HERE
WERE HANGED
38
SIOUX INDIANS
DEC. 26TH 1862
“Oh my God,” Maybeth said. “That’s awful. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at that gray memorial to some great human cataclysm, and what it brought to mind was Emmy. I thought about what she’d said when she came out of her last fit and before she’d slipped back into a healing sleep. She’d said, “They’re dead. They’re all dead.” It seemed a stretch, but I couldn’t help wondering, had this been what she’d seen? And if so, how had she known?
Which got me to thinking again about Albert and Mose, and especially about little Emmy. It seemed to me in that terrible moment, standing before such a solid and solemn reminder of tragedy, that all I ever did was let people down. I’d killed Jack. I’d got Albert snakebit. I’d promised Sister Eve that I’d watch out for Emmy, keep her safe, but she was probably already back in the greedy hands of the Black Witch, and Albert and Mose were rotting in jail, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about any of it.
“Come on,” Maybeth said and took my hand.
* * *
WHEN WE RETURNED, we found a tub of hot water near the fire and Mrs. Schofield hanging wet laundry on a line strung between two trees. Like everyone else in Hopersville, the Schofields drew their water from a pump in a large park on the far side of the tree-covered hill, hauling it a long distance for their cooking and washing. Maybeth told me that sometimes fetching the water could be a harrowing experience because the townspeople hated Hopersville and if you encountered them in the park, they threw insults and sometimes even rocks. Just the thought of anyone being cruel that way to Maybeth made me angry.
It was well after noon by then. Mother Beal was sitting on a crate, knitting. The twins were playing marbles around a circle Lester had drawn in the dirt. When they saw Maybeth, they cried out for her to play.
“In a while,” she put them off. “We followed Papa—” she began in explanation to Mother Beal.
“He’s back,” the old woman said with a sigh of exasperation. She nodded toward the tepee, from which came a loud snoring. “He used your mother’s pearl brooch this time.”
“I haven’t worn that brooch in years,” Maybeth’s mother said from the clothesline.
“He could have traded it for gas money, Sarah.”
“Enough to get us where? Not all the way to Chicago.”
Mother Beal’s eyes went to the truck, much of whose engine lay disemboweled on the ground. “We may never get there now.”
“He tried, Mama,” Mrs. Schofield said.
Mother Beal’s face was hard, but her voice was not when she said, “I’ve got some bread and cheese, if you two kids are hungry.”
Just then, Captain Gray came limping into the Schofields’ camp. “Police are sweeping through Hopersville, looking for someone.”
“Who?” Mother Beal asked.
“I don’t know. But they’re tearing everything apart. Best not get in their way.”
Now I could hear the barks of dogs, lots of them, and distant shouts.
Mr. Schofield stumbled from the tepee, trying to buckle his belt, his eyes a little unfocused as if still in a drunken haze. “What’s going on?”
“Police,” Mother Beal said. “Searching for someone.”
“Go, Buck,” Maybeth said. “Run.”
Everyone stared at me, surprise and suspicion on their faces. I heard the dogs coming toward us, but I just stood there, undecided.
“Go!” Maybeth gave me a shove. “I’ll find you.”
Without any idea of what it was all about, Mother Beal said, “Go on, son. And God be with you.”
I took off at a run along the bank of the Minnesota River. A hundred yards away, I dove behind a thick growth of sumac and lay where I could see what went on in Hopersville. Officers with dogs on leashes moved swiftly through the encampment, rousting men from the shanties, barking at them harshly, a sound little different from the dogs’. If a man objected, a billy club was the response he got. I felt terrible and guilty because I knew I was the cause of all that disruption in a place where lives were already brutally disrupted. I watched three cops with a dog approach the Schofields, and I hoped that because there were children present the family might be spared the worst. But when Captain Gray stepped between the officers and the family, he was shoved to the ground and a snarling dog went at him. Mrs. Schofield cried out and tried to help, but she went down under a blow from a billy club. Her husband, who still hadn’t succeeded in securing his belt, stepped toward the cop as if to defend his wife, but his pants fell down and he tripped himself and tumbled over Mrs. Schofield. Maybeth rushed to help her parents and was rewarded with a cop’s boot to her ribs. Mother Beal pulled the twins to her bosom and shielded them with her old body.
