The Indifference of Tumbleweed

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘I will come,’ said Hope. She held little Emily closer to her chest. ‘It is a time of loss for some amongst us. I should like to share poor Mr Fields’ grief for a short while.’

  What was she losing, I wondered? Surely she and her boy would be living with her sister’s family on the acres accorded them. I had observed little or no disharmony between her and the Franklins during the months on the trail. But something in her words and the instinctive hugging of the little girl made me wonder. I would have liked to linger and question her, but was mindful of my role as messenger and moved on.

  The Bricewoods had spread themselves across a wide area, as they had done throughout the migration. Whilst equality and tolerance had been repeatedly preached by the patriarch, his actions told another tale. Mr Bricewood believed himself to be a better man than any others in our party, despite his failure to win the role of party leader. He naturally warranted more space, more possessions, more sons and daughters, in his own mind. Henry’s small stature must have caused him considerable chagrin, although he had never openly revealed it. He was confirmed in his beliefs by the success of our migration. He had lost nothing, other than the removal of a son to be a soldier – something that might have happened wherever the family had been. His bluff good cheer remained undented, his image of himself as clear and complacent as it had ever been.

  I was hoping to avoid Henry if possible, having nothing further to say to him. I did not want to witness his unhappiness again, because it gave me heavy sensations in my chest. Unsure as I continued to be as to the sincerity of his proposal and the reality of his love for me, there was no doubting his disappointment. I scanned my conscience for indications that I might have caused needless pain. Had I humiliated him? Had I given him cause to suppose I would marry him? As so many times before, I found myself adrift in the great ocean of human emotion, incapable of understanding its complexities. I was stupid, I concluded. Incorrigibly blind and deaf to subtleties that others easily detected.

  Fortunately, Mr Bricewood himself was the first person I encountered. He was standing on widespread feet, staring at the sky to the west. ‘Rain on the way,’ he said, as if I’d been at his shoulder for some time. ‘Days shortening. Need to hunker down before winter storms are on us.’

  Winter, I thought with incredulity. An odd effect of the long walk we had achieved was that we had failed to recognise the past months as a genuine summer. It was a suspended time, where the heavens had hung in paralysis while we humans had done the moving. How could the summer have ended in such a fashion? I was familiar with the urgent activity that came with autumn – the piling of firewood, production of warm clothes, feeding up of animals – even in a city. It came after the laziness of summer, where living was easy and work slipped into a secondary place. But this year had been altogether different. We had worn ourselves out with the walking and everything required of us for simple survival. How ever would we find the energy necessary to confront an early winter?

  ‘Mrs Fields is to be buried later today,’ I reported doggedly. ‘It is her husband’s wish that as many of the party as possible attend the service.’

  He wrinkled his nose, as if smelling the over-ripe corpse. ‘If business permits, I shall be there,’ he said ponderously. ‘Rest assured, in any case, the Bricewoods will be well represented.’

  I walked away, irritated by his manner. Perhaps, I thought, I would never see a Bricewood again after this brief period of turbulence, before each family went its own way.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  In the event, the crowd of mourners encircling the new grave was respectably large. The priest delivered a long eulogy, in which he gave full recognition to the loss suffered by the husband and children of the deceased, and the unfortunately timing of her death. He reminded us that we could not know the reasons for God’s acts, but should trust that it was all for the best in the final analysis. Little Ellie chose my hand to cling to, which flattered me considerably. Grandma stood tall, her eyes unblinkingly on Mr Fields. She had found a fresh frock to wear, but her chin was bristly. He did his best to avoid her gaze.

  Before we were properly begun, the rain started. It came on a sharp northerly wind, and stung our faces. Father Benedict acted as if nothing was happening, which gave us all the lead we needed. No-one flinched, except for a few of the youngsters, who pulled at their mothers and tried to wrap themselves in skirts or shawls. Mr Fields and the other men, all with bare heads, let the deluge wet them as if it were a necessary part of the proceedings. A kind of baptism in reverse, I thought. A matching wetting to that we all endured as infants at the font. The grave quickly started to turn muddy, and the simple coffin darkened under the rain.

