Chapter 13

It was a happy, glad summer of plenty. There was plenty of sunshine, and plenty of light drizzle and rain and things grew plenty well. We had plenty of help from Alawa in the fields and help from Eliza in the home and Mataoka was doted on as much as our two little papooses were.

It occurs to me now that different girls’ bodies respond differently to pregnancy. Just look around yourself at the women you know. Now, Mataoka was one of those women blessed with a body changed almost not at all by pregnancy. While carrying our children, she was still slim and active and glowing, just her big, distended belly and firmer, fuller, little breasts betraying that she was heavy with child. And as soon as she’d birthed, her tummy shrank back down to her lithe, active self again. I would have loved her all the same if she had waddled about heavily as my own mother always had, but it was a blessing that Mataoka never had any aches or pains or sickness that afflict so many with child.

And I know better than to claim it was typical of the Indians, for I have seen as wide a variety of body shapes among them as amongst my own. Mataoka was just a perpetually young, lithe doe of the finest kind, the apple of my eye, the girl filling all my dreams with stimulating warmth.

Oh, I am biased, you claim, but that happens to all men in love: the definition of perfection becomes the spitting image of whomever you adore so deeply. That the petty townsfolk could look down on my wife, declare her a no-good Indian, confused me greatly, for she was the most perfect creature in all creation with a sweetness of mind and manner with it.

By gods mercy no illness visited us neither. Both little Harvey and little Martha thrived. Harvey now much cared for by Eliza but still nursing next to his sister on occasion. Even at such a young age they seemed to share a sweet bond, and I was hopeful that they’d grow up as close as I was to my sister.

Harvey was the loudest, with the runniest nose, and the one who constantly tried to taste everything around him, from stones to dirt to leaves to any bits of his auntie Eliza that he could reach. Martha, though, just smiled and gurgled happily and locked eyes with you and lit up your world in quiet contentment.

But truth be told, I felt a bit guilty for admitting that I missed private time with my wife. It already felt so long ago that we had chased each other in naked abandon around our cabin and woods - alone, carefree in the heat of endless honeymoon. Now I slept behind my wife as she cuddled and cradled our newborn, with little Harvey watching us from across the dim divide from the pallet where he, Eliza and Alawa slept. Mataoka let me nestle between her thighs but it wasn’t the same, sharing our immediate world with more important things, and feeling always observed. And Mataoka wouldn’t have let me go further anyhow, as it was unlucky to couple too soon after a birthing and, after the necessary moons had passed, she told me that she had enough to do without carrying a third child already.

I threw myself into my smelting, figuring that I was providing for my family’s future. Our field was the smallest of farms but we were just producing for ourselves, a smallholding of self-sufficiency, rather than for selling in the town’s market. Instead, our cash crop was iron ingots from our summer camp down the valley. And so through the heat of summer I hacked and rinsed and baked countless barrowfuls of ore and hammered down dozens of the things which I buried in the corner of the wigwam for safe keeping.

Eliza complained that my loud hammering rung in her ears even when she was up by the cabin, so loud was my smelting and so far the wind carried the noise. Everyone in the valley and perhaps beyond knew when I was producing ingots. Mataoka convinced me to build wicker wind-breaks around the summer camp to somehow contain and muffle things so as not to wake sleeping children and irritable mothers.

By high summer I had to escort Eliza back home and I loaded up the wheelbarrow with as many ingots as I could push, greased up the hub and prepared everything ready to set off on the now-familiar and well-trampled trail back to the frontier. Eliza had become increasingly sullen as the day to return approached, and I had been apprehensive that Eliza might be planning to stay without asking pa’s permission. She seemed to be clutching at any excuse to extend her stay, although both children and mother were in the best of health. Mataoka well knew that Eliza wanted to move in with us permanently and both the girls had whispered about it by the evening fire over several nights, and then Mataoka had announced that it would be for the best and Eliza just had to get pa’s blessing.

Finally Eliza could delay it no longer and we set off home. It was the first time I had been truly alone with my sister in an age, and we chatted not much but there was a calm trusting comfortable bond between us. At nights, under the conifers, Eliza would snuggle up to me, offering sisterly warmth, and it felt just like we used to sleep as kids before our parents had separated us all those years before.

On the fourth and final day of our trek we saw more lands being cleared by burning as the frontier crept ever forward. Strangers - new families fresh to the frontier - stopped to stare as we passed their plots, for we must have been a novel sight for them. Eliza wrapped her shawl tighter and put her head down and marched onward even faster, for she drew their gaze as she did all of the coarser sex and she was as uncomfortable with their attention as ever.

Finally we saw the familiar farm ahead and I cast an appraising look around, noticing the order, fertility, new outbuildings and prosperity it showed. Our arrival was spotted some way off and the twins, bigger than ever, rushed out to run rings around us as we approached. Judy, in her little dress and tattered apron looked so like a young Eliza that I had to shake my head to clear it, but then I realized that it was a hand-me-down dress that I had grown up seeing the little Eliza skipping around in all those years before.

Eliza grabbed for any twin within reach and swung them around when she caught them, but they quickly slipped free, shrieking happily, and ran more laps just out of her reach. By now I was numb to the weight of the barrow and I plodded onward, laying each foot in front of the other, as the barns inched into view.

Ma was overjoyed to have her oldest daughter home again and embraced her gratefully. I just got a quick hug, but at least ma was no longer running screaming from me. Pa seemed pleased with that improvement, too, and when I showed him the ingots under the tattered oilcloth in the wheelbarrow, he grinned even wider and we set about adding them to the cache in the barn. I noticed how many new iron tools there were around the farm and I knew our good fortune was benefiting the family. In the back of my mind I wondered how I could help Mataoka’s family, too. But in front of me there was too much to take in and re-familiarize myself with, so I put that thought aside for later.

There was a new addition around the farm, too. With Jonathon now rarely home and never helping – he had taken to town where a wanton lifestyle suited his disposition – pa had hired in a farmhand to do the labor I used to do. There was something familiar about Eric and it took me a while to place him, but he was the quieter of the two boys who had apprenticed for the blacksmith. He had clashed just once too often with the rowdy apprentice, whose name I learned was Simon, and whom it turned out was the blacksmith’s son. And so pa had taken him in, instead. They had fired some bricks and built a small forge and Eric, no match for the master, had still turned out some passable implements and nails and was improving. His blades were still poor, though.

I looked at the forge carefully, with a mind to make my own and learn something of the art. Built as a lean-to against the back of the wash house down near the beck, the forge shared an enlarged chimney so now there was often hot water for washing bathing and such whenever the forge was in use. A small crude waterwheel worked the bellows and made the small bed of coals roar and glow white hot. Eric explained his plans to drive a mill stone from the wheel too, and even a wood saw. I took everything in, studied every detail, and listened carefully as Eric described how to fire bricks.

Eliza spent hours sitting by the summer kitchen fire in the evenings describing how we had it in our valley and how Martha and little Harvey were, and ma hung on every word. I sensed that no matter how great the distance between myself and my ma, she was going to count my offspring as her own, and that warmed me immensely.

I rested up for a couple of days, weary from the march, not able to lift much of a finger, before pa and I took a couple of ingots in to sell. The blacksmith, appreciating my pa’s help in taking Eric off his hands, was on good terms with pa but his son, bullish as always, was surly. Where was Eliza, he wondered. And Eric better not show his face if he knew what was good for him, he was sure to warn me discreetly as pa and the blacksmith haggled behind us.