And then the spirit that always passed between Master Wilson and myself trailed its cold fingers down my arm and into my own fingers clasped around the lance. Master Wilson began shivering.
By now my companions had entered his house. I heard furniture being overturned and dishes breaking. I heard the squeal of the hogs as they were killed. I heard gunfire, as my friends fired their rifles into the air. Chickens squawked and scurried all around us, while in the distance, a dog barked.
I kept my eye on Wilson. I kept the point of my lance pressed into his chest. I did not kill him yet. I watched and listened to him plead for his life, while inside the house was Chloe.
I did not know this of course, but she was alive and she was there. She had hidden herself tightly between a corner cabinet and the wall, a masterful hiding place that Wilson had built should raiding Indians ever attack their farm. This must have been the only thing he ever did well on his own, the only thing for which I am grateful to him, but then he always did care about his property.
The corner cabinet was secured to the wall and could not be turned over, and the board covering the crack between the wall and the cabinet, the board behind which Chloe hid herself, could be secured from the inside. It was easy in the frenzied heat of a raid to overlook this little illusion.
“I have a woman,” Wilson said to me. “You can have her.”
I pushed the lance a little harder against his skin.
I laugh now to think of this irony, that he saved Chloe this way, saved her for me, and that he now offered her to me, if only I would spare his churlish life. And is it not also ironic that a man could build something such as this cabinet yet could not seal all the cracks in his cabin? As I held my lance on Master Wilson, Chloe was now able to watch through a crack at the corner of the house as he begged me for his life.
Did I look familiar to her, even with my war paint and my leggings and my breastplate? She knew now that I was alive, that I had not drowned in the river, for Master Wilson had tortured her with this information ever since I spoke with him on the streets of Drunken Bride. And she had heard of the nigger Indian, for I had been seen raiding with the tribe. I had been seen killing a man. I had been seen lifting a child onto the back of my horse. I had gained a reputation among the Texans.
And now Chloe, from her hiding place, having heard all the talk of the nigger Indian, having been told by Master Wilson that I was alive and looking for her, suddenly realized who was on the horse, holding a lance against the chest of the man who had owned her and raped her and called her his wife.
And just as she realized it Master Wilson also realized it, for he suddenly looked at me and said, “Didn’t I own you once?”
“My name,” I said in English, “is Kweepoonaduh Tuhmoo, but you know me as Persimmon Wilson.”
“I owned you,” he said again, and it was right then that I ran the lance through his chest, and right then that I leapt off my horse and scalped him, and right then that Chloe pushed her way out from behind the corner cabinet and walked, somehow walked unharmed, through this din of warriors to me.
There was no time to think that what I was seeing might be an apparition. Indeed I did not even care, for real or not, this woman coming toward me was some semblance of Chloe, and I climbed onto my horse, and I stuck out my foot for her to step onto, and I switched Joseph Wilson’s scalp to my other hand that I might hold this hand out, covered in the blood of a man she hated, to help her up.
She did not hesitate. Chloe did not hesitate. She took my hand. She stepped onto my foot. She slung herself up behind me, and she was real. Her body pressed against mine. Her warmth, Chloe’s warmth covered my back. She reached her arms around my waist and held on. “Persy,” she said. I could not speak. Around us the warriors circled and whooped and torched the cabin. The flames rose quickly into the air, the wood was so dry. Thin Knife came riding up beside me. He nodded and smiled and rode away, and I followed with Chloe holding on.
WE RODE hard away from Drunken Bride. We covered the distance, normally four days’ ride, in two. We rode through the night, stopping only briefly for water and to change horses at the place of my capture. There was no time to talk with Chloe, no way to prepare her for the life I was riding her into. I did not even think of these things. I only felt her body behind mine, felt her arms circling my waist, felt her head lean against my back, and rode hard, away from Drunken Bride, away from the body of Master Wilson still pinned to the ground with my lance.
When we reached the village the women fell upon Chloe. They grabbed at her and I wheeled my horse around, kicking at them, calling out.
