Kitt Peak (2 page)

My Abby is gone, Thomas. . . .

~ * ~

Here there was an obvious pause while Adams took a drink; there was evidence that the spill on the letter had occurred at this point. Thomas could almost see his friend blotting the alcohol from the page before continuing. The letter went on:

~ * ~

I'll be honest with you, because you'd figure out anyway that I'm in the bottle and feeling badly. Seems I invested a bit too much in my life after the Army, and when things did not turn out as I planned I took a bit of a fall.

But my Abby, as I said, is gone. She's only nineteen, now, Thomas, you may remember my talking about her years ago. To me she was only a baby then, and her momma was raising her on the Papagos reservation here, though in Christian ways. In my head, she was always my little girl, but when I came back to Tucson she was all grown up, with ideas of her own. She didn't want to live in Tucson City with me, at least not at first; but even after she came to live with me I could see she wasn't happy. But then, things seemed to get better. And then she disappeared.

~ * ~

Again there was a pause, Thomas could feel it. And once again when the man went back to writing, he was drunker, and his hand less steady:

~ * ~

Thomas, I'm a desperate man, if you can't tell. Abby's mother was a good woman, and tried to raise her the way I wanted.

I have no right to ask this of you, old friend. I realize that Boston must seem very far away from the Army and from Arizona, but . . .

~ * ~

Again a lengt
hy pause, before Adams asked the question he felt he had to steal himself to ask:

~ * ~

You're the best friend I've ever known, Thomas, and the best tracker. If you could help me, I would be beholden to you for my life. I hesitate to ask you for old times' sake, but if that's all that it takes, for my daughter, I'll do that. All right, my daughter is
Injun, at least half, but she's all I have, and I don't want a horrible thing to happen. I'm afraid I must sign off now with this plea I've made. . . .

~ * ~

The letter was unsigned, with a running line, blotted carelessly, after the last word. Perhaps Adams had thought to reopen the letter, remembering that he hadn't signed it. Thomas wondered, also, if the man had hesitated to ask for his help, or found it so difficult, because Thomas was Negro.

That's an evil thought.

Sighing, Thomas walked to the window and looked out. Still holding the letter, he put his hands behind his back and clasped them. No, it wasn't such an evil thought. As much as Bill Adams was a friend, he had still found it difficult to ask Thomas's help, simply because of the difference in their skin color. Adams would deny it, but still, here in this time, thirty years after the War Between the States, Thomas was a second-class citizen merely because his skin was dark. In the Army, especially in the Buffalo Soldiers, the difference between him and Adams had been easier to ignore; but here, in the real world, the stigma was unavoidable.

Thomas stared out at the January white of Boston, where the people professed equality but didn't live it, and thought of the warmness of Tucson.

Adams had found it difficult to ask. But he
had
asked.

I'll help you, old friend,
Thomas thought.
I'll help you merely because you're my friend, and, almost as importantly, because if I don't, if I stay here in two-faced Boston, pacing the rooms of this little house and brooding, I will lose my mind, along with the rest of my pride.

Having decided, Thomas turned away from the window. There was a perceptible smile on his face. He held the letter almost lovingly in his hand, and placed it carefully on the lamp table as he turned to make the bed in sharp military corners, and thought of what he would need to take with him.

Three days later, in Birmingham, Alabama, Lincoln Reeves's own life was turned upside down by the arrival of a letter. This one was delivered by a black man, though, with whom, if Lincoln had any enmity, he was unaware of it.

"Nice day, George," Lincoln said, meeting the man at his own rickety gate. Like everything else on the sharecropper's farm, it needed fixing. Like everything else, it would have to wait in line.

"They all the same to me, Mistah Reeves," George said, shaking his head. Lincoln tried to recall if he had ever seen the man smile, and came up empty. "One day goes intuh the next, and then th' nex' day come aftuh that."

"Whatever you say, George." Lincoln took his mail from the dour mailman and smiled. He looked at the slate-blue sky over the dusty field, the clouds, felt the almost spring-like warmth. As the mailman turned away, already shaking his head, Lincoln said, "Couple of months it'll be spring, and then I can get to planting. And won't
that
be fine, George?"

"Whatever you says, Mistuh Reeves," George said, continuing to shake his head as he went through the gate, closing it behind him. He chuckled slightly. "Whatever you says. You say hi to that wife and baby of yours, now, Mr. Reeves."

Lincoln watched the man retreat down the dusty road, then looked at the sky again. It
would
be fine. It certainly would. His first crop, on his own — well,
almost
his own — farm, and this was a fine day, and this was, after all, a fine life. Inside he heard Matty singing to the baby, and Lincoln had, at this moment, to admit to himself that he had done all right for himself. He had come about as far as he had wished, if not as far as he had hoped. And Thomas Mullin had told him — ordered him — to stay in the Army. What did the old man know? . . .

A moment later, glancing at the mail in his hand, Lincoln had a moment of wonder. Had he conjured Thomas Mullin up? For there, at the top of the thin stack of letters, was a crisply cornered letter from the Lieutenant, the first Lincoln had received in nearly a year. And here Lincoln had begun to worry about the old man, that things were slipping for him. Lincoln thumbed the flap of the letter open, wincing at the ragged tear he was putting in it, almost waiting for Mullin to snap a comment at him:

"What's the matter, Trooper? Are you so
lazy
that you can't open an envelope properly? What if that envelope were evidence? What if you were
destroying
evidence?"

Reeves pulled the thin sheet out, laughing inwardly at his picture of the man he had conjured up. Even now, even at this distance in time and miles, Lieutenant Thomas Mullin still made Lincoln's back stiffen up in salute, his mind more alert. It was silly... .

