Listen to the Mockingbird

by Penny Rudolph

  My mother didn’t want to go, but my father believed in the New World more than he believed in God and he could charm the teeth from a snake; Mama could deny him nothing. To keep her happy, he invited her mother to accompany them.

  As a girl, my grandmother had run off with a Czech stableboy. He died of a liver ailment before they could marry but not before my mother was conceived. Nanny’s own parents must have been decent souls because they had welcomed her back, concocted some story and eventually left her their moderate wealth.

  Unlike my mother, who doted on ribbons and lace and dressing for dinner, Nanny cared little for society, preferring to spend her time in solitary pursuits. One of these was her flute, which she taught to me. More than once she sent my mother into despair with her disregard for proper style. Nanny had a penchant for saucy, outrageous bonnets and would wear a Bonaparte hat even to visit the green grocer. When Papa announced we would all go to America, Nanny thought it was a glorious idea.

  For my part I, too, was glad enough to go.

  Papa, having no son, had taught me how to keep accounts, how the planting should be done, even how to settle disputes among the peasants who worked the farms. Mama was forever squabbling with him over proper activity for a lady. At fifteen, I was certain that anywhere would be better than Durnstein, where the Danube—and precious little else—paused on its way to Vienna. The cobblestone streets and wattle-and-daub houses had begun crumbling long before the Americans had declared independence. The only event of any moment had been the capture for ransom of some dotty English king in the twelfth century.

  My father had heard of the plight of the Negroes in America, and that urged him on. He would purchase a farm in Missouri, would buy a few black folk from their cruel masters and help them to settle on part of his land. It didn’t work out quite that way.

  He did buy the land. And Mother enrolled me at Bartholomew’s Ladies Academy. She fussed over my hair and hired a seamstress to make me a whole new wardrobe so I should not be out of style in such sublime company. I fought all the frippery, I was a headstrong girl, and when Mama fell ill of a wasting disease I was stricken with guilt. I began taking elaborate pains with my appearance to please her.

  Two weeks after I graduated from the academy, my dear papa was struck down by a heart no one knew was ailing. Nanny and I arranged the funeral and saw him into the ground. Mother was too weak to be much aware of anything; she lingered another six months.

  I had hardly begun to think straight when Nanny shocked everyone—me most of all—by announcing she was getting married. At age seventy-four, my grandmother, who had borne a child but had never wed, married the haberdasher from whom she bought her audacious hats.

  I wandered about our huge house feeling gloomy and abandoned. My friends declared that a husband would make my life cheery again and insisted I attend as many parties as possible. To my dismay, I found them quite tiresome. Each month, another of my erstwhile classmates announced her engagement. I feared my mother was right: Papa had treated me too much like a son and my willful ways would never attract a suitor. I resolved to sweeten my behavior.

  Crossing the street one day, I was splattered with mud by a passing carriage; and as I was trying to repair the damage, I felt a hand on my elbow and looked up into the face of Andrew Collins. His Irish dash, mixed part and part with a lost-boy manner, snatched at my heart and lodged it permanently in my throat. He was a lieutenant in the First Missouri Cavalry, and I wager you will never set eyes upon a handsomer figure in a uniform.

  He smiled a wise-wistful-private-joke sort of smile that was all from the eyes. A broad forelock of red-blond hair slid slantwise across his forehead.

  And I was as lost as the Isle of Atlantis.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I named the tarantula Evelina. Whether it was female I hadn’t the slightest idea, but it was so fastidious about dispatching cockroaches I decided it must be.

  Sheriff Zeke Fountain was astonished by my cleaning efforts and apparently thought I enjoyed it too much because he nattered something about not being sure such activity was allowed.

  “You sound like a government man from back East,” I said, which made him snort and eye me as if I might be some sort of spy. I added to his discomfort by asking, “Where in the name of God do these dreadful victuals come from?”

  He cast me an insulted look.

  I leveled a gaze at him. “Fetch me a small stove, Zeke. There must be an old one around somewhere.”

