All She Left Behind Read online

  Her ribs still hurt. “Oh, no, you’re a big boy. Last night was special and I had your grandpa’s horse to help me hold you. Your uncle George too.”

  “All right.” He let her take his hand and they made their way to Ariyah’s. Jennie had known this vivacious woman since their school days. She’d never teased Jennie when she’d struggled with her words, could make her laugh. She dressed and cooked with a flair. Ariyah lived with her parents, a happy arrangement. Jennie heard piano music as they turned up the path to the stone steps. That’s new. The ship from San Francisco must have brought the instrument. She hadn’t even known that Ariyah could play. Jennie chastised herself, always so wrapped up within her own world, her own wonderings. What else had been going on in Ariyah’s world that Jennie had missed?

  She knocked on the door. Someone played a Bach concerto. Jennie could almost hear the violins and cellos as she’d heard them played in a big church back in Chicago before they’d headed west. She let herself get lost inside the music, stepping across the tops of the notes, whisking her from worry and uncertainty to momentary pleasure. Even Dougie held her hand and listened. It would be his first time to hear piano music of any kind. How lovely that Bach introduced him.

  “Ariyah, I had no idea,” Jennie told her friend when she opened the door. “You have a piano and you play.”

  “My new beau ordered it in.” The music began again. “And he’s the one making music.”

  She motioned them to follow her, a blonde twist with black combs climbed up the back of her head. She stood nearly six feet tall. Striking. Her beau played beautifully. When they entered the spacious room with natural light falling on the dark piano wood, he stopped and rose, smiling at Ariyah as though they were alone in the room.

  How Jennie longed for that look of devotion to be on her husband’s face; prayed for its return.

  Ariyah introduced them to Peleg, her beau, his dark eyes and olive skin spoke to his Spanish heritage.

  “How wonderful to hear piano music once again,” Jennie said. “I’d forgotten how much comfort it could bring.”

  “Peleg seemed to know it was just what I needed too,” Ariyah offered.

  “Love seeks to see always with fresh eyes,” Peleg said with a thick accent. “It is so, is it not, my Ariyah?”

  “Fresh eyes, yes. And fresh ears too.”

  She put her arm around Jennie’s waist, led Dougie to the second piano stool as Peleg sat back down. “Put your hand here.”

  Dougie looked to Jennie for confirmation. She nodded.

  “We give a little lesson, sí?” And the kind man placed his hands over Dougie’s and plunked a simple tune.

  Her son looked up and smiled. “I play, Mama.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Music might be a way to reach her son. People responded to different ways of mending. She considered telling Ariyah what had transpired in recent days but didn’t. She didn’t want her friend judging Charles. And she didn’t want to watch Ariyah’s eyes grow sad with Jennie’s news. She’d keep the pain to herself and find a way to bring Charles to a restorative place. Wasn’t that what families did for each other?

  7

  Pearls of Wonder

  That evening, with the call of geese overhead, Jennie arrived home with Charles already there. She invited Charles to walk with her.

  “Where to?”

  “Just the drying shed.”

  She felt relief at seeing the distillery unharmed. She picked up the beaker of lavender oil. “Here it is. Our nest egg.” She’d need to clean the tubs and coils before beginning another distillation. She told Charles how she’d have to do it. “It’s quite a process, but I want the purest of oils.”

  “I’m sure you do.” He leaned against the center beam, scratched his back there. “So what did you want to talk about? The thing with Dougie. Look.” His eyes scanned the rafters, he blinked. Dust motes danced in the slanted sunset pouring through the open door. “That wasn’t my fault. I fell asleep, and he, well, he consumed what was left in the bottle.”

  She didn’t point out that Charles had been holding the empty bottle in his arms. This was no time to confront him about that.

  “Dougie came through it,” she said. “I should have had him with me in the shed.”

  “Yes. You should have.” Her husband was more than willing to let her shoulder the blame.

