Chapter 7

We took care to leave quietly and not let anyone see which way we went, although Mataoka had taught Eliza the route to our farmstead as she and I had taught ourselves; Eliza had been reciting the path, tracing a finger up and down across the fingers of an outspread hand – “and in the second valley there is a deep gorge, and you can cross it about a mile south where tall ceders lean over it. And then...”.

It was important to us that Eliza knew, and that she guided ma and pa should they come visit, but that nobody else should know. We even planned to backtrack and walk in some streams to ensure not even Indians could track us. I had only gone five steps before I stopped, put the wheelbarrow down, and went to get some grease for the axle. Then we were off again.

This was the third journey for us in as many months, and things felt familiar again. We made better progress, and reached a good stopping point quite early in the evening and there was plenty of light left for Mataoka to lay out her snares before bed.

In truth, we were both dreading bed. There was the air of unfinished business, of pain and hurt, of shame between us. We both longed to be together, touching, skin to skin, kissing, but were both nervous.

Mataoka spread out our blankets under a conifer as usual and, as it was the height of summer, it was warm enough to not need to bundle up tight so we could share. We carefully stripped by the fire and went to the cool bubbling brook to splash ourselves clean; Mataoka had a thing about keeping clean.

I looked at her naked form padding quietly in front of me, over the deep moss towards the stony creek. It was the first time I saw her properly in good light. I marveled at her soft, unblemished skin. I longed to grab her. I hurriedly stripped off and joined her in the ankle deep water and stood so close our hips were bumping. We made happy sounds as we passed the soap around and spread it over each other and rubbed it in. The feel of her soft hands on my chest and shoulders was exquisite. I rubbed her breasts, fascinated by their small firmness. They gave me such urges. Mataoka needed a kiss. We needed to splash more cold water on each other to get the soap off and keep ourselves calm until we got back to our den for the night.

I watched her comb out her wet hair. I wanted to help. But I also wanted to be far enough apart to watch her properly. I loved the way her breasts rose and fell as she lifted and dropped her arms as she combed. I wanted to kiss her. “You peeking,” she giggled.

I waited until she put the comb down and pounced. We found each other and it didn’t hurt her so much this time and she wouldn’t let me stop. Soon it was nice, really nice. Now we felt like proper man and wife. We had grown up. We had each other. Forever.

The next morning the snares were empty – Mataoka joked that she had rushed to put them out the night before as she couldn’t bear to be apart from me, but I figured it was because we were still too close to the village and all game, even the small stuff, was too wary. But we had food with us and we had a good breakfast and then carried on walking, pushing the barrow, off westwards, towards home. Now we had mated, so our hearts felt light.

We reached our cliff on the fourth afternoon, and quickly retrieved the ladder where we’d hidden it. My wife climbed up first, giving me a good view up her dress, seeing the charms I now knew so intimately. She paused and gave me a good look as she looked over her shoulder and smiled mischievously, her eyes twinkling.

I knew that look. Now we were married, Mataoka was insatiable. She wanted a baby and she knew how to get me to give it. We hurried to the wigwam, leaving the barrow down below, and went to bed before we’d even checked on the field.

The field was looking drier and some of the crop at the highest sides were growing slower than the lush crop nearer the rice pool. I figured we couldn’t raise the water level with damns or we’d flood the field, but perhaps we could divert some stream from higher up and make it run around the top of the basin? I talked it over with my partner and we went up the creek looking for a good place to dig a channel.

It was back-breaking work, but it was for us so we put our backs into it. We hacked a shallow gully around the drier side first, and then joined it up with the stream. Water started to trickle immediately, but seeped away before it ever reached the field. Mataoka gathered wheelbarrow loads of clay and lined it so the water would carry further. In the end we had a working irrigation system, and we copied it on the the other side, too.

Now the fields were better watered, Mataoka set about thinning and weeding and I went back upstream and spent some days chopping the rest of the logs for the house. I didn’t count too carefully, I just did all the trees that had slipped down the bank.

Days fell into a happy routine. In the morning we would wake up, and hold each other tight and say nothing and pretend to each other to be asleep until we absolutely had to wake up and get up and get working. Mataoka would bring lunch to me up where I was working the timber and we would sit there, swatting the daytime gnats that buzzed in the warm, wet shade of the trees, until full and content. Then Mataoka would get up and go to wander back down to the field, and fall sprawling over the nearest log. The first time I thought she was hurt, and she didn’t try to get up I got the idea when she tugged her dress up and wriggled her bottom at me enticingly. Now I knew her game, and obliged her daily. That would give me happy thoughts for the rest of the day and I worked all the harder on our house timbers until dusk when Mataoka would fetch me and tug me to our hot spring for a soak and quiet talk about our plans for the farm and long gentle kissing, before we went down the hill for supper and bed. It was the nicest routine in the world and I loved my wife all the more.

One morning Mataoka took me to see something peculiar in the turkey pen; the birds had killed and eaten a raccoon! Only tufts of fur and the bones were left, having been pecked clean. We started giving the birds a more varied diet, throwing in the waste from our dinners, and the birds were fattening up nicely.

We quickly ran down the game around the field, and that suited us, as the animals were only going to cause us problems. But now I had to take the ladder down the cliff to hunt where the deer were a lot more plentiful. Large herds were always passing across, and I would go take one about once a week or so.

In July, the first tips of the rice started to break the surface of the pond and the corn in the field was now high. As August came, everything needed harvesting at once. Mataoka had me push some of the smaller logs into the stream and she pulled them to the shore as they reached the rice pond. These we then tied together as a raft so we could get among the rice heads, as wading in the pond would hurt the plants, she explained. We whacked each head and it spilled its grain all into the boat and soon we had a plenty big pile.

Whack, whack, “Owwww,” Mataoka cried, rubbing her arm. A rice worm had landed on her and bitten her! Rice worms were something to watch out for, because they had a nasty bite. Mataoka tucked her legs up tight under her dress and pulled her arms in and got me to carry on whacking alone while she watched and grinned at me from safety. I sent some rice cascading over her but she just laughed at me. I had to watch out for the worms.

We slow-cooked some of the rice that evening. We had brought some empty sacks back with us from the wedding, so we filled them up with the baked grain. And by now it was time to go harvest our corn, too. It was August, and everything was ripe all at once. Our fields were nothing compared to the farms on the frontier, but we were rushed off our feet.