Soon Be Free (21 page)

“Pity we'll never meet again,” the man said. “You seem to have promise as a businessman.” He strode over to Lonny Brill and opened his billfold.

I clicked off our microfilm reader, and the shrinking image winked from the center of the screen. Chiefs Cap lost interest in the Delaware and returned to his own research project at another machine.

Mike and I sat back in our big wooden chairs as he whispered, “Ernie's got his shack and the bait shop right on Delaware land and a parrot named after a Delaware chief. What's missing from this picture, Dana?” I shrugged my shoulders.

Mike scooted his chair closer to me. I could smell his Freedent gum as he said, “All Mattie and Ray have to do is get their hands on this mysterious document, sell it to the Indians, and presto, they're filthy rich and can move out of that depressing house with the cat flap door.”

“Good thinking!” I squeezed Mike's cheeks together, the way a grandmother does when you've finished all your cauliflower. The gum flew across the table. “Suave, Mike.” I picked up the wad with a piece of notebook paper and presented the gift to him. “Now all we have to do is figure out why James had that treaty, how Flint got it—”

“And where it is now,” Mike said.

We hit the computers, and a half hour later Mike spread the printout on the library table with the listing of every reference to the Delaware in the library. We scanned through all sorts of entries on death rituals, unwilling removals west and south, exotic clothing of silver and feathers, turtle rattles, Doll Being, Snowboy, Great Bear, matrilineal descent, cedar smoke to cure nightmares, and treaties, treaties, treaties.

Something suddenly popped out at me:

HEARING BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS

RE: DELAWARE INDIAN JUDGMENT FUNDS

A harried librarian directed us to government documents, which were caverns and mountains of stuffed tan file boxes arranged by month and year. We marched up and down the stacks, blurred dates streaking past us.

“Here it is.” Mike pulled down the right box and found the right booklet as flimsy as Christmas wrap, and we buried ourselves in some of the most boring stuff you'd ever want to read. Lots of
whereas'
es and
heretofores
and
pursuant to
s, but by the end of it we discovered some important facts. Descendants of Kansas Delaware Indians were
still
battling the U.S. government over violations of their land rights going back 150 years. To top that, the government was
refusing to recognize the Delaware as a legitimate tribe with legal claims to Kansas land.

“Can you believe this, Dana? The government says the Delaware are just a splinter group of the Cherokee Nation. I'll bet there's not a Delaware alive who thinks
that.”

“Now we've got to get some answers from Bo Prairie Fire.” That would be tough, but I hoped he might be thinking more clearly when he got his coughing under control. A swig of that codeine cough medicine Mom stashed in the medicine cabinet might help, if I could spirit it out of the house, or else Faith Cloud's murky, fermented tea.

• • •

We actually had our second bed-and-breakfast customers. Their car, with New Mexico plates, was parked at the side of the house. They were probably visiting their kid at KU. Mom was in the kitchen working up to another sour cream coffee cake, the phone clamped between her chin and her shoulder. “For you, Dana. It's that Tracy person.”

Tracy had a deep voice, deeper than Mike's. “I have some bad news, Dana. It's about Bo Prairie Fire. He died this morning. Pneumonia.”

“Oh, no.” My first thought was,
It's not fair. I'm so close to solving the mystery, and he's got the key
. Then I realized how selfish that thought was, and a pang of sadness hit me for this lonely old man. I pictured him wracked with coughing and ranting on about
things that made very little sense. Yet all those ramblings might have been just a protective shell for the nugget of truth hidden inside. If only I could get to it. “I'm really sorry, Tracy.” Stupid. It wasn't her fault. But it's hard to know what to say in a situation like this. Death is just embarrassing.

“He had no family,” Tracy said, “so the shelter called me when he went to the hospital. I'm the only one who's been visiting him for the last few months, besides you.” Her voice sounded weary, as if she'd been up all night, and maybe she had. Maybe she'd sat with him at the hospital. Maybe he hadn't died alone.

She continued, “It's really sad that a man lives to be eighty years old and doesn't have any descendants to remember him. Kind of makes me want to get married and have a bunch of kids.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I just wanted to get this conversation over with and go up to my room and cry.

