A Light in the Wilderness

  “Howdy.” The lead man wore a fur hat and clothes of skins with the fur hides turned in against him. “Where you hail from?”

  “Kentucky. Missouri.”

  “Mighty right. Come with Black Harris? Meek?”

  “Met ’em both. Meek’s our pilot ’til we broke off to follow English.”

  “Come all that way alone, did you?”

  “My man’s around.” The hair on her arms began to shimmer.

  “Mighty right.”

  The lead man spit onto the ground. His horse stomped, eager to move on, and they had a string of pack mules that threatened to get into trouble if they stopped too long. She’d seen that happen with other strings getting impatient, all lined up and nowhere to go.

  “You got any tobacco? I could sure use a smoke and see there’s lots of bearberry around to mix it with.” This from another of the trappers midway in the string.

  Letitia shook her head. She didn’t know what bearberry was nor did she have any tobacco left. It struck her as odd that if they were newly headed out they would have secured supplies at Fort Vancouver and shouldn’t be in need.

  She stepped back, prayed Martha would not awake. They might be good men . . . or they might be trouble. Rothwell returned and stood beside her, his fishtail high over his back. She wished she’d picked up the pistol.

  “You’re always out of tobacco,” the lead man said to the second.

  “I lost two good twists,” the other defended.

  “Mighty right. You lost ’em to cards. We mean you no harm, missus.” He must have seen worry on her face and offered to wash it away. “We’re moving on through to California, checking our traps as we go.”

  “Have nothing to offer you, suh.” Then, “Wait.” She dipped inside the tent, stepped back out, the pistol in one hand kept in the folds of her skirt, fresh butter in the other. She handed him the packet wrapped in leaves.

  “This’ll make good eating. Thank you, missus.” He removed his hat and tipped it at her. “You be careful now, you hear? They got a law in these parts forcing black folks into doing other people’s labor.”

  “In Kentucky we calls that slavery.”

  “Mighty right. That’s what I call it too, but there’s lots who wouldn’t and they as soon take you away to make butter for them as look at ya.”

  “I thanks you for the warnin’.”

  The men moved on then. Letitia was reminded that Davey had made a good choice staking a claim beside the trapper’s trail despite her earlier wish for privacy. Yes, there was risk. But next time she would sell her butter and cheese and whatever else she could come up with that those travelers might want. She’d also keep that pistol on her person, in case the men’s warnings came to pass.

  The Woman made her way toward the wagon set well below the spring. Newly planted saplings leaned into the windless rain. A dog barked her arrival and for a moment she wished she’d brought Little Shoot with her to charm the animal. But she didn’t want any harm to come to him, so she went alone.

  The dog continued to bark until the burnt-seed woman came out, carrying the “Oh” of surprise on her face. She held a baby on her hip, a little hat to ward off rain. Up close she was not much taller than The Woman was. The Woman gave her a basket filled with baked camas, pushing it toward her.

  “Thank you. I’s Letitia Carson. This be Martha.” The burnt-seed woman took the basket, set it down out of the misting rain.

  “Betsy.” She pointed her fingers to her breast. “Kalapuya. We dig camas here.” Palm up, she moved her hand across the meadows, her movement like a prelude to a soft-singing song.

  “You speak good English. Better’n mine.”

  The Woman knew it was not right to wave her own feather, but she liked knowing that her English was understandable by the Others. Little Shoot had an able teacher in her and this was good. The burnt-seed woman, Letitia, wore a round and open face full of curiosity but also respect. She did not ask questions that buzzed like mosquitoes as many Others did.

  “At the Institute, closed now, Missionaries teach. Dr. White leaves and everything changes.”

  Letitia squinted, as though the name held meaning for her.

  “You know Dr. White?”

  “I thinks we meet him and a colored man, heading to the states.”

  “You will return to the states?” It was her turn to ask questions.

  Letitia shook her head. “No. We stayin’.” She used her palm up to survey the same area of Betsy’s camas.

