A Tendering in the Storm (Change and Cherish Historical)

  “Your father. It’s an artillery service medal, for your marksmanship, he said. You didn’t actually ever shoot at any … person, did you?”

  “Nein. They give medals out just for being ready in a time of war,” he said.

  “We weren’t really at war,” I countered.

  “Not how Governor Stevens saw it. Anyway, it is a good picture, Emma. You have a talent I didn’t know you had. But you ought not waste your time on making a likeness of me. Draw the children instead.”

  I shrugged but beamed with his praise. I didn’t let his alteration of an idea serve as criticism.

  That night my husband showed me how he loved me in the quiet while our children slept. He kissed me with a tenderness that brought shivers. I thought I might tell him in the morning of my plan to earn money of my own, but at that moment I didn’t want to speak of common funds or independence. I only wanted to be with him, to know him and let him know me. That night we spoke all the words of love we could imagine, tasted of the honey of our full moon.

  8

  Emma

  A Compass Lost

  “But why? Can’t you just send it to him? Why do you have to go to Aurora?”

  “And why must you always question what I do and the way I have to do it, Emma?” Christian said. “Besides, I want to see how the colony there progresses.”

  We stood at the water’s edge. Joe Knight held Andy’s hand and the two stood a distance away, being polite. I suppose we did sound as though we’d had this argument before. Soon Christian would be lifting me and then the children, carrying us out to the tender to get into the boat that would sail us up the Willapa.

  This argument annoyed more than others, though, because I’d misunderstood, thinking he planned to return to the Willapa with us after this captivating weekend of the Fourth. Instead, his plan sent us home while he headed across the Bay then down the Wallacut River. He’d take a steamer up the Columbia to Portland. To see Herr Keil. To make our payment. “It would be too dangerous to put something so precious into the mail,” he insisted. “What if it were stolen?”

  “You’re the marshal. You could catch the culprit,” I said. I was being difficult, my back lifting like a frightened cat’s.

  “I won’t stay there, Emma. I’ll be back. Maybe I can talk your brother into coming for a visit. Would you like that?”

  “Don’t wheedle your way through my annoyance by offering up my brother,” I snapped. “If he wanted to come he would have. He must be holding some grudge I don’t even know about to have stayed away so long.”

  “Not every act that you don’t like has something to do with you, Liebchen.” I frowned at him. “Indeed. I can bring back things we need. Treasures for the children. Some pigment and resins for that painting you want to make. Maybe I’ll look for a ewe.”

  “Something more to place in the common hold I suppose,” I said. Into his silence I blew like old sheets in the wind, knowing soon they’d wear thin. I sighed. “A bred ewe would be nice. To make our own yarn would be good and we could start our own little flock. Ja, ja, I know,” I said, holding up my hand before he could comment on things held in common. “Maybe you can make me a spinning wheel so I won’t have to use Mary’s.” I wiped Kate’s face with my handkerchief. “I do wish your family had thought to bring out more of our household things when they came. Though I realize we had few household things in Bethel, having never had a home of our own before, you always being gone.”

  “I can see this is the day when everything I say upsets you and reminds you of past indignities. You have an amazing memory, Frau Giesy,” he said, “and I can tell you are about to share that gift with me if I stay here any longer.”

  I sighed again, this time motioning for Joe to bring Andy. We’d had such a good weekend together at Bruceport. I wished we could just stay; maybe build ourselves a house on stilts over tide flats. I’d have to mention that to Christian.

  But not now. Now it was Monday and a new week and Christian was going to Aurora. I hoisted Kate into my arms, then Christian lifted us both and sloshed across the shoals and shallow water to our waiting boat. Joe Knight followed with Andy.

  “I wish they had a dock,” I complained, just for something to say. My husband settled us onto the craft. “When will you leave then?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow, barring anything going wrong here that needs my attention.”

  “Is Joe going with you? Maybe we should come along.”

