The Indifference of Tumbleweed

by Rebecca Tope

  I found no words of comfort, other than a question. ‘And you? You too were ill, two days past.’

  He smiled. ‘I cannot afford to be ill. It was quite gone by the next morning.’

  ‘This place is like paradise, do you not think?’ I spread my arms to embrace the plants on every side of us. We had pushed through trackless vegetation, without any thought of where we might be going. One glimpse of a berry or flower would draw us deeper into the thicket, with trailing tendrils catching at our legs and good-sized trees scattered amongst the smaller shrubs. ‘Has any white man ever stood here before?’ I wondered aloud, before catching myself with a blush. Mr Fields could hardly count himself as a white man, and I feared I must have offended him.

  He gave me a severe look. ‘No white man stands here now, but a white woman – who is certain to be the first since the dawn of time to tread in this exact spot.’

  It was a heady feeling. It made the world seem very young and fresh, full of beckoning opportunities and God-given riches. The berries had been growing for a thousand years, just waiting for me and my kind to pluck them. The fat birds and animals had somehow existed independently of humanity’s ministrations and were now a rich source of food and useful materials. I forgot, for the moment, the population of Indians, living lightly on this land and leaving no mark that I could discern. They had not cut down trees or planted crops in orderly rows. They had not tamed the beasts and corralled them for their own convenience, other than horses, which were like dogs in their natural association with human beings. All that rightful activity lay ahead, along with the civilising influence of democracy and true religion and the rule of law. It sent my heart soaring to imagine it all.

  Then Mr Fields brought me down to earth again. He cleared his throat and glanced around, as if wary of eavesdroppers. ‘Your sister…’ he began.

  ‘I know,’ I said quickly, eager to hush him up. ‘I was deeply troubled by her ways, at first. But then Henry Bricewood set my mind at ease, somewhat.’

  ‘Henry Bricewood is no judge of society’s ways and the steep slope she is sliding down. She must marry Abel Tennant at the earliest opportunity.’

  ‘Perhaps she will.’ I frowned. ‘Although I cannot think who will make her do so. She tells me she has no wish to be his wife.’

  ‘Then she is damned,’ he said simply and with a terrible certainty. I recalled the Welsh Baptist, who doubtless spoke constantly about the sins of the flesh and the punishment everlasting.

  ‘She can repent and do penance, when she returns to her rightful self. I fear she has lost her good sense, for the moment. But God is merciful, and true repentance will earn his approbation.’

  ‘You Papists!’ he snapped. ‘Always a let-out. Nothing is forever with you people. A sin so wantonly enjoyed can never be erased. Her repentance would never carry sincerity.'

  I recoiled under this attack. According to my father, there had been many times in the past when born a Roman Catholic had brought much in the way of prejudice or disapprobation. Being Irish implied a vulnerability to such attitudes, but I had seldom encountered it personally. My father had kept his family clear of the growing disdain that even the constitutional tolerance of America could not completely abjure. Despite their disillusion with much about his native land, my parents both took the fundamentals of their religion for granted, as natural and inescapable as the air they breathed, and had been unable to accept any need to defend it. We were all Collinses and holders of the true faith, and once we had resettled in Providence, this was no longer a matter for concern. I recalled the early months in the new home, where my father had found the genuine and sincere tolerance difficult to credit. We had no longer been jeered at, with the word Papists hurled at us. In Boston we had been encouraged by our priests to regard Baptists, Methodists and others as puritanical killjoys who understood nothing of God’s infinite mercy and forgiveness. Their world was narrow and dark, where ours was joyous and full of colour. Now Mr Fields had gone some way to remind me of this difference, with his extraordinary and unanticipated criticism.

  ‘The Lord God is a loving and forgiving Father,’ I stammered. ‘He is merciful and understanding. He sees into our hearts. Fanny is not wicked; merely misguided.’

  He bit his lips, as if wishing he had never spoken, but more words burst from him, nonetheless. ‘She knows she does wrong. She has been taught the moral laws that she must obey. And yet your parents wink at her misdeeds. I am at a loss to understand it.’

