Mother St. John stood and walked across the room, careful not to step on the creaky boards, to the table where she kept a small pitcher of water. She poured some into a tin cup and brought it to Eliza.
“Lift your head now,” she coaxed. She helped Eliza sip a bit. Eliza drank and then lay her head back down with a sigh. She began to whisper again.
“My mama . . . four little boys sold . . . shoulder high to her . . . Joseph and Solomon and Willie and one we called Pumpkin Bottom . . . can’t even remember . . . name. Can’t let him be sold.” Eliza’s eyes opened, enormously wide.
Mother St. John looked into them and was pulled into memories of another person’s owning. “Shhh,” she said, to soothe Eliza. “You’re safe here, both of you. Sleep now.” Her mind took hold of Eliza’s words and manifested the most awful scene: four small boys clinging to their mother’s skirts and being ripped away from her by an awful brute of a man who, holding a tree limb and a horsewhip, was hitting the legs of the little boys. Was that what it was like? How horrible. Mother St. John had no idea what she’d do with these two. If she helped them, could she get into trouble? She needed Father Paul. He’d know what to do. He’d know about the Church’s position.
Eliza mumbled for a while longer, about her boy, about a piano. Mother St. John caressed Eliza’s head and worried over the consequences for harboring fugitives. She didn’t want to threaten the safety of her own children for helping just one child. But the laws here were loose yet. Jurisdiction was a fuzzy matter. The territory hadn’t yet defined what it wanted to be, how it wanted to govern.
“Gotta have papers . . . free document,” Eliza murmured. “Keep moving.”
Mother St. John thought about the paper she’d created for the twins. She could easily create a free paper for Eliza. But would it be a sin? She needed Father Paul. Should she wait until she spoke with him or create them in the meanwhile, so that they’d be ready when he arrived? Writing was so formal, so clear, so civilized. Mother St. John’s heart pattered at the thought of the looping letters and lovely words she’d get to inscribe in the morning. She liked the smell of the ink, the sound of the quill dipping into the inkwell, the sight of the ink dripping from the quill tip, and especially the scratch of the inked quill on the paper.
Eliza coughed again. Mother St. John recognized that deep-chested but dry hacking. She had heard that type of cough before. Eliza was very sick. “We’ll talk in the morning,” said Mother St. John. She imagined poor Eliza, sick with consumption, scrubbing floors and pounding bread dough and shining boots. She pictured Mistress Winston sitting up in bed and ordering Eliza about, even as she doubled over with coughing and chills. Mother St. John asked, “Were they terribly cruel?” but Eliza was asleep again. In her slumber, she looked no more than a girl herself, sixteen, eighteen at the most.
Here, in this exact moment, Mother St. John made a decision that would forever change the course of her life, of her calling, her work on the earth: There’s no harm in giving refuge to a mother and child. There’s no harm in writing a paper. This isn’t much different than the Virgin arriving in Bethlehem.
Mother St. John pulled the blanket up again, and then checked on the twin babies. She covered them both too, and unclenched the boy’s fist from his sister’s hair. She covered Big Waters’ feet, which were sticking out at the bottom of the bed like two gnarled tree roots. She wiped up the floor in her room, where Eliza, Davis, Big Waters, and the babies slept, and in the infirmary entry. She stood and straightened her back. Then she opened the door and stepped out into the black night. What a strange few days. She wondered if she should go after the young woman whose babies lay sleeping in their baskets. She wondered whom that girl was running from. She wondered who might come for the other mother and her child. Mother St. John wished for a bit of tobacco, but stepped back inside and closed the door. She drew the heavy board down across the door but then lifted it again. What if the mother of the twins changed her mind? How would she get in? But what if whoever was chasing the two runaways was approaching? So she drew the board down again. She pulled a blanket from a shelf and lay it on the floor in front of the door. If anyone came, she’d hear. If the mother knocked, Mother St. John would know, and welcome her with an open mind and an open heart. She stood up again and took an ax down from the mantel. If there was a knock and it was a chaser looking to collect Eliza and Davis, well, she’d have to chop him, wouldn’t she? She’d have to be David protecting the people from the wild, hairy, dastardly Goliaths of the world.
