The Indifference of Tumbleweed (20 page)

‘Yes,' she nodded slowly. ‘You could say that. To what purpose would you tell them?'

‘To save you! You are on the road to damnation, you must know that. What if you…get with child? What then?'

‘That is unlikely,' she assured me. ‘The Holy Book has something to say about that – did you know? Genesis, Chapter 38, verse 9. Go and read it for yourself, if you have not done so already.'

I waved this piece of cleverness aside. ‘You must marry him. There can be no choice but that for you.'

‘Be quiet, Charity. I have no concern for consequences, out here in the Land of Nowhere. Look at it! We are like butterflies fluttering thoughtlessly amongst the flowers, never knowing there are but a few days to live. We could all be killed before the month is out. The river might flood and wash us away, wagons and all. Indians might rise up and slaughter us. Buffalo might turn in a great mass and trample us to pulp. There is nothing safe here, no promises for a golden future. It is based on dreams and stories and nothing more.'

‘So you have become a butterfly.' It was a fitting comparison. Fanny was certainly as pretty as a butterfly.

‘You are refusing to listen to me, as always. I am sixteen years old, Charity. I have done my lessons and heard all the talk from our elders. I understand the world and my own place in it. I think myself fortunate in that regard. I am tasting freedom, as all Americans believe they have a right to do. If you were to tell all those people what you witnessed, you would be doing nothing more than burdening them with a matter that is not their concern.'

‘They would curtail that freedom you value so much.'

‘Indeed.' Her face grew serious. ‘And I would wither and die as a consequence, like a butterfly in a belljar. Is that your desire?'

‘Perhaps it is,' I muttered angrily.

‘You have always been deficient in love, Charity. You were wrongly named by your poor mother. There is precious little charity in your nature.'

Reference to my mother, who had died when I was well below two years in age, to be replaced within months by the woman I had regarded as my parent ever since, was so shockingly uncommon that my mouth dropped open. I was stunned, not least because I had never been quite sure that Fanny and the others knew that I was in reality only half a sister and Reuben half a brother. My father had taken me aside when I was seven and briefly told me the facts, which I had stored away as being somehow special. My mother had been nineteen years old when she died, was named Sadie, and I had her large feet and sallow skin. She had been much mourned when she died and lay buried in Massachusetts, where she had no-one to grieve for her any longer. Her Irish origins were much the same as my father's second wife's, and indeed there were some Wicklow cousins in common, as far as he could understand it.

‘You know nothing of my mother,' I stammered, feeling unpleasantly wrong-footed by this turn in our argument.

‘I know as much as you do yourself. Perhaps more, since
my
mother has told me about her.'

‘Why would she tell you and not me?'

Fanny shrugged. ‘Thinking it may upset you, perhaps.'

The diversion had no possible relevance, but I could not pull myself away from it. ‘And does your mother also think I lack charity?'

‘I have never asked her. We have never discussed your character. I am speaking of how it is now between us. You can do nothing but harm by speaking out, harm to yourself and others. My soul is not for the saving. My soul soars and sings, thanks to Abel's magic. Go your own way, sister, and leave me to mine.'

For the hundredth time, I saw again the moments in the sage-filled hollow with male nakedness all too grossly evident. Again I felt the painful mixture of excitement and revulsion – but with each revisit the revulsion gained sway over the thrill, until I had changed my own reaction considerably. ‘It is the way to damnation,' I repeated, feeling a deeper certainty than ever before that this was truly the case. And then a new thought hit me. ‘And they would hang Abel if the truth were known,' I spat, with a venom that felt good.

She forced a defiant laugh, but I saw the flash of fear in her eyes. ‘They would not!' she said.

‘They hang a man for stealing a sheep in the Old Country. They hang them here for less than that.'

‘You would have that on your conscience?'

‘The sin is not mine. By remaining silent I strain my conscience, too.'

