Angels Make Their Hope Here

by Breena Clarke

  Dossie was too nervous to sleep deeply in case Mr. Duncan wanted her to fetch or to follow. She listened and was certain she’d identified his snoring. She rested and drowsed against the bedpost listening to Jan whistling. He was the last to be awake. Pet had long since ceased playing his spoons. Mr. Ernst Wilhelm must be the one who was snorting snores every so often. It was a rude sound, and Dossie attributed it to him without proof. She listened to Jan make up music with his own mouth and mark the cadence of his dances. There were trills in Jan’s sounds that put Dossie in mind of some birds and, though the dancing was unavailable to her, she heard the shushing of Jan’s soft moccasins on the wood. Was that the flapping of wings? What was this boy? Was’t possible he took the air when all was quiet and all the others slept? Only her fear of waking Hat kept her in the bedroom away from peeping at him.

  Jan Smoot was the most handsome of all God’s people. Jan was dark eyed like his uncle, deep tan skinned, fluffy haired beautiful in an aloof, unself-conscious way. It was as if he knew very well how beguiling his face was but didn’t care to take advantage by calling attention to it. How could he help smiling, though, for his soul was sweet. When he smiled he drew all eyes, and even the blind woman at the well would know that he was beautiful, for she would hear the sharp sigh of delight that passed the lips of folk who could see him. It fitted together to Dossie. Jan was very much like his uncle.

  Finally it became completely quiet in the Wilhelm house except for snores. God’s people were noisy when they slept, Dossie thought. It was a measure of their happiness, their peaceful and unguarded ways, that they lay themselves down and closed their eyes with little care when they were spent from the day. And they sucked air and made sounds that must have carried for miles. But no one heard and found them. Their mountains kept their sounds from giving them up. Birds were their confederates, everywhere masking their voices with singing and chattering.

  Dossie did not know it, but not everyone slept at once in Russell’s Knob. There was vigorous defense of their perimeter. Folk in Russell’s Knob liked to say they had learned to sleep deeply without care because no one ventured up so high but the bears. Truth was they posted lookouts.

  They kept and built their own fires at their own hearths. They slept in pretty places. Their beds were sturdy and covered with quilts. They dressed up fine. They had the mastery of their beasts—their donkeys, horses, hogs, chickens, and cows. Their chickens gave good eggs. They freely killed what ducks they wanted, fished the streams, and ate the catch. They planted the crops they ate and sold.

  Dossie had listened to the drunken barbs between the men and heard wisps of Hat’s discontent. She knew that Duncan was very harsh with Jan for his mischief-making. But though they fussed and upbraided each other, they were tightly woven.

  They pushed berries into their mouths from bushes at the back of their own porches and went about openly with blue-stained faces—unabashed.

  They sang if they cared to. They were as unconscious of it as warblers. They fiddled and worked their feet to entertain themselves. They drank ale and whiskey and smoked tobacco. The People were beautiful in all their aspects and saw it in each other. She thought of herself as come all this way and here she sits on a promontory among these wonderful folk—all of God’s family.

  And she—Dossie—was delivered here by Mr. Duncan Smoot just like Evangelist Zilpha had said God would do. The Evangelist had been so sure! She said it with a heat that chased off any kind of doubt. She said Dossie child was going to be swept up by a strong, kind, powerful God who would answer a girl’s little voice raised in prayer.

  “You woke, Dossie?” Duncan called under the window before it was full seeing light. She was awake—poised to hear him and to answer. “Yes, sir,” she said quietly.

  “Come on then. Let’s us go.”

  He had his donkeys tied together and ready except for the jenny who stood apart. Hat woke, too, and wanted to fix coffee. Duncan refused, saying that Dossie would fix coffee when she got home. The sound of his words thrilled Dossie. He had named her and given her a purpose and told of his satisfaction—all in the few words he spoke. Hat packed a basket of stale biscuits, buttermilk, and quince jam and gave it to Dossie. The girl hoisted it and followed Duncan. He hung her basket on the pommel and lifted her into the saddle to ride the little way up to their home—God’s promontory. Dossie was careful to pull herself tall in the saddle like he said and tuck her skirt and leave her legs onto one side of the horse. “Make yourself a good seat,” Duncan had told her the first time he put Dossie on horseback. “Spread your butt out and settle. No fidgetin’.”

