by Kaki Warner
The Friends School for the Betterment of People of Color. It was the same.
From inside the building came the distant voices of children chanting their numbers. He pictured Prudence Lincoln standing before them, smiling as she had once smiled at him, her oldest pupil.
Had she received his letter? Would she welcome him? Or would she choose these strangers over him once again, and send him away with more excuses? If so, it would be the last time. He could not spend the rest of his life waiting for her to accept him. If she turned him away this time, he would not come back.
He did not want to think of how empty his days would be if that happened.
Pushing the thought aside, he brushed back his shoulder-length hair and tugged the collar away from his neck so he could breathe. As he walked toward the front porch, he looked around.
The yard was bare but for a leafless willow tree. There was no snow on the ground, and few clouds hung in the sky. Even though it was early morning, the breeze off the Ohio was so gentle it felt like a cool hand against his cheek. Much warmer than in Colorado. For a moment, the horizon beckoned, and the call to return home was strong in his mind. He had been gone many months and had traveled far. He wanted to go back to his snowy mountains.
But first, he must see Prudence Lincoln.
When he started up the steps, he saw a black-skinned girl-child sitting in a chair on the far end of the porch, staring in his direction. She looked small and thin beneath her worn coat, and probably had less than a dozen years. She was darker than Prudence Lincoln, and tiny ribbon-tied braids sprouted from her head like raven feathers from a war bonnet. He wondered why she was not at her lessons with the other children.
“Mornin’,” she called. “My name Lillie. It really Lillian, but ev’rybody only call me Lillie.”
He nodded without speaking. Setting down the leather pouch holding his extra clothes, he stared at the closed door, that uneasiness rising in him again. He did not like it. Did not like the feeling of doubt that came with it. Irritated at such weakness, he smoothed a hand down the front of his jacket. He did not like these fancy clothes the Scotsman had bought for him, either. Or the boots he had to wear instead of his moccasins. He missed his topknot and eagle feather.
But to honor his white grandfather—and Prudence Lincoln, who was half white—this was the path he had chosen. For now. But once he returned to his mountains, he would cast aside these foolish trappings and become Cheyenne once again.
“Ain’t you gonna knock?” the girl called.
He scowled at her for interrupting his thoughts.
She seemed not to notice and continued to stare, her head cocked to one side.
He took a deep breath, let it out, then lifted his fist and pounded on the door.
He stepped back and waited.
Footsteps approached. He stood stiffly as the door opened and a stern-faced old woman in a plain brown dress looked out at him. He did not recognize her from before, when he had left Prudence Lincoln in anger and sailed across the wide water to buy horses.
“How may I help thee?” she asked.
A Quaker. He remembered the strange way they spoke. “You will take me to Prudence Lincoln.” Seeing the woman’s mouth tighten, he added, “Please.”
“Miss Lincoln is not here.” The woman tried to close the door.
Thomas stopped it with his hand. “Where is she?”
She blinked round, dark eyes, reminding Thomas of a tiny brown wren. “I was told they went to the capitol.”
They? And what was this capitol?
This time, she shut the door before Thomas could stop her. “Noxa’e! Wait!”
The footsteps faded into silence.
Muttering, he turned to find the girl rising from her chair.
“I knows you.” She reached out to touch the porch rail. “You her Indian, ain’t you? Thomas Redstone.” She walked closer, one hand on the railing, the other pointed his way. “You a Cheyenne Dog Soldier.”
He saw nothing familiar in the girl’s face, or in the odd way she looked toward him, but not at him. She spoke like other black skins he knew who had been slaves. Not like Prudence Lincoln. She had never been a slave, and her white father had raised her to speak in the white way. The proper way, she called it.
Thinking this girl—proper or not—might be more help than the Quaker woman, he put on a smile. “I did not see you when I came here before.”
“I not see you, neither,” she said and giggled.
Then he understood. Her careful gait. That blank stare. The intent way she listened, her head tilted to one side to catch every sound. “You cannot see.”
“Scarlet fever. Three years back when I eight. You sounds tall.”
“If you cannot see me, how do you know who I am?”
She continued toward him. When the fingertips of her outstretched hand brushed his coat, she stopped and let her arm fall back to her side. “You talk different from the Friends. Or Miss Pru. Or anybody.” She smiled at his chest. “Can I feel you face?”
He drew back. “Why?”
“That how I learn what you look like.”
Forcing down his natural wariness around those marked by the Great Spirit, Thomas bent to within reach of her hands.
Her touch was as soft as a moth’s wings. And ticklish. But he stood motionless while she felt everything, even his ears and lips and eyes. When she finally took her hands away, he straightened, glad the ordeal was over. He was not comfortable with such touching, except with Prudence Lincoln. He liked to keep people far enough away that he could see all of them at once and know if a threat was coming. “What did you learn?” he asked.
Another giggle, showing a gap where a front tooth had been. “You gots a big nose and you eyebrows very stern. What color you eyes?”
“Dark, and my nose is not big. What is this capitol the Quaker woman spoke of?”
“Indianapolis. I go there ’fore I blind. It a big place, sho’ ’nuff. What color you hair?”