  Jennie took a deep breath. “Joseph and Lucinda are most gracious. But with them, the girls, the boarders, us, there are too many people mixing together day and night. Sometimes I can’t think straight.”

  “You don’t think straight anyway.” He said it to tease, but it punched her confidence. The people who knew one best could also slice the deepest.

  She set the beaker down, pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders as the evening cooled the day. “I propose that no one thinks straight with so many competing voices. What if we were to find our own place? You, me, and Douglas. Close enough for you to walk or ride to work. I could distill my plants and make a little extra that way.”

  He stood quiet, giving no indication of what her suggestion might mean to him. Then, “And I can simply stay on being an assistant superintendent.”

  “Yes.” His acidic tone surprised her. “Don’t you like what you do?”

  “Would you?”

  She hadn’t thought that he wasn’t happy at the prison. He’d taken the job with regular pay when he had injured his hand while working on a new building in town, before they were married. The job offer had been timely, he’d always said. And his working and living with the Sloans was how they’d met. She’d always thought him pleased with a steady job.

  The truth was, she didn’t know what he might wish to do instead. She hadn’t paid attention to his dreams, even though she lamented how little he attended to hers. Maybe he held back his own hopes as she had hers, each fearing the other wouldn’t care.

  “How would you prefer to spend your time?”

  He walked over to the distillery, bent down to look at the coils. Jennie held her breath, felt as anxious as when Dougie got too close to something fragile, like the brass and glass. “Buy land and sell it,” he continued. “That’s what this country is, people moving in, making buys. I got here too late to get in on the free land, but I can buy up and resell.” He turned to her. “If I had a stake.”

  Birds chattered near the ridge beam, building nests it appeared.

  “I—I didn’t know you had any interest in real estate.”

  “That’s why I petitioned for improvements on the Tualatin River. Land increases in value if there’s reliable transportation, a way to get goods to market. I keep my eyes open all the time about things like that.”

  “You’ve thought about this.”

  “Of course I have. But with no stake”—he rubbed his fingers together as though they held coins dribbling through them—“no land.” His hands dropped to his sides.

  “Could we take out a loan? Ariyah’s father owns the bank. Your income could be the collateral. Or we might save a portion of your wages, set it aside for investing.”

  “Not if we live by ourselves. My salary will soon be eaten up and your little adventure with oils won’t bring in enough to buy onions, let alone a fine orchard somewhere.”

  “I’ll grow onions, not buy them.”

  “You say.”

  Conversing with him wasn’t unlike negotiating with Douglas at times. She tried again. “I know we’ve had our trials, Charles.” She thought of their baby but didn’t say her name. “I do think we’d be better on our own, without people listening even when they don’t want to.”

  He ran his fingers along the coils.

  “What about asking my father for a loan?” Jennie said.

  “No. I won’t be indebted to your family. No.”

  She was pleased with his response. She didn’t want to be beholden to them either. “Would you consider moving out from Lucinda and Joseph’s in the meantime? If we can find an inexpensive place
. You could start your land acquisition adventure by finding an abandoned cabin. For the three of us.”

  “I can look, but we’d do better staying right here. You have help with Dougie and we save money. Like you suggested. But I’ll look. Consider it.”

  The scent of lavender still filled the shed. It soothed her as it always did.

  He reached for her then, and while she stiffened initially, he made no move of pressure. He was gentle and pulled her into a warm kiss, then held her face with both hands. “I never meant to hurt you, Jennie. Nor Douglas. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  “I know.” Her eyes began to tear. “It’s all the demands. It’ll be better when we have our own home. I’m certain of it.” She kissed him back and sank into cautious comfort in his arms.

  The Sloan home sat in the middle of a block of houses on dirt streets with boardwalks to keep slippered feet from spring and winter mud. Cobblestones marked the busier commercial areas. Most residences were composed of two-story clapboard houses with small sheds or barns behind and room for a cow or goat or chickens, a buggy or wagon, and a horse or mule. William graciously provided the Sloan household with milk. Lucinda’s girls gathered eggs from their chicken coop. An alley ran behind the houses that backed onto similar barns and garden areas with cabins facing the other street.

