The Indifference of Tumbleweed (17 page)

Lizzie took to watching me as I worked, and was soon bringing Bathsheba out to the grass, where she would stroke and croon over her dog while I gave a similar time to my oxen. This went on for a week, with every day a slightly harder climb, the land rising slowly but inexorably towards the distant mountains, and the oxen gradually growing thinner.

‘Will Reuben be fighting now?' my sister asked me, on one of these evenings.

‘Perhaps. But I guess they have to teach him soldiering first.' I discovered that I had given my brother scarcely a thought for days. His disappearance left all too small a ripple on the surface of my life.

‘He will make a poor student.'

I had never questioned to myself the regard the younger girls had for Reuben, and had no notion of their feelings about him, except for Nam who often demanded he give her rides on his back and would creep up to him for shelter if the wind blew strong on the early days of our trek. ‘No call to worry over him,' I said.

Lizzie did not respond, and I cared too little to attempt to ascertain her thoughts on the matter. She pulled at small knots in her dog's coat and I wandered over to a clump of plantain which I gathered for my oxen. When I returned, I said, ‘We shall always remember these months, I suppose. All our lives, this will be the great adventure that we look back on, as if it were a story.'

‘Is that the reason you write in the journal?'

I paused. ‘Maybe it is. Lest we forget the facts of it all.' I frowned, thinking I ought to expand on my daily records considerably if I were seriously to rely on them in years to come. ‘We are privileged to be part of this emigration. We owe it to our descendants to remember it all.'

Lizzie shrugged impatiently. ‘I would take no interest in dusty old journals if my ancestor had done what we are doing. We will be recorded as fools, just as likely, moving so slowly along tracks that nobody is certain of. Those men at the fort saw us in that way.'

I had been doing my utmost to forget the scorn that greeted us at the fort, and was shocked that this young sister had taken it to heart. ‘The track is certain enough,' I corrected her. ‘The South Pass is an easy way through the Divide.'

‘And then?'

‘Then, dear sister, we settle near Oregon City in the fertile valley and become founders of a great civilisation. Our father will be prosperous, as before, manufacturing essential goods. We will find rich and handsome husbands and live long and happy lives in a democratic Garden of Eden.' I spoke only slightly ironically, quoting the established and universal expectation of every soul in the wagon train. ‘What else?' I added.

Lizzie was fourteen years old and a serious person - at times. She was also discontented and disinclined to socialise. ‘Rich and handsome husbands,' she repeated
with a wry smile. ‘For Fanny perhaps. She keeps her skin unburnt and her hair thick. Fanny treads lightly, like a fairy. She will sing and dance for the men of Oregon and break a hundred hearts.'

I chuckled. ‘She was born under a laughing star.'

‘And mine was the very opposite,' said Lizzie, who had heard stories of her miserable infancy many a time.

‘And mine?' I wondered.

‘You, Charity? You move like a shadow, watching us all and never giving a hint of your thoughts. The men speak to you, and you listen, but they learn nothing of your heart. I have seen them looking after you and scratching their heads. Abel and Henry and even poor Mr Fields – they expect something from you and never receive it.'

I jerked back as if slapped. A tightness like a clenched fist took place in my chest so I could hardly breathe. And yet there had been nothing overtly unkind in Lizzie's words. It was shock, not pain, and a thread of fear. I could not account for the fear and sought to smother it with a forced croaking laugh.

‘And you are another, then, to be watching me so closely,' I accused. ‘And drawing your childish conclusions, that are nothing more than fantasy and mistake.'

She lifted one shoulder carelessly. ‘You asked,' she said.

‘I will take care not to do so again.'

We returned to our tent in a scratchy silence. I deliberately filled my head with matters concerning the oxen, my brother Reuben, my youngest sister's prattle about a deer she had seen in the distance. I chattered brightly to Fanny and my mother, revisiting the encounter we had had with the Indians at the fort, and the way they had expected us to provide food and drink for them. I strove to insert opinions and observations, as a riposte to Lizzie's characterisation of me. ‘The Indian men are well made,' I said firmly. ‘But I thought the women very brainless and savage.'

