Miss Gower might have felt sorry for me, but maybe she felt angry for me too.
Soon, I spot a plume of red hanging on a tree. When I get closer, I recognize not only the stump dock, but the pattern of the cedars to the right of it. I glide my canoe up to the dock and climb out, then tie up far in the woods like Dad says to.
I stand on the dock and press my throbbing hands against my throbbing back.
I didn’t get lost. I didn’t fall in.
My canoe has changed everything.
It’s also changed nothing.
Or maybe my canoe is like Miss Gower. It will give me a way to change everything. Just not the way I expected, and not without putting in the work.
I put on my britches and hang my gown on its peg, then I find my hatchet and join Dad in the clearing where he’s grubbing a stump.
“You’re back early,” he says. “Everything go all right?”
“I got the flour and oatmeal, just like you asked.”
“You didn’t need to hurry back.” Dad pulls out a few pieces of charred stump and tosses them aside. “You might have passed some time with your friends.”
“I couldn’t. They were all in school.” I kneel and help pry stump chunks. “Dad?”
Dad smiles all silly, just like he does when he says Mrs. Wright.
“School costs three dollars, and I know that’s a lot of money, but may I go? A new session’s starting soon.”
Dad sits back on his heels and scrubs a handkerchief over his shiny forehead. “May you? I think you ought to. I never had much schooling myself. Being ignorant makes you powerless. You’ve got to place a lot of trust in anyone with more learning than you.”
Like if you can’t cipher and you need to reckon a debt. Like if you have to hit a sailor and you don’t know to aim for his windpipe.
Papa wanted me to earn a leaving certificate because when you educate a woman, you educate a family. Dad is like Miss Gower—he would have me prevail.
“Can you?” Dad sighs. “If I had the money, it’d be yours. I spent what was left of my Fraser River savings on your boarding bill at the Occidental, though, and I owe Albert Pinkham for at least six months’ worth of dry goods.”
I hate money. I hate that everything has to cost, and I hate that it costs everyone the same when there are jobs for boys but not girls and pennypinchers charge high rent for a schoolroom.
“It’s a long way to pull a canoe every day,” Dad goes on. “Money aside, the trip would be hard on you. Soon enough it’ll be raining all the time. You’ll be drenched and muddy before you even step foot in the classroom.”
I recite the reflection I wrote last week in the privy while waiting for a break in the sheeting, endless rain so I could get back to the cabin without being half-drowned.
“If you always wait for fair weather, you’ll never get anything done.”
Mr. W laughs, abrupt and unplanned. “You’re definitely learning to be on the Pacific coast.”
“So, I can go to school?” I press.
“We should talk it over with Mrs. Wright,” he says, and this time he doesn’t get all giggly. “It’s got to do with money we don’t have, and it’s got to do with you.”
I want to tell him not to bother. That I know what she’s going to say. School’s got nothing left to teach you, Jane. These dishes won’t wash themselves, Jane.
Just like Lowell.
Only it’s not. This time, a grown-up is taking my side.
Jer and I are turned out of the cabin while Dad and Mrs. D talk it over. It’s nice to play with Jer again. We play hide-and-seek and jump off stumps. We eat the wild salmonberries that weigh down the bushes along the edge of the clearing and stain our hands bright red. When we’re stuffed, we fill a dishcloth with them, so I can make a crumble once I’m allowed back in the house.
It’s forever before the door opens and Dad steps outside. “Mrs. Wright and I agree you may go to school if you keep up with your chores and find a way to pay the teacher yourself.”
Then he sighs, runs a hand through his small bit of hair, and heads toward the trail that leads down to the long bank.
At supper Mrs. D talks only when she has to, and it’s things like please pass the wapatos and Jer, use your fork.
It’s three days before she says a single thing to me: Don’t think this gets you out of the dishes, miss. Her voice is all warpy, like she’s been crying.
At Ida’s wedding I make sure to stand next to Nettie Baker and find out when her school is starting. Nell’s lavender muslin gown fits me better than I thought it would and reminds me I’ll need a new dress for school, since showing up in my torn green rag will doubtless be frowned on.
