Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee
“Isaac musta told someone to tell her. She’s like our messenger, knows lots of folks. She’s the one who told me I’d replace her, even helped me get my Moses wagon.”
“Oh. Did she tell you where is this Harp Falls?”
“Somewhere between here and California.” She wrinkles her nose. “So you’s from China?”
“My parents were, but I was born in New York.”
“Your mama?”
I shake my head. “When I came early, the doctor turned her away because he had never delivered a Chinese baby. By the time Father found us, Mother was dead.”
And now he is, too. A tear breaks loose, but I bar the others from leaving. Father would be horrified if I gave in to all my Snake weaknesses. Annamae hands me a handkerchief, and I blow my nose. Then she pushes away the hair sticking to my face and frowns.
“You got looks that could trip a fella. This ain’t gonna be easy.” She pulls my chin from side to side. Her fingers feel cool against my hot skin. “Well, we can do one thing.”
She pulls sewing scissors from what seems to be a well-stocked saddlebag.
“Turn around,” she orders, pulling off my hat.
I recoil, remembering the fortune-teller’s warning about warding off back luck. Yet I doubt my luck could get much worse than it is now.
Before I can speak, I hear a snip. I clasp my hands tightly together as the last shreds of my identity are shorn away.
Annamae holds up my hair like a tangle of seaweed she scooped from the ocean. I draw in my breath at the sight. By the time she finishes, my head feels lighter, airy even. I run my fingers through my shorn locks.
“It’ll grow back,” says Annamae, giving me a stern look. She pats her bound chest, well hidden under the folds of her frock coat. “So you know, we each have our battles to fight.”
I nod. She was right to cut it off.
She purses her lips, not satisfied. “Still too pretty. Keep you’s hat low even at night when we’re around people. Nothing we can do about our colors, though, short of Indian paint.”
“We could wear handkerchiefs over our faces. But then we’re back to looking like criminals.”
She grabs a handful of dirt. As she brings it near my face, I recoil. “You think that’s necessary?”
“I know. I hate being grimy, too.” She rubs the dirt into my cheeks. I try to hold still. My eye catches on a piece of twine around her wrist with a single bauble—a brown rock with a hole in it. “Just think, you’s still clean under the dirt.”
When I’m grubby enough to satisfy her, she pulls my hat low over my eyes and cinches the cord. The wet dirt on my face smells foul and makes me sneeze.
I dab my nose with my handkerchief. Annamae watches me fold the hanky into a neat square and clucks her tongue.
“At least you got that fiddle. But you still gonna need to man it up.” She pokes at my soft thigh.
I flinch and eye her athletic build.
“I must run ten miles a day on chores, that’s why I’m so tough.” She chuckles.
“Ten miles?”
She nods. “Female slaves gotta do what we can to keep outta trouble. The less wag in your wagon, the better. You just got a few girl kinks to work out. You’s wrists, for one. Too bendy. You ready to go?”
Before we leave, she digs a shallow grave with the heel of her boot, deposits in my severed strands, then kicks dirt back over it. I haul a rock and place it on top for good measure.
Slowly, we part the willow curtain. I follow Annamae back onto the deserted trail, feeling naked despite all my layers. The morning rays begin to paint the landscape with pastels. Yesterday morning, the sight would have filled me with wonder. Now, my gut chokes with sand and all I see before me is a road with no end.
6
“WALK STRAIGHTA. NOT YOU’S BACK, YOU’S curves,” says Annamae.
I march in the straightest line I can manage, trying to keep the pendulum from swinging, though I don’t have much to swing. Still, even the slightest tick-tock could give me away.
“Strut more, like the pigeons do. Feet out, looser in the knees. Keep you’s head down. Like a pigeon hunting a potata bug.”
I spend the next few hours perfecting my gait, and by the time I lose my shadow, it almost feels natural. The ferry starts back up at nine, which means we might see Argonauts by this afternoon, and pioneers and their wagons after that. For now, it’s just us and the prairie dogs.
