The Americans traveling under our safe harbor scoffed and left the circle around the fire.
The Indians stayed late into the evening with the rest of us, who watched with empty stomachs as the doctor carried on conversations with his hands. I wondered if they’d ever leave so we could go to our beds. Hunger is easier to manage when asleep. The Americans laid their bedrolls farther from our campfire, and I noticed they slept with their rifles across their chests.
The Indians lingered. With the palm of his hand, one pointed toward me, and later my husband said he spoke of my black hair, as black as his, and that like him, I parted mine in the middle. Something in common. Then Aurora stood up, my sweet little daughter. I would have put her to bed earlier, but the doctor liked her company, and she snuggled beneath his arms as he made signs with the Indians. She gave them her comforter, her little patched quilt I’d made for her with the wool I dyed myself.
“Are you sure you wish to give that away?” I said as she carried it toward them.
She turned to look at me, then back to her father. “Of course she will be generous,” the doctor told me. “That is what we do.” He beamed at her.
I remembered how the red madder root stained my fingers when I dyed the yarn. I thought of the days I spent stitching the little squares. With each poke of the needle I said a prayer for her. Others in our colony stitched it too. It was a gift of love from all of us, not just from me. I didn’t want her to give it away. It was as though I was losing Willie again, a precious thing departing.
I scolded myself as I saw the happiness on the face of the Indian. It was wrong of me to remember an object so fondly and to compare it with the loss of my son.
Then the doctor gave the man an oxbow so he could make for himself a bow of fine Missouri wood. I wondered if the doctor expected each of us to give them something. I had nothing I wanted to part with.
“Bring your friends in the morning,” my husband signed. Where he learned such signing I will never know. Neither did I know what we’d feed them except dried peaches.
Just before dawn, twenty-five Indians drove a dozen oxen and neat cows into our camp. They were animals we’d lost, and we were grateful to see them. The natives brought fresh meat, too, and berries. We made ready, my girls and I, to serve the men and their families with them. My girls were eleven years, eight years, and six years old then, but they all knew how food was the servant of the heart. We served them a Strudel with dried peaches I baked in our dutch oven, as people called it, rising at four o’clock to do it. The Americans ate heartily though they sat at a distance. The Indians squatted to eat the baked goods and when they had their fill, the women and children ate. We sang for them then, and they grunted agreement with bits of Strudel falling on the men’s bare chests, catching in the ends of their silky hair.
Then one meandered toward Willie’s hearse.
I wanted the hearse left alone, but the doctor stood and as though he showed off a new horse or a new wagon just completed, he spoke in loud words, calling August to help him. They lifted the top of the coffin. My stomach twisted like a snake as I watched them view my Willie.
There was no need of this. I rose to protest, but the Indians all moved toward the hearse now. They lowered their heads as though in prayer and stepped back, seemingly aware of the sanctity of death. The doctor continued to tell them about the whiskey and how it kept Willie pure until we could bury him in the West. The Indians kept their eyes down and then the doctor put the top back on.
The Americans grumbled things I couldn’t understand, though they made motions like men who drink too much and pointed to the Indians. But the Indians mounted up then, and waved to us when the trumpet sounded and the Schellenbaum tinkled its bells as we headed out once again behind Willie’s hearse. Like Lot’s wife, I looked back. I did not dissolve into salt. The Indians stayed as silhouettes against the horizon for as long as I could see.
“I have power over the Indians,” the doctor told me that afternoon when we rested. “I could get them to do anything I wanted.”
“You are worshiped by many, Husband,” I told him.
“Ja, ja, I know this.” He tugged at that tuft of hair beneath his lip. “These Indians, I have a special way with them. Did you see how they looked at Willie?”
I ached. Yes, I saw.
So why he was frightened during our time in Willapa still confounds me. So frightened he would not let the men use guns to hunt for food and our children went hungry at night, again.
I suppose we do things we cannot foresee when trouble drops onto our doorstep. We may try to step over it, go around, but usually we walk through. By God’s grace we walk through.
