All She Left Behind Read online

  “You say.”

  Charles spun around then and headed toward the house, the shadow of the tree leaves like stripes across his back. Dougie broke from her hold and trotted after his father. She was torn between the happiness of her idea moving forward, her family’s loving support, and an ache for choosing that over soothing her husband, watching her son seek after him. She was selfish and yet felt affirmed that what she did, she did for Charles and Dougie too.

  She watched the installation, the distillery’s twists and curls of tubing were a metaphor for her life. Even the essencier, the part that separated the treasured oils from the waste, reflected her efforts to sort out what mattered from the unessential that could tangle up her days.

  5

  The Alchemy of Hope

  Because of Jennie’s inability to read as others in her family did—swift and without effort—she’d thought for many years that she had no real abilities, that instead her brain was as mixed up as the hog’s mash. Mathias, a favorite brother, who had died in 1861 during the Terrible War, had been her patient teacher, helping her link the scratching on a page to names for letters and then matching them to sounds. It was her sister Rebecca—who died the year that Dougie was born—who taught her how to write. To print, actually, in big block letters, as in cursive she reversed the b and d. She still struggled with both reading and script. Before her parents pulled her from the humiliation of school, she’d had to stand in front of others and read fresh and unfamiliar words, an effort that caused her heart to pound and breath escape her lungs as she listened to the snickering of schoolmates. Though once Jennie memorized material, she could stand before a crowd and declaim whole paragraphs of words.

  Her father was a pastor, George a scientist, DW a teacher and lawyer. Lucinda ran a household and a boarding business that took thought and action. Girls didn’t go on to school, and certainly not those for whom reading was such a trial. But her family’s presence told her they trusted her ways with oils and herbs. They might not know of her longing to understand better how people became ill or how they healed. Nor had she ever said that if she’d been trained, perhaps she might have saved her own baby.

  She watched the distillery be set up, her thoughts going to Ariyah’s birth and death, thoughts rushing through a memory tunnel the way the Schyrle brought distant objects into closer focus. Women and children needed access to a university-trained woman physician. Maybe one day she’d have a daughter who would be that healer.

  Jennie took a deep breath. Her ribs still hurt from Charles’s shove.

  “I don’t think I knew that Charley wanted to build a separate building,” her father said. “I hope he isn’t too discombobulated. One really should see if the thing works.”

  “Oh, it’ll work, all right.” George had few doubts of anything in life. In that, he was like Charles, or at least as Charles had been before his wedding-night fall.

  Her father handed George the glass tubing he connected to the tin-lined copper pot he’d had made. He’d fashioned a brass coil that snaked from the kettle into a large tub of water, both containers sitting almost side by side. “The spring water here is quite cold, so that’s good. You have to cool the steam to liquid to get the oils. The steam will travel through the coils. Do you have plants ready? As soon as this water starts to boil, we’ll be adding them.”

  “Lavender.” Jennie spoke with pride. Half the flowers on the stems had withered when she’d harvested them the previous week, so they were perfect. “I’m going to start with lavender.”

  “That’ll do.”

  She gathered the plants, holding them gently so her own body oils wouldn’t contaminate them. She watched every detail of her brother’s actions. They waited for the water to boil and spoke of land law changes; the sermon Pastor Parrish had given that Sunday. Her father remembered Mathias and his going off to war, and Rebecca’s love of novels brought her into this occasion. She’d died of typhus. Joseph came out and watched, entering into the conversation. Jennie looked for Charles, wishing he’d join them too, but he didn’t. Hopefully he was watching Dougie. She felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t wondered earlier where her son was, but he’d followed his father inside. He’d be fine.

  Finally, George stepped back to remove the cover. Jennie placed handfuls of what she’d dried into the copper pot. George secured the lid that sported a hole where the tubing rose straight up and then angled toward the cooling tub coils. The copper pot sat over the flames. As the fire heated her plants, steam rose up into the cooling tub. Inside, it coiled like a snake and came out the side near the bottom of the water cooling tub. The area around the opening had been caulked as tight as a newly framed log cabin so it wouldn’t leak. Whatever oils would appear would then pour into a beaker that had two openings. “A glass receptacle works best,” George said.

