Minowe laughed—a fake, icy laugh. “Of all the things that happened to him here—the punishments, shamings—you’re the worst.”
She stomped off, leaving Alma with a mouthful of bitter words and tears stinging her eyes.
“Do you think that too, ?” Alma asked after she found her voice.
“No, Azaadiins. Of course we’re friends. Minowe too. She just . . .” paused and kicked at the dirt. “Living on the reservation won’t be easy. They’re not used to no waxopíni wí there.”
“What about the nuns? They’re white women. And surely some of the agency employees have wives.”
shrugged. “It’s different. You’d be the wife of an Indian. Many peoples—white and red—won’t like that.”
Alma squinted up at the sun. Only moments before its bright face had seemed so cheery. Off in the distance, she heard the rumble of an approaching carriage. “I love him . . . What would you do if you were in my place?”
bit her lip. After another drawn-out pause, the smile Alma cherished returned to the girl’s face. “I’d run away too.”
“Will you help me? I need someone to distract the dogs and keep them quiet while I sneak out.”
“I can manage that.”
“And afterward, you can’t tell anyone where we’ve gone. Father will figure it out eventually, but at least and I will have a head start. After we’re married, there’s nothing he can do.” The thud of horse hooves and cry of iron wheels grew louder. “I’d better go.”
She turned to leave and saw the stick Minowe had thrown to the ground. Alma picked it up. Her fingers curled around the rough bark until they blanched. “It’s not a lie.”
eased the stick from her hand and burrowed a fresh hole. “Don’t worry none about Minowe. She’ll come around. First her brother left and now you. She just feels left behind. I’ll bring her with me to help with the dogs. I know she’ll wants to say goodbye.”
“Bring her if you want. I don’t care.” Her shaky voice betrayed her. She took a step toward the house, then turned back. “It won’t be forever. Goodbye, I mean. We’ll see each other again, I’m sure.”
Her friend flung another seed onto the earth and looked down, but not before Alma saw the doubt in her eyes.
CHAPTER 37
Minnesota, 1906
Alma alighted the carriage and shook the dust from her skirt. Stewart kept his gaze forward, the brim of his derby shadowing his face from the morning sun. He’d woken with a stiff, rigid manner and sat thus still. “Which direction are you going?”
She looked both ways down the thoroughfare. “North.” She pointed in the direction she’d started off yesterday before turning around, the direction Frederick had instructed her to go.
“How far?”
Ningo’anwe’biwin, whatever that meant. “Um . . . no more than a couple of miles.”
“And what’s the name of this sister?”
A layer of dust had settled over her from the ride in and seemed to cover everything—her shoes, her skirt, her hair, her skin, even her tongue felt dry and gritty. She swallowed. “Minowe.” How strange to speak her name aloud after so long, and yet so effortless, as if her lips had never forgotten the motion. “Margaret, that was her Christian name. Surely she’s married now, but I don’t know her surname.”
Stewart exhaled, long and steady. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed the back of his neck. The white silk turned damp and brown. She watched him finger the blue initials hand-stitched at the corner before finally looking at her. “And you’ll be back at the agency by—”
“By one. I promise.”
He turned forward again and held his eyes shut through another long exhale. Then, without goodbye, he steered the horse and buggy toward the livery. It sickened her to watch him go. Her neck felt flush, but her hands clammy. They’d argued before, she told herself as she started off down the road. But this was more than an argument. Something had wedged between them. Something sharp and deep. Or maybe it had always been there—her past, her secrets—and only now lay exposed.
She glanced over her shoulder. The white agency building glared in the sunlight, painfully bright against an otherwise neutral landscape. She squinted and watched Stewart mount the steps. He was doing this for her. Whatever was between them, he was still here. After she got her answers from Minowe, after they freed Asku, she and Stewart could look forward again and let the past alone.
First she had to find Minowe. A dense fringe of grass and shrubs lined either side of the road. Beyond lay open field—some tilled, some fallow—with stands of birch and cottonwood about the border. But no path anywhere in sight.
