Prudence (25 page)

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B
ut then on our way we was hiding in the brush. We had just turned around the Mississippi and were getting ready to cut north. That’s where the portage trail was from the big lake Winnibegoshish they call it and from there we would find Bawaatang it’s called and that would lead us north. I knew my way around and I knew the rivers and streams and lakes because I had been dragged from camp to camp while our mother was still alive and I could have been a proper woods girl one of those Indians who knows things but I never had the chance before or after because while we were waiting out the sun Felix and Davey and Billy and Ernie and Frankie came near and they shot my sister and she died there shaking and shivering in the leaves while they watched and that was the end of my dreams there was no point anymore. And that’s where I stayed even after Frankie died and they closed the Pines and moved back to Chicago. I was stuck around those people and they weren’t you and they weren’t my people even Felix though he were always good to me. We had some good times and he was always gentle but he was a man like all the others I had known as a girl. The only one of them worth anything was Frankie and that’s just how it goes the good die young. My sister and you are proof of that and so was Frankie. He was the one who came to me after you got shot the rest of them went about with their business it was only Frankie who came to me. He stood there in the door of that little room they put me in. He had too much respect
too much kindness to barge in and do what he really wanted to do he was better than most men. No. No he wouldn’t ever force himself on a woman or take advantage of her. He said things to me that night standing there in the doorway his arms so strong and delicate you could tell he was a gentle man and he looked at me and said he would come back. I’ll come back and make this right. I’ll come back and fix things he said such was his noble gentle heart. Of all the goddamn people in this world he’s the only one worth anything because he’s the only one who never lied to me or let me down he said he’d write and he did and he sent me that necklace which is the treasure of my heart. Only he didn’t come back. He didn’t come back but that was hardly his fault.

