Something Worth Doing Page 10

  Abigail learned that the little town of Canemah—where her sister nursed her baby—had four feet of water running through the streets. People climbed to their rooftops, and John Coburn, Kate’s husband, was one of many ship captains and crew sent to rescue overwhelmed settlers onto steamships. Abigail hoped Kate was on one of those ships and not waiting in her attic for rescue. Towns that were a part of Oregon’s young history, like Champoeg where the vote to become a part of America one day and not Britain had taken place, were washed away with nothing to show for what had been there except the memories of the survivors.

  And Lafayette’s new warehouse holding 80,000 bushels of wheat—including the Duniways’ bumper harvest—was washed away, along with Amos and Fanny’s store and much of the business district. Abigail sent word when she learned of it, and communication resumed that the Coburns and Cooks—Amos and Fanny—should come to Sunny Hillside where they’d welcome them high above flooding streams.

  The warehouse loss devastated the area, but Ben had already lost on the sale of his wheat when he was forced to sell it before the flood for fifty cents a bushel. It was less than the going market rate. But he had to pay that surety debt at 2 percent interest. Abigail wrote of it in her ‘Farmer’s Wife’ column, though she never mentioned Ben by name. The subject was always “the Farmer.” She wrote that the merchant who had purchased the Farmer’s wheat at a bargain price (because the Farmer had a debt to pay) hoped to resell and make a profit. That merchant had lost now too—to the flood. In her column, she wrote of the devastation, how people lost cattle and how surging waters kept them all from beginning repairs. Water. Flooding. Waiting. That was the real force of nature, worse than tornados or fires, because after those, one could begin cleanup and start over without having to wait and obsess about what one would do in the aftermath and what might be salvaged or lost.

  They called it the Great Oregon Flood of 1861–62, but Abigail’s trail friend, Shirley Ellis, wrote that a boat was required on K Street in Sacramento and that people had died, washed away, their bodies never found for burial. It was more than an Oregon flood.

  “Such a tragedy,” Shirley had written.

  “In so many ways,” Abigail wrote back, and didn’t even mention wondering if her novel had ever arrived.

  Abigail became even more specific in her next column. She told her readers that the Farmer’s debt amounted to $240 a year and his farm only earned $500 on a good year, so there was little left to support his family. She also complained that the typesetter had made many errors in a previous column but added that “My husband says I ought not to complain about the printer, because he probably couldn’t read my scratchings. I advise the Farmer that people often compliment me when they watch me write before them. He says, ‘They’re looking at your handwriting upside down.’ Perhaps he’s right,” she conceded and hoped the interchange between the Farmer and the Farmer’s Wife brought a bit of joyful relief as people came out of their badger holes to assess what had happened to their landscapes and their lives.

  “That last column was a little too personal,” Ben told her. “You ought not mention our debts, and so specifically.” They had put the children to bed, and Abigail worked on another piece to submit to the paper.

  “I want people to see that they aren’t alone.” She looked up at him.

  “And poke your thumb in my eye?”

  Was that why I was specific? “Details give authenticity to a writer’s work.”

  He grunted. “A little less truthfulness at my expense could be pleasant.”

  She did consider whether she was being unfair or not and decided that she wasn’t.

  “It shows that the Farmers, the men, are in charge, and they make the deals, for good or bad.” Abigail said. “Every man and woman can relate to that.”

  The flooding aftermath attacked the economy. Jobs disappeared, households split, forest trees fell over roadways, their roots loosened by inundated soils, blocking transports and deliveries. Steamships on the Willamette maneuvered through waterways clogged with debris and changed channels. The school where Jerry and Harvey attended closed down for the term as it tried to recover. Everything wasn’t working out all right. Harvey’s camping site had been swilled away by the greedy river. Damaged sawmills like her father’s hindered rebuilding, both getting logs to the mill and out to building sites. Abigail’s little house in Lafayette had water to the third step leading to the porch but hadn’t been washed away. Her sisters’ families could stay there while they rebuilt.

