The Healer's Daughter

by Charlotte Hinger

  “Never has.”

  “This is the town and the state and the time,” Jed said. “Teddy’s murder is all over the papers. People care.”

  “White folks?” she scoffed.

  “Yes. Some of them. They may not know all the details, but Brother Kulp wrote an editorial for The Colored Citizen right away. How the white people came for Teddy Sommers.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “Not yet. Ultimately, we’re going to find out Potroff was behind it, of course. But he always has someone else do his dirty work. That goes without saying.”

  “I heard about the fancy paper the note was writ on. Heard those letters all those white folks back in Topeka was making over was my daughter’s doing.”

  “How did you hear?”

  “Patricia come over yesterday. She the one what said. She knowed I’d be taking it hard. Teddy killed is hard enough. Knowing Bethany might have caused it ’bout to do me in. Can’t think of nothing else now. Knowing it was my own daughter’s words what got him hung like some old hog.”

  “Don’t blame Bethany,” Jed said. “We know she was betrayed by one of our own.”

  “Who?” she said. “Someone from Nicodemus? Who would be so mean?”

  “We’re sure it was Dolly,” Jed said evenly. “Because she’s gone. Packed up her things and left the same night Teddy was killed. Wouldn’t make sense for her to do that unless she was afraid to stay here.”

  “She take her children?”

  “No. Just her sewing things. In fact, that’s how we knew she had just left instead of something happening to her.”

  “Her.”

  “Yes, her. What kind of woman would run off from her own children?” he blurted. He slapped his hand against his thigh whip-crack sharp, and Queen Bess jumped.

  “She mean as a snake.”

  “Yes, maybe so. But she’s gone, and we’ll never find her. We can’t do a thing about it. We’ll never be able to bring her to justice now,” he said bitterly.

  Queen Bess lifted her head, and her face smoothed into an inscrutable mask.

  “Don’t fret yourself none about that little high-yeller girl,” she said.

  After Jed left, Queen Bess stared at strands of gray-white clouds dripping from the sky like streaky foam from a mad dog’s mouth. She shivered from the ever-present wind that kept pushing, pushing at the edges of her soul.

  She looked for Jesus in the clouds. Any sign at all to pull her back from the next step.

  Jesus wasn’t in the clouds. He wasn’t in the swaying grass.

  His voice didn’t sing through the trees like it did in Kentucky, because there weren’t any trees. His face wasn’t on the water, because there wasn’t any water for him to stir.

  Warn’t no Jesus here in Kansas.

  She gathered power to her. Her mother had taught the ways, and her mother before her. They knew it was against the law, but it didn’t make them no never mind. Didn’t her, neither.

  She had never used them before. Hadn’t needed to and hadn’t wanted to. She had belonged to Jesus.

  Before.

  Jed had asked her to trust him to do something about the white men, and she did. He had the look. But wasn’t nothing that man could do about Dolly. He said so himself. It was up to her to bring that spiteful little bitch to justice.

  She rose and went inside. She went to the shelf that held all the herbs and healing medicines she had brought with her. She had never taught Bethany all she knew. Never wanted her daughter to know the dark ways. She reached for the tattered, black, silk handkerchief.

  She carried it to the table. She laid it there, then sat heavily in her chair staring at it. Slowly she untied the knot.

  It was difficult. Her hands trembled. The knot was hard, resistant. It took her a long time. She opened the square and looked at the cherished elements within. She picked up a root and began.

  On a street in New Orleans, Dolly Redgrave stopped pinning up the hem of a white woman’s dress and stared at her arm. There were small, black splotches like large freckles on her skin. Her fine, fine skin. Nearly white. Everyone said so. A week later they had spread to the rest of her body until she looked like a soiled Holstein.

  In a mere month’s time, she was as black as Satan’s fiddle.

  “If it’s just the same to you, Brother Jed, I’d just as soon you and your merry band of men stay hidden,” Kulp said as he, Jed, McBane, and the three white men from Millbrook rode up to a soddy.

