A Light in the Wilderness (27 page)

The next weeks found her lost in thought as she called each cow in for milking morning and night. She made cheese, prepared for the winter months. Their years together, seven in all, had been shorter than she’d hoped for. Once she’d been uncertain, but she and Davey made a good life together, did their share to mend the wounded world being good neighbors, caring for their children, fending for themselves with room to help others. A dozen irritations through the years rolled through her mind, anger that he’d gone to California then brought back what took his life. But maybe it hadn’t. Maybe as the Scripture said, there is a time for everything. She wished Davey’s time hadn’t come so soon.

As the weeks passed, she remembered more occasions of joys than irritations, moments that bled through the tears to stain her heart. Those would be the stories she would tell her children. Those would be the memories she’d let hold her hostage.

No one knew when the estate would be settled. For now, they had the cabin and all the things bought to furnish it. The cattle
belonged to her, all from Charity’s yield. Davey had claimed two old cows and a new calf. She expected she’d be paid the amount in the agreement, $200 per year since 1845 when they’d left Missouri. That came to $1,400. The land would have to be sold for that payment to be made. But if she received the $1,400 she’d be able to buy property somewhere, maybe in the Umpqua country in the southern part of the state. Maybe she could lease. When the executor was named, she’d give him the paper as a claim against the estate. That’s what Micah had told her to do. And she’d tell them what was hers already, what property she had earned herself these seven years. She’d set aside Davey’s watch for Junior when he came around, if he ever did. She hadn’t seen him since the funeral. Until the executor rode in, she would be the sparrow, trusting in God’s provision.

Someone pounded on the cabin door. It was the dark of November, so early in the morning that if there’d been a clear sky the moon would have been a witness.

“Who—who be there? Shush now.” Letitia spoke to Adam, who’d begun to cry. “You all right.” His caramel-colored face dripped with tears. “You fine.” She patted him, pulled on her knitted shawl to go to the door.

“What is it, Mama?”

“Nothin’, baby. Go back to sleep.”

She picked Adam up, held him on her hip. Roth stood, head at the twist, but he didn’t bark. He hadn’t barked since G.B. struck him.

The pounding began again and this time she recognized the voice telling her to “open up for the law.”

“What—what you doing here?”

Greenberry Smith pushed past her with his former father-in-law and another man she didn’t recognize crushing a letter at her chest. He jerked open cupboard doors, looked in trunks, counted dishes, his heavy brogans dropping mud.

“Why you here?” She set Adam down, clutched at her nightdress, his paper in hand. Both children cried.

“You two go out and count the stock.”

“It’s still dark, G.B. We can afford to let the woman get herself decent.”

“Write down all the tools too. Make sure you get the bull and all those hogs they got.”

“What you doin’ here?”

“My job.”

“You stop!”

“Why? You gonna pull a pistol on me? Here.” He nodded to the letter that had fallen to the floor. “Not that you can read it so I’ll tell you. I’ve been appointed executor of David Carson’s estate. He had no will—”

“He sign an agreement. It like a will.”

“Did he? Let’s see it!”

Did she dare give it to him? Micah had said the executor would need it. “It in a safe place.” She should have given it to Micah. At least he was a witness that it existed, though he’d never seen it signed.

“Come on. Give it to me.”

The palms of her hands sweated. Thoughts like billiard balls rattled through her addled brain.
Should I? Shouldn’t
I?

“Anything related to your husband’s estate is court business now.” This from one of the men accompanying G.B. He spoke softly.

“Get out there and count stock, I tell you.” The men left and to Letitia G.B. said, “You’ll be in trouble if you don’t comply, woman. You aren’t even supposed to be inside this state. Remember that.”

Davey said the exclusion
law didn’t apply to those already here.
She put Adam down; her hands shook as she opened the cupboard door and held a pottery canister to her stomach, pulling the paper out as she did. She handed it to him. He unrolled it, read it, and put it in the inside pocket of his vest.

“No!” She grabbed at him. “I keep that. Show the sheriff.”

He pushed her away. “Sheriff and probate court have assigned me the duty.” He grinned. “I’ll see it gets to the right place. Now step back. We’ve got to make a list of all Davey’s assets.”

“Assets? I knows about assets. Some of what you countin’ up is my assets. The furniture’s mine. I pay Gage to make it. All the cattle ’cept Davey’s three. The dishes—”

“Yours? You can’t own property. You are property! The only reason I don’t list you as a ‘asset’ is because no one’s buyin’ wenches these days in this
free
state. Rather humorous I’d say that you came all that way across the plains to find out that you’re back where you belong. In the state of Nowhere and Worthless. That’s your property.”

