Chapter 42: Harvest

 

The harvest kept everyone on Jenny’s farm busy. Zeke came almost every day, usually with new instructions for O’Neil. Zeke showed his suspicions about the hired hand, but O’Neil didn’t complain when Zeke interfered.

“We’ll finish the wheat harvest today,” O’Neil reported to Jenny on September 10. “Zeke and his twin brothers will be here to help by midday. We’ll git the last of it to the mill by evening. Then we’ll start on the barley and oats.”

“Rachel and I can help, too,” Jenny said. “We’ve finished putting up the vegetables.”

“Don’t you rush your work, Miz Jenny. Zeke and I can handle it.” O’Neil had taken to calling her “Miz Jenny,” like the younger Pershing children. Zeke now made a point of calling her “Jenny.” “Next week I’ll scythe the meadow for hay. Git a cuttin’ done afore the corn’s ready to reap.”

“You’ve been a prayer answered, Mr. O’Neil.” Jenny smiled at him. Rachel still blushed when the man was around, but Jenny now relied on him. William doted on O’Neil, demanding piggyback rides in the evenings after supper.

When Zeke and the twins arrived midmorning, Zeke asked Jenny, “Why weren’t you at church yesterday?”

“William had a fever. He’s still croupy.”

“We should be able to hire some day laborers to finish the harvest, if we need more men. Several prospectors have returned from California. Seems finding gold is harder than they expected. The nuggets ain’t just lying on the ground.” Zeke sounded smug. “I could’ve told them farming is more dependable.”

“Any word from Joel?” Jenny asked. She really wanted to know whether anyone coming back from California had seen Mac, but Zeke would most likely have asked about his brother.

“Nope. I asked whether we had mail when I was in town last week. I’d hoped Esther or Pa might have a letter from Joel, but nothing yet.” Zeke squinted at her as he answered her unasked question. “And nothing for you from Mac either.”

Jenny sighed. “We’ll hear soon enough, I expect.” While she and Rachel packed a basket of cold dinner for the men and boys and carried it to the fields, she wondered where Mac was—still prospecting, or on his way to Boston.

The next week O’Neil and Zeke mowed the hayfield with sickles, while the twins raked the cut grass behind them and piled it in the wagon. Jenny and Rachel brought them dinner and ginger beer each noon and helped with the raking. Even William followed behind the mowers, placing stray stalks in a basket to take back to Shanty.

When the heat grew to be too much, they rested beneath the trees and ate.

“You teaching school again this winter, Jenny?” Zeke asked on their last afternoon working in the meadow.

Jonathan and David groaned at his question.

“I plan to.” She smiled at the twins. “You boys did fine last year. This year I’m expecting you to parse sentences.” The twelve-year-olds groaned again.

“New families from the States are arriving,” Zeke said. “Maybe some of them will settle nearby and want their young’uns to go to school also.”

Jenny nodded. “I could teach a few more children. Might need another bench or two if I have more students.”

While Rachel gathered eggs in the barn that evening, O’Neil said quietly to Jenny, “I’ll build your benches if you teach me to read and write. Never had the chance to learn as a boy. I can write my name, but that’s it.”

Jenny suspected O’Neil didn’t like confessing his lack of schooling and had waited to catch her alone to ask the question. “We’ll start tonight.” She smiled at him. “You’ve been such a help, it’s the least I can do.” She found a primer and gave it to O’Neil. “I’ll need this for the children when school starts,” she said. “But you can use it now. Sit by the fire, and I’ll listen to you read.”

Before she doused the lamp that evening, Jenny wrote:

 

Saturday, September 15th—I forget how fortunate I have been to have received an education, though I do not use it much except when teaching. Mr. O’Neil, who is a fine man, never had the opportunity to learn to read. What he missed! And how I miss having many books around me now.

Tomorrow is William’s second birthday. I am so thankful to have him. I am too busy to bake a cake—we will celebrate next week.

The following Tuesday, after Jenny had her receipt from the mill for her wheat harvest, she went to Abernethy’s store in Oregon City. She paid Zeke and O’Neil with a portion of her wheat, first crediting her account at the store, and then asking the clerk to transfer credit to the men’s accounts. In the absence of much coinage, farmers and townsfolk alike bartered grain as their primary instrument of exchange in Oregon.