Lincoln read the short note, and instantly felt himself go rigid and alert. Not so silly.

"Matty!" he called, already wincing at the fight he would have with his wife. He could only hope she would understand.

Resolutely, steeling himself for the confrontation to come, he mounted the creaking steps of the farmhouse, vowing to fix them as soon as he returned, opened the squeaking screen door to enter.

A day later, filled with guilt and remorse, he was packed and ready to go. Another fine day was dawning; it would be even warmer than yesterday, the temperature climbing perhaps into the sixties. Wonderful weather for January. There were a lot of chores that wouldn't get done today. . . .

"Matty," he said, unable to say anything else, holding his hands out in supplication. His carpetbag lay at his feet on the porch. In Matty's arms, the baby cooed and twisted, following the flight of an early morning crow cawing through the air over the near field.

"You say you'll be back before planting," Matty said solemnly.

"Matty, I promise. You can get Jedediah and Marcus to help until then. Jedediah knows how to fix things, the pump and such, and if by any chance I was late he could start the early plowing." Seeing her eyebrows go up he continued in a rush. "Though I know that won't be necessary. But . . . if it is, he'll do it. He owes me big, I got him started last year. And Marcus is good with the baby, and can run chores to town. Oh please, Matty, don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you, Lincoln," she said evenly. "I'm mad at Thomas Mullin and the Army."

"Don't be, Matty."

"When the Army gets hold of you, it's the only thing can make you act like this. Everything else, you're your own man. I just can't understand why you have to drop your life and run. Especially to help some white man."

~ * ~

He reached out to take one of her hands, but instead, she shifted the baby from the crook of her other arm and handed it to him.

"Say good-bye to your papa, Washington," Matty said coldly. "Say good-bye to your papa who's leaving you to help some crazy old fool find a drunk
white
man's
Indian
daughter."

The baby cooed, looking up into Lincoln's face and smiling. Lincoln looked at Matty imploringly.

"Matty, I've told you. These are the only two men from the Army I would do this for. Sergeant Adams saved my
life.
And Lieutenant Mullin is —

"Like a father to you," Matty finished. "I've only heard it a thousand times, Lincoln." Suddenly, as she saw him reach down for his bag, her tone softened.

He straightened up, handed the baby to her. "I have to go, Matty," he said, turning away.

"Lincoln —" She put her hand on his arm, gripped him tight, turned him around.

He looked down at her. "Matty, I said I'm sor…

"I know," she whispered, reaching up to kiss him. Suddenly she was crying. "I know, and I understand. But you have to be careful."

"Of course I'll be careful," he said. He brought his lips down to the baby's head and kissed his crown. "And you be careful, too."

When he looked back at Matty she was still crying. "Oh, Lincoln." she said, hugging him tight.

"I know, Matty, I know."

Gently, he pulled away from her, walked down the steps, and didn't look back until he was far away, across his sharecropped field, at the edge of the land that might one day be his or his son's.

When he looked back he waved, and Matty waved back, and made little Washington wave, too.

Steel your mind, Thomas.

He hadn't remembered how truly tedious a long train trip could be. What at first began as an exciting excursion, a setting out for new places on a machine that traveled the rails faster than any man could run or ride, became, after the first few days, a boring series of embarkings and debarkings, facing an endless dull panorama of shorn trees and winter whiteness. What had at first been charming soon turned maddening, and Thomas was thankful for the thin stack of unread
Strand
magazines he had brought in his bag. He had particularly enjoyed Conan Doyle's most recent adventure, published in the December 1902 edition, recounting the "Adventure of the Speckled Band." Conan Doyle was back at his best, after a disastrous interlude where he had tried to kill Sherlock Holmes off, then, after an outcry which Thomas had only been too willing to add to, posting three letters in as many days to the
Strand
after they had dared to offer to the reading public the outrage titled "An Affair at Reichenbach Falls."

But the present adventure was more up to snuff, with Holmes employing all of his deductive powers to great end, and Thomas knew this Holmes story was a fine one because he had been unable to guess its ending. That had only happened once in the last year, a sure sign that Conan Doyle had been losing his powers.

Perhaps we're both coming back, Conan Doyle,
he thought.

He shifted his weight on his bag, and looked out the window. The baggage car was empty now, another Negro having gotten off in Fort Worth. Only twice in the past two weeks had he sat in the last passenger car, but that was back in the East, where segregation was more subtle, and now that he was back in the South, the more overt forms of racism were evident. But baggage cars could be made comfortable, and the Negro porter on this train had taken good care of him, and made sure that he was fed properly and allowed to use the men's facilities after the white passengers had gone to bed for the evening... .

The window was small, and smudged, but it showed the same relentless vista of bleak winter, the same denuded trees, only mercifully shy of snow.

Thomas tucked his
Strand
magazine away and drew out the papers in his jacket pocket.

The first was the letter from Bill Adams, which he had been over numerous times. Always he came to the same conclusions. The second was a telegram from Lincoln Reeves, waiting for him in Kansas City, as he had instructed, with one word, Yes.

These two he put away, finding no more interest in them. The third, however, still held his attention. It was another telegram, this one from Tucson, from the landlord of the hotel where Bill Adams had been staying. Though it was few in words, it told Thomas much:

~ * ~

ADAMS BELIEVED DEAD STOP. INJUN BEING HELD STOP. MARSHAL SAYS NO ARMY IN TERFERENCE NEEDED STOP. CATES.

~ * ~

Apparently Mr. Cates had misunderstood Thomas's own telegram, regarding his present status with the U.S. Army. That was fine, and irrelevant. Besides the fact that his friend might be dead, Thomas found he could read volumes from the short message.