The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

by J. Anderson Coats

  I frown. “Indians speak different languages?”

  “You’ve studied geography, haven’t you? You know where Europe is, that it’s made up of lots of different countries. Do all the people there speak European?”

  “Of course not.” I loved the big, colorful map Miss Bradley would have two of us hold up and the long pointer she’d use when we’d name the countries. “They speak French and Spanish and Italian and . . . oh.”

  “Just so with Indians,” Mr. W says. “Sometimes the languages are alike. Sometimes they’re not. The nice thing about Chinook is that everyone knows some of it, so we can get what we need from one another. Come, let’s go help Mrs. Wright with the supplies.”

  He grins big and silly when he says Mrs. Wright. It makes me smile too, even if I can’t think of her as anything but Mrs. D.

  Mr. Pinkham’s shop boy has piled all our goods on a contraption that looks like the sled I had at the farmhouse. This sled has long poles that stretch from the slats straight out, like they’re meant for a horse or a donkey to get harnessed there.

  Only there’s no horse or donkey nearby.

  Mr. W stations himself between the poles like he’s the donkey. Maybe he’s showing off for Mrs. D, since it’s silly to cart our goods this way or any way when we could easily have the shop boy deliver them.

  “Where’s your house?” I put a hand to my eyes and peer north, where Evie said everyone lives.

  “You’re going to want to put your boots on, Jane,” Mr. W says. “We’ve got a bit of a walk in front of us.”

  16

  WE HEAD UP THE MILL road that leads away from Mr. Yesler’s wharf straight up the hill. The houses thin out on my left, the stores disappear on my right, and nothing’s ahead but a whole lot of cedar.

  The trees are taller than anything I could have imagined from Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet that mentions them only as lumber, tidy and milled and piled on a wharf to sell. It’s hard to see how these trees could ever be reduced to lumber. Not when they’re so big around you couldn’t hug them with your fingers touching. Not when they’re living and towering and hiding any number of bears or wolves or cougars or who knows what else.

  Calling the mill road a road once we’re fifty steps beyond the Occidental is a lie. As the sawdust fades, it turns into a sloppy river of mud with log skids wedged across it every ten feet or so.

  Mrs. D will put a stop to this. Any moment now she’ll kick up a huge, ever-loving fuss. Screech screech I won’t tolerate this walking ugh my hem is a mess we will go back to town this instant and get a decent house made of milled boards.

  She doesn’t, though. She shoulders her carpetbag and walks in front of Mr. W, who’s straining to pull the sled heaped with our trunk and all the things we bought from Mr. Pinkham. I bring up the rear, making sure Jer is in sight somewhere ahead of me. He’s having a merry time striding through the tall grass and picking wildflowers and flinging them at me by the handful.

  Toward the top of the hill the skids fade out, and what’s left is a path that’s been made just by people walking in the same place again and again. The ground underfoot is worn down to packed dirt, and the weeds grow up tall on either side.

  The trees close in. Thick and tall and endless. Pretty soon even the sound of Mr. Yesler’s mill fades away.

  “Sir?” I venture. “Where are we going?”

  “Home,” Mr. W says. “Also . . . perhaps you could call me something other than sir.”

  One of the first things Mrs. D said to me after she and Papa got married was that under no circumstances should I ever call her Mother or Mama or anything like that. She said it made her feel positively ancient, and besides, she wasn’t my proper mother. She never did say what I should call her, so I say ma’am because calling her Mrs. Deming makes me feel like a mill girl or a parlormaid. Like she’s my employer somehow and not a relation who’s supposed to take care of me.

  “Like what?” I ask him.

  Mr. W pulls a rag from his pocket and mops his big, sweaty forehead. “I can’t expect Father. How about Uncle Charlie?”

  “All right,” I say, because I plan to avoid calling him anything at all. Not that I don’t like him. I do, the way you like a pretty sunset or a cool drink of lemonade. When I woke up this morning, he was a friendly bachelor who told funny stories and kept jerky in his pockets.

  Now we’ll all be living in his house.

