A Tendering in the Storm (Change and Cherish Historical)

  I bowed my head. Once again with Keil’s words, a silent comfort washed over me. I felt my shoulders sag with the weight of life I carried and felt warmed by the hope that a special blessing did come to those who prepared the meal with love. Aside from loving my children, I didn’t think I loved anything or anyone anymore. Maybe my parents in a distant way, the Kinder of my family. But life, or sunrise and sunset, the smell of cedar in the air, the warmth of well-chinked logs, the taste of salt on my lips, even the presence of friends, none of those had warranted the emotion of love or even gratitude. Keil’s prayer reminded me that I had prepared food joyfully and that God saw that as love. Perhaps that was enough love for now.

  I stood back to make sure all were served, called the children when the adults had finished, and offered seconds to Jack before anyone else. He glowered the whole time. When I’d served all the thin pancakes with the hot maple sugar and butter treats, people made comforting sounds about being satisfied. There were a few scraps for the dogs outside. People yawned, made ready for bed. “We will make the same arrangements as before,” Keil announced.

  I nodded while Helena, Louisa, Margaret, and I rolled out mats as the men put chairs up on the table so we’d have more floor space. I’d need to boil the water and wash the dishes yet, but having everyone settled down would make that easier.

  “Andy will finish the rabbit now,” Jack said.

  “Please, Jack. It really is easier for me to do it while I clean up. There’s no need to have the boy—”

  “He must do what he’s told,” Jack said, his voice loud. “I’ll not have you make him into a sniffling rabbit.”

  “Jack—”

  “Get over here, boy,” he ordered. “Pull the guts out and skin this animal.”

  “I don’t think he’s ever dressed an animal before,” I protested. “Let me just show him—”

  “Must you insist on defying me, woman?” Jack said. He grabbed my arm, then thinking better of it, he dropped it. The cabin stilled as before a storm.

  I watched my son as he made his way through the adults, some already lying down, others still standing or sitting on the floor. He didn’t look cowed or defiant either. “I can do it, Mama,” he said.

  “Your mama is not the one asking,” Jack said. “I am. You listen to me, now, you hear?” He boxed at his ear but missed as Andy ducked. “You have a weak stomach, is that it? Can’t stand to handle what will feed you?”

  I saw just a tiny flash of anger cross my son’s eyes, but he held his temper and began the task of gutting the animal. The group went back to their settling in while Andy kept his head low. Tears formed around his nose and he wiped them with his forearm as he worked. He did the work cleanly, using a knife with skill. The odor of intestines and blood was greater than wet wool and old soot. It wasn’t that Andy shied from the blood or body juices of the rabbit, I could see that. He didn’t have a weak stomach. He grieved the animal’s death. Had he gone to the trap and found it still alive, he would have tried to tend it, not bring it home for dinner.

  At last he finished and washed up, stepped outside and hung the hare from the rafter, tossed the entrails to the dogs. I’d fry the hare in the morning. I finished washing the tin plates, wiped out the dutch oven and hoped that Jack would be asleep by the time I lay down beside Louisa on the floor.

  No one slept yet. Keil had asked a blessing on our sleep, but people chattered as though they were sitting upright on a divan, telling stories in the darkness. The air cooled in the cabin as the fire died. They talked about the service, about Andreas’s long and good life. Helena said perhaps she should have stayed with her mother; Keil assured her she was needed at Aurora. Louisa said the oyster shell Jack placed at the grave looked peaceful next to the wooden marker Keil had made himself. Every now and then a person would fail to respond and I knew that, like a star disappearing in the dawn, the person had drifted to sleep. Maybe that’s what death was like when one died in their sleep, just a gentle not responding to an earthly voice; listening instead to one from somewhere else. I hoped that was how it had been for Christian when he died … just a change, not so much a challenge. I closed my eyes, hoping for sleep.

  Instead, I lay awake remembering Christian. I heard Jack’s steady breathing and knew he lay awake as well. Louisa said the oyster shell painting looked good next to a wooden marker Keil had made for Andreas’s grave. Then it came to me: Keil must have made the one for Christian’s grave too, all those years ago. How very odd that he should have.

