The blacksmith’s eyes widened. “Imma send erry Negroed figure I know to dat Stillwater place to get dem sum freedom. If all dem slave catchers dumb as yull, they be safe un soun in broad daylight even if day’d be carryin’ signs whut say ‘I’s escaped my massas. Catch me quick.’”
Beaver Jean didn’t turn around and moved farther into the fort. He sat down at a table where a man served bread and beer. He asked a young soldier if he knew of a monsignor leading the committed souls away from their rightful masters, and a young soldier said, “The father to the Indians and Negroes? Yeah, he’s here. Been back in the quarantine for a neary a month.”
“The quarantine?”
“The pox afflicted a lot of the people. We put ’em on the south end and put up some fleety walls. The father’s been hauling water for ’em from the Bad River. You can catch him coming back anytime.”
“I believe I will do that just after I finish my sup,” said Beaver Jean. “Thank ye for yer kind help,” he said.
“Surely,” said the soldier. “But I’d turn wide of that pox infestation if I were you.”
“Thank ye for the warning, but I never been sick a day in my life unless it was induced with hard liquor. And once I had some toes removed for infections, but that too was a self-inflicted affliction.”
The soldier held up his two-fingered hand. “I lost these digits in the raising of that wall yonder.” He pointed toward where Beaver Jean had entered the fort. “Now alls I got left is this gristly pair. When you find the father, will you ask him if my digits will be returned to me in my heavenly way?”
“For yer kind help, I will,” said Beaver Jean. “Yer a good boy. As fine a one as I hope my own to grow up to be.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the soldier. Then he farted loudly. “Excuse my disturbance. I feart I have worms of some kind in my inter workings.”
“Drink some clear water mixed with a little turpentine. It’ll clear ye right up,” said Beaver Jean. “Same concoction works for lice in yer beard and armpits.” Beaver Jean told himself to remember those two bits of wisdom to teach his son.
Beaver Jean got up and wandered around for a while. He talked with some trappers about beaver prospects. He talked with some traders from the American Fur Company who told him money was now in buffalo. Finally, the people who had been crossing this way and that way, brushing shoulders and talking mouth to ear, moved away from the main thoroughfare, opening up a wide space down which a skinny old man tugged a cart full of water buckets. The people on either side raised handkerchiefs to their noses and mouths, and many turned away from the man. Beaver Jean approached him.
“Well, ye must be the monsignor every soul’s avoiding,” Beaver Jean said as he passed. “God bless ye and all that.”
The old man wore dull black pants, a black wool shirt so dusty it could have been gray, and a handkerchief around his neck. “Terrible, terrible disease,” the monsignor said.
Beaver Jean joined him in step. He helped the old man with the handle of the cart.
“If your soul’s not pure as snow, you better back away from me. The Lord’s my only protection from the affliction, and you’re like to get it, should you follow me to where I’m going.”
“I’m healthy as a horse,” said Beaver Jean. “Heard ye rode with some runaways out here.”
The old man walked quickly and breathed heavy. He seemed quite tired but moved despite it, pressing forward. Then he dropped the handle and said, “Yes, man. Here, take this if you won’t be deterred like a body with an ounce of God-given sense in his head.” He plucked a clean handkerchief from inside his shirt and wiped his brow. He straightened his back and walked quickly now. “Come along,” he told Beaver Jean. “Hurry up.”
“This cart weighs considerably and is left-leaning to boot,” said Beaver Jean. “I shall take my time, sir. God bless ye and all that.” But he did pull a bit harder and pick up the pace a little. He remembered how infuriating it was when Alice would walk so slow as to let the snowdrifts pile around her hooves, even as the angry, cheated Indians were gaining on them. “About them that runned away?”
“What do you want to know about it?” he asked. “I don’t lie. But I’m not inclined to offer information to those that needn’t have it.” He pointed out a gopher hole to Beaver Jean so he wouldn’t trip in it.
