Night Birds, The

by Maltman, Thomas

  “Came back?” I said, “How? She left you in Missouri. She wouldn’t know where any of you were. And the War . . . you’re moving too fast. What happened the rest of that summer? Did the boy tell the others you had healed him? The girl with the kerchief, the one in the field of dead blackbirds, was that my mother? And what about Tatanyandowan? Did he come for you again? Did he kill his brother for what he’d done?”

  Hazel sat beside me on the bed. “It’s late,” she said. “Aren’t you the least bit tired?”

  I was about to open my mouth and answer when we heard a new sound in the storm, the shrill whinnying of horses and the cries of men shouting to be heard above the thunder. We looked at one another; a shadow passed over her face. I knew then she was thinking of Jakob, tarred and feathered on the table, and the sound of the riders outside as they rent his printing press to pieces. Who would be out riding on such a night? Our place was set back a ways from the road leading to Kingdom, so we didn’t often see strangers. Downstairs we heard voices, the rasp of spurs on the porch, a low gravelly voice and my mother’s nasal response. Hazel threw on a lavender shawl before leading the way down the loft ladder.

  Two men stood just inside our doorway, their long oilskin slickers dripping with rain. One held his hat to his chest as he addressed my mother. He had a lean, boyish face and a spidery beard. He glanced once in our direction and I saw his eyes were a wintry gray. His mouth twitched and he gave just the faintest nod to acknowledge Hazel before turning back toward my mother. His partner was a larger man, his features obscured by a bushy goatee and long sideburns. Under the shadow of his hat his eyes scanned the room, passing over us with a dismissive glance.

  The one thing in the room that held his attention hung above the mantel: my papa’s half-stock plains rifle, his constant companion during the Devil’s Lake campaigns. It was a .45 caliber flintlock that had been converted to percussion caps. My papa oiled that stock until it shone like an ebony skin. He never let me shoot it but sometimes, while my mother took her laudanum naps, I fetched it from its place and looked down the barrel and out the window. It was a heavy thing, cold and yet somehow alive against my shoulder. I imagined Indians charging my position before falling at the gun’s roar. Here was a thing that could end a person in a glimmer. Here was knowledge my papa did not share with me, though I did not know why.

  The other man felt my eyes on him and gave me a quick half smile. His coat steamed in the room’s warmth. Behind him the door remained open; more men milled outside. “There’s a hotel just down the road,” I heard my mother saying. “It’s not more than a mile.” She had to raise her voice to be heard above the storm.

  The younger one smiled and parted his coat. Two revolvers hung from a belt looped around his waist. He had long fine fingers and his gestures were smooth and practiced. One of his hands slid into a shirt pocket and plucked out an Indian head gold dollar that glistened in the pinkness of his palm. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until after the coin emerged like some magic trick. “It’s worth more than what they would charge us in town,” he told her. He had a slow, easy way of speaking, his voice drawling over the words. His pale gray eyes and gold coin had my mother entranced.

  Hazel spoke up then, looking directly at the one holding the coin. “Let them keep riding, Cassie. Caleb will be back soon and he’s not overfond of strangers.” This was a lie. My papa would not be back for at least a month. Despite the lateness of the hour, I felt exhilarated, almost punch drunk. Aunt Hazel flickered as she moved between candlelight and shadow. She wore her hair in two dark braids that twisted down her back. I saw her as a woman in a deep purple shawl and a long sweeping dress: a sad, quiet woman. But with her braids like that I also saw the girl from the story, the daughter of a healer.

  For the briefest moment the man’s face hardened into a wolfish glare and his fist closed around the gold coin. But then he smiled again. “Only a mile, you say?”

  My mother narrowed her eyes after the fist swallowed the coin back up. “If you was to stay here you’d have to sleep in the haymow,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to go back out in the storm. You’d catch your death.”

  The fist opened again to reveal the gold. “I knew there was hospitality yet in the world,” he said. “It’s a cold rain this far north. I’m very certain death rides in just such weather.”

  My mother took the coin and slid it into an apron pocket. She swallowed before speaking again. “Are you lawmen?”

  He laughed, showing gleaming white teeth. His hair was slicked back so cleanly it was difficult to believe he’d been out in a storm. “We’re cattlemen,” he said. “Up from Iowa. We’re searching for stock to buy and bring back to our steading.” He bowed slightly. “My name’s Jordan Jackson. This here’s my brother, Fred. But some call him ‘Stonewall.’”

  My mother appraised him. “Stonewall? Like that Secesh general who got killed?”

  At the word “Secesh,” Fred’s faint smile went dead and he walked out the door to join the men on the porch.

  Jordan frowned briefly, before taking out another coin, this one silver. “He didn’t get his name for his sociability,” he said, handing my mother the coin. “That’s for any hot vittles you could sling in our direction. We got six more men outside.”

  “Vittles?” Mother said, taking the coin quickly. “All we have is beans and bread.”

  Jordan nodded. “Our needs are small.” He, too, looked at the rifle hanging above the mantel. “Your husband, Caleb, was it? Was he in the War Between the States?”

