The Indifference of Tumbleweed (26 page)

I felt somehow that I should find him pitiable, with his pocked face and empty pockets. Instead I sensed a nobility to him that made me seek to gaze directly into his eyes. Since those early days with Abel Tennant stirring me so dreadfully with his look, I had steadfastly avoided meeting a man's eyes directly. With Henry, a habit had developed where we walked side by side, seldom turning towards each other at all. His short stature meant that he was forced to look upwards at anyone of normal height, and this was awkward for us both. Even my father made me uneasy, ever since I acquired the awful knowledge concerning Fanny. Unsure as to what he knew, I felt he might read it in my face if I looked at him full on. I had got into the habit of constantly keeping my gaze on the ground, rounding my shoulders and letting my hair fall across my face.

So now that Mr Fields had revealed his darker self in an outpouring of confession as to his poverty and castigation of my sister, I felt called upon to confront him. His
honesty was laudable, his need to be heard irresistible. The exact import of his words was opaque to me, but I could not withhold my sympathy and respect.

‘I know you are a good man,' I said. ‘Doubtless a good Baptist, too.'

‘I am no Baptist,' he returned, with a look of surprise. ‘That was my friend. My wife's husband. I follow no Church.'

‘Oh.' I was dumbfounded. I had almost been ready to hear that he had once been a minister in the Baptist Church himself.

‘I fear there is no Church that would take me.' He smiled ruefully.

‘Mine would,' I said with certainty.

‘Because they take anybody, without discretion?'

‘The desire is reason enough,' I said, quoting a line I had heard many times.

‘A desire that is absent, I fear,' he said. ‘I cannot envisage a circumstance in which I might count myself a Roman Catholic.'

We had been concealed amongst the mountainside foliage long enough. His miserable sickly wife would be missing him, and my libertine sister would cast aspersions on my character if she discovered where I had been and which man I had been alone with. ‘We should not be here like this,' I said, regretful that a reminder of good and evil was serving to eject me from paradise. Was I a new Eve, capable of seducing Adam into disobedience and sin that would taint us for ever more?

‘We must return to our responsibilities,' he said, reading my mind. He straightened his back, so his long dark hair fell away from his face and again we exchanged looks. His skin was like a badly tilled field, with pits and bumps down both cheeks. But his chin and neck were smooth and I recalled the odd fact that Indians grew very little hair on their faces. Unlike my grandmother, I thought, with a kink of my lips that he immediately saw and misinterpreted as an expression of friendship. He smiled back, with a broad show of teeth and narrowing of eyes that conveyed gratitude and liking in a frankness that made me feel warm.

The friendship that I had not hitherto acknowledged bloomed within me and my own smile broadened. I felt an urge to reach out for his hand, for a touch of his skin, but did not. ‘Thank you for showing me the plants,' I said. ‘I will not forget their names.'

‘It was a simple thing,' he demurred. ‘And please accept my apologies for anything I said out of turn concerning your sister. It is none of my business.'

I ought to have resented the way he had returned me to my early distress about Fanny. He had removed the lid of a can containing a noxious stew of dark emotions, but I discovered to my relief that they were less powerful now. The worst of the jealousy and guilt had evaporated, leaving a nagging worry as the dominant sensation.

‘It will have to be faced,' I muttered, hoping to sound like a mature adult.

‘Or perhaps it will wither of its own accord, with no permanent harm done,' he suggested. ‘Six or seven weeks from now, they can go their separate ways and never meet again.'

Six or seven weeks sounded to me like a very long time.

3
^rd
August

We left Fort Boise today, expecting to reach Fort Nez Perce by the end of the month. It is on the Columbia River, which we shall then follow almost all the way to Oregon City. The way is plain ahead, with an expected arrival by late September. Mr Tennant has insisted on remaining with the train and his party, his foot slightly improved with no need for amputation. We have, for a few more days, good supplies of food, augmented by the prodigious supply of wild berries and nuts on all sides. But there is a huge canyon ahead, forcing us to leave the Snake River for a time. There are as well many Indians living in this region.

