Benito pulled the wagon up behind us, stepped off, and walked abreast. “I knock?” he asked.
“We’ll all go,” I announced, straightening my bonnet strings. “Bring Bandit with us. Let them know it’s a friendly visit, from one family to another.”
“You heard the little woman,” Joseph said squeezing my hand as he pulled the blanket from my lap and helped me step out. Bandit bounded past me, stretched on the frozen ground, tail wagging in readiness. Joseph took my hand and we three—plus a kelpie—walked up on the silent porch, walked up to face our future.
FAMILY MATTERS
Some years tumble into themselves and cannot be distinguished from another. Newspapers and archival experts well record what transpired of import. But such accounts do not stimulate the pangs of memory like the scent of fresh lumber taking on moisture in a January drizzle or the clatter of a train making its way across the country. If I had not made notes in ink to preserve the highlights of 1869, it would be lost, pushed down by the pressure of weightier years. This way, as they say, “cream rises” and so does 1869.
What better example of cream rising than to discover the depth of Joseph’s generosity or the breadth of my own capacity to care?
Chief Paulina of the Paiutes had been hunted down and killed; after months of controversy, President Johnson had barely missed impeachment in the Senate and at election time, he was replaced. Finally, we had a new president, a fighting man, Joseph said, meaner than even Paulina: an Ohioan named Ulysses S. Grant.
And it was “a fighting man” I thought of when the wild-eyed man gripped the tent flap that day. He snapped it open and we felt the blast of fury in his eyes.
“What do you want?”
His eyes were dark, set into a cow-like face dominated by his wide, flat nose. He wore homespun pants and shirt, a weary jacket made smaller by the exposure of slender forearms sticking from the sleeves.
“We’ve brought some food for you. An early Christmas gift,” Joseph said, responding to the fear more than the fight in the man’s eyes.
“Appreciate your interest,” the man said, less hostile, “believe we’ll be all right.” He stepped back a bit, so we could see the children huddled around a small sheepherder’s stove, chimney stack poked out through a hole in the tent. His wife, suckling a child, sat toward the back, a thin blanket draped over the shoulders of her dark linsey-woolsey. From the shadow of the lean-to, she smiled at me. Her eyes flashed the pride and sparkle of a new mother tempered by the wisdom of the status of her brood.
Putting her finger to her lips she signaled “sleeping” and lay the child in a bundle of blankets kept warm by the fire. The baby, eyes closed, sucked at an imaginary nipple, rooting at the blanket that nestled close to its face and then slept soundly.
“Is it a girl?” I asked softly, slipping gently inside, concerned about the cold draft our presence brought. The man hesitated, then let me pass. “Such lovely eyelashes,” I said. Her mother nodded, smiled again, tucked the blanket from her infant’s face. “What’s her name?”
“Eleanor,” the man answered. He looked on kindly at his wife who blushed as she examined her hands, clasped and unclasped them, fidgeted with the baby’s thin blanket. To one of her other children, she signaled and a boy smudged with soot on his nose snuggled into the crook of her arm. A gathering of tenderness circled parents and child, held them safe, together, despite the desperation of their circumstances.
“We’ve little to offer,” the man said, still standing not far from the opening. His voice had softened some with his introduction of his daughter. “You’re welcome to warm yourself a bit at our fire before you leave.” He opened the flap farther and Joseph followed me inside, ducking considerably. Benito hesitated a moment but the man urged him on into the smoky dim, having reconciled himself to our intrusion. He dropped the tent flap behind him so that we now all huddled inside, including Bandit who dropped at my feet.
Tidy and compact, the family nonetheless looked as poor as Job’s turkey. The shelter held little else, save the children, their parents, smoke and a steamer or two stacked in the back and being used as a table and child’s bed. One, I noticed, was covered with a threadbare Hudson’s Bay blanket, the black and red stripe faded into the grey. On it lay a toddler staring at us, scratching his leg against the wool with one hand, sucking his thumb with the other. They were barefoot. Old quilts covered the dirt floor.
