A Clearing in the Wild (18 page)

“You’re my family,” I said, biting my tongue as soon as I said it.

“
Ja
. We’re all family,” George said.

“Someone else can take her back,” John Genger said. “This would be more practical. Not you. We need you. You’ve been anointed as leader.”

“Anyone going back will compromise the mission,” John Stauffer said. He pulled at a tobacco strip, then chewed. “We need all of us to build, all of us to decide the site. If one returns now, we’ll have fewer to work and even less when we send men back to bring the rest out.”

“Pa’s right, Christian,” Hans said.

“You knew?” Adam Knight asked me. “You didn’t tell your husband?”

“I—”

“She told me when she was certain, but I should have known this,” Christian said.

“She will slow us down,” John Genger said.

“It hasn’t—”

“If we are not here, there will be fewer to prepare for each day,” Christian said. “You can make better time without us.”

“You were chosen by Father Keil.” This from Joe Knight’s brother.

“We can make adjustments, brother,” Joe Knight said. “All will work out well. Change doesn’t mean we’ve erred.”

“When? When can we expect this infant to join the scouts?” Hans asked as he scratched at his callus.

Christian turned to me, a puzzled look on his face.

“Am I allowed to speak at last?” Christian narrowed his eyes at me. “October,” I told him, then said to the group, “Late in October.”

We heard the oxen from a nearby camp being yoked. A child’s cry rose and then silenced.

“Nine were chosen for a reason,” Adam Schuele said at last. “Nine were commissioned by our leader. Nine plus this woman. She is one of us. She is here to discover her own part in God’s plan for us. Her presence offers an opportunity to show the spirit of our colony, that we look after one another, that all needs are provided for with enough left to give away. We will look after you, too, Christian. It is how we do this. As community.”

Adam Schuele had scouted for Bethel with my father, and his words now brought my father to mind. My father committed me to Adam’s care in addition to my husband’s; it had been my father’s last request before we left.

The men remained silent after Adam spoke. I didn’t know now if they’d take a vote or what would happen. Did Christian’s word as leader carry more weight in this instance? Did his status as my husband matter? Was it a greater sin that I kept a secret from the scouts and the will of the colony, or from my husband?

The silence lasted a long time. I thought of words to fill the empty space, but something kept my mouth closed. Instead, I listened to the distant sounds of wagons coming forward, the stomps of impatience and snorts from our stock all packed up and ready to start out. The breeze dried the perspiration above my lip. I kicked at the edge of the fire and watched the sparks light up. The worst that could happen had been said out loud: sending me back.

No, the worst would be if Christian left to
take
me back. It would be years, if ever, before he’d forgive me for that. I poked in the dust with my boot, sending up dust puffs between Christian and me.

“By October we’ll be well into Oregon Territory.” Michael Sr. spoke at last. “You can winter in Portland or Dalles City if need be while the rest of us find the site and begin the work. This would be better than losing anyone to a return trip.”

“Keeping her through the winter apart from us will cost,” John Genger said. Then he shrugged. “But maybe some settler will take pity on us and sell out cheaper if they see we have a woman and babe to tend to.”

“Oh, ho,” Joe cleared his throat. “I say she stays. Who else says this?”

All the men concurred. Only Christian withheld his agreement nod.

“Can you live with this, Christian?” Adam Schuele asked. “Can you accept the consensus of the scouts and trust that what you have is what God wants for you?”

“
Ja
, I can,” he said at last. “Though I will wonder always why He chose to let me lead this scouting party but not my own household.”

The next days were silent ones between my husband and me. We did the work together that we needed, carried messages back and forth between the others and one another about how far we’d travel before nooning. We even washed clothes together in a dirty stream, and he answered me when I asked for the name of the land formation in the distance. We were civil to each other but spoke less than if we’d just recently met. At night, we slept side by side with his arm often draped over me as he snored. He would quickly remove it in the morning.

I wanted to talk with him about this infant. I wanted to ask how he might have rejoiced if we had been back in Bethel or already in Oregon sharing this news. It was this in-between state that bothered him, I told
myself. He worried over our safety, about the journey between where we’d been and where we headed.

The snake rose up twisting and turning into itself, slithering like a thick rope through the landscape canvas of mountains and trees and rushing rivers until it hissed, “Traitor,” its mouth wide and fangs wet.

“Traitor!” I shouted the word loud enough inside my dream that I woke Christian up.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he said, shaking my shoulder. When I couldn’t stop the tears and frightened breathing from my nightmare, he folded me into his arms. “Rest now,
Liebchen
. You’re all right, now. Shh. You’ll wake the others.”

“I’m sorry, so sorry, Christian. I should have told you. I feared you’d send me back. It was selfish. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh, shh. I have my part in this,
Liebchen
. A man so busy with his work, he fails to notice when God has allowed him to co-create with Him, this is a man who needs forgiveness too.”

