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

  “That’s not just a man’s discovery, Mr. Ehlen,” I said. “Not just a man’s.”

  Keil appeared to revive with the arrival of those wagons. He’d given directions for where people should park, pointing with his cane. Over the next few days, he had Jonathan set up ledger pages at the Keil and Company Store, as he called the communal shop, so people could get their supplies. At least we had supplies for them, though the addition of two hundred fifty-two people strained our resources, or so Jonathan said. John Giesy said we’d do fine.

  Checking our own kitchen larder, I knew we’d be hard pressed. I wondered why Keil hadn’t pushed us to grind more wheat, to make sure we dried more fruits and vegetables, if he knew there’d be this big arrival. Maybe he wasn’t sure the Bethelites would really come. Perhaps he planned to purchase supplies from the ships. He must have cash, if that was his plan.

  Keil announced with some bravado, “There is plenty of land for you all east of here. You must not worry. This is our Eden, and now we will make it a garden that will become known the world around.”

  Keil made a big show of assuring the new arrivals that there was enough for everyone in the storehouses: enough thread for the women, enough wheat for bread, enough land to plow. No one said out loud that there weren’t enough houses, though once the Knight and Stauffer women arrived from Willapa, the looks on their faces as they gazed around spoke loudly enough.

  On the final feast day, my parents came to town, word having reached them at Schuele’s. My mother and sisters sat on a quilt beneath the trees, brushing flies away from the baskets of bread and slices of ham and hard-boiled eggs. My children were with them, my Ida enjoying the pampering of her aunts. I’d sat with them all for a time, watching Lou work on her sampler while Johanna hovered. Lou hadn’t had a quaking fit for several weeks now, my mother said. Johanna knew what the quaking looked like, and she took it as her mission to be prepared, sometimes anticipating a fit by a certain look in Lou’s eyes or the way she held her head.

  Christine stood to the side with my father, listening to the new arrivals. I hadn’t seen her engaged in much conversation. My father talked with Mr. Ehlen, nodding his head, and I heard “abolitionists” and “war” as words drifted from the trees. He avoids me. When he walked over toward the corrals and Christine joined my mother and sisters, I assumed he wanted to smoke his pipe alone. I asked my mother if she’d watch my children.

  “I will,” Christine offered. She had the sober face of someone accustomed to disappointment, always preparing for more. “I never had any brothers or sisters,” she said. “Except you Wagners later in life.” It was the most personal information I’d heard about her.

  I thanked her, and while the band played in the distance, I followed my father. He tapped at his pipe burl. Mr. Ehlen had apparently given it to him, as it had Antietam and a date carved into the outside of the bowl. Perhaps it was where he’d received his wound.

  “Have you located any property to homestead?” I thought it an innocent enough question.

  “What I do with property should be of no concern to you, Emma Giesy.”

  “Papa,” I said, blinking back the tears that the harshness of his words had sprung, “I wanted only to talk…about…where I could find you and my sisters and brothers and mother, when you settle down. I miss seeing you. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  His eyes softened. “Your brothers work in Oregon City. Your sisters help look after the Schuele fields for now. I suspect we’ll winter again with them. Except for Kitty.” He scoffed. “Where she picks this new name thing up, I’ll never know.”

  “Kitty distinguishes herself that way. Maybe to be sure you don’t confuse her with Christine.”

  He stiffened his shoulders. “We have room enough for many children, no matter how they disappoint us.”

  I wanted to ask if I disappointed him, but I didn’t have the courage. “It’s a wonder that you would have added a child, a woman, into your family. Our family.”

  “She needed a safe place to be, Emma. It is the Christian way, to offer safety.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “That’s Christine’s story to tell,” he said. The sharpness of his words sliced like paper against a child’s tender skin. I was still at the edge of my family.

  “Will Christine winter with you?”

  “She plans to stay with the Keils. Ask her your questions, Emma. She’s a grown woman, like you, on her own.”