Ningo’anwe’biwin. She unpinned her hat and wiped her brow with the sleeve of her duster. When had she heard that phrase? She caged her present troubles and thought back. Summer perhaps? Long ago. Warmth had hung in the air, the canopy of leaves above her full and green. Minowe was beside her and they trudged hand in hand behind a loping Asku. She’d been ten, maybe eleven.
“How much farther?” she’d asked.
Asku turned and grinned. “Ningo’anwe’biwin.”
“What does that mean?” she asked Minowe.
Her friend puzzled a minute, working through the translation, then her face brightened. “From one place of rest to the next.”
“Oh.” Alma walked a few more feet, then stopped. “How far is that?”
Minowe shrugged.
Asku whirled around again. Light filtered through the trees, falling around him like a golden cloak. “About half a mile, Azaadiins. Come on. You can make it.”
He seemed then as he’d always seemed to her: invincible, infallible. And Minowe . . . Frederick had been right. They used to be inseparable.
A cool fall breeze nipped at the back of her neck and rustled her skirt, sucking the memory of warmth from the air. Solitude stung her like a hornet’s bite, a cruel reminder why she seldom tended the garden of her remembrance. She took a deep breath and continued down the road. Though her chest heaved and sweat returned to her brow, she doubted an Indian—unencumbered by heavy petticoats, a corset, and high-heeled boots—would yet require a rest.
After a few more minutes of travel, the tall roadside grasses parted to reveal a narrow trail. It snaked eastward through the prairie and disappeared into a sparse woodland. Alma stretched onto her tiptoes and looked down the main road. No other trailheads visible. Hiking her skirts, she clambered up the road’s embankment onto the trail.
Alma’s insides tightened as she tramped down the path. Every inch of her skin itched with the urge to turn back. Asku she could talk to. And Frederick. They’d both been gone before she and announced their plans to marry. What they knew, if anything, came secondhand. But Minowe bore witness to it all.
She stopped and shook the clenched-fist tension from her hands. Turn back now and Asku hanged. Her feet shuffled onward. She couldn’t abide more sorrow and guilt.
The path dead-ended at several acres of downward-sloping farmland. Weeds and dry prairie grass overran most of the land. A few rows of corn stood like skeletons at the far end, bounded by sprawling squash plants and a leafy cluster of beet tops. Trees sprouted like whiskers beyond the modest stretch of crops, and farther on a small lake rippled in the afternoon sunlight.
She trudged across the field and around the tall cornstalks. A light breeze rustled their droopy, yellowing arms. Her heart inched higher and higher until she felt it pulse at the base of her tongue.
Clear of the garden now, she ducked beneath an empty clothesline into a barren yard. A small farmhouse stood at its center. Gray tarpaper clung to the frame like sunken skin. The breeze swelled and several torn swaths flapped back, revealing the studs and a helter-skelter array of narrow cross boards beneath.
Alma climbed two stairs to a creaky porch. The eaves of the rusty tin roof shuddered above her. She hesitated before the door, her fingers loath to form a fist, her knuckles reticent to knock. At last she rapped. The rickety door shuddered.
&nb
sp; No answer.
After several seconds of silence, she pulled back the flannel covering and peeked inside the paneless window. A wooden table stood in the center of the room beside a potbellied stove. Baskets of woven birch bark lined the walls, and five rolled rush mats rested against the far corner. The earthen floor looked newly swept, and a tidy set of tin dishes rested at one end of the table. No one was inside.
Should she wait? This mightn’t be Minowe’s house at all. Then she caught sight of a doll propped up in the corner, a cloth doll seated beside two others made of grass. Alma’s immediately recognized the faded blue and white dress, the strands of yellow thread sewn on as hair. Minowe had made it when they were girls, not long after Alma’s mother burned the Indian doll. Alma had made one, too, under Minowe’s tutelage. Only hers had black hair instead of yellow. They’d taken greater care to hide them, stashing them beneath a loose floorboard beside Alma’s bed.
