Crooked River (6 page)

“Indian's upstairs,” Laura said, trying to hurry him on his way.

It wasn't long after the trapper went up the narrow steps that I knew something was wrong. There was a thumping noise, as if a large stone had been dropped on the floor, and then came the sound of the trapper's raspy old laughter. A sickly feeling crawled right into my stomach.

I couldn't hear all the words the trapper was saying to Indian John, but the few I could catch were ugly enough. There was more raspy laughter and scraping and thumping on the floor above our heads, as if the trapper was tormenting poor Indian John, who was desperate to move.

What happened next took me by surprise, though. Laura ran to the hearth, picked up the big frying pan, and flew up the steps to the loft.

“Out of our house,” she hollered at the trapper in a voice that didn't even sound like her own. It was loud and booming, as if she was shouting into a barrel. “Out of our house before I smash you to bits.”

And believe me, by the sound of her voice, there was no question that she would smash the trapper's head flat as a rattlesnake's if given half the chance. I
expect that the trapper must have believed this, too, because he left the loft so fast, he missed half of the steps coming down.

While he was shooting past me and out the door, I noticed that he had something in his hand. It looked like maybe it was a twist of brown paper, but I didn't pay it any real notice. I just stood by the hearth, with my knuckles squeezed white, praying for the cabin door to close and for us to be rid of him.

After the trapper had gone, Laura came back down the stairs. She didn't even glance in my direction. All she said was, “May the Lord forgive me for defending the life of a murderer,” and she dropped the pan on the hearth with a loud clang that made me jump. “And may the Lord keep Pa from finding out what I done, too,” she added.

Then she picked up a lump of bread dough we had left on the table and began to knead it furiously, as if she was trying to squeeze the life out of it.

“Any harm come to him?” I said finally.

“To whom?” Laura answered.

“Indian John.”

Laura's hands stopped right in the middle of her work. “Don't you show even the smallest kindness or pity for that Indian, Rebecca Carver,” she said fiercely. “Or I will take all of the things that you've hidden in our chest—the quills, the beads, everything—and I will burn them to ashes this very minute.”

Laura lifted up the dough and thudded it back on the table, lifted and thudded—hard enough to send up clouds of flour. To my way of thinking, she wasn't making the smallest bit of sense. First she saved Indian
John from the no-good trapper and then she scolded me for asking a trifling question.

“I only wanted to know,” I kept on.

With the way Laura's eyes looked daggers at me, I didn't dare to open my mouth again. I didn't dare to ask if she saw the trapper carrying something when he left the loft, or if she thought he had stolen something from us or from Indian John.

I just kept silent and did my work without a word. By evening, I had nearly forgotten all about the trapper. I didn't know then what an unfortunate mistake that would later turn out to be.

After the no-good trapper, a whole river of people started coming to our door to see Indian John. It was as if the trapper had opened the waterways of curiosity and folks arrived from far and wide to stare at a captive Indian.

I didn't care for their visits at all.

Amos had once told me about Learned Pig shows, where people paid a few cents to see an exhibition where real pigs spelled and counted. He said that some of the pigs had even been taught to spell the name of the president of the United States—Mr. Madison himself.

I wasn't sure all that was true.

But it seemed to me that the families who came to our house acted as if we had a Learned Pig show inside. The women arrived wearing their best going-to-meeting
gowns, and the children always carried something to give us Carvers. Since it was the time of year when most folks didn't have much good food left, it was most often a pail of butter or a few brown eggs—as if we were foolish enough not to have cows or chickens of our own.

After they stepped inside, the women would cast their eyes around our cabin and say in a jumpy voice, “That Indian ain't allowed free, is he? You've got him in chains now, I suppose?”

If it was up to me, I would have told them the Indian was sitting by the fire sharpening his hatchet. See how fast that would make them throw on their bonnets, turn on their heels, and run. Let them leave Indian John and us alone.

But Pa would certainly hear of it and give me a thrashing. He had given Laura an awful hard scolding when he got word of how she had treated that miserable trapper.

So me and Laura didn't have any choice but to tell the visitors where to find Indian John chained in the loft. Then they would go up the narrow stairs, real slowly, still talking to us as they went up. Always the women in front and their children behind, clutching hold of their skirts.

After a period of silent staring, when we could just hear the feet of the children shuffling back and forth on the floor, they would often holler down to us.