  “At least no water in the basement like there would be back in Illinois,” Abigail said.

  “No basements in Oregon,” Ben said. “Another western innovation.”

  It was a few weeks into March when her brother Harvey rode up the hillside to the house through a field of daffodils at dusk, a drizzle of rain dripping off his hat.

  “You’re not bringing bad news? Jerry and Father are all right?”

  “No bad news. Nothing you haven’t already heard,” he said.

  “Come on in. Get yourself dry. I’ll tend your horse.” Ben spoke, motioned for Harvey to dismount while his brother-in-law led his mount to their barn. Abigail heard him talking to the animal on the way, then start singing a little tune.

  “I read that ‘the Farmer’s Wife’ gave her permission for ‘the Farmer’ to head to Idaho,” Harvey said as Ben returned and put Wilkie in the high chair, his one-year-old legs sticking out like little stumps. His hands reached out to pat his father’s cheeks as he bent to the boy. The men took their seats with Clara, Willis, and two-year-old Hubert perched on a bench side by side. “The Farmer is you, right, Ben?” Harvey took the bowl of beans Abigail handed him. She kept ahold of it just a second longer than she needed, making him pay attention to her and not talk about her as though she weren’t there. Harvey gave her eye contact, said, “Thanks, Sister,” then to Ben he said, “Does it bother you that she’s always putting private things out there for the world to read about in her column?”

  “I don’t mind it much,” Ben said. He moved his peas around the plate, didn’t look at Harvey. “It gives Jenny respite, as she calls it, to scribble.”

  “Still, a little delicacy wouldn’t hurt. Or a letter informing the rest of the family of the Duniway-doings before we have to read of it in the paper.”

  “I never write about you,” Abigail said. “Are you envious?” She set a platter of rice and a chicken she’d butchered onto the table. She cooked it up with dried herbs that Harriet had given her the last time they were together.

  Harvey snorted. “At least your farm wasn’t damaged.” He forked a chicken thigh. And ‘the Farmer’ managed to pay his debts.”

  Ben winced then. “The Farmer will pay his debts,” Ben said. “Why I’m heading to Idaho to the mines.”

  “I wondered if that was true, what the Farmer’s Wife said.”

  “The Farmer’s Wife always writes true things,” she said.

  “Just not always factual.”

  Before Abigail could object, Harvey continued. “I thought I might go with you to Idaho. I’m not taken by the war effort. I think those Southern states have made a mistake, but I don’t think dying to end slavery is the right answer. Negotiations makes more sense. But I thought I’d take a year while the school gets back on its feet and students can return to create needed capital so I can go through the university without having to work at the sawmill.”

  “Will you study law?” Ben asked. He passed the platter to Abigail, who had at last sat down.

  “Maybe. First a general degree in economics. Then math, English, the usual advanced courses.”

  “A woman wouldn’t know ‘usual’ when it comes to the higher education she’s deprived of.”

  “Not now, Jenny,” Ben said.

  She sighed. No need to be strident at the table. There’d be time for her and Harvey to wrestle over issues later—if either had the energy for it.

  Ben said he’d be glad for the company in the mines, th
ough he worried about leaving Abigail with the children, and hired workers to run the farm.

  “Send the money,” Abigail said. “We’ll be all right, though missing you more than all the water in the Willamette.”

  “I’ll miss you more than all the water in the ocean, Pa,” Clara said.

  “Where are you going, Papa?” Willis asked.

  “On an adventure, Son.” Ben squeezed his daughter’s shoulder and made his voice light for his children.

  For the first time since they’d made the decision for Ben to leave, Abigail realized how much the children would miss him, and they didn’t have the luxury of knowing why he was leaving, sacrificing home and hearth in order to help them all, and yes, make amends for his poor judgment. She let herself feel the pain of the coming separation, then vowed that she couldn’t let those feelings intrude or she would be a puddle when he left and that would upset the children even more. In the same way that she brushed by little joys that she didn’t think she deserved, she tamped down sadness by getting to work.

