Angels Make Their Hope Here

by Breena Clarke

  When Jan left the house, he had planned to head up onto the next ridge to Noelle’s place. Her house was his house, too. Instead he headed down.

  The descent was quiet and dark. Jan’s feet were sure of the way—were always confident in buckskin. Their bottoms were intimate with this ground, and all that could be known could be felt through the balls of his feet. The people of Russell’s Knob were clever in their twisting and turning. On their circuitous pathways they never risked slipping off or being caught on spirit paths or being discovered by outsiders. In this precinct, Jan Smoot could keep his head in darkness or in light of day.

  When he was in smelling distance, two figures burst through rustling understory to meet him and nuzzle his hands. Portzl and Friedl, his cousin’s mastiffs, came to accompany Jan to the porch. They were waiting for him. Doubtless they had heard him make up his mind to come and had listened for his footfalls.

  Pet slept on his back with his mouth open and gassed the place with ale breath. Jan pushed him toward the wall with his foot and came beneath the covers beside him. Pet had warmed the bed but not yet soaked it with sweating. Jan was comfortable at once. Pet moved about in adjusting to Jan’s presence, but he never woke.

  Pet woke before sun up, moved close to Jan, put his hand on Jan’s member, and stroked it.

  “Leave off, Pet,” Jan whispered and shifted himself.

  “Is a wonder you didn’t stay to watch the old man with his new gal,” Pet said and giggled.

  “She’s a little girl. He ain’t doing it,” Jan said.

  “How you know if you ain’t stay to watch,” Pet asked.

  Jan punched him in the side and laughed.

  “What she look like, Jan?” Pet asked.

  “A pretty little dark plum. Ah, but she’s skinny and ain’t got no tits. She’s a little girl.”

  “Uncle likes ’em grown. He likes ’em big.” Pet snickered and drew his hands to illustrate bulbous breasts.

  “The old man ain’t gettin’ so much pussy lately. He’s living like a papist since Noelle got mad at him. She’s the only one that’ll take my part, Pet,” Jan said.

  “Jan… I,” Pet stammered.

  “Oh, shut it, Pet. No point you gettin’ a beatin’, too. An’ Hat could have took my part with Uncle, but she ain’t ever going to do that. He’s thrown me out. The little girl is sleeping in my bed, Pet,” Jan said in a plucky voice tinged with hurt.

  Two happy, chattering voices burst out of the surround when Dossie came from the chicken house the next day with a basket of eggs. As the two chatterers approached, Dossie saw an oddly dressed woman accompanying Jan. She was clothed in a tunic of softened deerskin and a skirt of the same and skin boots decorated with quills and feathers.

  The woman’s face was trained on Jan’s. He carried her baskets and pouches and tried to hold her around the waist as well.

  “Hey, little nanny goat!” Duncan burst from the house and startled Dossie, calling out from the porch in a voice and manner that she had not yet ever heard. “Hey! Where you been wanderin’?” Duncan yelled. He hurried toward the woman, swept her up, swung her around, and squeezed her waist. He set her back on her feet and swatted her backside. Jan stepped away to allow his uncle this prerogative, but he didn’t completely give up the woman. He raised his hand to her cheek, and she held it while she looked at Duncan. For one blessed moment Jan was exhilarated.

  Dossie stopped and stared openly at the three. Oh! At last the woman of Duncan Smoot’s house had come back. But it was clear when she walked onto the porch and entered that this was not her house. She was comfortable but exuded no air of ownership. Her bundles and baskets were left on the porch, and both Jan and Duncan treated her as a guest. She nodded her head toward Dossie.

  “Girl, bring me some of tha’ coffee I smell,” she said. Dossie continued to stare, taking in the woman’s striking countenance. For it was her altogether rather than some piercing, pretty eyes or one lovely nose or spongy soft, smooth skin or her thick braided hair singly.

  Duncan, who’d been wholly engaged by the woman’s arrival, came back to himself. “Dossie, this here is Noelle. Miz Noelle Beaulieu,” he said with a charming and humorous emphasis that made the woman smile broadly and show all of her teeth.

  “Noelle, this here is Dossie. Boy, take off Noelle’s boots,” Duncan ordered Jan. Dossie realized she’d never seen Jan so happy as he now seemed. His face was split wide across with smiling. He sat before the woman in the cross-legged fashion and pulled away her boots. When Dossie brought the coffee, Jan took the cup from her and gave it to Noelle.