  In a rush, all my initial feelings of dread and guilt and utter confusion returned to me. Over the weeks since Independence Rock, I had allowed Henry’s soothing words to subdue these painful thoughts and let others – older and wiser than myself – make it right somehow. Fanny and I had kept a distance between us, until I was unsure as to how things stood with her and Abel. Perhaps the madness had passed, the passion receded, and all returned to rightness of its own accord. Now, hearing Mr Fields, I feared this was far from the case.

  ‘I accused her in very similar terms,’ I told him. ‘When I found them, together, my reaction was just as you say. And then she informed me that I lacked charity and had no concept of what she was experiencing. She made it sound…exalted.’ I sniffed back sudden tears, acutely miserable to discover how tainted the little paradise had become.

  ‘She is a devil,’ he said.

  ‘No, no. She is my sister. And you – Mr Fields, you do not know her. You judge far too harshly.’

  ‘I think not. I have never been a severe man. I have kept to my own ways and done no harm to a soul. I have saved that woman and her brats. I have followed a path approved by God and government, this Manifest Destiny they speak of, until all my goods can be packed into a chest inside a wagon. I possess not a single penny beyond what I have here on this trail. When we arrive in the promised land of Oregon, I must work every moment of every day to simply keep myself and the family alive. I make no complaint. I am aware of contradictions and mysteries in the ways of the world. I am myself a contradiction, a mongrel born from two worlds that have scant mutual understanding. But I cannot stand by silently and watch a young girl take herself to perdition. For weeks I have buttoned my lips, but now I can do it no more.’

  I felt somehow that I should find him pitiable, with his pocked face and empty pockets. Instead I sensed a nobility to him that made me seek to gaze directly into his eyes. Since those early days with Abel Tennant stirring me so dreadfully with his look, I had steadfastly avoided meeting a man’s eyes directly. With Henry, a habit had developed where we walked side by side, seldom turning towards each other at all. His short stature meant that he was forced to look upwards at anyone of normal height, and this was awkward for us both. Even my father made me uneasy, ever since I acquired the awful knowledge concerning Fanny. Unsure as to what he knew, I felt he might read it in my face if I looked at him full on. I had got into the habit of constantly keeping my gaze on the ground, rounding my shoulders and letting my hair fall across my face.

  So now that Mr Fields had revealed his darker self in an outpouring of confession as to his poverty and castigation of my sister, I felt called upon to confront him. His honesty was laudable, his need to be heard irresistible. The exact import of his words was opaque to me, but I could not withhold my sympathy and respect.

  ‘I know you are a good man,’ I said. ‘Doubtless a good Baptist, too.’

  ‘I am no Baptist,’ he returned, with a look of surprise. ‘That was my friend. My wife’s husband. I follow no Church.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was dumbfounded. I had almost been ready to hear that he had once been a minister in the Baptist Church himself.

  ‘I fear there is no Church that would take me.’ He smiled ruefully.

  ‘Mine would,’ I said with certainty.

  ‘Because they take anybody, without discretion?’

  ‘The desire is reason enough,’ I said, quoting a line I had heard many times.

  ‘A desire that is absent, I fear,’ he said. ‘I ca
nnot envisage a circumstance in which I might count myself a Roman Catholic.’

  We had been concealed amongst the mountainside foliage long enough. His miserable sickly wife would be missing him, and my libertine sister would cast aspersions on my character if she discovered where I had been and which man I had been alone with. ‘We should not be here like this,’ I said, regretful that a reminder of good and evil was serving to eject me from paradise. Was I a new Eve, capable of seducing Adam into disobedience and sin that would taint us for ever more?

