“Well, two’s a company and—”
“Three’s a crowd. I’m so glad you understand, Nellie. Thank you.” She curtsied to Mr. Smith. “Let’s find my gramo. She can give consent. Nellie has to finish her porridge-making.”
Fabritus opened the door and touched his hand to the small of her back as she passed before him, a touch as brief yet pleasant as the watching of a falling star. She didn’t want the sensation to ever end. She had found her focus, the hearth of her heart, and Fabritus Smith stood at the warming fire beside her.
29
Six and One-Quarter Cents
So what could Tabby do in this Salem town to keep John and Nellie and herself from returning to starvation, or worse, dependence? The question never left her, not while she scrubbed the Robertses’ floor or brushed out Nellie’s long hair or listened to John play the violin. Today these thoughts came as she headed toward a cabin that Reverend Roberts said acted as a mercantile, “though he has little on his shelves.” She liked to walk along the river and had learned not to hunch her shoulders against the soft rain. It only gave one a sore neck and didn’t keep her from getting wet. Funny, this Oregon mist. It mostly beaded up on fur hats she saw men wear or on her own wool shawl. This February morning, rain stayed at bay while wildflowers small as baby tongues pushed up through black soil. She passed by a group of round-faced Indian women working hides near the river. Beyond, ducks quacked at their intrusion. She wondered if any of the women had been part of the group who had rented them horses after they left the Pringle wagons behind. Virgil and his sons had gone back to retrieve those wagons. She looked at each face, smiled, but she couldn’t distinguish their round faces, one from another. She’d need more time with them to see the uniqueness of each. It wasn’t the noblest thought, but strangers were like chickens to her: they all looked alike until you got to know them.
What were the occupations available to a woman who would turn sixty-seven years old on May first? A newspaper called the Spectator fed the territory, and she might talk with the publisher about setting type or even writing a piece now and then. But newspapers operated on the edge, as she well knew, and would have little for payment to their workers. Besides, it was published in a town farther away, and she didn’t plan to move to another city again, having found this resting place. She might teach, in the spring, but there were plenty of younger men and women, former missionaries, trained for that as well. Her prayers held a constant plea for what she was supposed to do. The story of the Hebrews and their manna being provided daily always rose in her mind. They’d had just enough. If one hoarded, it spoiled. They were given sustenance for one day, meant to put their trust in God. She sighed. She’d already posed the idea of keeping the Roberts household running, cooking and cleaning, in return for their room and board, but she needed something that might bring in currency so she could move forward into . . . what? She didn’t know.
At the trading post she waited for the owner to exchange the cornmeal that Reverend Roberts had received as payment for wheat flour. Then they’d barter about how much each was worth. She didn’t like that part of commerce here in this Oregon country. Very annoying and time consuming. The trader seemed to take especially long this morning getting himself ready for commerce, tying his apron around his back, wiping off the plank counter.
Patience. Patience was the voice of reason in that classic poem of John Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent.” She had not thought of that poem for years. Clark had liked it. Milton had the full confidence of his employer, making his way up the social ladder. Then he’d lost his sight and wondered about his worth in serving both his employer and God. In the poem, Patience reminded Milton, “Who best bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best.” Patience finished with “They serve who only stand and wait.” Tabby guessed that she was fortunate to stand at all. She needed to remember Patience.
She tapped her gloved finger on the counter, patience having stepped aside. She again felt that object stuck in the tip of her ring finger. It needed to come out. This was as good a time as any to turn that glove inside out and free the pebble or button or whatever it was. As though kneading a tiny roll of dough, she massaged the irritant down the glove finger, niggling at its resistance. Weren’t we all like that? Resisting old habits, not wanting to be pushed out old channels and into the wide unknown world?
