by Judy Alter
"Liza, and she was right to do so."
"Nonsense. It was just a brief episode. I'm fine."
"Are you?" He did not look fine at all. His eyes, more than anything else, spoke of chronic pain.
He shrugged. "That same old problem—constipation. There's a small fistula. It is no matter." He bent to his desk as though he would return to work and close the subject.
Chapter 15
I went to California because I could not bear to be apart from John again. That was the lesson I learned in Paris. But I went as an exile. Nothing there interested me—I remembered rural life in California all too well—and everything that made life fascinating for me was missing, except John and the children. There, as the poet said, was the rub.
In Paris I had missed John desperately. At first I thought it was the frantic pace of the campaign that I longed for, the expectation that any minute glory would be ours. But it slowly dawned on me that John himself was what I really wanted, that if he had come to Paris and wrapped me in his arms, I would ask nothing more and would live there contentedly. And a corner of my mind remembered ever after Sophie's warning about a handsome husband. In the dark of the night, with an ocean and a continent between us, I could—and did—give in to black fantasies about John's private life in California—the women who must, I thought, be surrounding him. In those minutes I forgot all that I knew about the masculine nature of rural California... and the lack of women.
John did not, of course, come to Paris to get me, and the news of Father's intestinal attack, offering a clear excuse for returning to the States, came as a mixed blessing. I worried for Father, of course, desperately, with a fear that lodged in my heart as a lump, right next to the lump caused by worrying about what John was doing. But I welcomed any excuse to be back in the States and that much closer to California.
The only true regret I had when I finally left Washington for California was leaving Father, for I saw in his eyes that we would not be together again.
"Jessie, I have drawn a will—"
"I cannot talk about that," I said shortly.
He looked long and hard at me. "It's nothing. Just in case. I might be knocked down by a runaway carriage tomorrow, the way these drivers are. I have put it on record."
"Fine," I said. "I assume William knows where it is."
"It is not for William," he said. "It is for you to know and take care of." Seeing how his words distressed me, he said lightly, "Pray you will have nothing to do for twenty years."
"Yes, pray," I whispered.
The very day of parting was even more difficult. Father felt compelled to leave nothing unsaid, and I was flatly ungracious about not wanting to hear it. We stood awkwardly in the entryway of the house on C Street, the new house with new furniture, a house that held none of my memories—a fact that made it only barely easier to leave.
"Jessie," he said, looking at me with those tired eyes in a face puffed and pale with illness, "you have been everything to me, everything that your mother could not be. Next to her, you have been my greatest treasure."
"Father, I..." My voice cracked, and I could say no more.
Father plowed determinedly ahead. "We've had our disagreements, and your marriage is one of them... but I've kept my peace privately and have publicly done what I believed I had to for the country. But you must know that through it all my feelings for you have never changed."
"Nor mine for you," I lied, thinking of my resentment of him during the campaign, my futile wish that he would leap to John's defense.
The old war horse saw through me. "I hope that's not true. I'd expect more loyalty to your husband from you. But I... well, I've said what I wanted to say."
"Thank you, Father," I replied, walking into his embrace and hiding my tears on his shoulder.
"There, now," he said, wiping awkwardly at my face, "you mustn't cry. We've had the best of everything together."
"We almost caught the brass ring," I said, and managed to smile just a bit as I said it.
"Everyone has his own brass ring, Jessie. Who knows? Maybe we have caught ours."
With those words ringing in my ears, I left him. As the carriage pulled away, I leaned far out the window—so far that Lily tugged on my coat as though to keep me from falling out—watching that old man standing on the stairs, his hand raised in farewell. I would never see him again, of that I was sure. Once again I had chosen John... but it was never an easy choice for me.
* * *
John met us in San Francisco and whisked us off to Bear Valley and the Mariposas with little more than an overnight stop in San Francisco. No shopping, no investigating who were the dignitaries now—though I doubted I knew them—none of the taste of civilization I'd expected at the end of my long journey.
