When Winter Comes

by V.A. Shannon

Genres: Coming of Age; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Fall & winter reads

Synopsis

In the voice of an unforgettable heroine, V. A. Shannon explores one of the most harrowing episodes in pioneer history—the ill-fated journey of the Donner Party—in a mesmerizing novel of resilience and survival.

Mrs. Jacob Klein has a husband, children, and a warm and comfortable home in California. No one—not even her family—knows how she came to be out West thirteen years ago. Jacob, a kind and patient man, has promised not to ask. But if she were to tell her story, she would recount a tale of tragedy, mishaps, and unthinkable choices—yet also sacrifice, courage, and a powerful, unexpected love ...

1846: On the outskirts of Cincinnati, wagons gather by the hundreds, readying to head west to California. Among the throng is a fifteen-year-old girl eager to escape her abusive family. With just a few stolen dollars to her name, she enlists as helpmate to a married couple with a young daughter. Their group stays optimistic in the face of the journey's hazards and delays. Then comes a decision that she is powerless to prevent: instead of following the wagon train's established route, the Donner Party will take a shortcut over the Sierras, aiming to clear the mountains before the first snows descend.

In the years since that infamous winter, other survivors have sold their accounts for notoriety and money, lurid tales often filled with half-truths or blatant, gory lies. Now, Mrs. Klein must decide whether to keep those bitter memories secret, or risk destroying the life she has endured so much to build.

Release date: October 30, 2018

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Print pages: 304

Sample

There was a special service in church this morning, which was filled to bursting.

Preacher Holden—well now, there is a storyteller. He can tell a Bible story like no one else I ever heard. His tales always seem to start somewhere in the middle, like a traveler who’s been set down smack in the middle of a wood. Off he sets on his journey, sometimes looking ahead and sometimes over his shoulder. Soon enough this thing reminds him of that, and that thing recalls another, and Preacher Holden wanders round the highways and byways of his story until, by some mystery known only to him, he arrives back where he began.

His services are well attended, and not just out of a sense of duty, or a fear of being judged wanting by our neighbors. It’s because one minute we’re thinking how hard the benches are and what we’ll be eating for our dinners, and the next, we’re right along with Jonah, trapped in that whale’s stomach and feeling miserable as all get-out. At the same time we’re feeling sorry for the whale with that great undigested lump inside him, hammering and kicking at his insides and wailing to be set free.

If it’s the feast for the prodigal son, our mouths water for the smell of the hot butter and cinnamon in Mrs. Jackson’s apple turnovers that she’s so famous for; or we’ll find ourselves sitting beside the happy couple at Cana and quietly wishing for something a bit stronger than water to toast them in.

When he comes to the end of the story, Preacher Holden lets us sit for a minute and digest his words. Then we come to realize that along the way he’s managed to set traps for the unwary, adding in sly comments that point to those of us who’ve sinned somewhat and need a little gentle reminding of it. And he always ends up with a few home truths that catch out those of us that have let our minds wander away.

He had plenty of those today, for it is during his story that the snow begins falling on the other side of the big arched window that we subscribed for last spring. Snow on Christmas Eve! The children are wriggling in their seats, desperate to get outside, and even the older folks who should know better are nudging their neighbors, jerking their heads toward the windows with their eyebrows raised and smiling themselves silly, as if they’d never seen snow before.

Perhaps some of them hadn’t, for it almost never snows here. We have a few days of pretty heavy rain through December and January, but other than that, even when it’s cold enough to want the fires lit from breakfast onward and an extra quilt or two on the beds, most days give us blue skies and sun. The grass stays green and the crops are good and lush year-round, and the animals fare well.

Our own animals do better than most, for I feed them with a generous hand. They don’t amount to much, a few chickens and a goat or two. We don’t have cows. I don’t like to hear their lowing, a sad and lonely noise to my way of thinking. The rooster crowing, good and loud, and the hens squawking over which has the choicest bit of potato peeling or the last shuck of corn, that’s a noise I like to hear.

I wonder if Jacob thought to shut them safely into the henhouse when the snow started up. Once the thought has entered my head I cannot shift it, and I stop listening to the Bible story and think about the snow instead.

Preacher Holden announces the last hymn. It’s one of my favorites, “Lord, We Thank Thee for This Day.” Bustling up the aisle toward the little upright pianoforte comes Mrs. Holden—his mother, not his wife, for Preacher Holden is a single young man of but eight-and-twenty. He is exceeding handsome, with dark flashing eyes and brown hair curling over his starched white collar, so attendance at his church might not be just on account of his storytelling skills. But he has his eye on Betsey Mueller, a pretty girl of eighteen or so. With three much older sisters all long since married and families of their own, I guess Betsey’s arrival was a surprise to her ma, who must have thought herself long since free of the burden of child-rearing. I know the family well. Betsey’s father, Heinrich, owns the lumberyard along with my husband, and Heinrich and Jacob were young men together in Germany before they set out to adventure to the New World and pitched up here in California.

