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DEAR LEVI:
LETTERS FROM THE OVERLAND TRAIL
Elvira Woodruff
DEAR AUSTIN:
LETTERS FROM THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Elvira Woodruff
For Mike
The two principles on which our conduct
towards the Indians should be founded are
justice and fear.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1786
it is the time when the leaves
are small on the trees.
too small
for hiding.
the gichi-mookomaanag—
white men—
hunt for us.
run, i whisper to Little Otter.
run like a fast-melting spring river.
do not look back.
run.
he is quick,
Little Otter,
and slips like a soft fish
through their hands.
but Ten Claws and i
are not so lucky.
one snap
of the white man's gun
and he is dead.
i am caught.
Pa never told us he would capture an Indian and bring him back across the river. Never breathed a word that he would march an Indian right into our cabin and make him a prisoner while we were gone away. Only thing he told us was that he was going across the Crooked River to see about a few savages who were causing trouble.
Now, if our poor Ma had been alive, I don't expect he would have ever dared to do such a shameful thing. Not if she had been standing in the doorway with her Bible clutched to her chest, he wouldn't have. But Ma was gone, and me and my sister Laura had set out in pouring rain to help the Hawleys, who had all taken sick with a fever.
The Hawleys lived up the road from us, where it was mostly uncleared woods. And truth to speak, they were the kind who were always falling sick, or getting bit by a snake, or being thrown off their miserable horse. Never should have come out to the Ohio frontier in the first place, Pa often said.
We had been on the frontier for nearly twelve years, so we were as seasoned as salt. The Evans family, who lived in the opposite direction from the Hawleys, had come from Vermont not long after us. Right past the Evanses’ log house was old Vinegar Bigger's cabin—he was as old as the saints, folks said.
And if you kept on going, past Mr. Bigger's cabin, past the woods where the pigeons were fond of roosting, past the muddiest part of the road, past a thicket of greenbriers on your left, you would reach the small settlement on the Crooked River. It had about fifty more people who, in late summer, were often as sick as the Hawleys on account of the fevers caused by the swampy river.
“You coming, Laura?” I hollered as we made our way toward the Hawleys’ cabin. I pushed back the hood of my cloak to look for my sister, who was lagging somewhere behind me in the rain.
Laura was seventeen, four years older than me, and she had always been big for a girl. No matter how much our Ma had added and mended, Laura's clothes kept up a never-ending tug-of-war around her body, and her dresses were always too short to cover up her thick ankles and wide white feet. Pa called her “our horse.” That's what he said when folks came to visit.
“This here's Laura. Our big horse,” he'd laugh, in that loud way of his. “Gonna have to turn her out to pasture if she keeps on growing like she is.”
Then he'd nod at me. “And this here's Rebecca,” he'd say. “She looks like her Ma did, but she's slow in the head, and lazy, and don't do a quarter of the work.”
I was not slow in the head. Or lazy.
But we would just keep our heads down and not say a word whenever Pa was talking to folks. No matter what he called us.
Since our Ma had died, me and Laura had only ourselves for company. Our three-year-old sister, Mercy, was nothing but a babbling pester. And our two brothers, Amos and Lorenzo, along with our miserable cousin George, who lived in our cabin, had no use for us except for the three meals we set in front of them every day.
Breakfast, noonday dinner, and supper. That's all we were to them.
Sometimes after the supper meal was through, me and Laura would set by the hearth, and if she wasn't too awful tired, Laura would brush the bird nests out of my brown hair, same as Ma had once done. And often, I did Laura's mending in the evenings because my fingers were small and quick. And my eyesight was good, where hers wasn't. So that's the way we filled in some of what was missing without Ma.
As me and Laura drew closer to the Hawleys’ log house, I noticed there wasn't a whisper of smoke coming from their chimney, a bad sign, surely. “No fire going.” I pointed.
Laura tugged her wet cloak tighter around her shoulders. “Well, we are just gonna knock on that door and see what we find,” she said, casting a jumpy look at the cabin and taking a deep breath.
Turned out, poor Mrs. Hawley was nearer to death than life. I reckon it was a good thing we had come when we did because she couldn't even stir from her bed to fetch a cup of water or a crust of bread for her ailing husband and children. And the smell in that place could have nearly kilt you.
Laura sent me back to our house to fetch some hot coals to start a fire, and she said I should gather up a full basket of food for the Hawleys. Even though it was still pouring rain, I ran part of the way back just to get the smell of the Hawleys’ place out of my head.
My brother Lorenzo was sitting inside our cabin when I returned. He had been left to keep an eye on little Mercy, but he had himself pulled up to a big platter on the table, and he was picking out the leftover pieces of cold pork from breakfast with his fingers instead. Pick. Chew. Pick. Chew.
One of the fresh loaves that me and Laura had baked the day before was sitting on the table with its end crumbled in where he had tunneled through it with his fingers.
