by Jane Toombs
Mima obviously liked colorful things. Perhaps the bit of ribbon was the first she'd ever owned, which seemed a shame. As soon as he could, he'd see she had everything she needed, everything she wanted.
As soon as they reached Michigan. If they did.
With Mima in tow, he descended to the cargo deck, skirting groups of still apprehensive passengers who weren't entirely convinced they were safe despite the crew's reassurances. Nobody paid particular attention to either him or Mima. He didn't see any of the scam trio.
A half hour later they stood with Rawhide and the pony on the dock in the hamlet of Cypress Green watching River Lady churn upstream. The town was no different than others they passed, a few houses, a store and a wharf with a warehouse, the clearing surrounded by the ever-present, seemingly endless greenery of Louisiana.
Ignoring the curious stares of the few townspeople at the landing, Nick ambled over to an ancient white-haired Negro who sat fishing from the end of the dock.
The old man glanced sideways at him, taking in Mima, who trailed behind. "Howdy, massah," he said.
English, not French.
"Any more upriver boats stopping here today?" Nick asked in the same language.
The old Negro shrugged. "They stops sometimes. You got to ask the man to run up the flag do you want to make sure." He looked beyond Nick. "Howdy there, l'il gal."
Mima smiled at him shyly.
"She only understands French," Nick said.
"Ya'll must be from New Orleans." The old man studied Mima as he spoke, ignoring the tugging on his line until Nick pointed out that he had a bite. Then he hauled in a large fish--the ugliest Nick had ever seen.
Eyes wide, Mima stepped back from the flopping monster. "Only be a catfish, ain't gonna hurt you, l'il gal," the Negro said as he took a knife and deftly severed the fish's spine at the back of its head. Standing up, he lifted the still quivering fish. "Looks like I gonna eat good tonight." Nick translated for Mima and again she smiled at the old man.
The Negro started to walk away, paused and said haltingly, "Massah, I done feel the good in you." He touched his own chest. "In here. So I tells you that li'l gal, she don't be no common nigger."
"I realize she's special," Nick said, "but how did you know?"
The old man touched his chest once more. "I feels it in here." He appraised Nick from watery brown eyes and nodded. "I's glad we met, brought me a catfish, it did. Good luck to you and the li'l gal, massah."
"Thank you." Nick watched the old man touch Mima's head gently in passing and hoped the luck the old man wished them came their way--beginning with the flag to stop the next paddlewheeler headed upstream.
He was loathe to attract any more attention to himself and Mima than necessary. The dockmaster must have seen them debark from the last boat and asking him to raise the flag
so they could board the next would make the man wonder why they'd left one boat only to get on another. If anyone stopped by later asking questions, the dockmaster would remember them.
You're being too careful, Nick told himself. Why would anyone come searching for you or for Mima in this tiny village? Get moving!
Telling Mima to stay with the horses, he strode to the unpainted shanty beside the dock. A roughly dressed white man lounged in the doorway.
"I thought this was Cypress Levee," Nick said, improvising. "It appears I got off at the wrong place."
The man pointed to the wooden sign beside the shanty. "That there says Cypress Green."
Nick shrugged. "I misread it."
"Ain't no Cypress Levee in Louisiana I ever heard tell of."
"I was told the town's in Mississippi. Would you flag the next upriver boat, please?"
"Don't see no reason why not." The man reached inside the shack and jerked on a rope. A white flag sprang erect above the shanty.
Noticing the man looking at him expectantly, Nick pulled a silver coin from his pocket, offered it and the man took the silver with a nod of thanks. His fingers tingling slightly from contact with the coin, Nick joined Mima by the horses.
They waited over an hour before a paddlewheeler churned upstream, altering her course when the pilot noticed the white flag.
"She's the Flying Catfish," Nick told Mima as the boat maneuvered toward the dock. "Maybe she's part of the old man's luck."
The Catfish was bound for St. Louis so they disembarked days later in Cairo, Illinois and boarded an Ohio River sternwheeler which took them to Evansville, Indiana. There they got on a smaller boat that sailed the newly completed Wabash and Erie Canal to Toledo, Ohio.
By that time, Rawhide's stone bruise had healed.
