Crooked River (3 page)

Now, my Pa had done a lot of terrible things in his life. I could name more than a few of them. He had beat a fellow within an inch of his life. Shot a neighbor's
dog for drinking a pan of milk in our springhouse. Thrown a chair once at our poor Ma.

But nothing as dreadful bad as putting a murderer in our own house, above our own heads.

Amos insisted that there wasn't any other place. “Can't have some savage running loose in the woods, killing other poor folks. You want that, Reb?” Amos had said. “He's just gonna stay here until the trial. Pa's got him in leg irons and chains. Ain't gonna hurt no one.”

It was true that our settlement on the Crooked River didn't have a jail yet. It had one narrow mud road called Water Street, which ended at the river. About two dozen cabins and dwellings—some still unfinished—were scattered along the road. In between, there were three small taverns for travelers and two pitiful, half-empty stores where you could buy Bateman's drops, and salt, and not much else. But, even though our settlement didn't have a proper jail, I still didn't think my Pa had the right to use our cabin as one.

Lying in bed that night, me and Laura couldn't even close our eyes for fear that the Indian would slip down from the chamber loft and murder us in our sleep. The bedstead that was Laura's and mine stood closest to the stairs.

“What are we gonna do?” I whispered to Laura, my voice rising in the darkness. “If he comes down those steps, what will we do?”

Mercy slept on a straw pallet set on the floor beside us. Pa and the boys were on the other side of the
old quilt that hung between our beds. I could already hear Pa's rattling snore.

Laura whispered that she didn't care what Pa said, she was going to fetch the knives from the shelf by the hearth and we would put them between the ropes that held our bed. So, that's what we did. I had the sharp knife that we always used for paring apples, and Laura had our biggest butchering knife.

But I wasn't sure if putting the knives beneath our bed made me feel more or less terrified at the place we were in. Or if we would ever be able to curl our fingers around the handles and use them. And what if the Indian crept down the stairs before we heard him? Or a whole band of Indians attacked us from the outside? What would we do then?

The darkness outside the house was filled with the echoing sounds of early spring frogs. They were loud that night, making a noise like a thousand jangling harness bells, and I knew we would never hear the soft sounds of approaching Indians.

Lying there, I couldn't keep my mind from twisting and turning on its own. Thinking about all the stories I'd heard of what Indians had done. Pa and the trappers who came through would tell these kinds of stories in low voices, leaving out more words than they kept in. “A whole family. Four children. And an old woman. Seventy years old. A crying shame. Right in their beds while they slept. Near Black Fork. Burnt to the ground.”

What if we were kilt by Indians—what would happen then? Would me and Laura open our eyes and find ourselves in the eternalized world? Would
Ma suddenly appear next to our bed, wearing her faded green dress, and lead us away? Thinking about it made my whole body turn cold as pond ice. I surely wanted to be saved from the evil to come— and to see our dear Ma again—but I didn't feel ready to die. Not right then, I didn't.

Ma had always been fearful of Indians. “They are the work of the devil,” she would tell Pa or anyone else who brought up the subject. “No different than rattlesnakes, catamounts, or wolves. Nothing but savage beasts in human skin.”

Savage beasts in human skin.

I slid my fingers carefully along the bed ropes, searching for the knife again, making certain it was where I remembered. My throat tightened as my fingers suddenly touched the smooth wooden handle, and I felt as if I would be sick. I wanted to take it back to the hearth. That was the honest truth. I didn't want to keep it under my bed. Nor kill anybody with it. Not even a savage Indian.

When the morning birds started up singing and the light in the room turned to a bluish gray, I wanted to cry with both joy and misery at the same time. After a whole night of lying awake, staring into the darkness, I was as tired as death. But me and Laura were still alive. I reckoned that was something to be thankful for, even if it meant another eternal day of cooking for Pa and the boys.

I watched as Laura slid her legs out of bed and hobbled toward the hearth at the other end of the cabin. I don't know why, but I was awful glad to see things begin in the ordinary way they always did. I was glad for the kindling being stubborn to catch fire, as it always was. And for the soft clang of the iron teakettle being set on the hook. I didn't even
mind when Mercy breathed loudly in my ear, “Wake up, Reb.”

But cooking breakfast was a trial that morning.

Maybe it was on account of how tired we were, but I scorched the cornmeal making the corn mush, and Laura missed a pot of boiling water and dropped a handful of good sliced potatoes into the fire. We had to pull them out with a ladle, one by one. They were more than half burnt and covered in ashes.

