Dreams Beneath Your Feet

by Win Blevins

  She insisted on hugging each of the boys, which made them pull sour faces, and she lifted little Paloma out of her cradleboard and kissed her face over and over.

  Narcissa was thoroughly the vivacious woman Julia remembered from rendezvous. She looked up at her friend’s husband, Marcus, the physician, standing at the top of the stairs. A shadow cut his face in half at a slant, and Julia thought he seemed more somber than he used to, much more.

  Then she saw that he was holding the hand of a child about two years old. Narcissa followed her glance.

  “This is our Alice Clarissa!” she exclaimed.

  Alice jumped down the steps two at a time and into her mother’s arms. She immediately stuck her thumb into her mouth and peered round-eyed and wary at Julia and the kids.

  “She’s not used to strangers,” Narcissa said. “Well, strangers that aren’t Indians.”

  Julia thought, But we are Indians.

  “I’m so glad to see you again,” exclaimed Narcissa. This time it sounded like a question.

  “I’m going home to California,” Julia said. “We all are. The mountain life is changing.”

  “Oh, it is,” said Narcissa enthusiastically. “We got six new missionaries right at the start, they came by sea, and five more families have joined us here at Wailatpu just this summer. We believe that tens of thousands of Americans will come to Oregon over the next decade.”

  Julia decided not to say that was the reason her husband and their friends were leaving the mountains for California.

  “I’m sure you’ll be so glad to live in a house again,” said Narcissa.

  “I will,” said Julia. “Even more for the children’s sake than mine.”

  “I should say so. Let’s walk around the grounds,” Narcissa bubbled on. “You must tell me everything, and I will show you all we’ve done.

  “Wait.” Her way was to make sudden movements with her head and hands, stop-start, the way a bird turns its gaze. “Where is your husband? Who is with you?”

  When Julia pointed out the men unloading the packhorses and explained that Sam Morgan and Hannibal MacKye were along as well, and a Hawaiian boy named Jay, Narcissa got more excited. “We’ll see them after our little tour.”

  The mission grounds were fine, set on a peninsula between two branches of the Walla Walla River, with the big house next to the main river. “We have more than two hundred acres under cultivation,” Narcissa said, sweeping her arm to include it all. “Those little hills”—she pointed to the east—“feed our horses and cows, even in the winter.”

  She pointed out the Whitmans’ large home, not of logs but sawn boards. Though they weren’t yet whitewashed, she had a front door painted bright green. Clustered nearby stood a blacksmith shop, a mill, and a millpond. The new families were busy putting up basic shelter for the coming winter.

  “Not only are we self-sufficient in growing our own food,” she said, “we are teaching the Cayuses to be farmers. They borrow any plow we have and break the ground themselves. They are eager to own hogs, hens, and cattle, and several of them have obtained them already.”

  Julia thought there was something brittle in Narcissa’s enthusiasm. Perhaps the four years of life in the wilds had aged her. The red-gold hair seemed not so lustrous, and Narcissa now wore thick glasses.

  Flat Dog walked up, and Narcissa shook his hand eagerly. He waved at Dr. Whitman, still standing at the front door watching.

  “My husband is telling me without saying so,” said Julia, “that it’s time for me and Esperanza to put up the lodge. Mind you, we’ve taught the men to help out.”

  “I’ll come and say hello to everyone.”

  The adults were old friends except for Jay, introduced by Julia. Sam, Hannibal, and Flat Dog all knelt to say hello to Alice Clarissa, who wouldn’t let go of her mother’s hand.

  “I have a great idea,” said Narcissa. “You get your shelter up, and we’ll have tea at the house late this afternoon. Just us ladies.”

  Which was just what Julia wanted.

  ESPERANZA WAS SURPRISED when the time came and her mother asked Jay to come along. A man? At a ladies’ event? She wondered what her mother had up her sleeve. Mother is odd.

  When they came in, all three of them could see the surprise on Narcissa’s face. Everyone flushed with embarrassment. Perhaps their hostess was puzzled that they’d brought their Owyhee servant along, but she was gracious. “Welcome to our home. I get so little company. For this special occasion I’ve made shortbread, and a very good English tea with real cream from our cows.”

