All She Left Behind

Prologue

Love came later, when his words reached out to catch her as she fell, offering a cushion of comfort that held her and began the healing before she even knew the depth of ache and loss she carried. Dreams delayed are not always dreams destroyed, he told her. That truth brought healing to her life.

But her story begins long before that day, on her wedding day, when Jane Jennie Lichtenthaler took Charles Pickett to be her wedded husband. Their vows were spoken at her sister’s Hillsboro home, Washington County, Oregon, a state just celebrating its first birthday. A judge presided, even though her father was a pastor and could have officiated. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, March 27, 1860.

Later, each guest brought a lantern to the wedding dance and set it along the boardwalk, the shards of light a path the hopeful couple would follow into the Tualatin Hotel. Charles and Jennie slipped through the Oregon mist, the lantern lights shining on her slippers, sprinkling liquid diamonds onto almost auburn hair. The last to arrive, as was the custom, they laughed beneath the hotel’s canopy covering the entrance. March, a month of new beginnings, is often marked by rain in the Willamette Valley. Jennie settled her hooped skirts, brushed water drops of weather from the yellow-dyed linen, and straightened the waist bow, as large as her husband’s fist. He stood behind to smooth the ribbons cascading down Jennie’s back, his hands then gentle at her bare shoulders, his fingers a tingle on her skin. Ready? he whispered in her ear.

At seventeen, she thought she was.

She nodded. Charles kissed her cheek, commented on her dimples, and they stepped through the doorway into the promise of their new lives, greeted by the music, laughter, and good wishes. Cheers went up and someone struck a tambourine to thrill the fiddlers into a faster jig, which Charles took as a sign to swing Jennie onto the cornmeal-covered floor. He swirled his bride as she caught glimpses of her father’s smile, her mother’s tears upon her cheeks. Ariyah, Jennie’s friend and wedding witness, waved her gloved fingers as they danced by. Jennie’s brothers and sisters clapped and stomped their feet to the fiddle and tambourine. The strong face of Josiah Parrish, the reverend and Indian agent, graced the crowd as they swished across the oak floor, his silver beard the only sign of age, belying the stories of the courage associated with a much younger man. He was a friend of Jennie’s parents; his wife a generous soul whose dress of red stood out among the many darker cloths much easier to acquire in this far western place. Jennie leaned her head back and she let her husband lead her. Each guest blurred into a room of goodwill carrying present and future prayers for happiness.

Then Charles lost his footing.

Jennie blamed the cornmeal.

His arms flailed as though a skater on ice and he slipped from her perspiring fingers. She reached but they couldn’t grasp each other. Charles fell backward. In the slow arc of disaster, she heard the crack of his head against the hardwood floor, his moan into sudden silence as the fiddlers saw the fall unfold and lowered their bows.

Jennie bent over him. Charles? Charles?

His eyes rolled away and he lay quiet. Someone gentled Jennie aside, but she saw Charles return, his eyes open, try to focus. The crowd helped sit him up. Charles rubbed his head.

Is there a doctor here? someone shouted.

I’m fine. He listed, woozy. Joseph Sloan, Charles’s new brother-in-law (and boss), clapped his back as others stood him up, brushed off his dark pants of the cornmeal, and flicked the grains from white blousy sleeves. He’d removed his coat with the dancing heat. Others urged Charles toward his new wife and she reached for his hand. He grabbed and held it.

Are you all right? She shouted in his ear to be heard above the music that had begun again.

His answer was to hold her elbow, turn her out toward the crowd, and bellow, It’s the father’s dance with the bride. Her father moved forward as her husband handed Jennie off. One of her twin brothers took her mother’s hand to dance. To Jennie, Charles said, I need fresh air. Don’t feel so good. Be back soon, promise. He rubbed his neck and Joseph Sloan walked out beside him, steadying him.

Is that blood on the back of his head?

Her father began the now much slower waltz as Jennie twisted, trying to watch the two men disappear outside. He’ll be fine. Just took a little spill.