And now, here in Portland nearly a year since we left Willapa, the doctor is happier, at last, as he used to be. His trips out to Aurora Mills excite him, and he returns full of ideas for how the colony will prosper. He carries no ill will toward the Willapa branch that I can see.
I’ve made a bread pudding with fresh milk. I serve these Portland Americans, and my husband says Jack Giesy will take the cows north. The Americans finish their pudding and leave our Portland home, tipping their hats at me and saying, “Danke.” My husband gives me no indication of who these Americans are, but he seems happy. So, Jack Giesy is in charge of taking the cows to Willapa. “Big Jack” is what many call him.
“Would it be good to send others with him who have more experience with cows?”
“Jacob needs the challenge, to know that people depend on him. When he has others around who will pick him up, he can act the Dummkopf. Sometimes it takes a challenge to help the children think no longer as children but as men.”
“Maybe Peter Klein could go,” Aurora says. She is now eating the pudding that I held back for the children. “Peter went to Will-pa before anyone else arrived.” She is seven and is still troubled by that Willapa word. I smile at her. She can almost read my mind.
The doctor taps her little upturned nose. “Ah, my Aurora, always thinking. But no, you women lack understanding. I will send some of the younger boys along, but Jacob will be in charge and we will see if he can live up to the challenge.”
I pack a bag of food for Jack and the boys he takes with him and pray he will not stop by Chris and Emma’s or stay for long if he does. Emma has a way of serving ideas into men’s heads while their stomachs are filled up with her Strudels.
7
Emma
The Waning Moon
On March 26, 1857, I turned age twenty-four. Christian came to spend the day even though I knew it took him from his work, it being a Thursday and during the season when big schooners anchored outside the Bay looking for baskets of oysters to buy for San Francisco.
“Like newlyweds,” Martin said, when Christian appeared at noontime still wearing big rubber boots he said were a part of his uniform. Martin said “newlyweds” not with disgust but with a tone of envy, as though he too might like such a marriage arrangement. We met at the stockade, of course. It was our gathering place now. I didn’t even mind the journey by mule and boat and mule again, suspecting that Christian might actually come for my birthday.
There were presents for me too. Karl Ruge gave me Germania Kalender published by the famous Geo Brumder of Milwaukee. It was filled with stories and cartoon pictures and ads for pharmaceuticals in the back, and Ayer’s Sarsaparilla. Martin leaned over my chair as I turned the pages. “New herbals,” he noted.
“Very thoughtful,” Christian said. “I know Emma likes to write what she’s done on the dates, and she hasn’t been able to do that with only a calendar from 1855 that Mary brought with her.”
The book had a hard cover with a lovely drawing of a lion on the front. It was written in German and I loved it. The stories I could read to Andy and Kate. It contained advice and information about lots of things, such as when to plant, the tides, days of full moons. How someone figured out all those details and still got them printed in a book in time for use always surprised. This one had recipes in it and
a little word trivia. I read that the Italian word for “religion” translated into English as ambassador. “An ambassador offers us help in a foreign land,” Karl said. “Religion does, too.”
“Thank you,” I said, holding it to my chest. “I’ll treasure it.”
“Ja, by golly, I thought you might,” Karl said. He dropped his eyes. A hint of pink formed on the circle of weathered cheeks framed by his white beard.
Barbara Giesy gave me an embroidered handkerchief, and my mother-in-law said she had something new to eat for the occasion. She called it coconut. It was green and in the middle had a substance that felt smooth but tasted quite fine. “It comes from the Sandwich Islands,” she said. “On board a ship. I thought you’d like it. It’s … different.”
“It is,” I said. Andy took a taste and so did Kate, who scrunched her nose at me. “She likes tart things,” I said.
Mary’s gift was a new needle for my chatelaine and a thimble made of bone.
They were being terribly kind to me, my husband’s family. I suspected Mary had told them that I knew of their petty joke and they wanted to win me over so I wouldn’t come up with something back in kind. Maybe they felt a little guilt.