I couldn’t take it, couldn’t just stand by and not try to help those good people who’d opened their hearts to me and their home, such as it was. I was blind with a rage far greater than any fear, and I stood up to run to their aid. I had no idea what I would do, but I wasn’t going to let this travesty continue.
Before I could take a step, a powerful hand grabbed my shoulder from behind, and a low voice growled, “Got you.”
The hand spun me around. And I stared into the face of Hawk Flies at Night.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I TRIED TO pull away, but the Indian held me in a vicious grip.
“Let me go, you bastard.” I kicked at him.
“Easy, little man,” he said. “Keep your voice down. They’re waiting for you.”
“Who?” I tried another kick.
“Amdacha.”
“Who?”
“Broken to Pieces. You call him Mose. Him and your brother and the little girl.”
That made me go still. “Where?”
“Across the river. Quick, before those bullies spot us.”
“I can’t leave them.” I looked desperately toward the Schofields’ encampment, where the altercation was continuing, and Maybeth lay on the ground next to her mother and father, holding her side where she’d been kicked, and the twins were screaming bloody murder, and old Mother Beal was up and giving those boys in khaki a good what-for with her tongue.
“You can’t help them,” the Indian said. “If they’re smart enough to build a tepee, I’m guessing they’re smart enough to get through this. But if the law lays its hands on you, Buck, you’ll never see the light of day again.”
One of the cops had gone into the tepee, and he came out now and shouted something above the cacophony. The cop with the dog pulled the canine off Captain Gray, and the law moved on. In our direction. The Indian and I crept low behind the cover of the sumac, and together began to run. We didn’t stop until we reached a bridge that spanned the river.
We found them in a dense copse of poplars a quarter of a mile downriver from Hopersville. The canoe had been carried into the trees and laid on its side. From the river and from the far bank, it would have been nearly impossible to spot the camp—unless a fire attracted someone’s eye, but there was no sign of a fire having been lit. The blankets lay together in the soft undergrowth, and I could see that this was where the others had passed the night.
When the Indian and I appeared, they came scrambling. Albert and Emmy, anyway. Mose only looked up from where he’d been sitting, which was apart from the others, and stared at me as if I were simply a stranger, someone who meant nothing to him. Emmy hugged me and she was crying from happiness. Even Albert, who was normally about as emotional as a pipe wrench, smiled huge and embraced me.
“Where’d you find him, Forrest?” my brother said.
“Across the river, like we thought,” the Indian replied.
“I went back to our camp yesterday and you were gone,” I said.
“We heard dogs and men coming,” Albert said. “We had to leave.”
“We couldn’t even make a trail sign to let you know,” Em
my said. “We had to get out of there so fast.”
“We heard dogs again a while ago,” Albert said. “In that shantytown across the river. What happened?”
“The cops came looking for me, tearing everything apart.”
“Not looking for you,” Forrest said. He’d made himself comfortable on a blanket on the ground.
“Who?” I asked.
“There’s a state hospital for the criminally insane downriver a few miles. Two days ago, some crazy man escaped. Pretty dangerous, they say.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“On the other side of the river, I kept my ear to the ground. But if they’d caught you instead, Mr. Kidnapper, that would still have been a fine feather in their caps.”
“And bad for us,” Emmy said and gave me another hug.
Mose was chewing on a long blade of wild grass, looking darkly ruminative.
“What’s up with him?” I asked Albert.
“He’s been like that since we found the skeleton.”
“He won’t even talk to us anymore,” Emmy said.
