“And what does he say?”
“He’s silent on the issue. He never was one to fix broken things. I wielded the hammer for repairs.” She was aware of John’s presence and found it peaceful in the midst of the storm.
“Thank you, Tabby. Whatever happens ahead. Thank you.”
“You’re a gift to me too, John.”
Tabby wondered if the darkness made it safe for him to speak such words. It did for her.
Thunder cracked above them, booming so close Tabby grabbed at her ears.
“There won’t be much sleeping tonight,” John said.
“‘What hath night to do with sleep?’” Tabby quoted. “Milton.”
“I didn’t know the man took a wagon train west.”
The rain stayed through that evening and then all day, off and on and then again when they reached Ray County where they made camp in the wet. The following morning the rain invited itself to stay for breakfast, drizzle interrupted by downpours. There’d been no cake-baking, that was for certain. The men sweat beneath their drenched slickers by the time the animals were harnessed, and Orus gave the shout to head out. Tabby thought they should give a few more hours to let the ground soak up the rain—not that she offered this bit of wisdom. But a few miles later she could see that Orus had made a good decision to go rather than stay. This section of road was in good shape, and the air cool though cloudy, and no rain.
At least Judson managed the oxen well. John had told the boy that if the oxen ears were forward, to stand in front and glare, and if the oxen didn’t push their ears back, to growl at them. The oxen were being argumentative if they didn’t set their ears back and acknowledge who was boss. “If they still don’t put their ears back, you hit them hard on the rump with the whip or the goad. Really hard. Otherwise they’ll not listen to you when you gee and haw them forward.” So far, Judson had only had to use the stick once.
Not far from Camden a wagon approached, the cover curled back to expose the bows like ribs. A young woman, pregnant, sat beside a man. She looked familiar. It had to be Young Pherne. She and David Bain had married last year. Virgilia had felt cheated not to have seen her cousin when they visited Manthano, yet here she was, on a wagon seat beside her husband. Tabby guessed Virgilia would be pleased.
There were howdys and hat-to-hearts all around, though Orus kept his wagons rolling and reminded the rest to do the same. “It’s not easy getting these rigs moving, so do your talking along the way. Good to see you, Niece,” he’d added, tapping the side of his hat when he replaced it over his flattened dark hair, but he didn’t stop, instead reined his horse to the front of the line.
Virgilia and Young Pherne chattered like squirrels while her husband spoke with Virgil’s sons, easily keeping up the pace, driving the wagon beside them as they urged the oxen onward. He had a fine mule team. Tabby wished she could walk a good enough speed to be a part of the conversation with Young Pherne, but she’d have to wait until they reached Manthano’s. That wasn’t far away.
As they started up the long driveway to her son’s, Tabby expected to see wagons parked beside the house or barns, to watch activities of loading and slaves moving here and there getting everything ready. But all looked the way it had when she and Virgilia had made their way up to the house the autumn before. She guessed her son was well-packed and prepared, just waiting on them.
She heard a cry behind her.
“Broken tongue,” Octavius shouted, and the wagon behind him stopped. It was Virgil’s second wagon. Tabby’s would have halted too if she hadn’t directed Judson to pull out and move alongside to keep going before their wagon stalled. It would be a hard pull up the rest of the hill for Virgil’s good wagon, now that they’d been stopped. And there would be repairs to consider.
They were but a few yards from Manthano’s and Orus had already reached the house with his wagons. Tabby saw black men now directing where to park the wagons, where to lead the oxen for water. Tabby got off her harp-back chair when Judson had pulled them to a stop. Her foot always stiffened after long hours of sitting. She shook her leg out, brushed dust from her linen skirt as John began taking off the oxen yoke. She approached Orus and Young Pherne, who had pulled their buckboard up beside Orus’s rigs. That was where she heard the latest news.
“Pregnant? My brother might have waited until we got to Oregon to have another.”
