This Tender Land (20 page)

He helped me up and walked me outside, where Emmy and Mose were already waiting. Emmy hugged me and put her cheek against my chest.

“Your heart, Odie,” she said. “It’s beating like a wild bird all caged up.”

I saw Mose sign to Albert,
Money?

“Gone,” I said. My voice sounded somehow separate from me, as if someone else were speaking.

I told them about the pillowcase in the larder, and Albert and Mose went together into the house to fetch it. My strength failed me again, and I had to sit down in the dimness of the farmyard. I looked at my hands, empty now, and wondered, distantly, what had become of the gun.

Albert and Mose came from the farmhouse with the pillowcase, the water bag, and the blankets Volz had given us, and also the clothing Emmy had worn when we first came there.

“Looked everywhere,” Albert said. “Couldn’t find the money. Maybe he’s already spent it. We need to be moving.”

We made our way through the orchard with the moon on the rise, walking among the trees we’d tended, across the grass Mose had trimmed with his scythe. We’d put something of ourselves into the soil and into what grew there, even if only briefly, and I felt a kinship with it and remembered how Jack, in speaking of it, had called it tender. Although I’d done a terrible thing that night, and maybe Jack had done terrible things, too, I understood that the land was not to blame. I tried to take it a step further, to feel God there, all around me, as Jack had. But my heart wasn’t in it. I felt only loss, only emptiness.

Mose and Albert pulled the canoe from its hiding place among
the brush and set it on the water of the Gilead. I was still dazed, and Emmy helped me in and took the place in front of me. Mose stepped into the bow, Albert into the stern, and we glided off. I could see the course of the river before us, milk white in the moonlight. I heard the plop of something heavy hit the water near the back of the canoe. I didn’t have to ask what it was Albert had thrown there.

And so we moved on, heading toward what I hoped, though more and more dimly, might be the new life I’d so desperately imagined for us.

FROM THE HEIGHT
of a certain wisdom acquired across many decades, I look down now on those four children traveling a meandering river whose end was unknown to them. Even across the distance of time, I hurt for them and pray for them still. Our former selves are never dead. We speak to them, arguing against decisions we know will bring only unhappiness, offering consolation and hope, even though they cannot hear. “Albert,” I whisper, “stay clearheaded. Mose, stay strong. Emmy, hold to the truth of your visions. And, Odie, Odie, do not be afraid. I am here, waiting patiently for you on the banks of the Gilead.”

ONLY TEN DAYS
had passed since we’d fled Lincoln School, but already it felt like forever. The weather turned and we drifted under gray skies. We spoke little, hoped less. The memory of what we’d left behind us, which so far was mostly death and despair, felt like a heavy, dragging anchor, and because we couldn’t find the strength on our own, the river moved us forward at a crawl.

The second night after we’d left Jack’s place, we camped near enough a little town that we could hear the music of a dance. Fiddles, guitars, an accordion. I longed to haul out my harmonica and play, join in the tunes that I knew were lifting the spirits of those in the hall—American Legion? Elks? Church annex? But we’d left a dead man behind us, and for fear that we’d be discovered, Albert forbade me to play anything.

He’d gone into the town near dark and had come back with a ham bone that still had some meat on it and a bunch of potato and carrot peelings, all of which he’d found wrapped in a newspaper
in a garbage can behind a café. He also returned with a rip in his shirtsleeve courtesy of a bony-looking mongrel lurking near the garbage can who was just as hungry as we were. It wasn’t much of a meal, and we gave the lion’s share to Emmy. Turned out we were the headlines in the newspaper that had been used as wrapping, but not, thank goodness, for what had happened at Jack’s farm. As near as we could tell, that crime hadn’t yet been discovered. The newspaper was the
Mankato Daily Free Press,
published in the city to the east, the direction the Gilead was taking us. This was the headline:
THEFT AND KIDNAPPING!
NOW MURDER?