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I
don’t care what Billy has to say he is a piece of work himself. And just tonight I saw him which is the reason for this letter I guess. I needed a ride and we all pay with what we have little did I know way back when you and I were leaving that school we would pay like we did. Not during those long days when we slept in windrows and in barns and we worked here and there for our keep it wasn’t work like I’ve been forced to do since it was honest and it left me tired and just emptied right out not all balled up and anxious like I’ve felt these many years oh you could give me that kind of work forever and I would be happy mucking out horse stalls and feeding slops and picking potatoes and beets and stirring lye and plucking chickens and cleaning fish and everything the poor people between Flandreau and here needed done in the hot days of July that we spent walking our way north and east. Our plan was to get to Canada and find ourselves a home on one of the reserves up there and everyone can say what they want but those dirt farmers struggled in them days and they were by and large good people and they often put us up for a few days or a week they were simple people and they wouldn’t stand us
being used unfairly they come to our country to avoid all sorts of unfairness themselves but I can’t say the same for those Washburns except for Frankie he was always good to me. Billy told me some things and really made me think back on the days at the Pines I’d rather forget and I tried to shut my ears but he told me anyway. But God Jesus in heaven I know that some people like poetry and all that pretty stuff but words aren’t made for that all words do is tear a person apart. They are bad and are used for bad no matter what smart people say and I don’t care what language it is people talk only because you can’t go around shooting people all the time and that’s the truth. But Frankie. He was different. That is love and make no mistake about it that is love and not that other thing. I don’t believe what Billy said I know the type of breed who is always jealous of everything everyone else has so what he says against Frankie is bound to be all twisted up. After White Earth which we avoided because they were always on the lookout for runaways like us we ran out of places that would have us the farms got smaller and smaller and there were more trees and so we had to get by living the way we’d grown up it were no hardship eating grass seeds and picking leeks and catching fish here and there at the beaver dams where they got trapped but the days were so long and sometimes with the storms that come at night it was impossible to see anything we didn’t know the country there so we had to travel at first light and dusk and it took us a lot of time to make any progress. That day we were hiding in the hazel brush it were so dense that no one could see in there not anything and we knew by then how to be very quiet and still but Billy was enough of an Indian to sniff us out but not enough of a man to see his enemy before he shot. We heard them coming Felix and Billy and Ernest and Frankie and the quiet one David and then they got quiet and we thought they left and since we couldn’t really see them I jumped and I guess so did you when the shot came and you started shaking your arms and legs all over the place and your blood
was all over me and it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before all the blood left and they dragged us out of the brush and beheld you and Billy saw what he had done and Felix was rough with your body and rough with me and with Frankie too who was sensitive and not made for such troubles. I didn’t even get to say a word before Felix took me up in his arms and carried me out of the woods and I didn’t want to give him or anyone else the satisfaction of anything so I wouldn’t say anything when they asked me their questions and when the Doctor checked me over and even when they buried your body I wouldn’t give them any satisfaction at all but then the body washed up under the dock and they knew how empty it all was and how big the mistakes they had made and then it was like they owed me something like they owed me your life and that’s a joke because that was a debt they couldn’t pay and when everything was settled and done they kept me because they didn’t know where to send me I never did tell them where I was from because to go back to that awful place and without you by my side would have made losing you more awful than it was in the first place. So they kept me and made me sleep down in Felix’s shack and after they left I had to rely on him to bring me to school and to get me back across the river and I watched his hands as they prepared our food and as they cleaned our clothes and fed the fire. I couldn’t stand the sight of them those thick fingers and their dainty fine gestures that looked so strange on such a big man. I hated them and hated him and I couldn’t help it because as I say Felix was good to me but there was something separate in him some watchful thing like he knew more than he was letting on. I was hard on him at times and I guess I’m sorry for that because he would just look confused and hurt like some bear that had been shot in the gut and just sat down in the leaves too ignorant to know what had happened to it but once in a while Frankie would send things back to me from overseas little letters and sometimes a
present and he was forever sending things to me because I owned his heart no matter what Billy says. Though when he visited me that night and stood in the doorway and said he was sorry so so sorry what did he have to be sorry for if he didn’t do it? Frankie wrote me and called me DEAREST and told me he’d take me away from this terrible place and he sent me that necklace with a heart on it from England and we know that hearts mean LOVE. I was certain Frankie would come back and take me away when the war was over and we would make happy lives together and maybe even live in the big house just me and him. But Frankie never did come back but Billy did. I just can’t believe it and I can’t have you in a world like that. He said that Frankie is the one who done the shooting and that he never loved me but you can’t trust a man to tell the truth. I remember hearing Billy right before the shot. It was Billy I heard right before you got shot saying “wait, wait, Frankie” that much is true I remember that clear as anything but I don’t know what he meant. Why would Billy be saying wait wait Frankie if Billy done it after all? And after Billy told me those terrible things and did what he did between my legs he gave me that dress the one meant for his wife though I don’t care I’ll wear it anyway and they will see. I only wanted my sister and you but the world won’t let me keep either one it surely won’t. Why after all these years would he say such a thing. All that death was behind us. All of it was gone and done with. And why did my heart beat so fast when he said it, those words I had waited for so long. The world too harsh a place for such a thing to be a lie. It must be true. It must be. So it’s time for me to make some decisions for myself.

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I
t’s getting on toward mid-morning. Richard has gone out to find us some whiskey and you’d think that it’d be easy to find such a thing in a broken-down village like this but maybe it’s because the
only place you can be sure to find it is in an Indian’s gut or a logger’s gut not on the shelves. We already drank up the rest of what we had yesterday and all last night and the gin too though that’s as terrible as the plants they come from all scratchy and patchy you see them and ground hemlock around the blueberry patches and they make my skin crawl and so does the gin but we drank what we had because what them loggers say is probably true that it is liquid courage and you and me need all the courage we can get to get to where we are going. I already got everything else ready yesterday they sell it right on the shelves of the store and I bought it all proper like a lady who runs her own house and the man says to me what you need that for and I said well I got some rats I gotta take care of and he said well by God you’re staying over at the Wigwam why don’t you let Harris worry about it and I said they don’t take proper care of the upper rooms and so I will because I won’t sleep with a rat and I think he got my meaning because he straightens up and he says in all his years in the village he never once saw a rat and I said well then why do you sell the stuff then and he said people use it for this and that but for mice mostly and I said oh well that’s probably what I am hearing at night. Mice. And so I got it and I’m ready. I don’t need anyone where I’m going. Just you. Just my Grace. People say what I am about to do is a terrible thing but the world is a terrible thing and that’s the truth. And I’m doing you a favor you don’t need the world and I don’t need the world but we need each other and so we’re going to have to stick together and you have to listen to me I’m taking you to a good place you better believe it.