‘My heart bleeds for you,' she said bitterly. ‘You stand there in judgement over something you do not understand. Yet you envy me in your heart. I do not forget your first words when you discovered us. I was in the place you thought rightfully yours. I am the winsome young sister and you are the dry elder, of whom there are so many high expectations. It is the natural order and we cannot change it. My freedom was always of a different order from yours.'

I was hurt and bemused by this speech. ‘Did Abel put these notions into your head?'

She smiled. ‘Abel is not a man for ideas. Abel scarcely utters a word to me. My ideas are my own, forged and tempered in my own smithy, like the best of swords. I trust them completely.'

‘Ideas are powerless if the world is against you.'

‘And you take it upon yourself to represent the world.'

I splashed away from her then, feeling all the previous dark emotions, along with a bunch of new ones. In some way I was guilty, it seemed. Guilty for being older than Fanny, more serious and ‘dry'. Guilty for entertaining even for a moment the idea of revealing her sins to those in power over us both. Guilty of a deficiency in love and charity, as well as understanding. And also perhaps guilty of stupidity – the failing that until then I had imagined to be Reuben's exclusive territory. Nobody was as stupid as our brother, but perhaps with him gone, someone else was constrained to fill his shoes.

Nothing had been resolved. We had made vague threats to each other, inspiring fear on both sides. In my darker moments I was glad to have shaken her from the horrible complacency in which she gave the impression that she had found treasure that others were too timid or hidebound to seek. She had never imagined that Abel might be hanged for their sinfulness, evidently. I had been confident of my threat when I made it, but soon I began to doubt whether I had it right. Fornication was a sin more condemned by the church than the state, and I had never heard tell of a man executed for its commission, unless he be a slave forgetting himself with a white girl. But I was glad I had alarmed my sister and I wondered how much she would fight to save his life, or whether all her concern was for herself by association with him.

I found myself in an even more dark and lonely place after this exchange. I could not look a man in the face without imagining him naked and shuddering as Abel had
been. I could not see a baby without also seeing how it had been generated, often by parents who were as plain and undemonstrative as two stones. I assumed that every loud word or laugh in the camp at night was prelude to the dreadful deed I had witnessed. I had been shown a universal fact of nature and found myself appalled.

It continued to be the case that there was nobody I might share these feelings with. Everyone was either too young or too old, too innocent or too untrustworthy. I could not discern who amongst the party already understood how human beings came together, and who might be as ignorant as myself. Mr Bricewood had daughters, Hannah and Martha, but they were hardly older than Lizzie, and impossible to speak to sensibly. There were young wives – the two Mrs Tennants as well as Mrs Gordon, who would very probably have responded to shy questions as to monthly courses or even the tribulations of childbirth – but they would find it beyond strange if I attempted to consult them about my sister and her behaviour.

We progressed through South Pass as if we were enjoying a summer walk on a gentle hilltop. The very ease of it made many people delirious, and they ran to and fro, arms outspread, praising God for the provision of this way through the Divide. There was another fort almost within reach, and the people in the wagon train were warm with a sense of accomplishment that the journey was half done so readily. All but myself, it seemed. I dragged myself about, unmoved by the celebrations, which were becoming more numerous as we negotiated one important landmark after another. No doubt there would be singing and partying when we reached Fort Bridger, too. I felt I would for ever, throughout my life, be sickened by that sort of thing, after what had happened at Independence Rock.

July 17
^th

The journey since the South Pass has been through mountainous country, but the way is not hard. There has been rain each night for five days, and it is altogether cooler than before. Nam's earache is gone, thanks to Grandmother's ministrations with poultices and good nursing. Bathsheba continues to behave badly. Little Susanna Fields has broken her leg quite badly, from falling under the wagon wheel and being crushed. We hope to achieve one hundred miles each week until late September, when we should find ourselves in Oregon City. The oxen are hale and willing. We reach
Fort Bridger tomorrow. Several wagons left us the day after we traversed South Pass, believing there to be a shorter cut-off. Amongst them was Virginia Reed and her family.