  “A stove!” He banged a thick fist against the bars that separated us. “You know I can’t do that, Matty.”

  “Why not? It’s cold in here, for one thing. I need the heat. You wouldn’t want me to call the Women’s Christian Union down on you for abusing a prisoner, would you? And I’m a sight better cook than whoever prepares that slop. It’s not fit for pigs.”

  He shook his head and stomped off, muttering.

  I heaved a sigh and sank onto the chair that was still minus its back, thinking Zeke probably wouldn’t be sheriff if his cousins didn’t own half the valley. Tomorrow, I’d badger him to bring a hammer and nails so I could fix the chair. It had been quite elegant once—mahogany, with graceful claw feet, it looked rather like the chairs I took with me from St. Louis.

  999

  When Andrew continued to drink himself to madness, I slipped away one morning and took the carriage into town. There, I found J. Marcus Lewiston, attorney at law, and begged an interview.

  He was a slight gentleman with narrow wrists inside white shirt cuffs starched stiff as boards. A shock of very white hair fell across a pale brow above an equally white mustache.

  I explained my plight.

  He listened carefully, asking a few questions.

  “I did not come to this union penniless,” I finished, “but my husband has taken charge of my funds.”

  “Of course.” He rose from his desk, examined for a time the cases of books behind it then turned to me.

  “Regaining your property, if any remains, might be possible. But it would be no easy matter and doubtless take considerable time. How do you propose to live during this process?”

  I stared at him. “I don’t know.”

  “Have you children, madam?”

  I hesitated. “No.”

  “But you are with child.”

  I could feel a flush engulf my face. “How did you know?”

  “That is when women in your circumstances seek my counsel.” He held my eyes then turned his face to the window. “I regret that I have no advice for you except to endure.”

  “But suppose I find some source of support?” I gasped. “A divorce is not possible?” My voice wavered on the last syllables.

  “Not if you wish to keep this child with you after it is born. Your husband would be its guardian.”

  “Even given the…way he is?”

  “Could you prove that? Are there witnesses?”

  I couldn’t seem to shape my lips around words to answer.

  “Even if you could prove it, the likelihood is very, very great that your husband still would be given guardianship. Think it over, madam. My advice is to endure.”

  999

  I grasped the bars of my cell and peered into Winona’s face.

  “You do look right pert, Miss Matty. It appears you is doing a sight better.”

  “Did the Confederates come back? Do they still think they can take my land?”

  “Nosiree. I ain’t seen hide nor hair of them buzzards. I had me some words with them, but I don’t know as that’s what sent them off.

  “‘She do got certain rights, sir,’ that’s what I told ’em. That lieutenant, he calls me a witch and I tells him ‘If you think I got the powers of a witch, maybe you better think about that some more.’”

  Zia, sleepy and untroubled, was hugging Winona’s shoulder.

  Zeke appeared behind Winona. “You got twenty minutes, Matty,” he muttered. “I got me an errand to run.” He scratched a bushy eyebrow, grunted
and disappeared.

  I put my hand through the bars and patted Zia, who stirred and found her mouth with her thumb. “She’s twice as big as she was. She’s been okay? No croup?”

  “She be fine. Other things ain’t so fine.”

  I raised my eyes to meet Winona’s.

  “Someone sure do think we got something, and they wants it,” she said. “We was all out workin’ yesterday. I made me this contraption to carry Zia on my back like the Injun women do an’ I was mucking out the barn. When I got back to the house, I seen right quick someone been there. He sure to God made a mess. All them papers from your desk was throwed this way and that, clothes chucked out of bureau drawers and I don’t know what all. Every room. Even onions dumped out an’ rollin’ around on the kitchen floor. Whosomever done it weren’t particular.”

  “Your room, too?”

  “Yes, indeedy. Like I got something worth lookin’ for.”

  “What was taken?”

