A Mending at the Edge: A Novel (Change And Cherish) Read online

  I couldn’t imagine what normal was for Brita. She was raising children who within a very few years would be bigger than she was. Charles already was. I saw the boys together at a distance. They threw rocks at some sort of target in an open field. I remembered how close I’d come to striking Andy for his sassiness and was grateful that I hadn’t. For Brita, there’d be no physical means to keep her children under control. Jack had tried to control me that way. I suppose Brita had learned faster than the rest of us that size wasn’t much help in keeping one’s children in check. I could still grab Andy’s ear, but he hated it, and I didn’t like doing it. I needed to find some tender way between us, instead of arm twisting.

  Brita acted as though nothing could impede her way, not even a fire in the place where she lived and worked. She hadn’t heard that the family she’d served in Aurora had lost their father and two of their four children of smallpox, nor had she heard of Lucinda’s death or the Keil children’s.

  “I’m sorry to hear,” she said. “It’s good that Frau Keil has you there, then, for comfort. It appears Mr. Keil is recovered.” She nodded toward him, leaning into some discussion with a well-dressed man, Helena close by his side.

  “This is his first outing since the children died,” I said. “And I’m not sure I’m much comfort to Louisa, but my mother and sisters bring her nurture.”

  “Your family came? But that’s good. I’m surprised you even remember me, with your whole family with you now.”

  “You’re memorable,” I said. I was pleased to see her smile. We walked awhile, and then I said, “Brita, tell me all you know about that Homestead Act.”

  If it surprised her, my change of subject, she made no mention of it. She sat down on the tongue of an unhitched wagon. I could see that she’d stitched up her skirt hem with tiny, even stitches.

  “Go off to the courthouse. Find land that hasn’t been aclaimed and claim it. Build a house on it and stay there five years and it’s ayours. I’ve got a spot far south of Salem. It’s not open, so I’ll have work to do to clear it for planting.”

  “Even women can do this?”

  She nodded. “The land is yours in even shorter time if you’re a veteran, if you’re coming back from the war. They wanted to give aspecial help to soldiers. But why would you do that, Emma? Didn’t they promise to build you a house right there in Aurora? And your family is there now.”

  “I wonder if that will ever happen. Brother Keil mourns the deaths of his children so deeply he rarely comes out of his workroom cave. When he does it’s for something…promotional. Certainly not to build a woman a promised house. Helena wants a church, and that makes good sense. Part of me feels selfish, wanting the colony to build me a home when there are others who need them too. Sometimes I wonder if the trials we’ve faced have been because we haven’t taken time for gratitude and worship, just as Helena says.”

  “It would be difficult to build a house on your own,” she said.

  “You’re planning to do it.”

  “But if I had someone close to help me, I’d accept the help.”

  “I never told you, but the house I want will have room for two families. We could make them totally independent or have one kitchen that we both used. Have a good roof and a place for people to be private, but within a shout should they need help. I’d thought maybe you’d join me there, you and the children, but then you left.”

  I wanted her to say she’d return. It would give me a reason to push for the house daily. We started walking again, out across the meadow. I slowed my pace, partly for Pearl’s shortened steps, but more for Brita, who still moved by shifting her weight from side to side. She finally stopped, picked up Pearl, and bounced her lovingly as she faced her, her daughter’s legs around her waist.

  “Your double house idea is lovely,” Brita said. “But I’m not the one to live on that other side.”

  “Because you want your own home.”

  She nodded. “Though when I first came for help, that house you describe would have been a good place to collect myself again and get my children settled down. Not that the hallway by the blue cabinet wasn’t a restful place,” she hastened to add. “But a house with only one other family around would abeen better. It’s a fine idea, Emma.”

  “But?”

  “People like me must be prepared in case someone pulls the rug from beneath our feet. I want to know that I made the rug I stand on and laid it in the house with my name on the door. I want to know that it is my home and that I’ll leave when I choose, and not when someone else says I must.”

  “I’d never ask you to leave, Brita.”

