“Sweet rivers of redeeming love,
Lie just before mine eyes,
Had I the pinions of a dove,
I’d to those rivers fly.”
Our bodies slide over each other like water. He folds me into his arms, and I draw him closer until there’s no space left between us. His heart pulses against mine.
“I’d rise superior to my pain,
With joy outstrip the wind;
I’d cross o’er Jordan’s stormy waves,
And leave the world behind.”
“Catrina.” He breathes my name like a secret. I caught you.
“Stonefield.” I run my hands over the hills and hollows of him, exploring the strange new land of his body. I let you.
“I view the monster death, and smile,
Now he has lost his sting;
Though darkness rages all the while,
I still in triumph sing.”
His breaths turn into kisses, waking my skin everywhere his mouth touches as if it’s been sleeping until this second. I don’t want him to stop until he wakes up every part of me.
My dove, in the cleft of the rock, the secret place. He kisses me a thousand times, until the world slips off its hinges, and I can’t tell which way’s up or down—everything is sky.
“I hold my Saviour in my arms,
And will not let Him go;
I’m so delighted with His charms,
No other god I’ll know.”
When our bodies come together, we cry out at the shock of it, and the sound echoes across the valley. My head tilts back, and my hair tumbles over the edge of the cliff. The world’s upside-down. We see the black rock in the middle of Stone Field—a circle of darkness, set ablaze. And as I melt into the warmth of his arms, nothing else matters.
14
It’s almost twilight by the time we swim back through the spring and put our clothes on, shivering from the cold water and the evening air flowing into the valley. In Stone Field, the sorghum stalks are silhouetted against the dark blue sky. They’ve grown thicker and are filling with sweet sugar juice—these September stalks are no longer the thin grassy shoots from the summer, but they’re not quite ripe enough for the press. I don’t want this moment to move into the future. I want to linger in Stone Field where it’s sweet and peaceful.
But I need to go see how Papa’s doing, and Henry will be back soon. As we approach the house, I give Stonefield one last kiss. He heads toward the barn and I start walking to the quiet house.
Lordy, just in time—the sound of Henry’s wagon rounding the bend sends me galloping to the back door and tearing through the house toward my room. I hope Papa can’t hear the ruckus I’m making as I throw open my door and start peeling off my wet clothes. I wad them up in a ball and stuff them under my bed, then grab the nightgown I took off this morning and shove it over my head. I jump into bed right as I hear Henry walk through the front door. He builds a fire and then walks to my room.
“You all right?”
I nod, but don’t say anything. He keeps talking, thinking my throat hurts too much to speak.
“Effie and Dora send you their well wishes and say to tell you they’ll miss you this week at the meetings.”
I nod again, wishing he’d leave me be. Maybe it’s my quietness, but Henry seems antsy to talk.
“I’m worried about your safety, Cat.”
I wait for him to go on.
“I’ve been thinking about our little farmhand who acts like he doesn’t remember where he came from or why he’s here.”
I bite my tongue, I want so bad to say something.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s one of those Creek Indians who’ve joined up with the Confederates. Some of them want to stay neutral and be let alone. But there’s just no place for middle ground anymore. If Stonefield’s Creek, then what side is he on?”
“He doesn’t have a side.” I whisper the words as if my throat hurts too much to speak loud. “He lost his memory about all that.”
“That’s what he says. But what’s he doing up here, alone, away from his people?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Henry.”
“Well, the fact is, we don’t know anything about him, Cat. I’d hate to think we’re harboring a traitor in our own house.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m trying to take care of you and Father, but everything is changing. Roubidoux’s not safe anymore. There’s a lot of hotheaded talk going around. Frank Louis left the Hosses’ in a huff earlier, claiming that if anyone with Federalist leanings steps within a hundred feet of his property, he’ll shoot.” Henry’s laugh sounds sad. “Frank Louis! We used to shoot rabbits together when we were boys and now he wants to shoot me.”
He rubs his chin. “I need to protect you, Cat, but I’ll be gone sooner than I planned. I don’t think it’s proper under the circumstances that I wait till next month to enlist. I talked with Mr. Hoss today and we’ve agreed that Dora and I will be married in Rolla tomorrow morning by the justice of the peace and spend about a week in St. Louis for our honeymoon.”
What?
“I’ll give Stonefield detailed instructions about what work I want done each day that I can’t be here to work the farm myself. He needs to be constantly employed. If he hopes to remain here, he’ll have to account for every minute of his time while I’m away and complete every work order I give to the exact detail. And if he doesn’t, he’s gone the moment I return—Father will just have to deal with it.”
He looks at me, his eyes lined with worry. “Do you understand?”
Dora living here in a week? Henry off to war! It’s like the world’s gone mad. The only thing that keeps me from crying out in anger is the thought of having Stonefield all to myself while they’re on their honeymoon. I nod, staring at the floor. I wish Henry would leave the doorway.
He waits, as if he expects me to say something like “Congratulations,” or maybe he wants me to tell him how grateful I am for all he’s done for me. But when I don’t, he sighs. “I’ll tell Father about tomorrow. Don’t worry—you sleep in and rest. You don’t have to attend—it will be a simple ceremony, just Dora, me, and the justice of the peace. It’s for the best.”
