Crooked River

by Shelley Pearsall

  Peter Kelley continued. “All of us went—my Pa and Ma and my four brothers. I remember how it was a beautiful autumn afternoon, not a hint of a cloud. All was right with the world, it seemed. That's what I remember most about that day.” He wrinkled his forehead. “Do you understand what I mean?”

  I nodded.

  There was a summer afternoon before Ma died that I had not forgotten either. It was a real pretty day. Me and Laura and Ma were picking beans in the garden, and we got to singing songs and tossing beans from one basket to another, just for our own amusement. We had never done a thing like that before, and we must have been a sight. I could still recall the bright blue sky and the sound of Ma laughing.

  Peter Kelley shook his head. “Maybe we weren't watching as close as we should have been, on account of how beautiful that day was. But before any of us knew what had happened, a rattlesnake came through the cranberries, just came up real sudden, and it struck our Ma hard on the foot.”

  I caught my breath. I had seen more than my share of rattlesnakes, and I knew what they could do to folks if you came across them unawares.

  Peter Kelley closed his eyes, as if he was remembering the scene exactly as it was. “I can still hear the terrible sound of Ma's voice shrieking for us. Pa sent me and my brother Nathaniel running for the nearest town to fetch a doctor. Never ran so fast in all my life,” he said softly, “trying to save my Ma that morning.”

  I swallowed hard, thinking about my own Ma.

  “The doctor told us to bind up her foot with tobacco leaves to draw out the poison. If the swelling grew worse, he said to dig a hole in the ground and have her put her foot inside the dirt, packed in tobacco leaves.

  “We tried everything.” Peter Kelley shook his head. “But Ma's foot and leg swelled up as full as the skin could hold. It was black from the poison, truly it was.” He took a deep breath. “We knew she wasn't long for the earth. Not more than a few days left, everyone told us. And we didn't know how we would manage in the world without her. My youngest brother was only four.”

  I cast a look at Laura because I remembered this feeling too well.

  Peter Kelley continued. “The next day my older brother met a Chippewa man fishing in our river. All of us could speak some words in Chippewa, and my brother the best of all, so my brother told the Indian—” Peter's voice caught in his throat. “He told him about the coming death of our poor Ma.

  “That same evening,” Peter Kelley said, “I heard a soft knock on our door, and I opened it to see who it was. Amik's grandmother stood outside in the darkness.” He squinted his eyes. “All these years later, I can still recall exactly what she looked like. She was called by the name Old Turtle Woman, and I remember how she was a small woman with stooped shoulders and gray-streaked hair, and how she always wore a circle of tiny rabbit bones around her neck.

  “The woman pressed a bundle of leaves toward me, saying, ‘Aabajitoonan, aabajitoonan’—Use them, use them.” Peter Kelley looked down at his hands. “Two of the women in our settlement were already sewing Ma's burial clothes when we bound the leaves on her swollen leg that night as Amik's grandmother had told us to do. But not a one of us expected those leaves would change a thing, certainly we didn't.”

  Mr. Kelley stopped and took a long sip of tea.

  “And the leaves did?” I asked, hardly daring to believe that they would. It made me shiver to think about that blackened, swelled-up leg with Indian leaves wrapped around it, and the women sewing burial clothes in the next room.

  Peter Kelley nodded and gave a wide grin. “In the morning, my Ma was well enough to get out of bed and try on those burial clothes for size.”

  “Surely not,” Laura cried.

  “Yes, she was fine and well again,” he insisted.

  “The leaves did all that?” I said.

  Mr. Kelley shrugged. “All I can say is that those of us who saw it with our own eyes believed it to be so. And Ma has lived more than a dozen good years since.”

  In the silence after he finished his story, I thought about my own Ma. I imagined the old Indian woman with the rabbit bone necklace coming to our cabin when my Ma was dying. Even then, I was certain she never would have taken help from an Indian. Knowing my Ma, she would rather have died and gone on to the next world than to have allowed Indians to save her. I glanced over at Laura and wondered what we would do if we were in the same place.

