Stillwater

by Nicole Helget

  She reoriented herself, got her mind right. Breathed the cold air. Snow air. Her lungs then felt as open and free as they had in some time. Her chest opened like bird wings and she respired full. The winter winds rushed in and swirled inside her chest, around the heart that had always loved Jim Christmas. “Someday we’ll swim in warm waters and all be together,” she said to her child, his deep-sleep breath floating off his lips. Lies, she knew. But what did it matter to lie now? She pulled her arms around her son again and then loosened them and produced a little coo. One more breath. Clean and sprightly. Then Eliza Christmas exhaled her last ghost of air and discovered herself ankle-deep in seawater surrounded by flamingoes. A long-legged man fished its waters. Her loins stirred and prepared once more for the violence of it.

  18

  The Red Swan

  BEYOND A STAND OF pines, their branches heavy with the weight of snow, appeared the Red Swan Saloon, a tall, thin, ordinary building but for the red swan on the sign above the door. The ox, sensing a warm bed of straw and a handful of oats, quickened its pace. Father Paul turned to look at his cargo. They were clasped together in sleep.

  The Red Swan Saloon on the outskirts of Stillwater was built through the patronage of the logging men who worked along the St. Croix River and in the far northern timber camps, which began appearing in the late 1830s as the fur trade declined and men had to imagine a new industry. The first gaggle of ladies of pleasure arrived by steamboat in 1835.

  When the women stepped off the boat, they looked to be of the Southern aristocracy, wearing white gloves and hooped skirts. Behind the upstairs bedroom doors of the Red Swan Saloon, these women swore most unladylike, squatted over men of every shape, color, and size, and dabbed their foreheads with powder puffs afterward, sighing, “My, I broke into a little sweat,” as if amazed, as if they hadn’t said it fourteen times already that week.

  But the real work of the brothel was its quiet embrace and then covert moving of those whom the world of men had mistreated. Several of the disgraced Southern belles came to the North with memories of mistreatment and sympathized with their darker-race neighbors. From their lacy beds the Southern whores rebelled against the practice by coercing money, wiling secrecy, and ascertaining connections from their wealthy, powerful patrons to aid their Negro charges. A web of brothels across the country quivered with the movement of men and women escaping the confines of slavery. Very soon after its construction, the Red Swan Saloon joined the crisscross of assistance to the slaves.

  Father Paul, in one of his first trips to the brothel to bring the good news and Holy Reconciliation for the whores’ sinful deeds, instead found himself accomplice to the whores’ good if illegal exploits. Now he intended to leave Eliza and Davis here for the ladies and their private benefactors to deliver on to freedom. These benefactors were something of a mystery. Father Paul knew much money was needed for the tasks, but he wasn’t sure exactly from whom it came, as none of the women would utter the name. Though he wanted to know, the secrecy comforted him too, as he suspected his own participation in the work was kept anonymous as well.

  “Here we are,” he said. He pulled back on the reins and the ox stopped compliantly. Father Paul turned again to look at the mother and child. Neither moved. He hopped from the seat and moved to the side of the cart. He reached over and touched the young mother on the shoulder. He shook her, and her whole body moved. There was no reaction.

  The jerk woke the boy clutched in her grip. He pressed his head to her chest. “Mama?” he said.

  Father Paul outstretched his arms. “Here we go,” he said. “Come.”

  The boy lifted his fingers to his mother’s lips. “Mama?” he said again.

  “Come, come,” said Father Paul. He opened and closed his hands. “Come here now.”

  The boy pushed against his mother’s arms. They gripped him stiffly.

  “Oh,” said Father Paul. He reached into the cart and broke the child from his mother’s rigid hold. The boy grimaced, understanding. He crawled off her lap and slid away. He stood, and she fell back against the wall of the cart so that her head faced the white sky and her eyes stared up at its gray clouds. Her mouth was slightly parted, as if in rapture.

  The boy sighed. “Will you close her eyes?” he said to Father Paul.

