The sight of the stains on her clothes, proof of her toils—flour, grease, blood, grime, bits of bark, repulsed her. Stomach churning, she sat kneading her aching thighs through the thin, faded blue fabric of her chambray skirt. A few lank coils of dull, dusty blonde hair held haphazardly in place in a chignon on the back of her head straggled over her brow.
Shivering, seated at the rough, plank-board table, she stared into the smudgy fire of green oak, sobbing into the grate. Struggling flames released gray ghosts of smoke that wafted around the room. The soft, monotonous patter of rain penetrated through the split logs of the cabin walls. Damp seeped into the corners, the food, the body.
Coming to her feet, her chair tipped backward onto the puncheon floor. Startled out of her stupor, she paced from one side of her cage to the other. She stopped, eyes focusing on the bureau drawers beside the bed. She stumbled across the room. Head bowed over the chipped and cracked porcelain wash basin on top of the bureau, the image in the murky water brought her to a standstill.
Leaning closer, staring hard at the pale, dim, unrecognizable visage looking up at her through the water, she watched trembling fingers find the strands of hair veiling her cheek. The grimy, cold fingers tucked the strands behind her ears.
Reaching out with trembling fingers, she lovingly fondled the tortoise-shell toilet set of brush, comb, and mirror to the side of the basin. Her hand hovered over the mirror laying on a white lace handkerchief. Her heart ached to touch it, hold it to her bosom. Permission refused, her arms dangled limp at her side. She closed her eyes.
Folding her arms tight across her chest, she staggered back to the fire. Ribs aching, bruises tender and raw, she sucked in the moist air and clung to the mantel-shelf, head down between her shaking arms.
Too late; the gates holding back the storm had blown wide open. Behind those portholes raged a deluge of thoughts…faces…scenes of violent death. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she willed herself to hold back the rush of memories and visions assaulting her mind.
None of this could be true. Nightmare…a long, long horrible nightmare. Awake now. Awake but lost.
Punishing herself, cringing, she opened her eyes and caught the gleam of gold encircling her third finger, left hand. She shook her head, refusing to accept the ring’s existence, but the wedding band was real. The cabin was real. The cold, the rain outside, the darkness, the loneliness…all real.
Mouthing the question, she asked, “How much time? Who am I? Where is this place?”
The ring on her hand and the double bed in the corner declared there was a lord and master—the tormentor. Sick…her empty stomach lurched, and she doubled over and gaged on her sob of terror.
The bed—the wedding ring quilt. It belonged to her—her mother. Her mother’s quilt…it was here…in this place…this hell. Overriding the joy of recognition, came the knowledge that beneath the quilt lay the dingy sheets, and underneath them a lumpy mattress of musty straw. She shivered. On the bed, two feather pillows ominously waited. Shuddering, foreboding consumed her, and she turned away.
Peering into the pitch-black night through the only window in the cabin, she could see nothing outside. Glancing to her left, she knew the barn, and the animals were there. Pivoting her head, peering into the darkness, straining to see the river and the ferry landing, she saw no lights. But he was out there. He’d be coming in soon.
The kettle of chicken and dumplings sat simmering on the wood cookstove, bread, and butter on the table. His plate and fork lay ready for him. The tormentor would expect his supper the minute he stepped over the threshold.
I have time. I have time to search. The missing could surface. Awake, I can find it—proof of my before life. Mustn’t get caught, he mustn’t suspect I’ve begun to remember.
Every drawer sorted, meager belongings refolded and carefully replaced, she found nothing. Nothing spoke to her. Shoulders slumped, slipping to the cold floor, she folded in, retreating into her other self, her numb self, the self that didn’t feel or think. Doubled up into her protective ball between the dresser and bed she could escape the ugly truth.
