Albert joined in a few bars later, “Ain’t gonna study war no more, ain’t gonna study war no more . . .”
At the third stanza, Amdacha began to sign the words.
We risked a fire that night and sat together, talking quietly around the flames, as we had on many nights since we’d taken to the rivers. It began to feel to me as if what had been broken was coming together again, but I knew it would never be exactly the same. With every turn of the river, we were changing, becoming different people, and for the first time I understood that the journey we were on wasn’t just about getting to Saint Louis.
Emmy lay her head against my shoulder and nodded off. I put her on her blanket, but she woke for a moment and held to me, so I lay down to keep her company.
Albert and Amdacha stayed at the dying fire, their faces dimly lit by the last of the flames.
“I’m sorry,” Albert said.
What for? Amdacha signed.
“I knew my mother and father. I know where I came from.” He’d been staring into the coals of the fire, but now he looked up. “I never thought how hard that must be for you.”
What’s most important is who I am now.
Albert picked up a stick and stirred the coals, so that a few more flames sprang to life. “I was scared you wouldn’t come with us.”
I’ll go back. Someday.
“Because you’re Amdacha now?”
Broken to Pieces, I thought.
Amdacha lifted his eyes to the night sky, thought about this for a moment, gave his shoulders a faint shrug and signed, Ah, hell, you can still call me Mose.
- PART FIVE -
THE FLATS
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
IT WAS ANOTHER two days before Saint Paul came into sight. Our first real glimpse of what lay ahead was the imposing stone of Fort Snelling, whose gray ramparts dominated the bluff above the confluence of the Minnesota and the Mississippi Rivers.
As we passed beneath the great fortress, Mose stared up, his eyes filled with hatred. That’s where the soldiers who killed my people came from, he signed. He looked at the river bottoms, scanning the trees and shadows as if searching for something. They built a stockade here and shoved nearly two thousand women and children and old men into it. Hundreds died in the winter that followed.
For Mose, everything that had occurred since we’d left New Bremen had torn open his soul. Across the days on the river as we canoed toward Saint Paul, I’d watched him struggle with the terrible pain of that rending, and at night, I’d listened as he cried out unintelligibly in his sleep. So I thought I understood his rage when we passed beneath those stone walls, which were a symbol of all that had been cut out of his life.
We entered the Mississippi at sunset, the surface broad and mirror smooth, the river bluffs aflame with the last light of day. Albert guided us to the riverbank for the night. We emptied the canoe, lifted it from the water, settled ourselves among the trees, and began gathering driftwood to build a fire, which was only for the comfort of the light it would give because we had no food left to cook. We’d had nothing to eat for more than a day. I’d considered the five-dollar bills in my boot, using them to buy food, but Emmy had told me that I’d know when the time was right, and I just didn’t feel it yet.
We’d encountered towboats pushing loads on the Minnesota, but the first two we saw on the mighty Mississippi were twice as long, ten barges in one tow and eight in the other. The waves from their passing battered the shoreline, and I thought how easily our canoe might be swamped if we found ourselves caught in the wake of one of those flotillas.
When we’d begun our journey, the moon had been nearing fullness, and that night it was full again. I lay under the trees on the river bottoms and stared up at the man in the moon, whose face, through the branches, was cracked and broken. I couldn’t sleep. We were finally on the Mississippi River, which would take us to Saint Louis. But how far that was, how many more full moons ahead of us, I had no idea.
I heard Mose rise and watched him slip away. I thought he was just getting up to relieve himself, but when he didn’t return for a long time, I became worried. I tugged my boots on, left my blanket, and followed where he’d gone, deeper into the bottomlands. I found him in a small clearing, sitting with his legs crossed, his face lifted to the night sky, cast in white from the moonglow. He was chanting in a low voice, no words because he lacked a tongue, but it was clear to me that he knew what he was saying. I wondered if it was some sacred prayer that Forrest had taught him, or if he was simply giving voice to what was inside him now. The sound that came from him rose and fell, gentle waves on the sea of night. He lifted his hands as if in supplication. Or perhaps celebration. What did I know? I felt as if I were trespassing, witness to something never meant to be shared, and I quietly retreated.
