Crooked River

by Shelley Pearsall

  “Acquaintance?” Pa's voice was sharp.

  Mr. Kelley took a deep breath. I could see his shoulders rise up and down, and I felt sorry for him because of my Pa being the way he is.

  “I'm newly in the practice of law,” he said real quiet. “And I have come to see about perhaps defending him in his trial.”

  My mouth just about fell to my feet when I heard that. All he had told us was that he was acquainted with the Indian from boyhood. He never breathed a word about defending him. Or being a lawyer.

  My Pa let out a loud hoot of laughter. “Well, don't that beat all,” he said, smacking his hand down on the table. “George,” he hollered at my no-good cousin. “George—this man is gonna stand up for a savage. Don't that beat all you ever heard?”

  Cousin George grinned and shook his head.

  “You a real lawyer?” Pa asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Kelley answered, as red as beets.

  “You study many books?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Kelley said.

  “Well, I'll tell you what.” Pa snorted and leaned forward. “You got more ed-u-cation than you got brains, Mr. Peter Kelley, Esquire. Everybody around here knows that savage up there”—Pa jabbed his finger toward the loft—“kilt a poor fellow who didn't have no reason to die. Kilt him in cold blood with a tomahawk.” He fixed his eyes on Peter Kelley's face. “And if you keep that Indian up there from hanging for his crime, you got the fewest brains of any man I know on this green earth.”

  Pa stood up and pointed at the door. “Now git out of my house.”

  Seems like when a person is treated poorly by someone else, it makes you want to take their side. I don't know why. Maybe it isn't even a side you would have picked under other circumstances.

  I couldn't imagine how Peter Kelley was going to stand up to my Pa. Or how he was going to save an Indian who everybody believed was guilty. But as I watched Mr. Kelley pick up his hat and walk out the door with his skinny shoulders and his too-big coat, I am ashamed to say that I wanted to see him try.

  I didn't expect that Peter Kelley would ever dare to come back to our house. Not with how Pa had run him off. While we fixed supper that night, I asked Laura, “You think he'll still try to be the lawyer for Indian John?”

  “Perhaps,” Laura said, keeping her eyes on the turnips she was cutting.

  “You think all he told us is true? About Indian John not being the kind of person to kill a trapper?”

  “I know what our Pa and the other men have said,” she answered evenly. “That's what I know to be true.”

  I felt sorry for Laura. She had been real quiet and downcast ever since Pa had sent Mr. Kelley away and scolded us. I figured she had taken a small fancy to the lawyer just in the brief moment we had met him. On account of his wavy red hair and gentle eyes, I think. And I expect he would have made a good beau for her if he hadn't been going against our Pa and defending an Indian.

  Pa always said the only man who would ever marry Laura was an old widower. “Someone who ain't interested in picking through all the apples in the barrel and will take jist about anyone. That's the fellow for you,” Pa would tell her. But I knew that kindhearted Laura would make a good wife for anyone.

  “You suppose Mr. Kelley knows something about Indian John that Pa don't?” I kept on. “That why he's trying to defend him?”

  “I don't know,” Laura answered, standing up and dumping her handful of turnips into the soup pot. “But he has some very peculiar beliefs about Indians.”

  “Maybe Indian John didn't murder anyone— couldn't that be true?” I said. “Maybe they caught the wrong person by mistake. Don't that happen sometimes?”

  Laura's eyes flashed toward me. “You better not let Pa catch you saying something like that, Rebecca Ann Carver,” she warned. “That's spreading lies and gossip.”

  I tried to put my restless questions in the back of my mind, but it wasn't easy. While we did our mending work in the evening, I thought hard about the new calf that had finally been born to our sickly cow and what we could name it if it lived long enough. I tried to remember the words to a verse that Ma always used to recite. But my mind still circled back to Indian John and Peter Kelley. What did Mr. Kelley know? What had he said to Indian John in the loft?

