The Snake River (26 page)

“Why did you go?” She considered. “I’ll just say you were upset. Everybody’s upset.

“Now get. Be sure no one sees you.”

Sima guided Lisbeth to the door, turned back to say thanks to Miss Jewel.

“Nicolette’s is empty, you know,” she told him. The old gal had married Pierre, who was ancient.

“You’d best come back tomorrow,” she added.

The thrill in their faces was embarrassing. Sima nodded at her with restraint and was gone.

Aiding fornicators. Was she terribly wicked?

Helping love blossom, she corrected herself.

Sometimes this damn religion seemed to nurture hatred and root out love.

20 March 1838

Fort Vancouver

My dear Miss Jewel:

Your request touches my old heart. The world is unjust, and it is unjust that so fine a person as you should feel herself in a difficult situation.

You are most welcome here, of course, and I personally would be glad of your company.

I cannot offer you quite the position you ask. Our pupils here are all Catholic, like their fathers before them. You can see the unsuitability.

I do, however, open the door of hospitality wide. You would be a welcome guest, of course with no charge, for as long as you like. At a time of your choosing I could arrange transportation to the States for you on one of our ships.

I personally look forward to your arrival at your earliest convenience. The bearer of this letter is authorized to escort you to this fort if you choose.

Yr. obdnt servant,

John McLoughlin

She thanked McLoughlin’s messenger, told him she would need no escort, and dismissed him. She thought she should give the man a few dollars as a thank you. But her financial situation was desperate already.

In this vast wilderness, she had nowhere to turn.

“Sima, I want to talk to you about your future.” Dr. Full was groping. He didn’t know how to approach the boy. Didn’t know where the boy’s mind was.

So much had happened. Mr. O’Flaherty had run off. Miss Jewel disgraced. Alan Wineson dead. Unthinkably, Annie Lee dead. The boy infatuated with Lisbeth McDougal. Dr. Full knew such puppy love had inordinate sway over the minds of the young. Carnal sin had even a greater sway, and the boy might be trapped in that swamp. Dr. Full was worried about his Alchemized Savage.

Sima sat nervously on the edge of one of the Fulls’ kitchen chairs. The boy refused tea and coffee, refused all amenities, just sat and waited. From appearances, unwillingly.

Dr. Full never knew what the boy was thinking. Sima would say what white people wanted to hear, Dr. Full knew that. It annoyed him, the arrogance in it.

“Sima, I see God working powerfully in your life. Do you feel Him?”

Sima didn’t look up at Dr. Full. He didn’t know what to do, how to answer. How odd for Dr. Full to bring this up. How could he not know that, because of the way he treated Miss Jewel, Sima despised him? How could he pretend that wasn’t between them?

Sima couldn’t just answer the question simply anyway. Of course, he felt Spirit in his life. He had been born in Spirit, raised to honor Spirit. Spirit was in him and in everything.

Dr. Full meant something else, though. Something like a code that…Sima wasn’t sure. But he knew he didn’t want what Dr. Full was talking about. He wanted to keep being Sima.

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You learn fast—read, write, figure. You draw wonderfully. Where come these gifts but from God?”

“I don’t know,” Sima said. Being around white people was pretending all the time. Except for Flare and Miss Jewel.

“When you think back on your life, notice how it has changed. Last summer, when you left your tribe, you were a savage. You have been alchemized into something shining. Only God can do that.”

Sima wanted to be out of here.

“Perhaps it’s too soon. This summer, perhaps, you could look back on the year since we found you with God’s help. When you look back, you will see a transformation. A miracle.”

Sima stared at his knees.

“Perhaps then you will make a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He shines through you even now, radiant and holy.”

Sima let it go.

“Perhaps I can give you now a glimpse of your future. It is glorious beyond imagination.”

Sima thought, he means beyond the imagination of a savage.

“We would like you to go to the United States on a ship, perhaps next fall. The Methodist Episcopal Church will pay your passage. Our members there will house you, feed you, clothe you, take care of everything.

“You will do something for us—speak to our congregations, and let them see what redemption can do for one of your race.” He wants to show off his trophy, thought Sima, his Alchemized Savage, thought Sima. “And we will do something for you—help you apprentice yourself to an artist, a master of drawing and painting.”

Sima felt flushed. He didn’t know about that. Someone to show him how to do things, maybe, skills of the pencil, the brush, the palette. But maybe someone to order him what to paint and how to paint.

It didn’t matter anyway.

“What are your thoughts about this?”

Sima thought about whether he should answer. After a while, he looked Dr. Full in the eye, and with a deliberately soft eye and soft voice said, “You know. Next month I will be going to Montreal with the Hudson’s Bay men to look for my father.”

