“Mama!” Kate cried as I pulled on my scarf and Christian’s heavy oiled slicker.
“It’s fine, Liebchen,” I said. “I’ll be right back. Don’t worry.” I swung open the door and stepped into the downpour. It chilled but it wasn’t icy, wasn’t about to become snow. Water ran like spring freshets along the muddy path, so instead I walked beside it. I slipped my way to where the cows mooed in the half barn. They stood, heads up when they saw me. They hadn’t been milked since the morning before. They wouldn’t like what I was about to do. I untied them, then I picked up a stick and shouted, startling them both. One mooed and switched her tail at me.
“Get out! Go! Go on now!” I swatted again but they merely moved a little and stood looking at me, the rain making their short horns as shiny as the Bay. “Please, you’ve got to go. Go to Mary’s, please.” I switched them again. They moved but a foot, the cold evident in the moisture at their nostrils.
If I’d wanted them to stand still and not move despite my shouts, they would have run in all directions.
I put the rope around the neck of one of them, the one with the bell, and began to drag her forward from the comfort of the half barn. They could be so contrary, these animals. We’d tamed them into dogs who didn’t want to be in the wet and the cold. Who could blame them? But it was all I could think of to do, to let loose the cows and swat at them and head them in the direction of Mary and Boshie’s and hope that when the Giesys saw the animals loose and needing milked they’d know that something was wrong.
Finally I dragged the recalcitrant cow out onto the path. The other followed at a desperately slow pace. How long have I been gone from Andy? “Shoo!” I shouted, getting behind them now. “Shoo!” They both turned back toward me. Then, as though they shared a signal, each began running toward me, back into the half barn. “No, please!” I felt the tears come. “Ach, jammer! What is the matter with you?” They split around me as though I were an island and they the moving river, their hooves splashing mud onto my dress, my slicker, my face. They stood inside then, chewing their cuds, their bags swollen out between their legs.
I stomped to the house to get Christian’s percussion gun. One shot, that’s all I needed. Thank goodness Christian hadn’t left me a flintlock. In this rain, the powder would have been nothing but mud and I’d not have gotten off a single shot.
Before I left with the gun, I tended to Andy, his face so hot. “Katie, you put this cloth on your brother’s forehead. Do it now. I’ll be right back. Never mind the gun. It’ll be fine, ja.” Christian cried now too. He was sitting up by himself and had just started to crawl. I scanned the room to see if he could reach anything that could hurt him. “You watch Baby, too, Kate. Make sure he doesn’t get too near the fire.”
“You’re crying, Mama,” Kate said.
I wiped at my eyes. “It’s just rain. Go; do as you’re told now.”
Outside I hit at the cows with the butt of the gun and this time, as though to humor me, they moved out single file down the path. “Go! Go!” I shouted. Instead they stopped. But before they could turn around and race past me again, I aimed the rifle and shot. The recoil forced me flat against the ground. I knew I’d have a bruise the size of the Territory in the morning, but I looked with joy to see them both running down the path toward Mary and Boshie’s, their full bags swaying out between their legs as they ran.
“Oh, thank God,” I said. “Thank God.”
It was the first time I had prayed since Christian died. At least it was a prayer of gratitude and not one of complaint.
Heading back toward the house I thought that I should have tied something in writing to the bell! How could I have not done something so obvious, to tell them what I needed? Ach. There was no calling those cows back now. I’d have to hope that the cows arrived and that Boshie would bring them back and not decide to “help me out” by keeping them.
“Please,” I said out loud. “Please bring someone back who can help us.” I wiped my son’s forehead with a cooling cloth. At least the cool rain was good for something.
So when hours later I heard the cows bellow and I opened the door to hold up the lantern and look out, I believed even Jack Giesy could be an answer to prayer.
Jack led with that sly grin, and said something about my not letting him come in “until the cows come home.”
“Of course I want you in here. Those cows did their duty bringing me help.”
