Under a Blackberry Moon

by Serena Miller

  As Moon Song looked at Fallen Arrow and then at Skypilot, she knew in her heart she would have to make a choice and that choice would have to be for the woman who had raised her and had taken care of her when no one else wanted her. Fallen Arrow had suffered too much. Moon Song would not add to her grandmother’s sorrow.

  Her grandmother napped often since her illness, and after the good meal, she wanted to be helped back into bed. Soon she was snoring. When Moon Song came back outside, she saw that Little Gray Squirrel had run off to play with the other children of the village. Little Standing Bear, tired out from all the attention and play, had already fallen asleep in Skypilot’s arms.

  It was still light outside. Light enough for Skypilot to be able to read. This was her chance, finally, to discover what her father had sent to her in the tin box. Best of all, she could find out without her grandmother’s constant questions.

  Quietly, she removed the tin from beneath her grandmother’s sleeping bench and took it outside.

  “I want you to do something for me,” she said as she carried the tin outside.

  “I would do anything for you.” The tone of Skypilot’s voice was so serious, it put a knot in her stomach. As did the image of him holding her little son so tenderly. She did not know if she would ever be able to untie that knot in her stomach. The man meant what he said. He always meant what he said. He would do anything for her, and she knew it.

  She lifted Standing Bear from his arms as she handed him the tin.

  “My father sent it to me. This box is here for me when I come. You read it to me, please?”

  Skypilot opened the tin and pulled out the book inside.

  “A Bible?” he asked. “Your father sent you a Bible? It might take me a few days to read it to you, but I’m willing.”

  “Two papers are inside,” she said. “I cannot read the marks.”

  He pulled the first envelope out of the Bible and began to read.

  Dear daughter,

  If you are reading this, then it means that I have died and gone to my reward. What that reward might be is anyone’s guess. I have not been a bad man, but I have been a weak man. I pray that my weakness did not destroy you like it did your mother.

  “This says that your father is dead.” Skypilot stopped and gave her a long look. “Are you all right?”

  She wasn’t sure. It felt strange discovering that her father was no longer on this earth, and yet it wasn’t as though she had ever really known the man.

  “Please read more.”

  Yes, I know about your mother. I have shed many bitter tears remembering my love for her and how, in an ill-conceived attempt to make my own father happy, I tore you out of her arms.

  I was twenty-four, the baby of my family, and a baby in more ways than I was a man, and I wanted so badly to please my father.

  He had sent word that I was to bring you to him. He wanted to see his granddaughter, he said. He also sent instructions that I was to leave her mother behind.

  I remember you playing with a small toy that day. It was the doll your mother had made to help keep you content on the journey. I remember holding your hand as we walked toward the ship on its way to the great city of Boston. You were such a good little girl. Your mother had spent weeks sewing beautiful little dresses for you that she thought would please my family. I remember how excited she was to get to meet my family. She had no idea that she would not be welcome.

  She had no idea I had secretly made arrangements for her to be kept from following us onto the ship.

  I should have turned back. When I saw the horrible grief on her face as the men I had hired held her back from boarding the ship, I should have turned back. But I had promised my father that I would bring you, his only grandchild, to visit him—without your mother.

  I had been too weak to tell her earlier, because I didn’t want to deal with her hurt feelings, and because I was a coward.

  She had even made a gift for my father. A beautiful beaded shirt. It took her weeks. He would not have touched it. He would have had a servant burn it had she ever gotten the chance to present it to him.

  I did not realize at the time that the man was not fit to even look upon her face.

  To my credit, at that very moment, as I saw her fighting to get to you, I regretted my decision and developed a plan. I would go home, confront my father, present you, in all your little girl finery, to him, and then go back to her, where I belonged.

  I was proud of you. Never, ever doubt that I was proud of you. You were such a bright, happy, loving little girl. Smarter than a child your age should have been, and beautiful like your mother. You could already speak both Chippewa and English when we left for Boston.

  Skypilot glanced up. “No wonder you picked up English so quickly last winter. You spoke it as a child!”

  “I do not remember this.” Her voice was strangled with tears. She was so grateful that her grandmother was asleep. “Please go on.”

  I had been sent to check on mineral deposits in the Keweenaw that my father and his business partners were interested in. I planned to give them a report, then take you and get on the next ship back to my wife and your mother. All this I was going to tell my father the minute he and I were alone.

  It seemed so simple and so noble. A few days to sail to Boston, a couple days there explaining my intentions, a few days back. I envisioned apologizing to your mother, begging her forgiveness, and living happily ever after.

  But I underestimated your mother’s grief.

  I also underestimated my father’s deep understanding of my weakness.

  Your grandfather was a brilliant man who made a fortune from his staggering ingenuity and his ability to read people. He listened to my pompous speech about going back to the woman I loved. He nodded and agreed and gave me no argument.

  That was the most brilliant part of all—he gave me no resistance. I was ready for a fight, and when he gave me none, I did not see the danger.

