The Indifference of Tumbleweed (9 page)

‘My interest lies in the spiritual aspect,' he said. ‘At least – in the inner realms of pain and anguish. The body might be bruised and weakened, but the
spirit.
How much more injured must it be?'

This was an improvement, I realised with relief. Even my parents could not object to a discussion of matters ethereal or religious. Although it did not sound as if Henry
was quite meaning the latter. ‘Of course, you being Irish, you might already understand something of my drift,' he continued. ‘The Irish are more forthright in giving expression to their emotions than are many other people.'

‘Oh?' Somewhere I detected in myself a hint of offence, or perhaps merely an echo of jokes made against my countrymen in every corner of Boston, which I still remembered with childish pain. The strengthening prejudice against the Irish had been one prime motive in my father's decision to shift to Providence and then to migrate to new lands in the west, in the hope of finding a better attitude in the motley mixture of backgrounds we would find ourselves amongst.

Henry appeared oblivious to my concern. ‘By comparison with the English or German ways, at least. And the Scots, of course. But Mr Fields is of mixed descent, and his wife - whatever she might be, she is certainly not Irish.'

‘Indeed not,' I agreed.

‘Consider, then, the consequences for the unhappy couple. I have no apprehension of the detail, but the loss of the child is common knowledge, and there are tales of a kick which precipitated that loss. And yet, no one in this party has spoken of it since the day it took place. Is that not strange?'

‘Mr Bricewood,' I began, having summoned my courage, ‘I cannot understand the import of your words. What is it that you are attempting to say? I am in agreement with you that the loss is grievous for the Fields family; the associated behaviour regrettable, to say the least. Mr Fields is wretched with self-reproach, and his wife, I suppose, is cool and unforgiving. I may well be wrong on that point, but it would seem to fit her character. She is a woman given to complaint, and now she has something to complain about. And yet she has made no approach to Mr Tennant, to my knowledge, made no accusation of deliberate injury against her husband…'

‘Wait!' Henry begged. ‘Why would she do such a thing, even if it were legally admissable for a wife to accuse her husband as you suggest?'

‘Is it not?' I enquired, struck by my own ignorance.

‘A wife belongs to her husband, as a slave or a dog belongs. Surely you understand that?'

‘I had not considered the matter in such terms,' I admitted.

The conversation was circling around some mysterious central point, I suspected. Henry was perhaps testing me, making soundings as to how much he might venture to say. There was a suppressed urgency in his manner, and he too, like me, sent frequent
glances to all sides, to be sure we were not overheard. ‘I should return to my family,' he said now, with reluctance. ‘I am grateful for your company, Miss Collins. I understand how strange it must seem to you, for me to behave in this way. It is strange to me, too. I felt driven to it by an inner force. I trust I have not upset you?'

The formality was an irritation to me. Henry had doubtless been schooled in the acceptable tone to adopt with a young lady, and it was quite familiar to me from our years in the east. And yet I felt the falseness of it, when I stopped walking for a moment and deliberately looked into his face. He was almost bursting with other words, other ideas or questions.

‘Mr Bricewood,' I returned, further chafed by this extension of formality that I was demonstrating in turn, ‘we have been fellows in this company for several weeks now. Surely we can have a normal conversation without embarrassment?'

‘You are Papists, are you not?' The question was so extremely unexpected that my jaw simply dropped. I stared hard at the river close by, with its swirling currents and clusters of rushes on the further bank. It had been quite a time since such a question had been asked in my hearing.

‘We are Roman Catholics,' I corrected him. ‘As are the great majority of Irish settlers.'

‘I have heard of missions being established amongst the Indians to the north,' he said, with a strange eagerness, his short legs almost dancing with energy. ‘A wild land indeed, with Blackfeet and Crow and Flathead all in need of the white man's attentions. They can doubtless be civilised as the Cherokee and Sioux have been in other regions. It is a worthy vocation.'

‘You would be a missionary?' Was this, then, the real import of his approach to me? I could not see his face, walking side by side as we were, although a glance at his profile revealed a demeanour of excitement.

