A Light in the Wilderness (29 page)

“No surety I win this case.”

“No. But you have to try. Let’s go inside. I’ll buy those back for you.”

“No.” Letitia straightened her shoulders, adjusted her worn straw hat, and opened the door to the store. “Suh.”

The clerk looked up from the string holder he refilled.

“I will buy that tea set and the candlesticks. In the window. In time. If you keeps them for me?”

“They’re costly.” He spoke the words with kindness. Did he know their story?

Letitia saw him look to Nancy.

“She’ll pay,” Nancy said. “And I’ll pay for them myself if need be. Please keep them back, with her name on them, could you?”

“Got anything to put down?”

“I’ll bring a firkin of cheese in tomorrow, if you keeps them back.”

“Done. What name shall I write on them?”

She hesitated only a moment. “They belong to Mrs. David Carson.”

She returned the next day with Micah Read to deliver the cheese and meet the attorney. He’d arrived the winter past into the Territory and had a partner in Corvallis.

“He won’t have any loyalties to G.B. Smith or anyone else, being new,” Micah said. “But he’ll be made aware that G.B. Smith has few friends and you have many.”

“Not so many, but good friends.”

“More than you’d realize. People are tired of the exclusion laws and property laws only allowing whites to claim land. We’re tired of the constant slave-state talk. It’s a matter of principle whether Oregonians stand for justice or power alone. People admire you, Letitia, for carrying on for your family. I don’t know anyone who feels Smith was fair in his handling of the estate.” He stopped before a door. “Mr. A.J. Thayer hails from New York. We’ll see if he’s up to the task.”

The lawyer had kind, calming eyes, even if he did speak with short, clipped sentences. “This is an injustice. The law was meant
to address this very kind of travesty.” His office held boxes yet unpacked sitting beneath a table he used for a desk. Letitia wondered if Joseph Gage had made it. “If you’d been his legal wife, able to inherit, none of this would be an issue.” He was thoughtful. “We’ll make this a labor dispute case, requesting payment for services rendered. I’ve only been here two months and I’ve already heard things about Greenberry Smith I’d rather not know. I’ll take your case, with pleasure.”

In March, Letitia’s lawyer posted a summons in the
Statesman Journal
to one Henry Walker (whom Davey had told that Letitia owned all the cows but seven) and Thomas Knighton (from whom Davey had purchased Charity with Letitia’s money way back in Missouri—he was one of their drovers). “I’ve also seen who put in claims against the estate. G.B. is getting paid for his ‘expenses.’ Davey’s son put in and was paid $242 for labor.”

“What labor?” They were in the lawyer’s office. “That boy rarely lift a hand to help his daddy. Maybe he claim he be paid for going to California. You heard any more about the buyer comin’ in or when?”

“Not a word. No evidence that the land’s been sold. Nothing about the larger herd either. I suspect Smith sold them outside of the auction or kept them for himself. We might not get those cows back.”

“He must be keeping them somewhere. No one’s seen ’em,” Letitia said. “I goes back to look now and then.”

“I can’t get you the land, I’m sorry. But maybe we can get you money for your labor and those cows wrapped with a little justice.”

What would justice look like, Letitia wondered. Her color kept her from being seen as a legal wife, as someone who could inherit, who could even testify against a white man. Her color and her gender kept her from ever voting to make changes in these laws that threatened to exclude her and her children or from making life better for all women and children. Letitia thought of Betsy. She too knew about being wronged. She too was as amputated from
the land as Letitia was. They were both staying when they’d soon be required to leave.

In February of 1854, a little over a year after the auction, her lawyer was ready to sue. He’d taken “witness statements” and she had witnesses to help her cause.

“Does I have to speak to the court against him? What if they takes me or my children away?” They sat in his office, now lined with bookcases and a shiny leafed potted plant at the corner of his desk.

“Where are you staying?”

“In Polk County, with the Gages. I never knew when G.B. come in the night and force us out so I took up the Gages’ kind offer. I be going south to the Cow Creek Valley to help a family birth their baby, coming back and forth. You tell me when to be where and I be there.”

He nodded. “I’ll be speaking for you, Mrs. Carson.” Thayer had never asked and she had never told him, but it pleased her that he called her by that name. “Much of this will go back and forth on paper. But you’ll be sworn in official for the laying out of facts. I’ll be the one to question Mr. Greenberry Smith. You won’t have to say a word. I will ask the questions. Now that we’ve found Walker and Knighton, we have good evidence not only that you worked for Mr. Carson but that you were also the owner of those missing cows. We’re going to sue him for $5,000.”

She began to hope, though he warned her that the ins and outs of justice could take months, maybe even years. She had waited a long time to decide to stand out. But she’d also waited to find a man to love, to have two healthy children to raise; even longer to feel free and safe. She could wait to seek justice.

Letitia and her children lived in three places that year: with the Gages, then with the Eliff household where a baby was due in the Cow Creek Valley of southern Oregon, and then back to what had
once belonged to her and Davey. She always visited the farm when she came for legal proceedings, walked the fields, checked the trees, chopped at blackberry bushes crouching in. Roth wobbled behind her, stood with her when the children raced among the apple trees.