The children were excited beyond measure at the prospect of life in the country, clamoring to ride a horse immediately and demanding to know if there were really bears in Bear Valley—there were!—and would they have to go to school? My head grew tired from listening to them all chatter at once, and I was more peevish than usual.
"You'll grow to love it, Jessie," John said quietly, reading my mind. "It's not New York or Paris...."
"I would have chosen either," I said shortly, "but for you."
He chuckled. "I'm flattered. We shall stay here three years, make our fortune, and then you may make your choice."
An empty promise? One offered with good intentions but no surety? One that I could hold out as a beacon through long and hot California summers? I had no way of knowing.
"Look, Mother, there are flowers everywhere! And there's our house... it is our house, isn't it, Father?" Lily's voice rose in excitement.
"Yes," John said, "it's our house."
It was a whitewashed cottage, set in a valley with the pasture around it bordered by a grove of white oaks, thick with undergrowth—later I would learn that the Indians, unaware of the terrible irony involved, called it the "White House." It never failed to grate on my nerves to hear a simple Indian woman refer to my humble home as the White House. Pictures of Mr. Buchanan and his hostess-niece flashed before my mind, and, briefly, I felt that old resentment. But I tried to put it behind me.
As we approached in the carriage, I saw that mountains rose on either side of the house, shutting it in until I felt claustrophobic in anticipation.
"Are there really bears?" Charley demanded again.
"Yes, there are," John said solemnly. "They eat at the hog ranch down the valley... and sometimes they wander in here when they're hungry."
"May I feed them?"
"No!" I shouted. "If you see a bear, you run for home—"
"If you see a bear," John interrupted, "stand very still and wait for it to go away. Don't listen to your mother in this particular case. She knows little of bears and country life." He offered me a reassuring smile, but I was not comforted.
It took all my energy to turn the cottage into a livable home. In the town of Mariposas, some thirteen miles away, I made an unbelievable find—French wallpaper. I used it to brighten the main room of the cottage, where John had installed fine brick chimneys at either end of the room. The rest of the house I brightened by putting cotton over the planked walls and adding my Oriental rugs to the floor. Once again our few good things had followed us across the country.
"It is," Lily pronounced one day, "a fine home!"
About a month after we arrived, some neighbors—a man and his wife—rode up. The man left his wife on horseback by the gate while he dismounted and, with a nod to me as I worked in the garden by the stoop, went in to see John. I thought it rude of him to leave his wife thus and reasoned that the least I could do was go to the gate and be gracious.
"Good morning," I called as I approached.
"Good morning," she replied. "And how are you, Mrs. Frémont?"
"Why, I'm just fine, thank you," I said, "working in my garden and enjoying this fair weather."
"I'm so glad to hear that you've recovered from you
r father's death," she said in all sincerity.
My world spun, whirling around me in a great vortex, and I reached for the gate as all threatened to turn to blackness. Just as I finally managed to ask, with a wail in my voice, "Is my father dead?" her husband ran out of the house, leaped the fence without bothering with the gate, and began angrily to lead her horse away.
I turned, only to run right into John, who had come up behind me. Now his arms went around me and he held my head to his shoulder, stroking my hair and murmuring comforting words as one would to a child.
"My father is dead," I whispered.
Yes, Jessie, I know. He died while we were en route."
"Did you... did you know?" I could not believe he would keep that secret from me, even with thoughts of protecting me.
"No, by the heavens above, I did not know until two minutes ago. I... I am as shocked as you are."
"I should..." A sob stifled my voice, and I had to start over. "I should have been with him. He shouldn't have died alone."
"He had Liza and William," John reminded me gently.
"That's not the same," I muttered. "He knew when I left that we wouldn't be together again."
"He would not have had you stay," John said. "That wasn't his way."
I knew he was right, but that didn't lessen my guilt.