She nodded, tried to let the music slow her racing pulse. She didn’t tell her father what she’d seen that quickened her heart: something in Charles Pickett’s countenance had changed.

1

Sharing All That Matters

SIX YEARS LATER

Spring in the Willamette Valley is rain-soaked grasses pierced by early blooms. ‘And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils.’ Jennie Pickett quoted Wordsworth to her almost-three-year-old boy, Douglas, as they walked toward Pringle Creek in Salem. The short, white-petaled wildflowers dotted the fields, colorful essentials breaking the soil and the winter malaise and the pall from President Lincoln’s assassination the year before.

In a rare respite, Jennie and Douglas followed the path toward the tributary of the Willamette. Jennie spoke the word in her head, Will-AM-it, a pronunciation people said didn’t match with its spelling. But spelling had never been Jennie’s gift. Mother and son walked beside the mighty river, watched the commerce of ferry crossings, steamships, and small river craft gliding on its surface.

Dougie was never one to settle easily, and Jennie gripped him tighter at his urge to pull away, caught his emerald eyes that matched her own. If we’re very quiet when we reach the creek, we’ll see a surprise. You can look through the brass and glass. Would you like that? That slowed his resistance, and he reached around to grab at the quilt draped over his mother’s arm, the telescope safe beneath it.

You let me?

Yes. Careful. He matched his pace to hers, skipping but still letting himself be held. They stopped to look at beetle tracks in the sand, listened as a hawk screeched in the distance. Jennie was pleased she’d left her hoops at home, as she could feel her son press against her side, his closeness warm and welcome through her blue-dyed linen skirt.

They reached the shoreline and Dougie nestled among the willows, then stood, wiggling as a child does. Jennie patted the quilt, urging him to sit, to lie on bellies side-by-side. For a moment a thread on the nine-patch gained his interest. Then he sat up and lifted the quilt to seek what bugs or twigs beneath it might need his scant attention.

The Schyrle brass and glass lay beside Jennie, the draws already out so she could quickly put the eyepiece to her face and then to his when the time was right. She debated about a practice look, decided against it. Like all almost-three-year-old boys, he could be a scamp about other people’s things. She still taught boundaries and borders, yours and mine and others’ being concepts in formation. A warm breeze brushed her cheeks.

Jennie had witnessed the promised surprise three times now. On the first occasion, she’d been uncertain of what she’d really seen and didn’t have the Schyrle Jennie’s brother George had brought all the way from France. The next time, she intentionally carried the telescoping glass, and like a prayer answered, the surprise happened again, an intersection she claimed of Divine presence into her fretful days, a gift to move her another step through the grieving of a great loss. That day, she hoped it would happen again so she could share it with her son.

Lie beside me. She patted the spread quilt. The viewing spot beside the creek was hidden from the water but close enough they could see the ripples, hear the impeded stream gurgling around tree falls and rocks. She whispered, There, you see?

See what, Mama?

Shhh. The fox. We’ll see if he does what he’s done before. That’s the surprise.

I see foxes. Daddy shows me. He pushed away from her, rose on his knees, scanned with his eyes, looked for the Schyrle, then turned back to the creek.

Jennie lifted the brass and glass and allowed the practice view. She helped him hold the telescope as she sat behind him. Look at that rock there. You’ll have to close one eye. She leaned around to see his face.

He squeezed both eyes shut, opened each, tried again. Jennie hid her smile.

Pretend you want to wink at me. I’ve seen you do that.

He giggled, then put his own finger to his lips, remembering to be quiet. He tried again and this time he closed the eye not against the lens.

She held the wooden barrel for him. Can you see the rock? He nodded, which took the lens from his eye. Try again.

I see, Mama. His voice held excitement. E-nor-mous.

Yes. It does look big through the glass. Now when the fox comes by, if he does, look at his head. This fox plans and we can see him doing it if we’re very patient and wait. A warmth filled her stomach, so pleased she was by her son following her direction. He often didn’t, listening more to his father and his aunt and uncle than to her—even his cousins and the boarders who lived with them held his attention better. Today, he held the Schyrle, a precious instrument. An artist had painted a calla lily on the smooth wooden barrel.

