by Mark Henry
Mrs. Tally’s shrill voice made the second-story windows buzz. She never could get it through her head that English spoken succinctly and at a great volume did not automatically translate into every other language in the world. He could see the girls flinch at the well-intentioned but earsplitting words the heavy woman hurled at them as she pointed toward the double doors that led into the main lobby.
The wild girl appeared to ignore the barrage, and let her eyes crawl back up the red brick face of the building until again they settled on Trap. She cocked her face to one side and ran a hand over the top of her head, sliding her fingers through the black mane. Her eyes caught his this time, and held them while she gently fingered a small leather bag that hung from a thong at her breast. The tiniest hint of a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, and then vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Mrs. Tally interrupted the moment and shooed her new charges in the front door and out of sight.
Trap blinked to clear his head. He felt an overpowering need to flee his father’s study and rush headlong down the stairs to see the beautiful apparition again. As far as he knew, no girl had ever singled him out for a smile.
“. . . and you should remember, the Chiricahua Apache are your people as well,” his father was saying. Reverend O’Shannon stared at the window at his own reflection. His hands were still clasped behind his back. “Someday, you’ll meet someone. When that day comes, you will see what I mean. Nothing else will matter but her.”
Trap looked at his father. His mind filled with the vision of the floating girl with blue-black hair. Now, more than ever, he understood what his father meant—and they were moving to Arizona in five days.
CHAPTER 6
“Carpe diem,” Trap’s father would often say. “Seize the day and worry not for the morrow; the Lord has your future well in hand.”
Mrs. Tally had the new arrivals shuffled off to the girls’ dormitory behind the main building by the time Trap was able to escape his father’s study and make it downstairs. She would keep them busy settling in and getting them fitted for uniforms until lunch, so Trap resigned himself to a dry morning of lessons and pretended study.
Trap had never been the kind of boy to make long-range plans. He walked for hours in the woods with his mother, enjoyed yearly hunting trips with his father in the fall, but the future and the world of adulthood rarely came up. Each day provided a new sort of adventure, and he was happy to tend to each one as it presented itself. Carpe diem indeed.
The arrival of this mysterious girl who floated across the ground sent a sudden whirlwind of thoughts spinning through the boy’s head. For the first time in his life, Trap thought about the eventuality of providing for someone else, and came to the sad realization that he didn’t have many marketable skills. This thought alone put him into a quiet stupor, and he spent the morning brooding into his arithmetic primer, seeing nothing but a blur.
At sixteen, Trap was among the oldest of the twenty-five students at White Oak. Girls of any age outnumbered boys six to one. The only other boy close to his age was Frank Tall Horse, a gangly Ogallala Sioux. None of the other male students was older than twelve.
When he was ten, Trap had asked his mother why there were few other boys his age to play with.
“Indian boys of all ages are fighters,” she’d told him. “Most are killed in battle. A few more of the girls survive. If they aren’t taken as slaves by other tribes, well-meaning soldiers sometimes bring them here.” Hummingbird was a quiet woman, but she wasn’t one to beat around the bush.
Morning classes ground by with a glacial lack of speed. When it came time for midday break, Trap felt as if he might jump out of his skin if he didn’t get another look at the floating girl.
A bright sun filtered through the new foliage on the tall oaks and cast dimpled shadows around the spring grass in the exercise yard below.
Mrs. Tally was in the habit of having what she called an early lunch, which everyone knew was a nap. Trap was certain she would let the new girls out for some fresh air while she retired to her quarters for an hour or so.
Knowing the new girl would likely come out the large double doors off the front hallway, Trap resolved to station himself in the grassy area nearby.
Frank Tall Horse was a quiet boy, a head taller than Trap. He’d been orphaned at three—too young to be a warrior when he was brought to White Oak. Prone to spending hours with his nose stuck in fanciful tales by someone named Jules Verne, he knew little of his native ways except for what Trap’s mother had taught him. He liked to joke that he’d been raised in captivity.