The seasons changed. When it came time to roast the camas, Letitia and the children went with Little Shoot, traveling a few miles to where the clan dug the hole and built the fire to roast the roots. They stayed the day, watching the stick games and gambling stones pass between quick hands. Letitia knew she wasn’t of these fine people, but she felt a kinship with them. In some ways the time with the group took her back to when she lived in the slaves’ houses as a child, everyone kin, everyone looking out for each other. And despite the uncertainties of the future, she felt safe. Not just with the Kalapuya but within her heart. There was no certainty, no papers that could protect her. She had to live every day trusting that with friends and God’s help she could put this latest cower to rest. It required repetition.

Later that fall, her attorney met her at the farm. He said he wanted to see what they had built together. The buildings stood empty, the barn door swung on one leather hinge. No one had moved there yet. Letitia and Betsy picked apples and put them in a basket as they waited for the attorney. Letitia looked for evidence of the cows returning. She’d seen a cow pie near the barn, and tracks but no animals.

Thayer arrived and looked up at the odd-shaped hill. “Heard about this landmark. It really does have a coffin look to it.” He dismounted, removed his hat. “Hot.” He wiped his wide forehead with his forearm. “But not humid like New York.” He said the word like “New Yak.”

She offered him an apple and he bit, the crunch clear and sharp.

“We’ve gotten a response from Mr. Smith’s attorney. He’s contesting any number of points. But we expected that.” He was quick to reassure her. “A jury has been impaneled and we’re going to court.”

The palms of her hands began to sweat. “I needs to be there?”

“It isn’t necessary.”

But she’d already decided. “I wants to be.” Like every woman of color, her life was a blend of fitting in and standing out. In that court, for her children and herself, she needed to model stepping up.

The months of waiting had taught her that she did not pursue this lawsuit out of desperation or fear; she could see her way through into the future and it no longer frightened her. She had a new story to tell. No, this lawsuit was seeking justice for her children and for Davey and maybe, one day, for another woman who fell in love with a man of a different color. It was one small way to heal a wounded world.

The courtroom was on the second floor of the new county courthouse. It housed linseed-oiled chairs and a large desk that the District Court judge sat behind. He looked tired from traveling the circuit to various inns and barrooms transformed into courtrooms. At least Corvallis boasted a proper site to conduct legal affairs. Along the wall twelve men fidgeted on spindly chairs. Letitia assumed they were hoping this wouldn’t last long. The judge’s name was Williams.

“Fair, wise. Politically astute. This is an important case for him to be assigned,” Thayer whispered to her. “Look who else is here. Bois is a territorial prosecuting attorney, Wilson a deputy US district attorney, and there’s even a deputy United States Marshal.”

“They expecting trouble?” she whispered.

“Political trouble maybe, depending on how this all comes out.”

“Do I . . . need to worry they remove me? That exclusion law?”

“No, no. They repealed it a few months ago. Maybe the news didn’t reach the Umpqua Valley what with the Indian war going on there.” He patted her hand.

“I knows one of those men.” Letitia nodded to the jury chairs.

“Which?”

“Rinehart. He came in ’45 with me and Davey. I midwife his boy, Charles, back in Missouri.”

“Good, that’s good.”

“He know G.B. Smith too, come in that same company.”

“Any others?” Thayer took notes.

“Maybe if I hear the names, but no.”

“Fortunately several came recently, in ’52. And from free states like Ohio and New York and Massachusetts. Most jurors are from slave-holding states. Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia.” He checked off a list.

“None from Missouri?”

“One. Bounds, but he got here in ’50 so I doubt he knows about G.B. Smith. I think we have a fair group.” He patted her hand. His felt cool.

Visitors filled the chairs behind them. A man with a pad took notes. “The
Statesman
,” her lawyer said. “This is a big case in the Territory, one that speaks to justice. Pro-slavery advocates are especially interested. We’ll see what kind of state our Oregon intends to be.”

G.B. Smith sat beside and across from Letitia and her attorney. His face flushed when he looked at her and she realized her lawsuit had embarrassed him, made him public in a way he didn’t want. He wore Davey’s vest bought at the auction.
Hope
it keep him warm.

Thayer presented their case, how he’d come up with the $5,000 claim based on her years of labor and the value of the cows.

G.B.’s lawyer, Kelsay, replied. “First of all, my client has a bill of sale proving that this woman was nothing but a slave bought by the deceased back in Missouri.”

“No,” Letitia whispered to Thayer. “I had free papers. He know that. He tried to take them from me back in Missouri on patrol. Sarah Davis know I’m free. We ask her.”
Not being chased.
Nothing to fear. Not going to die.
She caused her heartbeat to calm.

“Something wrong, Mr. Thayer.”

“No, your honor.” Thayer continued, “But if the defendant has
such a bill of sale, would it not be helpful to the court for him to produce it? I suspect it is a myth. And we can produce a witness who would testify to the plaintiff’s free status at the time of her overland journey.”

“Mr. Kelsay?”

“We’ll provide it to the court. Therefore,” Kelsay continued, “when her master died she was owed nothing. Her emancipation is payment enough. Secondly, the seven and a half years she claims to have worked for the deceased as a free Negro under contract is a lie. We have witnesses saying she was often sick, so sick she stayed with Joseph Gage and family and the deceased paid for all her care during that time when he had no return in labor for six months or more. When she was delivered of her child, she did not work for months.” He looked at his notes. “About the cows. When were the twenty-nine cows she claims are hers purchased? Are there bills of sale for said cows? No.” Kelsay poked at his palm for emphasis. “In return, she’s had the use of the deceased’s ten cows for ten years earning money from cheese and butter and beef, so she’s already been compensated well beyond the entitlement for labor that she claims.”