“Didn’t have much to do today,” Will said. “Thought I’d be of more use at the farm. Abercrombies were planting beans.”
“I don’t care what you thought,” Pa said, frowning. “I’m paying your school fees. Which means you should sit in class and learn. I expect you to be there, unless I’ve given you leave not to be.”
“But Pa—”
“Did you hear me, son?” Pa said. “Your duty is to go to school. Nothing more. Not farming. And certainly not on your friend’s farm. I hire others to cultivate my claim, so there’s not even a good reason for you to work on the land I own. You’ll be in a town job someday, and you need an education.”
“I’ll rub down Valiente for you, Pa,” Will offered, hoping Pa would leave the carriage house and not lecture him anymore.
“A man takes care of his own mount.” Pa continued to curry Valiente. Silently, Will finished tending Shanty, measured out oats for Valiente, then headed inside their home.
When Mac finished grooming Valiente, he followed Will into the house, still with a frown on his face. The boy had no business playing hooky from school. Mac took the back stairs up to the bedroom he shared with his wife Jenny. He’d have to discuss Will's infraction with her, and she was often soft on the boy.
Jenny sat in a chair reading and glanced up. “Hard day?” she asked.
He took off his cravat and sighed. “I just saw Will in the carriage house.”
“Oh?” She sounded surprised. “I didn’t hear him come home from school.”
Mac laughed sharply. “School? He didn’t go to school today.”
“Where was he?”
“He was truant. He went to Daniel’s to plow a field,” Mac said. “I swear, I don’t know what’s gotten into that boy. He used to be so easy, and now he causes problems every time we turn around.”
“He’s sixteen, Mac.” Jenny smiled. “What were you like at sixteen?”
“This isn’t about me,” Mac said, unhooking his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “At sixteen, you were already his mother.”
“Yes. But boys are different. They grow up more slowly.” She stood and crossed the room to him. “Or so you’ve always told me.”
Mac leaned over and kissed her. At thirty-one and after eight pregnancies, her waist had thickened, but her hair was still the light brown he’d always loved, and her smile lit up whatever room she occupied. He pulled her close. “How long until supper?”
“Not long enough,” she murmured against his mouth. “So tell me again, what was William doing today?”
“You’ll have to ask him. All he told me was the Abercrombies were planting beans.”
“You didn’t chastise him, did you?”
“What was I supposed to do, Jenny? The boy belongs in school.”
“You know he’s bored at the academy. Maybe a tutor would suit him better.”
“There aren’t any tutors in town who are any better than the academy teachers.” Mac shook his head. “He needs the discipline of school.”
“Don’t be so hard on him,” Jenny said. She patted his arm. “Wash up, then come downstairs. I’ll go find him and have a word.”
When Mac went down for supper, he found his whole family in the parlor. Jenny sat with little Maggie on her lap—hard to believe their baby was almost two. Eliza and Lottie leaned on their mother, pestering her with questions. Maria knitted in a chair by the fire, and Caleb and Nathan played marbles on the carpet. Will had his nose buried in yesterday’s paper.
“What’s the War news, son?” Mac asked as he entered the room. Eliza and Lottie left their mother and rushed to hug him. He boosted Lottie, almost seven, onto his hip.
“Secessionists beat the Union in Florida,” Will said. He didn’t look up from the paper. “Somewhere called Olustee. That was on February 20, almost two weeks ago.”
“What else is in the paper?”
“The telegraph line from California to Portland was completed yesterday.” Will sounded more animated with that news. “First telegram to arrive from California said the Union is winning in Richmond. We’ll get more current war news in Oregon now.”
“News from the East to San Francisco, then all the way north to Portland,” Cal crowed from the floor.
“I heard,” Mac said. Throughout the day, men had stopped in Mac’s office in town to discuss the telegraph connection with California. It would be an enormous help to business. The speed of communications had increased considerably since Mac arrived in Oregon sixteen years ago. Then, it took months for letters to reach Oregon or California from the East. Within a few years, travel between Oregon and California became easier, but travel and communications from Eastern cities like Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., were still slow. The telegraph would bring the nation together.
Or it would, if not for the infernal War. For the past three years, the nation had fought state against state, brother against brother. Arguments between the North and South influenced politics in Oregon as much as in the East. There might not be battles between opposing armies in the West, but neighbors abandoned friendships when arguments over the War broke out.
Mac was a Yankee through and through. But long-time acquaintances who had emigrated from Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky favored the Secessionists. Mac was careful before he voiced his opinions outside the house, though he tried to instill his own political sentiments in his children.
When the family moved to the dining room for supper, the boys continued to chatter about the telegraph, with thirteen-year-old Maria listening intently. She was a quiet girl, the daughter Mac adopted in California in 1850 after her mother died. Jenny had gladly taken Maria in, and the two of them were now inseparable.
After supper, the children dispersed, leaving Mac and Jenny alone at the table. Mac smoked a cigar, and Jenny sipped a cup of tea.
“What would you think if I took Will and Cal to Portland next week?” Mac asked. “I know Will played hooky today. But I have business to conduct, and I could show them the telegraph.”
“There’s been a telegraph office in Oregon City for months,” she said.
“Yes, but I do need to go to Portland. And we could send a telegram to my agent in San Francisco—it would go along the entire line in Oregon.”