  “It wouldn’t be your home, though, Emma. The colony would have the house, and they could do with it what they pleased. That’s the other side of sharing everything.”

  “One’s own place” was a slender thread of the colony life that others could snip off. Still, no one had ever been expelled from Keil’s colony. Even back in Bethel the Bauers had built ten businesses right inside Bethel after they’d said they no longer wanted to be a part of Keil’s communal ways. Keil had left Bethel, and it might be yet another way Keil kept control over us colonists here, promising things but never delivering. I’d have to get approval from him to use the house, even if he authorized the two-family design. “Maybe Keil will determine who would live on the other side.”

  “Unless you were strong enough to stand your ground,” Brita continued. “That’s the only way a woman, even a small woman, can have what she wants. You got to care deep to step over people’s open-mouthed gasps that you’d dare something so outrageous or that it could ever succeed.”

  “How did you ever get so wise, Brita?”

  She laughed. “Ah, the fire-eater taught me all that.”

  Spring turned into summer, slow but steady as the milk that dripped into the lumps that formed cottage cheese. Still no word about my house. Still no movement toward the church. My parents kept themselves distant from the village. I began thinking about work I could do to make a living apart from the colony. Maybe Jack wouldn’t know where I was, and an employer would assume I was widowed and eligible for my own earnings. I wasn’t sure that the colony would want me around, working for them, if I found another place to live. It was acceptable for Henry C, the music master, to live within the village and yet earn money from the outside that he said he would use to send his son to Harvard one day. He never took a dime for lessons given to colony children, and Jonathan said he believed in the communal ways of sharing. But a woman? I doubted they’d pay me for my cooking or sewing. Truth told, I did have much to repay them for. They’d rescued me and my children two years earlier. Still, by the time I found land to build on, what I contributed in work to the colony ought to make things even with what they’d given to me, Clara the chicken included.

  Two years I’d been here. It was a year already since Jack left the second time. I decided to ride along one day when the men delivered butter to Oregon City. They’d stop at Solomon Weil’s pottery shop there too, to make trades. I asked and they let me off at the Clackamas County courthouse. “I just want to check on something for Jonathan,” I told the driver, never quite sure if he’d report to Keil or not. It wasn’t a total lie…just a half truth. I’d let Jonathan know of my results of looking at land maps and deeds. I sought unclaimed land that had already been surveyed. Most of it was far from Aurora or any other place where my children could go to school or where I could find employment. Maybe I’d have to do what Brita did, first find a paying job and then save up enough so that all I needed to do was work at proving up my land within those five years.

  If I began this fall of 1863, I reasoned, my Andy would be fifteen by the time it was mine. I’d need his help to do it. But Andy needed to be in school. And how would I do that? We’d be as we had been in Willapa: isolated and alone. Still, throughout the summer, I rode to look at various sites. When I rode with my sons, no one asked any questions of where I was going. When I came to the barns alone, the men w
ould frown as I asked for a horse or a mule, as though without children around a woman was somehow up to no good. I gave no explanations to them. Let them wonder.

  The search took time, what with fitting it in between the constancy of colony work. And I had to feel strong enough, when I went alone, to endure the disapproving looks of the men.

  To gain such strength, I’d begun reading the Scriptures again. Karl had recommended it, and once, before Christian died, I’d found the time of reading full of peace and wisdom. I’d deprived myself of both by ignoring those words. My sister Kitty had preached Scripture to me in her letters. At least that was how I’d seen them. I’d lifted her words and carried them as weights, instead of as the wings she intended. But then that psalm had come to me to comfort Louisa and to remind me that once I’d found nurture in the psalms and other scriptures too. Kitty loved the psalms and even taught the group of us a psalm to sing while we worked. It was a part of her, Scripture and song, and they weren’t meant to make me wear a cloak of guilt just because I didn’t experience faith the way she did. One summer morning, I’d been reading in the book of Revelation: “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” The words spoke to my heart, and I decided to take my little man, Andy, with me to see if we could find that “open door.”

