Under a Painted Sky

by Stacey Lee

  Our trail soon converges with the one that starts at Independence, Missouri. The road grows thick with wagons and people plodding up to the fort on the hill.

  The sun hangs low, so we settle in for the night a few miles past the junction in a sea of wagon circles, people, and animals.

  Cay and West go hunting. They only have one rifle between them but hunting is their ritual together. Peety never seems to mind, in fact, I think he enjoys the time by himself. He told Andy he was twenty-one, which means he was born in the Year of the Rat. Though Rats are charming and sociable, they like to spend time in quiet reflection.

  Peety leads the horses to a branch of the Platte River, talking to them conversationally in Spanish, while Andy and I collect firewood.

  Only a few stringy willows grow among the sandy bluffs, not enough to hold a flame. To solve this problem, emigrants are throwing buffalo chips onto their fires.

  Andy pokes the toe of her boot at a pie-sized chip, then stoops down to collect it. She points her nose at the even bigger pile by my feet. “Get that one.”

  “Maybe one’s enough,” I suggest, not wanting to touch buffalo droppings.

  But one tiny hitch of Andy’s eyebrow tells me to stop being a girl, and pick it up. I pull my sleeves over my hands and retrieve it.

  Turns out buffalo chips aren’t so horrible. They’re dry as skillet bread and scentless. Our two chips catch the sparks and hold them fast, and in no time, our water boils.

  “Heard talk of a whetstone half a mile downstream. Think I’ll go sharpen the knives.” Andy rummages through our gear, collecting the miscellaneous blades: two pocket knives, a hunting knife, and her cooking knife. “You’s okay here by you’self?”

  “Yes. I’ll sift the cornmeal.”

  She keeps her head down as she hurries in the direction of the river and soon is swallowed into the masses, more folks than I’ve seen since St. Joe. They’re a diverse bunch with common dreams—land for the pioneers, gold for the Argonauts. Judging from the conversations, neither group can wait to reach Fort Kearny, the first trading post since we left civilization. Not me. The place is probably crawling with lawmen. Maybe they even keep a judge on hand so they can try and hang in one shot.

  As if summoned by my worries, a trio of scruffy-faced men in navy-blue uniforms materialize out of the haze and skulk toward me. Army men. I drop the sack of cornmeal I’m holding and it spills into the sand.

  “Hey, boy,” says one of the men. His untucked shirt reveals a protruding belly, and greasy strands of his blond hair stick to his tanned cheeks.

  I get to my feet, mouth gaping like a bass, but failing to produce any noise. The men’s heads tilt and swivel as they try to make out my face from under the shade of my hat, like a band of coyotes routing out the throat hold. I notice that the cottonwood above my head is sturdy enough for a hanging and forget how to work my lungs.

  There’s no sign of the boys or Andy, only pioneers briskly going about their business, too far away to notice. I cannot flee since that would confirm my guilt. I step backward, willing the shade of the cottonwood to swallow me up. The men close in.

  Blondie’s eyes shift around our camp. “Here by yourself?”

  All the blood in my body surges to my head as I ransack my brain for the answer to this simple question. I do not want to involve the remuda by saying no. Then again, plainly I have more supplies than one person needs. I sway, but catch myself before I topple over.

  “We came to the right party,” says another man with hair too gray for a soldier. “He’s already full as a tick.”

  “Well then, I guess you won’t mind sharing,” says Blondie. “Come on, hand over some of your rookus juice.”

  A third man, smacking his tobacco, leans in toward me. “You wouldn’t hold back from good soldiers protecting their fellow countrymen, would you? Share your stash and we might consider you a patriot.” My brain trips over itself trying to keep up, but I can’t figure out what he wants.

  “Maybe he don’t understand.” The gray-haired man leans in closer. “Whis-key,” he says slow and loud, as if I don’t speak English.

  A spark jumps out of the fire with a loud crack and wakes me from my stupor. “Yo no—” I begin in Spanish, quickly switching to Chinese when I realize my blunder. “Ngoh mm ming baak,” I say, which simply means, “I don’t understand.” I pray they will leave me alone now, but Blondie scowls and starts casting his eyes at our supplies.