“Mama’s . . . well, Alonzo, our brother born in October after you left, Gramma.” Young Pherne acknowledged Tabby’s approach without breaking her speech. “He . . . he didn’t make it. Buried the same day as he was born.”
“Your poor mama,” Tabby said. “And she’s with child again?” Young Pherne nodded.
“I hope she’s early and can make the trek all right. Where is my brother?” Orus looked around, fists straight beside his hips. “Wouldn’t want any complications on the trip. For your stepmother’s sake,” Orus said to the raised eyebrows Tabby showed him.
“Why don’t we wait to greet him before we get ahead worrying, Son.” Tabby could see that irons were in a fire and she wanted to spread the coals to cool things down.
Young Pherne’s next words were barely audible above the commotion of the broken tongue, animals being taken to water, people and children and dogs stretching and beginning the evening routines. “I don’t think my parents are going to Oregon, Uncle Orus.”
“What?” This from both Orus and Virgil, who had joined the little gathering. Behind them Virgil’s boys began removing the heavy yokes so they could begin the tongue repair.
“Papa said it wasn’t going to work, them heading west.”
“I hope he sold some of his property to pay me back the money he owes me.”
“Orus. No.” Tabby shook her head.
Young Pherne’s husband spoke up then. “If Pherne wasn’t with child, we’d join you. Maybe next year. Got bit by the Oregon bug myself.”
Tabby said, “We don’t know the whole story, Orus. They may well be in need of our assistance. Poor Catherine. And they may have changed their minds and are still coming.”
Her sons would have to work things out. She was more concerned about Catherine, who came out onto the porch, looking washed out as an old rag, as tired as she had the year before, and equally as pregnant.
“Welcome. Manny is inside. Please, go on in. We’re putting food together for you all.”
Orus sidled past her, though he tapped his hat rim at her in acknowledgment. Virgil turned back at Octavius’s call related to the wagon tongue. The tension lingered. Maybe she should follow Orus inside and act as a diffuser between her sons, but Catherine directed her to a table beneath a hickory tree where a black woman placed chunks of cheese and sliced pork. Hunger spoke louder than family dissension.
“Was it us being here?” Tabby asked Catherine. “Virgilia worried over the extra work we were for you. I should have listened.”
“No, no. It wasn’t having you and Virgilia here, Mother Brown. That wasn’t what caused the complications of Alonzo’s birth. I’d been so frail, through the whole pregnancy.”
Slaves fanned their faces with sheets of cloth stretched onto circles of willow boughs. Tabby fidgeted. She didn’t like having owned people adding to her comfort. “And now?” Pherne had taken a seat beside her mother.
“And now I feel a little stronger. But not so strong I want to test it by traveling in a wagon all that way. You understand, don’t you?” Pherne nodded. Tabby did too. “I couldn’t risk losing another child.”
“It’s unfortunate that your dear husband—my son—didn’t give your poor body a rest.” Tabby knew she should keep her opinions to herself, but it was a habit hard to break.
“Why, I heard tell that the best way to deal with a stillbirth is to begin again. Like getting back onto a horse after a bad fall,” Catherine said.
Pherne stiffened.
Tabby tapped her walking stick once on the ground beside her. “A woman’s body needs a rest between pregnancies, good or bad. My dear
father told me that and he was a physician, he should know. Losing a child isn’t like a horse tumble. No, no. And there is nothing written that says a woman has to have a child every other year, or every year because she can. Goodness, that’s why so many of us die young!”
Catherine blinked, changed the subject. “What we wonder about, Mother Brown, is you being able to make the trek, you and your brother-in-law, both of you, well, being . . . old. Older.”
“I think we’ll do fine. We’ve had a good test in this route so far. I’ve loved seeing the terrain, the change in seasons from last fall to spring. My wagon is sturdy. No broken tongue, at least. I like seeing change. The cornfields coming on. The taste of honey made from new flowers. Your honey, well, thank you for giving us a couple of tins to take with us last year. We’ll appreciate a tin for Oregon if you have one.”
“Manthano has not spoken to you?”
