Soon Be Free (22 page)

The younger Indian was obviously an apprentice watching every move the master craftsman made, as if someday this solemn task would fall to him and to his own sons. On a silent signal the young man placed a great eagle feather in Mr. Prairie Fire's hands. There were no songs or prayers out loud, but the two Delaware men seemed to be praying silently, as Quakers do.

Tracy, the wanna-be anthropologist, was fascinated by the whole ceremony, but after about fifteen minutes I couldn't bear the tense silence any longer, or Mr. Prairie Fire's lifeless face. I stepped forward over the lumpy grass to study the depth of his grave, which was lined with bark and leaves.

What year is it, Mr. Prairie Fire?
I silently asked. The older Indian gave a nod, and, as the grave diggers closed the casket and lowered it into the ground, I heard Mr. Prairie Fire's voiceless reply: “Why, it's
this
year, girlie, eighteen and fifty-seven.”

The thud of dry earth on the top of his simple pine box was deeply chilling, and for the first time in my life I realized how utterly permanent death is. Despite the hole in the casket that set his spirit free,
Mr. Prairie Fire's body would wither and decay in the cold, damp earth, and his life would be a flickering memory entrusted to only the few of us on the edge of his grave.

Months before, Jeep and Mike, Sally and Ahn and I had had a sort-of funeral for Miz Lizbet, but we'd never actually known her in the flesh. Mr. Prairie Fire had been alive to me. His voice, his rambling, raspy words, were seared into my memory.

The old Indian said, “We leave Elder Brother to his rest,” and we all turned our backs on Mr. Bo Prairie Fire, deep and alone in that hole. Then the young Indian reached into a beautiful basket and pulled out a bundle wrapped in cowhide. “His only treasure,” he said as he presented this gift to “Lulu,” who was the closest thing to Mr. Prairie Fire's widow. She shook her head and passed it on to me, saying, “Leave it in the hands of the young.” Her gray hair flowed down her back and around her face, sopping up tears.

I held the brittle cowhide package and felt Mr. Prairie Fire's spirit pass through me until I swayed like tallgrass in the prairie wind.

• • •

Mike was there when I got home, and he surveyed the cowhide bundle that had belonged to Bo Prairie Fire. It crackled with age. I was afraid it would snap like a taco shell as I unfolded it so carefully.

Inside was a dish towel wrapped and wrapped around something as light as air. The edge of the linen dish towel was embroidered with a monogram. I ran my finger over the delicate pink thread:
M
W
B.

“Be careful. It's really old,” Tracy said, with awe in her voice.

Mike said, “Just open the thing!”

But I couldn't. There was something floating here just beneath the surface of my memory.
M
W
B
. I'd seen those initials before, engraved on the journal that had made Miz Lizbet come alive for me. My heart felt like a woodpecker had attacked it, and I was sure Mike and Tracy could hear it knocking. “Do you recognize this, Mike?
W
for Weaver,
M
for Millicent, and
B
for Baylor.”

Millicent Baylor Weaver, James's mother!

Mike caught on, and the blood drained from his face. “It's hers, isn't it?”

We gently unfolded the yellowed parchment inside, and there it was, the treaty between the United States government and the Delaware Tribe of Indians. Chief Tonganoxie had signed his name beside the signature of the Indian agent, and both had signed the date: March 26, 1857.

It was time to clue my parents in on what was happening.

• • •

Dad hurried right home to see the document. “It's genuine, all right,” he confirmed. His face glowed with excitement, and Mom beamed, too.

Mike said, “Dr. Shannon, we think this document is what Mr. and Mrs. Berk were looking for when they tore up your bathroom.”

“Don't spin out of orbit, Mom and Dad, but I sort of snooped around their room.”

“Dana!” Mom cried.

“I know, I know, it's not good for business, and I promise I won't do it to every guest who stays at our B and B. But the snooping paid off.”

“What did you find?” Dad asked. The history professor half was winning out over the father half.

