A Clearing in the Wild

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  And then I heard German. Was it? Ja! And the cries of a child, and then through the openings of the timber and the vines came Peter Klein, a Bethelite, and a dozen others, twenty-five in all, men, women and children weighted down with packs on their backs and driving a few cows before them.

  “From what George told us, I knew we couldn’t make the trail with wagons,” Peter said. He laughed and his eyes sparkled. “But the cows helped thrash it down for us—those we didn’t lose.”

  I named the people who’d come, hugging the women and children, getting their stories of when they’d left, the trials they’d had along the way. Andy clutched my knees as I walked, and I realized he hadn’t ever seen children before, had never gazed into the eyes of one his size.

  My greatest joy was when I reached Mary Giesy. I held her in my arms with just the hint of guilt that I had a child of my own and would soon produce another, when last I’d seen her, she grieved the loss of her son.

  “Did you have trouble? With Indians?”

  Mary shook her head. “No. It was almost … boring,” she said. “Day after day of walking, sleeping out under the stars. We were just anxious to leave Bethel, and with Willie turning ill, the rest of the party decided to wait for him to improve. We came on ahead. Michael Schaefer Sr. drew maps and told stories until we felt we’d been with you all coming across.”

  “Willie’s ill? Something bad?”

  “The malaria. He gets it every year, remember? It’s one reason Herr Kiel wants to come west, to have his children in a healthy place.”

  “Except for mosquitoes, spiders, and an occasional bear, this is a heavenly place,” I said. I hugged her again. “I’m so glad you came with Peter’s group, before all the rest.”

  “Ja, me, too,” she whispered in my ear. “I wanted my baby to be born in this Washington Territory and not somewhere along the way.”

  Her dark eyes danced with her news. She hardly looked pregnant, and when I stood back to gaze at her, she giggled. “We have until next year to prepare,” she said. “The baby isn’t due until January.”

  I calculated.

  Mary smiled. “Ja, the first week away from Bethel I conceived. On the trail.”

  “Is it sacrilege,” I whispered, leaning in to her, “to think we all might do better away from our leader?”

  Her eyes grew large and then she laughed. “At least you haven’t changed,” she said. “That’s comforting when everything else surely has.”

  But I had changed, at least inside. I was stronger and more aware of my husband, more willing to help him succeed. And one way was to celebrate the arrival of this first group. He’d pay attention to the task, but joy fueled the laborers. Oh, how we sang and celebrated in the September air so crisp, with the spruce trees in their prime, of full brush of branches arching out over the forest floor. The hemlock and fir, even a tree Christian called yew, stood in their glory, piercing the perfect blue sky. I loved the looks of the children as they eyed those massive trees, saw the thickness of such timber; ignored the catch in my stomach as the women looked upward, shaking their heads at the treetops. Mary nearly fell over backward trying to see the top. I caught her before she fell.

  “It can be tamed,” I told Mary when she said she’d never seen anything so dense, so foreboding.

  I took in with good cheer the approval of Peter’s wife and some young girls as they noted my pregnancy and patted my Andy’s head as I held him on my hip.

  “Ja, it is good to be here,” they told me.

  “What is the three-sided yard?” one asked.

  “Part of a stockade,” I said. “Just a precaution. Against Indian trouble.”

  They looked with judging eyes at the log house with its pitiful canvas roof. They didn’t seem pleased at the height of the riverbanks where we’d have to slide down to pull up buckets of water. The amenities they’d left behind loomed larger. I knew those looks. Yes, they were grateful to be at the end of their journey, but alarmed perhaps at what this next step in the journey entailed. I tried not to dwell on their expressions, the looks that said, “Where are we? And what have we done?”