Tabby shook her head.
“Of course not. You haven’t seen him yet, though I thought he would write.”
“About the honey?”
“No. He wants you to stay here, with us. Won’t you please consider it?” She touched Tabby’s arm. Her fingers were cool. “I know you’d be a good help to me, and Manthano would appreciate your being here, he would.”
“Stay here?”
She’d be with family. She would be useful. She wouldn’t have to weather the long trip. She could end her life with ease, slaves fanning her face, washing her clothes, tending the fields. She could influence these grandchildren whom she’d had little time with. Help Young Pherne out; go west when they did in a few years, perhaps. And Catherine certainly could use the assistance. If nothing else, a stronger voice to tell her husband no more children for a while. Catherine may think herself stronger than she was last year, but the color of her skin was that of oatmeal and she was thin as egg noodles.
“Manthano may want that, but how would you feel, Catherine, about my remaining behind? Uncle John would need to stay too, you understand. If we’re as old and useless as my sons think we are, we could well add to your burden, not lessen it.”
“John, too?” Catherine cocked her head and the breeze caught the crocheted square that crowned thick, black hair. She looked Spanish almost. Tabby hadn’t noticed that before. “Oh. He’d be welcomed, of course. Manthano would wish both of you to remain.”
“And you?”
“It would make Manthano happy, I know.”
“If Manthano brings the invitation to me, I’ll consider it.” Was God telling her that this was the place where she could love and do good?
Manthano came to her after the supper pause, the heat of the day washed away by the shade as they sat on the veranda overlooking the river. To the side, black men busied themselves hefting hams from a cellar to the summer kitchen attached by a walkway to this big house. Beatrice pecked with Manthano’s chickens, though keeping to the outside edge. Chickens weren’t always accommodating to emigrants.
Tabby looked around. When would she want to live in a home with such luxury? Perhaps her old age deserved a slowing time with predictable shelter, good food, grandchildren to help raise up.
“Catherine said she’d made the invitation to you. And to John. You’d be welcome, Mother. What do you say about staying on?”
“I’m surprised, first of all. Truth is, I’ve never felt welcome in your home, Manthano. I know you wrote to me some years back, saying that I didn’t understand, that you hadn’t closed your doors to me and opened them only to your wife’s kin. But you never came to see us. You left in a huff when you married Rebecca, and we never even knew when you took Catherine to be your wife. And truth be known, if you had really wanted John and I to stay, I think you would have written the invitation before we left St. Charles to give us proper time to consider.”
“I was concerned you’d think it was too soon.”
“It is. Catherine needs a rest between these babies.”
“I meant my marrying her so soon after Rebecca’s death.”
“A man with four children, one of which is a wobbler, is fortunate to find a new wife after only seven months. And Catherine appears to have served you well, giving you four children in eight years.”
“But who is keeping track, right, Mother?”
“It is not a criticism, merely an observation. There are ways to ease that. Catherine is wearing out, it appears to me.”
“That isn’t really your business though, is it, Mother.”
She sighed. How did an invitation become an argument so quickly? “I suppose not.” With her fingernail, she picked at a nubbin on her walking stick. “But I’d be hard pressed not to wear my opinions on my apron rather than stuff them in a purse if I stayed. Which is why I suspect you didn’t write to ask.” Manthano clasped his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his rocker, closed his eyes so she could no longer look into them. “Or maybe you didn’t want to disappoint Orus in a letter. Maybe didn’t want Orus to know you’d changed your mind. Now that I can understand.”
Tabby had heard her sons’ loud voices, though couldn’t make out the words while she and Catherine and Pherne had sat beneath the hickory trees.
“I think the way you boys talk to each other, the way you spar when it’s not intended, I suspect that is part of what drove you away from St. Charles and away from your brother and sister. And from me. And I fear it would happen again if I remained here with you.”
He sat silent. “I loved the sea, Mother. You took us from that.”
