Where the Broken Heart Still Beats

by Carolyn Meyer

  Sinty-ann was glad, for Anna's sake, that the new baby was a boy. As much as she loved Prairie Flower, she believed it was always better to have a boy. Much more attention and affection were lavished on a son than on a daughter. And boys were indulged, allowed to do whatever they wanted.

  Now there were six children in Anna's family. Sinty-ann envied her: Anna was fortunate to have so many. The women of the People had few children. Sinty-ann had been much admired in her tribe because she had given her husband three children. Most women were lucky to have two.

  Lucy came shyly to the steps of the cabin and gazed up at Sinty-ann, waiting for news. "You have a brother," Sinty-ann told her.

  Lucy smiled. "And is he healthy?" she asked. "Mama has lost two infants that were not."

  Sinty-ann hesitated. The baby boy had not cried as lustily as she wished, but he seemed all right. "I think he is strong. You come and meet him."

  Lucy followed her into the cabin. Martha, who had gone to weed the garden, threw down her hoe and hurried to join them. The younger children tiptoed in and gazed in silent awe at their sleeping mother and the tiny, red-faced bundle next to her.

  But then Papa came with Mrs. Bigelow, who bustled in and shooed them all away, including Sinty-ann. Would this woman know to find sage to burn, to purify the room where the birth had taken place? Would she know to take Anna to the creek to bathe, to purify her body after the delivery? Sinty-ann supposed not. These white women seemed to know little about the importance of such things.

  Oddly enough, no one asked her where she had gone. With the excitement of the birth, her disappearance seemed to have been forgotten. That night when all had settled down again, Sinty-ann listened to the breathing of the Parker family sleeping on all sides of her and remembered her own children, how they had come into the world, how joyously they had been received, first the two boys, and then many seasons later, her precious Topsannah. She had lost everything else, her husband, her sons, her People, her way of life. But at least she had her Prairie Flower.

  She lay there thinking of what had happened to her in the wilderness for the past few days, of the panther that had become her puha, but mostly of the memories that had come back to her of her childhood. There was so much to occupy her mind, so many questions. Would her People have done the things that she remembered—to her own family? She knew the answer: she had been with them on raids, she had seen it with her own eyes, she had taken part in it. It was what the People did.

  There had never been talk of "right" and "wrong" as there was in this family, where the parents read from a book they called the Bible and insisted that she and Prairie Flower must learn parts to recite: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: ... Then there was the other thing they always wanted her to say: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.... Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. She turned her mind away from that.

  Her People didn't think about right and wrong. They simply lived their lives, hunting buffalo and making war on their enemies. The white settlers were their enemies. They had come onto the land where the People hunted their food. They had cleared away the trees, killed the game, built ugly cabins like this one, surrounded the land with fences so that neither the animals nor those who hunted them could roam freely.

  She had heard the old men of the tribe talking: when the white men came, everything changed. They had to be driven out. She had been part of a white family, and the People had taken her away. It had been difficult for a while, but she had become part of them. She still did not understand why the white soldiers had captured her at the camp by the river or why Uncle had brought her here. Maybe that had been a misunderstanding. But why did they not let her go now when they knew she didn't belong here? Why would they not let her return to her People where she belonged?

  Uncle had promised she could go, but now there was a war, "the war between the states," Uncle called it. Everyone talked about it, but Sinty-ann did not understand any of it. Something about the right to own slaves, Uncle explained. That much she understood: the People always had slaves. When someone captured someone else, the captives became slaves. She didn't know where Uncle had captured the dark-skinned people who were his slaves and worked in his fields.

  She resolved never to speak of what she had remembered in the wilderness. Not even to Lucy. A young girl with much wisdom, she could nevertheless not be expected to understand Sinty-ann's torment, the conflict she felt. The memory was too painful, and she willed herself to forget what had happened long ago and could not be changed.