“You? In need of something?” His smile broadened if it was possible, one hand still holding the lead rope of a cow.
“I need you to take care of Kate and Christian while I get Andy to Woodard’s Landing and Dr. Cooper.”
The smile vanished. “The boy is ill?” His concern seemed genuine.
“You think I’d send my cows out for some silly reason? A fever. He’s had it for a week, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. He hardly eats. I’ve done what I could but he needs a doctor. I need to take him to the doctor.”
“Don’t be troublesome, Emma Giesy,” Jack said. He moved with the cows toward the barn and tied them, then walked as quickly as I’d ever seen him back to the cabin. “The boy is ill and must be taken, as you say.” He stomped water from his brogans. “But I can do that faster and safer. Your place is here with your other children.”
“But Andy needs—”
“To be taken care of quickly. Let’s bundle him now. No more about it. I’ll look after him.”
I stared. It was the best choice. I’d have to trust this man. I found the blanket, wrapped Christian’s oil slicker around Andy, then lifted this bundle so light into Jack’s arms. “I want to come along, Andy, but I can’t. Cousin Jack is taking care of you.” He lay still against Jack’s chest. “Thank you,” I said. “Please. Let me know what’s happening. Please.”
“As soon as I can,” he said.
So I let Jack take Andy to his grandparents, where Martin was and where the doctor could be called from Woodard’s Landing. I let him take my son.
True to his word, Jack did come back two days later, with news that filled me with relief. Dr. Cooper said Andy rested quietly at Andreas and Barbara’s. “It’s a kind of bronchitis,” Jack said. “Doc Cooper gave him baked onion juice, a little sugar and glycerin. Calmed the cough some. He doesn’t look so tired. And he slept they said.”
“Is he well enough to travel?”
“Oh, not for a bit yet,” Jack said. “Your mother-in-law said not to worry, to just take good care of Kate and Christian. She said she hoped you’d accept their help for once with this.”
“I wouldn’t have let you take him if I wasn’t willing to do what was best for him,” I said.
“Something I know,” Jack said.
“Did he give you any idea of how much time before I can come to get him?”
“Martin said he’d bring him back when he got better.”
“Martin did? Oh, good.”
Knowing Martin tended him brought comfort. He’d understand my need to have my son back and could remind my in-laws about whom Andy really belonged to. I sent Jack off with thanks, grateful that he left without resistance or suggesting any future obligation.
By February 1859, the rains let up. Sun breaks came occasionally, chasing off the fog, and one morning I bundled up the children and we set off. I stopped at Mary’s and asked if she would mind watching Kate and Christian while I went to fetch Andy.
“Is he that much better then?” she asked.
“Jack says he makes steady improvement and he’s been there two weeks. It’s time for me to bring him home.”
“Or at least visit him,” Mary said. Her cheeks were rosy as though she’d been out in the sun but it wasn’t that warm. “I’d be lost without Elizabeth for that long.”
“I have been,” I said. She rubbed her belly as I talked. “Are you … will you have a child?”
“Ja! We are so happy. I wanted to tell you but it’s hard to share a joy when someone is in sorrow in her own life. I thought Jack mi
ght have told you.”
“I don’t like to have him around much,” I said. “Except now, to share news about Andy.”
“You should talk more to him. He’s funny, sometimes, Emma. He could make you laugh. You used to like to laugh.”
“That was before my husband died and I had three children to raise. I don’t have much time for frolic,” I said.
“A little light conversation with Jack wouldn’t take much effort,” she said.
“When is your baby due?” I asked.
“Summer. It will be a good time for a little one with fresh vegetables from our gardens. Elizabeth will have a new brother or sister.” She smiled at her daughter working diligently on a stitching sampler. Kate already had her face in the sampler, looking closely. “I can watch the children for you but you’ll come back today, won’t you? I don’t have goat’s milk here.”