Dry-eyed, I left his arms and turned toward the house. "We must tell the children," I said, practicality being all that kept me from collapsing.
"I'll tell them, Jessie." He reached an arm to steady me as I stumbled on the first step.
"No," I said in a tinny voice. "I'll tell them."
And tell them I did, my voice absolutely calm and without emotion. Only Lily sensed the enormity of this tragedy for me and came to put a loving arm around my shoulders.
"Is Mother all right, Lily?" Charley asked. At nine he was old enough to comprehend that something awful had happened, but not old enough to be sure how to deal with it. Three-year-old Frank merely watched me, his eyes wide.
"She will be fine," Lily said reassuringly. "Run and play, boys, and see you tend to my chickens."
John took my arm and, with Lily trailing close behind, helped me to the bedroom. Once in the privacy of my room, I collapsed onto the bed, all my starch and strength washed away, great sobs racking my body as I cried for the man who had made me what I was, without whom I might have been another person—less driven, happier, but never the same.
"Father?" Dimly I was aware of Lily and John.
"Let her cry," he said. "It's good for her, and I will stay with her."
And so he stayed, sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting until my wails had subsided into an occasional deep sob. And then he rubbed my back, gently, lovingly, until at long last I slept. And did not wake for twenty-four hours.
My family tiptoed around me for days. "Can I bring you a cup of tea, Mother?"
"Jessie, would you care to walk out this evening?"
"Mother, I'll see to the boys. You go and rest." At first I relished their care and concern. But then I began to tire of being a fragile porcelain doll, and I began to assert myself, taking over my responsibilities, trying to start conversations that did not deal with Father's death.
The sadness, of course, did not disappear in a fortnight or a month. I carried it around with me—a sodden lump, a black cloud over my head, whatever form it took—for weeks and months. But each day it lessened a little, and each day I told myself to remember that Father really believed he had caught his own brass ring in his time. I learned to dwell on the successes of his career and the closeness of our early relationship rather than on his more recent defeats and our political differences.
Summer came on with unbearable heat. Since we had not arrived in time to plant a garden, we had at first no vegetables and subsisted on a diet of canned vegetables and rice.
"I cannot feed my family this way," I fumed.
"There's a new farmer down the valley," John said one day. "I can offer him sluice water for his garden, in return for vegetables."
"Do that," I demanded, and soon we had a plentiful supply of vegetables.
Once again Lily kept a poultry yard, with chickens, turkeys, and ducks, so we soon had fresh meat on our table.
"See," I told John one evening with triumph, "we shall live in a civilized manner in the wilderness!"
"I never doubted it, Jessie," he said, taking another bite of chicken, "never for a minute."
Our laundry was done by Indian women, whom we had been told never to trust. Yet I found they took not a thing without permission, not even discarded tin cans, which they used for cooking over their open fires. We saved scraps for them and found, to my absolute amazement, that their favorite food was a mixture of turnip peelings and suet put between two pieces of bread. The Earl of Sandwich would have been as amazed as I to see to what uses his invention had been put.
One day they arrived with a large crop of mushrooms and toadstools, which they proudly offered to me. "For family," said the spokeswoman.
"No!" I said, my voice rising sharper than I meant. I softened it immediately and tried to think how to tell them about poisonous toadstools. "Some bad," I said, falling into the trap of thinking they would understand pidgin English or baby talk. "Make you sick."
The three women in front of me laughed heartily, showing blackened and missing teeth. "No sick," said the spokeswoman.
"Wait!" I cried, and dashed into the house for a silver coin and a dish of water. Back in front of them, I put some of the toadstools—the ones so obvious even I could tell the difference—into the water and then tossed the coin in. "Watch," I said, "black." Sure enough, the coin turned black almost instantly. "Poison," I repeated.
The spokeswoman laughed heartily again, reached into the dish, and popped a toadstool into her mouth. As I cried out in alarm, she chewed once or twice, swallowed, and smiled broadly again.
