“Better change your name. Gwan. Send them boys back. Don’t let them cross the border. He’s my boy. He’s mine.”
“I won’t.”
“Good luck to you then.” She put her head on her pillow and turned her back to Ernst Wilhelm.
Pet and his father drove up to Duncan’s house in one of the larger beer wagons with two of Wilhelm’s sturdiest horses pulling it. Noelle and Dossie made a straw pallet in the back of this wagon. Noelle spoke to Jan and Pet in a husky voice. “Lash these goods up tight. She’s still weak. Don’t toss her roun’ too much, or the baby liable to come early. She’s not strong enough to bring it.”
Noelle reached and took Pet’s face between her hands and spoke to him. “You come back here in one good piece, boy. You b’long to us. Your papa has made his bed and can lie in it with his own conscience. You’re our baby. You’re our ol’ shoe. We want you. You come back here.” Noelle spoke to Pet as if she were calling down spirits to influence him. She grabbed his shoulders and squeezed.
“Yes, Imi,” he replied with the old childhood name him and Jan had used for Noelle. She placed her palm on Pet’s chest, then on Jan’s, and closed her eyes to murmur prayers that Grandmother would look after them on the road. She gave Grandmother no exhortation on behalf of Ernst Wilhelm or Arminty Brown, for these two were to be left to their own fates or someone else’s prayers. Noelle firmly believed that prayers, like butter, must not be spread too thinly. Her gods, she knew, were miserly in parceling out blessings.
Duncan could have cut the route to Canada without his eyes. He had traversed it many times leading others along routes through New York to the border crossing. But his role in this plan was to stay back and muddy the water.
Few but Noelle knew Duncan had been a conductor for years. Ever else he was or had been, he was a smuggler of people and goods.
Dossie packed up cooked eggs and some fatback and dried meat and many, many hoecakes. She added potatoes and apples as an afterthought. She envisioned them eating potatoes roasted over a fire that Jan had raised, Arminty’s strength building up because of the hot vittles.
At the dock on the border, the boys were falsely jocular so no one would weep.
“When he’s grown up, send your son back to learn the business, Papa,” Pet said shyly and slapped his father’s shoulder. Ernst Wilhelm pulled him and held him and kissed his lips and ruffled his hair as if he were a very small boy. Ernst had been far younger than Petrus when he had left Dresden so many years ago. How could he have known he’d have so beautiful a son as Petrus and leave him to take another child to another country?
“Yes, Uncle Ernst, send your son back to us when he is big,” Jan said and clapped Pet’s back. His uncle pulled him close and kissed him and bade him take care of Petrus and Hat and himself and all.
The cousins were raucous on the trip home. They were drunk when they left Rochester riding southward. They became drunker still, stopping at taverns in New York. When they got to Schoharie and smelled the fragrance of the hops barns, they sobered some and got to longing for their home. Jan knew Pet was grieved at parting from his papa. He, too, was sorry to see the old bear depart for Canada.
As the boat docked in Canada, Arminty rose and stood beside her man. Yes, indeed, now he was hers. She trembled. She became nervous of her appearance. Allowing that she had been ill and jailed, she wanted to be pretty now that she was drawing up and assuming a new role. She was soon to be a mother. Her man had shot a man to keep her from going south when he could simply have tossed her aside. The facts were deeply sobering. What would happen next? The equation was simple. For what Ernst had done thus far, Arminty would belong to him for as long as he wanted. She was standing next to him in broad daylight! She brushed her clothes and patted her hair, then moved closer to him and picked at his coat to remove lint and flecks. She lost balance with the movements of the boat, and Ernst grasped her gently to brace her.
“Are you ready, Mrs. Brown?” he asked with true kindness, for he was sympathetic to her nerves and delicate situation. They had decided to take the name Brown—the name Arminty had used since leaving Tennessee—so that they would become Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Brown when they entered their new country.
“Yes, Mr. Brown, I am ready,” Arminty answered in a familiar, cheerful voice that sounded like a small dinner bell. It was the lighthearted, delicate, and musical voice she’d acquired and practiced to please her man. The return of this sound was reassuring to Ernest Brown. He took Arminty’s elbow and led her from the boat. He stepped on the dock first, sighed deeply, and reached both hands to assist his new wife. He felt guilty about Hat and Petrus. Why couldn’t he be some Oriental potentate with as many wives as he wanted? Why couldn’t he have them all? Often it is the hard choices that are very simply and unequivocally made.