  Instead, he asked me to at least make a quick appearance at the parties he’d already scheduled to welcome me home. He gambled on the expectation that I would be hungry for the “civilization” I had left behind.

  I enjoyed those parties and made quite a fool of myself all puffed up and telling my stories about the great frontier I had just left. Of course, this also drew many silly young females around me who made much of me. I fancied myself quite the brave fellow. You would have thought that I opened up the West single-handedly.

  Also, my father was aware that one of my favorite activities had been attending theatres and plays. Those had also been arranged, along with the refreshments at various establishments afterward. Two days became a couple weeks, and I was the toast of the town with my grandiose stories and foolish posturing.

  My father’s parties and social engagements became like a spill of molasses in which a fly has become entrapped, struggling to lift itself from the sweetness until it no longer has the strength to try.

  If I had been allowed free access to you during that time, perhaps your cries for your mother would have shaken me out of my own little self-centered world, but my father (and remember that he was the shrewd mastermind of a far-reaching financial empire) hired a virtual battalion of competent nursemaids who kept you nearly as entertained and occupied as myself. I convinced myself that you were having the time of your life and that you were too young to care about the short separation from your mother.

  It was only later—much later—that one of the nursemaids confessed that they made certain to take you far away from my hearing so that I could not hear your cries each time you called for your mother.

  One week passed, and then another. Nearly a month had gone by, and the parties and social engagements were finally beginning to pall. I grew tired of the conversations. I began to see myself as I truly was—a colossal bag of empty wind. I began to long for the clean winds of the North country, the rough-and-tumble inhabitants of the Lake Superior region, and most of all for your mother. I was pac
king to go back to her, and our tickets had already been purchased, when word of her death reached me.

  It came through such convoluted channels that much of what had happened was garbled. My father broke the news to me. With such tenderness, he made it sound like it had been a tragic accident—the kind to be expected in such a primitive and dangerous place. I cried on his shoulder. He patted me on the back and soothed me, and I loved him for it.

  I was so young. He was so shrewd. Neither I nor your mother were a match for him.

  There was enough man in me that I did do one thing that he did not expect. I insisted on taking that trip back to Michigan. I wanted to see my wife’s family. I wanted to apologize for that cruel trick I had played on her before we sailed away. I thought it would make me feel better.

  I groan aloud at the thought now. I was still young enough to think that I could actually feel better.

  What I discovered changed the direction of my life.

  You have probably been told that your mother committed suicide because of her heartbreak over my abandonment. That is a lie. She was not that weak.

  Your grandfather was an evil and selfish man. He had her murdered once he realized that I still intended to return to her. Your mother did not commit suicide. She was killed by a man my father hired. They poisoned her and made it look like it was at her own hand. My older brother told me in a moment of weakness. He had overheard a conversation between my father and the man he hired. My brother was too afraid of my father to stop it. By the time he told me, it was too late.

  Neither my brother nor I said a word to my father about what we knew. My brother, because he was afraid. Me, because I wanted revenge.

  If Skypilot could have absorbed the shock of those words into his own body and never let her know, he would have. As it was, he had to sit and watch Moon Song stare into space. She sat on a log near the outdoor fire, her knees tucked up beneath her chin, rocking back and forth, back and forth.

  “Moon Song,” he said softly. “Are you all right?”

  She gave a mirthless laugh, then held out her arm and pushed up the sleeve. “Why does color of my skin make me less than others?”

  His heart broke for her. “Moon Song, my love, the color of your skin is perfect.”

  She ignored him. “My mother was not allowed in my father’s home because she was Chippewa. She was murdered because she was Chippewa.”

  “I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve such things to happen to you, Moon Song. None of your people do.”

  “Read.”

  “Moon Song, I—”

  “No more talk.” Her face was set and stony. “Read!”

  My greatest concern became you. As small and innocent as you were, I knew that if my father perceived you as important enough to pull me back to my beloved Lake Superior region again, you would not be safe, either. I also knew, by then, that he hated you for no other reason than the fact that you were Chippewa. I did not want you to live in a home where you were barely tolerated.

  I was terrified for you, because I now realized that I was no match for him. He was smarter and stronger and more ruthless than me. I could not fight him. There was only one nick in his armor that I could discover, and that was his own arrogance. He assumed that because he despised you, it would be easy for me to do so as well.

  And so, as a shield to protect you, I feigned nonchalance toward your existence. I pretended that the only reason I went back was to leave you with your grandmother because I no longer wanted you.

  Privately, I left you in the one place I knew you would be loved and cherished and taught the old ways. I never contacted you again because I knew my father had eyes and ears everywhere. My only contact with you these past sixteen years has been the daily prayers I send up for you. There has not been one day that I have not prayed for you.