Arms limp, one hand slipped under the dresser. Caressing the cool, carved wooden leg of the bureau, wayward fingers slid up and under on a mission of their own. Tucked up behind the ornate carving at the front of the dresser, a leather-bound book wrapped in a chamois brought her searching digits to a halt. Slowly, heart thudding, she coaxed the pouch out of its hiding place and returned to lucidity. Setting the fallen chair upright, she pulled it closer to the fire and sat to open the book.
In a graceful, delicate hand, she read, My Journal. Anora Claire Sennett.
Anora Claire Sennett? Me? That’s me. My name. The name I had before…before he dragged me into hell. Anora Claire, he doesn’t call me that. I don’t want him to use my name. I don’t want to hear it on his lips. I’m not her, I’m not anyone. I’m no one. Nothing. I’m an object, an animal of little use and of no consequence.
The danger of learning, recapturing herself lay in the journal. She slapped it shut. A face, a woman’s pale face, at first out of focus, now took shape behind her closed eyelids. The woman had fine blond hair, a sweet smile, and laughing blue eyes. Afraid to read more, but more afraid of the faces she saw behind her closed eyes, Anora reopened the book.
Warm liquid spilled down her cheek. She wiped away the liquid with one finger and looked at it, surprised to find it, amazed she’d manufactured it. She had no more tears, no more emotions, a dull emptiness served as a wall against the bleakness, the pain. Her eyes burned, produced more tears, and she read the first entry in her book.
March 10, 1846. Mama started to keep this journal on our journey. Now it’s up to me.
Faded and water stained, she found the words difficult to read, written in the lead pencil still tucked safely inside the binding.
We have come sixty-five miles, less than a full week, and we have, today, buried Mama and Papa on the banks of the Des Moines River. Uncle Ruben says it was influenza. I am left under his protection and Aunt Carrie’s loving arms.
Aunt Carrie is prostrate with grief. She misses her sister and hasn’t risen from her bed for two days. The weather is foul. A bitter wind blows with now and then a skiff of snow. Uncle Ruben and I have spoken to Aunt Carrie, and we are agreed, we will continue on to the Oregon Territory. Papa wanted to start a ferry service on the Willamette; I don’t know our final destination…it hardly matters. To turn back to Burlington would diminish their sacrifice.
In my mind, I see green forests and mountains. I will be glad to leave the flat farmlands and open prairies of Iowa. I will try to keep my mind on the end of our journey.
Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, Anora wiped her damp cheeks. Impatient, no time to waste, she had to read more, learn more, remember everything.
April 5, 1846. Uncle Ruben has taken the extra wagon, and some of its contents, across the Missouri to St. Joseph to trade for goods and supplies. I am certain he has taken Papa’s money and valuables. I can’t find Papa’s watch, his diamond stickpin, or cufflinks. I know there was at least eight hundred dollars stuffed inside a jar of dried beans. I looked for the money a few days after we crossed the Des Moines River.
I salvaged Mama’s sewing basket, her hairbrush, comb, and mirror of tortoise-shell. I didn’t want to keep her dresses, but Uncle Ruben says we may have use for them either as clothes for ourselves or to trade with the Indians.
I have Papa’s rain slicker of rubberized canvas and his mackinaw. They are too big for me. I’m cutting off the sleeves and hemming them up. We have saved the extra fabric to patch the wagon cover if need be.
Aunt Carrie and I are camped here, with at least a hundred wagons, waiting to join with a hundred or more wagons that we can see on the bank of the river on the other side. Every day the ferry takes twenty, thirty, wagons across, along with cattle, women, and children.
It has rained for three days. Mr. Comstock, an old, funny little man, says he is going to Oregon to die, once he sees the Pacific Ocean. He says the sun is going to come out tomorrow, and it will begin to warm up.
His grandson, Whitcombe, is at our campfire almost every evening. He plays the harmonica beautifully, and the old man has a fiddle. Aunt Carrie says Whit is sweet on me. Whit says he’s going west to become a cowboy. He’s the handsomest boy I have ever met. He smiles all the time with his blue eyes. I love to dance with him.
