The Memory Weaver

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “I’ll close the barn door for you.”

  I waved good-bye and pressed the reins against Nellie’s neck. Leaving Henry was the only hesitation I experienced in the questionable move forward I began that night. I was committed. I had to make it work. That’s what I repeated as the first drops of rain began to pelt.

  The Diary of Eliza Spalding

  1850

  Rain falls like sheets of pewter, so hard sometimes I cannot see the oak trees across the yard. I’m grateful my husband and daughter stay in Oregon City and aren’t out riding in this weather. I’m glad Horace is here for company and for the care of my children. The one regret I had of our marriage in Ohio was that none of my family could be there: not Horace, not my five sisters, not my parents. It was good that before we left for the mission field we did travel back as husband and wife then, and my father gave us his blessings and one hundred dollars and a wagon that we took with us all the way to Lapwai. But the wedding was lonely for me. I had committed my life to the Lord and he had provided for me a good man, a reverend who had studied beside me, allowed me to learn Greek and Hebrew with him, and never minded that the languages came more easily to me than to himself. And he was a good husband, writing to my family, asking their permission for our not returning to New York to marry, though I wonder what he would have done if my father had forbade it. I was twenty-five years old when I married, a spinster. But still, I was surprised when he told me he’d written to my parents asking for my hand. I didn’t speak out or up. It was not my place. I lived with people who had taken me under their wing to allow me to be close to my intended with full expression of propriety. And we were proper, always.

  Even on our wedding night I was not flummoxed, as my husband is a tender lover, a good man despite his temper, a temper never thrown to me. And I can calm him. I just can’t ever change his mind once he has it set. As with insisting Eliza go to the trial, to be deposed and testify. I wonder what state I’ll find her in and how long it will take for me to have her speak in normal childlike tones again, if ever I’ll hear her voice laced with laughter rather than despair? The nightmares grew more intense when Mr. S began speaking of the trial. I wonder how she fares. It’s not right that she is out of my sight, away from arms I might wrap around her in protection. Mr. S will not coddle her, but I think walking beside a child carrying legitimate fears is not a coddle but a balm, an act of mercy, and are we not compelled to love mercy? Mr. S uses the same Scripture from Micah 6:8 to remind me that “to do justice” comes before loving mercy, and Eliza’s presence at the trial is part of acting justly. But I grieve for the child that was and wonder if I abandon her when I submit to my husband’s will. I entrust her care to you, God—a mother’s constant prayer.

  9

  Anxiety Shifting

  I longed for Mr. Warren’s loving arms to surround me with protection. I knocked on the door but no one came to answer. Wasn’t Mr. Warren staying there, at “our home”? I knocked again. The rain had lessened and a moon promised light enough to capture the beads of moisture on my cape. He must have gone to his parents’ with plans to meet me here in the morning. I shivered. Have I miscalculated? With Nellie unsaddled and cooled down, I spent the rest of that night alone in the dark cabin, my bedroll enough cover in the morning chill to bring me blessed sleep. It was the first night I’d spent all alone without a sister sharing quilts or a parent in another bed across the room. I awoke in the morning to the face of my soon-to-be husband.

  “I guess you’re anxious.” He grinned. I smelled a sweetness on his breath, new to me. His eyes looked fevered.

  “It seemed easier to get an early start. I couldn’t sleep. Where were you?”

  “I couldn’t sleep either, darlin’.” He paused. “I stayed with my parents, told them of our plans.”

  “You warned them not to say anything until after we’re gone?”

  He nodded. “They’re happy to have a Spalding in the family. My pa thinks some of your smarts will rub off on me.”

  I didn’t know what to do with that compliment, at least it seemed like one though a backhanded slap at his own son.

  “You’re smart enough.” I spread my hand in an arc to take in the room. I noted the bottles were missing. “You have your own home and a place for your wife.”

  “And family.”

  “Yes. A family.” I swallowed. It was a subject we’d never discussed. “But not right away maybe.”