Birds sang into the silence as Dougie swung the Schyrle back and forth through the air like a confused symphony conductor.

Careful. They wouldn’t be able to stay much longer.

With her hand she stopped Dougie’s thrusting. She pointed as the animal trotted along the opposite bank that narrowed the waterway. One could see the rusty-red fur with the naked eye, but seeing the surprise required the Schyrle. She modeled stillness, then softly, Can you see the fox?

Yes, Mama. He mimicked whispering.

Good boy. Watch what he does.

The fox had stopped at a willow and did what she’d seen him do before: he tugged at tufts of wool that passing sheep had left behind. The creak of willow canes as he mouthed the wool snapped in the still air. Again and again, he pulled at wooly bits until he had a mouthful. Then the fox plunged into the creek, his muzzle still a foam of grayish-looking fur. His head and the top of his back cut a chevron in the water.

What’s he doing, Mama?

Look through the brass and glass. He turned back. Point it at his head. See? He nodded, moving the telescope, and she chided herself for asking him questions he felt compelled to answer.

As the slow current carried the fox along—they were so close—small black dots leapt from the fox’s head and nose and dropped onto the bits of wool in the fox’s mouth. The animal then released small tufts into the water. Laden with fleas and bugs, the islands of wool floated away from him. Keep following with the Schyrle. I hope you can see the little black things jumping from his head to the little boats of wool he spits out.

Dougie sat spellbound, watching as the cleansing continued until the fox swam around a bend, out of sight. Unbidden tears formed in her eyes. She wasn’t certain if the tears came from the delight at witnessing this natural event with her son or at some unknown emotion moving in to fill grief’s leaving.

Dougie turned his head and she took the Schyrle from him. He smiled. What was that, Mama?

That fox found a way to get rid of unwanted visitors to his fur.

He frowned, then tucked his chin in thought.

Those little black things bouncing from the fox’s head were fleas and ticks, creatures that trouble him. They jump onto his fur when he’s not looking, but he knows they’re there.

She collapsed the telescope back into the barrel, clipped the lens cover over the end. They stood. She considered asking Dougie to hold the Schyrle while she folded the quilt but didn’t want to test his good behavior. She put it down, draped the quilt over her arm, then lifted the lens, noting Dougie’s still-confused face.

He gathers wool from the willows and then lets the wool trick those little beasts into leaving his fur. They think they’re hopping onto another sentient being instead of onto little wool boats that will carry them away.

Sent-tent?

Sen-tee-ent. She sounded the word out and hugged her son. The fox is a warm being with breath and blood and heart. It can feel pain and even plays at times. I’ve seen that fox jump up on all four feet and hop around. We are feeling, sentient beings too. We have that in common with animals. That fox tricked those bothersome things into floating away from him. She lifted a bit of lint from Dougie’s short pants.

I run ahead, Mama.

Yes. But be careful.

She bent down to kiss his cheek as he startled forward toward his next adventure. But then he turned his face, popping warm lips on her cheek instead as he scampered away. She folded the quilt, cast a last glance at the daffodils, touching her fingers where Dougie had planted that rare kiss. A second surprise.

She walked the path back to her sister’s home, keeping Dougie in sight, breathing in the scent of spring, allowing the light breeze to lift strands of hair from her bonnet-less head. Dougie disappeared behind the house and would likely untie the dog, who barked his own impatience at not being allowed to go with them. Inside, the world would be in full motion.

A steamboat whistle shrieked in the distance as Jennie ascended the wooden steps. Would the cargo boat have brought her latest shipment, unloading it at Pringle Creek before the boat headed to Eugene? She hated waiting for cargo from San Francisco. There’d been lung illness each summer in the Salem village, and Jennie did her best to keep her family healthy. The oils and aromatics she ordered helped cleanse the house and heal bodies.