  “They left Bethel early,” Christian told me that evening. He wasn’t telling me anything Mary hadn’t already said. As we talked, he walked with me to the river, reached down, and pulled up the bucket with corn juice from where I tied it to keep cool. We didn’t purchase much corn, just enough to make the drink that I swirled round with my long burl spoon. I imagined how many new things I’d have once Christian’s parents arrived with our trunks. “They came overland,” Christian said. “Wilhelm is but a few weeks behind. We’ll need to send Hans or Adam out to meet him and bring him on up.”

  His words held … caution, I suppose, perhaps a wariness that he’d be judged by that man. But no, those would be my thoughts pushing their way through like an unruly toddler. Christian would be worried about their safety, about having enough for them to eat once they arrived, about having shelter and safety from any uprisings.

  “Joe Knight never made it back with them,” he said then.

  “He didn’t? What happened?”

  Christian shook his head. “He … made his own way, going to California, Peter tells me. Adam returned, said they were but a day out when Joe announced he wanted to work for a while, maybe in California. There were words exchanged and then they separated.”

  “Maybe he met up with them. Maybe he’s with Wilhelm’s group now,” I said, chirped almost.

  “They argued. The scouts separated. They didn’t agree once they left here. This is not a good sign.”

  “But now you’ll have help to build the houses,” I said. “All those men. You’ll have them built in no time.”

  He hesitated before taking my lead away from the discomforting news about Joe Knight. “Ja, we finish the stockade, then build a gun house, high so we can see all around. Peter thinks it necessary, as all they heard along the way were rumors of massacres.” He looked away from me.

  “But with all this help—”

  “Peter says our leader brings thirty-seven wagons, more than I thought for this first journey. I figure six people to a wagon. That’s two hundred and twenty people who will arrive here in less than two months.”

  I swallowed. He didn’t need to say more. The rains would come soon. The cool air promised that. And now there was a defection, a hole in the tapestry of the scouts. I had nothing to say to bring comfort.

  In the morning, the men finished the stockade wall with the logs stood up on end, side by side like little fishes in those metal tins I’d once seen. The stockade surrounded the house we’d built. Then the men enclosed it with a heavy log gate hung on leather straps and began chopping more logs to build the gun turret area while other men began another hut inside the stockade.

  I kept my voice light for the women, to reassure them. I showed them how we would have enough to eat to feed their children. “Food is the servant of the heart,” I said. “We can go to the ocean and dig for clams. They try to hide but we find them. We might buy an oyster or two as well.”

  “You’ve done this?” Mary asked.

  I shook my head, no. “But my friend Sarah digs for clams and she eats the oysters, and there are fish in the river, and elk and deer and even bear in the forest. We won’t go hungry,” I assured them. I showed them my dried berries. I suggested that we could all sleep under one roof but that we had so little rain in these months that their canvas tarps would protect them against the elements until all had houses. I made sure to call them houses—not huts.

  As the men worked on the houses, we dug potatoes I’d planted and roasted them. Hans had help now and brought in good-sized deer. We all had fresh meat, and I showed them how to dry it.

  Then later in the week, with the scythes they brought with them, we women cut the skimpy grain and talked as we worked, like women of old who bent to their harvest. It felt good to be in the company of women again. I looked out over the heads wrapped in dark scarves tied at the back of th
e neck, and for the first time I didn’t mind that I wore one too, for it made me one of them again. To be able to answer their questions, to calm their worries, to offer comfort in this wilderness, that was what love was. Noticing another’s need and tending it.

  The Wolfer girls looked after the younger children as we tied the shocks, then broke the small heads into our aprons. We’d grind the grain on river rocks until the grist stones arrived and we had a mill of our own. The other women followed suit, and it seemed to ease the fears of the uprisings, of all the unknowns that face anyone who enters a wilderness place. Acting together to help others forestalled our deeper fears.

  We had grain for our children to eat, enough for ourselves and one another, at least for a time. Our men prepared a safe place for us. We had friends and family together for the first time in more than a year. What more could we ask for?

  Karl Ruge, our teacher, had once quoted Socrates, who said contentment was natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty. I saw natural wealth here. I wanted to believe that everything would be well. We’d been chosen to come here. All had agreed. We had nothing to fear.

