The Lynching of Louie Sam (9 page)

A
S WE HEAD SOUTH ACROSS
the border into the Washington Territory, the men who had been cheering and hollering the loudest for the end of Louie Sam are silent. Once the deed was done, it was like nobody wanted to think about it anymore. We left him hanging from that cedar branch and we rode away. We want to get back to our normal lives, to our normal selves.

Everything is more complicated than I thought it would be. I expected justice to feel good, but it feels tight and cold in the pit of my stomach.

When we reach The Crossing, Mr. Moultray speaks to us. His face is somber and weighted down, like he doesn't feel in a celebrating mood any more than I do. Or maybe he's just tired. I know I am. Mr. Moultray tells the men that they did what needed to be done, and that they should be proud. But the next thing he says is that none of us should ever talk about what happened—not to our families, not to the sheriff, not to anyone. The Nooksack Vigilance Committee is henceforth a secret brotherhood. How can you have it both ways? If we're supposed to be so proud of what we did to Louie Sam, then why are we keeping secrets about it?

F
IRST LIGHT STARTS TO
show above the trees to the east as Father, Mae, and I follow the track along Sumas Creek to our mill and our cabin. From a distance, we see chimney smoke above the trees. Why does Mam have a full fire going at such an hour, when normally she would just be rising? Father gives Mae a kick. She trots ahead a little, but quickly falls back into a walk—like us, worn out from the night's outing. Father kicks her harder.

“Get up!” he says, his voice crusty and thick. He hasn't used it since we left the hanging spot.

Gypsy comes running to meet us, barking in a fury of excitement. When we leave the trees and our cabin comes into sight, we get another surprise. A woman is outside, pitching water from a bucket onto the ground. When she turns around, I see that she's Agnes, the Nooksack squaw who was Bill Hampton's Indian wife.

“Agnes!” my father calls to her. “Where's my wife?”

Mae has picked up her pace, eager now that she knows her feed is close by. Agnes straightens up and waits for Mae to trot up to the cabin and for Father to rein her in before speaking. Her English is not good, despite living with a white man for all those years. She relies mostly on Chinook to make herself understood.

“Bébe yuk'-wa,”
she says.

There's the cry of a newborn from inside the cabin, making her meaning clear enough—while we were gone, the new baby arrived! Father leaps down from the saddle and tells me to see to Mae, then he barrels into the house. Agnes follows him into the cabin, slow and easy, like she lives here. Anxious as I am to see my new brother or sister, I feed and water Mae and Ulysses. I see from the way the two cows are shifting in their stall that they need milking, so I do that, too. After riding all night and being alone with too many thoughts, it feels good to keep my hands busy.

By the time I go inside, the new baby already has a name. He is to be called Edward, after Mam's father. Teddy for short. The baby and Mam are both asleep in my parents' bed, behind a curtain they have rigged for privacy. I go around the curtain and take a peek. Teddy is bundled in Mam's arms, looking no different to my eyes from any of my other brothers or sisters when they were born. I let the curtain fall and step as quietly as I can over to the table near the stove, where Annie is pouring tea for Father out of the old china pot that Mam brought from England. The boys come out from the back room, wiping sleep from their eyes. I tell John that he should have done the milking. John says he was up half the night bringing in firewood for the stove while Teddy got born. Father shushes us, so as not to wake Mam. It's strange to see Agnes taking Mam's place at the stove, a full-blooded Indian stirring the porridge just like a white woman would. Her face is cut deep with wrinkles, but she can't be that old.

“We owe you thanks, Agnes,” my father says quietly. He takes a long sip of the tea, even though it's scalding hot.

Agnes nods toward John.
“Man mam'-ook cháh-ko
ni-ka.”
She seems sad, even when she smiles.

“She means I went for her,” says John. “When Mam's pains started, I didn't know what else to do—or when you'd be back.”

We all fall silent at that. I wonder if Agnes knows where we were last night, and what we were doing. She shows no curiosity, but John does. He whispers to me, “So what happened? Did you get him?”

He says it with such eagerness that I want to smack him. I wish I could tell him right there and then about how complicated it is, but Mam is sleeping—and it doesn't feel right to talk about Louie Sam in front of a native woman.

“I'll tell you later,” I say.

Father gives me a sharp look and I remember that we're not supposed to say anything at all. He takes another sip of tea. I take a seat at the table, and thank Agnes kindly when she puts a bowl of porridge in front of me.

I
T'S
T
HURSDAY, BUT NOBODY
even talks about going to school today. After breakfast, Father heads straight away down to the mill. Agnes stays and kneads some dough so we'll have fresh bread for the evening meal. Mam wakes up and Agnes brings her a bowl of yesterday's bread softened in some warm milk. From behind the curtain on the other side of the room, I listen to Mam and Agnes talking in soft voices, but I can't make out what they're saying. Female talk, oohing and aahing over the new baby. I suppose it's the same in any language. At the table, Isabel is singing softly to her dolly, pretending that she has a new baby, too. Annie's peeling potatoes. Everybody's calm. It's nice.

O
NCE THE BREAD IS BAKED
, Agnes says she's going back home, to the shack she and her sons built in the woods a half mile up Sumas Creek, after they had to move out of the ferryman's house at The Crossing when Mr. Hampton died. Without asking, she takes two of the fresh loaves with her.

I go into the back room and lie down. I am so bone weary that I expect I could sleep standing up, but the minute I close my eyes I see Louie Sam hanging from that cedar, and the fear in his face. I open my eyes to make him go away and feel my heart racing. John comes into the room.

“Tell me what happened,” he says.

“We're not supposed to talk about it,” I reply.

“Says who?”

“Says Mr. Moultray.”

