Crooked River

by Shelley Pearsall

  “Would you describe the three Indians you tried to catch?”

  “There was two grown Indians and one real young boy, maybe seven or eight years of age.”

  “And what happened to them?”

  “Well, the boy run off from us before we could catch him. We were told by that Indian”—Pa motioned toward Indian John—“that the boy was known by the name of Semo.”

  when I hear the name Semo,

  i laugh

  inside my mouth.

  the men who caught me

  wanted the name

  of the young Indian

  who ran.

  i told them

  Se Mo.

  shame and dirt.

  the gichi-mookomaanag

  wandered in the woods

  for hours

  calling out

  shame and

  dirt. shame

  and dirt.

  while my son

  Little Otter,

  slipped away.

  inside my mouth,

  i laugh.

  “Pardon me?” Mr. Kelley said, and I saw his eyes dart over to Indian John.

  “I said SE-MO,” Pa spat. “You listenin’ or not?”

  There was a peculiar silence before Peter Kelley continued. His eyes flickered in the direction of Indian John again and then he coughed a little and returned to his questions. “And what do you remember about the other two Indians?” he said.

  “The other Indian was older. He run off before we caught him and shot himself with his own gun.”

  Mr. Kelley squinted at Pa, as if he was pretending to be confused. “While he was running, you say? He shot and killed himself with his own gun?” You could tell by the way his voice rose that he didn't believe a word my Pa said.

  Mr. Root leaped up to shout an objection and the judge leaned across the table. “Mr. Kelley,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “This is a case about a dead trapper, not a dead Indian, am I correct?”

  Mr. Kelley nodded and repeated his apologies twice. Around us, everyone seemed impatient to move and the children in the back were fussing loudly. A man in the crowd stood up and hollered something about Mr. Kelley that doesn't bear repeating. It was already well past the noon mealtime.

  “Have your questions for this witness been concluded, Mr. Kelley?” The judge sighed.

  “Yes sir, that was all, I think, yes,” Mr. Kelley said. Even though from the downcast look on his face, I don't imagine that they were.

  Standing up and wiping a cloth across his shiny bald head, the judge told everyone that the next witness would have to wait until the court had some refreshments and its noonday meal. Although I daresay from the weary expressions on the faces of the judge and jury, none of them were very anxious to return to the Indian's trial again.

  As we walked back to the cabin, Mrs. Evans huffed, “That miserable lawyer has nothing but lies in his mouth. Just full of outright lies. I don't see how he can stand up there and say those things to your Pa.”

  I didn't breathe a word, but while we walked, I kept on wondering about Mr. Kelley's question. How could a man be running and shoot himself with his own gun?

  the words of the white men

  roll with lies.

  Ten Claws

  has the legs

  of an old man,

  of a slow crane bird,

  of a turtle.

  i hear the snap

  of the white man's gun,

  but i do not feel

  its sting. beside me

  Ten Claws

  is the one who cries and

  falls.

  Ten Claws

  has the legs

  of an old man,

  of a slow crane bird,

  of a turtle,

  but even Ten Claws

  does not run

  slow enough

  to shoot

  himself

  with his own gun.

  When the court resumed again in the late afternoon, a large bear of a man filled the entire witness chair. I drew in my breath.

  Blacksmith Nichols.

  In the settlement, the sight of him always frightened me near to death. His soot black hands were the size of bear paws. Beneath his rolled-up sleeves, his red arms were as big around as tree limbs. But it was his fierce eyes that truly seemed to burn holes straight through your skin if you caused him to turn them in your direction. Whenever he came to visit my Pa, I sat in terror of him.

  But Augustus Root didn't seem to feel even a shiver of fear. After the blacksmith was sworn to tell the truth, he strolled easily toward him. “Tell us, if you would, Mr. Nichols,” he started, in a voice that was almost cheerful, as if he was asking Mr. Nichols to tea. “How did you come to make the acquaintance of the Indian who is before us today, the one who is called—”

  “Made him a tomahawk,” the blacksmith's voice rumbled, and he stuck his finger in Indian John's direction before Mr. Root even finished all his words.