Mrs. Holden is a widow, and on the lookout for husband number three, or so they say. She’s in an outfit I’ve not seen before. It’s a sober enough shade of blue, in keeping with Preacher Holden’s views on appropriate dress for women, but even so, as she rustles past me I hear the distinctive sound of a silk taffeta petticoat. There’s a hint of lace at her wrists, too, and some startling green and yellow feathers in her bonnet. She seats herself at the keyboard with a girlish shake of her head that sets her curls dancing—curls that have surely seen the benefit of blacking lotion as well as the curl papers—and a single yellow feather detaches itself from the bonnet and goes floating up into the air.

My close friend Minnie Arbuthnot raises her eyebrows at me from across the aisle. Her mouth twitches, and despite my increasing fears for my poor chickens, mine does the same. Respectable wives and mothers we might be, but when we are together we can’t help laughing over any silly thing, just as much as the foolish girls in the schoolroom. I bite my lips together, my shoulders shaking, and look down at the floor until I can control myself.

I’ve left seven-year-old Hannah and six-year-old Clara at home with Jacob, who has a head cold and needs to stay in the warm. But I have my Meggie to one side of me, and we raise to our feet along with the rest, opening our hymnals. On the other side of me is old Peabody, the owner of the town mercantile, as close with a smile as he is with a cent. He only comes to church as the chance to get warm for nothing. But even Mr. Peabody can’t sit when all else are standing, so with a great show of suffering he pulls himself to his feet, disclosing the fact that he has been sitting upon a newspaper. It’s one of the local scandal sheets that spreads speculation and tittle-tattle, not a respectable sort of periodical at all.

Mrs. Holden strikes up the opening chords of the hymn. I open my mouth and take a deep breath, ready to sing. Mr. Peabody’s newspaper slithers to the floor and my eyes follow it, and I suddenly make sense of the upside-down print of the headline. My mouth stays open but not a sound comes out.

We come out of church to find that the snow has stopped, with the paths and tree branches frosted as thick as a white layer cake. Folks are saying how it looks a right pretty picture, and asking one another if they think it’ll stay put for a day or two more. But I have no need to squint up at the flat white sky above us to know that a big storm is on the way. I can smell it and taste it in the air.

I take a firm hold of Meggie’s hand, and we set off along the path that will lead us around the back of the church and out of the town. I move at such a pace that the poor child has to fairly run to keep up with me, nodding and smiling at my neighbors as I go and hoping I look sociable enough, but with no desire to stop and pass the time of day. Our headlong flight is checked, though. Preacher Holden emerges from the crowd with his mother on his arm, and I am bidden by good manners to stop in my tracks and bid them Season’s Greetings.

In his hand he carries old Peabody’s paper. He sees me looking at it and gives a half laugh.

“I see you have noticed—I’m afraid I had reason to reprimand Mr. Peabody for bringing this vulgar gossip-sheet into the Lord’s House.” He clears his throat. “But I reckon that if anyone is deserving of being in the Lord’s presence this day, it is this fine gentleman.”

He holds the paper up, to display what had snagged my attention in church: the likeness of a weak-faced man with wispy fine hair, and the headline.

With an effort, I wrench my eyes away from the paper and bring them back to Preacher Holden’s face. There is an avid look in his eyes that no amount of piety can conceal. I know what his next words will be before he even opens his mouth.

“And as for that other wretched fellow who accompanied him on his journey—Keseberg—well, he is in sore need of our prayers, that much is certain.”

I can make no answer. I mutter something foolish about the snow; then I pick up my skirts and fairly run out of the churchyard, Meggie at my heels, and Preacher and Mrs. Holden openmouthed behind me.

I have always believed that I would meet Mr. Eddy again. It would be a day like any other; a blowy day in spring maybe, or the high heat of midsummer. I would be walking along the street in my print frock and bonnet, on my way to the mercantile perhaps, or taking the air with my husband and children on a Sunday afternoon.

And Mr. Eddy would be there.

He would walk toward me, and as he passed by he would look at me something quizzical. His stride might falter some, thinking that perhaps he knew me. He’d tip his hat. He might smile a little. But then he would look again.

