Crooked River Read online

  when we reach the log house

  of the tall man

  with the black hair of the bear

  and the eyes of the snake,

  i am placed

  in a room that floats

  above the ground.

  in the room

  where the tall man keeps

  his winter food,

  i am stored

  like a sack of parched corn

  or a bag of wild rice.

  you will die soon,

  the gichi-mookomaanag

  say to me.

  Windigo,

  the flesh-eating giant,

  will devour you

  by the next moon,

  i tell them.

  and they

  do not understand

  a word.

  Amos told me that the men had gone across the Crooked River to find three Indians who had kilt a white trapper named Gibbs and stole all his traps. One of the three Indians was real young. But Amos said the young one got away and the second one, an older Indian, kilt himself with a gun. So, they brought back just one.

  According to Amos, it took the men two days in the pouring rain to drag the Indian back to the settlement, and they had to pull him the whole way at the end of a chain. The savage Indian was known by the name Indian John, and the men were gonna put him on trial for murder and hang him.

  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.

  in the night

  i listen,

  i walk through the darkness

  with my ears.

  seven voices sleep below—

  the tall man

  with the black hair of the bear,

  and six other ones.

  they do not sleep softly.

  the tall man snores through his nose

  and rumbles

  and groans.

  a small one is fitful and cries out,

  and two girls whisper together

  like leaves,

  sh-sh-sh-sh.

  i close my eyes

  and think

  of my wife Rice Bird,

  and the two Old Ones

  who live in our bark lodge,

  and my brave son

  Little Otter,

  and quiet Yellow Wing,

  only four winters old,

  who does not make a sound

  when she sleeps.

  i walk through the other lodges

  in our half circle

  and I think about the men

  who will not come

  for me.

  my father is old,

  Small Hawk and Half Sky

  are gone to war,

  Ten Claws is dead.

  in the darkness,

  the five lodges of our small band

  are silent

  and empty of men.

  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.

  “You listenin’?” Pa hollered. “You hear what I said?”

  “Yes, Pa,” Laura whispered. And then Pa slid out the door like the mean old rattlesnake he was and disappeared.

  After Pa left, Laura laid her head down on the table and wept so hard that it made me start to tremble with fear. Mercy sat in her chair staring silently at both of us, pale as a little snowdrop.

  “What on earth are we gonna do, Reb?” Laura cried softly. “What on earth are we gonna do?” Watching her big shoulders heave up and down with sobs made my heart pound. I was dreadful afraid of being left alone in the world. If I lost Laura, what would happen to me?

  After Ma died, I think my mind tried to turn Laura into my Ma. It erased and rewrote Laura and Ma, as if they were lines drawn on writing slates. But seeing my sister cry as if the world was ending made me realize that even though she was tall and strong for a girl, I could lose her just as quick and heartless as I had lost my Ma.

  Taking a deep breath, I picked up one of the pewter dishes on the table.

  “I'll go on upstairs,” I said. “I don't much mind. I already seen that Indian once.” I tried to keep my voice sounding as if I didn't much mind. I stood up and started to scrape the food from the dish into one of our big wooden bowls.

  “Sit down,” Laura answered, with her voice muffled in her arms. “You will not do any such thing, Reb.”

  I sank back down in my chair again and stared at my hands. I circled my fingers around one of my scrawny wrists and traced the lines on my palm so I wouldn't have to look over at Laura with her head down on the table.

  Outside, a woodpecker rattled loudly on a tree. It was quiet above us in the loft, I noticed. No one would have guessed an Indian was up there. A gray mouse skittered across the plank floor, and I stomped my foot to make him run.

  “All right,” Laura said suddenly. She lifted her head and wiped a sleeve across her face. “You and me, we'll just go on up there and do exactly what Pa said. That Indian kills us, it'll be Pa's price to pay in heaven.”

  I didn't dare to get in her way. As she lumped food into the bowl, her lips were pressed tight together. They made a fierce white line below her nose. “You're gonna carry the food,” Laura said in a high-strung voice. “And I'm gonna walk behind you with a frying pan and a knife. That's what we are gonna do….”

  So that's how we went up to the loft.

  I had hold of the wooden bowl of leftover food, and Laura followed me with the frying pan. She had once kilt a rattlesnake with that same iron pan. Flung it right at the snake's head and smashed it flat. The rattlesnake tail had twelve bells on it, if you can believe that, and we still had the tail and the frying pan both.

  As we crept up the stairs, Laura hissed, “You just be sure to get out of th
e way.” She was holding the pan so close behind me, seemed like I could feel its cold weight pressing on my neck. “If that Indian causes us any trouble, I'm throwing this frying pan at him,” she said. “You hear me, Rebecca?”

  I nodded.

  from below

  comes the girl

  i have seen before—

  the one with the darting eyes of the bird

  and the shrieking voice of the jay.

  Bird Eyes.

  behind her, I see

  a tall, older one.

  Tall Girl Who Follows

  carries a cooking pot

  and a long knife

  in her hands.

  i close my eyes.

  asleep.

  the Bird Eye girl

  flies toward me

  like a gust of wind.

  she leaves a bowl of food

  at my feet and

  runs.

  the older one

  stands still as a shadow.

  sh-sh-sh-sh,

  she whispers

  like the trees.

  i wait.

  but Tall Girl Who Follows

  does not move closer,

  and she does not use

  the sharp edge

  of her long knife.

  when I open my eyes,

  they are gone.

  “Never been so full of fright in all my life,” Laura said, pressing her hand to her chest when we reached the bottom of the stairs. “We just gave bread to the devil, sure enough we did.” She squeezed my arm. “We was awful brave to do that, wasn't we, Reb? My heart was pounding like a hammer.” She paused and looked at me. “How about yours?”

  I nodded, and Laura leaned closer.

  “You feeling scared?” she said, frowning. “You're being real quiet.”

  I shook my head no.

  “Well, Pa never should have made us do that,” she insisted. “It weren't right of him anyway. Even if the Indian was chained and all. He's a prisoner and a murderer. There was no cause for Pa to have his daughters take food up to him.”

  I don't think Laura felt a morsel of pity for the Indian after seeing him, not by the way she talked, and so I didn't dare to say how I felt. Ma always said I was too softhearted.