  I prepared the Hasenpfeffer to kind reviews. “Andy did a fine job in dressing the animal,” I said. “A good dressing is half of the flavor.” The women nodded. We knew that field dressing made the venison, reduced the gamey taste if a man handled the carcass well, but I appreciated their praising Andy for his effort. The men had saddled the animals and rolled up their slickers to where they could reach them easily. The air felt heavy with rain, but we could see patches of blue sky flirting with the clouds. Jack had gone into the barn to milk the cows, I assumed. I thought it odd that he’d begin that chore before the colonists left, but perhaps he knew we’d be talking for a while. It seemed we Germans were forever talking. Even as our hands were on the latchkeys ready to leave, we’d stop and find some new topic that needed exploring. It had been a while since I’d enjoyed the little gabbing that went on. When it wasn’t about me, gossip was intriguing. As when they’d talked themselves to sleep the night before, it was a comfort. Even now I didn’t mind Louisa directing her words at me, trying to get me to change and come to Oregon.

  “But if my parents are on their way out, they’ll come here,” I said. “Imagine how disappointed they’d be if we weren’t present to greet them. I’d want them to see all that we’ve accomplished.” I spread my arm to take in the half barn and the fields we’d planted, the smokehouse. Our lives these past seven years were written on the landscape. “Besides, Jack won’t leave.”

  “You should come for a visit at least,” Louisa said. “You don’t even know all the advances we’ve made at Aurora because you’ve never been there to see, not once. Come next year for the harvest festivals. Such precious things to look at. Some of the men are weaving baskets in the winter months, and they are highly valued at the fairs.”

  “I think they’ll all come to Aurora,” Helena said with authority. She patted her thick braids wrapped tightly around her head. “They’ll listen to my urgings.” I wonder how Helena fits into Louisa’s life. I suspected those in Bethel might have been pleased to see Helena go. Does Louisa welcome her?

  “You could use a basket for your eggs, Emma,” Louisa said. “We’re back to weaving again. My husband purchased sheep and we’re dying the wool as we used to and showing it at the fairs. Maybe you could display some of your woodwork, and Jack could bring his drawings.” She got all excited with that idea and clapped her hands. “The band plays as it did back in Bethel, and we are helping our neighbors, just as we did back there. That’s why we came. To serve our neighbors, to make their lives better than our own.”

  She reminded me of … me, five years previous when I’d tried to convince Christian and all the Giesys to remain here in the Willapa country, to see the goodness in the crude huts, the huge timber that took its toll on all of us, when all I wanted was to find freedom for myself, relief for my husband. That’s what Louisa wanted too. I could see that.

  “You could cook us up a storm at Aurora,” Margaret said.

  “What’s this talk about Aurora Mills?” Jack said. He’d come out of the half barn carrying a bucket of milk. He set it down. “This is my home now. And my wife and children stay with me.”

  “Well of course they’d stay with you, wherever you went, Jack,” Helena said.

  “We could all help each other more if we were closer, don’t you think?” Louisa said. “That is the Christian way, to help each other. And if all of you were to come to Oregon—we’re a state already, not like this Territory—we could better welcome all the Bethelites and
be in service to our neighbors too.”

  Louisa actually meant what she said. Charity was in her heart: charity for her husband, for the colony, even for those of us who had separated ourselves. She just never saw her husband’s faults, the way he ruled over others, the way he set all the tasks before people, then manipulated them into acting whether they wanted to or not. No, Jack and I agreed on that, we could never go to Aurora Mills.

  Through all of this Keil said nothing, nodded his head as his wife pleaded his cause. Finally, “Louisa,” he cautioned. “Sister Emma and Brother Jack would come if they could, but they are needed here. We are grateful for the hospitality they’ve shown us. You have Helena to help and others as well. We’re fine.”

  I nodded to him, then hugged each of the women and watched with my shawl wrapped tightly around me in the clear, cold air as the colonists rode off through the trees following the river. Jack waved at them too. It would be at least four, maybe five days before they made it back to the relative comfort of their homes. They’d take respite in the cabins of strangers along the way. Had they accomplished what they’d come for? Had they meant to mourn, or lure us to Aurora? Maybe Karl Ruge or Barbara or the others had agreed to move. I hadn’t even asked.

