He’d never wanted to come? None of this made sense. “You worked so hard. Did so well.”
“I worked hard to honor my father, my people.”
All those years—first to raise his hand, last to quit the study room—it must mean more than honor. “But . . . but you were happy.”
He spread a hand out over the rock, bracing himself it seemed, as if the weight of his body were too much to hold upright. “I don’t know anymore.”
“No!” She slammed her palm against the floor. “You were happy. I remember. Something happened to you at Brown. Everything was fine before you left.”
“Is that what you want to hear? That they mistreated me there? That I didn’t fit in?” He pushed off the wall and stalked the perimeter of his cell. The tremor of his steps reached her through the floorboards. “It’s true. There was no place for a red man in their world. I wasn’t welcome in any of their social clubs or study groups. I was behind in class from the moment I arrived there.”
“Nonsense.”
“Those boys were learning Latin before I spoke a word of English. They didn’t spend half their school day harvesting crops or sanding wood.”
“You just needed time.”
He pushed back his shirtsleeve and brandished his arm. “Time won’t change the color of my skin!”
Alma flinched and pulled back from the bars.
He glared at her a moment, then hung his head and sighed. He looked like a weatherworn scarecrow whose straw stuffing had blown away with the wind. “At Brown I was too Indian to fit in. When I returned home, I was too like the white man.”
Alma rose, ignoring the dirt smudged across her skirt. He followed her with eyes as dark and empty as the void between the stars. “You could have put your learning to use. Worked at the agency or taught at the day school.”
“So my people could despise me even more?”
“You could have done anything. Been anyone you wanted to be.”
Asku righted his chair and collapsed onto it. “Except be an Indian.”
She crossed to a nearby window. It was yet afternoon, but the narrow opening strangled back the sun. Her thoughts clattered, one against the other, impossible to right or tame. “I think it best you don’t take the stand. I’m sure Stewart will agree. Even without your testimony we can win your case.”
“I don’t want to win the case, Alma.” The edge returned to his voice. “I’m guilty.”
“Judge Baum might dismiss the case outright.”
“No, go back home.”
Her eyes clung to the sliver of pale-blue sky visible through the window. “At the very least we can show mitigating circumstances. Plead for a lesser sentence.”
“I said I don’t want your help!”
“I’ll not let you die to prove some silly point.”
His chair legs scraped against the floor. The cell bars shivered beneath his grasp. “I spent every day at Stover ashamed to be Indian and every day since ashamed I am not Indian enough. I killed Agent Andrews in the name of Anishinaabe justice. In the eyes of my people I am whole again—not Harry Muskrat, but Askuwheteau, son of Odinigun. I would rather die beloved by my people than live a ghost in their world.”
Alma shook her head, as if doing so would dislodge his words from her ears. “That’s suicide.”
“It is the way I have chosen.”
She still could not look at him. The blue sky bled into the gray stone walls through the prism of her tears. “You’re going to fight these charges. Fight them and win.”
He shook the bars so violently the bolts whined and bits of the stone ceiling struck the floor like hail. “It is right that I should die. I will hear the drums of my forefathers and dance with them in the sky. Don’t rob me of that honor.”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. The lighter step of the boy watchman and another heavier set. She did not turn around when they entered the room. Did not turn around as they berated Asku for the ruckus and told him to prepare for transport. The cell door creaked open. Chains clanked. Locks snapped shut.
Again, the world seemed to wobble. How dare he ask her to let him die. After all she’d done to try to save him. After she’d already watched another loved one hang. Alma braced herself against the wall. The chill of the stone reached her through her gloves, traveling up her arms and down her spine until her whole body shivered.
“Azaadiins, please.”
Even his voice, raspy with emotion, a voice as familiar as the churning Mississippi, could not compel her to turn. His shackles rattled down the stairs. It was a halting sound—the thud of a footstep, the clang of metal, a moment’s pause, and then another thud—that harried her nerves. None of this made sense, his confession of murder, his will to die. Another stair. Another thud and clang. Why hadn’t he told her sooner? Told her the truth from the beginning. Why had he let her believe they’d ever been happy?
