The Healer's Daughter

by Charlotte Hinger

  He started to assure her that would not be necessary, but something in her voice stopped him.

  “Ten cents for one hundred sheets,” he said. “The paper is spoiled, you know. Worthless to me.”

  “Thank you, that’s quite reasonable, sir.”

  Two weeks later Bethany Herbert stood beside her desk, which was a broad plank spread across two barrels. It was late December, and the morning was bitterly cold. The settlers were anxiously waiting for Tripp and Harrington to return with food. They were watching provisions carefully, but had decided the school would be a welcome distraction for the whole community.

  Bethany had spent last week setting up her classroom in the back part of the hotel. Knowing it was important that the children have the best possible impression of the opening day of school, she gathered a good supply of buffalo chips for the stove. She wanted them to associate the school with kindness and warmth and love and opportunity.

  Most of all, she wanted to instill a love of learning. She wondered if that would be possible in these crude surroundings. Her own education had been in an exquisitely beautiful room, with brocades and velvets and the scent of wax on mahogany furniture. She had enjoyed the same meals as Miss Nancy and, of course, had clean, neat attire.

  She knew how the day in formal classrooms should begin. She had once accompanied Miss Nancy to a spelling bee in a small private school in a town close to their plantation. Even as Miss Nancy’s girl, huddled in the corner at the back of the room, she had witnessed the careful opening exercises, with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the opening hymn.

  When Mr. Meissner offered her the paper, she had been overwhelmed with confusion. Paper. White folks’ paper for the children. She would have refused if he didn’t set a price. It was their school. Not a school started as a white man’s project. It belonged to the people of Nicodemus.

  Nevertheless, she knew the gift had no strings attached. It was a good-willed gesture from an honest, simple man. But she could not accept the gift. The white people in the area had to see the people of Nicodemus as self-supporting and capable of carrying their own weight. At all costs, they must establish that they needed to be paid in cash, not barter, and they needed to pay for services in coin in return, or they would never be able to choose to purchase what they needed or desired. They would always have to settle for whatever people felt like offering.

  She trembled with wonder at the importance of what was about to begin here this very day.

  “Please stand,” she said, “and recite the Lord’s Prayer.”

  When they finished, she told them all to sit down. Her gaze faltered when she saw how instantly they all complied. It was a bitter legacy from another time, this willingness to accede to authority of any kind. And she was the school marm.

  These were children of the wicked Reconstruction. They did not even have the giddiness of children born on plantations where most had food and warmth and a relatively untroubled if extremely short childhood. A time where they were cared for by grannies while their mothers worked in the field. All these children had ever known was fear and hunger and a loss of place.

  Dear God, she realized. All this time she had been worrying about initiating them into the white folks’ world of knowledge. Now she knew she was even going to have to teach these children how to be black.

  There were only a couple of makeshift benches. Most of the children sat in a semi-circle on the floor. Suddenly, Silas and LuAnne Brown pushed through the door. They were followed by the parents of the other children and Jim Black, Teddy, and Mr. Jones. The adults stood at the back of the room, watching respectfully.

  “Don’t mind us,” Jones said quickly. “We going to leave right away. We just want to watch you get started. That’s all.” Tears streamed down LuAnne’s face.

  Suddenly Bethany was seized with joy. Joy of the morning, joy at the eager look of the bright, cheerful faces of the adults.

  This was their land, their town, their people, their school in this wild, bawdy state. She wanted the children to know about their own people. About Africa and about America. About the white and black people who had died to bring them to this town and this place. This opportunity.

  Most of all, she wanted them to know their own music. She turned aside from the solemn white folks’ dirges and opening exercises and clapped her hands and begin an irresistible rhythm until the children looked at one another and began clapping in response.

  “Children,” she sang out brightly. “Children, we’re going to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Let us begin.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bethany rose, got one of the dried buffalo chips from the corner of the dugout, poked it into the stove, and hurried back to bed. They were all hungry now. Not yet desperate, but becoming anxious as they waited for Reverend Harrington to return with food. School was conducted intermittently, when the weather permitted.

