Boston Jane

by Jennifer L. Holm

  One evening after a lovely salmon supper we sat in front of the warm fire. It had been a good day. I had not seen Mary once.

  Brandywine circled the table, begging for salmon.

  Father Joseph was instructing Sootie and Suis and Handsome Jim in the ways of the church. From what I had heard, he was not having very much success converting any of the Indians, but he was tireless.

  He explained in detail how Jesus was crucified.

  “Boston god is very bad,” Handsome Jim said, narrowing his eyes.

  Suis nodded in agreement.

  “Why do you say that?” Father Joseph asked, perplexed.

  “Boston god kill son,” Handsome Jim said solemnly. “More bad than anything.”

  I stifled a laugh.

  Father Joseph sighed. “I shall never be able to teach them.”

  Suddenly Brandywine started growling at the door. Someone was outside, knocking. It was very late now and I wondered who it could be.

  I went to the door.

  Mary stood in the dark shadows, staring at me with grim eyes, seaweed hanging from her hair.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, willing her to go away.

  “Ma’am?”

  It was Champ, the pioneer with the dreadful socks.

  “Hello, ma’am,” he said, tipping his filthy hat. His eyes were burning red holes in his head, and he was pale.

  “I’m afraid that Mr. Russell has gone to Astoria.”

  “That sure smells good,” Champ said meaningfully, sniffing the air. “I been traveling all day.”

  Traveling? Judging by the smell of whiskey on his breath, I thought it more likely that he had been drinking all day. Even so, I couldn’t very well turn away a hungry soul.

  I stepped aside. “Come in and I’ll give you something to eat.”

  I sat him down at the table and dished out some salmon. He ate ravenously, as if he hadn’t had food in weeks. When he had finished everything on his plate, I gave him a second helping. He demolished this as well and then leaned back and belched loudly. I had learned to take such belches as signs of appreciation.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, wiping his filthy arm across his mouth. And then he sneezed, right across the table at us. I dearly wished these men knew the value of a pocket-handkerchief.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, eyeing him warily, watching out for fleas.

  “That was mighty tasty,” he said, his red eyes lingering on Suis in a most ill-mannered way. “Yep, it surely was.”

  I was beginning to feel most uncomfortable when—will you believe it?—the man reached across the table, put his hand on Suis’s bare leg, and grinned toothily at her!

  Suis recoiled.

  “Sir!” I shouted.

  Handsome Jim sprang forward.

  Sootie scrambled around the table into her mother’s arms.

  Champ acted as if nothing untoward had happened.

  “It’s mighty late. You reckon I could sleep here tonight? Russell always lets me sleep here when I’m passing through,” he said. His eyes looked glazed and unnaturally bright.

  “I think you should find other sleeping quarters,” I said stiffly.

  “Hoity-toity! All right then, ma’am. Should think you’d like better company than savages, you a lady and all. They ain’t nought but stupid savages,” he said, and spat at Handsome Jim’s feet.

  Handsome Jim stared at him stoically, but his eyes were challenging.

  “You are not welcome to stay, sir.” Sensing trouble, Father Joseph took a step forward and glowered at the man. Even though I knew he was a man of peace, his towering frame looked imposing. I could have hugged him.

  “Stupid savages,” Champ muttered. He got up slowly from the table and staggered out the door and into the dark night.

  I knelt in front of the stream and splashed cold water in my face. Then I tipped the bucket and let the water rush in, wondering what to do.

  A week and a half after the disturbing incident with Champ, Handsome Jim had awakened, burning with fever. I had bathed his forehead with cool water, but he had just thrown off his blankets and looked at me with fever-mad eyes, shouting, “Memelose, memelose.”

  I had been nursing him for several days and now I wasn’t feeling very well myself, although my feelings had nothing to do with Handsome Jim’s mysterious illness. I had spent all of the previous night staying up with him. Toward dawn I had drifted off to sleep in a chair by the fire, only to be awakened by a cold, wet prickling on my spine.

  A cold, wet, all-too-familiar prickling.