  It is because of you that I became my father’s son. He chose not to pursue the copper mining he sent me to Michigan to be in charge of. I shrugged and said that we were well rid of that mosquito-infested wilderness. My two older brothers along with my father and I made mountains of money together, just as my father had always wished. I worked beside him every day, aware of what he had done to your mother, and I smiled every day because I knew a secret. My secret was that I was living my life for you.

  The past sixteen years of my life since I left the land of your mother’s ancestors have been a strange, emotionless dance that I have lived. Every morning I have put on a gray business suit, lived within the gray walls of my father’s many lucrative businesses, and lived a gray life. I have not remarried because I could not see why I should have a life when your mother’s had been extinguished because of mine.

  One word sent to you or one word of news about you to me would have sent him sniffing after you. He would have found and devoured you had he any inkling I was trying to protect you by my apparent lack of interest. He had a vision of building an empire with his three sons, and he built it. He had no idea that the only color in my life was the vision of you living wild and free while I kept your grandfather satiated and at bay by my constant presence.

  I waited a long time for his death. It came exactly one month ago. It was brought on by an overindulgence of all the good things that he loved to eat. He weighed so much at the time of his death that it took ten strong men to carry him to his final resting place, and even then, one staggered and nearly fell.

  On the other hand, I deliberately ate sparingly. I had read the articles of Dr. Graham and about his institute. I lived on mixtures of whole grains, lemon water, fresh fruits and vegetables. I had one goal, to outlive my father and have the opportunity to safely see you again and tell you the truth.

  There is irony in my attempt to stay healthy and well. I neglected one small thing. This week, my father got his own revenge. It appears that one cannot hate as intensely and as long as I have without one’s body turning upon itself. The doctors say that I have a tumor growing and pressing upon my brain. They do not have the skill to operate. They say I have only a few days to live. Maybe weeks at most. I hate to tell them that my tumor bears my father’s name. I am certain that my simmering hatred created it and put it there.

  I had planned to come to you and see your face again now that the danger is over, but that will never be. I had long envisioned being present when you opened the gift I have spent sixteen years preparing for you. That won’t happen, either. But the gift will remain. I hope it can remain for many generations.

  I told you that I had lived a gray, nearly monastic existence. My brothers sometimes teased me about my less than lavish lifestyle. I, who could have afforded to live in a mansion, chose to live quite modestly.

  My one luxury was putting every extra dime I could wrest from my father’s business into purchasing as much as I possibly could of the most beautiful place on earth.

  I am aware, however, of what has been happening on the Keewenaw. I know all about the mining that is going on there, not to mention the timber that is being removed for bracing up the mines.

  Instead, there is a home waiting for you in the Huron Mountains, my sweet girl, if you want it. The land is free and clear. The boundaries have been surveyed and well set. The timber is untouched.

  I also made certain to purchase land that had no mineral value whatsoever, a tract of land that was far away from the ranges of iron and copper mines, so that you would never have to deal with the legalities of mineral rights or the problems that living next to the brawling mining towns can bring.

  You will never have to live on a government-created Indian reservation. I have paid the taxes through your lifetime. You can live where you can breathe and where your children can run free. No one can ever take it away from you.

  It seemed the least I could do.

  Now, as I sit here dying, I keep remembering the call of loons at dawn on the lake, and I remember the smell of campfires, and the excited laughter and exaggerated boasting of your mother’s people after a successful hunt. The happiest years of my lif
e were spent with you and my beloved wife. As brief as they were.

  These blessings I try to give to you now, to enjoy forever, where no one can take them away.

  Your loving father,

  Benjamin Webster

  22

  How many acres had Webster been able to purchase for his daughter? A hundred? Several hundred? Maybe a large farm or tract of timber? Skypilot wondered if there was a house connected to it.

  It would have been rude to pull the envelope with the deed out of the Bible without asking, but he had gotten so caught up in the story, he couldn’t help but wonder.

  He waited for Moon Song to absorb this earthshaking information and hoped that she could feel some gladness in her heart over a father who would sacrifice so much for her.

  She was quiet, staring off into space, her hand automatically patting little Standing Bear’s back.

  Her father’s Bible was old and well worn. He lifted the cover. Inside, on the flyleaf, the same hand that had penned a note, which he read aloud.

  Dear Moon Song,

  There are those among your mother’s people who say that Christianity is a white man’s religion. That is not true. Christ was not white. Jesus’s skin would have been closer to the rich color of your mother’s. Even though I am not of his race, I have drawn strength from his words. Perhaps someday you will find strength there too.

  Your loving father,

  Benjamin Webster

  Skypilot decided he would have liked this man, and felt a sting of grief that he had never known him.

  Moon Song reached out for her father’s Bible, and he handed it to her. She hugged it to her heart for a long time, as though wishing she could somehow absorb her father’s spirit. Finally, she stirred on her log as though coming out of a trance. “Read the other letter.”

  He fumbled the sheet out of the thick envelope he was holding, glanced at it, and then nearly dropped it.