“A blueprint of our house and a rare old book by Samuel Straightfeather that's supposed to tell all about this treaty. But the book's gone now.” My parents listened. They were great at crunch times like this, so I continued. “Okay, here's the deal, and don't yell until I've finished the whole thing. Mike's brother Howie drove us to Kansas City, and we tried to get into the Berks' house while they're stuck in jail, but we didn't get any farther than the cat door.”

Mom clunked her forehead and groaned, but Dad's eyes just glistened.

“Then we met their neighbor Faith Cloud, who's a Delaware, and she's related to poor Mr. Bo Prairie Fire, the man who died.”

“It wasn't murder, Dr. and Mrs. Shannon,” Mike assured them.

“Mom, Dad, I think Faith Cloud's our only hope of solving the whole mystery of the missing treaty.”

Dad nodded and went for his car keys.

Mrs. Bowers was tending her vegetables when James and Ma approached. She didn't hear them. James took this as a sign that they should turn back, but Ma dug three fingers into his back and urged him forward.

“Mrs. Bowers?” His voice wobbled.

Glancing around, her soft, doughy face turned to smiles. “Why, if it isn't James Weaver!” She pulled herself to her feet, with Ma's help. “Where's that scoundrel son of mine? Hiding behind some bushes? Will Bowers, show your ugly face. You can't scare me.”

Ma said, “Marian, let's go inside.”

“Sure enough he'll just pop up at a window and stop my heart. I tell you, that boy's just like his father.”

Ma guided Mrs. Bowers into her keeping room, called that because it was the room with the fireplace where the family kept warm in the evenings. James prayed that Will's little sisters wouldn't come around while he told Mrs. Bowers what he couldn't imagine telling her.

“Glass of lemonade, James? I can't wait to hear
about your adventures out east. Did my Will clobber some of those nasty slave catchers? He's got a temper, that one. Tell me before he comes in here boasting like a shameless preacher.”

The smile faded from her face as James said, “Mrs. Bowers, Will isn't coming home.”

Ma sidled up next to the woman. “He gave his life for an important principle, Marian. I trust that will give thee some comfort.”

“Comfort?” she said absently. “Why should that comfort me?”

James perched on the edge of a footstool. “Mrs. Bowers, we wouldn't be here, Solomon Jefferson and the four freed people and myself, if it weren't for thy son Will. He knew things about the traveling that Solomon and I wouldn't have figured out in a dozen years. He made us maps, caught us turtles with his bare hands. We'd still be trying to cross the Ohio River back in Kentucky if it wasn't for Will knowing how to make watertight rafts out of pure nothing.” This wasn't completely true, but James deemed a small stretch of the story fitting at this sorrowful time. “Thy son Will stood up to slave catchers and mean-hearted men all along the way and never flinched. He didn't have a scared bone in his body.”

Mrs. Bowers's chin and neck seemed to sink into her shoulders. James looked away as two impossibly heavy teardrops etched her cheeks. Finally, she said, “It wasn't enough to get a leg shot off?”

“Does thee want the whole story, Marian?”

“No, none of it.” She wiped the tears with her sleeves. “Everett will want to hear about it, no doubt. I'll send him down later. As for me, I'd like to just sit here.”

Ma nodded and held her hand.

“Alone.”

• • •

On the way home, it occurred to James that Mrs. Bowers must hate him for surviving the trip while Will's charred remains floated to the bottom of the Mississippi River. It was another terrible trade: Will's life for his, same as trading the Negroes' lives for the Delawares'.

Was growing up and being responsible always going to be like this? Did every important choice for the good hurt someone else? Open one door, and another one slams in the wind on someone you love?

Ma walked beside him silently. She had such a clear vision of what was good and what wasn't, and if she doubted for even an instant, prayer cleared it all up. For James, important things were always fuzzy, like a shimmery image floating on the horizon. Only houses and buildings came into sharp focus—wood and stone and brick. And none of that murky, fishy isinglass, no. His houses would have genuine, crystal-clear glass that wrapped around the building. Doors out of glass, yes! A house flooded with sunlight. And
what
couldn't
you do with native stones carved to fit together like a hand in a glove?

His face suddenly flushed with shame. Will. The Bowers family's grief—that's what he should be thinking about, not mortar and brick. And then, to his further shame, Ma spoke at last. Her voice was husky, the way it got when she'd been praying silently for a long time. She said, “I am proud of thee, son, and so grateful that thee has come home to us safely.”