  “The essencier,” Jennie said.

  “Right. It’ll separate oils from waste.”

  “How much will it make?” The scent was strong.

  “That depends. The oils are found inside the plant’s oil glands and the tiny hairs and even the veins.”

  “Like our own veins,” Jennie said.

  “Like that, I believe. If you were very careful when you harvested them, you might get a few more ounces than if you weren’t. I suspect there’s a method to it, just as there is to being in a laboratory, like that Bunsen finding an antidote to arsenic. Alchemy is an art.”

  “An antidote to arsenic?” Joseph expressed interest.

  George told them more and Jennie asked to borrow the paper that had informed her brother. It would take her a time to read it, but there were many accidental deaths from arsenic and strychnine that settlers used to manage rats and mice. To find something that would halt a terrible death seemed miraculous.

  “You may as well go inside,” George said. “It’s just a waiting game now.” He shooed them toward the door. “Mama’s pie is baking and the little girls’ arms are tired of whipping up the cream William brought. I’ll watch the flames.”

  “I’ll stay here with you.” Jennie imagined repeating this process with rosemary and violets and peppermint too. She didn’t need notes. She’d memorized what George had done. But she also wanted to go through the cleanup process.

  “Best you check in with your husband.” Her father put his arm around Jennie’s shoulder and pushed her toward the house.

  “He—he’ll be fine.”

  Her father frowned. She felt the pressure on her shoulder. Her small stature made it easy for even those who loved her to push her in their direction.

  “Yes. I’d better face the music.”

  Charles wasn’t in the main room of the house.

  “Upstairs.” Lucinda pointed with her chin while she plopped whipped cream onto slices of pie. “Tell Douglas the pie’s ready.” Mary and Nellie licked their fingers of the cream. “I suspect he’s ready for something sweet. Did everything work all right with the still?”

  “Yes. It seems to. I’ll have lavender oil in a few hours. Isn’t that grand?” Jennie pulled an apron over her head, the movement sending a lavender scent into the warm room.

  Jennie started to tell them about the arsenic antidote George had mentioned, but her mother looked over the top of her spectacles in that way she had of expressing her displeasure at Jennie’s hesitation.

  “Jane Jennie Lichtenthaler Pickett, you’d best—”

  “Alright. I’m going upstairs.” She felt like a recalcitrant child, yet why should she? She was a grown woman, a mother of two—one living—and a wife who worked hard to take care of her family and contribute. A man didn’t always have to be pampered, did he? Compromise was part of the language of a marriage or ought to be. And this distillery was as close to Jennie’s dream of being a real healer that she would ever have. With it, she could not only meet her family’s needs, but she could help others. Couldn’t she have just one afternoon to celebrate without having to soothe her husband’s wounded spirit?

  She took
a deep breath, shortened with the jab of pain that came as she climbed the stairs. She pushed open the door. With Charles, it was always something.

  6

  Certainty

  Charles curled on the bed. Dougie sat on his trundle bed, simply staring. Odd. “Dougie, there’s pie downstairs.” He didn’t move. She turned to Charles. “Pie is ready. Will you come down?”

  Neither of them stirred. She bent over Charles, lowered his arm from his face. He rolled over, revealing a brown bottle he cradled to his chest. She smelled the spirits. He snored.

  Jennie stumbled backward, making sense of what she saw. He was drunk, had to be. While Dougie was under his care.

  My son! “Dougie?”

  He looked up at her, eyes glazed.

  “Douglas. Come to Mama.”

  He mewed like a kitten and lifted his arms. As she picked him up, she smelled the vile scent of spirits on his breath. A child! Her husband had defiled their child.

