Before I went to sleep I glanced at my brother. Albert lay very still, his eyes wide open, staring up at the waning moon like a man long dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE TOUCH ON my arm woke me.
At Lincoln School, because we all knew about DiMarco’s proclivities where children were concerned, we slept lightly, and an unexpected touch in the night was an alarm. My eyes shot open and I tried to rise, but I found myself pinned to the ground. When I opened my mouth, a hand clamped itself there to stifle my scream.
In the dim moonlight above me, I saw Albert and Mose. Albert had a finger to his lips, warning me to be quiet. When it was clear that I was fully awake, Mose let me go. Albert signaled for me to get up. He grabbed the blanket I’d been sleeping on and signed, Follow us. Mose handed me my boots.
Red coals still glowed among the ashes of the fire, and on the far side, the Indian still lay breathing deeply. We crept past him down to the river, where the canoe was already in the water and Emmy was waiting. Albert folded the blanket we’d slept on and put it with the other in the center of the canoe. The pillowcase and canvas water bag were there, too. Mose held the canoe while the rest of us got in, then he stepped into the stern, shoved us off, and we arrowed down the Gilead.
I didn’t know the why of it. As Mose and Albert dipped the paddles, I tried to figure what it was that had motivated my brother to sneak us off that way. I liked Forrest. He’d been decent and had seemed not that different from us, a man drifting before the wind of circumstance. Was it the hooch? Was Albert afraid of a repeat of Jack?
I waited until we were well away from our night’s camp to risk speaking.
“What are we doing, Albert?” I kept my voice low.
“Putting distance between us and Hawk Flies at Night.”
“Why?”
“He was going to turn us in.”
“How do you know?”
“That mason jar full of bootlegged liquor.”
“What about it?”
“It was square.”
“So?”
“You ever seen a square mason jar?”
It wasn’t something I’d thought much about, but I did now. “I guess not.”
“Me neither, until Brickman strong-armed me and Herman Volz into cooking mash for him. He bought special square mason jars to put the hooch in. Said they packed better if they were square.”
“Forrest got his booze from Brickman?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“And he was going to turn us in for the reward?”
“What do you think? Would you throw away five hundred dollars?”
Emmy curled herself up and went to sleep. Mose and Albert paddled through the night. Occasionally in the distance, I could see an isolated glimmer, maybe the yard light of a farmhouse. I figured Albert was right. Five hundred dollars was a lot of money, but I’d have given every cent of it to be safe in one of those houses. To be in a place I called home.
In the late afternoon, we stopped. We’d put a lot of distance between us and Forrest. Mose and Albert were beat. We sat on a little hill above the river, where a great, solitary sycamore provided shade. The hill rose out of prairie and afforded a view of the whole area. The railroad bed had veered away from the river. There were no farmhouses near, no barns, no fences, nothing tainted by a clumsy human hand. For as far as the eye could see there was only high grass and wildflowers, bending like dancers to some tune they heard in the wind, and above us a stately canopy of white sycamore branches and green leaves.
Beautiful, Mose signed languidly. Let’s stay here awhile.
“How about forever?” I said.
“We could build a house,” Emmy said. “We could live in it together.”
Mose signed, Albert could build it. Albert can build anything.
“We’re not staying here,” Albert said. “We’re going to Saint Louis.”
I remembered Saint Louis, but only barely. We’d visited there once after my mother died, but we never went back.
Mose signed, What’s in Saint Louis?
“Home,” Albert said. “Maybe.”
He reached into the pillowcase and brought out one of the stacks of letters that he’d thrown in with everything else. They were still bound with twine, but not tied with the simple shoestring knot that Brickman had used. It was a slippery eight loop, a complicated knot, which could be easily loosened or tightened without untying, one we’d learned in Boy Scouts. I didn’t know when he’d done it, but Albert had gone through the letters. He loosened the knot, slipped out the top letter, and handed it to me. It was addressed to Superintendent, Lincoln Indian Training School.
“Read it,” Albert said.