  Seemed like we were all lost in our thoughts until Mr. Kelley said he didn't mean to keep us from eating our pie, and Laura jumped up to serve the forgotten pieces. I could tell that Mr. Kelley liked that pie real well because he didn't stop to take one breath while eating it. He even picked up the crumbs one by one with the back of his fork. When he finished, he shook his head slowly and said that our Ma's custard pie was the best he'd ever tasted.

  Laura just nodded and said that our Ma always was a good cook, but there was still much to be learnt since she had gone.

  “Yes, I expect there is,” Mr. Kelley said in a quiet way, and I caught him giving Laura a kind look as he pushed back his chair to leave.

  When he reached down to pick up the snowshoe, I couldn't help noticing it again. I think he must have seen me staring at it, because he tucked it quickly under his arm and didn't say one word of explanation about it.

  All Peter Kelley told us before he left was that he hoped to return one last time before the trial to talk to Amik. Maybe his eyes said that he hoped to see Laura again, too. It was hard telling. But before he disappeared down the path, he turned and waved at us. I remember how he stopped right in the middle of his ambling walk and turned around. Taking off his hat, he waved it once in the air. The sunlight caught his copper red hair, and I had to admit that maybe he was handsome in a skinny sort of way.

  That would be the last glimpse we would have of him for nearly two weeks.

  Red Hair says

  he will be gone

  many nights,

  until the end of the flowering moon

  is near,

  preparing

  for the trial.

  before he leaves

  he reaches

  deep

  inside his coat

  to find

  a duckbill of sweet maple sugar, and

  two acorn cakes

  from Rice Bird, and

  a bag of tobacco

  from Ajijaak, my father.

  i take the gifts

  and Red Hair says—

  your wife and children and the Old Ones

  wish me to tell you

  that their hearts

  melt

  and they pray to Kitche Manitou

  for your return.

  after the trial,

  i will go back? i ask.

  eya’,

  yes, Red Hair says.

  i will hunt in the woods

  and fish in the rivers

  and see the sun rise

  and fall

  in the sky again?

  eya’, eya’, eya’,

  yes, yes, yes, he says.

  after Red Hair has gone,

  i pour

  the sandy grains

  of maple sugar

  into my mouth.

  the taste of the trees

  is sweet

  on my tongue.

  As Indian John's trial drew closer, a gnawing dread began to grow inside me.

  It was the same feeling I had at certain other times of the year. I always dreaded the start of the bitter month of March, which had taken Ma away. And the approach of Independence Day on account of how Pa and the men got rolling drunk on whiskey and went wild with their guns. And hog-butchering time because Pa said I was too softhearted.

  And now, as the end of May approached, an uneasy feeling had come over me about the trial and what was going to happen. Everywhere I went, it seemed I heard folks talking about Mr. Kelley and Indian John. And most of what they were saying was mean and ugly.

  Our gossiping neighbor, Mrs. Evans, s
aid that she had seen Peter Kelley riding through the settlement. “Yesterday, I think I saw that Indian lawyer,” she told us one morning while she was visiting our house. “He was riding an old, swaybacked horse along Water Street. What a poor stick he is.” She rolled her eyes. “Looks as if he's never done an ounce of work in his life. They say he don't own no farmland at all, not even a cornfield, 'magine that.” She leaned forward and grinned with her poor-looking teeth. “He ain't gonna last one day out here on the frontier, not one day.”

  I didn't dare to turn my eyes in Laura's direction. The whole time Mrs. Evans was talking, I just stared at the knotholes in our table.