  He brought the she-donkey’s reins to where she could handle them. “Click an’ cluck at her. See if she’ll follow,” he said. Then he went back to string up the other two donkeys. Dossie ran through some sounds and came to a tongue-sucking call for the beast. Her ears fanned back and forth and brought some energy to her haunches. Duncan came around and took the horse’s reins with one hand and the other donkeys’ in the other. He clicked to the horse to set them all off in a parade.

  Jan let cold water over his head and came around the side of the house to see his uncle and the girl setting off home. A completely undignified and unbidden thought crossed his mind. He was green jealous her—of Dossie. Uncle had pushed him off! Uncle pretended to love him still, but something had changed. And Jan thought it was unseemly that the girl followed Uncle like a puppy dog—so obedient. It bothered him to feel like a visitor at Uncle’s hearth. Hadn’t he grown up at Uncle’s feet and tied his flies and fetched his nails? It stung him that Uncle walked off with the girl riding his horse and him not saying one word to Jan. Uncle did not tell him a single thing to do.

  “Do this for me, boy,” Duncan would say all day every day. Him and Pet competed to please Uncle. Early on it was sugar tits in his pockets for the fastest one or the strongest. Then they competed not to be punished by him or to earn his grudging compliments. And now he had the little girl to fetch for him.

  Ah, let him go then! Jan sighed and looked around to see what chores he would do for An’ Hat to earn his seat at her breakfast table. He was hungry and regretted eating so little at last night’s supper and drinking so much.

  Jan Smoot had been Charlie Tougle Jr. when he’d witnessed his cousin’s birth. He was called Son then. Only after his mother’s death did he get the name Jan Smoot. Uncle had given him the venerated name of the youngest son of Lucy Smoot to save him the pain of being called by the name of his mother’s killer.

  It had caused Jan some confusion and discomfort losing his earliest name. The name belonged to the time that contained his mother and, though Duncan tried to erase the ugly memories of the killing, he was unable to stop talking about Jan’s mother. So she remained a part of his uncle’s memories and An’ Hat’s and Noelle’s, but not his. Jan had no clear recollections of her unless he strained and wished and sweated and invoked magic.

  2

  WHEN DUNCAN RETURNED FROM his winter work, he wondered momentarily who was the beautiful woman sitting on his porch step. Indeed he rubbed at his eyes to clear them and look. The woman saw him lift his arm and she waved excitedly. Dossie! He hadn’t expected her here. He’d wanted to come up and clean himself and see her and the others at Hat’s dinner table. He hadn’t expected her to be here. The pretty one is not responsible for her own prettiness, he thought. It is an accident of nature. She can’t be credited or blamed for it. So Dossie could not help that she was pretty. And Duncan could not help that he wanted to gaze on her. If the horse had not been impatient, he’d have sat and looked at her for an hour’s time. Could she stand and hold her arm aloft for that long? The sight of the girl’s right arm high above her head, hoisting her right breast and mashing its nipple against her bodice, might have been the one vision that would change his life.

  Nervous to peruse Dossie’s body, Duncan could see that she had flourished in his absence. She was taller and plumper. She was robust. She was exuberant. She stood on
the porch and giggled.

  She ambushed him. She wanted to see him first—touch him first. She wanted to be the first one to hang on his arm and ask him how he’d been keeping. She wanted to receive the first smile of paternal pride when he looked around and saw the winter accomplishments.

  She wanted to draw water and warm it for him to clean up. She’d spent winter with Noelle and Hat, as before, but she’d been coming to Duncan’s house each day since the Flower Moon—since the streams had started to run. She rose in the morning looking for him—preparing for him. She threw open the windows each day to clean out dull odors, but as the air was still cool, for three days running, she’d made up a fire and cozied the place with wood Jan chopped. At dusk when he hadn’t come, she extinguished the fire and went back to Noelle’s house to sleep.