As Jenny submitted her grain receipts to the clerk, she smiled in satisfaction at the summer’s yield. With Zeke’s and O’Neil’s assistance, she’d managed the farm without Mac or the Tanners. She’d had to spend some of Mac’s coins on the mules and on sundry other items, but she’d made it through another harvest.

Jenny stocked up on supplies, needing not only flour and sugar for a cake for William, but dry goods and cloth as well.

“Glad to see you paid down your balance,” the clerk Hamilton told her when he tallied her purchases. “Don’t go building it back up too fast now, you hear?”

Jenny seethed at his patronizing tone. The man hadn’t talked to any men like that, nor to the wives whose husbands were at home. But she would need the store’s credit again through the winter, so she held her tongue.

“You cashing out, Mr. O’Neil?” she asked when she gave him his accounting. “Or would you like to stay here for the winter? I’d be obliged if you did. And we can continue to work on your reading.”

“Ain’t no reason to leave till spring,” he said. “I’ll winter here. Do your chores, if’n you’ll give me meals. And I appreciate the lessons. Come spring, I’ll see what the news from California is, then decide what to do.”

As Jenny wrote in her journal before bed, her doubt whether she could keep the farm resurfaced.

 

Tuesday, September 18th—How long will Zeke and Mr. O’Neil continue to work my land? I may need to find another hired hand. Or will I have to forfeit the claim when Mac has been away two years? I need to talk to Doc again.

 

On Wednesday, she baked a cake, killed a chicken, and made a belated birthday dinner for William. Rachel, O’Neil, Zeke, and the twins joined them, and she thanked the men and boys for their harvest work.

She kept her fears to herself.

Each evening Jenny helped O’Neil read the primer. He was hesitant at first, but as September days waned, he began to improve.

He hadn’t wanted his lessons in Rachel’s presence, but Jenny convinced him the cabin was too small for her to tutor him privately. After supper, Rachel washed the dishes. Jenny dried them and looked over O’Neil’s shoulder to assist him as he sounded out words he did not know. Some evenings the women switched places, and Rachel assisted O’Neil. The younger girl grew more comfortable with the hired hand, smiling in encouragement when he figured out a new word on his own.

On the last Saturday in September, Oregon City held a harvest celebration. Some farmers were still reaping their crops, but winter would come soon, and most of the hard work of summer was behind them. Unlike the year before, Jenny decided to attend.

When Jenny saw Doc at the celebration, she pulled him aside to ask him about the land laws. “You told me when Mac left he couldn’t be gone more than two years, or I’d lose the land. Is that still the law?”

“If a man’s not on his land, he can pay a tax instead,” Doc said. “It’s five dollars. Do you have the money?”

Jenny nodded. “I’ll find the money, if that’s all I need to do.”

Doc shook his head, but said only, “Let me ask around. McDougall left in February of forty-eight? You have a few months yet.”

New emigrants joined the established farmers for the harvest feast. Jenny and William shared their meal with a family named Bingham from Illinois. The Binghams had three school-aged children, as well as a daughter named Meg, who was two years old, like William. Esther and her family also sat near Jenny, Esther now heavily swollen with her second child. The older children ran in the meadow, and the toddlers played together on a blanket while the adults talked.

“Most of our company turned south at the Parting of the Ways,” Mrs. Bingham told Jenny. “They were all after gold. But Mr. Bingham and I wanted to farm. And now that I see Oregon men returning from California, I know we were right.”

“The land here is good,” Daniel Abercrombie said. “Fertile, with plenty of rain.”

“Jenny’s husband and my brother are still in California,” Esther said. “We haven’t heard from them since spring. That’s the hardest part—not knowing.”

“Surely they will send word,” Mrs. Bingham said. “They wouldn’t be so cruel as to leave you in ignorance of their fate. Perhaps I can understand a brother not writing, but a husband . . . .” Her words trailed off.

If Jenny had been Mac’s wife, she would have been hurt by the woman’s insinuation Mac didn’t care about her. As it was, she had no right to expect anything from him. But she still hoped for some word of how he was doing.