  “One of the herd boys is heading back with me. He’s just arrived. I’ll be back in a week or so. Think of me as being here working instead of there at Aurora. Then maybe it won’t seem like such a terrible separation.”

  “Ja. Tell a story to my mind.”

  “Draw another picture,” he said. “I’ll look at it when I get back.” He kissed my nose then, a rare public expression of affection. His hand lingered in mine and he squeezed it, then turned and sloshed his way back toward the shore.

  I watched him and remembered a dream I’d had where we’d gone underwater together. I asked him if he knew how to get where we were going and he said no, that he’d lost his compass.

  “Do you have your compass?” I shouted. He held his hand to his ear as though he couldn’t hear. The wind whipped the sail insistently. At the water’s edge, he turned and I waved a last good-bye. The boatman pulled his anchor and we moved out into the stream.

  I’d have to think of this separation as just like the others, with him oystering while I tended the children. It’s no different. Nothing to worry over. Tell ourselves stories, ja. That is what we must do when we pull up our anchor and have only our compass to trust as we sail away.

  Maybe it was the dream. Maybe it was the idea that he was leaving me for Keil, doing Keil’s bidding once again. Perhaps it was nothing more than women’s intuition. I wasn’t sure what compelled me, but about a half hour up the Willapa, with the seagulls crying above us, I shouted to the oarsman, “Turn back, ja?”

  He frowned and I spoke my English more slowly. “I want to go back.”

  “The Mister won’t be liking it,” he said.

  “The Mister will understand that you listened to his wife,” I said. “Besides, you’ll earn twice the fee.”

  “We’ll stay with Papa?” Andy asked.

  “Ja. We’ll stay and if nothing else, see if we can convince him not to go away at all.” I imagined Christian’s frown when he saw us but I pitched that thought away. I could turn his frowns to laughter.

  Kate patted my cheek as the oarsman began rowing the craft back toward the Bay. Now that we headed west, I was in an even greater hurry to arrive. It was silly. I’d just said good-bye but I felt a joy in heading back toward him, in surprising him. I’d change his mind, I would.

  A dark bank of clouds formed in the western sky and I told myself it was wise we’d turned back. Why, there might be a squall or something. This storm would blow over tonight and then we could both leave together in the morning—if Christian still insisted on going to Aurora after I tried one more time to convince him otherwise.

  I held Kate against my chest and she slept. Andy shouted up at the seagulls. This was what a woman did, try to convince her husband of reasonable acts to take. Christian would forgive me the extra cost of the oarsman having to bring us back.

  As we approached Bruceport again, I watched as an old man loaded chairs and a bedstead and barrels onto a raft tethered to a piling at the river’s edge. His long white beard caught in the swirl of breeze. Shoalwater women culled oysters. Tiny drifts of smoke from cooking fires reached up to a sky now dotted with a mix of dark clouds. The sun still warmed our faces. I licked my lips. The oarsman clanged a bell and I watched as Sam Woodard stepped out of his warehouse. He put a telescope on us and I waved. Then Christian soon stood beside him and I waved again, my whole arm sweeping across the sky. They walked toward us, both wearing their oystering waders, followed by shadows on the wet sand. The herd boy joined them from off to the side and before the oarsman could
say anything I said, “I forgot something.”

  “What did you forget that was so important?” Christian said. He crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t look angry but wore a small frown of concern. Sam smiled and shook his head.

  “We forgot that we had one more day to spend with you,” I said. “One more day before you leave for Aurora Mills. A chance to spend it with your family and here we’d sailed away. We can all leave together in the morning. You go your way; we’ll go ours. If you still insist on leaving us.”

  “Ach, Emma.” Christian said. “You waste this oarsman’s time and other people’s money in this foolish return.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But you can’t deny you’ll like having someone tonight to share your bed.”

  “She has you there,” Sam said and the herd boy laughed with him.