11
Beaver Jean’s Troublesome Wives and Toes
BEAVER JEAN UNTIED THE NAG from the cart shaft and rubbed her nose some. Snow blew around his little cabin and settled into big drifts in front of the window. But even through the blowing snow and over the drifts, he could see his Indian wives inside, waiting for him. He put his mind to dealing with their antics tonight. He determined to come in firm and loud and not allow for any foolishness. He considered the cold and thought it would be wrong to keep the nag outdoors.
“You’ll have to come inside with us tonight,” he told the animal. He led her to the door, rested his shoulder against it, and pushed it open.
“I’m hungry,” he yelled into the dim room. “Yer man is back, women. Help me with Alice here. She’s cold.”
Beaver Jean’s breath could rip bark off a tree. His fat wives, who typically bounced at his feet and yapped in his face like wolf pups the moment he came back from his excursions, stepped away from him, covered their faces with their hands, then pinched their noses and pointed at his mouth.
“Shigog,” they giggled. They looked at each other. “Shigog.” The one with the droopy eyelid, The Girl with Friend Eyes, hid behind In the Trees, the one whose arms dangled long in front of her. The one with long arms reached behind and slapped at her sister-wife.
“Skunk, skunk,” The Girl with Friend Eyes shrieked, brave under the protection of the other wife. They were both smiling like mules, their teeth white and horizon-straight.
Beaver Jean raised his hand and shook it as though empowered with prodigious might. “Ye’ll bring down the lightning!” he warned them. “Now get this animal some water if ye haven’t used it all for yerselves!” The wives sprung, quick and nimble, toward the coat he’d hung on a nail beside the door. They dug into the pockets and turned them inside-out, searching for treats or bits of leftover meat. Eventually, the one whose arms dangled long, chewing on a sliver of jerky, slapped the backside of the nag and moved her toward a corner.
“Come, come Alice,” she crooned. The horse moved compliantly. The woman had a way with animals, Beaver Jean had always thought.
“My toes is like to fall off, if it matters to ye squaws,” he said. He limped farther inside and took off his satchel, which the wives bore down upon. The Girl with Friend Eyes had her hands on the bag of coffee beans and In the Trees had her dangling arms wrapped around a jar of molasses.
“Get ye outta there!” Beaver Jean yelled. He swatted his arms at them. “Dammee, ye two.” The molasses was intended as a gift for Lydian, who liked sweet things more than most.
He looked around for a container of some sort in which he could soak his foot. “My toes is aching me like a sonofabitch, I said. Dammee.”
His wives had their fingers deep in molasses and cheeks stuffed with beans. In a time and a place when he needed comfort and care, they mocked him and made him uneasy, thought only of their own selfish wants.
“Get outta those beans,” he commanded. “There won’t be a one left for grinding. That’s Lydian’s sweet, ye wenches.”
They were getting too bold for their own good, those two squaws. They’d gotten their nerve back and dander raised since Lydian left, as if they wanted to punish him for ever bringing her to his family in the first place. He wasn’t a man to take such silliness from women, but his foot was paining him, he was tired, and he was cold. He didn’t have the gumption to put them back in their right place and right mind, but he’d have to do it soon. Beaver J
ean trusted in a firm hand. It was the right way for a man to handle his women.
He roared a few more times: “Get that fire going! Fix me something to eat, dammee! Cease that cackling, ye wenches! I’ll put ye through the window! I will! Give me some peace, ye shrieking hawks!”
He spoke Ojibwe fairly but always yelled in English. He could understand some of the other Indian languages and a little French too. Since most of the French trappers were gone now, he hardly heard French at all anymore, except among some of the lesser tribes who always had a woman who could speak it a little. Those French-speaking women always made him lonely for his mother, who had been a real lady, the likes of which he had never come across yet in these parts. All these native women were ruffians, and the white ones were uppity yet on the verge of fainting at every inconvenient moment.
“Bring me that chair!” he yelled. His wives sucked in their faces and puckered their lips.