I just nod again and slide down under the covers, pulling them over my head to block out the image of my brother, who looks at me with disappointment on his face. I hate him for rushing to marry a fool woman he doesn’t love just so he’ll have someone to hold before he goes to war, someone to write him letters while he’s away, and someone to make sure I stay penned in and proper while he’s gone. I know he’s marrying Dora because he can’t have the woman he loves. Lord, how could he do such a thing.
* * *
It’s been four days since Henry left, and every one a dream. In the mornings, I work side by side with Stonefield, helping him finish the work Henry assigned to him for the day, and then we eat supper with Papa. When my father retires to his study, we have the evenings to ourselves to do whatever we want.
Tonight it’s almost dusk. We sneak into the pantry and pinch some oil to fill the grease lights in our little stone house. We didn’t eat much at supper with Papa tonight because we want to have a picnic at night, just the two of us. I grab some salted pork and a jar of mustard pickles I made last summer, and Stonefield fills a sack with biscuits and hooks a half-full jug of cider on his thumb. I pat Napoleon on the head as I close the door, and we’re off to the woods.
We lie on the ground in our roofless house, with the food set out over the blanket, the little lamps burning, and the big starry sky hanging above us. For a while, we eat and talk about the wild work we want to make, but then we just lie quiet, our bodies tangled up together on the ground, staring up through the dangling feathers to the stars.
“Lookit.” I point straight up. “Pegasus.”
“What’s Pegasus?”
“If you connect those stars”—I trace them in the air with my finger—“you can draw the flying horse, Pegasus.
Papa’s read all about the ancient Greeks and their stories about gods and creatures that are even more cockeyed than the stories in the Bible.”
“I think I see your flying horse.”
“Part horse and part bird. These Greek folks loved the creatures who weren’t quite one thing nor the other, but something in-between. See?” I point to the southern part of the sky. “There’s old Capricornus. He’s part goat and part fish. I bet he’s much more comfortable in the sky than trying to live on land with the normal goats or in the water with the fish, don’t you?”
Stonefield gives a little snort-laugh. “I know how he feels, not being quite one thing nor the other. I wish I could have known these Greek people.”
“Me too. Look—there’s you and me.” I smile up at Pisces.
“Where?”
“To the right of Pegasus. Papa says that’s Aphrodite and Eros, the goddess and god of love. They escaped from the monster Typhon by leaping into the sea and turning themselves into fish.”
“Looks like they’re connected.”
“They tied themselves together with a rope so they’d never lose each other.”
Stonefield takes my hand and locks his fingers into mine. “And they’ve managed to stay together all this time.”
“Maybe they escaped from time, too. I don’t think there’s time up there, do you?”
“Nor distance.” Stonefield sits up and reaches for Leaves of Grass. “Mr. Whitman writes about that. Listen to this.” He opens the book near the light of the grease lamp. I close my eyes and listen to the soft whisper of the pages as they turn. When Stonefield stops, it’s as if the book is holding its breath.
“‘What is it, then, between us?’” he reads. “‘What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not … I am with you.’”
The pages let out their breath as Stonefield closes the covers. “He’s right, this Mr. Whitman. These thoughts he’s speaking to us now through this book—he wrote them days and days ago and miles away from us, but we hear them as if he’s whispering in our ears right now. He may be dead, for all we know, but it doesn’t matter. He’s right here, speaking to us.”
“Haunting us?”
“Maybe … yes. Catrina, that’s the way it will be with us. Love is stronger than even death.”
“Yes. I hope you haunt me when you die.” I imagine the smile on his lips.
“And you must haunt me, too. We’ll live here, together, like Aphrodite and Eros live in the sky.” The lid of the small chest that we made from oak wood creaks open and Stonefield fumbles around for something inside it. I hear the scratch of a graphite pencil on paper and then he closes the book again, setting it inside the chest. “Nothing can come between us, Catrina.” His skin brushes mine. We’ll always have this invisible rope tying us together.
He leans over and when he kisses me, my soul rises and wants free as it always does when his lips touch mine. My mouth, my neck, my shoulders—every part of me he kisses feels my aching spirit beneath the skin. It wants to be with his soul and hold it in the same way our bodies are touching each other. I can feel our souls slipping free of us, to cleave together and become one. And then I let Stonefield come inside me, again, closer to me than anyone else. He’s deep inside me, part of me. He is me. He looks into my eyes as we move together, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing. My heart’s beating faster as it gets ready for that moment our souls leap from our bodies. When mine leaves me I see white light, and my body trembles with the pleasure of releasing it. I’m light as air. Stonefield feels it, too—he’s shaking in my arms.
We hold on till all is still. Our bodies have died a little while our souls are hovering in an embrace over our heads. Our breath, coming fast, is the only thing that tells me we’re both alive. Slow, our spirits let go of each other and slip back into our bodies, making us heavy again. We stare at each other in wonder. Each time we come together it’s like a miracle from the Bible. Like God flies us up to Heaven for a peek, and then lets us go back down to earth. We lie there, stunned. Soon, sleep washes over me slow and easy like Stonefield’s voice in my head. Always.
