The Siren's Tale (12 page)

Local pranksters had filled the hole with tumbleweed. When the flaming paper hit the tumbleweed, the whole thing went up in a ball of fire, leaving Grandfather with a case of scorched buttocks.

On the top of the outhouse lay a crude straw doll. I silently watched as its stitched face turned to ashes. In due time the fire wagon arrived, with Mayor Hawker shouting orders, the horse harnesses jingling, and all the usual hubbub. 

Once order had been restored, we sat down to a late breakfast. Grandfather was seated on a block of ice. His face looked comical because of the streaks of soot. But any sense of comedy ceased when he spoke up churlishly:

“This is all your fault, Cassie. If you didn't encourage 'em all to think you was a witch by your strange ways, they would leave us alone. Who do you think that redheaded doll was aimed at?”

Captain Vye did not explain to Cassandra what he meant by saying Nicholas Brighton was not her “type,” but he had known similarly effeminate men aboard ship. He was fairly sure the returning native was of that sort, though his homosexuality was never openly spoken of in Alta. He supposed Brighton's elevated social status kept the issue under the table. The size of a man's property was what mattered in these parts, not one's masculine hardiness. As for what Cassandra might be able to do with a man of such inclinations, he would never have ventured a guess.

It was not long before the Captain saw a way to improve their undesirable, suspect status in the community, thus inadvertently furthering Cassandra's secret new plan. It all began with his
bragging about her Saratoga Springs theatrical experience to his drinking buddies. 

“
You must be out of your mind. I absolutely refuse,” was Cassandra's response when her grandfather said he had volunteered her for the duties of rehearsing the players and embellishing the dog-eared pioneer script for the Thanksgiving Day pageant, which was held annually at the Brighton Grange.   

“
You cannot keep your head down forever, Cassie,” the Captain said, taking a firmer tone than he ever had before. “It is time you showed these good people you are glad to be among ‘em. Help with their little western show, and they will see you differently. That is the best way to get around Widow Brown and her ilk.”

In the end, she agreed.

A week before Thanksgiving, Mayor Hawker was proudly showing off a big gash in his right shin to his beautiful hostess. 

“
How do they say it in show business, Cassandra? Break a leg? Then take a look here. I have come close to doing it!” 

The
cast was assembled at Mill’s Creek. Hawker's wound had been obtained during a close call with an axe during a recent woodcutting party at his cabin.

“
An inch further, Ted, and you would be playin’ Peg-leg Pete instead of interlocutor,” chuckled Fairwell.

“
A pirate alongside pilgrims, Indians, and pioneers…hmm, charming,” murmured Cassandra. The men and boys were crowded around her in the parlor, and she was pouring wine for the adults. “We could think of adding pirates to next year's show.”

“
First we gotta live through this one. I’m as nervous as a Thanksgiving turkey,” Jason Harrison said plaintively.

“
Make believe the audience is naked, and you will do just fine,” said Cassandra in her throaty voice. “Can you just picture Widow Brown that way?”   

Her guests howled at the image. Young and
old alike, their eyes were brighter for the attentions of their witty and sexy hostess.

As for their hostess, she was having more
fun than she had enjoyed since leaving Saratoga. Cassandra's eyes sparkled, and her breasts bulged so beguilingly over the tight neckline of her empire dress that Jason Harrison thought Mayor Hawker might topple over from attempting to see down her cleavage without being slapped.

T
he cast of characters who would star in the Thanksgiving pageant included Cassandra's Indian maid Annie, who would play Sacajawea silently, the speaking parts being reserved for men; three boys from the village who would be painted as braves and two others dressed as pilgrims; Fairwell, who would be decked out in his best mountain gear to present a loquacious version of Jim Bridger; and the Bottomly twins, who traditionally represented Lewis and Clark, with Del speaking for both explorers. As the town’s most sought-after bachelor, Jason would naturally play Myles Standish and also double, because of his manly physique, as Crazy Horse. His bushy eyebrows rising to the same heights as his oratory, Mayor Hawker would be master of ceremonies, wearing, as usual, his pilgrim-father’s three-corner hat and brandishing a colonial walking stick.

