Stillwater

by Nicole Helget

  “Ye can’t throw me anywhere, ye old whelp! Not ye or ye and yer brother both. Ye old turtles!” Beaver Jean wondered why the fat Schmidt kept such close watch over the contents of his house. He speculated that the Schmidts must have some mighty good foodstuffs in there. The Schmidt brothers weren’t friendly, but they were good cooks. Beaver Jean salivated. “What do I care whether ye got a cellar or not? Ye sure is acting fidgety.” He pounded his chest. All this yelling was giving his chest pains. “Now I would consider given ye my liquor and a warm fox rug I got rolled up here for that information ye were yapping about and a bit of that jelly with a bit of bread, if ye got it.”

  “Bread!” roared Schmidt. “Of course I gotten bread! We eaten like royalty here! You throwen me that rug, and I will tellen you the first bit.”

  Beaver Jean untied the rug from his saddle and heaved it to the Schmidt cabin. It landed just short of the porch. One of the dogs scrambled down and retrieved it, and dropped it at the fat Schmidt’s feet. He kicked the dog away from it then, and the dog yelped.

  “Seems to be true,” said the fat Schmidt, “that the Frenchy priest who baptizen those Sioux bein’ massacred by the Chippeways at Black Dog Village on the St. Peter River hasen organized . . .”

  Beaver Jean put up his hand and said, “Whoa now.” He took a deep, sanctimonious breath. “That river is called the Minnesota River, ye turkey. And them Chippeways are supposed to be called the Ojibwes.” Alice whinnied as if in agreement. Beaver Jean patted her neck.

  “You donten tellen me! That river is calleden the St. Peter after the saint. And Chippeways and Ojibwes is the same. Now you bettern be quiet or this deal is overen!” He swiped his hand in the air.

  “Go on, ye sensitive old coon. But it is too called the Minnesota River, now.”

  “Monsignor RaVoux hasen it in his head to taken those Sioux which canten get along with the Chippeways and moven them westward toward what they’re callen Dakota.” The fat Schmidt pointed his shaky arm toward the west.

  “That right?” Beaver Jean remembered his own grandpappy, who’d come down with fierce shaking toward the end of his life, how the man could hardly manage a sip of water without upsetting the whole of it onto his chest.

  “Well, I’m tellen it to you, arenten I?” said Schmidt. “Course it’s right.”

  “What’s them Sioux running away to Dakota from the Ojibwes got to do with the three I’m looking for?” Beneath him, Alice relaxed her hind legs, as though she was going to sit down in the snow. Beaver Jean heeled her in the belly.

  The fat Schmidt pretended not to notice. “If you’d shutten up, I’d tellen it to you. For one, it ainten got nothin’ to do with your wife. I hearden something bout a girl runnen to Texen or Mexico, though.” He leaned back on his heels and cracked his back.

  Beaver Jean wondered if Lydian had really run off to the south. She was always babbling about that place. He supposed if that was where she really wanted to be, he may as well give her a chance to see it. He thought she must have the traveling spirit, as he did, and that made him happy. He’d have to go get her, though, in time. She belonged with him. And certainly, his boy belonged with him. No one else could teach his son all the important lessons he knew. He wondered if his son living in Mexico would make him dark-colored or if he’d stay light, like him and Lydian.

  “For B,” Schmidt continued, “I hearden some Negro servants stayen at Fort Snelling defected their duties to them’s masters and found asylum in the bosom of the monsignor.”

  Beaver Jean puffed up with an important thought. “That is not right thinking on the part of that monsignor. Why, that makes him guilty of harboring fugitives, and I mean to bring him in too for a fine reward!” said Beaver Jean.

  “No, it donten! He’s a man of God and those rules donten apply to him.” He pulled up the waistband of his pants again. “He sayen himself that he is subjecten to no laws except the ones which God hasen given onto man and I for one agreein’ with him.”

  “Well, if yer so smart, which way they taken out to them Dakotas?” Alice felt weak in the rump again. Beaver Jean kicked her up.

  “You mean you donten know how to get to the Dakotas? What kind of trapper are you if you canten even find the Dakotas?”

  From inside the house came the high vibration of a harmonica being played. The fat Schmidt went to the window and rapped on it. The music stopped.