  The wind raged; snow fell in great drifts. She was miserably cold, despite her quilts, and sick with worry over the other families. Several children were especially frail. She would check on them the moment the storm let up.

  The snow stopped by mid-afternoon. She went to the stove, picked up a pan, shoved the door open, scooped up a pan full of snow, and set it on the stove to warm.

  When it melted, she gratefully drank it. Dizzy with hunger, she sat weakly on the side of the bed. When her stomach settled, she rose and spooned some broth from her wild onion stew into a cup and sipped slowly, making it last. They needed meat.

  When they were lucky enough to snare a rabbit, the children and pregnant women and nursing mothers were fed first, and it had been three days since there was meat for the rest of them. Finally, she rose and listlessly dressed to go out and see how the other colonists had fared in the storm.

  She heard voices shouting. She grabbed her cloak and went outside. She blinked against the icy white diamonds sparkling across the prairie.

  All of the men in the colony and a scattering of women had gathered outside. They were pointing to a wavering, long, dark line moving slowly in the distance.

  “Indians,” someone shouted. “Wild Indians.”

  The distant figures pushed through the snow. The riders were traveling single file, but as they drew closer, their profiles and paraphernalia were unmistakable.

  “Get a gun.”

  “No, wait. Don’t. Not yet.”

  “They can hardly move through this snow. Bet they weren’t expecting it either, any more than we were. They for damn sure won’t attack.”

  Bethany watched, her hunger forgotten. She sheltered her keen, far-seeing eyes with her hand. Several of the horses pulled riggings like the one she and Jim Black had put together to transport Mrs. Mercer.

  “Those people aren’t going to give us any trouble,” she said. “There’s women with them. And little children. They’re coming toward us.” She turned and looked at the pale line of smoke drifting from the pipes sticking out on top of the dugouts. “They see our smoke.”

  “I’m going to talk to them,” said Jim Black.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Teddy.

  Five other men volunteered to join them. They put a white flag on top of a long pole and started pushing through the heavy banks of snow.

  A huge Indian at the head of the line held up his hand and turned to holler a command to the group following. The caravan stopped. The Indians stared at the black men coming across the prairie.

  “Believe he’s as big as you are, Jim,” Teddy said. “Pretty close, anyway.”

  As the colonists trudged toward the Indians, both groups eyed one another warily. The blacks stopped when they were about twenty-five feet away. Although all the Indian men had bows and quivers of sharp-pointed arrows, only a few had rifles, and they were very old.

  Arrow-Going-Home, the principal chief for the Hunkah, the Isolated Earth People, shared the leadership for the hunt with Sun-On-His-Wings, the principal chief of Tzi-Sho, the Sky People. He stood silently before the
edgy band of black people and sniffed the air. Of all the traits of the Heavy Eyebrows, the white people’s ways that were the most despicable to the Osage, the Little People, were the way they kept their revolting body odors trapped in their collars and pants. It made his stomach heave. He sniffed again. Despite the difference in color, these men were no different from white people.

  He stared at Jim’s blackness, then turned and called to Sun-On-His-Wings, who immediately stepped forward. Both men were well over six feet with shaven heads except for a tall roach into which eagle feathers were braided. Arrow-Going-Home’s feather hung on the right side of his scalp lock with the sharp side of the feather turned outward to show that he was Hunkah. Sun-On-His-Wings wore his feather to the left with the downy gentle side facing out, showing he was Tzi-Sho.

  Jim didn’t understand a word the chief said, but from the wondering looks that passed between the men, he wasn’t what they expected. He smiled, then touched his face. His gesture set off a flurry of hand movements from the stern warrior facing him. When the Indian finished, he looked at Jim, clearly expecting a response.

  “It’s sign language,” said Teddy. “And I don’t know it.”

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t.”

  “They’ve been hunting,” said John More. “Look what they is dragging along behind them.”