In that moment, sick horror would go sliding across his face, and oh! I would fall upon Mr. Eddy! My nails out to claw at his face and my fists ready to knock his teeth down his throat!

My poor husband would have to pull me away in shame, with all the townsfolk watching. Mr. Eddy would turn tail and flee. But no matter how fast he might go flying down the street, my words would go screaming along behind him, “Liar! LIAR! LIAR!”

It is what I have been waiting for, all these years. But I have been cheated. He has died a hero, and been written in the newspapers so; and his lies will live on, immortalized.

Dear God, there is no justice in the world!

If I cannot tell Mr. Eddy what I think of him to his face, then I must use my pen to cut through the twisty tangle of lies that he planted and that have grown up these long years to conceal the truth. Now they will fall away and the straight facts of the matter show through at long last. How I knew Mr. Eddy, and Mr. Keseberg, too; and how Mr. Eddy, carpenter, coffin maker, betrayed us both at the last.

Mr. Eddy’s death is not the beginning of my story. It is where my story ends. But with the ending comes the beginning, and my story starts back in Cincinnati, when I was but fifteen. Yes. I may as well start there as anywhere.

My parents were both born in Cincinnati, when it was nothing more than a handful of little farms, with a population of maybe thirty families. It never was a peaceful place. Even then it was known for lawlessness, with the farmers turning their corn crop into moonshine and selling it to the soldiers stationed at Fort Washington. In no more than thirty years, this little hamlet changed beyond recognition, and by the time I was born it was become a city, grown fat on the proceeds of slaughter.

Great herds of pigs, a hundred strong or more, were whipped hourly through the unpaved streets, leaving a thick, stinking trail behind them, and their desperate squealing chorus from the slaughterhouses was in our ears from dawn until dusk. Grindhouses turned teeth, snouts, tusks, tails, and gristle into fertilizer, to be shipped to the South for use on the great cotton plantations. And in every other street in our part of the city were the render-houses where they boiled down the pig fat. Some of this went to the army to grease their bullet casings, and some to the cotton mills of the North to lubricate the spinning and weaving machines. What was left went to the other factories in the city, and the creeks and streams that fed into the mighty Ohio River foamed with the foul-smelling run-off from the dyers, tanners, candle-makers, soapmakers, and the rest. The sky and the streets alike were clotted with the smoking stench from the factory chimneys, a ripe, greasy fog that clung to everything it touched; and the black smoke of the steamers churning their way up and down the river all the livelong day contributed to the choking miasma that filled our lungs and stung our eyes.

Cincinnati was a rich city, with money streaming in just as fast as the hog meat was shipped out. For the factory owners living in their grand mansions in the leafy airiness of Auburn Hill, I daresay it was a splendid life. But my life was not. For the life I was born into was a hard one, and a brutal one.

I had two brothers a couple of years younger than me, and then a whole parcel of snot-nosed, grizzling little sisters. With them and Ma and Pa, there were ten of us in two rooms. We dealt with one another with a cruel, low cunning, using fists and teeth without a second thought, if it meant a rag to sleep under for the night or some scrap of food.

We lived close by the river, in the stench and filth of fish heads and pig muck and rotting vegetables and with the scutter and mess of immigrants all piled in on top of one another, with virtually no sanitation and no common language. Most of the men worked the wharves, loading and unloading the great steamboats. They spent their nights in the alehouse, and were always with an eye to the main chance, wanting to make as much cash as they could by doing as little work as possible. Most of the women made a living selling themselves in some alleyway. My parents were the same, with thievery and whoring their trades when they were sober enough. I was no different. Other girls my age were apprenticed out as milliners, or worked from dawn to midnight in the factories, but I had mastered the easier art of coin-from-pocket at an early age. And now it seemed it was time for the whoring.

Late one night in early spring, Pa staggered home with a man who stank of the drink, and had a sly, sideways look to him. He was dressed real sharp, with a fancy hat and waistcoat. I reckon he was a passenger on one of the steamboats come ashore for a night of low roistering, and had fallen in with my pa on his way.

Pa shouted me downstairs, and told me that now I was grown enough, I could earn my keep. He sent me into the privy outhouse, no more than a rotting shack that we shared with half a dozen other families, with this man. He was drunk, right enough, but it didn’t stop him being lustful. As soon as he had shut the door behind us, he was fumbling in his pants with one hand and grabbing at my hair with the other, forcing me to my knees.

I knelt in front of him, shaking all over. I was right sickened to do it, and too afraid not to. This moment’s hesitation was enough to make him land me a sharp crack across the ear. That decided me; I leapt to my feet and gave him an almighty shove. He staggered back, and lost his balance, catching his head on the wooden door where a big nail stuck out hung with scraps of paper, and then he fell down in a heap across the privy.

