Crooked River

by Shelley Pearsall

  Hammering her big knuckles on the door frame to get our attention, Mrs. Evans gasped, out of breath, “That judge we been waiting for is here. My husband seen him with his own eyes.”

  If you ranked men in order of importance, the most important man to meet would likely be the president, next the governor, and right after that would be the traveling judges who came for the court days.

  Since none of us had a prayer of ever meeting President Madison and not likely Governor Meigs either, everyone was always anxious to get a glimpse of the judges when they passed through our settlement like minor kings. They always had fine-cut frock coats from the city, handsome riding horses, and a collection of mysterious leather bags and round portmanteaus tied to their saddles.

  “It's Judge James Randolph Noble,” Mrs. Evans continued. “That's what my husband said.”

  Judge James Randolph Noble.

  I don't know why, but hearing his fancy name gave me some hope. I pictured the judge in his flowing black robes, looking like Moses giving out the Ten Commandments. A judge named James Randolph Noble would see to it that justice was done for Peter Kelley and Indian John, surely he would.

  Mrs. Evans, who was an everlasting talker, said the courtroom for the judge was being set up under the big shady tree next to Mr. Perry's store. “Anybody who can fill up a foot of space and put the fear of God in that wretched savage is invited to come and hear it, they says—even women and children and babes in arms,” Mrs. Evans rattled on.

  Mrs. Evans peered at us. “I reckon both of you is gonna be there with your Pa and brothers, ain't you?”

  When me and Laura didn't answer, Mrs. Evans leaned forward, eyeing us more closely. “Now you ain't just gonna stay here in your old house, are you? Don't you want to see that Indian get his comeuppance for what he done? Setting here by yourselves won't be half as good as watching all that.”

  She shook her finger at Laura. “You just tell that Pa of yours to let you come and watch. I don't see why Major Carver would find fault with letting his girls come to a savage's trial. You tell him Mrs. Evans will keep an eye on you. Just tell him that.” She turned to leave. “And I'm gonna borrow one of your milk buckets while I'm here, too, if you don't mind.”

  And without waiting to hear a word from us, she headed out the door in the direction of our barn and was gone.

  After Mrs. Evans left, Laura heaved a deep sigh. “I don't care to go to that trial at all,” she said. “Let everybody leave us to ourselves. You and me, we'll take a pinch or two of loaf sugar and make some fancy little cakes in the reflector oven. Like the ones Ma used to have for company. And we'll put on our good bonnets and find a place to sit near the cabin, and we'll drink green tea and eat our fancy little cakes. Let Pa and the men do what they will.”

  To tell the honest truth, I didn't want to see the trial either. I knew what Peter Kelley had told me— how he was going to win. And I knew what my Pa and the settlement all believed. And I knew that Judge James R. Noble was there to see that fair justice was done. Looking at it from all of these directions, I believed that nothing good could possibly come out of the trial for anyone.

  But Pa wouldn't hear of us staying home.

  “Carvers is gonna be at the trial,” he said when Laura tried to reason with him at supper that night. She told him that we were planning to do some baking and keep an eye on Mercy rather than going to watch the trial proceedings.

  “You just bring Mercy along with you and make her mind,” he said in a hard voice. “And you make your bread and such some other day. All of us is gonna be at the trial.”

  the gichi-mookomaanag

  paint my face

  in crooked stripes.

  they take me

  from the place

  that floats above the ground.

  outside

  i lift up my head

  and smell the corn

  growing in the fields

  and the fish

  swimming in the rivers

  and the wild red berries

  turning full and ripe

  in the woods.

  i hear the deer moving

  with their fawns

  and the snapping turtles

  coming up from the rivers

  and the rattlesnakes curled

  asleep

  in the sunlight.

  i believe

  the gichi-mookomaanag

  are blind and deaf—

  they do not turn their heads

  to look up at the sky.

  they do not hear the sound

  of their loud feet.

  they pull me

  through the woods

  at the end of their iron rope,

  talking of death

  in words they think i do not know.

  they see and hear

  nothing

  that lives.