  “Ayee.”

  “You can collect your camas, still. Other plants and seeds too. Maybe you show me.”

  There were no words to make the Others go away once they decided to stay. She had heard of people who tried this and many died, and still, more of the Others came. A thing to remember was to bring the Others the wisdom of the People’s ways and so live with peace in the shadow of these hills.

  She looked with curiosity at Letitia’s face. She had not seen an Other with such dark skin. None of the Missionaries had burnt-seed faces.

  This Letitia warmed her baby’s hands at a small fire.

  The Woman noticed then logs laid out not far from the creek, marking a lodge, she imagined. “The creek.” She gestured. “Rises in budding time. Water fills this place we stand on.”

  “It overflow?”

  The Woman nodded.

  “I want to build higher up. Near the spring.”

  The spring. Not “our spring,” not yet. The Woman hoped the sadness on her face didn’t show. “You will let the People use the spring.”

  “Yessum. And when we have apples you’ll eat.” She nodded toward the six new mounds surrounding the apple saplings. “Building nearer the spring keeps us safer?”

  “Ayee.”

  Letitia chewed her lower lip, adjusted the baby on her hip. The child looked with curiosity, big eyes the colors of a grey wolf and a bear.

  “Betsy, you helps me pull these logs up the hill? We lays ’em where the water don’t reach.”

  The Woman nodded. Letitia put Martha under the tent in her board. Then together the women pushed and pulled the logs toward the hillside. They should build into the bank. The earth would keep them warm; dig down too, the way the People built their lodges.

  The Woman said as much. “Yes. That be a good idea. Let dirt act as walls.”

  By the time they finished, the child cried from the tent, hungry for its mother. Rain fell again and The Woman took it as a sign to leave. She fingered the sapling leaves.

  “Apples. One day. Today, I gives you this.” From the tent Letitia handed The Woman four biscuits and a jar of jelly. “Pear-apple jelly. Brought a long way.”

  “Ayee. Kloshe. My grandson Little Shoot will like these with his eggs.”

  “You have chickens?” The Woman nodded. “What can I trade you for a laying chicken?”

  “More of this.” She held up the jam.

  The Woman left, pressing her walking stick into the soft ground. She tired from the effort of dragging the logs, but grateful that here, there was nothing for her grandson to fear.

  Four able men returned with Davey to help him fell more trees and set the center beam for their house, form a roof he’d make shingles for.

  “You moved the boundary marks.”

  “Yes suh.”

  “You did this by yourself?”

  She shook her head. “A woman, Betsy, come by. She a Kala . . . Kala-puya and said the meadow floods. Every spring. Where you put the logs will be swimming in two feet of water. She marked on her leggins.”

  “Flooded? Every year? That creek doesn’t look to have it in it.”

  “We dig into the earth and have dirt for part of the walls. Build it faster and stay warmer.”

  “She’s got a point,” one of the men said.

  Davey frowned. “Had my heart set on looking out at the stream, dropping a line off the front porch.”

  “It ain’t that far to the hillside.” Another man took a twist of tobacco fr
om the braided sections. “Let’s get this thing going.”

  And so they built their home on the side of the hill, using the earth for warmth as Betsy advised. One of the men helping said he thought Davey had picked a fine place to claim. He planned to file on the section south. “We’ll be neighbors,” he said.

  “You have family, suh?” It would be nice to have a woman close by . . . if she was a woman who’d accept the likes of her.

  “Not yet. But I’m courting.”

  “May you find as good a helper as my Tish.”

  Davey split rails for potatoes that winter, though he announced the camas “tasty” and hoped next year they’d have a supply of their own. A chicken appeared, and while the darker days kept the chicken from laying many eggs, it was still something Letitia looked forward to, the wondering and then picking up the warm egg and carrying it to the cabin.