  I fixed my attention on the reality before my eyes. The woman was dead and gone, leaving two children behind her. If my grandmother had been correct, there was no land for the little family without a wife, leaving them rootless and insecure. They might even feel constrained to journey back to more settled lands, and take their chances in Indiana or Illinois. The waste implied in this idea wrung my insides and I recoiled at it. I looked sideways at Mr Fields’ face, which was impassively directed at the ground, and not quite at the rain-soaked coffin. He shook his head slightly as I watched, and I wondered whether the gesture was intended for me.

  The hole was filled with muddy dirt, the moment we turned away, by two men with spades. Father Benedict had plainly instructed them in the digging and filling of a grave, and they did it with a quick competence. We drifted off in varying directions, with no suggestion of a gathering for drink and cake, as would have been the practice back in Providence. The rain made us behave with little decorum, once freed from the ceremony. I ran with my sisters back to our wagon, where we towelled ourselves and huddled under the canvas.

  ‘When will we have a proper house again?’ wailed Lizzie. ‘We are living like animals here.’ Her dog and the remaining pups had been left to find their own shelter as best they could, which gave the lie to her words.

  ‘I shall be off next spring, to San Francisco, where they built homes of stone, and the rain runs away in drains,’ asserted Fanny.

  ‘Why wait so long as that?’ Lizzie asked rudely. ‘Why do you not go today?’

  ‘I have to make my plans,’ said Fanny airily.

  The day dribbled away after that, with a general gloom at the cold and damp. Even the men with their precious land deeds disappeared into huts and wagons, no doubt contemplating the coming months with less enthusiasm than before.

  It rained throughout the following two days, which saw us all discomposed in varying ways. My mother had taken several items out of the wagon and laid them on the ground for inspection, the day after we arrived. When the rain set in, she was at a loss as to which to preserve from getting wet. With all her daughters taking up space beneath the cover, she could not easily return the boxes and barrels to their original places, in any case. She bewailed the dampness of her best clothes, which had survived so many months on the trail without mishap. The coloured ribbon on her best bonnet seeped pink dye onto her finest silk camisole. My grandmother’s fine woollen shawl was dragged from a basket, mis-shapen and heavy. She earned little sympathy from anyone. ‘Woollens dry well enough,’ said my mother. ‘’Twill pull back into shape and no harm done. But my things are ruined.’

  We had been wet a few times on the trail, but then the sun had come through hot and drying, and all had been well. Now we were doubtful as to the strength of the autumn sun – even whether it would ever reappear at all. The best items had been carefully packed away out of harm’s reach, and my mother reproached herself severely for her premature unpacking of them. ‘And there was I, thinking we had reached our destination,’ she moaned. ‘When all along, we were simply in another camp, waiting for I know not what.’

  And then the miracle happened and my mother’s mood changed to one of pure joy. It was the evening of the third day of rain, with the light fading early. As always, people were coming and going out
side, most of them on horseback. Men wore capes and hats against the rain, making it hard to identify them. My sisters and I were sick of being confined to the wagon, but saw little appeal in climbing down onto the muddy ground, where we would only get cold and wet. We felt marooned and purposeless.

  A shout was heard some distance away, which I thought included the word ‘Collins’. At first I thought perhaps something had happened to my father and that he might be hurt in some way.

  ‘Mother,’ I called, pushing back the front flap of the tent we had eventually erected, to where she was crouched with my grandmother, under a makeshift shelter, neither of them willing to abide with us girls in the wagon.

  She looked up, but was immediately distracted by a small boy flying up to her, over the mud. ‘He is back!’ he cried. ‘Mr Collins says to tell you your son is back.’

  We all stared speechless. For a few seconds, I could not recall whom the child might mean.