  Mother shook her head. “I wouldn’t let him go fight over niggers,” she said. She smiled, proud of herself. “He stayed on account of me. The only ones he ever killed were red devils, not really men at all.” She walked over and pulled me by the arm. “Asa, you go help these men get their mounts stabled and brushed down.” She nodded at Jordan. “This boy’s good with horses.”

  Jordan muttered a brief “Appreciated,” buttoned his slicker, and set his hat back on before rejoining the men on the porch. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my mother and aunt exchange hostile glares. But I was too excited to worry over them. I shrugged on a heavy wool coat over my nightshirt and followed Jordan into the storm. Most of the men had already headed toward the barn and I had to run through the wet muck of the yard to catch up with Jordan, the mud gumming up the sides of my legs. His collar was up and he had his hat pulled low. His horse was a big beautiful bay and her nostrils steamed in the dark. These men had been riding hard.

  Inside the barn, the men were already tending to their own mounts. Swallows kept up a steady high chatter in the eaves. Our draft horse whinnied in greeting to the other horses. I had crossed the yard in my bare feet and the mud was chilly against my skin. I hugged my arms close to myself while I watched them, looking for an opportunity to help. All eight of the men I counted were dressed in identical oilskin slickers. Beneath the slickers they wore fine vests and wool pants and most had beards and mustaches and kept their hair clipped short. All of them were armed, revolvers mostly, like something out of one of my dime novels. Only strangers carried guns wherever they went. Or Pinkertons. Or outlaws. But they had been generous with my mother, so it was hard for me to imagine them doing evil. All ignored me, except for Jordan. “Fetch me a currycomb, boy,” he said. “And show me where we get grain for our horses.”

  At the grain bin, one of our old barn cats, Esther, kept vigil for rats. The cat had been part of our land for as long my memory and was said to have descended from Freyja, the cat my family got right after they came here from Missouri. She was the only one who let me hold her, purring steadily. But tonight she limped away, her back leg dragging. After I filled a bag with grain, I helped Jordan brush down his bay. She had a glistening coat and had worked herself into a lather. We brushed in silence though I could hear the others calling coarse things to one another, glad to be out of the rain and the cold. The horse crunched happily on the grain and then seemed to go still and droop her heavy
head; again I wondered why they had driven her so hard. I brushed the knots from her mane. It smelled of wet moldering hay in here, as if all the world were washing away in the storm. Jordan came around the other side and handed me a coin when I was done.

  “No, sir,” I told him. “You don’t need to pay me.”

  Jordan closed a cold hand over mine. “Keep it,” he said. He had the palest gray eyes I had ever seen, shining like clouds carrying snow. “I’m glad to hear your pa isn’t a Yankee.”

  “We’re from Missouri,” I said.

  “Is that a fact?” Jordan said. “Good country, Missouri.”

  The other men were done caring for the mounts and gathered around. I felt all their eyes on me and wanted to say something important. “My grandpapa was run out of Missouri on account of counter-rary views. They put tar and feathers on him.”

  Jordan smiled and other men guffawed. My cheeks and neck reddened. I didn’t see anything funny in the matter. To stop their laughing I said, “My papa killed ten men.” I had tried to make my voice sound low, but it rose and crackled.

  It stopped their laughter, but Jordan still smiled. “Ten?” he said. “That’s a powerful lot of killing. I guess he didn’t like Indians.”

  “If you don’t believe me you can go see the scalps hanging in his jail.” Jordan took off his hat and drew a hand across his brow. “Your papa’s a lawman?” he asked.

  I was about to launch into a story about the horse thieves he had tracked and captured five summers before, when Hazel spoke behind me. “Asa, come help me carry the food.” She had her hands on her hips. “I hope you boys are hungry,” she said, before leaving the barn.

  I followed her back across the yard into the mud and rain again, grateful to be released from the men’s scrutiny. When I came up to her, she whirled and clutched me by the arm. “Don’t you talk to those men anymore,” she said. Her grip tightened, but I yanked my arm free. I was tired of people telling me what to do, how to act.

  “I’ll do as I see fitting,” I said. The thunder and downpour had moved on while I had been in the barn. Now it was just a chilly penetrating rain that went to my core.

  Her voice was gentler when she spoke next. “Trust me,” she said. “I need you to believe me.”

  I heard the imploring tone in her voice and didn’t say anything more. My mother was waiting for us on the porch. She carried out two loaves of bread while Hazel and I used iron tongs to balance a heavy pot of steaming beans between us. We had to go slow over the slick mud and patchwork puddles and my teeth were chattering in my skull by the time we reached the barn. The men received their food gratefully and didn’t ask any more questions.

  We left them to eat and crossed the yard. Back inside the house, my mother went to her room without speaking any further about our strange visitors. I yawned, feeling at that moment how truly late it must be. Dawn was maybe four hours away. When I tried to make for the loft ladder, Hazel stopped me. “Just a minute,” she said. “You have mud caked straight up to your knees.”

  “Leave it,” I said, suddenly petulant. “I don’t mind.”

  “Please,” she said. “I don’t want you to catch chill.”

