A Clearing in the Wild (11 page)

We’d also dream of a home in the new land, one that would be more glorious and grand than the ones we had in Bethel. That wouldn’t be hard for me, not having a home of our own. I’d be left to help my mother with the children and share my bed again with sisters.

I sought a plan. I could show myself as someone needing reining in. If our leader thought I couldn’t be left alone here, without a husband to control me, he might then require that Christian stay in Bethel with me.

But when I thought of what I might do—talk overly loud at Elim gatherings or slack off at the glove factory or act peevish with Helena—
the efforts appeared so childish that our leader and maybe even Christian would just laugh and tell my father to keep his thumb on me while Christian headed west. Or worse, my parents would be shamed, and Christian, too.

I considered raising dissent among the newcomers. It might not be difficult, as a couple of the Kentucky families newly recruited had already left us by February. Christian said they’d found nothing wrong in Bethel but that they realized they wanted to claim ownership of land, be able to plant what they wished when they wished, hunt when they wanted. The process at Bethel told them well that this would not be the case as a part of the colony. Our leader decided such things, and most of the men went along with him. Those who didn’t, left.

I could be vocal about not understanding why people left. We lived in America, after all, where we ought to be free to make choices. I hoped my words would find their way to our leader and perhaps he’d suggest to Christian that he best stay here to keep my tongue in check.

“You’ve been encouraging dissent,” Christian told me in our room that March evening not long before my birthday. We were readying ourselves for bed. “I hear of it.”

“Nothing others aren’t saying out loud,” I said. “We’re free to have our say, even us women. I’m surprised anyone listened.”

“You don’t know the hardships of women who alone with their husbands and children try to claim a land.
Ja
, they end up with their names on a document. But they alone must do the work, as there are no others invested in their success. If their crops fail, they have no storehouse to deliver grain for their families. It is not all roses,
Liebchen
. You do a disservice when you tell people only of the difficulties of the colony and only the joys of settlement on property alone.”

“Many of the newer recruits came from small farms,” I said. “They know the trials.” I picked up my hairbrush.

He sighed. “You are destined to cause me pain.”

“I only want people to know what we’re about, and that we are not all perfection, as our leader would have us believe. We do have tragedies here, too. Look at Mary. And our leader blamed her for her baby’s death. Do you think he was right?”

Christian shook his head no. “But there is a time to disagree, Emma, and a time to keep silent.”

“I’m not well-versed in keeping silent,” I said. I pulled my brush through the long strands, rolling the loose hair from the brush into a tiny ball that I could later weave into a wall hanging. Maybe I’d tie a ribbon around it and slip it into Christian’s saddlebag so he’d remember me after he’d gone. I forced myself to stop thinking that way. He just had to stay here with me.

“Your words bring suspicion and discord where it need not be, Emma. Will you stop it, for me?”

“Stop talking about the virtues of owning one’s own land?” I said.

“About your view of life here. It … unsettles people to hear you speak such things while I’m away.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t go, then,” I said. “Or maybe in my own house, I’d find a better way to see things.”

“Any new home must go to the new recruits, Emma. You have a fine place to reside. It would be selfish to live in your own home alone, a waste of colony labor to build for us when we are leaving.”

“That’s the point, though.
I’m
not leaving. You are.”

His galluses hung loose at his side, exposing his shirt, his wide chest. He took in a deep breath and clamped his jaw shut. His fists rolled up tight, then released. He exhaled a long, slow breath. I stepped back from the force of him. “You will stop talking in the way I’ve asked, Emma.” He’d never given me a direct order before.

“Or?”

“Or face consequences I do not wish to name.”

“Because?”

“Because you are the wife of the leader of the Oregon Territory scouts. And you must act accordingly.”

As leader, he’d remain behind in the Oregon Territory once they found the new land. That meant more than a year before I’d see him again, more likely two. Here’s where I’d stay, beneath my father’s roof, never in a home of my own.

Pray? I suppose I might have tried that route. But our leader always led our prayers during worship; at home, my father did. We read the Scriptures and did discuss them, but most of Bethel lived content to let our leader set our spiritual tone and be the intercessor for our needs. Our leader would hardly offer prayers for my contentment. I was on my own and beginning to wonder whether my prayers, like my voice in the colony, were ever heard.

I’d have to make Christian want to take me with him. I imagined what miracle would make him do this, what intervention would cause him to set aside the dangers or demands of such a journey so he’d include a woman in the undertaking, one woman, his own wife.

I’d have to press the shared goal we had to begin our family. He’d turn forty this year, 1853. It was time he had a son. I needed to remind him of his mortality and his duty to his wife. Ruth’s words from Scripture came to mind: “Whither thou goest, I will go.” Perhaps he’d listen to that.