Nobody took this up, either to agree or disagree. We ate our supper, which was flavoured as always with sage from the surrounding bushes. In those weeks on the plains I believe we all smelled and tasted the dry sweet-sharp sage every moment of the day and night until we ceased to notice it.

During that night there was a commotion from tents at the forefront of the train. A gun was fired and a great animal roar went up immediately afterwards. A roar of pain and rage and fear. The gun fired again and the noise ceased. My father ordered us all
to remain in the tent, and he went to investigate. ‘A bear has been killed,' he said shortly when he came back. There was a hint of sadness in his tone.

The body of the bear was the object of great interest next day. It was not especially large, with dark brown fur and long yellow teeth bared even in death. The thick curved claws were exposed like discarded weapons and the chest spiky with dried blood. There was considerable debate as to whether it was worth skinning and butchering for the hide and meat. So recently supplied by the fort, no-one was low on provisions. Mr Franklin was not the only butcher in the train, but we all looked to him for guidance. He chewed his chequered moustache and wavered. The man who had shot the creature was a well-fed farmer from Missouri, one of a minority who could handle a rifle with confidence. He admitted to never having consumed the meat of a bear and felt disinclined to try it.

Then Mr Fields stepped forward. ‘We cannot waste it,' he said, quite loudly. ‘The animal has died for no purpose – we owe it a duty to eat it.'

Everybody stared, blinking at the idea he had expressed. One or two muttered about his Indian heritage leaving a legacy of savage notions. ‘The beast was mauling my tent,' the farmer corrected him. ‘It would most likely have killed the wife and myself if'n I hadn't shot it.'

Mr Fields shook his head. ‘A clap of your hands would drive it away. 'Tis a young male – no cubs to rear, no reason to be hungry or aggressive. Just curiosity. That's what killed him.' He sighed, with the same sadness I had heard in my father's voice.

With some reluctance, Mr Franklin and another butcher shared the gory business of skinning and dismembering the animal, stacking shapeless chunks of meat in a shady place where it was divided up amongst families willing to use it. My mother took one piece, salting it and pressing it into an earthenware pot, as if it were a ham. It was all done quickly, but our departure that morning was delayed.

I found myself standing next to Mrs Gordon, who was holding her sister's baby, as usual. We both watched the butchering sideways, flinching at the strenuous slices her brother-in-law was making through the fresh meat, revealing the tightly-packed grey intestines, still steaming with body heat. A great pile of these innards was left at the side of the trail as a feast for crows and other creatures.

I made a low sound of disgust and Mrs Gordon smiled at me. ‘Nasty,' she agreed.

I had been hoping for a proper talk with her since the trek began and this promised to be my opportunity. Her own child was contentedly playing with his cousins,
everything in suspension while we awaited the dismembering of the bear. ‘What is the baby called?' I asked.

She looked at it as if surprised to find it in her arms. ‘Emily,' she said. She leaned towards me confidingly. ‘Do you know – I am now feeding her, instead of her mother. I still have some milk, from a little boy I lost a year since, and her own mother's has gone thin.'

I recoiled slightly, unprepared for such intimate revelations. ‘Oh, my,' I managed.

She sighed. ‘It is no hardship, to be honest. I am glad to do whatever I can to repay the kindness of Mr Franklin. He truly did rescue me and my little lad. I have no notion what might have befallen us else.'

Her accent was a muddle of Southern States and something I faintly recognised as London English. ‘Where are you from?' I asked her.

‘I was born in Poplar, beside the great Thames River, but the family all shipped to South Carolina when I was six. I married Tommy's father when I was sixteen, and he died six months past. Got bitten by a rattlesnake in Kentucky in November. He stepped on it and it bit him three times.' She shook her head. ‘Took him two hours to die.'

‘Were you there?'

‘Not when it bit, but I found him before he died. Said our goodbyes very nicely we did.' Her eyes were shiny with tears that suggested a sort of sentimental ecstasy rather than profound grief.

‘There are no snakes in Ireland,' I said childishly. ‘Saint Patrick drove them all away.'

‘Precious few in London, either. We are living in a wild land here, and like to get a lot wilder.'

Her utterances were of the sort that gave little opening for sensible responses, I was discovering. Although she looked tired, her hem stiff with dust and mud, her hands red and swollen, there was a spirit to her that I found appealing. ‘Will you miss Allen and Jude?' I ventured.

