by Tom Blair
The whole time going back across the Platte on the flat Pa was complaining. Complaining about the money he’d spent. But I don’t think he was really that way. Think he was happy to have got us something. Happy we were safe so far. Happy we was closer to California.
After Fort Laramie we kept on the Northside of the Platte heading west. Some men put up a fuss that the Southside of the Platte was an easier trail. Captain said no. Owners of flat boats wanting five dollars for taking wagons to the Southside told lies about an easy trail. Said that in 1850 he’d been with a Mississippi Company when they used the North route. He knew it was passable. Right he was.
Half a day out of the Laramie the Captain swung the train North. Away from the Platte we swung. Captain said we had to go around a canyon the Platte ran through. Not enough room on the edge of the river for wagons. So North we went. Couldn’t hardly tell, but when you looked back you knew. The river kept getting further back and lower on the horizon. After a long spell of flat prairie, the hills were a change. ’Course not a good change if you were an oxen. An oxen pulling a wagon up a slope. Ma and Mary never could have believed so many wildflowers. But the oxen weren’t smelling no sweet flowers.
Didn’t know what the Captain did till after Fort Laramie. Cut a fella out of the wagon train. Gave him his twenty-five dollars back. Told him he and his family weren’t going. Weren’t going to California in the Captain’s train. Ma told me the reason of it. This fella was always spitting mad. Mostly mad at his wife about this or that. One morning she didn’t come out. Stayed in the wagon. Her son cooking supper that day. Then the Captain saw the truth of it. She was bruised and pounded. So the Captain waited till Fort Laramie. Told them not on his train.
After a spell hardly a tree some places. So’s no wood for the cooking fires. ’Course you knew what we did. Picked up buffalo chips. “Chips” just a woman’s way of saying it. Picked up droppings from oxen and cows and all sorts. Only picked up dried hard ones from trains before. Just people droppings we didn’t pick up. First only used two fingers. After a spell didn’t bother me any. Held a bunch in my arms.
So’s anyway Arch and I fun Matthew one day. He’s like us. Has to gather chips for his ma. Puts them in a burlap bag he does. Hung on the side of their wagon the bag is. So’s his ma has chips for the morning and evening fires. After a day on the trail Arch and Matthew and me goes out. Goes out like most times to collect chips. But I come back before them. Quick like I get a big handful. A handful of warm ox dropping. Pack it tight I do. Wait for Arch and Matthew. Sure enough Matthew hangs the bag of chips on the side of his wagon. Then he’s off. Walk by I do. Walk by just looking around. Make sure no one’s a watching. Drop the warm ball in the bag and keep going. Arch and I sit and wait. For sure it was a loud one. Never heard his ma yell so loud. Never heard nobody’s ma yell so loud.
Emigrant Hill is where we buried her. She was from the Ingrams wagon. Maybe five years old she was. Had the fever for days. Even before we got to Fort Laramie she had fever chills. Got ’em from the rain and cold winds. Her ma all the time nursing her tender. But then the little girl got the shakes bad. Shakes stopped. She died. Right on top of the hill men dug her grave. Mister Ingrams pulled some boards from the second floor of their wagon. Used them for her box. Pa took a hunk of board and made a marker. Heated up a piece of iron and burnt in her name. We all stood in a big circle. Silent we stood. Captain read from the Bible. A wind blowing hard. Dark sky like it wanted to rain. Her ma and brother crying. Her father just looking at his boots. Didn’t move at all.
It was the Ingrams’s girl dying that twisted my life. Turned it all whichaway. Let me tell you why.
Four of the wagons in our train had a passenger. Someone not a part of a family. These people paid to ride in the wagon. Paid a fair amount to the family in the wagon. Ingrams had a passenger. Timothy Akins was his name. Spoke strange. Acted strange. And dressed strange to my way of dressing.