“Don’t be hard on him,” Forrest said. “There’s something he needs to do. Now that Buck isn’t a missing person anymore, I think it’s time he did it.”
“What?” I asked.
But Forrest wouldn’t say. He got up, walked to Mose, sat down, and spoke to him quietly for a long time. Mose listened and, when Forrest had said his piece, gave a single nod.
Forrest came back to where the rest of us were sitting. “We may be gone a while.”
“You want us along?” Albert asked.
“This is for Amdacha and me. You all just stay put until we return.”
Forrest started out of the trees, and Mose followed, not even bothering to glance our way. He was clearly deep into something troubling and personal, and I hoped that his normal affability was still with him somewhere.
When they’d gone, I said, “How’d you hook up with Forrest? Aren’t you afraid he’s going to turn us in?”
“He was waiting for us, Odie,” Emmy said. “When we came here on the river, he signaled us. Albert didn’t want to pull up, but Mose made it clear we were going to. Hawk Flies at Night said he was watching for us.”
“Just waiting here?”
Albert said, “He read about me and the snakebite, and he didn’t have anywhere he had to be. It was Mose he was really worried about.”
“Why Mose?”
“I guess because Mose is Sioux, like him.”
“We thought we heard you playing your harmonica last night,” Emmy said. “But it was dark, and Forrest said we should wait until morning, and he would go looking for you. That way, we wouldn’t get caught. He’s nice, Odie.”
“What happened to you?” Albert asked.
I told them everything, except about Maybeth and me and the kisses. That was a gem of a memory all my own. After that, the day passed with excruciating slowness, mostly because, now that I was safe, all I could think about was Maybeth and the Schofields, and I was concerned about their safety. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I have to go back,” I told Albert. “I have to make sure the Schofields are okay.”
“We’re not getting separated again.”
“I’ll come back, I swear, Albert.”
“No.” He tried for that voice of authority he’d always wielded, but the old iron-willed Albert was still missing.
“I’m going.” I stood up.
Albert stood up, too, but slowly. “You’re not.”
“Don’t fight,” Emmy said. “If he has to go, Albert, he should go. It’s not like last time, when he stomped off mad. This is important.”
Albert looked too tired to fight. But he said rather meanly, “If you don’t come back, we’re not looking for you.”
“I’ll be back before dark.”
I returned to Hopersville, and as I walked through the shantytown, I saw the destruction the police had left in their wake. Lean-tos had been knocked down, cardboard enclosures torn apart, the thin boards of piano-crate abodes splintered. Corrugated tin had been pulled off the sides of shacks, and doors torn from makeshift hinges. I figured the authorities had used the search as an excuse to try to shatter the spirit of the community and maybe disperse its unwanted inhabitants. When I reached the Schofields’ tepee, I found that it had been shoved down and lay like something dead on the ground. But folks were gathered around the little encampment, faces I recognized from the night before, when we’d shared food and music, and were at work pulling the tarps free of the long poles as Mother Beal gave directions for the re-raising of the structure.
Maybeth came running. She threw her arms around me and clung to me as if I’d been lost forever. “Oh, Buck, I was so afraid for you.”
I stepped back and put my hand gently on her side, where she’d been kicked. “Are you all right?”
“A little sore, but I don’t care. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
“How’s your mother?”
Mrs. Schofield sat with the twins near the disemboweled pickup truck. She had her arms around them and was speaking in a low, soothing voice.
“She said those billy clubs weren’t any worse than the hailstones in Kansas. She’s tough, my mom.”
The same couldn’t be said for her father, who was nowhere in sight. I didn’t ask, figuring I had a pretty good idea of what had become of him. Sooner or later, he’d return from his visit to the blind pig, and by then, the hard work would be done.
Mother Beal smiled at me when I joined in the effort to raise the tepee. “Wondered if you would be back. Good to see you, Buck.”