  The following spring and summer Betsy became her teacher, showing her plants and what they did, which to eat and how to dry them. They dug out a rotten log, burned it, then planted tobacco seeds, Martha watching from her perch, outgrowing that board. They climbed Coffin Butte and Betsy pointed out landmarks with the Indian names she could remember. The view was of a splendid valley, meadows and small plots of trees, but no other homesteads that she could see. It was a vast beyond and Letitia took in its promise.

  Her days, like the winter rains, found a steady joy despite the work. Davey laughed and tickled his daughter, bounced her on his knee. They decided not to butcher any cows but build up their herd, so they lived on venison and raccoon and once an elk. When Letitia decided it was time to make cheese, they used a deer’s stomach for the rennet. She stretched and dried it, but Letitia had to experiment with amounts to make cheese. Davey helped wash up dishes and said more than once how good it was to be close to the spring, especially when the meadow flooded as it did that next spring. “You were right.”

  Letitia grinned, remembering Nancy saying once how rare it was for a man to admit that his wife was right, because it always meant admitting he was wrong.

  Betsy learned how to make cheese too, Letitia grateful to have something to give back to the Kalapuya woman. Little Shoot joined them, a boy with long black hair Letitia envied for its straightness and easy care. Betsy’s too. Martha’s fingers were always getting stuck in the thick nap of Letitia’s hair if she left it unbraided, which she did most often, the coconut oil and honey mixture keeping the tight kinks in check. Martha’s hair was soft fuzz, black as earth.

  “First we heat the milk in a copper pot. When it warm, we takes it off the heat and puts in this itty-bitty piece of a deer’s stomach. Always save the stomach, stretch it out like a banjo.”

  “A drum.”

  “Dry that stomach, then roll it, and it keep and give us a piece the size of my Martha’s thumb to make the milk jell.”

  Betsy nodded, seeming to memorize as they worked. While they waited for the milk to heat or cool, Betsy told stories. She reminded Little Shoot to listen and to sit. “If you stand, you will get a hump back. We should have three storytellers.”

  Letitia handed her the spoon.

  “That way they correct my telling. But there are few storytellers left so I teach Little Shoot. And with your baby, there are three to listen. I tell today of pine squirrel and deer and of hope and fear.” She gave a little cackle and Martha giggled.

  “Now we waits until the milk gets thick and jiggles like a fat man’s belly.”

  Betsy shared a story of a boy becoming the moon and another of how a coyote outsmarted a frog. The stories reminded Letitia of days before her mother was sold when they sat around a fire pit in an evening while men and women sang and swapped stories to make the children laugh and sometimes the parents cry.

  “I cuts the thick milk now into small pieces and then breaks it.” Letitia liked the squishy feel of breaking up the cheese until it was the size of grains of corn dribbling over her dark fingers. She could transform milk. A woman was always transforming. “It like a custard all broken apart. Now we heat again. Keeps stirring. Don’ let it boil. Good.” She hovered behind Betsy. “Now we lets it cool and hears more stories. Or I teaches you to pun jab, tell stories with pats and claps of hands.”

  Little Shoot laughed as Betsy tried her hand at the claps and slaps. She shook her head. “No good!”

  Letitia strained the cooled milk, then let it drip through one of her old petticoats before returning it to the pan and kneading in the salt. When she pulled out her quilting hoops, Betsy’s forehead furrowed.

  “I gots cloth and this be the shape of our cheese. Wrap this cloth around and we store it in the firkin I bring all the way from Missouri. Keep it cool and dry. It gets a hard crust and tastes kloshe.” She was proud of her use of Betsy’s word for “good.”

  “You trade it.”

  “Sell it to the trappers and anyone else achin’ for a good bite of cheese. Closest neat cows are in Fort Vancouver, Davey says, so we good. We very good to have our cows. We wily as your coyote changing milk to butter and cheese to money.”

  Davey went to town alone. Letitia preferred the shadow of Coffin Butte, singing hymns and trail songs to Martha as she skimmed cream, transforming milk into cheese. At the cabin, Davey appeared settled, happy to be splitting rails to mark his property, keep the cows from wandering. They’d bred Charity and her heifer. Old B was fit to the plow and they broke ground for a garden. “We’re not raising wheat, nothing like that. We’re stockmen.”