8
DUNCAN RODE UP TO the Wilhelm house to find Hat. She was seated on the top step of the porch with her skirt drawn over her legs, tucked up under her like a child, like a woman rarely does after her body gets out in front of her.
“Gwan in an’ get your bonnet, Pippy. I’ll show you a patch of berries that has sprung up new,” Duncan said with exuberance. He sat on his horse and called to her. “Stir yourself, girl. Hurry up!”
Hat got her bonnet and let Duncan pull her up onto the saddle in front of him.
“He ain’t keeping my boy, is he?” Hat asked with a quavering voice so unlike herself. Sitting sidesaddle, she nestled against Duncan.
“No, Hattie. Your boy is coming back.” Duncan rode uphill and around bends at top speed until she laughed and held to the horse’s mane and begged him to stop. They came upon a crag set in a hillock that had been a childhood hideaway and in it was an abundance of blueberry bushes. They dismounted, filled their buckets, and filled their mouths.
“Hattie, if Wilhelm hadn’t brought you back I would’ve spent my life looking for you. I woulda gone south to get you,” Duncan said solemnly.
“I know that, Punkin,” Hat answered, indulging herself in berries. “I’ve lost my husband, Duncan.”
“Yes, Hattie, but you’re still as pretty as a button,” Duncan said and smiled.
She kissed Duncan with her arms encircling his neck. “We better get back, though, ’less your wife puts you out,” Hat joked. “I’ve got work to do. I’ve got to keep an eye on things until my son comes back.” Duncan heard determination and was pleased. They mounted the horse as before, spilling many berries and giggling like youngsters.
Dossie looked out at their approach. As Duncan and Hat came up, she contained her enthusiasm at some effort. Duncan and Hat were so happily engaged that Dossie did not want to disturb them—to break them apart. She was still cautious to presume with her husband and his sister. Hat needed Duncan, especially now. Dossie waited and let them ride up and tie the horse. She stood when Hat came onto the porch, and Hat nodded to her with formal courtesy as the woman of the house. Hat held out the buckets of blueberries and grinned.
“We want some cream, Dossie Bird,” Duncan called.
“No cream!” Hat shouted. “Duncan wants to eat them berries right out of the bowl. Nay, Duncan, we will wait for a pie.”
“It look like we could have many a pie. Look like y’all got a secret place for berries. These’re the bes’ ever seen.” Dossie caught their merriment.
“Shall I turn you a crust, Miz Smoot? When we was children we had to pick double what was needed ’cause Punkin always ate half of what we pick,” Hat teased as she tied an apron around her waist. “Dossie, when I was small as a top, I loved my brother so much I followed him all over the house, the yard, the bushes. When he go pee, I go behind him. Cissy used to switch my butt for always trying to trail after Duncan. Me and Cissy were kept nearer the house, and we had to work the chickens and cook. We did sewing and mending, too. Most everything we did was in the house and in the yard and the nearby vegetable patch and the animal pens. We didn’t get to run off fishing and go hunting. We didn’t go tracking and rid
ing horses. We wasn’t allowed to ride with Papa and the uncles up to the Indian camp.”
“Aw, Pippy,” Duncan cut in.
“I told Duncan once that I would marry him when I grew up. He say, ‘No, Pippy. You my sister. I can’t fuck you. I got to have a wife to make babies with. You got to get a man of your own.’ He laughed at me. He told Cissy what I said, and she boxed my ears. Then she demanded that I only sleep in her bed and I must work next to her. I had to stay well within her distance for shouting or I would get my ears slapped. It was really Cissy that loved Duncan so much that she wanted him for her own and wanted to trail off after him—hunting, fishing, doing all of the boy things. She was the better fisherman. She was good at trappin’ squirrels and possums, too. She wasn’t ’lowed to, of course.