I had to admit to a very hazy grasp of our route, at this point. The Snake River had been our guide for so long that it had become like an old friend. Scouts informed us that it would before long take a course that we could no longer follow. A canyon of mythical depths lay ahead, impossible to measure, and completely unthinkable for a wagon train to navigate. We would have to make our way across some alarmingly inhospitable terrain before finally reaching the welcoming grasslands of the Grande Ronde and Fort Nez Perce. The scouts warned us to inspect our oxen closely, since a cracked hoof or failing strength would be the finishing of them in the weeks ahead. The trail had been found and marked only three years earlier, as we had been told many times. There were numerous steep mountain passes to traverse, with a dramatic reduction in vegetation. Hard as it was to believe, we were assured that within four or five days, we would discover for ourselves the first serious hardships of the journey.

We would have to cross to the western side of the Snake, and then leave it behind to cross the Wallowa mountains. The Indians here were disturbed by the growing numbers of white settlers and unpredictable in their reactions. The Fort to the north was entirely controlled by Indians, we learned; enterprising natives who had taken with enthusiasm to trading with white emigrants. But those remaining in the mountains were a law unto themselves and we should be wary.

I tried to summarise these reports in my journal, but could manage nothing better than a faint-hearted optimism that the end of the journey was in sight.

Cloud and Thunder and Dot and Seamus were in excellent health as we left Fort Boise. Their second set of shoes were still good, and they seemed almost eager to set out again from the fort. Mr Tennant's animals were also quite well, but the added weight of their owner riding in the wagon seemed to tell on them. He sat at the front of the wagon bed in his chair, the damaged leg with its bandages protruding over the board, and cheered on his beasts. He was a large man, but it was a surprise that the oxen found him so much of an extra burden, when they already had barrels, chests, tools, sacks and so forth loaded onto the wagon. Abel joked that they simply resented the fact that he was riding instead of walking.

I had watched Abel Tennant closely after my discussion with Mr Fields, hoping to elicit the current situation between him and my sister. He whistled as he attended to his many tasks, was solicitous and cheerful with his injured father, and polite to Mr Franklin and Mr Bricewood. In short, he seemed content. He took no notice of me, which served to rekindle the sparks of jealousy that had tormented me weeks before. I felt as if I had somehow missed a chance, let something slip through my fingers that I might never have again. He also avoided my parents as much as possible, I realised. He did it cleverly, casually, so it was very far from obvious.

In a calmer frame of mind than before, I did my best to understand the situation and why it still caused me such confusion. Since the age of eleven or twelve I had read and heard the usual romantic stories where great passion overcame terrible obstacles and the couple enjoyed a triumphant and permanent embrace at the end. They all lived happily ever after, because love conquers all and is the glue that holds us all together. In real life, society was generally composed of couples with children who were on the whole living happily ever after, albeit with hardships and disagreements to taint their contentment. There was very little sign, however, of the towering passions that filled the stories. This, I admitted to myself, was where my difficulty lay. At least at the beginning of the relationship, surely, there must always be this powerful love between the two. Without it, something was wrong.

And there was nothing to suggest that Abel and Fanny were in the grip of anything resembling this expected emotion. There was no romance, and the passion as Fanny had tried to describe it was a deplorably physical thing. There was no mooning or sighing or writing of verse. All I could detect was a kind of complacency in them both. They held up their heads and walked with a firm step. Fanny swayed her hips
and pushed out her bosom, as if flaunting her body. Abel swung his axe and smacked his oxen with a manly air than suggested pride in his own powers.