  Duncan looked like an embarrassed hound dog in Noelle Beaulieu’s presence. He drank in the woman throughout supper. She traded looks and smiles with him so that Jan knew she had forgiven Duncan and was as itchy for him as he was for her.

  Jan knew them best after all. After supper, he gathered up Noelle’s things from the porch and took them to her place. He knew she’d stay the night with Uncle.

  Jan considered his relations with the two of them. Noelle would have made a perfect wife for his uncle. But she would not—could not—be obedient to him. You can’t tie a Spirit Woman up in the kitchen and expect her to cook and clean and tend to young’uns. She has got to be out and about her healing. She can’t be expected to let herself be told what to do and not do by a man.

  She would have made a good mother for him, though. Jan’s mama had been Noelle’s dearest friend. Her death had only taken her body away from them is what Noelle always told him. As much as his mama loved him, she was surely still watching and guiding, Noelle explained, and so they must keep a place for her. Jan reflected that his fervent little prayers had simply never been answered. Nobody’s god listened to him! He’d wanted his mama’s body, and he couldn’t have it. He wanted them—Uncle, Noelle, and him—to stay together around a hearth, under one roof. He could not have that either.

  At daybreak Dossie woke to see Noelle’s back as she walked away from the house. The woman in doeskin was carrying her boots and picking her way out of the yard. Her eyes were trained on the path. Her hips moved with energy like potatoes in a sack. What kind of a wild circumstance was this woman who looked so different and acted so different? The surprise was that Mr. Duncan seemed smitten with her. He’d looked at her and listened to her with rapt attention throughout supper. Dossie had to admit she was annoyed. It didn’t suit with him being God. This woman’s sudden appearance had messed up her cloud of imagination. She’d conjured up a whole circumstance with herself at the middle of it holding on to Mr. Duncan. Here come this woman! Dossie kept up her sulky reverie throughout the early morning until Duncan Smoot came into the kitchen for his repast. “I want my coffee, little girl,” Duncan said sharply. Dossie came back to herself quickly. His face was freshly splashed with water, but he did not smile at her as he’d become accustomed to doing when his first cup of coffee was brought to the table.

  “Hey, Dossie gal, gwan in and help Hattie with our supper,” Duncan said as soon as they reached the Wilhelms’ porch. Dossie’s head bobbed in response like a puppy’s. She quickly looked down at her feet when Jan, Pet, and Ernst Wilhelm, seated for their morning repast at the Wilhelms’ kitchen table, turned in her direction. “Tell Hat to sen’ me some sour milk and bread ’cause I’m hungry!” Duncan called loudly, then sat. When Dossie bowed her head in automatic concession to his command, a small cloud of shame passed over him. Though perfect obedience was what was wanted and expected in a young female, Duncan did not like to see Dossie cringe. If anyone would ask, it is why he’d brought her here. He could not stomach what he’d seen of her treatment at the hands of the lowlanders.

  The boys, too, had learned to obey. Perfect obedience or suffer the punishment was what all of the People observed. Though, for Jan and Pet, it was not always clear whom to obey.

  “Petrus has work to do here, Duncan. I need him at the brewery. He cannot go today,” Ernst Wilhelm said and started the tug-of-war. The cousins exchanged a glance,
then continued with their mush and bread and coffee. This argument would not be settled by them. “Petrus must stay here today.”

  “That big oaf there is worth two men, and I need him. We’re negotiating for a string of mules. Jan can’t handle them alone,” Duncan said.

  “My son ain’t no oaf, and he ain’t born to do your bidding!” They were bald faced in their scrapping about who should tell the boys what to do. But Wilhelm was the more exercised because his wife ceded authority for her son completely to her brother.

  “Calm down, Wilhelm. I ain’t stealing yer boy. I’m just borrying him. What say you, Hat?” Duncan asked, asserting his authority with his sister. The boys hung their heads and waited for the answer.

  “Let him go, Mr. Wilhelm. The three banded together is better,” Hat pronounced.

  “Squaw!” Wilhelm snarled at his wife. “You would side with Duncan against daylight. Your brother don’t own my son!”