  “A tomahawk,” Mr. Root repeated slowly.

  “Yes sir.”

  “And why did you make a tomahawk for this particular Indian?”

  Mr. Nichols crossed his arms and glared at the lawyer. “You seen many blacksmiths among the savages, Mr. Root?”

  Not a soul in the crowd dared to laugh.

  Augustus Root smiled uncomfortably. “No, of course not, quite so.” He straightened the fancy white cloth tied around his neck and smoothed the front of his yellow silk vest before speaking again. I hid a small grin behind my hand.

  “Could you, perhaps, describe the tomahawk you made for Indian John?” he said, gesturing with one arm. “Tell the jury, well, exactly how it was made.”

  Mr. Nichols stared at the lawyer as if he had asked an even more thick-skulled question. “What a tomahawk is made of?” he repeated.

  “Let me remind everyone,” the judge interrupted, “that this is a court of law and all questions are to be answered to the best of one's knowledge.”

  Seemed to me that the blacksmith grew even larger as he drew back his anvil-sized shoulders and turned his fierce eyes upon the judge.

  “Mr. Nichols, could you explain how the tomahawk was made exactly? Just for the jury,” the lawyer hurried on.

  There was a long terrifying wait before Nichols turned toward the crowd again and answered the lawyer.

  “It was a pipe tomahawk. Iron blade with a steel edge. For sharpness,” he added in a voice that sent a chill clear through my bones.

  “And you made only the blade, am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the haft—the handle? What did it look like?”

  “Wood.”

  “Any decoration that you recall?”

  “Yes.”

  Augustus Root stopped and rubbed his eyes, as if he was growing weary of asking question after question without getting anything more than a yes or no. “Could you perhaps describe it?” he said, sighing loudly.

  “There was marks scorched all along the wood of the haft.” Mr. Nichols moved his hands. “Dark and light stripes.”

  “Made by the Indian?”

  “Made by some Indian,” the blacksmith rumbled. “I don't know who.”

  “Anything else? Other decorations?”

  “One piece of trade silver in the shape of a diamond, set in the wood.”

  The lawyer glanced out at the crowd and said in a louder voice, as if he wanted all of us to hear him.

  “Do you think, Mr. Nichols, you would recognize the tomahawk you worked on if it was shown to you again?”

  My heart thudded in my chest.

  “Yes,” Mr. Nichols said, folding his big arms. “I would.”

  Grinning a little to himself, Augustus Root walked quickly to his chair to fetch something. In an anxious rush of air, everyone around us stood up to see it.

  i have seen the tomahawk

  of Ten Claws

  many times.

  he wore it

  proudly
/>
  tucked in the woven red sash

  tied around his waist.

  it is handsome—

  as the gichi-mookomaan

  holds it overhead,

  i see

  the flash of silver

  and the handle

  half as long as a man's arm,

  circled

  with bands of black

  and brown

  like a striped insect

  that hums over summer fields.

  but i know, too,

  that the tomahawk

  of Ten Claws

  flies on angry wings

  when it is thrown.

  i remember

  how Ten Claws was too much mad,

  how he took his tomahawk one night

  and plunged into the dark and snow.

  we called out to him,

  béka! béka! stop!

  but he would listen to

  no one.

  I knew by the whispering sound of the crowd that the tomahawk was exactly the one the blacksmith had described. Exactly the one he had made for Indian John. And the same one that had been found in the trapper's head. Stinging tears began to fill my eyes and a lump rose fast in my throat.

  “Is this the pipe tomahawk you recollect making?” I heard Augustus Root say loudly and the blacksmith did not take more than a half second to examine it before I heard him answer that it was.

  “Could you show us the person you made it for?” the lawyer continued.

  The blacksmith stood up and pointed his finger.

  My heart sank to my feet.

  “That Indian is who I made it for. That one sitting right there,” he said, in a voice that was sure as anything.

  Some in the crowd wanted to see Indian John hanged without hearing another word. A man with a face full of pox scars waved his arm at the judge and hollered out, “You heared what that Nichols fellow said. Jist hang the savage from this big tree right here and be done with it.”

  I looked up at the wide oak tree above us and held my arms across my sickening stomach.

  “Silence!”

  As the crowd clapped and cheered, Judge James R. Noble pounded his mallet so hard on his table, I expect it probably made circles in the wood. “I am the judge of this state of Ohio,” he bellowed when the crowd grew quiet. “And I don't give a pickled damn who you want to hang or when.” He leaned across the table, his face as red as clay bricks, and stared furiously at everyone. “You will not—by the laws of the United States or the ones written by God himself—hang anyone until I give the word that justice is done.”

  The judge gestured toward poor Mr. Kelley and said that he had every right to take his turn, even if the Indian was as guilty as a fox in a henhouse. “Every right,” he repeated, and glared at the crowd.

  But I could tell that there wasn't enough time left for Mr. Kelley to question the blacksmith. In the nearby fields, the cows were beginning to bellow for their milking, and there was a day's worth of chores still left to do. So, the judge said the trial would conclude for the day and resume the next morning.

  The crowd grumbled as they began to pick up their sundry collection of chairs and benches. “Ain't nothing left to try,” I could hear people saying to each other. “Guilty as guilty is,” they mumbled. “Waste our time listening to nothing. Jist hang him.”

  Me and Laura kept our heads down as we walked back to the cabin with Mercy. I felt plain shaken inside. I didn't know what to think. In my mind, I tried to reason that perhaps Mr. Nichols was mistaken. Or that the trapper had been kilt by another tomahawk, exactly like the one the blacksmith had made. But Mr. Nichols was the only blacksmith we had, and who would recognize a tomahawk better than him?

  Laura looked over at me. “You feeling as dreadful bad as I am?”

  I nodded.

  “I just feel so sorry for Peter Kelley.” Laura's voice wavered. “I think he must have believed every word Indian John told him. They were friends, and so he thought…” Her voice trailed away.

  “Yes,” I said low, scuffing my feet along the hard wagon ruts of the road.

  “What will Mr. Kelley say tomorrow?” she whispered. “Or do?”

  I couldn't imagine what Mr. Kelley would do the next day or how he would prove the blacksmith wrong. But the rest of the evening, my mind kept repeating the words he had said to me. I will win.

  Even though it didn't seem likely that Mr. Nichols would be mistaken in front of God and all those men, I could not give up on those words. No matter what everybody else, even Laura, thought to be true, my mind still held on to I will win.

  The next morning, the sky poured rain. When I heard it on the roof as I was lying in bed, I nearly shouted for joy. There wouldn't be any trial beneath Mr. Perry's old tree. Not in the hard rain. But then Pa came stomping in while we were fixing breakfast and told us the trial would be held inside our cabin on account of the poor weather and because our log house was the biggest one.

  I couldn't keep a downcast look from crossing my face. Pa caught a glimpse of it and said he had best not ever see that look again—hard work was what we did, and if I didn't want a thrashing, I had better help Laura get everything in order. I didn't dare to tell him that it wasn't the work I didn't want to do.

  After Pa left, I took some breakfast up to Indian John. He was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, staring into the shadows as if he was thinking. I don't know if he understood what all the shuffling and noise meant below, but he didn't nod in my direction as he usually did.

  As I set down the plate of food, I noticed that his white blanket was crumpled in the middle of the loft floor. I figured that it had fallen off his shoulders while the men were putting him back in irons and no one had cared to pick it up. Someone ought to show Amik one small kindness, I thought. No matter what happened at the miserable trial that day.

  So, I lifted up the white blanket from where it lay in a heap, shook the dust out of it, and folded it as neatly as one of our own bed quilts. Before I went back down the steps, I put the blanket beside his straw pallet and smoothed it with my hands. The blanket was wool with a band of red along the side, and I imagine it was important to him. It would have been important to me, anyway.

  I didn't say a word to Laura about it when I came downstairs. With people already arriving, we had to hurry to move all our furnishings and such to the walls. By midmorning, folks were packed into our cabin so tightly that not a chink of air remained. They were crowded on our beds, and Lorenzo even perched on top of our flour barrel.

  Me and Laura settled in the farthest corner of the room, behind all of the water-soaked backs and heads. We sat on the top of our wooden chest so no other folks would use it as their seat. It made my heart pound to imagine what would happen if anybody stumbled upon the things we had hidden inside. What would they think if they opened the wooden cover and caught a glimpse of the beads and quills and such?

  From where we sat, we could see Judge Noble, who was placed squarely in front of our fireplace, behind our dinner table. The jury was on the judge's left, crowded on chairs and stools in front of our food cupboard. The lawyers had the other side of the hearth to themselves. They sat in two of our good straight-backed chairs from the East with our dried bunches of herbs dangling strangely above their heads. Indian John sat on the far side of Peter Kelley, nearly hidden in the cabin corner.

  The judge hammered his mallet on our table. “Come to order,” he called out. I noticed that his hair was wet and unruly from the rain. He kept running his hand over the top of his wide forehead, trying to smooth away the lingering drops of water.

  “We are returning to the testimony of blacksmith Nichols this morning,” he said, clearing his throat. “And as planned, we will hear the questions of the lawyer Mr. Kelley today.”

  From the side of the fireplace, Mr. Kelley stood up and walked toward blacksmith Nichols, who was sitting in a chair beside the judge's table. Laura stared down at her fingers, k
notting and unknotting them. A lump rose in my throat as I watched Peter Kelley square his thin shoulders and face the blacksmith.

  His copper red hair was combed neatly, I noticed, and he wore a vest and shirt that looked newly made, but seeing those things made my heart ache even more. How would it feel to be in his shoes? I wondered. Having to defend the life of a person who was once your friend?

  For Mr. Kelley's sake, may something go well, I prayed. Just one small thing.

  “Good morning, Mr. Nichols,” the lawyer said in a quiet voice. “I only have a few questions.” Even those simple words made the crowd mock him in low whispers. Beside me, Laura shook her head.

  Mr. Kelley didn't seem to pay the whispers any mind. He held up the striped tomahawk again. “You made this tomahawk for the Indian called Indian John, am I correct?”

  Nichols rolled his eyes and gave a sigh loud enough for the whole room to hear. “I already said that to the lawyer yesterday, if you was listening.”

  “Answer the question Mr. Kelley asked you,” the judge warned.

  “Yes,” the blacksmith's voice rumbled. “Answer ain't no different than yesterday's—yes.”

  “Thank you,” Peter Kelley said, setting the tomahawk on the corner of the judge's table. He walked across the room to fetch something from a sack beside his chair. I raised my head to see what he was doing. He held up a small hatchet with a wood handle, the kind most of the men carried. Not much different than the tomahawk except for its plain handle.

  “I'm just curious, Mr. Nichols,” Peter Kelley said. “How about this hatchet? Do you recollect making this one?” He handed it to the blacksmith. “Go on— take a closer look at it.”

  A peculiar expression passed across Nichols's face as he took that hatchet from Mr. Kelley. He gazed at it for a good long while, turning it over and over in his big hands and running his thumb along the side of the blade, and then he said, “Nope. It ain't one of mine.”

  “You're certain?” Mr. Kelley repeated. “This isn't the one you made in the fall of last year for Reverend Doan?” Reverend Doan was a Methodist circuit preacher who came through from time to time. I could tell by the way Mr. Kelley asked the question that the hatchet surely belonged to the minister. But I didn't see what Reverend Doan's hatchet had to do with anything.