  On the day of the trial, we didn't leave until the sun was nearly above the tops of the trees, long after Pa and my brothers had left. It seemed as if we had been awake for hours. Days, even. I had tossed and turned all night, fearing what would happen. Laura looked worn to shadows, too.

  It had been awful hard listening to Pa and the men getting Indian John ready in the morning. I don't think me or Laura ever imagined they would use the soot from our own kettles and fat from the grease pot to paint stripes on Indian John's face. By the time they left with Indian John, both our stomachs were turned. Only Mercy had an appetite for her breakfast, while me and Laura didn't eat much more than a mouthful of ours.

  We washed the breakfast dishes in silence. I scrubbed the plates in small circles while Laura dried them just as slow. After the dishes were done, we took our time combing our hair, and I mended a torn hem in Laura's good dress. Twice.

  Finally, when there wasn't any more time to be wasted—and we knew Pa would be looking for us—we pulled on our bonnets and tucked our hair carefully inside. Before we closed the cabin door, Laura took a pinch of camphor from one of our tins and put it in her workbag. The sight of her bringing that along filled me with dread. Camphor was for funerals and sitting up with somebody's remains. It brought you back to your senses if you were overcome. I asked Laura why she would take it to the trial, and she said there was no telling what we would see that day, no telling at all.

  Holding tight to Mercy's little hands, we made our way down the road toward the settlement. White gnats flew in clouds around us and we had to keep a sharp eye for snakes curled up on the warm dirt. “Where we going?” Mercy kept on asking, and Laura kept on answering, “Hush.”

  As we drew closer to the settlement, I figured we would surely hear the trial.

  But we didn't hear a word until we came out of the woods and saw the silent crowd of spectators gathered around Mr. Perry's store. I had never seen so many people in one place in all my life. Not for Independence Day or a cabin raising or a funeral either. They didn't fit in the shade of the big tree but spilled out in every direction.

  “Lord, look at the people,” Laura gasped. “Reb, look at all the people.”

  The crowd sat on all manner of things—wagon boxes, planks, upended logs, and fancy chairs. Whatever they could find or bring, I supposed. Around the edges, there were bed quilts and blankets scattered across the scraggled grass, filled with women and children.

  As me and Laura drew closer, we caught sight of the jury men. They sat on two rows of planks near the front of the crowd. There were twelve of them, and I noticed a few faces I knew among them—our neighbor Mr. Evans, the shoemaker Hiram Nash, old Vinegar Bigger, the rough Hoadley brothers, who were rumored to be overly fond of drinking whiskey slings, Mr. Hawley—and a half dozen others. Most of the men looked mighty uncomfortable in their good suits of clothes, with their faces still sunburnt from planting. I could see their pocket handkerchiefs moving up to wipe their foreheads.

  Judge James R. Noble was next to the jury. He sat behind a table that was placed on a raised box.

  I studied him. He wasn't exactly l
ike the picture I had drawn in my mind. I had imagined someone tall and white-haired. Someone who would make everyone take notice and tremble. But Judge Noble was a round and fleshy-faced sort of man. His brown hair had retreated far back, leaving a wide white forehead that caught the shine of the sun. And his black robes hung in loose folds around him.

  When we reached the edge of the crowd, the judge was talking to someone sitting on the right side of him in what seemed to be the witness chair.

  The man was dressed in a dark suit of clothes, and he had a good brown hat resting in his lap.

  It gave me a start to realize that the man sitting there, being spoken to by the judge himself, was my very own Pa.

  Mrs. Evans caught sight of us and waved us over to a row where she was sitting. “Your Pa's up there testifying to the truth right now,” she hollered out, loud as an old crow, and my cheeks flushed when people's heads turned to stare.

  As we sat down next to Mrs. Evans, we heard the judge say that the jury would now hear the testimony of the witness, Major Lorenzo Carver.

