by S. L. Hawke
“Get out of here!” Uriah Sloan yelled. “Forgive me, this was my fault! Run!” Emma ran out of the livery and up the hill. Folk laughed as she ran by thinking she was just another Indian boy running from mischief. She ran past the Mission, ran past the dairy, and ran until her breath was gone, until she saw the white picket fence of Evergreen, and then she ran inside the gate, to the water course, waded down into it and collapsed, washing McKenna’s seed off her until the cold water numbed her. Then she waded out and wept.
*******
Soquel Creek, Sloan Farm, 4 days later…
I got off my mare and walked her down to my mother’s house thinking about my morning with Emma. She had finally understood the impact of Uriah’s betrayal of her secret identity. I was relieved that her company, which I would have normally had, along with a cart, was no longer something she wanted to offer. Emma’s suggestion of taking Faustino on as helper seemed the logical thing to do. After Angus’ wedding, I returned to the Estate and saw, as we bathed together, that Emma had bruises on her, and a rope burn. These injuries horrified me and I did not believe her story of subduing an agitated horse. We argued, our first fight, and I felt badly.
I had wanted to tell her of the discoveries Shaw-Jones had made at the workshop, of the sounds we heard in the gulch, similar to the ones she and I had heard passing through there. My plan was to return there with the hope of contacting whoever seemed to call for me. I had to find out what fate seemed to be in store for all of us.
Death could not be so soon in my future. I refused to believe it. There was still much to do and my mind was turned now on how to avoid being part of this next stage coach robbery Ingram wanted to engage in. The gold I had hooked these fish with was not enough to secure a crew, enough rations, or guarantees for the ship to reach Panama. Going over the isthmus was dangerous, but the time it saved was worth it and the ship waiting for them in the gulf commanded a high price to break the blockade of the Union Army. These thoughts helped still the anger I had left with after Emma and I argued this morning.
I was glad, however, as I came through the gate, that Emma was no longer bounding about the county since her secret was given up. She did not fight me very much on it. The news of the Sheriff being a murderer filled the papers with pronouncements and odd jokes about how the law will preserve your innards. The town knew very little of the real conspiracy and Fergus had yet to reveal the contents of the ledger found under the Chinese Oven at the cemetery. Andrew had told me we would hold a meeting soon to discuss our plans for the arrest of Tom Poole, but I did not count on it. My thoughts went back to Emma.
Emma had nightmares of her own ranch burning. I was discretely informed by the Duchess that the anniversary of the death of her young son might have something to do with Emma’s sudden case of nerves. She had begun to vomit at the slightest whiff of scent, weep suddenly, and sleep a lot, yet somehow managed to look radiant and more beautiful than the day I first met her.
There was also an epidemic in town, but it seemed only to affect meat eaters. I noticed this and warned my kin. Henry, admiring my observation, managed to stay clear of it as well. Sophia adjusted her menu and bought meat from the Carboneras instead of the Howser family and was doing a brisk business as a ‘safe and clean’ restaurant. Emma ate only the freshest food she could get and seemed to improve, eating no meat, just fish, and I was grateful for the Japanese meals we shared together. We had decided to marry, and so I came to let my mother know of our intentions and to get her blessing.
Uriah had done a sound job with the gate and the barn was in good order. I chose to visit today, knowing he was at the house of the Soquel’s mercantile owner, Hiram Imus, helping them with the business but mostly, I suspected, trying to get a glimpse of the young, rather spirited daughter. I smiled, remembering my encounter at the store just a few weeks earlier.
“Two sacks of oats, one of rice, two of beans, and three cans of–” I scanned the shelves behind the counter at the meager offerings of vegetables, glad that my sisters were good picklers, but then saw something I did not expect. “Three of …those.” I expressed surprise and asked the storekeeper’s daughter, Eliza, “Does that say pineapple and guava?”
The tiny, dark-haired girl behind the counter grinned with a nod, then daintily climbed a ladder to reach the cans I had pointed to on the wall.
“So, are you Uriah’s big, foul-tempered brother?”