“I heard maybe ye took up some scallywags what did run away from their master back in a town called Stillwater on the St. Croix River,” Beaver Jean said.
“What happened to your leg?” asked the priest. “Or your foot? I see you have a gimp.”
“Had to be relieved of some infected toes,” said Beaver Jean. “Ye bring some runaways out here?”
“Well I might have done something like that,” said the old priest. He looked ahead, seemed to be gauging how much farther he had to pull the cart. The water sloshed over the bucket rims as the cart jerked over a rut. “You’re welcome to look if you want, but you won’t find any help here in getting anyone you find back to where you want them to be. In fact, I say the word, and you might catch hell for it.”
“This place be runnin’ over with soldiers,” said Beaver Jean. “Ye think they don’t have the correct sense of right and wrong? Where’s the general or the man in charge of this outfit?”
“So long as I been here, these men have all figured right and wrong from the good book and no other place. We serve, all of us, only one master here. And when these men are confused, they come to me for answers.”
“Well, I figure to just look around and see what I can see.” Behind them and the cart, the thoroughfare closed again with people.
“Suit yourself,” said the priest. “But I warned you about the pox and such.”
PART III: ORPHANS
23
Angel’s Doll
ANGEL HATTERBY WOULD SPEND most of her infancy banging her pink fists on what turned out to be, for her, death’s sturdy locked door. Millicent laced Angel’s food with whatever household poisons the child would drink without objection. Sweet liquids, such as borax mixed with sugar, worked well. Jimsonweed caused fever and shaking, enough to alarm Barton and bring him running from wherever he might be. Millicent only wanted him to be with her. She wanted him to see what a careful and dutiful mother she was. She wanted him to compliment her, smile at her, stay with her. But again and again, he’d wait until the child pinkened, sat up, and felt better, and he’d be off again. Millicent became more creative, more clever. Ashes from the fire caused an eerily similar ashy color in the baby. She’d send for Barton and cling to his arm as he pulled back the blanket to see if he too could see the odd color. She sometimes dabbed chloroform tenderly onto a handkerchief and wafted it soothingly under the child’s nose. Millicent simply had to take care not to let the little girl inhale too much and to hold her tongue forward so she didn’t swallow it and suffocate. Millicent had learned her lesson about that. She’d been careless with the first, but not with this one.
Millicent did these things to Angel not because she didn’t love the baby. She did. And she tried to be very careful, so as spare Angel from what happened to that first child. She hadn’t meant for that to occur. No one could say she wasn’t a good mother. Everyone could see how difficult that loss had been on her. She had been, of course, completely devoted to the baby, like any good wife should be to the child of her husband. But to have Barton turn away from her after the child’s death, not touch her or kiss her or share a bed with her unless he was roaring drunk and confused, was too much. She needed Angel to bring him back home from his many, many trips, his many, many distractions. So she was restrained with Angel, and Millicent’s self-control had succeeded. Angel was alive, after all, and growing like other normal five-year-olds, unlike the first child, the poor dear.
Angel’s curiosity about where her mother went at dusk compelled her to be naughty, but to be naughty while also being good. She saw her mother creep past the bedroom door and heard her mother’s hand sliding down the banister. Angel cli
mbed out of bed without thumping. In her bare feet, she padded down the stairs, but she did it without putting her filthy handprints on the wallpaper or smudging the butternut handrail Father had specially made for Mother when she cried and cried about him leaving on business again. Angel crept through the lavishly wallpapered blue dining room, but she didn’t touch Mother’s silverware, nor the candlesticks, nor the stuffed peacock Father bought for Mother when she threatened to jump into the river and never be seen again. Angel didn’t smear the stained glass windows on the dining room doors or put her fingers through the lacy ruffle of the sofa pillow. Angel sneaked through the winter kitchen, but she didn’t filch bread or get too close to the new stove, which had come on the train all the way from Boston, the stove that Father ordered for Mother when she said she’d throw a rope from the rafters of the livery and hang herself if he ever left again. Angel did go outdoors without Mother’s or Nanny’s supervision, but she stayed inside the fenced yard and didn’t pull petals off the flowers, which Father had arranged to be planted by the former gardener to Andrew Jackson’s wife when Mother threatened to lie down in front of the stagecoach and get trampled to death if he took another business trip south without her.
