Fuck, he’d been warned about this. By uncles, but also by his father to explain how crazy he went after their mother absconded back to Viking-era Norway with his progeny in her womb. Male wolves felt compelled to protect their mates under the best of circumstances. When they were pregnant, it went to DEFCON five.
And the insane wolf inside him must have somehow sensed she was carrying Nago’s child because it was already banging against the cage of Nago’s body as he put on his cargo pants and slipped on his Adidas running shoes. Find her, it yelled at Nago. Find my mate. Protect her!
For once, Nago didn’t disagree. He wanted to get eyes on Halle as badly as the wolf. But he forced himself to walk, not run, to the door as he assured himself that he’d find her right outside. That she’d probably gone to the outhouse. He almost had himself convinced.
But then he opened the door and saw them under the magnolia tree.
Eric. With his arm around Halle’s shoulders as she cried, with her hand covering her mouth. Another wolf. Touching his pregnant she-wolf. And she was crying.
Nago saw this. And at that moment there was no logic to be found. But a moment was all the wolf needed.
It took over before Nago even had the chance to think, “Don’t.”
20
Mississippi, 1837
It was a mighty odd way to begin a knowing. She’d think that for years to come.
The wolf. The man. The tree. The breakfast. The saving.
Followed by the declaration that he would not be letting her go.
It would seem she’d run away from one circumstance, only to fall right into another. But in truth, this circumstance felt much different than the other.
For one, the Indian took her with him everywhere. To arrange the canoe. Then to watch him tend to his farm work. He had a whole field of corn on the grow. A few other vegetables and two beehives, besides. Also a horse and an old cow whose milk had dried up. Which was fine by her, because she’d once tasted the milk from a Briarleaf cow and it had done nothing but turn her stomach to hurting.
The Indian pointed out a house in the distance and told her all the land she could see, including his, belonged to the white man who’d visited earlier. There were cabins like his all up and down the river, and they each shared a portion of their crops with “the king” in exchange for living here.
She asked if there was any cotton being grown, and the smile appeared behind his lips again when he answered. “No, none of that here.”
That first morning the Indian showed her everything there was to show her on the property, but the next he began teaching her. First, they did all his chores together. Then he took her to the river and taught her how to fish for their supper.
He taught her many things over the next four weeks. But not how to hunt birds and rabbits as he did with a bow and arrow. He carried the bow and arrow everywhere with him outside the cabin but hid it away someplace she couldn’t see when they were inside.
Probably in the same place as the knives, which she had scanned for but had yet to find anywhere but on the table when he put them there himself.
He did not necessarily act distrustful of her. At least not in the way of Massa’s wife who went about the plantation asking the woman slaves pointed questions whenever anything went missing for more than an hour or two in the main house. But the feeling that he was always watching her was one and the same.
She thought of trying to sneak out at night. But they worked together on the little farm from dawn to dusk. Less work than picking cotton, but she’d be lucky to keep her eyes open through the last meal, much less longer than the Indian who always seemed to have an after-supper project.
At first, it was another chair. Then when that was done, a bigger table. In less time than she ever could have guessed, it became a familiar routine for her to fall asleep while watching him craft from her pallet on the floor.
She should have felt like his servant. More than that, like his slave. He put her to hard work, and he did not pay her in anything but food and shelter.
But she did not feel the slave when she was with him. For one thing, he did not ever tell her what to do; he showed her how to do it for herself. For another thing, there was the promise he made her.
On the second full day of work, he walked her over to a patch of dirt and drew in it with a stick. One line up and down on the left. Then one up and down on the right. After that, he drew an across line coming out of the left line. It started out straight, but then it curved up, almost but not quite meeting the up and down right line.
Last he drew a large circle at the bottom of the lines. “Here is the gulf. You cannot get across,” he told her. He pointed to the left up and down line. “This is the Mississippi River. You can also not cross this river without a boat.”
His stick moved to the right line. “This river is not the right one for you to cross.”
Then his stick moved to the top line. “And here is the river I live on. You can follow this river east and then keep walking north. But there are more rivers on the way to the place you seek. Rivers you cannot cross without swimming.”
She followed his stick, staying quiet as he erased all hope of escape for her. But then he said, “After the full moon, I will teach you to make a small raft. Then I will lead you across the river and as far north as Illinois, if this is your wish.”
Of course, that would be her wish in a month, she thought but did not say. Why did he think a month would make any difference?
And then there was the chair he made. So they could sit at the table together, instead of taking turns. When it was finished, he set it down for her with an apology. “Sorry I did not have this ready until now. Never expected company out here after my people left.”
That was how he described the Indian removals, as his people leaving.
“Why did you stay behind?” she dared to ask him that night as they ate supper together for the first time.
“One of us must always stay with the kingdom gate. It is important to my people,” he answered. “I had no mate, so I was chosen to stay behind when the new king arrived.”