“Salmon face,” the long-armed one said. But she lugged the chair closer to the fire and patted him on the head. Then she shook her hand and stuck out her tongue as though she’d caught something deadly from his hair. Beaver Jean didn’t have the vigor to strike her, and anyway these days he was just as likely to get struck in return as not.
Beaver Jean had been having a tough time eking out a decent living over the past few years. After a long, steady business of selling beaver skins to be made into fancy hats for the Easterners and Europeans, Beaver Jean felt betrayed by the sudden lack of interest. Now they wanted silk and were buying hats from the Orient. Well, how could he compete with that? Where could he get silk? For a while, Beaver Jean thought he might be able to make thread out of the webs of tree caterpillars, but the material was too flimsy, and it easily disintegrated.
For now, he’d have to pick up more bounty hunting and such. Life was about adapting to the changing times, and if he didn’t change with them, he’d get left behind and be a pauper too. Trading with poor tribes wasn’t making him much money these days. Those Indians had gotten themselves into quite some trouble after they agreed to sell their lands without getting their payments up front. That was a mistake Beaver Jean would never make. He always got payment upon delivery. Since then, the tribes had little money to pay with and few things to trade, so Beaver Jean had to find other ways to make a living.
But he couldn’t do a single useful thing until the blessed hellion toes quit afflicting him. As the cold wore off and feeling came back into his foot, the damned things throbbed as if weasel teeth were embedded beneath the nails. He lugged his foot onto his lap and peeled off his sock, then unwound the soggy wrapping from his toes. The middle three were swollen and discolored, and when he touched them, yellow pus bubbled from the sides of the nails. Only the big guy and the little guy had a regular pink color to them. He exhaled and squeezed the bad toes a little. The skin and muscle gave in easily, as only dead things can. The small black hairs, proud as cockleburs, that once erupted from those toes now rubbed off. This foot was going gangrenous, surely. So the poison wouldn’t climb up his leg, he’d have to get the foot fixed up, toes chopped off, while hunting down Lydian and while keeping an eye out for that Negress and child.
He didn’t consider himself sentimental, but he thought about some of the good times he’d had with those toes: as a small boy, he’d dangled his legs in a muddy pond and the minnows would nibble at them. Yes, he’d miss those old toes, but he had to get on with the good work of finding the women and putting them back where they needed to be. Lydian with him and the squaws. The Negro woman and boy with their rightful owners in Stillwater. And he’d put the fear of God into the squaws. With the money from the bounty, he intended to buy a pillow from a catalogue for Lydian and a paddle to swat those other two.
He spent the whole night worrying about this and that: his toes, money and supplies, how Lydian had gone missing and was no doubt ready to give birth at any moment, how these wives wouldn’t give him one second of pity. Where had he gone wrong? Giving them too much learning and too much traveling? Paying them too much attention? And since there was no peace to be found at home, at first light, Beaver Jean packed up his belongings again. He grabbed his liquor bottles and sucked a nice gulp out of one before he packed some food. He coaxed the nag back outdoors and let her sniff the wind.
“Which way do ye think, Alice?” Beaver Jean said. He trusted the animal’s instinct in these matters. The horse turned with the wind, toward the home of Lydian’s stepmother, a wildcat of the prairie. Though he dreaded it, he would go to look for his pregnant wife there. Then he would go to the infirmary to have his toes seen to. He hoped his leg wouldn’t be rotten by the time he got there. He hoped too to see some sign of the runaway pair before someone else caught them and collected the fee. Beaver Jean sighed with the weariness of a man with a lot on his mind.
12
Albertina
ON THE PRAIRIE LANDS a few days south of Stillwater, Lydian’s stepmother, Albertina, heard the creaking and the whinnying of Beaver Jean’s cart and horse before she saw him. She ran to the window and spied him rising up like a god from between the snowdrifts. She hoped he wasn’t bringing Lydian back to live with her. She looked hard and saw only Jean. Albertina ran around the house, tidied the supper pots, swept ashes off the fireplace, and started a pot of coffee. She pulled the pins out of her bun and shook down her hair, which was full, wavy, and golden, with graying strands at the temples. She pinched her cheeks and wiped her armpits with a rag. Albertina hadn’t seen her own husband in years. After coming home and learning that Lydian had been married and moved on, he’d decided to stay in the timber camps all year. He sent packages with money, which Albertina spent on food and cloth for herself and her other little girl, and on improvements to their house.