I wasn’t planning anything, not that I hadn’t tried. But every idea that had come into my head seemed silly or cruel, though I believed their joke was too. Still, I wasn’t sure I was willing to let their generosity on my birthday buy their way out of guilt.
“And what did you get your wife?” my father-in-law asked Christian.
Christian pulled a tiny misshapen pearl from the knotted bag he wore around his neck. “Just this,” he said. “To add to her string of them.”
“Pearls,” my sisters-in-law cooed.
“Extravagance,” my father-in-law scoffed.
“Not when you don’t have to purchase it,” Christian told him.
“Ah, but you’ve paid for it. With your time and hard work and being away from home,” he was told.
“I have another gift,” Christian said. “But of course I don’t know for certain when it will arrive.”
“That cow,” I said, knowing. “Andy, let’s look for the cow your papa gave me.” I set the presents aside and took my son’s hand. We pretended to look for a cow under a leafy fern and inside a rotting cedar trunk.
“Cows don’t grow in trees, Mama,” Andy said. “Do they, Papa?”
“Indeed they don’t. They should have been here by now. Wilhelm said he’d send a dozen from Portland, so we can begin dairying and give the goats a rest.”
I hadn’t realized he’d contacted Keil. I wondered when he’d done that. I hoped Wilhelm wasn’t bringing the cows himself. Well, of course he wouldn’t be. He was tied to his precious Aurora Mills.
Before dusk drifted in along with the usual evening March showers, we left the partiers to their music and dancing and began our trek home. Christian planned to stay the night, then take the boat back down to Bruceport in the morning. At the river crossing he said, “Someday we’ll have to build a bridge so you don’t have to struggle so much to take the trail.”
“It’s only bad a few weeks out of the year,” I said.
“Indeed, but it looks dangerous, so swift as it is.”
When we crossed to the other side I helped tie up the little boat, then loaded Andy up on the mule while Christian held Kate. I turned to reach for her and saw instead my husband staring at me. The expression on his face warmed my soul.
“What?” I said.
“You’ve changed, Emma. Once crossing this river would have made you physically ill. Now, you take the boat without effort and cross even when the river runs high.”
“Ja. The children need me to know what I’m doing,” I said. “I don’t want to frighten them.”
“So it is true,” Christian teased. “Children do raise their parents up.”
We slept soundly that evening so I didn’t hear the cowbells the next morning until they were nearly upon us. “Yahoy.” I heard the shout. A man’s voice.
“Christian.” I shook my husband’s shoulder. “Wake up. Someone’s here.”
My husband rolled off the rope bed, grabbed his britches, then opened the latch. A drizzle of rain silvered the door opening, but I could still make out yellowish animals moving in the mist. The bells sounded muffled now under the rain.
“Are these Bethel cows?” Christian shouted.
“Ja. For the Giesys,” a man answered.
“Leave them and come in out of the rain, man. There’s plenty enough fodder to keep them content for a time. How many are there of you? Come now,” he called to the herders, stepping back to invite them in.
How many men were there? I threw on my shawl around my nightdress and pulled the nightcap down over my ears. The air chilled. I’d have to fix a meal quickly. I’d build a fire, stir up johnnycakes. We had venison sausage I could fry, fruit preserves to spread on the cakes. I gave some of the goat cheese to Kate to keep her happy until I could milk the goat, handed Andy a bite of biscuit, then told him to dress as I set about my work.
While I was busy tending my family, being happy in my home, and while my back was turned, Jack Giesy stepped into my life.
Jack looked harmless all wet from the drizzle. He removed his hat when I turned around and swatted the wet of it against his thigh. “Ach,” he said. “My mother taught me better manners than to baptize a woman’s floor first thing in the morning.”
“It’ll soak in,” Christian said, coming in behind him. “No matter. Here, take one of the stools. You too, Gus. What about the others, won’t they come in?” Christian asked.
