Mrs. Mike by Benedict Freedman
I came to the clearing. There should have been a cabin there. There wasn't. I ran on. I almost fell into the foundation of a house. The root cellar was half-filled with smoking ash. I heard voices now, somewhere a man crying. Two Indians passed me carrying something charred and black in a blanket. I didn't know what it was when I looked at it. . . but when I thought about it, I knew. I saw Joe Henderson standing in a knot of Indians and 'breeds. I walked to them. I had run all the way but now somehow it took me a long time to reach them.
They were gathered about a well whose stone sides were blackened like an outdoor oven. From down inside the well came Mike's voice, hollow and full of echoes. "Give me a hand there!"
Mustagan bent over the edge and stretched out his hands. A brave reached to steady him as he received the burden. With a grunt he lifted the body over the side and laid it on the ground. There was a general movement forward. Only Henderson stood rocklike, his eyes rested a moment on the figure. It was a
woman's. There was no face. Joe Henderson looked back toward the well. One of the men called down to Mike, "Anyone else?"
It was a moment before Mike answered. "Yes, two, I think. I'm sending up the child."
Again Mustagan reached into the well. This body was very small. He laid it at Henderson's feet. This time no one moved. They were like a well-trained chorus, their eyes fixed on Henderson, waiting for him to cry or sob or scream. But he didn't do anything.
Mike handed up the third body, again a woman's. Joe didn't look at it, not once. He didn't lift his eyes from the body of the child.
Mike climbed up from that death hole. I was almost surprised. The rule, I thought, was that Mustagan had to lift you over the edge and that you had to be dead with your face burnt off.
Mike looked angry when he saw me, but he just said, "Sit down, Kathy."
There was no place to sit. The ground was too hot. There was only the wall of the well, and I wasn't going to sit on that. I shook my head, and Mike turned a little wearily to Joe Henderson.
"I'm sorry, Joe," he said.
The words seemed to rouse Henderson. For the first time he looked away from the boy, looked straight at Mike. He spoke very quietly. "It's not Tommy."
Mike didn't say anything.
I looked down again at the boy. Of course it was Tommy. The face was there, all but—Anyway, there was enough to see. There could be no doubt that it was Tommy Henderson.
"It's not Tommy," Joe Henderson said again. Then all at once he fell beside Tommy and grabbed him in his arms. The small blackened shoulder turned flaky and crumbled under his touch. He didn't seem to notice.
"Don't be scared, Tommy. Don't be scared. I won't let anything happen to you, not this time, not again! I saw the smoke, Tommy, I came up by canoe as far as I could. But it crossed the river,
Tommy, cut me off. But I went by land, Tommy, right through it. So don't be afraid, Tommy. Tommy?" He let the body fall from his hands. ''No, that's not Tommy. I won't let it be Tommy!" And he turned up an agonized face. He saw me. He began explaining very fast.
"You see, my store is right by the river, the widest part of the river. Uaawa would bring him to the river." He repeated the name Uaawa to himself. Dark shadows swam in his eyes. Then they became still with uncertainty.
"Uaawa," he said again, as though that explained everything to him. He looked over at the body of the second woman, his hands clenched at his sides.
"So she sneaks out as soon as my back is turned—takes Tommy to her sister. They talk to him in Beaver, sing to him in Beaver. They feed him Indian food, tell him Indian stories. She tried to make an Indian out of my son, out of Tommy Henderson."
He stopped and laughed, or maybe cried. It was a strangled sound in his throat.
"She hated me, all right. She knew I had no use for her, and she hated me. The damn klooch! She knew she could get at me through Tommy. I was a fool. I should have known she'd do this. But he was hers too, and I didn't think she could."
Mike took him by the shoulder. "What are you saying, man?"
"That she murdered my son."
"You mustn't be thinking things like that."
Joe Henderson spoke again.