In the morning, we loaded the canoe and prepared to enter Saint Paul. We could see homes crowning the bluffs upriver, some of which looked huge and magnificent.
“Do you think princes and princesses live there?” Emmy asked, gazing up at the mansions.
“Rich people, for sure,” Albert said. “Rich people always find the places where they can look down on everyone else.”
“I want to be rich someday,” Emmy said. “And live in a big house like that.”
Albert said, “Do you know what a house like that costs?”
Emmy shook her head.
“Your soul,” he said. “Come on, let’s hit the river.”
We paddled a good part of the morning. The face of the river changed. Trees gave way to industry, and rows of neat little houses marched up the hills, and then a cluster of stone towers came into view, the tallest buildings I thought I’d ever seen, crowded shoulder to shoulder, and atop one of the hills that backed them rose the dome of a great cathedral. We slid under the span of a bridge that seemed impossibly high overhead, and finally Albert guided us into a narrow channel between a long island and the south bank, and we drew the canoe up on the opposite side of the river from all the imposing architecture of the great downtown.
Once we’d disembarked, Albert pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, and I recognized it as the scrap on which Forrest had written the name of the person he said would help us. I wasn’t sure that we needed any real help, except we could all use a good bath. We hadn’t cleaned ourselves well since we’d left Sister Eve, and even to one another we were beginning to smell like things dying or already dead.
“ ‘West Side Flats, Gertie Hellmann,’ ” Albert read. “ ‘Ask anybody.’ ”
I looked over his shoulder and saw that, in addition to the name, Forrest had drawn a crude map of the river with an X marking where we would find the West Side Flats, which was, I figured, exactly where we were.
“What now?” I asked.
“I’m going to find Gertie.”
“What do we do with the canoe?”
“You stay with it, all of you. I’m going alone.” He looked to Mose. “Don’t let anything happen.”
Mose gave a solemn nod, and my brother climbed the riverbank and disappeared.
In my experience, railroad tracks and rivers are like brothers. They follow each other everywhere. Above the spot where we’d landed our canoe ran a couple of sets of rails, and while we waited for Albert to return, a slow-moving freight train rolled past, heading downriver. The cars were empty and some of the doors had been left open. Occasionally, we caught sight of a man or two sitting idly inside. We stared at them as they passed, and they stared vacantly back. I wondered where they were going, or if they knew or even cared.
When the last car had gone by, three figures revealed themselves on the far side of the tracks, kids, like us, hands stuffed in their pockets, looking down with great interest at where we stood beside our canoe.
“You Indians?” the tallest of them asked. He had dark, unkempt hair, big ears, and wore clothes nearly as soiled as ours. I put him at about my age.
“Do we look like Indians?” I called up to him.
“We’re vagabonds,” I said.
“Vagabonds. What country do they come from?”
“Here.”
“Hell, we got Arabs here and Mexicans and Jews, but I ain’t never heard of Vagabonds. You got names?”
“Buck Jones,” I said. “That’s Amdacha. And this is—” Emmy had never taken a different name, and I hesitated, trying to think of something appropriate.
“Emmy,” she said.
“I got a sister named Emma. That’s almost the same,” the tall kid said. “Me, I’m John Kelly. This here is Mook, and that’s Chili.” He looked upriver. “Did you canoe down here?”
“That we did.”
“From where?”
“You’re a curious bunch,” I said. “You live around here?”
“We all live on the Flats.”
“Do you know Gertie Hellmann?”
“Everybody knows Gertie. Why?”
“We’re looking for her.”
“Won’t have any trouble finding her.” He eyed our canoe with great interest. “Never been in one of those. Tippy?”