  She carried him down the stairs, him on her hip pressing against her ribs; her other hand on the wall to balance, gasping as she entered the kitchen.

  “What is it?” Lucinda said. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s . . . I smell liquor. Charles is . . . out. Snoring.” Tears burned behind her nose. “I—how could he? I don’t know how much he’s taken.”

  “Maybe Dougie just spilled it on himself.” Lucinda, offering an option that didn’t pierce with pain.

  She had to think. Pretending would not help. “Chamomile. If we can get him to drink it. Maybe violet root. I’ve some crushed in a tin in the drying shed. It’s marked.”

  “I’ll get it.” Lucinda lifted her skirts and ran.

  Her father took Dougie from her arms. He stroked his grandson’s shoulders, rubbed his thin little arms. “There, there now.” Dougie burped. His eyes stayed open, but they did not focus. Still, he smiled, giving hope that he would be all right with time—and an expectorant to empty his stomach. Alcohol poisoning was as dangerous as arsenic.

  “How could Charles . . . I can’t condone consumption like that, not for him and certainly not for a child.” She blinked back tears.

  “Dougie might have gotten into it after—well, after Charles slept. It could happen to anyone,” Joseph said.

  She wished Lucinda were present to listen to her husband’s defense of her abusive, neglectful-of-his-son, drunk-upstairs husband. “I can’t believe you’d defend what he did to a child.”

  “He made a mistake, but we all do at some point in our lives. Even you, Perfect Jennie Pickett.”

  “Here now, there’s no call for that,” Jennie’s father said.

  Jennie touched her father’s arm to calm him. She frowned. Joseph’s mocking made no sense. She had never claimed to be perfect, far from it. Why would he even suggest such a thing. Unless her certainty about the vileness of alcohol was what he ascribed as her “perfection.” She was certain of that: alcohol was the perfect, heinous brew and she did perfectly condemn its use.

  Lucinda returned with the root and Jennie crushed a small amount with calomel. Her little finger shook as she placed the mash on her son’s lips. “Lick your lips, Douglas.” Dougie pushed away, but his grandfather held him as Jennie urged yet a greater swipe with his tongue. At his grandfather’s urging, the boy licked, then chewed, then swallowed again.

  “Feel bad, Paw-Paw.”

  Her mother handed Jennie a bowl. Let the impurities leave him.

  Dougie found the edge and vomited.

  Gratitude mixed with fury at Charles raged through her, along with guilt at not having watched her son; with letting herself enjoy the possibilities of the new distillery; with having trusted Charles.

  “We should get him to a doctor to bleed him,” her mother said.

  “No, no bleeding. It weakens the body.” Jennie knew that much about modern medicine. “But we should take him anyway, make sure we haven’t missed something.”

  She scurried then, grabbing a quilt to wrap him in.

  George had come in. It was decided he would carry him and Jennie ride a second horse.

  Dougie cried now. Were there bruises? Had he consumed something else? “Let the doctor check him,” her father reassured. At least this family offered hands she could hold in times of trial. They rode off, leaving her husband behind.

  Evening had come upon them while she prayed for her son, for herself. Dougie vomited again.

  “Oh George, I’m so sorry.” She pressed her horse up beside him. George’s red vest was splashed with brown.

  “It’s nothing, Sister.”

  “There, through those trees.” She pointed to the path.

  The doctor wasn’t that one whom Charles had dragged back too late the night Ariyah was born.

  “You did well with the expectorant applied.” He spoke to George, though Jennie had told him about the herbs she’d used.

  “Speak to his mother. She’s the one who treated him.”

  “I’m sure you offered direction.”

  George shook his head.

  “I suppose he grabbed an unwatched stein, did he?”

  “We don’t rightly know. His father was watching him, but he’s currently . . . indisposed and not able to convey to us the circumstances of his son’s condition.”

  “And his father would be—”

  “Charley Pickett. Works at the prison.”