I pressed myself back against the wall, fearful for what I had done. I thought that any minute he would rise to his feet and land me one before carrying on what he had started. Worse, he’d tell Pa. I didn’t want to think what Pa would do to me. It wouldn’t be just his fists, it would be his buckle-belt at least. My back was already crisscrossed with scars; the last time he’d thrashed me it had been days before I could stir from my bed. But the man didn’t move, not a twitch. After a while I reached out my foot and kicked at his leg.

“Mister. Hey, Mister. Wake up.”

There was no reply, not even a groan or a sigh. His eyes were half-open, gazing milky up at the roof, and a little trickle of blood slid across his forehead. I stood there, staring down at him, dreading the thought of Pa coming to see what we were about. And then I had the sudden thought that perhaps he was dead. If so, Pa’s buckle-belt was the least of my worries.

A great rush of fear made me spring away from the door. Without a second’s thought I set to rummage through the man’s clothing to see what he had about him. In his pants pocket I found some coin, and in his waistcoat pocket a silver watch on a heavy chain. Then I legged out of there as fast as I could run, out of the privy outhouse, out of our street, and out into the maze of alleyways that led down to the river.

It was getting on toward dawn, and a cold gray mist was rolling in off the water. Most of the night’s revelers were gone, so the streets were as quiet as ever they got. There was a drunkard spewing up his guts in a doorway, and two women passed me, one with an eye that was beginning to black up and blood on her bodice, her friend holding her up as she wept her way along the street. Other than that I saw no one, and no one spoke to me. I ran as fast as I could through the narrow alleyways that led to the water’s edge.

One of my shoes was losing its sole, and at every step it flapped and caught, causing me once to fall and gash my hand. I kicked it off, and its broke-down fellow, too, and ran faster, stumbling on the uneven ground in my bare feet. My breath was coming in great ragged gasps, and I thought that any minute the hangman’s hand would reach out and grab me.

Eventually I could run no more, and stopped to catch my breath. I was out on the wharves by now, among the warehouses that lined the waterfront. There were some wooden crates piled up, and I found a space between them and crept inside.

Here I stayed for a while, trying to quiet my heaving gasps for air, and listening fearfully for the sounds of pursuit. All was quiet but for the heavy slap of the water against the sides of the ships, and the slow creak of their timbers, and the rats scuttling in the shadows beside me.

After a while I grew a little calmer, and tried to think what to do next. I supposed I’d run away from home, quite without meaning to. Where I would go, I had no idea. I had never thought about leaving Cincinnati, it had never crossed my mind that I could. But indeed, there was a great leaving of the place, especially by the Germans.

The Germans had been among the first to arrive and settle in the area, and I guess in the early days they were as accepted as any other. But as time wore on, feelings began to build against them. The German wharf-men worked cheaper and harder than the rest, and went home to their families at the end of the day, which caused great ill feeling among the men lingering in the alehouses. And their wives were neat and clean, scrubbing their doorsteps down and planting up their little gardens, which riled the slovenly women of our neighborhood.

This resentment was not confined to the river folk, but ran high in all parts of the town, the rich as well as the poor. The Germans had a great love of music and theater and gaiety of all kinds, and thought nothing of indulging themselves with these treats on a Sunday; and as well, a goodly number of them were Catholics. All in all, the pious folk of Cincinnati came to consider them unsuitable inhabitants of a God-fearing city.

The more that feelings grew against them, the more they were forced to live among their own kind. This meant that as more and more new Germans settled in, so the town became more divided, the Germans in one part, and everyone else in another. Laws were passed to keep them from some types of employment, and soon moves were afoot to drive them all out, if possible, for it was feared that they would come to overtake the place entirely. So, just as fast as new folk rolled in off the boats, clutching their baskets of sausage and black bread close to them and looking bewildered about them and not a word of English to be heard, so others rolled out in their wagons.

I am sure that the same was true in many of the towns in the East. It was the foreigners, Germans and Irish the most, who made up the main part of the wagon trains heading west, inspired by the tales of great forests ripe for the felling and with good hunting, rich meadows stretching to the horizon, with herds of wild horses running free, and anyone’s for the taking. There was talk of slow-moving rivers and fast-running streams, clean air and cloudless blue skies and the chance for every person, young or old, rich or poor, to make something better of themselves. It was no wonder that so many folks scratched together their few possessions and set off in pursuit of this dream, eager to escape the nightmare of the squalid struggle for survival in the backstreet slums.