I’d brought goat’s milk along just in case, but I assured her I’d be back, hopefully with Andy, before it got dark.
“It gets dark early,” she warned me. “And the river’s running high, you know.”
“Then I’d better be off.”
When I arrived at the crossing, my boat wasn’t moored where it was usually left. Other people used the craft; it was a custom, just as it had been back in Bethel. I thought of it as “my boat,” since Christian had bought it. I moved up and down the shoreline trying to find where whoever used the boat last might have tied it, muttering beneath my breath about the inconsiderateness of them. I looked across the water to see if someone had already used it to cross and sure enough, I saw it there, tied to a willow, the water pushing against it so it was nearly flush with the opposite bank.
The river was way too high to attempt to wade it.
Letting Jack take Andy had been the right thing to do. I’d have risked all three of my children in that boat with the Willapa so high. I’d have lacked the physical strength to cross it, much as I would have wanted to. Will was sometimes simply not enough. Timing was as much a factor in success as effort.
There was nothing I could do on this shoreline. If I waited for whoever had taken the boat to return, it would likely be too late to make it to Fort Willapa to get Andy and come back. The river ran swift, and managing the boat with Andy on the return trip could be a challenge too. But if I attempted to wade it I could at least see him, at least know that he was doing well.
I couldn’t.
The rush of water darkened before me. I’d ridden on boats. I’d taken a mule across a stream. I’d stood in the water and clubbed fish to survive a winter. But I could not imagine myself with water to my chest pushing against the strength of the current and being strong enough when I reached the other side to then bring Andy back.
I told myself this obstacle was nothing out of the ordinary in a place like this where the rivers acted as both transport and barrier. There was nothing strange in having family look after a child, especially a sick child.
Watching the river rush, undercutting the banks while it carried swirls of trees and branches, I came to one conclusion that day: I couldn’t leave my children behind while I traveled off to follow a scheme to paint or draw and make money of my own. If I went, they’d have to go with me.
I hoped my in-laws explained what would keep me away. Andy would see Jack or others coming and going and might not understand that a younger brother and sister and a raging river kept his mother from being with him.
I can’t even cross a river to visit my son.
My routine continued through that month. I milked the cows. Karl came by once or twice, but without Andy there to teach, he seemed uncomfortable. He didn’t even take time to smoke his pipe. Jack picked up the butter, spent a little time talking. He wasn’t going back to the oyster beds, he said. Too much work for a laboring man with no potential for ownership, not that Jack wanted that. “I think communal living is the perfect answer for a young man’s life. No worries, labor that helps others, never without a roof over one’s head.”
“Don’t you ever want to just have something to call your own?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Owning property doesn’t give a man much over one who doesn’t. Why, we had neighbors back in Harmony who worked twice as hard just to keep everyone fed because they had land, property, and slaves. If war comes, they’ll die for that property, and why? I don’t see the point. Not when you can live taking care of your neighbor while your neighbor … takes care of you.” That last he added with that grin again telling me he had more than one intent to convey.
“I’m sure Joe Knight’s been pleased to be working for himself.”
“Maybe could be. But I think he’ll tire of the effort before long and head back to San Francisco. Maybe even Bethel. Oystering is a constant job, and the beds are property, so he has to watch them diligently so no one steals the shellfish. He stays awake nights worrying. None of us colony members do. Not worth it if you ask me.”
“I thought you said you rarely slept.”
He grinned. “True enough. But I’m not awake worrying.”
“Christian never felt the need to own things either,” I said.
“But you, you’re one to believe that if you own a sheep you’ll soon have wool and yarn and weavings to sell.”
“Ja, and if the sheep belongs to the community, then no one cares especially for it. No one calls it by name or worries over it. Instead of it being an animal with wool becoming a weaving, it’ll be but a sheep growing old.”
“Don’t let those who tend sheep in Bethel hear you say that. They looked after the animals as though they were children.”