  Though I longed for the warmth of my bed, I obeyed. I waited for her while she filled a washbasin with steaming water on the stove. She had a cloth slung over her shoulder and knelt before me and began to rub the mud from my skin in soothing circular motions. For some reason then I thought of Wanikiya, the wounded Indian, and how she had cleaned him after my papa shot him. There was nothing of such shame in what she did now. Hazel knelt on the hard floorboards so that I could see the top of her head. Even in the light of a sputtering candle I could count the gray hairs mixed in with her braids. The sour cakes of mud fell away from my skin. I knew she must have been every bit as tired as I was and I felt a sudden longing to protect her. My throat got knotted with emotion and I had to wipe my eyes. I hoped she wouldn’t ever go away again.

  “Sleepy?” she asked.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  Back in the loft, we crawled beneath our separate blankets. I wanted to ask her about the men, about why she was afraid of me talking to them. I rolled over to speak, felt my head against the sweet coolness of the pillow. I was asleep before the question ever left my mouth.

  It was noon by the time I woke up and Jordan Jackson and his men were long gone. They left no note and no trace that they had ever been in the barn.

  With so much of our grain gone, for the next few days, I walked to a small wood-encircled lot the locusts had left alone to cut hay for our draft horse, Moses. Swinging the heavy scythe in the sun allowed me to forget about those men, how I had embarrassed myself before them. Haying in the heat took muscle and endurance. It made me feel strong. That rare summer storm having passed, puddles evaporated and a July sun turned the earth tawny and boneyard brittle once more. Nights I drifted off and dreamed of the men. Their horses were black with eyes of fire. We were pounding over a wet road at full speed and I had to cling to the man in front of me. Hail sliced into my skin. I shouted at them, Where have you taken me? Why did you choose me? The wind swallowed up my voice. I only knew in the dream that we were running away and that we’d done something terrible and I was just as guilty as they.

  One night as we got ready for bed I got up the courage to ask Aunt Hazel about her story again. “My father,” I said. “You don’t talk about him much.” When she didn’t say anything, I rushed on. “I wish I could see The Book of Wonders ,” I told her. “I could teach myself the country spells inside there and then I wouldn’t be ordinary anymore.”

  “You’re far from ordinary,” Hazel said, laughing. Then she paused. “Is it true that Caleb keeps scalps in his jail?”

  I wondered how long she’d been listening while I talked to the men. I nodded. Though I had been bragging to those men about it, in truth the scalps made my skin prickle.

  “Will you show me them?” She didn’t look into my eyes. Her hand smoothed over the quilt on her bed. I wondered why she would want to see something so terrible. But I agreed to show her what she wanted to see.

  She patted the bed and I sat down. “I could tell you about all of us as we were then, if I only had those journals my pa made us keep our first summer. He was worried about us turning wild, you see. But those journals and Pa’s book were lost in the fire.”

  MILFORD PRAIRIE

  1859

  THE

  PARABLE OF

  THE SOWER

  JAKOB M AY 12, 1859

  SPRING RAINS ARRIVE nearly every night and wash down through the holes in the shingles to pelt the children while they sleep. The rain pings in the copper pots we set on the floor and soaks into our blankets. Rain and sun and wind: I feel this country stripping away what we once were. In the sunlit mornings we stretch the blankets out on the prairie grass to dry.

  Along with the iron plow I bought in Milford, I have carried back these blank journals and a book by a man named Thoreau for myself and the children. What we will become frightens me. As the boys cut wood for the worm fence they are building to keep the stock out of our fields, they catch glimpses of the Indian boys running in the woods. Leaf children, Hazel calls them. I can see the bitterness in Asa and Caleb’s face as they hack at the forest and drag up heavy limbs. How they long for such freedom yet there is so much work to be done. I tell them those boys are like the grasshopper of Aesop’s fable. They play now and will not be ready for winter. I tell them whatever I can to keep them working, even as I wonder. Who is wiser after all? We who plant more than our family needs for the sake of commerce? Or they who take what nature provides? Who has greater faith?

  This is what we’ve lost: two mothers. One printing press. One milch cow. Clean summer clothing. Ordinary life, predictability. I am afraid the children have lost faith in me.

  This is what we’ve gained: a daughter who speaks, two milking goats, four laying hens, four oxen, friends beyond the river.

  Hazel ne
atly folded away her winter petticoats and the bonnet that should keep her skin like milk. She braids her hair Indian-style down either side. Her skin turns coppery in the sun. The boys strip off their shirts. Asa burns and freckles. Caleb’s skin is a deep golden brown and there is golden hair on his mouth and chin and his eyebrows have darkened. Darkening. They are turning wild, my children, after only a season in this territory.

  And so the journals. The days before I sent my children to Kate’s school seem a long time ago. Then the only lessons they had were practiced in my printing shop. I taught all three of my own children to read, taught them what mathematics they needed to sell the papers in the streets. I can teach them all they need to know once again. We have the Grimm brother’s fairy tales from which they can learn German. We have the book by Thoreau and a Bible.

  I read them a section of Thoreau each night and ask them to respond in kind. Tonight I read to them this passage: “I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt?”