“But you at least were doing good work. I … looked after my own.”

He patted my back. “You’re young, Emma. Let this be the only time you deceive me so you needn’t have bad dreams.”

I thought of staying silent about my other secret … but this might be my chance to truly wash away the deceptive stains I hid within my heart, the chance to change the fabric of my marriage. I took a deep breath. “Father Keil would not have sent me along if I hadn’t begged him to,” I whispered. I felt Christian’s arms stiffen in their hold around me. “I went to him. I told him it wasn’t fair that you and I were separated so much within our marriage and that you would want to start a
family soon and how could you, with you gone for a year, maybe two or three before I’d see you again. And all because he sent you away each time.”

“You went to him after I told you not to.”

“Yes, but as Adam said and the scouts all agreed, he wouldn’t have sent me along if he hadn’t chosen to. No one can badger our leader into doing something he doesn’t want to. No one ever has. And you prayed for this, you said that yourself.”

“Indeed. He’s human and can fall to deception too. Did he know you carried a child already? Did you tell him this?”

I shook my head. “He didn’t know. But, Christian, I believe that if he had, he’d still have sent me with you. He told me that women will always be punished in childbirth, that it will be a hard state for us no matter where we are because of what Eve did. I think he hopes I’ll find understanding within a difficult childbirth, my cries of pain to tell me of all I share with women through the ages, to remind us of our sins and that we are not unique at all, just one of many who need forgiveness.”

Christian rested his chin on the top of my head. “You have a severe view of Wilhelm. I’ve known him many years. He doesn’t dwell on sinfulness, Emma. He dwells on love, on sharing with others all we have, and holding us together so we will find that final respite in heaven. It’s Christ’s love displayed in his leadership that draws others to the colony. Not all of us could be so deceived to miss a man who harbors such harsh thoughts.”

He leaned me away from him, then kissed me on the forehead, my eyes, my cheeks, and finally my lips. “We will start over,” Christian said. “This will be a new time for us now.” I nodded. “
Gut, gut.
” He lay down and motioned to let my head rest on his chest. “We have both erred and been forgiven,
ja?
And we learn from this to talk when there are problems, lest the snake wake us in the night.”

I climbed Independence Rock along with the rest of the scouts. We arrived there before the Fourth of July and celebrated the halfway mark of our journey west. Christian thought the rocks too smooth for me, that going up would be fine, but coming down would challenge and I might slip and fall. But I pleaded. I wanted to see the views from above, and finally he gave in.

Standing on top the hill as rounded as brown bread, a person could see forever. For the first time, I realized how the Missouri landscape had restricted my view, the eye, seeking distant vistas, always interrupted by trees and shrubbery and rolling hills. Atop Independence Rock, looking east, I felt as though I could see the bricks of Bethel. Previous travelers had carved names into the stone, witnesses to those pursuing wider horizons. The landscape west looked as still as a lake and twice as wide. The colony had restricted my vision, but perhaps that proved purposeful. They liked dips and valleys where people nestled apart from others, where they could believe they were the only ones in the world; intruders were kept out by clear boundaries and woods. Finding a site in the Oregon Territory with such isolation could prove challenging. I hoped a more open space in the wilderness would be where the Lord would lead.

“Careful now,
Liebchen
,” Christian told me. He held my hand and caught me once when my smooth leather soles did slide on the rounded rock.

“The rest of the way looks … easy,” I said. “Nothing in our way now. We can almost see the ocean from here.”

“These western landscapes are like a woman’s wrapper: deceiving,” Christian said. He smiled.

He was right, of course, because not a few days later came Devil’s Gate, a slice in a granite mountain that looked like a nasty wound. The
Sweetwater River ran through it. We would take the trail south, as the wagons did, even though Michael Sr. thought the animals could make it through the cut without a problem.

How the decisions were made in this community of scouts remained a mystery to me. I would have agreed with Michael Sr. True, the cut was narrow, but it would save time, something the scouts said must be a deciding factor if we found a good campsite and thought to lay over an extra day to rest the animals. “Got to make good time” was the motto, and so we’d head on out whether we were rested or not.

Yet here we could have saved time but didn’t.

“Who decides whether we take a certain trail or not?” I asked Christian at noon while we ate jerked beef. “This road around the Devil’s Gate took more time. We could have ridden through that cut in the rock.”

“Our animals aren’t so surefooted, though. If we had a problem in the narrow place, we’d have no help coming along behind us, as no wagons come that way.”

“That’s reasonable,” I said. The breeze lifted my own scent to my nose. I needed to lay out my wrapper to air this night. “But who decided that? Hans makes some decisions about the stock. Wouldn’t it have been his call about the ability of the animals?”