“What does it say?”
“It is the deed.”
“What does it say?”
He could hear the impatience in her voice, but as he scanned the sheet of paper, he was suddenly having trouble getting his breath.
“It says that Victoria Moon Song Webster owns approximately sixteen thousand acres of land in the Huron Mountains.”
She seemed unimpressed. “How much is that?”
He did some quick calculations in his head, grateful that his arithmetic knowledge had been well polished these past few months in the schoolroom.
“Twenty-five square miles.”
“Oh.”
Her tone of voice puzzled him. “You aren’t impressed with that?”
“You do not understand. That is great wealth to a white man.”
“Well, yes. It is.”
“To Chippewa, it like saying that I own twenty-five square miles of the lake. I can fish in it. I can paddle in it. I can drink it and swim in it, but own it? How can one person ‘own’ sixteen thousand acres of land?”
“I don’t know, Moon Song, but the reality is that your father took good care of you before he died.”
“My father?” she said. “I do not know this father. He was not here when I fell from a tree or cried with a bellyache.”
“No. He was trying to protect you from a vicious man the only way he knew how.”
“I wish I could know that father whose voice you read.” She gave a great sigh.
“Will you be going to see the land he bought you?”
“I must think what to do. Grandmother is still not strong, and it is a long walk to Huron Mountains for an old woman.”
“You have the mule.”
“I think Grandmother would not like to leave her people. It would be too lonely and dangerous to live there alone. I do not think the village would come with us.”
At that moment, Grandmother called out for Moon Song. The old woman sounded irritated and querulous.
“Grandmother is not happy,” Moon Song said. “She wants to know the meaning of our many words.”
“Will you explain all this to her?”
“Yes. Someday soon. Not now.”
For the life of him, he could not figure out why she seemed so emotionless and detached from that impassioned letter from her father. Most women would be sobbing by now, but Moon Song never seemed to react to anything the way he expected.
“What are you thinking, Moon Song?”
“There is only room for one thing in Moon Song’s head right now,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“The name of the man who killed my mother.”
Skypilot went to find Little Gray Squirrel while Moon Song tended to her grandmother and then fed Standing Bear, readying him for the night. Her child was able to eat wild rice porridge these days, which she seasoned with maple sugar. It kept his belly full longer than her milk alone had done, and he had begun sleeping through the night.
It was a warm night, which eased the awkwardness of what to do with Skypilot. There was no reason he could not sleep outside their cabin. She would gather balsam tips to make his sleep more comfortable. Little Gray Squirrel could stay inside with her and Grandmother. Fallen Arrow had once been a chief’s wife, so she possessed several well-woven, good-quality Hudson Bay blankets that had been given to her husband in trade. These were highly prized items in her cabin. Skypilot would not grow cold.
Even though she knew Fallen Arrow was not happy with Skypilot being here, the Chippewa were a hospitable people and her grandmother would not fuss at her if she took the time to make a comfortable bed for a guest. While the boy cousin once again played with little Standing Bear under the watchful eye of Fallen Arrow, Moon Song and Skypilot left to gather the balsam branches. Moon Song saw her grandmother look up and scowl as they walked away and knew that she would be soundly scolded when she returned.
She had things she needed to say to this man, and she did not want her grandmother listening. Fallen Arrow’s knowledge of English was limited, but she knew enough to misconstrue the words she would hear.
It was one thing to sit at the campfire with her grandmother and cousin close enough to hear every word, and another to be completely alone with Skypilot. As they walked into the forest near twilight, neither of them seemed to know what to say. They, who had spent so many companionable hours together, were suddenly tongue-tied and awkward with one another.
It was foolish of her, and she knew it, but she did not stop walking until they had gone much deeper into the forest than necessary to simply gather a few balsam pine tips. Then she stopped and looked at this man who had haunted her dreams since they had parted at Fort Wilkins.
“The moon is so full,” he said when she stopped. “It is a beautiful night.”
“We have many names for the different moons.”
“What is the name for this one?”
“Some call it Blackberry Moon,” she said, “because it is the month when the blackberries grow ripe.”
“That’s a lovely name. What are some other names of your months?”
“There is Rice Moon when we gather wild rice for the winter. Falling Leaves Moon, when all the leaves fall to ground. Freezing Moon, when the snows come.”
“That certainly makes more sense to me than the names of months we have,” Skypilot said. “I’m glad I came to see you. I’ve missed you terribly.”
“Why did you come here?” She held her breath, waiting. “I asked you not to.”
His answer was as forthcoming and honest as any woman could want.
“Because I love you.” His voice was matter-of-fact, as though he was saying that the lake was wet or pine boughs were green. He spoke as though she should already know this thing.
“You should go back to Bay City.”
“I already did that. I was miserable. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“You cannot stay here.”
“Of course I can, and I’m going to. Maybe not here in this village right now, but close enough to see you.”
