Dorothy Garlock - [Annie Lash 03] (35 page)

Eli and Aee had put their heads together and were trying to figure out a way to make soap that had a nice smell to it. Eli thought it would sell in St. Charles and St. Louis. They had even named it “Wilderness Flower.”

Maggie related the news to Light. She described in detail, to his amusement, the dresses Mrs. Mac had cut from the fabric Eli had given them.

Bodkin, she told him, had been moping around since Aee had begun walking out with Eli. Lately Bodkin had turned his attentions to Bee. This had not sat well with Dixon. Maggie thought it great fun to watch the two men vie for the attention of MacMillan’s shy daughter. Bee had taken to putting her hair up in a new way and making sure the clean side of her apron was turned out at mealtime.

Light was bored and tired of inactivity. He had asked Caleb to bring a hide from his lodge so he could make Maggie an extra pair of moccasins. Mrs. Mac suggested that he not work his arm and shoulder for a few more days.

This afternoon he had taken a small whetstone from his pack and sharpened his knives. He had just finished and was putting them back in his pack when Eli came in. Light half-expected to see Maggie dash in behind him. A smile flickered across his dark face.

Eli read his thoughts.

“Aee is going to keep Maggie busy so I can talk to you. All women like new dresses . . . or so I’m told. They’re making one for Maggie today.”

“I hold no ill feelings about the shooting,” Light said abruptly, thinking that the only reason for Eli’s visit was to apologize.

“I was hasty—”

“There was no time to let you know I was there.”

“I know that, but Maggie will never forgive me. It tore her to pieces.”

Light said nothing. He wasn’t a man to speak unless a reply was required.

“I know it’s bothering you that you’re not holding up your end here at MacMillan’s right now. I’d feel the same. Paul and I will furnish meat for the homestead until you’re on your feet.” Eli’s grin was somewhat boyish. “Neither of us is the hunter you are, but we’ll make out.”

“I’m obliged.”

Eli stood on first one foot and then the other. Now that he was here, he didn’t know how to start. What he had to say to Light couldn’t be blurted right out.

Light sensed Eli’s unease, and he felt a bit of apprehension. What did this man have to say that was so hard for him to spit out?

“Lightbody is a name I’ve not heard before,” Eli began. “Did your folks come from Canada?”

Light looked at him squarely, his black eyes snaring blue ones and holding them. There must be something more important than curiosity about his name lying behind the question.

“My father did.”

“Was he French?”

“He was. My mother was Osage, as you know.”

“How did you get the name Lightbody? It’s not French.”

“My mother named me Lightbody because I was small at birth. Indian children do not necessarily carry their father’s name.”

“I didn’t know that.” Eli looked down at his feet, then at the wall, avoiding the questioning gaze of the man who sat on the bunk. “What was your father’s name?” Eli waited in a vacuum of uncertainty for the answer.

“Pierre Baptiste.”

Eli’s rigid shoulders slumped. He had not been aware that he was holding his breath until the air came from his mouth in a rush.

“Yes,” he said. Then again, “Yes.”

Light sensed that this was a very important moment for Eli and waited patiently, as was his way, to discover the connection with him. Eli seemed unable to speak.

Finally Light broke the silence. “Why are you interested in my father’s name?”

“Because . . . because my father’s name was also Pierre Baptiste.”

The words were totally unexpected. The implication did not register at once with Light.

“How can that be? You said you were Swedish. Baptiste is a French name, a common name. There are probably many other Frenchmen by that name.”

“That may be true, but none of them with a son named Baptiste Lightbody. You’re my brother, Light. Like it or not.”

Light was stunned. He looked at the tall man standing in front of him and suddenly it hit him why Eli had looked so familiar to him. Eli’s eyes and eyebrows were like Light’s father’s and he held his head slightly to the side as Pierre Baptiste had done. Light looked for other similarities, but found none. He remembered his father as being a big man, even bigger than Eli.

“I understand that this is hard for you to take in all at once. I’ve had five years to think about it.” Eli pulled up his shirt and unwrapped a doeskin belt from around his waist. He unfolded it on the bunk and took out a letter. “Ten years ago my father sent this letter up the Ohio to Sloan Carroll at Carrolltown. He had known him many years ago. In it he inquires about me. He felt that he had been wrong to go and leave me behind. But, as the letter relates, his life with my mother was far from pleasant.

“Five years back Sloan discovered my whereabouts and sent a message for me to come see him. Until that time I had thought I had no blood kin anywhere in the world.” Eli handed the letter to Light.

Light took the paper but did not unfold it. He looked hard at Eli.

“If what you say is true, your father is what is known as a squaw man. Whites look down on a white man who marries an Indian woman and begets half-breed children. How do you feel about that?”

“At first I was angry that my father left me with a mother who despised me because I was his son; I was resentful that he had taken up with an Indian woman. But, now . . . well, time has a way of sorting things out. Read the letter.”

Light folded back the single sheet of paper. The ink had faded until it was nearly impossible to make out all the words. He did see his mother’s name, Willow Wind, and a reference to “my son, Baptiste Lightbody.” The paper had torn apart at the fold, but his father’s bold signature, Pierre Baptiste, was unmistakable. Light folded the paper carefully and handed it back to Eli.

“It’s in bad shape. Could you make out the words? I’ve been trying to save it until you could read it.”

“I saw my mother’s name and mine. I’ve no doubt my father wrote it.”

Eli returned the letter to the doeskin belt and wrapped it about his waist. He sank into the chair, relieved that the words were out at last but uncertain about how Light felt about what he had just been told.

“The letter was in better condition when I got it, but I’ve folded and unfolded and read every word a hundred times. Obviously, Pierre Baptiste loved your mother and pitied mine. He wanted to know if I still lived and, if I did, where I was.” Eli paused. “My impression was that he was a good man who probably
had
to marry. He just was unable to live the kind of life my mother demanded.”