The ghosts of the honored past would be summoned and introduced by Hawker in a tableaux featuring an amalgam of famous pioneers, pilgrims, and Indians of the olden days, who would appear in turn around a fake campfire to tell tales of Thanksgivings past.
However, the sum total of wardrobe and stage props saved from previous years, Cassandra had soon discovered, was meager: one dusty pilgrim coat, one musty warrior headdress fashioned from turkey feathers, four coonskin caps, and a dozen spears, tomahawks, and blunderbusses.

Cassandra
enlisted the help of Annie May in assembling additional props and costumes. She also made numerous emendations to the script, which was a handed-down, incongruent quilting of pilgrim and pioneer lore full of gaps and unintended puns. The gaffs probably tickled the audience as well as anything else; however, the mayor was delighted with Cassandra’s improvements. Her new words added length and elegance to the narrative, if not historic reliability.    

Shambling into the large, stone-f
loored kitchen, the cast set about obeying Cassandra's order that they must try on their costumes before departing. The players struggled into the outfits, applying them over their own clothing for the sake of both warmth and decency. This layering created a cast of characters much bulkier than the original starved pilgrims could ever possibly have appeared. 

While this comic ordeal was going on, Cassandra tried a coonskin cap on over her red-gold curls, looking at herself in a small
hand mirror framed in beaten silver, and meanwhile eavesdropped on the men's conversation. Her ears pricked up when they said Nicholas Brighton was expected home today and the town was a-buzz about his return. 

“
Nicholas should never of left home,” opined Mayor Hawker. “I don’t believe in new occupations in families. My father was a soldier, and I served during the war, was elected mayor on the strength of it. If it were up to me, my son Thomas would have followed in my footsteps. But my wife, God forgive her, put too many fears in Tom for the military line of work.”  

“
Has Brighton settled in San Francisco for good, then?” asked Harrison.

“
For bad, you mean!” said Fairwell. “If that ain’t the wickedest den of depravity on earth, I don’t know where one would be.” However, his opinion was uttered in a wistful tone that somewhat belied his words.

Mayor Hawker now had his opportunity to hold forth.

“Samuel Brighton had a friend, Ian Scattergood, the uncle of Caleb, our ice man. When Ian left town to start up his own accountancy firm in San Francisco, Samuel put the idea into his young son's head that he might apprentice with his old friend one day, as Nicholas was bookish. The Widder was floored, though, when Nick come home from college and said he was a-goin' to San Francisco.” 

“
Did she beg him not to go?” inquired Fairwell.

“
She is too proud and stubborn. Said the Lord’s will would be done, and she would be able to handle everything at the Grange. So Brighton packs off to San Francisco and lo and behold, he passes his examination for the accountancy license. Then Scattergood sold him on the bright idee of getting hisself trained for gold assaying, a field that has sprung up alongside prospecting. Besides his college degree, Brighton got himself another license from the Evening College at the San Francisco YMCA.”

“
What is it good fer?” asked Del.

“
Well, it’s like being a revenuer. Yer offerin' an opinion about what somebody’s gold might be worth and also assignin' taxes for the guv-ment.” 

At the mention of taxes and the government, the men's expressions soured.
They would have spit if they had been outdoors.

“
I remember when Brighton left home,” said Del Bottomly, the butcher. “We never thought he would last a week away from his mother’s apron strings.” His twin nodded and winked, which was as much as Tim ever did, as Del spoke for them both.

“
They say,” said Fairwell, “that Nicholas ain’t the same lighthearted boy no more. He has a lot of strange notions about things. Some say it’s due to the private school he went to back East. Or maybe his life in the big bad city.”

This train of
thought gave the men pause as they sipped the fine French burgundy Cassandra was pouring into lovely crystal goblets. The men held them by the bowls, as though the weight of their hands might crush the stems. They sipped the wine carefully, so as not to spill on her carpet. When they got home, they would tell their wives and mothers there was no sand on the floor, and it was so clean you could eat off it. They would not mention the wine or Cassandra's joke about Widow Brown.