  “I know where them Dakotas be!” shouted Beaver Jean. “I been in that territory lots of times and took bears and lions out of that craggy wilderness. I asked if ye know which route that holy caravan is taking so I don’t have to wear Alice out looking down the wrong path when I could simply take the right one that’s been paved by the monsignor and his caravan of wrongdoers!”

  Alice sniffed.

  “If I dinten have that blind brother of mine to take caren of, I mighten ride along out there and seen what kinds of critters they gotten out there in that territory to catchen and sellen,” said Schmidt.

  “I’d never travel with yer crotchety self,” said Beaver Jean. “But that’s pretty good information, I must say. Now I’m gonna give ye the liquor, and maybe ye can let me sit by yer fire for a bit to warm up. My foot is hurt from an amputation I had to endure.”

  “You’re not comen in here. I’ll shooten you in the eye dead on if you thinken you’re comen in here. Now getten out of here and don’t you comen back!” He stepped off his porch carefully, so as not to lose his pants.

  Beaver Jean pulled a bag out from between his legs. “I was keeping it warm in there,” he said. He untied the bag and pulled out the bottle. “Here ye be.” He tossed it to Schmidt. “Share a bit of that with the skinny fella in there.”

  Schmidt caught the bottle, then yelled back, “Donten you be tellen me what to do with my own bottle.” Then he turned his back on Beaver Jean, slapped his fat thigh for the hounds to follow, and headed into the house.

  20

  The Disquieting Mother

  BARTON AND MILLICENT HATTERBY blew into the Stillwater Home for Orphans and Infirmed on a mid-April morning, hollered for Mother St. John, and demanded to see what white babies were for sale or adoption.

  “I’ve just got to have one,” said Millicent. Her brown eyes were warm as coffee.

  Mother St. John welcomed them down the hall, past all the rooms of children, toward the kitchen, where she’d put Lydian’s twins in a crib while she cooked. Big Waters pounded bread dough in the corner. She groaned disapprovingly when the couple entered.

  “I’ve got tea,” she said. “Would you like some to warm up?”

  “No, we’re looking for a son,” said Mr. Hatterby. He tucked a hand between the buttons of his coat.

  Millicent tightened her lips into a smile. Her husband was always wandering off to Fort Snelling to negotiate with the regiment men, to Grand Portage to bargain with the fur trappers, to the timber camps to collaborate with the foremen, to the sawmill to parley with the barons, to the river to consult with the steamboat captains, to the church to make deals with the priest, or to the Indian camps to sway the chiefs. He had big ideas about this town and territory and imagined himself at the center of organizing it. She wished he would stay home with her. She hoped that maybe a new baby would tether him to her.

  The babies lay tangled together on a blanket of red-and-black plaid. Millicent noted the aged Indian woman standing nearby.

  “Hello,” Millicent said.

  The woman nodded. She was chewing tobacco and moaning a little chant, conjuring up some wicked Indian spells, no doubt, thought Millicent. The nun laid one hand on the crib and stretched her other over the babies, as if to introduce them.

  “These are our newest additions,” said Mother St. John. “The bald one’s Clement. The other is Scholastica.”

  At the sight of the infant with swirling black hair, the muscles in Mrs. Hatterby’s neck swelled, and her throat felt as if she’d swallowed a thistle. That old itch, the kind she’d first felt months before when she’d b
irthed her own, returned to her fingertips. This urge, for her, was a thing hard to explain, both loving and hurting, teetering between care and pain, between the desire to stroke the heel of a tiny foot and drive her fingernail into the head’s soft spot. It was a baby’s vulnerability, its resilience, the thinnest ledge between life and death that made Millicent barmy with glee. She pulled a porcelain baby brush from her pocket and ran her thumbs over the bristles.

  “The boy’s the little one?” asked Mr. Hatterby. “The one that looks pale?”

  “I brought this,” Millicent said. She raised the brush a little to show Mother St. John. “I had hoped.”

  “Well, yes,” said the nun. “As you can see, the girl has a headful of hair—”

  “She’s got a darling widow’s peak,” said Millicent.

  “The boy is small, but he is doing well,” said Mother St. John.