The others returned.

“Ask Sarah Davis. She know I’m free. I belong to no one. Her father-in-law the one what free me. She know I’m not property. G.B. know it too.” She turned to him. “You see my papers in Missouri. You know I free to come with Davey and work for him. He sign an agreement. Ask him!”

“What’s she talking about, G.B.? She’s got some kind of papers?”

“Let’s leave Mrs. Davis out of this. We’ll let the court know of our findings. You can remain here with your br . . . children until the auction.”

“Auction?”

“No will.” He raised his palms up as though he was powerless to do otherwise. “There’ll be unpaid debts against the estate. Only way to pay them is to sell the assets. I’ll set the date and after that, you’re gone. What we reap from the auction will go to Davey’s heirs. I already found them. Most back in North Carolina. Junior of course, but it’ll all be divided among his
rightful
kin.” He leaned into her. “Of which you are not one.”

“That agreement say he pay me for the seven years I work for him, since 1845. That labor alone be close to $1,400 dollars. All the cows be mine. Twenty-nine.”

“We’ll see what the court has to say. Meanwhile, you won’t
have much packing to do, because everything here is Davey’s. It’ll be sold.”

“No! I buy this.” She pounded her hand on the table. “I buy this!”

“With what?”

“My butter and milk and pork I sell.”

“You sell? No, David Carson sells. Everything belongs to him. Don’t you get that?”

“Where I go? Where I take our children?”

“No matter to the court. I’ve already got a buyer for the property.”

Junior.

It was like a summer storm rolling in with black clouds, lightning, hail, and wind. It happened so fast, the devastation unknown until it was over. G.B. set the date of the auction for January. She’d be turned out in the coldest, wettest month of the year.

“You stay with us,” Betsy told her. “We build shelter. You be safe.”

She sobbed at the kindness offered. She had to keep Charity. She had to make sure the agreement had been delivered to the court so they could see she had a claim not as an heir, a relative, but as an employee, as anyone else who ever worked for Davey and now had a claim.

Junior had never seen the agreement, said he knew nothing of it, and no, he wasn’t planning to make his home open to the wench and her children.

“I do for you,” she told him.

“What? What did you do for me? You took my daddy from me. I shouldn’t even be talking to the likes of you. You put a spell on him. For all I know you poisoned him and that’s why he’s dead.”

There was no reasoning with him.

With Nancy and Micah she tried to work the problem through, but it was like pushing a rock through the cheese sieve: it didn’t go.

“She needs a lawyer, Micah.”

“I can pay. I got a little money.”

“The law doesn’t allow a person of color to bring suit against a white person. Can’t testify against them anyway.” Micah bounced their youngest child on his knee. “I doubt any attorney will take your case with all the uproar about exclusions and lash laws and Oregon becoming free or slave, especially not in time to stop this auction.”

“I can be there when they sells my things? I can buy some back?”

“You can. But a bigger problem is where you’ll go after that.”

“She’ll come here.” Nancy was firm.

Letitia shook her head. “You gots too many to look after now without adding mine.”

Martha Hawkins sat beside her. The girl had grown so much and now held Letitia the way she’d once comforted Martha when her sister died. Adam and Perry Read played with wooden toys Joseph Gage had made for them.

“The Gages, maybe. They in another county. Maybe they willing to harbor someone supposed to leave the state.”

In late November, she ventured into Salem and the probate court. She’d never been in the city before, but she swallowed her fears and asked to speak to the clerk about the signed agreement. She said she had a claim against the estate in the amount of one thousand four hundred dollars in return for her labor. “G.B. Smith has the contract David Carson sign.” She heard the tremor in her voice. Would they send her away, she and her children? Arrest her? Put her in jail?

“There’s no evidence provided in the material given to the court by the administrator,” the clerk said. He wore a long coat and a string tie. She’d never seen Davey in a tie. “There are several claims here. Doc Smith wants $50 for his care and treatment of David Carson. David Carson is asking for $200 for four months of labor at $50 a month. Guess it’s not
the
David Carson, deceased.” He laughed at his own joke.

“I sees him take it. I gives the paper to Mr. Smith when he counts the assets.”

The clerk pawed through more documents. “It’s not here. Your claim’s not on the list. I’m sorry.”