The Last Crossing (54 page)

The three-year-old-boy reeled and staggered under the weight of the pup, fighting to curb its frantic efforts to escape. Finally, the struggle became too much and he dropped down on his buttocks a short way from Potts’s hiding place. Holding the pup trapped between his fat knees, Mitchell vigorously scratched the belly of the wriggling dog, bent his head to scold it in Crow.

Out of the corner of his eye, Potts saw a skinny bitch lope up a nearby ridge, stop, then begin to sidle down it, pendulous teats swinging, lips curled, fangs exposed. The sight of her brought him into the open to put himself between her and his son. His sudden appearance snapped Mitchell’s face up, loosened his grip on the pup. It squirted out of his lap, waddled eagerly to its mother’s side. Mitchell slowly pushing himself to his feet, gaping at him, Potts unable to bring himself to move despite the danger of being discovered so near his wife’s camp. The boy’s eyes widening, his mouth puckering tighter. Father and son locked face to face, frozen in the ice of an unexpected encounter.

Then Mitchell turned and ran.

Two steps and Potts overtook him, swept his son up in his arms, felt the fierce churning of the stocky legs battering his hips, heard the boy’s scream of warning. “Enemy!” Potts clamped a hand to his mouth, choking off Mitchell’s cry.

If anyone heard, they paid no heed, thought it only a shout in a boys’ game of war. Potts hugged the little body hard, hand covering everything of the tiny face but the black eyes, pools of terror. There was no recognition in those eyes; they did not remember him, were blank of everything but the tightening coil of panic. The body did not know him. Potts could feel the cold of Mitchell’s flesh clean through his son’s buckskin jacket. The chilly stiffness of a dead child.

Seconds passed. Slowly, Potts set Mitchell on his feet, held him firmly by one shoulder. He gestured to a stick lying on the ground. “Count coup.”

Mitchell looked up in amazement. The enemy was ordering him to humiliate him in battle. The little boy did as he was told, slowly reached down, grasped the stick. “Count coup,” Potts demanded. The boy hesitated, then struck his father twice on the thigh, so fiercely the rotten stick snapped.

“Now I will run from you,” said Potts. “I will run because the bravery and power of a Crow warrior makes me afraid.”

And he did, springing through the clutching bushes to where his pony waited.

Now he and the Englishman are about to ride to where boats still raise smoke and beat the water wild with their paddles, down to St. Louis, the city Potts’s two Almost Fathers, Harvey and Dawson, had fled to, orphaning him those many years ago. Maybe he would find them still there, mad Harvey drinking and fighting, Dawson worrying about business and counting money. It would be good to see his Almost Fathers again, to tell them what he had become. A man with a hundred horses, a man who bore the honour name Bear Child.

Many years ago, his mother, Crooked Back, had dreamed he would be the child of three fathers. Not Kanai, not white, but a being made strong and strange by mixed blood and mixed influences. Andrew Potts, whose face he could not remember, had given him white man’s blood. Harvey had roared in his cups, sworn and beat him, teaching him with every blow the lesson that it was a far better thing to be feared than to be afraid. Then came his last father, Dawson, who tried to prod the white mind in him, teaching him to sign his name, to add and subtract, telling him stories of his Scots ancestors across the Big Water, the wild, free raiders who danced their victories over a holy cross of swords laid on the ground.

His own father had died when Jerry was a baby. To his son, Mitchell, he was now dead. But perhaps to be shaped by many hands was a fortunate thing, far better than to be shaped by a single hand. A bundle of sticks does not break as easily as one stick. For Mitchell’s sake, he prayed his son would become such a bundle. Whatever Jerry Potts could give him had already been given.

LUCY
Expecting a blow doesn’t make it easier to bear. Abner Stoveall taught me that. You wait for it to land, your shoulders scrunch up, your back goes hard as a plank, every muscle pulls tight, the pain lies in wait under your skin, ready to shriek. So when it lands, maybe it hurts all the more because you’re prepared for its coming.

I saw for the longest time how it was going to fall out with Charles and me. Even when he took no steps to travel down to St. Louis with the season growing late, cold weather threatening, I didn’t allow myself to hope he meant to stay here in the Overland with me for the winter. In my heart, I knew sooner or later Charles would leave off from me and go back to Old England. These good days are but for a little bit, I told myself. Be satisfied. Sweetness goes; it’s not for forever, it won’t last. I knew it well, that one day for his sake I’d have to renounce him.

Yesterday, when I heard those heavy boots in the hall outside my door, I felt that it was Custis Straw come back to me, not Charles. Once a heavy man, you don’t lose the tread, you set your feet solid. It’s your way of walking through the world. His knock at the door made me guess the news he was bringing wasn’t good. A mousy little rap, Excuse me, please. I got something hard to tell, it said.

Straw came in wearing snow on his shoulders. It didn’t even have time to melt, he came up the stairs of the Overland that quick. I was setting on the bed, didn’t even blink, waiting for the blow to land. Straw
had about as much colour as the envelope in his hand. He laid the letter on the table and said, “Charles asked me to give you this.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose to dam the tears back. I don’t believe he saw. I said, “I thank you kindly, Custis.”

He shifted his feet and a little snow melted, dripped to the floorboards. Then he said, “Well, I’ll leave you then.”

“I’d be grateful,” was all I could manage. Grateful I was when he closed the door behind him so quiet and gentle, like I was a sleeping baby. I stared at the letter for the longest time before I dared to open it.

Charles writes a fine hand, as pretty as he paints, but I had to con out the meaning of a good many of the words.

It took me a good while to spell out all the words, work them through to sense. But when I did, I could read plain between the lines of that clear hand. He’s a deep well of pain and confusion, more than I reckoned. My heart breaks for him. I know something else. Every
word Charles wrote he thinks he believes because he’s got to blind himself. But I can see the truth of it. I have no other choice but to look on it steady.

In so many words, he said his brother threw himself away on an Indian woman. Charles’s circumstances are no different. He can’t raise me up, but I can damn sure pull him down. I won’t do it.

A fact is a hard grindstone to rub your nose on, but I’ve done it all my life. Yoked to me, an ignorant country woman, he’d have a bitter time of it. I’d be a shame to him. He would wear down over time. It’s the nature of whatever is soft and fine to be done so.

Once he gets among his own kind, things will look a good deal different. I’ll seem wondrous strange to him from distant England. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I don’t have faith in that. If it were true, we’d love the dead more than the living.

I don’t fault him for what I know is going to happen. How could I? I’m in Charles’s debt. After Madge was taken from me, I thought my heart was forever shut, but he unbarred it. Never mind I’m alone again, one bird on a bough in a cold wind.

Last night, I rubbed his letter on my breasts as if I could feel his hands in his words. I licked it as if I might taste his skin. I lapped the paper like a cat laps cream, or like the red bone hound in my dream licked my blood from the ground.

My moon blood has stopped its flow. Call me a fool, but I’m glad of my condition.