Love came later, when his words reached out to catch her as she fell, offering a cushion of comfort that held her and began the healing before she even knew the depth of ache and loss she carried. “Dreams delayed are not always dreams destroyed,” he told her. That truth brought healing to her life.
But her story begins long before that day, on her wedding day, when Jane “Jennie” Lichtenthaler took Charles Pickett to be her wedded husband. Their vows were spoken at her sister’s Hillsboro home, Washington County, Oregon, a state just celebrating its first birthday. A judge presided, even though her father was a pastor and could have officiated. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, March 27, 1860.
Later, each guest brought a lantern to the wedding dance and set it along the boardwalk, the shards of light a path the hopeful couple would follow into the Tualatin Hotel. Charles and Jennie slipped through the Oregon mist, the lantern lights shining on her slippers, sprinkling liquid diamonds onto almost auburn hair. The last to arrive, as was the custom, they laughed beneath the hotel’s canopy covering the entrance. March, a month of new beginnings, is often marked by rain in the Willamette Valley. Jennie settled her hooped skirts, brushed water drops of weather from the yellow-dyed linen, and straightened the waist bow, as large as her husband’s fist. He stood behind to smooth the ribbons cascading down Jennie’s back, his hands then gentle at her bare shoulders, his fingers a tingle on her skin. “Ready?” he whispered in her ear.
At seventeen, she thought she was.
She nodded. Charles kissed her cheek, commented on her dimples, and they stepped through the doorway into the promise of their new lives, greeted by the music, laughter, and good wishes. Cheers went up and someone struck a tambourine to thrill the fiddlers into a faster jig, which Charles took as a sign to swing Jennie onto the cornmeal-covered floor. He swirled his bride as she caught glimpses of her father’s smile, her mother’s tears upon her cheeks. Ariyah, Jennie’s friend and wedding witness, waved her gloved fingers as they danced by. Jennie’s brothers and sisters clapped and stomped their feet to the fiddle and tambourine. The strong face of Josiah Parrish, the reverend and Indian agent, graced the crowd as they swished across the oak floor, his silver beard the only sign of age, belying the stories of the courage associated with a much younger man. He was a friend of Jennie’s parents; his wife a generous soul whose dress of red stood out among the many darker cloths much easier to acquire in this far western place. Jennie leaned her head back and she let her husband lead her. Each guest blurred into a room of goodwill carrying present and future prayers for happiness.
Then Charles lost his footing.
Jennie blamed the cornmeal.
His arms flailed as though a skater on ice and he slipped from her perspiring fingers. She reached but they couldn’t grasp each other. Charles fell backward. In the slow arc of disaster, she heard the crack of his head against the hardwood floor, his moan into sudden silence as the fiddlers saw the fall unfold and lowered their bows.
Jennie bent over him. “Charles? Charles?”
His eyes rolled away and he lay quiet. Someone gentled Jennie aside, but she saw Charles return, his eyes open, try to focus. The crowd helped sit him up. Charles rubbed his head.
“Is there a doctor here?” someone shouted.
“I’m fine.” He listed, woozy. Joseph Sloan, Charles’s new brother-in-law (and boss), clapped his back as others stood him up, brushed off his dark pants of the cornmeal, and flicked the grains from white blousy sleeves. He’d removed his coat with the dancing heat. Others urged Charles toward his new wife and she reached for his hand. He grabbed and held it.
“Are you all right?” She shouted in his ear to be heard above the music that had begun again.
His answer was to hold her elbow, turn her out toward the crowd, and bellow, “It’s the father’s dance with the bride.” Her father moved forward as her husband handed Jennie off. One of her twin brothers took her mother’s hand to dance. To Jennie, Charles said, “I need fresh air. Don’t feel so good. Be back soon, promise.” He rubbed his neck and Joseph Sloan walked out beside him, steadying him.
Is that blood on the back of his head?
Her father began the now much slower waltz as Jennie twisted, trying to watch the two men disappear outside. “He’ll be fine. Just took a little spill.”
She nodded, tried to let the music slow her racing pulse. She didn’t tell her father what she’d seen that quickened her heart: something in Charles Pickett’s countenance had changed.