Nick stopped in Toledo only long enough to buy additional boy's clothes for Mima because she'd be more comfortable riding with pants on. She was still barefoot, insisting she'd never worn shoes. Mima would have to learn to wear them but that could wait until they got settled and colder weather set in.
He rode Rawhide north along the lake road toward Monroe, Michigan, trailed by Mima on the pony. Because of the pony, he set a slow pace.
"That lake be big as Pontchartrain," Mima said, staring at the sunlit waters of Lake Erie.
"Bigger," Nick corrected, remembering the size of the Great Lakes on the United States map. He watched a schooner, sails plumped by the wind, tack eastward, passing a sternwheeler nosing in toward Toledo.
The road wound along the shore for twenty some miles, with sand dunes and the lake to the right and mostly saplings and underbrush to the left. Except for one stand of tall pines, most of the big trees had been cut, their stumps still visible through the greenery. They passed occasional farms carved from the surrounding woods.
They also went by more than one loaded wagon rumbling over the rutted road and edged out of the way of other wagons heading south. Now and then riders on faster horses trotted past. As they neared Monroe, the woods grew thicker, the trees taller.
"Mon-roe, it smells good," Mima observed.
Nick, breathing in the lake-fresh air tinged with the scent of pine, nodded. The sight and scent of the deep woods went a long way toward easing his tension. Maybe their catfish luck would hold in this new community.
By late afternoon, farms again pushed back the trees. Very shortly they came in sight of the town--a few steepled churches and well-built houses, mostly two-story with neat gardens. As they entered the village an occasional dog rushed up to bark at the horses' heels, upsetting Mima, who feared they'd bite the pony.
A large river, the Raisin, flowed through the town to the lake.
Three boys, group under a tall maple, gawked as Nick and Mima rode toward them. Just as they reached the maple, a cat squalled and someone yelled from high in the tree. Everyone looked up.
With a crash of branches and a shower of leaves, a boy fell from the maple, a kitten clutched in his arms. He slammed onto the road directly in front of Rawhide. The horse reared, twisting to avoid him. Quickly quieting the dun and bringing him to a halt, Nick slid from his back and ran to the boy. He dodged the escaping calico kitten, who spat at him and streaked through fence palings into the yard of a large white house.
Nick reached the downed boy and dropped to one knee. Blue eyes stared up at him from behind disheveled reddish- blond hair. Nick pushed strands of hair off the boy's forehead, noting the pale face was twisted in pain. He looked about ten.
"Where does it hurt?" Nick asked.
"My shoulder." The boy gasped the words, reaching for his left shoulder with his right hand.
"Is Autie okay, mister?" one of the other boys asked. Nick didn't answer, his fingers gently probing Autie's arms and legs. In the boy's left armpit he found an abnormal protuberance. The end of the humerus, the large arm bone, was clearly out of its socket. The sooner he reduced the dislocation, the less swelling and pain the boy would have. Looking into the boy's blue eyes, he said, "Your shoulder's dislocated. I can put the bone back into place but it'll hurt."
Autie firmed his jaw. "I can take it. Go ahead."
Nick asked one of the boys to take off his shirt and give it to him. He wrapped the shirt tightly around Autie's left arm and tied it, leaving the sleeves free. He then stood, eased the boot off his right foot and sat next to Autie on the boy's left side, placing his bootless foot firmly into the boy's armpit. Holding the sleeves of the shirt he'd wrapped about the left arm, he pushed on the head of the humerus with his foot, at the same time pulling firmly and steadily on the sleeves of the shirt, as Dr. Kellogg had taught him.
A few seconds later he felt the end of the humerous snap back into place. He'd expected the boy to scream in pain but Autie never uttered a sound. The sweat on the boy's brow showed he'd suffered.
"That does it," Nick told him, helping the boy to sit up. "You've got a lot of courage."
Autie took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Thanks, sir." Glancing around he added, "Where's the kitten?"
Nick jerked his head toward the yard. "Safe and sound." Autie smiled faintly. "It's Libbie's. Libbie Bacon, I mean. She's Judge Bacon's daughter."
The way he said the judge's name spoke volumes. Judge Bacon was evidently one of Monroe's leading citizens.