"The many times I told the woman what to do in case I wasn't here, and Tommy was bit by a snake! What to do if he cut himself, what to do if he got sick on those tins they send us, and what to do if there was a fire. 'Put him in the river,' I told her, 'right in front of the cabin it's deepest and widest.' "
Mike spoke soothingly to him. "She didn't know there would be a fire, Joe, when she started off."
"It was hate that made her take Tommy to that Indian cabin. Hate that made her put him down the well."
"Joe! Joe, it was too late by the time she saw the fire. It was between them and the river. She did what she could for Tommy. He was her child too."
"Hate was her child. Mine is dead."
The graves were dug all day. I worked with the women. Thirty-seven wooden crosses we made and whitewashed. We cooked mush in the cabins and tepees that were left. The fire had skipped around like a child playing hopscotch. Without reason it had taken and it had spared. Mike fell asleep while he was eating the mush. I shook him and he finished. Mustagan asked us into his cabin. He shook hands with Mike after the custom of white men. "The Sergeant, him save the people of Mustagan."
That was all, but it was enough.
Twelve
I TRAILED MY hand in the water. It looked like the hand of a sea nymph who had somehow drifted into the Peace River. The current was carrying our canoe along swiftly, and the Indian in the bow held his paddle upraised, watching for snags. I let the water run through my fingers and kept my eyes on the woods, hoping I'd see a bear. I loved to watch bears—from a distance. The day before, I had nearly sat down on one. The men had pulled the canoe on the bank for some minor repairs. I walked over to a flat rock, curled up on it, and there was a black bear eating red willow berries. He backed away, but stopped to turn up a rock and lick off the insects and bugs clinging to the bottom. That's when I jumped up and ran. A bear that will eat grubs off the bottom of a stone will eat anything, I reasoned, and that anything might be me. /
Mike wasn't impressed. He said black bears were friendly, lumbering old cusses, and that the only ones I need worry about were grizzlies. Just the same, it was a shock seeing it, and from then on I was doubly careful. I didn't want my baby born with a face like a black bear's.
Mike thought I was becoming unusually scary and fanciful. "It'll be a good thing when you have the baby and get over all this," he'd say.
But I continued to give way to my moods, and right now it was my mood to take my hand out of the water and flick drops in Mike's face. He grinned down at me and splashed me with his paddle.
"How's my cabbage?"
That was his new name for me. He said that's what I looked like, a little round cabbage. I dipped down for more water to splash back. He laughed, caught a crab, and almost lost his paddle.
I lay back among the cushions and half-closed my eyes against the sun. It was lazy and peaceful after the excitement of leaving. Ours was the last boat of the season, and already Hudson's Hope was weeks away.
We had been rebuilding our house on a new site. The other was too charred; it would be years before anything grew back. Mike had dug the foundation when the letter with Government seals came through to us.
"We're transferred to Grouard," Mike had said. "Well, at least we don't have to worry about packing."
And that was a true word. We had the clothes on our backs, and that was all. The fire had cleaned us out.
One by one, 'breed and Indian, they came, and at our door each left a gift of food. The canoe was given us, and enough provisions for the six weeks it would take us to reach Grouard; and these people faced a long, hungry winter.
Everyone came down to the river to see us off. The flag was flown at the pier just as it was the day the fur brigade left. At the last, Mustaga
of flint-tipped arrows. We shoved off, and I looked back at the waving hands, at the waving flag.
Tonight, as I laid our blankets on somebody else's bed and hung that somebody else's blanket up as a partition, I wondered about all these cabins we'd been sleeping in for the last few weeks. The owners of them we rarely saw. But on the wall or over the stove was usually a crudely painted sign. The one here said, "Make yourself to home, stranger, and shut the door when you leave." In the North no one ever locked his door, not even when leaving for the winter.
Every night we stopped in a cabin where wood had been stacked, matches left, and canned goods laid out for the chance traveler. All the unknown host received in return was a scribbled note giving our thanks, any news we could think of, and our names. This whole system of northern hospitality was a gigantic chain, for while we were eating this man's beans, he was undoubtedly farther up the trail, eating somebody else's.
