Free 0800722329 by Jane Kirkpatrick Page A

this be God’s blessing, this pleasant respite from my fears? His breath sweet upon me. Despite what Rachel subscribed to, I must not let myself think of happier things, for surely then they’d disappear like birds flying into sunset. Thoughts beset the future.
    I told him I didn’t want to see the cabin. Yet.

    “I asked Mrs. Brown how she made such good coffee and she said she added an egg.” Rachel leaned over the coffeepoton the stove my father had purchased for her that fall. We were learning together how to cook on it. I still preferred placing the pot inside the fireplace coals, but we were being “modern” with Rachel the kitchen head.
    “I think they meant to crack the egg and put it in raw.”
    “Oh, do you think so?” With a long-handled spoon she reached into the grounds, pulling out a stained, shell-intact egg.
    I shook my head. How could one woman be so ignorant? That was uncharitable of me, but these incidents occurred several times a week. She lacked common sense, as Nancy called it—everyday wisdom. I tried to be kind, I really did, but her efforts always meant more work for me until I decided it was better if I just did it myself, leaving her the more pleasurable task of reading to the girls. She would be “teacher” and tell stories of her privileged life in Boston where paid maids and cooks provided the common in her common sense.
    She was even worse with the cookstove. I still had Henry cut green wood as well as dried wood, but now he had to chop to fit the firebox on the stove. It was easier for me to simply start the fire with coals from the fireplace, so that meant we kept two fires going. Rachel liked the extra heat while the rest of us sweat cracklings. Our stove had six eyes with handles, six places for pots to boil, eggs to fry on, coffee to bubble up even with a whole egg plopped inside. The stove needed watching, but Rachel would start a pan and then wander away much like Martha did but she was only seven. I expected her to have a flighty mind; not Rachel.
    And my father. He tolerated all sorts of uncommon sense from Rachel, things he’d have raised his voice about if I had done it. She left the gate to the garden open and the hogs rooted their way in. During butchering she fainted, actually swooned into a heap of crinoline-covered linens when my father made his firstcut into the abdomen of the hog whose leg she held. The limb flopped onto the back of my father’s neck, splattering blood on him, on her. She sank away and that day I . . . I disappeared too.

    I’m at Waiilatpu again. Blood streaks across the face of Dr. Whitman, who falls victim to a hatchet, then a gun. I jerk at the sounds. Frank Sager had run away days before, but he is back, then shot by the Indian Joe Lewis. He falls dead at my feet. We’re in the house. My limbs feel cold and numb. I hear the Indians’ muffled calls to Mrs. Whitman, promising they will harm her no more. Mr. Rogers, our beloved teacher, holds her by the elbow as they come into this room and I see that she’s been shot; his arm hangs loose with blood pouring. The smell suffocates. She sees her husband dead and falls, nearly pulls Mr. Rogers down. I cannot move. A Cayuse, maybe one who shot her, lifts then walks her to the chaise lounge. So strange—to aid the one you’ve injured. Then another raises his hatchet against our teacher, who shouts out, “Oh God, no!” Mr. Rogers falls. Blood arcs onto his murderer’s face as the man turns toward me. A dozen others whooping like cranes singing of their victory rush past him, pulling him toward others who have come from the barns to see what the noise is about. The smell is thick in my throat. The sounds deafening yet muffled like I am underwater. The curious are struck down in seconds; the chunk of blade to bone, a sound so fiercely final. I pull my apron starched with bluing over my face, inhale the scent wet with blood. I push away the sounds, and stand frozen while all around me I hear