  Ben had killed the panther, meaning to save Sinty-ann's life, or Lucy's. He didn't know that the panther was Sinty-ann's puha, her medicine. For a short time she had had medicine, but she was sure it was gone now, gone forever. As the life of the panther left its body, surely the puha left hers.

  She lay for a long time thinking about these things, and finally she slept.

  In the days that followed the family was caught up in the new life that had come to them. They decided to name the baby Daniel. He was a quiet baby and seldom cried, but he was small and needed to be fed often. Sinty-ann had hidden a little bunch of crow feathers under the mattress to ward off the evil spirits that might be troubling him.

  "Grandfather built this cradle," Lucy told her one afternoon as they sat on the long, shady gallery. Lucy rocked the cradle with her foot while she sewed. She was working on a cover for Martha's bed, stitching together small pieces of leftover cloth. Sinty-ann recognized scraps of her own calico dress. It was to be a gift when Martha married Jedediah. Sinty-ann was sewing new moccasins for Papa and Uncle.

  "All of us have slept in this cradle," Lucy said. She broke off a thread and looked at Sinty-ann. "What did your babies sleep in? Did they have a special bed?"

  "Cradleboard," Sinty-ann explained. She liked to tell Lucy about this, because it pleased her to recall the birth of her sons and the pleasant days when they were infants. "I make a bag of buckskin, very soft, and it is fastened to a board in the back. I wrap the baby in rabbit skin with dry moss to catch his mess, and I tie him in the cradleboard with leather thongs. All day he is in his cradleboard, and I carry him on my back or I prop him in a safe place when I do my work. At night I take him out and clean him and put him in his night cradle. It is made of stiff rawhide so that he can sleep in same bed with me, but I will not roll on him and harm him. He is happy. I am happy."

  Lucy stared at her incredulously. "All the time in a cradleboard, tied up like that? When did you let him out?"

  "When he is older I let him out to crawl around. Then he learns to walk. When he walks, his father puts him on a horse, and he learns to ride. By the time he is like James, he has his own pony. He plays games with other boys on their ponies. It is how he learns to be a great hunter. You see my boys, you understand."

  "But James is only six! He is just now learning to ride!"

  Sinty-ann allowed herself to smile at Lucy. "You see my boys," she repeated, "you understand."

  "Tell me about them, Sinty-ann," Lucy said. "Tell me how Comanches learn." Everyone else was away from the cabin, except Anna, who was sleeping, or Lucy would not have dared to ask her such questions. Sinty-ann knew that Lucy had been told not to speak to her about her life with the People. "Comanches," these white people called them. Sinty-ann had tried to explain to Lucy that it was a name given them by their enemies, but sometimes Lucy forgot and used it anyway.

  "First the boy learns to ride his pony," Sinty-ann said. "From then on, he is on his pony all the time. He doesn't use a saddle. He has to herd his father's ponies. He learns to use a rope to catch horses. His grandfather makes him a bow and blunt arrows and teaches him to shoot because father is out hunting and grandfather has more time to teach. He shoots birds and little animals. He grows bigger; he learns more. When he is lik
e Ben, he moves to his own tipi. My son Quanah killed his first buffalo when he is your age. We had a celebration for that. Pecos was older, like Ben."

  She continued, "First a boy becomes a good hunter, then he is a good warrior. He knows how to ride using his pony as a shield. He hangs over the side of the pony, one foot hooked over the pony's back, but he can still shoot an arrow. And he learns to rescue a fallen comrade, to pick up the body of a man, wounded or dead. Boys practice together. First they learn to ride in at full speed and pick up something from the ground, an old buffalo robe at first and then something heavier until they can pick up a grown man and put him on a horse. And if there is no one to help, he must be able to do this alone. It is a man's highest duty to his comrades."

  Lucy had stopped sewing. "But why?" she asked, leaning intently toward Sinty-ann, forgetting about the quilt in her lap, forgetting to rock the cradle.

  "A man of the People must not allow the body of another warrior to be scalped. This would allow the dead man's soul to escape. There would be no peace for him."