Tracy sounded like she was fighting back tears also as she told me, “There's a funeral service Friday. The shelter found a couple of Delaware men from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to do it right. It's an anthropologist's dream. I'll pick you up a few minutes before noon.”

“I look like a wild woman.” Sabetha tried to tame her hair into braids as they neared Lawrence. “Your mama will have one look at me and throw me down the well.”

“Not my ma. She's the mildest of women,” James lied. It was true that Ma had grown more gentle in his mind with the passing days of travel, but there was no way to prepare these pilgrims for Ma's donkey-stubborn ways. Within two hours of arrival she'd have them all washed and fit and painting the barn and putting up strawberry jam. Why, she was probably already heating up the iron for the bedsheets they'd be pressing, since James had sent a telegram telling her when they'd arrive.

Spring storms had carved great ruts in the road, and James and all the free Negroes bounced along in the coach with the men on one side and the women on the other. Their words sounded jiggly, as if they were talking underwater.

“Anyway, my ma will be so glad to see us, thee could come with ten hairy warts spread across thy
face and she'd think thee beautiful.” Truth was, they all looked bedraggled. Miz Pru barely weighed as much as a spring lamb now. Solomon's clothes hung on him, also, and his eyes had sunk into dark, baggy circles. Callie's legs and arms were scarred and tracked with red welts—flea bites, probably, since it was too early for mosquitoes. Homer's hair was as wide as a hatbox. Pa would want to take hedge clippers to it. And no telling what James himself looked like, with his britches three inches above his ankles and his coppery hair spread out over his shoulders like a girl's.

Sabetha said, “I've been hearing Lawrence, Lawrence, Lawrence since we left Bullocks'. What's it like, anyway?”

How do you describe where you come from?
“It depends on where you're standing,” James explained. “Now, Free-Staters like my pa say it's the Athens of Kansas.” Sabetha looked puzzled. “Athens is a big city with all kinds of wonderful old buildings. It's in Greece, in Europe.”

“Well, I knew that,” Sabetha snapped.

“But those proslavery people, they can't tolerate Lawrence being organized as a free-soil town. They say it's the Gall Bag of the Territories.”

Miz Pru dozed, and each time she woke, she took up the conversation right where she'd left off. “I say, it's been one devil of a trip, one devil. But, next stop we're at freedom's door.”

“Yes, suh! Soon be free!” Homer said.

Solomon stirred uneasily. “Miz Pru, there's something you don't know.”

“I've lived twice as long as you, Solomon Jefferson, each day knowin' troubles. Honey, don't I know it all.”

“Yes, ma'am, but I've lived in Kansas, and you haven't, not yet. Slave catchers once came for me over in Olneys' front yard, Miz Pru.”

“You don't say?”

“Yes, ma'am. Took me with them. I'd have been dragged after a horse hadn't been for Mr. James's daddy.”

Sabetha shot Solomon a killing look. “You been lying to us all this way, filling our heads with talk of being home free? If that's true, you're about the cruelest man on the earth, crueler than any master in Kentucky.”

James tried to rescue Solomon. “No more lies, Sabetha.” Except the big one, about the Delaware Indians, which he'd keep to himself. “We've still got to hide thee out, but thee can stay safe in our house until my pa can fix the legal papers, official seal and all. When thee's good and ready, we'll pass thee North with all thee needs for safe passage.”

“Will it be dangerous?” Callie's voice was weary; since they'd lost Will, she'd aged years.

“Not as dangerous as what we've been through, I promise thee, but it's not a glory trip, either. Or
thee could take thy chances and make thy home in Lawrence.”

Sabetha pinned the last of her braids in the crown around her head. “Well, at least
somebody's
telling us the way it truly is.”

Solomon lowered his head almost to his knees, pierced by Sabetha's poison-arrow words, until she poked him with her toe. “Oh, don't look so hangdog.”

“Will—” Just the mention of his name made James's throat tighten. Before long he'd have to sit with Will's grieving ma. “Will made thee a map to follow out of Topeka, along the Lane Trail, up through Nebraska Territory, and all the way north to Canada.”

“You comin' with us, Mistuh James, suh?”

James took a deep breath. “No, Homer, I'm staying here with my family; thee must go with thine.”

They were silent for a time, except for Miz Pru's snores and the rattles of the coach. Miz Pru woke again. “And how we gonna know the right way to go?”