  Laura kept her head down and her eyes fixed on her work the whole time. She didn't speak hardly a word. When Amos told me they would need help in the fields the next day I was glad for the chance to go and leave Laura to herself.

  The next morning, I followed Pa and the boys out to the fields. It was a real pretty morning. The wispy clouds looked like bits of wool tumbling across the cabin floor. Under my feet, the dirt was cool and soft. Only thing Pa said to me was that I had better work as hard as a boy.

  In the field, I stayed close to Amos and far from the others. He had a pointed ax for loosening the rocks and roots, and I tugged the smaller ones out of the dirt and threw them in a pile. The field had to be cleared—grubbed, as the men said—before it could be plowed for corn.

  It was hard not to talk and fill up the empty space when you were working with Amos. He could go for hours without saying anything, stopping only to spit or take a swig of water from the jug he had set into the field dirt.

  One thing I found while I was grubbing was an arrowhead point.

  I thought at first it was a stub of a sprouting plant, and then when I leaned closer, I realized it was a small gray arrowhead. I held it in my palm for Amos to see.

  “Here, see what I dug up.”

  “Lorenzo's got a whole collection of those,” he said, not even taking a half minute to look at it. “The field's full of them.”

  “I never found one before,” I said, surprised. “How'd they get here, in our field?”

  “How do you think, Reb?” Amos went back to chopping at the dirt. “This was Indian land long before it was ours. How do you reckon arrowheads got here?”

  Finding that arrowhead had a powerful effect on me because I had never before thought about Indians living on the same ground where we lived now. In my mind, they had always been on the far side of the Crooked River or on the edges of wherever we were living. Indian lands were always beyond— beyond the river, beyond that mountain, on the other side of that lake. They had their place. We had ours. And it had never been the same place. But looking at that little gray-colored arrowhead gave me a peculiar feeling.

  My mind started thinking about how it would feel if, in the years to come, someone dug up something from us Carvers—a button, or a spoon that got thrown out with the dishwater, or a musket ball. Would they know we had lived here? That this had been our farm? Or would we be just like the Indian who sent this arrow flying? Would we be forgotten and long gone?

  I remembered how Ma's bones were buried on this land, under a big hickory tree that she always loved. In a hundred years, if they dug under that tree, would they know whose bones—

  I dropped the arrowhead back into the dirt and pressed the clods down hard with my bare feet to cover it. Didn't want to think about that old arrowhead and the Indians anymore. My head was a mixed-up jumble.

  We grubbed rocks and roots the whole day, from morning to evening. By the time Pa was ready to go in for the supper meal, my arms were pink from the sun, and my palms looked as if they had been rubbed across a grindstone.

  Lorenzo didn't take any pity on me. “Looka there at that little pile of stones you done,” he said, coming over. “The pile of stones me and George have is twice the size of yours.” He reached down to tug a fist-sized rock out of the ground. “You missed this one,” he said, sending it clattering onto my pile.

  I scowled at him. “Maybe you and Cousin George ought to stay out here and find all of the rest of them rocks yourself.”

  After Lorenzo kicked a footful of dirt in my direction and ran off, I had to admit that it didn't look like me and Amos had done very much. That was the problem with grubbing out the fields. You worked for hours and hours, and it seemed as if all the same stones and
roots came back. No matter how far you flung them or how fast you dug them up, you couldn't get rid of them. The earth was stubborn. That was the truth.

  I guess Peter Kelley must have been the same way. He wouldn't give up easily. No matter what my mean Pa said. Because when we returned to the house in the evening, Laura pulled me outside and whispered real low, “Today, while you and the boys was gone in the fields, Peter Kelley stopped by here.”

  Red Hair climbs the steps

  a second time

  to see me.

  i close my eyes.

  you are a stranger now,

  i tell him.

  go away, gichi-mookomaan,

  and do not return

  again.