After her daughter passed Missus Ingrams said no more. Didn’t want to go to California. She didn’t want her son dying on the journey. Her husband put up a fuss. But she just kept saying no. Wanted to go back to Fort Laramie. Wanted to live near where her daughter was buried. So Ingrams pulled away from the train. Headed back. But not their passenger. Not Mister Akins. He was going to California. That’s how I got to know him. ’Cause he rode with us. Almost didn’t. Pa said no when Mister Ingrams asked would he take Akins. Pa said we already had too much in our wagon. Mister Ingrams was off and back in a spell. Talked to Pa he did. Pa talked to Ma and then Pa told Mary and me. Akins was traveling with us. Ingrams and Pa was trading wagons. Ingrams didn’t need two floors. Back in Fort Laramie they’d be done traveling. So Ma got her two floors. Just like a root cellar it was. She had a place in the wagon for all our belongings. No reason to be sleeping on axes and sacks of grain. ’Course Pa got something. Got twenty-five dollars from Ingrams. That was the fare Akins paid Ingrams. Pa was right happy. Happy till the trunk and the truth of the fare.
I’m going to tell you about the trunk and the fare. But first let me tell you about Timothy Akins. An old fellow he was. Maybe over fifty. More round than straight up and down. Skin was whiter than a lady’s skin. Hands didn’t have no scars, didn’t look like they’d done much. Wore pants that matched his jacket. Same cloth they were. Wore shirts that were white. ’Course they turned a yellow by the Salt Desert. Wore glasses. He read a lot. That’s why he wore glasses so much. Never did wear boots. Wore shoes. They looked like his hands. Didn’t look like they’d done much working. And Akins spoke strange. Each word had a space between. Like each was special and needed room to stretch.
About the trunk. When we traded wagons everything got moved. Our belongings to their wagon. Ingrams belongings hauled to ours. Pa was loading our new wagon and there it was. Biggest trunk you ever saw. Twice as big as Ma’s hope chest. Pa went to move it. Went to slide it to the back of the wagon so’s Ingrams could take it with them. It didn’t move. Like it was nailed down it sat. Pa down and off. Straight to Ingrams he went. Some loud words and he was back. Mister Akins’s trunk it was. Heavy like to be filled with rocks. But not rocks, filled solid it was with books that Akins was taking to California.
Now, a digression and pause if I may. Pause as a gray-black caterpillar pauses for its metamorphosis into a resplendent butterfly. No less did Timothy Akins change my life than God’s wonder changes the caterpillar’s. As I learned from Mister Akins, there are those seismic-like moments that forever change nature and, perhaps, even mankind itself. Often these changes are recorded, labeled, and studied. Christ’s birth being such an event as reflected in the Anno Domini dating system … B.C…. Before Christ. My life’s calendar calibrated against B.A., Before Akins and A.A., After Akins. The remainder of my letter to you is written in the style of an Akins disciple. In no way does my stylistic metamorphosis reflect any malice toward, or disappointment in, my family and life before I met Mister Akins. Both were without blemish. Rather, let my writing acknowledge the teachings of my mentor, and my profound respect for him.
With the burying of the young Ingrams girl and the exchanging of wagons, the train resumed its weave among the hills north of the Platte. Mister Akins sat next to Mother on the wagon seat. My sister more often walked. Mary claimed that she enjoyed the exercise. Perhaps, but physical exercise was not her exercise. Her smiling stroll along the edges of our train allowed her to gauge the young men that might, through looks and demeanor, qualify as a potential biological, economic, and emotional partner for life. Having identified a small subset of eligible male candidates, she proceeded to better know them. This done with the shrewd application of seeming disinterest, followed by random conversation and casual-appearing questions crafted to lay bare the unsuspecting males’ core beliefs, aspirations, and frailties. Mother would only ask, “Mary, does he have eyes as blue as your father’s?”
