CHAPTER 6
Wisconsin, 1881
Reveille sounded at first light. Alma winced and yanked her quilt over her head. But the horn’s sharp notes were insistent, like needle pricks against her eardrums. Her father had assigned a boy named Frederick the duty of awaking the school with this noise every morning. He’d never even held a horn, had shaken it at first as if it might rattle. Silly boy. She could do much better. But Papa said it wasn’t her place. The horn was ugly anyway, worn and rusty from Mr. Simms’s days in the war with the Mexicans.
When the clamor ended, she slid from her bed and splashed her face with icy water from the washbowl on her bed stand. The ceiling creaked with footfalls of the boys shrugging off sleep in the attic dormitory. She brushed her hair smooth and traded her nightshirt for her school uniform.
The other girls bustled between their washstands and bedside trunks. Bedsprings squeaked as they tucked the corners of their sheets under their mattresses and smoothed the wrinkles from their quilts. They took turns weaving each other’s hair into tight plaits. Alma could braid her hair all by herself . . . but never quite as neat as the other girls managed.
Stupor thawed from the room, and whispers rose above the sound of morning chores. It was a strange mix of heavily accented English and Indian gibberish, none of which was directed at her. Even Margaret still kept her distance. Alma perched on the edge of her bed and pretended not to mind, attacking her already gleaming boots with polish.
Boot heels clipped down the hallway and the room went silent. The girls scrambled into place at the end of their beds: backs straight, hands clasped, chins up, eyes down. Alma stood, too, her posture straight but less rigid. She watched Rose struggle with her buttons, securing the top one just before Miss Wells strode into the room. Alma’s mother sauntered in a few seconds behind, still dressed in her sateen robe and lace-trimmed nightshirt.
“If you’ll be so kind as to attend to that side of the room, Mrs. Blanchard, I’ll inspect this side,” Miss Wells said.
Her mother yawned and gave a lazy wave of assent. Usually Miss Wells managed morning inspection alone, but Alma had overheard her father encouraging her mother to “suffer more involvement with the pupils.” So a few times over the past week her mother—a rare sight before the noon hour—graced their company.
Miss Wells, however, did not appear grateful for the help. The sharp features of her oblong face were pinched. Her gray eyes darted hither and thither, as if to catch any offenses before Alma’s mother had a chance to overlook them. She marched the length of the room and stopped at the far-most bed.
May, whom Alma guessed to be the youngest of all the girls, was the teacher’s first victim. Miss Wells examined the corners of her bed, the alignment of her quilt, the neatness of her trunk, even the cleanliness of her washstand.
All the while, May stood still as a stone figurine at the end of her bed. Only her coal-black eyes moved, following Miss Wells out the very corner of her sockets, fleeing down to the floor when the woman came to face her.
Miss Wells took the girl’s chin in hand and turned it into the light. She inspected the smoothness of May’s hair and neatness of her uniform. At a tap on the wrist, May extended her hands and splayed her fingers. The teacher scrutinized each nail for dirt, then turned May’s hands over and examined her palms. The entire drill progressed in silence.
Alma saw May’s bunched stocking and grimaced. Even though she was angry with the lot of them, Alma took no delight in what was surely to come.
“It appears you have not bothered to properly garter your stocking.” The teacher’s voice was sweet as honeycomb, a sound that made the nape of Alma’s neck tingle. “What have you to say for yourself?”
May stared wide-eyed at Miss Wells and said nothing.
“Your stocking, Miss May.”
The girl bit her lower lip and looked over her heavy black uniform. She smoothed her skirt, checked to see that the buttons on her sleeves were fastened and her boots laced, then turned back to Miss Wells and shook her head.
The teacher huffed and pointed to the slack fabric bunched around the girl’s ankle.
May bent over and fought with the stocking until it lay smooth and securely fastened above her knee. When she looked back to the teacher, her face was hopeful, her eyes pleading.
“Ten demerits,” Miss Wells said. She made a note in her ledger and moved on the next girl, ignoring the way May’s carriage wilted.