  “I don’t understand this…bitterness between us,” I said finally, deciding to state my case.

  He tapped his pipe against the split rail, sucked on the now dry stem. He sighed. “Christine works well at the hotel, or so they tell me,” he said. “I hear talk that Keil will build a real hotel soon. One where many can stay over if they wish. There is railroad talk too.” He shook his head. “Imagine. Keil sends people west to avoid the influence of the railroad on our children when the tracks were laid twenty miles away, and now he plans ways to bring the railroad right through his Aurora, right to our doorsteps.”

  “I’ve wondered about that too. What is it? What did Brother Keil do to make both of you separate from him?”

  “It is no concern of yours, Emma.”

  “I wonder if whatever separates you from him also separates…us,” I said. “I’ve come to…understand Keil and his motives. Yes, he can bob like an apple in the water, sometimes showing his colors, sometimes making one hold his nose to approach him. But he puts whatever is earned through the hotel or our wheat sales or apples back into the colony. He buys more land so new people will have places to farm. Except for the gross Haus, he doesn’t live above the rest of us.” I spoke the words softly and hadn’t thought they’d sounded too complimentary of Keil. But my father, who’d been talking to me as we had of old, now bristled.

  “You defend him,” he said. “He replaces faith with economics. That was never the intent.” Then, “You have made your bed, Emma. You lie down with Giesys…”

  “But you loved Christian. Like a son he was to you!”

  “Ja, Christian. He was a good man. The best of the lot. My good friend. And he died.”

  My father grieves my husband’s passing too. That hadn’t occurred to me.

  He paused. “And you ended up giving up Christian’s land to a ne’er-do-well.”

  “All the Giesys aren’t like that. Just Jack. I was doing the best I could. I hadn’t heard from you. I wanted you to come out, to help me, but—”

  “Jonathan offered you a way out. You could have come to Aurora after Christian’s death, and he would have helped you. You could have sold the land eventually in Willapa, so you could buy your own in your son’s name. All the scouts fared well except for Adam, and that was because of Keil. But you had to do it in your way, didn’t you? After all I’d taught you about staying close to the land. As long as you have land, no one can ever take it from you, Emma.”

  “The Indians here would argue with you,” I said.

  “What? Ach, ja. This is true enough, but I’m not obligated to have them listen to me,” he added. “If I were, they would probably ignore my advice as my daughter and son do.”

  It’s what I did with the property that upsets him? I’ve behaved unwisely about the land and for this I can’t be forgiven?

  “Aber in Bethel, you belonged to the communal ways,” I said. “You helped start Bethel. That was your life. That’s what you taught me, Papa. I thought you were angry because we remained in Willapa, because we tried oystering as something apart from the colony. Or because I remarried. To be angry because I tried to find safe haven for my children here in Aurora…”

  “Because you let a Giesy get your land.” He nearly shouted. “Ach. Why should I expect a woman to be quick enough to outfox a Giesy? Even now Andrew Giesy, who works with August Keil to sell the communal land in Bethel, tries to say the property I held as my own there must go into the common fund, while August Keil operates his land as though it is his personally. He puts nothing into the
communal pot. He hasn’t since he returned to help Andrew make the sales. Keil replaced me with his son as co-manager back there, quick as a lynx. He’ll replace Jonathan too, you wait and see.”

  “I didn’t know you had trouble back in Bethel,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ja. I held that land in my name from the beginning, and sold it…Ach, never mind. It is too easy to get under another’s spell, and I suspect that’s what has happened to you.”

  “Jonathan trusts Brother Keil,” I said.

  “Maybe. But we would all be better if we had land in our own names. We could still offer help to others, still be communal in the Christian way. You remember that, Emma.”

  “I’m a woman. Land can never be in my name.”

  He shook his head and began to walk away. I couldn’t let him. I wasn’t finished. I reached for his shirtsleeve. He stopped.