It came to her then as she opened the door that the fox was not only clever, but that he was a self-healer, one who didn’t wait for something or someone else to solve his discomfort of ticks and fleas that irritated his days. He’d found release with a little help from the sheep who wandered past and left their wool. Had he thought it through somehow? Was it the gift of instinct? Who knew? What mattered was that it worked and he had cleverly healed himself. Perhaps all sentient beings had that capacity. There was a lesson there. Jennie just had to learn it.

2

From Loss to Repair

Lucinda lifted her eyes from her work to greet Jennie. There you are. I wondered what happened to you two.

We took a little hike. Jennie hurried past, up the stairs, and put the quilt back into the trunk, laid the Schyrle onto it, then rushed back down.

Nellie cried looking for you. The child sucked a thumb as she stood beside her mother. Mary wondered too.

I should have taken the girls with us. I’m sorry. We walked by the creek. This fox came by. Have I told you about that? She lifted her apron from the kitchen hook, dropped it over her head, then wrapped the strings around her still-tender middle. Tender from the birth—and death—of her baby.

Lucinda wiped her forehead of the dampness worked up while she kneaded the bread dough before her. A second pang of guilt rose up: Jennie shouldn’t have been off playing with her son while Lucinda worked so hard. But they all labored.

Charles and Joseph Sloan had worked to build the two-story clapboard house they lived in. Though it had three bedrooms, it was nonetheless crowded with the Sloans, Picketts, and new boarders. The three single men shared one room and the two sisters and their families found scant privacy in the other two bedrooms. At times it felt like they were still on the wagon train that brought them from Illinois to Oregon, exposing them to new people finding their places in a moving menagerie of hope elbowed by discomfort. Jennie was only ten when she traveled the Oregon Trail with the Missionary Train, but she remembered the strangeness of so many new people and the habit her parents had of inviting others to their fires. Her sister collected strays too, and more than once Jennie wondered if she wasn’t one of them, arriving at Lucinda’s hearth when she was fifteen, perhaps having worn her own parents out.

The boarders left each morning, securing work as bricklayers, fashioning harnesses, or helping widows plant their beans and peas. They brought home happy stories from their labor. Joseph and Charles brought their work home too, but their talk didn’t contribute to an enlightened atmosphere. Joseph was the superintendent of the Oregon State Prison, containing those convicted or feebleminded; and Charles was his assistant. The county spent twice the money on dealing with the legal system as on building roads, a disparity Charles and Joseph thought appropriate until a horse became mired in muck while taking a prisoner from court to jail. They didn’t share Jennie’s view—that everything was interconnected, roads and criminals two threads to the weave of humanity.

Charles and Joseph spoke of control and punishment, sometimes making fun of the feebleminded, which made Jennie sad and, worse, guilty that she didn’t speak up to defend them. They never pondered about how people came to be the way they were, unable to think clearly or making choices that landed them in prison.

You’re soft, Jennie, Joseph pronounced once when she braved the confab at the table to bring up an alternative to the opinion that their prisoners were worthless men.

Justice and mercy both are required of us, Jennie said.

Charles snickered into his soup bowl.

Joseph pointed his fork, jabbing a bite of duck toward her. You can’t heal everything, Jennie Pickett. Your oils might be good for children and docile women but not for those with hardened hearts.

Charles kept his blue eyes to his bowl, not wanting to disagree with his boss. She supposed she was fortunate Charles didn’t say out loud what he growled about in their room: how his hard-earned money ought not be spent on oils and aromatics, lavender and licorice root. But they were her passion, healing not an effort to her but rather her greatest joy.

Jennie shook her head of the memory. She sighed, patted her apron that smelled of lavender soap she’d made. She continued telling Lucinda about the fox, reaching for the rolling pin. This fox—I assume it’s the same one each time—trots along and takes sheep’s wool from the willows and, with a mouthful, jumps into the water. Lucinda’s brow furrowed, so Jennie sped up her telling. As he floats along, he releases tufts, but only after the bugs and whatnot from his fur have hopped onto the wool. They disappear and he’s free of them. It’s a cleansing ritual. Self-healing. Quite fascinating to witness.