  25

  The Confluence of Streams

  “Emma,” Christian shouted. He looked happy. “Michael’s here.”

  Michael Sr. rubbed his chin. Before we could send anyone out, Michael Sr. had left Keil’s train to come ahead, letting us know they were close. George Link and John Genger would bring them on in the rest of the way. We gathered around him, breezes swirling our thin dresses. Wilhelm’s wagon train was somewhere east of The Dalles along the Columbia River. Instead of telling us how they all fared, he told us rumors of the Indian wars and the soldiers who dotted the river passages with troop transports. I tried not to feel nervous about the possibility of attack. No Indians here had frightened us. Our remoteness probably helped, I decided. They’d have to come looking for us; we wouldn’t likely stumble upon trouble. We’d built that stockade. But that was cautionary, something a good leader would do.

  “Your brother travels with Keil,” Michael Sr. said and nodded to me.

  “He and Willie just couldn’t be separated now, could they?” I said. “Thank goodness, or my brother would have stayed home.” Jonathan traveled with them. My brother, soon here holding his nephew, telling me how Mama and Papa were, the girls and little boys, what the journey had really been like. I could hardly wait.

  “Ah … ja,” Michael Sr. said. He cleared his throat, turned back to the others. He changed the subject then, but not without leaving me wondering at the wariness in his voice. “Their journey west has been uneventful,” Michael Sr. continued, then said that our leader was primed to love this place because of the ease of the overland passage. “When I left them at The Dalles, they’d had gifts of horses given to them by Cayuse, and they’d been treated like royalty by the Indians coming across, or so Wilhelm tells it. It’s only since they reached Oregon Territory that there are Indian worries. On the plains, sometimes whole deer would be killed, dressed, and left for our arrival at an evening camp.” Entire Indian families came in more than once and were fed by the colonists. “One night we were joined by thirty braves and their wives and children and their dogs, too.” He grinned. “Of course, Wilhelm had invited them, although he never once said anything to Louisa or the others, so we thought we were under attack at first.”

  I could imagine the fear and then surprise Louisa, Keil’s wife, must have felt, taking a deep breath and finding a way to feed those additional people without even the benefit of preparation. “Keil, he is ready to love this place because I tell him of all the possibilities. He is excited, I can tell you that,” Michael Sr. told us. His eyes scanned our progress, and I thought I saw a small frown. “At one point on the journey Keil was burdened, but he separated himself and went to a high mound, and there he wrestled with the enemy, and God said He’d walk with him.”

  “Does he think the game left by the Indians is an example of that?” Peter Klein asked.

  “Maybe. And Adam’s letters reached home ahead of time to raise their enthusiasm. But more, the Indians were subdued by the … hearse,” he said. “I’ve come ahead to tell so we can send a delegation to the Columbia River to bring them here.”

  At last they would see what my husband had contended with and how well he’d done despite the trials. The stockade had a blockhouse within it and gun turrets at the top. The fields of grain were harvested, and we had plenty of potatoes. Christian had hoped we’d even sell some and ship them south, our first produce sale. But the Californians apparently planted their own this year and weren’t interested in any of ours. Still, anyone could see that love and labor had gone into this clearing to prepare for the community. I loved Michael Sr.’s enthusiasm. The safe trip by the main colony affirmed that the journey west was of divine calling.

  But what was this hearse?

  Already a light rain dribbled over us as we talked, the drops of water on my husband’s hair like light spots of diamonds flashing when sun broke through the clouds. The air smelled sweet, and the contrasts between the dark trunks of trees and the needles of green stood crisp against the mist. I wanted the new arrivals to see what we saw, this beauty and not the challenges still to be faced.

  “What is this hearse you speak of?” Sebastian Giesy asked.

  Michael Sr. looked around then and nodded toward the stockade. “A sturdy blockhouse. Good. We’ll be safe here. When the Indian things calm down, we can move to our houses.”

