A Light in the Wilderness Page 4

  He was an easy man to be around. Cheerful. He asked rather than ordered. Never made any move to touch her person in demand. He did small things that eased her day like fixing the coffee in the morning, burning the trash far from the house to reduce the smell.

  Once he’d handed her a bouquet of beardtongue, white as a summer cloud and just as delicate.

  “Thought you’d like a posy.” His face burned red from the sun, or perhaps it had been a blush inching up on his cheeks, escaping his gray-tinted red beard.

  “Spring bring surprises.” She had dipped her face into the tiny flowers, not sure what to say next. No one had ever offered her flowers. Her children never lived long enough and their fathers weren’t men who cared for the fancies of a woman. Such kindnesses made her wonder if Davey might have had a wife at one time, someone who like Letitia appreciated a gentle conversation over corn pone.

  She spread butter on a biscuit as the rain came down. “I hear crossings be delayed out of St. Jo.”

  “A few made it before the Missouri flooded.” Rain cascaded off the shake roof and formed a curtain to filter the lush dogwoods beyond. “’Spect the Kindreds and Bowmans and Gilliams and Fords are all on their way by now.”

  “And Robin and Polly and their three.”

  “Who?”

  “The Ford slaves and their three children Ford didn’t sell before he leave.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

  “Man has property he needs to manage.” Davey spoke into his plate. “Cost money to take his own family plus a slave family of eight.”

  “He might have thought of that ’fore he decide to leave. Leave all of them here, give them their freedom. Instead he sell three Ford children away from their mother.”

  “How do you even know of this?”

  Letitia shrugged. Davey had little knowledge of the chatter line across counties among colored people. She knew of the Holmeses who were part of the 1844 train because the Bowmans spoke of who was going from Howard or Platte or a dozen other Missouri counties.

  “Well, they’re off and I guess we’ll know when a letter or two arrives extolling the glory of the trip—unless someone turns back. That’s always possible. It takes quite a strength to keep going in the face of trial.”

  “A trial? Mistah Bowman’s books say the trip like a walk down the cattle path.”

  “A cattle trail through desert and peaks. But we have to keep our tales light so as not to upset the fragile form.”

  “’Spect so,” Letitia said. She smiled over “fragile form” and also how she’d picked up that shortened word “’spect” from Davey’s lingo, sounding American in its clipped always-in-a-hurry way. Now and then a “bit o’ the Irish” slipped into his speech, making her wonder how he endured the spit and stir-up against his people the way she did against hers. Did he do what he could to not bring attention to his Irish? He could hide his roots much easier than she could her beginnings from faraway Africa.

  “Guess who I ran into today?” Davey took a drink of buttermilk. Like the Bowman children, he preferred it, he said, to coffee.

  Letitia raised one eyebrow in question.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. Greenberry Smith.”

  Her hands shook as she lifted her cup of buttermilk.

  “You don’t know him, I ’spect.” He continued to talk.

  Letitia knew him. He was a patroller, prowling the roads at night to return property who’d gone beyond their owner’s will. He “administered justice” on the road if the owners advanced their preferences, laying out lashes on bare backs, or worse.

  Once he’d stopped her when her midwife work kept her out late. She was headed back on a moonlit trail, sweat dampening her hands. He’d come upon her with another man, both riding big, nervous horses that pranced around her.

  “Your master know you’re loafing in the moonlight?”

  She fumbled at the knitted purse tied to her waist, grateful she’d stopped carrying it where she’d have to unbutton her bodice to retrieve it. She pulled the paper out, tried not to tremble as she handed it to him. “I’s free.”

  Letitia wasn’t sure if it was good there were two patrollers that night. Greenberry Smith wouldn’t hurt her as there was a witness; or maybe a second man might urge the other on toward “doing their duty” to keep slavery secure.

  “I seen her before,” the other man said. His horse stomped, rested one back leg then another, ready to go home too. “Let her go. I got a gut ache and she belongs to the Bowmans.”

