Authors: Thomas Maltman
Night Birds, The (18 page)
They talked for a while longer. “Is it true that the cities by the big waters have so many white men they build on top of one another, like ants? Wamiditanka see them and say there as many whites as blades of grass on the prairie and they build thunder wagons that roar on tracks across the land.”
It was Jakob’s turn to be silent, thinking of the ancient cities of the Old World and those new ones along the East Coast and of how the cholera and fevers spread through the masses of people, all of them longing for a better life, for land of their own. He was thinking of the Germans in Milford who couldn’t wait to get more land on the reservation opened up for settlement.
“I like to see these great villages,” the old man confided. “But I do not wish for all the white people to come here. I do not wish for my people to become like the whites and cut up the earth, their grandmother, and live like women.”
It was getting late by then, the novelty of the visit already exhausted for the youngest boys who had curled up to sleep on the buffalo robes. They bid each other goodnight and took their leave.
A full moon rose in the west, a pale mirror of their world. Jakob tried to imagine a day when the earth had so many people they ran out of space and had to find a way to cross the great starry darkness to inhabit such a place. Windblown clouds darkened the face of the moon and hid the path before them. Then the clouds passed and the grass appeared once more, silvered with milky light.
Later they would learn that the affliction that had troubled them was called “prairie dig” and that settlers in that county often experienced it the first time they cut the sod. Then the girl’s only thought was how beautiful it was to be out walking on such a night and not feel the terrible itching anymore. For the first time she began to hope they might find peace here. The lull of the moonlight that came and went, and her long tiredness took its toll. She fell asleep on her feet, though she kept moving. She had no memory of walking home, no memory of crossing back over the river at night to sleep in their cabin, as if a part of her dreaming self had never made the journey, but stayed there at the Indian camp beside the boy and the old man.
T
HEY CAME WITH
the rain. Hadn’t I foreseen them as I stood by the window and Hazel began her story of light and dark? I felt the way Jakob must have felt finding Ruth, the runaway, in his haymow, as though words had a summoning power. The more Aunt Hazel spoke, the more it seemed the past was quickening under the surface of the present. I thought of the old medicine man’s tale: all those bodies trapped inside the stomach of Eya the Devourer, quaking to get out. Something was about to break through, something was reaching for me, and I both feared and longed for it. Hazel was just finishing her story now, saying, “A year before Jakob left for the War, Kate came back into our lives.”
The rain swept over the ravaged countryside and turned the Waraju River into a torrent. The wind shrieked through thin spaces in our cabin’s chinking. Here in the loft I felt that Aunt Hazel and I were closer to the storm; we only had to step through the high window into a landscape of cloud and lightning. Occasional spats of hail clattered on the shingles. We passed the long dark night as she told me her story. A candle on the nightstand cast flickering lights and shadows through the room. My hands shook.
“Came back?” I said, “How? She left you in Missouri. She wouldn’t know where any of you were. And the War . . . you’re moving too fast. What happened the rest of that summer? Did the boy tell the others you had healed him? The girl with the kerchief, the one in the field of dead blackbirds, was that my mother? And what about Tatanyandowan? Did he come for you again? Did he kill his brother for what he’d done?”
Hazel sat beside me on the bed. “It’s late,” she said. “Aren’t you the least bit tired?”
I was about to open my mouth and answer when we heard a new sound in the storm, the shrill whinnying of horses and the cries of men shouting to be heard above the thunder. We looked at one another; a shadow passed over her face. I knew then she was thinking of Jakob, tarred and feathered on the table, and the sound of the riders outside as they rent his printing press to pieces. Who would be out riding on such a night? Our place was set back a ways from the road leading to Kingdom, so we didn’t often see strangers. Downstairs we heard voices, the rasp of spurs on the porch, a low gravelly voice and my mother’s nasal response. Hazel threw on a lavender shawl before leading the way down the loft ladder.
Two men stood just inside our doorway, their long oilskin slickers dripping with rain. One held his hat to his chest as he addressed my mother. He had a lean, boyish face and a spidery beard. He glanced once in our direction and I saw his eyes were a wintry gray. His mouth twitched and he gave just the faintest nod to acknowledge Hazel before turning back toward my mother. His partner was a larger man, his features obscured by a bushy goatee and long sideburns. Under the shadow of his hat his eyes scanned the room, passing over us with a dismissive glance.
