A Clearing in the Wild by Jane Kirkpatrick

Author:Jane Kirkpatrick [Kirkpatrick, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-55069-9
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2011-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

From the parlor window in December, I saw the scouts ride through the cedars, ducking beneath the feathery boughs, stirring up thin layers of snow that turned brown grasses into white. I counted the scouts. There were only seven.

I grabbed a shawl against the cool dusk and raced outside, Andy in my arms. He’d gained weight and felt like the watermelon he’d arrived as. My eyes scanned, seeking my husband’s. I didn’t find him.

“Where’s Christian?” I asked Adam Schuele as he tied up his mount to the hitching post. “What’s happened?” The horses’ breaths puffed into the cold air.

“Nothing happened, Emma. All goes well, though we still do not find the perfect place for our brothers and sisters in Missouri. We come back so Christian can be with you … at your time.” He looked down. “I see we arrive too late.”

“So he’s safe?”

“Christian stops at the commissary to attend to your bills, and ours. John Genger goes with him to ensure the accounting.”

I would deal with the dis-ease of those bills later. Instead, I let my rage rise. Christian might have come here first; he might have seen his son before worrying over obligations of the “mission.” Hadn’t our separation been sacrifice enough for his success?

“What do you bring us?” Adam nodded toward the bundle in my arms.

“A boy,” I said. “Andrew Jackson Giesy. The first new member of the Bethel Colony in the West.”

I held Andy up for Adam and the other scouts to see, then pulled him back into the warmth of my chest. Andy cried, and I patted his back while the men stood at a distance, nodding their heads in that way that men do with newborns, that mix of hesitancy wrapped in awe, humbled that women bring forth such lusty life and that they too had a part in it.

George Link made the only specific comment. “He has big hands. He’ll carry the Schellenbaum well.” The rest of the men mumbled agreement before they headed to the soldiers’ barracks where they would spend their nights. They walked as though they carried extra weight, though their faces had all thinned since I’d seen them.

All the lamps were lit, and Pap, An-Gie’s daughter, held Andy while I swayed her boy in his board by moving my knees as I sang. These two were brothers fed from the same breast. I’d decided not to run after Christian; the sutler would tell him of Andrew soon enough.

The abalone shell combs held my hair in the low knot at my neck. I’d embroidered a tiny white shell onto the otherwise plain woolen dress that I’d made while Christian was gone. I hoped Christian would like it. The wool had been expensive, but it would last a long time. I had never sewn an item from cloth made by someone I didn’t personally know. I even knew the sheep back in Missouri and carded the wool with my own hands to tug at the sticks and burrs hidden there. I spun the wool into thread and finally into fiber.

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