Wilderness Days (2 page)

Jehu snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot. I’ve got something for you,” he said, fishing in the leather satchel slung over his shoulder and pulling out a letter. The handwriting was familiar.

“It’s a letter—” he began.

“From Papa!” I cried, snatching it from his fingers.

“Picked it up from a passing ship. Got a few letters for Swan, and one for Russell, too.”

The mail was a random enterprise, with letters generally delivered by passing ships. I had not received a letter from Papa since arriving on Shoalwater Bay. Then again, I had not written Papa for several months now, and as I turned the letter over in my hand, I felt a rush of guilt.

Although he had not prevented my trip, Papa had made it
clear that he did not think highly of William Baldt, and I had delayed writing him from shame when William had not met me upon my arrival. I had intended to write him after William showed up and we were married. Then the engagement had been broken, and as I had thought to return home, there was no need for a letter. Now perhaps I would write and persuade Papa to join me. The settlement could most certainly use a proper physician.

Papa. How I missed his booming laugh. His warm eyes. His ability to finish off one of Mrs. Parker’s cherry pies in a single sitting.

I recalled the way his mustache turned up at the corners when he smiled, and how he never turned away patients, not even when they stumbled onto our doorstep in the middle of the night.

And most of all, I recalled how when I was a little girl he would stand at the bottom of the stairs and call: “Where is my favorite daughter?”

It was our little ritual. I would throw back the covers on my four-poster bed, rush down the hall in my bare feet, and peer down at him from the top of the stairs.

“She is right here!” I would say. “And she is your
only
daughter!”

He would shake his head at me, his eyes crinkling with amusement, and more often than not, he would roar with laughter at the picture I presented.

“You’re not my Janey! My Janey never sleeps through breakfast! My Janey’s hair is never tangled.”

It had always just been Papa and me. And, of course, Mrs.
Parker, our kindly housekeeper, who had wiped away every childhood tear with her worn apron. They were all the family I had ever known.

I took the letter and carefully, slowly unfolded it, intending to savor every word.

When I looked up, Jehu was standing there, watching me carefully.

“Bad news?”

I shook my head wordlessly. Above us a gull squawked hoarsely, and as if it were yesterday I recalled the way Papa’s
coughing had filled the house at night, and how he had at first forbidden me to travel west to marry William. What horrible fights we had had! And then I recalled how, the morning after a visit by a fellow physician, Papa’s resistance had abruptly evaporated, and he had given me his permission to marry.

He had known he was dying! That was why he had let me go.

I felt a pain deep in my stomach, sharp as the hurtful words I had spoken to my sweet papa, and staggered forward.

“Boston Jane?” Sootie asked nervously, looking between Jehu and me.

Jehu’s eyes widened in alarm. “Jane, what is it?” he asked urgently, grabbing my shoulders.

“Papa’s dead.”

“Oh, Jane.” Jehu’s voice echoed in my head.

And then I did precisely what Miss Hepplewhite would have recommended in just such a situation.

I fainted.

When I came to
, I found myself on a hard bunk in a filthy, flea-ridden cabin.

The settlement at Shoalwater Bay was barely a settlement at all. In the center of a muddy clearing, up from the winding beach, stood Mr. Russell’s pioneer cabin, which doubled as a trading post—and inside it I now lay. A slender stream running alongside the cabin led to the Chinook village, where my friends Keer-ukso and Chief Toke and Sootie lived. Near a spot on the stream where the Chinooks liked to gather water was a small rustic chapel. There Father Joseph, a French Catholic missionary, preached and lived. Farther up the bay, a pioneer named M’Carty and his Chinook wife had a cabin.

Mr. Russell’s cabin had been my home, albeit a poor excuse for one, since arriving on the bay in April. I had been obliged to take up residence there because my former betrothed had abandoned me, without bothering to arrange suitable accommodations. The inside of the cabin consisted of a ramshackle grouping
of wooden bunks lining two walls, a rickety set of shelves that contained trading supplies, and a sawbuck table where meals were generally taken. The floor was hard-packed dirt, and the cabin had a tendency to attract local vermin despite my hard work trying to keep it clean. Then again, the vermin were quite probably attracted by the filthy pioneer men, who thought it perfectly reasonable to take a bath once a month. Any pioneer man passing through Shoalwater Bay looking to make his fortune was welcome to stay in the cabin where I resided. Needless to say, I was now rather unfortunately used to the sound of snoring men.

“Jane,” a deep voice said, and I looked up to see the worried, bearded face of Mr. Swan, a decidedly curious man who had come to the bay all the way from Boston to study the Chinook Indians. His spectacles were balanced precariously on his bulbous nose as he surveyed me anxiously. He had a thick white beard and flyaway hair. This eccentric, excitable older man had been almost like a father to me in the time that I’d resided here on Shoalwater Bay.

A father
.

I remembered at once the reason I was lying here and squeezed my eyes shut. Papa was dead. My own sweet papa. Hot tears slipped from my eyes, and I felt gasps rising in my throat.

“Oh, my dear girl,” Mr. Swan said awkwardly, smoothing back my untidy red hair. “I am so terribly sorry.”

But something inside of me was draining out, falling away, and although I heard the concern in his voice, my mouth couldn’t
form any words. All I could think was that Papa was gone. It was too much. Too much to live, knowing that I was all alone in this cold, lonely world.

I turned away and closed my eyes.