"Can you move your left arm without pain?" Nick asked. With only a bit of wincing, Autie was able to go through the full range of motion with the arm. Nick grinned at him. "You'll do. Think you can stand?"
Autie nodded and, with Nick's aid, got to his feet. The three boys closed in around him.
"Jeez, Autie," one said, "you could've been killed trying to rescue that dumb cat."
"Not me," Autie boasted. "I was born lucky."
Nick saw a small crowd had gathered. "The boy's
fine," he said, walking to where Rawhide waited. "And so is Libbie Bacon's kitten."
Mounting the dun, he rode on with the pony close
behind, aware people stared after them. He certainly hadn't slipped into town unnoticed.
Dr. Kellogg had described his friend Phillip Jenkins' house as being on the north side of town. "Phil runs a dairy farm," he'd added. "Claims he's got the biggest and reddest barn around. Toughest sergeant I ever knew. Hard as old boot leather. I can't picture him milking cows."
The Jenkins farm was a ways past the town. Barking dogs greeted them when they turned in the drive but quieted when Nick spoke to them, escorting the horse and pony up to the house without snapping at their feet.
A gray-haired woman came onto the front porch and Nick swept off his hat. "Hello," he said. "I'm Nicholas Deplacer, a friend of Dr. Kellogg's. I have a letter from him to Mr. Jenkins."
"Dr. Kellogg, you say?" Without waiting for his nod, she smiled. "A grand person, the doctor. Why our youngest is named for him. If you're his friend, you're welcome in our house. I'm Mrs. Jenkins." Her glance traveled to Mima and back to Nick. "You and--?"
"Mima is a gift to me from the doctor," Nick said.
"He decided I'd need help with housework since I've never done any."
Mrs. Jenkins appraised Mima in her boy's clothes. "A girl, is she? Looks kind of puny for working. Well, never mind, bring her on in with you."
As Nick dismounted, Mima slid off the pony before Nick could help her.
"Don't she speak English?" Mrs. Jenkins asked.
"She's learning. But she understands French better." "Imagine that! Do they all speak French down in New Orleans? We got a lot of French around Detroit but they talk almost as good as me." Mrs. Jenkins chattered on as she led the way into the house, insisting on bringing them into the front parlor. "You wait right here while I get Mr. Jenkins from the barn."
Nick sat on a red plush settee and told Mima to sit next to him. She shook her head.
"Me, I don't be sitting with white folks." Easing down onto the carpet at his feet, she glanced around uneasily at the dark furniture and the green velvet drapes, everything prim and neat.
"I told Mrs. Jenkins you were a gift from the doctor," he said, "to help me in the house--when we find one. She seemed to think you were too little."
"Me, I be strong! I be keeping your house clean like this."
"Our house, Mima. You're not my slave. I don't own you. What I intend to tell people is that you're a free woman of color--or girl, rather."
She nodded, as though she'd expected no less. "I see that boy you help, he bring good luck to you," she told him. After what happened on River Lady, he'd vowed to never again disregard Mima's predictions. "No danger coming up?" he asked.
She shook her head.
Phil Jenkins came in, stout, redfaced and smelling of cows. Even before he read Dr. Kellogg's letter, he invited Nick and Mima to take the evening meal with them and spend the night.
"This says you're good enough to doctor people yourself," Jenkins said when he finished the letter. "You gonna set up in Monroe?"
"I don't know," Nick said, uneasy about passing as a physician when he was nothing of the sort. "I imagine Monroe has enough doctors already."
"I'll tell you the place as needs a doctor bad," Jenkins said. "Nogadata. It's a village maybe eight, nine miles inland. Nary a doctor in the place. Man was complaining to me just the other day how far they got to travel if anyone gets sick or hurt. His wife started in to bleeding real bad one night and she like to've died afore he got help for her." "I may take a look at Nogadata," Nick said.
Jenkins eyed Mima. "This un's scrawny as a baby bird fresh from the shell. If Doc was gonna give you a nigger to do your work, he could've picked a grown woman."