April 7th. We are the only wagon left on this side of the Missouri. There is no sign of Uncle Ruben. Whit and his grandfather crossed this morning. I fear Uncle Ruben has abandoned us here.
April 9. Uncle Ruben returned this evening. He reeks of gin. He grabbed me and kissed me, then Aunt Carrie. He slapped our behinds and told us to get a good night’s rest because tomorrow we are off to Oregon with Captain McClain to guide us.
Uncle Ruben told us there are three nanny goats and a ram waiting for us on the other side of the river to supply us with fresh milk. If this is true, and not the gin talking, I am astonished at his shrewdness.
He says we also have an extra cart with buckets of tar and axle grease waiting across river. As soon as he was done with his bragging, he fell down on the ground sound asleep. Aunt Carrie and I put him under the wagon with a blanket. We packed the wagon. We shall see what we find tomorrow.
All of this leaves me to conclude that perhaps not all of Papa’s money went for gin and whoring. I don’t doubt Uncle Ruben’s favorite pastime to be the pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh.
April 13. We have made eighteen miles today. The weather remains calm and dry. We have made good time since leaving St. Joseph. We had to chip ice off the water pail this morning, and sleeping in my little tent is cold.
April 15. After playing least-in-sight throughout the day, Uncle Ruben came into my tent. I awoke when he started to crawl on top of me. I kicked him out. Aunt Carrie heard him yell. He picked himself up and climbed into their wagon. They are shouting at each other. I try to keep their voices out of my head by putting my fingers in my ears.
April 16. Aunt Carrie offered me a place to sleep inside the wagon. Uncle Ruben is consigned to the tent. I am grateful to her, although negotiations cost her a black eye and a chipped tooth. I think her ribs are sore, she is unable to bend over this morning to put the kettle over the fire.
»»•««
“Hey. You got my supper cooked?”
His bellow blew in before he stepped over the threshold. Rain swept in behind him. The draft from opening and closing the door lifted the fire in the grate up into the flu. A swirl of blue smoke escaped, rushing into the room, stinging the eyes.
Springing out of her chair, Anora stealthily concealed the journal in the dress pocket under her apron. Using her skirt as a hot pad, she swung the iron arm away from the fire into the room. After removing the cast-iron kettle, she set it down in the middle of the table. The man took off his rain-slicker and soiled, water stained, leather fedora, and hung them on the wooden pegs to the side of the door. Head down, she stirred the contents of the kettle.
Her tormentor, built close to the ground, had a torso thick and round, hard as an oak. His face, florid and puffy, took on a purple hue when in a rage, and he was always in a rage. His dark brown eyes, ringed with bruised circles of dissipation, were set beneath heavy, black brows. Thinning, lank, coffee-brown hair lay like oily corn silk across his weathered dome. His once flat stomach, sacrificed for food and drink, slopped over the top of his trousers.
She ladled a generous portion of the chicken and dumplings onto his plate, a savory vapor rising to tantalize the senses. Salivating, her stomach growling with hunger, remembering her place, she stepped back into the shadows of the room.
“You’re nothing to look at, Norie girl. Dumb as a rock, but you can cook.” He took a forkful and shoved it between his lips, chewing, the gravy oozed out the sides of his ugly mouth. “It’s hot, anyway,” he said, smacking his lips.
With his head down, he said, “You’ve got tender thighs to keep me warm. You’ll do for now. Mind…I can be rid of you whenever I take a notion. That water out there is moving fast and cold. I reckon a body wouldn’t be found in there till way after summer?”
His laughter released fumes of the beer he’d been imbibing at the saloon across the river, in Takenah.
He reached into the darkness, found her skirt, and pulled her into the light. Cupping his hand over her backside, he pinched her tender bottom, then slapped it hard with his big hand. He laughed again and went back to buttering himself a thick slice of bread.