  I’d opened my eyes to see Mary standing over me.

  There was no doubt about it. I had to face the fact that I was being haunted.

  How did one get rid of a ghost? There was nothing in The Young Lady’s Confidante, I knew that much.

  “Mademoiselle!” someone shouted.

  I was so startled I dropped my bucket.

  Father Joseph was stumbling up the path from the village, his face pale. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The Indians,” he said anxiously. “They’re sick.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid they have the smallpox, mademoiselle,” he said, his voice breaking.

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “Handsome Jim’s sick. You don’t think …” My voice trailed off in a whisper.

  He nodded grimly.

  “Oh blast,” I whispered. “But who gave it to them? No one’s been ill—”

  I thought back to that night Champ had visited. He had seemed odd, but his behavior had been so atrocious I hadn’t paid attention to his physical appearance. Suddenly I knew that he’d been sick. Had he known it? Had he known it and deliberately exposed himself to the Indians?

  I felt the breath go out of me. “How many ill?”

  “Three or four. The healthy ones have left, gone away. I’ve been trying to help, but …”

  “Have you been vaccinated?” I asked, fingering the pox scar on my arm.

  He nodded.

  In the distance a bird shrieked.

  “I greatly fear there will soon be no Indians for me to convert,” Father Joseph said sadly.

  The next morning Suis appeared at Mr. Russell’s cabin with Sootie cradled in her arms. My heart went still at the sight of the pale little girl.

  “Chinook lametsin no good,” Suis said desperately. Sootie’s eyes were closed, and her skin was hot to the touch. “Boston Jane, you help Sootie! Swan, he says you very good doctor.”

  “Me? But I’m not a doctor!”

  “Swan, he says your father very big doctor in Boston,” Suis insisted.

  “But I don’t know anything,” I protested. “Nothing that would help her.”

  Suis held out her child to me, her own eyes shiny-bright with fever. Little bumps resembling fleabites had already begun to creep up her slender arms.

  I hesitated. I was fond of Suis and Sootie, but what would happen if I tried to nurse them and they died?

  A little voice inside me whispered, Just like Mary.

  “Boston Jane, you help,” Suis begged.

  Boston Jane.

  Miss Hepplewhite’s words rang in my head.

  Never forget who you are.

  I was trapped, caught, between my past as Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia and this other creature, Boston Jane of Shoalwater Bay.

  What did one do in such a situation? There had been no lessons on this, no valuable rules about nursing dying Indians. There was nothing in The Young Lady’s Confidante to help me. William would be here any day. My entire future was ahead of me. Wasn’t it enough that I was already taking care of Handsome Jim? Wasn’t I already putting myself at risk?

  Papa’s voice suddenly spoke loudly in my ear.

  “It’s dirty work helping sick people, Janey,” Papa said. “But it’s even dirtier work burying them.”

  I looked into Suis’s almond eyes and held out my arms.

  * **

  I put Suis on a bunk and Sootie on the bunk abo
ve her.

  The remaining five bunks were soon occupied by other sick Indians who’d managed to drag themselves over to Mr. Russell’s cabin and collapse on the rickety porch.

  As the hours passed, it seemed that I cursed everyone. Champ for bringing the sickness, Mr. Swan for putting me in such a wretched situation, William Baldt for abandoning me in this wilderness. Even Jehu Scudder for not being here.

  I tried to remember Papa’s advice and did what I could to make them more comfortable. Father Joseph never left my side, and as much as the priest had vexed me in the past, I was grateful to see his black robes about the tiny cabin.

  Suis was the worst. Little red bumps covered her skin and even her eyes. Father Joseph and I sat next to her bunk listening to her ragged breathing.

  “God have mercy on her soul,” he murmured, shaking his head.

  The green ribbon I had given her was woven into her braid. The sight of it shook me.

  “She is not going to die,” I said firmly.

  “Mademoiselle,” Father Joseph said carefully, “she is very far gone already.”

  “No,” I said, and I grabbed Suis’s hand and clutched it hard.