“Black. Why did Prudence Lincoln go there?”
“To raise money for Reverend Brother Sampson and talk ’bout schoolin’ fo’ black folk.” A spark lit the blankness in her brown eyes. “You fetchin’ her? She ’posed come back long time ago, but she ain’t showed.”
Thomas stared past her, plans already forming. If he fetched Prudence Lincoln, it would not be to bring her back here.
“Oh. Well.” A deep sigh. “They not let you take her, anyways.”
He glared down at her dark head. “Who would stop me?”
“Mistuh Marsh. He say Reverend Brother Sampson need her.”
“Tell me of these men.”
Leaning over the rail, she groped until her hand brushed a shrub planted beside the porch. Plucking a withered blossom, she sniffed it, then slipped it into her coat pocket before moving down the rail to another plant. “Reverend Brother Sampson a preaching man. He a slave in Kentucky ’fore he come here on the Underground Railroad. Now he preach the Holy Gospel in a big tent. He nice. Always bring me peppermints.”
“And the other man?”
She plucked another dead blossom, sniffed, then put it in the pocket with the first. “Mistuh Marsh. He white.” Her voice changed. Held a trace of . . . fear? “He take Reverend Brother Sampson ’round so he can preach. This time, he take him to Indianapolis. Miss Pru say folks there maybe send him all the way to Washington to talk to the President.”
Thomas knew what a talk with the White Father in Washington meant. More treaties, more broken promises, more trouble for the People. “Why do they need Prudence Lincoln to do this?”
“’Cause she smart. Mistuh Marsh say with her by his side, folks maybe like Reverend Brother Sampson ’nuff to make him a leg-a-slater. I ain’t sure what that is. Nobody tell me nothin’ ’round here. They think ’cause I blind, I stupid, too.”
“’Course. Everybody do. Even the Friends.”
A coldness gripped him. Did that mean she had chosen this man over him? He did not want to believe that. Prudence Lincoln was his heart-mate. But why, then—after he wrote to her that he was coming—was she not here? What was he to do now? Wait for her until he grew old and his days ran out?
He could not do that. He would not live his life that way. Better to walk away now than to be sent away later.
Fury burned away the chill. But it also awakened that part of him too stubborn to give up . . . not even when he hung in agony from the ropes during the Sun Dance ceremony . . . or when he saw his chief killed and the People driven from their lands onto government reservations . . . or when he searched tirelessly, despite his wounds, to find Prudence after the Arapaho renegade took her.
He would not walk away this time. He would go to this other place—this Indianapolis. He would find Prudence Lincoln and tell her what was in his heart. Then he would go back to his mountains. If she chose to stay here, that would be the end of it. He would put her from his life forever.
If he could.
He looked down at the girl staring blankly across the yard, her thin fingers tugging at a loose thread on her worn cuff. “Where is this place called Indianapolis?”
She looked up.
Her eyes might be blank, but he sensed a sharp intelligence hidden behind them. This girl was not stupid.
“You go after her? ’Cause I tell you how to get there. I even get you a map.” She leaned closer to whisper at his jacket. “But you gots to take me with you. Miss Pru need both us to get her away from Mistuh Marsh.”
Thomas almost smiled, amused that she thought he needed help from a blind girl who probably weighed little more than his bag of extra clothes. “I cannot take you with me.”
Chin jutting, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Then I ain’t helpin’.”
“Goodbye, Lillian.” He picked up his leather bag.
“Where you goin’?”
He started down the steps into the yard.
“You cain’t jist leave me!” She stumbled forward, hands clutching at air. “A po’ blind black girl who ain’t got nobody to look out for her, not even a dog to lick away her tears!”
“Go inside, Lillian,” he called over his shoulder.
“Don’t go!” She flung herself toward him.
With a curse, he dropped the bag and caught her before she flew headfirst down the steps. “You foolish ka’eskone,” he scolded, setting her back on her feet. “You could have hurt yourself!”
Behind him, the door swung open. A man in a dark collarless coat over a plain white shirt stepped onto the porch. “What’s going on out here? Lillie, what mischief have thee gotten into this time?”
When she tucked her head without answering, the Quaker turned his attention to Thomas. “I am Friend Matthews,” the older man said. “Administrator of the school. Who might thee be?”
“Thomas Redstone.”
“The man seeking Miss Lincoln?”
Thomas nodded.
“Weren’t you told she was in Indianapolis?”
“Yes, but I was not told when she will come back.”
“We don’t know when she’ll be back.”
Thomas thought for a moment. “She knew I would come. She left no message for me?”
“None that I am aware of. I am sorry, friend.” Turning to the girl, he held out his hand. “Come along, child.”
“No.” The girl fumbled until she found Thomas’s hand. Taking it in both of hers, she grinned at the Quaker’s stomach. “I’m going with Daddy.”
Ten minutes later, Thomas walked back toward the Schuler train station, this time with two bags of clothes and a beaming little black girl by his side.
“I know’d you catch me ’fore I fall down the steps,” the girl said, clinging to his arm as they walked along the road. “You a good daddy. Gots any other chilrin ’sides me?”