  “Don’t make sense,” said Jim quietly. “There’s too many of them for a hunting party. What kind of hunters would take women and children along? And they don’t have enough guns to do any good. Their horses are plumb pitiful. Worse than ours.”

  The Osage had been given permission to leave the reservation for their winter hunt. Each year they were forced to travel farther and farther west to find buffalo. They were the last remnant of a heroic tribe whose ownership of the vast prairies once ranged from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains.

  Last year’s hunt had been so disastrous that only centuries-old tradition had compelled them to go on one this year. The Heavy Eyebrows had wiped out their buffalo to the extent that it had become nearly impossible to provide the animal skins necessary to perform the seven rites for manhood.

  Now some of the tribesmen were old men before they were fully initiated. Their bows and arrows were no match for the long Sharps rifles used by the wasteful Heavy Eyebrows to slaughter buffalo. On the other hand, their arrows were swift. Deadly compared to the few pitiful firearms they carried. This year’s hunt had been better.

  The blacks stared at a travois heaped with slaughtered buffalo, covered with hides and lashed firmly onto the crude sleds.

  “Meat, by God. Meat and robes.” They began to mutter. “Food. Food for the families. Meat.” Maybe enough to see them through the winter.

  The two chiefs followed their gaze and spoke sharply to the other blacks. The Indians tensed.

  Instinctively, Jim held up his hands to show they were empty. None of his people meant any harm. They weren’t foolish enough to try to take the meat away from the Indians. Not yet, anyway, he thought grimly.

  “Maybe it won’t matter if we don’t know sign language,” Teddy said. “There’s some things people just seem to know everywhere.”

  Jim motioned to the chief and walked over to the first travois. He tugged on the covering hide and exposed the mound of meat. He pointed toward it and made a circling gesture over his stomach.

  The chief turned back to the men. An agile younger man jumped down off his horse and walked over the snow to join them. He and the chief started talking rapidly. Jim stood to one side. The younger man looked at the heaps of meat and nodded. The chief turned and solemnly faced Jim, then gestured toward the collection of smokestacks in the distance. He pointed toward the sky. A new storm was coming. He made a movement that Jim was sure meant the Indians needed to rest and sleep. They wanted to feed their horses. It would only make sense that men of any race needed a place out of the weather.

  Jim faltered for an instant. What if they were letting a group of wild savages into their homes who would slaughter them all? But the Indians had meat, and the settlers had no guarantee that Harrington and Tripp would make it back before they were totally out of food. He looked at the chief and nodded.

  The chief shouted to his people, and the Indians headed toward the large, communal, open-faced shed the settlers had dug in a ravine to shelter their animals. Stacks of hay cats in the corner were needed for fuel, and the whole colony drew on the supply to ignite their slower-burning buffalo chips. The Indians’ horses began to make short work of the hay bundles, and Jim and Teddy watched uneasily.

  “Guess hay for meat ain’t too bad,” Jim said.

  “Long as they come through with the meat.”

  Then the chief went to the back-most travois, tugged an animal skin off, and laid it on top of the snow. He pulled hunks of meat from under the rest of the hides and laid the meat on the skin. He twisted the four corners into a bundle, slung it over his shoulder, turned, and looked expectantly at Jim.

  “Praise the Lord,” whispered Teddy.

  Jim gestured for the chief to follow and led him to the first dugout that had a pipe protruding from the earth. Smoke drifted into the crisp winter air. Jim pointed toward others. The chief understood at once, looked around, located more smoke. Then he called sharply to two men standing to one side, and they began unloading the meat from two of the travois. They divided it into smaller units and parceled them out to each dugout.

  An old woman waited by the last travois. She had spotted the thick stream of smoke billowing from Bethany’s dugout when the caravan first stopped. She called sharply to two muscular young men. They unhitched the travois from the horse, hoisted it onto their shoulders like it was a stretcher, and started dog trotting toward the dugout. On the travois lay Walking Buffalo, son of Arrow-Going-Home.