  Father Paul cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “I will.” He reached into the cart, grabbed the boy beneath his armpits, and lifted him down. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Father Paul entered the Red Swan, had a quick exchange with Miss Daisy, and put the child in a velvet chair. He coaxed the bartender into helping him bring Eliza’s body inside. The women gathered around her in a strange, somber pall; white women in every color and texture of dress surrounded the frail, listless body of a Negro woman dressed in the muted hues of a household slave. The whores pulled lace handkerchiefs from their bodices and pressed them to their eyes and noses. One fixed a stray curl on Eliza’s forehead, and another straightened her dress. Father Paul said the obligatory words, and afterward the whores cursed all the men who had probably done the dead woman wrong, confusing their own tales of misery with what they assumed were Eliza’s. The boy watched and listened quietly.

  Father Paul helped the bartender dispose of Eliza’s body until the ground thawed for burial and took care to acclimate Davis to life without his mother by telling him about the Kingdom of Glory. He pondered what to do with the boy. Take him back to the Home for Orphans and Infirmed? Could Mother St. John manage another child? Would the Winstons recover him there and drag him to the South and into a life of bondage without anyone, not even a mother, to protect him? Should Father Paul send him on toward safety and freedom? When he expressed this conundrum to Miss Daisy, she scoffed at him and behaved as though she’d been insulted.

  “I’ll love him like a natural mother, of course,” she said. “I’ve always wanted one. He almost looks white anyway. Like he could be mine anyhow.”

  It was absurd, Father Paul knew, but who would object?

  As he got ready to leave, the ladies crowded around him. They teased Father Paul’s hair, rubbed his chest, pinched his buttocks, blew on his neck, and patted him from top to bottom. Miss Sunny asked him to say her name, as it tickled her to hear him say it. Miss Cornflower raised her leg onto the piano bench and lifted her skirt to reveal her pink stockings. Miss Bluebell bobbed her bosoms so that they looked like a pair of gophers poking their heads out of a hole.

  Though they were goodhearted women, they were devilish at times and could not, with their daily experience of the basest desires of men, believe that the priest did not want to expel his buildup. Instead he asked if they wanted to render their confessions. The ladies fought over who got to go first, feigning all seriousness and then spouting the filthiest deeds imaginable: I sucked a trapper’s pole. I got poked by an Indian for four continuous hours. I ejaculated a logger between my bosoms. I took it like an animal on all fours from a boy of not yet fifteen, with a rod thin and hooked like a peavey. Miss Marigold and I bopped a dwarf railroad man between us. I cried out to the Lord in most unholy ways. I took His name in vain.

  Father Paul listened to each lady and then gave each the same penance: an Act of Contrition and some serious imploring for the Virgin Mary’s intercession, all to be done while kneeling so that each woman knew the Heavenly Father’s true motivation for fashioning human legs to bend midway. Then he lined them up and offered them the Holy Eucharist, which he placed on each tongue without judgment, without wondering where that tongue had been last or what sacrilege had crossed it. He understood that the women confessed crude sins to shock and arouse him, but he was wise, empathetic enough to know that in this place was much pain, despite the carousing atmosphere and jolly décor. In the few years he’d known them, he’d tended to these ladies after beatings, broken noses, and twisted arms, after abortions, and after letters from loved ones who told them they were considered dead among their relatives. In the way that Jesus ge
ntly urged the prostitute to sin no more, so would he free these from wrongdoing. Most were still nearly children, lambs wandering in a land of wolves. When he considered the way men used them and turned them into animals, Father Paul came as close to hate as he could allow himself to.

  When he was finished, he bid the women to join him in special prayer for Eliza and thanked them for their promise to care for Davis. He assured them that they’d all have a special place in heaven, for their good works far outweighed their sins. He made the sign of the cross over each of the ladies of the Red Swan and commissioned the bartender to teach Davis some tunes on the piano. Then he opened the front door and walked outside. As he coaxed his ox to stand, the ladies stood in the doorway, as colorful as a collection of priestly stoles in an armoire at the Vatican. They set to corrupting their lips with observations about the blessed endowment of the priest: “Looks like he put a ferret in them pantaloons.” Davis, hearing language he knew he ought not hear, put his hands over his ears, then looked at the priest. And, as if not to hurt his feelings, he removed his little palms from them and waved to the priest. The women, upon seeing this act of empathy, erupted in laughter and hugged the child. Davis smiled, proud to cause such happiness and entertainment.