  Mother came to her senses first. ‘Reuben?’ she gasped. ‘How can that be?’ We had heard accounts of the war, continuing to the south with some fierce fighting, and shuddered to think of my brother’s fate.

  ‘See!’ The boy pointed a sharp finger across the tracks and puddles of the camp. ‘There he is!’

  There, in fact, were two men, walking side by side, both submerged under voluminous capes. Neither of them looked a bit like my brother. ‘That’s not him,’ I said.

  The boy shrugged; his work was done. He was, I realised, one of the smaller Bricewood boys, whose name had never properly entered my mind. Something Biblical – Gideon? Joshua? I shook my head. The time had passed when it could matter.

  My mother had sharper sight than mine. ‘Reuben!’ she cried, and flew across the mud to the men. I followed, along with my sisters, more slowly and hesitantly, my eyes fixed on the cape-shrouded pair. One I belatedly distinguished as my father, his head tilted solicitously towards the other. It was the other that compelled me. He walked with an odd crooked stance, not limping, but somehow angled to one side. A few seconds later we were crowded around, peering into the face of the newcomer, striving to connect it to the young man we remembered.

  Reuben – for it was of course my brother – had changed horribly. His face was full of grey shadows, his eyes almost lost in dark hollows. Two teeth had gone and his lips were mis-shapen. My father swept us away with a strong arm. ‘Stay back,’ he ordered. Only my mother was permitted to touch Reuben, laying a hand gently against his cheek and crooning wordlessly.

  We moved through the rain back to the wagon, arriving wet and untidy, hair in sodden clumps and hems filthy with mud. Reuben sat on a barrel beside the wagon and we squatted around him, waiting for the story. Nam was closest, one small hand on his knee, staring unblinking at his ravaged face.

  At first we assumed that our father knew the facts and would reveal them to us, but we were wrong. He had only fifteen or twenty minutes’ advantage on us, during which he had sent the small messenger, and then urged his returned son to walk with him to join us. He was as mystified as any as to how and why and when the miracle of Reuben’s appearance had taken place.

  Mother gave him a drink of brandy, and Grandma peeled away his soaking outer garments, and slowly we accepted him as one of our own blood.

  ‘Where are you hurt?’ asked Father.

  ‘My shoulder was broke.’ The word came thickly in a voice much deeper than I recalled.

  ‘But your face!’ said Mother.

  ‘Horse kicked it. Threw me onto rocks and kicked me.’ He looked up, for the first time, meeting one pair of eyes after another. ‘Took out some teeth,’ he added.

  ‘When was this?’ Grandma wondered.

  ‘Three months since. In Colorado country. They took me back to the Fort and got me mended again.’

  ‘Fort? What fort?’ demanded Father.

  ‘Leavenworth. When I was whole, they discharged me, and left me to make my way west. I’ve been following you for a month and a half, near enough.’

  ‘On foot?’ Father was appalled, his hand to his mouth.

  ‘At first.’ Reuben’s nod was a cockeyed flinch that drew my attention to the shoulder he had broken. It was twisted and raised close to his ear. Grandma had not stripped him to the skin, but strange lumps were visible through his shirt. He continued his account. ‘Then a small group of riders caught up with me and supplied me with a quiet mare. I have her still. She and I are the best of friends. I call her Venus, after the star. She has a white star on her face.’

  ‘You rode alone, all those miles?’ It was Fanny speaking. Her eyes sparkled at the idea of such an adventure.

  ‘Not always. I had company at times. The trail is clear enough, and there are numbers of solitary migrants heading westwards. Not only families. Scouts. Trappers. Messengers.’

  ‘Outlaws,’ growled Grandma. ‘You were not safe, boy. And how about Indians? Were they with you out there, too?’

  ‘Did you not fight, then?’ Mother was slow to take in the implications. ‘Were you not a soldier after all?’