  Petrus Wilhelm and his father frightened Dossie. It was not solely on account of the fuss and tussle that erupted when Duncan and Ernst Wilhelm spoke but because they were so pale. Neither of them was brown tinted by sun or circumstance. Petrus Wilhelm did not, at first sight, look anything at all like his mother. More’s the pity, Dossie thought, for she believed Miz Hat was the prettiest woman she had ever seen. Pet had his father’s lank brown hair and, though his body was modeled on his father’s, it was not yet as hard and fat. Pet had the same small sky-blue eyes, the identical long, bony nose, the same blushing complexion as his father, and the similarity was often remarked upon. Though Mr. Wilhelm raised his voice in shouts, Duncan Smoot did not cower before him. And though Petrus Wilhelm was the image of his papa, he was obedient to his uncle.

  Pet wanted to rebuke his father for insulting his mother, but he did not. No boy in these hills rises against his father unless he is prepared to hurt him. This was Pet’s eternal turmoil, because he loved Papa, though he would defend his mother with his life. That, too, is the mountain boy’s code.

  “Papa,” Pet said, pushing back the empty bowl of mush. His youthful appetite satisfied, he was eager for riding and raiding and adventure with Duncan and Jan. They were a band.

  “I got to go and look after Jan. He’s soft and liable to get hurt,” Pet said and slapped playfully at Jan’s head. “It’s only a day gone. Me an’ Jan’ll work like beasts when we get back. Uncle needs an ox. That’s me.” He spoke in the self-deprecating tone of voice that always succeeded in extricating him from a fuss with Hat and Duncan and his papa, but pissed Jan.

  “Don’t let your uncle get you killed,” Ernst Wilhelm said. He rolled his eyes at Hat, though she had cast her eyes to her lap. “And take care of Jan. Your mama will be inconsolable if he gets hurt.”

  Duncan and the boys returned at suppertime. The band had cajoled three jacks and a jenny from the landing after driving a bargain with a boat boy who had swiped them off a westbound barge. Ever the clever bargainer, Duncan skinned the boy—giving him half what the animals were worth even on the fast market—and the three were jocular, pleased with their adventure.

  Dossie nodded to Duncan when he walked onto the Wilhelms’ porch behind Jan. She wanted to rush up and hug Duncan because he’d returned. Dossie restrained herself at some effort, and he rewarded her by holding her chin high, asking her to bring him a repast.

  “Mr. Duncan wants a glass of sour milk, ma’am—an’ some bread for it, he said.”

  “Well, he gon’ wait for his supper jus’ like Mr. Wilhelm!” Hat retorted with some humor in her fussing.

  A look of grave discomfort crossed Dossie’s face. Hat noted it and was some bit alarmed. Was this girl so scared of Duncan that she dared not jump to do his bidding?

  “He hasn’t been layin’ a hand on you, has he?” Hat asked, feeling guilty that she hadn’t marked the relations between this little gal and Duncan.

  Affronted at the question, Dossie spoke up like she’d done that first time Hat had seen her. “No, ma’am. He does no such thing! I only wan’ him to have what he ask for,” she answered plain and simple.

  Hat chuckled and remembered that she had once been absolutely obedient to her brother. “Pippy, go fetch me…,” Duncan would say, and she would run off to get string and small knives and glasses of buttermilk.

  “Yonder,” Hat said and pointed toward a crock. “Give him sour milk and some of tha’ stale bread and tell him I say to stop up his mouth with it!” she said with a guffaw.

  Dossie knew that it wasn’t proper for her to sit at Duncan’s side on the porch with Mr. Wilhelm and Jan and Pet. She wanted to listen to his banter, though, and feel his domination of the other men. This was the part of seeing him in company with the others that she most enjoyed. She liked crediting that Duncan was chief among the others, and that all of the others, including her, lived in his heaven. His voice cut through the others’ talk when he expressed an opinion or told a tale or rebuked one of the boys. She presented the buttermilk and bread to him in the midst of banter and withdrew to the kitchen.

  Later Hat gave her a pot to hoist, and she did and carried the dinner stew to the table.

  “Sirs, your dinner is down,” Dossie mumbled shyly. Jan and Pet laughed stupidly, and Duncan cut his eyes.

  Still worried that she ought not to be seated among the others in God’s heaven, Dossie sat on the edge of her chair ready to leap up to answer Duncan’s slightest wish. The boys snickered at her and hunched each other’s ribs when their uncle was not watching.