  Her eyes were closed, her face flushed.

  “Suis, you cannot give up,” I begged. “Think of Sootie. And your husband.” I swallowed, my voice wavering, the tears suddenly thick in my eyes. “And me,” I whispered.

  For a brief moment she seemed to turn toward me, but her eyes did not open. And then I felt her squeeze my hand softly, once.

  * **

  Just before midnight, Suis slipped away quietly, without a word. In the end, her formidable trading skills had been no match against that greediest of traders—death.

  I didn’t think twice. I wiped her beautiful face and dressed her in my white velvet wedding dress. The soft fabric wrapped around the gentle curves of her body as if it had been made for her. She would be the most beautiful woman in all of heaven, of that I was sure.

  Father Joseph sat with me while I sewed her body in a blanket. My hands shook with each stitch. The blanket would have to do until we could arrange a proper burial.

  “Jane,” he said finally, swallowing painfully. “I tried to help her. I swear I did.”

  “Of course you did,” I said. We had both been running ourselves ragged trying to keep our patients comfortable.

  “Not Suis,” he said in a strained voice. “Mary.”

  I looked up from my sewing.

  Father Joseph’s anguished eyes met mine.

  I knew I would never really know what happened that night in the cabin on the Lady Luck. But I also suddenly knew that for all his annoying qualities and his preaching, he wasn’t a bad man. In his own way he was trying to be good. He was, in the end, another soul stranded in the wilderness, disappointed and far from home and everything familiar.

  Just like me.

  “I tried,” he said brokenly.

  I gripped his hand. “Dear Father Joseph, I know.”

  The next morning two young men died in quick succession. I ran out of blankets and had to use tablecloths. There were now three bodies behind the cabin.

  We had just dragged the last body out of the cabin when Father Joseph swooned.

  “Rien que des sauvages. Pourquoi m’avez-vous donné aux sauvages? Je n’ai aucun espoir, je n’ai aucun espoir,” he muttered over and over, babbling in French in his delirium. I touched his forehead. It was burning. I worried, remembering Papa’s warning that the vaccination was not certain proof against the pox. I put him on one of the bunks of the recently dead.

  I was on my own.

  Hours passed. Then days.

  I lost track of life.

  Papa’s words came to me often during that dark endless time as I brewed tea and changed sheets and bathed bodies burning with fever. His presence filled the whole cabin, and I could almost smell his pipe. I missed him so desperately.

  “Sometimes all you can do is keep a person cool and comfortable, Janey,” Papa said to me.

  Handsome Jim seemed to be getting better and had brief moments of consciousness when he seemed almost himself. But Sootie was still very ill. She clung tenuously to life, drifting in and out of fever. I found myself bargaining with God for the little girl’s survival. Let her live, I prayed. Let her live and I shall forgive You for taking Suis and Mary.

  Was my bad luck killing all those I held dear?

  I tucked Sootie’s clam doll into her side and wondered.

  It was dusk when Brandywine started barking. He was out behind the cabin, barking loud enough to wake all of creation.

  “Brandywine?” I called, walking behind the cabin.

  The dog was going crazy.

  A mountain cougar was pawing at the dead bodies! It caught sight of me and snarled. Was it going to pounce? Brandywine barked wildly and charged bravely at the cat.

  “Brandywine!”

  In the end I didn’t faint as Miss Hepplewhite had suggested. I ran back into the cabin and got Mr. Russell’s rifle. I had never shot a rifle in my life, but I didn’t stop to think. I just pointed it in the general direction of the cougar and pulled the trigger. The blast knocked me to the ground, but when I looked up the cougar was gone, disappeared into the dark, silky shadows of the forest.

  Brandywine padded over to my side with a whimper, nuzzling his cold nose in my hand.

  “Oh blast,” I whispered, as I realized I had a fresh problem. The cougar had managed to tear the tablecloth off one of the bodies, and a brown hand hung limply.

  There was no help for it. I had to bury the bodies.