The irritant dropped on the wooden counter with a ping. Tabby adjusted her round glasses. A coin? Yes, it was! A six-and-a-quarter-cent piece, so tiny and worn she couldn’t make out the image pressed into the copper. Currency. How long had it been there? Years? It might have somehow gotten in there even before she married Clark. Oh, wouldn’t he laugh to know that she’d carried something of her former life—lives—into this new land that everyone touted as full of hope and opportunity. A gift from the past, but also, a gift from Providence.
“Is that a coin?” The trader leaned over. “See so few of these. Our coinage here is trade for salmon, wheat, horses, occasional gold dust, and beaver hides. Soft gold we call it. And cornmeal for wheat. But here ’tis this.” He motioned, asking if he could pick it up. “Here is coinage. One day I’ll hope to see such in this neck of the woods. I tire of the constant haggling over value.”
“Can I buy six needles with it?”
He blinked. “Six? Hmm. What about one?”
“Five?” Tabby offered.
“Two.”
“Four.”
He pulled on his beard. “Three.”
“Done.”
Tabby left the shop with her needles and wheat flour. She stopped where the Indian women worked their hides and there had a moment of insight. They must have other buckskins, already soft and ready to sew. She hurried back to the parsonage. “Nellie, let’s find what old clothes we might rid ourselves of.”
“You don’t have much, Mother Brown.” But they found two calico dresses, faded and worn. A lace collar, a knitted shawl, and her finest black dress she’d refused to part with back on the trail. She’d worn it after Clark had died. Now was the time to put it into better service. They put the clothes into one of Mary’s baskets.
“Come with me.”
It was amazing how the mind worked. From darkness, light.
She had no idea what the hides were worth but wanted to be fair. And then there was the matter of being able to negotiate to get what one really wanted. “Does anyone here speak English?”
“A-mer-i-can.” A round-faced woman spoke. When Tabby nodded, she touched her chest. Her dark eyes shone clear as fine crystal.
“Would you consider trading these clothes for three of your tanned hides?” She motioned toward the basket Nellie held, then the buckskins they worked on.
The woman shook her head. Tabby paused. She held up two fingers. “Two?”
The woman said something to the others, who rose and huddled around the clothing, pulling from the basket, holding the items up to their chins, giggling. “Two.”
“Done!”
Tabby collected her precious purchases, her mind full of possibilities, wondering if she’d see that black dress torn into strips to decorate a horse’s mane or sewn onto a child’s dress, ribbons fluttering in the breeze. Nellie carried the hides, soft as butter, in the basket. Trust in the manna. Why did she ever doubt?
Homes had to be protected from threats, Pherne knew, weeds and vines cut back often or they’d creep in and take over. Living inside someone else’s space proved daunting. Little adjustments she might make in her own home would be intrusive inside someone else’s. Oh, the Matthews family was kind indeed, and Pherne and the girls worked hard to assist, but Sarelia dropped and broke a gold-rimmed teacup and Emma ate the last of a chunk of biscuit that Mrs. Matthews said she’d planned to use for stuffing the chicken they’d have for supper. “I’ll have to bake more,” Mrs. Matthews said through gritted teeth. They used up the Matthewses’ soap doing laundry, had nothing to share to lighten the load. A person given shelter and sustenance needed a way to rep
ay it, to carry her own weight. Preparing meals and watching over young ones was hardly a fair exchange.
And there were other threats to creating a home: the long wait in getting to where they had intended all those months ago, the delay moving toward the new lives of prosperity that Virgil had touted before they left. Yes, she’d made her peace with leaving all behind in Missouri, but she felt like one foot was stuck in tar and all she could do was twist in circles, keeping her in one place. She watched Virgilia fall in love, heard her boys make plans to claim their own boundaries. Even Albro, who at thirteen didn’t always ride out with his father and brothers, rather spending more time at the livery. He traded his labor not only for his place to sleep but for his brothers’ bed and board until he could come home. Except that they had no home.