‘Not quite that. I have no strong religious faith, and I would hesitate to impose it on others, even if I had. I believe it important to let such things occur freely. However, I would educate, instruct, assist. There is such a great gulf between the societies of Europe, its great cities and history, and these savages, who have scarcely learned to wear proper garments, leave alone having any awareness of the great works of literature that have filled Europe for two thousand years or more.' Here he pulled the gilt-edged book from his pocket and waved it under my nose. ‘Such as this, for example.'

It was his copy of
Paradise Lost,
and I hoped he was about to give me a further rendition from it.

But all he did was flip it open, showing the verse form in very small print. It made me feel tired to imagine anyone reading every page. ‘Would you read it to the savages, then?'

‘I might select some especially beautiful lines to share with them,' he said softly.

I tried to enter into his thinking. I had heard many descriptions of Dublin and Liverpool; I had seen Boston, Providence and Saint Louis for myself. Of the five, only Dublin struck me as
great
, and that must be debatable. I had seen Indians wearing entirely decent clothing, controlling their horses with magical skill, behaving with perfect respectfulness to the white women they met in the street. The tales of scalpings and cannibalism and wanton slaughter were vivid and inescapable, but they were more a kind of fairytale than anything from actual experience. ‘It is God's wish for us,' I acknowledged. The words
manifest destiny
were repeated so often by emigrants that they had almost lost their meaning. It was beyond question that the colonisation of the west beyond the boundary of the Louisiana Purchase was a virtuous exercise. We were following an imperative that might test our stamina and determination, but which would reward us handsomely. We were patriotic Americans intent on outnumbering the British in Oregon Country. We would have land, society, prosperity – everything a rational human being could wish for. If Henry Bricewood felt that part of his own personal purpose was to bring learning to the Indians, that was not especially exceptional. Indeed, as I considered it further, it struck me as rather noble.

‘I believed that to be so, until just a few days ago,' he said, his pace slowing to a clumsy rhythm that I guessed revealed an inner difficulty. Again he gave a quick scan of the vicinity, but it seemed we continued to be invisible to our relatives and companions, all walking in their own groups, or attending to matters too engrossing to permit idle observations of others. ‘When I look at Jude, or Mr Fields, or even my own mother, I wonder how we might appear to the savages. Many amongst us are hardly paragons, would you say? I came to doubt our right to teach, leave alone preach. It came to me that the Indians might have superior virtue of their own and that we are the real savages.'

He sighed unhappily and I again floundered in my efforts to follow his thoughts. There was something dangerous in these last words. There was also an alarming
absence of logic to his conversation that made me wary. In the space of a few minutes he had contradicted and questioned himself like a madman. ‘I sound crazy,' he said, echoing my thoughts so exactly I wondered if I might have spoken them aloud. ‘Perhaps I am. If so, I assure you I am a harmless lunatic.'

‘I - I had no notion what to say to him. He was interesting, and the flash of danger I had sensed was all associated with society's judgements and his own muddled future. There was no personal threat to myself. I found myself wishing to show kindness to him. ‘I am privileged to hear your thoughts. I hope that speaking them aloud has helped to clarify them?'

‘Sadly not,' he sighed again. ‘And now I truly must make my excuses. My father will be expecting me to take my turn leading the wagon.'

Again it was a formality fit for a ballroom; something a migrant Irish girl knew little of. At least, there had been balls in plenty, but I had done my best to avoid them. My father's restless soul had come to my rescue in that respect. Just as I had reached an age when entering society was becoming a necessity, we had begun to pack up our chattels and make the slow and complicated journey to Westport and the great emigration.

‘I enjoyed our talk,' I said sincerely, whilst also feeling an impatience with his stiffness.