  It’s afternoon when we emerge onto a flat beach made of small rocks that slopes down to a shimmering stretch of water. Across the water is yet another wall of timber stretching north and south and endless. There’s a canoe pulled up on the beach, wide in the middle and pointed at both ends like the ones Indians use. Mr. W pulls the sled over the rocks toward it.

  This is not a bit of a walk.

  “All righty, ladies and Jer,” Mr. W says cheerfully. “Let’s load up the canoe. We’ll be home before you know it.”

  There’s no sound here but the lap-lap of water and the shuff-rustle of wind in the trees and Jer’s whooping as he rushes down to the waterline and scares a flock of gulls. The water and the rock-beach and the stillness are not in any way pretty—striking is a better word. It’s the sort of thing that ought to be in Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet. A chapter on Sportsman’s Paradise or Majestic Scenery, maybe, and it wouldn’t need improvement or correction.

  But over my shoulder is the trodden path that leads back to Seattle and its half-dozen roads and stores and hotels and Indian women selling things made from woven wood and everyone speaking a made-up language that belongs to everyone and no one all at once.

  All my friends, too. My Continental friends and my Seattle friends. All of us together.

  “Ready, Jane?” Mr. W stands next to the canoe. Mrs. D is already sitting in the middle, holding Jer on her lap. Our things are piled around her, some before and some behind. He’s even dismantled the sled and packed it along the sides. There’s a space at the front where Mr. W is pointing. “Off we go!”

  Mr. W whistles as he paddles. The canoe looks like it would be shaky, but it glides steadily as we move across the lake. The sky is a pale gray, as un-Mediterranean as a thing can be, and the wind is bitter and cutting even though it’s blasted June.

  “What’s the place called?” I ask Mr. W. “Where you live?”

  “Where we live,” Mr. W says in that irritatingly cheerful voice. “It doesn’t have a name. Hardly anyone lives there. Seattle folk call it the Eastside, because it’s on the east side of the lake.”

  “So . . . there’s no town,” I say.

  “Heavens no!” Mr. W chuckles as if I suggested the president would be there.

  Now Mrs. D will get angry. Screech screech four thousand miles unacceptable how dare you drag me into the wilderness.

  She’s not even scowling, though. All right, she is scowling, but that’s because Jer won’t stop fussing for a bite to eat or a turn at paddling or Hoss.

  That means she knew. She knew marrying Mr. W meant we wouldn’t be staying where there were roads and stores and friends.

  We paddle past the tree-spiky piece of land to starboard. Mr. W says it’s an island where Indians fish and not the Eastside where we’re going. I peer for a wharf or a dock or a gravel beach, but there’s none to be seen. Just cedars and water and the odd bird winging overhead. We get closer to the shore, and the trees are so tall they feel fragile, like the smallest gust could knock them down.

  “Here we are!” Mr. W glides the canoe up to a platform of wide stumps that stick out of the water about the length of my forearm. They’re clustered so tightly they form something of a landing. He climbs out of the canoe and strings a length of rope across the stump dock and well into the trees beyond.

  “All secured,” Mr. W says when he returns. “Let me carry Jer up to dry land.”

  While Mrs. D hands Jer over, I crawl out of the canoe. It bumps and wavers against the dock, and the water below looks bleak and cold. The stumps are mushy underfoot, and all at once I wonder how far
down they go. If they’re sturdy enough to trust.

  “Too high! No up! Daney! Daney!”

  I hurry across the landing and scrabble up the slippery, cedary bank. Jer has been sat on a stump that’s as high as my waist. He’s stiff with terror and red from squalling.

  “Come now, Jer, you’re all right.” I help him off the stump.

  “If you let him down, watch him, got that?” Mr. W says over his shoulder. “The shoreline here is treacherous. There are places where you can fall straight through, places that look like they’d be all right to stand on. I put him up there so we could unload without worrying about him getting trapped under some roots.”

  And drowning, he means, but thankfully doesn’t say.

  I turn to Jer and tell him, “You don’t have to be on the stump if you sit right here next to it and don’t move. Play with Hoss while we get things out of the canoe. If you move, I’ll put you up there again. Savvy?”