  I saw Augustus Root stand up and move toward my Pa. He was a lawyer from the East who had been living in our settlement for nearly two years. But I must confess, me and Laura never took much of a liking to him. Mr. Root seemed to think more highly of himself than a person should and was terribly fond of listening to the sound of his own voice.

  He was also the only man we knew who still dressed in knee breeches and stockings. And truth to speak, Mr. Root's legs were nothing to look at neither. Scrawny old bird legs in white stockings. When no one was around, me and Laura called him Rooster Root on account of his legs and his peculiar habit of puffing out his chest when he spoke.

  “Tell us, Major Carver,” he said, moving in quick steps toward the witness chair. “Tell us in your own words exactly what happened in regards to the Indian we have brought before us this morning.”

  “Well, now.” My Pa gazed at Mr. Root and answered slowly. “I think you and everybody else on the jury knows exactly what happened. I don't need to go and repeat all the details, do I, Augustus?” He looked out at the crowd. “We all live 'round here and we ain't the kinds to keep secrets, is we?”

  But I could tell that the judge was none too pleased with this answer. His shoulders rose up so his robe was almost touching his ears, and he leaned forward to stare at my Pa in the witness chair.

  “Mr. Carver,” he said slowly, giving my Pa a look that could have withered a cornstalk in July. “I don't give one damned fig what everybody in this town knows or doesn't know. This is a court of law. You tell the jury exactly what you know. Do you understand?”

  Right at that moment, I felt a small flicker of hope for Indian John and Peter Kelley I didn't dare to look over at Laura, but I could hear her give a soft whisper under her breath. Maybe Peter Kelley was right about the judge being more powerful than any of the men in our settlement. I had never seen anybody stand up to my Pa. He was feared on both sides of the river. But Judge James R. Noble didn't seem to take any notice of that fact.

  In the silence after the judge scolded my Pa, I watched as Mr. Root patted a handkerchief carefully across his forehead and blew his nose loudly. I figured my father was supposed to be on the same side as him, and my Pa was not acting according to his plans. But then he didn't act according to anyone's plans except his own.

  Mr. Root took a long while to fold his handkerchief into a small, neat square and tuck it back in his frock coat before beginning again. I guessed he was trying to give Pa time to stop stewing in his chair.

  “To continue,” he said finally, giving Pa a small, encouraging smile. “Please tell us, Major Carver, in your own words, what happened earlier this spring and how you came to capture the Indian before us today.”

  My Pa crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. He fixed his eyes on Mr. Root and didn't look once at the crowd or the jury and especially not the judge. Just spoke straight to the lawyer, as if he was the only other person there.

  “In the month of April, this year,” he said, “me and my men got word that a poor trapper named Gibbs had been found dead—kilt by Indians at the end of March.”

  “And where was the trapper found?”

  “Other side of Crooked River.” Pa waved his arm as if he was standing right on the river's edge. “Over there, the western side.”

  “And what did you do after hearing about the dead trapper?”

  “Well,” Pa said, sending a hard spit of tobacco to the ground. “I got all my men together, maybe ten of us there was, and we went 'cross the river at the end of April to hunt for the three Indians who done it.”

  “I see.” Mr. Root nodded slowly and rubbed his chin, as if he was pretending to think hard. “You say Indians did this,” he repeated. “But how did you know that for certainty, Major Carver?”

  “Whether or not Indians kilt the trapper, you mean?”

  “Yes.” Mr. Root nodded solemnly.

  Pa gave a little snort. “He had an Indian tomahawk stuck into his skull, that's how.” He paused and added, “Reckon that would kill jist about anybody, now wouldn't it?”

  A wave of laughter rippled through the crowd and the judge leaned forward to say something. But before he did, Mr. Root hurried on with his next question.

  “How did you know which particular Indians did it?”

  “Folks around here and over there told us,” Pa said. “They ain't dumb.”

  “What folks?”

  “Do I gotta go and name them all?” Pa scowled. “I ain't got all year to set here for this trial.”