CHAPTER 41
Minnesota, 1906
Alma’s eyes climbed the red and white edifice of the Ryan Hotel, lighting on the fifth floor. Behind her, carriages and bicycles rattled. Automobiles honked. Streetcars whined along their tracks. Her bounding pulse had not slowed in the hour-long ride from Fort Snelling, nor had her mind quieted. How could she face Stewart? What would she tell him—that Asku was guilty? She hardly believed it herself.
Her feet echoed as she crossed the marble foyer. The gears of the elevator worked her nerves. Inside the room, Stewart was already preparing for dinner. “Hurry and change, darling,” he said, slipping an arm into his freshly pressed dress shirt. “We don’t want to miss our reservation.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and watched him dress. He worked through his buttons and donned his waistcoat—white on white. Embellished satin upon starched cotton. His face, reflected in the vanity mirror, wore a cheerful expression she’d not seen since they crossed the Mississippi. A good meeting with Mr. Gates then. Agreement all around they could win the case. Save for one small detail: Asku wasn’t innocent. Just thinking the words pained her. How could she utter them aloud?
Stewart picked up his bow tie. Also white, though black was in fashion now too. He whistled as he worked it round his collar and began to tie. She could see the deft movement of his hands in the mirror. Over, under, fold, around. “I thought you might like your blue chiffon,” he said, and gestured toward the chaise. “I already laid it out for you.”
She glanced over at the dress. The window above the chaise looked out over the skyline. Shadow had fallen and the sky colored over like a bruise. If only she’d passed over the morning paper that day, left its stories silenced between the pages, thrown it out with the breakfast scraps. She would never have returned to Stover and seen the injustice her childhood eyes could not. She would never have lost her fantasies of prosperity to the reality of life on the reservation.
Stewart’s cufflinks snapped into place. Fabric rustled as he shrugged on his tailcoat.
Could she leave Asku for the gallows, let him die when she had the power to save him? In lieu of an answer, her father’s voice came to her, warm, robust, humming with excitement: We’re their salvation. He’d said those words the very first day the Indians arrived. How fervently she’d once believed them.
But then, for all their good intentions, they hadn’t really saved them at all.
“Aren’t you going to take off your duster and dress for dinner?”
She jogged her head and turned to her husband. How handsome he looked in his double-breasted jacket, the silk-faced collar shining in the lamplight. His hair was neatly combed, his cheeks freshly shaven, his hazel eyes expectant. She pulled off her coat and laid it beside her on the bed. As an afterthought, she removed her gloves and unpinned her hat too. Sweat clung to the palms of her hands. She wiped them over her skirt. “I have to tell you something.”
“Yes, we can talk at dinner.”
“No, here.”
He hesitated, then sat beside her.
She searched the silence for the best
way to begin. It offered nothing. She ran her hands over her dress for the second time, then hid them in folds of fabric when she noticed her reddened and haggard nail beds. “Why do you love me?”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“When you first saw me at the picture show and afterward, during our courtship, what made you fall in love with me?”
He flattened his lips and sat back. “I guess it was many things. Your sweetness, your intelligence, your pensiveness—”
“My frailty?”
“I never saw you as frail. Melancholy perhaps. But with that comes grit. Having borne something terrible and survived. For that I loved you too.”
“But you never asked after the circumstances.”
He shrugged. “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
At last perhaps she was.
“I told Harry what we found at White Earth. He still refuses our help.”
“What?” He started to chuckle, but the sound sputtered into a wheezing exhale. “You’re serious. Why?”
“He told me, that is, he confessed that”—Alma swallowed—“he killed Agent Andrews.”
Stewart blinked. “He’s guilty? We did all this, came all this way, to help a murderer?”
