twenty-four

Therese made herself useful. Not only did she have a stew ready each evening, when the weary woodcutters returned, but she fashioned a broom of reeds gathered on a stick and swept the cabin daily. She began washing their clothes as well. They had no tub, but she heated water in a kettle and scrubbed their britches and flannel shirts and drawers as best she could. She mended the clothing too with some stout black thread and needles Armand got for her at the mercantile.

Armand also brought some rope, which she strung in the wood yard, and hung the washed duds on it. She was well aware of the passage of days and the steady advance of cold that often slowed down drying the clothing she’d scrubbed. Sometimes she would drape the clothes around the wood stove on whatever was handy.

This toil wasn’t leading her anywhere, and least of all toward the great task she had been commissioned to do. And the days were long and lonesome. Sometimes all three men were out in the hills collecting wood. Other times Armand sent his sons out and stayed close, sawing and chopping mountains of wood into stove lengths. Other times he loaded a wagon with his wood and delivered it somewhere. Even a small place like Lewistown seemed to consume mountains of cordwood.

It was a mean life she was living; lonely and weary. Beau and Martin were usually too worn from their long days of hard work to do much more than devour their supper and fall into their bunks. But now and then Martin hovered about, curious about her, eyeing her small cubicle, his yearnings plain to her. Sometimes he was sullen; other times he was bold and opinionated and given to bragging. Once he put a hand on her hip; she firmly removed it.

“I am married,” she said.

He laughed smartly at that. She wished she had deterred him in some other way.

But he was helpful too. He fashioned clothes pins from sticks he cleverly channeled, and after that she could entrust her washes to a windy day. The others barely noticed her face and figure, except to puzzle her solitude in their minds.

Nothing more was done about the church. That agitated her, but she was helpless to make things move. She apologized to all the saints in heaven for letting them down. She wondered if she had been given a false task, a delusion she would laugh at someday if she ever escaped this drudgery. Her people always worked hard, but the time always arrived when they tuned up their fiddles, poured some fiery drink, and danced the night away.

Then one day work found her. Arnie Campbell, who owned the Lewistown Mercantile, saw scrubbed clothing hanging from a line in the wood yard and came calling. Fortunately Armand was present, because Therese could understand very little of it. But Armand soon translated the whole meeting for her.

Campbell wanted her to wash his clothing. There wasn’t any washerwoman in Lewistown. The only ones who washed anything were the sporting women, but they didn’t wash for others, just for themselves. The men of Lewistown wore clothes so foul they got stiff with grime. If the little lady would wash Campbell’s clothing, he’d give her a metal tub, some soap, and a good corrugated washboard, and she could repay him out of her services. If she’d wash other men’s duds, he would act as her agent; collect the stuff and get it to her, and pay her two cents a shirt, one cent for britches, and one cent for underdrawers. And if she could mend, he’d pay her one cent for each rip she sewed up. He’d charge his customers more, of course, but she would get business and he would profit from the trade.

Armand didn’t press her, and she was grateful for that. “If you do, the money’s yours,” he said.

“What money?” she asked. It would take a long time to earn one dollar.

He laughed. “Firewood is better. We’re doing pretty good.”

“I will do it,” she said. “I’ve never been afraid of work. I do good work.”

Armand walked over to Campbell’s store and returned a while later with a galvanized metal tub, a washboard, an orange box of Fels Naptha, and more clothesline.

Then he pulled a heavy item out of the tub. “He sent this along too. For his shirts, even if no one else wants it.”

He handed her a small flat iron. “One extra cent to iron each of his shirts,” Armand said.

She rubbed a hand across the smooth bottom of the iron and clasped her hand around the wooden handle. She would need to be careful with it. But it would earn a little more toward the building of her church.

She immediately had more washing than she could handle and spent her days scrubbing and rinsing and twisting water out of clothes. Each day, Campbell brought her loads of clothing, sometimes in a burlap bag, other times loose. On good days they went outside; on the cold, dark, snow-spitting days, she draped them over every surface in the cabin, which often annoyed the men. But they didn’t object. She was earning a little. Pennies, dimes, and two-bit pieces began to fill her spare moccasin. But it wouldn’t buy a church.

Martin teased her, usually after he had demolished more of her stew.

“You should have stayed married,” he said. “Now you got three men to feed and five hundred to keep clean.”

“Well, you could wash your own clothing,” she replied.

“I like for you to wash mine. I’ll keep you plenty busy.”

There was something possessive in his tone. She thought that when she could, she would move to a cabin of her own. She lived with three men in the same room, and she was depending too much on their restraint.

One sunny November day she grew weary of the endless toil, wrapped a shawl over her, and headed into a pleasant day. Her feet took her to the churchyard. The stakes were still present, but the small cairn with the claim in it had been demolished. She looked for the jar with the claim in it, but it was gone, and the rocks were scattered. Did someone want the land? It was well west of town. On the other hand, someone had trenched the foundation, so that there was a rectangle cut into the soil, and the rectangle was level. Fieldstone could be laid into it for the foundation of the church. So someone had been busy. But who? Beau and Martin? She didn’t know. They seemed so busy harvesting and cutting dry wood to feed the town’s appetites that she scarcely imagined they would find the energy and will to proceed.

