The Lynching of Louie Sam (24 page)

“Some people,” she tells me, “are angry at you for turning against your own kind.”

I don't need to ask who those people might be. Her soon-to-be husband must be one of them, as well as Mr. Osterman and Sheriff Leckie.

“But I'm not angry with you, George,” she says, “even though you have a funny way of showing your gratitude for us taking you in and feeding you and giving you a bed for the night when you were hurt so bad. I'm more
worried
for you, worried about what might befall a boy who doesn't know when to keep his gob shut.”

She has lost all trace of gentleness. She looks me in the eye and tells me, “I see you have nothing to say, George. Best to keep it that way if you know what's good for you and your kin.”

With that she heads back up the path to the house, taking long strides just like a man would. And I'm afraid of her, same as I would be if it were a man making threats against me and mine.

I
GET BACK TO THE
house in time to see the hindquarters of Mr. Bell's horse carrying Mrs. Bell down the path to the track. Mam is leaning over Teddy's cradle when I go inside. She keeps her back to me.

“What did that woman want with ye?” she asks.

I stop myself from telling Mam the truth. Mrs. Bell's threats would only put more strain on her shaky nerves, when she's just earned a respite by getting Teddy to fall asleep. Besides, Annie, Will, and Isabel are seated at the table eating their eggs and hotcakes. It's not proper for little kids to hear about how evil the human spirit can be.

“It's private,” I tell Mam.

Mam turns and gives me a funny look.

“George Gillies, I'll not have you keeping secrets with the likes of her. Nor company, neither.”

I feel myself blushing. I don't even want to think about what on earth she imagines is going on between me and Mrs. Bell.

“I got to get to school,” I tell her, and I head for the door.

“You need to walk Annie and Will,” Mam tells me. “John's staying back to help Father with the planting today.”

That would be my job, if my arm weren't broken. I feel as useless as a dull blade.

“I can walk Annie,” says Will.

Mam looks at Will, and finds a smile for him.

“I'm forgetting how much you're grown,” she tells him. To me she says, “I'll send your lunch with the children.”

I
TOLD
M
AM A WHITE LIE
—I'm not going to school. I just need air. Outside, I think that maybe I should go find Father in the fields and tell him about Mrs. Bell's visit. But what exactly can I tell him, except that I let a woman scare the willies out of me? I need to go someplace where I can think. I start walking, and before I know it I'm at the creek. I keep walking along the creek, until the Hamptons' shack comes into view. Joe is outside, near their cook fire. Something tells me that Joe is exactly the one I need to talk to. Maybe that's why my feet have led me this way.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

T
HE
H
AMPTON PLACE ISN'T
neat and tidy like ours. There is no tilled garden waiting to be planted. The shack is surrounded by brambles. The walls are of logs and the roof of deer skin, making it look half Indian tepee and half a white man's cabin. The cooking fire is outside. A big cast iron pot is propped up over the red-hot embers with something that smells like porridge cooking in it. Joe has got a newly killed buck hanging from a tree branch. He's got the carcass split open and he's putting the guts into a bucket—so fresh they're steaming. He tells me to take a load off, so I take a seat on a stump of wood set up for that purpose near the fire.

“You were right about Louie Sam,” I tell him. “I know he didn't shoot Mr. Bell.”

“Did you come over here to tell me what I already know?”

I falter at that. Why did I come here? What is it I want from Joe? Maybe I want reminding that there's a wrong that must be righted, no matter how much risk it brings down on the heads of us Gillies. I find myself saying, “Some of the settlers are holding a meeting. We're sending a letter to the governor to tell him who led the lynch mob, so they'll be arrested and sent to Canada to face justice.”

Joe finishes gutting the deer. He carries the bucket to the pot over the fire and, fishing out the kidneys and the liver and the heart, tosses them into it. He does all of this without speaking a word in response to what I've just told him. At last I say, “I thought you'd be happy to hear that.”

“My cousin is still dead,” says Joe. “But maybe you sleep better at night now, without him in your dreams, so that's good.”

His voice isn't angry, but his words are. I feel bad that he thinks I'm fighting for justice just to make myself feel better, to ease my guilty conscience. Maybe that's why I find myself telling him what I have told no one else.

“I saw him on the telegraph trail, south of the river,” I say. “He came to me.”

When I say it out loud, it sounds crazy. But Joe doesn't seem to think so.

“What was he doing?”

“He was walking through the woods, alongside me. I was in rough shape at the time. I fell and broke my arm and I was all alone. It was a comfort to see him, even though I knew he had no cause to be friendly to me.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“No. But I thought he was smiling.”

“He was like that. He liked a good joke. He had a temper on him, too, though. Like his pa.” Then he adds, glancing at my cast, “Maybe he was smiling because he saw your arm was broke.”

That hadn't occurred to me before.

I ask, “You reckon it was really him?”

“You got to be careful with the spirit world,” says Joe. “They don't like loose talk about them from the living. I heard about a man who told a missionary about the river spirit, and he wound up drowning.”

That's no kind of answer—just superstition.