Light nodded, then said: “He was a good father. He loved my mother and was not ashamed of his half-breed children.”

“My mother was Swedish. When she was a young girl, she came with her parents to Louisville, a town up on the Ohio. She was their only child and they doted on her. My grandparents baked bread and cakes to sell. We all lived together in the back of their store. I don’t know what my father’s work was during this time, but I don’t believe it was in the bakery. He left when I was so young that I don’t remember him at all.”

Eli was silent for a short while before he continued.

“Mother had fits of yelling and hitting and crying. She would fly into a rage that lasted for days. I was five or six when my grandparents died. I remember them and how they did everything they could for my mother and me. The only loving attention I received when I was a child was from my grandma.

“The bake shop shut down after Granny and Grandpa died. We lived for a while on the money they left us. Mother constantly harped on the fact that my father had deserted me and what a rapscallion he was. She said I was a bastard, which I know now was not true. I was not to use his name or speak it. I was never to forget that I was a Nielson.

“She insisted that I go to the docks every day and seek work. She was determined that I not be lazy like
him.
As I grew older I came to realize Pierre Baptiste may have had a good reason to leave us. Sloan Carroll told me that he left with the blessing of my grandparents and that they had assured him they would take care of Mother and me. They did until they died five years later.”

Light sat quietly, but his mind was far from quiet. It was a struggle to accept this man as his father’s son. He knew of men who had sired offspring by several different women and then had gone away and left them. This was not something the father he knew would have done.

“My mother died when I was eleven.” Eli told him. “I went to the shack we lived in and found her. She had hanged herself or one of her . . . friends had hanged her. I’ve wondered all these years if something happened before she met my father to make her not . . . quite right in the head or if she had been that way since birth. I don’t think ill of her. I want you to know that. She was my mother and gave me life. She couldn’t help being the way she was.”

“What did you do after she died?”

“I met Paul. He was footloose like me. He was about sixteen, I’d say, and had run away from a bad life in Canada. He didn’t speak a word of English. I didn’t speak a word of French, but we got along. He was like a father to me, although we are nearly the same age.”

“Didn’t you think of looking for your father?”

“Not once. I was scared to death he would find me. It had been drummed into my head ever since I could remember that he was the devil come to life.”

“What changed your mind?”

“My mind wasn’t changed about finding him. Sloan’s message had reached Louisville and had lain around there for several years while I was freighting farther up the Ohio. I happened onto it by accident when I returned there to buy freight goods. On a trip downriver, Paul and I stopped at Carrolltown. Sloan gave me the letter. I was shocked to learn that my father had even thought of me. Since our first visit to Carrolltown, Paul and I have become friends with Sloan. We have visited in his home many times.”

“You’ve known about this for five years?”

“Sloan also told me on that first visit that he had received word from Jefferson Merrick that my father had been killed. That is how I knew to inquire of Merrick when I came looking for you.”

Light was silent. He thought of that time. A party of Sauk Indians had ambushed his father while he was checking his trap lines and had killed him. His mother had been devastated. At times he could almost hear in his mind the keening sounds of her grief when she heard the news.

“At first I wasn’t very interested in finding you. I kept thinking about it. The more Paul told me to forget it, that you would not care to hear from me, the more curious I became. And to tell you the truth, I almost hated you because you’d had
my
father during the years you were growing up and I’d had no one but a mother who didn’t care if I lived or died.

“I wanted to see you. I wanted to assure myself that I was a better man than you are. I also wanted to know what kind of a man my father was, and you were the only one who could tell me. Knowing that there was another man in the world who had the same blood in his veins that ran in mine has gnawed at me for five years. I wanted to know what he was like.”

“You expected to see a savage with war paint on his face.” It was a flat statement.

Eli grinned sheepishly.

“I didn’t expect you to be quite so civilized or that you would have a woman like Maggie.”

“You think I
am
civilized?”

“At times yes, at other times no.” Eli had answered as truthfully as he could. “I wondered
if
you were after you killed the three rivermen, and I was sure you
were
when you toted the small man home on your back.”

The statement required no answer and Light gave none.

Paul came in. He looked first at one and then the other.

“I see you are both alive.
Mon Dieu!
” Paul sighed with relief. “I’m glad it’s over.”

Light, as usual, said nothing.

Eli was uneasy about what Light was thinking. Was he disappointed to learn that his father had sired a son and gone away and left him? It was common for a white man to leave his half-breed sons, but not the other way around.

Light’s impassive face revealed nothing. Eli stood and held out his hand.

“I’m glad I got to know you, Light. If I can ever be of any help to you, you need only let me know.”

Light hesitated, then put his hand in that of his newfound brother.

When he was alone again, Light lay down on the bunk and stared at the ceiling. The news Eli had given him had surprised him but had not shocked him as much as Eli thought. Since his father’s death, Light had searched his memory for bits and pieces of information about his father’s life before he came to the land west of the big river. He could recall no mention by his father of family, friends, or even places he had visited east of the river. Pierre Baptiste’s former life must have been very painful for him to have blotted it out so completely.

He had a brother.
Light did not think it would make much difference in his life. He and Maggie would go on to their mountain. Eli’s life would continue here, or on the river. Yet it was good to know that his father’s blood would be passed down throughout the ages in the white man’s world from which he came and the blood of his mother’s people would be carried on by his and Maggie’s descendants.

The door flew open and Maggie came in.

“Looky, Light. Look at my new dress. Me an’ Aee made it—” She paused, tilted her head and looked at him. “Why was ya smilin’, Light? Ya was smilin’ in here all by yoreself.”