“He's asleep. When's he wake up?”

Truth to speak, I think Indian John just pretended to be asleep. When he heard footsteps, I think he would lean his head down as far as it would go on
his chest, so the only things visible in the shadows were the bottoms of his moccasins, his stretched-out legs, and the top of his head.

“Can you git him to wake up?” they'd ask.

Me and Laura would give each other a look, and then one of us would holler upstairs that we didn't care to do anything to make the Indian angry. That usually sent the curious eyes hurrying back down from the loft.

Sometimes, though, they got to throwing things at Indian John, trying to wake him up. They threw little things mostly, like the kernels of dried corn that were scattered on the floor of the loft. Or something the children had carried in. Maybe a clay marble or a pebble. From below, we could hear things clattering and rolling across the floor. The children would holler, “Hit him right there on the shoulder, you see that, Ma?” and they would laugh and clap. It always brought a terrible sick feeling to my stomach.

They were only throwing corn kernels and pebbles, but it seemed like I could feel the sting of every single piece that they threw as if it was my own skin instead of Indian John's. I could scarcely understand how people could think to do such things.

Me and Laura tried to keep the loft swept as best we could. After the visitors left, I often went upstairs and swept again. If Laura wasn't minding me, I would leave something small near Indian John's feet to try and make up for what folks had done.

Once I left him a brown butterfly wing I found near the springhouse. And another time, a scrap of green silk ribbon I had saved since Ma's death.
Sometimes, before I went back downstairs, I would whisper that I was real sorry for the way people were. I expect that he didn't understand a word, but I felt better for saying it.

After seeing what a gazingstock they made of Indian John, I never wanted to go to a Learned Pig show. Not even when I was old. It seemed to me that it wasn't right to stare at anything, human or animal, in a show. Even if it was only trained pigs who could spell the name of the president.

A different sort of visitor arrived one morning during the second week of May. Me and Laura were boiling clothes outside. We had a roaring good fire going and a mess of clothes to wash in the big kettle.

In the field just across the road from our cabin, Pa and the men were burning the last of the big brush heaps they had piled up in the fall. You could smell the bitter-sharp smoke from the burning wood on the air. Spring was a peculiar time, I thought. Sweetness and bitterness both. We tapped the sweetness out of some trees and burnt others to pieces within the same few months.

I squinted at the field, trying to see where Pa and the men were working, and that's when I spotted someone coming down the road.

All I saw at first was a blaze of copper red hair on
a stranger who looked as skinny as a beanpole. His brown coat flapped loosely around him as he walked, and he carried his hat in one hand.

“Now who could that be?” Laura said.

“Likely someone else coming to stare at Indian John,” I sighed. “Or to bother us about his trial.”

Pa had said that Indian John's trial would be held at the beginning of June, after the corn was in the ground. But I was awful tired of answering folks’ eternal questions about it. Or perhaps I didn't like to be reminded that Indian John was still accused of murder.

“We aren't fit for visitors. Look at us.” Laura tried to push her loose straggles of hair underneath her cap, and she told me to pull down my rolled-up sleeves. “Mind your manners, Reb,” she whispered.

When the stranger reached us, he stopped nearly a dozen feet away. Looking up, I tried to give him what I thought was a tired, unfriendly stare. As if we were too busy to be bothered to help him.

“Good morning,” he said awkwardly, twisting the brim of his black hat in his hands like he was full of nerves.

He looked to be about the same age as Amos or Cousin George. His frock coat was rather worn and ill fitting, with one button missing. And the cloth around his neck was tied in a clumsy knot. But his wavy red hair was combed real carefully to one side, I noticed. It curled a little in the early morning dampness, and he reached up with one hand to smooth it down.

“My name is Peter Kelley,” he said in a stumbling voice. “Mr. Peter Kelley. From Warren, Ohio.”

I could tell by the way Laura was trying to straighten her day cap that she was taken by him. He did have kind brown eyes, I would venture to say, and a gentle sort of appearance with his skinny shoulders and his too-large coat.

“Perhaps I've come to the wrong place,” he stammered. He cast a look at our cabin, then at the clearing around us. “I have, haven't I?” He glanced at Laura, and I could see his face grow a shade of pink. Truthfully, we were both water-splattered and wearing our oldest gowns.