The Indifference of Tumbleweed (7 page)

I had written,
Naomi's hand bitten accidentally by Mr Bricewood's dog and greatly damaged. No marker at the place, which was in a broad valley, with four birch trees on a ridge. We can never find it again.

‘Longitude and latty…what was it you said, Dadda?' I had never heard either word before, and had not the slightest understanding of what he meant.

He made a grimace of defeat. ‘I never quite grasped it myself, to be frank with you. But later on we will go and speak with Mr Padgett and ask him to explain it to us. 'Tis science, my lamb, and far beyond the scope of our sort.'

I cocked my head at him, acting the simple daughter, putting a finger to my mouth. I had observed that all four of we sisters had behaved in a similar fashion since Nam's injury. We had grown more nervous, not only of the evils that could befall us, but of the strange interplay between the men of our party. Despite the providential presence of the yarrow, it came home to me how alone we were in that great empty country. However carefully we planned and prepared ourselves with tools and other equipment, we were ill provided with medicines adequate to any serious malady. There were two surgeons in the train, with trunks full of laudanum and materials for poultices, as well as the sinister knives and forceps they might be called upon to use.
But these supplies would soon disappear, leaving eight hundred people to fend for themselves. I could recall life back in Boston, before we moved south to Providence, how a doctor and his assistant had both attended Lizzie's birth, when I was just six. We lived in a sturdy town house, with a doctor's office five buildings away, his pharmacy well stocked. There had been people of every skill to call on, within half a mile of us. And yet, I mused, it was not so entirely different here on this wagon train. Amongst the migrants there had to be every skill known to humankind. There was even a register, kept by the leader of the largest party, at the head of the train, in which were listed all these abilities, with the name and party of those possessing them. We were a moving town, in effect, with neighbours and alliances and slowly developing feuds.

‘Is science so difficult, Dadda?' I simpered. ‘Is it trains, and stars and medicine?'

He scratched his head and gave me a close scrutiny. ‘As you know full well,' he chastised me. ‘You were in the city not so many months since. You saw the glass manufactory, and the dyers, and the ironworks.'

It was true that we had been taken to see the industrial enterprises of the fast-growing city. My father had told us the story of his arrival in America, where he had originally intended to find a place in a glass-making enterprise. He had been thrilled by the possibilities, in his first year or two in the new land. But somehow he had stepped away from that plan into leatherwork. The new dyes had intrigued him, and the very obvious demand for all types of harness and other equine and agricultural equipment felt good to him. He could speak the language of horsemen and was proud of the quality of his goods.

In his youth, my father had been a passionate rider, following the hounds and entering the steeplechases. There were similar events in Massachusetts, which gave rise to reminiscences from my grandmother as well as my father, about their earlier years in Ireland. She told a vivid story of a bright winter morning, standing with her mother at a field gate and watching a stampede of huge sweating horses charging towards them, bearing big red-faced men, shouting and yodelling. She laughingly told of her terror as they veered away at almost the final moment, the weight and speed of them beyond description. I had never in my life been on horseback and Reuben was little better. When my father reproached him, saying that in the Old Country he'd have ridden to hounds at seven years old, been blooded with the fox's brush and be
proud of it, my brother had shrugged and expressed relief at his own less gruesome upbringing.

‘A man of business makes a better life than a man of science,' I told my father, as if reciting a remark made previously. It was a truism that required no further defence or elaboration. My father had made money aplenty in the Boston and Providence years. Money for a wagon and oxen and cattle, and great stacks of goods, and a new home when we reached the western coast. What man of science could ever have prospered so well?

The incident with Nam's hand sent all kinds of ripples spreading over the next days. The wounds turned black where the dog's teeth had gone in, and the pain kept her awake at night. Our mother had taken her in with her and Grandma and we heard the cries and whispers in the small dark hours. Mamma looked pinched and anxious in the mornings. The yarrow infusion had been kept and bottled, but it was all gone by the third day and we saw no more of the plant as we journeyed. Grandma watched closely for the sinister threads of infection that would spread up the wrist and spell doom for the hand itself. One of the surgeons would be called to amputate it, with the unimaginable horror that would go with such a procedure. But there were no such signs, nor the telltale smell of dead flesh that would indicate gangrene. Instead, the little hand slowly resumed its natural shape, the fingers wiggled and after a week, the pain was greatly abated.