  “That be the funny part. We don’t know if anything’s missin’ from your papers or your clothes, but nothing else seems gone. Just mussed up. ’Specially your papers. And whosomever it was, I reckon he figgered he didn’t make a big enough mess, ’cause he come back in the night.”

  I blinked. “While everyone was there?”

  “Not to the house. This mornin’, Nacho say someone was rootin’ around in the barn last night. There was pictures all here and there. Seems like that Julio kid be fancying himself an artist.”

  “Julio? An artist?”

  “Well, he does make pictures. An’ I reckon the barn be where he keeps his stuff. Probably he’s drawing when you think he’s working. I got to say, though, he does a fair job at drawing. He got some real good likenesses of folks. He seemed real embarrassed to see ’em all layin’ around like that.”

  “But what would anyone be after in the barn?”

  Winona’s shoulders rose and fell eloquently. “Maybe someone thinks you got a solid gold saddle. Even feed sacks was spilled all over.”

  I knew full well there was only one thing I had that anyone might want: the small wooden chest I’d brought with me to the Mesilla Valley. Only one person knew about the chest, and he wasn’t likely ever to set foot on the ranch. Then it occurred to me that a thorough enough thief could have found it accidentally. “Were any of the walls of the house damaged? I mean the inside walls.”

  “Miss Matty, this place be affectin’ your brain. Why would a thief mess up a…” Her voice slowed. “…a wall.” She rolled her eyes and looked at me hard. “I don’t want to know.”

  She knew about that chest and that it was full of double eagles and slugs. I had used most of the heavy, eight-sided fifty-dollar slugs to purchase the ranch.

  Zia yawned and was shoving her fist into her mouth, melting my heart, when sounds of boots scuffling and men grunting came from the front of the jail. Something heavy met the floor with a thump and a clatter. She turned to stare at something I couldn’t see. “What in tarnation is that?”

  Zeke’s voice growled irritably, “She wants a goddam stove.”

  A grin filled half Winona’s face with gleaming white teeth. “Well, if that don’t beat all.” She bussed my cheek through the bars, winked at me and disappeared.

  Zeke emerged from the hall mopping his head and neck with a blue rag that might once have been a bandana.

  “Winona says someone broke into the house. Made a mess of things.”

  He nodded. “So I heard.”

  “Well, I don’t see you getting on your horse and getting out there to see what’s going on. Or did the Texans pass a law saying it’s okay for thieves to ransack your neighbor’s house as long as they leave yours alone?”

  Zeke shook his head. “You think that’s all I got to do? I heard nothing was stolen, nobody out there saw anything and nobody could tell if anything was taken.”

  “So you aren’t even going to look into it?” Suddenly, I thought of the map I had found on the dead boy in the barn. Could whoever had searched the house have been after that?

  Zeke was scratching the top of his head. “Tell you what. I’ll send a deputy around to the saloons to see if anyone heard anything about it. That’s about the best I can do.” He opened the lock on my cell. “Now stand back so me and Murphy can get by. This fool thing ain’t big, but it’s sure enough heavy as a dead ox.”

  Scraggly, yellow-haired Murphy was big, but more than one or two of his wits were among the missing. He helped Zeke with fetch-and-carry work. They wrestled the small iron stove into a corner of the cell, grunting and groaning and complaining every inch of the way.

  “Don’t put it there,” I said.

  Zeke mopped his head, his chest heaving with the exertion. “Why not?”

  I pointed to the wall beneath the tiny window. “It has to go there, and I’ll need a pipe to send the smoke out.”

  Zeke groaned, but they moved the stove. Then he sent Murphy back to wherever he’d come from.

  “Thanks—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “Don’t thank me. I’m sick and tired of your natterin’ about my cooking. Fact is, I ain’t fond of my cooking myself.”

  “You were doing the cooking?”

  “You think we got a chef from Atlanta, maybe?”

  “You mean you were eating the same food?”

  “Of course, I been eatin’ the same food.” A sad look passed over his face, and I remembered that his wife had run off.

  “What was her name?” I asked gently. “Your wife?”