"Come tomorrow," she said.
And sure enough, she did, apparently none the worse for the toadstools. They never again, however, offered me toadstools for the family, and I was grateful.
In midsummer I had another example of the lack of civilization in that place—only it was a terrifying example that truly threatened my family.
There was always trouble over the ownership of mines. John had carved Las Mariposas into a shape that included several of the richest veins, and when the matter was before the court and legal title was granted him, there was much resentment. I understood that and dismissed it, figuring that he who was smart enough to succeed always aroused some enmity. My pride in John and my naiveté blinded me to the dangers.
Soon after I arrived in California, a group of Frenchmen seized the Guadalupe mine, and John had to seek a court order to evict them from his property. When the sheriff, running for reelection and afraid to jeopardize his standing, refused to serve the warrant, John himself presented it. He went unarmed, though Jake, the black man who helped us around the place, had secretly come to our cottage and, with Lily's help, armed himself to follow John. Still, John was so successful that the Frenchmen not only agreed to vacate the mine but asked him to bring us all to supper, especially, they said, "the little boy who can speak French." They meant Charley, who was fluent in the Gallic tongue. When we accepted some time later, we dined on sweet omelettes, a real treat, as eggs were scarce.
But then the California legislature, in a move I would never understand to my dying day, decreed that any untended mine was fair game. Anyone who came across an untended mine could simply claim it and begin to mine the gold. John therefore kept his mines occupied at all times—but even this did not work. The guard at the Black Drift was bribed to leave the mine, making it thus empty and legal prey for a group of men who felt they had been cheated when John had laid out the boundaries of the Mariposas. They called themselves the Hornitos League, and they were backed by a rival mining company, the Merced.
In midsummer the Hornitos bullies seized the Black Drift and laid siege to the Pine Tree
and the Josephina, where men were at work. Their plan was to starve the men out, so that the mine would be untended and they could jump it. But the plan backfired: our men refused to leave their mines and, instead, barricaded themselves behind rocks, prepared to fight if necessary.
I knew nothing of all this until the early-morning hours of a night so hot I had been unable to sleep. A rider approached the house, shouting for John. "The Black Drift! It's been jumped."
John, who slept soundly in heat or cold, awoke suddenly and was pulling on his pants before I could even react. "Go back to sleep, Jessie," he said. "It's nothing—just some mine business I must tend to."
But I had heard the anger and panic in the man's voice, and I knew it was more than "just some mine business." I raised my head for a kiss and then sank back into the hot bed, where I tossed and turned until early daylight, then escaped to sit on the front stoop and catch what cool I could.
Before long the children were up and our day into its usual full swing. I kept them busy with games and chores, but all the while my eyes were on the road, watching for John to come home. It was a good three miles to the mines, over a perilous and skinny mountain trail known as Hell's Hollow, so I could expect neither speed nor sound to give me a clue. When he arrived at noon, I rushed to meet him.
"Jessie!" he said. "What's the matter?"
"I... I was worried about your safety."
"Nonsense. It's simply a dispute among men," he said reassuringly, but I was not comforted.
Jake—he who had taken guns to defend John against the Frenchmen—told me the whole of it later that day. "You've a right to know, Mrs. Frémont," he said, telling how the men in the Pine Tree had barricaded themselves with fused powder kegs, which they threatened to ignite if anyone tried to enter. "They have plenty of fresh air and water," he told me, "but no food. And the Hornitos, they won't let anyone go near with food. Mr. Frémont, he went to talk to the Hornitos, not armed or nothing, though he tells me he had a derringer in his shirt pocket."
"Small comfort that," I murmured.
Gleefully he chuckled. "You're right, missus. Derringer wouldn't do no good against all them rifles that was pointed at him." My heart leaped in fear, but he went on, "But he was quiet and fair, and there weren't no trouble....'Course, there weren't no solution either."