The slow steady walking pace was conducive to quiet reflection, even amongst the younger children and the less thoughtful of the young men. It was common for an hour to pass in virtual silence as each of us sank into our own musings. Now and then somebody would point out a bird or a plant worthy of notice. In the early weeks there had been a compulsive flow of plans and dreams for the end of our journey, but these grew repetitive and then slowly faded away. The second half of the trek, in the fierce heat of summer and then perhaps the first chills of autumn, where we would be crossing the daunting Continental Divide, was beyond our imaginations to discuss. Once we reached Fort Bridger, and its famous lush meadows and good society, there would be a division of trails. Decisions would have to be made, and I heard my father and Mr Tennant debate the alternatives, now and then. We had always made our destination the southern part of Oregon, in preference to California, which was full of Mexicans and uncomfortably hot. In Oregon, said my father, there was much that
would remind him of Old Ireland – which was of little appeal to me or my sisters, since we knew no home other than the American settlements.

I had thought Henry and myself unobserved during our long exchange on the banks of the Platte River, but in that I was mistaken. Abel Tennant was at my side not a half hour later, giving a small cough of introduction on his arrival. ‘Miss Collins is popular with the young men, it seems,' he said with a slight laugh. ‘If Henry Bricewood can be termed a man. It strikes me that he lacks a few of the properties that would qualify him for such a description.'

I bit back the urge to defend Henry. I had learned enough from my family and the schoolroom to know that to do so would simply hand Abel a weapon. ‘Can I assist you in some way?' I asked him, as coldly as I could. As with Henry, we were walking side by side, unable to look squarely at each other – for which I was most grateful. But I was totally unprepared for my body's response to his very presence. A look, it seemed, was not required for the uncontrollable pulses to start their insistent throbbing. It was even more alarming on this second occasion, when my mind was still occupied with Henry, and thoughts about the fate of the Indian nations, and the sad little dead baby. It was deeply worrying to discover that my body, as it were, had a mind of its own. Where did ultimate power lie, then? In an outright battle between will and flesh, which would win? The uncertainty in the answer to this question came as a considerable shock to me. It also explained the stories and gossip I had heard at times from older women, and even more it gave meaning to the preachings of our Catholic priests – which I had mostly taken to be nothing more than platitudes and empty words, passing over my head as quite irrelevant.

‘Assist?' he repeated. ‘I think not. You can favour me with your company. I have a notion that we are all finding this emigration business increasingly tedious, day after day. We are all turning to oxen, I believe. Scarcely more than twelve miles a day is a gruelling slow pace, when on horseback a man could manage four or five times as much, with ease. On a riverboat, going with the current, it would be even more. And so much more pleasant in every way.'

‘I make no complaint,' I said. ‘Especially as I dislike travelling by water.'

‘When have you had that experience?'

‘As with almost all the other emigrants, we came to Kansas on the Missouri steam packet.' Memories of the crowded boat, the unpredictable muddy waters, the unpleasant gliding motion, returned to me. ‘I disliked it,' I said again.

‘Rivers are nature's great highways,' he corrected me. ‘This land is generously provided with them. Have you never glimpsed the mighty Mississippi?'

‘I have not.'

‘Surely, at Saint Louis, you could hardly miss it?'

Miss the Mississippi
, I repeated to myself, savouring the sound inside my head. I had a hunch that Henry Bricewood would have caught himself up and uttered the accidental repetition aloud. ‘I was sick,' I explained. ‘And quite uninterested in the scenery.' The winter months had in fact seen my whole family swamped by colds and coughs that passed from one to the next and back again, until we were living in a miserable miasma of mucus and sore heads. The journey from Providence had been slow and unpleasant, with only the prospect of spring and the thrill of the wagon train inciting us to proceed. More than once my mother had implored my father to turn around and take us back to the east.

Abel was plainly in an affable frame of mind, despite his objections to the tedium of our days. He swung his arms and whistled softly, trying to keep in step with me. Considering my skirts made my gait difficult to observe, this was a forlorn endeavour. It did, however, carry with it a playfulness that I found welcome. Abel was a likeable fellow in his way, as far as I could judge. I had heard him singing some evenings and noticed that he could at times be nicely attentive to his mother.