When I next was aware of opening my eyes, the wind hissed softly through the tiny window, promising cold days ahead. It was September, but it looked the same as when I had first arrived in April. Nothing but gray gloom in all directions and endless rain in this soggy place in the middle of nowhere.

The rain beat a steady drum on the roof, lulling me, like the clip-clop sound of carriages going up and down the cobblestones of Walnut Street in Philadelphia. The men moved about the cabin, their voices hushed murmurs. I heard a crackle and hiss, smelled the scent of salt pork frying. I had been in bed for three days now, or was it four? How easily time slipped away. Sometimes it felt like I had been forever in this wet, musty place. It was better—yes, better—to simply close my eyes and ignore all the voices calling me steadily, intruding on this quiet, urging me to get up, to go on, to live. Better to ignore Jehu’s warm hand holding mine, his fingers smoothing down my hair, tangling in my curls like a brush.

If I closed my eyes, it all came rushing back. If I strained hard with my heart, I could hear the life I had left behind so long ago. It was so easy, really, to simply slip away, slip back to Walnut Street. One moment I was on the hard bunk in Mr. Russell’s cabin and the next I was on my childhood bed, the
four posts rising around me like comforting sentries, the mattress soft as a cloud. Everything so very warm and dry and dear.

A familiar voice called up to my window.

Come on, Jane!

Was that my childhood playmate Jebediah Parker calling me to come out and play? To run up and down Walnut Street and toss apples and chase carriages and throw pats of manure?

And that smell, so like the warm scents that used to drift up from Mrs. Parker’s kitchen. Was she making roast pork and apples for supper? Yes, I must be in the kitchen, next to the stove, the smells so strong and sweet that my mouth watered. And what was that other smell? That woodsy smell drifting on the air? I squeezed my eyes, memory straining now, and recognized Papa’s tobacco!

“Janey,” Papa said, leaning over me, his eyes full of laughter. “It’s time for supper.”

I opened my mouth to tell him how much I missed him, how very much, and then Mr. Swan’s face swam into view, a pipe balanced in his mouth, the smoke rising in curls. He was holding a steaming bowl.

“Supper. I’ve made my famous fisherman’s pudding.” He swallowed hard, worry etching lines in his face. “Please, my dear, you must eat something,” he pleaded in a strained voice.

But how could I eat when Papa would never take another bite again? When he would never stroll down the street, or puff on his pipe, or roar with laughter, because he was buried in the cold, cold ground. A heavy, leaden feeling pushed down on my
chest, and I closed my eyes and felt myself drift away, tugged like a log on the tide, the waves dragging me farther and farther until Mr. Swan’s face was a speck on the horizon.

And then he was gone.

All the men of the settlement worried about me.

But there was nothing I could do, you see, except lie there and remember the pallor of Papa’s face when I left Philadelphia—how during my final months at home he had coughed and coughed, a cough that racked his chest and left him gasping for air. I couldn’t forget how unkind I had been to him, how we had fought so fiercely over my engagement to William Baldt, how I, his only daughter, had abandoned him to follow a useless man west. I had chosen my own selfish desires and left my dear, sweet papa to die alone in Philadelphia.

The men took turns trying to entice me back to the world of the living.

Jehu recited tales of sea voyages taken before he had ever met me, how he had traveled across the seas to China, and how he had seen women in the Sandwich Islands who wore grass skirts. Mr. Swan read from his diary, describing the medicinal properties of plants and the pattern of the tides on Shoalwater Bay. Chief Toke, Sootie’s father and the kindly chief of the local Chinooks, brought Sootie, who bounced on the side of the bunk, discussing her doll collection earnestly. And Father Joseph sat by my side, head bowed, whispering soft prayers in French, the words low and comforting like a nursery rhyme. Even Brandywine, Mr. Swan’s
plump, flea-bitten hound, took time off from begging for food around the campsite to sleep curled up at the foot of the bunk, his cold, wet nose pressed against my feet.

But it was my dear friend Keer-ukso who almost lured me back. His musical voice snaked into my dreams and tugged at me. Maybe it was the sorrow, the deep, aching emptiness that he carried around with him that I recognized, so like my own. He alone, who had recently lost loved ones in the summer outbreak, seemed to understand how difficult it was to hear the sound of life continuing, moving forward so effortlessly, as if Papa had never lived at all. As if the world could go on without his booming laugh or kind eyes.

Keer-ukso sat quietly beside me, chanting softly in Chinook.

“Halo moosum,”
he whispered, and it sounded like the wind whipping through the cedar trees, the sound washing over me like the fog on the bay.

But then his voice drifted away and I couldn’t hear him; it was as if I were too far away.

And maybe I was.

“Dang gal, ya stink worse than a beaver rotting in the sun,” a voice said loudly, and I heard the distinct sound of spitting, followed by the soft wet noise of tobacco hitting the floor.

I blinked my eyes open to see Mr. Russell towering over me. When I had first arrived on the bay, this filthy, buckskin-clad, ill-mannered mountain man, much given to spitting tobacco in my general direction, had spent his days ordering me about the
cabin as if I were a maid. But as time passed, I had grudgingly come to respect, and, I suppose, admire the gruff, long-whiskered man who ate whatever I placed before him.

“What’s going on here, gal? I go away hunting for a few days and come back and find ya lying in bed like a lump when there’s mending to be done?” Mr. Russell barked impatiently. “And all these here men have been mollycoddling ya while ya stink up the place!”