Alma winced at the word. It still seemed impossible, her beloved Asku a killer.
“Why didn’t he tell you this at the beginning? Before we wasted all that time at White Earth?” Stewart jerked to his feet and paced the length of the bedroom. The pendant light above swayed on its gilded chain, casting roving pools of light and shadow. “If he thinks I’m going to walk into that courtroom and convince the jury he’s an innocent man—”
“That’s not what he wants.” She paused. The testimonies, the letters, the fraudulent documents they’d uncovered on the reservation—they could still use them to save Asku’s life. She brought her fingers to her mouth, stopped, and let her hand fall to her lap. No. Asku had made his choice. Who were they to override it? “He wants to plead guilty. He’s ready to die.”
“As he should.”
“Stewart!”
“Alma, he killed a man. Not to mention he embroiled us in his deceit, sent us out on this frivolous hunt to uncover evidence that didn’t exist.”
“He didn’t send us. We went of our own accord, remember.”
Stewart continued to pace. He tugged at the knot of his bow tie as if his collar were strangling him. “Mr. Gates is going to be furious. Judge Baum. The whole courtroom will be in an uproar.”
“Let them be.”
“How can you be so calm about this? We’ve made a disgrace of ourselves here. Inserted ourselves into the investigation. Aroused trouble on the reservation. All this for a murderer? Tell me at least that he’s repentant.”
“No.”
Stewart balked. “No?”
“Sit down, dearest. Please.”
She gestured to the bed, but he flopped down on the chaise, brushing aside her dress as if it were a rag.
“It’s hard to explain.” She fought the tremble in her voice. “Harry knew full well when he shot the agent he would die for it. He did it for honor.”
“Honor?” His head fell back against the wall. “Honor? What does honor—”
“You saw the reservation. The corruption. The poverty.” She looked down at her dust-stained skirt. She had to say the words, as much for her own ears as Stewart’s. “It’s more than that, though. It was the school—Stover—that was the start of it.”
He stood and set again to pacing—around the bed between the vanity stool and lacquered table to the chaise and window and back. She imagined the thoughts working through his head. You said Harry thrived at Stover. How could something that happened all those years ago lead a man to murder? I thought the schools were set up for the Indians’ own good?
Whatever his thoughts, he said nothing and Alma bore the silence. In time, the clap of patent-leather shoes atop the floor softened to a hum. “Tell me what this is about, Alma. All of it.”
And so she did. She told him of the very first day she’d met Asku, how he clambered so bravely from the wagon. She told him of Minowe and the doll. Of Miss Wells and her ruler. Of their lessons and their games. She told him how they’d sneak out into the woods, dance their forbidden dances, sing their forbidden songs, speak in their foreign tongues.
“. . . for me it was fun, an adventure.” A tear trickled from her eye, cutting a path down her face for others to follow. She rifled through her handbag. When she remembered she’d given her silk hankie to Minowe, she wiped her face with her sleeve. “I didn’t realize these rituals were a way to keep a piece of their original selves alive. Their struggle, their homesickness, the discrimination they faced—it was all around me and I did nothing about it.”
Stewart sat next to her. “It’s not your fault, Alma. You were just a girl.”
“And Harry?”
He frowned, dragged a hand down his face, and sighed. “I’ll speak to Mr. Gates tomorrow before the trial, convince him we must let Mr. Muskrat plead guilty.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not saying I agree with any of this—the murder, staying silent about what we uncovered on the reservation—but if your friend is ready and willing to die for his crime, well, I suppose that’s justice.”
“There’s something more I must tell you.” She fished again through her purse. Her fingers clasped around the necklace. She’d held it so many times, worked over every inch, knew each plane and curve. How smooth the beads and quill felt. How cold. She pulled it out and handed it to Stewart. “A boy came to Stover when I was fourteen. They called him George, but his name was . . .”