  They knew it was occupied by a half-starved white family who could neither read nor write. One of the sons was said to be touched in the head. He would be marked as “idiotic” on the new census form just rolled out that year. In the meantime, Kulp was just concerned with tallying the male voters in the county.

  “Understood.” Jed grinned. “No point in scaring these poor folks half to death.”

  He waved for the men from Millbrook to stay back. No doubt the family had already been brainwashed by the propaganda rolling out of Wade City and would take little comfort in seeing strangers of any race.

  “They probably expect us to murder them in their beds,” Jed muttered.

  “It would be one less white family to contend with,” McBane said.

  Jed looked back at their neighbors, hoping they had not overheard. He studied the homestead. It looked safe. There were no outlying buildings.

  “Everything looks clear for you to do your work, A.T. Fire one shot if anything goes wrong.” He gestured to McBane to follow him back to where the Millbrook men were hidden.

  Kulp trotted down the incline toward the soddy. A little boy saw him coming, dropped his bucket, and ran screaming toward the house. Seconds later his mother appeared in the doorway, took one look, then started to shove against the rickety, half-askew door.

  “Ma’am,” Kulp called sharply. “Please do not be afraid. I’m simply here to take the census so we can organize the county.”

  She stepped outside, shaking uncontrollably, and her terrified little boy clung to her thigh. An old, yellow mongrel dog growled, hair stiffening as it carefully eased along the ground on its belly toward Kulp.

  “The dog, madam,” he said quietly. “Please call off that dog.”

  “Rufus,” the woman said sharply, never dropping her gaze from Kulp’s face. “Quiet down, boy.”

  The dog laid its head on his paws and lay watching, watching and whimpering.

  “I just need to ask you a couple of questions,” Kulp said. “That’s all. I’m the official census taker. We must do this to get this county organized. It’s the law. It won’t be necessary for me to come inside.”

  She was barefoot, clad in faded calico, and her skimpy hair looked like dried, moldy moss. Veins stuck out like dead earthworms on her brown, cracked feet.

  “Don’t know nothing ’bout no politics,” she said, her eyes sparking with anger, her arms folded across her chest. “Don’t much care if this godforsaken county ever has a county seat. Don’t care what you pay me, neither. Just want you folks to leave us alone.”

  “Madam, I can assure you, my purpose here today is not to engage you in a political debate or to try to influence your vote on the location of the county seat. All I want to know is, do you have a husband? Is he over twenty-one? And do you have sons who can be counted as eligible voters? That’s all.”

  She peered at him suspiciously. “That’s all?”

  “Yes. Later this year, if this county gets organized we will take a federal census. Then someone will be asking you a whole passel of questions.”

  “My husband’s off working on the railroad.”

  Kulp made a note on his form. “And your sons?”

  “Junior’s just sixteen.” She looked down, reluctant to tell this black man that her boy wasn’t quite right. It warn’t natural to have some nigger come poking around when her man was away no how. Let alone a smart one. “Willy here is seven. I ain’t got no girls.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Kulp said warmly
. He smiled. “That’s all the information I need.”

  He walked over to Gloriana, picked up the reins, and started to mount. Suddenly he stopped and walked back, his hat still in his hand.

  “Mrs. Sungar? What did you mean when you said, ‘No matter what you pay me’?”

  “Why, to vote for your town for the county seat. Don’t care if you pay us twice as much as the other one. Ain’t going to take no money for a vote. Irwin done told that other fellow so, too.”

  “What other fellow?”

  “That Potroff fellow.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Bethany looked around her vacant classroom. Soon they would have to resume lessons. Move on. The room looked old somehow. Abandoned. A mouse peeked out from the coal bin. Dust motes hung heavily in the evening air.

  With one arm she hugged the remainder of her precious vellum paper and envelopes against her chest. In the other hand, she carried a little stick of cedar she had snatched from the campfire. A boy had stripped the branches from a tree growing on the bank of the Solomon. The colonists rationed the cedar, adding just a few twigs to the main blaze each evening because they treasured the odor.