Miss Jewel went everywhere with Sima or Lisbeth, which made it better and worse at the same time. Better because she didn’t have to bear it alone. Worse because everyone spoke to Sima and Lisbeth and acted as if Miss Jewel didn’t exist.

When she went to the river to fetch water, for a walk, to the privy, she didn’t exist.

The congregation of Mission Bottom was shunning Maggie Jewel.

Though she knew Sima and Lisbeth wanted to spend every spare moment alone, they mostly stayed with Miss Jewel. They were gone only at night. She wondered when they slept. And where.

When just Miss Jewel and Sima were together, and someone did speak to him, Sima answered, “Bottom of the morning to ye, you ass.”

Miss Jewel corrected him, of course, but Sima paid her no mind. He seemed angrier about the shunning than Maggie was. Noon or night, he growled, “Bottom of the morning to ye, you ass.”

She knew it was conscious and deliberate. They were making a point of cutting her off from succor. They were unanimous about it. The only person who said anything to her, once, was Parky. He spoke to Sima, got the usual vulgar rebuff, looked off across the river, and murmured, “I’m sorry, Maggie.” After that Miss Jewel would head back the way she came to avoid Parky. She felt it would kill her if even he snubbed her.

Miss Jewel decided the shunning was fair. They were within their rights. But they couldn’t know how it hurt her. She was on the outside once more, looking in on human society, as she had been in the temporary homes she’d been in, foster homes. There she languished, suspended in an awful pain. She saw what other people had and hardly noticed. Family, community, belonging—she had none. It made her take two resolutions: She would always be independent, able to take care of herself, able to support herself, because you never knew. And she would find a place where she belonged. That was what her church meant to her.

Now Miss Jewel had lost everything. How could she be independent two thousand miles from civilization? How could she even earn a living? How could she belong to people who despised her?

She swung from utter despair to deep despondence. Mostly it was despondence. She sent Sima off to school, though the new teacher, Elvira Upping, wasn’t equipped by training or temperament to deal with Indian students, especially Indians at completely different levels of learning. Then Miss Jewel lay around all day, doing nothing. She wrote a lot in her journal at first, all the lurid details of the lies and the maneuvers, but soon she didn’t care. She didn’t leave the cabin except to go to the privy, because she didn’t want to be snubbed. She just lay about.

She wondered what would happen when they ran out of the stores of flour and beans they had in the cabin. Sima said he would hunt and make sure they ate. Would the congregation try to starve them out? Surely not, but…

From Miss Jewel’s journal:

My mind is still cast down. I pray—I agonize—but still something rests upon it which I cannot describe. My spirit groaneth within me as I go about my work; my mind is restless and I do not find peace. It really appears to me that God is preparing some event for me which now I do not understand. I have met so many disappointments as to cause me to be weaned from earth….Perhaps I am wrong and take erroneous views, but I have prayed that if I am deceived the Lord will undeceive me. I want very much to know the will of God concerning me, and I think I can never rest contented till I do. My case is, I think, singular. I know of no Christian that ever felt as I do. I am sensible that some unseen hand is leading and directing the events of my life, and shall I not be grateful that I am so much regarded as to be led on, even through affliction, for some wise purpose? I will be thankful and bless God that he afflicts me and deigns even to notice me.

In the evenings Sima read stories from
The Thousand and One Nights
and Miss Jane Porter’s
Scottish Chiefs
to Miss Jewel and Lisbeth. The two were her last contacts with the world of human beings. She made tea for the Indian students one night when Sima brought them, but they were uncomfortable, and she asked him not to bring them again. She fantasized sometimes about telling Flare that she knew now who was a liar and who wasn’t. But mostly she withdrew from human contact.

She didn’t care. She was dead to the world.

She wrote a poem in her journal:

Though waves and storm go o’er my head—

Though strength and health and friends be gone,

Though joys be withered all, and dead—

Though every comfort be withdrawn,

On this my steadfast soul relies:

Father! Thy mercy never dies!

Chapter Twenty-eight

Flare patted Doctor. He liked to keep the critter nearby on watch. Flare could hear in the dark, but

Doctor could smell. Smell Injun.

Unfortunately, Flare was hearing too many noises that told nothing. The horses snuffling, clomping, occasionally nickering. Once in a while a shout, or voices raised in song. Skye’s loud, half-drunken bellow, mostly. The men were celebrating, and tippling.

He guessed they did have something to celebrate. Flare and the lads caught those Klamaths and took care of them. Brought the ponies back. Mainly they’d gotten the herd over the roughest country and were down on the Willamette, at Mackenzie Fork. Safe country, sort of. Not far to go to French Prairie, where they’d trade lots of the horses. An easy go on to Vancouver, where they’d trade the rest of them. And head home with some dollars in their possible sacks.

But Flare felt wearied by it all tonight.