  “Does she now. So these free papers are forged?” She had seen the space between Smith’s front teeth as he sneered into the moonlight.

  “Nah. She stays with ’em. They give her those papers back in Kentucky, I hear tell.”

  “Pity if they were lost. She doesn’t look like any free woman.”

  Letitia had lowered her head. Must not speak up.

  The second patroller’s horse switched its tail, danced sideways, ready to move. “Come on, G.B. Let’s head out. Give her the papers.”

  “Don’t be so hasty. I think we need to see if these are real or not. Take her in to Bowmans, if that’s who you say owns her.”

  “No sense waking a man up in the middle of the night. She’s free.”

  “Here, girl. Put your pretty hand up here if you want these back.”

  Letitia lifted her head and reached. He held the documents above her fingertips.

  “Come on. Work for it.”

  She jumped then, her breast hitting his leg. She almost clenched the papers, but he lifted them higher, a grin on his face.

  “Dance for ’em. Come on, pretty girl like you can dance, can’t you?”

  She jumped and he lifted the papers ever higher. She jumped, humiliation like hail pelting every inch of her skin.

  “Here!” The second patroller grabbed the papers from behind G.B. Smith, spurred his big gelding around, and handed them to Letitia. “Get on home. I ain’t got time for this.” He rode off.

  G.B. stared at her for a time, then said, “Rescued. This time.” He grinned at her as she trembled, trying to put her paper back inside her bag. “I’m not sure there is a greater affront to the successful commerce of a country than a freed slave. You are the epitome of that affront. Free and taking money from the hands of hardworking people. Someday, you’ll have to pay.” He’d swung his horse around, the animal kicking rock and dirt up onto her before taking G.B. away.

  She felt tears press against her nose, shook as she wiped her face of them. She didn’t know what “affront” and “epitome” meant, but the tone Smith used to spread the words out like a stream of spit told her all she needed. She’d never forgotten that night or others where G.B. Smith reigned. He was a man who forced others to stay in the shadows.

  Davey scraped his cup on the wood table. Buttermilk edged his mustache, bringing Letitia back to the wet day.

  “You know him personal?” She kept her voice light, chewed her biscuit slow.

  “From my time in Carolina,” Davey said. “He came up here after I did. So I sees him today and he says he’s making plans to leave this country, head to where there’s a territory and no laws yet on the books ’cept what citizens put there and a man can make something of himself without all the bad tales chasing him.”

  “Place don’t make a man.” She dipped out boiled potatoes, the steam filling her nose and prickling her cheeks with the wet.

  “No? Well, a place sure enough carves him out so he finds out what kind of man he is.”

  “If he be a gambler and a cheat in this country, then crossin’ mountains or survivin’ floodin’ rivers ain’t likely to change him into somethin’ different.”

  “Oh, woman.” Davey sat back to make room for her serving, wiped his lip of the buttermilk.

  She was aware of his closeness, could smell the soap he’d put in his hair. Is that new?

  “He wondered how I bought a free black from the Bowmans.” He poked the potato with his fork.

 
; She felt the hair on her arms bristle and she stiffened in her serving, turned her back to him. “You told him I belongs to you?”

  “I didn’t correct him. I thought about it. But I figured it’s safer for you if he thinks you’re already claimed, don’t you think?”

  Was it? “He knows I free.” Was it better if people believed she belonged to Davey? All she wanted to do was have a life, someday buy a place of her own, live without the fears of patrollers on the road. Was it any different having people think she belonged to Davey Carson, as when most folks assumed she belonged to the Bowmans? But Letitia didn’t belong to anyone except God Almighty. Her mama had told her that too, before they parted when Letitia was ten. She told her that the Lord loved mercy, sought justice, and abided well with a humble person who didn’t get too far out in front of herself, who knew how to fit in rather than stand out.

  “Just so long as you know I’s free.”

  He raised one bushy eyebrow. “Lookee, I know that. I’m grateful you board here. You’re . . . good company.” He cleared his throat.