Trap stared at the door and bounced with nervous energy.
“How about a leg-wrestling match?” Tall Horse suggested. He had a new book, but sensed his friend’s anxiety and genuinely wanted to help.
Trap watched the door while he spoke. He’d wrestled the long-legged Sioux at least two dozen times over the years, and bested him every time though he was over a head shorter. Suddenly, the thought of this new girl seeing him doing nothing but standing around waiting seemed foolish. It would be better if he were engaged in some sort of contest. Especially a contest he was likely to win.
“Sure,” Trap said, trying to sound disinterested. “A game might be good.”
The two boys lay down on the grass elbow-to-elbow, Trap’s feet toward the building and Tall Horse’s toward the trees. In unison they counted to three, then raised their legs to hook each other at the knee. Locked together, each struggled to roll his opponent backward over his own head.
Trap beat the taller boy soundly on the first round.
“Two out of three?” Frank picked bits of grass and twigs out of his close-cropped hair.
Trap shrugged. “All right by me,” he said resuming his position.
“I’ve learned your trick, Apache,” Tall Horse said as he raised his leg the first time. “This time the mighty Sioux will be victorious.”
On the count of two, the front doors of the school opened. Trap felt the strength leave his legs when the new girl floated out in her crisp blue uniform dress. The sight of her hit Trap like a bucket of springwater. The ability for all concentration drained from his body. She looked directly at him. A smile crossed her oval face.
Tall Horse took advantage of the momentary lapse and sent the befuddled Trap flying backward into the grass. When he rolled to his feet, the girl was gone.
The Sioux boy ducked his head and gave an embarrassed grimace at having won the contest. He never won at anything physical, and seemed uncomfortable with the thought of it.
“Want another go at it?” Tall Horse grunted.
Trap popped his neck from side to side and grinned. “No. It was fair.”
He left a beaming Tall Horse to his book and moved immediately toward the place where he’d last seen the floating girl.
The other new arrivals milled around at the edge of the yard, bunched in the same nervous group. Two of them looked as though they might be sisters; all were surely from the same tribe.
It was easy to find the girl’s track. The stiff leather soles of her newly issued shoes couldn’t hide the soft, toe-first way her feet struck the ground with each step. His mother walked the same way, and Trap had grown up mimicking it.
The tracks led around the corner, toward the delivery entrance to the kitchen and the root cellar he’d help enlarge the previous fall. The constricting pair of new shoes lay abandoned beside the worn path.
Trap knelt to study the small print of the girl’s bare foot. His open hand almost covered it. Trap’s mother often told him to feel the track—talk to it, she said. He touched each tiny indentation where toes had dug in lightly to the dark earth, closed his eyes to see what these tracks might tell him.
He heard a sharp yowl, like a bobcat caught in a snare.
Trap’s eyes snapped open and he sprinted around the building.
The Van Zandt’s Creamery wagon was parked beside the kitchen entrance. Another yowl came from the open d
oor of the root cellar. Moments later a fuming Harry Van Zandt scampered out of the dark opening, the remains of a jar of currant jelly dripping off the top of his head. At seventeen, Harry was nearly six feet tall with menacing features and a permanent scowl on his long face. His younger brother Roth was nowhere to be seen.
Harry cast his eyes back and forth on the ground while he wiped the sticky red goop off his face.
“Watch her, Roth,” he yelled into the cellar as he found an oak branch the size of his arm. “She’s a scrapper. Them jars hurt, I’m tellin’ ya.” He tested the club on his open palm and started for the door again.
There was a commotion of breaking bottles and more cries from the cellar.
“Where you aim to go with that?” Trap nodded toward the piece of oak in Harry’s hand.
“None of your damned business, runt,” the other boy said. “I’m gonna teach that little red whore some manners. She’s a looker, but that don’t give her no right. . . .”
The stone caught Harry high in the side of the head, glancing off a glob of current jelly. Dark eyes rolled back in his head, lids fluttering life a leaf on the wind. He swayed on his feet, teetered for a moment, then collapsed into the dirt by the back wheel of his delivery wagon.
