When Sally O'Malley Discovered the Sea

One

Miz Broome chucked me out. Chucked me right out like I was chewed-on chicken bones.

“That’s the last straw, Sally O’Malley,” she called as she chucked my coat after me. “Goodbye, and good riddance.”

Jumpin’ jiminy! Due to an unfortunate incident with the pig and the church ladies, I was out and on my own. And so was the pig.

The sun was too strong for a coat, but my red knitted cap stayed put. I took long strides ahead, for there was nothing behind me but an angry Miz Broome and her River Hotel and Mineral Spring.

Still, where was I going? And what for? I had no purpose or destination, no place to belong, no one to depend on, no one to miss or to miss me. Nothing was holding me or calling me anywhere. I was aimless as a falling leaf. Alone.

But there are worse things than being alone. I knew that for sure.

A tiny shiver shook me. Fear? Not Sally O’Malley. It was more likely excitement, or maybe too much of the foul-smelling water from Miz Broome’s mineral spring. I just kept walking. Moses and the Israelites wandered the desert for forty years be-fore they figured out where they were going and why. I reckoned I’d wander on a while and hope it wouldn’t take me as long.

I ate as I walked, fed by the thimbleberries, huckleberries, and dark-blue berries of the salal shrubs that grew in thickets beside the road. My hands turned purple from the berries, and I rubbed them on my face and growled. Beware! I was hun-gry and ferocious.

If only I were purple all the time, so creepy that people would stay away. I hadn’t had many good experiences with people in my life, and I tended to keep clear of them.

Soon enough, I was bone-weary from the walking, tired as a hound with ten pups. And, I had to admit, a bit low-down from the turn of events. Though it was still light, and the evening lingered mild and sweet, I sought somewhere to sleep. “Let’s find me a place,” I said right out loud, and it was strange to hear a human voice. “Far enough from the road that I won’t get squashed by a wagon, but not so far that I get lost in the woods.”

Fir and cedar trees grew as close together as sardines in a can, and so tall I swore I could see angels sitting on the tops, flapping their wings at me. The ground was thick with ferns and bracken, and carpeted in fir needles. I gathered heaps of fir branches and made a pile, wrapped myself in my coat, and settled down with an oof. The ground was still warm, though a little damp, and soft but for lumps of fir cones.

It would do.

It was dark as the inside of an old boot when I jerked awake. Crickets and katydids chirped. The frogs by the river krek-keked. Foxes screeched like babies crying, and owls hoo-hooed at each other. Unknown critters scrambled and snuffled and snorted. What a rumpus.

I jumped to my feet, brushing off the ants and spiders. I hollered, “All of you, pipe down and let me sleep!” It didn’t work, but it didn’t matter. Before long, I was asleep again anyway.

At dawn, I was woke by a red-and-black woodpecker, near the size of a butter churn, hammering for his breakfast, and I gave up sleeping. Sweeping leaves, nee-dles, and spiderwebs from my face and clothes, I got to my feet and, having no other choice, relieved myself in the woods.

As I stood again, there was a sudden silence, as if all the birds and insects and crit-ters had gone away, leaving only me in an empty world. A funny feeling ran down my spine, and the hair on my arms lifted straight up, like prairie grass in spring. Turning my head ever so slightly and slowly, I looked behind me.

Oh, criminy! A lion! My heart thumped like a beaver’s tail on a riverbank. There was a lion, right there in the brush! A lion!

No, it was a leopard!

No, a cougar!

Anyway, it was a cat--a huge cat, reddish tan, bigheaded, pointy-eared. I stood there like a potted plant--not a muscle moving except for the pounding of my heart--and watched it.

The cat looked bigger, much bigger, and more menacing than a house cat. I had to admit it was not a leopard or a cougar, and likely just a bobcat, but still, a wild an-imal and dangerous. I knew some about facing wild animals, because of the dime novels about the Old West that I found hidden in the garden shed at the orphan home I had lived in before Miz Broome’s. Ned Buntline was my favorite author, but it was Old Bill Williams, mountain man, I recalled now. He once found himself facing a bear. I knew I should do what Bill did--wave my arms, make a lot of noise, and back up slowly. But I couldn’t. I was plumb frozen.