I remove my hat and swab my face for the dozenth time. March mornings are always nippy, but wearing enough clothes for four people might kill me before the law does. I shed a few layers, then collapse on the grass underneath the shadiest tree.
Annamae strips off her coat. From her saddlebag, she produces a brick of cheese and a hunk of bacon, though she returns the bacon to the bag. “We’ll save this for tomorrow’s breakfast. Nothing says good morning like a streaky slab of po’ man’s steak.”
“Isn’t this breakfast?”
“Nope. It’s closer to noon.” She shaves off a slice from the cheese, says a quick prayer, then hands the morsel to me. I swallow it in one bite and wait for more.
“That’s it for now,” she says. “We gotta make it last.”
My stomach grumbles in protest. I sigh and ball a fist into it. On any other day, I’d be having two eggs and rice porridge—and there’d be custard tarts on special occasions. My eyes begin to blur when I remember the last thing Father gave me was a plate of miniature suns. I shove that thought away. Annamae rolls out the bubbles in the waxy paper covering the cheese.
“So how’d you and Isaac get split up?” I ask.
“We were all sold off from Frogg Farm. Tommy and I went to the Yorkshires, and I don’t know where Isaac went. He got picked up quick, he being strong enough to carry Tommy and me in each arm.” She flashes me a grin. Her teeth are straight as a picket fence on top but crooked on the bottom.
“Why’d Isaac want to go west? Why not try a free state, or—”
“Free states don’t make you free.” She sniffs. “If the law catches you, they return you to you’s owner. Not much law in this direction and the pioneers got better things to do than trouble over runaways.”
May the pioneers have better things to do than trouble over me, too. I force my aching feet back onto the empty trail after Annamae.
If I’m going to catch up with Mr. Trask, Father’s friend who has Mother’s bracelet, I will need a speedier mode of transport than these legs. We could use Yorkshire’s rings to buy a horse, assuming we survive long enough to make it to the next trading post. But what if they don’t sell horses? Without a horse, not only will I never catch Mr. Trask, I’ll be a lame fox on hunting day.
I up my pace. Negative thoughts pour gravel in your shoes and make your step unsteady. Instead, I think back to the last time I saw the energetic thirty-year-old grocer from New York. Father’s best friend and a fellow musician, Mr. Trask showed up out of the blue last month. He’d come all the way from New York City. Father said to him, “Don’t tell me you’re here to reclaim your tuning fork, because I’ve grown quite fond of it.”
“That’s yours to keep, Henry.” Mr. Trask’s tawny eyes twinkled. “Sold the store, now I’m off to see the Pacific Ocean. That coast is ready to explode. Dreams are ripe for the picking in all that sunshine.” He grabbed his red suspenders and straightened his back, always managing to look taller than Father, though they were both a hand under six foot.
“I’m leading a train of seven. You ever think about heading west, Henry?” he asked.
Father turned his gaze on me, sweeping up coffee beans. “I think about it a lot.”
Mr. Trask and his wagon train stayed in town three more nights as they waited their turn on the ferry. He and Father went to Belly’s Tavern every night after we closed up shop.
On the last night, Father removed Mother’s
I looked up from my Latin reader in alarm. “What are you doing?”
After a long pause, he dropped the bracelet into a velvet pouch. Then he held the pouch in his hand, his eyes far away for a moment.
When he tucked the pouch into his pocket, I protested, “You’re not selling it? That’s the only thing we have left. That is her. You’re giving away Mother?”
He ignored my disrespect. “You will see it again one day. Your mother would understand.”
“How would you know?” I huffed.
He buttoned up his coat, then collected his walking stick. Before he left, he said in a voice more sorrowful than angry, “It is not for children to question parents.”
That was the end of February, eighteen days ago.
I tell Annamae about Mr. Trask.
“So what did your daddy want to do out there in California?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” I press my fingers into my hard head. “He tried to tell me, but I was still mad about the bracelet and wouldn’t listen.”