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
His answer took her breath away, but she couldn’t trust it. Not even coming from Skypilot’s truthful lips. He had not experienced what her people had. White people came to this land of Kitchigami to wrest minerals out of the soil, or to hunt for sport, or to cut down the timber, or to populate Fort Wilkins. Mining towns came and hundreds of people surrounded them. Then the copper gave out and the people left and the town died. No white person stayed forever in this demanding country except the Black Robes like Slovic, and even some of them left.
She turned away from him and began slicing balsam bough tips off the low-hanging branches.
He grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face him.
“I mean it, Moon Song. I’m not leaving. I know we have a lot to overcome, but my hope is to someday be able to marry you and live with you, but even if you won’t have me as a husband, I’m staying here anyway because this is where you are. I find it hard to breathe when I am away from you.”
This was a hard speech to ignore. Then she remembered Fallen Arrow telling her that her father had said similar things to her mother before they married.
The vision of her mother trying to get on the ship and being held back by her father’s men arose before her. What if Moon Song gave in? What if she married Skypilot and they had a child together? He would have the legal ability to take that child away from her forever if he so chose. She could not bear the thought of having to go through the nightmare her mother must have gone through after her father took her away.
“I’m not like your father, Moon Song,” Skypilot said, as if reading her thoughts. “I am not a weak man. You know that. I’m not some young kid trying to please his rich father. I am my own man, and I make my own way. If you will have me, I will never desert you or forsake you. On this, I give you my most solemn promise.”
Oh, this man had such g
ood words. Her heart trusted him. She knew his goodness, his decency, his compassion, his loyalty, his courage. But her head kept telling her to be wise. To be cautious. To not trust.
Just like her grandmother had taught her over and over.
“No,” she said.
“Do you love me?”
“Who could not love you?” She smiled sadly and shook her head. “You do not understand what you are saying. You do not understand how different our worlds are.”
He glanced around and spied a long stick lying on the ground. He picked it up and drew a circle in the dirt as big around as the trunk of a large tree. “That is your world, Moon Song. Stand inside of it.”
She wondered what he was doing, but she obeyed.
He drew another circle, this one intersecting with the first. “This is my world.” He threw the stick away and then stepped into the space that had been made by intersecting the two circles and pulled her into it with him.
He grabbed her hands and held them to his chest. “Somehow, we will create our own world, here, together, where our worlds intersect. We will live in that world with little Standing Bear and Fallen Arrow growing stronger inside this circle with us. I will not leave you, Moon Song, ever.”
“But all white men—”
“You have seen my Holy Scriptures, have you not?”
“Yes.”
“The words in that book are sacred to me. When I say that I will never leave you nor forsake you, I’m not making up some white man’s words that mean nothing, I am repeating sacred, holy words that are in that book. Those words have power. I want to teach you the power of those words. For me to ignore my Holy Scriptures and walk away from you, or to take a child from you as your father did your mother, would mean to me that I had lied to my God. I would accept death before I would leave you after making such a holy promise.”
“But . . .”
With one strong arm, he drew her tight against him and stopped her protest with his lips. This was not their first kiss, but those two others were nothing compared to the passion that was within this. The man loved her. He had shown that love over and over. He had moved to this place and found work here even before he searched for her. He meant it when he said he was staying.
When they finally broke the kiss, she said, “The snow in winter is taller than four men standing on each other’s shoulders.”
“Then you’ll have to make me snowshoes,” he said, and kissed her again.
“Grandmother can be very demanding.”
“Then we shall give her whatever she wants.” He kissed her again. “She raised you. She deserves honor.”
“You will be made fun of by some white people if you marry a Chippewa. They will call you insulting names.”
“Names like what?” He laughed. “Names like ‘squaw man’?” He took one step back. “Look at me. I can fell an ox with one fist. How many men do you really think are going to want to try and insult me?”
She knew that he did not realize what he had just said, but still, it cut her deeply. “You think being called a ‘squaw man’ is insult? Then maybe it is best not to marry a squaw.” She put one hand on her chest. “I am a squaw! You will be squaw man.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, Moon Song.” He was heartsick over the realization of how his words had sounded to her. Even to his own ears it sounded like he was ashamed of her. “You know I’m not . . . I would never . . . I was just saying . . .”
She stepped out of the circle and started picking up the boughs she had dropped on the ground. “Time to go back now. Grandmother will be worried.”
That night, she lay awake, her mind turning over this thought and that, like a child turning stones over, looking beneath, wondering which ones had worms beneath them or which ones might hide a small treasure.
Her father’s letter had stirred up deeper emotions than she had allowed Skypilot to see. Her father was gone. Truly and irrevocably gone. She had always wondered if he might come back. As a little girl, she had longed for her loving father to come back. She had envisioned herself leaping into his arms and him telling her that trickster spirits had made him forget that he had a little girl, but that he had finally remembered and had come back for her, and that nothing would separate them now.