Thinking fast, Nick said, "I believe the doctor thought if I set up housekeeping with a black woman there might be talk. But with a child--"
Mrs. Jenkins bustled in, talking before she entered the room. "Penny Peters stopped by with the thread she bought in town for me and you'll never guess what she said. Do you know what Mr. Deplacer here did?" She plowed on, not waiting for answers. "That Custer boy--he's the one who lives with the Reeds, her brother or some such--fell out of a tree by Judge Bacon's house and dislocated his shoulder. Mr. Deplacer stopped his horse, got off and in no time fixed that boy up as good as new." She fixed Nick with a frowning gaze. "And to think you never even told us!"
Nick shrugged, unable to think of a good response. "Well, now, that'll set you off on the right foot," Jenkins said. "Folks in Nogadata'll know all about you afore you ever get there. You're right welcome to stay here with us till you make up your mind what you mean to do--any friend of Doc's is a friend of mine--but my advice is to set out your shingle where you're needed. Mind you, Nogadata ain't Monroe by a long shot but a heap of good folks live there." "Nogadata's an odd name," Nick said.
"Injun. Huron, maybe. Or Shawnee. Some claim it means some kind of fish and others say it's Injun for wildcat.
Take your pick."
Wildcat fish? A prickle ran along Nick's spine. An omen? Was he meant to go to Nogadata?
Late the next morning, Phil Jenkins insisted on riding with Nick to "introduce him around" in Nogadata. "You can leave the little nigger gal here with ma," he added.
But Mima trembled in terror at the idea of being parted from Nick. In order not to be slowed by the pony, Nick sat her behind him on Rawhide.
They rode inland through tall maples and oaks along a road that was little more than two ruts. Though a lake breeze diluted the July heat in Monroe, it didn't penetrate into the woods and the air soon grew stifling. Swarming black flies bit both people and horses, making the trip even more unpleasant and causing Nick to wonder what he was doing there.
When at last they reached the wide clearing of the town site, Nick's mind was about made up. Omen or not, this wasn't the place for him. But as they rode into the village, bisected by a stream, the flies disappeared. When they forded the shallow creek rather than crossing by the narrow wooden bridge, the gurgle of the water brought a smile to Nick's face. He couldn't help but be charmed by a community where a stream flowed through the center of town.
"Mostly Pennsylvania Dutch live here--Germans, you know," Jenkins said. "They grow potatoes, trap fo
r fur,
and make furniture." He pointed to a long, low shedlike building. "You'd be surprised how many folks buy their chairs and tables. Even clear down to Cincinnati."
He reined in his dappled gray and dismounted. Nick followed suit. In the next half-hour he met what seemed like the entire population of the place.
"Yah, we hear about Dr. Deplacer," a stocky blond man named Zweig said and Jenkins winked at Nick, who was startled to be addressed as doctor.
He started to correct Zweig when his attention was caught by a woman in a high-waisted white dress that fell in folds to her shoes, quite unlike the current fashion which featured a long vee waist and a wide skirt thrust out by crinolines. She stood on a door-stoop, her unbound hair so blonde it appeared silver in the sunlight. Nick knew he was staring but he couldn't take his eyes from her. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. As in a dream, he noted how blue energy crackled all around her. All else but the woman in white faded from his senses. Feeling drawn to her by invisible threads, he took a step forward.
As though from a great distance, he heard Jenkins say
to Zweig, "Never saw that gal before. She a stranger here?" "She's visiting the Lindenblatts." A tinge of disapproval showed in Zweig's voice. "Waisenen, her name is--a Finlander. Young Mrs. Lindenblatt's a Finn, you know." Mima, who'd stuck as close to Nick as his shadow, grasped his hand and tugged hard, breaking the spell. He tore his gaze away from the woman to look down at her.
"That lady in white," Mima whispered, "I see she bad, bad trouble for you."
He knew better than to discount Mima's foreseeing but he also knew that, bad trouble or not, he'd never be able to stay away from the lovely and dangerous Miss Waisenen.
Chapter 14
A week later, on a hot and muggy Saturday, Nick and Mima moved into a vacant house in Nogadata, furnishing it with cast-offs from the Jenkins and a new table and chairs, courtesy of Henry Zweig, who owned and operated the small furniture-making business. Nick had decided on the house after finding a back yard shielded by a dense cedar hedge that contained an outdoor entrance to a root cellar.