15
The grease lights have gone out when I wake in the night to Stonefield’s moans. He’s tossing on the ground like a new-caught fish. I fumble in the dark and shake him awake.
“Stonefield, are you all right?”
He gasps, and I feel him jolt, like he’s just fallen out of his dream. He’s breathing hard. I hold on to him and wait till his breath slows down. His skin is cool, but damp with sweat.
“Was it a nightmare?”
He turns onto his side, facing me. I can barely see him in the dark. “Memories. Dreams about things that happened to me.”
Lord. I sit up. “What do you remember?”
“How I got here.”
I wait.
He’s quiet, like he wants my permission to continue.
I don’t want to hear about his past, but I say, “Go ahead. Tell it.”
“I was teaching my primary class at the Mission School for Orphaned Children. It was in Lanesville, Missouri.” His voice sounds distant, as if he’s far away inside the story he’s telling.
“That’s not far from here.” But Stonefield doesn’t hear me, he’s so lost in his memory.
“My students called me Mr. Hanson. Thomas Hanson. Half of the children were absent with a fever going around, but the group that remained was excited. We were finishing up the last part of their first reader, each student taking a turn reading aloud. They were so proud to be finishing their first real book, and we had a celebration planned afterward—with games and shadow pantomimes—they could hardly contain themselves.”
I wait, quiet, to let him tell the rest.
“But we didn’t finish.” Stonefield’s voice is so low I can barely hear him. “The door burst open right when Tommy Williams started reading. He dropped the book. I remember watching it fall to the floor—it seemed to fall so slowly, like time wasn’t paying attention to the rules anymore. Then all at once, time sped up. Men in gray uniforms rushed into our classroom. Papers flew from my desk, and the children screamed.”
I feel his body tense up as if the soldiers might burst through our secret house right this instant.
“The men took hold of me by the arm and fired questions at me.”
“What kind of questions?”
“They yelled, ‘Which are you for, the North or the South?’ I said I wasn’t for either one. They said everyone had to pick sides, but I just wanted them to leave without hurting any of my students. So I told them I didn’t want to be a part of the war, and just wanted to be left in peace, but they wouldn’t have it.”
“What did they do?”
“They said I must be a nigger or an Indian savage or I’d know better. They wanted to know if I was mostly white, or mostly some other thing, like Mexican, Negro, or Muscogee Creek Indian. When they said Muscogee Creek, I recognized it as the name of my people. I knew nothing about them, but I knew they were mine. I hadn’t heard the term in so many years. I was so stunned, I didn’t say anything and just shook my head, so the men laughed at me for not knowing who I was or where I came from.” His body’s trembling now.
“What happened?”
“First they said they’d shoot me in front of the children if I didn’t tell them what I was and which side I was on.” His fingers tighten around mine. “But then they decided I was probably part Indian and part Negro—they called me a mutt. And since I refused to join the Confederacy, they decided to sell me into slavery down in Oklahoma Territory, where they were headed.”
“How did you get away?”
“I bolted.” He slips his hand from mine. “I jumped out the second-story window.” He shakes his head. “How could I do that? How could I just abandon my students?” He runs his hand through his hair. “By the time they made it down the stairs and out the door, I’d already hopped into the bac
k of a wagon of supplies on the road, headed northeast toward St. Louis. I didn’t care where I was going as long as it was in the opposite direction of those men and Oklahoma Territory, where they wanted to sell me. But the children’s fever sickness caught hold of me on the way and I fell out of the wagon somewhere near Roubidoux.”
I take hold of his hand again. “And ended up in a cane field.”
“Not just any cane field.” He locks his fingers around mine and pulls me close. Finally, he’s coming back to the here and now.
“Stonefield,” I whisper. “Now that you remember it, you can forget all about it again. You can just be you, here with me.”
His hand loosens just a bit in mine, and I can feel his arm stiffen. “I can’t, Catrina. Not if I don’t know who I am.”
“But you do know who you are. You remembered.”
“I remembered that someone took things away from me when I was young. They took me away from the Creek Indians and took my name—I don’t even remember it—and they called me Thomas Hanson instead. They took my language and forced me to speak theirs until I forgot my own. I won’t know who I am until I find out more about that part of me they stole away.”
“Maybe the less you find out the better—you know how people feel about Creek Indians.”
“People?” He pulls his hand from mine. “You mean people like you?”
“I didn’t mean me.” I reach for his fingers again in the dark and can’t find them. “I mean those men who came to your school and the writers in the newspapers who make Henry worried about the Creeks who joined the Confederates.” I tell him what Henry said, and how no one in Roubidoux would like that he was a Creek Indian.
Stonefield stays quiet for a long time. Finally, he says in a low voice, “I need to know more about who I am.”
“Stonefield—”
“That’s not my name. Neither is Thomas Hanson.”
“But that’s the past.” I find his arm and hold on tight, wishing I could squeeze away the stiffness and draw him back to me. “None of it matters now.”
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