  Their leaving left a longing. No more marrow or fatness, just a hunger. I’d liked having the house full of people. Jack hadn’t barked as much and because of guests, I’d received two days without Jack here at all.

  I turned to go back in when Jack closed the space between us in quick steps. He smelled of rye. Did he hide it in the half barn? “Things are going to be different now,” he said. “No more of this pampering. You prepare meals for a dozen without complaint, yet with me you are always sick. Always whining. This will cease.”

  “You wanted me to serve our guests properly, didn’t you? I was doing what you wanted. I had to do it in between being sick.”

  “You loved the little pearls they threw to you about how good things tasted and how skilled you are. You knew exactly what you were doing, winning them over so they’d try to lure you away from me, hide you away in Aurora Mills.”

  “Oh, Jack,” I scoffed.

  “It won’t happen, Emma Giesy. Your mind may go away from me but you will never leave, at least not alive.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic, Jack,” I said.

  He stopped me. He gripped with his hand, that wide palm squeezing my arm until if felt like no blood flowed through it. “You’re hurting me,” I said. My fingers tingled.

  “Pain in your arm maybe could be just the beginning of your worries,” he said. “It just maybe could be.” He pushed me away then, and I stumbled but caught myself as he stormed into the cabin, shouting for Andy.

  “You leave him alone,” I said. I rushed after him, rubbing my arm. “Whatever you want done, I’ll do it.”

  “Andy!” he shouted. “Get out here.”

  I tripped over the milk bucket. “Ach!”

  Jack turned and, in a flash I didn’t see coming because I stared at the milk spilled at my feet, he struck me. The back of his hand rocked my chin up through my teeth and into my eyes. I fell. That is all I remember.

  27

  Emma

  You, You, You, Must Go

  The voice began inside me when my eyes eased open to my new world. The words whispered over the broken place in my tooth, across my swollen lips. You, you, you, must go. You, you, you, must go.

  It was nearly dark inside the cabin. I tried to make sense of things. Jack must have carried me to the bed. With the tip of my tongue, I felt the puffiness from the cut my tooth made. Andy sat at the foot of the bed, his back to me. I heard Kate and Christian chattering on the floor beside us, arguing over a toy. Christian stuttered, “That my-my-mine, Katie. My-my-mine.” Shame washed over me, shame that I’d let this happen.

  When I moved, Andy turned. I forced a smile. I brushed the chestnut strands out of his eyes. “Are you all right?” I asked him. He nodded. “Thank God for that,” I said.

  You, you, you must go. You, you, you must go.

  My eyes closed. I’d been going my whole life, trying to make things happen, trying to push my way into a world I thought needed changing. Once I’d claimed a husband I loved, chose a wilderness to be with him. We’d survived a winter designed by the devil himself and lived to tell of it. We’d remained to build a home, a place I once called my own. Scripture promised “peaceable habitation, sure dwellings, quiet resting-places” and with Christian, I’d had that despite the trials. All was gone now. The song said I should go too.

  I stared at the peeled-log ceiling. I wasn’t capable of leaving. I had nowhere to go.

  Jack came in. Andy slipped to the far side of the bed. I almost felt him shiver. I sat up, kept myself from wincing as Jack knelt beside the bed. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t.” He pressed his head into my lap like a small boy. I didn’t touch him. He lifted his head. “It’s like I’m a firecracker that sizzles and snaps and then explodes. I promise to do better.” He had tears in his eyes. “It was the whiskey, I think. It must have been. I’ve never struck a woman before, not ever.”

  “And the children?”

  He shook his head. “Nein. I didn’t do anything to harm the boy, did I, Andy?” Andy shook his head. “See. It will be better now. There were too many people around; too much going on. We just need to be here alone. It will be all right now.” He patted my hand and I flinched. He stood then. “You get up now, Emma. See what I’ve done for you.” He sounded cheery again as though all was forgotten. He helped me stand. The room spun, eventually settled. “I’ve made you a drawing,” he said, nearly gleeful now. “Of us and all the children. You can make a wood frame for it when you feel up to it. Make those curlicues that Keil commented on. We’ll be a good team. I draw; you frame. Look at it.”