CHAPTER 42
Wisconsin, 1891
The moments after the hanging were a blur. The sound of a knife sawing through rope. A thud. Alma shrieked and fell to the ground, tearing out her hair and balling her fists over her ears. She closed her eyes to rid them of sight—the jaundiced torchlight, the frayed rope unraveling as it swung from the tree.
Mr. Coleman picked her up and carried her home. The smell of pitch and smoke and horse sweat lingered in her nostrils. She could hear Mr. Simms and her father trailing behind.
“I can’t believe . . .” her father muttered. “I never meant . . .”
Her mother sat waiting for them on Stover’s veranda. Still in her nightclothes, with her hair lying over her shoulder in a frizzled braid, the woman’s eyes blazed mad.
When Mr. Coleman set Alma down, her legs wobbled. Or was it the earth that wobbled, and she the only steady thing upon it? Even in the darkness, pity showed on Mr. Coleman’s lined face. She could see contempt, too, a general distaste for the whole incident, but also kindness—something void in the other faces around her. He shook his head and prodded her toward her mother. The woman grabbed her arm, digging her fingers into Alma’s skin, and forced her up the steps and into the house.
“What have you done, Alma? Every household in La Crosse will be talking about you tomorrow. You’ve shamed us—this family, your father and his work, yourself most certainly—all beyond repair.” Hysteria edged the woman’s voice. Her breath came ragged between swallowed sobs. “You selfish girl, did you ever stop to think how this would ruin us?”
The words sounded like the lines of a play, scripted and surreal. Her mind felt scrambled, her senses numb. Her mother threw her into her room and locked the door. Alma lay upon the wooden floor where she had landed, silent and unmoving. He couldn’t be dead, her Tshikw’set. It had been someone else they’d pulled from the forest. Tomorrow she’d sneak out and join him on the train.
A few minutes later, Mr. Simms entered with a hammer and nailed shut her window. Something about the sound—the initial loud whack, the cry of wood split by a rusty nail—struck open her consciousness. Tears came first, followed by crushing pain. She curled into a ball and wailed. She clawed at her clothes and banged her head against the floorboards. Dawn came and still she hurt. Her final hope—that it had all been but a d
ream—faded with the morning sun.
* * *
Two days she lay on the floor of her small room. Outside, life at Stover continued. A bugle sounded for morning drills. A whistle cry heralded meals. Synchronized footfalls marched to and from the classroom. Machinery brayed from the wood shop, and sewing machines hummed in the nearby parlor. The sounds stabbed through her temples. The light trespassing beneath the drawn curtains stung her eyes.
She wondered if the Indians knew of death. Did they whisper about it at night in their dormitories? Were they angry, frightened, scared? She worried for . Did they know she’d helped Alma escape? Had they punished her too?
Her thoughts wound to Minowe. Why hadn’t she come to her, slipped a note, a ribbon, any token of solidarity under the door for comfort? Surely she’d heard Alma’s cries. Did their years of friendship mean nothing?
Later, after still no sign, Alma decided Minowe must blame her for what happened. They all did. How could they not? But for Alma, would still be alive.
* * *
On the third day, her mother unlocked the door and strode in. Her appearance was once again immaculate, but her face looked aged, as if the stress of the last few days had proven too much for her nightly regimen of creams to erase lines from her skin. Her blue eyes lit on Alma for a moment, then focused on the blank wall above. “Get up and dress for the train.”
“Where are we going?”
“You are going back to Philadelphia. Aunt Tucia has agreed to take you in.” Without deigning another glance in Alma’s direction, she turned to leave.
Alma scrambled to her feet. “I won’t go.”
Her mother wheeled around, lips stretched thin across her haggard face. “Have you any idea what you’ve done? Not a decent family in all of La Crosse will receive my call. People snicker at your father when he goes into town. You’ve jeopardized the school, our livelihood, everything. This is how you repay our love?”
“Love? You never loved me.”
“I gave up everything for you.” She stormed toward the door, but Alma caught hold of her arm.
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