If she didn’t know the word stocking, May clearly knew what demerits meant: scrubbing the floors while the other children got to play in the yard. Alma couldn’t help but frown with her. The factory-made stockings provided by the Indian Bureau fit May like an elephant’s hat would fit a dormouse.
Miss Wells followed the same routine for each girl: leering over every inch of their bed, washstand, and uniform. By contrast, Alma’s mother drifted down her assigned row of beds with little care. She seldom touched anything, and never the girls themselves. Whenever she encountered something overwhelmingly amiss, such as the water stains on Alice’s dress, she flapped her hand in the offender’s direction and said in a flat voice, “Demerits here, I should think.”
Inspection was almost over when Alma saw a sliver of black fabric peeking from beneath Margaret’s pillow. At first, she thought it just a shadow, but then her every muscle, from toes to forehead, clenched. The doll!
She tapped her foot and cleared her throat softly. When Margaret looked over, Alma nodded toward the pillow.
Margaret’s eyes doubled in size. She started to shuffle backward, but Alma’s mother had already reached her for inspection.
“Come forward, little girl. Stand up straight.”
Alma’s clasped hands squeezed so tightly her fingers lost feeling. The seconds limped by. She followed every flicker of her mother’s crystal-blue eyes: up and down the length of Margaret’s dress, a glance at the nightstand and washbowl, to and fro from one corner of the bed to the other, then back to Margaret’s face.
“Neat enough, but do stop fidgeting.”
Alma exhaled and snuck Margaret a little smile.
Her mother sashayed onward, then paused and wheeled back. “What do we have here?”
Alma’s heart echoed each step her mother took toward Margaret’s bed.
“This is entirely unacceptable.” Her mother brushed past the Indian toward the head of the bed, the pillow, the doll . . . the nightstand?
“A mat of hairs has been left here in your comb. Disgusting. Uncouth. Miss Wells, demerits here for this one.”
This time, Alma had no chance for relief. Her mother whirled away from the nightstand and froze. Her dainty mouth fell open. Her porcelain skin flared red. She reached out and pulled the doll from beneath Margaret’s pillow. “Where did you get this?”
Margaret looked like a baby bird caught in a tomcat’s claws. Her eyes began to water and her lower lip trembled.
Alma’s mother brandished the doll above her head. “You sinister little devil! You’ll suffer more than demerits for this.”
She grabbed Margaret by the collar of her dress and dragged her to the potbellied furnace in the corner of the room. The fire had dwindled through the night, but flashes of light still showed through the grate as the embers continued to smolder. She opened the door and threw the doll inside. Sparks swirled. Yellow flames gathered, consuming the doll and its beautifully embroidered costume. Margaret and Alma whimpered at the same time.
“Hold out your hand,” her mother said, then more loudly, “your hand!”
Margaret raised a trembling hand. Her breathing had quickened and sweat glistened at her hairline. Alma’s mother gripped the girl’s wrist and thrust her hand toward the flames.
Sharp inhales sounded around the room. Even Miss Wells seemed surprised, though her lips trembled with a smile.
Margaret shook her head frantically. Her tears sparkled in the fire’s light. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Then, as her fingers neared the mouth of
the furnace, she screamed.
The sound jolted Alma from her silence. “It was me, Mama.”
When her quiet voice did not draw her mother’s attention, she gulped and hollered over Margaret’s cries. “It was me! I didn’t burn the doll as you asked.”
Her mother spun round. “What?”
“I . . . I just wanted to play with it.”
Her mother dropped Margaret’s hand. She no longer seemed to blink or even breathe but stared at Alma with a gaze that could quicken the dead.
“Mama, I didn’t mean—”
“Silence.” She strode across the room to Alma’s nightstand and grabbed her silver-handled brush. “Bend over your bed and lift your skirts.”
Alma looked down the rows of gaping faces and felt her cheeks burn.
“Now, young lady.” Her mother’s voice was steady, but knife-sharp. “Let these Indians see what happens to bad little girls.”