“You could have gone back. I did it so I wouldn’t have to ever wonder again if you’d lived or died on a ship. One time of not knowing was enough. And you’ve done well for yourself here.” She spread her arms around. “Harness making, breeding those mammoth mules, farming. All good business ventures, it appears. With slaves to help, of course.” She knew that last was spoken with a sharpness that wouldn’t enhance her son’s invitation.
“Think on it though, would you, Mother? Perhaps we need more time together, not less, to work out our differences.”
“Familiarity breeds friendship?”
“Something like that.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped as though in prayer, head lowered. “I don’t know how many years you have left, Mother. But I would like some of them to be spent with me and mine.”
She heard an evening dove coo, suggesting a quieting of her tongue.
“I’ll consider it, I will. And talk with John as well.” She had Judson to think of too, though she suspected he could hire on as an extra. Orus would likely take him to herd their neat cows they planned to buy from Manthano. “Whatever I decide, know that I am grateful and humbled that you would ask me to remain. I am a person who can be difficult to live with. If your father were alive, I’m sure he’d concur. But some of that contrariness is what has gotten me through tough times. I’m not certain I could turn it around when I’m being offered luxury in my final days instead of trials. I think our character is shaped by the challenges, don’t you?”
“Maybe that’s why I want you to stay. So you can continue to shape my character.” He grinned and she saw his father’s smile as she looked upon his face.
Go or Stay. Tabby wrote the title in her memoir, then about choices she had made in her life. Whether or not to leave Brimfield, Massachusetts, and marry, for one. She’d known her way around Brimfield, had her father’s reputation to polish her own when she behaved indiscreetly. A model child she wasn’t. After the accident, well, Brimfield became a safe place. Everyone knew her story. She never had to explain the walking stick. But leaving as a young wife would allow her to make her own history in a new place. She had vacillated, and that is the heart of the pain of a choice. “Once decided, amazing things can happen. Somehow I had hoped there would be a right and perfect answer, but there was none. We pray for guidance, make a choice, and then we live with it, adapt. Make new climes,” she wrote. Her husband’s ministry was always being scrubbed between those who thought him too severe a
nd those who thought him too relaxed in his theology. Just like on the washboard, clothes can get worn out with such scrubbing. They struggled: should they go to some new venture or stay and work through the consequences?
She would not want anything to interfere with her sons’ and daughter’s successes. But oh the hole in her heart when she thought of starting anew without family, left waiting for her death while the larger part of her legacy moved west.
She paced the room. She wasn’t finished yet, not ready to ease away her days with Manthano’s slaves breezing her face in the heat. Writing in her memoir felt like praying, and she needed to do that now.
She would go, keep her spirits up. As Tennyson would say, “We are call’d—we must go.” And so she would ride in the morning of the times. “The choice comes back to knowing what we’re called to do and then doing it with all our hearts and minds and souls.” She had to go. As a young wife, she couldn’t say “stay,” and she couldn’t say stay now either.
13
To Choose
“This is a pretty comfortable place, it seems to me.” John gazed and Tabby saw what he saw: the sheep-cropped lawns, the whitewashed pillars that set off the front porch, black-skinned people hoeing in the gardens. Orchards. Fields of hemp. Children’s laughter serenading. “Unless you’d miss me.” His eyes caught hers. She looked away.
“It is comfortable here, I agree.” Tabby’s palms became sweaty with his words. Without him along, her children would never consent to her heading west. She wouldn’t entice him unfairly. “But would you want to miss out on the great migration to Oregon country? That’s the pull, isn’t it? Like the next shoreline you haven’t encountered before. You’re an old sea captain who must always take on the siren call of new seas, isn’t that so?”
“Yes, yes, I know. But maybe as I’m approaching my eighth decade, maybe a warm bed each night and the sureness of a full stomach is a greater lure for me.” He rubbed his belly as he talked. “Of course a pleasant bed warmer is nothing to sniff at.” He wiggled his white eyebrows, making light, but his eyes spoke of the seriousness of his hope.