  “Finish up now,” she told the children. “Take your bowls to the sink.”

  While Abigail washed the dishes and Clara dried, Harvey caught them up on the news and told tales of daring rescues during the flooding, stories of people helping neighbors, free blacks and Asians helping whites and vice versa, the vitriol of race and politics diminished for a time.

  “Disasters bring out the best in us,” Abigail said. “It’s that pioneering spirit, how we have to try new ways when the circumstances force us into different channels.”

  “And give a man permission to make mistakes,” Ben said. “I’m told by my carpenter friends that the mark of a true craftsman isn’t that he makes no errors but how well he covers them up so no one notices, that’s the key.”

  “A little difficult to do when the carpenter’s wife spreads the error in the newspaper,” Harvey said.

  He held a teasing voice, but Abigail noticed Ben’s bearded face turned a little redder, and she thought in the future she ought to increase the good tales she told of the Farmer. Surely his sacrifice of leaving home would be worthy of a column. Maybe even two.

  THIRTEEN

  Going On

  1862

  _______

  Abigail sent Ben off in March, hopeful for the benefit of this needed separation. But with him gone, she realized how much she relied on him, even when he merely sat and jawed with friends in the other room. Buttressing in a relationship, she realized, came in many shapes and sizes. He’d never complained about the Farmer stories she wrote, except that one time when she’d harped about the loan. But maybe Harvey was correct, and flapping the Duniway “underlings” in the newspaper winds wasn’t the best use of her time. She’d write of less personal things or use those personal events to be symbols of wider concerns. She penned a column in the spring about the death of someone “dear” and how alcoholism had shredded the promise of his life. It was an uncle she worried over, and she used the occasion of his downfall to urge Oregonians to wage war on King Alcohol who is “if possible, a worse enemy to progress than the dire hallucination of secession.”

  She wrote about missing her farmer. Anonymous said she’d driven him away. She penned a sad tale of her children crying for their farmer-father. Anonymous said she was a poor mother to let her children suffer so. Without Ben to put the nasty reply letters into perspective, she dwelt overmuch on negativity rather than on hope. One needed others to nurture optimism, or at least she was finding that she did.

  So far there’d been no gold strike in Idaho, and her Hope School hadn’t restarted due to the regional flooding aftermath. Ben wrote of his longing to be home and encouraged her that if she had some idea for income that would bring him home, she should pursue it. So she did.

  “Forty dollars a month,” she wrote to Ben, “is at least a sure thing.” She’d taken a position teaching in a private school. “Some people still have capital to pay tuition, but it’s a relief to not have to manage the collection of funds and just take my salary at month’s end. Clara and Willis can attend for free, so there is that added bonus. Soon you’ll strike it rich, God willing, and I can buy new shoes for the boys who are so badly in need.”

  Like the two tracks of a wagon wheel through tall grass, she sent him dual messages: shared stories of how much the children missed him, next to expressed concerns about their fragile pecuniary state. Her letters gave him details, too, of the spring at Sunny Hillside and the glorious blooms on the apple trees, a blanket of white fluffs floating on a sea of green. “I wish you could see it, Ben. The farm is so beautiful.” Then she’d consider striking out those very words, writing a new page, not wanting him to feel homesick. “Save these letters, Mr. Duniway, that I might draw upon them one day when I have time to work on another improved novel or two. They’ll help me remember what was happening for us during this temporary separation.”

  She decided to hire a bit of help for herself and put a small portion of her income toward a woman to care for the children while she taught. “It puts money into the economy so don’t say I’m wasting it.” She wished Jerry still lived with them. He’d lend both happiness and help, but schooling was more important. She knew that.