Kay. Kay. No. No. Kwahee. Kwahee. Back. Back. Kay. Kay. Kwahee. Kwahee.
The women moved away and stood watching and frowning. Kwahee, I said again, and I dismounted. Feather Horse pushed her way to the front of the crowd and watched as I helped Chloe down and set her on the ground. “It is his woman,” she said to the people.
“Ahh,” the women said, and they smiled and nodded and looked at Chloe, nudging each other and chattering.
“Kweepoonaduh Tuhmoo’s woman is white,” someone observed.
“This was not in my vision,” Feather Horse replied.
“She is not white,” I told them, and the crowd laughed.
Chloe clung to me. She did not raise her head to look at them. A boy came up and took my horse. The crowd parted as I walked her to my tipi, lifted the flap, and led her inside.
“Sit,” I said. She looked at me. I did not realize I had spoken in Comanche. I motioned to my bed. She sat and ran her hand along the buffalo robe that covered it.
I built a fire. I brought her food and water. I squatted down across from her, watching as she pulled the meat off an antelope bone and gulped the water from a tin cup I had found during a raid. When she was finished I motioned that she should lie down. She shook her head. I knew what she was thinking, that I would want to be with her. “You sleep,” I said. “Just sleep. I will not bother you.”
She frowned and shook her head again, and I realized again that I had been speaking Comanche. “Sleep,” I said in English. “Just sleep. You must be tired.”
She lay down and pulled the buffalo robe up around her, closed her eyes, and slept for most of three days. I suppose it was too much for her, that moment of realizing where she was. I suppose that she could not fathom how she had gotten here. I suppose she could not fathom whom I had become. I sat across from her for that entire three days, rising only to bring her water or help her outside to relieve herself. The rest of the time I watched the firelight flicker across her face, just as I had done that first night together in my cabin in the quarters of Sweetmore.
I could not resist sometimes stroking the backs of my fingers across her cheek as she slept. I lifted her hair and smelt of it. I climbed under the buffalo robes with her, and without waking, she settled against my chest. If she whimpered, I rocked her. If she cried out, I hushed her, speaking Comanche again without thinking. Puh sooah-tsoomyee. He is dead. Puh sooah-tsoomyee.
But even as I lay with her, and held her, and comforted her I felt a great stabbing in my heart. That Master Wilson had lied to me was clear, and I was a fool for having believed him, but other questions plagued me. Why was Chloe at Wilson’s house? There seemed to be no other former slaves on the property, so why had she not taken her freedom with the rest? Why had she stayed with the man who had repeatedly raped her and who had left me to drown in the river?
Still, I nursed her. I held her every night. I kept the fire going. If the buffalo robe slipped from her shoulder, I moved it back. I did nothing but watch Chloe and wait for her to wake up that we might talk. And on the fourth day she finally did. She looked around my lodge with an awareness of her surroundings that I had not seen in her eyes the previous three days. She seemed to know exactly where she was, and she gazed at the walls of my tipi, my bow and quiver of arrows hanging from one of the poles, the fire at the center of the lodge, me hunkered down across from her. “I recko
n you wantin’ to know what I doin’ there,” she said.
I nodded.
“I thought you dead. I seen you drown in the river. Then he tell me you in Drunken Bride lookin’ fo’ me.”
I didn’t understand, and I shook my head.
“I passin’ fo’ white,” she whispered, bowing her head. “I passin’ fo’ his wife. You got any water?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said.
She looked up and glared at me. “I need some water.”
I complied, dipping some into the tin cup and handing it to her, and then sitting on the other side of the fire from her. She drank, and then put the cup down and wiped her sleeve across her mouth.
“I passin’ fo’ white,” Chloe said again, this time looking straight at me. “All them folks in Drunken Bride, they think I be white. I passin’ fo’ his wife. I thought you dead,” she said again.