  Once inside, they lowered the travois to the floor, then stood attentively with arms folded across their chests as the old woman came through the door. Bethany stared into the sharp, black eyes of one of the oldest women she had ever seen. Her mahogany skin was like a dried and cracked mud puddle checkered into hundreds of squares. Her gray hair was thin and drawn into two skimpy braids. There was a red line down the middle of her scalp. Her mouth was a thin, tight line, her hands old yellow claws, as dried as cottonwood twigs, with odd black marks on the backs.

  Bethany fetched a pallet of fresh straw and laid it on top of her feather beds. She would burn it afterwards to dispose of blood or seepage. Her mother had taught her well about the risks of contagious diseases. She gestured for the two young men to transfer the injured warrior to her bed.

  The old woman barked a command, and they ran outside and came back carrying hide bundles, which they placed in the center of the room. They went back outside again, leaving the two women alone with the injured man. The Indian woman glanced at Bethany and quickly took in the bundles of dried herbs and sacks of seeds hanging on the wall. She pulled aside the heavy buffalo hide covering the man and knelt over him.

  Bethany’s throat went dry. Human bodies were alike, no matter what the color of their skin, and this man’s wound sliced across his stomach. It was very deep with telltale red lines spreading out from a crust of blood and pus. The two women stared at one another. Wordlessly, Bethany set to work. She sacrificed her hoard of buffalo chips to set kettles boiling. The man lying on the bed stirred, moaned.

  Bethany turned and watched as the old woman unrolled one of the skin bundles. She spread out the contents, then picked up a handful of dried, tangled roots, fine and withered like old moss. Bethany gasped as she put the roots directly over the wound.

  The man tightened his lips. Pain was universal. Bethany eyed her precious bottle of laudanum on the shelf above her tied cache of herbs. There were only five doses left. She had no way of replacing it. Suddenly the old woman rose and went over to the little sacks Bethany had strung down the wall. She quickly removed and untied the first one.

  “Please don’t,” said Bethany. But the woman ignored her
as she examined the contents. She worked her way down, carefully retying each one before going on to the next. When she came to the one containing willow bark, her eyes gleamed triumphantly, and she went to the stove. She poured some of the boiling water there into a tin cup and let it steep. After it cooled, she knelt beside the man and gestured to Bethany to help raise his head. She forced some of the tea into his mouth and held it shut, forcing him to swallow.

  About five minutes later, the man began thrashing from side to side. The old woman’s mouth tensed. With a glance at Bethany, she pressed her hands against her temples and rocked from side to side to indicate unbearable pain. She looked at the hanks of herbs and shrugged helplessly. Bethany understood. They both knew the man’s pain was sending him into shock. She could help, but that tiny bit of laudanum was all she had left. The man moaned again. His fever was breaking even as his torment increased. His forehead was drenched with sweat.

  Deciding quickly, she went to the shelf, got the bottle, and offered it to the old woman, who opened it and smelled it. Her eyes gleamed with recognition.

  “Is good,” she said in broken English. She went to her bundle, removed a buffalo bone spoon, and carefully eased some of the liquid into Walking Buffalo’s mouth.

  The old woman began to chant and never took her eyes off the man. About thirty minutes later he fell into a deep sleep. Then she picked up the other leather pouch and pulled out a piece of meat. Eying Bethany, the old woman poured some hot water into a separate pot, then divided up the meat into quick-cooking chunks and threw them into the water. Bethany’s stomach ached with hunger.

  When it had cooked, the old woman first coaxed the wounded man awake long enough to get some broth down his throat, then she handed Bethany a bowl.

  When she’d finished eating, Bethany rose and poured water over a few of the Earl Grey tea leaves she had brought from Kentucky. She offered it to the old woman, who eyed her with suspicion for the first time. Bethany looked at her in bewilderment, then realized the medicine woman had never seen these herbs before and was not about to ingest an unknown substance. A woman after her own heart, but she didn’t know how to tell her this. Bethany nodded and smiled, and tactfully removed the cup.