He was still breathing, but a nasty knot was already rising over his left temple. That was his problem.
Trap bent to scoop up the oak club and trotted the two steps to the open root cellar. A jar of tomatoes shattered against the timber door frame.
Once his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see Roth Van Zandt holding a wooden barrel lid like a shield as he advanced on the new girl at the far end of the narrow earthen room.
Tomatoes had been a bumper crop the previous summer, and there was an almost endless supply of jars she could use to defend herself.
“Almost there, darlin’,” Roth giggled as another jar of tomatoes exploded off the wooden lid. He didn’t look up as Trap moved up behind him. “Me and Harry here gonna show you some fun, that’s all.... We ain’t gonna hurt you, are we, Harry?”
Trap moved up so he was within striking distance with the oak club. “No,” he said. “We’re not.”
Roth lowered the barrel lid in time to catch a quart jar on the point of his chin. Glass shattered and Trap stepped back to avoid getting splattered.
“Your brother’s outside with a bad headache,” Trap said, gesturing with the wood. “Take him on back to town before this girl knocks your head off.”
Van Zandt wiped the red juice off his face and chest. His tongue flicked across his lips in disgust.
“Havin’ a white pa didn’t help you much when it came to brains, O’Shannon.” Roth spit. “Just goes to prove it only takes a drop of the heathen blood to ruin a body.”
Trap raised the club. “Go ahead and say another word about my mother,” he whispered. “I’ll finish what the girl started.”
Roth talked big, but he had no intention of facing Trap alone. He backed outside with the barrel lid in hand before helping his half-conscious brother back to the wagon.
“You ain’t heard the last of us, O’Shannon.” Roth gathered up the reins and clucked to the Cleveland Bay mare to get her moving. “Or you either, Miss Tomato Chucker. You’re bound to see us again, that’s for damned sure.”
Trap threw the oak club at Van Zandt to hurry him along. When the wagon was safely down the gravel drive, he turned to face the new girl. She was even more beautiful up close than from his father’s window. He could think of nothing to say, so he just stood and looked.
“You are Indian?” she said at length. His staring didn’t seem to bother her.
Trap swallowed hard. “Yes. I mean, sort of. My mother is Chiricahua Apache.” He felt as if he was tripping over every word.
“My name is Maggie Sundown of the Nimi’ipuu—the whites call us Wallowa Nez Percé.” Her chest still heaved. Her eyes, the color of black coffee, glistened as she calmed herself from her run-in with the Van Zandts.
“I’m Patrick O’Shannon, but everyone calls me Trap.”
“Reverend O’Shannon is your father?”
Trap nodded.
Maggie smiled. “So you live here, like I do.”
All Trap ever wanted to do again was stand there and watch this girl smile. Then he thought about what she’d just said and the happiness drained out of him.
“Only a few more days.” The words tasted bitter as he said them. “We’re moving to Arizona.”
Maggie brushed a lock of hair away from her full cheek. The smile was gone.
“That is a very sad thing to hear, Patrick Trap O’Shannon of the Chiricahua Apache.”
The promise of an interesting week hung heavy on her sigh.
CHAPTER 7
Trap decided early on that whatever he decided to do with his life, it would not involve wearing a necktie. Even if he had shared his father’s zeal for the ministry, the way he’d have to dress alone was enough to keep him from following in the man’s steps. He considered the infernal things instruments of unbearable torture, and avoided them as he would any other form of slow, strangling death.
Unfortunately, the reverend saw things differently and required a tie for church and all important social events—like dinner with the new superintendent.
The Reverend Tobias Drum had arrived that morning by wagon with a pile of worn carpetbags and a fine Thoroughbred gelding, the color of a roasted chestnut. His coming was like a dark cloud over the school. The students had lined up at the windows in stunned sadness to witness the proof that the O’Shannons were leaving very soon.
