“Gramo, you’re so skinny!”
“Watch your tongue, Child. I still weigh a hundred pounds dripping wet.”
Virgilia and Nellie both scrambled up the bank and began stripping off their clothes too—Virgilia folding hers in a neat pile; Nellie leaving apron, shirt, and gathered gingham skirt like a pile of corn husks. Then on either side of Tabby, the girls lifted her arms and carried her down the bank, all three walking into the river. They splashed each other and sank down to their necks, feeling squishy mud between their toes and disturbing pebbles that had rested in the waters for eons. Their squeals would surely bring others but Tabby didn’t care. In fact, she wished Pherne was with them. She found that sometimes writing her memoir brought nostalgia to the surface. But the memories also reminded her that she still had a life to live. Plunging into living wasn’t all that unlike plunging into a river. Maybe that’s why the old Negro spiritual of “Take Me to the River” often rang through her head, even in the midst of making sassafras tea or grinding corn. Life sources: food and water. And playing a little with grandchildren.
She inhaled a deep breath, pinched her nose, and closed her eyes and sank beneath the surface. Whatever lay ahead, she would keep plunging into life.
18
Moon in Morning Milk
They’d struggled through August, some days making only four miles, finding rivers with no water in them, seeking springs in a desert land. The moon displayed her phases. Pherne sat up in the night, her shawl wrapped around her. The desert could cool in the evening, then burn hot as ash in the daylight. She worked to keep her regrets at bay, didn’t want to trouble Virgil further. But they were turning into foreboding like a bad storm coming that kept her from sleep. Nightmares of people without facial features begging for help woke her, the longing staying through the day, making her irritable when she held her skirts out as protection so her mother and girls could modestly tend their personal needs.
September found them at another juncture, another fork in the road. Some wagons would rumble toward California and the rest head on toward the Scott-Applegate cutoff. Pherne had hoped for Nellie’s sake her parents would be there, waiting. Or at least had left a note scratched out on a precious piece of paper and stuck under a rock or on an old skull left along the road in this unusual and barren terrain.
While there were notes left for others coming behind, none were from the Blodgetts. Nothing there but the caw of a disturbed raven flying high overhead and heat rising from the sand that burned their feet. Dust devils swirled in the hot air.
“It’ll be all right, Nellie Louise.” Pherne spoke to the girl’s fears as much as to her own, for even she could see the starkness of the route they were obliged to take by virtue of following after Applegate and his road builders. If they had kept up a little more, they might have missed seeing that man and missed learning of this alternate route as well. A desert awaited them as a desert of uncertainty awaited Nellie—awaited them all. Pherne regretted not arguing stronger to follow Orus and the more established route, but it was too late now. Regrets must be treated like wounds, remembered only for how well they healed. Or didn’t. “You’re safe with us. We’ll look after you.” She reached out to touch the girl’s dark strand of hair that stuck to tears—or maybe sweat—on her cheek.
“Thank you, Mrs. Pringle. I never wished to be a burden.”
She took the girl into her arms. “Ah, Nellie, that’s the wish of us all and why we were given into families. You’re no burden. Come on, let’s go find Gramo, girls. Maybe she needs a little company. Old people get lonesome.”
As they approached, they watched Judson clear mucous from the oxen’s noses. Virgil had told the boys how critical it was to keep the dust from their nostrils or they’d overheat in the desert. The animals could get by with less water than a horse or a mule, but they couldn’t abide the dust. “You’re doing good work, Judson.” Pherne encouraged the boy, who lowered his head in shyness, still.
“I wonder if my lotion would help keep the dust from their noses,” Nellie Louise offered.
“More likely it would hold it and make it harder to breathe,” Judson told her as they slowed their walk to watch.
“I suppose.”
Pherne’s mother sat in the shade, eyes closed.
“We came to visit, Mother.”
“You brought your calling cards, did you?”
She snapped her eyes open. Buddy panted beside her, nuzzling his nose beneath her hand.