  “Maybe we’ll check ourselves,” he says. “Bet we find plenty of joy juice in those saddlebags.”

  I cannot let them put their grubby hands on our things. Perhaps I can scare them away. Father said people fear what they don’t understand, and perhaps if I make myself very confusing, they will be very afraid.

  Andy appears fifty feet away, slowing when she sees the situation. She begins to hurry toward me, but I shake my head at her. If the soldiers see us together, it might raise their suspicions. The soldier in the back, a thin man, turns to see what I’m looking at, and I quickly unleash in my harshest Cantonese, “For shame, you with the great blond belly. A bear knows better than to eat a porcupine!”

  The tobacco-chewing soldier and the gray-haired one look at each other uneasily, but Blondie’s face screws up. “Take it easy,” he says gruffly.

  I cannot stop now, or he will think I am weak. I throw my hands at all of them. “Do you not know that too much alcohol will make your bowels sluggish? Go away, you turtle eggs.”

  “Maybe we should ask someone else,” suggests the gray-haired man.

  “Yes, go pick on someone your own size, gender, color, and aptitude,” I continue in my foreign tongue. “I am just as much a patriot as you. My skin may be yellow, but I am not”—I glance at my spilled grain—“I am not cornmeal, and you have no right to tread over me, as if I am mush.” I kick at the cornmeal, spraying some of it onto the first man’s boots. Blondie steps back and soon he is hurrying away after his compatriots.

  I collect my breath, and Andy hurries toward me, her kitchen knife held low at her side. She eyes the scattered cornmeal. “What happened?”

  “They were looking for whiskey.”

  Her worried expression turns wry. “Looks like they came to the wrong place.”

  I crumple onto the ground, my guts flooding with acid. “What if they had . . . what if—”

  “They didn’t.” Andy makes brisk work of salvaging what cornmeal she can.

  I stare at the fire, willing the panic imps to leave.

  She bats at my hand. “Stop picking off you’s buttons. You’s nervous habits drive me batty. Take off you’s shirt.” She whips out her needle and reattaches my sleeve button. “We’s safe. Nothing gonna bug us tonight except a few stones in the mush.”

  I crane my neck in every direction, looking for more soldiers. “We can’t go to the fort tomorrow.”

  “All right, we won’t,” she says solemnly.

  Her words of solidarity soothe me. “You ever think about the noose?”

  She snorts, then glances at me, though her fingers don’t lose their rhythm. “I been thinking about the noose since I was born. You know, sometimes they use thirteen loops in the hangman’s knot. That makes it go easy. Six or seven gets the job done, too, if it’s hemp. Any less and you got you’self some powerful kicking to do when you swing.”

  I gulp, never considering this aspect of things.

  She swats my arm. “As Isaac always says, no one ever injured an eye by looking at the bright side. We’s making good time and flying under the wings of eagles.”

  I shift my focus to Andy’s dark hands, and try to unbend my frown. Next to the stone on the twine bracelet she’s worn every day since I met her, she’s added a wood button, along with two furry seeds that she somehow punched holes through.

  “Why do you collect those things?”

  “One day I’m g
onna see my little brother, Tommy, again. And I want to show him pieces of where I been.”

  “I thought he died?”

  “He did. See, I figure if this bracelet’s on my body when I die, it’s going with me to heaven.” She stops sewing and holds up her wrist. The baubles line up neatly. “Isaac tucked this rock with the hole in a boll of cotton for Tommy to find. He was always doing silly stuff like that to help the picking go by faster.”

  She removes the bracelet and lets me hold it. “Tommy said if he looked at a person through the hole, he could see the good in them.” She points to the seeds with her needle. “These are from ‘Yankee Doodle’ night. They dropped on me when we were sitting under that tree. And this button is from Mrs. Calloway. I found it on the floor of her wagon and she said to keep it. Tommy’s gonna like that one.”

  I loop the twine around my finger, remembering Mother’s bracelet.