  It’s the details one remembers. The way the sun slanted through the clouds. The perspiration on my face. The lack of premonition. I stood with the children at my side on the riverbank, where Christian had sent me while he helped the old man at his raft. I don’t think Christian would have seen the old man if he hadn’t come out to greet us again. I don’t think the herd boy or Christian would have been at that place where the river poured into the Bay. But he was. They were. I stood with my children cluck-henned against my hem. Christian said he had to help that man who was going to lose everything on that raft if he didn’t get things tied down. The next thing I knew, he was on the rickety craft with the man, tying the pieces of furniture down, the herd boy helping with ropes and a canvas tarp. “I’ll just be a minute,” Christian had said. “Just wait up there on the bank with the children.”

  Sam had gone back inside. We stood waiting, watching them work.

  Then came the squall.

  It was a freakish burst of wind and rain that tore at the tether, then spun the raft and its cargo out toward the Bay. I’m not even sure of how it transpired.

  I’d turned my face from the blast of rain and wind, then looked back. A cedar dresser shifted against a barrel on the raft and then as though in slow motion, the old man reached to resettle it but instead fell backward into the sea. I heard his shout, an “Oh!” of surprise. I watched as Christian moved swiftly to that side of the raft, his tall body leaning down, then he dropped to one knee to reach his hand out, the black heel of his waders etched against the skyline. The herd boy grasped a bedstead as it shifted with Christian’s weight on that side and the wind acting as a swirling agent, pushing then lifting. They were no longer attached to the piling, had become like a leaf in the sea. “What’s Papa doing?” Andy asked.

  “He’s helping someone who was foolish enough to move furniture out in a squall,” I said.

  Christian reached for the man. I couldn’t see him. He must have slipped under the raft. Christian jumped in then. He didn’t remove his waders. He held on to the raft, but by then it had swirled out farther and waves washed over it. I lost sight of the herd boy, hoping he stood on the far side reaching for Christian or pulling the old man up.

  “His waders. They’ll fill,” I whispered.

  The wind took their shouts from us, if there were any. And then with relief I saw the old man swimming toward the shore, leaving the raft of his furniture. The herd boy wasn’t on the raft; I couldn’t see Christian gripping it. They must be on the far side. Surely I’d see him and Christian any moment following the old man, swimming to safety.

  But I didn’t.

  The raft drifted away.

  The old man stood dripping on shore looking back at it.

  “Christian? Christian!” This can’t be happening! I ran, sweeping Kate up into my arms, screaming. “Christian! For heaven’s sake, where are you? Where?” I sloshed toward the water, moved back and forth along the shoreline. “Christian! Please. Where are you?”

  The old man stood panting, his hands on his thighs as he breathed heavily. “Where is he? What have you done to my husband?” I wanted to pummel him, but Kate clung to my neck.

  “Papa? Where’s Papa?” Andy asked.

  The old man coughed up seawater. He shouted for Sam, who had already run from the warehouse at my cries, I suppose. “He’s out there!” I screamed. “Christian is out there. And the boy. They were with the raft. They went under. Please, please, please. Sam! You have to save him! I don’t even know if he can swim!”

  Sam signaled the oarsman who had already pushed his craft out to the sea. Together they rowed toward the raft that bounced and jerked toward the long island that separated the Bay from the sea. Wind still whipped at us. Maybe Christian was hanging on and I just couldn’t see him.

  It was Sunday, July 6, about four in the afternoon. I dropped to my knees in prayer.

  “I’m so sorry, Missis.” The old man coughed. “So sorry. The furniture was just old stuff.”

  They recovered Christian’s body in the dusk, cut him free from the ropes, brought him to me.

  I could not believe my eyes. I could not. A swell of outrage surged through me. A waste, that’s what it was. A complete and total waste of two lives. Christian, always doing for others, always acting the Diamond Rule, making one’s life better than his own. But at what cost? The old man saved himself! He didn’t need fixing or helping. He did it on his own! Oh, the irony, the irony. God must be laughing at me, I thought, to take my husband over such a trivial thing as old furniture and to save the man who’d caused it.