Spring came early at this Salem place. Pherne watched while Virgil, Captain John, and the boys left in the mornings, still identifying the exact acreage they wanted to claim. Six hundred and forty acres was much to manage and Virgil hoped to find land that had a mix of both timber and prairie. The former would be cut for buildings or for sale; the latter, tilled for crops or to act as grazing for their cows and sheep. He’d traded the wagon they’d gone back for, for seed, and wanted to get it in “their ground” as soon as he could.
It was late March and the weather perfection. It had rained only at night and the days were filled with clouds that dotted like white notes across a sketching pad of blue. Virgilia looked after the younger girls, and her sons all rode off with their father, so Pherne had time to explore, praying as she walked. This day, Buddy trotted beside her. His bad leg kept him closer to her more now, his hound ears nearly dragging the ground as he sniffed in this new land. She was glad for the company.
She’d missed that old cabin at first, buried as it was in a thicket of brambles and brush on the outskirts of town. Buddy had startled after a rabbit and she’d left the path to follow him and found an area with foliage like a rock wall that ran for several hundred yards. It must mean a stream wasn’t far away, or a spring. She’d called Buddy back, then pulled the twigs and dead leaves off his furry back while he panted. A few brambles later, blackberry canes torn aside, there stood the cabin.
She’d sketched the house the next time, drawing the perimeter as she could see it tangled as it was with blackberry vines. She rubbed with her finger to make the foliage of the oak tree that shaded over it. She’d looked at the drawing now and then, wondering about the cabin’s history. Over a meal she helped serve one evening, she asked Mr. Matthews if he knew of the house, and he nodded, said the people had come and gone before his time, though he’d only come out in ’43. No one owned it, he thought. “Might have been someone with Hudson’s Bay had it built for wintering over. Or maybe one of the Methodist missionaries who came by ship and they’ve returned home.”
The next day she brought with her a big knife that Mr. Matthews kept out in his barn. She began to hack and pull and tear while Buddy’s tail wagged, his nose stuck into vines.
The hard work broke a sweat in her and she realized it felt good to have her body engaged in physical effort. Not that there wasn’t work in doing laundry or making soap. She hadn’t given that activity much value. But there was mystery in this work, wondering what she’d uncover. Perhaps that was why Virgil took so much pleasure in looking for “their land.” He was careful to always include her in the outcome, saying “we” and “our” with frequency. She was grateful for that. It would be “their land” when he made the claim, but this discovery felt different. He liked exploring, and she found she did too, though this was “her” cabin, at least for now.
She wiped her forehead with her forearm. Leather gloves would be a welcome protection as she pulled and chopped, but gloves were a premium in this country and expensive if one could find them at all. Was that the doorway? She’d thought it was a window. Branches brushed her cheeks as she stepped inside.
It was dark and smelled of animal scat, dead leaves, and dirt. Her eyes adjusted to the pale light slipping past foliage that blocked the two windows, warbled glass still intact. The puncheon floor creaked as she crossed it. The wood meant someone had taken great care. She wondered if the people who had built it had become too ill to keep back the growth or if they’d lost hope and left. Nothing hung on the walls. They hadn’t departed in haste, as the cabin was bare . . . except for a canvas covering objects in the center. Her eyes adjusted to the light, she moved toward the covered pile. She pulled at the tarp, hoping she wouldn’t hear mice scattering or uncover a snake. As the canvas slipped to the floor, she stepped back and gasped, her hands reached for the absent locket.
“It’s meant for us,” she told Virgil that evening. “You have to come and see.”
“We’ll soon have land, Phernie. Can’t you be patient at the Matthewses’? I hate to move us from there to a place, what, at the edge of the village with nothing in it?”
“That’s what I want you to see. I know I can make it into a home. It will free you up to work the land, not worry over a structure for us. It’s meant to be ours, it is.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Come with me tomorrow and I’ll show you.”
“Don’t get the children’s hopes up. The land I want is a good ride from here. We’d be better to build on that.”
“Yes. But that won’t happen this season and won’t need to. Trust me. You’ll see.”
In the end, they took the children too.