  “Dora,” he grunted and examined the toes of his boots. When he looked up, his blue eyes were shiny. “She was a good cook, was Dora,” he said in a tight voice.

  “I’m sorry—” I began.

  “Didn’t harm me none,” he muttered and stalked out, banging the cell door behind him. “I’ll find you a dang stovepipe.”

  I didn’t call out to tell him he’d forgotten to lock my cell; I just wrapped the arm of the big padlock around the two center bars and snapped it locked myself. I wasn’t about to try to break out. Leastways, not right then.

  I was wondering whether Dora was just a silly twit who would have run off with anyone who gave her a lace hanky or whether, like Andrew, Sheriff Zeke Fountain had an ugly side that drove her to seek any available refuge.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Andrew raised the notion that I should plead his case with General Wilkinson, I had my first inkling for escape. At first I thrust that idea away; my visit to the lawyer a few weeks before had been such a failure, I feared to hope for anything. But as Andrew became set upon sending me to the general on my own, I began to form a plan.

  Winona, of course, had caught me trying to cover the bruises on my face. One morning, when Andrew had left the house, I went to the kitchen and told her everything.

  “I knows somethin’ be powerful wrong,” she said. “I did not know it be that bad.”

  “You don’t have to go with me,” I told her. “I don’t think he would do any harm to you.”

  “Sure to God you ain’t that dumb, Miss Matty. He only thinks he own you. He knows he own me. He knows I can’t go to nobody. He knows if I run away he could get them to set the hounds on me.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut against a headache that threatened to split the top of my head. “As soon as we get to Santa Fe, I’ll set you free.”

  “That would be mighty nice. But the first thing we got to do is get there.”

  It didn’t take long to pack. There was little I wanted beyond my mother’s silver and a few clothes. There was no question of Andrew ever relinquishing any of my own funds to me, and I could take nothing he might notice, nothing that might alert him to my plan, until I’d had time to get far enough away. I only hoped I could sell the silver for enough money to get back to St. Louis.

  By the time Andrew returned in mid-afternoon, I was ready. We had hitched Fanny and a black horse to the wagon, and I had sent Winona back to the cabin she shared with four women who washed cl
othes for the army.

  Andrew’s head hung lower and lower as he ate the supper Winona had prepared, and I waited for whatever final horror I was sure he had in store.

  Instead, he looked at me, and a tear drizzled down his cheek. “Please, Matty, don’t desert me.”

  Something fluttered inside me, and I found myself reaching out to pat his arm and reassure him. But by the time I touched him, his eyes had closed and his head fell to the table. I sat stunned, staring at him, thinking him dead, feeling a peculiar mix of joy and fear and sorrow.

  Then Andrew began to snore, and I realized he had doubtless spent the afternoon drinking and had merely passed out. I was carefully and quietly getting up from the table when Winona appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “We ready?”

  “Sssh,” I motioned then whispered, “He’s asleep. It’s best we don’t wake him.”

  “He ain’t gonna wake up. Not soon, anyways. I done give him enough yarrow leaves in his soup to keep him quiet a good long time.”

  I stared at her. “You poisoned him?”

  “I sure did want to, yes, indeed. But I got to thinkin’ you don’t know what he has tol’ folks about you. He might of told ’em you are the crazy one. He might of told ’em you’re dangerous. So I just give him enough to put him good and sound asleep.”

  She leaned over Andrew then straightened. “Seeing as he probably had him a snoot-full of whiskey to boot, he likely gonna sleep right there till tomorrow night. He gonna feel sickish, but he wake up all right. More’s the pity.”

  I expelled my breath all in a rush. “Thank you,” I whispered, not sure whether I was thanking her for putting him to sleep or for not killing him. “Let’s get on with it then.”

  999

  I know exactly when I conceived the most outlandish scheme a sane woman could imagine

  Winona and I found the trail along the river and followed it north most of the night. The moon was plenty bright, the horses fresh; and with every mile we covered I felt a little lighter.