  “Papa. We’ll talk again, ja? I want so for us to enjoy the company of each other again one day. This conversation, it doesn’t leave me…satisfied.”

  The set of his jaw loosened, and I thought the lines to his eyes crinkled as they might before he smiled. “Satisfaction is what comes from a good stew,” he said.

  “I make an ample one. With many pieces blended into the whole to make an altogether new flavor. You’ll come to my house and have it sometime? When I have a house?”

  He said nothing for a moment, then he patted my shoulder. “Ja, Daughter. I will one day come for your satisfying stew.”

  In that second week, several Wolff wagons began pulling out, heading east to the land assigned to them. The Knights said they’d look at property in the Oregon City area, and I could tell that like my father, they wanted land of their own. Mrs. Kraus, a widow with three children, said she’d remain in the Aurora area and hope for a house. Join the wait for the walnut to roll your way, I thought but didn’t say. Triphena Will, holding her six-month-old infant, Leonard, told her husband, “I’d like to go home now.” You could tell by her crying-red eyes that she meant back to Bethel.

  Then began the meetings to ensure proper posting of what people brought in from Bethel to Aurora—who would get credit for what, who would be building barns and houses, who would go to work in the fields, who would find work outside the colony but bring resources back in return for their assignment of land, which new craftsmen could begin work making the big lathes needed to turn the long pillars for the church. These were experienced builders. Aurora was the sixth colony they’d built up while following Keil. Wolfers and Wagners and Forstners had their names attached to places like Harmony in Pennsylvania and, of course, Bethel. I could feel the swirl of progress in the fall air.

  With all the reconsidering, I asked Jonathan to show me my page in the ledger book. The fabric I’d purchased was noted, as was the flour I’d been given for personal use on the distribution days. I noticed Clara was on the page as an acquisition and debits placed against it. A good portion of the debits were Jack’s. But my page lacked acknowledgment of what I’d brought into the colony, and after my father’s words, such mention seemed important. If the colony ever dissolved, I’d want to have compensation for what I’d contributed and not—heaven forbid—still owed.

  “Shouldn’t there be a page that says what I’ve contributed?” I asked my brother.

  “It’s there,” he said. “Your hours of labor against what you’ve purchased—your shoes, your thread, your coffee. That dime you gave in cash for having won the award for your drawing at the Agricultural Fair.”

  “But that comes out even for the first year,” I said. “I’m not accumulating. And there’s nothing to note what I brought in through the Willapa land. That we paid it back. Or the work I’ve done here at the Keils’, the stage stop, the gardens.”

  “Ja, I see what you say now. You really need that in order for there to be no question about our building you a house. We need to reassure that you are a full member of the colony,” my brother told me.

  “There’s no question but that I’m a member of the colony,” I said. “Who’s challenging that?”

  “No one,” Jonathan said. “Yet. But we need to be sure in case someone does. Your husband isn’t a member, so that’s the rub.”

  “Ach. My husband risked his life coming out here for those of Bethel. And he believed he belonged to the colony here, even if I didn’t. The Giesys are all here. Have they brought funds into the colony? Did they sell their land in Willapa? Make the certificate say when Christian joined, then, along with his wife.”

  “But Jack Giesy isn’t a member, Emma. I don’t think you can join without your current husband.”

  I stared at him. “We took in runaway women and never asked their husbands about doing it,” I said.

  “But they did not join up if they were married.”

  “Brother Keil would never think to stop a Giesy who wants to join up, would he? Louisa knows I’m a member. Helena would vouch for me. I’m a Giesy, for heaven’s sake. It’s what drives my father from me!”

  “I don’t know,” he cautioned.

  “Will you build me a home or not?” I actually stamped my foot. This had gone on long enough.

  Jonathan sighed and pulled a sheet of paper from the cubby in his desk. “Keil wants you to sign this,” he said. He slid the paper across the oak to me. “I’ve been…hesitant to show it to you.”