With every step Alma took toward her bed, she regretted saving Margaret’s doll. She hated Stover and wished her family had never come. She drew her skirt up over her backside and braced her hands on the mattress.
The back of the brush struck her bottom, stinging her skin through her thin cotton drawers and driving her forward. She balled the quilt in her fists and clenched her teeth. Her mother paddled her again. And again.
Ten strikes later, Alma’s legs wobbled and tears streamed down her face. Her mother cast the brush onto the bed and stalked away. Alma stood and straightened her skirt, keeping her head down to hide her red, puffy face. She never wanted to see her mother or another Indian ever again.
* * *
Stares and whispers kept Alma’s embarrassment aflame all day. Why couldn’t the Indians just ignore her like they usually did?
When evening finally came, Alma lingered in the parlor as the others marched to bed. She waited until all was quiet, then hobbled upstairs. Her backside still throbbed from the morning’s punishment.
A sliver of light shone beneath the dormitory door. Alma could hear Miss Wells pacing the room, counting heads. She sighed and slumped against the wall. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes—hot tears, full of hate and frustration. She couldn’t bear it, not a single day more. She felt lonelier here surrounded by the Indian children than she had in Philadelphia all alone.
The footfalls stopped and the somber drone of evening Scripture began. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah . . .”
Ugh. Alma knew that one already. The Indians had probably never seen a whale, wouldn’t know what the story meant. True, she hadn’t either. But she’d seen the skeleton of one laid out in a museum. Surely that counted.
“Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and . . .”
Run away, that’s what she’d do. Run away and find a new mother and real friends.
When the footfalls stopped and the somber drone of evening prayers began, Alma turned the knob and opened the door just a crack. She slipped in and crept to her bedside. With Miss Wells’s gaze upon them, not one of the sixteen girls dared look up. She sank onto her knees beside her bed. While her lips mouthed the last verse of prayer, her mind swirled with plans of flight.
After the teacher damped the lamps, Alma slid into bed, still dressed in her day clothes and boots. She would slip out as soon as the other girls were asleep. Maybe she’d join a troupe of actors, wear face paint and pretty costumes. Maybe she’d steal onto a steamboat and sail down the Mississippi. Anywhere would be better than here.
In time, rustling fabric and whining bedsprings settled. Slow, even breaths sounded through the room. Alma was just about to rise when the floorboard creaked beside her.
She cracked open one eye and spied one of the older girls, named Catherine, creeping toward the window. The girl’s quilt hung over her shoulders like a shawl. She coaxed the window open without a sound and slipped out onto the roof.
Next, Alice tiptoed past, then Rose and Margaret. Had they stolen her idea? Were they running away too?
Alma remained motionless, her eyes combing over the other beds. Sleeping forms rose and fell with silent breaths. No one else had awoken.
She looked back to the window. Alice and Rose had already vanished onto the roof. Margaret gathered up her nightshirt with one hand and grabbed the window frame with the other. A breeze fluttered her hair, carrying with it the scent of the lawn and trees, the rocks and dirt, the moonlight and stars. A slight leap and out she climbed, into the open.
CHAPTER 7
Minnesota, 1906
Endless miles of baled hay and swaying cornstalks at last gave way to the stone, brick, and steel of St. Paul. Inside the dining car, Alma’s teacup chattered atop its saucer in time with the rocking train. The toast on her plate lay half-eaten and her soft-boiled egg untouched. She stared out the window at the small houses and tenement buildings lining the track. Every so often, the gray water of the Mississippi bullied its way into view between gaps in the transitioning landscape. At this distance, the river’s surface appeared smooth, like a vein of painted glass in a decorative window. But Alma knew better. She had looked upon those same waters countless times as a girl. She knew their unforgiving and unyielding currents.
“La Crosse is what—a hundred miles downriver?” Stewart asked.