But before that Reuben and I were addressed by Henry Bricewood, in the company of Jude Franklin, the younger of the two Franklin brothers. Jude and Henry had been cautious friends from Westport days, and were often seen together. How Jude had missed the original scene with the dog was unexplained. He was a slow-witted fellow, but not in the way that my brother was slow. Reuben had a steady good-hearted approach, with a task done well to its completion. Jude seemed perpetually frustrated and angry with himself and his limitations. He would kick and lash the oxen if they turned the wrong way or ignored an instruction. I had seen him break a good knife by getting it too deep into a stick he was trying to cut, stupidly wrenching and twisting it beyond its endurance. His two young sisters, with far more natural ability than he would ever have, would watch him cautiously from a distance, whispering together, but never venturing to advise or assist him. His older brother Allen sneered at him
continuously, teasing and jibing and making everything a hundred times worse. Allen was a good deal of the reason for Jude being the way he was, I concluded.

There were ten Franklins in all. Mr Samuel Franklin was a skilled butcher, with large beefy forearms and a strange multi-coloured moustache which jutted horizontally above his lip, to give him an air of perpetual pouting. His passion was all for his apple trees, and he repeatedly spoke of a change of career when he reached Oregon. My father suggested he acquire a herd of swine, the meat of which went so well with applesauce. ‘Combine your skills, man,' he adjured. ‘Don't give up one for another.'

Mr Franklin was no great wit, and had the same uncontrolled impatience that I had seen in Jude. He wore a wide-brimmed felt hat, dyed a bright blue colour, which he would snatch from his head and use to belabour a misbehaving child or beast. He was always first to have the oxen yoked and the fire kicked out every morning. His wife was a small dark woman, with evasive eyes and silent manner. Her children occupied much of her time, despite a tendency to push them away when they were importunate. I scarcely ever heard her speak. Also with them was her much younger widowed sister, Mrs Gordon, who had a small son, perhaps four years old. Then came Allen, Jude, Billy, aged about eleven, two girls with names I had still not committed to memory, and a baby, not yet a year in age. Mrs Gordon did the great bulk of the food preparation, sewing, washing and baby care. ‘Earning her passage, so she is,' said my father. Her sister would walk at a pace that was close to trotting, keeping at the head of the whole party alongside her impatient husband. She seldom took notice of her baby or the two little girls who trailed along far behind with the little Gordon boy.

Henry Bricewood enquired regularly about Nam's hand, Jude Franklin usually with him. They approached Reuben and me on the last day in May. ‘Miss Collins,' said Henry, with a little bow that surprised me. Jude snickered softly. ‘How is your sister's wounded hand now?'

‘It appears to be free from infection,' I told him. I looked around in vain for one of my parents or my grandmother to elaborate the report, knowing Reuben would remain dumb. It did not feel like my place to be doing it.

‘The dog has been absolved,' Henry told me, still speaking very formally and telling me something that had been clear from the start. Puzzled, I ventured a small smile.

‘That comes as a great relief,' I said. ‘The dog has no harm in him.'

‘He is expected to serve some useful purpose in the future, the nature of which is unclear to me.' Henry was watching my face as he spoke, with an intensity that was more of an appeal than a threat. I remembered the searching stirring look that Abel Tennant had used to beguile me, and noted how different the two young men were, and how my response to Henry contained nothing to disturb the flow of my blood. Henry was speaking to me as one sentient being to another, perhaps testing me to see if I were a match for his intellect. His remark contained a wealth of implications that were not lost on me.

‘Can he bring down a buffalo?' I wondered, with a smile.