He shook himself. Got to get out of this feeling of deadness.

He thought of his plan. Meant to save six of the best horses for Sima. Give the boy something to take back to his tribe, making things all right at home. Man couldn’t live on the outs with his blood relations. But he could take care of his obligations and move on.

“Flare.”

A soft voice.

“Flare.”

Craw’s voice.

“Come.”

Craw walked close, sat. He got out the white clay pipe he still carried in a
gage d’amour
around his neck. Loaded up, handed Flare the tobacco. Flare loaded up his own pipe.

“Murph relieved me. Want to jaw a little.”

Flare waited. He supposed it was such tame country he could talk on watch. Too bad, in a way. They used a lucifer to fire up.

“Garrett wants to go to trapping.”

“Nothing there, Craw. Beaver’s a dollar a pound.”

“I told him that.”

“Here Before Christ will hire him.” It was the American trappers’ bitter name for the Hudson’s Bay Company, which always insisted its rights were prior to anybody’s.

“Doing what?”

“Sailor on the timber boats. Back and forth to the Sandwich Islands. Winsome lasses there, they say, Craw.”

“I’ll tell him. All of it. Believe he’d rather go mining.”

Flare puffed and sat and looked at the stars.

“What were we after, Craw?”

“Making the blood sing.”

“Why doesn’t it sing anymore?”

“Does for me, Flare. Slower maybe. Different tune, for sure.”

“We killed a lad, Craw.” Meaning Innie. “Two lads, truly.” The Klamath sentry, too.

“Life looks cheap when you’re young. ’Pears a long stretch, too.”

“Was it worth it?” Flare asked.

“Half a year’s wage, coupla months’ work.”

Flare tapped the ashes out of his pipe. “Why do things seem so sour to me? Getting old?”

“Might be. ’Nother word for getting old is growing up.”

Flare gave him a silly grin in the dark. “Never tried that.”

To Dr. Full’s gratification, Billy Wells and the others rode in early on Sunday afternoon. The community welcomed them warmly, and some of the women got together a second dinner, side meat, sop, and other things the travelers hadn’t eaten for weeks. That night the men reported their progress to the congregation, and it sounded splendid.

As he listened, what Dr. Full really thought was how splendid was Billy Wells. Put in charge of a difficult project, Billy had come through. He looked good—three weeks of clearing trees had shaped him up. He had a new air of authority, the sort that comes to a man growing into what he should do, what God asks him to do. He had a clear eye. His manner was not so insinuating as before—he was a little more direct.

Dr. Full was very satisfied. That’s why, when Billy came to him with that special request after church that evening, Dr. Full said they must discuss it with the deacons tomorrow morning. Billy would be reporting to them anyway, decisions would be made about funding for the mission, and how many colonists to send there, and who would go. They could bring it up after all that business.

Privately, Full thought it was a good idea. A very good idea.

Billy Wells had a flair for the dramatic.

He, the deacons, and Dr. Full spent all morning working out the plan for the Dalles mission, practical men working out practical affairs. The deacons did not always know God’s will, as Dr. Full seemed to, but they knew something about how to build a wilderness outpost and make it work. After two hours, things were in good shape.

That’s when Billy made his surprising request. “Gentlemen, I want to take a new wife to the Dalles.”

The deacons looked at each other uncertainly. Parky said, “Billy, appears to me she’s spoke to that,” and everyone chuckled. The community hadn’t been able to do much chuckling about Miss Jewel lately.

Billy grinned and gave an elaborate shrug. “Let’s let her speak for herself.”

He opened the church door and jerked his head.

Elvira Upping stepped into the doorway.

Billy and Elvira held hands sometimes, and looked at each other fondly, and told the deacons how they had discovered each other. Billy said Elvira had come to him as a great comfort after his fall, and helped him set his feet on the right path again.

“I saw the light of the Lord shining forth in him,” she explained. “He was washed in the blood of the Lamb. At first I just wanted to show him my personal support as a Christian. But soon God led me to see how he and I—”

“We’ve each spent the last three weeks praying about it, far apart, and we feel led to it,” Billy said. “There’s not much more to say than that. We feel led to it.”

While the couple sat outside, awaiting their decision, the deacons debated only briefly. Parky was dubious. He asked sharply, “Samuel, do you know what on earth you’re doing?”

Dr. Full choked back his anger. He’d never been able to get Parky to show respect consistently, or even to be uniform in addressing him properly. In a carefully curbed voice, he said they all should submit to where God was leading them.

Parky let it go.

The deacons were practical men, men with some years of experience with marriage. They liked the way the young folks mooned at each other. They thought God meant man and woman to get paired up. They weren’t so sure it made that much difference which one you paired up with. And they damn well thought a fellow starting a new mission in the wilderness was best supported by a helpmate.

