The Lynching of Louie Sam (10 page)

“Let go of him!” Annie calls to Jimmy. Then she sees me across the way. “George, make him stop!”

But John manages to hook Jimmy's leg with his foot. Jimmy falls hard on his back and John is on top of him, his small fists pounding into Jimmy's big face—giving him back the beating that he just took. Now that John is winning, it's safe for me to mix in. I hold off for a second or two, though, to give John his due revenge. I look over to Pete, thinking he might be wanting to rescue Jimmy, his more-or-less stepbrother. Pete has stopped shouting for blood, but I see he's smiling a little—like he's just as pleased to see Jimmy being pummeled as he was to see John in that spot a minute ago.

I make my move. Striding forward, I grab hold of John by both his arms and drag him off of Jimmy.

“That's enough!” I say.

John struggles to get free from me, but I can tell it's mostly for show. He's had enough. There's blood running out of his nose, and he'll have two shiners. The kids around us step back, loosening the circle they formed to watch the fight—those who a moment ago wanted a ringside view suddenly wanting to melt away into the background as Miss Carmichael descends from the porch, blowing her whistle. Her voice is tight and high when she demands to know, “What in heaven's name is going on here?”

“He called my ma a whore!” Jimmy cries out, staggering to his feet and pointing at John.

“Only because you called Agnes one!” shouts John right back.

“She's just an Indian,” says Jimmy. “She doesn't count.”

John can't keep quiet. “Agnes is nice! She helped Mam!”

I think to myself,
There's our reputation as Indian
lovers—set in stone.

Abigail says, “Everybody knows your ma's a whore, Jimmy.”

Miss Carmichael is scandalized. “Abigail Stevens!”

“Well, it's true.”

I notice that Pete Harkness gives Abigail no argument whatsoever in defense of Mrs. Bell.

M
ISS
C
ARMICHAEL KICKS
John out of school for the rest of the day for fighting, but not Jimmy because she says his father just died and he deserves special consideration. But each boy is sporting a bloody nose, so she winds up sending them both home, anyway. John is in no condition to be walking all that distance alone, so I tell Miss Carmichael I'm going with him, and Will can walk Annie home later. To make up for missing another whole day of school, Miss Carmichael makes me take home a book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, her favorite writer, and tells me to memorize one of his poems for Monday.

Mam, barely on her feet after having the baby, gets upset with John. His nose has swollen up fiercely by the time we get home and she says it will never look right again. But when she learns what the fight was about, that John was defending Agnes, she is more forgiving. She soaks a rag in hot water and makes a poultice for him to hold over his nose and his eyes.

Father has little to say about the fight, other than that John should have kept his fists higher to protect his face. Since Wednesday night, he's been quiet, preferring to spend most of his time alone in the mill instead of with the rest of us in the cabin. He barely pays attention to Teddy. With Father spending all his time in the mill, the chores fall to John and me. That's fine with me. It feels good to keep busy, and I like spending the rest of the day away from people.

Late in the afternoon, before John and I have to give the cows their evening milking, I settle myself in a quiet corner of the shed and open the book by Mr. Emerson to a poem called “Nature.” It's full of fancy language, the gist of which is that God is all around us. That seems like a wrong-headed idea to me—everybody knows God is in Heaven. Isn't Nature what leads us astray, like the snake tempting Eve with the apple? I thought Nature was what we sinners were put on earth to overcome, but here this poem seems to say that Nature is its own kind of god. I wish I could talk with Father about what it means, but remembering the scowl he wore when he came into the house for the noon meal warns me against it. He isn't even talking to Mam, not very much.

I
T RAINS ALL DAY
S
ATURDAY
. After supper, when Teddy and the younger kids have gone to bed and Father has taken a lantern back down to the mill, I find a moment alone with Mam. She's sitting in the rocking chair we brought all the way from England. Her eyes are closed, but I can tell she's awake from the way she's rocking herself ever so gently.

“Will you listen to this poem I had to learn?” I ask her.

She opens her eyes, so weary that I think she might have been sleeping after all.

“Aye, Georgie. Let me hear it.”

I begin reciting, but when I get to the part—

For Nature listens in the rose
And hearkens in the berry's bell
To help her friends, to plague her foes,
And likewise God she judges well.

—I stop. Mam's eyes have been closed again, her face soft while she's been listening. Now she comes back to the world.

“Is that the end of it?”

“No. There's more.”

“Why did you stop?”

“It doesn't seem right, Nature judging God. God made Nature. Only God can judge.”

“I suppose,” she says, all dreamy.

It surprises me that she isn't troubled the way I am, she being the one who insists we go to church every Sunday.

“But it's wrong,” I tell her.

“It's just a poem, George. A nice poem. You learned it well.” She eases herself up from the rocking chair. You can tell she's stiff and sore. “Time to get to bed now, for both of us.”