Trap tried to keep an open mind, but Drum seemed to him a particularly oily man, both in body and demeanor. He was stout, a half a head taller than Trap’s father, who stood nearly six feet. Where the Reverend O’Shannon possessed the gaunt appearance of a hungry boxer, Drum was a blocky brute with the well-fed look and sullen eyes of one more accustomed to barroom brawls. Bushy sideburns covered pink jowls, and a greasy ponytail dusted the collar of his black frock coat with a steady sifting of dandruff.
From the time the man had arrived, Trap’s father had become almost subservient to him, yielding the school as if he’d turned over the reins already. What was worse is that Drum appeared to expect such treatment.
The men’s voices hummed through the panel door off the dining room while Trap helped his mother fill crystal water glasses and finish setting the table. He tugged at the knot in his silk tie.
A sumptuous meal of roast pork, turnips, string beans, and hot bread spread across the expansive oak table—the table his mother would have to leave behind in two days time when they left for Arizona.
“Why don’t you take this fine table and leave me behind?” Trap said before he thought much about it. He would never have spoken so directly to his father.
Hummingbird smiled softly as she always did, reacting to what he meant, not what he said. “The table is only planks and sticks.” She smoothed the front of her white apron with a copper hand. Her hair was long, but she kept it coiled and pinned up so Trap hardly ever saw it down. “I’m sure there will be tables in Arizona.” She put a hand on Trap’s shoulder. “But I do worry for you, my son. There is more to this than you can understand. I have asked your father to tell you, and maybe he will in his time. You are almost grown. . . .”
The Reverend O’Shannon’s face was locked in a wooden half frown when he came through the door ahead of Drum.
“We have a job to do,” Drum was saying. “It’s not always pleasant, but it is, nonetheless, our duty.”
Trap’s jaw dropped when the new superintendent took the chair at the head of the long table—his father’s spot—and flopped down in it before his mother was seated.
Reverend O’Shannon said grace and carved the roast while he listened in stony silence as Drum droned on with his philosophy about running an Indian school.
Drum began eating as soon as his plate was filled. “The United States Army has made my orders clear,” he said
around a fork piled high with roast pork and turnips.
“Chuparosa,” O’Shannon said, calling his wife by name to get her to hold up her plate. He gave her a thick slice of end-cut. Trap knew the seasoned, outer edge of the roast was his mother’s favorite, and his father always made certain she got this choice morsel, no matter who was eating with them. The reverend looked up at Drum and moved the knife to cut Trap’s portion. “I was under the impression we got our orders from a higher authority than the Army,” he said. His voice was tight but controlled.
Drum waved him off with the fork. “Of course we do, but the Army brings us the students. We have to learn to work hand in glove. Don’t disparage the military, O’Shannon. The God of the Israelites utilized an army to work miracles.”
“True enough,” Trap’s father said. Everyone served, he sat down to his own plate.
“I couldn’t help but notice you called your wife by an Indian name. Do you believe that is wise?” Drum continued to eat as he spoke. He appeared to be numb to the fact that Mrs. O’Shannon sat directly to his right, and spoke of her more as if she were a valued hunting dog than another human being.
“Ah, yes,” O’Shannon said. “Chuparosa. It’s Spanish for Hummingbird. The Apache often use Spanish appellations—Geronimo, Magnus Colorado—beyond that . . .” He shrugged. “It was her name before I knew her and it continues to be so. I see no reason to call her anything else.”
Drum grunted through a full mouth of meat and turnips. “This meal prepared by your lovely Hummingbird is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.” Other than a backhanded gesture toward Trap’s mother, he ignored her completely. “She has learned to cook as good as any white woman.”
The man’s flippant tone made Trap grip his knife tighter and chased away any thought of an appetite.
“See what the savage Indian is capable of when properly schooled and trained.” Drum pushed ahead, unwavering in his rude behavior. “Left to her own devices—her natural and carnal state, if you will—who knows what kind of grubs we’d be eating. Likely a feast of stolen horse and potent corn tiswin.”