A Sweetness to the Soul (28 page)

Joseph watched the children playing with Bandit. The dog seemed to like the attention, didn’t snap his jaws or run away. He behaved as though at home and Joseph wondered how long he’d been here in this simple house. Joseph felt weak, thought his legs looked bony, lacking muscle. He wondered when he’d eaten last, how he’d even stayed alive.

“How much time?” Joseph asked warily. “Or did he say?”

Francis shrugged her shoulders. “Several months if we can keep infection out. He set your leg, too. Good thing you were out. Just watching was enough to make me faint.” She shivered.

“Several months?”

“It’s a very bad injury,” Francis defended. “He said you were fortunate just to be alive.” She wiped his forehead with her cool fingers,
looking into his blue eyes. “We’ll take good care of you. Small return for your help for us. A few months will mean nothing. You’ll see.”

It was the exact same argument I attempted with my father and my intended. “A few months will mean nothing,” I said, though I knew I’d be using the time to plan a way out for us all. I wasn’t sure what was in this arrangement for Papa or for Mr. Case. Discovering it would be the key to my reprieve.

“Yes. Well. You should do as your father wishes,” Mama said. We sat in the parlor a week after the celebration. Mama kept her eyes on her needlework, talking into her skirts.

“I want to do as Papa wishes,” I said, my heart pounding, my own unfinished needlework resting on my linsey-woolsey. “I just want more time to do it.” I pulled my shawl around my shoulders to ward off the morning chill.

J. W. sat next to me on the divan. “No need to fear, girl,” J. W. said, patting my knee with a familiarity I did not prefer. “I’m an experienced man. Can take care of a little thing like you.” He grinned revealing his tobacco-stained teeth. He stretched his long legs out in front of him like a comfortable cat, put his hands behind his head, making himself right at home. Mama lifted her eyes from her work, gave him one of her looks. He stared back. She out-looked him and he straightened, pulling his knees up and keeping his boots flat on the floor, his big hands now folded awkwardly in his lap. He rubbed his eye with one fist, waiting.

“Janie can hold her own,” Papa said, rising to stand by the window, behind Mama sitting on the caned chair. “You’re getting a real lady who will also be a helpmate for your business,” he said to J. W.

Papa’s observation gave me my opening.

“Right now, you’re on the trails into Canyon City, aren’t you Mister Case?” I asked, honey dripping from my tongue. It was the first time I’d spoken directly to him since our “betrothal” and I wished I hadn’t noticed the dark hairs peering out from his nose, the
large pockmarks on his cheeks. His face formed a distraction to my thinking.

“Just call me J. W., girl,” he said, smiling at me. He started to pat my leg again but I tried one of Mama’s looks and he returned his hand to his territory. Still, he seemed pleased I had at last spoken to him. “I leave again in the morning. With my fine set of animals, I might add, thanks to—”

“What’s his packing got to do with waiting, Janie?” Papa asked quickly. I could tell by Papa’s voice that he wanted to make this easier for me, give me some choice. I wondered what had happened to Lodenma’s rumor about Papa promising me to Luther or what had transpired to bring in Mr. Case.

I improvised. “A wife wants time to know her husband, know his likes and dislikes, how to make him happy,” I said. J. W. watched me like a dog watching a muskrat dive, with interest, wondering if he could catch me if he just plunged in.

“So the sooner the better?” he offered. “So’s you can know me?”

“We could consider things in the spring,” I said. “Give me the opportunity to sort the seeds, store them, have a cache for planting. Give me time to paddle flax and spin thread.” I tried to think of things I needed to do to borrow time. “And court,” I offered, looking as demure as I could.

“Child’s right about that,” Mama said, looking up. “No reason not to court. You owe us that much,” she added, not letting reference to the mule deal slip by.

“Courting?” J. W. said as though just considering it. “What would that be, exactly?”

“Well. Time here,” Mama said, smoothing her skirts, then clasping her hands over her needlework. “Perhaps some walks when you’ve a few days between trips. An exchange of pleasantries and some baubles. Every young girl likes baubles.” She adjusted the snood at the back of her neck, primping.

“Not to mention baubles for the girl’s mother,” Papa said. He laughed. Mama did not join him.