  A lean-to kept Letitia dry while milking cows. She called each in by name. “Here, Charity.” She’d milk, then with a gentle slap, send her out, her bell clanging, then call in Blue, Charity’s calf, now with one of her own. Martha could say “cow” and worked on “baby” as though she knew that was her name too.

  The days rode up and down, filled with the ordinary: stuffing a mattress with bedstraw, examining a plant Betsy shared with them, eating watercress near Sulphur Springs. Little Shoot learned to aim with Davey’s pistol, the two males laughing together. Martha took her first steps. Cheese crumbled off their chins on a frosted morning. This was freedom both inside and out and Letitia relished it, even letting herself stand out to the passing trappers who bought her cheese and butter, gave her security in her earnings.

  Davey’s citizenship papers arrived in the fall of 1846. He did a little jig outside the store housing the post office in Oregon City.

  When he arrived home, he shouted, “Tish! Guess what? My papers are here!”

  “What papers be those?” She wiped her hands on her apron, walked out to where Davey grinned.

  “Why, my citizenship papers. I was waiting on . . . Oh.”

  How could he have forgotten that she never knew?

  “You just now getting those papers? How we have this land then?” She spread her hand to take in their homestead. “You lie?”

  “No. Now, lookee here. They knew I’d applied. Came all this way. Only a fool would come to claim land without being certain he could.”

  She stared at him. Was that disgust he saw on her face?

  “Now Tish—”

  “You risk this land, this place you leave us if something happen to you?” She narrowed her eyes, her words a hiss.

  “But see, everything worked out fine. The sparrows are being looked after.”

  She shook her head and went back inside. So much for sharing a happy thing with someone committed to loving you. He led Fergus into the barn. Might be a good place to stay the night.

  Later that October, Davey was asked to help build a cabin on a claim south, one taken by the man who’d helped raise their cabin. Letitia brought along a berry pie, egg noodles, fresh bread, and cheese. The day was balmy like spring without the winds, and there’d be people there, some from the wagon train she hadn’t seen for a year, Davey’d told her. She smelled distant burning smoke. As they pulled off the trapper’s trail, she saw children. Then closer she recognized little Martha Hawkins walking with Nancy Jane. Her heart swelled.
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  “Martha? Is that you, chil’?”

  “You know my soon-to-be stepchildren?” Micah Read took the pies from Letitia’s hands.

  Nancy Hawkins stepped out of a wagon. “I know that voice.” She opened wide her arms.

  Martha ran toward them while Nancy asked, “You live close?” Then to Micah Read, “Why didn’t you tell me who had the claim north of us?”

  “You never asked.”

  “We’s neighbors.” Letitia couldn’t control the wideness of her grin nor ignore how good it felt to anticipate a neighbor she so loved. “The Lord be good, so very good.”

  A month later for her November wedding, Nancy Hawkins readied a dark blue dress borrowed from Sarah Bowman with whom she’d spent the winter. But the lace she’d stitched to it was a piece she’d worked on while walking across the trail.

  “I never expected to fall in love again, ever, but that Thomas Micah Read . . . he prefers to be called Micah,” she whispered to Letitia as Letitia helped her dress. They were in the cabin Micah had built with Davey’s and other men’s help. “He’s been as kind and gentle as any man could be.”

  Letitia glimpsed out the window at Coffin Butte, a different angle from the one she and Davey shared, but one she’d come to appreciate and hoped Nancy would too.

  “He’s a few years older than me but widowed nearly two years. He said he was ‘waiting for perfection and found it in me.’ Isn’t that sweet?” Nancy pulled her shoes off and wiggled her toes inside white silk stockings. The white leather shoes were borrowed too.

  “Nancy,” her mother cautioned. “You’ll pick up slivers. This floor is well adzed but nothing keeps all those splinters out.”