A Sweetness to the Soul (34 page)

“Another gift of the Chinese,” Joseph said, speaking of the fireworks. “Hope they’ve got enough water in Canyon Creek to put all the fires out,” he joked, his arm around my shoulders. The band broke into “My Country” and then an Irish tune Joseph said was from County Derry. It was a sad song, a man singing to his son, Danny, who had died in battle. I blinked back the tears that rose unbidden on the sad strains of the phrase, “It’s you, it’s you must go and I must stay,” grateful that my husband did not tease me for my sentiment.

Following the song, we headed with the throng of people to the Elkhorn Hotel for a night meal and eventually to bed.

I thought later it was good we had that evening of celebration together. Even the O’Connors’ presence seemed to buoy Joseph, remind him of a good decision made years before, and at the same time confirm his belief that Canyon City and the interior of Oregon would grow, his plan for our part in it getting clearer, the trail to our future being better defined. Only later in my marriage did I equate times of joy and sureness as forewarning of disasters to follow.

As we rode up to the picket fence that surrounded Turners’, I held a mix of emotion. Soon, I’d be meeting my rival, the model of a wife and mother Joseph held in high esteem. He had written to Francis the morning after our wedding and I was not asked to review his message. I had felt a tinge of something I would later call envy. At that moment, envy was too large a word to fit into the first day of my marriage.

At the same time, riding to the home of the woman who had nursed my husband back to health, I felt full of pride in my status: I arrived at Francis Turner’s home as the wife of Joseph Sherar.

Whatever Joseph felt, he was not sharing. I noticed he chewed his lower lip as he scanned the yard. The place seemed unduly quiet. “Not even chickens scratching around.” The skips sat idly in the shade on plank shelves, no bees nearby.

We “howdyed” them, Joseph calling out to Archibald and Francis and each of the children. Even the kelpie barked into the silence, his “yip” pause “yip” pattern going unanswered. We tied our horses to the rail and I stepped through the picket gate Joseph held open for me, aware of a strange apprehension brought on by more than the afternoon heat.

Archibald appeared on the porch so quietly, a gasp marked my startle as I had already started up the steps when I saw him. Thin as a hickory switch, he stood before us, eyes all hollowed out like coal lumps in snow, his beard knotted, clothes hanging on him like they were meant for someone fuller, bigger in body and spirit. He looked right through me, then came from some far away place to bring Joseph to recognition. When he did he moaned and reached his hand out as though seeking his balance.

“You got my letter, then,” he said, his voice weak. “So good you sent J. W. on ahead.” He held Joseph’s hand, clinging. “Ella said we should wait. If I’d known you would almost pass, we could have.” He talked like we understood his reference.

“Where’s Francis?” Joseph asked.

Archibald’s eyes narrowed in pain at the sound of her name. He
took a long time answering, swallowing. “She’s lost to us, Joseph, like I wrote. God took her home two weeks ago. Baby too,” he said, his voice ending in a half-spoken word. “Buried ’em together.”

“We’ve received no letter,” Joseph said, his voice even, full of patience. “Ella, and the other children? Where are they?” he probed gently.

Archibald sighed. “Boys are with friends in town. They can stay. Martha’s in The Dalles with the Gilliams. And Ella’s with J. W., on her way to Mrs. Herbert.”

“Mama?” I said, taken aback. “That Mrs. Herbert?”

Archibald looked at me for the first time. “J. W. said she’d look after Ella good. Used to looking after folks.” His voice defended, like he was being asked to respond to too much, losing his wife and infant and now being challenged on the choices he made for the living. “J. W. said she was looking for a young girl to keep, all her children but one being gone. Said you’d be having your own in time and you not having a place and all, wouldn’t be good to add an almost seven-year-old to the mix.” He rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers as if wiping the pain away. “Wasn’t what Francis and I agreed to. Figured she’d understand.” He dropped heavily onto the plank wash bench and leaned his head back against the house, closed his eyes. “Already dead a week by the time I wrote to tell you what her wishes were.”

“You want us to take Ella?” Joseph asked, still putting the pieces together in the present tense.

“Wanted,” Archibald corrected, making it past. “Your mama made good sense in her letter. And J. W. happening out when he did seemed God’s message to us, too. Thought you’d sent him. Don’t want to burden you, with a new marriage and all.”