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T
he train’s just come in. The passengers are getting off the usual people but there is a small man that just stepped off he has a funny way of walking and he looks very serious. He don’t belong here. But neither do we my sweet, my sweetest heart. We won’t be
here much longer not to worry. So I am going to stop writing. I’m not alone I got you. And I’ll be seeing you soon anyway in the sweet by-and-by and perhaps there I will get to hold you in my arms and when you get older you can hold me in yours and we will have quite a time and the fields will be green and wide and life will be what we make of
it.

THE WIGWAM—AUGUST 3, 1952

N
ot long after the maid found Prudence, the sheriff came. After him, the coroner. Soon, everyone in the village, Indian and white and in between, had gathered outside the hotel, in front of the hardware store and the grocer’s, on the platform that served the depot, and in the Wigwam itself.

It was, as dramatic events go, quiet. There wasn’t much fuss. It wasn’t that kind of village. And it was too hot, in any event, to do more than sit and wonder and shake one’s head. Rat poison. And with a baby on the way. The only disruption had been when Felix barged into the Wigwam and up to Prudence’s room and insisted on accompanying her body to the coroner’s office off the reservation.

The sheriff, sweating through his uniform, looked dully at him.

“You family, Chief?”

“I’m her father.”

“You don’t look it.”

Felix shrugged.

The sheriff looked at Felix and then around at the others and then at the small room itself, the dust blooming off the sills with every dry, cracked breath of the window. The room was nothing much. A narrow iron-framed bed covered with white sheets and a neatly folded gray army blanket rolled up at the foot. A three-drawer dresser with a white enameled washbasin and matching pitcher on
the top. The top drawer of the dresser was slightly ajar, a pair of white cotton women’s underwear hung out over the drawer front, drying. A washcloth and bar of soap rested on an enameled tray next to the basin. A dirt-stained floral-print dress lay crumpled in the corner. A black clutch stood on the dresser. A silver necklace and heart pendant lay on top of a long, neatly folded letter next to a clutch of dried flowers on the windowsill, and there was also a bottle of gin there, and a yellow cardboard box, and a single, bent spoon. A brandy bottle had been set carefully in the wastebasket on top of crumpled brown craft paper and some clothing tags. Next to the only chair, over which had been folded a short wool jacket, was a small red cardboard suitcase.

“Is that true?” asked the sheriff of no one in particular.

No one answered.

“I asked if that’s true or not.” This time he took the time to cast his blood-rimmed eyes at those gathered in the small room; at Felix, at Billy, then at Harris and the washing girl who had discovered the body.

“No,” said Harris. “No, that ain’t true.”

The sheriff looked hard at Felix.

“So that ain’t true.”

“That’s my girl,” said Felix.

“So it is true.”

“That’s my girl,” said Felix.

“Jesus Christ. Fine. Fine, fine, fine.”

So her body was loaded onto a canvas stretcher, covered with a white sheet, and handed down the narrow stairs like a ham in paper. And Felix, looking very out of place, rode in the back of the cruiser, last in the caravan of official vehicles that sped off toward the county seat, though now there was no rush. Everyone watched them go. Felix sat straight in the backseat with his hands on his lap and his cap dusting the headliner. He looked for all the world like one of
those cigar-store Indians; for all the world as though he’d been turned to wood. They watched until the dust and the heat and the grasshoppers—surprised, interrupted—resumed their dreary duties of marking time in a place where time didn’t matter anymore.

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T
hey saw the Jew that day. And they remembered him later when they bothered to think about it. This was 1952, and no one had seen a Jew on the reservation before. Even the men who had served in the war hadn’t seen any. None in Minneapolis in 1944, when they had been fed roast beef at the Milwaukee Road Depot before shipping out. And none in Europe, either. Not alive. Not dressed, anyway, as this one was, in a black suit and a black hat. They saw him step off the train and adjust his hat and wipe his forehead and then disappear into the Wigwam only to reappear a few minutes later with a small suitcase in one hand and a soda in the other and set off down the highway.

“What was that?” asked Billy Cochran.

The others looked after him as he walked out to the highway and turned west, picking his way through the uncut weeds on the shoulder of the macadam.

“Christ Almighty, I think it was a Jew,” said Dickie Jr., who’d been to Mittelbau-Dora.

“A what?”

“The last of his goddamn
tribe.”