What had happened to that doll? Perhaps it was still there in the dormitory, or in some dust-covered trunk. Minowe, she’d called her. Such a silly, childish thing to do, naming the doll after her friend. What had Minowe called her doll? Alma couldn’t remember.
She seated herself upon the steps to wait. A tissuey layer of clouds grayed the sky, but the north wind lay dormant. She thought of yesterday’s gale, how the house behind her must have shaken and rattled. A pang whispered in her heart. It was so tiny, the house, small enough to fit in her home’s parlor with room to spare. She strangled back her sympathy. “I’m only here to talk about Asku,” she would say, in the dry, matter-of-fact tone of Miss Wells when Minowe returned.
Minutes stretched and gummed together. With each snap in the trees or rustle of cornstalks, Alma’s pulse quickened only to slow again when no one appeared. With time, the prairie grass and weeds blurred like a watercolor before her tired eyes. Her head grew heavy against her palm. Thoughts of quitting her post lazed through her mind when a thunderclap of tumbling logs startled her to attention.
Her head jerked toward the noise.
Minowe stood a few yards away, her face pale and wide, her arms limp as the last of the sticks and lumber fell to the ground. They rolled away from her feet like a rippling tide.
They stared at each other for several heavy seconds. Alma had never believed in ghosts. The temporal world haunted her enough. But seeing Minowe made her skin tighten and prickle, as if everyone lost in the past had emerged into the clearing with her. Minowe’s starched black uniform was now a simple skirt and blouse—both patched and tattered at the hem. Her hair, once tied in a careful bun, hung long and plaited down her back. But her face, her eyes, her long arms and graceful hands were the same.
“You should not have come,” Minowe said at last.
Though she’d practiced the lines, Alma’s voice deserted her. “I . . .” She cleared her throat weakly. “I’m only here for Asku.”
Minowe’s eyes went glassy at her brother’s name. Her lips compressed into a thin, sharp line. She looked away, blinking several times, then faced Alma with a hardened expression. “You can’t help him.”
“You’re wrong. My husband is a lawyer. We’re here searching for the truth.”
Minowe snickered, her face contorting cruelly. She sank to her haunches and snatched up her fallen logs.
“Don’t you care if he hangs?” Alma said.
“This does not belong to you.” Her voice was low, hoarse, dangerous, but Alma paid no heed.
“He was my friend. Nisayenh, brother to me, too.”
“Brother?” Minowe stood and stomped to the side of the house. She threw her cache of logs atop a stack of wood. They landed haphazardly, jutting out from the otherwise tidy pile, as the resulting clap echoed through the clearing. “You cannot say that. Not after these many years. After all you did.”
“Me?” Alma tried to laugh, but it came out as a cackle. “I’m to blame for this?”
“Your father, that school, you all betrayed him.”
“Who are you to speak of betrayal?” Madness edged her words. “You? Of all people.”
Minowe flinched. “You never should of run away with him.” Her voice broke and quieted. Her gaze retreated to the ground and she shook her head. “I told you so, but you wouldn’t listen.”
The dusty yard blinked in and out of focus. Alma closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath between clenched teeth. “I’m not here to talk about .”
“You thought nothing would happen.” Another bitter snicker. “A white girl and an Indian.”
Alma’s pulse thudded against her temples. “Leave it alone, Minowe.”
“You never really loved him. Just wanted to be one of us.”
The words stunned her. Time stilled. She felt the sun beat upon her neck, felt the dampness beneath her arms and across her palms, felt her heart ache. She had wanted to be one of them, desperately; had hated always being the outsider. But her love for was more than that, far more. “This has nothing to do with him.”
“No?”
Alma took another deep breath. Her fists trembled. “What do you know about the murder of Agent Andrews?”
“Nothing. I know nothing.”
“If you don’t help me, Asku will die. Is that what you want?”
Minowe’s expression wilted. She brushed past Alma toward the front of the house. “I told you, this doesn’t belong to you.”