You got close enough to see that?

My eyes are good. And I had my Schyrle.

I wasn’t questioning you. Lucinda reached her hand across the table to touch Jennie’s as she pressed the rolling pin on the dough.

I know that. Everything urges my . . . defensiveness, I’d guess I’d call it. Then I turn to weepy. Her eyes watered, unbidden.

Your wounds are still fresh. Lucinda spoke with a mothering tone. How sweet you got to see something like that fox. I suppose the sheep scrape against the willows?

Jennie nodded. Maybe Reverend Parrish’s Merino ewes are leaving wool behind. I wonder if I could pluck enough to spin some of that fine wool for a shawl.

And deprive your fox? Lucinda laughed.

And deprive my fox. Jennie smiled, wiped her eyes with the edge of the apron. It smelled of sunshine too. Why the sight of the daffodils and fox brought such comfort she didn’t know. Perhaps a sign that she’d now start thinking of happier, healing things.

Jennie had named their baby Ariyah after her best friend. The word in Italian meant musical and in Greek it suggested pure. She liked the sound of the word, and its meaning even more, asking her friend to write it down so she could memorize the letters. Pure music. It was perfect for a child born without blemish and whom Jennie had sung songs to while the infant grew within.

Charles had crafted the coffin, suggested Jennie line it with silk. They buried her in November, the ground rarely freezing in the Willamette Valley, so she could be laid to rest in a steady drizzle. The child was rarely mentioned now—doing so upset Charles. But Ariyah was seldom far from Jennie’s mind.

After the death, Charles’s evenings took on the pattern of disappearing with Joseph, both returning late. He brushed aside Jennie’s need to speak of Baby Ariyah, creating a widening space between them.

The evening of the fox sighting, Jennie had intended to share that happy memory, but Charles was in one of his moods, offering one-word answers to questions about his day. She put Dougie to bed and didn’t mention the fox. She spoke her evening prayers, whispering Ariyah’s name.

The baby didn’t require a name. He spoke into the darkness as they lay side by side in their featherbed.

Not name her? This was a new complaint. His grieving took a twisted turn. God gave names to everything he made. We always name the things we love. The people we love.

She could feel Charles massage his neck in the darkness, but earlier he’d denied he had a headache when Jennie asked if he might like a rub of periwinkle to his temples.

We have a son named Douglas, he said. That’s what matters now. Your mourning brings gloom to the entire household. I don’t look forward to coming home to such. So stop it. He rolled to his side, pulling the cover over his shoulder, leaving her shivering in the March night.

He’d been so kind, so tender in their courting. Flowers pleased her, especially daffodils, and he often picked them growing wild. His look into her eyes had sent trills of passion through her in those days before his fall.

Perhaps it’s all the people under one roof that brings our trouble. And the harsh discussions of prisoners that keep joy from the atmosphere. She hesitated then. Or the scent of liquor that follows Sloan home. She knew she had just raised the tension, but then plunged into the abyss of lingering loss. She might have lived if you’d gone straight for the doctor and returned before—

A quick jerk, his shoulder whacked against her face. Enough or I’ll give you something to whine about! He had never struck her, though he had said things that hurt as much.

Does he not know he’s split my lip?

Threatening now, hissing. Spittle hit her face. You put two and two together to make it my fault? You can’t remember the sequence to starching my shirts without a disaster but wrap blame around a stick to make it a cudgel to beat me with? She couldn’t see his face. He gripped her shoulders. She curled into herself. You’re so swift to find fault with me when it was your body that defiled the child.

His words sliced. She was too stunned to speak.

I don’t want to hear another word about ‘A-rye-ahhhh.’ Sounds like what you say to a doctor with a tongue depressor stuck in your throat.

What does a tongue depressor have to do with our deceased child? Was it the shock of his threatening her or one of those times when she didn’t understand his sarcasm?