  Narcissa gestured at a low table actually set with a linen cloth, damasked napkins, and fine china. Julia smiled broadly. This was what she wanted Esperanza to experience. “So, the mission board has sent out your fine things.”

  “A gift from Mother, come all the way around Cape Horn, can you imagine?

  “Alice, would you bring the cups and spoons? They’re set out in the kitchen, one for each person.

  “Speaking of fine things, here’s a dazzler. “At our mission at Lapwai we have a printing press.”

  “A printing press?” said Julia, amazed. Lapwai was to the east, the Methodist post among the Nez Percés.

  “We’ve printed the New Testament in the Nez Percé language,” said Narcissa proudly, or at least she tried for pride.

  Julia couldn’t help thinking of what her husband would say. “Those people don’t read Nez Percé, or some missionary’s written version of Nez Percé, any better than they read English. It’s not a written-down language.”

  Alice appeared at that moment trying to carry too many cups, and Esperanza rescued her.

  Narcissa said, “While this tea steeps, may I show you around the house?” It was huge, and Julia was curious.

  Beyond the parlor a dining hall. “We have so many people to feed. And this,” Narcissa said as she passed into the next rooms, “is the Indian hall, a necessity. The greatest trial to a woman’s feelings is to have her cooking and eating rooms always filled with dirty Indians, men, especially at mealtime. Now we devote this room to them especially, and don’t let them go into the other part of the house at all.”

  She passed on to the kitchen and pantry.

  “It sounds unkind, but they are so filthy, we must clean up after them. We have come here to elevate them and not to suffer ourselves to sink down to their standard.”

  That’s what people will say about my husband and children, Julia thought. Filthy. But their missions and towns, with their privies, smell worse than any Crow village.

  She saw Alice Clarissa with her hand in her mouth. The child had dipped the entire appendage into the cream and was sucking at one end while it dripped off her elbow at the other.

  They swept into a large bedroom with a four-poster bed and—Narcissa showed this with an impish smile—a chamber pot. She went to the window. “The privy is outside. Tell them what a privy is, Alice Clarissa.”

  “It’s where you poo. I’m learning, but the seat is too high.”

  Julia told Esperanza softly in Crow what “poo” meant.

  On they went through the servants’ bedroom to a room with a bookcase, a medicine case, and a desk where Dr. Whitman did his work, as he was doing now. It had a fine big window that let the morning sun in.

  “We have seven large windows,” said Narcissa, “some small ones, and oil-fueled lamps.”

  She showed them what Esperanza thought the greatest curiosity of all, a chest of drawers built into the wall.

  “Our accommodations are fine,” said Narcissa, “and that is deliberate. Part of what we do for the Natives is show them the refinements that civilization provides. To Christianize them we must first civilize them.” Her voice quivered with hope.

  Esperanza gave her mother a funny look, and Julia smiled back. Yes, part of civilization, or at least the American version, is the fancy English some people speak.

  “Ha, he,” said Alice Clarissa, “one day I try to hide from my mommy in the bottom drawer.
”

  They found their way back to the parlor. The shortcakes and tea, Esperanza thought, were amazing. She watched her mother carefully for manners. Esperanza knew the Americans and British put a lot of stock in deportment, especially at the table. How odd, in her opinion, that they seemed to her not to know common courtesies. They didn’t know how to listen to another person with full attention and how to avoid being intrusive, yet they made a big issue out of table manners. She noticed that Jay seemed to know what to do at table and was surprised.

  When they were finished eating, Julia said, “You may have been surprised that I brought Jay along, but I wanted you to meet him. He’s very interesting, and has quite a story to tell.” She turned her chair a little toward Jay, raised her eyebrows, and said, “Jay, we are not taken in by your breechcloth and leggings. Why don’t you tell us your real name? And why are you a woman living in disguise as a boy?”

  Narcissa made a little squeak and put her hand over her mouth.

  THE MAN-WOMAN SAID, “My name is Lei, Lei Palua. I’m sorry, for what I’ve done; I . . . I was so afraid.”

  “I know, Lei, but we must have answers.” Julia was tolerating no evasions.