  ‘We must return to our responsibilities,’ he said, reading my mind. He straightened his back, so his long dark hair fell away from his face and again we exchanged looks. His skin was like a badly tilled field, with pits and bumps down both cheeks. But his chin and neck were smooth and I recalled the odd fact that Indians grew very little hair on their faces. Unlike my grandmother, I thought, with a kink of my lips that he immediately saw and misinterpreted as an expression of friendship. He smiled back, with a broad show of teeth and narrowing of eyes that conveyed gratitude and liking in a frankness that made me feel warm.

  The friendship that I had not hitherto acknowledged bloomed within me and my own smile broadened. I felt an urge to reach out for his hand, for a touch of his skin, but did not. ‘Thank you for showing me the plants,’ I said. ‘I will not forget their names.’

  ‘It was a simple thing,’ he demurred. ‘And please accept my apologies for anything I said out of turn concerning your sister. It is none of my business.’

  I ought to have resented the way he had returned me to my early distress about Fanny. He had removed the lid of a can containing a noxious stew of dark emotions, but I discovered to my relief that they were less powerful now. The worst of the jealousy and guilt had evaporated, leaving a nagging worry as the dominant sensation.

  ‘It will have to be faced,’ I muttered, hoping to sound like a mature adult.

  ‘Or perhaps it will wither of its own accord, with no permanent harm done,’ he suggested. ‘Six or seven weeks from now, they can go their separate ways and never meet again.’

  Six or seven weeks sounded to me like a very long time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  3rd August

  We left Fort Boise today, expecting to reach Fort Nez Perce by the end of the month. It is on the Columbia River, which we shall then follow almost all the way to Oregon City. The way is plain ahead, with an expected arrival by late September. Mr Tennant has insisted on remaining with the train and his party, his foot slightly improved with no need for amputation. We have, for a few more days, good supplies of food, augmented by the prodigious supply of wild berries and nuts on all sides. But there is a huge canyon ahead, forcing us to leave the Snake River for a time. There are as well many Indians living in this region.

  I had to admit to a very hazy grasp of our route, at this point. The Snake River had been our guide for so long that it had become like an old friend. Scouts informed us that it would before long take a course that we could no longer follow. A canyon of mythical depths lay ahead, impossible to measure, and completely unthinkable for a wagon train to navigate. We would have to make our way across some alarmingly inhospitable terrain before finally reaching the welcoming grasslands of the Grande Ronde and Fort Nez Perce. The scouts warned us to inspect our oxen closely, since a cracked hoof or failing strength would be the finishing of them in the weeks ahead. The trail had been found and marked only three years earlier, as we had been told many times. There were numerous steep mountain passes to traverse, with a dramatic reduction in vegetation. Hard as it was to believe, we were assured that within four or five days, we would discover for ourselves the first serious hardships of the journey.

  We would have to cross to the western side of the Snake, and then leave it behind to cross the Wallowa mountains. The Indians here were disturbed by the growing numbers of white settlers and unpredictable in their reactions. The Fort to the north was entirely controlled by Indians, we learned; enterprising natives who had taken with enthusiasm to trading with white emigrants. But those remaining in the mountains were a law unto themselves and we should be wary.

  I tried to summarise these reports in my journal, but could manage nothing better than a faint-hearted optimism that the end of the journey was in sight.

  Cloud and Thunder and Dot and Seamus were in excellent health as we left Fort Boise. Their second set of shoes were still good, and they seemed almost eager to set out again from the fort. Mr Tennant’s animals were also quite well, but the added weight of their owner riding in the wagon seemed to tell on them. He sat at the front of the wagon bed in his chair, the damaged leg with its bandages protruding over the board, and cheered on his beasts. He was a large man, but it was a surprise that the oxen found him so much of an extra burden, when they already had barrels, chests, tools, sacks and so forth loaded onto the wagon. Abel joked that they simply resented the fact that he was riding instead of walking.

  I had watched Abel Tennant closely after my discussion with Mr Fields, hoping to elicit the current situation between him and my sister. He whistled as he attended to his many tasks, was solicitous and cheerful with his injured father, and polite to Mr Franklin and Mr Bricewood. In short, he seemed content. He took no notice of me, which served to rekindle the sparks of jealousy that had tormented me weeks before. I felt as if I had somehow missed a chance, let something slip through my fingers that I might never have again. He also avoided my parents as much as possible, I realised. He did it cleverly, casually, so it was very far from obvious.