The pageant players left us, vowing to a man that they would practice their lines. I stayed up late and kept grandfather company. He was seated in an armchair, puffing on a meerschaum pipe. Occasionally he would stir the embers, so that warmth irradiated the chimney corner of the parlor.  

“
Why is it we are not friendly with the Brightons?” I asked casually, stretching both hands out toward the dancing flames.

“
Damned if I know. The Widow has the personality of a hanging judge.”

“
But Mrs. Brighton is a lady. A famous parson’s granddaughter, isn’t she?”

“
Yep, but she made it a point to put on no more airs than her husband did, and Samuel's people were only poor peanut farmers in North Carolina. The young couple had lean years when they took over her father’s homestead, which had fallen on hard times.”

He puffed on his pipe for several moments.

“And now I do recall my error. I made a lewd joke in her presence. It was mild, to my point of view. But I have not seen the Widow since, nor once been invited to the Grange. Ah, but that is how the folks are here, no sense of humor.”

Shortly thereafter he damped the fire, and we
went up to our beds.

That night, I had a remarkab
le dream. It plagued me until the day I left Alta.

I
n my dream, I was dancing on a decorated green in the summertime. I wheeled out from the circle of dancers on Curly Drake's arm. His bare skin felt ice cold to me, despite the heat of the day. We came out somewhere in a hollow bathed in iridescent light. The sun had suddenly gone down, and the sky was laced with heat lightning. I was frantically searching for something in the darkness. 

“
Forget it,” said Curly. “Come here and kiss me, lass.” 

I felt panicky and ran away
, but he pursued me into a copse of holly bushes. He grabbed me, and just as his lips touched mine, there was a loud cracking noise, like a log splitting in a fireplace. I watched in horror as Curly turned into a skeleton and fell into fragments, like ashes from a burning log. I found myself outdoors again, now all alone in a dark wood. I saw myself standing over Curly's dead body. In my hair was a jagged streak of white, like the lightning that had struck him dead.

Galloping towards me through a tunnel of darkness was a bright knight in a suit of armor on a white horse. He bore a silver lance in his cuffed hand. I was curious
to see his face, but his visor was closed. He swept me off my feet and onto the back of his stallion. That was when I awoke.

In the morning,
I could not think of anything but my dream. I became convinced that Curly was fated for the terrible end I had foreseen. I knew I must forestall it by ending our love affair. Yet at what a sacrifice! Only my infuriating lover could arouse in me the intense sexual joy that I craved. But to save his life, I would give him up. He must be released from my spell and allowed to marry Clare Brighton.

I cried myself to sleep for many a night. Widow Brown, it seemed, had won. How galling! And how was I to carry out my dream of a triumphant exit from Alta on the arm of an attractive man? It wasn't long before I became convinced that Nicholas Brighton, the native whom I had not yet met, was the white knight I saw in my dream, and that he would be the solution to my human dilemma.

Thanksgiving dawned in Alta with a blessing of fine weather—cloudless blue skies, bright sun, and mild morning winds. The early snows were melting on the trails, leaving them muddy in spots and bare in others, but they were clear enough for a good deal of visiting and traipsing about among the bustling households. While not all native peoples celebrated the national festival begun by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the story of the fifty-three surviving pilgrims and Wampanoag sharing a harvest celebration in 1621 remained a cornerstone in the traditions handed down within pioneer families. 

At noon the
Captain said he would spend the holiday at the Plush Horse, and off he went in the carriage, leaving Horatio Nelson and Annie May undefended against the whims of his granddaughter. The two young people were accustomed to her abrupt demands and could withstand them without bursting into tears. Nonetheless, the Indian maid was taken aback when she found Cassandra in the tiny attic room, holding up and examining with a critical eye the beaded leather dress the maid was to wear in this evening’s pageant at the Grange.  