  “Best we be on our way, little lady.” He pulled me up from my pallet, kissed me despite my having no tooth powder with me. He ran his hand up my back. “Hmm, hmm. I’m going to like having this to wake up to every morning.” He bundled up my quilt bag, tied it tightly with the hemp rope, and carried it out to put behind the saddle he’d already put on top of Nellie. “Glad you have your own horse.”

  “She’s not really mine.” I stroked the mare’s soft nose, felt the soft bristles. “Millie rides her as much as I do.” My father would miss the horse when he awoke, probably more than me. For a moment I wondered if my father would come riding down the lane to grab Nellie back, if not me. I imagined him doing so; so of course, he wouldn’t.

  Mr. Warren helped me mount, then threw his long leg over his own saddle with bedroll already attached. And we set off.

  I heard afterward that my father rode through Brownsville shouting, “My daughter is dead to me! My daughter is dead to me!” Had he spoken those anguished words the night of the massacre as he made his way nearly ninety miles from where he’d been thrown by his horse, traveling by foot to tell my mother what she already knew, that the Whitmans had been attacked, many women and children taken hostage? Mr. Cranfield had preceded my father’s return to Lapwai, so my mother knew and waited only for word of the fate of her husband and her child. Together—if he lived—they’d have to decide whether to seek refuge at the Spokane mission or stay where they were among the Nez Perce.

  But while he was riding through town shouting of my demise, news of my disappearance being explained by Mr. Warren’s parents, that I’d willingly gone with him with the intent to take marriage vows, I was happily riding beside my soon-to-be husband welcoming the balmy spring, pleased that our two-day ride to Oregon City would likely take us to a wedding day of May 11, 1854, the middle of a lovely month. It was an outing beneath a honeyed moon—as they call those special times after a marriage. We had our honeyed moon to guide us before the ceremony, without the intimacy of such an occasion. We chatted as friends until Mr. Warren added, “A few of my dock mates will raise a cup with us afterwards. A celebration.”

  “They will? How do they know of our wedding?”

  “I’ll tell ’em when we have our supper in the inn. They’ll be resting in the saloon side, I’m sure.”

  Are those hoofbeats following? Is my father chasing us? “A part of me wanted him to care enough about me to come after me. “Maybe we should camp early,” I said, ambivalence dancing in my head.

  He set the tent beneath oak trees near where a group of Germans worked to construct a town they called Aurora. We’d followed the lazy Pudding River, so we still had the familiar stream to camp by when I watched as Mr. Warren took a flask from his saddlebag and drank.

  “Medicinal?”

  “Absolutely. Want some?” He offered the flask to me.

  I shook my head, didn’t protest his drinking from it, one swallow then two before he put it in the saddle pack. He was clear and calm with me, found dry pine needles, urging the fire to take, and we boiled soup in a tin pot he’d brought. A man was entitled to his medicine. Nothing Mr. Warren handed me could flummox me. Father wasn’t following. I saw myself as one of those brave heroines serialized in Godey’s Magazine, women who rose above difficult situations during the Revolutionary War, women who saved their husbands and family after bankruptcy. I’d even read Jack Tier, a raucous story of a woman deserted by her husband who followed him to sea, dressed as a man, making her way for years without him realizing she was there, watching out for him. I co
uld do whatever had to be done. I could look out for myself.

  “You’re screamin’ loud enough to wake Washington and he’s been dead for years.” Mr. Warren shook me awake. It was the dark before the sunrise.

  “I . . . they come sometimes.” I slowed my breathing, swallowed. I hadn’t ever told him of Waiilatpu, but he’d heard the general stories. “I’ll be all right. I . . . I don’t have them often. I’m sorry.” I lifted the damp bun from my neck. Changed the subject. “Are the horses still hobbled?”

  “Animals are fine. It’s you I worry over.” His brown eyes looked marble-glassy. “Your screams woke me like a bullet.”

  “I’ll be fine. Once we’re married I bet I never have another.”

  “What are they about?”

  How much do I tell him, one who has never known of such a trial? “Suffocation, mostly.” I turned away. “I can’t breathe and danger lurks in various forms.”

  He held me then, asked no more questions, rocking me as though I were a child, using his wide thumb to brush away nightmare-tears.