‘Of course. Though not so much as their parents will. I can fit no more chores into my day, which is bad news for my sister. I fear she will be forced to collect dung and tend oxen more than she expected.'

‘Is she much senior to you in years?'

‘She is eight-and-twenty, and I am seven years younger.' She looked over to her little boy. ‘I had another one, just like Tommy. Little Joe, we called him. Six months old he was, when he went. I never knew it was such pain, when a child dies.' She put a hand to her breast. ‘It's like a thousand stabs from Mr Franklin's knife – and yet you never bleed. People cannot see the wounds, and so they cannot understand.'

‘You are a mere year older than I.' It seemed impossible that she had known such grief and loss in so short a life. I would have guessed her to be twenty-five at the very least.

‘It should be counted in experience, and not the calendar,' she said, eyeing me appraisingly. ‘You strike me as very young for your age.'

It was said gently, but I felt it as a criticism, for all that. Or perhaps patronage was closer to the truth. It was an attitude I had felt from others in the party, and I wondered whether I was discussed as being immature and slow. The idea annoyed me all the more for knowing there was some truth to it. ‘I dare say I shall catch up before long,' I snapped.

‘I dare say you will,' she said mildly. Then she added, ‘Your name is Charity, mine is Hope.' She laughed. ‘Somewhere in the train, there must be a Faith, don't you think?'

‘Hope,' I repeated, feeling there was a kind of magic in this connection. I knew the Biblical reference well enough. ‘I like it better than Charity.'

‘They both demand that we live up to them,' she said. ‘And I suspect that mine is rather easier than yours. It is my nature to think the future will be better than the present. Hopefulness comes readily to me.'

I did not respond. It had never crossed my mind that I ought to strive to be charitable because of my name. ‘it was my mother's choice,' I said. ‘And she is dead, so I cannot ask her what she was thinking.'

‘Better that than Virginia,' said Hope Gordon with another laugh. The baby in her arms whimpered and wriggled, and she jiggled it gently. ‘And I believe “Fanny” has unsavoury associations amongst the lower classes.'

Her meaning escaped me. ‘I should go,' I said. ‘There is work to be done.'

‘As always,' she agreed, with a little shrug. ‘I can already barely recall the days when I could sit for an hour in our yard with my lace cushion, knowing the meal would be prepared by our servant woman.'

My own thoughts went back a year, to our Providence home where we too had servants, and I would readily devote a whole day to painting a single scene or packing lavender into sachets for the drawers, while Fanny picked tunes on the piano and the little ones played with a puppy on the lawn. ‘We have become like peasants,' I said.

‘It is all in a good cause,' she told me severely. ‘And we shall be kings and queens in Oregon – just you wait and see.'

Our party had gained a more forward point in the train since leaving the fort, thanks to an accident of positioning when we had departed. We had set our camp a little to the northern side of the fort, and when it came to hitching up the oxen and moving out, we had luckily found a clear way on the westwards track, due to a stoppage that kept others back. A man had shouted, ‘Hey, you Tennants! Mind your place!' but Mr Tennant merely grinned and waved his hat and urged us on. There was no overall authority to ordain each party's position and we saw no reason to hang back. The shouting man subsided and everything settled into the new sequence.

There were many advantages to the change. The ruts were not so deep, the water not so muddy. We felt more involved in decisions, hearing more accurate reports of the scouts' instructions and suggestions. The subtle feeling of importance that filtered downwards from the front to the rear to be entirely diluted by the time it reached the tail-enders, made itself manifest in Mr Tennant as well as Mr Bricewood. Their voices grew louder, their heads more erect. The condition of our animals and wagons became a greater matter of pride than it had done earlier.

None of this seemed to please Mr Fields. He had tried to hang back, shaking his head at our pushing ourselves forward, and now his ragged coverings and sickly children were more evident and shameful than before. I heard Mrs Gordon reproaching Mrs Fields for the condition of the family's garments and wondering whether she was not ashamed for them to be seen in such a state. The legacy of the unpleasant attitudes of the French Indians at the fort was persisting, I concluded. Mrs Gordon was doubtless recollecting the forceful expressions of contempt that we had endured and anxious that it should not happen again.