  “No up,” Jer repeats, shaking his head firmly. “Daney, hold you.”

  “I can’t hold you, Jer,” I reply. “I’ve got to help unload. You need to sit down now.”

  “Hold you, Daney!” Jer shrieks, loud enough to bring Mr. W clumping over and fumbling in his pockets and looking annoyed.

  I make a fist like Nell showed me and stay between him and Jer.

  Mr. W kneels and pulls out a little wooden animal and holds it up without a word. Jer stops howling and peers first at the toy, then at Mr. W.

  “It’s a bear,” Mr. W says to him. “It’s for you, but only if you sit here and play with it while your sister helps with the load.”

  The bear isn’t as cleverly carved as Hoss, but I grin outright at its round, furry rump and slightly crossed eyes. I thought Mr. W had forgotten all about those toys he was making for us.

  Jer takes the bear and plunks down beside the stump. He neighs and beams and holds it up. “Hoss, Daney. Other Hoss.”

  “If you say so,” I reply, because it doesn’t do any good to argue with a little kid. Or maybe Jer thinks every wooden toy is a horse. Maybe he’ll think my fish is a horse too.

  “Charles, I need your help with this!” Mrs. D is struggling with a sack of meal, so Mr. W hauls it up for her. He makes trip after trip, puffing and wheezing to get the heaviest things up the bank and onto dry ground.

  His pockets look empty.

  I’ll ask. I’ll just come out and say it, like Miss Gower would.

  But it’ll be awful if there’s no fish. Maybe Mr. W didn’t have time. Or he decided I didn’t need one. Or he just forgot. He’ll mutter something and turn red and I’ll be the one who’ll look the fool with my hand out for some baby toy I don’t even need.

  “Jane, you’re in the way!” Mrs. D snaps. “Stop your woolgathering and help with these bags!”

  So I do. I carry bag after bag and pile them on the bank while Jer gallops Other Hoss around and makes a saddle for him out of leaves. By the time we’re done, I can’t think how to ask without sounding greedy or selfish or babyish.

  We get everything unloaded from the canoe, but Mr. W’s sled won’t work here to carry things, because there’s no road. There’s nothing but timber in every direction, and a brushy undergrowth that would catch sled runners and overturn our belongings at every step.

  “We’ll carry what we can,” Mr. W says, “and I’ll come back for the rest once you’re settled in the cabin.”

  We get most of the dry goods into carpetbags and rucksacks. Even Jer is carrying a bag of beans with one hand and his new toy in the other. Our trunk must stay, as well as the pile of blankets and a jug of molasses.

  “Will these things be safe?” I ask. “No one will take them, right? Animals won’t get to it?”

  I give him a hopeful Look.

  Mr. W shoulders his load. He’s carrying three times what anyone else is, and his cheeks are already pink. “We didn’t leave anything animals would care about. As for people, Indians don’t come here much because the fishing’s better other places, and the nearest white people are busy digging coal down in Coal Creek.”

  “So . . . we’re alone here.” I can’t keep the disappointment out of my voice, and it’s not just because my friends are clear across the lake.

  “Not in the slightest!” Mr. W grins. “We’ve got each other.”

  It might be all of us together, but we are not a we. You can’t fling strangers into close quarters and expect them to knit into a family just like that.

  Just because this is our only choice doesn’t make it a good one.

  The cabin sits in a clearing, small and square like something out of Mr. Grimm’s stories. It’s made of stacked-up logs crossed at the corners with mud mashed in the cracks. There are wooden shingles on the roof and a chimney made of smooth, round rocks.

  After all the mud and ramshackle white-painted shanties in Seattle, an honest-to-goodness outpost of civilization on the fringe of a brand-new territory, I didn’t expect a homestead cabin out back of the beyond to be so . . . tidy.

  The cabin is a single room, with a hulking black stove opposite the front door and windows at either end covered by wooden shutters. On one side of the room is a big bed and on the other is a set of bunk beds like on the Continental. There’s also a table with a red cloth and a bench near the hearth. On the wall by the fireplace, there’s a shelf with crockery containers that look like they’re supposed to hold dry goods.