“Not if you know what you’re doing.”
“Could we take a ride?”
“Maybe another time.”
“Gonna be here awhile?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Buck Jones,” John Kelly said. “Like the movie star.” Then he grinned. “My ass. See you around, Buck Jones.”
He turned, headed away, and the other two followed.
Albert showed up a few minutes later. “Back in the canoe,” he said.
“We’re not stopping?”
“Just going downriver a ways.”
We canoed another half mile, to the end of the island, where the narrow channel opened once again onto the broad current of the river. All along the bank, shacks had been constructed, and several of what I would later learn were called shantyboats lay moored there as well. We came at last to a large brick building with MORGAN’S BOATWORKS painted in white on the side. A couple of long wooden docks jutted into the river, where a number of vessels were tied up. A few had masts, a couple were sleek-looking speedboats, and one was a stern-wheel towboat. A man stood knee deep in the brown river water, bent toward one of the larger sailboats, eyeing a hole above the waterline, which had been hastily patched with plywood. Albert guided us to within a few feet of the man, who turned when he heard the splash of our paddles.
“I’m looking for Wooster Morgan,” Albert said.
“Found him.” He was nearly bald, but a black handlebar mustache curled flamboyantly along his upper lip. He wore a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled above biceps like bowling balls.
“I just came from Gertie Hellmann’s place. She said we could leave our canoe with you.”
“She did, did she? Well, we don’t want to make a liar out of Gertie. Lift ’er up and we’ll find a place to store ’er.”
Wooster Morgan waded from the water and watched as we unloaded our things and my brother and Mose lifted the canoe onto their shoulders. “This way,” he said, and he waved us to follow.
Inside, the boatworks was one great room with all kinds of lathes and grinders and a whole world of tools I’d never seen before and whose purpose I couldn’t begin to guess. There was also a good deal of welding equipment, and from the rafters hung thick chains with hooks big enough to lift a whale. A small craft sat up on blocks, its hull fit with runners—an iceboat, I would later learn. The place smelled of grease and acetylene and beneath that, the sweet scent of new sawdust. As Albert’s eyes took in all that machinery, I could see that he thought he’d just stepped into heaven.
Wooster Morgan set up a couple of sawhorses and, once the canoe had been laid across them, asked our names. We gave him the ones we were using those days.
“Did Gertie tell you the rules of my boat hotel?” Morgan asked.
“No, sir,” Albert replied.
“You got one week. Normally I’d charge you a buck, but seeing as how you’re friends of Gertie’s . . .” He looked us over and smoothed his mustache. “A handshake from each of you fellers, and a kiss on the cheek from the little angel will do for now.”
We walked through the West Side Flats, seven or eight square blocks of houses built so close together even Emmy would have had trouble squeezing between them. In truth, many of the constructions didn’t seem any sturdier than the thrown-together shanties of Hopersville. All of them had outhouses in back, and I saw no indication of running water anywhere. There was not a blade of grass to be seen, and the few trees in evidence were scrawny, struggling things. It seemed to be all squalor, out of which had arisen a community. A vibrant community judging from all the people we saw. Women hanging wash on the line, calling to one another across ragged fences. Scruffy kids playing in the dirt yards. Men with horses and wagons going about their enterprises—ragmen, icemen, tinkers. A few automobiles, but not many. When we turned up a street called Fairfield, a row of shops lined both sides—butchers, dry goods stores, grocers, a couple of barbershops, a blacksmith, all with customers coming and going, giving one another cordial greetings as they met and passed.
At the Lincoln School, we’d had indoor plumbing, showers, and a roof over our heads that generally didn’t leak. We’d had grass, plenty of it, and trees. We’d been given three meals a day and a bed to sleep on. In truth, we’d known a great many comforts. But in this crowded, chaotic community, I could see in abundance two precious things that had been withheld from us at Lincoln School: happiness and freedom.