  Andy didn’t seem all that happy to go with me. I wanted to talk about what I proposed to do and how it might affect him. I asked Kitty to look after my other children, so I could devote this time to my older yet more distant son.

  “I promised to help Martin sort out the new shipment,” he said.

  “Martin will do fine without you for a few hours.”

  “I don’t like that old horse they always pick for me either. He tries to bite me whenever I bend over.”

  “Don’t bend over near him, then.”

  “Martin teaches me things, Mama. Important things. I should stay and help him.” I reminded him that Martin wasn’t his father and that I, as his mother, would decide how he spent his time. I too had things to teach him. He said he didn’t care to spend his time riding around anyway, and he didn’t know why I wanted to live someplace else either. “I like Aurora, Mama.”

  “Bitte, don’t make this difficult, Andy.”

  He crossed his arms over his narrow chest.

  “I’ll take care of the horse,” I said.

  “That I’d like to see,” he sassed. I didn’t reprimand him. Instead, I decided to do him one better.

  “Is that dinner, Mama?” Andy asked as we walked toward the barns for our afternoon excursion. I’d told him there’d be a delay because I had something special to prepare. He nodded toward the basket I carried. It was a colony basket, made from ash and oak and brought from Bethel. The cover fit tightly to keep flying bugs out, but the weave let air flow through. Inside I had cold ham slices and bread and several hard-boiled eggs in blue shells. But I also had a very hot baked potato, just taken out of the coals.

  “Dinner and a surprise,” I said.

  When we arrived at the barn, one of the men saddled the mule and then led up Andy’s mount, the horse he didn’t like. “Mama…,” he began.

  “That one bites, so be careful,” the stableman said.

  “Ja, so I’m told,” I said. “Give me a moment.” To Andy I said, “Act like you’re having just the best time.” I showed them a pocket I’d made, and put the hot potato in it. Then I tied the pocket around my waist, with the hot tuber at my backside, making sure the horse was busy munching and not paying attention. “You watch.” I led the horse down the fence line and tied him loosely to the rail. I gave him plenty of rope to move his head. I chattered about the weather as the man placed the saddle on the horse’s back. And then I deliberately bent over to check the stirrup, my backside toward the horse’s head. The potato was hot enough that I could feel it through my dark calico dress and petticoat.

  “Ach, be careful,” the stableman warned.

  I heard the tug of the rope and the horse twisting his head, and I knew he’d be reaching to bite the potato in my pocketed Hinterviertel.

  “Mama…”

  “Shush now,” I told him in a singsong voice. “We’re just chattering away here.”

  I felt the pocket move. The horse grabbed and bit into the hot potato.

  The animal twisted his head back. I heard the halter rings rattle against the rope, followed by the thump of a half-eaten potato hitting the ground at my side. The stableman chuckled low. “A hot Kartoffel never had such a bite.”

  I straightened, fussed with the leather, and then found a reason to once again bend with my Hinterviertel toward the horse’s biting end. The horse twisted his head but did nothing. “I doubt he’ll ever do that again,” I said, standing up. “He’ll think he did it to himself too, if we don’t make any real notice of it. So, are you ready to ride with your mama?”

  The stableman smiled as he walked away, shaking his head. Andy nodded and mounted up. I thought I saw appreciation in his face. “You outsmarted him, Mama,” Andy said.

  “Yes, I did.”

  Martin wasn’t the only adult my son could learn from. Perhaps I’d opened my very next door.

  Acting as Though Hopeful

  Andy and I had a grand day out riding. I’d made a map, thinking maybe my father would be interested if I found a good piece of property even if it couldn’t be a homestead claim. Being with my son made me grateful: we had a roof over our heads, and we had family around us, though neither fit the image I’d planned. Serenity settled in my mind while we rode. I could accept the present experiences while still pursuing something different and, hopefully, better.

  Andy spoke with animation about his time with Martin and his pharmaceutical activities.