  She went inside and walked over to the stove. She opened the grate and reverently laid the precious cedar inside. A burnt offering. Her hand trembled.

  A last purging. Her dreams, her soul. She would feed in the paper one sheet at a time and pray for forgiveness with each one. Pray for God to remove all vanity, all will. Pray that he dampen her fiery core. Pray to become slave dumb.

  It was fitting somehow that this ritual take place at the school where her hopes had risen every morning, borne upward on the black smoke arising from the stovepipe. A vision of little black children soaring, soaring to the clouds, the sky, up to the heavens.

  She reached into the box beside the stove and picked up some hanks of twisted prairie grass. She tossed them into the stove, then reached into the box holding dried cow chips and watched the blaze take hold until it was hot enough to ignite pieces of coal.

  Her head seemed to wobble on her body now, and some days, she feared it would go banging away across the prairie like a tumbleweed. She couldn’t complete a thought. If she got up at all in the morning she couldn’t remember why.

  It was time.

  She clasped her hands tightly together to stop their shaking and turned to fetch the paper.

  She was so preoccupied with the fire that she didn’t hear the three men enter the room. When she saw them, she jumped, and her hand flew against her chest as though she could keep her heart from flying out.

  “We didn’t mean to scare you, Miss Bethany,” Kulp said.

  McBane nodded, his eyes solemn, watchful. Jed looked at Bethany uneasily, not bothering to disguise his anger.

  Kulp cleared his throat. “We’ve come here to ask your assistance, Miss Bethany.”

  “They have, not me,” Jed said quickly. “This is their idea. Not mine. I don’t want you to do anything that would put you in harm’s way.”

  She slipped behind her desk like a ghost and clasped her hands. She examined her thin wrists as though to reassure herself there was a body there. Her face was as dry as an autumn leaf, finally devoid of tears. Surely, she had been drained of them forever.

  Kulp always did the talking. The man had an instinct for striking just the right tone with people. Even the whites who resented having to deal with a black census taker had been charmed by the man’s easy manners, his wit, and his endless supply of stories. McBane was usually the one who fired off inflammatory political salvoes, like a little bantam rooster spoiling for a fight.

  “I can’t offer you decent chairs,” she said, “but there’s no need for all of you to stand. Please make yourselves as comfortable as you can on the benches.”

  “This is not my idea,” Jed said again. “But they’ve persuaded me that it’s up to you.”

  “Everyone around here knows you are the mysterious Sunflower,” said McBane. “And we want you to write one more letter.”

  Her stomach plummeted. “Why, in God’s name? After all the harm I’ve done?”

  “Because no one in Topeka knows you’re that person,” Kulp said. “Now we want everyone to know. What we’ve done out here. What we could be if folks just gave us a chance.”

  Kulp leaned forward, his voice coaxing, persistent. On one of his trips back to Topeka, he had met a fine lady—a schoolteacher, the daughter of a preacher man. The family was entranced when he came to call. His Lavina played the organ, served tea in china cups painted with pink roses.

  The Colored Citizen had published the paper he’d read before the St. John’s Literary Society. How could he ask Lavina to come here to this place he had shamelessly described as the new Eden? A place where they had hung a wee black man who was as innocent as a cricket.

  “We’re not asking you to tell a lie,” McBane said.

  “You have no right to ask anything,” Jed retorted. “ ’Specially to ask her to do something that might get her killed.”

  “Killed?” Bethany raised her eyes. Her heart leaped inside her, and her pulse throbbed visibly in her throat.

  “Yes, killed. And they are going to try to persuade you that some good could come out of Teddy’s death. They want to convince you there’s a chance to make Teddy’s life count for something.”

  “That’s enough, Jed,” McBane snapped. “We agreed to let Miss Bethany make up her own mind.”

  “And how could writing another letter help?” she asked.

  “Folks have pieced it all together,” said McBane. “You, the letter. Despite the reservations of Brother Jed, you can do us a world of good if you’ll go along with our plan.”