  Mr. Hatterby pushed down Millicent’s arm. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said.

  “Yes,” Millicent said. “The hair, though.” She smiled. “I’m sure about it.” Millicent had to get her hands on that child. She had to brush that hair. She didn’t want to appear too desperate because Barton didn’t like it when she behaved hysterically or fitfully, and he often said, “Easy now, Millicent.” She hated to disappoint him. Early when Barton was courting her, they’d waded in freezing water and waited to see who could outlast the other. It was the first day the robins had returned. At first, the water stung her legs. But eventually, Millicent’s thigh above water cooled and numbed and her calf below the water felt amputated, as though it were not there. Millicent knew about this strange, little-known aspect of pain. Pain doesn’t hurt for long. As soon as you think you can’t stand it one more second, you do. And as soon as you think the pain’s unbearable again, the pain’s gone. She could’ve stood all day in that water. But she’d let Barton win at the little game and took care to display her ankles as she dashed out of the water. The good pain of that cold water reminded Millicent of this yearning to touch that baby. She could’ve just stuffed those hands and feet into her mouth and eaten the child up. She wanted her so desperately. Millicent had spent her entire thirty-five years waiting and wanting for people.

  The baby girl screeched like a stringed instrument.

  “Noisy one,” said Barton. His mustache twitched.

  “She’s upset from all this excitement,” offered Millicent.

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s right,” said Barton. “The boy. He doesn’t have much vigor, does he?”

  “He’s sleepy is all,” said Mother St. John.

  Barton Hatterby leaned over the crib and pulled the bald one away from his twin sister by the foot. “There we go,” he said. “That’s better. Now get a good look at them and decide,” he told his wife.

  Mother St. John cried out a little. She said, “We’ve learned that they’re really only satisfied if they’re together. They’re hardly any trouble at all when they’re together.”

  Millicent caught the wide-awake eyes of the boy. Such a strange look he gave her. He had uneasy control over his eyes, looping around in the sockets, but she knew that to be common in babies. He had the look of a cat she once saw and didn’t like. She felt known and invaded, challenged suddenly by the infant, as if he meant to unnerve her. His skin had the dull white pasty look of a newly born but already dead animal.

  “We’re not taking the boy,” she said.

  “Maybe we should wait awhile,” said Mr. Hatterby. “Perhaps another baby will arrive soon.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Hatterby. “We’d wait forever before there’d be another white baby. I know you wanted a son, but—” She studied the boy again. He was bluish and small. He looked like the zombies she had heard tales of.

  When Millicent was a small girl, her mother threw herself into the ocean and died after relentless attempts to get the attention of her husband, a captain in the French army in Haiti. After Millicent’s mother was gone, a Haitian nanny had cared for her and filled her head with talk of zombies and spells. A tapestry of a blue Jesus dying on the cross hung above the table where Nanny had prepared Milly’s food. Nanny had fashioned a small altar of colored bottles and a red-and-black rooster made of cloth, to which she presented three kernels of corn on the window ledge next to the tapestry. Milly had asked her nanny if she prayed to Jesus, to which her nanny had said of course. One must respect and fear all people who can come back from the dead, so that they don’t get mad and bite the necks of the living.

  Millicent considered the bald boy again. “No,” she said, “we won’t be needing him. Only the girl.”

  “But they’re really so much more content when together,” said Mother St. John. “As soon as I try to separate them—”

  “No, no,” said Mr. Hatterby. “We’ll only be leaving with the girl. Maybe we’ll have our own boy someday soon.” He gave his wife an obliging, sideways squeeze.

  “She’s really lovely,” said Millicent. “I’m her mother, certainly. I already feel like her mother, as though she belongs to me.”

  “I’ve got lots of other little girls in need of good homes,” Mother St. John went on. “Many past this delicate, crying stage—”

  Mr. Hatterby asked, “The baby girl, is she healthy enough? The boy’s not going to work out, and I won’t take a sickly one. Does she have worms or the croup? Are you sure these others didn’t contaminate her?”

  “They’re both healthy.” Mother St. John leaned over and moved the boy back near his sister and covered them both.