As she’d gotten older and more resentful of his long absence and silence, she envisioned a different scenario, one in which he came for her but she turned her back on him and refused to have anything to do with him, teaching him a lesson for having abandoned her for so long.
Neither scenario had come true. Instead, she was now left with a phantom father who had loved her desperately but whom she would not have the chance to love back. Time, illness, and an evil grandfather had taken that chance away.
It was strange how memories, long suppressed, came flooding back into her mind now as if they were breaking through a rotten dam.
Even though she had only been four years old when her father left her forever with Fallen Arrow, there were flashes of short, vivid memories. She remembered the nursery in the big house in Boston and how sometimes during the social whirl her grandfather had created, her father would remember that he had a little girl and would come to the nursery to visit with her. He would always have sweets with him. Sometimes he would sit on the floor and play with her. He would admire her dolls and her toys, and she remembered how they had played with teacups and pretend biscuits once.
He had been a handsome man, with kind eyes, and she felt safe whenever he was near her. It wasn’t as though she felt unsafe with the nursemaids whom her grandfather provided, but she felt calm in his presence because she knew he loved her, and there was nothing better than to be held in his arms and to be told that she was precious to him.
Then he had taken her to Fallen Arrow and left her forever. When she finally realized he was never coming back, she had simply gone deeper and deeper into the culture that had accepted her until she had nearly forgotten who she was, even going so far as to suppress her little girl command of English. Her father’s language was not something Fallen Arrow had encouraged or used.
A greater mastery of English surfaced naturally as the floodgates of her memory opened. She could hear now, with her child’s memories and ears, the cadences and tenses of what had once been her native language, and she understood it all. Knowledge of her father’s love for her had broken something loose inside of her, something that had been frozen in time for sixteen years.
A few memories now came, unbidden, to the surface of her mind. The feel of silk upon her skin. Velvet skirts brushing against her legs. Cool linen sheets and soft feather-tick mattresses. Thick damask tablecloths and heavy silverware and delicious foods that appeared magically out of nowhere. She remembered riding in a beautiful carriage with her father, her small gloved hand resting in his as he pointed out the sights of Boston. Much of the time he smelled of cloves.
Now this father whose love had brought her into existence and whose weakness had destroyed her mother and nearly destroyed her, had given her this great gift. It felt very strange. Something that Skypilot said came back to her as she lay there, turning over the stones in her mind. He had said that she was now a very wealthy woman, and he was right. Sixteen thousand untouched acres was worth a terrible amount of money. More money than she could imagine. She had no idea what to do about it.
The ground was hard. He and Moon Song had brought just about enough boughs in from the forest to be annoying. His sleeping arrangements hadn’t exactly been their focus. Not that he was going to be able to sleep anyway.
One slip of the tongue, and she had turned away from him.
Was this what being married to Moon Song would be like? Constantly being on his guard not to step his foot in something he did not see?
It felt as though he had been having a lovely stroll down a shady path and accidentally stepped into a bear trap.
He had meant what he said. He was not going to leave. And he would never leave her if she would have him, but talk about
getting the wind knocked out of your sails! Things had been going so well until that slip of the tongue.
A few minutes later, he saw her coming back outside. He was lying so close to the opening, she practically had to step over him. He felt immediate concern.
“Moon Song? Is everything all right?”
“I forgot to make water.”
“Oh.” He waited for her to come back from her little jaunt behind a tree on the outskirts of the village. When she came back, he was sitting up.
“Do you want me to leave in the morning?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“I don’t understand what happened out there. I didn’t mean anything by what I said.”
She quietly thought this over. “You say you will not leave me. Did you mean that?”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“Then you teach in that school awhile longer. See the big snow. If you are still in Rockland in spring? Then we talk.”
“Can I come visit you?”
“If you are still here in the spring? You come visit.”
“I’m staying at the boardinghouse. If you need me, you know where I am. I won’t be leaving, Moon Song.”
“Good.” She patted his leg. “Maybe you will be smarter in spring.”
23
Living in a fading mining town, knowing she was within a day’s walk, was incredibly hard.
She had said for him to come see her in the spring, when she hoped he would be smarter. What had she meant by that? After a great deal of thought, he decided that he knew.
He had seen a beautiful, brilliant, compassionate, and competent woman and had fallen in love with her. It was as simple as that. The fact that she was Indian had little to do with his desire to spend the rest of his life with her.
However, in Moon Song’s eyes, evidently being Chippewa defined her. He knew little about her people and he realized that unless he knew and loved the Chippewas, she would never trust his love for her.
He had hoped to convert her from whatever it was she believed in to Christianity—without having any real idea about what those beliefs might be. He realized that until he learned more about her people’s religion and beliefs, it would be unfair for him to expect her to show any interest in learning about his.
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