  "Then why do they scalp other people?"

  "Because they are enemies."

  She stopped suddenly, thinking again of her husband and sons. As many hairs as grew on her head, that was how often she wondered where they were, if they were alive. After a moment Lucy sat back and resumed her sewing, her foot once again rhythmically rocking the cradle.

  Sinty-ann glanced down at the tiny baby in the cradle and looked quickly away. He was not strong; he would not do well. The crow feathers might help. Her People would give a sickly child a new name, hoping to change his fate.

  She wondered if she should say this to Lucy, but in the end she said nothing, and the two of them sat in silence, each locked in her own thoughts.

  Chapter Seventeen

  From Lucy's diary, August 31, 1861

  This morning we buried little Daniel John Parker, aged twenty days. We wrapped him in an embroidered cloth that Mama had been saving for a special occasion—but not this—and laid him in the tiny coffin Papa made for him. Papa dug a small grave beneath the hackberry tree in back of the cabin and placed the little wooden box in it. Then Grandfather read from his old Bible: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." When he finished the Psalm, he led us in prayer. We each took turns throwing dirt on the coffin. Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow had come with some chicken potpies. We ate and visited for a while, and then it was over.

  We have known for some time, perhaps from the very beginning, that Daniel was a frail baby. His cries were weak, and he did not nurse strongly. But we all hoped that somehow he would survive, that we would care for him so tenderly and so well that he could not help but live. Mama and Papa and Grandfather have prayed for him constantly since his birth. But none of this appears to have done one bit of good, and yesterday he left this life as quietly as he came into it. I suppose it was meant to be.

  Papa hides his feelings and goes out to work in the fields. Mama weeps, of course, but she also is exceedingly angry. At first she would not say why she was so riled, and we thought she was bitter because God had taken away her child. But finally she admitted to us that she blames Cynthia Ann for harming the infant, for putting some Indian spell on him. Although we have tried to tell her that this is nonsense, she refuses to listen to reason.

  This is Mrs. Bigelow's doing. She found feathers, crow feathers, I believe, hidden in Daniel's cradle, and she leaped to the conclusion that it was a spell. That's what she told Mama. I know that Mrs. Bigelow has been frightened of Cynthia Ann ever since our trip to Austin in the spring. Of course she also remembers well that Cynthia Ann stole two of their horses on her first attempt to run away shortly after she came to us.

  Mrs. Bigelow claims she still sees something wild and untamed in Cynthia Ann's eyes. She does not see what I see: that Cynthia Ann is not the same person she was back then. Mrs. Bigelow was insistent that teaching her Bible verses would subdue this wildness, but she is not yet satisfied that her plan is working. And because Mama needs to blame someone for her heartbreak, it is an easy thing for her to put the fault on poor Cynthia Ann.

  I tried to explain this to Cynthia Ann and begged her to stay away from Mama. Actually I did not tell her the whole truth; I simply said that Mama is grieving deeply and that she wants to be left alone. And Cynthia Ann seems to understand. She admitted the business about the feathers to me—that she always tied a little bundle to the cradleboard when her children were babies. But Mama did not want to hear about it.

  This is not all of the bad news. The war continues, and the situation worsens. Jedediah has heard from his friend Sul Ross that Texas has already raised ten regiments to serve the Confederacy. Mr. Ross has gone in, and Jedediah has told Martha that he plans to join as soon as he has helped Papa with the cotton. She is quite beside herself, but she is determined to put on a brave face. Now it seems that they will marry earlier than planned, but of course this is not the time to speak of a wedding, with so much sadness in the family.

  I do not understand all the reasons for this war, although Grandfather and Papa and Jed do discuss it quite often. It has to do with states' rights, among them the right to keep slaves, which are sorely needed by cotton farmers like us and must surely not be taken away from us. Everyone here blames the President of the Union, Mr. Lincoln, for bringing us to this. Grandfather is a friend of Sam Houston, who was our governor until last spring, and like Mr. Houston was opposed to secession of Texas from the Union. But it has happened, and now the men are going off to fight. And I can see that Jedediah is impatient to go.

