Tish was quiet. He knew she was thinking because she sucked on her bottom lip when a thought worked its way to her tongue.
“We’ll be fine. We don’t want to get caught in the mountains at an early storm, so we got to go faster.”
“I needs to stay with the Hawkinses.”
Was this woman suddenly going to get demanding? “They’ve got two wagons and their cattle and kin. They can’t move much faster. We can.”
“We know them. They friends. They needs us.”
She chewed that lip again and absently rubbed her belly. Maybe she needs them. He couldn’t be giving in to every woman whim. Still . . . he didn’t want her troubled with this baby coming. She was good help and, besides, he liked her and maybe even loved her. He knew he liked her best when she wasn’t soured on something he’d done. He decided never to tell her that he’d been left off guard duty from now on because he’d fallen asleep. He was lucky he didn’t get lashed.
“Alright. We’ll wait until the baby comes. Then we move forward.” He supposed women did need each other at troubling times, unlike men who could go it alone.
The fiddler played “Turkey in the Straw” on a cooling-off evening on the first days of June. There’d been a wedding earlier in the day with dancing and jerked buffalo meat to eat. Letitia and Nancy and her relatives had hung the strips on the poles the men set over a fire pit, smoking the meat in five hours or so. The men had come upon a buffalo herd and decided it was time to harvest a few. That’s what Davey called it, a harvest. Letitia boiled meat strips in a heavy salt brine, her mouth watering in anticipation. This meat would keep them for months, but the work had tired all of them. Some women didn’t even know how to cure it, nor separate the hide from the muscle.
Nancy’s family had worked beside Letitia, and even Nancy smiled once when Nancy Jane put her pudgy palm into the salt box then licked at the grains. The face she made looked like a punched-in peach. Letitia noticed that Nancy kept Maryanne close by and Martha even closer. Forgiving herself would take even longer than discovering there was no way to move her heart around to fill the empty space that Laura left.
It wouldn’t be long before the wagons reached Fort Laramie where they could resupply flour and corn and get iron for major repairs. Letitia planned to get new salve for the oxen and Charity’s hooves, split by the hard, dry ground. When the short bristled grass pushed up between the cracks, the hooves festered though Letitia washed them every night hoping to keep the faithful beasts from going lame. She struggled to bend and lift the heavy hooves, sat to do the washing. Fortunately, the animals were docile, but she still used caution lifting their legs. One jerk and her baby’s . . . well, she wouldn’t think about it.
Walking to Nancy’s wagon for her evening pause, Letitia caught an image of herself in the broken mirror Nancy’d hung on the side of her wagon. Letitia’s face had grown darker in the hot sun despite wearing the bonnet. And her cheeks looked plump as a gopher’s. When would this baby arrive?
“It feel good to have a full larder.” She nodded at the dried buffalo meat.
Nancy sighed. “At least I can keep the children fed if not safe.”
Letitia didn’t respond, ran her fingers through the daisy fuzz on Nancy Jane’s head. After a bit, she said, “I not sure we keep our chillun safe, not forever. We jus’ asked to prepare ’em for the dangers.”
“I didn’t do that well.”
“I hear you tell your girls be careful. But chilluns . . .” She raised her palms. “No holdin’ chilluns back from explorin’. It their nature.”
“Will it ever stop hurting?” Nancy looked at Letitia, wearing an ache so cutting, Letitia’s thoughts sank to a deepening well.
“Wounds heal, even ones made with sharp knives. But they be leavin’ scars.”
“Especially on the heart. My sister-in-law tells me I need to stop talking about it. ‘You’re not the first woman to lose a child,’ she says.”
“Grievin’ a personal thing. Can’t move on till you witness to the loss and that be different for each of us.”
“I pray, I do.”
“He listen. Maybe he send me to listen too.”
Nancy looked up. “Thank you for not telling me to be silent.”
“A grievin’ cloak wears different on ever’ body. When you ready, you put on a different one. ’Til then, I be here holdin’ your grievin’ shawl.”