The one thing in the room that held his attention hung above the mantel: my papa’s half-stock plains rifle, his constant companion during the Devil’s Lake campaigns. It was a .45 caliber flintlock that had been converted to percussion caps. My papa oiled that stock until it shone like an ebony skin. He never let me shoot it but sometimes, while my mother took her laudanum naps, I fetched it from its place and looked down the barrel and out the window. It was a heavy thing, cold and yet somehow alive against my shoulder. I imagined Indians charging my position before falling at the gun’s roar. Here was a thing that could end a person in a glimmer. Here was knowledge my papa did not share with me, though I did not know why.
The other man felt my eyes on him and gave me a quick half smile. His coat steamed in the room’s warmth. Behind him the door remained open; more men milled outside. “There’s a hotel just down the road,” I heard my mother saying. “It’s not more than a mile.” She had to raise her voice to be heard above the storm.
The younger one smiled and parted his coat. Two revolvers hung from a belt looped around his waist. He had long fine fingers and his gestures were smooth and practiced. One of his hands slid into a shirt pocket and plucked out an Indian head gold dollar that glistened in the pinkness of his palm. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until after the coin emerged like some magic trick. “It’s worth more than what they would charge us in town,” he told her. He had a slow, easy way of speaking, his voice drawling over the words. His pale gray eyes and gold coin had my mother entranced.
Hazel spoke up then, looking directly at the one holding the coin. “Let them keep riding, Cassie. Caleb will be back soon and he’s not overfond of strangers.” This was a lie. My papa would not be back for at least a month. Despite the lateness of the hour, I felt exhilarated, almost punch drunk. Aunt Hazel flickered as she moved between candlelight and shadow. She wore her hair in two dark braids that twisted down her back. I saw her as a woman in a deep purple shawl and a long sweeping dress: a sad, quiet woman. But with her braids like that I also saw the girl from the story, the daughter of a healer.
For the briefest moment the man’s face hardened into a wolfish glare and his fist closed around the gold coin. But then he smiled again. “Only a mile, you say?”
My mother narrowed her eyes after the fist swallowed the coin back up. “If you was to stay here you’d have to sleep in the haymow,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to go back out in the storm. You’d catch your death.”
The fist opened again to reveal the gold. “I knew there was hospitality yet in the world,” he said. “It’s a cold rain this far north. I’m very certain death rides in just such weather.”
My mother took the coin and slid it into an apron pocket. She swallowed before speaking again. “Are you lawmen?”
He laughed, showing gleaming white teeth. His hair was slicked back so cleanly it was difficult to believe he’d been out in a storm. “We’re cattlemen,” he said. “Up from Iowa. We’re searching for stock to buy and bring back to our steading.” He bowed slightly. “My name’s Jordan Jackson. This here’s my brother, Fred. But some call him ‘Stonewall.’”
My mother appraised him. “Stonewall? Like that Secesh general who got killed?”
At the word “Secesh,” Fred’s faint smile went dead and he walked out the door to join the men on the porch.
Jordan frowned briefly, before taking out another coin, this one silver. “He didn’t get his name for his sociability,” he said, handing my mother the coin. “That’s for any hot vittles you could sling in our direction. We got six more men outside.”
“Vittles?” Mother said, taking the coin quickly. “All we have is beans and bread.”
Jordan nodded. “Our needs are small.” He, too, looked at the rifle hanging above the mantel. “Your husband, Caleb, was it? Was he in the War Between the States?”
Mother shook her head. “I wouldn’t let him go fight over niggers,” she said. She smiled, proud of herself. “He stayed on account of me. The only ones he ever killed were red devils, not really men at all.” She walked over and pulled me by the arm. “Asa, you go help these men get their mounts stabled and brushed down.” She nodded at Jordan. “This boy’s good with horses.”
Jordan muttered a brief “Appreciated,” buttoned his slicker, and set his hat back on before rejoining the men on the porch. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother and aunt exchange hostile glares. But I was too excited to worry over them. I shrugged on a heavy wool coat over my nightshirt and followed Jordan into the storm. Most of the men had already headed toward the barn and I had to run through the wet muck of the yard to catch up with Jordan, the mud gumming up the sides of my legs. His collar was up and he had his hat pulled low. His horse was a big beautiful bay and her nostrils steamed in the dark. These men had been riding hard.