  “We didn’t expect so many,” Christian said. He added, his voice low, “We have fewer houses ready than planned, but not for lack of work. You know of our challenges here. Wilhelm will understand.”

  Michael Sr. averted his eyes. “He may expect more from us. He’s … not always realistic.” He pulled at his beard. “When I told him you had a son, he groused and said, ‘That’s not what I sent him out there to do.’ ”

  The men chuckled low, all except Christian. I felt my cheeks grow warm and was grateful when Peter Klein said, “Why do we send men to the Columbia River to meet them? Won’t they sell their wagons in Portland and come the way we did?”

  Michael Sr. shook his head and then looked cautiously at me. He took in a deep breath. “They have a hearse. Willie died before they left. Wilhelm’s beloved son.”

  This was news even Peter Klein’s early-leaving train had not known. Our leader loved that boy more than anyone—more than Louisa, I thought, though I’d never said as much. I wondered how he’d dealt with the loss of his son. Did he blame himself, his own sinful state, as he had with Sebastian and Mary? Or did he blame Louisa? I shivered for her. How hard to leave behind a loved one deep in Missouri soil.

  “Ja,” Michael Sr. continued. “It was a big loss. Malaria. Your brother grieves, Frau Giesy. They delayed starting west because of Willie’s death.”

  “To take time to bury him,” I said.

  “No.” He swallowed. “To bring Willie with them.”

  “What nonsense is that?” Christian said. “They brought Willie’s body across the mountains, the plains, through Indian country?”

  “Ja. Keil had a lead- and tin-lined casket made. He would have asked you with your skills, but you were here. So it took a little longer to make. Then he placed the body inside. He steeped it in our Golden Rule Whiskey. He composed songs sung each morning by the colonists walking behind the Schellenbaum. Herr Keil believes it is that which kept the Indians from harassing them. The Indians saw their journey as a sacred one, that our people tend well to the dead. Adam says Indians came in and looked at the hearse. Ja, Herr Keil wanted to bury his son here in this place that calls us all. Well, almost all. He names this place Aurora for his daughter without even seeing it.”

  He’d brought his dead son all the way across the mountains. I couldn’t imagine how hard that must have been for Louisa, and for the colonists, each morning following that hearse carried in an open ambulance with fluttering black fringe around the top. Keil would have made it big and ornamen
tal, I had no doubt about that.

  “Hopefully nothing bad has happened to the wagons after you left, Michael,” Christian said. “It will be good if all things continue to go well. It will make him more understanding of our … of our progress here.”

  It was the first indication I had that my husband worried.

  “Our leader will see that this is the place we were meant to be, or he wouldn’t have had such an untroubled journey here,” I said. That became my prayer. “Moving a hearse across the country. Ja, that is quite a feat.”

  While Christian prepared to leave to meet Wilhelm’s group, I busied myself quizzing Michael Sr. about who else had come, which families, and who remained behind. Certain families were more easy-going than others, less dependent on sturdy roofs over their head, I imagined, more able to bundle up with another family and make a joy of it rather than a misery. “At least they’ll have wagons to spend the winter in,” I told Michael Sr. as he looked around the stockade. “We can pull quite a few inside the perimeter.”

  “Tents. They’ll have to live in tents or inside the stockade house,” he said. “Most of the wagons were ordered sold in Portland. I told them they can’t easily come across the trail where the younger men will push the cows through. You say we’re to go farther down the Columbia toward the old Astorian fort and have Keil come up the Wallacut River?”

  Christian nodded. “It’s closer to the coast. We’ll cross the Bay and finish here on the Willapa River. The portage at the Wallacut will challenge them, with that hearse. Moving that wagon will be the worst. It’s a heavy thing.”

  “You bought boats with sails, ja?”

  “One or two,” Christian answered. “And there are larger boats that come in as far as Woodard’s Landing.”