Dreams Beneath Your Feet (12 page)

Julia smiled with pleasure.

Esperanza thought irritably,
He's charming my mother.

Boy's companion, Nell, seemed amused by the situation. Esperanza disliked her.

Their story came out quickly. From the big island called Hawaii Boy had signed on with Hudson's Bay to work in America, and he labored mostly at Fort Walla Walla. That place was several weeks downriver, Esperanza didn't know or care where.
Nell was a Nez Percé, one of the tribes that bred Appaloosa horses, which Papa Sam was interested in.

“I have graduated from the employ of Hudson's Bay,” Boy said. He went on in an animated way—he was proud of his tale. “I am setting myself up as a trader, with some friends. We'll get goods from California and trade them to the Indians.”

Esperanza loved listening to Boy's musical voice. His speech, directed mainly to Julia, had a touch of elegance. Esperanza had heard similar tones from Ermatinger, who was educated, unlike the common trappers.

“We Kanaka people have been on this continent for about fifty years,” Boy said. “There are hundreds of us here. We've always been laborers, working for the British. I think it's time that we declared ourselves equal to the British, or anyone.”

“Absolutely,” said Sam.

“I agree with you,” put in Esperanza.

Boy gave her a gleaming smile.

Now he spoke of an opportunity he was developing with the Californios. The British ignored California, said Boy, and that was a mistake. “Also, my men and I have an advantage,” said Boy. “The British would have to bring horses over the Siskiyou Trail into Oregon and cross the Cascade Mountains with the herds somehow. But my Indian friends and I, we know the desert west of here. We know where the water is. We will be able to bring the horses to the Rockies, hundreds of horses. In California horses are common as . . . mosquitoes.”

Suddenly he slapped a mosquito on his forearm. Then, with a look of fascination, he picked up the smashed creature delicately and rubbed it between his huge thumb and forefinger until it was nothing. Last, with a strange expression, he sucked the forefinger.

Papa Sam made some inquiries about where the great horse herds of the northern part of California were—always talking business. Kanaka Boy answered fully, with the names of rivers and valleys Esperanza hadn't heard of.

Too soon Boy and Nell stood up. Esperanza realized that Nell hadn't said a word, just watched as though everything was a tickle somehow. Esperanza was sure she didn't mean anything to Boy.

“We'd better get back to camp,” Boy said. “Our friends will send someone looking for us.” He met all their eyes warmly, and then gave Julia and Esperanza special smiles. “Aloha,” he said. “That is how we Kanaka people say both hello and good-bye.”

When they left, Hannibal, Azul, and Rojo materialized out of the last of the twilight. “Who were they?”

Julia spoke up. “Kanaka Boy, a Hawaiian who has lifted himself up to become something. Very admirable.”

“And his wife,” said Sam.

Flat Dog said, “I don't trust him.”

 

 

 

L
EI FELT NICE
, very nice. Kind of giddy, but she liked it. The hurt in her leg, yes, it was still there, but . . . where? It didn't seem to matter.

Something nagged at her mind. Yes, she needed to know something. Nice, so nice . . .

Oh, what was it?

Yes, she needed to know . . .

Where am I?

It didn't matter, she felt good. She felt a rocking motion, kind of like a boat on a gentle lagoon. Rocking, rocking . . . Her legs dangled down one side and her arms down the other side, bumping against something warm.

Boy was jabbering on about something, on and on. Man liked to hear himself talk. The words, she couldn't make them out now. They brushed by her like feathers—yes, the words were
feathers. She liked that. Better than words being . . . meanings. Meanings?

The rocking, the words—she let herself float on the lake of consciousness.

 

L
ATER, MUCH LATER
, she felt cold. Annoying.
I like the rocking—that rocking, endless rocking—don't like to be cold.

She took some time and with great effort she formed words in her mind.
I'm cold, arms cold.

She spoke, but only a sort of moan made its way out of her throat.

