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“Pant like a dog.” I gave him the instruction my mother had once given me to stave off nausea.

In a moment he looked up, pale. “I’m not sure you can hear the truth, Eliza, of who your husband really is.”

What shame could he possibly carry that was as great as mine? “Just tell me.”

“Ah, ’Liza.” He leaned back onto the bed and then . . . fell asleep.

I had all I could do not to throw a basin of cold water in his face. Instead, I tried to imagine what he carried like heavy
stones or what had happened to make him turn from the path he’d been on, being a good father, looking after the cattle, being kind to me, not drinking or gambling. Had I done something earlier in the evening to upset him? I thought back and couldn’t name a thing.

It was evening when he awoke. I’d fed the girls and they’d gone to bed and slept. I nursed Lizzie. The fire crackled in the fireplace sending heat to our fronts while the woodstove warmed our backs. I heard him start to talk.

“In Missouri. I had a friend, a good friend, though he was a slave. My pa gave him to me when we were boys. Jeremiah. That was his name.”

I turned my head. “Your parents owned slaves?”

“Just a few. We had a hemp farm. Couldn’t have made it without them, my pa always said. They worked hard.” He grew silent.

I kicked myself that I’d interrupted his telling. “Go on.” I drew the rocker closer to hear him better and give him the privacy I could tell he needed.

“When we got ready to leave Missouri for Oregon . . .” He paused, his eyes looking upward. “My pa told me that since I was seventeen I needed to make ‘big boy’ choices. Jeremiah could come west with us and I’d have to pay his way since he belonged to me. He might be free in Oregon Territory, we couldn’t be sure. Or, I could give him his freedom in Missouri and not take him along. Or I could sell him—he was my property—and keep the money to cover my own expenses coming west.”

“What did you do?”

“None of those.” He leaned his head back against the duck-feather pillow. His handsome face wore weary lines against the pillow slip stained with baby goo that starching hadn’t gotten free. “I lost him in a game of cards.”

“You put Jeremiah up as collateral?”

“You’re right to judge me, Eliza.”

“I didn’t, I was—”

“Your tone of voice did.”

I kept my counsel, letting him continue.

“What kind of man would do such a thing, Eliza? That’s what you’re asking yourself, isn’t it? What kind of man would betray his best friend; treat him as though he was worth only what I could get for him?” His voice caught. “Every time I see a colored man here, I look twice, to see if it might be Jeremiah. I saw a colored man tonight. A free black, I imagine. He drove a freighter. He looked me in the eye and smiled. I couldn’t look back.”

“Did you . . . did you try to buy him back, Jeremiah?”

“I wish I had. I told my pa I’d set him free and he’d left us, just like that.” Andrew snapped his fingers. “My pa thought Jeremiah ungrateful. I didn’t correct him, compounding the evil that I am.” His voice caught again.

For only a moment did I wonder if he was telling a tale to trick me into seeing him with forgiving eyes, his anguish palpable. I reached over Lizzie to brush the tears from my husband’s stubbled cheeks. I’d never seen him weep. “I’m so sorry you had to make that choice when you were so young.”

He snorted. “I was seventeen. I thought I could win him back, before we left. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I gambled because it was fun and I figured I could get money to start here, in Oregon, with Jeremiah, free. God forgive me.” He choked on those words; inhaled regret. “When later I did win big and I went to look for him, his new owner had already sold him to someone heading west to California.” He fingered tears from the corners of his eyes. “So now you know. No shame, you said once? My shame. I can’t even describe it.”

I reached out and touched his arm, a psalm coming to mind
about a hand stretching out in the darkness without wearying. I stroked his wrist. “You’ve punished yourself enough.” I whispered the words. “You have sought forgiveness; now the task is to receive it, every day. You are not evil, Andrew. You are a good man who made a bad choice. You’ve made better ones. With God’s help, you will again.”

“With your help too, ’Liza.” He reached for my hand, squeezed it, then turned his face into the pillow, his back to me, his shoulders shaking. I put Lizzie in her cradle, the one her father had made for her. Then I crawled onto the bed beside my husband, stretched the length of myself against his back, my apron catching on the brads of his duck pants. I pulled the wedding ring quilt up over us, and reached around and held him to me. He gripped my forearm like a lifeline.

“We are all wretches, lost like the biblical woman with the missing coin. Lost until we knit God into the fabric of our lives,” I whispered. For the first time I truly believed it.

16
Unpredictable

The winter rains and mild weather of 1858–59 with no hard freeze had doused the ground in springtime, making squishy everywhere, walking to the smokehouse, gathering chicken eggs, feeding the hogs. The neat cows stood in muck while I milked them, and the bottom of my skirts and the girls’ caked with mud, straining the threads at the hemlines. I’d put the milk bucket into the spring and had just returned to the house to skim the cream from another pan. Lizzie would be ready to nurse. It was but a month or so after Andrew’s revelation about Jeremiah and I’d noticed his pacing had returned. Irritable, restless in the evenings when I urged him to whittle something for America Jane, hoping that might distract his thoughts. Still, his announcement was totally unexpected. “We’re moving.”