When it was up again, Mother Beal told everyone there, “I’m making stew and biscuits for supper. You’re all invited.”
“I can’t stay,” I told Maybeth.
“Why not?”
“I found them. My family. I have to get back.”
“Does that mean you’ll be moving on?”
“Not yet. I won’t go without saying goodbye, I promise.”
“Goodbye.” On her lips, it was like the toll of a soft, sad bell. “I don’t like that word.”
I didn’t either, and as I walked through the long shadows of late afternoon, I tried not to imagine the moment when it would have to be said.
Forrest had returned to camp, but he’d come alone.
“Where’s Mose?” I asked.
“Your friend has work to do,” Forrest said.
“Will he come back?”
“Maybe. When he’s ready.”
He’d brought food—bread and cheese and apples and a big hunk of bologna, and he’d refilled the water bag.
“How’d he get the food?” I asked Albert quietly.
“I gave him some of the money Sister Eve gave us.”
I stared wide-eyed at my brother. “You trusted him with our money?”
“Not much choice,” Albert said. “You were gone. I couldn’t leave Emmy alone. And he brought back the change, every last penny.”
Something was happening to us. When we’d begun our journey, Albert was distrustful to a fault, more likely to be crowned the king of England than put his faith in a man we barely knew. Mose, the most easygoing kid I’d ever known, had turned his back on us. Me, I was desperately in love. We’d been on the rivers only a month and already we were in places I couldn’t have begun to imagine at the Lincoln Indian Trading School.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
MOSE DIDN’T COME back the next day. Albert and Emmy and I were worried, but Forrest assured us he was all right. I wasn’t so certain. Even if he wasn’t in any danger, I’d never seen him in such a dark place. In the late morning, I returned to the Schofields’ camp, looking for Maybeth. She wasn’t there, her mother told me as she hung wet laundry, but would be along shortly. The twins were playing down by the big river, and Mr. Schofield was nowhere to be seen, but I could guess where he’d gone. Mother Beal invited me to sit with her while she smoked her corncob pipe.
“You look a little down in the mouth, Buck,” she observed. “Not usually the way a young man looks when he’s in love.”
“I’m not in love.”
She smiled around the stem of her pipe. “If you say. So, what’s the burr under your saddle?”
I told her about Mose, though I didn’t tell our whole, sordid history.
“I lived a long time among the Sioux,” Mother Beal said. “A people beset by all kinds of travail, but I found them to be good and kind and strong. That was especially true when they held to the practice of their old ways.”
She drew on her pipe and thought a bit.
“In the old days,” she continued, “when a Sioux boy was eleven or twelve, he would go out alone to seek a vision. They called it hanblecheyapi, which means, I believe, crying for a dream. It was a way of connecting with the spirit of the Creator, which they call Wakan Tanka. When I was a girl and the prairie grass was higher than a man’s head, I used to go way out and sit with it all around me so that I couldn’t see anything but the blue sky above, and I’d close my eyes and try to feel Wakan Tanka and wait for a dream to come.”
“Did it?”
“I often felt a deep peace. Maybe that’s what God is, and Wakan Tanka, in the end, and maybe that’s what the search for a vision is all about. It seems to me, Buck, that if you can find peace in your heart, God’s not far away. This friend of yours, it sounds like his life hasn’t been an easy one. It’s possible what he’s looking for is peace in his heart, and maybe he needs to be alone to find it.”
Maybeth came into camp from the direction of the river. She wore a different shirt than I’d seen her wear before and different pants, not so patched up. Her hair was brushed, her face clean and tanned and smiling. And most notable, she didn’t smell of woodsmoke. In Hopersville, where everyone cooked over a campfire, clothing always gave off the heavy scent of burned wood and char. Because of our fires as we traveled the river, Albert and Mose and Emmy and I smelled the same way. Whenever the scent was all around you, you didn’t notice. But Maybeth smelled of Ivory soap, and it was like perfume.
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