“When I got bigger Cissy wouldn’t let Duncan and me put our heads together on a thing without her. One day Punkin was letting it go next to the barn door and I was standing there talking to him. I must’ve been looking at his jasper ’cause when Cissy came up, she grabbed me at the shoulders and pulled me around and slapped me until my head rang with pounding bells. ‘Don’t you never do that, Hat!’ she hollered. ‘You ain’t s’posed to look at or touch a man’s member ’less you be a dirty girl!’ I said back when I could catch my breath to do so, ‘Cissy, Punkin ain’t no man!’ ” Hat rolled out her crust with an explosion of laughter and loose flour rose in white bursts about her, landing on her apron.
“Hush, Pippy. Gwan now,” Duncan hollered in from the porch, and the women guffawed.
“You might ast why my papa sent me off with a slickster. It was ’cause I started to show womanliness and I was a pretty girl. My father’s youngest brother started to notice me. Papa was concerned. He looked around for a husband for me. He didn’t much care as long as he wouldn’t have a problem with his brother. See, he worked his own little brother like a mule, and he needed him. He didn’t need me. He had Cissy for keepin’ the house. So he married me off. Duncan was ’way in the mines, or he would have saved me. Cissy cried and begged Papa, but he didn’t care about her either. My mama might have saved me, but she was dead.”
“Aw, Pippy, it’s done and finish now,” Duncan called out. He knew the hurts that Hat had suffered for being a pretty little girl coveted indecently. He was the one to have rescued her, but he hadn’t been able to.
Was it ’cause he was scared or in Charlie Tougle’s thrall that he hadn’t stepped in to save Cissy? And Pippy paid so dearly. And Cissy paid.
Duncan stood just inside the door and spoke quietly, “I’m sorry, Hattie.”
“Which part of our lands is Cissy’s share, Duncan?” Hat asked, sloughing off weepiness. “Shouldn’t Jan build a house and think of tomorrow? You better tell him, push him to build a house and settle down. Jan needs to get a good girl and make some babies. We need some babies around here to keep us company.” Hat spoke in a loose fashion as though she’d suddenly become tipsy. “You, too, Duncan. You and Dossie can make some babies.” Hat went to Dossie and grasped her arms. “Dossie, you got a job to do, girl. We need a baby.”
“Aw hush, Pippy,” Duncan said, finally becoming truly annoyed. Hat’s voice was beginning to ruffle his nerves. He lit a cigar because he was no longer in a conciliatory mood and smirked to think that Dossie would have to suffer his stinking breath. He intended to drink and smoke cigars and fuck her because she must give up her bed to Hat and sleep with him.
When Duncan was done drinking and smoking, he went to the patch alongside the house and chewed some mint. Then he returned to the house and found that Dossie and Hat had retired into Dossie’s bed and were soundly asleep.
Red, one of Mensah Paul’s youngsters, came up in the first light of day. “Mr. Duncan Smoot, sir,” he called in a well-modulated voice as he came onto the porch at the back of the house. Dossie shook water from her hands and wiped moisture from her face. She had heard Red’s approach and cleaned her face to meet him.
“What all is the matter, boy?” Dossie asked.
“Papa says a lawman from the town is heading up to see Miz Hat. He headin’ here if he don’t fin’ her home at her place.”
“Duncan,” Dossie called back into the house in a quiet, direct voice. “Come, boy, and sit.” Before she’d spoken his name a second time, Duncan had risen, called to Hat, and taken up his shotgun.
“Red, gwan back and tell your papa to come up quiet and stay hid,” Duncan said. Dossie put a corn cake in the boy’s hand.
“Mr. Smoot, I ain’t come with no force of arms, so I’ll ask you to lower your shotgun,” the lawman called out as he rode up and saw Duncan standing on the porch. Duncan lowered the gun very slowly. “I’m here to ask you if Miz Wilhelm is here. I’d like to have a speak with her. If you don’ min’ I’d like to see is she here, sir?” The sheriff spoke deferentially, respectfully.
The shotgun, the defiant stance, the suspicious stare, were all a show. Duncan knew the man had come alone. Everyone living up and down the mountain knew that. And he came confidently, fearlessly, with no bluster, so they also knew that he was—or had been—one of them.
The man dismounted, and Duncan said, “Come up, sir. Mrs. Wilhelm is visiting. She’s not feelin’ so well, though.” Dossie would have laughed at the sound of Duncan’s voice if the air was not so thick with danger. “Dossie, give the sheriff a cup of coffee, won’t you? Hattie, come on out and talk with the sheriff,” Duncan called out so amiably, so falsely friendly-like.