She decided to rest before she tried again. She turned her mind—
don't have much mind
—to where she was. She felt, she listened, she looked. No good to look—dark. Listen—
clumpety-clumpety-clump.
Feel—rocking motion, arms touching something warm. She felt with her hands—warm and hairy. Before long she put it together. She was belly down on the saddle of a horse. She rummaged around in her sensations for a moment and came up with something more. She was belly down and stark naked on the saddle of a horse.

She turned her mind back to the words, and this time she got it out. “I'm cold.”

“Don't worry about it,” said Boy. “Tomorrow morning you're going to be hot, as hot as any woman has ever been.”

 

S
HE CAME AWAKE
gradually. She was warm now, wrapped in a blanket with Boy. Gray birds flicked around in pine trees, swimming through a gray light.

Her mind was a little woozy, but working. She was in trouble, shot by Boy, then raped by Delly and Turno. She remembered the rapes only hazily, but she knew what had happened. She even remembered Nell twisting her nipples hard while Turno was on top of her. She wondered if she'd been raped by Boy. Yes, rape—she
wasn't his wife anymore, that was for sure. She was naked and felt sure Boy had probably done whatever he wanted to do.

Damn, I can't shake this fuzziness
.

She lay still. Boy was asleep, the drunk-but-not-very-drunk sleep. He could wake up at any moment.

She couldn't quite remember what he'd said last night, something important, something huge. She listened to his breathing, very deep, very regular. Maybe she could risk it. Very carefully, she rolled onto one side.

It felt like a stab in the leg. Her mouth shot open to scream, but she clamped down and made the scream soundless. She'd been shot, she remembered now, above the right knee, a long-distance shot by Boy. The ball tore through her flesh and into Warrior's flank. She imagined the one red glob on his black coat, among so many white snowflakes.

That was the reason Boy was going to kill her. He said so. That was part of the huge thing.

She looked at the wound and felt behind it. There she fingered another hole, where the ball came out. Maybe she wasn't terribly hurt, if it didn't fester.

Feeling tender around the face, she fingered herself gingerly. Yes, it was swollen, very sore around the cheekbones, with dried blood on the outsides of her eye sockets, below her nostrils, and below one ear. She squeezed the ear lightly and got a jolt of pain for her reward.

What a sight I must be, brown skin blotched with purples and speckled with red.

She slipped out of the blankets—the pain was bad—and sat up. Now she recognized this place. Boy had brought her here on their honeymoon, as he called it. It was a grassy meadow, with several hot springs easing out at the base of the hill. The sulfur smell of the springs brought it all back to her. They lolled in the hot springs for those few days, and rolled in the luxuriant grass, too. She thought she loved him then.

She crawled over to a boulder. Before trying what she was
going to try, she looked around. Their horses were hobbled, the ashes of a fire smoldering, Boy's rifle and pistol under one of his arms. A few feet away lay his possible sack, with belongings he needed for traveling.

No more stalling,
she told herself. She put her hands on the boulder, used the uninjured leg, tried to stand up, collapsed.

This time her scream wasn't quite soundless.

She watched Boy fearfully for a long moment. He flicked a fly off his nose with one hand but didn't wake up.

The opening of the possible sack caught her eye. Something silver . . . She felt a hot burn of frustration in her throat—she couldn't . . .

She knew what it was, Boy's flask of laudanum. He kept several flasks buried somewhere around the camp on the Owyhee, supposedly to help comrades with pain. Lei knew, though, he nipped on the stuff himself. He had invited her to join in. “Lotusland,” he would say, “lotusland.”

Now she knew why she felt fuzzy.

All right, do it this time.
She made her left leg push her upright, leaning on the boulder. She looked around. They were camped so close to one of the hot springs, they could have rolled in. But this wasn't one they played in. This was—

Like a slap the memory came. This was the one that was much too hot—you couldn't even get a toe into it. Once Boy caught a ground squirrel and threw it in for amusement. The creature hit the water, spasmed violently, and went rigid. She supposed the bones must still be down there somewhere.

Boy's words came back: “Tomorrow morning you're going to be hot, as hot as any woman has ever been.”