Angel scrambled out the door and behind a cottonwood tree. Angel counted to ten and peeked around to look for Mother. Angel loved the trees. She loved how they towered over the Hatterby house like protective grandmothers. She loved their green glow and the homes they made for all the little animals. She didn’t get scared when thunderstorms came and scratched the branches against her bedroom window or when in autumn the trees dropped all their leaves and looked like her nanny’s crooked fingers.
Angel had never known her mother liked the trees too. Her mother seemed to favor only her cats and her dresses and her parasols and her father, of course. But here she was! Under the trees too! Angel tried to be very quiet. She held her breath. She stood like a statue. Her mother knelt in the grass. Her skirt would get dirty! Angel was so surprised, she gasped. Her mother spun around.
“Angel?”
Angel froze, quiet as could be. She closed her eyes.
“I see you, Angel,” said her mother. “Come here.”
Angel swallowed. She stepped alongside the tree.
“Come,” said her mother. “It’s all right.” Her mother waved her over.
Angel ran to her and crashed down beside her. She put her head in her mother’s lap and looked up at her mother’s face. Mother had been crying. Her eyes were all wet and red. Angel didn’t worry because her mother cried a lot.
“You’re supposed to be in bed,” said her mother. She petted Angel’s hair and placed a strand behind her ear. All month, Angel had been laid up with various stomach illnesses. Angel’s stomach often pained her, and she only had one memory of a time when it hadn’t grumbled and pinched and barked at her like a dog. It was when her father had invited her mother along on a steamboat ride down the Mississippi River, and they had been gone for a month and left Angel in the care of a nanny, whom Father insisted upon hiring the last time he’d had to leave.
Among the trees, curled on her mother’s lap, Angel clenched her stomach muscles when she felt the gurgling noise coming. She tried to quiet it. She asked, loudly, “When is Father coming back?”
“Angel,” said her mother. “You needn’t shout. I’m right here.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Angel.
“In a week or two, I suppose,” said her mother.
“What’s he doing?” asked Angel.
“Business, dear,” said her mother. “He’s trying to make a state here, or a territory first, I think. I’m not sure which. Don’t worry your silly brain with it, dear. It’s a man’s concern and women only look foolish when they try to discuss such things.”
“What are you doing out here, Mother?” asked Angel. She played with the hem of her mother’s skirt. “Your skirt is getting dirty.”
Her mother paused and breathed and said, “Hmmm.” She pulled Angel onto her lap and pointed to a flat granite rock in the grass, about the size of the big Bible in the house. “There’s an angel down there,” she told Angel.
“Like me?”
“Yes,” she replied. “But no, that’s not what I mean.”
Her mother stood up and took Angel’s hand. “Come along, now,” she said. “Come away from here.” Her mother seemed sad.
Angel’s curiosity about the site overcame her. That same summer, she waited for a day when her mother was confined to her bed, sick, and Angel sneaked to the gardener’s shed and took a hoe. She scampered to that same place and dug and dug around in the peat, looking for angels. She dug and dug and got dirty until her shovel hit the top of a box. Angel wiped off the top and saw the letters O-P-A-L followed by HATTERBY, Angel’s own last name. She recognized that. Angel saw that name on the stone outside the gate of her own house.
Angel tugged the box out of the earth and pried it open with a stick. A cool breath and milky scent escaped the box. Inside was something wrapped in some white cloth. She picked up the gauzy bundle and unwrapped it. And between her hands unfolded a cherub doll, perfect with a creamy complexion. A doll! One unlike any she’d ever seen. Angel clutched it close to her chest and decided it was hers to keep. She filled in the hole and hid with the doll behind a stump in the woods. She pretended to serve it supper and coffee.