  He arrived at midday, and she thought it was inappropriate to run at him and grab on to him, though this was what she wanted to do. She wanted to press her body flat against him and have him feel the beautiful breasts that Hat had been trying to make her conceal under an apron. Dossie knew Duncan’s tastes—what things Jan and Pet laughed about. She stood on the porch and waved furiously. Oh, she was so glad to see him that she could have bitten off his ear and chewed it and swallowed it for love of him! It was a tribute to her new maturity that she remained on the porch until he and his horse rode up to greet her.

  “The most a woman can gain is what I want for you, little one.” Duncan Smoot had announced his decision to Dossie with unabashed earnestness at the conclusion of all the harvest festivals in the first season of her life in Russell’s Knob. “I want you to learn to read and write and to be clever,” Duncan said in a voice that surprised even himself. Dossie was to understand that he was thinking of her the way he thought of his nephews, as one of his children, as a stone needing polish and embellishment.

  “Noelle and Hattie will look after you for the wintertime,” Duncan had said, explaining that she would stay with Noelle and have winter lessons with her at the longhouse. His sister had agreed, Duncan said, to instruct Dossie in sewing, cooking, and other womanly sciences such as canning, jam making, cheese making, soap- and candlemaking. Duncan went further to recommend that Dossie learn beadwork from Noelle. He said it was certain Dossie’s cooking would improve if she had the chance to closely study Miz Hat. It would be a time for useful instruction.

  It was clear Duncan was pleased with the plan he’d devised. He did not expect Dossie’s face to fall. He was prompted to add that, in the cold months, there were others who depended on him elsewhere. Some folk left bondage after the harvesttime, he lectured her, for they had some provision then and, though the weather may be cold and their foot coverings sparse, they took the risks. Shouldn’t he go to help them, he’d asked. She was stung. She’d believed that, as he was all of the world to her, she was all of the world’s concerns to him.

  She fought to squelch tears, as she knew he would be displeased at such a show. But the list of deficiencies and duties and skills to be mastered was so long!

  “Must I have winter lessons, sir? I can keep your house. I can stay in your house while you’re gone and keep it clean. I can learn all about cooking from Miz Hat. I don’t need to learn no reading, Mr. Duncan,” Dossie blurted, having lost complete control of herself. Could she not go with him on his travels? She wanted to say that she could not bear to be anywhere else but with him and that she was frightened of Noelle. She would gladly follow Miz Hat, she wanted to plead. She could work hard, but why must she have winter lessons in reading and writing? Perhaps she was too thick for it and would fail badly. Miz Noelle would be pleased then to show her up to be a dunce.

  “Yes, of course you must,” Duncan answered without equivocation. Dossie had not asserted a contrary opinion since the first day when she’d piped up to say she would stay with him. She was obedient and deferential as was proper. But just as on that first day, Duncan felt a shiver of presentiment. It felt like the young girl had a soul’s mission despite him.

  “You are not my servant girl,” he said. “You are a ward in my house and I must look to your instructions and your circumstance. Yes, you must learn to read and write.”

  Dossie knew that she had made a mistake to question Duncan. She would take her winter lessons and do all else that he said, or she must go away from his house.

  Dossie’s plan was crumpled some. She must go to live with her rival? For now she did think of Noelle Beaulieu as her rival. She was an obstacle. She’d have to learn all of Noelle’s lessons and then move her out of the path.

  Ah, this is what Dossie wanted! She knew it. She wanted to find a place of permanence with Mr. Duncan Smoot.

  “You must learn a lot, little girl,” Duncan had said to her when he mounted his horse the first winter he went away. “Mind yourself.” He’d left her sitting on Noelle’s porch without lingering further or looking back. He revived the funny, delightful feeling she’d had before Noelle had come into the picture. He cared for her. He reckoned her—Dossie. He sounded like he was saying he would miss her.

  A circuitous path wound between the houses on the western chain of the town and was well traveled. Dossie learned her own cuts between Noelle’s longhouse and Duncan’s and the Wilhelms’ houses. Her winter responsibilities were considerable, as Mr. Duncan’s chickens required daily attention, and she was a hand at the soap- and candlemaking, as well as being required to learn letters and figures and the history of the town.