“But they aren’t. And if the Bethelites would want to do something different, they don’t have the authority to sell those sheep now, do they? They own nothing after all that work. Everything is in Keil’s name. He has property. What’ll happen when he dies? His sons will get all the work you’ve put in.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had a good life.”
“Don’t you ever … want something else?”
He smiled then. His dark eyes told me I didn’t want any answer he maybe could propose.
He was an interesting man, Jack Giesy, I had to say that for him. I could see a few of his virtues. But he presented a caution as well. I wanted to keep on his good side, as I might need his help bringing Andy back so I wouldn’t have to wait until the river lowered. Meanwhile, I would treat him like a brother, listening to his news.
One day, when he’d kept his distance, made Kate laugh with the faces he made and so seemed safe and predictable, I asked him if we could plan a time when he could go with me to pick up Andy. “You’re asking me for help, again? If I was a betting man, I’d have lost such a wager, that Emma Giesy would ask a man for help more than once in a lifetime.”
“Am I really as difficult as that?”
“Maybe could be you are.”
“So I am, then. Your answer?”
“Ja, sure. I’ll go with you. Let’s make it for Sunday next.”
He brought a mule. “We’ll need it here to work the fields anyway soon enough, so Boshie said to bring it. I’ll leave it here when we get back.” We loaded Kate and Christian up on the animal and the two of us walked the mile or so to Mary and Boshie’s.
“You’ll be back by dark?” Mary asked, as we unloaded the children.
I assured her we would. Karl was there. He drew on his pipe, asked after my health. I told him I missed our visits and he said, “Ja, by golly, I’ll have a new almanac to bring to you soon. We’ll check the best times to plant.” Then he nodded to Jack and headed back into the house, taking Kate by the hand while Mary held Christian on her hip.
Jack led the mule to a stump step so I could get astride the animal. He frowned again and I remembered his discomfort with my swinging my leg over the animal. “You don’t have a sidesaddle,” I said.
“You had one. We should have taken it.”
“And made it impossible for the children to ride? No. There’s nothing wrong with a woman r
iding in a way to make her secure.”
He grunted but swung up behind me.
“Feeling secure?” he whispered in my ear as he pressed into my back, reached for the reins and clicked his tongue at the mule that started off throwing me into Jack’s chest as it fast-trotted toward the river.
Jack didn’t want an answer, which was just as well. I felt secure enough that I wouldn’t fall off the mule but I resented this man breathing so close to my neck. I resisted the scent of him against me. I bristled at the warmth of his body seeping so close to mine. How could he be upset by the impropriety of my leg swinging over a mule’s rump but not have the slightest discomfort with an unmarried man’s body heat warming a widow’s robe?
Recent rains left the ferns and trees sparkling with raindrops. As the sun hit them, it reminded me of candles on the Tannenbaum at Christmastime. Birds twittered and I heard one lone seagull flying upriver and wondered for just a moment if it might be our Charlie. Andy would have been delighted to see a gull. It somehow marked the coming of spring.
Jack’s arms held me on either side of my shoulders, like a cow’s stanchion, as the mule plunged and pushed against the water, but we crossed the river without incident. On the other side, I suggested that I’d like to walk a ways. Jack complied and the conversation went easily back and forth between us talking of wheat and sheep. Safety. Walking was safer.
At a rock outcropping I noticed what looked like the remains of a drawing of a flower maybe or a dragonfly. “Look,” I pointed. “Could that be a natural design of lichen or is it a … drawing? Yes, I believe it is.”
“Maybe could be,” he said, grinning.
“You did that.”
“Ja, sure. I have hidden gifts you know nothing about.”
“I know the egg you scratched for Christian showed a fine talent,” I said.
“As if you’d know how to evaluate such talents, Emma Giesy.”
His retort had been said in jest, but it stung just the same. I wasn’t going to say anything to him about my own artistic bent. “Don’t you worry that it’ll soon be washed away?”