“That isn't a Christian way of looking at it,” I tell him. “You can tell God anything. He knows everything.”

Joe looks over at me across the fire. Now there's anger in his eyes.

“Does he know why the People of the River are dying?”

This takes me aback.

“What people?” I say. “Besides Louie Sam?”

He shakes his head.

“The whites brought sickness with them. Consumption. The pox. Whole families are dying, on both sides of the border. Ten years ago when the government tried to put the Nooksack on a reservation out by the bay, they came right back to the river, where they belong. Now … everything's changing. Settlers are stringing nets so the salmon can't get upstream. Fences are going up everywhere. I hunt for deer worrying I'll shoot somebody's cow instead and get strung up as a thief—on
our
land.”

Their land. Their ways. I'd like to tell him that it's our land now, and that our ways are making a living and a future out of what was just wilderness. Still, I think about how Agnes knew better than Dr. Thompson—with all his learning—what to do for Teddy. I don't know what to say, so I wind up saying something dumb.

“Do you pray like we do?” I ask him.

He simmers down at that.

“Of course I pray,” he says. “I prayed for this
mowitsh
to come and feed us.”

So
mowitsh
means deer. That's what the Indian girl was saying to me about the twigs in my hair that day on the telegraph trail. Now I get the joke—she was saying the twigs made it look like I had antlers, like a deer.

“What are you smiling at?” says Joe. “You think praying is funny?”

“I don't mean offense, Joe,” I tell him, serious again. “I reckon sometimes all we can do is pray.”

I get to my feet, readying to take my leave, when Agnes comes out from the shack. She goes to the fire to give the cast iron pot a stir, nodding to me.

“Baby good?” she asks me.

“Teddy is good,” I tell her. “Mam says he's like a little piglet grunting for his food.”

“No
páht-lum
,” she says.

“No, he's not drunk anymore. Thank you, Agnes. You saved him.”

She straightens up and smiles at me. Reaching her hand up to my face, she pats my cheek like I'm a little kid, even though I'm a good foot taller than her. Her palm is tough as cowhide. Her eyes are sad and so tired they make
me
tired just looking into them.

“Where's your brother?” I ask Joe.

“Over at the residential school in Lynden. Learning to be white.”

Agnes frowns at Joe and says something harsh to him in their language. He talks back to her. Whatever they're saying, I can tell this is an argument they've had before.

“What's she saying?” I ask Joe.

He laughs, “She's says I'm jealous because Billy knows how to read and write.”

“I could teach you,” I tell him. Joe gives me a cold look with those blue eyes, like he thinks I'm calling him stupid. “That is,” I add, “if you ever wanted to learn.”

He turns away and goes back to cleaning out the deer. Agnes sits down by the fire and stirs the pot. It seems neither one of them has anything left to say to me, or to each other.

“I guess I'll be going,” I tell them.

Just as I'm on my way, Joe says, “The people will be glad to know there's whites who are sorry for what happened.”

It's not much, but it's all the reassuring I'm going to get from him.

I
WALK BACK ALONG
the creek the way I came, thinking about my talk with Joe. There's a lot that's mysterious about the Indian way of thinking, and Joe is a particular curiosity. Sometimes he talks like a white man, and other times like an Indian. He'll always look like an Indian, though, except for his blue eyes, so I guess that decides the question as far as white folks are concerned. But it seems that everybody on this earth—whites and natives alike—suffers in one way or another. And, in one way or another, all of us are praying for that suffering to be eased.

Chapter Thirty

I
TAKE THE LONG WAY
around the house so Mam won't spy me and know that I am late for school again. I walk swiftly along the path to town. Passing Mr. Bell's burnt-out place, I give a thought to the stories going around about Mr. Bell's ghost, and the hairs on the back of my neck go up. I wish Joe Hampton had been clearer with me about whether it was really the spirit of Louie Sam that I saw walking last Sunday.

When I reach the schoolyard, the kids are already outside having recess. I see Abigail sitting on the bench with the other senior girls. I get the feeling she sees me, too, though her head doesn't turn my way, or even her eyes.

“What have you done now, George?”

I look down to see my sister Annie standing at my elbow. Her hands are on her waist and her elbows are sticking out.

“What are you talking about?” I say, cross that the little snip of a thing is taking me to task like she's the schoolma'am.

“None of the girls will even speak to me!”

“Well, maybe you should learn to talk more nicely to them then.”

“It's not because of me. It's because of you! They won't say what you've done, but it must be something bad.”

So word has spread about the meeting. Even the younger kids are fearful. I can't stop my glance from shooting over to Abigail, who's just ten paces away from me. Maybe she did too good a job letting people know. From the way she's coloring up, I know for certain she feels me looking at her, but she keeps her eyes forward on Mary Hecht, who's talking about a new dress or some such foolery. I look back to Annie.

“You need to trust in your own,” I tell her.

And I mean it. Others may turn against me, but I won't stand for disloyal talk coming from my own sister. She lowers her eyes. When she looks up again, I see how afraid she is.

“What's going to happen, George?” she whispers.