The complete oregon seri.., p.56
The Complete Oregon Series, page 56
“Then why are you sighing?” Rika asked. It had sounded like a sigh of resignation, not one of longing. “I thought you were looking forward to marrying your Philip.”
“Hendrika Aaldenberg! You know quite well that his name is Phineas.” A smile curled the edges of Jo’s lips. It was a game they had often played in the past few months, meant to lift Jo’s spirits and ease Rika’s gnawing worries about Jo’s health. “Of course I’m looking forward to going west and becoming his wife. I just wish you would change your mind and come with me.”
The conversation was as old as Rika’s pretending not to remember the name of Jo’s future husband, wrapping around them like a worn coat that comforted with its warmth and familiarity. “Go west and marry a man I don’t even know?” Rika shook her head. An image of Willem flickered through her. She shivered as she again felt his bloodshot eyes staring at her as if she were a stranger while she helped him to bed. “He could turn out to be a drunkard or—”
“Or…” Jo coughed. “Or he could turn out to be the man of your dreams.”
“I haven’t dreamed of any man.” Rika placed Jo’s boots next to the bed. “But I hope you become real happy with Paul.”
Jo held her ribs, this time from laughter, not coughing. “Phineas.”
Rika rolled around and pulled the thin quilt over her ears. Nights in the boarding house were as noisy as days in the weave room. Jo coughed and wheezed next to her, and in the other bed, Erma snored more loudly than Rika’s brother and half siblings had ever managed.
With a grunt, Rika turned to face the wall. The lumpy straw ticking beneath her rustled.
The snoring stopped for a second, then resumed twice as loudly.
She wanted to yell. How would she make it through a fourteen-hour workday without a wink of sleep? She threw her boot across the room. It thumped against the wall above Erma’s head.
At last, the snoring ended.
The popping and chirping in her ears never stopped, though. Sometimes at night, when everything was quiet, she still heard the incessant clattering of the looms. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up as hard of hearing as Jo.
Finally, long after midnight, Jo’s coughing ceased, and Rika fell into an exhausted sleep.
“Hey, Hendrika!”
A hand on her shoulder pulled Rika from sleep. She blinked open sleep-crusted eyes and stared into the semi-darkness of the room.
Erma stood next to her. The glow of the kerosene lamp created a halo around her head. “I think this,” Erma set one dusty boot on top of Rika’s chest, “belongs to you. And ’cause you were so busy throwing boots tonight, you and Johanna slept right through the bell. You’d better hurry if you want to make it to the mill on time.”
“Darn!” Rika threw back the quilt. The boot dropped to the floor, and she scrambled after it. “Jo, get up. We can’t be late again.” Her tired arms and legs protested as she struggled into her petticoat and pulled up her skirt.
Jo was still bundled up under the covers. One arm stuck out beneath the extra blanket she had heaved on top of herself.
“Jo!” Rika gave her a shove.
Jo didn’t move.
The slice of bread lay untouched on the trunk next to the bed. In the low light of the kerosene lamp, Rika caught a glimpse of a crumpled handkerchief, dotted with brownish spots and tinged with the gray lint that had accumulated in Jo’s lungs. Hastily, she closed the buttons on her bodice and bent to shake Jo awake.
Her hand gripped a cold shoulder.
The coldness raced up her arm and through the rest of her body. An icy lump formed in her stomach. “Jo?” she whispered. “Jo, please!”
No answer.
With trembling fingers, Rika rolled Jo over and stared into the face that had lost its feverish color. “Oh, no. No, no, no.” She pressed both hands to her mouth. “One more week. Just one more week. Then you get out of here.”
Tears burned her eyes. She stroked the stiff fingers. They were still clamped around one of Phineas’s letters.
“Hendrika, Jo, come on,” Erma called, already halfway out the door. “If you’re late again, you’re gonna be fired.”
Rika didn’t move from the bed. She slid the creased paper from Jo’s hand, folded the letter, and returned it to its envelope.