“You and Zach. He never tells me not to talk about Laura or the emptiness.”
“He lovin’ you into healin’.” Nancy nodded and the two sat together with the fiddle playing in the distance.
Letitia hadn’t had anyone to help her being loved to healing, but she somehow knew how to do it for another. She guessed that was the Lord’s provision.
Walking back, Letitia felt her water break. “This good as any evenin’ for you to arrive.” She turned back to get her friend.
They named the girl Martha. Davey said it was his mother’s name, and Letitia liked giving Martha Hawkins a namesake, something to remind the child that life went on.
“Her skin’s like Mama’s coffee,” Martha told Letitia as she ran her small finger down the baby’s cheek. “She puts lots and lots and lots of milk in it.”
“A weak coffee.” Nancy gazed at the child. “She’s beautiful. Look at that head of hair, so thick and sticking straight up, and those lashes. Goodness. What I wouldn’t give for those!”
Davey had stayed outside the wagon and was there when Doc Hawkins delivered Martha near dawn on June 9. Letitia heard fiddle music at the beginning of her labor, the strings still vibrating when Martha arrived a few hours later.
“I’m not sure it’s fair that your labor was so short,” Nancy teased, her eyes on Martha, the child now holding her namesake.
“Ain’t nothin’ fair ’bout child birthin’ except when it over.”
“Amen to that.” Nancy looked wistful. “Laura was a hard birth, hardest of all of them. So frail in the beginning, I even wondered if she’d live past the night.” She swallowed. “But she did, weak as a wilted bachelor button until we started on this journey. Then so lively and full of life until—”
“Best you think on that healthy chil’ and the good days you have with her.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. Here’s your joyous time and I’m mixing it with misery.”
“Can’t mix it unless I lets you. Good to let memories be salve instead of sorrow, though.” She hadn’t known she knew that before she said it. A good thing to remember for herself. “You be god-parentin’ for her?”
“Why, I’m sure Zach and I would be honored.” Nancy’s eyes teared up. “I’m happy for you, know that I am, Tish.”
“I knows. Tears mingle. Help us fly like sparrows out of the cave of darkness into a sky of light.”
Nancy squeezed Letitia’s shoulder, wiped her eyes of sadness.
Martha Hawkins spent the morning riding in the wagon with Letitia and her baby, but by noon Letitia was ready to walk. The little girl kicked dirt beside her and that was how their days went, with Martha tending to Baby Martha any way she could and Letitia loving the feel of a child in her arms and another near her knees.
“You’re a good mama.” Davey watched the child nurse. He’d been fed by the Hawkins clan and brought back a cup of soup for Letitia that he set on the wagon ledge.
“I’s practiced. You wanna—want to—hold her?”
“Aw, I’m not so good with little ones like that.”
“She don’ break.”
“She’s so . . . fragile.”
“Good-sized ham and as solid, I ’spect.” Letitia watched Davey’s eyes go from a moment of uncertainty to soft like a sunken cake as she handed the swaddled baby into his calloused hands.
He bounced the child who promptly burped up her supper. “Oh, here.” He handed the baby back.
“You just beginnin’. She make a papa out of you.” She paused. “But then you already one.”
“Now I have two. A lucky man I am.
”
Davey picked up the rib of a buffalo skeleton with currant berries growing around it. They were a few days out of Fort Laramie.
“We can use it to write a message on if we need to, to those coming behind.”
She frowned. He still hopin’ to join the faster groups if he plannin’ how to leave messages for others. And I thought he couldn’t write much. She adjusted the bonnet on Martha’s face to keep out the sun.
“Or better, use it as a back scratcher.” He demonstrated and they both laughed.
Later that day they came to a deep ravine and men began the tedious task of locking wheels and lowering the wagons with ropes to the bottom of a narrow canyon bordered by a dry riverbed and steep cliff walls. Cattle had been taken a different route where the wagons couldn’t pass. They traveled beside cliffs taller than any Letitia had ever seen. Small trees grew from the crags and she could smell honeysuckle blooming on sturdy vines pushing their way through cracks far up toward the top. They’d been careful with water, but for the entire day they did not cross a stream and their throats were parched as old paper.