She rolled out of bed as he turned away. A shaking hand lit the candle, carried it down the steps to the kitchen shelf where she kept her herbs and oils. Charles called them snake oils, no better than those peddled by the Hebrews in their carts. But Jennie put them to good use and sometimes earned their cost back. She opened the vial of eucalyptus and inhaled, hoping it would calm her pounding heart.

At least the herbs and oils gave a way to pay Lucinda back for all she did for Jennie and her family. She often rubbed peppermint oil onto Lucinda’s sore muscles, treated her nieces’ cuts.

She sat at the table, waiting for dawn, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, praying for guidance. Her lip grew fat as she bit against it.

How had she come to marry a man so different from her father or brothers? Oh, Charles was interested in business and public life, had been a petitioner to create a new county from Washington County where her parents lived, and he urged improvement on the Tualatin River to advance commerce and transportation. Her family was all concerned with civic duty and responsibility to others, and she’d seen that in Charles and welcomed it. Her brother David Lichtenthaler—DW—was the first Republican elected as county clerk in Marion County and two years previous had been appointed county judge for the new Union County in the far east of the state. Jennie was young, just fifteen when they’d met, with dreams she never shared with Charles, dreams that couldn’t be now.

She was susceptible to the wiles of an older man able to take care of her, she supposed, one with a honeyed tongue, quoting poetry and prose and lines from sermons, who dwelled on her beauty and didn’t take note of her flaws. Perhaps her family saw him as one who would look after her, given her deficiencies so important to a well-read family. Reading was a challenge to Jennie’s brain. No one seemed to know why.

Charles was well-read. Jennie was lovesick. Her parents didn’t object. On their wedding day her father did bless the marriage with Scripture and a prayer following Judge Wilcox’s pronouncement.

No, she had not misread Charles. Their union was a knot tied tight like that of rawhide, meant never to be broken. But that knot did need oiling, often, to keep it from fraying. That was what she was doing now, sitting alone in the kitchen, watching the sun come up, putting oil on her lip and creating a story of protection, of how she’d stepped on a rake and the handle had struck her in the face. It would explain the bruising on her cheek too. And who would question Jennie Pickett doing something so inept as letting a rake she’d failed to put away come back to haunt her. Oh, that Jennie, her siblings would say as they shook their heads, familiar with her faults.

Maybe that was a reason disciplining Dougie proved a strain: his oafish efforts at expression of frustration reminded her of her own challenging childhood.

Once, not long after Ariyah’s birth and death, her sister said something about Dougie being a blessed trial. She took it as a comment on her mothering.

Maybe he misses Baby Ariyah too, Jennie defended.

Lucinda scoffed. Their mother was there, visiting, her knitting needles clicking. She looked over at Lucinda.

He does, Jennie insisted. He asked me one day what happened to the baby in my belly, what I’d done with it. I told him she’d gone to be with God. He asked me then if he was next.

For all their goodness and experience with child-rearing and tending grandchildren, neither of them believed that small children noted the passing of another, had wonderings about life and death, even while they lacked the words to speak their thoughts. For so long, Jennie had lacked words to express herself. She still struggled. But one thing she knew: a death becomes the hub of a wheel and family members its spokes. They move around it for a very long time. It was Jennie’s dream to prevent the deaths, illnesses, and sufferings of others, especially for women and children, and when she couldn’t, to change that hub.

3

Something Changed

Before dawn, Charles came down the steps. He saw Jennie sitting there. She braced herself.

I . . . I can’t believe I did that, Jennie. I don’t know what came over me. I can’t even describe it. I’m—I’m sorry.

Relief flooded. It won’t stay puffy for long. I should have chosen a better time to speak.

He ran both hands through his hair that fell below his ears. I guess my head, it hurt more than I realized, and when you said about the doctor—

I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s over. It’s just that I miss her so.

He pulled the chair next to his wife, put his arm around her, rubbed her narrow shoulders. A doctor might not have made any difference. It was one of those things. The midwife said that. Jennie held still. "But I still wish I hadn’t failed you that night. Not