Dossie was happy Duncan gave her a job to do so that she was not standing and staring at the sheriff. Her heart felt like it would stop when she recognized the man who had grabbed her arm in the alley while the fight was raging in the tavern. She was so shocked she might have turned to a block of salt.
“You got a familiar face, Sheriff. Your mother is Bessie Stringley?” Duncan asked, eager to exploit his knowledge of the man’s background.
“Yes, sir,” the sheriff answered. “Now she is Branch, sir. My papa is Emil Branch, as am I.”
“Emil Branch. I’m pleased to know you,” Duncan said. He reached to shake the sheriff’s hand and led him to sit in a porch chair. “This is my wife, Dossie, sir,” Duncan pronounced grandly when Dossie offered up the sheriff’s coffee.
“How do, ma’am.” The sheriff nodded his head respectfully. His eyes lingered on her face for a split second longer than they might otherwise. Yes, he had seen her face before. Yes, he remembered her. She had a quiet, demure, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth manner now, but he had seen her in the alley behind the Irish drinking hole when her husband’s nephews were getting shellacked. Instinct told him that the fight had started on account of her. Ah, these jumble niggers and African Indians and subversive white men don’t accept that there are some places they are not welcome!
Dossie was struck to think that the sheriff must be a man from Russell’s Knob. His manner told on him. He was not a lowlander, though he was their sheriff. Her thoughts became consumed with hoping that the subject of the tavern and those doings would not come up.
Emil Branch decided that Duncan Smoot was a lucky man. His wife was pretty. And he had had his hands on her! He was not truly surprised to find her here. These people are mixers, amalgamators. Everybody who knows of them knows they take in runaways. And yes, his mama had come from up this way. Her people were among the whiter-colored ones, and she’d left and married a lowlander and lived like an ordinary white.
His gaze returned to Dossie surreptitiously. Miz Smoot’s figure was full and well presented. Though her mien was quiet, composed, he imagined that if she smiled her face would spring to life. Her eyes were inquisitive despite her good manners.
“I know your people, sir. Your mama was a very pretty young woman, son,” Duncan bantered, and his words startled the young sheriff. Branch’s cheeks became red; he looked again at Miz Smoot, then lowered his eyes.
“She still is, sir,” Branch replied. “Very pretty, sir.” His voice remained courteous, though it had a slight bris
tle that a stranger had mentioned his mother so familiarly. The show of pique—the possessiveness—was a tell that Duncan noted. The sheriff was not duplicitous then. He was letting his honest feelings show. Duncan thought that he could read Emil Branch and perhaps trust him.
“I’ll warrant she is. We ain’t seen her around here in a long time, though. Tell her to come home and see her people. We want to see her,” Duncan said. He took up the role of sweet patriarch with the young sheriff.
“I will give her your regard, sir,” Branch said, then turned his attention to Hat. “Ma’am, Miz Wilhelm, may I ask you where is your husband?”
At the question Harriet Wilhelm did something wholly unexpected by the others. She burst forth with a loud fit of crying. “I don’ know! I don’ know!” she wailed. It was a shocking departure from the dignified reticence that Harriet Smoot Wilhelm was known for. She shrieked, “He’s gone off from me! I ’on’t know to where!”
“Fix her some tea, Dossie. Won’t you fix Hattie some tea? It may make her calm,” Duncan said as though they had been nursing Hat’s hysteria throughout the night. Dossie wondered when the two had agreed on this subterfuge. “I b’lieve I tol’ you, Emil—Sheriff Branch—Miz Wilhelm ain’t feelin’ so good now,” Duncan continued with a deadly solemn face.
“Mr. Smoot, does she have any idea where her husband, Mr. Ernst Wilhelm, is at?” the sheriff asked Duncan as if Hat had gone insensible.
“Sheriff Branch, my sister don’t know a thing about where her husband has gone.”
“There is a story,” the sheriff began and was quickly stopped by Duncan’s raised hand.
“Sheriff, my sister has heard the story. You see what it done to her to hear these things. We don’ know what Mr. Wilhelm did or where he gone since he lef’ here some days ago.”
Dossie brought the hot tea to Hat, who jerked and whimpered but held the steaming cup competently and no drop was spilled.
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