“Close your eyes, Virgil. You children wait outside.”
She led her husband through the doorway she’d cleared even further of tangles and vines. She brought him to the center of the room where she’d replaced the wagon cover over the objects that had taken her breath away. “Ready?” Virgil nodded. She whisked away the cover. “Open your eyes.” He blinked, then opened his mouth in an O of surprise. “Do you have any doubt that this house is to be in our lives?”
Before them stood four harp-back chairs set around a Federalist table. Twins to the very chairs and table they’d had to leave behind.
Gramo sewed gloves. Whenever Virgilia and her sisters and mother went to visit, her gramo was hunched over, cutting or stitching. When Virgilia thought of it, she couldn’t remember a time when her gramo wasn’t engaged in some pursuit. She was never idle except when she napped. Here in Oregon, she’d seen little of such napping as she had back in Missouri. None of them had much time for idle dreaming.
“Got some sinew from one of the deer hides your father shot and it works as thread,” her gramo told her. “Tough and a little rough for seams but men like having watertight gloves. The trader says he’ll take all I can make. Here, you sit, you can help. I’ve got several laid out. It’s my route toward independence. When I sell these, I’ll have made thirty dollars above my board. Imagine that. Thirty dollars.”
“I thought you were looking after the Roberts house in exchange for board?” Virgilia’s mother picked up one of the needles.
Gramo pursed her lips. “We all thought it better that we remain friends and that would be best by my finding a boardinghouse. It was a mutual parting of the ways, though my leaving Beatrice behind was no small matter. The boardinghouse wasn’t interested in a chicken kept in the room.” She cheered herself and changed the subject. “We are planning a trip together, to the ocean, me and the Robertses. Nellie and Beatrice too. Besides, it takes so much of my time making gloves, I hardly had time to do the necessary cleaning and cooking for the reverend.” She shook her head. “My, my, but Mary does need help. I’m not the one to give it forever. John’s off looking for land, though how he’ll ever farm it I can’t imagine. He’s better off resting at the boardinghouse or telling his sailing tales to new listeners at the saloon, where he assures me he drinks only the good water of this Oregon country.”
“Where’s Nellie?” Virgilia looked around.
“She’s washing dishes, hoping Judson comes back for her before too long. She’s had no letters, but I’m not sure
the boy is literate. A lapse on my part, not knowing that. I could have taught him on the trail. And how are you and Mr. Smith getting on?”
“She’s in lo-o-o-ve,” Emma crooned. Sarelia giggled.
Virgilia felt her face grow hot. “You two go outside.” They giggled more but followed their big sister’s order.
She didn’t want to talk about Fabritus in front of her sisters or her mother or grandmother either. And yet she wanted to tell the world. This was the strangest time she’d ever known. Whether she spoke of him or not, everyone seemed to see how much he meant to her and teased, as Emma did.
“Her father and I approve,” her mother said. “He has a plan, that young man. Anyone named for a painter can’t be bad.” She patted Virgilia’s hand.
Virgilia decided that the glove she stitched needed her full attention. Emma and Sarelia spoke loudly about slugs, as locals called the slimy fat worms who appeared from the soil like bees to a swarm. The girls sat on stumps used for chairs outside the boardinghouse door. Her mother and grandmother chatted on about Gramo’s pending trip to the sea.
Yes, Fabritus did have a plan. He’d gone that very week to register his claim in Oregon City and told her he’d begin as soon as he could to clear the ground. Planting must precede everything else so he could one day support her. He had apple starts to nurture.
He hadn’t actually proposed, just told her about his plans and then that promise to “one day support her.” Until this journey west, she hadn’t thought much about what it took to support another, to keep alive, find ways to sustain a family, and perhaps one day prosper beyond what her own family had done. She couldn’t help but remember their comfortable life back in Missouri where they wanted for nothing, where books could be loaned out, read and returned, and necessities and luxuries purchased off supply ships sent down the Missouri from the East.
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