I lay awake listening to the snores of the Indians who were rolled in their blankets on the other side of our partition. The baby was moving in me. It moved a lot now. It was strange to think I had a person in me, a person who some day ... I snuggled in against Mike. It was then I felt my first pain. The cramp grabbed hold, turned and twisted in me like a live thing. I clutched Mike.
He was awake instantly, bending over me. "Kathy!"
"It's the baby!" I tensed myself against the pain, but it had stopped. I began to cry.
"Kathy, darling; girl, what is it? What's wrong?"
Nothing was wrong now, but I was scared. So was Mike.
"Kathy, are you—? It's bad?"
I cried harder, but against his arm, so the Indians couldn't hear.
"I don't want to have my baby here! You promised me we could get to Grouard, you promised me."
"Darling, I thought we could."
He began stroking me. I jumped away from him and said very viciously but very quietly. "You keep away from me!"
"Kathy." Mike said it in a stunned sort of way.
"You lied to me," I said into the pillow, "and now you can just leave me alone."
I knew I was unreasonable, that Mike had done his best. But I couldn't help it. I wanted a woman to help me. I would be ashamed in front of men. Oh, Mike was all right—but not those two Indians.
"Kathy," Mike said soothingly. "Kathy, girl."
"You've got to send those Indians away. I'm not going to have it if they're here. I won't, that's all. I just won't!"
Mike took my hand. "I'll send them away. I'll take care of you myself. It won't be anything, kitten. All women have babies. Haven't I always looked after you? And I will now. Don't be afraid, girl, trust me."
"I don't trust you," I said, and pulled my hand away. "You said we'd get to Grouard, you said I didn't have to have it on the trail. You promised."
"Kathy." There was decision in Mike's voice. "Tell me exactly how you feel. Do you have any pains now?"
"No."
"And how many did you have before?"
"Well, one."
"You'd be having them fast and close if you were near birth. I can get you to Peace River Crossing by morning. There's a Scottish woman there, Mrs. Mathers, who used to be a trained nurse. Do you want to chance it?"
I threw my arms about his neck. "Mike, you're so good to me!"
In less than ten minutes we and the two bewildered sleepy Indians were in the canoe. Sometimes I slept and sometimes I looked into the dark water. It was a silent, unreal trip. The paddles dipped together. An owl hooted through the forest. I would rather have my baby beside the river, with the wind blowing clear and sharp, than have it in that close and musty cabin. But there were no more pains. I dreamed that all the Junos we'd ever had were leading a beautiful little girl toward my mother and saying, "This is Katherine Mary's child." And I kept saying, "No, no, she hasn't been a baby yet, she hasn't been a baby."
When I opened my eyes the stars had faded out and the sky looked soft and pink. I reached up and kissed Mike's hair.
"Where's that baby?" he said and laughed.
We were no longer running in a gorge, but beside a grassy bank rising in terraces from the river bed. It was sunny meadow-land, and there were wild flowers, blue and red, and after a while a yellow kind. It was four hours before we came to Peace River Crossing. The Indians call it Eteomami, which means "Water Flowing Three Ways," because here the Hart, the Smoky, and the Peace come together.
"It's civilization," Mike said. "They've even got a telegraph."
He helped me out of the canoe. The ground felt unsteady under my feet. I held onto Mike and thought of one thing: getting to Mrs. Mathers's house. Twice Mike's name was called, and both times he answered without stopping.
"Here we are," he said, and we walked onto a porch that squeaked and moaned with every step. Mike knocked, and we stood there waiting. He knocked again, and the door opened a grudging crack.
"What do you want?" The voice was high-pitched and querulous.
"It's Sergeant Flannigan, Mrs. Mathers. I've brought my wife to you."
The door opened farther, and at first sight I didn't like her. She was a woman of fifty, with a lot of flesh, loose and gray. I tried to do away with my impression. Mike says it's a bad habit of mine, judging people right off by the way they look. But it wasn't the way she looked, exactly, it was her voice too.