  It was on the street behind them where the request came for someone to help an elderly woman suffering from malarial fever, the woman having taken the train across the Panama Isthmus some years previous. These occasional requests for Jennie’s “doctoring,” as she thought of it, brought in a few coins, but mostly people paid in butter or eggs or vegetable harvests. In a place of their own, they might actually have little cash to manage, only Charles’s salary. Otherwise, the currency was still trade, even though the region had Beaver coins minted until Governor Lane said doing so was unconstitutional. But they could manage with Charles’s income and what she could bring in.

  Jennie used quinine, sparingly as it was expensive. Sulfate of cinchona was less costly but harder on the stomach for treating malarial fevers. She’d visited Mrs. Staat before, but malaria fever had a way of returning.

  Her daughter led Jennie into the room, and she set her carpetbag with medicines and oils on the sideboard in the Staats’ bedroom. Doctoring brought healers into intimate places, and Jennie tried not to pay attention to the things people surrounded themselves with in their bedchambers.

  “Did you use all the quinine I left you?”

  “I did, Miss Jennie. I did as you said. And felt better for a time, I did. But then it comes back, it does.” Mrs. Staat, a squat woman when she stood, lay now barely taking up half of the length of the bed.

  “We just have to keep fighting it.” Jennie dipped a clean cloth into the water bowl and began to wash the woman’s face and neck to help hold the fevers down. Mrs. Staat shivered. “We’ll get you through this season.” Jennie smiled and gave the woman the spoonful of quinine. “A little glycerin on those lips will make you feel better too.”

  “How’s that boy? And that handsome husband of yours?” Mrs. Staat was one to want to take attention from herself when she could, even when her body trembled with intermittent fevers.

  “Both fine, thank you for asking.” Jennie looked at her pocket watch and held her wrist to take the woman’s pulse. It was fast but steady. She patted her hand, tucked it under the nine-patch covering her. “We are looking for a place of our own. If you hear of anything, not too expensive nor too far from where Charles works, you let me know.”

  “There’s an empty cabin on the lot where I work,” her daughter offered. She sat on the far side of her mother’s bed. “I do the cleaning for the people and they once had live-in servants.” She leaned over and whispered, “Might even have been slaves. They used the small house.”

  “Where is it?”

  “On Third Street. I can ask if they would rent it.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “What do I owe you today, for the quinine, Miss Jennie?”

  “If you find us a place we’ve been seeking to call home, then not a thing today, Mrs. Staat. Not a thing.”

  Jennie visited the property mentioned, but it wasn’t suitable. Too small, too dilapidated. But looking at it was an impetus to seek out more possibilities. Charles was always so tired after work and he often volunteered for extra hours, so Jennie made it her mission to find the perfect place. She and Dougie walked the back streets, looking at places that might work, finding the time with her son restful. Working toward something was more invigorating than merely moving away from discomfort. And the fresh air helped too.

  October arrived with a dusting of snow shivering the lilac bushes to the right of the back door of one empty house she found. The lilacs’ presence said that a woman had lived there once, not only an old settler now gone off to find gold, but someone who valued fragrance and beauty. Daffodil stems lined the path to a small shed that sat at the back of a yard cluttered with blackberry vines and black currants. Charles could build a small heating shed for the distillery. I can distill the currant seeds. Excellent for bone aches, facial blemishes, and excessive alcohol use. Charles could construct a table, and plenty of stumps dotted the entire town and would serve as chairs without backs once they were rolled in. They’d make a rope bed and Charles could make a wooden bed for Dougie.

  The shed itself would be suitable. A lean-to stall on one side could house a horse. Or maybe a cow. There’d be room for a couple of chickens and for hanging plants from the rafters, once they repaired the holes in the shake roof. Jennie imagined cooking at the fireplace for her small family. A pang of discomfort struck then, loss hitting still-aching ribs as she thought about Baby Ariyah and about leaving her sister.