I pulled the letter from its envelope.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have recently become aware that there are two boys in your care at the Lincoln Indian Training School whose surname is O’Banion. The older is Albert, who has attained his fourteenth birthday. The other boy generally goes by Odie and is four years younger than his brother. I haven’t the means to care for these boys, but I would like from time to time to send some money. These amounts should be used to supply the boys with whatever they need, items for which the school is not responsible but that may make their time in your care a little easier.
For reasons of my own, I don’t want the boys to know the source of this money. Enclosed you will find $20.
God bless you for the good work you are doing on behalf of all the children in your care.
The letter wasn’t signed. I read it again, then stared at Albert. “Aunt Julia?”
He nodded. “Aunt Julia.”
“The Brickmans told us she was dead.”
“Look at the postmark.”
There was no return address, but I studied the printing of the faded red cancellation stamp. I made out SAINT LOUIS and a date. “She sent it two years ago.”
“A long time after the Brickmans told us she died.”
I reached eagerly for the stack of letters. “Are there others?”
“Just that one.”
“What happened to them? She said she’d send money from time to time.”
“I don’t know,” Albert said. “But this one’s enough for me. I wasn’t sure where we were going when we started out. Now I know.”
Mose signed, Home for all of us?
Albert said, “We’re family, aren’t we?”
We decided to stay the night on the hill, that little island of peace rising out of an ocean of prairie, safe under the wide-spread boughs of the sycamore.
I’d begun to have trouble sleeping. It had started after I shot Jack. Sometimes I couldn’t go to sleep, or if I did, I woke from nightmares set in the prison that had been Jack’s barn. In those terrible dreams, he would open his one good eye and stare up at me accusingly from the dirt of the barn floor. I would try to tell him I was sorry, so very sorry, but it was as if my mouth was wired shut, and in my struggle to sleep, I woke myself.
That night I hadn’t been able to fall asleep. I lay staring up at the sycamore branches, which formed a kind of roof above us, my stomach empty, complaining, and I kept thinking, Home. Which was something I’d never known, not really. Before Lincoln School, we’d lived on the road, and before that in the upstairs of a house that belonged to an old woman with many cats and that I recalled only in small, disconnected pieces. Lincoln School had housed me, but it wasn’t home. I tried not to get excited about Saint Louis and Aunt Julia, but that was like asking a starving kid not to salivate at the smell of hot food.
I left the others sleeping and stepped away from the sycamore tree. What I saw then was a thing of such beauty that I have never, across the eight decades of my life, forgotten it. The meadow that rolled away from the hill was alive with fireflies. For as far as I could see, the land was lit by millions of tiny, luminescing lanterns. They winked on and off and drifted in random currents, a sea of stars, an earthbound Milky Way. I have been to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night and gazed
across the City of Light, but all that man-made brilliance didn’t hold a candle to the miracle I witnessed on a June night along the bank of the Gilead River when I was a boy.
I felt a hand slipped into my own, and I looked down to see Emmy standing with me. Even in the dark, I could see the shine of her eyes. “I want to come back here someday, Odie.”
“We will,” I promised.
We stood together for a long while, hand in hand, in the midst of that miracle, and although my stomach was empty, my heart was full.
* * *
NEXT MORNING, AFTER we loaded the canoe, my brother looked to the west and gave a low whistle.
“Red sky at morning,” he said.
All along the western horizon, the sky looked like a strip of inflamed skin. Mose and Albert paddled like crazy to try to stay ahead of the weather, but they hadn’t eaten since the catfish Forrest had shared nearly two days earlier, and they tired quickly. Although the clouds moved sluggishly, by late afternoon they’d overtaken us. A wind rose at our backs, and just before the storm hit, we reached the confluence of the Gilead and the much larger Minnesota River. Rain fell heavily, but we kept going, looking for a good place to pull up against the riverbank. Finally, we spotted a long spit of sand covered with bulrushes. We drew up and unloaded the canoe. Mose and Albert tipped it against a tree on the bank and hung one of the blankets as cover, and we gathered, wet and tired, under its protection.