Mister Akins had been our passenger, genteel mother referred to him as our guest, for more than a week before Fath
er learned the awful truth. A truth born from a casual comment at one of the nightly campfire gatherings. Father, feeling financially superior to the others squatting near the flaming centerpiece, boasted how he would spend the twenty-five dollar fare collected from Ingrams for transporting Mister Akins. Father confident that twenty-five dollar fare far exceeded any costs for Akins’s transport. Then a dagger to Father’s heart as a fellow traveler laughingly reported that all the other passengers had paid fifty dollars. Right back to our wagon Father sprang yelling at Mister Akins; wanting to know how much he paid Ingrams. Looking up from his book he answered fifty dollars. A response served with no more emotion than if Father had asked him what time his pocket watch showed. Only pausing to take a breath so he had sufficient air to shout his words, Father demanded Mister Akins pay him the other twenty-five dollars. Mister Akins looked up again, held his silence for a moment and then softly explained that he had paid Mister Ingrams fifty dollars, and he didn’t believe seventy-five dollars was a reasonable fare. Spitting mad, Father made straight off to the Captain, who stoked his already coal-hot consternation. The Captain informed him that Ingrams had used half of Akins’s fare to pay his charge for leading their wagon to California. Hence, the Captain concluded, Ingrams had paid Father the full balance of Akins’s fare. Not surrendering his right to a full fare, Father pleaded that since the Ingrams weren’t going to California the Captain should give him their twenty-five dollar fee. As a judge ruling from the bench, the Captain told Father that only Mister Ingrams could ask for his money back. Father did not sleep this night. But the resolution of his frustration was the single occurrence that most shaped my life.
Father never ceased berating Mister Akins; in Father’s universe of fairness his need, yes, unquestionable right, to collect fifty dollars for Akins’s fare “stood taller” than Akins’s desire to pay no more than fifty dollars for transport. In time a truce. A truce forged by the flame of necessity. A necessity for Mister Akins to tender Father a fig leaf of satisfaction while not depleting his meager personal funds. To my horror, Mister Akins offered an additional consideration; he would provide me an introduction to a classical education. To my greater horror, Father accepted. While Akins verbalized for Father and me the topics he would touch upon, our heads nodded acceptance. Nodded with the same comprehension of the scholarly world as possessed by cattle nodding their heads at a watering trough.
After the evening meal of the day of the truce, Mister Akins attempted to survey my brain to better understand in which classical disciplines I excelled and which would require his tutelage. It was a brief and unpleasant survey. Unpleasant for Akins; he mumbled that he should have paid my Father the contested fare rather than attempt to breastfeed my intellect. When asked if I spoke Latin, I responded by stating no one in my family knew any Indian words … no matter what tribe. Further inquiries about the Iliad, Hamlet, prime numbers, Pythagoras’ Theorem, the Battle of Waterloo, Copernicus, and Aristotle were met with like nonsensical responses; thus confirming Miss Brite’s inability to concurrently teach diverse subjects to ten grades of farmyard kids cloistered in a one-room clapboard Iowa schoolhouse.
We had just broken camp, the train crawling westward, when my formal education began. Seated on his trunk of books, and I across from him in the wagon as we rolled along the Platte, Atkins explained that he needed to build a foundation before he could raise the walls of my education. First he would add depth and breadth to my vocabulary. Silently I sat for a few minutes as if pondering his decree, then I asked what the word vocabulary meant. He set still for a spell. In time he reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve a key, which he used to unlock the great trunk. The first time I had seen it open; over a hundred books intricately stacked and layered. Books with leather covers of blacks, browns, grays, and crimsons. Most with black lettering across their covers, a few with gold. From his compressed library he handed me Oliver Twist. With Mister Dickens’s novel he provided a John Jacob Parker fountain pen and a few sheets of the whitest paper I had ever seen. He told me that I should read the first chapter and record each word that I did not understand. He admonished me to write small and neatly, since he had less than fifty sheets of paper, and they would have to suffice for the duration of our journey. Upon providing instruction my new schoolmaster moved forward, climbed up, and took his traditional position next to Mother on the wagon seat.
I sinned. I sinned against the gods of knowledge. I desecrated the work of one of their ministers. But I didn’t know.
Try as I might, it was impossible for me to record words neatly on a piece of paper while the wagon swayed and jolted along the uneven trail. In time an idea of immense merit and efficiency washed across me. I merely used the fountain pen to underline those words in the first chapter that held no meaning for me. When we paused for the noon meal Mister Akins requested that I show him my work. We were standing on the north side of our wagon seeking shade from the noon sun as I handed him Dickens’s tale. He looked down at the open pages. He stood silent, then gazed at me with an expression that was a close cousin, if not a brother, to disgust. Without a word he climbed into the wagon, placed the book in the trunk, lowered the lid slowly, inserted the key, and clicked the lock shut.