Five children, counting the baby. Five, well-loved children, to look at their faces: they all lacked the doe-eyed stares of children nurtured only with food.
Joseph spread his wide hands before the fire, rubbing them to warm, accepting the man’s hospitality. He nodded toward the wagons outside and said: “Appreciate it if you’d take those stores off our hands.”
The man shook his head, said quickly: “Not necessary.” I noticed the woman watched Joseph when he spoke, a quizzical look on her face. Her husband continued. “Gustauf, my oldest, already nine,” he ruffled the boy’s hair and spoke with obvious pride, “has shot us a good-size buck which we’ve skinned and cut. It should hold us through the week. The game remains ample thanks to God’s generosity. Not much after the month,” he said, shooing two children out of the way so Joseph and Benito could sit. “It will be spring. We’ll plant corn first thing and vegetables next and be fine.” He motioned me to be seated on the steamer beside the toddler. “And we’ve seedlings. Apples and pears and sweet grape starts we’ve brought with us. Shall I fix some tea, Eleanor?”
The woman nodded and I realized she and the baby shared a name. I marveled that this father of five had found the place in his heart to assist his very quiet wife with her household obligations. Eleanor nodded and started to rise to help him, but he pressed his hand on her shoulder as he stepped past her and she sat back down. He pushed aside a sack of eye-pocked potatoes as he reached for the tea tin. His pants hung from him; worn thin at the back. A respectful grace flowed between husband and wife and their children, all of whom were beautiful despite their pale and paper-thin faces. Two middle children pushed next to me on the steamer trunk, patted Bandit still at my feet. I felt their warmth, smelled their clean bodies, which was no mean feat considering I could see no hand pump and the nearest water would be some distance to be hauled for bathing.
The man dipped water from a crude bucket and heated it in the pan on the stove. The children remained attentive, subdued. Still, only a blind man would have missed the easy way this family stayed at peace with each other and their circumstances. I watched my hopes for the presence of any of these children living in my home disappear.
“Surely you’d accept some fresh oranges for the children,” I said. “And Eleanor needs variety and fat to make the baby’s milk.”
“And shelter,” Joseph said. “Not to add insult to your agony, but a place like this is good for old miners, not families. Why, these walls are so thin any fat doe just sneezing as she walked by would give your whole family a shower. And doesn’t look like you’d have linens to spare to wipe yourselves up.”
The man did not take offense as I thought he might. Instead he nodded agreement with my husband. “We have little but enough to share and so we lack nothing. Truly. We’re fine just as we are. Though some take issue with it,” he added, frustration sifting through his words.
“That should be a worry to you,” Joseph said.
Again, Eleanor stared at my husband.
“It is,” the man said. “We’ve learned there is a move to take the children from us.” Then for a moment his face formed a loathsome look. “It’s not you been sent?”
“No,” Joseph assured him, “though we would invite you to have the children stay with us until the winter or this crisis has passed.”
Despite the stove’s fervent heat, I felt a cold chill on my face as a blast of air hit the tent side. Into the awkward silence that followed I said, “You’ve chosen good land. What made you decide to build your shelter here, Eleanor? It seems so far from water. And into t
he wind.”
Her husband answered for her. “It’s a distance from the stream over the side but we like the openness, the mountain to watch over us. And there’s little timber in this clearing so it did not seem to matter where we set the tent and built the lean-to. We have five years for a permanent structure; plant and harvest and then it will be ours. You probably know that Missus … Why, I’ve forgotten to ask your names,” he said.
“And we to offer them or find out yours,” Joseph said. “Joseph Sherar. My wife, Jane, and our friend, Benito.”
Eleanor’s head jerked, she stared openly at Joseph. I thought I saw a flicker of recognition on her face as her husband gave us their name, “Blivens,” he said, offering his hand. Eleanor signaled something to her husband using her fingers and he answered back, surprised. “Really?” He turned to Joseph. “She says she knows you. Both of you,” referring to Benito.