“Will we need calling cards in Oregon?” Virgilia joined her grandmother in the wagon shade, watching where she sat. Snakes liked shade too.
“I doubt that. The rules of civil living will be different. And we’ll help make those rules. That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it, girls?”
Her mother was right. Yes, circumstances were setting their responses now, but wouldn’t they be able to control what happened to them once they arrived? This was a transitional time, like being on the steamboat that took them to Missouri all those years before. What happened these months wouldn’t define the future. Being in Oregon would. She had to remember that and assure Nellie Louise of the same.
The Scott-Applegate wagons, as Virgil called them, pulled out and Pherne stepped more quickly as Virgil approached, their two wagons already creaking across the flat with her sons managing the teams. Her bonnet shaded her eyes. Beyond him, a malevolent black mountain like a nightmare formed a dark wall across the landscape, calling them deeper into their choice. “It’s fifty-five miles across with only one spring, Captain Scott tells us. We’ll have to keep on through the night. How’s Nellie doing?” He nodded toward the girl who Virgilia had her arm around, bent in quiet talking as they walked.
“Disappointed. Feels abandoned. I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t have left a message for her here. I hope they didn’t go on toward California. It could be months, maybe years before they reestablish their ties.”
“Maybe they’re counting on her independent spirit to take her on through.”
“Which it will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t being tested, poor thing.” Pherne took a deep breath. “Fifty-five miles.”
Virgil nodded and pointed. “Scott calls this the Black Rock Desert. It’ll be grueling with the stock already stretched and not much promise of water or feed.”
“I baked extra bread with the cornmeal.”
“They’ll likely need it. Thank you.” Virgil led his horse as they followed the line of wagons whose occupants occasionally waved or tipped their hats. Virgil’s face was drawn and caked with dust.
“I really do want us to succeed. I’m not being contrary when I bring up issues that concern me,” Pherne said.
Virgil nodded. “I know, I know. Sorry about the other evening. I didn’t mean to raise my voice.”
“Nor did I. I just felt so bereft, that’s the only way to say it. Like we’re floating forward without a real sense of where we’re going or even why. I miss—” Her voice broke and she fought back tears.
“I know.” He stopped then, took her hand, his fingers rubbing the back of her palm. “I know what you miss: safety. Scott says this route is essential to protection of the Territory, now that our joint treaty with the British is expiring. The British could easily block the Columbia River and settlers would have no way in or out. The Scott-Applegate route is for the self-defense of us all. Troops and supplies can come this way without fear of British engagement. Our war with them isn’t that far back in history.” She stumbled on a rock and he held her upright. “We take this route as a duty, not only a risk.”
Pherne raised her eyebrows to him. “You raise the idea of war and think I’ll feel safer?”
“The possibility of war is always present. Scott says Indian trouble on this route isn’t likely. It’s the British we have to be wary of. Here we don’t have the Columbia River danger and we can reach the Willamette Valley quicker than Orus will. Support those settlers already there in the southern regions. We’re helping a
nswer the Oregon Question, Phernie—will it be British or kept for America? Those in Congress may argue, but we act. We know what we want.”
“You know what I want?”
“Excruciating predictability.”
She swallowed a laugh then, his using a phrase she’d often said when he teased her need to have order and design and safety. He stopped and held her shoulders, lifted her chin. Wagons continued to roll on by them, and someone hooted. Buddy rubbed his nose to go between them. Virgil’s horse lowered his head, waiting. The earth was crust beneath their feet. Weeds like popped corn stuck out of deep earth splits in the desert. Yet there was a kind of beauty she had not noticed until her husband took her into his arms.
“We’re making a scene.”
His shirt against her cheek mixed sweat and the pungent scent from the hot spring where she’d washed it. She felt herself drifting to another place and time, when life had ease and she knew her role in the world.
His voice caught. “Phernie, stay with me now.”
“Where would I go?”
“Away in your mind. Don’t do that, please. I need you beside me, I do. The children do.”
She inhaled, pushed back against his chest, her fingers to her cheek to wipe at the wetness.
“‘See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek.’”