• • •

Homer couldn't wait to spill the news: “Mistuh James, suh, we gettin' married!”

“Thee and Sabetha?”
It can't be.

Solomon said, “Sabetha and me, we've made a pledge to each other.”

Callie was ready to pop, but neither Solomon nor Sabetha looked like they'd been stung by the love bug. Miz Pru sat in the rocker with her hands under her, as if they'd take off on their own if she didn't pin them down.

“We gettin' married!”

“All of thee?” Ma asked. “Would somebody say plainly what's going on?”

“Miz Weaver, ma'am,” began Solomon, but Sabetha waved the wooden spoon to hush him. “The plain truth is, we just can't keep on going all the way to Canada. We're all tired. Tired of being on the road, tired of having no place to hang out our wash, tired of having no home that's ours; always somebody
else's. Look at Miz Pru. She's worn thin as a bedsheet. So, we all decided it. We're staying here.”

“Here?”
Ma asked, pointing to her kitchen floor.

“Nearby here,” Solomon explained, “if Mr. Weaver can get all these folks free papers nobody's got to worry over.”

“He can,” Ma assured them, “although with this new Dred Scott decision, thy safety is less certain, even with legal papers.”

“I ain't have any dread.” Miz Pru freed up one of her hands to shake a finger at James. “You done told us we could take our chances in Kansas, boy, and that's what we're gonna do. This place gonna be awright. Me and Callie knows it, right, girl?” Her elbow jabbed Callie at the waist, and Callie nearly doubled over as she blurted out, “Natcherly.”

Sabetha gave the stew another stir and hung the wood spoon in the notch of the kettle. “Miz Pru thinks Solomon needs a wife.”

“And thee?” Ma asked.

“Lord knows, I don't need no man.” She shot Solomon a playful look over her shoulder.

“Homer and I are going to build us all a house,” Solomon said.

“I'll draw thee a house to build, Solomon. I've got a pack of ideas racing round in my head.” Blue shutters that folded over the windows at night . . . a sleeping porch with window seats you could flip open like a trunk . . . walls deep
enough to build drawers right into them. He could see it all clearly, the way Callie saw happenings in the future.

Sabetha folded her arms across her chest in her usual way. “We'll make a good life here, me and Callie and Homer and Miz Pru. We've all gotten used to Solomon Jefferson.”

Solomon smiled and reached out for Sabetha, but Miz Pru, in her uncanny way, sensed the movement and hopped out of her chair to bat his hand away. “Whatchu puttin' your arms aroun'? She ain't your wife yet.” Dropping back down into the rocker, she muttered, “Man get milk for free, he ain't gonna buy the cow.”

Ma hid a smile and looked from bride to groom. “Does thee love one another?”

They both considered the question, but Sabetha was the first to answer. “Seems to me Solomon's never gonna be done with Lizbet.”

His face went the color of limestone at the mention of her name.

Ma nodded. “Quite a remarkable woman, Elizabeth Charles.”

“You tellin' me? I done give her life. Now, Sabetha, here, she's my daughter, too; I been carryin' her since she was ten. She's awright.”

“Sabetha, does thee love Solomon?”

“Well as I can.”

“Love grows. When Mr. Weaver and I first took
our wedding vows, we were like cat and dog. He was quite a contrary man.”

He
was contrary? Ma couldn't have been a dandelion blowing in the wind, either. Ma was like those giant sunflowers that poked up straight on sturdy stalks and stubbornly turned their faces to the sun. James thought about Callie's question, how his ma and pa ever got together, what with her being all about praying over things, and him being all about proving them.

“We still have our differences now and again, as James will tell thee.”

“That's the truth!”

“Callie, does thee approve of this match?” asked Ma.

Callie put her hands on her hips and looked up to Solomon like he was a tall building. “You say we're going to have a house?” He nodded. “You say I'm going to go to school?” He nodded again. “You say we're going to be free folks, no more worrying about people snatching us back to Kentucky?”

“I believe that's true, Callie.”