  Clara Belle had taken an interest in the piano, and Abigail traded laundry work for her lessons. One day she’d buy a piano for her, she would. She gave Willis the task of sweeping every day, told three-year-old Hubert he had the important work of watching fifteen-month-old Wilkie while she soaked the more well-to-do neighbors’ duds. While the clothes dried, she worked the spinning wheel, turning their sheep’s wool into thread she could mend with or sell. She had to remind herself to relax her shoulders, take little pauses in her labor, because Ben wasn’t there to remind her. She read to the children before bedtime, though she could barely stay awake. And each evening when she fell onto her own feather comfort, she longed for Ben, prepared a celebration for when he’d come home, and prayed for a bountiful harvest in the fall on Sunny Hillside Farm. And each evening she turned questions over in her mind. What do I have control over? How can I make everything be all right?

  “It’s Jerry. He’s very ill and he’s asking for you.”

  “The flu?”

  “We don’t know . . . he collapsed at the mill.” Jenny’s stepmother’s voice caught and anguish flooded her face. “Tucker’s with him. He may not make it through the day. Come. I have the carriage to bring you back.”

  “No. You take the children to Fanny’s. Let her know what’s happened and to bring them and her own.” Abigail turned to the children’s nanny. “Please let the school know I won’t be there, and catch Clara and Willis and bring them back.”

  “Of course.”

  Abigail raced to the paddock behind the house where they kept one mare. The breeding stock and other animals stayed at Sunny Hillside. The horse recognized Abigail and came trotting across the field to get her treat. “We’ve a twenty-mile ride, Bonnie. I hope you’ve eaten your breakfast. Poor Jerry’s down.” The tears came as she saddled and mounted up.

  Anger and frustration were the reins she held as she kneed Bonnie toward Forest Grove. Why did her father make Jerry work so hard at the mill? At nineteen, he was still a frail young man, competing with Harvey. She chastised herself for not having found a way to have Jerry stay with them instead of being under her father’s thumb. She should have insisted he remain with them. Shearing sheep was tiring work but seasonal. The sawmill was heavy, demanding, year-round labor. Wind dried her tears as she pushed the mare, slowing only when she felt the horse might falter if she didn’t.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. By the time Abigail reached Forest Grove and dismounted a lathered horse, her father stepped out of the house. His face told her everything she didn’t want to know. She’d never missed Ben more.

  Abigail rinsed the cloth she’d used to wipe Jerry’s eyelids, his thin face. “No way to avoid it,” Abigail said, answering Fanny’s longing to sweep away grief as so large a pa
rt of their daily lives. “We have to plow through.”

  “You’re always so strong, Abigail,” their stepmother said. Their hands touched when Abigail gave her a wet cloth.

  “Strong? No. I’ve found a way to push the pain under. Get angry at the world, at . . .” She started to spit blaming words toward her father, but she didn’t.

  “May you never lose a child,” her father said as he leaned against the doorframe, shoulders drooped, watching the women. What they did was women’s work.

  It might ease his grief to participate. Why couldn’t men perform such ministrations as women did?

  “Love helps,” his wife said. She left Jerry’s body to go to their father and stroke his crossed arms. “Love always helps.”

  Her father held her hand as she leaned her face against his shoulder. The shared grief was visible to Abigail, and she felt a new appreciation for Ruth as the woman returned to rub Jerry’s body with fragrant oils.

  Perhaps, Abigail thought, love is the only real balm to pain. Perhaps that was why her father had remarried so quickly. They could say “time heals all wounds,” but it wasn’t time, it was courage. It was being willing to risk love, after love had disappeared, after sorrow for whatever reason caught the heart up short and pierced it like an arrow. Her stepmother grieved Jerry’s death too. He’d been her stepchild, but she had loved him, done his laundry, cared for him, fed him. And Ruth’s mistake those years before had happened after her own husband died and she sought comfort, thought she’d found it in an irresponsible man but had encountered only fleeting warmth. Love had come into her life again through Abigail’s father. Abigail thought of Ben and how fortunate she was to have someone who loved her so very much.