  Father gave Mother the circlet of ten different-colored jade stones as a wedding present. A client in New York once offered Father three hundred dollars for it. It’s irreplaceable, not because the jeweler only made one, but because it’s the only thing that remains of my parents, besides Lady Tin-Yin, of course. Mother never took her bracelet off, which means she believed it was a part of her. She might not have lived long enough for me to know her touch, but if she had, I imagine it would feel like those jade stones: smooth and delicate and full of warmth.

  I twist the twine around my finger but it springs away and unwinds. It’s quality twine, the kind that has a mind of its own. “It’s beautiful.”

  She puts down her sewing. “It’s time to ask the boys if we can keep on with ’em.”

  I nod. “You don’t think we should tell them about us, do you?”

  She doesn’t answer right away but squints as if divining the future in the smoke of the fire. “No. Those boys done nothing but good by us. The less they know, the better. If we’s ever caught, then they’s innocent.”

  “The law might not believe them.”

  “It’s not the law I worry about. What if they swear on the Book but don’t tell the truth? God likes his harps back nice and shiny.”

  “You think they would lie for us?”

  “They might.”

  I loop the bracelet back over her hand, and she tucks it under her sleeve. If the boys did lie on the Bible, I hope God would not hold it against them. My harp isn’t exactly shiny either.

  “I’m also gonna ask ’em to find out about Harp Falls,” she says in a softer voice.

  “I remember,” I say glumly. I try to lift up my frown as I sense her eyes upon me. “You can have Paloma.”

  “Thanks, but I wouldn’t take her from you. I’ll get another animal somewhere, don’t worry about that. You’s a real gem, Sammy, a gem to the core. Gonna miss you a lot.”

  She finishes with my button, snapping off the thread with her teeth. My own fingers somehow tied my shirt flaps into a knot, and now I try to work them free. I don’t know which worries me more, lawmen catching us, or Andy leaving. How does she expect to find her brother in this wild country? The federal marshals could easily have taken her for a runaway, or even as one of the Broken Hand Gang. Without the protection of the remuda, she’ll be an easy target.

  As for myself, if the boys don’t want us, and Andy leaves, I’ll be all alone. It won’t be easy, especially when my companions have become like family. The flames appear like bright blurry patches in front of my eyes.

  20

  WEST AND CAY RETURN EMPTY-HANDED. THE NOISE of the crowds scared off the game. We huddle around our fire with bowls of turnip-corn mash.

  “Well, kids, with Fort Kearny a whoop and a holler away, looks like we’ll have to cut you loose soon,” says Cay as we chew.

  Andy nudges me. I open my mouth to speak, but Peety beats me to it.

  “We getting boring of you, chicos,” says Peety.

  Andy drops the nut she was about to put in her mouth.

  “Bored. Speak English, vaquero,” says Cay.

  “We’ll give ya rope you can use for the snakes at night,” says West. “But remember, it don’t keep away bears.”

  “What do we do about those?” I ask, dreading the thought of climbing another tree.

  “Bears are funny,” says Cay. “See, what they really want are your boots. They like to chew on them. Something about our feet smells good to them. Especially Peety’s. How do you think he got that hole?”

  We look at Peety’s boots. Sure enough, his big toe pokes right through the leather. He wiggles it for us.

  “You let a bear chew on your foot?” Andy exclaims.

  “I’m not loco. I took off boot first. The bear chew on it for little while, then he give it back.”

  Peety’s face does not crack. But when I look at West and Cay, they are doubled over with laughter.

  “Bear say, ‘Gracias, señor, tastes like chocolate.’”

  Andy stabs Peety with her glare. “Shame on you jackals and you’s nasty toes.”

  “It’s like this, boys,” says Cay, his voice still hoarse with laughter. “We ain’t going to California for another drive. We’re going to dig for gold, too, and we want you to come with us. What say you?”

  “Yes!” yells Andy, throwing up her arms and grinning at me. I muster a smile, though not much more. Despite our good fortune, the thought of Andy leaving still troubles me. It puts a hole in my mood, through which all other good feelings seep out.