The Minnesota was a broad river with a much faster current than the Gilead. We watched huge tree limbs carried swiftly past, only to be caught in places where the water eddied in angry, brown swirls. Wet and tired and hungry and intimidated by the fast water, I began to wonder about the advisability of Albert’s plan to follow rivers all the way to Saint Louis.
The rain continued to fall and our spirits continued to plummet. I could see weariness on the others’ faces, and I felt it myself right down to my bones. Not even the promise of home could lift me up.
Night descended, and the rain finally ceased, and from somewhere out in the darkness came music and the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WHAT IS IT? Mose signed.
“Got me,” Albert said.
“An angel.” The look on Emmy’s face told me she believed it.
“Whoever it is, she’s got a swell voice,” I said. “And just listen to that trumpet.”
“Gabriel’s horn,” Emmy said.
“I don’t know about that, but he sure knows his stuff.” I looked to Albert. “We should check it out, don’t you think?”
“Not all of us.”
“I’m not staying here,” I said.
“I want to go, too,” Emmy said.
Mose signed, All for one and one for all.
Albert spent a moment weighing things. “All right,” he said, giving in. “But we need to be careful. There’s five hundred dollars on our heads. Even an angel would be tempted.”
We left the sandy spit, climbed the steep riverbank, and made our way through a thin line of trees. On the other side was a railroad bed and tracks, then a broad meadow, and beyond the meadow, a town. The sky was still overcast, and the reflection of the town lights made the low clouds look like smoke above a raging fire. In the center of the meadow stood a huge tent surrounded by smaller ones. The large tent was brightly illuminated from inside, and shadows moved across the canvas walls. A number of automobiles had been parked in the meadow.
“A circus?” I said.
“You ever hear of a circus band playing religious music?” Albert said. “That’s a revival.”
“What’s a revival?” Emmy said.
“Let’s go see.” I started forward.
Albert grabbed my arm. “Too risky.”
A gentle wind blew out of the west. Our clothes were damp and the breeze was chilling. Emmy held herself and shivered.
Mose signed, Emmy’s cold and wet. The tent is shelter.
“She’s all over the papers,” Albert said. “Someone might recognize her. Hawk Flies at Night did.”
I sniffed at the air. “Do you smell that?”
“Food,” Emmy said.
“Good food,” I said. “I swear it’s coming from that big tent.”
Mose signed eagerly, Do they feed people at revivals?
“I don’t know,” Albert said.
“Please, Albert.” Emmy looked up at him with pleading eyes. “I’m freezing. And I’m so hungry.”
Emmy had put on the seed cap Albert gave her. “Pull that bill down real low,” I told her. She did, and I said, “There, Albert. Can’t hardly see her face at all.”
My brother relented. “Let Mose and me go first. If everything’s okay, we’ll give the high sign.”
As we crossed the meadow, music broke out again from inside the big tent, a hymn I recognized from the services the Brickmans had held in the gymnasium at Lincoln School, “Lord of All Hopefulness.” That beautiful angel’s voice rose above the others and above the instruments as well. It was a voice that spoke to a deep human longing, probably in those already inside the tent, but also in me. Emmy and I waited near the entrance, while Albert and Mose checked things out. The music stopped, and I heard a woman begin to speak. Mose appeared and signaled us to come ahead.
Inside, the tent was lit by electric lamps hung from the support poles. Benches had been placed in rows with an aisle up the middle that ran to a raised platform, where a piano stood and behind it folding chairs on which sat several musicians with their instruments. Above the platform hung a banner that proclaimed, SWORD OF GIDEON HEALING CRUSADE. A woman held center stage. Her hair was a long, sleek tumble the color of fox fur, and she wore a flowing white robe whose long hem trailed behind her as she moved. The tent was little more than half-filled, mostly older men and women dressed in clothing not much better than the things Emmy and Albert and Mose and I wore. There were a few kids scattered here and there, enough so that we didn’t stand out. Albert and Mose were sitting together on a bench on the left side of the center aisle. Emmy and I took a bench on the opposite side. The air was warm inside the tent, but Emmy nestled against me and I could feel her shivering. The good smell of food—chicken soup, I’d decided—was powerful, but I couldn’t see any sign of it.