  Reuben’s rueful grin finally convinced me that somewhere inside this stranger, my original brother still lurked. ‘I never even saw a Mexican,’ he said. ‘We were on our way to the battlefields when I was thrown. The horse saw a rattlesnake and shied. I was not prepared and just somersaulted off his rear end. Then he danced back and stamped on my mouth.’

  Nam giggled, as I suspected Reuben had intended. ‘Did he stamp on your shoulder, too?’ asked Grandma.

  ‘The shoulder encountered a very sharp and inconvenient rock. It broke into seven pieces, as far as the doc could tell. The horse was a big’un, and I fell from a great height. The arm is never going to be of much use again.’ He sighed, and pushed back his shirt for us to see. I watched his face as the family all peered at the damage. Pain was carved into his eyes and mouth – not mere bodily pain, but suffering in his mind, as well. He had put great effort into telling his tale with humour and lightness, but it was clear that it had been a terrible time. Only then did I shift my gaze lower. There were no scars. The broken bones had not cut through his flesh, but simply rearranged themselves invisibly beneath the skin. I fingered my own shoulder, mentally comparing it with the distortion I was viewing. Where I had a short ledge, then a rounded corner that slid down to my upper arm, Reuben had no such thing. At the point where his neck ended, there was a large knob pointing forwards. His arm had been drawn out of line, and was pulled across his chest, giving it little freedom to move.

  My grandmother ran featherlight finger over the area and down his back. ‘Does it pain you?’ she asked.

  ‘Aches,’ he said. ‘Never stops.’

  ‘The muscles are all misplaced,’ she said. ‘Can you move your head as usual?’

  He lifted his chin, and slowly turned his head from side to side. It cleared the new knob of bone just barely. Then he tipped it forward so his chin almost touched his chest. ‘Good!’ said Grandma. ‘No harm done to your neck bones, then.’

  ‘Was he a good doctor?’ asked Mother, looking very pale.

  ‘Not specially. He bound it up, and told me to leave Mother Nature to work her magic on me. After four weeks he took the binding off and said it was as good a job as might be expected. He was more concerned with my mouth. The jaw was cracked, and I could barely eat. He cleaned it well, and gave me straws to sup with. There was an Indian woman who made excellent soup.’

  ‘Well, it might improve,’ judged Grandma, still intent on the shoulder. ‘And you have the use of three remaining limbs. ’Tis not so very bad.’

  ‘It’s glad I am to be home, to be sure,’ said Reuben, looking at Father, who smiled at the Irishness.

  At the end of the day, we permitted ourselves a muted rejoicing. Reuben was given a bed inside the wagon, where he laid himself down with care, and fell into a short afternoon sleep. He had been unable to conceal his weariness and pain, his face collapsing into a grey mask no longer capable of a smile. But he was back with us, and a
ll seven of us were thankful beyond words. ‘A miracle!’ Mother murmured, more than once. The mare, so oddly named Venus, was collected from the post she had been tied to, and made much of by us all. She had been a generous gift from a bright-eyed group of young men, dizzy with the sense of possibility ahead of them. Reuben roused himself and insisted on climbing down from the wagon to ensure that she had all she required. Then he slid helplessly back into a deep slumber which Grandma said was the best thing for him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Reuben’s return released a flood of optimism and determination in us all. We were complete again, having not entirely understood before how his absence had affected us. Father busied himself amongst men of business, and brought us news of an agreement with the British, by which Oregon had become a new State, under the American flag. The future was golden, we believed. There might be skirmishes with bands of Indians, but it was assumed that there would be space enough for all, and harmony was not beyond the wit of man to maintain. The Willamette carried with it an atmosphere of tranquillity that nothing could disturb. Mr Franklin went off to plant his apple trees, the Tennants moved out with merry whoops and waves of their hats. The day after Reuben joined us, the Bricewoods too made their preparations to leave, having acquired treble the amount of land that we and the Franklins now owned. The head of our party rode their biggest horse, with his dog loping alongside. The dispersal to new homesteads was almost complete and I felt apprehensive about my own future.