After only a few days, though, Angel’s cherub melted and distorted into something ugly and began to smell of wet bread. Bugs crawled from the eyelids and a sticky mess pooled where clean, cool limbs had been. Angel found a branch with a forked tip and pushed the bundle through the woods and down to the St. Croix River. She watched it bob on the current before finally getting lost in the froth. She collected a few clamshells and skipped back to the house.
When she was older, Angel would wonder whether she had actually done this, whether she had actually seen what she saw. The smell permeated. And Angel remembered this too: one evening as she lay in bed, trying to sleep but biting her nails, her mother darkened the doorway. She dropped the box onto Angel’s floor and walked away. Angel didn’t dare get out of the bed, but the smell from the box was familiar. She turned over and gnawed at her nails until they bled. When she woke, the box was gone, and she wondered if it had ever really been there. She wondered if she had dreamt her mother’s dark shape against the faint light in the doorway. But the smell hung over her, cold and moist and dead.
Later in the morning, her mother came up with soup in a white bowl, black swans gliding along the rim. Angel loved the bowl. Steam clouded above it. Her mother’s eyes had tightened and grown small. Her lips formed a thin smile.
“Here we are,” her mother said. “Drink it all gone.”
Angel sat up, and her mother arranged the tray over her. She dipped the spoon into the broth, blew on it, and sipped it obligingly.
“Hot,” said Angel.
“All of it,” said her mother.
Angel swirled the spoon, which twisted the floating cream into the shape of a winding river.
“Don’t play. Eat.”
Angel filled the spoon and brought it to her lips again. She swallowed. Overwhelming the cream and stronger than the onion, pepper, and salt, a bitter and sour flavor bloomed on Angel’s tongue and in the back of her throat. She felt her stomach clench.
“That’s a good girl,” said her mother.
Angel swallowed it all.
For Angel, the next few weeks passed in a haze of steam, darkness, sweats, and otherworldly visions. She felt they were real, but, as in a vivid dream, she couldn’t be sure. She heard a voice, over and over again, as she drifted in and out of sleep. A child’s voice, talking and playing, at once familiar and foreign to her, tinkered in her brain as though speaking in a room with clanking glass panes. She tried to lie very still on her pillow so as to hear the child clearly. Any rustle of her blanket or her hair obscured the voice. It bounced and echoed as if the speaker was traveling through rooms or turning his back to her.
I’m hungry, he said. My stomach’s rumbling, he said. What’s for supper?
Angel stiffened, didn’t breathe. She opened her eyes wide and waited for the blur to clear. She looked around her room, wondering if someone was there. The room was dark and humid, but there was no one in it but her. What are you making for supper? the boy said. Can I have a cup of milk?
Angel’s stomach rumbled then and her tongue thickened with thirst. Angel became aware of a fortitude and boldness building in her own body, as though she were about to leap over a wide creek or jump from a tree branch to the ground. She felt like herself, but she felt like something else too. Something bigger, lighter, ghostlike. Then, in her dark, solitary room, she opened her mouth and whispered, “I can feel your hunger. I remember you.” She could smell the rancid odor of her own breath. She wondered if she was dying, but she was not afraid.
Did you hear that? the boy said to someone else. Are you talking to me, Mother? he wondered.
“I’m here,” Angel whispered again. Her teeth chattered. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”
Who is that talking in my head?
“I’m very sick. I might die.” Angel closed her eyes. She imagined the boy turning and looking and spinning.
I hear someone, the boy said. No, he said. Someone else.
Her gut seized and she retched up a drop of black, wiry spittle. She smiled, pleased in a way to have such power. “If I die, I’ll haunt you,” she whispered.
Who’s that? the boy said. What do you want?
Then, just as suddenly as the magic had come over her, it was gone. The door creaked open and Angel’s mother walked into her bedroom, carrying another tray.
Stillwater Page 14