Inside the barn, the men were already tending to their own mounts. Swallows kept up a steady high chatter in the eaves. Our draft horse whinnied in greeting to the other horses. I had crossed the yard in my bare feet and the mud was chilly against my skin. I hugged my arms close to myself while I watched them, looking for an opportunity to help. All eight of the men I counted were dressed in identical oilskin slickers. Beneath the slickers they wore fine vests and wool pants and most had beards and mustaches and kept their hair clipped short. All of them were armed, revolvers mostly, like something out of one of my dime novels. Only strangers carried guns wherever they went. Or Pinkertons. Or outlaws. But they had been generous with my mother, so it was hard for me to imagine them doing evil. All ignored me, except for Jordan. “Fetch me a currycomb, boy,” he said. “And show me where we get grain for our horses.”
At the grain bin, one of our old barn cats, Esther, kept vigil for rats. The cat had been part of our land for as long my memory and was said to have descended from Freyja, the cat my family got right after they came here from Missouri. She was the only one who let me hold her, purring steadily. But tonight she limped away, her back leg dragging. After I filled a bag with grain, I helped Jordan brush down his bay. She had a glistening coat and had worked herself into a lather. We brushed in silence though I could hear the others calling coarse things to one another, glad to be out of the rain and the cold. The horse crunched happily on the grain and then seemed to go still and droop her heavy head; again I wondered why they had driven her so hard. I brushed the knots from her mane. It smelled of wet moldering hay in here, as if all the world were washing away in the storm. Jordan came around the other side and handed me a coin when I was done.
“No, sir,” I told him. “You don’t need to pay me.”
Jordan closed a cold hand over mine. “Keep it,” he said. He had the palest gray eyes I had ever seen, shining like clouds carrying snow. “I’m glad to hear your pa isn’t a Yankee.”
“We’re from Missouri,” I said.
“Is that a fact?” Jordan said. “Good country, Missouri.”
The other men were done caring for the mounts and gathered around. I felt all their eyes on me and wanted to say something important. “My grandpapa was run out of Missouri on account of counter-rary views. They put tar and feathers on him.”
Jordan smiled and other men guffawed. My cheeks and neck reddened. I didn’t see anything funny in the matter. To stop their laughing I said, “My papa killed ten men.” I had tried to make my voice sound low, but it rose and crackled.
It stopped their laughter, but Jordan still smiled. “Ten?” he said. “That’s a powerful lot of killing. I guess he didn’t like Indians.”
“If you don’t believe me you can go see the scalps hanging in his jail.” Jordan took off his hat and drew a hand across his brow. “Your papa’s a lawman?” he asked.
I was about to launch into a story about the horse thieves he had tracked and captured five summers before, when Hazel spoke behind me. “Asa, come help me carry the food.” She had her hands on her hips. “I hope you boys are hungry,” she said, before leaving the barn.
I followed her back across the yard into the mud and rain again, grateful to be released from the men’s scrutiny. When I came up to her, she whirled and clutched me by the arm. “Don’t you talk to those men anymore,” she said. Her grip tightened, but I yanked my arm free. I was tired of people telling me what to do, how to act.
“I’ll do as I see fitting,” I said. The thunder and downpour had moved on while I had been in the barn. Now it was just a chilly penetrating rain that went to my core.
Her voice was gentler when she spoke next. “Trust me,” she said. “I need you to believe me.”
I heard the imploring tone in her voice and didn’t say anything more. My mother was waiting for us on the porch. She carried out two loaves of bread while Hazel and I used iron tongs to balance a heavy pot of steaming beans between us. We had to go slow over the slick mud and patchwork puddles and my teeth were chattering in my skull by the time we reached the barn. The men received their food gratefully and didn’t ask any more questions.
We left them to eat and crossed the yard. Back inside the house, my mother went to her room without speaking any further about our strange visitors. I yawned, feeling at that moment how truly late it must be. Dawn was maybe four hours away. When I tried to make for the loft ladder, Hazel stopped me. “Just a minute,” she said. “You have mud caked straight up to your knees.”
“Leave it,” I said, suddenly petulant. “I don’t mind.”
“Please,” she said. “I don’t want you to catch chill.”
Though I longed for the warmth of my bed, I obeyed. I waited for her while she filled a washbasin with steaming water on the stove. She had a cloth slung over her shoulder and knelt before me and began to rub the mud from my skin in soothing circular motions. For some reason then I thought of Wanikiya, the wounded Indian, and how she had cleaned him after my papa shot him. There was nothing of such shame in what she did now. Hazel knelt on the hard floorboards so that I could see the top of her head. Even in the light of a sputtering candle I could count the gray hairs mixed in with her braids. The sour cakes of mud fell away from my skin. I knew she must have been every bit as tired as I was and I felt a sudden longing to protect her. My throat got knotted with emotion and I had to wipe my eyes. I hoped she wouldn’t ever go away again.