  She did not believe she could bear the rebirth of hope. Sickened, she tried to beat it back. But like a baby determined to be born, hope began pushing.

  “You owe it to your people,” Kulp said.

  “You don’t owe anyone a damned thing,” Jed snapped, glaring at Kulp.

  “The hopes of thousands are resting on your willingness to do this,” McBane said.

  “This is the first step,” Kulp warned. “There’s more to follow.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s a mistake,” Jed said. “The only reason I’m here at all is to keep these two from twisting your arm.”

  “Gentlemen!” Her voice was sharp, commanding, and all three looked at her sheepishly. “Now, I would like someone to tell me precisely what you want done.”

  “We have the note that was left on Teddy. We have the last letter you wrote to the Topeka Capital. He was carrying it with him when he was killed. We found it in his saddlebag. Now we want you to write another letter saying exactly what happened to Teddy. Name names, give all the reasons, and explain what’s at stake out here for the colored people.”

  “Or not,” Jed said stubbornly. “Or not, if you so desire.”

  “And the next step?”

  “The next step will be to go with us to Topeka,” Kulp said. “We can arrange an audience with Governor St. John. He has been quite intrigued with the columns of an editor from Parsons who goes by the pseudonym of Kicking Bird. I’ve heard he would love to know about Sunflower. I have my sources, and they say he concurs with those views as much as he agrees with the opinions of anyone.”

  “St. John’s an odd duck,” piped up McBane. “His crusade for Prohibition is as well-known as his advocacy for blacks. He believes women should vote.”

  “Bethany,” Jed pleaded. “What if exposing you causes whites to come after you like they did for Teddy?”

  “And what if it does?” Her cheeks flamed. She would not hesitate to give her own now worthless life to atone for her part in Teddy’s murder.

  Jed’s lips thinned. She responded with a tight, proud smile, and he looked away. He slapped his hand against his thigh repeatedly.

  “Yes. I will do this. Yes. It will take me a while,” she said softly. “And I’m going to do it right now, right here in this very room.” She swallowed w
hen she looked at the pieces of vellum. The precious pieces of stationery she had come so close to destroying. The paper that would prove she was Sunflower.

  “We have some ideas we would like you to include,” McBane said.

  “I’m sure you do, but I’m not interested in hearing them.”

  McBane started to protest, but Kulp laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure Miss Bethany has ideas of her own,” he said. “After all, she is Sunflower.”

  “I’m going to stay here until you’ve finished,” Jed said. “Then I’ll walk you home.”

  “No, no. I don’t need someone to escort me, and I can’t even imagine writing something this important with someone else in the room. Please leave with your friends.”

  Reluctantly they all filed out. Bethany picked up a piece of the children’s scrap paper and laid it next to the heavy vellum on her desk.

  She sat down and bent to her work, carefully testing the words. The room became crowded with haunts vying with one another to have a voice. Women wronged, women ashamed; but they were outnumbered by women clad in red. Warrior women—Joan of Arc, Madame Roland, Harriet Tubman. They whispered, coached.

  Like a phoenix, Bethany’s ruined soul rose from Teddy’s ashes.

  When she had finished, she stood, placed the letter inside the envelope, sealed it, and picked up the precious remaining blank sheets. Curiously energized despite the lateness of the hour, she left the schoolhouse and walked toward her dugout.

  She froze, sensing a presence, then relaxed as she saw Jed watching from behind the hotel. He kept guard until she reached her own place.

  Jarred by the noise and the press of people, when Bethany got off the train in Topeka, she reached for Jed’s arm. He gave her hand a comforting pat. “Nervous?”

  “A little, yes.” She laughed. “More than a little.” She clutched her traveling bag containing new clothes as they waited for Kulp and McBane to return with a carriage.

  At first she had laughed when A.T. rode into Nicodemus with ten yards of taffeta. The blue-purple was so dark it was nearly black. He had also purchased black wool for a matching bonnet and a warm shawl.