  I asked, “And do you want to work with apothecary things, be a healer of sorts?” Then thinking I should not just ask questions but state my thoughts if I wanted to influence my children, I added, “Healing would be a good thing to do.”

  “When someone needs their leg cut off, I want to cut it off,” Andy said. I raised my eyebrows. “When someone breaks an arm, I want to set it. And if—”

  “You…want to cut off limbs?”

  “Only to help people, Mama.” I heard the disgust in his voice. “If there’s infection. I want to heal and fix things. Make it better.”

  “That’s gut,” I said. “Very good.” This was a change from the time when he’d wanted to hurt Big Jack. “It would take both strength and courage to do such work,” I said.

  “I have both.”

  “You say that very firmly for one who is not quite ten years,” I said. I shook my head, and he raised his eyes in question. “Your father and I headed west ten years ago. The years slipped past me like an otter sliding down the Willapa River’s banks.” As we rode, I pondered silently. What did I have to say for them? More important, what did I want the next ten to look like?

  “I’m old enough to know what I want to do when I grow up,” Andy said. A slight breeze lifted his straight brown hair, and he pushed it away from his eyes. He rode without a hat and squinted into the sun. He had new boots on. I hadn’t purchased those for him. Martin must have. Or maybe my father. Had he needed shoes and I’d failed to see it?

  “You want to be a doctor in ten years then, ja?”

  “Is there a way that can happen, Mama?”

  He lifted those sable eyes that caused my throat to tighten. Oh, how I wanted to be the person he saw, someone who could do anything to make her children’s lives better than her own.

  “Only Karl Ruge and the music master have university degrees here. But they could prepare you for a university. While you study hard now, I’ll try to find a way to send you later.” I thought perhaps my father might help pay for his schooling. Or maybe the colony could, but I didn’t propose either solution. Better not to lift up hopes that would only be later dashed.

  We found ourselves near Adam Schuele’s farm and reined our horses down the long lane. Keil had given directions fo
r a road to be built from Aurora to a Giesy farm, a road that bypassed Adam’s farm altogether, making it difficult for Adam to bring his goods to Aurora. I hadn’t realized the convolutedness of this trail until we’d ridden this less-traveled road.

  I hoped we’d see my parents here.

  Adam greeted us with a bear hug. He raised hogs, and the pungent scent of the pigs rose to my nose despite the distance of the pens from the house.

  “What brings you here, Emma?” Adam asked. He could use my first name because we’d been through so much together that first winter in Willapa.

  “I thought maybe I’d see my family,” I said. “And we’re thinking to find a homestead plot, my son and I, so we’re riding and beholding.”

  “Like father, like daughter, wanting to live somewhere outside of Aurora.” Then, “Didn’t I hear Keil had agreed to build you a house?”

  “Did he, Mama?”

  “With his children’s deaths, he’s been morose and not interested in much of what’s going on. I’m afraid our home isn’t very high up on his list,” I told Andy.

  “The Homestead Act is a good thing. I considered it myself.”

  “You and Keil…quarreled,” I said, risking the intimacy.

  “He thought we scouts made a mistake.” His hands quivered as he pulled a chair out for me. He was aging like my father.

  His words burned at my stomach. I’d been a part of that so-called Willapa mistake too.

  “Ja, well, that is his loss. He’s envious of what we had there in Willapa, building a new place different from what Aurora is, everyone with their own home in their own name instead of Keil and Company.”

  He looked wistful. “Those were good times, ja? We took care of you, Emma, as your father asked us to. And you took care of us.”

  “My parents, they’ve—”

  “They didn’t want to come out here at first,” Adam said. “But they tangled with August Keil and Andrew Giesy when Wilhelm sent that son back to Bethel and told that Giesy to help your father manage affairs in Bethel. Then leaving seemed wise. But I don’t think they wanted to deal with what might greet them here, either.” He’d been hulling some berries when we came in, and he handed a few to Andy now. “I told your parents not to come, to stay there where land was in their name and not Keil’s only. But they wanted to help family.” He smiled at me. “And Jonathan is a big Keil supporter.”