Alma tore her gaze from the window and looked at her husband. His soft eyes calmed her—not the blue of her parents’ nor the inky-brown of the Indians’, but hazel. Even in the harsh incandescent light of her aunt’s parlor that first evening they’d met, his eyes had struck her. She could stare into them forever without reminder of things past. Here especially, so close to her childhood home, she needed that refuge. “A hundred and fifty.”
“Did you come here often?”
She shook her head. “Only once. Mother preferred Chicago.”
“Isn’t that twice as far?”
“Yes, but twice as fashionable.”
Stewart chuckled. “She’s still living in La Crosse, isn’t she? We could stop by on our return home.”
“No,” she said, on top of his words.
“You don’t think she’d like to meet me?”
Alma clutched her teacup to silence its clattering. Her mother would love to meet him, to show him off to all of her friends. “See, my silly daughter’s made something of herself, after all,” she would say.
His tidy hair and correct posture, his tailored suit and silk tie, his silver tiepin and cufflinks—that was all she would see. Not the tender, honorable man beneath.
She shifted atop the velvet seat cushion. It no longer felt soft, but coarse and prickly. “I’d hate to take you away from your practice any longer than necessary.”
His lips flattened. “And your father? Shouldn’t you like to visit his grave?”
“No.” Even to her own ears it sounded like a lie.
He crossed his legs and looked out the window. Minutes passed in want of a word, a touch, a glance. But Alma didn’t trust herself. Her shaky voice, her watery eyes, her sweat-dampened gloves all would beg more questions, elicit more deceit.
“Union Depot can’t be far off,” Stewart finally said. “I’ll return to our sleeper and instruct the valet about our luggage.” He stood and grabbed the book he’d been reading over breakfast: A Treatise on the Law of Capital Offenses.
She touched his hand with the tips of her fingers. “Stewart . . . thank you.”
He mustered a smile and exited the dining car. He would never admit to weariness, but she could see the lines around his mouth, the way the rest of his face refused the mirth of his smile, as if it had been painted on atop an otherwise somber expression.
Four days had passed since she’d first read of Harry’s trial in the morning papers. Stewart’s face had looked weary even then, but now, watching him walk away, she saw the fatigue in his step, in the slant of his shoulders. He loved her so. And this was how she repaid him?
Outside, debarking passengers bustled about the depot. Coaches, wagonettes, and the occasional
automobile crowded the curb. Horns honked. Horses whinnied. Train whistles blew.
She and Stewart found a quiet corner on the platform. He withdrew his pocket watch from his waistcoat and sighed. “I had hoped to go to the hotel with you, but my appointment with your classmate’s lawyer, Mr. Gates, is at eleven. I’d best head to his office straightaway.”
“That’s all right. I wanted to go see Harry, anyway.”
His hazel eyes fixed her with a concerned look. “Alone? Shouldn’t you like to freshen up first at the hotel? I can join you this afternoon and we can go together.”
“I doubt anyone at the jail will take offense to my traveling clothes.” She straightened his tie and patted his chest. “Besides, dear, it’s the twentieth century. Women travel alone all the time.”
He shuffled a foot atop the wood platform. “He’s not being held in the city jail, darling, but several miles southwest of here at Fort Snelling.”
An army fort outside the city? The idea seemed archaic. Harry wasn’t some rabble-rousing warrior in the like of Geronimo or Crazy Horse. “This isn’t a military matter.”
“The crime occurred on federal trust land—”
“The Indians own the land. The government parceled it out under the Dawes and Nelson acts. Father spoke of it often.”
He smiled that tired smile. “Yes, but not all of it was allotted. And even that which was remains in trust for twenty-five years.”
“Oh.” It seemed Stewart had done more than brush up on criminal law in the past few days. “What about bail?”
“The judge refused to set bail. I’ll speak to Mr. Gates and see if we can’t get your friend transferred to the city holding facility. Until then, why don’t you—”
“Wherever he is, I’ll see him today.”
Stewart pursed his lips, but led her to the line of waiting cabs. “Are you sure?”
She squeezed his hand. “I’ll be fine. I’ll meet you back at the hotel in time for dinner.”
Between Earth and Sky Page 4