  We could see dawn rising. “Do you want to just get on?”

  I nodded and we made an early start, breaking our fast with hardtack and dried apples I’d brought along. The countryside dressed in dawn was awash in dew, full of wild iris, meadows with spring grasses, and in the distance, east, a snowcapped mountain named Hood beckoned. We rode through such verdant country, crossing streams and eventually hearing the roar of a sound-deafening waterfall. “That’ll be Willamette Falls,” Mr. Warren raised his voice. “And beside it Oregon City, capital of the Territory, where we’ll speak our vows.”

  And where I’d last visited with my father for the trial.

  10

  Vows

  Mr. Warren and I started up the steps of the courthouse where the trial had been held. A buzzing started in my head. I couldn’t catch my breath. I stopped, grabbed Mr. Warren’s arm. Spots danced before my eyes.

  “You all right?”

  “Yes. It’s just . . . could we rest first? Have a canteen of water?”

  He pulled out his pocket watch. “Sure, but they might close and we’d have to wait until tomorrow. I hate to pay for two rooms at the hotel. We need to get the license here.”

  “Oh. Yes. Financially it would be better.”

  He took my elbow, eased me to sit on the steps. “Put your head between your legs. My ma says that helps with fainting.”

  My single crinoline puffed out as I lifted my skirts and sat, then put my head between my knees. He sat beside me, waved his hat for a breeze. “Must be the heat of the day.” I panted like a dog, something my mother suggested could stave off nausea. “Why don’t you go in and get things started. I’ll join you.”

  “Well . . . all right. If you’re sure. You aren’t changin’ your mind, are you?”

  I shook my head, no.

  “I’ll be back quick as a dog’s wag.” He leapt up, causing a brush of air to cool my face.

  I kept myself aware of the steps against my legs, the breeze on my hot face. I’m here. It’s a different time. I remembered, without going away, my father looking disgusted if I said anything to the lawyers—in depositions, they called my telling—about a kindness one of our captors offered, that they gave us water or shared a dried carrot, keeping us alive. Were they not showing us a mercy? Was I not supposed to tell? Then witnesses, the young woman who was taken every night by Five Crows, a Umatilla chief telling the priests we were huddled with that he intended her for his wife. She’d begged us, pleaded in wails as horrifying as the screams we’d heard the night the Whitmans died, to not let them take her. But the priests knew that resisting meant certain death. Her death she probably prayed for, but it did not come.

  I remembered the five Cayuse who sat before us at the trial, dressed in white men’s suits, their hair cut, not looking fierce. I didn’t recognize them as those who killed anyone. Maybe they’d given themselves up so the ransom could be paid, the money, arms, and trade goods? When I heard them speak, my ears closed and I heard nothing, just watched their mouths move in silence. I couldn’t tell if they had been the ones asking me to translate, to tell Lorinda she must go. I would have recognized their throaty voices’ demanding for Five Crows, words like coal cutting hard and black.

  I hardly noticed that I’d sat upright on the steps. I tried to stay present at the trial, but I could not. Even their faces faded away. Then I was no longer in that hot stuffy courtroom nor even waiting for Mr. Warren. I’d gone back to Waiilatpu.

  “Tell her she must come,” an Indian demands. “She will be wife.”

  The snake Five Crows wants Lorinda Bewley, sends a guard to bring her. She is lovely, twice my age. I translate the guard’s order and she sobs, runs to the priests newly arrived in the Territory. Why are they even hostages, so new to this place? They know only about the deaths of the Whitmans and likely worry over their own. She is dragged away . . . And each night for a week I am told to tell her “You must go” and hear her wails. One time I add, “You are keeping us alive. If you don’t go, they’ll kill us. They say that. You are giving up your life for ours. Like Jesus did.” I wasn’t sure she knew how her sacrifice—that whatever they did to make her wail and sob so—was saving us, keeping us from having the same fate speared through us. “God will be with you.” Words my mother prayed when my father and brother and I left on our journeys leaving her behind. I am an empty vessel. No one to comfort me, everyone like sleepwalkers. Daily I send Lorinda to her pain.