“And whom may I be addressing who knows that Uriah is my kin?”
The little girl held her doll size hand out with frankness and fearlessness. “Miss Eliza Imus.”
Her first question had startled me. “I’m sorry, you have me at a distinct disadvantage, Miss Eliza.” She grinned mischievously while loading my cans into the basket I was filling with flour, eggs, sugar, anything I could get my hands on that could feed the my brother and my mother well.
“Mrs. Cahill down at the mercantile in Santa Cruz said that while she was waiting for her horse and trap to be brought forward, a foul-tempered and undressed man terrified her child by verbally assaulting her from a second story window of the Harris House. It’s well known that Henry and Sophia Harris, the proprietors, had a relative turn up after ten years of being away.”
News traveled fast, as Lam had warned me it would. From Eliza’s recounting I could tell she did not put too much stock in the tale. I cleared my throat. “Actually a child was banging a ball against the side of the hotel.” Embarrassment made me flush. “How much is owed?”
“Five and fifty,” Eliza said. I handed her the coin I had in my pocket. She stared down at my twenty dollar gold piece. ”Balls bounce, I believe. Banging is for firecrackers. It’s amazing how loud ordinary noises in the morning can be after a late night visit with kin.”
“You like my brother?” I asked, diverting the conversation and enjoying the blush that brightened her doll-like face.
“In polite society, which this is not, by the way, I should be offended, but seeing as that you may be family one day, I would have to venture that, yes, and Uriah Sloan may have some redeeming qualities, like the ability to say nothing at all most of the time. Silence, by the way, speaks volumes, unlike small talk which clearly takes up time but not space, or hides banal attempts to be witty–” She said this quickly and with the tone of amazement. “–like the remainder of his kin.” Clearly Uriah’s stalwart silence and lack of Sloan verbal exchange were a point in his favor. She gave me my change and I lifted the full basket over the counter, winking at her elucidative banter. She giggled, like a sprite, and I was glad that my brother took an interest in her, though, he’d best be up to her level if he planned to court this one.
“Well, I know for a fact, that Sloan men like a woman who knows her own mind and is not afraid to voice it.”
Eliza Imus giggled again, bringing a smile to my face. “Thank you, Mr. Sloan. I will take that under advisement.”
I hesitated before handing the basket up to Faustino.
“Sloan men can be stubborn and slow to make their intentions known, like mules. Try not to hold it against him.” Faustino came forward and waved to Eliza as if they were old friends. Eliza nodded and waved in return. Miss Imus sent both of us off in our wagon with a sparkle and a wave.
Uriah did not deserve that sweet, spunky girl. But then I did not deserve an honored place in Emma’s or my mother’s heart either.
“Mother?!” I called, coming through the door.
“Here, Andhra, back here,” I heard a voice call me. Mother was on the porch, thin, wide-eyed, and somewhat pale from the cancer. Her breath wheezed, but her eyes burned bright blue. I bent down and kissed her cheek, hugged as hard as I could without hurting her, and sat down on a footstool at her feet. The tears on her cheeks I did not deserve. I heard someone else move about and peered in the kitchen. A young Chinese girl came out, dressed in bright silk. With my mother’s gestural encouragement, the girl crept forward like a wary puppy.
“Come on, Ang, don’t be shy.” My m
other grabbed onto the child’s hand and held it fast against her cheek. “This is Ang. They found her hiding in a trunk in the hold of the steamer from San Francisco. Emma’s mendicant, a Chinaman named Lam, brought her to me. She is my hands, my feet, and my eyes. I cannot do without her. To think they would sell this poor child. What would your father say?” Then my mother kissed the child on the cheek and asked her to make tea. She watched the child go back into the kitchen then took my hands again. “Tell me about my grandson.”
After a long description and my mother’s delighted inquiries, I knew I had come to hear what must be said between us, and to acknowledge her impending death.
“This is a terrible job you have taken on, Andhra. You may never be able to face the folk or your family again.”