She took down a plate from the sideboard, and pulled a chair up to the table, intending to sit across from him. His rough words stopped her. “The cow and them goats been waitin’ for you. My guess is they ain’t been milked since this mornin’. I could see that when I put Roscoe and Pete away. What you been doin’ with yourself in here? Sittin’ on your dumb ass like you always does. You eat when you get your chores done.”
Anora wanted to rage against him; leap across the table, and wrap her hands around his thick, hairy neck. Instead, gaze averted, head down, she reached for a crusty slice of bread to take with her to the barn.
Her fingers were crushed, the slice of bread squeezed into a doughy ball by his meaty hand. Fingers growing numb and bloodless within his grasp, his cool, grimy, sausage-size middle finger made lazy, seductive circles on her wrenched arm,
Keeping her eyes downcast, watching her fingers turn purple and swell around the circle of gold on her third finger left hand, he spoke, his voice low, silky smooth, “You hurry up now. It’s a cold, wet night; you got to keep me warm. You ain’t good for much else.
“Remember, the Willa Jane is comin’ back down river from Marysville tomorrow, bringing livestock and winter stores. You got to be up early gettin’ vittles for the folks. Make ’em happy so’s they don’t think twice about the price.”
He pulled a watch out of his vest pocket, its silver case catching her eye. He flicked it open to look at the time. It took everything she had not to snatch it away from him.
Papa’s watch.
Compressing her lips together, she held her tongue and swallowed back the tears that would surely give her away—he must not see any spark. No spark…stay dull. Stay dead, hide.
“Shouldn’t take more than a half hour for the milkin’,” he said, and snapped the watch case shut, tucking it back in his pocket.
He tossed her hand aside, going back to his food. She picked up the wad of bread with her other hand while working the blood to circulate again in her fingers. Stuffing the ball of bread into her mouth, she stumbled to the door. She had to get out, get outside, get out into fresh, cool, wet, and cleansing air, where she could breathe.
»»•««
Standing on the stoop in the dark, Anora gave her eyes time to adjust to the blackness. She had to think. Run, run, she wanted to run into the darkness and never stop running, but she couldn’t imagine where she’d go.
She couldn’t go down the hill to the water…the water held death and panic. Oh, the tormentor knew that, used that to keep her in check. To take off up the road would be foolhardy. She’d tried it once on a plow horse, and suffered a beating for her trouble. From that time on, he kept all his horses stabled on the other side of the river. If she tried to go to a neighboring farm, they’d send for him. He’d convinced everyone, and anyone who would listen, she wasn’t right in the head.
His story—she’d suffered a tumble from a wagon. He loved his young bride, he claimed. He’d nursed her through the ordeal of the head trauma. But his sweetheart had left him. Now, he had her body, but not her mind. Being a dutiful, God-fearing husband, he now felt duty bound to care for her, protect her. He prayed every day for his beautiful Norie to awaken.
Her memory was extremely faulty, but she had no memory of falling from a wagon. She’d suffered many a blow to the head delivered by his hammer fists. He’d tripped her and kicked her, but she’d never fallen accidentally. Shoved, yes, tossed, yes, and thrown, yes. She had scars aplenty, scars on her ankles and wrists, her back, her legs, her arms but no scars on her face. Bruises yes, but he was careful not to leave gashes, they were too hard to explain. She knew better than to argue with him or anyone. No one cared. No one noticed, no one would believe her. They believed him. They believed every lie he fed them. They believed his explanations for her bruises, her silences—her dullness. She didn’t dare speak to anyone or look anyone in the eye, her shame, her disgrace too great. And he would punish, punish severely, if he caught her responding in any way.
But maybe he was right. Maybe she wasn’t right in the head. Better to stay numb. It didn’t matter who she was or who she’d been before, not anymore. She couldn’t go back, and there was nothing ahead of her but more of the same. She had no way out of purgatory. No way.