  After eating themselves to founder, Ernst Wilhelm and Duncan went to the porch to smoke cigars and drink whiskey. Jan and Pet followed them, and Jan began to dance—raising his arms and shuffling his feet in soft moccasins. A cloud of smoke was soon so thick around them that Dossie stood back in the doorway and watched and listened. She was transfixed at the sight of Jan’s dancing and got woozy from the aroma of liquor and the smoke. Hat did not let her linger long.

  “Come away,” she said and led Dossie to her own bedroom.

  Dossie stopped just inside the doorway and, as before, she marveled. She was still unsure that Duncan was not God and these others his minions. Their places—their houses, their beds, the chairs at their hearths—had the atmosphere of a heaven. The People of Russell’s Knob were, no doubt, caught in tangles and angry fusses, but they had plenty and they were lusty and loyal and celebratory. Yes, she had indeed been rescued by God and brought to Canaan Land.

  The room was a large one and was divided in the middle by the large bed. All of Hat’s wardrobe and her many adornments were placed to the left of the bed, and Ernst Wilhelm’s clothes and sundry were to the right of the great bed. Once inside the room Hat began to loosen her clothes as if to slough off her great and many duties, placating and providing for her titans. She stooped to pick up her husband’s clothes from the floor and snorted with annoyance. She was a fortunate, privileged woman in Russell’s Knob, but Harriet Smoot Wilhelm was not self-indulgent. She was busy. She was a woman of industry and so was weary at the end of the day. Hat sat in her high-backed rocker and set to brushing her voluminous hair with a large fancy-handled brush. She twisted up her hair in thick ropes and further wound and pinned the ropes to her head. She covered up her head with a cloth.

  Miz Hat was changed when she came into this precinct—this part of this fine room that had her chair was nearby the window facing east, that had her accoutrement, that had her embroidery on a small table beside her chair, that was a cozy within a cozy home and hearth. If you did not see her in this room, you might think she was stingy with smiles. Oh, but here, unfurling her hair ribbons and looking at her combs, she was animated and cheerful as a kitten, a laughing girl. When she’d done up her own hair, she went to a drawer in her chest and took out a sleeve of red cloth.

  The sleeve was tied with a fancy ribbon and, when Hat opened it and lay it out, revealed pockets for combs in a bed of deep green color. The inside of the wrapping was further embellished with stitched pictures of birds and flo
wers. Hat smiled gleefully when she spread the breathtaking array of bone and wooden combs. Dossie caught up her breath at the sight of them.

  “Ah, Miz Hat.” Dossie was dumb and overwhelmed with wonder. “Where they come from?” she asked.

  Hat snickered behind her hand and hugged her hands over her stomach. “Mr. Wilhelm brought me a fancy present when he behaved badly and I stung him, you see,” she said and executed an intricate set of eye movements. “I wearied him. I fussed. I cried constantly until he went to the city and bought me this. Then I was sweet again, you see.” Hat giggled. “Whore’s tricks! We all learn them. But are they not a delight?”

  Her words were thrilling, they seemed uncertain waters, a grown woman’s secrets. Ah, she knew Miz Hat suffered her husband. Dossie disliked him herself.

  Hat pulled off her headcloth and applied firm but gentle fingers to her hair. “I’m glad of you, girl,” she said massaging. “Cissy and Noelle fought over fixing up my hair. They played with me like I was a doll. I was a very spoiled dolly before Cissy died,” Hat said, letting her levity fade.

  Hat’s nut-colored hands were beautiful on the white sheets when she pulled back the counterpanes and exposed her bed. Ah, in God’s house they are flush in bed linens! Hat’s hands amazed! She had nails so clean and smooth shaped a baby could suck her fingers like a tit.

  To have a warmth beside you in your family is not a prize or a privilege; it is a necessary. So surely God would have a necessary, because God would have all that was necessary. God wouldn’t go without. God must have a family.

  Invited into the bed, Dossie lay awake beside Hat and listened to the drunken talkers for a time after Hat had fallen asleep, disappearing beneath her covers. Had she escaped and landed next to God and his family of folk? Dossie still believed they were her divine deliverers. She slipped out of the bed onto the floor, drew up her knees, and sat back against the four-poster. Miz Hat was a wonder! She was so sweet when the men weren’t around. Well, sometimes she was sweet with Jan, but with Mr. Duncan most of all. It seemed she never wanted her husband or son to see her smile.