  Mr. Hatterby lowered his voice and leaned toward Mother St. John. “We lost one, you know,” he said. Two months before, Mr. Hatterby came upon a scene he’d never forget. His wife sitting, in the nursery rocking chair, was humming a lullaby, cupping the dead baby’s mouth around her nipple. Pale blue milk spilled down the porcelain cheek, running, running onto the wood floor. Mr. Hatterby discharged all the servants and help. He didn’t want the story getting out.

  He had nailed together a little box, dug a small hole in the frozen ground with considerable effort, and called for the priest. Together, as light snow fell, they buried the girl, just six weeks old, while Millicent watched from the window. For days, Millicent asked after the baby. Who was minding her? Other times, he’d found her sobbing, the front of her blouse soaked with milk. Millicent’s mind was as fragile as a prairie hen’s egg. Mr. Hatterby couldn’t determine whether she understood that the baby was dead and buried. Because he was a busy man and didn’t like getting involved in women’s troubles, he consulted with the priest, and they together decided it was best to quickly get her another baby and proceed as though the entire event had never occurred.

  Millicent felt a tingling rush of milk come to her breasts. “I think she’s hungry,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Mother St. John. “I heard about your loss from the priest. I’m terribly sorry.” She pursed a smile. “It’s hard getting such little ones through the winters here. I’ve had some troubles myself over the years. We had some Indian children with smallpox a couple years back. Terrible illness.”

  The Hatterbys didn’t respond.

  Mother St. John cleared her throat and fell quiet.

  Millicent thought the nun’s silence was a good thing. She hoped Mother St. John wouldn’t say anything that would make Barton change his mind about the baby, make her leave this place without that child in her arms.

  “We’ll take her,” said Mr. Hatterby. He took up the little girl and handed the babe to his wife. “There you are now. Your daughter.”

  “She looks of me, a little,” said Mrs. Hatterby. The girl child squirmed. Mrs. Hatterby brought the baby to her own face to kiss the little pink lips.

  Mr. Hatterby reached inside his coat and pulled from it a bag of coins. He pressed it into Mother St. John’s hand. She opened her lips but said nothing. Big Waters rumbled in the corner, but no one paid any attention to her.

  The baby boy squirmed restlessly.

  When they got int
o the wagon, Mrs. Hatterby lifted her shawl, unbuttoned her blouse, and plugged the infant’s nose until she opened her mouth and latched on.

  “She’s hungry, I bet,” he said to his wife. He clicked at the horses to move and put a hand on his wife’s thigh to steady her and the baby. “Everything will be all right now, won’t it, Millicent?”

  “Oh yes,” she said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” he said. “I knew it.”

  “This angel will get nice and fat,” said Mrs. Hatterby. And Angel is what they called her.

  21

  The Unwanted Ones

  NOW THAT THE BOY CHILD had been stripped of his mother, as well as his sister, Big Waters thought to convince him that she would not leave him. She rubbed the baby boy’s legs with lard until they glistened and were warm and limber. She wrapped him up tightly and brought him to her own chest. She chanted a little song, telling him he would be a strong warrior, a brave hunter, the rock for his family. The baby whimpered softly but soon fell asleep against Big Waters’ breast.

  Arthritic aches racked her body. Each movement sent switches of lightning up her back. Her own mother had been humped over by such pains as these. By the time Big Waters was a woman with children, her mother could stand no taller than a deer, no matter how many layers of bear fat Big Waters rubbed and pounded into the woman’s crooked spine. One day, the old woman disappeared into the prairie. Big Waters watched her hobble away, her head no taller than the tips of the Indian grass until she was a specter, and then gone. Big Waters wanted to call to her to come back, but she hadn’t. Perhaps if her mother had known what a help she had been to Big Waters. How her children had loved their granny’s stories of the old days and of Jesus. The old woman told many stories of Jesus and his spirit of fire. Fire, that constant source of entertainment, captivated the children. Big Waters had once caught her oldest trying to set fire to Granny’s hem as she slept. Though her hem was singed, Granny was patient with the boy and laughed at his antic. Those were days when Big Waters was young, with a strong husband and many healthy children. Now she moaned when she moved. She prayed to the warm west winds. When they came, her aches subsided. Soon they would bring longer days, more sunlight, better health for her. Then she would be more of a help to Mother St. John. To the little ones.