  19

  The Schmidt Brothers

  BEAVER JEAN CAME TO ON the floor of the Home for Orphans and Infirmed. His eyelids weighed more than they used to. His forehead felt as though it had been stomped upon. His tongue had grown dry and fat. He groaned, turned over on his side, and slowly sat up. He tried to orient himself and figure out how long he’d been here. A blanket lay beside him. There’d been a pillow under his head. He’d been cared for. He remembered the nun. He remembered her saying that the place was full, and he felt no anger that he’d been confined to the hard floor for his recovery. He wiggled his toes. He could feel blood rush from where the sick ones had once been. He sat still and waited for the seeping to stop. He thought about where he’d go and what he’d do next.

  Beaver Jean didn’t like the Schmidt brothers, who lived in the woods two days east of Stillwater, but he knew of no one else, aside from the religious types he tried not to get involved with, who knew as much about the comings and goings and whereabouts of folks as they did. They were the nosiest pair of badgers this side of the river. One of the brothers was fat. The other was skinny. Like him, they were trappers, and Beaver Jean often found himself in competition with them over productive river locations or animal paths. They were forever accusing Beaver Jean of thieving from them, but this was only rarely true. Now, though, he needed them, so he stuffed his sore, bandaged foot into his boot, yelled for someone to bring him Alice, and prepared to take leave of the infirmary and the nun who ran it. She came running. He told her about his powerful headache and that he felt as though he had slept for three years.

  “Only two,” she said. “And it was a fitful, restless, and gaseous slumber.”

  “Well, I’m off and grateful to ye for yer help,” he said to her.

  She followed him out into knee-deep snow where his horse was saddled and waiting, thanks to Big Waters.

  He braced his hand on her shoulder and hoisted himself into his saddle. The leather whined as his weight settled into place.

  “Bless you, mister,” she replied. She waved.

  “Thank ye,” he said. “I’m sure it means a lot. Take good care of that newly borned one. The one ye said which was a girl.” He nodded toward the infirmary.

  “I will,” she said. She waved again and turned away.

  “Ye’ll need to send me word if ye see any of my lost wanderers,” he said to her back.

  “Yes, I will,” said Mother St. John over her shoulder. But she didn’t look him in the eye.

  Beaver Jean urged Alice down the path and into the dense woods. He rode for hours into the winter wind. His foot hurt in the stirrup. He sometimes pulled it out and lifted it onto the horse’s neck, so that the blood didn’t run so hard and hot. That type of riding provided some temporary relief. He thought about In the Trees and The Girl with Friend Eyes and wondered what they were up to. He considered what they might be eating. He remembered the little games they played, such as hit-the-other-on-the-top-of-the-hand-before-she-pulls-it-away, and how they would braid each other’s hair. They were good women to have, he decided. Even if they were troublesome quite a lot. He rode all day, camped, then rode all day the next. When he spotted the Schmidt brothers’ cabin, he cleared his throat and prepared to shout, but the brothers’ dogs, a trio of hounds with long ears and tongues, bounded off the porch and dashed through the drifts toward Alice, who reared up and kicked at the ruffians.

  “Ye Schmidty boys!” Beaver Jean yelled. “Ye call yer hounds down now, dammee. I’m an injured soul and can’t fight these bastards from hell. They smell the blood on me, I think.”

  The front door opened, and the fat brother emerged. The thin brother poked his head out but then went back inside and closed the door. The fat brother pointed a rifle at Beaver Jean.

  “What do ye think yer pointing at?” Beaver Jean called out. Several of his encounters with the brothers had come close to fisticuffs, but never had either of them aimed a rifle at him. He tried to remember an offense he had recently committed that might inspire such a reaction of implied violence. He undercut the Schmidts in a deal with the Ojibwe, but they had done it to him first. He took a wolf off their territory, but he had used his own trap. Beaver Jean thought maybe they were angry over his marriage to In the Trees. Years ago, the fat Schmidt had negotiated a deal with the chief for In the Trees. But the chief had changed his mind and reneged, coming to an agreement with Beaver Jean instead.