“You quote Romeo and Juliet to me in the midst of this?” Pherne spread her hand out to take in the vast flat with ground so hard and broken it looked like crumbling cobblestones all the way to that black mountain wall.
“What better bard to share my thoughts. I only wish I’d said it in the moonlight.” He gave her a quick kiss. “I love you, Phernie. You believe that.”
“I won’t say ‘I love you too,’ because that’s too predictable for an adventurer like you, Virgil Pringle.” She smiled. “I will ponder on your patriotism and whether or not we do a thing beyond our own adventuring.” She inhaled. “But know that you are the glove to my cheek and you mean more to me than breath itself. So let us breathe together and get through this desert.”
“John? What’s wrong?” Tabby heard a grunt from behind the wagon. She’d gone to the back to stabilize the butter churn. The cows weren’t giving much milk and the churn bumped in the dark. She rumbled and shifted in the wagon, working toward the back. They’d reached the first spring in the early afternoon, took their supper, and filled buckets for oxen and horses to drink. They’d headed toward that black rock soon after and had been traveling through the night across hot, dusty ground. In places, the dust looked like soda, and Mr. Scott said the saleratus could help raise bread, so the women gathered some. The heat weighed on everyone and caused perspiration to gather beneath Tabby’s arms. That’s when she’d heard the grunt from John.
He led Schooner, not riding him as did most of the men, saving their mounts. The animal offered up no antics. In front, Judson goaded the oxen with his stick, the whip retired to the wagon box. They would have stopped, so weary were they, yet they plodded like ants to a hill, steady and determined.
“Oh, I’m all right.” Disgust laced John’s words. “Tripped over my dang feet and Schooner here clipped the back of my heel. I expect it’s bleeding some. Moccasins don’t protect like my brogans. Not your fault.”
Tabby could tell he spoke to the horse with that last, not her, but part of her did wonder if the problems they faced right now were indeed her fault.
They had fallen behind Orus and now on this trail too. First it was pounding wooden wedges to fill in the spaces where the wood had shrunk away from the iron band of the wheels. They were all shriveling in the dry heat, but the wagon wheels at least had a remedy. Virgil’s wagons had slowed for them, helping out. Then her oxen had resisted. Well, who could blame them? Judson did well with the yoke, but they paced slower than others with the boy lacking confidence in how to manage them through the different terrains. The oxen knew it. Still, despite their noses clogging in the heat, they plodded on, though not as fast as Virgil’s well-trained teams.
Thank the Lord, the moon was full, and even though it was a Sunday, they were rolling through the night, crushing over sage and greasewood, the broken stalks sending up a pungent smell as they scraped the wagon bottoms. John wasn’t leading his horse directly behind them. He didn’t want to risk the next sage popping up and striking the animal in surprise as their wagon spit out the garbled brush that stood taller than she was. It was the same reason he hadn’t tied the horse to the box. He led Schooner around the sage, but Tabby had warned about getting too far aside so that he couldn’t keep track of them in the night, especially in that darkest hour before the dawn. And to not get overtired.
“Get up in here,” Tabby told him. “I’ve got my medicines.”
“Should I have Judson stop the team?”
Why is he asking me? “Not if you can hoist yourself up.”
“Come on, Schooner.” The horse barely lifted its head as John attached the reins. No resistance, that was sure.
They were both in the wagon now, being jostled like loose potatoes in a bag. “How much farther you figure we’ve got?” John asked the question after she administered a poultice to his heel, using a little of their precious water. Beatrice clucked in her cage. She knew what to do in the night.
“Kids count the white rotations on the wheel, but they don’t do it at night so I don’t really know. Virgil said it’s fifty-five miles across.”
“Judging by the moon location, I’d say we should reach that second spring hole around four in the morning. Sure hope we don’t have another burial like we did yesterday.”
“This country takes its toll.”
“I hope there’s water when we get there. Thank you, Tabby.” He held her hand. “I’m sorry to trouble you.”
“Nonsense. What is family for?”
“Not to take care of an old man. I never intended that.”