She stepped into the muddy yard, rain coming down on her head like watery arrows. Going up a small rise, she passed under the arm of the big Douglas fir that stood aside the farm track. Walking by the stock cribs, big splats of water bombarded her, dripping off the low hanging boughs. It felt so cool and refreshing, she stopped to scrub her face with the moisture, hoping to scrub away some of the cobwebs from her brain.
The stock cribs were on both sides of the lane. They stood empty, but come tomorrow afternoon, they’d be full of waiting cows, sheep, and pigs to be sent down river to Oregon City, and maybe on to California ports.
The price of the ferry ride across the river doubled during these bustling times. The farmers knew it, but aside from a little grumbling and grousing, they usually paid to get home out of the weather. Her job, as he’d said, was to make their fleecing a little less painful by keeping their bellies warm and full.
She walked in the dark up the lane; she could walk it in her sleep. Once to the barn, she opened the wide, creaking, slatted wooden doors and stepped up the ramp, then reached to the side of the door, on the left, for the lantern. She found the flint box on the nail barrel below the lantern, and struck the flint on the steel, sparking a light to the oily wick before replacing the glass chimney over the flame.
The light didn’t reach a circumference of more than four feet, but she knew Rosco and Pete stood together in profile in their stall to her right. She could see their white faces. The big white oxen chewed their cuds, switched their long tails, not at all disturbed by her intrusion.
Moving down the center aisle, she detected the soft rustle and scurry of unseen critters, the jostling of the bats in the loft, the cackle of the chickens protesting the lantern’s light. Rather than give her unease, these sounds brought her comfort. Even the sound of the rats that lived under the feed troughs didn’t frighten her.
In the dark, with two galvanized pails and lantern in hand, she went down to the far end of the barn. She heard the clunk and thud of Rosebud and Lillybell jumping down from their feed boxes. Homer, the ram, continued undisturbed, eating out of the trough. The goats began to bleat their anticipation of the release of milk from their full udders. The milch cow barely acknowledge her presence. Each of the goats bumped her from behind when she closed the wire and wood gate of their stall.
She always serviced Rosebud first, then Lillybell, then the cow. She set down her little three-legged stool and drew the goat into position, resting her head against the goat’s woolly, black and white belly. Tugging on the teats, the milk sprit, sprit, sprit into the empty pail. Eyes closed, she tried to remember back. These goats, these oxen, the cow, were they the same animals that had come with her across country to Oregon? She wished they could tell her what had happened. She needed so desperately to know. She didn’t even know what year it was.
The barn smelled of hay and grain, wood and dung, and she found the quiet comforting. The animals liked her, trusted her. Rosebud and Lillybell expected a sweet apple for their cooperation. Homer pushed his horned head into her side, demanding his share. Rosco and Pete were her pets; they wanted her to scratch their heads between their great long horns, and the cow bellowed her approval.
About to leave the barn, she felt the weight of the journal on her thigh. It wasn’t safe to keep it in the house. She considered it a miracle he hadn’t discovered it before this.
Setting the milk pails down, she took the lantern back to the far end of the barn. The goat’s feed barrel sat outside the goat stall. He never fed the goats or emptied feed into the barrel. He didn’t like them.
Opening the wooden lid, she held the lantern up over the contents to be sure there weren’t any rats in residence, then jammed the book down deep into the mash of corn and barley.
Not wasting time, she replaced the lid, leaving the lantern in the barn. Hurriedly, she retraced her steps to the house, carrying the sloshing pails of milk to the front stoop. It was a cold night, just above freezing. The milk would have to wait in their metal milk cans until morning.
She heard him stomping around inside the cabin. She couldn’t keep him waiting; he would take it out on her if he were made to wait.
Once inside, his plate, the kettle of food, and the bread and butter waited to be cleared away. He sat on the edge of the bed, barefoot, in his threadbare, red long johns. Chewing on a slice of bread, she began to clean off the table. He opened the watchcase, then impatiently snapped it shut, the sound causing her to wince, urging her to work faster.