  Grandfather says we must all be prepared to make sacrifices, that our lives will become harder, but we must not complain. Martha, of course, is sacrificing a life with Jedediah, and I have promised Grandfather that I, as a loyal Texan and daughter of the Confederacy, will do all I can to help.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sinty-ann was the first one to spot the smoke, a thin wisp curling up from the direction of the Bigelows' cabin. The weather had turned cooler, and neighbors and friends from as far away as Fort Worth had gathered outside under the trees for the wedding of Martha and Jedediah. It was rare for so many to get together, as the settlers' farms are widely separated. Most planned to spend the night. They were all enjoying themselves; even Anna was smiling, although the spot under the tree behind the cabin was still a bare mound of earth, a stark reminder of the baby who had lived a short time and died.

  Sinty-ann knew that she was blamed for the baby's death. It was, she was certain, Mrs. Bigelow's influence. Sinty-ann understood Anna's bitterness; the loss of her child had addled her thinking. But she did blame the Bigelow woman, who made up stories about her and poisoned Anna's fevered mind. Anna took in Mrs. Bigelow's poison and believed her. And so when Sinty-ann saw the curl of smoke in the distance, she said nothing. Maybe she was mistaken about the source.

  Everyone had brought food, turning the event into a feast like the ones the People had after a buffalo hunt or a successful raid. The men had set up tables in the yard, laying boards across sawhorses and setting planks on rounds of logs for makeshift benches. The Bigelows had arrived first to help with the cooking, and Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Raymond and Mr. and Mrs. John Henry Brown and their families had all come shortly after. Soon quite a crowd had gathered.

  Sinty-ann had helped the men dig the pit where they roasted a steer killed for the occasion. The women had baked chickens and wild turkeys, and they brought cakes yellow with butter and eggs and pies made with nuts, as well as all kinds of other dishes prepared with vegetables from their gardens. Everyone contributed to the meal.

  When the work was done they all changed into their best clothes. Sinty-ann put on the silk dress they had made for her to wear to Austin, even though it was hot and heavy and uncomfortable. Prairie Flower was dressed up in a little dress that had been Sarah's with tiny yellow and green flowers, and Lucy had tied Prairie Flower's long, dark
hair in two bunches with yellow ribbons.

  Uncle had managed to buy enough cloth in Fort Worth for Martha to make a wedding dress. "You'd better take care of these clothes," he warned them, "because with the war on there's bound to be shortages." He had heard talk in the dry-goods store that the North was setting up a blockade, stopping the shipment to the South of cloth and other necessities produced in the North.

  Poor Martha! For the past few days she had been sewing steadily, and her eyes were red both from sewing and from weeping because her new husband would soon be leaving her.

  A man they called "preacher" had ridden out from Fort Worth to read from the Bible and to listen while Jedediah and Martha made promises to each other while every one stood by, listening. Sinty-ann noticed tears in the eyes of many others besides Martha.

  But then, after one of Uncle's long prayers and another by the preacher, the feasting began and the mood lifted. Martha, hanging on Jedediah's arm, smiled sweetly and chatted with the guests, moving from group to group. But as soon as the bride moved on, the talk grew serious.

  Sinty-ann idly listened, but it was always about the war, and she cared little about any of that. The war was the reason Uncle gave for not allowing her to return to the People. The war was the reason Jedediah was going off in two days to join one of the cavalry units, leaving his new wife behind.

  The family had pitched in to help them finish their cabin, even the youngest children whose job was to mix the mud and sage grass to build the chimney. Prairie Flower had squealed with joy as she tramped around in the mess of water and clay to make the thick, sticky mixture. The older ones pushed her out of the way when it came time to form the lumps they called "cats and bats," packed around the wooden twigs that formed the chimney.