TEN
Life, Death, and What Is Sure

1858

_______

They’d endured more than celebrated the Christmas holidays. Her niece, the sickly Eda, had passed. For Jenny, the very thought of the death of Clara or Willis caused such heartache that she sometimes couldn’t catch her breath. Her mother had grieved her firstborn, and then another son died when Jenny was eleven and the boy only one month old, followed by their sister Alice, born and died the same day, the autumn before they left Illinois. The work hadn’t stopped for her mother with any of those deaths, and it wouldn’t for Fanny either. But neighbors helped. Families brought food and talked softly while preparing Eda for burial, putting all the hopes and dreams for her gentled into the wooden casket that the Lafayette furniture maker crafted. There was nothing more forlorn, Jenny decided, than an empty child-size casket being brought into the house—except one holding a child when it was taken back out.

It made Jenny want to grab up her two children and set them inside a fleece-lined basket and hold them there, prevent death from reaching its greedy fingers into their lives. But of course, living held risk, the very act of breathing meant another step into the unknown. How one took those steps would shape the character of those around you—Fanny’s other children, her husband, Amos. Men had their own struggles with such a loss. Women suffered differently. Jenny vowed to visit Fanny often, help her with the daily tasks that must go on, and put her own struggles and fatigue aside when she was with her. And she wouldn’t mention a word about the restrictions placed on women to mourn in silence and not too long, as though there were a timeline for grief to close the cracks in a family’s foundation.

She must also include such loss in her novels—for any frontier reader would relate. There wasn’t a single family who hadn’t experienced a death of some kind. She would attempt to capture life inside her stories . . . give new meaning to the tragedies they couldn’t control.

“It’s something you’re good at, Fanny. It will give you a sense of accomplishment, when right now you likely can’t feel much of anything except anguish.”

Fanny sighed. “I have no skills. I couldn’t even keep my girl alive.”

“You did everything you could for her. Illness . . . there’s so much we don’t control, Fanny. Only how we respond to what life hands us. And you have a talent I desperately need. Please.”

Jenny had opened Hope School in the Lafayette house. She’d thought of the idea while washing clothes and wondered if mundane tasks might indeed be the catalyst for creativity. She got Ben’s agreement with the promise she’d be back on Sunny Hillside each weekend with the children and all summer long.

“Not much of a married life though.” Ben had chewed on his pipe stem. He never put tobacco in the bowl.

“Men go off to the mines. Or they work large ranches East and leave their families to operate their farms. It’s what people have to do. I’ll make up stews, and you can fix potatoes and bacon easy enough. You’ll have plenty of eggs. I’ll still make butter to sell.”

She could out-argue him, and he’d agreed, so Jenny had her subscription school she called Hope, and now Fanny was enlisted to help with the school’s Christmas pageant.

Jenny admitted to herself that she liked the drama, the rehearsals, hearing children read the lines she wrote telling a story of a lost present and how it had been magically found and everyone lived happily. And then the grand performance. She had actors for the Bible story, and each student had a part. After all, the Christmas story was for everyone. She dressed Willis up in a fleece, and he moaned “Baaa! Baaa!” even when he wasn’t supposed to. Clara sang. One of the tallest boys was Joseph, and her youngest sister with the beautiful eyebrows, Sarah Maria, acted as Mary, who had to shout above the bleating sheep. The others were either shepherds or angels, and they had more than three wise men, who also had to yell above the bleating ram. Everyone laughed, even Fanny and Amos, grieving parents finding comfort in the family and friends who walked beside them as they were reminded of the story of Christ’s birth and promise.

Jenny accepted the congratulations from her students’ parents and that night sank into bed happy.

Her best work had been convincing Fanny that her labor was worthy and that there was life after grief. She loved seeing Fanny enjoy herself. As she told Ben, “She accepted my few coins to reimburse her for her stitching too.”

“Always working to honor women’s labor,” Ben said. “Well done, Wife.”

Spring was approaching, and Jenny knew she’d have to close the school down and be available for the farm work, especially cooking for all the men. Ben had enjoyed the winter, coming into Lafayette midweek and fixing meals so Jenny had more time for lesson preparations. He told of ways that other families adjusted to the challenges of frontier finance.

“There are gold strikes in Idaho.” Ben turned the bacon and the aroma filled the large kitchen. Jenny sat at a day desk he’d built for her. “I was thinking this fall I might go there and make a strike like I did in Jacksonville before I met you.”

“We’d be separated even more than this past winter.” She looked up from her foolscap.

“If I made a strike, you wouldn’t have to have the school. We’d have enough with the farm.”

He doesn’t see how much I love the teaching, having a part in contributing to the family through more than just laundry.

He smiled at Clara, who sat waiting for the bacon. “I’d miss my pumpkins, that’s sure.”

“I’m no pumpkin, Pa,” Clara said. “But Willis is a squash.”

“Am not.”

“Are so.”

“Children.” Jenny’s voice stopped the fracas. Ben did enjoy his time with Clara and Willis. He was a good husband, despite his tendency to visit and bring back friends—at his leisure—for her to serve them supper. And he didn’t mind cooking for the family, which was a boon to her, though she couldn’t imagine him frying potatoes for his guests or hired men.

Once they’d had a row over how his “guests” were treated. Two of his bachelor friends had stopped by Sunny Hillside Farm after the supper hour when Ben wasn’t home. Jenny had been quilting—not her most favorite activity—and she kept on as the men chatted with each other about whether Oregon would become a state, how they’d lose their autonomy as a territory able to make their own laws once Oregon joined the union. They talked around her, didn’t ask her opinion. Eventually realizing there would be no food forthcoming, they made some comment about it.

“Oh, were you waiting to be fed? Had I known that’s what you stopped by for, I could have told you an hour ago and you could have made your way back to your own kitchen.” Which they then did and later told Ben about it. He’d been livid.

“You provide when you can, knowing that someday someone will help you,” he had told her, his voice raised. “Hospitality is the bedrock of this country.”

“No. Work is the bedrock, and I was working, but not to prepare their suppers. You get them married off so they can eat at home.” Poor souls who accept those proposals seeking stomach-soothing over love. “I’d say I’m not alone in my feelings about this. Why should women be expected to take care of everyone? It was the end of a long day, and they expected me to wait on them just because I was a woman.”

“They’re neighbors.”

“Who should eat at home or when invited.” Silence. Then, “The Farmer’s Wife might have words to say about such frontier hospitality. It’s the pioneer women who are expected to be hospitable while you men make the rules about what that looks like.”

“As it should be,” Ben said.

“Maybe one day it’ll be different. Ouch.” She had poked the needle into her finger, sucked on it. Her Farmer’s Wife gave her an outlet to express her upset, but it didn’t change anything for the lives of women and that had been her intent and still was.

Her finger bled.

“Let me kiss that and make it better,” Ben said.

She let him. He said he understood that women got little rest and that she especially didn’t seem to know how to play.

“We women have no time to play.”

“You need to laugh a little more,” he’d told her and kissed her hand again. “Try to be a little more accommodating.”

“Holy cow chips. One more task to put on my list.” She had sighed. “I’ll think on it.”

“Good. Now let me hold you and kiss that pain away. I hate arguing with you.”

“Because I almost always win.”

He had grinned at that, and she let him pull her close.

Come spring, they were expecting another Duniway.