“Oh, I know. But what kind of kin would I be if I didn’t do what I could? After all, I wouldn’t have been able to come without you.”
“You’d have found a way. You always did.”
The cooling evening chilled. John moved closer to her.
Tabby cleared her throat. “It’s finally dawned on me that we’re the first wagons through here. Other travelers have been on horses and mules. But the Applegates have surely marked the trail a wagon needs, don’t you think?”
“Nice diversion, Mrs. Brown.”
“What? Well, no. I was just—I wish I’d had Orus to confer with before taking this route. What if wagons can’t get through?”
John shook his head and patted her thin shoulder, his hand warm against the calico. “Don’t search for bad seas, Tabby. It is what it is. We’re here now.”
Virgilia thought of another exaggeration. “It’s so hot, a planted seed would grow two feet a minute.”
“It’s so hot . . . the devil would need a freighter of snow to cool things down.”
“That’s a good one, Nellie. Let’s see, it’s so hot . . . the johnnycakes rolled off the desert looking for a griddle to cool down on.”
Nellie laughed out loud and Virgilia breathed a hot sigh of relief. They walked through the night, giving respite to the animals. The little girls stayed in the wagon. Virgilia’s mama walked on the far side. Her father hitched his horse to a wagon and moved on foot up and down the line, speaking encouraging words, making sure everyone was doing all right.
“I wish the moon wasn’t so bright, though,” Nellie said.” Then we could see the stars.”
“They’ll pop out eventually. I’m glad we can see as well as we can. Some of this brush is taller than we are. How does it even grow with no water? It makes my arms tingle thinking we might walk right off avoiding the sage and end up wandering away from the wagons.”
“Wouldn’t we hear them?”
“I guess. But the sounds are funny here. Sometimes I can hear Papa talking way up the line and then other times I hav
e trouble hearing Mama from the other side of the wagon.”
“It’s the vastness. I think this is what my father left home for, the bigness and open spaces, all the new experiences. I . . . I still can’t believe I’m not with them.”
Virgilia put her arm through Nellie’s. “I know you can’t but you will.” She wasn’t sure why it mattered so much that the people around her be encouraged. Maybe it was good to lament. There was a whole chapter in the Bible called Lamentations, wasn’t there? And yet, having her friend be sad was like a pebble stuck in the finger of a glove; it worked on her in an annoying way, causing her to want to interrupt it. “Let’s try . . . as cold as, you know, ‘She was as cold as an icicle’ or ‘It was so cold her toes turned as blue as her lips.’”
Nellie shook her head, no. “I don’t want to play anymore.”
Nellie’s words left Virgilia feeling as cold as an bummer lamb’s breath. What was a friend to do?
When they reached the first spring around four in the morning, an ox bellowed its complaint while jerking ahead for water. The sounds awoke Tabby from her doze on the harp-back chair. She caught her breath. The moon floated over the Black Rock in a morning milk of clouds spilled across the sky. The desert itself looked like a beach before them. She spoke a prayer of gratitude, then called out to John lying in the wagon. “You don’t want to miss this, John.”
He grunted, then joined her, poking his head through the opening.
“Magnificent. Like low tide.”
She turned to him. “My very thoughts.”
He kissed her, on her capped head first, then lifted her chin to brush her cracked lips with his. “We see the world the same. Surely that’s a step toward love.”
She hadn’t planned to, but she leaned into him and sighed.
A kiss had not been a part of her life since the day she had pressed her lips to Clark’s, not long before he died. She didn’t encourage John and she didn’t discourage him. In fact, his action had startled her into silence. It was pleasant to be desired, to have his warm blue eyes catch hers over the fire. Having someone help her up and down without having to ask, even if at times it annoyed her that she needed assistance, was an unexpected comfort. But it also complicated things. What would that kiss mean when they arrived? She hadn’t even thought about whether John or Judson would continue on with her. She’d always lived alone. And Nellie Louise. What of her? Did Tabby want a new family at her age? Oh, why did he have to kiss her? And what did it really mean?