“The Underground Railroad operates all up and down the Lane Trail. Will said thee's to look for piles of stones across each valley. Thee can see them from one peak to the next. They're called Lane's Chimneys, and they tell thee the right direction to safe houses and such.”

“How do we know Mr. Will's right?” Sabetha asked. “The boy's dead as a tree stump.”

“Will's made the trip more than once. Thee must trust his word.” As James said this, he realized that he was no longer a person to be trusted, for he'd made a deal with the devil. He could never tell Ma. He'd hide that treaty document so well that even if she turned the house inside out for spring cleaning, she'd never find it. Never.

• • •

“James Weaver, is that thee? Why, thee's grown a country mile, son.” Ma embraced him briefly. When he'd left, his head had come to her nose. Now, just four weeks later, they met nearly eye-to-eye. She gathered a fistful of his stringy hair. “Lucky Mr. Draper's just sharpened my barber shears. Solomon Jefferson, good to see thee.”

Trembles studied James a minute. Assured that he was the same boy, she swished by and curled her tail around his leg.

As James introduced the guests, Ma looked each over, assessing the damage. She handed Callie a wet washcloth and motioned for her to wash the grime off her face and remove that snakeskin around her neck. She lowered Miz Pru into her own rocking chair with the red-and-yellow flouncy cushion. She placed a bowl of peas in her lap. Without missing a beat, Miz Pru began snapping those peas and tossing them into a second bowl.
Clink, clink.
Sabetha was given a half-hemmed flour sack with a needle and thread stuck in it.

“Thee must be hungry as magpies. Thee might also welcome some cool springwater.” She passed Solomon a bucket to take to the well out back and handed James a bread knife and Homer a butter paddle. Homer stuffed the rubber ball under his arm and set to the task of smearing fresh-churned butter on thick slices of Ma's rye bread, still warm. James watched him lick his lips in anticipation.

Ma conducted this well-tuned orchestra until she noticed who was missing. Her eyes met James's. “Will's gone home to his mother?” she asked, almost pleading. James shook his head. Ma pressed both hands to her lips; tears filled the corners of her eyes. She closed her eyes in prayer as Sabetha sat with the needle poised in midair, and Homer shifted from foot to foot, snowing bits of his ball.

After the longest time, Ma said, “Sabetha, see to the rabbit stew simmering on the stove. Homer, I believe thee will find a rubber ball in that basket at thy feet. Thine will have to go in the trash bin.” To James's shock, Homer turned his crumbling ball over to Ma and gleefully took up Rebecca's blue one that still had some bounce to it. Ma said, “Friends, my husband, Mr. Caleb Weaver, will be home shortly with our daughter. Thee will be perfectly safe here with Solomon whilst James and I are gone.”

He'd just gotten home after weeks and weeks of travel; he didn't want to go anywhere, especially not
there.

“James, thee must tell me about thy friend Will, and then thee and I shall go to Mrs. Bowers and remind her that the Lord has taken Will for a purpose. Thee has four blocks to think how to put that purpose in words, son.”

I did not expect to see Mr. Prairie Fire at his funeral. Well, I knew he'd be there, but I thought the casket would be decently closed as it had been at the only other funeral I ever attended, which was for Grammy Shannon. But when we got to the graveside, there was Mr. Bo Prairie Fire, in full glory.

Two Delaware men had washed and tended the body for two days and had draped him in a white shroud. He lay there facing west, according to custom, and believe me, he never looked so good. Gone were the lines in his forehead, the furrows that had formed when he was wracked with coughing.

Since burial had to be done at high noon, I took two hours off of school, but I couldn't ask my friends to do that. So, we mourners were a pitifully small group: the two Delaware men; Tracy and me; the social worker from the shelter; and the woman who wasn't Lulu. We made a sad half-circle around the coffin and watched silently as one of the Indians carved a notch in the side of the casket for Mr. Prairie Fire's spirit to escape. His spirit was to
remain on earth for four days after burial. The older Indian explained in a singsong fashion, half in English and half in Lenape, that on the fourth day he and his son would come back and build a fire to allow Mr. Prairie Fire's spirit to waft to heaven in the smoke of the cedar limbs.