“No. And I am not your father.” He had spoken those words many times . . . to her, the Quaker, and to anyone else who would listen before they were gently, but firmly, herded out the door. The people at the school seemed eager to send the girl away with him. He could guess why.
“I knows you ain’t.”
“Then why did you tell them I was?”
“’Cause I need a daddy and they wouldn’t let me go with you if you wasn’t. Slow down. I’m just a po’ little blind girl, ’member?”
More like heavoheso—a devil—in pigtails. Reining in his temper, Thomas slowed his pace. He did not know what to do with this strange child. He was not a nursemaid. “Where are your parents?”
“You mean ’sides you?”
“I am not your father.”
“Don’t know where my other daddy is. He sold off ’fore I born. Mama gone to Jesus. Drowned. Up and walk out the field one day, straight into the river. Overseer find her floatin’ in the weeds. You know skin turn white and come off you stay in the water too long?”
Thomas kept walking, not sure what to say. The girl had lied about him being her father. Maybe she lied about this, as well. He hoped so.
“Mama always want to be white. Guess she got her wish. She make a pretty white lady, sho’ ’nuff. Miss Pru pretty?”
“Yes.”
“That probably ’cause she half white.”
Thomas smirked at the notion. “It is not the color of her skin that makes her pretty. It is the goodness in her heart.” And her smile. And the way she looked at him when he touched her. Would he ever hold her against him again?
“After your mother died, who took care of you, Lillian?”
“Whoever around. When the fightin’ stop, Friends come and bring us to freedom lan’. Been here since. They nice, even if they talk funny.”
They talk funny? Thomas wondered what Prudence Lincoln thought about the way this girl spoke. He remembered how she had sat beside him, pointing out the letters in her book and teaching him to speak in the proper way. He had not been a good student. It was hard to think about words when she sat so close.
“Hey,” the girl said, giving his hand a yank to get his attention. “Since I be your little girl, my name Lillie Redstone now?”
Thomas did not answer.
After a while, they turned onto a side road that ran along the railroad tracks. Up ahead, the depot squatted like a beetle beside a spindly water tower balanced on eight skinny wooden legs. A beetle and a hungry spider. He felt caught in a web, too. He still was not sure what to do when the train came. He could not leave the girl by the tracks. And he could not take her back to the school. Maybe when he found Prudence Lincoln . . .
“She not fo’get.”
He looked down at her. “What?”
“Miss Pru. She not fo’get you comin’. She leave you a note, but Mistuh Marsh not give it to Friend Matthews like he say he do.”
Thomas smiled. She had remembered.
“And he mean to Miss Pru. Take her to Indianapolis when she want to wait for you. Say she better behave. He a mean one, make Miss Pru cry like that.”
Cry? Thomas’s steps slowed. Eho’nehevehohtse rarely cried. Not even after he freed her from Lone Tree. Or when she tended him after he was shot, and he heard her awake from night terrors. Who was this man and why did he warn her to behave? Prudence Lincoln always behaved. When Thomas was with her, that was his hardest task—to convince her not to behave.
But maybe the girl was lying about this, too.
He stopped and looked down at her bent head. “How do you know this?”
“I listen. A shadow on the wall, that me. And I hear Miss Pru say, ‘Here the note.’ And he say, ‘I take it to Friend Matthews right now.’ ’Cept he don’t. And he don
’t tell him you comin’, neither. Mistuh Marsh, he a damn liar.”
“Like you, okom?”
“No, I better’n him.” She frowned. “What okom mean?”
“Coyote.”
Lost in thought, Thomas resumed walking, the girl close at his side, her hand on his arm. If Prudence was in trouble, he would help her. But if he had to take this strange child with him, she must obey him so he could keep her safe.
Stopping again, he hunkered onto his heels and gripped her thin shoulders. “Listen well, Katse’e.”
“Cat see what?”
“Kat-se’-e. It is the Cheyenne word for ‘little girl.’”
“So I not okom no more?” She frowned, her gaze fixed on a distant horizon her eyes could not see. “Cats sneaky. Dogs nicer. And horses. Chickens, they—”
“Never mind that,” he said, more harshly than he should have. “Heed my words. From this day, there will be no more lies. You will speak only the truth to me, or I will send you back to the school.”
“They not take me.”
“Then I will leave you by the tracks with your bag of clothes.”
“Fo’ true?”
“For true,” he lied. “Do you understand?”
“I ’pose.” A sniff. “But you not a very nice Daddy.”
The quaver in her voice left him unmoved. And unconvinced. “Now you will make your promise to me. You will tell no more lies.”
She huffed out a deep breath. “All right. No more lies.”
“And you will do what I say.”
“That two promises.”
“And you will do what I say,” he repeated through gritted teeth.
“All right! But we ain’t got time for no more promises, Daddy. I hears the train comin’.”
Behind him, a locomotive whistle blew. With a sigh, Thomas rose. If Prudence Lincoln sent him away again, he would leave this devil-child with her. It would serve them both right.
* * *
Several hours later, as the sun began to slip behind the trees, their train rolled into Indianapolis. The girl had been talking when Thomas dozed off, and was still talking when he awoke. She had strong lungs.