  Red Hair says it has been

  many winters

  and we have been separated

  far apart,

  but two things he has not forgotten,

  one

  is how we saved his ma, and

  two

  is the stories of the Old Ones.

  he says to me—

  Amik, do you remember

  your grandmother's old story

  of the Fox, Snake, and Man?

  i know the story well—

  many strings of lives ago,

  Little Fox risked his life

  to save Man

  from the coils of a great serpent.

  but as time passed,

  one winter to the next,

  one winter to the next,

  Man forgot Fox's good deed,

  as he forgets many things.

  one starving moon,

  Man drew his sharp knife

  to kill

  poor thin Fox who had eaten

  from his cache of winter food.

  don't you remember me?

  Fox cried.

  don't you

  remember?

  do you see? Red Hair says—

  i am taking your side.

  i do not want to be

  the man who forgot

  what the fox had done.

  i am silent

  for a long while

  thinking of Fox and Man

  and the great serpent.

  finally, i tell him—

  Red Hair,

  no matter what the gichi-mookomaanag

  say about me—

  Amik is not guilty.

  Laura wouldn't tell me anything else about Peter Kelley's visit until the next morning when Pa and the boys left to hitch up our horse. Even then, she wouldn't breathe a word until she had gone outside and made certain they were inside the barn.

  After she closed the cabin door, she turned toward me and spoke in a whisper. “I was so startled when I saw that it was Mr. Kelley yesterday. I didn't know whether or not I ought to let him in.”

  “What did he say?”

  Laura took a deep breath. “Well, he was full of nerves, I could tell. You shoulda seen the way his face was flushed, as if he had a fever. And he talked so fast I could hardly keep up. But he said he knew our Pa believed in his heart that Indian John had murdered someone—and maybe he had—but he wasn't certain himself and so all he wanted to do was talk to Indian John, just talk for a while, and try to find out the truth.”

  Laura looked at me, wide-eyed. “I was wrong to go against Pa and let him in, wasn't I?”

  “Not so long as Pa don't find out.” I grinned.

  Laura straightened her shoulders and pressed her lips together. “Well, I did let him in, even if it was wrong.” Her voice fell to a softer whisper. “And he brought me a little handful of spring violets, too,” she added.

  “Violets?”

  “Over here.” She led me to our wooden chest. “I put them inside with our other things.” Sure enough, inside our chest was a knot of flowers from the woods. Delicate purple ones. Me and Laura dearly loved violets.

  “I know I shouldn't have taken them,” she whispered. “But no one ever gave me a thing like that before, and I didn't know what to do, truly I didn't. Aren't they beautiful, Reb?” She lifted them up from the teacup of water where they were setting, and my heart pounded, fearing that Pa and the boys might come stomping in.

  “Maybe you shouldn't keep them,” I told her in a jumpy voice. My eyes darted from the flowers to the cabin door and back again.

  “Reb Carver, I daresay you should be the one to talk, with all the things you have kept from the Indian,” Laura whispered loudly. “My little flowers won't do any harm, I don't think.” She set the violets carefully back in their teacup and closed the heavy wooden cover. “Never got flowers from a gentleman before,” she said, smoothing her hand across the top of the chest. “Even if Mr. Kelley is helping a savage Indian, they're still real nice.”

  I didn't say a word, just hoped in my head that Mr. Kelley was smart enough to know that he could get me and Laura in awful bad trouble with Pa if he kept coming around to our house and didn't watch his step.

  Standing up, Laura cast her eyes around the cabin and sighed. “I surely hope he doesn't come back this morning,” she said. “What would he say about me keeping a house like this?”

  “He's gonna come back?” I asked, wide-eyed.

  Laura tugged Mercy off the bed and began picking up the yarn that she had unrolled every which way. “He said he might, if Pa and the boys are gone.”

  I already knew that they were going to the mills with the last of our shelled corn. After they had the wagon ready, they would rattle down the road with our old horse, Mary Ester. She walked so slow and plodding, I knew they wouldn't be back from the mills until well after dark.