Jack shook his head. “We’ve got the other along, you know, that ‘surprise’ you wanted.” He grinned at me. “The cows were nothing coming across the Cowlitz Trail,” Jack said. “But those … hogs,” he said. “Whooee! They’d rather rut in the underbrush than be herded.”
Still, they’d had no trouble to speak of, to hear Jack tell the story. They brought the stock from Portland across the Columbia up through the thick brush to our home, the one farthest south of all the Giesy claims.
“It was cold,” Jack said. “ ’Cept for yesterday when the sun shone on us, when it could penetrate the trees. This is some country you’ve chosen, Chris. Alluring though, all the ferns and birds and I bet butterflies too, when there’s time to let them land on your hand.” He put his hat on his knee and motioned to Kate, who sat wide-eyed on her raised mat. She smiled and lowered herself from the mat then waddled, falling but once, to his arms.
“That’s Cousin Jack,” Christian said to her. “You’ve just met a distant relative.”
I handed Gus, one of the herd boys, a mug of hot black tea and hesitated before Jack, not sure how he’d manage a hot tin and my daughter on his lap. With the ease of a dancer moving his partner from one side to the other, he transferred Kate to his opposite knee, then reached for the cup. “Danke,” he said. He obviously knew how to juggle a thing or two. “Two lovely girls you have here, Christian.” He sipped, then let a slow grin move across his lips. “This may be a wet boarding house, Christian, but I like the service.” He lifted the mug up as though it were a beer stein, nodded to Kate, and drank. I smelled the slightest scent of ale with his movements.
That was all there was to it, that first meeting. Jack joked about the journey, talked of moving through the night as the moonlight held. Gus frowned with Jack’s talk of having energy enough to go all night. He told us the whiskey flask had kept them warm and he still had some left. They’d had no difficulty with the cows at all. “I don’t know why Wilhelm was so opposed to this valley,” he said.
“He was right,” Christian said. He kept his eyes from me. “There were too many to prepare for, so taking the others to Portland, that made sense. But with these few hardy souls left, we’ll make a go of it.”
“Music comes from the river and trees like a symphony playing,” Jack said. “I’m anxious to see the Bay, see what this river flows into. Who knows, maybe I’ll stay.
”
Jack set his empty cup down on the earth floor, then responded to Kate’s reaching for his mustache. He trimmed it, I could tell, for not a single hair reached down over his full upper lip. Mindlessly I touched my own lips. They were sore from Christian’s beard and the kisses he’d left there. The taste of my husband still lingered.
“Don’t let her pull your mustache,” Christian said. “She has a wicked grip for just a little one.”
“I’m used to little women,” he said. I don’t think the look he gave me was anything more than to enjoy his own joke. Jack took Kate’s fingers in his hands, then blew against them, making a funny sound that caused both Andy and Kate to break into laughter. He was a natural with children. It must have been a Giesy trait.
“I’d better get you fed or you’ll eat her fingers off,” I said.
He popped Kate’s fingers into his mouth as I said it, and she squealed, a sound that quickly turned to fear, perhaps as she realized what I’d said. Jack laughed.
“No, no, Kate.” I reached for her. “He won’t eat your fingers. It’s all right. Ach, I’m sorry,” I said.
“No matter,” Jack said, then turned to Christian to begin their talk of cows and hogs. I put Kate back on our bed, then served the men their breakfast.
It was lighter outside now, the sun not showing itself but reflecting against the drizzle. Christian put on his canvas-waxed slicker and boots and stepped outside with Gus to send in the other two young men who’d traveled north with them. These were boys I didn’t know, but when I asked as I served them, they did tell me about Jonathan and described Aurora Mills with steadied glumness.
They joked with Jack, though, who sat back from the table to take another cup of tea. He crossed his long legs at the ankles and each time I brought something to that end of the table to serve the boys, I had to step over them, my skirts catching on his brogans.
“Guess I could make your life easier,” he said after the third time.