A Sweetness to the Soul (21 page)

“I annoy you?” he asked, grabbing at her arm.

“He was suddenly very angry,” Sunmiet remembered, “and I was frightened.”

He snapped at her. “I make a trip in the snow I did not expect to fall so soon so you would not forget me. And my presence annoys you? I see it takes little to make you forget those who care for you,” he sneered. “Perhaps you have become a forever child of the non-Indians.”

He finished, letting the final insult sink in.

“I could barely believe his poor judgment! Just to finish a badly
started plan he had continued on through the night and the storm, called me out into risk for no reason but to announce himself! And I was foolish enough to believe he brought important news.” Sunmiet shook her head.

It was the night she knew she would have to trust her own judgment or this Standing Tall, whom she did truly love and who said he cared for her, would bring her harm.

Sunmiet wrapped the blanket around herself tightly, pushed away from him, and turned to make her way back to the door. “No,” Standing Tall said grabbing her arm. He saw the fire in her eyes and dropped his hand. “Stay just a minute. Give me warmth for my journey back,” he whined. He reached to rub the blanket draped across her back.

“Your warmth will have to come from your lantern,” she told him. “Or the embers that burned up your wisdom.” She pulled away from him, leaping to find her tracks left earlier in the snow, hoping to make her way up the stairs to her cot before anyone would know.

“He did not follow me,” Sunmiet said.

She padded with wet shoes into the sleeping quarters, made her way through the shadows of the dressers and beds to her own. Lying there, her heart calm, undiscovered, she found a moment to worry about Standing Tall, where he might sleep this night, survive the storm. Why did he do such foolish things? Did she wish to spend the rest of her life with such a man? Would her father understand if she didn’t? “All questions I would have to answer before spring,” she told me.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the matron’s shoes walking crisply beside her bed, pausing.

“I thought my shoes would give me away,” Sunmiet told me. “Auntie Lilie stood there while I pretended sleep. I could hear her breathing, smell the scent of cabbage left on her clothes from yesterday’s stew, but she moved on.”

Sunmiet planned to take what lessons she could from the early storm. Perhaps it had been sent to warn her of this man’s thinking, give her time to prepare for a future with it.

In the morning, her cold fingers fumbled with the tiny dress buttons that marched like the boarding school lines up to her throat. She buried her wet socks under the covers and found a dry pair to pull up over her knees. Her wet shoes tugged over the socks told her that her feet would be cold all day. “Oh, hayah, that man!” she said beneath her breath.

She heard the chatter of the girls as they made their way to the hall, pulled their long braids over the collars of their thin coats and lined up in their dark dresses to descend the stairs. Cold air rushed at them and Sunmiet shivered, knowing they were about to enter the snowy world between the dorm and the cafeteria. It was going to be a cold day.

“But a good day,” Sunmiet told me, “for I had not been discovered.”

In rigid silence, the girls began the walk down the hall. In the distance, beyond her daydreaming, Sunmiet heard the scrape of the heavy door as the matron opened it into the stairwell, and the shuffle of feet as the girls began descending the stairs. “Then suddenly, the line disintegrated into a cackle of surprise and chatter and I knew without even seeing,” Sunmiet said. “I pushed to the front of the line, closer to the confusion, and stared at the item of interest lying at the base of the steps. I barely heard the girls giggling. I realized in a quick moment that this would be a snowstorm to remember, one whose lessons I must quickly learn. For there at the bottom of the steps looking up at me from beneath a cozy blanket, bearing his sleepy, sheepish grin, and his lopsided look lay Standing Tall.”

The storm taught Joseph lessons, too. He stayed a second day beneath his oiled skin, waiting for the snow to let up, hoping it would melt off once the accumulation stopped and the sun came out. He sketched some in his little book, read
Hiawatha
to Bandit once again. He said he’d wished he’d brought another book or two to read, perhaps the Bible his mother had given him when he’d left New York. Instead, he
recalled favorite scriptures and then closed his eyes to memorize Longfellow’s cadence. He shared them all out loud with the dog.