She takes a candle and moves slowly toward her bed, pulling the curtain across behind her. I watch through the gap as she reaches into Teddy's cradle and pulls a blanket up over him. In the candlelight, her eyes shine and her smile is full of wonder. One thing I'll say for Mr. Emerson's poetry: Mam sure seems to like it.

Chapter Twelve

O
N
S
UNDAY MORNING, NEITHER
Mam nor Father seems to remember about Sunday school, and we children are not disposed to remind them. The day starts gray and cool, nothing like the previous Sunday, the day we found Mr. Bell's body. Can it be that only a week has gone by? It seems like it all happened to somebody else, like in a story.

I'm splitting wood in the yard when, late in the morning, we have a visitor. It's Agnes's son, Joe Hampton. Agnes has sent him over with a brace of quail, wanting to trade them for eggs and a quantity of flour. When Joe sees John's shiners, he tells Mam there's a paste his ma makes from yellow flowers to bring down bruises and he offers to fetch some. But before he does that, Mam insists on giving him a bowl of the barley soup she's cooking for our lunch, which he eats outside, leaning against the paddock fence.

Joe is a few years older than I am. His hair is long and wild and he's dark-skinned like an Indian, but his eyes are blue from his father. He speaks English like a white man, but with a lilt he got from the way his mother's people talk. As he eats, he watches me work, and I half watch him, feeling awkward about his presence. I'm mindful of having recently been called an Indian lover, and of now having one dining right here on my doorstep.

“You're George,” he says, after a few spoonfuls of the soup.

“That's right.”

I set another log on the chopping stump.

“I heard you rode with them the other night.”

This to me seems disrespectful, an Indian questioning me about my business.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I say.

I bring the ax down on the log, but my aim is off and instead of splitting it, I send it flying off the stump. I wish this hadn't happened in front of Joe. As I bend over to pick up the log, he tells me, “People are talking. The Sumas are worked up about it.”

I say, “The Sumas ought to acknowledge the fact that one of them is a murderer.”

“What murderer would that be?” he asks.

“You know what murderer.”

He won't let it go. “That's just it. Louie Sam talked to his ma. He told her he didn't do it.”

This hits me. For one thing, I never thought about Louie Sam having a mother. For another, I've got that niggling feeling working at me again, making me wonder whether Father was right, whether the Nooksack Vigilance Committee should have let Louie Sam stand trial. Joe Hampton fixes me with a look, like he's reading something in my face. I turn away quickly.

“Of course that's what his ma would say,” I tell him. “Anyway, the Sumas are just protecting their own.”

“We don't abide outlaws any more than you whites do. Look at Louie's pa. When Justice Campbell showed the Sumas chiefs enough evidence, they handed him over for murder.”

“For a Nooksack, you seem to know an awful lot about the Sumas,” I remark.

“Louie Sam was my cousin,” he says. “His ma and my ma had the same
chope
—grampa.”

I don't want to know that. I don't want to hear any more about Louie Sam, or about his family. I split another log, cleanly down the middle this time—hoping Joe will take the message that this conversation is at an end.

“Thursday morning, Justice Campbell showed up at the Sumas village to tell the chiefs that a lynch mob had come up from the American side to take Louie away from Thomas York's house.” I keep chopping wood, pretending not to listen. “Big Charlie and Sam Joe went with Justice Campbell to track the mob down the Whatcom Trail until just before the border. That's where they found Louie, still hanging where he'd been left the night before.”

My limbs cease to function for the moment and I have to let the ax rest on the block. Joe Hampton knows he's gotten to me. He lets me sweat for a little before saying, “But I suppose you know all about that.”

I'm done listening to him. I stack up the chopped wood in my arms and walk past him, heading for the cabin. Before I get to the door, Joe decides he's got something else to tell me.

“The People of the River are coming to Sumas from all over.”

“
What
people?”

“The People of the River. The
. We're deciding what should be done to avenge my cousin's death.”

“You don't avenge justice,” I tell him. But I'm blowing smoke, and he knows it.

“Let me tell you about justice, the
way. Among our people, if you kill one of our kin, then one of
your
kin has to die. Doesn't matter who. Any white man will do.”

From the look in his eyes, I get the feeling he would be satisfied if that somebody was me, here and now. But in the next second he's friendly again, telling me to thank Mam for the soup. He sets the bowl on the fence post and I watch him as he heads away down the path toward the creek. Then I go inside the cabin and stack the wood by the stove. I'm wondering exactly how many Indians are gathering at Sumas, and whether the Nooksack on our side of the border will stand with them—and how far the lot of them intend to go in pursuit of what they call justice. I'm wondering how safe my family will be if Louie Sam's kin decide they're coming across the border to settle the score.