Before we finished that, Pa and the boys came stomping in from the morning milking. Pa was raging to Amos about one of our cows who was in a fair way to die if she didn't have her calf soon. In Pa's eyes, it was all the cow's fault, of course. “Dumbest animals on earth,” Pa said, taking off his boots and thumping them down on the floor. “She can just go on and die. Ain't that right, Amos? Let her lie out there suffering for a week and die. Never been nothing but trouble, that dumb old cow.”

Pa didn't have no patience for weakness. When Ma died giving birth to Mercy, he hadn't been no different than he was about our cow. He said it was Ma's fault, that she just gave up and wanted to die. She would have taken the baby to die with her, too, but Mrs. Hawley had kept Mercy alive, nursing her and a baby of her own.

“Why ain't things ready on the table?” Pa said, giving us a scowl. “What the devil you two been doing all this time?”

“Everything's done, Pa,” Laura answered, and we sent the food clattering onto the table in front of
them. Half-burnt cornmeal mush, mashed potatoes, yellow pickles, fried pork, bread, and coffee.

“Git that bread down here to me—I'm hungry as a horse,” Pa ordered. “And the potatoes. Where's the yeller pickles? This mush looks worse than death.”

Pa always got his plate first.

Next it was Lorenzo, heaping his plate as if he was the only other one to eat. He was chattering on like a two-headed jaybird—talking about the Indian and what was gonna happen to him, and asking when the trial was going to be—and nobody was saying a word back.

Cousin George sat next to Amos, chewing his food silently. He always acted as if he was one of the lords of creation and never used more than two words in talking to us. “Cup's empty,” he'd say loudly. Or, “Pork's cold.”

George had come to live with us after he didn't get any land when his old father died—just two horses and a plow—but you would have thought he owned half a kingdom by the way he carried on.

In the middle of the meal, Pa waved his table knife at us.

“Over here,” he said.

Me and Laura left the food we were watching on the hearth and came over to the table. I knew we were gonna hear about the cornmeal mush. Seemed as if there was always something that wasn't to Pa's liking.

“After we git done and you two git your breakfast,” Pa told us through a mouthful of half-chewed food,
“I want you to go on upstairs and take the rest of this food, whatever scraps is left, to that Indian.”

“What?” Laura gasped like a piece of wet wood in a hot fire.

I stared at Pa, and my face and arms felt suddenly prickly, as if I was being stuck with a thousand porcupine quills. Climb into the loft and take food to the murderer?

“Ain't no reason for the girls to do that, Pa,” Amos said slowly, without looking up. “They got plenty of work in front of them. I'll take a dish of food and a slop jar upstairs for the Indian to use 'fore we head out to the fields.”

Pa smacked his hand down on the table, making us all jump.

“Amos,” he hollered. “You want your sisters to be a burden all your life? ’Cause that's exactly what they is gonna be.” He pointed at us. “How they gonna be fit to live out here in the woods if they can't do nothing for themselves? They'll be jist like the Hawleys, who couldn't chop the head off a chicken to save their own lives.”

Amos didn't answer a word, just started shoveling food fast into his mouth. Cousin George chewed on a piece of bread and grinned, like he found everything downright humorous. And Lorenzo said loudly, “Well, they ain't living with me. I ain't taking care of them when I'm old.”

That made Pa laugh. He leaned over and smacked Lorenzo on the back. “You're the only one who's got brains,” he said. “You can look after me in my old age. How 'bout that?”

While Pa was laughing, I let myself breathe again. I figured maybe he had just been trying to give us a fright. I know I ought to get used to such things from Pa. Our Ma always used to say, “Even eels get accustomed to being skinned”—but I don't reckon that's true.

Next to me, Laura gave a deep sigh and brushed her hands across her apron. “That all you wanted, Pa?” she said softly. When he didn't answer, we just turned back to our work as if we had never stopped—ladling out more food, clearing off dishes, and boiling water for washing.

But Pa didn't forget. As all of them were pulling on their boots to go out to the fields, he looked up suddenly and pointed his finger at us. We had just sat down with Mercy to have our little breakfast of green tea and bread.

“You remember what I told you about feeding that Indian,” he said sharply. “He ain't had nothing to eat since we brought him here yesterday, so you take a dish of food up to him.”

The bread I was eating stuck fast in my throat.

“Please don't leave us alone with him, Pa,” Laura begged, her voice rising. “Me and Reb—we can't fight off Indians, truly we can't. If Indians come, me and Reb, we can't—”

“No Indians is gonna come here,” Pa spat. “Don't be stupid fools. They know if any harm ever come to the Carvers, we'd kill every last one of them. And that Indian up there”—he grinned and gestured toward the chamber loft—“ain't going no place, not with how well he's chained. You just go on up and see for yourselves.”

Pa opened the cabin door. “So I don't want to hear no more tears or complaining neither. I'm your Pa and you do what I says.”

Laura didn't answer.