  • • •

  Later that night, we pat down our pockets and pull together a total of twenty-four dollars plus Ty Yorkshire’s rings. Nobody knows exactly how much those will fetch. I debate whether to tell the boys they’re stolen, then decide they probably already know. We need enough supplies to last the month until we arrive at the next trading post, Fort Laramie. West tears out a sheet from his journal for me to write a shopping list and tally costs. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Andy counting on her fingers, her lips mouthing the numbers. She loses her place and grimaces.

  “We’ll need about fifty for everything,” I inform our group.

  “Peety needs new boots,” says Andy.

  Peety tucks his foot under him. “No, new horseshoes more important.”

  “One day, Peety, we’re going to find enough gold to shoe all the horses,” says Cay.

  “How they gonna walk, hombre?”

  “They’re not gonna need to walk. They can sit around and drink tequila. We just better get there before everyone else digs it all up.”

  West doesn’t look up from his journal where he’s sketching a picture of the fort on the hill. “We’ll get there when we get there.”

  Peety uncaps a silver flask. Before taking a sip, he says, “I know you want to pan for gold, but I got another idea.”

  “What’s that?” asks Cay.

  “Mexican governors grant mucho land for ranchos to Mexicans. Miners going to need cattle and horses.”

  “If I wanted to drive cattle, I woulda stayed in Texas.”

  West puts down his charcoal. “That wasn’t an option for you, remember? Peety’s on to something. We’d be the bosses, instead of the beef herders. Do something respectable for a change.”

  “Maybe I like being unrespectable,” says Cay, turning his socks inside out.

  West sighs. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  Before the good humor of the night is wasted, I summon my most casual tone. “So who wants to do the supplying?”

  All the boys raise their hands.

  “Great. Andy and I will meet you at the Platte River crossing.”

  “That’s ten miles past the fort,” West says.

  “I know. I don’t like supplying.” I spit onto the fire. “Women’s work.”

  Andy hoists her eyebrows at me but adds an emphatic, “Me neither.”

  West looks a
t Peety, who shrugs. I brace myself for questions, but to my surprise, Cay says, “Suit yourself.”

  Andy stops counting and knits her fingers over her knees. “When you get to the fort, you mind asking how to get to Harp Falls?”

  Cay puts down his sock. “I thought that was a made-up place.”

  “Never said that.”

  West tips up his hat. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Got some people going that way. Thought I might join them.”

  West’s face is an unreadable page. “Okay, we’ll ask.”

  Cay slaps his socks against his saddlebag. “All right, all right, too much business and not enough play today. Time for ‘Miss Mable’s Table.’” He can’t get enough of that dirty ditty about two lovers who meet under the furniture.

  I cough. I can’t play that here with all these people around, or any other song for that matter. Folks always flock to a violin, no matter how rusty it sounds.

  “My arm hurts from roping. But I can strum.”

  This, at least, I can do quietly. I remove my fiddle and place my hands, left on the fingerboard, right over the bridge. E for exquisite, Father, even without the bow. Tonight I play for three princes and one princess.

  “‘West Is Where My Heart Lies,’” I announce.

  I usually let others take care of the singing, but since not many know this song, I croon the words in my soft singing voice and strum as quietly as possible. Even my normally cranky D-string gets along with the others this time. Andy hums along in a pitch-perfect alto.

  West’s shoulders relax as he listens, and his eyes follow my fingers. When I sing the refrain, West is where my heart lies, my eyes flit to his, though I drop them quickly before I tip him off to my longing.

  • • •

  Later, after everyone falls asleep, I take my violin and steal away to the water. I kneel on a patch of dry grass. The waxing moon casts just enough light to give me a reflection. My hair sticks out in different directions and I’m grimacing. I shiver, wishing I still had my shawl, the one Father had Mrs. Kurtz knit for me out of the softest lambs’ wool. He tied it tight over my shoulders and told me not to mislay it, the way I did its predecessor and my bonnet with the daisies.