Billy and Elvira were told they might have the ceremony Saturday, kneel with the community on Sunday to ask God’s blessing on their enterprise, and head back to the Dalles Monday morning and get to work.

The mountain men, plus Garrett, drove the horses into French Prairie just before sunset on a perfect spring day, the wind gentle, the sky robin’s-egg blue. Flare felt like the setting sun was shattering an exquisite afternoon.

The Frenchies said how glad they were to see all that fine horseflesh. Tomorrow they’d trade, and tomorrow night hold a feast and a dance to celebrate skinning the Americans.

Skye led the boys off to get drunk. The only two who didn’t want to drink, Flare and Craw, stayed with the horses.

This time it was Flare who brought out clay pipe and tobacco. He’d been wondering about it since the other night. “How come you upped and left the mountains all of a sudden, Craw? Didn’t even wait for rendezvous, as I recall.”

Craw snorted a laugh. “Don’t exactly know. Felt different. Everything. Real different.”

He looked around a little, lit his pipe, pondered. Flare waited.

“You recollect the spring of ’34? We was on the Madison? High up?”

Flare nodded.

“Handy died, remember?”

Flare remembered. Craw and Handy paired up and trapped up toward some of the boiling springs. Handy, who was called that for a reason Flare never knew, went exploring and broke through the crust of the earth and put both legs into some of that hot water. Craw brought him into camp on a travois. After about a week his legs got all inflamed and he got a high fever and died.

“It was then I started thinking of going somewhere else, doing something else, didn’t know what. Just dissatisfied.

“I hadn’t known Handy much afore I paired with him that time, but he had a Bannock wife and a little boy. They were with her folks over to Henry’s Lake at the time. He hated to be away from that boy. Kept talking about staying with that bunch of Bannocks all the time and…doing whatever. I wondered then. Whatever didn’t seem like enough for a white man to do, but Handy wanted to do it.

“When we buried him, I got to thinking on what he’d done, and what he wanted to do, and the want he got left with. What he’d done was grow up to be man-sized and then fight and fuck all over Injun country, blood runnin’ high. Then look around to see what was next, and…” Craw made a scissors motion with his fingers.

“I had my woman, just Helen then, hadn’t got together with Pine yet, plus Garrett and Isabelle. Susie’s out of Pine. I began to think about that.” His fingers scissored again. “Wanted to do something else. Something more. Didn’t know what.” He shook his head, chuckled at himself. “Californy,” he said, and grinned at Flare.

“What have you done?”

Craw looked away. Kept his head turned. Looked back. “Reared my children up to be human beings,” he said.

Flare sat, fidgeted. “Mine grew up without me. Whoever they are, wherever they are.”

Craw nodded, puffed. “They do that,” he said. “Mine grew up most of the way while this child was trying to outwit beaver. You know what, though? When you teach someone to be a grown-up, you learn yourself how to be one.” He gave an embarrassed grin. “Might even act like it sometimes.”

“If you try it, do you like it?”

Craw grinned foolishly and shrugged. “It’s like there’s stages. You’re a kid and you play kids’ games, and that feels good. Then you’re a young buck and you play grown-up boys’ games, and that feels grand. I don’t hold with those as never goes adventurin’.”

“Fight and fuck all over Injun country,” said Flare uncertainly.

“That shines. Then one day you ain’t a young buck, and young bucks’ games don’t feel like enough. You want…Helen and Pine and Garrett and Isabelle and Susie.”

He gave a wry look. Flare let it sit.

“Craw,” said Flare, “I’m gonna dub you Sir Nut.”

“Naw,” protested Craw. “Na-a-a-w.”

“Truly I am. Get on your knees.”

They invented it drunk, around a campfire, years before. That summer a scientist fellow named Nutting rode with them, studying plants. He had a habit of getting philosophical with big subjects around the campfire at night. So the game was, if a man spoke big foolishness, or pomposity, or a bunch of big words, he got dubbed Sir Nut. He couldn’t refuse the honor.

Grumbling good-humoredly, Craw knelt in front of Flare. “By the power invested in me as Grand Poobah,” intoned Flare, “I hereby dub thee Sir Nut.”

He tapped the ashes of his pipe onto Craw’s balding head.

Craw jumped up laughing and slapping at his head.

Flare jumped back, well back. Must have been a hot spot or two in those ashes.

“Whoo!” hollered Craw, laughing. “Whoo! That’s what I get! Whoo!”

When Miss Jewel heard about the wedding coming on Saturday, she turned to her Bible and read. After a while she copied some verses from
Jeremiah
into her journal:

Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.

Thou, therefore, gird up thy loins, and arise and speak unto them all that I command thee; be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them. And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee.

But what should she say? Who should she fight?