  “Ah, yes. With Sloan.” He pulled Dougie’s lower eyelid down, looked at both pupils. “I think he’ll sleep now. Wake him every hour and have him drink water.” He put his stethoscope against her son’s chest. “Heartbeat steady. Looks like he’ll come through it. Waking and water and food in the morning. He’ll be hungry.”

  They spoke good-byes, and this time George handed Dougie up to Jennie so she could hold him in her arms as they plodded toward home.

  Home. She thought of what she could do, where they could go. She’d been so certain the distillery was the answer. But now, being alone with Charles and Douglas made no sense at all.

  Or did it?

  If she could get Charles away from Joseph, at least after hours, free of the prison talk; if she could be alone with him and Dougie, maybe they could still make a way as a family. She decided then: she would find a home, one that might even have a small drying shed where she could set up the distillery. She’d get Charles to help, let him be more a part of things. That was why he’d made the poor choice. He hadn’t meant to lose control like he had. He’d be sorry and ashamed.

  She shared her plan with her father when they got back. He’d waited up for them, checked on the essencier while they were gone. Her father bedded down in the main room too, where Jennie could watch her son whose clothes she changed. She’d wake him every hour. Her mother slept on the small day cot, Dougie beside her. George took his bedroll to the drying shed where he said he’d monitor the distillery as the lavender oil finished dripping into the beaker.

  “We’d need a small place,” Jennie said as she fluffed up a feather comforter for her father’s use. “Not far from the prison so Charles can keep his job. We could rent or maybe find an abandoned cabin, take it over.” There were many tumbling-down structures left behind by those lured by the ’62 gold strike in Canyon City farther east.

  “Would Charles agree?”

  “I’ll make my case that his temper and his drinking are—”

  “Temper? What’s that about?”

  “He—it’s only happened twice. I . . . provoked him. He didn’t mean it. He sometimes grabs me to get my attention. You know how I don’t always understand. He doesn’t intend to hurt me.”

  Her father frowned. “This drinking has happened before?”

  “His—his temperament is hampered by us living with his boss, Lucinda, and the girls. Dougie and me. And the boarders. Joseph, as both relative and a superior, it’s too much for him. It’s as though he’s never free of that prison.”

  “I don’t like what happened today.” He shook his head. “Don’t pretend,
Jane.” He called her by her given name only when he was deeply concerned.

  “I won’t, Papa.” She kept her voice light. “I don’t think I am. No. Today . . . it must be the pressures and perhaps how excluded he felt when I insisted we set up the distillery without him. I didn’t handle it well. I should have been more attentive to his feelings.”

  “A man who uses his family as an excuse for his own moral demise doesn’t speak well of his future or his family’s. You remember that.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “And there is no excuse for his not protecting Douglas. That’s unforgivable. I’ll speak to him myself about that.”

  “No, Papa. This is my trial.” She pulled the covers over her son. “I’ll deal with him and Dougie. I will.”

  Jennie called up the stairs when Joseph and Lucinda and the girls came down for the morning meal. No one answered. She walked up, dreading what she’d find. Charles wasn’t there. He must have risen early and threaded his way through the sleeping people on the floor, as she’d heard nothing and no one else woke either. His uniform no longer hung on the hook and she was surprised at her relief. Until that moment she had worried he might leave out of humiliation for what he’d done and she might not ever find him. What if he didn’t come home?

  Back outside, she checked on the oil, then woke Dougie and fed him, finished sending her parents and George off as Joseph and the boarders left for work.

  Dougie talked with his cousins, seemed unaffected by what had happened. “Where’s Papa?”

  “At work, I imagine. We’ll see him later.”

  “Why don’t you take him for a walk,” Lucinda suggested. “Get some fresh air in him.”

  Jennie should have thought of that. “Would you like to visit Aunt Ariyah?”

  “All right.” The boy was docile as a lamb despite his sleep being interrupted every hour. “Carry me, Mama? Like last night?”