It struck me now, that this was just the time of year when the wagons departed on the trail to the West. Their gathering point was some meadowland on the outskirts of the city, where they made ready to start on the first part of their journey to Independence, Missouri, a journey of some five hundred miles.

I had heard tell that in Independence the wagons collected in their hundreds, the little trickles of travelers from every town in the East joining together to form a great river that swept across the plains toward Oregon and California. I longed to see this great sight, for even with only a dozen or so wagons departing from Cincinnati, during the first week of spring our little stretch of meadow turned into a bustling marketplace.

Stalls set up with dried goods for purchase, peas and beans and rice, and there were drapers with silks and calicos, and wool merchants with bales of cloth, and trinket stalls with beads and other gewgaws that could be traded with the Indians on the way, or the Mexicos on arrival in California. The tallower was there with candles and lanterns and axle grease in buckets, and the cooper, to make or mend barrels. There would be a blacksmith sharpening knives and shoeing horses, cursing and yelling in the heat of his forge, and the clang of the hammers and the sparks flying up; and drovers with beeves and cows and mules for sale, all bellowing and braying and neighing. And there were cages filled with chickens, the hens clucking and squawking and the roosters crowing fit to burst, and dogs reputed to be fine ratters, and cats said to be great mousers.

Over all, a preacher yelling like enough to raise the dead in one corner, and the medicine man in another, offering Dr. Cooper’s Tonic and Mrs. Madison’s Liniment, guaranteed to mend everything from a fever to a broken leg. He made good money, for most women bought a bottle or two of his cure-all. No woman wanted to birth a baby on the journey, and it was well known that if you took a spoonful or so the early morning grips that showed a baby was started would disappear, and the baby with them.

It was a sight to see the wagons arriving day by day. They’d have their teams of heavy beeves pulling, with another yoke or two roped behind, and maybe a goat or a milk cow and a calf or two. The women in their caps and bonnets would be helped down from their high seats in front and they would go from stall to stall, fingering the goods and bartering, and their teamsters would load their purchases into the wagons. There would be some down-at-heel folks, looking to work their passage, and a few single men up on their glossy horses, intending to join with a train. These men would strut about with their fingers stuck in their waistcoats, stiff new-leather gun belts with shiny-handled guns in the holsters slung casually over their hips and cigarillos perched in the corners of their mouths, talking in loud voices of their plans for getting rich in California, at the same time pulling their hats low on their foreheads, to hide their assessing glances at the plump matrons and the pretty daughters.

It was possible to join a wagon train, even if you had no horse or wagon of your own. They went at walking pace, and if you could find someone to take on your belongings for a fee you could walk the trail with them. I felt in my pocket, and pulled out the coins I had taken. There were some dimes and quarters, and five silver dollars, too. I had never seen so much money in my life before. I had no belongings, but I had the fee right enough.

I poked my head cautiously out of my little hidey-hole, and looked to left and right. There was no one to see me.

I got to my feet, and set off, my legs shaking beneath me. I had decided. I would leave Cincinnati for good, and make the journey to the West.

It was a long walk out of the city. By the time I arrived at the meadow, near to fainting with hunger, the sun was well up, and all in fine swing with five or six wagons already arrived.

The air smelled of new bread and hot fat, making my mouth water and my stomach ache. Close to me a man was selling doughballs, four for a dime, hot from the pan and sprinkled with sugar. Being hungry was nothing new, but for the first time in my whole life, I could buy anything I wanted. And now I thought of my little brothers. I imagined saying to them, “Choose what you want, and eat as much as you like!” and their faces lighting up at the notion. I turned my money over and over in my pocket and my fingers knocked against the silver pocket watch.

I had all but forgot the watch, and how I had come by it. No one could prove where I got the coin from but a silver pocket watch was a different matter, and I thought I was a fool to have took it. I looked around me real quick and sharp. There was no one looking toward me in any particular manner. Casual as could be, I sauntered across the grass to where I had spied a ragged little lad, who I half knew. As I went, I took off my neckerchief, and folded the pocket watch into it, and held it in one hand, with a dime in the other.

When I reached the lad, I held out the dime and asked him if he wanted it. He nodded, yes, of course, and reached out to grab it, but I was quicker than he, and held it out of reach.

“You know my brothers, don’t you? You know where I live?”

He nodded.

“You take this”—I handed him the little package—“and give it to my ma. Just my ma, mind!—not my pa, you understand?”

He nodded again.

“And then you come back here, and I will give you this dime, and another one as well.”

Maybe he’d deliver the watch safe, and maybe he wouldn’t. Ma could hock it in the pawnshop and buy some food for the little o. . .