I had not been unduly struck by the fact that Fanny and I were the only unmarried females in early adulthood in our party. It had not seemed to be a category worth identifying, until then. Now I understood that Abel had no-one but we two on which to practise his charms, unless he invaded another party in the train. This would have caused instant notice and reaction, and become public – which would have prevented such liberties as he took with my sister. And this realisation only served to heighten my jealousy and self-reproach, because I could surely have had him for myself if I had responded as he'd hoped, back in the middle of May.

He's mine!
I had cried, without any conscious thought. Now I had almost persuaded myself that I would never have wanted what Fanny had, but I still nursed a sense of being robbed.

Fanny had characterised me as uncharitable, in the carelessly cruel way that sisters address each other. She had also made reference to my homely looks, my blemishes and lank hair. Or had I read that into words of some ambiguity? I had no illusions that I was beautiful. I was like Lizzie – a fact I had rejected for years, telling myself that at least I had no actual defects as she did. But while I did carry features from my natural mother, I also shared with Lizzie our father's long face and mud-brown eyes. Fanny and Nam had inherited their mother's curls and wide mouth, which made a monumental difference.

6
^th
August

We have started to climb up to another range of mountains which comprise a great plateau, after we crossed the River Snake a day since. The riverbed was rocky and Mr Franklin's wagon lost a wheel. The men were soaked through, standing for hours in the water while they fixed it. Many of the stores were spoiled by falling into the water. We have not had such a hard crossing before, because in other places fords had been created by hundreds of wagons passing through. Here there is no such help. We must take the best-looking place and hope we can pass. However, a group of Indians were helpful in taking the horses and cattle across for us.

I knew I should write more about that awful day, but it was impossible to decide which were the most telling details to include – and there were huge personal
elements to it that I could never publicly record. Mr Tennant's two wagons went first, with Abel leading the oxen and his father shouting from the front board of the forward vehicle. The women and children waded into the cold water with squeals of protest. The dogs swam valiantly with their noses pointing out of the water and their front legs paddling fast and furious. It had been discovered that if two oxen could manage the task, it all went more quickly and easily than harnessing together four or even six, which was a complicated process, unless, like Mr Tennant's wagons, they were accustomed to it already. The riverbed was not muddy and the water did not rush especially rapidly. The hazard lay mainly in the rocks. We did not have much livestock with us, and those we did have were habituated to these crossings, although they were always reluctant. Four or five Indian men took them over without difficulty. We saw several Indian children splashing and swimming in the water, a short distance from the crossing place, and envied them their lack of fear. For us, rivers remained points of danger, as well as the source of essential water.

And yet it was an awful day. Our wagon went after Mr Franklin and ahead of Mr Fields. In every case, there were insufficient men for all the tasks, so wives had to push if the wheels encountered a rock. In our case, I led the oxen, and my parents walked alongside a wheel each, putting a shoulder to work when we were obstructed. They could not see each other, and it was not always apparent which wheel was causing the problem. Those ahead who had achieved the crossing – or those still waiting their turn - could be called upon to come and assist, but it was generally held that each family fended for themselves. When Mr Franklin's wheel came off, there was a great deal of shouting for help, from Mr Franklin himself and young Billy who were both striving to prevent the whole wagon from tipping over by holding the axle as horizontal as they could. The water was of some small help in buoying up the heavy vehicle, but the danger was nonetheless extreme. Henry Bricewood was the first to join them, and then my father made haste to add his strength. Billy was told to haul the loose wheel clear, which he managed to do. The oxen were up to their shoulders in water, and intent on dragging their burden onto dry land, whatever their master might say to the contrary.

Without thought I followed my father, trying to ignore the sodden clinging weight of my skirts that made it impossible to move quickly. An Indian man was coming from the far bank, and we met at the heads of the two oxen, both instinctively aware that any further pulling by them would throw lives and property into danger. As it
was, Mr Franklin slipped and the wagon lurched heavily. A barrel that had already been thrown violently to one side, toppled out of the wagon entirely, narrowly missing Billy and Henry's heads, before bobbing merrily downriver, never to be seen again. At least not by any white man.