  But there he lay, on the wet sand, his face the color of gray stone. I threw myself across his chest. Tears did not come. “Oh, Christian, how could you? How could you leave me here?”

  Christian lay still as I brushed the sea life from his face and straightened the collar at his neck. “How could you?” I whispered. “We had so much time before us.”

  The herd boy’s body washed ashore the next morning.

  I don’t remember much of what happened next. I know I wanted to take Christian home. I told Sam that and he nodded, said he’d have a casket made up quick as he could and he’d row us up the Willapa himself. I guess we must have stayed in the cabin, but I didn’t see Joe Knight until the next morning when he put his arms out to me, his eyes as red as sunset from the tears he’d shed. The children said almost nothing. I think they must have seen my eyes, my constant shaking of my head, my muttering words: “Such a waste. Such a waste.”

  In the morning, I carried my children and walked by myself to the river. We piled into a wide craft with the caskets at the center and headed home. Home. Things would be better if I could just get Christian home. I knew I should grieve the herd boy and his parents but I had only so much room for grief and I gripped it tight in my fist, held it just for my husband. The outrage I held for the nameless old man, for Keil and for God.

  How would I tell Christian’s parents? How would I tell his friends? Karl Ruge, Martin? His parents would say Christian shouldn’t have been at the ocean anyway, “messing with oysters.” Karl might say it as well, perhaps blame himself for being our partner. Would they acknowledge that if he hadn’t been planning to return money to Keil, he would have been working the oysters that day? Keil had some part in this just as he did in every bad thing that happened to us. If Christian had been working oysters, he might not have seen the old man—that wretched, surviving, old man—and then he’d still be with us, brushing the hair from Andy’s eyes, kissing Kate on her nose, telling me I cost him extra money by coming back. Maybe I’d cost him more than that.

  At Willapa, Sarah came out with a smile on her face. Then she saw the look Sam wore. She stared at me, the children, and the boxes in the center of the tendering craft.

  “Oh, Emma,” she whispered. “How …”

  “Stupid,” I said. “It was all such a waste.” She held me in her arms then, and at last I could weep.

  “You will leave the casket here,” Barbara said after we arrived at the stockade and Sam told her what had happened. She rubbed her hand along the wood. “We will prepare the body properly.”

  “I want to tak
e him home,” I said. “We can bury him on his own place.”

  “Nein,” Andreas countered. “He will be buried beside Willie, on the hill. Leave him here. Leave your son here as well. Take the girl and go home if you must. Martin will come get you when we are ready.”

  I bristled. “My children will go home with me,” I said. “And my husband.”

  “You no longer have a husband,” Barbara said. “I no longer have a son. You go.” She patted my back. We shared a grief. “You will find comfort at your cabin; I find comfort in preparing my son’s body, ja?” I could let her have this time with Christian, I decided. I nodded. “I will take the children,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Martin told me. “Karl too. We’ll see you safely there.”

  The air felt balmy as we rode in silence. How could the weather be perfect on a day dripping such grief? I held myself together until we reached the house. Opal bleated her greeting and I felt tears burn against my eyes. I blinked. “I’ll milk the goat,” Martin said. “Go on inside.”

  I carried Kate on my hip. Andy removed the lantern from the mule, the lantern Christian had made for me, the light that had last illuminated our lives as we walked the beach seeking treasures. Had that really just been a few days before? Karl opened the door. Andy ran in with the lantern and just the sight of it there on that table, knowing Christian would never again light that lamp, took my breath away.

  Karl reached for Kate before I fell.

  Darkness already shrouded when I awoke. A pinprick of light glowed from the candle on the table. Strange shadows danced against the walls. The candle shouldn’t be lit over there, away from me. My tongue felt thick and my eyes were gooey. I scanned the room stopping at Mary, who sat beside the light. I could hear the scrape of her needle through cloth as she found the hole in the cross-stitch she worked on. Her face held no features. Where were the children? What was she doing here? I tried to sit up.