“It would be no burden,” I said to Archibald, speaking up.

“You’d want Ella? Even with you being newly wed?”

“Surely Mama was only acting to be helpful, temporarily,” I said.

Archibald moved his hand dismissively. “You work it out,” he
said. “Ella’s fond of Joseph. Francis wanted it,” he sighed. “But I’ve no energy now.”

“When she understands our willingness and Francis’s wishes, Mama surely won’t stand in our way,” I said.

“Won’t she now,” Joseph said, his voice far away and strained yet a step ahead of me in his understanding.

I could see he was dealing with a range of disappointments. I didn’t know what he would do with the loss, how large Francis would come in his mind over time, how badly he wanted to battle for her child. My side began to hurt. I didn’t want to lose the friend I hoped my husband would become. I didn’t want to compete once again with the dead.

I took Archibald’s bony elbow and moved him gently back into the house, aware that of the three of us, I was least attached to Francis, dealing with less grief, more focused on what we could do in the present, how we could impact the future.

“Perhaps we could overtake J. W., to avoid confusion before it starts,” I suggested.

Joseph shook his head. “Too far ahead,” he said. “But if he doesn’t cross at the falls, we might make it to your mama’s before too much is nailed together. Need to settle things here first, though.”

My eyes scanned the cluttered room reflecting the emotional cave Archibald had crawled into. “Start a cook fire,” I directed Joseph, who surprisingly did as I asked. I located a pot and walked outside, pumped water from the hand pump and returned. “Some tea will clear our thinking,” I said. “Then we’ll eat something, help us know what to do next.”

The men accepted my directing. The cooking directed my thoughts, distracted me from hearing Archibald tell Joseph of Francis’s last hours, from having to decide what we’d do next.

The “next” turned out to be riding with Archibald back to Canyon City that afternoon, settling him in with the boys and their keepers. Joseph held a hasty meeting with Heppner and Benito and
we saddled up. We rode out hard, pausing only for a moment at the fresh graves.

As sometimes happens, we took different routes to the future.

Joseph and I slipped quickly through Cross Hollows, down the dugout road, and headed back across the falls with only a brief stop to learn from Auntie Magpie that Sunmiet’s baby had arrived “big and long and wiggly as a eel” and that all was well.

J. W. and Ella, however, took the northern route, crossed at the mouth on Nix’s bridge and rode on to Fifteen Mile Creek arriving at Mama and Papa’s two days ahead of Joseph and me.

“It makes no sense, Mama,” I said, frustrated. “Her father wants Ella with us. So did her mother. And Ella too. She knows Joseph, feels safe with him.”

“Yes. Well. The child’s wishes are of no consequence. She’s too young to know her wants. And her father agreed she should come with me for a time.” Mama sat in the kitchen at the small spinning wheel feeding flax fibers into the groove, making thread.

Ella stood at her side, wide blue eyes following Joseph’s movements as he paced around the room. She listened, her stiff child’s body rigid with tension, her dimples hidden in uncertainty. She wore two black ribbons on either side of the center part in her gold-spun hair.

“He didn’t know we’d be willing,” Joseph said firmly. “Now he does. He wants us to look after the girl.”

“The man’s deranged with grief,” Mama said, her foot moving rhythmically below the wheel. “Doesn’t know what he wants for sure. Times like these,” she motioned Ella to hand her more fibers, “cooler heads need prevail. I’ve seen it before. People in sadness making decisions they later regret. This is the best place for Ella. She’ll go to St. Mary’s Academy in the fall, get a good education. It’ll be easier from here. Might just move into The Dalles for the school year.
Once your house is finished, you not living in a hotel, we might discuss it again,” she said, adding a drop of sweet to the sour.

As always, there was truth in what Mama proposed. I did believe it would be difficult to add a seven-year-old to our quarters at the Umatilla House. And St. Mary’s was a good school and a good idea.

A part of me, selfishly, wanted more time alone with my husband before adding a half-grown family not of my making. But those beliefs were not enough to make me want to thwart my husband’s wishes. And there was Ella herself, all sweet-smelling and soft.

Joseph stopped pacing. “There’s no need to disrupt the girl more. She comes now, so neither of you feels the pain later. You’ll have ample time to see her. We’ll arrange it.”