I glared at him. “We was saving that bread for supper.”
Lorenzo was eleven, two years younger than me, and he was named after my Pa, so that showed you something right there. He could do whatever he pleased. Always acted like he was the biggest toad in the puddle. Always grabbed the biggest piece of meat from the supper table and took the warmest part of the hearth for his seat.
“No one told me a thing, and I was hungry,” he said, sticking his greasy fingers back into the pile of pork again. Pick. Chew.
Nobody vexed me as much as Lorenzo.
I pushed the basket onto the table. “Make your lazy old self useful and help git some things together for the Hawleys. They've all got the fever bad.”
“Ain't that a pity.” He grinned. “Poor Hawleys.”
Anger pinched my throat and squeezed my ribs. Poor Hawleys. Reaching out, I dug my fingers as hard as a horse's teeth into his left arm, trying to make him mind me. Who was gonna make him listen if me and Laura didn't? “You go on and git a string of beans from the loft so we can make a soup for the Hawleys.”
Lorenzo yanked his arm away. “Can't,” he said. “There's a murderous savage up there, and I ain't about to set one foot in the loft. But you can
go on up if you've a mind to.” Lorenzo gave me one of his half-crooked grins and brushed a lock of brown hair out of his eyes.
Now I didn't know a thing about the Indian right then. Not one thing. I figured Lorenzo was just spinning another miserable lie to get himself out of doing any decent work, same as he always did. I remember hollering at him, “I'm so awful sick of your stories—I'll go up to the loft myself and look for your killer Indian just to prove what a lazy yarn spinner you are.”
Snatching the basket off the table, I started up the narrow stairs furiously, not even taking care to watch the edge of my dress. It would serve Lorenzo right if my feet got tangled in my skirts and I fell down the steps, cracked my head on the plank floor, and died.
Below me, I could hear the sound of Lorenzo's chair scraping back from the table. “You best take care,” he called out.
Although I went up to the chamber loft nearly every day to fetch something, I never took much of a liking to it. The long, low-ceilinged room had only two small windows, one at each end, and you could hear mice rustling about in the shadows. Each time I reached my hand into an apple barrel or cut down a string of beans up there, I was tormented by the thought that one of those mice would go skittering up my arm.
“Lorenzo, this Indian of yours surely better be something to look at,” I said loudly as Lorenzo stood by the foot of the stairs. I squinted into the shadows of the loft, figuring that Lorenzo had hung an old coat from one of the rafters. Or fixed up a hat with goose feathers. That would be just the sort of thing he would do.
But I was wrong.
There in the loft, not more than a few steps away, was a real Indian staring straight back at me. My heart just about flew out of my chest at the sight, and I screamed.
I'm real ashamed to say that after seeing that Indian, I bolted from the cabin and tore down the road in the rain. Likely looked as if I had gone and caught myself on fire as I ran toward the settlement with my petticoats and bonnet strings flying.
I was so full of petrification, I never stopped for a minute to think why the Indian might be sitting there and what all Lorenzo knew.
And then I did the second wrong thing.
I yelled for help.
“Indians!” I shouted, and belted out every name I knew—Pa, Amos, Laura, the Hawleys, even Ma, who was gone, and Grandpa Carver back in the East. It was as if demons had taken possession of my voice and it was just shrieking out names on its own. I couldn't stop it.
All of the men within earshot came running at the dreadful sound of it. My older brother, Amos, came tearing across the field where he had been fixing a fence. Mr. Evans and old Vinegar Bigger flew out of their houses to help me. Even my Pa appeared, slopping down the muddy road with his rifle in his hand and a half dozen men from the settlement behind him. And that stopped me in my tracks.
My Pa.
I stood there in the middle of the road with my teeth rattling away on their own, trying to make sense of what I was seeing and all of the questions they were hollering at me. “You hurt? Were they Chippewas? How many? Which direction'd they go? Where's Lorenzo? Did they carry him off? Speak up, girl—”
That last voice was my Pa's.
“I says speak up,” he roared, moving close enough to strike me if he had a reason to. “Stop standing there like the village idiot and shaming your Pa. You tell the men exactly what you seen.”
Everyone got real quiet after that. The only sound was the rain splattering on the leaves around us. The men's eyes looked down at the ground because they all knew about my Pa. He had a temper like a timber rattlesnake, and even grown men kept their distance when they saw his anger rising. Everyone called him Major Carver. But my Pa wasn't the major of any army of soldiers—just gave orders to our settlement and us Carvers. And that was miserable enough.
“I seen an Indian, Pa,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice from shattering to pieces. “There's an Indian hiding up in our loft.”
Pa's eyes narrowed. “One Indian?” he said sharply. “That all you saw? One Indian?”
I nodded. “Yes sir.”