  The ground was soft, but in my exhausted state each shovel of dirt proved difficult. Very soon I could barely lift my arms. It was such numbing work. After digging the first two graves I thought I should just get down into one myself. Why not? This was hell on earth, and it was probably my punishment for bringing Mary out here to die, for letting them bury her in her cold sea grave—

  An owl hooted softly and I looked up, shaken by that clear sound.

  The sun was rising, bathing the wilderness in a sea of pink light. Mist hung in the air.

  And sitting on a log, wearing a dress blue as the sky after a summer rain shower, was Mary.

  Except it wasn’t the Mary who had been haunting me. Not the angry, begrudging ghost of a girl.

  It was the Mary I remembered, the girl I’d known in Philadelphia, her skin shining, her hair gleaming, her eyes bright and full of life. Something thrummed in the air, a sweetness, that filled my heart.

  “Mary?” I whispered, voice trembling.

  She smiled at me, a glimmer of pride in her eyes. And then she got up, my girl Mary, and walked slowly into the rising mist. As her black curls disappeared into the dawn, I knew—I cannot say why—that I would not see her again.

  At least not for a very long time.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  or,

  Thinking and Sewing

  “Come to the beach, Boston Jane!” Sootie said excitedly.

  Apparently a large whale had washed up on the beach. The little girl tugged on my hand and smiled up at me.

  Sootie was much improved, and more often than not could be found at Mr. Russell’s cabin, hanging on my skirts. She was a different child since her illness, quieter, and there was a lingering sadness about her. She asked often about Suis, about where she’d gone, but when I explained that Suis was in heaven she looked confused.

  “Heaven is for Boston tillicums,” she said. “Not Chinook.”

  “Suis is with God in heaven with the angels,” I said.

  “God is for Boston tillicums. Suis is not with Boston God,” she insisted.

  I shook my head.

  “What are angels?” Sootie demanded.

  “Angels are people with wings.”

  Sootie regarded me skeptically. “Like owls?”

  Father Joseph had survived his fever, but it was plain to see that he had done a very poor job converting the Indians, for they regarded most of wh
at he’d told them as nonsense. In the end, Handsome Jim had taken the little girl aside and explained that Suis was in her canoe, and was now at the center of the earth, where she was most happy.

  “Suis’s Tomanawos is crane. When you hear crane call, hooo-hooo,” he demonstrated, “it is your mother come to visit you.”

  Sootie seemed satisfied with this explanation. She remembered little of the horrible night her mother had died, and I was thankful to any god, Christian or Chinook, for that.

  I was quietly thankful for other things, too. Dolly had disappeared, run away, in the days following Suis’s death. While I grieved for Suis, I couldn’t help but think that her death had given the young slave girl a new chance at life.

  Handsome Jim was another story. His case of the pox had been mild, and unlike many of the survivors he had no scars.

  No visible scars at least.

  He had lost many close friends and something in him had changed. He was not the carefree young man he had been. He insisted that everyone call him by his new name. Keer-ukso. It meant crooked nose.

  I was very worried about him.

  “Boston Jane, come to the beach. Whale is very good,” Sootie persisted, interrupting my thoughts. “Get Keer-ukso, too!”

  “That’s a fine idea, Sootie,” I said.

  We found Handsome Jim outside Toke’s lodge. He was the only one there. Everyone else was at the beach with the whale. He was furiously carving at a piece of wood that I knew was going to be a canoe. He seemed to be pouring all his rage and grief into it.

  “Come to the beach!” Sootie said, tugging his hand.

  He shook his head grimly.

  “Yes,” I said gently. “Sootie wants you to come. You can’t disappoint her.”

  Sootie smiled impishly at him.

  Handsome Jim’s face darkened, but he allowed himself to be bullied along to the beach.

  We smelled it before we saw it, a pungent, fishy smell carried on the warm, humid August breeze. The Indians had already begun to strip off the meat and blubber, and the rib cage of the great beast was visible. Everyone was doing the greasy butchering work. Scavenger birds cried and shrieked in anticipation of their meal. Brandywine barked happily and charged at the gulls, scaring them off.