  A few days later, I was standing in Mr. Perry's dusty little store buying one stick cinnamon and some sugar when I overheard words that were even worse. Mr. Perry was talking to a stranger. Only thing I could see of the two of them was the tops of their heads over a stack of barrels—Mr. Perry's gray, uncombed hair and the stranger's brown work hat. Mr. Perry was telling the man that there was gonna be a big Indian trial in our settlement in a few days, and after the trial was held, they were gonna hang the savage first and drag the Indian lawyer out of the state on the back of his heels second.

  My stomach curled up inside me, and I didn't breathe a word as they spoke to each other. No one knew that me and Laura had gotten to know Mr. Kelley and Indian John. Or that we'd come to feel a great deal of pity in our hearts for them.

  “Nay, I wouldn't do that,” the stranger replied in a slow voice. “If it was me, I'd give that skinny lawyer a hatchet in the skull, same as that savage done to that poor white trapper. Then I'd throw his bones in the ground and let him go and defend all the misrable savages he wants in hell.”

  I feared I was going to vomit up everything inside me.

  Leaving the stick cinnamon exactly where it was and forgetting my little basket on a barrel, I told Mr. Perry that I was feeling an attack of the shaking ague coming on and I had to get home before I felt any worse. I ran all the way back to the cabin, holding my arms against my stomach and blinking tears out of my eyes.

  I couldn't understand how they could speak so cruelly against kind and gentle Peter Kelley, who was only trying to do what he thought was right. Who else would have defended Indian John if he hadn't stepped forward? Wasn't there a single soul who was taking Indian John's side?

  I tried asking Amos what he thought. One evening while he was cutting kindling, I stood by the chopping stump, rolling the strings of my apron around and around my finger.

  “You want something, Reb?” Amos said finally, giving me a half grin. “Or are you just standing there to see what work looks like?”

  “I'm wondering something,” I said.

  “Wondering ain't getting anything useful done.”

  “I'm wondering about the Indian's trial.”

  Amos stopped chopping and wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “What about it?”

  “I'm wondering why they're going to the trouble of a trial and a jury and lawyers if everybody already believes he's guilty.”

  Amos went back to chopping. “Because that's the way justice is,” he said, over the sound of the ax. “If you was a man, you would see that. Even a guilty Indian gets a trial in this country before he gets hanged. That's the fair way things get done.”

  “But what if—” I paused and took a deep breath. “What if it comes out in the trial that maybe he ain't guilty?”

  Amos sighed loudly. “Why don't you ever use your head, Reb? If he wasn't guilty, there wouldn't be a trial, now would there? There wouldn't be no need for a jury or lawyers if he was innocent, right? What kind of sense would that make?” He picked up the ax and lowered it hard, sending splinters of wood everywhere. “Now just go on and leave me alone.”

  What Amos meant was a bafflement to me. My mind twisted and turned trying to understand his words. They didn't make an ounce of sense, truly they didn't. No matter which way I looked at them.

  When I saw Mr. Kelley again, I decided I would ask him what he believed and I would warn him about Mr. Perry and the other men. Even if, like Amos, he thought I was nothing but a rattlebrained fool.

  Peter Kelley finally came back on a day that Laura was making soap at the Hawleys’. When I opened the door and saw his familiar coat, I knew that Laura would never forgive herself for leaving. We had just about given up all hope of seeing him again. Day after day we had jumped at each knock on the door, only to find another person waiting outside.

  “May I come in?” Mr. Kelley said in a hurried voice. He had a square haversack slung over one shoulder, and in his left hand, he held a brown leather book that was stuck full of papers.

  I nodded and wished that Laura was there. Mercy was playing with a big pile of wood shavings on the floor behind me, and I am sure that I looked like the foolishest thing, with wood shavings stuck all over my clothes. All the things I had been intending to ask Peter Kelley had suddenly left my head.

  “Laura ain't here,” I said as he stepped inside. “She's gone off to the Hawleys’ for the day.”

  Mr. Kelley hesitated. I watched as he gazed up at the loft above our heads and then back at the door he had come through. I could tell he was considering whether to leave or stay.