Dad is a wreck with Mrs. D being mad at him. He brings her wildflowers and spends a whole afternoon putting a flagstone in front of the privy instead of checking the traps, but she stays angry.
“She’ll come around,” Dad says wearily as we watch Jer beat the bushes for rabbits on the evening before the first day of school. “Don’t worry. Just go and study hard.”
Now I almost don’t want to go. I’m not sure what I’ll come back to.
Only, I do. The cabin will be here. The long bank will be here. Dad will be here. No one puts this much time and sweat into something and just turns his back on it.
Maybe Mrs. D sees that too.
So, the next day I’m up at barely-dawn and pulling toward the camp landing in my dress that doesn’t fit and a thirdhand pair of boys’ loggingman boots. I’ve got a bucket of salmonberries and three eggs tied up in my handkerchief. They’re not worth three dollars, but I’ll just keep bringing Nettie things till she says it’s enough.
There’s only so many ways I can improve myself on the Eastside. Only I wouldn’t be here to broaden my mind with school if no one taught me to make a canoe or if I hadn’t figured out where the best berries are.
Halfway up Third Avenue, I hear Nettie ringing the bell from the steps of the main university building. Kids are filing in, and I hurry to join them. Evie and Jenny take my elbows and pretend to get us stuck in the door as we walk in like they don’t notice my dress is wet from the knees down where I knelt in my canoe.
There’s a blackboard at the front of the room, maps hanging on the walls, and desks set up in rows with a space between to separate boys from girls. There’s a big stove in the middle with cedar stacked up tidy around it. Nettie is buttoned-up perfect like Miss Gower and smiling like Miss Bradley.
Evie, Inez, and I sit in the same row. Madge is in front of us and Jenny is behind.
It’s not schoolhouses on every corner, and I might be damp and slightly bedraggled, but I did my own pulling. I did my own berrying.
I am no one’s poor dear.
The first week goes so well, I’m a bit sad when it’s Friday. Saturday is nice because Dad and I take Jer down to the long bank to smoke fish with Lawrence and give Mrs. D some time to herself. Dad carries Jer on his shoulders, and I swing the bucket of salt and sing “Haul on the Bowline” like the deckhands on the Continental taught me and try to forget why she’s so angry.
Mrs. D doesn’t believe Papa wanted me to get a leaving certificate. She says things like he married me, didn’t he?
Or rather, she used to. Back when she was still speaking to any of us.
I boil four of our nicest eggs and collect a healthy pailful of salmonberries for Miss Baker for the week. I pack it all careful and tuck a handkerchief over it to keep out lake water and bugs.
On Monday I make sure I get to school well before the bell, and I march up to Miss Baker’s desk and proudly hold out the pail. “Here you are, ma’am!”
Miss Baker takes it, but her smile falters when she shifts the handkerchief. “Oh. Berries.”
“Is something wrong with them?” I ask. “They didn’t get smashed, did they?”
“No . . .” Miss Baker replaces the cloth and sets the pail on the floor. “Jane, honey. I . . . ah . . . haven’t finished the berries you brought last week.�
��
“Oh.” I frown at the heaping bucket. “Can’t you make a pie or something?”
“I did. Two, in fact.”
The classroom is starting to fill up. Madge and Inez come in with Evie close behind, and I give them a little half wave because I planned to hand my week’s tuition to Miss Baker before they were here to see me do it.
Miss Baker gestures me closer and lowers her voice. “These must go home with you. It’s not fair to the others. You needn’t pay your tuition all at once, but if you plan to stay—and I hope you do—I’ll need some earnest money before the end of the month. At least a dollar. In coins.”
The pair of socks I’m working on is barely a quarter done. All the storekeepers have more eggs than they know what to do with. Dad just traded our pile of pelts to Mr. Pinkham to pay the reckoning and get Mrs. D her calico.
“Yes, ma’am,” I whisper, but it comes out all blubbery because I may or may not be crying in front of the whole class.