After the noon pause Mister Akins did not take his place next to Mother when the train moved on. He walked far to one side of our wagon. Mostly he looked down. For the supper meal he ate by himself, propped against a boulder. My emotions were torn. Clearly, my actions against Oliver Twist offended Mister Akins. Unknowingly, or perhaps better stated, unthinkingly, I had desecrated something Mister Akins held dearly. For this I felt remorse. On the other hand, Arch and I would have more time to explore and conspire if my education had been fortuitously truncated by my ignorance. For this I felt hopeful.
The following morning Mister Akins said that he wished to speak with me. Up into our wheeled classroom he climbed. I followed. Seated on his trunk he began his apology. He told me that he should have explained to me the value of great books. He should have conveyed to me that a great book is no less worthy of respect and reverence than a grave site. As a coffin and tomb may hold the body of a great person, within the covers of a book may be the mind of a great person. Neither should suffer the stain or insult of careless, unthinking men. From the pocket of his coat Mister Akins then pulled Oliver Twist. Until halting for the noon meal we dissected the underlined words. Each word he inserted in a sentence and asked me to deduce its meaning. For several weeks each morning was dedicated to vocabulary. Each day new words, as well as a review of those previously discussed. But it was not the steady rising of my reservoir of words that struck my intellectual fancy. Rather it was Mister Akins’s afternoon forays into the sciences that swayed me to ponder a pursuit of a quarry that had never been considered before … an education.
Since the Captain had ruled there was no Sabbath, no Sundays, one day became as another. The events of a twenty-four hour period gave identity to a day, not the name of the day. Thus it was unexpected, of course we knew it was not distant, when the Captain told the men to set up camp early to celebrate July Fourth. After the wagons were anchored and the cooking fires set, a brief oration by the Captain. He spoke of God, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Millard Fillmore. More compliments were bestowed on President Fillmore than God. The Compromise of 1850, the Captain claimed, averted the fracture of the United States and was only made possible by the political acumen of President Fillmore. With a frown, Father looked at me and Mister Akins and mumbled that President Fillmore was made possible by President Taylor dying. Stalking and shooting a buck, Father argued, was for certain not the same as finding a deer dead asleep on the trail.
Once the Captain commanded that every man would be poured two cups of whiskey to celebrate the United States, smiles and pleasant times for all. The red-haired man from Boston with the pretty wife blew his horn with enthusiasm, while the Springfield farmer strummed his fiddle. Matthew all the time beating on an Indian drum that his father b
ought in Fort Laramie. Draped in a blanket of music, perhaps noise with a melody, the women cooked up extras of everything and those without extras borrowed from others. Quickly hot foods and cool cups of whiskey disappeared into smiling faces; then singing and dancing under the moon, embers from the cooking fires rising into the blackness and cold. Below a camp of laughter and no worries. No worries until the sun rose.
Perhaps a day or two after our July Fourth celebration I first learned of Mister Akins’s life. In an attempt to lead him away from his constant volleys of questions that ricocheted off my ignorance, I asked why, why was he going to California. I did this knowing that any question to Mister Akins resulted in an elaborate answer, elaborate and long. The latter being what I was seeking. Adjusting his posture on the great trunk, Mister Akins related that he was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. There he studied, and taught, at the College of Edinburgh; a college where his father had been a professor of Universal History. He was traveling to California neither seeking land nor gold, but to teach at Santa Clara College, formed by two Italian Jesuits, one of whom long before had studied with Mister Akins.
Then Mister Akins spoke of a subject not raised by me. He spoke of the camp’s recent July Fourth celebration. He said that a friend of his father’s, another professor at the College of Edinburgh, had written years before that a democracy will only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves gifts from the taxes paid. From that moment on, the majority will vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury; hence, every democracy will in time collapse due to their government’s loose purse strings.