  “Put that rifle down, ye old coon,” yelled Beaver Jean. “I come with a deal for ye to consider.”

  The fat brother widened his stance. “I’m not maken any deals with you, Beaver Jean. Getten the hell out of here or I’m gonna blasten a hole in you.”

  “Ye do that, and ye might break this bottle of fire I brought for ye.” Beaver Jean kicked with his good foot at the dogs, who were leaping up at him without much effect. With his boot, he popped one in the jaw. “Ye shut up, ye son of a bitch,” he said to it.

  The fat Schmidt shouted, “You betteren not maltreat them dogs! What you wanten for that liquor? And don’t tryen to cheat me, neither!” Then he brought the gun down and put two fingers in his mouth, high-pitch whistling for the dogs. The dogs jumped over one another through the snow and hopped back onto the porch and sat down, huffing and puffing happily, as though they’d saved the world from evil.

  “Ye heard any news about any Negro ones heading west?” Beaver Jean yelled. He adjusted his position in the saddle. His rump was quite sore, and his foot was throbbing terribly.

  The fat Schmidt rubbed his chin for a while, then shouted, “Mighten heard something about some caravans headen off to Dakota but I canten be certain.” He looked back toward the house and then turned to Beaver Jean again.

  Beaver Jean saw the thin brother pull aside a curtain inside and slowly put it back. “Ye better tell me straight, ye scoundrel,” said Beaver Jean. He thought these two were behaving mighty shiftily, as though they were hiding something.

  The fat Schmidt raised his gun, and the dogs started barking. “Donten you scoundrel me, you Beaver Jean! You owen me a spring’s worth of muskrat pelts after whaten you pulled last year.”

  “I don’t owe ye nothing!” Beaver Jean was getting mad now, and the blood seemed to be pooling in his boot.

  “That trap you setten upriver of mine was a sneaky a thing as I’ve everen seen in these parts,” said the fat Schmidt. “You donten have rights to that part of the St. Croix and you knowen it without me haven to tellen you it! So donten you tellen me to tellen you straight. Why, I oughten to come over there and pullen you down offen that old nag.”

  Beaver Jean leaned back and screamed to heaven, “By the time ye got over here, I’d be in Canada, ye old possum!” He calmed down a little and added, “Now have ye seen my l
ittle wife with the red hair?”

  The fat fellow shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He rubbed his jaw and looked again toward the house and back at Beaver Jean. “Jest what are you accusen me of, you Beaver Jean?” He moved his mouth some more but no words came out.

  “I’m simply asken if ye’ve seen my little wife,” said Beaver Jean. He sure hated dealing with the Schmidt brothers. They were about as contrary a pair of humans as he’d ever encountered in these parts. “I lost her and she’s about to birth.”

  “You comen all the way outen here to accusen me of taken your wifey?” said the fat Schmidt. “Well, I ain’t seenen no women about to birth and wouldn’t tellen you if I did, ye crippled beaver.”

  Beaver Jean thought that the man was a tad more ornery than usual. “Well, have ye seen that pair here what are Negro and run away from their master?” He held up the notice on Eliza and Davis.

  The fat Schmidt scratched his armpit. “No, I haven’t seenen your woman or the slave pair neither. But for a bit of that potato liquor I mighten be able to tell you what I knowen about a caravan mighten be headen somewhere. For a side of that bacon them dogs can smellen on you, too.”

  Beaver Jean leaned forward. “I don’t have no bacon, ye scoundrel!” he shouted over Alice’s ears. “That’s the smell of my bleeding foot that’s got yer dogs all scallywagged.” He raised his foot in proof. “Now I might be willing to swap you some potato liquor for some whereabouts of those people I’m searching for, but only if ye swap me some of that rhubarb jelly I know ye made last spring and kept down in that cellar of yers.”

  The fat Schmidt stepped back and peered through the window and into the confines of his own house. He turned back to Beaver Jean. “Don’t you talken about my cellar! You don’t knowen if I got a cellar over there or whatnot, and I tellen you what. I catchen you sniffin’ near my cellar and I will throwen you down in it and locken you up good ’til youen nothin’ but bones for the worms.”