T
he girl held Cassandra's gaze without modifying her expression. Something was on her mistress's mind. There were frequent walkabouts, and her mistress had an odd way of talking to herself in the mirror. But the painful experience of Annie's race had taught her it was best to pretend she was as blank and unaware of the White-Eye's wiles as if she were a piece of slate board.  

Indians lived at a bare subsistence level in a small encampment on a dusty plain with cruel new partners
: disease and starvation. Steady employment within the community of the White-Eye was actually the best Annie May could hope for if she wished to settle down alongside her brave. He was one of the few young men who had accepted his fate and was attempting, against heavy odds, to make himself into a farmer.

The pride and the power of the
Native American men had been decimated in the past fifteen years by the relentless greed and treachery of the White-Eye. Their warriors were now dead, their hunting lands gone and their leaders humbled, and the future was bleak. There was no schooling beyond the primary years for Indian girls, though this was the least of their concerns. When gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, the Indians were once again forced to move off land that had been promised them. The customary forty acres and a mule in the reservation allotted to each man in recompense was not enough to scratch a living from land more suited to grazing.

So, when Annie May's
young mistress declared she wanted the maid’s clothing and the role of Sacajawea in the evening’s entertainment, Annie May silently took the silver coin offered her and asked no questions.

My aim was to gain access to a party to which I had not been invited, without ever revealing who I was. The plan was simple. I would take my maid's role of Sacajawea in the pageant. With no one the wiser, the host, Nicholas Brighton, would be in my sights.

I had read up on the history behind my role. Sacajawea was
the legendary Indian woman who, with a newborn son and half-white husband in tow, accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark over the treacherous waters of the Missouri River. Though her adventure was only a small piece of Lewis and Clark's 7,000-mile expedition to chart the Northwest Territory, her story was much loved in Wyoming.

I needed a wig and makeup, along with the costume to carry it off. So I went to
my room and removed a wood tabletop from my square, leather-strapped seaman's trunk. As I pushed open the heavy lid, tears filled my eyes, but not merely because of the strong whiff of camphor. What memories rushed forth!

Here were antique l
inens passed down from Mary Vye to my mother, with the thought they would be brought out and used again when I married. The pillowcases were carefully folded around my silver-plated baby rattle and bronzed infant’s shoe. I took out a grey-hued daguerreotype of my mother and father on their wedding day. I missed them so. Father had been very tall and mother very short. The apprentice photographer had stood Kate up on a chair, so that their heads appeared fairly close together. In the resulting image, Gio’s legs were cut off beneath the knees, which looked peculiar. However, my parents were poor and could hardly insist that the portrait be done over, as it had been done as a favor.

Under the wedding portrait
was an old manuscript, “The Mayor's New Clothes,” which I leafed through. Here was my first writing that was performed, a rendition of an old fairy tale produced at Saratoga Springs Academy for Girls. There at the age of twelve I took my first bows before an audience. Finally, from the bottom of the trunk, I drew out the long black wig in which I had performed the role of Cleopatra.

The wig fit snugly over the bound coils of my hair and fell in two long pieces of raven hair almost to my waist. I braided the horsehair and tied the ends with beaded leather. I
put on Annie's leather dress and beaded leather boots; the latter were much too large, so I stuffed them with stockings. 

Then I
camouflaged my light complexion with pots of brown stage makeup, darkening the skin everywhere it would be visible. With makeup and rouge, I changed the conformation of my lips and cheekbones. Even though there was nothing that could be done with my eye color, I would be safe from detection. As any real Indian maid would do on the stage, I would keep my eyes downcast.  

I remained staring into the mirror long after I was satisfied by the efficacy of wardrobe and makeup application. I was staring not at my own altered image, but at a vision of the future, one that was vividly detailed.

I
saw a young woman who bore a startling resemblance to myself, except for the color of her eyes. Like me, she was wearing a Sacajawea costume. Standing beside her was a beautiful black-haired woman whom I instantly knew to be a siren.

Judging from the language of their postures, they seemed to be in conflict. Who were they? There was no way for me to know. I knew only that I was seeing shadows of important events yet to come.