“I do not understand your meaning,” she said
Another behind-the-lips smile, but his eyes struck her as sad. “I will explain it all to you after the full moon.”
She came to realize the Indian talked a lot but was full of secrets. The first day she was there, he introduced himself to her as Joseph. “That is my white man name given to me by the new king’s pastor. My Indian name I am keeping for someone.”
For who? she wondered. And she almost asked, but before she could he asked her, “What can I call you?”
She did not answer at first. But then when he showed himself to be the kind of man who could wait a long spell for the answer he wanted, she said, “Ain’t no reason to call me nothing. Have a mind to change this name I got soon as I get north, anyhow.”
He offered her half his bed space the first night. But she said she was fine on the floor. He did not argue with her but took all the blankets he had off the bed and put them down on the floor. For her! This act of unexpected kindness put her in an awful bind. On the one hand, she did not want to owe him for anything. On the other, she did not know how to protest anything a man did.
It had been pinched out of her. First by the woman she was given to when her mother was sold. Then by the other slaves who finished raising her when she was sold down here to Massa’s new plantation.
For this reason, she could not open her mouth to tell him it was wrong for her to sleep on the blankets, while he slept on a bare bed. So the arrangement was set.
Joseph did not seem to mind. And though she could sometimes feel his eyes on her as they worked together on his farm, he never touched her. Never pressed into her on purpose, like a dog looking to get his rub.
But he did eventually get her into his bed. Not by force, as she thought he might if he got the hankering one night, but by a question. “You read?” he asked her one night after the big
ger table was finished.
“No,” she answered. She had heard of plantations where slaves were allowed to read and in some cases, even taught how. But that wasn’t Briarleaf: “We wasn’t allowed. You?”
It had become easier to talk to him over the past few weeks. And to ask him questions. He seemed to like talking and kept up a steady dialogue while they worked, even if she stopped answering.
“I read some good,” he answered. “Missionaries used to teach us before the new king. I got a bible.”
“You a believer?” she asked, having always heard his people were godless heathens.
“I got a bible the missionaries gave me,” he answered with a behind the lips smile that told her he was not giving her question a full answer. Then he produced a pocket bible from beneath his mattress, sat down on the bed with it, and patted the space beside him. “I can read to you.”
She was a believer, even more so now. Truth told, God was the only power she could think of to credit for her continued state of existence. For that reason, she carefully set herself down beside him on the bed. Not touching, but she soon fell asleep while listening to his reading of Genesis and how God created the world.
She woke to find herself sleeping beside him. Covered with one of the quilts that had made up her pallet on the floor. Her immediate thoughts went to advantages taken, but when she looked down, her skirt was still on with no signs of it having been pushed up.
They read together every evening after that. And during the day, he taught her all the letters, writing them in the dirt with a stick and helping her sound them out. Sometimes he put little tests to her, and once he asked her, “Make a word for me with T, A, and C.”
When she came up with “CAT,” he smiled at her with his teeth, and his smile made her feel as if she were the cleverest thing on earth.
The days with the Indian passed by quickly. Many times it was easy for her to forget she was a runaway slave. And at times whole hours passed without thought given to the demon wolf who had tried to eat her alive during the last full moon night.
But sooner than she ever thought possible, she was forced to remember. “Tonight is the full moon,” Joseph told her when they woke one morning. “We have some extra chores to do.”
Extra chores turned out to be much stranger than the usual doings.
Joseph guided her toward what she’d thought was a simple shed at the edge of the property, mostly used for housing feed and other stores during the winter. But instead of getting out a bag of feed, he pushed the stores aside to reveal a wall full of clay jugs like the one he gave to the white man who came to the front door on her first morning here.
“Corn whiskey,” he said, coming to stand beside her. “Got a distillery of copper pots set up in the woods. Going to have to use it at next harvest, that’s a certainty. Near the end of my stores now.”
Her mouth dropped open to see the rows of clay jugs. “You made all this?” she asked.
“I did,” he answered.
This made her rethink everything she knew about the man standing beside her. She had never seen him drink a drop of alcohol while awake. But asleep was another story. Was Joseph a drunk, like them Indians you hear about?
“I do not drink it,” he said at the same time she got to wondering the question. “But I sell it for a nice profit on full moon nights.”
His meaning became clear just a little after dawn when white people started coming down the river path from both directions, making their way over to the little shed.
As it turned out, this was the reason for the shed’s split door, which she’d noticed but not fully countenanced before. However, on this day Joseph closed the bottom half and turned the little outbuilding into a service window. The white folks lined up, and Joseph sold the varying sized bottles of corn whiskey one by one.
After the king’s visit, she would have thought Joseph would have sent her back to hide in the house. But no, he kept her with him just as always. She was of no help with collecting or counting the coins people dropped into Joseph’s metal bowl, as that required sums and figures. But she could tote and get well enough, and she proved herself likely while helping Joseph make his sales.