‘A calf, perhaps. And since none of us is especially adept with a rifle, it might be safer to leave the work to the dog.'

It was scarcely possible to envisage the situation where we might be so in need of meat that a dog such as Melchior would be encouraged to bring down a buffalo calf. I suspected and hoped that the hypothesis was nothing more than words. ‘He would need fellows in such a task,' I said. ‘A pack of hunting dogs, not a single individual who may well have painful associations with the use of his teeth to draw blood.' I recalled the chipmunk that I had seen Melchior kill some weeks before. ‘Although if he is sufficiently hungry, he might be persuaded perhaps.'

‘I have taken it upon myself to supply him with a few scraps each evening,' he confessed. ‘He needs to maintain his strength, after all.'

Jude and Reuben had moved away slightly, plainly uninterested in our exchange, perhaps dimly aware that the words were not for them. Jude's gaze was on his aunt who had positioned her Dutch oven over the fire, and was dropping corn meal dumplings into it. The setting sun was on her, turning her dark hair to a glossy sheen. Mrs Gordon was considerably younger than her sister, but still at least ten years senior to Jude. If, as was perfectly probable, she found herself a new husband from amongst the men in the train, there was not the slightest idea in my head that it might be her sister's son. Indeed, such a pairing was most likely forbidden in the church laws.

I maintained my attention on Henry, who stood squarely before me, perhaps four inches shorter than I was, since I was of a fair height by that time. His head was long and boxy, hair cut short across the top and down the sides, perhaps in an attempt to reduce any appearance of being a child. He had a high brow and clear brown eyes under well-marked brows. He wore a jacket made of a good wool cloth, with deep pockets stuffed so full they dragged the garment down, spoiling its shape. A thick
book protruded from one, the edges of the pages gilded, so they glinted in the sunlight. Henry Bricewood cut a figure far more suited to the streets of a city or the cloisters of a university than the untamed trail that led across the Divide to the remote west.

For no reason at all, I laughed, perhaps for lack of suitable words, perhaps because there was something sweet and unexpected in this casual little talk about the dog. Something about Henry Bricewood, as I gradually came to know him better, sent worry and work into a distant corner, to be replaced by glimpses of something else. Something attached to words spoken for their own sake, which gave them power to conjure pictures that we could observe together. It confused me, while it yet gave me a sort of reassurance. When I looked from Henry to Jude, I silently allocated them to two distinct groups. Jude was only barely human. Ideas and pictures and visions of the future alarmed him. For Henry such things were central to his very being. Or so I concluded later that evening when I had opportunity to consider my observations more deeply.

Seemingly satisfied, Henry bowed again and said he was pleased that the hand was mending. ‘Thank you,' he added, and somewhere inside me, I knew what he meant.

‘What book is that?' I enquired, pointing to the gold-edged pages.

He brought it out of his pocket. ‘John Milton's great work,' he said, caressing the volume with reverence. ‘
Paradise Lost.
You know it?'

‘I have heard of it,' I nodded. Somewhere in my schooling, it had been mentioned, or so I thought.

‘It is like a Bible to me,' he confessed, causing me a tremor of shock. ‘The poetry is sublime.'

‘Read me some,' I invited boldly.

Henry glanced around, seemingly nervous of eavesdroppers. I understood quite well that the reading of poetry would not raise his status in the eyes of other young men. But there was nobody nearby, and Henry opened the book, keeping it close to his body. ‘Here,' he said, fixing his gaze on the first page he had happened upon.

‘This is from the Fourth Book,' he told me, and proceeded to read in a low musical voice:

‘So saying, his proud step he scornful turned,

But with sly circumspection, and began

Through wood, through waste, o'er hill, o'er dale, his roam.

Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where Heaven

With Earth and Ocean meets, the setting Sun

Slowly descended, and with right aspect

Against the eastern gate of Paradise

Levelled his evening rays. It was a rock

Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds,

Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent

Accessible from Earth, one entrance high;

The rest was craggy cliff, that overhung

Still as it rose, impossible to climb.

Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,