“Yes, but—”
“No more buts.” Virgil stood. “Orus says I indulge you.”
She felt her face grow warm with the words “Orus says.” “I imagine he does say such things of you, and I would hope that you counter his admonishments with facts. It is not indulging to work together to resolve painful issues. It is not indulging to give a person more time to decide going or staying. We don’t all come to decisions as my brother does, gathering enough information to decide a thing without seeking all the facts—and feelings—others might have. He often comes up short and has to adapt later because he has not looked for information so he can decide. I prefer assessing so one doesn’t have to make later changes.”
“You’re going into your head now, Pherne. But your heart is what’s making the decisions.” He took her hand. “Your heart and the great loss we both still feel. You are not leaving Oliver behind. We are taking him with us. Here.” He tapped his chest. “Your sadness, your anger at Orus, at me, those are losses reaching out like the gnarled hands of Shakespeare’s witches. They seek something to hold on to, but there is only air.” He stood and pulled her to him. “Let’s fill that air with newness, with the excitement of how our lives will change. Take your paints and pencils. Draw your way across the continent.” Pherne flinched at their mention. He stroked her back. “You won’t be tending a huge house, planting or harvesting a garden. For six months we’ll all be together with a common goal. Making it to Oregon as a family. Think of the memories we’ll make. Together, isn’t that what matters? Not all the nice things. Us, our children.”
“You’re sounding like Orus now.”
“Is that so bad?” He took her in his arms and she allowed herself to sink into his touch, his words. Maybe they would be enough to sustain her through this wrenching away of things.
“You haven’t made the leap yet, Love.” That’s what Pherne’s mother said when she told her of the conversation, or at least bits of it. Pherne had walked to her mother’s, finding comfort in the woman’s presence, her always hopeful spirit.
“The leap?”
“Onto a cloud of faith believing that we won’t fall through.”
“That’s the unknown I’m to contend with?”
Her mother heated tea water. “Not only that we won’t fall through but that we will thrive on that cloud of faith, draw new energy each time we need it, knowing that God is an unending source of hope no matter the trial. You and Virgil, each of us, have come so far together, Phernie.” She patted her daughter’s hand. “Let’s not make the journey full of pain because we couldn’t let things that needed to stay, stay. We have to make room for more treasures. In our hearts if nowhere else.”
“Virgil says I should take something symbolic of all the children and our years here. I have no idea what that could be.”
“What started the conversation?” She strained the tea into the porcelain cups. Pherne wondered if those fine cups would find their way to Oregon.
“This time? The harp-backed chairs from New England. The ones his parents gave us when we married. I love those chairs.” Pherne leaned over the teacup to inhale the scent. Moisture beaded above her lip.
“Tell you what. If you’re willing, let’s take the legs off one of those chairs—”
“And ruin it?”
“Now hear me out. Take the legs off and we’ll attach the chair and arms and back to the seat of my wagon. Put those legs in a bundle under the wagon floor. When we get to Oregon we’ll reattach them.”
“Virgil says it’s because it’s so heavy we can’t take it. It’ll be hard on your animals too.”
“I’ve been pondering on how my back will manage sitting on that hard seat with no high backrest, and your harp-back chair will be perfect. Solves both our problems.”
“It’ll break up the set. People won’t want to buy the table and chairs set if one is missing.”
“It might lower the value of the set, but it might also give them a story to tell, about how one of those chairs went to Oregon to help an old lady. Stories are worth their weight in gold where commerce is concerned.”
Pherne laughed. She pulled a piece of tea leaf from her tongue with her fingertips. “Mother, I do believe you can reconfigure any problem. I’ll get the saw and we’ll cut off those legs together.”
April 15, 1846. The wagons constituting the Brown-Pringle party lined up outside of Hickory Grove, the name Virgilia’s father had given their farm years before. Virgilia’s eyes cast over the line of wagons and she tapped her foot at the newest delay. Orus pressed again for her cousin Charles to drive the ox team for her grandmother and Uncle John instead of Judson Morrow, criticizing an old decision already made.