  The very largest homestead occupying the pinnacle of Russell’s Knob was the Van Waganen place. The Van Waganens were prominent, purely African-looking people who had been in Russell’s Knob since early days. Their ancestors were people who had come from disparate places in Africa but had been acculturated to their enslavement in the sugar islands. They came to belong to Cornelius Van Waganen, a Dutch farmer who purchased them in Barbados, then died intestate in New Jersey. Van Waganen’s former slaves left and hid out in Russell’s Knob. In those days, if you reached the hideout, you had reached your refuge. Russell Sitton and his band would not let them take you back. Russell Sitton had cut a border—had set a mark—had said, “Here I stay and I will kill a man who comes here for trouble.” He punctuated his declarations with skirmishes. Most of the families, like the Van Waganens, had come without clear title to themselves. None was relinquished, and none was taken back.

  The Barlows, Gin and his wife, Sarah, and their children, worked hard on land leased from the Van Waganens on the eastern chain of the town. The Vanders—Honey; her daughters, Sally, Mary, Tilly, and Anna; and Paul, her husband; the Bells, who were Honey Vander’s people, as well as the Hovens, who were the part of the Vander family that broke off, moved away, and came back after the race riot in Cincinnati, all lived and farmed on the eastern chain.

  The numerous DeGroots in Russell’s Knob were all descendants of Jan DeGroot, who came a mountain after breaking from his brother over the decision to bring his jumble children back with him from the sugar islands. Made unwelcome in the lowlands by his white family, Jan DeGroot and his wife and children departed and came to the highlands.

  The Paul and Siscoe families had ancestors who were runaways and stayaways. The stayaways were those of the Delaware and Munsee who had stayed away from white towns when others of their nation left for west. The Pauls and Siscoes had passed down British land titles near Russell Sitton’s holdings, and all of these titles, contested after the War of American Independence, were later ruled legal. It was said by the older folk with reverence that Russell’s Knob was truly Grandmother’s town—ancient ancestor Grandmother. For the true knob—the core navel of the town—was these British deeds.

  The Sitton family, closely related to the Smoots, was directly descended from a woman called Grandmother Sitton, a Munsee woman who bore children for a British army officer. In lieu of marriage, she was given title to land for her children. She passed the title forward. She convinced the other women thus situated to accept the British view that the land was their
s if they meant to die to keep others from taking it. They raised their children to think the same. They fed them courage with their milk and mush, and they built up a settlement that became a town. And the Smoots became blood related to the founding Sitton family through their revered ancestor Lucy the Angolan, who became a Sitton wife.

  The Tougle family—Charlie Tougle’s people, Jan’s father’s people—were now spurned in Russell’s Knob. They’d been stayaways like the Pauls and the Siscoes, but left the town after Cissy Smoot Tougle’s murder by her husband because the Smoots swore oaths, and the Tougles’ shame overwhelmed their grit.

  The Beaulieu, Noelle’s people, were a curious group whose numbers had dwindled to only the one. The “Boo-loo” was what folk sometimes called them, though most of the inhabitants of Russell’s Knob were facile with languages and found little about the European tongues difficult. It was a way to tease the family because their fortunes had fallen precipitously over the recent decades. They were disesteemed because Noelle’s grandfather, son of a French rich-boy adventurer and an Angolan girl he bought from a coffle, had once been very haughty. He escaped from his father, lit out with a wagonload of silver and most of his father’s library. He came into the highlands to stay free after he’d sold half the books to a pair of westward-bound Jesuits he met in Trenton. The rest of the library—several hundred volumes in English and French—he displayed in his house. He built a separate cabin for the books off to its own for fear of a hearth fire, then joined the cabin to the house, which made it appear to be an old Algonquin longhouse. He sold the silver pieces over two decades in New York City and was well set. In Russell’s Knob, Jacques Beaulieu married a relative of the Sittons and had several children. All of his children except two daughters died in a harsh, pestilential winter when he was away. The two daughters left were idolized by Jacques Beaulieu and his wife. He aspired to educate them and marry them off to special candidates. Some folk would have it that the common tradition of calling the mixed-race mountain folk “Jacks” had some connection to the flamboyant Jacques Beaulieu, though others believed it sprang from Jack-in-the-Green fests and the Jamaicans.