  I, Emma Giesy, will agree to abide by the rules of the Aurora Colony as directed by Father Keil, offering up what I have to give in service to the colony. In return, the colony will provide care and keeping for me and my family including the building of a home.

  “Will he sign this?” I said. Jonathan nodded. “Would you?” He nodded again. “It doesn’t say anything about my being a full member of the colony.”

  “Ja, you’re right about that.” Jonathan looked at the paper again.

  “I don’t need to be an official member, but I need something else here. It must read, ‘care, education, and keeping for all my children and me.’ And I want to add these final words.” I wrote five more words onto the tail of the agreement and slid it back across the desk to my brother.

  Jonathan looked at it and inserted the first suggestions I’d made. He read my final five words. “Ja. He will sign, though he might wonder what you mean by ‘designed for use by her.’”

  “Tell him it will be for service to our Lord,” I said. “Then let’s get this house underway.”

  Hammers in Hand

  November 15, 1863. Bryonia helps the headaches. Resting in a chair overlooking the river helps too. At night, I sit outside in the rocker and wrap myself in the Running Squares quilt. I stare at the stars and imagine each one disappearing until there is only a dark sky and I am alone beneath it but not lonely. My powerlessness disappears; my headache subsides.

  November 16. I’ve left no room to write, having spent myself on headache notes yesterday. Perhaps it is enough to say this was a good day despite the rains.

  The sounds of hammers throbbed, but not for my house, in my head.

  I dressed Ida, hurried my other children to don their petticoats and trousers, hating the pain in my head when I bent over to hook up Ida’s buckled shoes. Together we went to Martin, to see if he could give me some powders. I’d decided not to bother Brother Keil, and besides, I didn’t want to depend on his ministering to me—nor to deal with his cloying at my asking for assistance.

  Tall, slender Martin, always leaning forward, was one of the finest men I’d known. I’d trusted him and Karl Ruge to help me in my darkest hour, and it affirmed for me that while I’d made some bad decisions in my life, all of them weren’t so. I admired Martin, and sometimes small movements of his hands or the way he stood reminded me of Christian, his oldest brother. I ached then in remembering.

  “You’ll need Bryonia,” Martin said, after asking me a few questions about the onset of the headache and any other aches and pains I might have. He gave me a paper cone of crushed roots, told me how to take them, then mixed up a batch in w
ater for me to take half the dosage before I left. My heartbeat throbbed against my eyes, and everything in Martin’s apothecary appeared to have halos around it. It was early, before he usually opened his still-unfinished shop, and the lantern cast a soft glow.

  “In the old country, don’t you know,” Martin said, “they called Bryonia ‘wild hops,’ and it had a way of helping coughs as well.” He had me sit down, let Ida waddle around, squat, and touch the white knobs on the many drawers that rose to the high ceiling. Andy took Christian and Kate to show them the back room.

  “Maybe it would work for baking instead of yeast,” I said.

  Martin laughed. “It would add quite a strange sensation to bread dough. I’m not sure I’d recommend it.”

  I hadn’t been in his apothecary shop much, but I could see why Andy liked being here. A big desk sat at one end. Scents and smells pleasantly penetrated my aching head. The vials of bottles and dye packets had been placed in finely measured wooden boxes with dovetailed ends that lined the walls to make a comforting pattern. Martin had stained the wood with blood and milk, giving it a reddish cast instead of our usual colony blue. He must have made the little boxes himself.

  Andy led his throng back in, showing me how he swept the floors and how Martin let him unpack the barrels when they were delivered.

  “He’s good help,” Martin said.

  “His time with you is good for him too.”

  I thought I saw color rise on Martin’s neck. “We got to know each other in Willapa,” he said. “Careful,” he cautioned my son, settling some glass bottles onto a shelf. “Those will break.” I noticed that Andy didn’t sass him back when Martin gave instruction. He carried himself proudly, his younger brother and sister watching with admiring eyes.