For two years, she’d hired handymen to add rooms and amenities to the little cabin, so that it was now a comfortable house with a porch and a proper kitchen, an extra bedroom, and a sunroom where Albertina kept her plants, which grew green and lush all year round. In the corner was the table upon which Albertina had carnally known a Norwegian farmer named Ole, who had made that very table and who had a wife expecting their eighth child. On the north end was the additional bedroom in which Albertina had known the traveling preacher, Pastor David, who said, “Oh Lord, forgive me,” over and over. Over the new stairway banister is where Albertina had bent for a German handyman named Gunther, who had eyes that crossed. Beneath the new stone fireplace, Albertina had ridden the son of her nearest neighbor, Hans, a man Albertina had also known when he and his son came to carve and install the mantel. Hans had sent his son to Albertina alone once, to finish the mantel and, he hoped, to turn the boy away from lusts that seemed unnatural. Albertina rode the boy gently then forcefully, but she had not been able to satisfy him and had insulted him so badly that he never came back to complete the job, and she’d had to hire a Winnebago man to do so. The Winnebago man was insatiable and grew to love Albertina. He had scratched an eye into the fireplace mortar, which meant he was always watching her.
Albertina was forty years old, still attractive to her own eyes whenever she gazed in the mirror. “Upstairs!” she yelled to her little girl, the only child to whom she’d given birth. “Go on. Now!” She shooed her up the steps and ran to window. Her breath fogged the glass, and she drew a circle in the mist and then added a dot in the middle. A nipple. Albertina was burning up with lust.
“Now you will finally come to a good woman,” she said to the approaching figure. “I will be so naughty!” She undid her apron and tossed it onto a chair. She bent, and peeled her stockings off her legs. “Oooooh. You will like my legs around you, Mr. Jean. Big Mr. Jean-Jean. Albertina will rub you so naughty. Eeee!”
“Mama?” called the little girl. “What are you doing, Mama?”
“Go to your bed and play with your dolly!” snapped Albertina. “Right now!”
“Is Lydian coming home?” called the girl.
“I told you no!” Albertina yelled. “Now go
on and do not bother Mama anymore.” Albertina ran to the kitchen, slathered jelly onto half a loaf of bread, ran to the stairs, and tossed it up. “There you go, sweetie pie! Take the treat to your room and be good.”
The girl crept from her room and snatched up the bread. “Thank you, Mama!”
“Do not come out of your room until I tell you to, sweetie pie,” Albertina sang. “Promise Mama you will not. Not even if you hear funny noises!”
The girl went to her room and closed the door, used to such orders.
Albertina returned to the window. Jean was approaching very, very slowly. “Come, come, Mr. Jean. I am waiting for you!” she said. “Albertina is so impatient!” She unbuttoned her blouse and let her breasts hang free. She put her arms up and grabbed the top of the window. “Come, come, Mr. Jean.” She twisted back and forth, rubbing her nipples against the glass. “You like, Mr. Jean?”
Beaver Jean saw the sun reflecting off the Galtier cabin windows. The closer he got, the more certain he was that Lydian would not be found there. He hadn’t noticed a sign of a person coming or going along the path. And he became sure that Lydian would have selected a more hospitable place to birth his child. In his few encounters with the woman of this cabin, he had concluded that she was as mad as a wolverine. But because the cold snow was numbing his toes, they ached badly, and he wondered if he should stop at the cabin for a simple rest before heading to the infirmary to have the nurse fix his toes. The closer he got, the stronger the scent of coffee, which made him quicken his step until he glimpsed the woman standing in the window, naked and writhing.
Beaver Jean stopped and stood in the snow. “Dammee all,” Beaver Jean said. “What are ye doing with yerself?”
His horse whinnied. “Easy now, Alice,” he said. “We’ll be turning around from here. I’m sorry to trouble yer old legs with more wandering, but we can’t rest here. The woman of this house is mad, and it pains my heart to think of my Lydian withstanding the wretched mothering of this one.”
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