"You poor dear," she said. "Come in."
The house looked like her—big, rambling, and untidy. It smelled of food, and not only of today's food, but as though every meal had left its grease and its smell behind. She was telling me to take off my things. I did, but I felt uncomfortable the way she was looking at me. "This is silly," I told myself. "The woman's a trained nurse, she's got to look at me if she's going to help me." So I smiled and told her how we'd traveled all night to get to her.
"My dear," she said, "I don't know how you stood the trip. I know of many a miscarriage brought on by less than you've been through."
Mike frowned, but she didn't seem to notice.
"Bed's the place for her, Sergeant. I'll let you know when she's all tucked in and comfy."
Mike gave me a reassuring grin as Mrs. Mathers led me off.
She turned back the bedding and smoothed the rumpled covers. I stood and looked at the room. A cracked slop jar and basin, a dark dresser, and a straight-backed chair were the only furnishings.
"Do you want me to help you out of your things, dearie?" The plump fingers reached toward me.
"No," I said, drawing back a little. "I can manage fine, thank you." But I didn't, not with her watching me. I fumbled at every button. I'd taken off my boots and my mackinaws when she came toward me with a string in her hand. At the end of it was tied a button.
"Now," she said, "stand still, Mrs. Flannigan, and we'll see something."
"What?" I asked.
"Well now, we'll just see," and she hung the string in front of my stomach and stilled it with her hand.
"If it's a boy, the string will move forward and backward. If it's a girl, it will swing right and left."
"Oh, please, I'm so tired. I want to get into bed."
She was indignant at that. "Well, if you're not even curious!" She handed me a flannel nightgown which from the size of it was hers and watched me as I slipped it on.
"You're not built right," she said.
"What do you mean?" I felt frightened.
"You're just not. Too small all over."
I got into bed and pulled the covers up high.
"Some women aren't made for child-bearing, and you're one of them."
"My grandmother had fourteen children," I said, "and my mother had three."
"What did I tell you? See how they're dwindling off?" She brought her face against mine. "It's a bad month too. August is the eighth month of the year."
I made an effort to ove
"Too many eights," she said. "Eighth month of 1908 . . . and today, do you know what today is? The twenty-eighth! It's bad luck, terrible. I doubt if we'll take that baby out of you alive."
I shrank back against the sheets. "You mean I'll have a dead baby, a stillborn baby?" Just then it moved in me, and that tiny precious movement gave me the strength to lash out at her. "Don't you say things like that! Don't you dare! My baby's all right. My baby's alive!"
"Of course your baby's all right. What are you talking about, Kathy?" Mike stood in the doorway. "Kathy, what's wrong?"
I tried not to cry, but I did through every word. "She said I can't have a baby. She said—"
"What?" The word dropped from him like a bomb.
Mrs. Mathers began talking very fast. She scuttled over the words like a fat prairie chicken. "I said it would be a hard confinement, Sergeant. There's no use fooling ourselves, it will. And I was telling your wife that we always try to save the mother. If needs be, let the child go and save the mother. So you see, there's nothing for her to worry about, nothing at all, if the worst comes to the worst—"
"Get out!" Mike said, and his lips barely moved.
Mrs. Mathers stood and looked at him as though she hadn't heard right. Mike didn't say anything more. He didn't have to. Just looking at him made me want to hide under the covers.
Mrs. Mathers must have felt that way too, because she said, "Humph!" and started for the door. It wasn't until she was safely
out of the room that she muttered something about "my own house!"
Mike closed the door and came back to the bed. He spoke in a stern voice. "Forget that nonsense."
"Mike," I said, "she's the one you're mad at, not me." But even this wouldn't make him smile.
"Of all the fool, ridiculous things to tell a girl!"
"But maybe she knows. Maybe she's right. After all, she's a trained nurse, Mike."
"You see, she's got you half-believing those bogey stories. You'd think a nurse would know better. But I guess being a nurse can't change a person's character. She's a gray woman with gray sayings."