The big cat didn’t move either, just glared at me with its yellow eyes. My skin felt like it was crawling right off my body. Did bobcats attack people? Luckily, I had al-ready emptied my innards that morning, because I would have wet myself right there in fright.

It was perfectly quiet in the woods, like all creation was waiting for what would happen next. My stomach clenched, and my heart kept pounding. Would anyone notice I was gone, no longer among the living? Would someone find and bury my bones? Would anyone miss me? I took a deep breath, which rumbled in the si-lence.

Shucks, I wasn’t just going to stand there and be eaten. Buck up, Sally O’Malley, I thought, and my limbs unfroze a little. Also my voice. “Go away! Shoo!” Shoo? I’d scare the beast away by saying shoo? I’d have laughed if I weren’t so dad-blamed scared.

The bobcat still didn’t move.

Hope you were right, Bill Williams, I thought as I got noisier, waving my arms and shouting, “Go away! Git! Take off, you miserable varmint!” I took to chucking dirt clods and fir cones at the big cat. One hit him square on the nose.

He moved then. He opened his mouth, and I swear he was licking his lips, getting ready for Sally O’Malley for breakfast. His teeth shone in a beam of light, and I shook like a line of laundry in a windstorm. Then he opened wider and yawned, flicked his ears a time or two, turned, and walked away.

Yawned! He had yawned! And walked away! Was he saying I was too puny and in-significant to be worth eating? I was altogether mortified.

The bobcat was gone, but my hands were shaking. I was on the road just one day and night and already had run smack into a wild animal. Would I survive this jour-ney to who-knows-where?

I clasped my hands together to still them and took one more deep breath. I wasn’t going to get all peevish and nervy because of some big dumb cat who didn’t have the sense to eat me. Even so, I grabbed my coat and hightailed it out of the woods, in case he decided to come back and bring his family.

The only way ahead was . . . ahead. I wouldn’t go back to Miz Broome. For three years, I’d been a hired girl at her hotel outside Molalla, Oregon--ever since I turned ten and the orphan home sent me away. Miz Broome was stern and stingy and didn’t pay me much, but the city folk who came to drink the awful mineral wa-ter would often leave me some coins, and once even a dollar. I jingled the coins in my pocket. I should have enough to keep me fed for a spell, were I careful.

So on I went. As I trudged along, I kept an eye out for the return of the bobcat or some other hungry critter. In the distance, Mount Hood winked her snowy peak at me. She was solid, familiar, and I felt safer knowing she was there, watching.

Doug fir groves, so old that Noah might have sailed past them, ran along the road nestled against the foothills of the mountains. In places, farmers had cleared right down to the ground for farms and ranches, and the smell of cows was heavy in the air.

Tired as I was, I found myself grinning. The cow scent reminded me of the time I tied Madame Cruddly’s new bonnet, trimmed with fake roses and a stuffed bird, onto Farmer Gray’s cow. Madame Cruddly was the boss of the orphan home. Her lips had never known a smile or a kind word, and her gray hair was wrapped tight around her head like an iron helmet. She was stick-straight, skinny as a wet wea-sel, with cold and evil snake blood in her veins, and everyone was plumb afraid of her, especially Mr. Cruddly, who mostly holed up in his garden shed. I myself was particular to vex her whenever I could, and saw a lot of the root cellar as a result.

She loved that hat, but it suited the cow better, and that’s a fact. It was a shame the Grays’ billy goat ate it. The hat, not the cow.

Two

The air was filled with summer--bird songs and the drone of bees, the scent of mock-orange blossoms, and the spicy smell of the incense cedars. I kept walking. A gentle breeze on my cheek made me feel strangely empty, full of longing, like there was something I wanted. But what?

I shook my head. “Sally O’Malley,” I said loudly, “this is not a time to be fanciful, so stop right now. You’re probably just hungry.”

As the sun grew high, I took off my coat and made a bundle of it. I’d rather have thrown it away, but I knew I’d regret that when it cooled tonight. Coats should have wheels, so they could be pulled along. Or wings, so they could fly behind until needed.