  Sure enough, not long after they left, we heard the sound of a person coming down the path toward the house. Me and Laura both jumped up from our baking, and Laura nearly spilled a whole jug of water in her rush to scrub the dough and flour off her hands.

  When we reached the door, Peter Kelley stood outside waiting. He was wearing the same wide-brimmed hat and ill-fitting coat. “Good morning,” he said, pulling the hat off his head real fast and turning a shade of pink, I noticed.

  Laura answered “Good morning” in a soft voice that didn't even sound like her own. “This here's my sister Rebecca,” she told Mr. Kelley as if he had never seen me before. Strange to say, this time he had a single snowshoe tucked under his arm.

  i hold the snowshoe

  from Red Hair

  in my hand

  and touch the smooth curve

  of the wood

  made from the straight white tree

  that grows strong snowshoes.

  my fingers trace

  the paths of the netting

  woven tight as bowstrings

  by Rice Bird's quick wooden needle.

  Red Hair asks me—

  did you wear this snowshoe

  in the moon of the Big Spirit?

  in the moon of the sucker fish?

  in the moon of the crust on the snow?

  eya’, eya’, eya’,

  yes, yes, yes,

  i sigh.

  i do not see why my friend asks such

  foolish questions—

  how does he think

  i would walk

  in the winter moons,

  when the snow

  is deep

  and the freeze

  is hard?

  Red Hair says

  he is asking

  for the trial,

  that is the reason

  for his questions.

  i tell him

  i do not see

  why the white man's trial

  will need

  my snowshoes.

  When Peter Kelley finished his meeting with Indian John and came down the stairs, Laura invited him to stay for a piece of custard pie.

  She had made the pie the day before, just in case Mr. Kelley did come back again as he had promised. But Laura said that I was the only person, in all of earth and heaven, who was to know that she had used up eight whole eggs, four great spoonfuls of p
recious loaf sugar, and a good bit of our nutmeg to make it.

  I believe that Peter Kelley didn't know what to answer at first. After Laura asked him to stay, he stumbled over his words. First saying no, he didn't want to cause us any trouble with our Pa, and then saying perhaps he could stay for a moment to be polite, and finally deciding that it was a real kind offer and, yes, he would greatly appreciate a piece of pie.

  “It's one of our Ma's good pies,” Laura told him. “The kind she used to make.”

  “Your Ma?” Peter Kelley asked gently as he sat down at the table. “She is gone?”

  “Three years ago,” Laura answered. “She died in the month of March. God rest her soul.”

  “Right after giving birth to our sister Mercy,” I added, nodding at Mercy, who had her fingers in the yarn basket again. I don't know why I always had to tell folks that our Ma had died giving birth to her, but I did. It sounded as if I was putting all of the blame for Ma's death on my helpless little sister, who was born into this world silent and nearly blue. Maybe I still was.

  “I don't have any sisters of my own, only brothers,” Mr. Kelley said, slowly stirring the tea that Laura had set in front of him. “Just two brothers still living now and my Ma, who has grown quite old and feeble, I'm afraid.” He shook his head, and I could tell his Ma was dear to him by the sorrowful way his face looked.

  “Every time I see Amik here, what I can't keep from thinking about is how …” He paused and looked toward the loft stairs. “Is how my Ma wouldn't be alive today—she wouldn't have raised any of us, not my brothers or me—if it weren't for his family.” He pointed upward, as if pointing straight at Amik himself. “Years ago, his family saved her life.”

  “What?” I said, more loudly than I should have.

  He glanced at Laura and me. “I could only have been nine or ten years old when it happened,” he said. “It was the fall of the year, I remember, and we had all gone to a cranberry marsh to pick berries.”

  In my mind, I could picture a cranberry marsh— the green color of the leaves and the bright red berries nestled inside like jewels.