“. . . and so we are all afraid,” the woman in the white robe was saying. “Afraid of hunger, afraid of loss, afraid of what today holds and afraid that tomorrow will be no better, or maybe even worse. In these dark days, we’re terrified that we’ll lose our jobs, our homes, that our families will be torn apart. We’re reluctant to answer the knock at the door because maybe it’s the Devil waiting there with a foreclosure notice in his hand. We drop to our knees and pray to God for deliverance from all this misery. We look toward heaven, hoping for a sign that things will get better.”
She stood in the center of the stage, under the bright light, her long hair like a flow of glowing embers, her robe pure snow, her eyes so clear that even from the back of the tent they were like fresh, green willow leaves. She spread her arms wide, and the fabric of her robe opened as if she’d suddenly sprouted wings. A man stepped onto the stage and handed her a wooden cross that was nearly as tall as she. She took it in her hands and lifted it high, and the lights of the tent dimmed until the only one still shining was at her back. Across all those benches and the people there, she and that cross cast a long shadow.
“The sign has already been given to us,” she cried in a voice lovely as a nightingale’s. “It came as a promise drenched in blood, spoken in agony and in love. ‘Father, forgive them.’ ” She raised the cross higher and intoned, “ ‘Father, forgive them.’ ” She lowered the cross, and her voice dropped with it, and she said gently, liltingly, “ ‘Father, forgive them.’ Brothers and sisters, God so loved the world that he gave his precious only son to save us. This is not a God who would ever turn his back on you. In your darkest hour, even when Satan is knocking at your door, God is beside you. Even when you believe you ar
e steeped so deeply in sin that you must be lost to him, God is with you, and he forgives your sins. He asks only that you believe in him with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul.”
She smiled wondrously, and Emmy drew away from me and leaned toward her as if sucked in by some powerful, unseen wind.
A man near the front stood and cried out, “Sister Eve, we need a sign. Please, give us a sign, now, tonight.”
“I can’t give you a sign, brother. That comes from God alone.”
“Through you, Sister Eve, I know. I’ve seen it. Heal my son, Sister. Please, heal my son.” The man reached down and drew up a kid who looked no older than I. The boy was hunched, his spine so crooked it bent him nearly double, and he could barely look up. “My boy Cyrus was born with the Devil on his back. He’s been this way his whole life. I heard you take the Devil out of people, Sister Eve. I’m begging you, drive the Devil out of my boy.”
A look of deep compassion washed over the woman’s face. She handed the cross back to the man who’d brought it to her and opened her arms toward the crook-backed boy.
“Bring him to me.”
It was painful to watch the kid make his way up the steps of the platform. His father helped, and when they were both before Sister Eve, the boy stood, but still so terribly bent that it was clearly painful to lift his eyes to her. She knelt down and put her face level with his.
“Cyrus, do you believe in God?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I heard him utter. “I do.”
“Do you believe that God loves you?”
“I do, ma’am. I do.”
“And do you believe that God can heal you?”
“I want to, ma’am.” I could hear the choking in his voice, and although his back was to me and I couldn’t see his face, I was pretty sure he was pouring out a flood of tears.
“Believe, Cyrus. Believe with all your heart and soul.” Sister Eve reached out, placed her hands on his misshapen back, and the snow-white folds of her robe fell across his shoulders. She raised her eyes toward the canvas tent roof. “In the name of God whose divine breath fills us with life, in the name of God who shapes our hearts on the anvil of his love, in the name of God by whose boundless grace the halt and the lame are healed, I ask that this boy’s affliction be taken from him. Take out of his body, take out of his bone, take out of his whole being every last unclean thing and let this child walk upright again. In the sweet name of our Lord, let him be whole.”
This Tender Land Page 17