“Gramo’s made the arrangements, Uncle Orus. I think she needs to decide. Can’t we just go?”
Her uncle had turned on her, scowled. He was used to people skipping to his orders without letting their feet hit the ground.
“Learning to speak up for yourself, eh? Spending time with my mother will do that.”
“She’s speaking my thoughts,” her grandmother said. She’d hobbled from around the wagon. “You aren’t going to discourage me, Orus, by trying to make last-minute changes. No offense.” She angled her walking stick toward Virgilia’s cousin, who nodded, cast his eyes to the dirt. “John and I are packed and ready to go, and young Judson here is too.”
“Mother, Orus says Judson lacks experience.”
Now her mother had to intervene!
“Phernie, my dear daughter, stay out of this one.”
“My daughter has an interest in Judson, so it’s my business, Mother, it truly is.”
The freckles dotting Judson’s nose faded into the red of his face. Virgilia wanted to rush in and protect the boy . . . young man. He didn’t stand up for himself.
“Stop, please.” The bickering wore Virgilia out. “Whatever works best for you, Gramo. Please, Mama, don’t let’s argue.” Her face felt hot as a riverbank stone in August. Talking about her “interest” in a boy in front of him. Goodness. Was everything open to discussion in this family?
When Orus made his pronouncements, a disagreement always seemed to follow. At least from her gramo. The harp-back chair had caused a ruckus all right, but Virgilia was pleased her gramo and mother had won that debate. Her gramo sat on the wagon seat like a princess on a throne, with armrests and a pillowed seat. Best of all, when she rode in her gramo’s wagon box looking forward, she’d see the beautiful harp design her gramo would lean against across the country. Emma had been sitting on the chair while they had this driver conversation, and she’d seen Orus and Lavina’s younger ones running their hands along the arms before jumping down and heading to their own wagons. Each family had two wagons, and with her gramo’s, that made five in their group. But once they reached Manthano’s, there’d be at least two more. She wondered if any of the slaves would be coming along and if they’d have their own wagons too.
“Let’s get rolling,” her father called out. Her mother made the motion of washing her hands. “You’re right, you’re right. It’s whatever you decide, Mother. It’s your wagon. Your driver. Let it be, Orus.”
“And I’ve decided on the Morrow boy,” Tabby announced. “That settled? Let’s get this wagon train on the trail.” She looked at Orus. “As Orus I’m sure will say.”
But Virgilia’s mother had gone back inside the house, the home that had been theirs for all the years of Virgilia’s growing up. Virgilia followed her inside and watched her mother with stooped shoulders stand by the cradle. She might have been praying, likely fiddling with her gold locket that had a lock of Oliver’s hair inside. Then, like a hummingbird, her fingers feathered the headboard, ran across the sides and the stays that held the baby’s bed at either end. She pushed it lightly and it swung, back and forth, back and forth. “‘Hush-a-by baby on the treetop.’” Her mother whispered the words.
“‘When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.’” Virgilia’s clear voice sang the nex
t line. “Let’s not say the rest of it, Mama. Let’s say good-bye. Let the memory of the bad time stay here and just bring the happy times with Oliver with us.”
Her mother nodded. “You’re right, I—” Her voice caught and tears came now uninterrupted. Virgilia let her cry on her shoulder, the daughter a comfort to the mother, until she stopped, wiped her eyes with the handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve. “Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
“Pherne! You’re holding things up.” The shout came from her father.
“Coming,” Virgilia answered him. Her mother pasted a weak smile on her face. Whispered “thank you.”
Virgilia walked outside, her arm wrapped inside her mother’s elbow. She saw her gramo and said, “Take Mama’s other arm, Gramo. We’re in this together.” She could bring comfort to another. Love and do good in whatever way one can. Maybe this journey was her chance.