  He pushed the paper into my hands. He’d made cartoonlike characters of us, like the drawings that accompanied little stories on the editorial pages of our German newspapers. He’d captured our essence as he saw us with slight exaggerations of a facial feature or behavior. He’d placed us outside with trees looming behind us and storm clouds shadowing. Kate stooped at the outside edge staring under a salal-berry bush. Next to her stood Andy with a lead rope on Opal. He petted it. Christian was drawn clinging to my skirts on the far side of me. Jack sketched me towering over him as he knelt in front, staring out into the wilderness, the rest of us a kind of semicircle around him. He put grotesque smiles on all our faces. He’d drawn a dark fence around us. While he looked vulnerable kneeling, he also blocked the fence opening. We’d have to clamber over him to get out.

  It was a hideous drawing, more accurate than I wished. I had to change that picture.

  After the New Year, we had a hard freeze. This had never happened in Willapa before, or so Sam Woodard reported at a Sunday gathering we attended late in January. Jack insisted we all go to both the New Year’s gathering at the stockade and this late January event. I told him how tired I was and he said we could spend the night with Barbara then. When I protested, his nostrils flared and his eyes got that white around them and I said, “I’ll go. We’ll all go.” Which we did. I was learning not to resist.

  The men discussed how hard the ground had frozen and whether it would stay cold. The men had had to break the ice off the grass in addition to breaking the ice on the water troughs for the cows and mules to drink. Everything took much longer to do in the freeze, all the chores, and they commented on that. But it hadn’t rained as much, and that was a gift, I thought.

  I kept what was happening in our household to myself, not that the women questioned, but they might have seen the quick flinching of my children when someone reached out to hand them a cookie or might have wondered at the hollowness of my face. They looked the other way. But then I’d have denied any problems even if they’d asked. I had my stories: I wouldn’t complain, not even explain.

  We returned home, burned more wood, and s
till the house felt constantly drafty and cold. We walked as though on ice around the house. February’s rains lasted the entire month with few sunbreaks. That’s when Jack’s temper roused itself again, and I wondered if his disposition might be mixed up with the weather. When it was cold but dry, he was happier; when it rained he found fault. That didn’t explain his behavior in dry September, though. He was just an unpredictable man. He’d always been and I thought I could contain it. But I was so much weaker than I’d realized.

  In March, my growing size repelled Jack; he blamed me for “eating so much that even affection between a husband and wife was impaired.” I still had morning sickness and hardly ate a thing. I tried to explain about pregnancy, but he’d storm out of the cabin and be gone for hours. I savored the time without him, yet his absences scraped at my heart, knowing his return would bring pain of uncertainty.

  He made lists of our errors. My list was the longest. My failure to patch up a pair of his pants adequately. My inability to know that he wouldn’t want fish for dinner. That I spoiled the children, he said, turning my sons into rabbits scared of their shadows, feeding Kate into a “fat little pig.”

  I had never seen him hurt the children, physically, the way he’d struck me. And while he did aggress me again that month, it was in the smokehouse. He bent my fingers back getting me to admit fault for changing my mind about what we’d be eating without first getting his permission. He locked the smokehouse door, seeming to make sure the children didn’t see him. Perhaps he knew that if the children witnessed his violence against me again, or if they ever tried to intervene and were hurt themselves, that then I would take a different tack through this storm. I would listen to that song: You, you, you must go. I wondered if I could.

  I’d written to my parents, telling them of Jack’s striking me and his sporadic behaviors that frightened us. I’d given the letter to Mary to mail. She’d taken it from my shaking hands, said nothing except she’d send it off. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. I urged my parents to please come, that with them here, Jack would remain good, I felt sure of it. His bravado would be heightened and tempered by an audience, but he’d use words instead of fists to hurt us, and words we could endure if they were with us.