  The wind shifts and I hear the thundering falls and breathe easier. I’m in Oregon City, waiting on Mr. Warren. At the trial I had heard words of all that happened over again. Who died in which building. Who escaped. Who met their death by bullets or by hatchet. How Mr. Himble made it over the fence only to have an Indian shoot him and say, “Oh, see how I can make the white man tumble.” His daughter saw him fall.

  Timothy, a Nez Perce and early convert of my father’s, and his friend are sent by my mother to Waiilatpu to get word of us once Mr. Canfield arrived to tell of the massacre. The bodies still lie unburied when Timothy comes into the room where some of the fifty-nine hostages cower. Oh, how my heart sings at the sight of him, a friendly face, come to take me home. I send an arrow prayer of thanks.

  But he bends down to me and says, “Eliza Spalding.” His eyes are kind. “The Cayuse will not let us free you. If I try to take even you or any of the captives, they will ‘scour the country’ until they find and kill us all.”

  I remember the word “scour,” such a kitchen word carrying grating certainty, cleaning up a mess, debris. We are that mess. Timothy does not apologize. The Nez Perce do not say those English words “I’m sorry.” They give a gift instead. One day he will give a gift.

  At that moment I begin to cry. I’d held myself together, weaving threads of faith and hope. But Timothy’s words bring down my tears. We are all powerless and betrayed, by everyone: the Cayuse who killed; the Umatilla people who took advantage; the Nez Perce who let them do it and force me to remain. Outside my body I do not plead, but inside, my whole being begs him to rescue me, us. He squats down beside me, lifts my bloody apron to wipe away my tears. His voice cracks when he says, “Poor Eliza, don’t cry. You shall see your mother again.”

  I think he means in heaven.

  But I never talked at the trial. I keep my then twelve-year-old eyes staring straight ahead at the judge, only briefly glancing at the accused and the others who’d been held with me. A French interpreter, Jean Toupin, relayed what happened once the British arrived to negotiate. I sank into the background at the courthouse, tried to forget what happened at Waiilatpu. I think making me attend the trial was more for my father than me. As was our being witness to the hangings, all night hearing the construction of the gallows, the hammer blows like bullets against bone. When the day came, I held my apron up before my eyes just as I’d held it when it seemed we all would die, the scent of starch still brimming with the memories.

  “H
ere.” Mr. Warren placed a cool handkerchief to my hot face, the wet bringing me back. “You all right? Wasn’t sure you’d still be here.” He smiled his relief. “You better?”

  I stared, then nodded.

  “Good. Hey, you cryin’? What’s that about?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Let’s get this signed.” He showed me a paper. “You have to come inside. Then if you want to marry somewhere else, there’s a JP just down the street.”

  I let him pull me up, hold me just a moment. We entered and I clutched Mr. Warren’s arm. We signed the three-folded document they kept, received a second document just like it to take with us to show the justice of the peace. The walls closed in but I stayed there, in that place, made myself feel the cut log counter, experience the heat of the day, smell tobacco smoke clinging to the clerk’s coat. I stood beside my future husband, then let the sunshine flood my face outside.

  It took few minutes to change my status in the Territory and, yes, within my heart. I was a wife now, as my mother had been. I did it, Mama! My husband’s first insistence was that I call him Andrew.

  “My mother always called my father Mr. Spalding or Mr. S. It’s a moniker of respect. He called her Mrs. Spalding.”

  “I don’t know a moniker over a molehill. I just know I’d like to hear my name when I’m with my wife. You can call me Mr. Warren when you’re with your friends but at least with me, I’m Andrew, that understood? And you, Mrs. Warren—” he bent to kiss me as we stood outside the log house of the justice of the peace—“you I’ll be calling Eliza, wife, beautiful one, little lady, sweet pea, darlin’, and whatever else comes to mind. Oh, and Mrs. Warren too.” He had half a dozen names for me. I took them as a gift. He was kind about his request, but insistent. I vowed to work on what he wanted. He’d keep me safe in case my own imaginings failed me.