“Did you get Louie Sam?”

“I can't say.”

“You
did
get him, didn't you? Where is he now? Did they bring him to the jail in Nooksack?”

I look at him. Can he really be that dumb?

“He's not in any jail,” I say.

John studies me for a minute, and then he understands.

“So you lynched him.”

I know the word, but I haven't heard anyone use it in connection with Louie Sam. All the talk I've heard has been about justice and vigilance.
Lynched
. It's a rash word, harsher somehow than
hanged
. But it's what happened.

“Yeah,” I say.

John watches my face again, and his own face changes. Some of the eagerness goes out of his expression.

“Did he put up a fight?”

“No … Yes, but only at the end.”

“Well, did he say anything in his own defense?”

“He hardly said anything. He was too scared.”

“Hah! The coward.”

“He wasn't a coward,” I tell him. Then I add, because it seems like something that's important to know, “He was just a kid.”

“How old a kid?”

“Thirteen. Fourteen at most.”

This takes John aback. Then he says, “A murderer's a murderer.”

I don't have a reply to that. I say, “Let me sleep.”

Chapter Eleven

I
WAKE UP AT NOON
, edgy with the trembles of a bad dream. And then I remember it wasn't a dream. All of us are worn out, between Father and me riding all night and the baby getting born. At noon we sit around the table eating cheese and bread, staying quiet so as not to wake Mam and the baby. None of us has much to say, anyway.

In the afternoon, Tom Breckenridge's father brings grain to be milled, but he doesn't stay much longer than it takes for Father and me to grind the single sack of wheat he's brought with him. I open the sluice gate to let the water rush in from the wheel and drive the runner stone, while Father empties the wheat into the hopper. Then I hurry down to the meal floor to collect the flour in the sack as it comes down the chute. From upstairs, I can hear Mr. Breckenridge repeating to Father what Mr. Moultray told us at The Crossing about keeping quiet—as though he thinks Father needs reminding. I wonder if the real purpose of Mr. Breckenridge's visit is to deliver that message.

F
RIDAY MORNING OUTSIDE
the school, while we're waiting for Miss Carmichael to ring the bell, Pete refuses to speak to me, except to tell me that we Gillies are Indian lovers because Father spoke up in favor of letting Louie Sam stand trial. John and I deny it hotly, but Tom Breckenridge says it's true—he heard the same thing from his pa. I think it's curious how Mr. Breckenridge told Tom what happened, after making a special trip to our place to warn Father to keep quiet. Tom says that as Mr. Bell's closest neighbors, it could just as easily have been them that Louie Sam attacked. Tom counts himself lucky that he and his family are still alive.

“My pa says the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” Tom proclaims to the whole schoolyard. “We won't be safe until every last one of them is wiped out.”

Pretty soon, it seems that Pete and Tom have got the whole school agreeing with them about us being Indian lovers. Adding to our reputation is the fact that it was Agnes rather than a proper settler's wife who helped bring my baby brother into the world. I try to explain to Pete and Tom that Agnes was closest at hand to our cabin, and that John didn't know what else to do but fetch her, with Father and me gone and Mam crying out that the baby was coming and coming fast. But nothing I say matters.

Pete is busy turning himself into some kind of hero, boasting to Abigail Stevens and the other girls about how he rode with the men on some very important business. He's stepping around the vow we all took not to say anything. But seeing as how just about everybody's father rode with the posse, everybody knows what happened, anyway, except for the lurid details—which Pete is pleased to provide, whispering them to the girls in a corner of the schoolyard.

After Miss Carmichael calls us inside, Abigail comes up to me in the cloakroom.

“Why are you letting Pete take all the attention, George?”

“He can have it,” I tell her.

“You know what he's saying about you, don't you? He says you and your pa were cowards out there.”

“He's a liar,” I say.

“Then you better let folks know that,” she replies.

Lately, Abigail seems more like a woman than a girl—and not just because her figure has rounded out. There's a matter-of-factness about her, like she's annoyed the other kids don't see the way things are in the grown-up world as clearly as she does. Abigail has always been smart at school. Also, she has pretty eyes.

“We were sworn not to talk about what happened,” I tell her.

“Seems you're the only one keeping that promise. My pa told my ma all about it. He said he thought your pa had a good point, about letting that Indian have his day in court.”

“Then why didn't your pa speak up?” I say.

“How should I know, George? Was I there? And don't go raising your voice to me when I'm trying to help you.”

Outside, there is a sudden hullabaloo—shouting and hollering. Those of us who are indoors hurry out to the schoolyard to see what's the matter. By the time Abigail and I get there, a crowd three deep has circled around two boys flying fists at each other. The crowd—girls as well as boys—is egging them on, sounding just like the posse did in the minutes before Louie Sam died.

I push my way through to the front, and I see two things. The first is Pete, watching the fight with a stupid grin on his face. He's also leading the cheer. The second thing I see is that one of the boys is my brother, John, and the other is Jimmy Bell. Jimmy's half a head taller than John and has got the advantage of weight on his side. But John is a wiry scrapper and will never give up, which I know from wrassling with him myself.

Jimmy gets John in a headlock with his left arm and starts punching his face with his right fist.

“Give it to him, Jimmy!” yells Tom Breckenridge, standing at Pete's side.

I'm itching to run in and pull Jimmy off of my brother, but I know that if I do, John will never forgive me for saving him like that in front of everybody.

Now Abigail is shouting, “Stop it, Jimmy! You're hurting him!”

Miss Carmichael is on the front porch of the schoolhouse, blowing her whistle for them to stop—to no effect whatsoever. John's face is bloodied, his nose broken for sure. Annie and Will are across the circle from me.