And then she told me the story in its entirety. She told of watching me drown in the river. She told of Wilson raping her in the barn after the steamer landed. She told me of what he said. “You can have it this way, or we can make some other arrangements.” And she told of the day she climbed into the wagon beside him, the day she became “Mrs. Joseph Wilson.” She was the mother of his children, a boy and a girl. Both had died from scarlet fever, within weeks of each other.
When I found all this out, and when she cried telling me of the deaths of their children, I felt my heart rear up and gallop away from her. I could not help this. It was too much to take in. Chloe and Master Wilson living as husband and wife. Children. A family. “Can you fo’give me?” Chloe asked. “Fo’give me fo’ marryin’ him?”
I buried my face in my hands. Outside I heard Feather Horse and Crawls Along working and talking, the scrape of their tools across hides. Chloe whispered, “I done lost you, Persy. I don’t know what to do after that. I care ’bout you, and he done shot you. He hold my head up and make me watch you drown. You was gone, and I headin’ to Texas, and he . . . he havin’ me all along the way. Somethin’ snap in him when we leave Sweetmore. Somethin’ go wrong with him, Persy. He meaner than he ever been befo’. He hittin’ me now. He say he won’t hit me no mo’ if I let him make me white. I didn’t know you was alive, Persy. I didn’t know it.”
I kept my face buried in my hands. Across the tipi I heard Chloe softly crying. I think today, although I did not then, of how excruciating those moments must have been for her, sitting in a tipi in a strange place, among people she only knew as savages. She must have wondered what would become of her if I rejected her. What would become of her if I chose my pride over the love she offered to me, the love she had always offered? Once again her life hung in limbo as she waited for the decision of a man.
I left her in this state of limbo longer than I care to admit, but at last I lowered my hands from my face. I looked up at the red cedar poles meeting each other, and at the smoke spiraling up to the pale blue sky. I looked at the cradleboard Feather Horse and Crawls Along had made. I looked around my lodge, at my bow and quiver hanging with Mo’s haversack. I thought then of Mo’s hand gently curling in death, as if holding something. I thought of him saying, “Sweetheart,” and then dying. I thought of him telling me that if his wife Geraldine had been taken by Indians, he would still want her. I had told him the same thing about Chloe.
I wiped my tears away. “You didn’t marry him,” I said. “There is nothing to forgive.” I crawled across the tipi to her and wrapped my arms around her, and she fell into my lap and wept.
I suppose that if you have read this far, if you believe all that I have told you, then you will want to know why Chloe did not quit Master Wilson at the end of the war, and you will want to know if I truly did not blame her for staying, for continuing to pose as his wife, for continuing to pose as white. I did not blame her then, and I do not blame her still, for what, I ask you, could she have done differently?
One by one, all of Master Wilson’s slaves quit him until Chloe was left there with no one but Wilson knowing her true identity. To all the neighbors, to all you people in Drunken Bride, Chloe was white. Chloe was Joseph Wilson’s wife. So I ask you, had she chosen to leave, where could she have gone? What could she have done to earn a living? Who would have taken her in? And how can I blame her for staying in a life as tightly constricting as this jail in which I now sit?
“I loved my chirren,” Chloe said now. “I love ’em still. I hate they father, but I love Jason and Anna. That the one thing he let me do, name the chirren. And I name ’em after my mama and papa.”
I nodded.
“I hate him.”
“He is dead now, Chloe.”
“I hate him.”
I nodded again. In that moment it did not feel like enough that I had killed Joseph Wilson. It did not feel like enough to have merely run my lance through his body. It did not feel like enough to merely have his scalp drying on my shield. If I were not scheduled to hang so soon, I would take the time to write for you exactly what I would have done to him, but torture is a leisurely pursuit, and I have not the time to do it justice here.
“I thought you was dead,” Chloe said again. “I’d of never done it if I’d knowed you was alive.”
“You had to survive. We all had to survive.”