She whirled and stared at him. Did he just now speak those terrible words? No. No, but this was the huge something. This was what he'd said last night when she was out of her mind, when she complained about being cold. She knew exactly how he was going to kill her.

 

 

 

T
HEIR FIRST LOOK
at Fort Boise made them think they hadn't ridden several hundred miles downstream. It was Fort Hall on a smaller scale and in adobe, lying squatted in similar bottomlands along the Snake River. The big difference was the chief trader, who immediately came out to greet them.

“Francois Payette,” he introduced himself in a Frenchy accent. “Enchanted to make your acquaintance.” Where Ermatinger had been surly, Payette was all friendliness and charm, and his gray goatee gave everything a Gallic touch. “Will you join us for dinner, please, this evening at sunset? I promise you as fine a meal as the country will afford.”

When the sun dropped behind the western hills and the bottomland dropped from cool to nippy, Sam and the whole family made their way from the river's edge into the small fort. Sam was tickled to see how Esperanza spruced herself up for the dinner.
She'd used the trinkets he bought her at Fort Hall to make herself as squaw-like as possible. She'd vermilioned the part in her auburn hair, rouged her cheeks, and tied small bells to the bottom of her hide dress. A statement.

“She's in for some surprises,” Julia told Sam softly.

 

T
HE MOMENT
B
OY
sat up in the blankets, Lei handed Boy his coffee, as she did every morning, complete with a fine dollop of alcohol. He started every day this way. He was still cobwebby from sleep, but he held the cup steady and got a good slug down.

Half of her wished she had killed him. She had a decent chance. His knife was in his belt. A quick grab, one hard thrust, it might have worked. And it might not. Boy was quick as a lizard, and far nastier.

But that was not the point. Lei had rummaged around in herself, and she didn't think she could kill a human being, especially not one she'd spent the days of her life with, shared so many meals with, laid next to, made love to, hoped with, feared with, joined her life to. She wished she could, but that wasn't in her.

“Taste good?” she said. She hoped her tone was meek, chastened. Everything she'd done was the role of the wife who had remembered her place. Crawling because of her bad leg, she had made a fire. She got his big mug and the small sack of beans out of his possible sack—Boy went nowhere without his coffee. She brewed his morning cup and kept it on the fire, taking not even a sip for herself, playing the obedient wife.

She'd made only one change. Instead of whiskey, the cup was half-full of laudanum. It tasted and smelled the way it always did, since the laudanum itself was mostly alcohol.

“Boy,” she said, “I'm sorry.”

He looked at something over the rim of his coffee cup, infinity maybe, but not her. He just took a big gulp.

She felt a jolt of hatred, like bile. If only she could have killed him.
How in hell am I ever going to get free of him now?

“Boy, I'm sorry.”

Still no response. “I went crazy. You surprised me with those . . . Diggers. I'd seen people die, yes, but . . . So many, all at once . . .”

She shook her head, as though trying to wake up from a bad dream.

“The little children . . .”

Boy stuck the cup out at her.

She took it, poured in black coffee, and added several glugs from his rum flask. The contents of the flask had been altered radically.

He took the cup and swigged deep.

“I apologize to you. I was insane to do what I did.”

She forced herself to go to him, sit next to him, put an arm around him.

He drank.

“I'll do anything you say. I'm sorry I've acted . . . snooty, like some of the men stay. I'll do
whatever
you want.”

He snickered. He knew what that word meant, “whatever.” What Delly and Turno made her do yesterday.

She took his head in her hands, looked deep into his eyes, and saw the vagueness she was waiting for. “I am your wife.”

Boy started to say something, one of his witticisms, no doubt, one that cut as much as it amused. But he couldn't put the words together.

She took his cup and filled it once more, with both liquids.

She had come up with a plan to survive. It was mad, it was dangerous, and it was the only path she could see.

 

K
ANAKA
B
OY DIDN'T
pass out, exactly. When he had imbibed about three times as much laudanum as she'd ever seen him use, he drifted into another world, maybe what he called lotusland. His eyes were half-open, but he seemed to see nothing and hear nothing. He was utterly helpless. She went to work.