  “I’m choosin’ to fix your meals and wash your clothes. In exchange for my cow’s grazin’. That our deal.” She turned back to face him.

  “So it is.”

  He brushed crumbs from his beard that Letitia noticed he’d trimmed. When did he start doing that?

  “One thing G.B. did make sense about was me becoming a citizen. Suggested I get papers. That way we movers can have enough people to push for a new state.”

  “We movers?”

  “Yup. I’ve decided. I’m going to Oregon next year come high water or not. There were old folks in their forties who’ve gone. I figure I can too. You might think about what you’ll do then. I’ll sell my property and your cow’s fine grass and won’t be no place for you to bed down in my larder, either, come spring.”

  “Good to have advance warnin’.”

  “Isn’t it.” He grunted. He finished eating in silence. Then, “I got to be going now.” He lifted his pistol from the corner, wouldn’t look at her. “Be back before sunrise, I ’spect.”

  She walked toward the barn to milk, didn’t let herself think about where he went on those evenings. He said they hunted raccoons, but he had yet to ever bring any back for her to stew. She knew the look of a man on patrol for runaway slaves or prowling for free black men showing up where a group of white men didn’t think they belonged. She didn’t want to think of Davey as a man like that. Instead she sat on the stool beneath Charity, annoyed that there’d be yet another change.

  “Sho and he ain’t never married,” she told Charity. “No married man would give his woman a year notice of such a change as sellin’ and headin’ out.” No, he was a man looking out for himself with some dangerous leanings as he patrolled the county. She was foolish to ever think otherwise.

  Oregon Country

  Flower Time. That’s what the Kalapuya people called it. Her people. Small green shoots awoke and pushed up through the black earth. The Woman, known by the Others as Betsy, the name given her by the Methodist missionaries, dug with her kapn, pressing the digging stick against the slender shoots no taller than her finger. Later, her people would harvest larger bulbs found by their tall blooms bearing the purple color of morning skies. But now, her old fingers reached into the damp earth and sought out these small bulbs named camas. She soon filled the woven basket at her waist, walking back toward the rounded shelter to dump the roots into a larger basket made of willow and cedar root and shredded maple bark, the soft, inner bark. It pleased her to have the bulbs reappear each spring, a sign that the Creator continued to provide for them despite so many of her people dying of the aching disease seasons before.

  Her old back ached from the work, but it was good work. Others would come soon and they would dig a pit together to bake the bulbs. She liked to be first in the morning, to feel the dew dampen her hide moccasins, make them squishy soft. With her strong fingers she rubbed dirt from the bulbs that were nearly as white as the skins of the Missionaries.

  She returned to the shelter and lifted the tule mat off her grandson with her toes. “It is time, Little Shoot.” The boy, nine summers old, groaned and rolled over. This boy was tall and strong and she must keep him so. He was her treasured little shoot, her daughter and sons all gone now. She did not dwell on their passing, noting only the scars left on her face from the illness they had died from but she survived. She cherished this child even more for his being all that was left. But she would not spoil him as her mother had spoiled her brother. No, this Little Shoot would learn to do women things as well as men things so when she was gone he could survive. Maybe he would have to teach his wife such things if she lacked a kasa—a grandmother—of her own to show her the way. Today they would see if the traps they’d set for fish the night before bore fruit.

  The Woman wished she could remember the Kalapuyan word for grandmother. Instead she used the Chinookan, kasa, one of the trade words all the different tribes used that floated into her Kalapuyan ways. No matter. It was an easy word for the boy to pronounce and he used it now.

  “Kasa. Look. Little Shoot traps a fish!”

  “Ayee. Good. A trapped fish is good fruit.”

  He nodded, that smile lighting up his face before he turned to stand in the water and lift out the fish basket with the wiggling trout inside.