Her response surprised me. I looked at my hands. She placed her vein-ridden ones on mine. “Beth’s husband is not one to be crossed and Russia has fallen to the wolves of Europe. You have no protection there. You must go away to where you can find safety, not only for Hiru but for Emma as well.”
How did my mother know of my impending nuptials with Emma? As if reading my mind, she smiled, face drawn and pulled from pain. She began to cough. Ang came out quickly with a cloth and held my mother as she coughed violently and bloodied the cloth in front of her. She pushed Ang away as Ang tried to get my mother to drink the laudanum, as they called it here.
“Leave us for a moment,” ahe whispered to Ang. I held my mother’s hands together, feeling helpless.
“Mother, I should move here, help you and Uriah.” The words came out, but my mother knew my heart was not in it. I and she knew she would not last the year.
“Listen, Andhra, and promise me this.” She became her old self again, clear-eyed, steel and bone, reminding me so much of Cynthia, I was startled into silence. “You will start a new life, free from us, free from your past. Promise me.”
I could only nod.
“Andhra, I have something to confess.” My mother’s face held pain as if that were all she held dear.
“You don’t have to confess to me,” I murmured.
“I was a slave.” My mother held out her hand to me. In its palm was a scar, something I had always known her to have. I assumed she got it from cooking, and often she would tell us children she got it from handling a hot pot without thinking, and so that is what happens when you do not think first and just react, she would tell us. The moment was clear as day before me.
“I don’t understand, Mother–”
“I was eight, my brother and I were starving, and we ran around the streets of Dublin like rats. Then I was caught trying to take a few potatoes from a cart. The next thing I knew, they burnt me in the hand and put me on a ship to America.” My mother’s eyes grew far away as she remembered the story. I leaned forward to hear her better and to not miss any moment left. “I was lucky no man took an interest in me. I was awkward, tall for my age. Instead, I was purchased under bond, into a household as a maid. One day, the master of the house decided he wanted his due and tried to take me in the barn.” My mother closed her eyes. “That’s when I met your father.”
The shock of this story froze me to the footstool.
“He stopped the man, quite cleverly, actually. By opening the barn door and letting the horses out!” My mother smiled at the memory. “Then your father took my hand and told me to follow him. I don’t know why I did, but I knew if I didn’t leave there and then, my life would be forfeit. So I followed him. He put me under the canvas of his wagon and off I went!” She waved both her hands to the distance. “We didn’t stop until we got to Ohio. By then, I was his. But he insisted that we start our new life as properly as possible and we married at the courthouse. Isaac told the Justice that we had the same name, but I was from Baltimore.” My mother giggled, but tears formed at the corner of her eyes. Then she grabbed my hands with a strength I remembered from my childhood. “He gave me a new life that day.” She touched my face. “You have his spirit, my boy.”
Suddenly my mother crumpled in pain. The servant girl came out as I held on to my mother. She began to wail in pain, completely rigid. Ang was no stranger to this as I was, horrified to hold her shaking body, to listen to her moaning and crying in pain. Ang took out the opium bottle and pressed it between my mother’s tight grimace. She sucked it like a babe until the entire contents were gone. Then I watched her slip away into the dreams it offered.
I helped Ang get my mother to her bed, the odor of sickness all but complete in her dark room.
A door slammed. I walked out into my mother’s parlor to face my younger brother again.
4
Uriah looked at his brother, unable to do more than nod his head in greeting. The attempt McKenna had made on Her Highness was still with him, as was the beating McKenna had given him after Emma had run off. McKenna hit Uriah in the face, then the gut, but Uriah held up. Until McKenna pulled his pistol.
US Marshal Andrew Jackson Sweeney saved him. Rifle in hand, star visible on his jacket, Sweeney simply said: I need to get to my horse. You gentlemen take this outside, or I’ll take you to the jail. Either way it’s your choice. McKenna let go of Uriah and walked away, without a glance, as men do when they have made a mistake.