Best to keep her head down though, she reckoned, not daring to meet the eyes of the white people who came for Joseph’s whiskey. Any one of them could take a tale of her down the river to Briarleaf and collect their bounty.
That was unnecessary doing, however. Most none of the white folk made any talk about her being there, and the ones who did seemed to expect her presence already.
These white folks acknowledged her with a smile. “Glad you finally found someone to help you out round here,” one lady said.
And a pastor who evidently had no acquaintance with temperance said, “I have been praying for you, Joseph. God’s blessing upon the two of you,” before walking away with a small pot of whiskey.
The king came by, too. He skipped to the front of the line, but no one seemed to mind, and many called out greetings as he walked past all the waiting people. Joseph handed him two large bottles without exchange of payment. And the king tipped the wide brim of his fancy hat at her before saying to Joseph, “She is likely, isn’t she? Good hard worker and strong. The Queen and I hope it works out for you, Joseph.”
She stared hard at Joseph after both of these strange statements, but he did not look at her. In fact, it felt to her that he put great effort into not meeting her eye after those things were said.
Any road, the white folks were a sight nicer than the ones at Briarleaf. They smelled better, too. They carried a scent she could not quite reckon, but she could smell it plain, and it was similar to the one she’d begun to notice on Joseph a few weeks ago.
More people came throughout the morning. She and Joseph had no time for mid-day dinner; the line stretched so long down the trees. But with the both of them working, the line was reckoned faster than she would have thought in the morning. She and the Indian made a good team, she admitted to herself, even if she was more confused than a duck in a hen house as they went about their late afternoon chores.
These, too, had changed. Instead of feeding the cow and goat, he led them to a pen and locked them up in the shed.
“Do you afear them getting out?” she asked, having never seen them stray more than a mile or two before coming right back.
“I afear them being eaten. I try to keep them safe on full moon nights,” the Indian answered cryptically.
Then she watched as he tied two long lengths of rope. One around the magnolia tree, and another around a thin oak down aways from the magnolia. She knew. In the back of her mind, she knew what the rope was for.
But when she asked after the one he tied around the oak, he said, “I will tell you after supper.”
The Indian said they had to eat supper earlier than usual that night before the sun went down and the moon rose. But it was not the usual supper of salted pork and cornbread that he made. Instead, he placed a stack of flapjacks tall enough for a Paul Bunyan tale on the table between them.
She only managed a few bites but marveled as she watched the Indian consume most of the stack.
“You should eat the rest,” he said, nodding at the few flapjacks left on the tin plate.
“I ain’t hungry,” she confessed because both her mind and stomach were aswirl with emotions.
“Eat,” he insisted. “However this night ends, it will be long. That is certain.”
She ate two more pancakes, wondering about the night to come. Wondering about him. Wondering about all of it so much that the pancakes tasted like sweet ash in her mouth.
“There,” she said when she finished her portion. “I ate.”
His answer to her announcement surprised her greatly. For he set both their plates at the side of the table and took her hand!
“Before the moon rises, I got some words I need to say to you,” he said.
Then he said, “I am sorry for hurting you on the last full moon. You are a good wo
man. A real good woman. And though you are young still, I can tell you have lived a hard life. I had no wish to make your life harder. If I could not have done what I did that full moon night, I wouldn’t have.”
Now he raised the other hand, so both of his palms cupped her hand as he confessed, “But I cannot say I am not thankful for what passed. For waking up from the full moon and finding you in that tree. This month has told me a tale of things to come. A story we might make between us. And if those things are true, you will be the moon’s true blessing upon my life.”
“I…” She could think of no tactful way to put it, so she told him her truth. “I am confused by most of what you are saying, Joseph. But you truly…”
For this next part, she did not dare to raise her eyes from where his hands covered hers on the table. “You truly want me as your woman?”
“If the moon blesses us, and if you will have me, yes. But if the moon doesn’t bless us or if you decide you would rather continue north, I will guide you as promised. This I swear on my wolf.”
Again she didn’t understand. But a warm feeling burned inside her chest, as if her soul understood, even if she did not.
She and Joseph washed up the supper dishes. Together, as they always did.
Then he took her by the hand and said, “Come with me. I must show you how to use the ropes before the moon rises…”
However, his words trailed off when they came out the front door.
Three men stood between them and the magnolia tree. She recognized each and every one of them. There was the overseer who could always be viewed upon his horse from the fields where she used to pick cotton, the rolled cowhide in his hand making explicit promises about what would happen if any of them gave him a reason to come down from his horse. And one of the white men Massa hired on at the start of every harvest season. Crackers they were called on account of how frequently they used their whips.
And finally Massa himself, his jowly face a study of unchecked fury. “I knew…I knew that nigger lovin dandy was lying to me about you not being here!”
NAGO, His Mississippi Queen: 50 Loving States, Mississippi (The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 1) Page 11