  “I don't know when I can find a way to return, not with all the men in the fields and the settlement as busy as it is,” he mumbled, as if he was speaking to himself more than me. He gave me an uncertain look. “You'll keep an ear out for your Pa and brothers?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “You'll tell me if you hear anyone coming down the road?”

  I nodded again.

  Reluctantly, he started up the steps to the chamber loft. While he was talking to Indian John, I sat in the open doorway of the cabin, slowly cutting up a bowl of potatoes and keeping an eye out for Pa and the boys, who had gone to the settlement. Mercy played on the floor behind me.

  I tried to decide what to say to Mr. Kelley before he left. Should I warn him about Mr. Perry and the other men? Tell him everything I had overheard in the store? Was it blasphemous to repeat the words my brother Amos had said about the trial? Or should I just keep silent, as my Pa always said I ought to do?

  At the sound of Mr. Kelley's footsteps, my heart thudded in my chest and my mouth felt dry as ashes. I could not think of what words to say. The questions tossed to and fro in my mind. He would surely think I was a half-wit or a fool if I spoke. And how could I go against my Pa and the men?

  I ran my tongue across my lips. As Mr. Kelley was tucking the brown book back into his haversack, I stammered quickly “Will you win, do you think?” It was not the question I was fixing to ask, but it was the only one that came out.

  “Win?” He squinted at me.

  “The trial,” I said.

  Peter Kelley's forehead wrinkled up as if he was thinking what to say, and his serious brown eyes stared at me for what seemed like a long time before he replied. I reckon maybe he didn't want to answer on account of who my Pa was and what I might tell him.

  But finally, he said, “Yes, Miss Rebecca. I will win.”

  His voice was as sure and solid as a block of stone, and I had to swallow hard when I heard it because I figured he didn't know a thing about Mr. Perry and the men.

  “What if the men aim—” I paused, praying that Pa would never find out what I did. “What if the men aim, well, to cause you trouble?” I said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

  “Trouble?”

  “At the trial,” I mumbled. “Because of you, well, defending an Indian.”

  Mr. Kelley slung his haversack over his shoulder and gave me a wide easy grin. “I don't expect the judge or the sheriff would stand for that,” he said with a shrug. “And if someone didn't serve as the lawyer for the Indian's side, what sort of trial would there be?”

  Peter Kelley ducked through the doorway and was gone before I could tell him what my brother had said. Or that, truth be told, the sheriff for the Crooked River settlement might not help him either.
He was one of my Pa's good friends. And he was none too fond of Indians either, from what I knew.

  But perhaps Peter Kelley was right. Perhaps the judge would be on his side.

  in my mind

  i hear the words

  of Red Hair

  telling me how it will be.

  when I am brought

  to the trial,

  i will stand before a judge

  and twelve other white men

  who will decide

  right and wrong.

  i do not understand

  i tell my old friend.

  if an Indian murders a man,

  it is the man's family—

  brothers, sons, fathers—

  who decide

  right and wrong.

  they are the only ones who know

  what should be done.

  why would a white chief

  and twelve strangers

  take revenge for a murder

  that has not happened to them?

  i ask.

  Red Hair says it is the law

  of the white men—

  they must prove

  that i am guilty of the crime.

  but i am not guilty

  i tell Red Hair,

  and if they asked the family

  of the murdered man

  they would know

  i speak the truth.

  my friend sighs and tells me

  that after i see it

  with my own eyes

  and listen

  with my own ears,

  i will understand

  the fair justice

  of the white man.

  June 1812

  The judge arrived a few days before the trial was set to begin.

  It was the first week of June when he came riding into our settlement. The weather had been warm and dry, and the corn had been in the ground for a good while. The beets and potatoes were already coming up in the garden, and we had more onions than we cared to eat.

  Our gossiping neighbor Mrs. Evans was the one who came barreling down the path to our house to tell us the judge had arrived.