Mama acted as though she hadn’t heard him. She just paddled away on the spinning wheel, the thump and hum of it filling the room.

“Come, Ella,” Joseph said, reaching out for her, testing the tension.

The girl hesitated, looked at Mama as she began moving away. Without looking up, Mama reached her hand around Ella’s waist, pulled her, announcing her control, into her side.

“Well,” she said then, stopped her spinning and stared at Joseph. “You cannot always have what you want, Mr. Sherar. It’s a new experience for you, I’m sure, but the girl stays. Salve your grief some other way. Go make the marriage you wanted. Finish your house and we’ll talk again. Ella,” she said, patting the girl’s arm, “fetch me a dipper of water. My old bones are tired.” We watched Ella leave, looking back over her shoulder at us. Mama sighed and looked first at Joseph, then me before she said, “Reminds a soul of Rachel, don’t you think? Just her age when she died.”

“But I’ve never had trouble,” Joseph said. He was agitated as I had never seen him before. “What happened?”

Benito carried the information from one of his trips into town for a wagon load of shakes to roof the house with. The shakes would be extra protection against the leakage of the sparse rain though greater snow accumulations expected later in the year. “Nothing to be planned for,” Benito told him, unloading the piles of cedar. Puffs of dust burped out from piles as the shakes slapped the earth. Benito wiped his brow of the August heat, stopped to describe. “Cayuse attack on dugout trail. No place to go. Wounded many. Cut ropes and slash bags and kick everything over sides. Many animals destroyed. Flour and sugar snow on sagebrush until first rains.” He shook his head sadly, “All is lost.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Joseph,” I said, trying to calm my husband. He seemed decidedly upset. “Didn’t you tell me it was a risky business? Mr. Heppner must have known that too, decided he could live with the risk when he bought the string.”

Joseph snapped his response to me, startled me. “I didn’t just sell him the string. I sold him the idea. Told him the settlement would be increasing, things were safe. Everything he had he put into that string.” He wiped his face with the linen handkerchief he pulled from his shirt pocket.

Benito shook his head sadly, spit a stream of tobacco. “Mr. Heppner, he wiped out on first trip on his own.”

“No one holds you accountable for the loss,” I said, touching Joseph’s arm gently, still attempting to slow his irritation.

“Doesn’t matter.” He brushed my arm away. “Hold myself accountable.” He jabbed his finger into his chest as he spoke. “My integrity’s at risk.”

“Mr. Heppner,” Benito told him, picking up on my cue, “he does not blame you. He is just glad he lives and no lives were lost. He is just not sure what he will do next.”

Joseph grunted, ending the conversation but not his thoughts I was sure.

The men finished unloading the shakes, enough to roof two
houses, ours and Anna and Benito’s being built down the slope. We had lived two weeks in our home, a two-story frame structure built with extra bedrooms on either side of the stairwell at the top of the second floor. I missed some of the hustle and bustle of living in the Umatilla House, but I liked the privacy, the freedom that being in my own home afforded me, the opportunity to know my husband as a friend.

I brought up cool water from the well, offered it to the men in the sultry morning, pondering Joseph’s word
integrity
. Joseph wiped the cold liquid from his upper lip and mustache with the back of his hand. He emptied the dipper with a flick of his wrist, sprayed water beading up on the dust. He rinsed the cup, refilled it from the bucket, and handed it to Benito as he spoke, decision clear in his voice.

“I’ll replace the string.”

Benito’s eyes grew large above the rim of the dipper he drank from. He looked first at Joseph. Then at me.

“Replace it?” I said. “You don’t owe him that!”

“It’s not what I owe him, but what I owe myself—what I can live with.”

“Can we afford such generosity?” I said, though my voice held an opinion more than a question.

“Can’t afford not to,” he said. “Sold my reputation for success along with that string. My reputation for giving people good advice. Heppner took my words on as his dream. He trusted my judgment as much as anything. Don’t want my name bandied about in any way other than respectable.”

“But six thousand dollars!” I said. “We can’t manage that, what with the cattle, the ranch, and all.”

“You didn’t make the money,” he said, “or my reputation.”

“Maybe if you’d let me participate in both I’d see it differently,” I snapped back. I swallowed to keep the tears from stinging my eyes. Bandit appeared from nowhere, sat primly at my feet.