs: to build the colony, to plant and prune, to make a way to tend each other through the common fund. Why not the women? Why not let us have a special goal, something to mark our days in some interesting way? So long as our goal includes the tending of others, this should not be troublesome to the doctor.
I can almost see my Fraktur lettered certificate hanging there against the logs.
I suggested this to the doctor later in the week. He said nothing for a time, then told me that his next sermon must need be on humility.
We hear of difficulties in the Washington Territory. Two Indians have been hanged, though some say they were innocent wretches. Any of us could make mistakes; any of us could falter and fall and once hanged for it, there is no way to earn redemption. Not that redemption is earned, exactly. It is freely given. But any of us can be wretches in need of that gift of forgiveness.