I packed a basket of food. We’d taken a horse cart to the center of town, which offered a kind of park. Keil had laid out Bethel beautifully, with wide streets and trees planted on either side. At the park, a
bandstand offered a sheltered place for concerts in the summer. It was deserted in March except for an early crocus poking up through the earth and a wild goose or two. Sheppie trotted on behind us, chased at the geese. Then he panted, waiting for Christian to finish chewing on the chicken leg, sure my husband would toss the skin to him.

Christian wiped his beard with a napkin. “No women on this journey,” he said when I raised the issue.

“But you said yourself that more families headed west last year than ever before. Whole families. Including women and children.”

“They took wagons, Bethel wagons, sturdy and well built so they had plenty of supplies. And there were others in the party, other women. Ours will be a fast journey of all men, horseback. We’ve had special saddlebags made to carry what we need. It’s not a trip for a woman.”

“Those missionary women, that Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding, they rode sidesaddle all the way to Oregon,” I said, “years ago. They had no wagons.”

“They hooked up with a fur trading group from Hudson’s Bay for protection. We’ll travel as light as we can to move quickly, act as our own protection. Indeed, God as our protector.” He chewed again. “No, Emma,” he said to my open mouth. “No women.”

“But that will mean another year or more before I bear a child for you. Another year of my dawdling as though I’m married without any of the accoutrements of marriage: no home, no child, no husband at my side. What am I to do?”

He took pity on me and held me. “You’re young,” he said. “You have plenty of time to have things go your way. There are many who need your help while I’m gone. You can serve them; prepare yourself for when the whole community crosses the plains. Let your kindness rise like cream.”

“Cream sours,” I said. “I don’t just want things to go my way. I
want you to have what you said held meaning for you. A wife and family, both.”

“
Ja
,” he said. “I have a wife. A generous one. I’ll settle for one out of two.”

By early April, having made no progress with Christian, I took my case to a higher authority, asking for an audience with our leader. I was visiting Mary Giesy when Willie stopped by and said his father would see me then.

“We’ll talk later, Mary,” I said. Her face blotched from the tears she still shed daily over the loss of her son. Just a few more weeks and he might have lived. So small, so tiny, smaller than the palm of her husband’s hand. Being with her reminded me of my mother’s outrage at our leader’s condemnation of this woman. She’d done nothing wrong that I could see. While I believed that our leader had God-inspired visions that led him to the faith and the way we practiced it in Bethel, I also thought his humanity clawed through sometimes, tearing up what God intended. Finding Mary and Sebastian Giesy responsible for their infant’s death tore at my sense of fairness and the image I had of God. The God my parents shared with me offered hope rather than the picture of One who stunned His followers with tears over unknown sins so powerful they could cause their child’s death.

They would try again, Mary told me, but she worried. “If I can’t name what I did wrong to cause the early birth and neither can Sebastian, it will happen again to us.”

I wanted words to comfort her. “All we can do is ask forgiveness for whatever sins we commit, even the ones we can’t name,” I told her.

Mary’s purest desire was to live her life so her children would be
healthy and well and grow up strong. In my years of knowing her, she’d been close to that perfection, much closer than I’d ever be. She worked hard, lived cleanly, always sat attentively at the sermons, unlike me. She was even more generous than my mother, and my mother gave her all. She actually believed it important not only to give to others so they’d have what
they
needed, but also that in sharing into the common purse, what we gave became not just someone else’s, but
ours
.

Unfortunately, considering Mary’s virtues highlighted my less-than-angelic ways and our leader’s dire warnings about childbirth. I might well be storing up some trouble of my own, when that day came, with my headstrong ways.

I pitched those thoughts aside while Willie walked with me to his father’s home. He’d brought Gloriunda with him, and we held the child’s hands between us, lifting her every now and then into a swing. My arms ached, and I felt tired from all the nights of sleepless turning, trying to find a way for Christian to stay at home.

“My father said he only had a moment,” Willie told his sister as we walked. “So not much time for swinging.”

His sister giggled and leaned back, knowing we would catch her, knowing we’d both lift her up. “There’s no sense in fighting it,” I told him. “When a girl sets her mind to something …”

“
Ja
,” he said. “Especially a German girl.”

I had one chance, I knew, one opportunity to convince our leader that I should be allowed to go along. I was certain such a request had not occurred to him. He’d be expecting me to beg him to let Christian remain behind. My husband would never raise the issue of my going west. He’d only do so if our leader thought it wise or if he ordered
Christian to do it. Christian would not directly disobey an order. If our leader had forbidden our marriage, I’d still be Emma Wagner with Christian a husband lost to me forever.