“There.” Albert pointed toward a two-story dilapidated corner building with GERTIE’S painted on a window.
The door stood open, and we followed my brother inside. The space was cramped and crowded with tables. Chairs had been upturned and sat on the tabletops, their legs toward the ceiling. The air smelled of something savory.
A stepladder stood in one corner of the small café, with a man atop it, seeing to the repair of a hole in the ceiling. When he heard the clomp of our feet on the wooden floor, he turned and stared at us. He wore workman’s gloves, overalls, and boots that looked as if he’d walked to Africa and back in them. He climbed down from the ladder and came to where we stood, and I saw the damage to his face, scarring on the right side so severe it nearly closed up his eye. Although that old wounding seemed to give him no trouble, it was painful to look at. He tugged off his gloves, fisted his hands, and put them on his hips while he took the measure of each of us. Then he spoke, and I realized that, despite appearances, this was no man.
“Hello, there,” she said. “I’m Gertie.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
“FIRST THINGS FIRST.”
Gertie walked us into the kitchen, where a woman stood at a stove, eyeing the contents of two huge, steaming pots, the source of that wonderful aroma I’d smelled on entering the establishment.
“Flo,” Gertie said. “We have some guests.”
The woman turned. Her blond hair was limp from the steam of the pot and her face flushed, but this took nothing away from her beauty. Her eyes were startling blue and her smile immediate and enormous.
“Children?”
“According to Norman here,” Gertie said, “Forrest sent them.”
“Forrest? How is he?” Flo said with surprise and delight. “And where is he?”
“Out of work and in Mankato,” Gertie replied, giving us no time to answer for ourselves.
“Back in Minnesota,” Flo said. Her smile was beginning to seem like a permanent fixture. “Will we see him?”
Although the question was directed to us, it was once again Gertie who gave an answer.
“He’s sticking around home for a while, but if I know Forrest, he’ll be up here eventually to see his brother.”
Flo’s blue gaze, warm as a summer sky, ran across us all. “And you’re our guests until . . . ?”
“They’re on their way to Saint Louis. Just stoppi
ng for a breather,” Gertie said. “I’m putting them up in the shed for the night.”
Flo wore a flowered dress that reached to her calves. She hiked the hem up a bit, crouched so that she was eye-level with Emmy, and said, “You’re just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. What’s your name?”
“Emmy.”
Which made me roll my eyes. When would she ever learn?
Flo glanced up at me.
“Buck,” I said. “Buck Jones.”
“Like the movie star. And you?” This to Albert.
“Norman,” he said.
“And what about you?”
Mose stared down at her, and even if he’d had a tongue, I believe he could not have spoken, he seemed so starstruck.
“His name’s Amdacha,” Albert said. “He’s Sioux.”
“Just like Forrest and Calvin,” Flo said.
“Calvin?” I said.
“That’s Forrest’s brother. He didn’t tell you?”
“No, ma’am. He just sent us up here to Gertie.”
“That’s probably because he wasn’t sure Calvin would be around. This is the busy season on the river. And your parents?” Flo asked.
“We’re orphans, every one of us,” Albert said.
“I’m sorry.” Her smiled flagged a bit. “These are surely difficult times we’re living through.”
My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten for almost two days, and the smell from the pot was impossible to ignore.
“Hungry?” Flo asked.
“I could eat a horse,” I said.
“They’re with us just for tonight,” Gertie said brusquely. “We’ll feed them and they’ll sleep in the shed. They’ll work it off helping us at dinner.”
“All right.” Flo nodded her agreement.
“Come along,” Gertie said. “Let’s get you set up. Then we’ll put a little food in your stomachs and then—” She looked us over with stern eye. “Then a shower.”
* * *
OUR SHOWERS WERE taken in a stone building, public baths on the other side of the river, at the edge of the downtown, a place popular with the lower class who had no indoor plumbing. Judging from the crowd, there were a lot of folks in the same boat.
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