Train Station
Boston, Massachusetts
March 7, 1868
“No, ma’am.” The man behind the counter shook his head. “I can’t give you a refund on this ticket.”
“But you don’t understand.” Rika held out the ticket. A plume of dark gray coal smoke rose from the locomotive huffing and puffing its way out of the railroad station. Soot tickled her throat, and she coughed. “The ticket is valid, and I need the money.”
“No refund,” he shouted over a whistle blast and pointed at a small mark stamped on the ticket. “See? You have to either use the ticket by boarding the train next Friday or let it go to waste.”
Rika stared at the square piece of paper in her hand. So Jo’s beau hadn’t trusted her not to turn the ticket in for cash. And why should he? He doesn’t know her from Eve. Only a fool trusted strangers.
She shoved the ticket into the pocket of her thin wool coat, nodded a thank-you, and walked away.
What now? How else could she pay for Jo’s funeral? Her savings and Jo’s would cover it, but then how would she continue to pay rent now that she’d lost her job?
As she stepped off the curb, a horse let out a startled whinny and veered to the left, almost colliding with a cart.
“For heaven’s sake, pay attention, Miss,” the driver of the brougham yelled.
“Sorry,” Rika mumbled and hurried away. She stumbled along streets and alleys.
Where to? Erma and Mary-Ann couldn’t help. They’d already given half their wages to Phoebe, the scalped girl. Even if they had money, Rika doubted they would help. They’d been Jo’s friends, not hers, and now that Jo was dead, they wanted to save their money for the living. Everyone had liked smiling Jo, but Rika knew her own gap-toothed grin didn’t warm any hearts.
Certainly not Mrs. Gillespie’s. When Rika reached the boarding house, her landlady dragged a carpetbag through the front door and set down a slender box next to it.
Rika trudged up the steps. She stared at the box with its familiar purple and green stains. Mama’s box of paints! She glared at Mrs. Gillespie. “What are you doing? These are my things.”
Mrs. Gillespie dropped Rika’s old pair of shoes onto the box. “The mill is sending over half a dozen Irish girls, and I need the space.”
Trembling, Rika clutched her fingers together. “You can’t just put me out on the street.”
“I can’t afford to keep you on if you’re no longer paying rent,” Mrs. Gillespie said.
Bile crept up Rika’s throat. She swallowed. “I’ll pay. Really, I have enough to pay for a month.”
“And then what?” Mrs. Gillespie crossed her arms and peered at Rika from her position on the top stair. “How will you pay the month after that, now that you lost your place in the mill?”
So she had heard already. Rika’s shoulders slouched.
“Good luck, Miss Aaldenberg.” The landlady turned and stepped into the boarding house.
“No, no, no, you can’t just—”
The door swung closed between them.
The sound sent a thousand panicked thoughts ricocheting through Rika’s mind, leaving behind a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her knees gave out. She sank onto the cold stairs, between the carpetbag and the paint box, and cradled her head in her hands.
“Amen.” The pastor closed his Bible, nodded at Rika and the gravediggers waiting nearby, and walked away.
Rika stared into the open grave. Oh, Jo. Why is life so unfair sometimes?
When one of the gravediggers cleared his throat behind her, she gave herself a mental kick. No use lamenting over things she couldn’t change. She said her final good-bye to Jo and left the cemetery.
She wandered Boston’s streets, keeping on the lookout for offers of work or an inexpensive place to stay but finding neither. Her steps led her to the colorful stands and carts of the market, where she clutched the carpetbag to her chest and squeezed past two men haggling over a fish. The smell of bread and smoked meat made her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and market day with its smells and sights made her head spin. In search of food she could afford, she stepped around the yardstick of a vendor measuring cloth.
“Crunch bread,” a deep voice called across the street, trying to be heard over the other peddlers. “Boston buns! Apple bread fresh from the oven.”
That voice! She knew it. A shiver raced through her. She ducked behind a stand piled high with vegetables and peered at the man.