  She’d shown him how to collect and dry the fibers for the weir basket, then how to twine two kinds of fibers around vertical sticks, shaping it into the cone. It had been their winter’s work, along with her showing how to weave the mats they slept on. His mind was quick and his heart held the old ways from year to year. Soon, he would know all she had to teach him and he would have no more need of her. This was the way of things. A sadness fell upon her shoulders like a cedar cloak.

  Fishing with a line was easier but took more time. When the fish ran thick as grasshoppers, the People could spear them and sometimes catch them in their arms. But a boy must know every way to catch a fish in this stream called Soap Creek by the trappers heading south. She did not remember the Kalapuya name for this Soap Creek that formed the wide valley and flowed in the shadow of a hill shaped like a white person’s coffin. Or a whale. Yes, more like the whale she had seen once on the Big Water many miles away. She would rather think about the whale than the coffin. It was not time for death-thinking when she had so much to teach the child.

  Once beaver dams formed pools, but trappers came and the stream flowed free. The landscape changed for the People, and The Woman remembered as best she could how it had been so she could tell Little Shoot, so he could tell his children one day when she was no longer here to tell the stories of the way.

  The boy thanked the Creator for the fish and reached for a mat to lay it on, then went back to retrieve other weirs filled with fluttering fish. He passed by bushes, his hands swinging, and The Woman raised her voice to him. “Ayee, watch for the poison oak. Very bad for you. Remember.”

  Without turning around, he changed his path, but she could see his hand had touched the stinging shrub. “Come. Wash with the soap. Quick.” How could he have been so foolish? They would make their way to the bitter springs so he could drink the healing water. Ayee, he is yet young and still in need of his kasa to learn of dangers and the path through them. This is a thing to remember.

  5

  The Secrets of Butter and Cheese

  June turned hot but Davey still chopped wood, piling it up for winter. He fixed a broken fence, reworked a gate that Rothwell had figured out how to open. He filled holes the tan and white dog dug when Rothwell rooted like the hogs for whatever he searched for in the woods. The man took long chats with neighbors, sharing stories with Letitia of a whole number of Platte County folks preparing for the journey west.

  At the hotel, Letitia learned how the mistus wanted sheets cleaned and hung. She bit her tongue when the owner’s wife ordered her to do her work where she wasn’t seen. “Some folks don’t want to sleep on linens if they know
they’ve been touched by colored hands.” In Kentucky, folks expected their slaves to do their wash. Missouri was an in-between place, especially for a free black woman.

  Even if there’s soap between the sheets and my hands? Letitia didn’t say the words out loud, but she thought them and then chided herself for allowing the downcasts of others to turn her own good nature their way. Her touching the laundry for Davey Carson didn’t displease him one bit. She’d hang on to that. But it wouldn’t be so come next spring when he was gone and she was still in Missouri looking for a new place to do her wash. He had not asked her to go with him and she hadn’t proposed it. She had her job. And maybe she could arrange to stay at the hotel, exchanging Charity’s milk for a portion of her bed and board. She would talk to the owner that morning.

  “These girls’ll be taking your place, Letitia.” The hotel owner stood beside the washtubs in the backyard, his body no longer blocking her sight of two girls, not more than fifteen, who sent captured smiles toward her.

  “My work ain’t pleasin’?”

  “Your work’s fine. But I bought these two at the Weston sale, so no need of you. Except for you to show them how the mistress likes things done. She’s feeling poorly today. Girls,” he nodded toward the two, one round as a bucket and the other thin as a mop handle, “this is Letitia.”

  “Who you be?”

  “I’m Cora. This here’s Beulah.” The taller girl did the talking. “We brought from Tennessee.”

  “You get working, now. No idle chatter. Come by the office when you’re finished, Letitia, and I’ll wage you.”

  “Yes suh.”

  Cora waited until the owner had climbed the steps and gone inside before speaking again. “You free then?”

  Letitia nodded. “Looks like I’s free to be dismissed.”

  The bucket girl nodded. “Only bad thing ’bout being free I can think of.”