“What?” I turned to him, spoon in hand. “Moving? Where is it you plan to go and why?”

“Washington Territory—on the Touchet River.”

I barely had a breath. “Near . . . Waiilatpu?”

“No interfering state rules there. It’s still a territory. Man can do what he thinks best for his family. No taxes. Fewer regulations.”

“If I’m remembering, our Oregon Territory didn’t even have money to fund an army to send for our hostage rescue after the Whitmans died nor put down the uprising with the Yakima. A tax might have been a good thing.”

“They got you back.”

“The British got us back. They paid the ransom.”

“It’s about time you put those memories to rest, Eliza. Life goes on. Are you going with it is the question.”

“But this is our home.” Why was he upsetting our lives like this? He paced, the slight limp a reminder of his earlier choices. My sisters listened but offered no commentary.

“I want land where cattle don’t have to stand in muck more days out of the year than I care to count. There’s free land east of the Cascades and few people to populate it so we can have that cattle spread I’ve always wanted. You’re familiar with the terrain. Hillsides with grass to their bellies. Treed areas near the streams and then, gracious goodness, almost no rain in the winter. Snow, but no constant drizzle for weeks at a time. Don’t you miss that high dry country, darlin’?”

I didn’t. And I didn’t want to leave what we had in Brownsville. Why hadn’t I imagined it might have come to this?

A few nights later, as memories mixed with prayers kept me from sleep, an odd sound brought me to the porch where Martha Jane stood, dressed for travel, a small satchel in hand.

“Martha? What are you doing up at this hour?”

She looked startled in the moonlight, her wolf-fur hat wisp
ing around her heart-shaped face. She was fourteen years old with brows that framed deep brown eyes.

“What are you doing with your bag?”

“Oh please don’t try to stop us. Bill and I, we’re eloping.”

“Bill?”
Am I really
awake?

“Wigle.” She whispered it and what followed. “He’s a good man. He’s twenty-four, and when he turns twenty-five he comes into some money. We thought we could wait but we just can’t.”

“But how? I mean, I’ve never seen him around. When?” Then the important question: “Does Father know?”

“That we’re in love? Of course not. He’ll have me signed up to cook and clean for him and Rachel and Millie for the rest of my life now that you’re leaving!”

“I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going with Andrew or not.”

“Oh, you’ll go. And Father won’t let us join you. I can’t go back to Father and Rachel, Eliza. Don’t make me.”

“But you’ve only turned fourteen this week. It’s too . . . early.”

“You did it. Barely older than what I am now.”

“I was seventeen.”

“Be happy for me. Here’s Bill.”

She skipped off the porch as Bill Wigle dismounted. He tipped his hat at me, then made a stirrup with his hand so she could mount the horse he’d led in for her. He tied her satchel behind the saddle. I stood like a lump, unable to do or say anything to stop them.

“Where will you go?”

“Eugene City. No one here would ever marry us, not with Father around. Wish us well, Sister.”

I pulled my shawl closer to me.

“What’s going on?” This from Millie, her eyes full of sleep though. She carried a lantern from behind me, held it high. Her eyes grew wide. To Martha she said, “You’re going to do it?”

I turned to my youngest sister. “You knew about this?”

“Of course. You’re so preoccupied with the babies and Andrew—”

“And work, keeping the two of you in fine style.”

“I’ll take good care of her,” Bill said. He was tall and lanky and wore a silly lover’s grin. “We’re going to live with my brother Jacob, in Harrisburg.”

“Father will—”

“Not be happy. But he’ll never approve anyone I choose.” Martha leaned into Bill. “Just as he wasn’t with your Andrew. He wants to keep us close, doing things his way.”

“Don’t you worry. I’ll look after her, Mrs. Warren.” No longer grinning, Bill seemed bent on assuring me of his good intentions, but the man was going to marry a child! He sat straighter on the horse, tipped his hat at Millie and me, then reined his mount down our lane, Martha Jane riding close beside him.

If they were going toward Eugene City, they’d have to go through the Gap on the Territorial Road. I hurried back inside and dressed, told Andrew I had to make a quick trip, that Millie would watch America Jane when she woke.” I’ll take the baby with me.”

“What are you doing, darlin’?” Sleepiness, not worry, threaded through his words.

“Saving a life.”

“I’m going with you.” Millie leapt from the porch heading toward the barn. “I’ll get horses.”

“No! You stay right here, young lady, and look after America Jane.” Lizzie awoke to all the commotion then. I thrust the baby at Millie. “I’ll saddle Maka myself.”

My horse ready, I jammed a rain hat on my head, hung a slicker on my back, and mounted. Millie patted the baby in comfort, then handed her to me already swaddled in a blan
ket. “I could help,” she said. Like a sling, I tied Lizzie to my breast, the sling knot thick against the back of my neck, the hat wide enough to keep her dry. I pulled my oil slicker over us against the March chill and drizzle and rode hard, the leather reins wet in my hands. It’s what my mother would have done, rescue a child.