With the pile of dried branches he’d dragged close to his flames, he kept a small fire burning. Whenever he looked out, he noticed the soft pile of snow building up on the back of the mule as it stood, head drooped.

Joseph had plenty of thinking time.

It was his plan to send Fish Man on ahead while he checked out the mules, secured them for the spring, made inquiries about supply purchases, and returned himself to California. Now he wondered if he would be able to make the trip to California and return again before hard winter set in. In the spring, he hoped to arrive in the Oregon country with his own crew and assets to not only purchase the string but also buy his own supplies as well. He planned for forty mules and hoped to get them for slightly less than the going rate of $250 each. The cash would come from California. He could pull it all together as soon as he returned to the ranch. “I liked the rush of energy those thoughts of pulling it all together gave me,” he told me. “Almost as good as winning at cards.”

Men’s plans easily find themselves diverted and Joseph did not return to Fifteen Mile Crossing in four weeks as he had planned and promised.

On his third morning out, the snow stopped and a blinding bright sun glittered and glared off the white earth. The melted snow Joseph left in his cup the night before was frozen solid. The kelpie stepped gingerly from beneath the oil skin, then, with renewed courage, skidded on the hard white surface beyond their lean-to and dropped some pellets. With two kicks from his back paws on the crusty surface, Bandit revealed his futile effort at good hygiene. He trotted back to the fire, the melting snow close to the flames clogging his pads. Joseph picked up the dog, held his hands over Bandit’s paws and melted the frozen clumps. “Looks like you’ll be riding again today,” Joseph said, his breath forming icicles on his mustache and beard.

They spent the next three days pushing into packed snow, crashing through the crust in places, making little headway. Joseph walked often, leading the gelding and packmule on foot, the man and animals sharing the hard labor of making a path through the unknown. Two feet of the white drifted into the ravines, more on the flat surfaces on the ridgetops. Joseph kept the mountain range on his right, moved inland to find a narrow crossing of another river not yet frozen over, and continued south, into the tall timber. His thoughts were of the next ridge, the next ravine, how much stamina he and his animals had. He did not see another soul.

His fourth day out, Joseph noticed sugar pine cones larger than his own two hands peaking up from the tree wells. This was Klamath country and Joseph was grateful the wind had found another playground. “Another night and we should share Philamon’s roof,” he said to the kelpie.

It actually took two more nights before they spied the comforting smoke of Philamon’s fire. There were no signs of the garden now. Snow already covered the irrigation canals, corn stalks, and gate posts. For just a moment Joseph watched Philamon loading hay on the sled, ready to feed cattle. He shook off his uneasy feeling. Feeding hay in early November. It did not speak well for just how hard a winter lay ahead. He hoped things were better farther south.

He clucked the gelding into pushing snow with his brisket one more time as they worked their way down the ridge to Philamon’s. “At least I can exchange more reading,” Joseph said to the kelpie trotting briskly beside him now along the crusty surface.

He couldn’t know then that he would read all Philamon had, write words of his own, and forge a lifelong friendship with his renter. For Joseph never left the Klamath country until spring.

At our end, Papa arrived home a day after the first storm stopped. I had already strung the rope to the barn as soon as the sky held off.
More than two feet of snow drifted in the winds that began shortly after the snow ceased.

Luther made his way over early on the first morning of clear sky, attempting to endear himself to me and Mama as he offered his help until Papa arrived. At least his presence brought Mama out of her silence and she began to speak with me again if only to give directions.

While I usually found Luther’s presence boring and annoying, Mama’s mention of him as a possible suitor piqued my interest and so I took more careful watch: of how he dealt with the cold and how slow it made all work; of how he treated Hound and the mules; of what he said to Mama, Baby George, and me.

He seemed kind enough and did not raise his voice at the animals. But I could also tell him what to do, sass him without recourse. He simply listened, didn’t bait me back, and usually did what I told him. The conversations he introduced seemed of petty things: how the school teacher who stayed in their home last term chewed her meat (with tiny chop-chop bites) with her alder teeth, or how much his feet had grown (“two sizes since last year, don’t you know”). Perhaps he mistook me for someone who cared about these things. I didn’t, though I had wondered once about Miss Matthews, our teacher at the Walker School, and how she worked her wooden teeth.