The white apron covered his barrel chest, and the hands resting on the pushcart were as large as she remembered. Rika’s heart stuttered, then calmed. It couldn’t be him. Her father was in his fiftieth winter, and the man selling breads and pastries seemed younger than Rika.
“Nicolaas,” Rika whispered. It had to be him. When she’d left home six years before, he’d been just a boy, not yet twelve years old. Now her little brother was all grown up. She craned her neck and let her gaze slide over the crowd, making sure her father wasn’t with Nic.
When she realized he was alone, she blew out a long breath and hurried across the street.
Nic grinned a welcome. The twinkle in his brown eyes still reminded her of their mother. “Want a loaf of apple bread? For you, just two pennies.”
“No, thanks, I—”
“Seed bread, then?”
“I don’t want any bread. I’m—”
His grin turned into their father’s angry grimace. “Then get out of my way. I don’t hand out charities.” He kicked her as if she were a stray dog.
Rika cried out at the sharp pain in her shin. She clutched her skirt and stared up at Nic. The brown eyes that had once looked at her with adoration now held only cruel indifference.
“Want more of that?” he asked when she still didn’t run.
So her brother had become a man who kicked people when they couldn’t afford his bread. Rika’s chest burned. “If Mother could see you now, she would be ashamed.”
“How dare—” He lifted his fist, then stopped and blinked. “Rika? Hendrika? Is that you?”
Rika nodded but kept her distance. She no longer knew him or what he was capable of. Six years under their father’s tutelage had changed him from a shy boy into a hard man. To their father, being kind was a sign of weakness.
“Lord, you have changed!”
“So have you,” she mumbled.
“What are you doing here? Are you returning home?”
She shook her head. The bakery had never been her home, just the house where she grew up. She had promised herself she would never live there again. But where else was she supposed to go? She had spent the last two nights in the poorhouse, where she had to share a bed with the feeble-minded, the drunk, and the insane. She’d tried to find work in Boston and had gone to the hospital to ask for a job even though she had never wanted to work as a nurse again after the horrors of the war. But the war was over now, and the hospital no longer needed so many nurses. Immigrants, fresh off the ship, worked for next to nothing. No one wanted to employ Rika, and Mr. Macauley had gotten her blacklisted, so no other cotton mill would take her in either.
After losing Jo and her job in the mill, there was nothing left for her in Boston. She needed a new start somewhere else. Her fingers closed around the train ticket in the pocket of her worn coat. What if I traveled to Oregon in Jo’s place? She dismissed the thought as crazy, but once it had taken root, she couldn’t forget about it. Not allowing herself to hesitate, she straightened her shoulders. “I’m going west.”
Nic nodded but didn’t ask for details. “You have a husband?”
Again, Rika shook her head. “The war left me a widow.”
“Then you won’t make it very far.”
Her father had told her the same before she had left home. The hard, patronizing look in Nic’s eyes reminded Rika of their father—and it made her even more determined to go to Oregon. She clenched her jaw. “I’ll be fine.” If she made do with a piece of bread and a bowl of beans a day, she would make it to Oregon with the money Jo had saved for the journey. “Good-bye, Nic. Take care of yourself, and don’t become too much like Father.”
Without waiting for an answer, she stepped into the crowd and let the noise of the market wash over her, hoping it would drown out her pain.
Post Office
Cheyenne, Wyoming
March 18, 1868
“All aboard! Boise, Umatilla, The Dalles!”
Rika lifted her wrinkled skirts with one hand and ran to catch the stagecoach before it could depart. The train that brought her to Cheyenne had been late, and if she missed the connecting stage to The Dalles, she would be stuck in this busy little town for three days.
She almost collided with a man who was lugging a large sack toward his wagon. A mule brayed next to her, and Rika jumped and dropped her carpetbag. She snatched it up and hurried toward the red and golden stagecoach.
The driver sent her a glare. “Come on, Miss. I don’t have all day.”