“You think I want to be here?” Alma grabbed Minowe’s arm and spun her around. “To see you again?”
“Awas, then. Awas! Go back to your fancy house, with your fancy clothes, and your fancy lawyer husband.” She yanked her arm from Alma’s grasp and smiled a cruel, twisted smile. “Do you thinks of when you’re in his arms at night? Say his name in accident? No.” She stepped back and spit at the narrow patch of bald earth between them. “No, I bets you don’t even remember face.”
Alma didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. She let her purse fall to the ground and slapped Minowe across the face. “Don’t you speak of him! You have no right. Not after what you did.”
Minowe shuffled backward, cradling her cheek.
Alma looked down at her hand. Despite the leather cushion of her glove, her palm stung. Her limbs still twitched with anger, but the outline of her fingers, her silk handbag below in the dirt, all blurred with tears. “I did love him. And I do remember. His face. His voice. Everything.”
CHAPTER 38
Wisconsin, 1891
Alma took a parting glance around her room. Moonlight sliced through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the neatly made bed, bare vanity, and looming wardrobe. She thought back to the day her mother had moved her from the dormitory, separating her from the Indian girls, and how lonely the room had looked to her then. Two years later, it still felt lonely. She closed the door and crept down the hallway without looking back.
Two layers of stockings muffled her footsteps. Doubled-up petticoats ballooned her skirt. They simply would not fit in her crammed luggage. She’d struggled to close the brass clasps on her portmanteau suitcase and the seams of her carpetbag bulged. Both weighed more than the bulky sacks of flour Mrs. Simms stored in the cellar.
She was not going to chance another fall from the roof. She tiptoed down the stairs, boots slung over her shoulder, without eliciting a single creak or cry from the wood.
In the foyer she paused and glanced at the gilded hands of the grandfather clock. Five minutes before ten. She had little better than an hour to make it to the base of Grandfather’s Bluff. The bags would slow her pace, but she could make it.
She turned down the hallway leading toward the kitchen. The dark corridor lay still and empty. She had expected to see light coming from beneath the door of her father’s study. Most nights he stayed up late reading by the fire or shuffling through the piles of paperwork on his desk. Where was he tonight? She looked over her shoulder at the foyer and the cluster of rooms down the opposite hallway. Threads of moonlight filtered in through the foyer windows, otherwise all was dark.
Her father’s routine had its own telltale sounds: the whine of copper taps as he switched off the last of the wall sconces; slow, heavy footsteps; soft self-mutterings. None of this she heard. After straining her ears for over an hour, she could delay her departure no longer. Between the arduous task of picking through her belongings for only the most practical and important and the excitement that flapped inside her chest, she must have missed her father’s ascent to bed.
Another glance around the darkened first floor and she crept to the kitchen. waited for her by the back door.
“Minowe’s still mad?” Alma asked after glancing around the room.
nodded.
She drew in a deep breath to push down her sorrow. Air filled her lungs, but she still felt empty. “Tell her . . . never mind.”
The clock in the foyer sang out ten long chimes. She hugged , threw on her boots, and hurried through the back door before her tears had a chance to well.
“Goodbye, Azaadiins,” her friend whispered after her.
She raced across the yard to the cover of the woods. Amid the bramble and trees she turned back for one final look. The schoolhouse lay quiet and still, like a roosting owl. Even at night, the great edifice cast a shadow, swallowing the moon behind its boxy form. A darkened shape moved across the window in her father’s study. Alma blinked and the apparition vanished. Unspoken goodbyes weighed upon her tongue. She swallowed the bitter taste and hurried on.
A faintly worn game trail wound through the trees. She followed it for a short distance, then broke away and veered right at the gnarled oak stump. Insects sang and deer mice scurried through the underbrush. In the distance, a coyote pup howled. After a few minutes, the sound of lapping water broke through the nocturnal chatter and the trees parted for a small stream. From here, she would chase the flowing water all the way to the base of the bluffs.
Between Earth and Sky Page 28