Albert read the story to us aloud. They’d found Vincent DiMarco’s body at the bottom of the cliff in the quarry. Because they’d discovered a still near the quarry, which the authorities believed DiMarco had been operating, Sheriff Warford had initially thought the man might have been drunk and stumbled off the cliff edge. But because the official autopsy had revealed no alcohol in DiMarco’s blood and because DiMarco had been missing since the night of the kidnapping and robbery, the sheriff’s thinking had turned toward murder. Near the end of the article was a paragraph about Billy Red Sleeve. It said that in the search of the quarry following the discovery of DiMarco’s body, the body of the missing Indian boy had also been found. That was it. No further explanation. Just a dead Indian kid.

“At least his family won’t be wondering now,” I said.

“They blamed Volz’s still on DiMarco,” Albert pointed out. “That’s got to be Brickman’s doing, keeping his hands clean.”

“And Volz out of it,” I added, feeling greatly relieved.

Still no mention of us,
Mose signed, indicating himself and Albert and me.

“I don’t know why,” Albert said, shaking his head. “But it’s lucky for us.” He reached into the pillowcase and brought out an old seed cap, one that I’d seen Jack wear sometimes. I figured Albert had grabbed it along with everything else. Always thinking ahead. He adjusted the strap in back and handed it to Emmy.

“Wear that from now on,” he said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Jack recognized you from the newspaper picture. Somebody else will, too. Keep that bill pulled down low to hide your face whenever other folks are around.”

That night, little Emmy lay in Mose’s arms and cried and cried, and when we asked her why, she couldn’t say exactly, except that she felt all alone. I thought I understood, because I still remembered my first few weeks at Lincoln School, when it seemed like Albert and I had lost everything. I cried a lot then, mostly at night, like so many of the other kids. We were afraid, sure, but that was only part of it. We were also grieving, but that, too, was only part of it. There is a deeper hurt than anything sustained by the body, and it’s the wounding of the soul. It’s the feeling that you’ve been abandoned by everyone, even God. It’s the most alone you’ll ever be. A wounded body heals itself, but there is a scar. Watching Emmy weep in Mose’s strong arms, I thought the same must be true for a soul. There was a thick scar on my heart now, but the wound to Emmy’s heart was still so recent that it hadn’t begun to heal. I watched as Mose signed on her palm again and again,
Not alone. Not alone.

We camped the next night in a hollow, a place where no lights were visible to us and we believed we were hidden from the eyes of others. Albert decided we could risk a fire. We gathered branches that had fallen from the cottonwoods and other trees along the riverbank, and Albert, who’d taken to heart every lesson he’d learned from the Boy Scout manual, put the branches artfully together and struck a flame. There is something about a fire on a dark night, a fire shared with others, that pulls the gloom right out of you. We sat around the cheery little blaze with the branches popping as they burned and the flames dancing, and although we hadn’t eaten that day, I could feel our spirits rise along with the smoke that drifted toward the stars. It felt like forever since any of us had laughed or even smiled, and it was good to see on the faces of the others a look not necessarily of joy but certainly of release and comfort.

“Play a song for us, Odie,” Emmy said.

I glanced at Albert, and he nodded.

For the first time since we’d left Jack dead in the barn, I pulled out my harmonica and began to play. I chose “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” because it was lively and everyone knew the words. Albert and Emmy sang along, and Mose did a graceful ballet with his fingers.

I said, “This one’s for Mose,” and I played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He smiled big and, when the song was done, signed,
Miss the smell of a leather glove.

“There’s baseball in your future yet,” Albert said.

Emmy clapped her hands together. “You’ll be a famous ballplayer someday, Mose. I can see it.”

Mose shook his head and signed,
Just happy to be free.

Emmy said, “Will you play ‘Shenandoah,’ Odie?”

I wanted to keep the music light, but I knew the song was special to her because it had been special to her mother. So I put the harmonica to my lips and blew that sad, beautiful tune. We were quiet afterward, staring into the fire, lost in our thoughts.

“Know what I want?” Emmy said suddenly. She looked from Mose to Albert to me. “I want to sit with you around a fire like this every night until I die.”

Mose grinned and signed,
Burn up all the wood in the world.

“And just think about that smoke, Emmy,” Albert said, laughing. “It would cloud up the whole sky.”

A voice came to us from beyond the firelight. “Indians believe the smoke carries their prayers to heaven.”