It was more than I could manage to find anything further to say than this. The general buoyancy amongst the migrants only served to depress me further, filling me with a thick soup of anger and guilt and puzzlement. Fanny continued to cast anxious looks my way, as I grew thinner and gloomier with every passing day. Grandma finally took notice, too, and asked me if I had a cough, and whether my stools were normal. ‘You must have worms,' she said flatly, ‘if it is not the lung disease. A tapeworm, more than likely.'

I obediently swallowed the mixture she dug out of her trunk, knowing it would do me no good.

There was a great deal of discussion concerning the decision of a substantial group of parties, including the one led by Mr Donner, to break away and pursue a shorter but uncharted trail. I took little interest in this, trusting my father to do what was best for us. The fact that we had always had Oregon and the Willamette Valley as our destination made it an obvious decision to remain on the tried and tested way. It turned northwards towards Fort Hall, and this was fine with us. Those wishing to settle in California had a more difficult choice, since they were aiming for a point somewhat to the south. To traverse a long loop northwards was regarded as wasteful and foolish. But the scouts spoke up loudly in favour of us all remaining together and they shook their heads reproachfully as the breakaway parties steadfastly turned to the left, as we remained on the wide and easy trail to the right. There were other voices, claiming to know new routes that would save time and deliver the migrants to California with little difficulty. Rumours abounded to this effect, with our scouts suspected of unwarranted pessimism, simply in order to retain as large a train as possible with the payment that would accrue accordingly.

I was mildly sorry to lose Virginia Reed, who I had quietly hoped might become a friend in the weeks ahead. She would, I had imagined, provide me with a wholesome escape from my seething thoughts, and two or three times I had sought her out, only to find her busy and distracted, with no time for chatter.

We continued for another few days, not entirely unhappy at the additional pasture available for our stock, thanks to the diminution of the train. The routines were
unvaried, with men and beasts proceeding in a quiet orderly fashion along the ground softened by the nightly rains. There were whole days in which nobody spoke of the future, but concentrated on food stores, the quality of water and how it was difficult to wash any garments when they would not dry overnight. A growing pile of soiled clothes lay in a corner of the wagon, the hems caked with dust, armpits stiff with perspiration and a few shameful splashes of blood on skirts and undergarments. I was aware that Fanny had her courses the day we traversed South Pass, which brought a renewed surge of confused feelings. It meant – if my incomplete grasp of the process could be trusted - that she had escaped one particular trouble at least for another month, and also that she had a chance of escaping detection. Part of me was sorry about this and another part was much relieved. Natural justice should ordain that her own behaviour would lead to her downfall, and not a betrayal by me, her sister. But if nature refused to play her part, I remained the prime witness, still no closer to knowing what I ought to do.

Susanna Fields – or so we called her, even if Mr Fields were not her natural father - was the youngest of the three children, just past four years old. The accident had been largely the fault of her mother, who was directing the oxen from the front board of the wagon while her husband was walking ahead with Mr Franklin. I had been watching the men from a few yards behind them, feeling glad that they were enjoying such an amicable interlude. Mr Franklin was laughing at something the other man said, which I believe concerned a large bird of prey that had been soaring above us for some time. As always, my eyes remained fixed on his great bushy upper lip, which sometimes seemed to have an independent existence.

The first thing we heard was a shout from Mrs Fields and a low cry from one of the draft animals. Looking round, I could at first make out little of what was taking place. The wagon had slipped somewhat to one side, having been dragged out of the usual tracks and mounting one of the hard-baked edges of the rut. Something was amiss with the yoke and harness, so the beasts were further apart than they should have been, pulling awkwardly. One had almost got free from his restraints and was dragging everything sideways in an effort to reach a clump of grass close by. Despite his bellow when Mrs Fields whipped him, he continued on his wayward path. The wagon tipped further, rocking and creaking. The woman climbed down quickly, aware of the danger of the whole outfit tipping over.