  She’d face Lucinda when the time came, telling her of their plans to leave. She suspected Lucinda knew something was happening as Jennie and Dougie took those daily walks. Jennie knew she’d be disappointed, but perhaps their absence would force her to face Joseph’s problem with liquor.

  Charles approved the cabin when she showed him where it was on the map and they’d walked to it. He’d gone to the courthouse the next day to see who owned it. Jennie didn’t want to be a squatter, forced to move out should the original owner return. Charles said the papers needed some tending. The previous inhabitant had been a squatter, and no one was sure who the original owner ever was. Those confusions had happened as land laws changed from the time Oregon was a territory until becoming a state a few years previous. He’d keep at it until the title could be cleared. “It’s good experience for when I start my business. But it’ll take a little cash for a lawyer and such.”

  Jennie had been setting funds aside from her sale of oils and a portion of Charles’s salary. But she was aware of a gnawing in her stomach when she handed the money to him.

  Still, joy found its way inside her. Perhaps it was the Advent season or maybe it was the idea that soon, by spring perhaps, she’d have her own home. Her dishes would grace the table, her savories bring scents to the meals she prepared for her family. Charles would be the master of his home and Jennie the mistress of her kitchen and her oils. Maybe they’d plan another child.

  They celebrated Christmas that year of 1866 by attending the Methodist church services. Once again, her father preached. Later they traveled to William’s farm outside Salem; visited with their parents, now living but a few miles away. No liquor appeared to mar Joseph’s nor Charles’s good nature. No arguments. Just a celebratory time of love, forgiveness, and new beginnings told through the story of a baby and God’s presence within him. They gave each other homemade gifts.

  But then on Christmas night, Charles said he had a special present for her.

  “You already gave me a new sewing box.” They spent the evening at William’s farm and were in the bedroom with the others already sleeping or having gone home. Dougie played with his wagon and two wooden horses that his grandfather had carved for him. The scent of evergreens looped o
n every flat surface kept the Christmas spirit in each room. Jennie’s hoops swirled as she turned to face him.

  “No, stay there. Close your eyes.”

  She felt something cool drape around her neck, settle at her throat. She reached up. Pearls.

  “You shouldn’t have.”

  “You say. Open your eyes.” Charles grinned. “I’ve wanted to do that since the day we married.”

  “They’re beautiful.” She watched her reflection in the mirror. “But we need the money for our move, to make it on our own. For investments. They must have cost a fortune.” She fingered them, smooth as baby’s cheeks.

  “I made a good deal.” His voice held a pout in it.

  “You should say thank you, Mama.” Douglas listened, even though she hadn’t realized it.

  “Of course. You’re right, Dougie. They’re lovely. Thank you.”

  “He kept the secret, didn’t you, Boy?”

  Douglas nodded, returned to his wagon play.

  So the men in her life had held a secret, one meant to bring her joy. But pearls were costly. Where had Charles gotten the money?

  8

  Departures of a Certain Sort

  New Year’s, 1867. A fat doe on porcelain legs stared at her as Jennie headed toward the quiet of the drying shed where the distillery had continued to do its work. It darted away as she opened the door. She began to think of “last times.” The “last time” she’d bring in wood to Lucinda’s home. The “last time” she’d distill rosemary in this drying shed. The last time I’ll be in the room where baby Ariyah died. Going back in memory moved her forward, helped her say good-bye.

  Lucinda and Joseph seemed to know that change was in the wind. The men came home each day from work without any evidence of spirits, the tension that had once urged her to seek another place to live had dissipated like steam. If anything, they all laughed more and told stories. The men stopping sharing horrible things their prisoners had done, relating instead funny incidents featuring the cook or one of the delivery drivers. Charles even acted out a few scenarios. The children giggled, even little sober-faced Dougie. Maybe they didn’t have to move after all? Why was it that once a decision had been made, hesitation came to call. Perhaps it was the mind’s reluctance to make a major change.