They’d made camp by a small creek, and everyone took an assessment of how things had jiggled or been jostled in their wagons, noting the amount of fine dust that filtered over everything, the shifting of barrels that needed a tighter rope. Virgilia’s father would be keeping the diary of their journey, and she sat beside him as he made the initial entry at the end of their first day: “April 15, 1846. Left Hickory Grove this day with my family for Oregon. Went seven miles. Stopped for more company.”
“You didn’t say anything about the trouble we had with the ox, Papa, nor how much dust there is to contend with. I thought how Judson shod Ben—casting, he called it—was really something. That rope pulling around Ben’s middle and how he plopped down on his side so the farrier could shoe him.”
“When you don’t have a shoeing stock, that’s a pretty good way to take care of things.” He closed the diary, rubbed a spot on the leather cover. “No sense including everything we know. There’ll be more trouble and I won’t want to take the time to write it all. You could, though.”
“Write about the trouble?”
“The details, things I won’t be covering, like the casting. The smell of the rain when we get it. The grit of dust in our mouths. How swift or slow the rivers flow. What the weather is like, how different or the same. Maybe write a poem or two.”
“Oh Papa, I don’t know how to write poetry.”
“Don’t you? Why did I think that?” He smiled at her.
“Because I recited Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Day-Dream’ poem. It wasn’t my poem. I like it, though, because he talks of ‘titanic forces taking birth in divers season, divers climes.’” She exclaimed the words as she had for her school lessons a year before when she’d memorized the long poem.
“‘For we are ancients of the earth,’” her father continued. “‘And in the morning of the times.’”
“I would change it to the ‘morning of our times,’ even though I’m not sure I know what it means. But I do feel as though this journey is a titanic force, that none of us will be the same after it.” She thought of her mother’s sadness at the baby’s cradle.
“In the morning of our times. A good addition,” he said. “I doubt Tennyson would mind. Perhaps that speaks to why I wanted to go so much. Life is short. Remember that, Child. What more is yet to come for an old man like your papa and yet I seek the mornings.”
“You’re not old.” Virgilia leaned in, whispered, “Gramo is old.”
“And still she fights on, finding her own new climes and seasons.”
“I’m glad she fought for Judson.”
“I imagine you are.” He pulled her into his side, his arm a comfort on her shoulder. “He’s not much older than you are, Virgilia. Not ready to settle with a bride. I don’t want you hurting, now.”
She lowered her eyes to her hands folded in her lap. “I know that. We’re just friends, really we are. I hope I make many friends on this trip. And I intend to imagine myself into a new life in Oregon.” She surprised herself with that comment because, indeed, she had begun to daydream about a new life. This morning, she felt as she did just before she let loose the rope over their old swimming hole: anticipation, a trust that the water would be buoyant enough to hold her up once she plunged deep and didn’t fight the natural rise to the surface. And she relished with just a shiver letting loose that rope, dropping through the air, and then the moment that would take her breath away. It was how she wanted the rest of her life to be. “I’ll daydream my way into those new climes and seasons.”
“Like the rest of us.” He removed his arm, made another note in his diary that Virgilia could see: “Tennyson: Day-Dream.” He looked up at her and grinned. This journey was already memorable, as she’d never had such a moment with her father before, not ever.
She sauntered to the wagon and took out her own foolscap paper, writing not of the journey but of her mother during those last minutes before they left. For days she’d been putting the words together in her mind.
Empty now, the cradle stays
without a baby cooing.
Empty now, down feathers
without comfort
embrace the bottom of the child’s cot
like the lining of a coffin.
Empty now, no laughter reaches
from the confines of its polished rails.
Left behind, it may cheer another
while memories travel
in a mother’s
heart, her arms
so empty
now.
11
Last Arguments
Virgil rode beside Tabby’s wagon for a time, chatting with Uncle John while Judson walked beside the oxen. Tabby’s back felt sore, but she knew it was better than trying to walk.