  Not exactly a banker’s mansion, but even Mrs. D can’t find fault with how it’s kept.

  Mr. W puts down his load and builds a fire. Once the stove is busy and crackling, the whole cabin feels more comfortable. More like a home. Mrs. D takes the crockery containers off the shelf and examines them one by one. The biggest has a dusting of cornmeal at the bottom. Then flour, and finally sugar.

  “Daney!” Jer tugs my skirt. “I seed a wabbit! It dere. By da path.”

  “Go see if you can catch it,” Mr. W says. “It would make a tasty supper.”

  Jer furrows his brow. “I . . . can go?”

  “Charles . . . ,” Mrs. D says at the same time I ask, “it’s safe, right?”

  “Perfectly safe as long as he stays in the clearing,” Mr. W says. “We discussed this, Rose. This isn’t Lowell, Massachusetts. They must learn how to be on the Pacific coast. Both of them.”

  Mrs. D swallows. Then she nods.

  Both of them. That means me, too.

  I’ve read Mr. Mercer’s stupid pamphlet back to front and it’s nothing but lies. I did know how to be on the Pacific coast, until the Pacific coast was nothing like how it was supposed to be.

  Mr. W crouches so he’s at Jer’s eye level. “Go see if you can catch that rabbit, but stay in the clearing. Hear?”

  Jer looks at us. Mrs. D fidgets with the crockery lids, but I nod and smile. So he toddles outside, looking back every few steps. He edges out farther and farther till he finds a stick he can hit things with. Then something on the ground catches his eye, and he bends down for a better look.

  I wait for Jane, go mind your brother, but Mrs. D unpacks the tea and butter in choppy, tight motions, like she needs something to busy her hands. Mr. W touches her elbow in a very small embrace, then picks up a bucket and heads outside.

  Jer is happy out there all alone.

  I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I pick up a bag of beans, but Mrs. D pulls it away.

  “For heaven’s sake, Jane, I’m trying to work here. Shoo!”

  “You . . . don’t want my help?” I ask, because it’s like she started talking at me in Chinook.

  “Not right this moment,” she says. “Once everything is put away . . . maybe. For now . . . I don’t know, go learn to be here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Like there can be anything worth learning amidst nothing but timber.

  I go outside and sit against the cabin. Jer’s happily jumping on and off a stump near the edge of the clearing, waving his stick around. I almost call him over and ask if he wants to play. Inst
ead, I pull out my ragpaper book and my stub of a pencil.

  It will need chapters if it’s to be a proper pamphlet. Trade and Industry are right out, as are Roads and Civil Government.

  The Lake, then. That’s my first chapter. It’s what’s keeping me from my friends. It’s what’s keeping me from what little I had gotten to know.

  The shoreline cannot be trusted, I write. If you don’t know where to step, you could drown.

  Mr. W brings the bucket full of water into the cabin, then starts toward the path we came up. When he spots me, he pauses. “There are still things to put away. Did Mrs. Wright set you another task?”

  I shrug. This is Mrs. D’s hearth. What she’s been aiming for and planning for since that day all those months ago when the farmhouse got foreclosed on and we were turned out in the road. Now that she’s got it, she wants to rule it all alone.

  Mr. W squints at me. “Come, let me show you the place before I get the rest of our things.”

  We start at the well, and Mr. W shows me how to lift and lower the wooden cover. There’s a henhouse and six surly hens wandering the clearing. Mr. W tells me each of their names and explains they’ll be in a better humor in a few days, once they get over being angry at him for penning them up while he was away fetching us.

  There’s a half-finished stable that Mr. W says he’d like to put a goat in someday, or even a milking cow if he can think of a way to get her in his canoe. He says it with a wink, so I know he’s joking about the canoe part, but since cows can’t swim, we’re not likely to get one anytime soon.

  Behind the house, facing south, is the garden. Mr. W holds both arms out like he’s giving it a hug. The dug-up ground behind the deer fence is all in greening rows, and I recognize some of the vegetable tops from the farmhouse garden. There’s squash in one big patch, and some beets and lettuce. Next to it is a wooden trough full of water and a scarecrow.