  “How much do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  Narcissa got up, saying, “I think we need another pot of tea.”

  Alice Clarissa held up two dolls Hannibal made for her from deerskin and dewclaws and banged them together, like a war.

  They drank more tea, and the whole story came out. How Lei had thought Kanaka Boy was the most exciting man she’d ever met. She was enthusiastic about his plan for Hawaiians to be traders, not just laborers. Ran off with him to the camp he and the men had picked out, a horrible place in a horrible desert. How the men made whiskey and stayed drunk all the time. How they brought up other women and passed them around. How they sold whiskey to the Indians. How she began to think of escape. Then the terrible day when they killed all the Digger men and the small children and took the women and older children as slaves. Delicately, looking at Alice Clarissa, Lei told how the ruffians used the women.

  Lei paused for breath. She looked into the eyes of her listeners nervously but saw only empathy. She gathered her courage and went on. She told how she escaped and fled down the Owyhee River, hoping to get to the fort. How Boy caught her. How his men raped her. And Boy took her to the hot springs to kill her.

  “I, I overcame him the only way I could. He’s fond of laudanum. I gave him triple the amount he’s used to, and he passed out.”

  Julia looked to see that Alice Clarissa was paying no attention and asked, “Did you kill him?”

  “No.” Lei started to say one thing and said another. “No, I couldn’t.” She decided not to mention the castration.

  “Well, you’ve got plenty of reason to be scared.”

  “Please.” Lei hated the begging tone in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. “If I stay anywhere in this country, all of Oregon, he will find me and kill me. There are Hawaiians working at every post. If anyone sees me, my mother, my sister, my friends, the news will fly to him. That’s why I came up with the deception. Jay.”

  Now the shame left her face, and her voice took an edge. “Yes, true, Boy is a force of nature. But he is searching for his wife. His men will ask about a woman. So I cannot be Lei, only Jay.”

  All four women looked inside themselves at this reality and were stilled by it.

  “We’ll keep your secret,” said Julia.

  “From Sam and Hannibal and Flat Dog, too? I’m so scared.”

  Julia looked at Narcissa and answered, “From everyone who is not in this room.” Narcissa nodded.

  “I have to go to California,” said Lei. “Lots of people at Fort Walla Walla know me. My mother is at Fort Vancouver. I’m not safe until I get out of Oregon.”

  Julia nodded, half to herself. “Yes.”

  For a long moment no one spoke. Then Lei said, “How did you spot me?”

  Julia said, “A woman knows.”

  Thirty

  JOE MEEK SHOWED up low in his soul. “Rain left me,” he said. His Nez Percé wife, that is, the sister of Doc Newell’s wife, Clap. “Back at Fort Hall she left me.”

  Julia handed him a coffee cup, full to the brim and steaming.

  “But I see Helen Mar,” said Esperanza. She nodded toward Joe’s little daughter, playing with Doc’s son at the Newell lodge nearby.

  “That woman, she done left husband and child. If that ain’t poor bull. I’m so lonesome I could snuggle up to a porcupine.”

  Esperanza laughed. She liked Joe Meek—he was a clown. Now a sad clown, which made her like him even more.

  “Jay,” said Julia, “would you grind us some more coffee?” Jay spent her time with Julia and Esperanza now, still dressed as Jay. She opened the leather pouch and began to use one rock to smash the beans on a big, flat rock Flat Dog had dragged to the front of the lodge for the purpose.

  “Joe,” Julia said, “have your wives left you before?”

  Joe shrugged. Everyone knew the answer to that question.

  She put an arm around his shoulders. “Two, at least?”

  “Two,” he said. Joe was only thirty, but he’d been in the mountains eleven years.

  “So you’ve had three wives,” Julia said, her arm still around him. She gave Esperanza a mischievous look. They both knew he’d had countless women.

  Joe shrugged.

  “You won’t be lonely long.” Julia took her arm away. “So how was the trip?”

  “Sam and Flat Dog was right. Them three wagons? Trouble three times over.”

  Which everyone knew from the shape the wagons showed up in.