“I’m sorry, Jane. I really am.” Miss Baker hands me her handkerchief because mine is stiff with dried berry juice. “Unfortunately, my landlady insists on actual currency in exchange for board. Otherwise all our lives would be easier.”
My mind must be more shrinkened than I thought if I figured a pailful of stupid berries would be enough to pay an honest-to-goodness teacher, when Miss Gower handed me a dollar a week just to pretend.
I should have written this reflection long ago. The moment I learned the Washington Territory in Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet was too good to be true. The moment I realized there are people in the world who lie for profit.
If something’s not there to be had by anyone, you don’t wait around for a banker to save you. You don’t keep looking for palm trees. You don’t fool yourself that you’ll get a leaving certificate and keep a promise to a dead man.
You sit yourself quietly down with a simple, bitter truth. Sooner or later, you’ll have to open your hand and let the whole silly notion go.
23
THE DAY STARTS OUT ALL right, for a day where Mrs. D still looks through Dad when he tries to dump buckets for her or pretends he doesn’t want coffee so she can drink his share. For a day that’s numbered, because the end of the month is approaching and I still don’t have a coin to my name.
Telling Miss Baker will be hard. Telling Dad will be unbearable.
The sky is the color of dirty metal when I push away from the stump dock, and the wind off the lake cuts in a way it shouldn’t in September. The wind is off my port beam and I have to pull against it to the camp landing, and I’m wet clear through from the spray by the time I’ve beached the canoe.
Miss Baker has me switch seats with Gretchen Clyde so I can be near the stove.
By recess that awful misting rain is falling. A hard drizzle starts up after lunch, the kind that bounces off everything from the roof to the fence to the mud. When school’s out, the whole sky is open and Third Avenue is awash. Usually, the view’s pretty from the university’s porch, but today the bay is one long sheet of gray. You can’t even see Port Madison out in the distance for the fog.
Evie pulls up her hood and ties it tight. “You want to stay the night at my house, Jane?”
I do. I’m almost dry, and I’ll be drenched again even before I get to the camp landing. But if I can’t make it home in a little rain, Dad might decide that my canoe will need to be permanently stowed till next summer.
Besides, he’s probably had a long day of being ignored while I’ve been sitting with my friends at either elbow, in front of, and behind me.
“Thanks anyway,” I reply, “but I’d better not.”
I push off from the camp landing and start pulling, but the wind has picked up and it’s hard to stay on course. It’s too foggy for me to even make out the Indians’ fishing island, but I know where it ought to be. The rain drills down, and it’s hard to lift my arms in my wet cloak and dress.
Soon, I have to rest every ten strokes.
Then, every five strokes.
I can’t rest. I have to keep pulling so I can get home. Only, pulling doesn’t seem to work. Between the wind and the waves I might as well be anchored, and no amount of pulling’s going to change that.
I should have stayed with Evie. I could be drinking hot tea and eating buttered toast and sending Felicity on a secret mission to stop a jewel thief.
It’s going to be dark soon, and I can barely lift my arms. There’s water in the bottom of my canoe as deep as my thumb. I don’t know where I am. This might be only a lake, but it’s a big lake.
The canoe’s going to fill up. It’s going to sink. I don’t have the strength to right myself. Not now. Not soaking and sore.
Through the fog and wind-flung rain I can make out a spindly shape. It’s like a tall spider standing in shallow water.
A dock. A proper dock made of pilings.
A dock’s like a front door here on the lake. That’s what Dad told me before we made this canoe.
Sitting on the dock are two boys holding fishing poles. At least I think they’re boys. They look about my age, and they’re wearing sailors’ oilskins that in no way fit them, but that I suddenly envy because they must be warm and dry.
“Hey!” I call. “I’m lost! Can you help? Please?” Then I add, “Mahsie? Tsolo . . . um . . . house? Elehan?”
It’s terrible Chinook, but one boy hands his pole to the other and shouts, “Over here!”