I pulled her to me and I held her tight and I resolved that I would never let her go, that I would look after her, that she would finally be safe, for she was with me, and while I was not a wealthy man, I was no longer a poor man either. I had a lodge, and I had horses, and I had weapons, which I knew how to use. I would protect her. I would provide for her. Is that not what any man who is worth his salt wishes to do for his woman?
I cannot tell you how long she sobbed, except that it seemed forever. She took in great gulps of air, and I felt her tears dampen my shirt. Her shoulders shook violently as she let it all out, and I muttered in Comanche again and again, “Puh sooah-tsoomyee. Puh sooah-tsoomyee.” At last she slowed her crying and she looked up at me and asked, “What that mean?”
“He is dead,” I answered, which renewed her weeping. “I thought you wanted him dead,” I said.
“I did. But . . . I . . . I thought you was dead,” she said between sobs.
“I am not dead,” I told her. “You are here with me and I am not dead. This is my lodge. I have a herd of twenty-five horses. I can take care of you.”
She pulled back and looked at me. “How you come to be here?” she asked.
“I was looking for you,” I said, and then I told her everything, and we pieced our stories together like a quilt stitched with needles and thorns. She started laughing. I could not see what was funny, but she continued to laugh, and whenever she managed to stop, it was only briefly before she started again. I think now that she was hysterical, that she could not take it all in, my capture, the fact that these people, the people I lived among, had once planned to burn me alive. I think now that the death of Wilson was catching up to her, the sight of his body pinned to the ground with my lance, the sight of his bloody head, his scalp in my hand.
“Massuh Wilson dead,” she finally said between fits of hysteria. “He dead. I thought you dead. You don’t be dead. You thought I dead. I don’t be dead neither. Joseph dead. Holmes dead. We not dead.”
I flinched at the use of Wilson’s first name, but Chloe did not notice. She laughed some more and then dissolved once again into tears.
I stood and reached into Mo’s haversack and pulled out a handkerchief, which I offered to her. You will perhaps be surprised that I had a handkerchief, but I had many of your white person’s things, stolen in one raid or another. I cannot remember which raid the handkerchief came from; it was a wagon train I think. The handkerchief had initials embroidered into one corner with pale blue thread. Chloe wiped her eyes and then fingered the stitching. She looked up at me. “These yo’ letters?”
“No.”
“This belong to someone else?”
I shook my head. “It belongs to m
e. I took it.”
She looked around my lodge. “What else you take?”
“I took this shirt,” I answered, lifting the hem of the blue wool. “I took some of the horses I own. I took that gun. I took these books.” I lifted one of the books I’d stolen from the farm outside Drunken Bride and handed it to Chloe.
She held it in her hands like a broken bird, and then she opened it to the front page and ran her fingers across an inscription written there. “What it say, Persy?”
I took the book from her and read, “ ‘To my darling wife, Jane, from your loving husband, Richard. On the occasion of our marriage. May 19, 1860.’ ”
“That be the Coopers. Jane and Richard Cooper. I knowed ’em. They dead now?”
“Most likely.”
She nodded. “I hated ’em.”
“Did they treat you badly?”
She shook her head. “Naw. They was nice enough, but I couldn’t never be myself there. Didn’t no one know ’bout me. And they all say, I heard ’em, they say I Mistah Wilson’s uneducated wife. I heard ’em say they reckon he want me ’cause I purty, it sure ain’t ’cause I smart. They say, ‘Listen to the way she talk.’ I ain’t never knowed no other way to talk, Persy.”
“They are probably dead,” I said. I closed the book and wrapped my arms around Chloe again.
She looked up at the smoke vent, where the red cedar poles met and were lashed together. “You say this yo’ place?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You own it?”
“Yes.”
“You got a woman?”
I smiled. “No.”
She nodded at the cradleboard hanging from one of the lodge poles. “What that doin’ here?”
“My friend’s wife made it for me. She had a vision that I would find a woman, and that I needed my own lodge to bring her to. She believes this woman will provide me with a child.”
“Is that right?”
I nodded.
“Am I that woman?”
“Do you want to be?”
The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson Page 27