She sat down on dry grass, directly over the point where the altar would be.

“Madame,” she said. “Someone builds your church. And I have earned a little. But I don’t have the means to build an entire church. I can only do a little. I do not know what you wish of me, but I am willing to do whatever I am directed to do.”

She heard only the rustle of dead leaves.

Almost immediately, she grew aware of a commotion of hooves and discovered a two-horse ebony carriage toiling slowly up the grade from Lewistown. This carriage had a folding top that formed a hood, and that was up this day, even if the November sun warmed the afternoon. There was a sole driver, dressed in a long winter coat of gray wool, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, also gray. The carriage shone in the wan sun, as if it had not a speck of dust or mud on it. And the matched bay horses were perfectly groomed, with roached manes. They were in a handsome harness.

The man saw her lying just there, upon the place where the altar would be, and tugged the lines. The carriage stopped quickly. The bay horses heaved a little, having pulled the heavy carriage up a long slope.

The man didn’t get out, but studied her for some while, saying nothing. She saw he had great wealth and thought maybe Saint Therese might have heard her pleas and was sending someone. But no, this probably was the same man she had met on the trail when she was coming to this place. She did not like him.

The man seemed very distant and probably didn’t speak her tongue. She arose slowly, dusted off her long coarse gray skirt, and drew her shawl close around her. She didn’t like being inspected, but that was what was occurring. It seemed rude of him.

“I don’t suppose you speak English,” he said.

She knew only what he was asking: did she speak the Anglais?

She shook her head.

“Then, madame, we will converse in French. You are a Canadian, is that not so?”

“Long ago,” she said, reluctantly.

“From Saskatchewan, then.”

She marveled that he could know so much.

“And you and your family arrived in 1871 or so.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“And what is your name?”

“Therese Trouville.”

“And your husband?”

“I am not married anymore.”

“I’ve heard all about you,” the man said. “You are the laundress.”

She nodded.

“And this is the churchyard.”

“It was given to me,” she said.

“Ah, so I have heard, madame. You received a vision. A French saint came down an ivory stairs and there was the scent of roses in the air, and you were commissioned to come here and build a church.”

“She is not a French saint, monsieur. Therese of Avila is Spanish, and she was given the great task of reviving the Carmelite Order.”

He smiled. “Forgive me my error. I do not know anything about these things. I’m not even a Protestant, having abandoned all thought of religion from the age of twelve or so.”

He was conversing easily with her, and she knew most of the French, even though it was not quite her tongue. He seemed at peace, as if he were the lord of all creation here.

“You are?” she asked.

“Pardon me. Harley Bain. I manage a little property hereabouts. Manage is the correct word. It is open range, belonging to the government, and my actual property consists of a few acres.” He lifted an arm and swept his hand in a broad arc. “But I manage the rest.”

“You know something of me?”

“Certainly. It is my business to know everything. I know where you are living, in somewhat questionable circumstances. You are with the woodcutters. They are useful men. The whole town and half the ranches would freeze to death without them. And of course there is the miller over there, who is harboring several of your people. It happens we need him. And we need you: my men are filthy and need their clothing repaired. And it has come to me that the Sylvestres have returned to their home, even though they are not citizens, and are camped there with still more of the Métis. And I’ve heard about another family that showed up in the night a while ago, and is sheltering with that drunk who runs hogs north of town. And that’s not all. One of my riders reports that a Canadian family of about twenty has occupied one of my line camps, stuffed six deep in bunks on every wall, and all of them without privacy. It is not something that white people tolerate.”

Therese thought that this man would not contribute to her church. He sounded more and more like one of those who had supported the army, and sent all the people back to Canada.

“I will wash the clothing,” she said. “And build my church.”

“The clothing, that’s fine. But building the church? I don’t think so.”

“And why not?”

“I think I want this land,” he said. “It’s close to town, and valuable. And I’m a citizen.”

“I made a claim, in the name of the church.”

“I’m afraid you didn’t. You had no status as a citizen. Now if a bishop had made the claim, and he was a citizen, then I would say that the church would have some squatter’s rights—a sort of preemptive claim until the land can be surveyed.”

She didn’t grasp all of that, but she got the idea.

“This is where my church will rise. It is given to me to build it,” she said.

“Madame, I’m afraid not. It is not possible.”

“It is not in my hands; it is in the hands of God,” she said.

“Ah, I seem to have a powerful opponent, then. And here I thought it was merely the Métis I was facing. This little church was simply an instrument of you Canadians. Well, stern resistance requires stern measures. I think it is time for you to move on, madame. You will not want to live in Lewistown, especially one like you who is single and vulnerable.”

He smiled, the gentle creases of his weathered face crinkling up slightly.

“Au revoir,” he said, and clapped the lines over the rumps of his trotters. The bays lowered into the tugs and drew the carriage upward and finally over the brow of the hill.

Therese knelt at the altar again. “I ask for help and what do you send me?” she asked her patroness.