Eleanor looked delighted, excited, nodded and again spoke with her fingers.
“You were in San Francisco some years ago? Ate pasties near the wharf?”
Joseph narrowed his eyes to look at Blivens and then to Eleanor. He turned his head left, then right, the way Bandit does when he is considering. Joseph studied Eleanor’s lines and angles and then he burst out a gasp of held air. “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “Eleanor O’Connor. You look warmed and happy so I hardly recognized ye! And you were about to walk!”
“It’s Blivens now,” her husband said, “But you’re right about the O’Connor part. She does look happy, doesn’t she, now?” He looked at her feet. “Made her wooden shoes and she walks just fine. First thing I ever made of wood,” he said proudly.
“Eleanor-with-her-writing-pad O’Connor. No wonder this tent looks familiar! Did Strauss make it for you?” Joseph asked, delight on his face. He looked at the seams and the lighter patch at the top. The woman nodded, her face aglow. I vaguely remembered Joseph and Benito mentioning the woman who could not speak or walk and the little German who sewed up one of Joseph’s ideas.
Eleanor signaled again and her husband laughed. “She says the tent aided her escape or she might still be sitting at some wharf slicing potatoes and carrots surrounded by difficult brothers. Instead”—he improvised for her, looking at her with kindness—“she is living happily among her children, loved dearly by all of them and their father.”
“No doubt she could be happier,” I said, “without wolves at her door or the fear of some well-meaning person swooping in to take her children.” I didn’t mean to sound harsh nor to describe myself in the process, but there it was.
“You’re right on that,” Blivens said, contrite. He glanced at his wife who wore open trust on her face, looked adoringly at her husband. “And I would give what I could to make it different. But it isn’t.” He poured the tea for us in a single tin cup which we shared and passed between us. “So we will do what we can and hope the authorities will see our good intentions rather than our current circumstance.”
“They’re not likely to,” Joseph told him. “Word is, you’re risking your children to the elements. Especially with the babe. There’ll be a move to change that, with you or without. This weather shifts for worse and the sheriff’ll be here faster than a flash flood to separate your family.”
Benito spoke now, suggesting he bring in some of the foodstuffs in the wagon.
“Good idea,” Joseph said. “You’re welcome to spend time with us, till spring.” He looked across the small room at me, checking where my thoughts were.
“We don’t live that far away,” I added, “and it would only be for a short time.” My husband nodded his agreement to me. “We have plenty of room and love having children—and their parents—don’t we Joseph?”
“That we do,” he said softly, and I watched his face take on its idea look.
“We daren’t leave here,” Blivens said. “We risk losing the land.”
“Let the children come, then,” I said. “And Eleanor, with the baby.”
Into the silence that followed Joseph said: “We’ll bring some things in while you think on it.”
We three visitors bent through the tent flap and stepped out into the greater cold. “What they need,” Benito said as he pulled on his gloves, spit through his teeth, “is not all this food, but a safe roof.”
“Yes,” Joseph said, “and if he’ll let us, I know a way to give it. If you’ll agree, Janie,” he said, pulling me into his side as we walked.
And when I knew of it, I couldn’t help but agree.
So it came about that Eleanor Blivens and her husband, Ray, a former singing teacher from Illinois, and their five surprised children spent the next few weeks not in our home but in watching, and as they could, participating, in the raising of their own.
It took some convincing on Joseph’s part to get Blivens to accept our offer, pride holding him back, his disbelief that no conditions were attached to such generosity. But once accepted, Blivens was agush with appreciation, speaking, he said, for both him and his Eleanor. “We have never had such a gift,” he said. “And will never be able to repay you.”
“Not expected,” Joseph told him more than once. “We’ve the pleasure of giving and the hope that it will be returned, pressed down, shaken together, as Scripture says.”
It was a great event, the very best way to begin a new year.