I pull toward the dock. I could weep for how much easier it is with the wind at my back instead of my face. As I get closer, the boys put their poles down and kneel, ready to catch the canoe when I’m near enough.
Finally—finally—I bump up to the dock. The boys tie the canoe in a trice, and it flails and bobs against the pilings from the force of the storm. It’s all I can do to gather my sopping cloak about me and heave myself onto the boards.
“Oh, hey!” The taller boy is a little older than me, and he’s got bronzy skin like an Indian but it’s not as dark as most of the Indians’ I’ve seen. His hair is long and fluttery under his big hat, and he’s grinning like it’s Christmas morning. “You’re a girl!”
Any port in a storm, the deckhands on the Continental used to say, but right now I could very much do without Opinions on what girls should and shouldn’t do.
But the younger boy goes on, “You’ve got to come to our cabin. Will you? Please? Hannah—that’s our sister—Hannah hasn’t seen another girl or lady or anyone, really—except our granddad and us—since she came to take care of us, and she used to be in a school all for girls, and she’s sad because she misses them. The other girls. Not the school, though. She hated that place.”
“Can I . . . yes, I’m happy to meet your sister.” I swipe rain from my eyes. “I don’t want to impose, though.”
“Also, you should stay for dinner,” the older boy says, and just the thought of food sets me hurrying up the path behind him.
By the time we reach the boys’ cabin, I learn their name is Norley and that William just turned thirteen and Victor is ten. Their mama was an Indian and their dad was a white man and he got them this homestead claim and then both their parents died of a bad fever and Hannah had to be brought back from school to look after them, but even though they’re happy to see her, they really don’t need looking after because they’re doing well enough on their own proving up this homestead; just look at all that fence and those strips of land under plow and not a stump in sight thank you very much.
When Victor throws open the cabin door, chattering how he and William caught a strange fish, a girl about the same age as my Continental friends turns from the busy stove. She’s bronzy brown like her brothers, and her hair is braided and piled just like Nell’s.
I stand there helplessly dripping on her nice, clean floor. Too cold and stiff and bone-tired to even mind my manners.
“A strange fish, indeed!” Hannah crosses the room in three strides and pulls me toward the stove. “Come warm yourself right now. Boys, mop u
p that water.”
In two minutes she has me changed into one of her old dresses and my wet clothes hanging up to dry. At the same time, she’s putting supper on the table and giving her brothers enough of a Look that they start washing their hands. Only, they’re washing up in the murky dishpan, so she groans and shoves them outdoors with a cake of brown soap.
We’re partway through a delicious supper of fish and biscuits and a conversation about people who live on the lake when William squawks, “Hey! She got in again. Get her, Vic!”
“Oh no,” Hannah cries, and I swivel in my chair to see a nanny goat chewing a big hole in the front of my wet dress while trampling the skirts filthy.
Victor’s up and cramming a biscuit in his mouth as he runs, but the goat takes off with my clothes trailing behind her like a fallen banner. He tries to pounce on the goat, but she darts to the left at the last minute, and he goes skidding into a big grandfather clock.
William slams the door shut and the goat prances backward, going maaaa like she knows how much trouble she’s in. Victor drops a rope around her neck and both boys crow in victory. They push-pull the goat back outside. She takes a long scrap of my dress with her.
“I simply cannot believe that just happened.” Hannah squinches up her face. “I’m so sorry. That goat is more trouble than she’s worth. We’ve got four of them, but do any of the others break into the house and eat things that aren’t food? No, sir. Just that one.”
“My dress was mostly patches and bad seams anyway, and you saw how ill it fit.” I give Nell’s saucy grin, because Hannah’s cheeks are red and she’s toying with her mug.
“Still. You’re a guest in my home. Please keep what you’re wearing. I feel awful.”
I pick up my piece of bread with a layer of butter so thick my teeth leave marks where I bite. “I can’t imagine any animal that lets you have milk and butter could ever be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“You want her?”
I laugh, because Hannah’s likely being funny.
“Offer something,” she says. “Chances are good I’ll take it.”
The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming Page 16