  In a calmer frame of mind than before, I did my best to understand the situation and why it still caused me such confusion. Since the age of eleven or twelve I had read and heard the usual romantic stories where great passion overcame terrible obstacles and the couple enjoyed a triumphant and permanent embrace at the end. They all lived happily ever after, because love conquers all and is the glue that holds us all together. In real life, society was generally composed of couples with children who were on the whole living happily ever after, albeit with hardships and disagreements to taint their contentment. There was very little sign, however, of the towering passions that filled the stories. This, I admitted to myself, was where my difficulty lay. At least at the beginning of the relationship, surely, there must always be this powerful love between the two. Without it, something was wrong.

  And there was nothing to suggest that Abel and Fanny were in the grip of anything resembling this expected emotion. There was no romance, and the passion as Fanny had tried to describe it was a deplorably physical thing. There was no mooning or sighing or writing of verse. All I could detect was a kind of complacency in them both. They held up their heads and walked with a firm step. Fanny swayed her hips and pushed out her bosom, as if flaunting her body. Abel swung his axe and smacked his oxen with a manly air than suggested pride in his own powers.

  I had not been unduly struck by the fact that Fanny and I were the only unmarried females in early adulthood in our party. It had not seemed to be a category worth identifying, until then. Now I understood that Abel had no-one but we two on which to practise his charms, unless he invaded another party in the train. This would have caused instant notice and reaction, and become public – which would have prevented such liberties as he took with my sister. And this realisation only served to heighten my jealousy and self-reproach, because I could surely have had him for myself if I had responded as he’d hoped, back in the middle of May.

  He’s mine! I had cried, without any conscious thought. Now I had almost persuaded myself that I would never have wanted what Fanny had, but I still nursed a sense of being robbed.

  Fanny had characterised me as uncharitable, in the carelessly cruel way that sisters address each other. She had also made reference to my homely looks, my blemishes and lank hair. Or had I read that into words of some ambiguity? I had no illusions that I was beautiful. I was like Lizzie – a fact I had rejected for years, telling myself that at least I had no actual defect
s as she did. But while I did carry features from my natural mother, I also shared with Lizzie our father’s long face and mud-brown eyes. Fanny and Nam had inherited their mother’s curls and wide mouth, which made a monumental difference.

  6th August

  We have started to climb up to another range of mountains which comprise a great plateau, after we crossed the River Snake a day since. The riverbed was rocky and Mr Franklin’s wagon lost a wheel. The men were soaked through, standing for hours in the water while they fixed it. Many of the stores were spoiled by falling into the water. We have not had such a hard crossing before, because in other places fords had been created by hundreds of wagons passing through. Here there is no such help. We must take the best-looking place and hope we can pass. However, a group of Indians were helpful in taking the horses and cattle across for us.

  I knew I should write more about that awful day, but it was impossible to decide which were the most telling details to include – and there were huge personal elements to it that I could never publicly record. Mr Tennant’s two wagons went first, with Abel leading the oxen and his father shouting from the front board of the forward vehicle. The women and children waded into the cold water with squeals of protest. The dogs swam valiantly with their noses pointing out of the water and their front legs paddling fast and furious. It had been discovered that if two oxen could manage the task, it all went more quickly and easily than harnessing together four or even six, which was a complicated process, unless, like Mr Tennant’s wagons, they were accustomed to it already. The riverbed was not muddy and the water did not rush especially rapidly. The hazard lay mainly in the rocks. We did not have much livestock with us, and those we did have were habituated to these crossings, although they were always reluctant. Four or five Indian men took them over without difficulty. We saw several Indian children splashing and swimming in the water, a short distance from the crossing place, and envied them their lack of fear. For us, rivers remained points of danger, as well as the source of essential water.