Davey said they were all supposed to wait once they got to Ash Hollow, but forward groups had gone on ahead. “We may as well keep going ahead too,” he said.
“But Nancy—”
“Hawkins can decide on his own. They’ll follow the north fork same as us and we’ll meet up again. In Oregon if nowhere else.”
“I thought . . . she a big help.” How could she tell him about the rare and pleasant feeling of having a woman treat her like a friend.
“We’ll hold over at Fort Laramie. You’re more a help to her than she to you anyway.”
“No. She—”
“There’s no arguing about this, Tisha. You say your good-byes. We’ll head out at first light to catch up with a forward group. You do as I say now. That’s the way it is and I’ll not have an argument. Remember you’re working for me. Man has to be the head.”
“We leavin’ you. Davey got his mind made up.” Letitia had left Baby Martha sleeping in the wagon, settled for the evening, but she felt undressed without the child in her arms, as though she’d left her apron off in the middle of the day.
“Oh, Letitia!” Nancy hugged her. “I’ll have Zach talk to him.”
“It won’t do no good. He get his back up about somethin’ and—”
Nancy sighed and nodded. “The life of a wife. Maryanne, get Tish a cup of my tea.”
“I’ll miss Martha helpin’ me and all you do.” Even now Martha sat in the Carson wagon making sure the baby didn’t tumble off of the cot, the child not believing that a baby that young couldn’t roll over. Even Rothwell felt safe enough to leave the baby in Martha’s care. He’d trotted along with Letitia to the Hawkinses’ wagons.
“Have you told Martha?”
Letitia shook her head no.
“She’ll be at a loss, poor thing. She’s found a balm in looking after your baby. I’d let Martha go with you ’til Laramie but—”
“No, no. Too hard for you wonderin’ about her.”
“She’d be in good hands with you and I wouldn’t have to see those sad eyes staring guilt into me like an arrow to a target.”
“You keep your kin just fine. Martha need you.”
The women hugged again. There were still leavings to deal with and would be their whole lives.
“I hopes there are lots of trees so I bypass that fundamental circle.” Letitia made it sound light but she chewed on her lip. She wasn’t sure she’d find people to be a shelter with. And now, with a pecan-colored baby, there might be even more raised eyebrows and painful words spit her way. White folks didn’t like seeing more black folks join the world unless they owned them.
“Maybe . . .” Could she ask to travel with the Hawkins clan instead of with Davey? Davey would do fine without her. He had for years before she came along and even on this journey he handled the oxen himself. She’d been of little help of late because of her carrying and then the new baby. He wouldn’t have to deal with any comments about his “black woman” and child if she wasn’t around. Nor would she. Folks would assume for certain that she was a nanny of the Hawkinses and she could disappear inside their large family. She could offer comfort to Nancy and Martha too. She could milk the cows, Charity included. Davey would let her take Charity.
“Maybe you could come with us,” Nancy said.
Had she spoken her wish out loud? Letitia chewed on her lower lip.
“I was thinkin’ to ask.” She looked down. Some things are better left as wishes. “But truth is, I takes a vow and now I gots a family of more than Davey. And he makes a promise to me too. We get mixed up with you again in Oregon, Davey says.” She’d pray for that.
Oregon Country
Ducks flew overhead as The Woman dipped water from the bubbling springs to give to Little Shoot to drink. The smell pricked at her nose. “Those leaves are not friendly,” she told him.
“They grow thick like mosquitoes.”
“Ayee.” Poison oak did grow thick in this place, but so did many good plants. “One must learn ways to live with good and bad.”
Little Shoot still suffered from the poison oak, though the scratching lessened and the bubbling water at the springs seemed to help. For many days now they had eaten the trout from the streams by taking all the parts, the head and eggs, and then drying the flesh. Today she put one of the dried fish heads in a basket with hot rocks to make a boiled soup. Then she added a ball of baked camas into the bubbling mix. They would eat well, the entire clan spending a few days at this place of encircling hills.
