No. 25

The Elders in 1808 Cornelia

Dear Stewart,

You didn’t like this one, so I kept this one to myself. I let your mother read it and she said it was too romantic, and told me to get back to my chores. I knew that Cornelia was dropped. I was pushed—about the same age as Cornelia—and I could have been lost but God had me then and he has me now, and you, also, Dear Stewart. Well, your uncle Charles was moved by this one, or he was just being nice to me. He named his third daughter Cornelia.

In 1808 the Valentine Brother Family was on the move through the wilderness with their pioneering friends, Valentine entered the tributary first. The horses picking up on his tightening, they too pulled back and he fought, yelled, so could not hear his wife calling out behind him. Even if he had, he would have ignored it, for if he were to bend to her now, he would lose balance and toss it all for the strong currents. Winded and wet, he was finally on solid footing and turned around. When he saw the gash in her forehead, he turned the horses around to a bull’s eye view, alarmed by the catastrophe of her sinking shoulders, bun and bonnet. Her hair tangled and heavy. He scanned the wagon and began to count. He did it again. For once in his life, he wanted to be poor at math and memory.

His son Henry was running the riverbank, scanning rippled for his little sister, promising his mother that he would not go into rapids. She could not hear him confirm he understood the danger. He followed the edge, unaware of his progress, realizing that he now was out of sight of the caravan when he saw her limp body caught in a jam of felled trees.

He determined that he would not allow himself to fall. But to reach Cornelia and get her onto the log, he would have to find in his arms a manly set of them. He did his best to keep them dry. He tried not to look at her sleeping face and prayed to God for stamina. There they were, the two siblings, together in a holding pattern that he could manage. He held her in his arms the way he wanted his mother to see them when they would in a few moments be found, as if he was reading to her.

It took a chain of two or three men to wade into the water to turn Cornelia over her mother, who found another reserve of tears.

Henry, though, didn’t need assistance. He wanted to be find dry pants. Someone would have to dig a grave. He wanted to do it by himself. Next he wanted to start the fire by himself. Then he wanted to brush the horses by himself.  Then he wanted to trim and twist the grave markers by himself.

When it came time to sleep, he dragged his blankets as far from the crowd as possible, inching away more and more, counting off to avoid any disturbance trying now to throw him off, wondering if what he experienced that afternoon in the water, in his arms, was just the nature of frontier business transactions.

Either way, he wasn’t going to let it make him more wet, whatever it was.

—Miss Minnie

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel