But as the winter’s afternoon light began to dim, as we fixed up Seamus here, as the stream of patients finally dwindled and men were helped away home to their beds in the cabins and lodgings … it felt as if we had won some war. We three, aided by the army of wives and children that washed and cleaned and bandaged and cared, along with the men that carried and consoled and held their fellow men.
The giddying sensation of it swells in my chest, and I am not quite sure what to do with it.
“Seamus will be fine,” I hear Dr Spicer tell the storekeeper. “He might be dizzy and confused awhile but should be better with a decent sleep.”
“Aye, I’ll be fine,” mutters the miner, rousing now at the mention of his name. “But will you be fine, Mr Nathaniel? Will you?”
The storekeeper’s face darkens as he pulls his lodger to his feet.
“Gently, Mr Nathaniel!” Dr Spicer urges him.
He throws her a filthy look in return and grips the now-standing Seamus under one arm.
“C’mon, man,” he orders him forward.
Seamus tries to pull away, roaring, “How’s your conscience, eh?”
“And how’d you like all the rum you can drink when we get back to the store, for free, eh?” Mr Nathaniel counters, holding Seamus all the tighter and steering the staggering miner towards the canteen door.
“What does the Irishman mean?” Easter wonders aloud.
“I heard some of the women saying that Mr Nathaniel’s been holed up in the mine-manager’s office most of the day,” says Lachlan, passing us by with a bucket half filled with rags and water stained red on his way out for fresh water. “Suppose it’s made folk angry, seeing both of them in there instead of out helping.”
“Speaking of Mr Eriksson, I think I’ll have a word with him about the care his workers will need after this. We have woefully few medical supplies left…” Dr Spicer mutters, heading off after the men.
And with that, Easter and I are the only two left in this echoingly empty room. Like a puppet with its strings cut, I collapse down on to a bench.
“Think folks’ll see her as a real doctor now?” says Easter, flopping herself next to me.
“I hope so,” I answer.
Though in this moment, I am thinking of Easter rather than Dr Spicer; she has had more to bear today, having to face men who were frightened and in pain yet railed against a dark-skinned young girl stitching their wounds. But help them she did as wives shushed and begged the injured to be still and let her help them, in the same way as other wives begged their loved ones and friends to let Dr Spicer – assisted by a girl such as myself – make them better.
“To think she’ll have slept all through this strange day…” Easter says thoughtfully.
At first, my exhausted mind struggles to understand who exactly Easter refers to. For a moment, I fancy that she talks of the mystical, night-wandering Indian maiden; there’s been enough gloomy talk of the “Chippewa Curse” amongst folk in here today, though Dr Spicer – with her scientific leaning – has quickly and forcefully shushed any such nonsense in her hearing.
“Your mistress, you mean?” I ask Easter once my thoughts clear. “You think Mrs Eriksson will not have woken with the noise and the shouting?”
Easter shakes her head. “She takes such a strong dose of her medicine every morning that she’d sleep through a volcano erupting, I reckon. It’s her escape from this place – this prison, she calls it.”
“So she is very unhappy here?” I ask Easter, understanding how this far-flung place could drive a person half mad, especially with the dreadful heartbeat of the stamp mill clanging day in and day out.
“She got wed in a terrible hurry in London, thinking she’d have a fine old time as a married lady in America. She reckoned she’d be living in Chicago, as Mr Eriksson promised, taking tea and promenading with society ladies like herself,” Easter explains, holding her chin high, mimicking the ways of rich women. “Instead, her husband drags her here to Hawk’s Point, where there is nothing for her to do and more than plenty of time to do nothing in…”
“Can she not leave him? Go back to her family?” I suggest, imagining – with more than a little envy – Mrs Eriksson heading away on the first steamship of the spring.
“There’s the trouble – she’s got nowhere to go,” says Easter. “Her pa is dead, and gambled most of the family money away, she told me. Her mama doesn’t want to know about her troubles. She even wrote and told Mrs Eriksson that leaving her husband would be too shameful, and that she would just have to make the best of it.”
What a heartless thing for a mother to say. Many a time I heard Mother say the Gaelic phrase “an rud nach gabh leasachadh, ’s fheudar cur suas leis” (what cannot be cured must be endured), but I cannot imagine her ever letting one of her girls suffer in a miserable marriage.
“How old do you think your mistress is?” I ask.
“Maybe nineteen, maybe twenty,” Easter guesses as she spins.
Nineteen or twenty! Younger than I imagined and only a few years older than myself; nearer the ages of my beloved Effie and Ishbel, I think. How sad to be so alone and without family, for all the comforts that Mrs Eriksson might have.
“Your mistress’s situation – it puts me in mind of someone I used to know,” I tell Easter. “A young woman came to our island in Scotland. Caroline was distant kin of the Laird who owned the place. She might have seemed like another rich lady to any stranger, but in truth, she was almost a prisoner, unwanted and uncared for.”
“What happened to her?” asks Easter.
“My family had to leave the island as fast as we could, once we heard that the Laird thought Father was plotting against him. And so my sisters and I … we decided to smuggle Caroline away with us, from under her guardian’s very nose!”
I give a little shiver, recalling that frightening time and the risks we took. But how could we have abandoned a young woman when she had no one who truly cared for her but us?
Oh, how the Laird must have hated us! Especially as we stole away his dog Patch too… It was plain that he didn’t have a warm thought for either his poorly neglected ward or the pet he’d happily kick and beat, but a man like that would resent the dent to his pride.
“Is that so? That’s like Pastor Jacob!” Easter says with eyes wide. “We often had folk staying with us for just a short time. Took me till I was near grown to understand they were slaves on the run from the southern states, and the pastor’s home and church was a stopping point for them on their way north to Canada. Didn’t realise how dangerous it was till some bounty-hunter fellows came looking for runaways, and beat up the pastor when they didn’t find them.”
“Was that the time you stitched his head?” I check, making sense of what she said earlier.
“Yes…” she says, nodding thoughtfully at that unsettling memory. “But you know, some folk that stopped by were free black people from eastern cities, heading to homestead in the west. They’d come by train and stay awhile till they bought themselves wagons and horses and supplies for their journeying. There was this real nice lady – Mrs Clarice Campbell, her name was. She sent me a letter before I left Chicago, saying she and her husband had found themselves a homestead near a little town in Minnesota. Hopetown it was called, something pretty like that. Think I might like to go out that way once I saved myself enough money.”
“Really?” I ask, knowing I must look goggle-eyed with surprise. “I’ve always had a yearning to go west too!”
“Well, let’s go together!” Easter says lightly, holding a bloodied hand out to shake mine.
“Yes, let’s!” I say, beaming at the idea of someone sharing my dreams when I know not one other person who does.
But even with my spirit soaring and my own bloodied hand very definitely shaking on our agreement, I know in my heart of hearts it cannot happen.
For Father’s days of running are over. From the island to Glasgow, from Glasgow to New York, from New York to Hawk’s Point…
He would not see fit to move on again, I’m sure. Not unless something drove us from this place, as it did everywhere else.
But surely our days of ill-luck are over…?
Ever since the mine disaster, the weather has sulked, throwing us blinding snowstorms and terrible winds that toyed with the trees, tossing them around as if they were playthings.
But today is different. The air is still, the sky is bright blue, and the children of the Gillespie storefront classroom are quite daft, infected by the lightness, giddy at the glimpse of finer days to come even though it is still only March.
“In Scots Gaelic, we call it Am Màrt,” I tell the children, as Dr Spicer marks their writing at her desk.
“Am Màrt,” the children roar their sing-song response, just as they did when the Irish boys bellowed “Mí Márta”, and Henni and Matilde trilled “März!” in perfect unison in their clipped German accents.
But the Chippewas have far and away the best name for this month, as the pupils are about to find out.
“Jean, can you tell us what your word is?” I ask him.
“My people know this time as Snow Crust Moon. Naabidin is snow crust, Giizis means moon,” says Jean from his stool in the corner where his fingers deftly work on some colourful band or belt.
Wampum this craft is called. Jean has tried to teach me how to do it on those evenings he sometimes comes to share a meal with my family and Dr Spicer. Sadly, my fingers are clumsy and I spill more beads than I stitch; Odayan always watches with curiosity as they trickle between the cracks in the floorboards. I stumble too when I try to say the words of Jean’s language, but still I try. And in these long winter nights, when the wind howls and moans and rattles the thin clapboard walls, often all that helps lull me to sleep in the biting cold is to murmur the names of the months of the year over and over again, first in Chippewa and then in English: Spirit Moon, Bear Moon, Snow Crust Moon, Sugar Moon, Sucker Moon, Blossom Moon, Berry Moon, Ricing Moon, Changing Leaves Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Freezing Moon, Little Spirit Moon…
“Can you say it again, please, Jean?” I ask.
“Naabidin Giizis,” he replies.
Somewhere under a table I can hear the happy whack of his dog’s tail on the floor. Perhaps Odayan enjoys hearing his master’s voice, but I think it more likely that he has placed himself at Lachlan’s feet as usual and has just been fed a scrap my brother has saved from our breakfast table. Nearly all the children are in awe of Odayan, wishing they had such a creature themselves, but it is my brother who he softens for.
“Naabidin Giizis,” the children repeat excitedly, enjoying the taste of these different-sounding words in their mouths.
All except Charlie that is. He came crawling back to school a few weeks ago, once he realised how dull it was to be on his own. He now pulls a face as if he has been asked to eat something sour and unpleasant. His eyes are lowered, fidgeting with a piece of string, I notice.
“Very nice pronunciation!” says Dr Spicer getting up from her chair. “And that –” she takes a look at the clock, whose thin, metal hands finally reach up together in prayer, pointing straight at twelve – “brings us to the end of school for today. Do not rush, and no pushing and shoving as you leave…”
But Dr Spicer is guilty of doing all three as she belts herself into her oversized coat and squeezes past the chattering children before they have barely put their mittens and mufflers on. I understand her haste; today is her first appointment with the mine manager’s wife, which is why Easter leaves with her. It is fair to say that the trust and respect shown to Dr Spicer in the aftermath of the mine-tunnel collapse has made her the busiest person in town, with her swelling roll call of pupils to deal with in the mornings, and the surgeries she holds in the same storefront in the afternoons. All the hard work seems to suit Dr Spicer though. I recall her being gaunt and pale when we first met back in November (the month of the Freezing Moon!) But she is more than a little changed: pink-cheeked, a little plumper perhaps, but bonny.
Now, with the doctor already gone, I take her place by the door while the children chat and jostle their way out. As I say my goodbyes, I hear Odayan give a low warning growl and look round to see Charlie at the end of the line, turning back into the room, holding the string he was fidgeting with.
A flush of anger floods my face for I see he has made a slingshot of it! He seems about to ready his aim, about to let go of one end of the string so that some small, sharp stone will fly in the direction of the still-seated Jean, when Odayan’s growl turns to a menacing bark. Fear makes Charlie hesitate long enough for me to snatch the slingshot from his hand.
“Hey!” he calls out. “Give that back!”
“Get out,” I say firmly. “I’ll be telling Dr Spicer about this.”
“Well, tell her about that dangerous dog, then!” he blusters, pointing to Odayan, who now stands silent, at Jean’s command.
But for all his cocky words, Charlie moves fast enough, hurrying out of the doorway and away down the steps. I slam the door shut and lean against it, tossing the hateful slingshot on a nearby table.
“I’m sorry about that,” I say to Jean.
“What are you sorry for? It’s not your weapon,” he replies, slowly wrapping up his beadwork and placing it into his satchel. At his feet, Odayan relaxes and yawns, long, white fangs glinting. “The boy and some of the others in town have got braver with what they say to me since the mine accident.”