The fish eggs they’d save and eat in the winter, along with long strips of dried fish flesh. These fish were not big as the salmon on the Willamette River, but added up they would be enough for a long, rainy winter.
“You are well enough to do more?”
Little Shoot groaned. “I still need rest.”
She wasn’t sure if he teased her or not, but perhaps they had accomplished enough for one day. They made their way back toward the encampment where several families had built rounded shelters of hazel branches covered with tule mats and grasses. The Woman knew all the people were needed when they prepared the camas bulbs they’d dug or to grind the acorns into a meal. But she also liked the time alone with her grandson where he learned from her and not from the boys who knew better how to play than how to feed themselves.
Back at the camp, a pig snorted into a clearing. She had seen such an animal at the mission. This one must have escaped from far away. It sought acorns and belonged to the land. Little Shoot and several other boys chased it.
“Ayee. My grandson is feeling better.”
The Woman set about showing the boys how to make a fence from the saplings and grasses. “You will watch him and move the fence with him so he can eat the acorns. He will give himself up to us this fall, if we can keep him around.”
The boys did not look happy. Little Shoot told her later that the chase was more fun than what happened after the capture.
“It is good you learn this now and maybe, if you are wise, you make the capture interesting too. There is always room to find a new way to treasure a gift arriving unexpected.”
16
Carrying On
The next weeks felt harder to Letitia as she walked the trail without Nancy. They passed a wagon now and then, and she asked Davey if she and Martha could ride then. “It keeps the dust from the baby’s eyes.”
“Doesn’t take that long to pass a wagon.” But Davey agreed, stopping the ox team for her to get into the back under the bows as they came upon another family.
Inside, she didn’t have to feel the piercing hurt when a woman “hallo-ed” her and then stopped waving when Letitia turned her dark face toward the westerly-heading wife. She had yet to see another colored woman in all the wagons they’d passed. She longed to share a mother’s stories, how Martha curled herself into Letitia’s breast, how she nursed, soft and gentle, never greedy, as thou
gh she knew her mother had more than enough to give this child. But the women had turned aside.
Letitia wondered if she’d have any colored neighbors once they reached the territory, not that having them meant they’d be speak-to neighbors. Or if she’d have any speak-to neighbors at all.
Somewhere east of Laramie, Davey developed a cough and sore throat that she treated with an herb tea. He improved and told her he was grateful, patting her hip as they lay beside each other in the tent, Martha cooing between them in the crook of Letitia’s arm. Davey hacked through the night while Rothwell snored his level of concern outside the tent.
New challenges of the trail hardened the demand on the overlanders. One long route of fifty miles was made without any water for oxen, dogs, or people. The guide book Davey read from said it would be thirty miles. High clouds did little to soften the heat, and trees became scarce through much of the landscape before Fort Laramie. A strange high-peaked rock shot out of the land like a giant chimney in the distance and she didn’t have to ask its name. Davey had been saying they’d see Chimney Rock before long. She wished she could be there when the Hawkinses’ Martha first saw the pillar. The child’s eyes would be wide with wonder.
She found she talked to Baby Martha as though she was Nancy, holding her up to the landscapes, chatting away about the weather or Davey’s mumbling as he harnessed the oxen; even when she milked Charity and the baby stared with wide eyes at her from the cradle basket, she talked. “I spend more time talkin’ with you than your daddy. Guess you know afore him we still got cornmeal but gettin’ low on flour.” It was easier discussing a meal or dwindling supplies with another woman. Davey pooh-poohed any worries she raised or told her how he’d fix whatever troubled her. It was a part of him that annoyed like a too-tight shoe. She didn’t want to take it off, but she wished it would stretch a bit, give a little more room for the walking.
“We’ll resupply the flour at Fort Laramie.”
“What if they out or the price too high?”