At this, one of the men gave a big snort of laughter and some of the other men started to chuckle and exchange glances among themselves, as if they all knew something I didn't. I watched them rest the ends of their rifles on the ground as if they didn't mind one bit what I'd told them about Indians. Even my serious brother Amos shook his head and broke into a little smile. I could feel a red flush creep into my face as I stood there with all of the men laughing at me.
“I ain't lying,” I hollered in a voice that was choking up fast with tears. “You go on back there and see. I ain't lying.” I waved my arms in the direction of the house.
But the men just kept on chuckling and rolling their eyes at every word I said. Vinegar Bigger, who was standing near me, patted my shoulder with his old hand. He leaned over and said in a loud whisper, “Course you ain't lying, girl. We know there's an Indian in your Pa's house, 'cause we the ones who put him there.”
We the ones who put him there.
This was the first I realized what my Pa and the men had done. I imagine that my face went as white as a wall right then. All I knew was that the men had gone across the Crooked River to see about a few Indians who were causing trouble. They hadn't breathed a word about what kind of trouble or why. And now they wanted me to understand that they had brought back one of those savages and put him in our own house?
I didn't understand a thing.
“Go on.” My Pa gestured to the men. “Go on back to what you was doing. Sorry she brought you running. Real sorry for your trouble.”
My Pa waited until the men were gone to start laying out all of his worst words on me. After they left, his face went straight from being soft with laughter to hard with meanness. “I don't know what the devil got into you, Rebecca,” he swore. “Running and screaming for help like you was being scalpt—that ain't funny at all, you understand me?” His voice got louder. “You understand me? You made us Carvers look like a bunch of fools.” He spat out each word. Bunch. Of. Fools.
“Look at me!” Pa's voice roared.
My heart thudded in my chest, fearing what he might do. His hand grabbed hold of my face, and his rough fingers dug into my cheeks. “I won't stand to look like a fool,” he spat. “You ever do something like that again, I'll take a razor strop to you. You understand me?”
I nodded.
His fingers squeezed harder. “I'm your Pa. You answer me with a ‘yes sir.’” He leaned over and hollered in my face, so close I could smell the sour tobacco on his breath. My Pa's teeth were stained brown, and the corners of his mouth were yellowed like paper before it catches fire and burns.
“Yes sir,” I whispered.
“You ain't fit for the grease pot, you know that? You make me ashamed to have you as a daughter.” He swore and gave me a hard push. “Git back to the house.”
All the way through the woods, with the rain falling in buckets around me, I thought about how I purely hated my Pa.
My brother Amos was waiting for me when I got back. Most times, he had a softer heart than my Pa and the others. He was nearly twenty with my Pa's dark hair but my Ma's light-colored eyes. Every once in a while, Ma's eyes had given me the smallest flicker of kindness when they weren't filled up with worry or weariness. And Amos was the same way. If I looked up fast enough, there were times I caught something like Ma's kind look in his eyes.
“Seeing that Indian was a considerable surprise, I expect,” Amos said before I'd even closed the door. I gave a quick squint-look around. Our log house was big, but it was all one room. Except for the loft, you could see it in a single glance—the beds, the hearth, everything. There was no sign of Lorenzo. Just Amos sitting by himself, with his wide plow shoulders hunched over our big dinner table.
“Yes,” I said low. “It was.”
“But that didn't give you no cause to run, Reb,” he continued. “You coulda got somebody kilt, the way you were hollering about In
dians chasing you when there weren't none.”
I dug my fingernails into my palms. Last thing I wanted to hear from Amos was an echo of my Pa. I was always getting the blame for everything gone wrong. Slow in the head. Lazy. Not fit for the grease pot.
“I didn't mean to scare nobody,” I said, louder.
Amos kept his eyes on the table and picked up crumbs with the end of his finger. “Well, maybe Pa shoulda told you that he was bringing the Indian here, but that still didn't give you no cause to act like you did.” Amos frowned and shook his head. “You gotta turn the current of your mind to do more thinking, Reb. You are like a buzzing little fly that don't ever think. You just go headfirst right into things.”
I was not a buzzing little fly.
Both of us were silent for a while, with the rain drumming on the roof, Amos picking up more crumbs, and me not moving from where I stood as my cloak dripped water all over the floor.
Finally, Amos sighed loudly and said, “I don't mind telling you why the Indian's here, but you gotta promise you won't fall into a fit over this, Reb, or go running out of the house screaming for Pa and the men.”
Inside my mind, I thought that if the house caught fire right then, a windstorm was toppling all of the trees in the woods, and Indians were attacking— nothing, absolutely nothing, would make me run.
But I didn't say that to Amos. I just nodded and told him I would never do a fool-headed thing like that again. Ever. “Fine,” Amos said, leaning back in his chair. “Then I'll tell you what Pa and the other men have done.”
for two days
the rain falls
in long drops
from the clouds.
for two days
the gichi-mookomaanag
pull me
through the weeping woods
and across
the crooked running river.
i am tied to a long iron rope.
i do not come easily.
Crooked River Page 1