Joseph had milled lumber delivered from Tygh Valley, carried by a string of double freighters that included J. W. as a driver, up the grade to Wamic.
Getting the lumber took the longest. We built the bunkhouse shelter first to house the men. Then with Joseph as their architect and guide, Ray and Benito and several of our buckaroos along with the Pratts and others from Tygh Valley who learned of the plan, formed the frame and stood the walls of the Blivenses’ two story, four bedroom home.
It was too far for us to travel back and forth, so Joseph dug out one of Strauss’s tents and he and I stayed not far from Three Mile Creek while Eleanor and I cooked in it on a sheepherder’s stove to feed the men who built the house.
We had a day or two of cold drizzle that sogged the lumber and slowed us, but then the sun came out and you would have thought it April instead of January so warm did it beat on the workmen and us.
I had not expected to experience such pride in watching the house go up. I had thought I’d feel sadness that my hope for the children to live with us had been so quickly dashed. To my credit, I was wrong about myself. Watching their faces as each square nail made its mark; laughing with them as we baked pasties in the small oven of their lean-to; holding baby Eleanor after her feeding, sinking into the liquid of her eyes, all gave me such richness of feeling I failed to notice what I thought I’d lost.
Joseph became thoroughly engaged in his own creation. And when he thought the building moved too slowly, he sent Benito to the reservation. His right-hand man returned with Peter and George and several other young men, eager to put their shoulders to the effort. Joseph paid them a fair wage as he did his own men who initially shied away from the Indians. Finding them hard workers and good followers of directions—with Peter and George to interpret from the common Chinookan language spoken by so many—the buckaroos formed a bond with the Warm Springs people and the Wascos who entered into change.
Such a mixed crew made swift work of the Blivenses’ home.
Sunmiet rode over with her children, her latest bounced swaddled in the cradleboard carried at the withers of her horse. She did not speak of Standing Tall and I did not mention him. She and Eleanor communicated with their hands while I shook my head in wonder. We laughed together, watching the Blivens children and her own make games and play together.
Sunmiet honored me with her observation: “You live always with children,” she said, “even if not of your own. Maybe you have more family than most.”
The day the Blivenses moved into their home, they prepared to spread blankets on the floor as beds for the children, but Joseph and I had another surprise for them. We unloaded from t
he freighters rope beds with down mattresses for each child and a double one for the Blivenses. Eleanor kept shaking her head in wonder, squeezing my hands in appreciation, almost floating as she spun around the wood floor of her home. “We did not get the cradle yet,” I told her, gently patting the infant snoozing on my shoulder as we stood in their home. “It was promised, not delivered.” She moved her hands in the air to mean, “Fine, fine, this is too much.”
“I have cradle,” Peter said, overhearing us as he carried items from their tent to home. “From my people. One like my mother make for me.”
He created for her a hammock, with two hemp ropes strung parallel across a corner of the kitchen. He wrapped a blanket around the lines in the center forming a child’s cradle. He kept the lines separated with a frame of willow in the shape of an oval, covered with the blankets. With some caution, Eleanor laid her baby in the center of the oval and its soft form sunk into the womb of the cloth. “Push,” Peter said, directing, and Eleanor gently pushed the ropes as the baby rocked at her mother’s shoulder height. She floated there, like a feather in the wind, hung above the clatter of children and activity but with a bird’s eye view of the world.
“Here,” Sunmiet said, putting the finishing touches on a memorable event. She reached for her own child’s cradleboard. “Hang this from the hammock,” she said and removed the dreamcatcher with its oval frame. “For her bad dreams to be caught in the web and her good dreams to call to her in the morning.”
“And a prayer,” I said. “That God will honor her dreams and give her a sweetness to the soul.”
And so it was that Baby Eleanor spent her first night in the Blivenses’ new home asleep in the gift of the Warm Springs people with God’s blessings to keep her warm.
A Sweetness to the Soul Page 30