“How are you doing, Captain?” Virgil asked.
“Still sailing high. Did I ever tell you about the time I—”
“I’m sure you did.”
John laughed but kept on telling his story. Tabby lost the thread of conversation as she let her mind wander, heard the clop-clop of the oxen hooves, smelled the animals’ sweat and droppings they deposited on the trail. She nodded off, then jerked awake with the wheels lurching over a rock. Tabby grabbed the arms of her harp-back chair. How she wished she could walk, but her lameness would slow them down. She’d have to settle for a little exercise when camp was made and she let Beatrice out of her cage to peck on the ground. Ride or Walk. Maybe that should be her next memoir entry, when she had time to write. She certainly couldn’t write while sitting on that chair, luxurious as it was. Knitting would be her pastime. The wagon bounced and rocked from side to side. She had sat for a time with her legs hanging over the back opening of the wagon, watching the faithful oxen from whichever wagon had drawn the space behind theirs. Couldn’t write there either.
The day before, Virgil had stopped and bid adieux to his brothers and sisters, none of whom were headed out with them except for the nephew, Charles. Maybe she should have hired him instead of Judson, but no, he had family; Judson didn’t. Tabby saw Virgil’s shoulders droop as he bear-hugged his brothers, wiped his sisters’ eyes with his thumb. Her stomach tightened at how close she had come to waving good-bye to her family. Oh please may I have done the right thing. She recalled again the tension of the morning they headed out.
“We’ll have to pace ourselves to the slowest wagon and that can be dangerous, Marm. Indians can see our weakness—in this case your wagon—with that ridiculous harp-back chair.” Orus shook his head. “Makes us vulnerable to attack with slowed animals. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you, Marm?”
“And you know our wagon will be the slowest one how? Have you put weights on our wheels? Tied a log to the back to drag behind? Found our oxen wanting in some way? Why, I picked out their shoes myself and we have extras along. Plus tar. Plus grease buckets aplenty. I’ve read the materials. I know what we need. And we don’t need the extra weight of guilt that you’re hoping to plop upon our backs.”
“Facts are not guilt, Mother.”
“I can assure you we will be of no trouble
to you or the other wagons. Judson’s a good boy, a strong young man. Uncle John can ride just fine, and if not, he can sit in the wagon with me. You just put us in the line wherever you wish and we’ll keep up. If we don’t, by the time we get to Manthano’s, I’ll reconsider going at all. How is that for a good understanding?”
Orus flicked his Green River knife into the dirt, pulled it out, wiped it on his duck pants, then flicked it again. Tabby waited for his response but watching him, couldn’t resist a chide. “Did you weigh that knife? Does it put you over the limit? It best have other practical properties. After all, playing mumblety-peg is a frivolous thing.”
Orus lifted his eyes to her. “It weighs less than that school bell of yours. Or John’s violin. So don’t lecture me about what’s essential.” He sighed then. “I’m sure I’ll use this knife for practical things.”
“I’ll find a use for my school bell too. And music is a boon to any trail.”
“I’ll take you up on your offer, Marm. If you and Uncle John hold us back, you’ll drop out at Manthano’s and either head back or remain there. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” She rang her school bell at him, and he shook his head. “We’ll either be good to go or we’ll agree to stay.” She prayed she’d accept the outcome with dignity, and that Orus would too.
Virgilia had the ague. Pherne worried over giving her Champion pills. She’d heard they helped, but Pherne didn’t like newfangled medicines inside bottles or capsules. She preferred cool cloths, mustard compresses, herbs and plants that she had dried herself for healing. But pills were easier and she had little time to mix up her potions during the day and was too tired at night. Her mother always was more open to new things, suggested the pills, and had brought extra along. Little of that enterprising spirit had rubbed off onto Pherne. Virgil noted their daughter’s illness in his diary that day, that and the number of miles they’d made. “15.”