They were the same age, but Marshal Sweeney didn’t fear the men of this town. He didn’t live here. Sweeney took Uriah back to his sister’s hotel and back into her embrace. It was then Cynthia sat down with him and told him about the Union, and how Uriah needed to understand what he was getting into with Confederate beliefs.
He was almost glad that he had been beaten, understanding now that the world was much bigger than the farm, than the importance of making money, and his place in the town.
“You are one lucky son of a–” Marshal Sweeney said as he poured a whiskey at the hotel bar for Uriah. “He know you are A.J.’s brother?”
Uriah nodded.
“Well, that’s not good. I mean, well, it’s important McKenna fall under his spell.”
Uriah frowned at Marshal Sweeney. “What are you talking about?”
“I know what you are.” Uriah looked at the man in front of him. A man skilled with a sword, a man as inscrutable as the Asians he now claimed kinship to, a man who believed in freedom of the soul.
Uriah saw his brother inhale slowly, then look down as if he were trying to figure out a problem. “John’ll come after you if you don’t arrest him first,” Uriah said as he hung his head. He turned to face Jack. “I was angry and jealous of your freedom. John took advantage of me. I know that now. Our sisters’ lives were put in danger because I thought I could prove myself to be a force in the community just like you. Instead, all I did was beat innocent immigrants at the end of their workday, or bully young women into becoming a political boss’s plaything, or–”
“Blackmail the rich in this town for using whores instead of their wives.” Here Jack did a strange thing – he took off his hat and stared at Uriah. “Did you know about the Sheriff selling body parts?” Uriah took a step back. It now all made sense, how Uriah was told he didn’t have to bury the babes on the hill. Let the Sheriff’s Chinese do the dirty work.
“I buried the babes. But I didn’t do any more beyond that.”
“So you didn’t know the Sheriff was kidnapping the whores, torturing them, and preserving their–” Here Jack looked away. “Well, the important thing is, you weren’t party to it, were you?” Jack looked so confident, like he was a lawman himself. Was he? No, he had to clear his name, Uriah convinced himself.
“The Sheriff always sent me back to the jail. I thought he just wanted to–”
“What? Wanted to ‘take advantage’?” Jack narrowed his eyes. Uriah felt shame heat his face.
“He was the Sheriff! I couldn’t– I didn’t–” Uriah kicked the sideboard. “This is no different from you running off pretending to be Grey.”
“What?” His brother took a step forward. Uriah stepped back, afraid. Jack was a man who could best anyone.
“Why do you care which side is which?” Uriah shook his head. The words came like a flood, and with it the relief of telling the truth at last. “John said Emma’s husband, Liam MacAree, needed to be taught a lesson in who rules the town. That marrying into Royalty didn’t give him the right to turn away progress or good money.” Uriah ran a hand through his blond hair and paced as more words made their way forward. “I believed John. He seemed wealthy, everything a man could be, building a future with a vision of a wealthy township that we owned, as a community, beholden to no one but ourselves.”
“But John was just interested in making good for himself? Or was it something else?”
Uriah frowned at his brother’s insightful questions and how easily he seemed to draw things out. It didn’t matter anymore, keeping silent. He loved Eliza Imus with all his heart. He’d do anything to impress her as much as Jack had impressed her. Eliza had freed him from this silence he had imprisoned himself with.
“I see now, it was all for John,” Uriah began. “He wanted to profit from the division of our country. He wanted to take lands from those that had been here long before we came, who held their land outright. Worse yet, he treated these helpful, generous people like animals because they had the fortitude to work and the audacity to dance after dark.” Uriah felt himself shake, as if years of rot were draining from his infected heart. “Sophie used to tell me stories of Dah, of the Scots, that we are, and then Mother too, how the English hated the way the Scots lived their lives, because they chose to sing through their hardship, and create a life for themselves free of tyranny…” Uriah swallowed down a sob, but the tears ran in rivulets down his face. “I don’t want a life like that. I want to farm, to have children, to be free of what others say how we should live. How any of us should live. That is what I want.” Uriah searched his brother’s face for any signs of anger, disgust, emotion that differed from what he was feeling now, but saw only patience and…pride?