He’s right; I’m saddened to say that sense has quite left the townspeople. With no explanation for the disastrous second explosion, with worry about the future of the mine, with no chance of copper being found while they dig out and shore up the collapsed tunnel, folk have been looking for someone to blame. Rumours have taken hold, superstition has won out. It had to be the work of the Chippewa Curse and the black-feathered ghost they say. And if they cannot properly rage at a spectre, then they choose the next best thing and rage at a real living Indian. Even one who helped as much as anyone on the day of the disaster.
“You could just tell them that the spirit doesn’t exist,” I suggest.
“They never took my word on anything before, so they won’t now they’ve worked themselves up into a fever,” says Jean, putting on his hat and heading for the door, Odayan falling in step. “Think it’s maybe time I got out of Hawk’s Point for a while. Going to fix up my sled and go overland to visit my family on the reservation.”
“No!” I say, shocked. “We’d all miss you too much!”
And Lachlan would be devastated to say goodbye to Odayan, I think to myself.
“Huh,” is all Jean says in reply, as he takes his leave.
I lean in the doorway and watch him walk away without a backward glance, though he raises a hand to me over his shoulder. At his side, Odayan matches his master’s long, loping walk with a hunch-shouldered bounce of his own. They leave the road and wend between the buildings further along, heading up into the snowy woods and the cabin they both share somewhere in the foothills of the forested cliff.
I’m about to go inside when I see Easter hurrying back along the road.
“Is everything all right?” I ask, stepping down to meet her.
“I told Dr Spicer I heard some of the children talking about a pond in the woods where you can slide and skate,” she says, struggling for breath. “Heard them say it’s not far, just up behind the town. Dr Spicer asked if you and me could go on up there together and hustle any children we find back down to their mothers…”
“I knew they were all too giddy today,” I say in reply, grabbing my shawl from a hook by the door. “At least the snow will make it easier to track them.”
In just a few moments, Easter and I are following in the frosted footsteps of the children, heading uphill into the light-dappled trees at the foot of the cliff.
Holding our skirts high, their hems already soaked heavy, Easter and I both pant with the effort. And with those chest-pumping breaths, a subtle, sweet perfume suddenly comes
to me, making me quite giddy myself. There’s a scent in the air; the nuttiness of the pines, a soft wind that is no longer full of sharp ice to freeze the lungs. I smell loosening buds on branches and pinpricks of green shoots that unfurl in patches where the snow is beginning to melt.
The scent is of change, spring, hope.
Raising my face to the blue sky above the treetops, I can almost feel the gentle rhythmic pounding of birds’ wings in the sky above as they begin to drift northward in their vee formations, turning their feathered backs on southern wintering spots to return to their Michigan homelands.
And talking of birds, I see a gleaming black crow’s feather on a mossed tree trunk and gather it up to add to my brother’s collection, cheerfully sticking it in my hair as I set off again.
I’m about to take a high step forward over the stump when the back of Easter’s hand gently presses against my chest, and I stop in my tracks to see what she sees. Ah, we are being watched! A few feet away from us is a deer – a hind with amber eyes and the steam of her breath haloing at her wet, dark nose.
I expect the dainty animal to instantly leap away. When she does not, when she stays exactly where she is, with no fear, I have a thought; I am filled with a sudden sense that perhaps Mother is trying to reach out and tell me something. Trying to let me know that the snowed-in prison of Hawk’s Point is beginning to loosen its shackles. Back down at the waterfront, the ice that clings tight to edges of the vast Lake Superior will be already thinning, I realise, ready to let the first steamship come through in a few weeks’ time. Fresh supplies, new people and packets of mail will come (though I try not to think of those last, precious items). This steep forest that has seemed like a frozen bear trap around the town; it can now begin to start showing its beauty, its bounty, its rough but soon recognisable paths that will lead to other settlements just a few miles along the coast either side.
Little Bird Lands Page 8