Rika produced one of Jo’s tickets. When he nodded, she handed up her carpetbag, climbed into the stagecoach, and squeezed into the only free seat. “Good day,” she said to the other travelers.
The well-dressed, portly man next to her tipped his forehead, where the brim of his hat normally rested. “Welcome, young lady. James Kensington at your service.”
Instead of introducing herself, Rika asked, “Are you traveling to The Dalles too?”
“Yes. I signed up for the whole four weeks of dust and misery.”
Misery? Surely nothing could be worse than the last five days spent in the stuffy passenger car of that box-on-wheels calling itself a train. Her back still hurt from the hard wooden bench, and she couldn’t get the coal soot out of her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Kensington said, “but I didn’t catch your name.”
There it was, the dreaded question.
Better learn to be convincing now. “Johanna Bruggeman,” Rika said and suppressed a shiver. Her father had never talked about God, but surely taking the name of a dead woman was a sin.
Mr. Kensington gave her a friendly smile. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Bruggeman.”
Hours later, Rika finally admitted to herself that the stagecoach was indeed worse than the train. The coach’s wheels bumped over a rock, and she grabbed the leather strap dangling from the ceiling. Mr. Kensington crowded her from the left, while a mailbag pressed against her feet from the right. Every now and then, her knees collided with that of the traveler facing her in the cramped space.
“You hungry?” Mr. Kensington held out a piece of cold ham.
“Oh, no, thank you.” Rika pressed a hand to her belly. Every time the stagecoach lurched, her stomach did the same. She had no memory of the long journey across the ocean when she had been just one year old, but she imagined her parents must have felt like this. With the leather curtains closed to keep out the dust, the inside of the coach was as stifling as the train’s passenger car, despite the March breeze outside.
“In a year or two, once the transcontinental railroad is finally done, we’ll make it from the East Coast to the West Coast in just seven days,” the man opposite her said.
As heavenly as that sounded to Rika, it was of no use to them now. She had been traveling for days and was still nowhere near the Willamette Valley.
The coach slowed, and Mr. Kensington stiffened. His hand crept to the mother-of-pearl grip of his revolver.
“Easy, easy,” another traveler said. “Probably just a rest station. No need to worry.”
“I’ll stop worrying when we arrive in The Dalles,” Mr. Kensington said. With the ruts and rocks in the road, his interrupted words sounded as if he had the hiccups. “This is a major route. Bandits and marauding Indians could lurk behind every bush.”
The only other woman on the stagecoach gasped.
Surely he’s being overly dramatic.
The stagecoach rocked to a halt before Rika could ask, and her backside rejoiced when she climbed off the stage to stretch her cramped legs.
Just a few minutes later, they were on the road again with six fresh horses.
Silence settled over the travelers, though sleep was impossible on the swaying coach.
Rika took the bundle of letters out of her coat pocket and smoothed her finger over the carefully knotted ribbon that held Jo’s treasures together. Jo and Phineas Sharpe had been corresponding for six months, and now she held half a dozen letters on her lap.
She undid the knot and slipped the first letter from its envelope. A newspaper advertisement landed in her hands, and she lifted it to her eyes to read the printed text despite the coach’s swaying.
A good-natured, hardworking fellow of twenty-five years, six foot height, is heartily tired of bachelor life and desires the acquaintance of some maiden or widow lady not over twenty-five. She must be amiable, loving, and honest. Please respond to Phineas Sharpe, Hamilton Horse Farm, Baker Prairie, Oregon.
Honest. The corners of Rika’s mouth drooped as if she tasted something foul. Lying and pretending had always come easy to her. With a father like hers, she’d had ample practice.
She stared at the advertisement. How strange. What kind of man orders a bride through the mail? But the answer was clear. Someone as desperate as you. She folded the advertisement and straightened her shoulders. This couldn’t be worse than marrying Willem. She wanted a house and a secure position, and maybe Jo was right. Few women ever got a house of their own without marrying.