The man materialized out of the dark, big and powerful, shoulders like those of a buffalo, with hair like a buffalo’s winter hide flowing over them. He wore an old black cowboy hat, a snap-button shirt, dirty Levi’s, and scuffed, pointed-toe boots. He looked as if he’d just walked away from a cattle drive, except for the fact that he was clearly Indian. He stood at the edge of the firelight, a burlap bag slung over his shoulder, his eyes unreadable.

“Heard the music. Mind if I join you?”

Emmy scooted against Mose, who put his arm around her. Albert stood up in a challenging way and stared the man down. I glanced around, looking for something to use as a weapon, and finally settled on a big cottonwood limb that was just within reach, if it came to that.

“Don’t know if you’re hungry,” the man said. “But I got these to cook up, if you’ll let me use your fire.” He reached into his burlap bag and pulled out two catfish wrapped in newspaper. “Be glad to share ’em.”

It sounded like a friendly offer, but having just escaped Jack’s captivity, I wasn’t at all eager to welcome a stranger into the warm glow of our fire. On the other hand, we’d had almost nothing to eat for the last two days. I’d thought many times about the two five-dollar bills that lined the inside of my right boot and using it to buy food, but Emmy, on the night she’d come to me and had spoken trancelike, had said I’d know when the time was right to pull them out, and I didn’t feel that yet. So the idea of a meal of hot, tasty catfish was tantalizing.

Albert finally gave a nod.

The Indian plucked two straight, sturdy sticks from the bundle we’d put together to feed our fire. He took the catfish, which he’d already cleaned and scaled, threaded a stick down the mouth of each, and jammed the sticks into the ground, so that the fish were angled over the flames and the coals. Then he sat down on the far side of the fire.

“Young to be out on your own,” he said. “But then, I been on my own since I was thirteen.”

“Are you a cowboy?” I asked.

“Was. Been running cattle for a man in South Dakota. Nobody’s paying for cows right now, so I got let go. Decided to come back home.”

“Where’s home?” I asked.

He opened his arms. “Here.”

“Right here?” I tapped the ground.

“Yep. And back that way and down that way, too.” He pointed
both directions along the Gilead. “This was all my land and the land of my fellow Sioux. We don’t have papers saying so. But we never sold it. It just got took.”

He eyed Mose with particular interest and spoke to him in a language I didn’t understand. From the look on Mose’s face, it was clear he didn’t understand either. But Emmy answered, “Yes.”

The Indian’s eyes grew big and he smiled. He spoke again in that odd language, and Emmy replied in kind.

The Indian saw us boys gawking. He pointed to Mose. “I asked your friend there if he was Sioux. Then I asked the little girl how it is she understands my language. She told me she’s got Sioux blood in her.”

“I didn’t know you could speak Sioux,” I said to Emmy.

“Daddy taught me. But nobody would let me use it at Lincoln School. You remember that rule, Odie.”

I did. I remembered, too, the strappings and the nights in the quiet room meted out to those children who forgot it.

With the ice fully broken, I asked the Indian a question that had troubled me since he first appeared. “Where’s your pole?”

“Pole?”

“Fishing pole.” I nodded toward the catfish roasting over the fire.

“Didn’t catch them with no pole and hook. I noodled ’em.”

“Noodled?”

“You know.” He wiggled his fingers. “Dumb catfish, they think these are worms. When they bite, I just grab ’em.”

It sounded dangerous, and I couldn’t help thinking of Herman Volz and his four and a half fingers. But the Indian had a full set of digits on each hand.

Emmy still sat close to Mose, though not under the protection of his arm anymore. Since they’d conversed in Sioux, her fear of the Indian seemed to have vanished. She spoke to him again in that language and he answered.

“She asked me what my name is,” he translated for us. “I told her it’s Hawk Flies at Night. But most folks call me Forrest.”

“Why?” I asked.

“That’s the name on my white man’s birth certificate.”

“You have two names?”

“More’n that. So what names do you all go by?”

“Emmy,” Emmy said immediately.

Albert and I both gave her a sharp look, but it was too late to undo any damage her naïve truthfulness might have done.

“Buck,” I said.

“Norman,” Albert said.

“And what about you?” he asked Mose.

Mose signed his name.