How imaginative. I was getting lightheaded from hunger.

I knew what hunger felt like and what it could do to you. It was not infrequent at the orphan home.

Up ahead, I saw a store. It was worn and weather-beaten, with small windows and a big porch stacked with sacks and crates. Dresses and britches and straw hats hung from the rafters.

I hesitated on the porch. I didn’t want to go in. There would be people there. I didn’t fancy many people--well, really any people--so maybe I should just pass by. But it was a store, and stores had food, my stomach insisted.

Inside, it smelled of woodsmoke, coffee, old wood, and new pickles. Chairs circled a great black stove. I plucked a pickle from a barrel, sat right down to rest my feet, and looked around. I swore everything folks ever thought of could be found in that store. Hoes and plows and rakes, laundry tubs and butter churns. Shelves up to the ceiling crammed with sacks of potatoes, dog biscuits, and dried beans. Tins of corn plasters, laxatives, and rheumatism cures. Thick red carpets and white lace cur-tains. Ladies’ hats as big as wagon wheels, all befeathered and beflowered, and frilly shirtwaists with balloon sleeves too wide to fit through a doorway.

“You buyin’ or just lookin’?” asked the weedy clerk at the counter, leaning on the big old wheel of a coffee grinder. “This ain’t no picture gallery.” Weedy scratched the stubble on his chin. “And you owe me for the pickle.”

I roused myself and dropped some coins on the counter. “Give me three apples, not too wrinkly, and a small piece of yellow cheese.”

“Ain’t seen you around here before,” Weedy said as he wrapped my cheese in greasy paper.

I considered whether to tell him anything. He could be in cahoots with Miz Broome or the Cruddlys. Maybe they were looking for me, wanting me back. But, deep down, I knew they didn’t want me back. Nobody was wanting me. Never had. I lift-ed my chin in the air. “I ain’t been here before. I’m running away.”

“From who?”

I shrugged. Didn’t trust him. Wasn’t telling him anything.

“Where you headed?”

I shrugged again.

“You might want to think some about that so you’re not walking in circles.” Weedy scratched his chin again. “Was I runnin’, I’d head west. Always wanted to go west. ‘Go west, young man,’ some newspaperman said. ‘Go west.’ ”

My curiosity overcame my reluctance. “You mean the Old West, where Billy the Kid and Jesse James live?” I’d read about them in Mr. Cruddly’s garden shed.

“Nah. I mean the West of this country right now.”

“I thought Oregon was the West.”

“There’s more West out there.” His little black eyes glittered behind his glasses. “It’s the future. Hope and promise, new opportunities for this new century com-ing.”

“Then what are you doing here? Why aren’t you going west?”

He pulled a torn, dirty handkerchief from his pocket, blew his nose, and stuffed the kerchief back in the pocket. “I reckon I just don’t have the gumption.”

“Well, I do,” I said, and I took a big chomp of an apple. The West. I liked the sound of it. Future. Opportunities. Hope and promise. Yessirree. That suited me. I’d be running to something, not just from. “Maybe I’ll go. How would someone go west from here?”

“I ain’t tellin’.” He shook his head. “Not right to set a little lady like you on the road. There’s wolves out there, coyotes and cougars, men who’d shoot you soon as look at you. I won’t have no part in sending you into danger.”

Shucks. He wouldn’t go himself, but wouldn’t help me. How might I wangle out what I needed to know? I dropped two pennies on the counter and took another pickle from the barrel, my mouth puckering happily at the sourness. I do love me a pickle.

Finally, I said, “Let’s say a big, burly young fellow came in here and asked you the best way to go west. What would you tell him?”

Weedy raised one eyebrow at me before he answered. “First, I’d tell him to get a wagon, a compass, and a large, tough companion with a gun, a Bowie knife, or even a heavy shovel. Then I’d say, ‘Take this here road outside as far north as it goes, young fellow, and then turn left into the setting sun. That’s west. Go far as you can west, and you’ll get to the very end of this country.’ ”

The end? Sounded a little spooky. “What’s after that?”

“After that, just water. The sea.”

I’d heard some about the sea. “Lots of water, right? Bigger than a river.”