As Luther threw hay to the horses, I watched him and imagined him dancing in my parlor, or myself looking at his pimply face every day of my life as Mama looked at Papa’s. I could not see my future reflected in his eyes.

Several times that winter, lying deep in my goose-down comforter, I dreamed of someone tall, someone special. I walked just behind him, sometimes beside him and reached out to touch him, to have him turn so I could see his face. In the dream, his face would have no features, just whiteness, like the snow, and so I never saw who lived there, in my dream.

After Papa arrived home, we found that the winter simply consumed us. The temperature never rose to permit thawing. Clear days
meant no snow but air so cold Papa said his words froze and we could chop them from the air and save them, break them open to listen to whenever he wasn’t there. I didn’t believe him.

Overcast days threatened new snow piling on old snow, its only redeeming grace being the clean look the whiteness brought, if only temporarily. Everything we did could not be done without first contending with the snow, the frozen creeks, the cold. Getting hay and water to our stock, keeping the fires going in the house to keep ourselves from freezing, rationing supplies so we would not be forced to make a trip to The Dalles, all took our energy and time.

Christmas came and left with even the joy of cutting the tree taken from us as we were forced to tromp through deep drifts and arrive home cold and wet, almost like any other day that winter.

We greeted 1862 with the enthusiasm of mourners.

Only once did Lodenma and Senior May venture over with their little ones, so much work it was, so risky to show their faces to the cold. The Mays talked with Papa about opening this eastern part of Oregon, of more travelers that would surely come in spring, and how Papa could make a profit possibly with his own string or teaming up with someone else. Mama reminded him the mules were already spoken for. Papa simply nodded. Later, I heard their voices raised in argument, something about mules and cash and cards. “The money’s not been squandered,” Papa said. “Trust me on this, ’Lizbeth. You’re thinking in areas a woman ought to let be.”

Lodenma and Beatrice and even Senior May spent that night on their one visit, and Senior May took the occasion to show me how to hold his antler-handled knife so I could carve a piece of rough wood as he did, whittling animals and toys carrying the scent of alder and pine. Mama snorted that such was man’s doings. Papa smiled, encouraged me, said perhaps I’d be good enough to sell them someday to support myself “in case no suitor meets my requirements,” he said and laughed.

I liked sharing conversation with the adults. When visitors came, Mama often spoke directly to me and she smiled. And though
she never sent me off to care for Baby George, I didn’t mind as much. Other’s might never know of our dissension if they only saw our little family tightly sitting in the parlor with our guests.

The creation of small things from wood filled those dreary days, brushing blond chips from my skirts, pulling little slivers from my fingers, inhaling fresh-cut wood as we sat before the fireplace in the evenings. I thought of Pauline often and her little carved gift. I wondered who of Sunmiet’s people had made it as I chipped at my own.

Papa made only occasional trips on the sled through January and February, not wanting to tire the mules living on sparse rations. Once he made a trip south, to Tygh Valley to Muller’s store. The shelves held little. “Neither grass nor corn trains coming through,” Art Muller told him, sadly shaking his head as he moved Arbuckle coffee cans around on his sparse shelves.

In The Dalles, Papa heard news of low hay supplies and only scattered shipments as little arrived in the region, the snow said to spread from the Cascades clear east to the Rockies. The mighty Columbia River froze completely over.

Papa said the only good news came from the China boy, Tom, a cook at the Umatilla House, who said the tea leaves predicted a harsh but sudden spring sometime around April.

We did not go to church in The Dalles at all that winter, instead finding ourselves on Sundays reading from the scriptures. Once or twice, word spread and we gathered at the school for music and prayer with neighbors becoming preachers for the day. We missed the weekly fellowship though most of us were too tired and too compassionate to spread the animals’ strength out over our wishes instead of just onto our needs.

And I confess, I thought often of the tall Californian, the way he had spoken to me as a young woman, an adult. Once I even wondered if it was his face who would someday fill the whiteness of the stranger in my dream.