  “On the Snake River plains we couldn’t get the wagons through the sagebrushes, around the sagebrushes, in between the sagebrushes, or over the sagebrushes. Maybe we coulda cut down ever’ one of the gnarly plants from Fort Hall to Fort Boise. When I think on it, maybe we coulda dug a tunnel from one fort to t’other and gone under them sagebrushes. What we done, though, we took the wagon boxes off and left ’em. Make somebody a nice fire one night. Brought just the running gear along.”

  Jay filled the pot with water and put it back on the fire to brew.

  Joe grinned. “Dr. Marcus Whitman,” he said, “he is making heroes of me and Doc—first men to get wagons to Oregon. We is the wave of the future, he says. On that case the women will have to be satisfied with getting their wagons here in the shape of skeletons and they’ll have to go naked in Oregon. I mean, the living room will be naked, the kitchen will be naked, all their possessions will be naked, not the people. I’d druther it was the other way.

  “I’d say, though, leaving them furnishings along the trail will be a service. Keep them as follows from getting lost.”

  Julia asked, “Are we few the wave of the future, Joe? Hundreds of Americans to come?”

  “I don’ know. Ever’ one thinks so,” said Joe. “But white women can’t stand life so disorder-like. Ain’t nobody out here follows their ideas of order, particular not the Indians.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Joe,” said Sam Morgan, walking up. “Julia’s a white woman.” Which was only more or less true.

  Jay checked the pot and said, “Coffee’s ready.”

  Sam sat down at the fire, and Doc Newell slipped in next to him. “Joe’s just downhearted,” Doc said. “Surely and truly, we are the future, right here as we stand. Oregon is the greatest country in the world for the agriculturalist.” For a mountain man Doc Newell talked funny.

  Sam watched Jay pour them coffee. He’d begun to have a different idea about this boy.

  “No more of that talk that divides us into white and Indian,” said Julia.

  “White people are about to come in a tidal wave,” said Doc, “because of the missionaries.”

  Sam hated this subject. Yes, red and white. Yes, waves of Americans. And the end of the Crow way of life, just as Owl Woman predicted. The whole Plains Indian way of life. Still, he
was glad about his own outfit, and Doc and Joe’s—more mixed-blood children going to settle on the western coast.

  Joe said, “Some wagoneers we is. Them wagons is sure finished, and they near finished us.”

  Doc said to the party, “We’re obliged to make a decision to leave the wagons here. Big mountains ahead, the Cascades. The route is the river gorge. If you go through with horses, it’s narrow and rough. If you raft the river, there are big waterfalls, and you have to portage.”

  “What I hear is, it ain’t no wagon road,” said Joe. “Them wagons cost me my wife,” he said. “She wouldn’t have no truck with wagon-driving fools.”

  “Maybe it was Oregon,” said Doc. “She just wanted to stay near her people. Or maybe it was your drinking. Or your tomcatting around.”

  “Doc here,” complained Joe, “he’s got it all figgered out.”

  “I do. The way to work it is, float the wagons the rest of the way,” said Doc. “From here the Hudson’s Bay Company takes the fur down in bateaux. We’ll use the river as our highway.”

  “Where I come from,” said Joe, “we’d be honest and say the road stops more’n two hundred miles from where we mean to go.”

  Doc sighed. Finally he said, “Excuse me, please,” and walked toward his lodge. He turned back and said, “The bateaux will be starting downriver in about two weeks, and the Newell party will be going.” As he walked on, his spine was straighter and stiffer than it needed to be.

  “Appears your brother-in-law doesn’t see things the same as you,” said Sam.

  “Ex-brother-in-law,” said Joe.

  “And what about your daughter, and Doc’s son?” asked Julia.

  Joe twisted his mouth. “We’re leaving ’em with the Whitmans for now. We’ve done wore ’em out.”

  The children did look wasted.

  “The Whitmans are kind to take them in,” said Julia.

  “Good people,” said Joe.

  “More for Narcissa to do,” said Julia.

  “Joe,” said Esperanza, “come with me. I want to show you my new trick.” Esperanza had been learning trick riding from Uncle Hannibal and Papa Sam for years, and Joe was her favorite audience.