J. W. was quiet and I could see he was a man who liked to do things right even if it meant depriving himself of some pleasures.

“It could be in spring,” J. W. said thoughtfully. “And then you could join me on the trail. I’d be the envy of all them packers,” he said. “Wouldn’t have to leave you at home. Them Mexicans take their women along and they eat real good!”

Mama frowned. “Doesn’t seem a proper place for a lady,” she said.

J. W. thought again. “Well, just once or twice,” he said agreeing. “So she’ll know what it’s like for a man, know what comforts he’ll be missing, and what to do to please—”

“It’s settled then,” Papa interrupted. He seemed annoyed with all the talk of sparking. “In the spring. March? April?”

“May,” I said putting it off for as long as I could, batting my eyelashes again at J. W. He blushed. Then I hedged again. “We could
consider
it again. Come May.”

“May, then,” J. W. said. “And we begin the courtin’ now.”

“ ‘For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.’ Jeremiah 29:11-13.” Pastor Condon read the scripture at the New Year’s Eve service taking us from 1862 to ’63.

All the people did not take the chill from the old church, but the words lifted up my sinking spirits, warmed me, as nothing had for months. Sometimes I thought God’s plan was to punish me for my judgment with the babies; sometimes I didn’t think he cared about my life at all, so small a person was I.

The impending commitment Papa had made in my name hovered over me. I kept waiting for Divine Intervention or some worldly act to come between me and becoming Mrs. J. W. Case. I liked making things happen, not just waiting to see; but for this, the biggest
change of my life, inaction crippled me. I was at a loss to make something happen.

On New Year’s Eve I did pray. On the return from church in the back of the buckboard, with my feet resting on the hot stones, bundled up beneath the robe, I asked that what plans God had for my good and not my calamity would be revealed before May.

J. W.—who had been christened with only initials, one from both his father’s and his mother’s father’s name—did not join us on New Year’s Day. He had business to attend to “elsewheres.”

When he visited The Dalles, he did not always come courting. When he did, he spent more time with Papa than with me discussing their business connections, inventions such as a new barbed fence, or the gold fields. Often asked into their presence, I was then ignored, becoming part of the furniture or scenery depending on the terrain. I imagined it might be so come May and then thereafter. My mind could wander in their presence, though, as it did within the potato patch and now the corn fields that I helped tend.

J. W. was not an unkind man, I noticed. He often brought me gifts, awkwardly handing one to me and another to Mama. She seemed more taken with her bolt of cloth or a pewter spoon than I with my hair ribbon or bright colored marbles. I decided that if I were married to this older man my life might be much the same as now. I might even remain in this house while J. W. packed every few months into the mountains. Or perhaps I’d move to another parlor where friends of my husband would gather and like now, I would simply serve. My marriage might change little of my life except who shared my bed. I’d be exchanging Baby George for grown-up snores.

My daydreams were still filled with many children, a house large enough to have dancing in the parlor surrounded by family and friends. J. W. did not seem the fathering type and I couldn’t imagine dancing with him anywhere let alone in the parlor.

My nighttime dreams still held a stranger with no face.

“A hope” as scripture promised, appeared in March. The sun
warmed a wet earth. Yellow bells bloomed early, the winter having been so light of snow. I should have seen then the promise that always comes with spring. I saw it sure when J. W. said in passing to my Papa that he had heard the Californian had been located after all and “would recover.” I had not known he was even lost and the thought of it punched a hole in my stomach.

“Staying with who?” Papa asked. We three were standing at the corrals, the men conversing, me listening, standing straight like the corner post I’d become.

“Some mudlark family with a passel of kids,” J. W. said. He spit a stream of tobacco into the dirt. “Woman is a good-looker even if she is sickly. She and the Chinaman doc tended him all winter.” He leaned on the corral fence, chewing a long arc of old grass the winter wind had not destroyed. It hung over his thin lip, bouncing beneath his mustache as he spoke. “Month before anyone knew for sure where he was. Almost lost his leg. That dog hates you helped somehow. Lucky, that’s what he is.”