  “Just a few of them,” Mr. Root insisted, taking out his folded handkerchief again. “If you wouldn't mind, Mr. Carver, please.”

  “I'll see if I can recollect them all,” Pa answered with a loud sigh. “We talked to blacksmith Nichols, who made the Indian's tomahawk… the man who found the fellow dead on his land … 'nother trapper who hunted with the dead man… a fellow whose barn got burnt down by the same Indians last summer …,” he said, counting them one by one on his fingers as if to show how many there were.

  “And all of them told you the same thing?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What was it that they told you, exactly?”

  “That the murder had been done by three particular Indians who had been giving them trouble for a while.”

  “Three Indians,” Mr. Root repeated loudly.

  My Pa nodded. “One of which”—he pointed—“is sitting over there.”

  The crowd hushed as everybody leaned forward to look in the direction of Indian John, who was seated in a chair near the front. I was pleased that his chair didn't face the crowd. All anybody could get a glimpse of was the back of his head and the brown cloth of his plain shirt. The white blanket that I had often seen folded next to him in the loft was draped over his left shoulder. Only the judge and jury could see the fierce stripes that my Pa made.

  “When you say ‘trouble,’ of what sort do you mean?” continued Mr. Root.

  Pa leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. “Augustus, you know as well as me that we have been bothered by these hostile, savage Indians for years. I don't got to name all the troubles they cause.” He spit loudly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We try to clear our land, plant our fields, raise our families in peace, and they kill our women and children, steal our food, burn down our barns. Ain't no secret who's doing it if you live around here.”

  Folks all around me were nodding and agreeing as if it had happened to every last one of them. To be truthful, I didn't know anybody it had happened to. Nobody in the Crooked River settlement had ever been kilt by Indians. Not in my memory. Only thing I had ever heard were stories from other places.

  “Enough,” the judge said loudly, pinning a glare on Pa and Augustus Root.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Mr. Root said quickly. “That's all.”

  There were some hoots and shouts from the men in the crowd, but I couldn't tell the meaning exactly
. Regardless, the judge didn't appear to pay them any mind. He just turned toward the other side of his table. “Your questions, Mr. Kelley.”

  As Mr. Kelley stood up and walked toward the witness stand, it seemed that a dark cloud was cast over the sun and the air got suddenly colder. Folks leaned back and crossed their arms as if they had caught a chill. I heard a loud whispering start up all around me. Maybe the judge heard it, too, because he gave the crowd a long, sweeping stare.

  “Mr. Kelley,” he repeated loudly. “According to the law, it is now your turn to question the witness, Major Carver—as he is popularly known.”

  My heart pounded as young Mr. Kelley walked slowly toward my Pa's chair.

  One time, we had a little brown dog who was kilt one morning trying to fight off a wild bear. If you have ever seen that happen, you know the sickening feeling that comes from watching the terrible scene unfold and being helpless to do a thing about it. That's exactly how I felt as Mr. Kelley stood in front of my Pa.

  “Mr.—Major Carver,” Peter Kelley said, in a voice that was full of nerves. “You say you were told—or, well, heard—that three Indians were responsible for this crime, correct?”

  “Yessir,” my Pa shot back. “That's what I said.”

  “So, you didn't see the dead man yourself?”

  My Pa leaned forward ominously, and just out of pure habit, I moved back in my seat. “You trying to tell me that the poor trapper weren't dead?” he said real low.

  Peter Kelley's face turned a shade of red, and he stumbled over his answer. “I'm only trying to find out what you saw so the jury knows exactly—”

  “I don't need to see a dead man to know he's dead,” my Pa spat.

  From behind them came the judge's voice. “Answer the question, Mr. Carver. Did you see the dead man with your own eyes?”

  “No.”

  “The witness says no,” the judge repeated, giving Peter Kelley a stern, fatherly sort of look. “Move on to your next question.”

  I could see the lawyer's shoulders go up and down as he took in a trembling breath of air. He shuffled through the papers in his hand, and when he started up again, it seemed to me that he spoke with a trifle more courage and conviction.