“Not so lucky,” Papa said. “You got my mules.” I noticed he didn’t gloat over the observation as he might have the year before. I believe that being elected to public office buoyed Papa, made him less likely to stand on another in order to be taller himself. Perhaps his new perch as the county’s commissioner permitted him to appreciate Joseph some. After all, he had not pursued the failed mule deal which might have brought to Papa both embarrassment and loss. Papa seemed only to have continued irritation with his actions to contend with still.

J. W. nodded. “His Mexicans—I know you don’t think much of ’em, George—but they kept his string going, like always, even before they knew Sherar lived. Just trusting, I guess.”

My ears perked up at his name.

“You’ve talked with him?” Papa asked.

J. W. nodded. “Rode out to Turner’s last month, looking at scrubs he’d corralled. Pitiful place.” J. W. shook his head in amazement. “Kids running around chasing that funny-looking dog Sherar
eats with. Dog worried their shoats some, lying in wait for them pigs then snapping at ’em. Woman looks puny but still carries a glow. Looks to me like she’s the glue holding what little they have together. Turner don’t give her much to glue that’s for sure.”

J. W. was thoughtful, remembering his visit. He took the grass he’d been chewing from his mouth, rolled it between his fingers. “Walks with a stick cane yet, but moving around. Funny thing is, he asked about my intended when I told him who it was.” J. W. looked at me for the first time in the hour. “I told him she don’t say much, but she’s spoken for, come May.” J. W. had a quizzical look on his face as he added, “Said a curious thing then.”

“Yes?” Papa asked, looking at me.

“Said, ‘Wonder what she’d think of April?’ What’d you suppose that means?”

He wasn’t asking me, but I blushed, knowing my answer was “grand.”

Joseph’s words to J. W. rolled around, repeated in my thoughts along with the few other times we’d shared a word, a look or two. Sometimes I wondered if I was dreamin’ into make-believe, like I did when I was little; sometimes I knew exactly that his words meant he’d be coming for me, would find a way to save my May.

“It seems too early,” Francis said between coughs. “More time will make the leg stronger. You’ll have less limp.”

“Don’t care about the looks of it. Just need it to work well enough to hold me up and let me ride. It’s good enough for that,” Joseph told her. The Turner children circled his horse; Archibald Turner held the bridle and the gelding steady. Francis let Joseph steady himself with her frail shoulder before he eased himself from the tree stump onto the saddle. “Be awhile before I can mount without a step,” he said, as he landed with a hard thump onto the gelding’s back. He grimaced. “I’m here. Just have to plan ahead where I’ll be getting on and off for awhile.”

Francis wore a worried look. “Just seems too early. We could send word through Benito. There’s no need to rush.”

Their discussion was familiar, tenderized by need and time. Over the antler-chip checkers, Joseph had told Francis much about himself and about me those months while he recovered. At the stump burned black in square patches, he’d won and lost the checker games. He’d shared his fears and joys. He even talked of the empty space that would be filled up when he reached the falls and whatever it was that called to him there.

It was of that kind of sharing that I both loved to hear about, years later, and at the same time envied Francis for having had instead of me.

Joseph had even told Francis of J. W.’s passing comment about a planned May marriage.

“I heard him say it,” Francis said, “and thought the dog must have jumped on your leg, you look so pained.”

“Felt as though I was back in that rock tomb Archibald pulled me out of,” he told her. “My chest was so heavy.” Francis handed him some straw for the skips, continuing to cover the wild bee hives as they spoke into the unusually warm February morning. “Guess it was the thought of that girl marrying someone else come May that choked me up.”

“Pay attention to that,” Francis said, coughing as she moved on to the next hive. “Some folks don’t hold much with Archibald, but I knew first time I saw him that he’d be for me. And so he has been, through thick milk and thin.”

They’d talked together, eaten together, and as he healed, walked and worked together. The Turners had taken no pay for their care though Joseph offered. They did accept the food stores Benito brought out when he conferred with Joseph. That was all they’d accept. Archibald was adamant that what they gave to Joseph Sherar was only a small return for his generosity to them the year before. “Besides,” Archibald told him one evening, “Scripture says ‘give and
it will be returned to you, a good measure, pressed down and shaken together.’ You gave and now you’re receiving.”