“So after you find this Mr. Trask, maybe he’ll help you out. Look after you?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s a comfort. Girl like you shouldn’t be out by you’self.”
“Nor a girl like you.” Something pokes my heel. I stop to shake a pebble out of my boot. She offers me her arm.
“Oh, I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. Practically a man already.” She snorts. “You don’t have to worry about me. So what’s this Mr. Trask look like?”
“A few inches taller than you. Head like a nest with an ostrich egg in the middle, mustache, and a beaky kind of a nose. He always wore red suspenders and a white shirt. Not exactly the kind of man who stands out.”
“Well, my brother is the kinda man who stands out, tall as a lamppost, and good-looking, like his sister”—she smiles—“but unlike your Mr. Trask, he won’t be just strolling pretty. You know the way to California?”
“Follow the Oregon Trail to the California Trail, is all I know.”
We trudge along.
“Maybe you’ll find some folks who can help. I’ll go far as I can with you. But soon’s I find out where Harp Falls is, I’ve gotta be on my way. Could be tomorrow, could be next month.”
“I understand.” An anxious bubble forms in my stomach. I’ve known Annamae for less than a day, yet I feel bonded to her in the way common suffering can knit two souls together. Or maybe it’s just my small spleen talking. People with small spleens are notoriously cowardly.
“You know any hymns?” asks Annamae.
“Sure. ‘God of Our Fathers.’ ‘Glory Be.’”
“Don’t know those. You know ‘Chains of Mis’ry’? ‘Moses Split the Tide’?”
“No.”
She scratches her neck and her forehead crimps. I’m about to suggest we might have better luck with a secular tune when Annamae stops suddenly and puts her arm in front of me.
“Rattler,” whispers Annamae. The dirt moves, only it’s not dirt, but a yellow snake with brown and red patches, thick as my arm. The head rears as if to strike.
It weaves an S pattern, hissing. As I wait for my heart to start beating again, I notice its tail thumping the ground. “That isn’t a rattlesnake. Though it wishes it were.”
She doesn’t take her eyes off the snake. “How so?”
I point at the tail, ringed with black markings. “No rattle. It’s a bull snake, not poisonous. Father made me memorize all the poisonous things, berries, frogs—wait, what are you doing?” I exclaim as she inches closer.
The snake accelerates its thumping in its best mimicry of a rattlesnake.
“You sure it ain’t poisonous?”
“I’m sure.”
“Sure sure?” Annamae waves her left hand at the snake now, pulling its attention off kilter. She wiggles her fingers like a magician about to perform a trick.
“As sure as I’m a girl, though I wouldn’t—”
Quick as a flash, Annamae grabs the snake with her right hand below its diamond-shaped head. It wriggles as she squeezes. Then she snaps her wrist like she’s cracking a whip and cries, “Ya!”
I gasp and recoil, coward that I am. Being born in the Year of the Snake only means I dislike them less than the average person does.
The snake curls up its tail, then hangs limp.
She drapes her six-foot-long prize around her neck. “Bet you tasty on the flame.” When the tail twitches, she yanks it like a bellpull.
“Just goes to show,” she says as we start moving again, me keeping my distance, “you may not look like a boy, but as long as you act like one, most folks can’t tell you’s missing your rattle.” She breaks into a toothy grin.
We scout for a place to camp. The plains stretch before us in a slight descent, studded with teardrop-shaped junipers that remind me of jurors, silent and judging. Irregular jags of sandstone form rough hiding spots. It occurs to me we may not be the only criminal element on the trail here. Which would be worse, outlaws or lawmen? Or bears, for that matter?
Something screams, and I nearly jump out of all my shirts, which in turn nearly scares Annamae out of all hers.
But it’s just a blue jay jeering at us from the nearest juniper. Annamae gives me a hard look, then straightens her cuffs.
“Sorry. Er, how about over there?” I point to a craggy wall of sandstone smeared with lichen rising fifty yards beyond the juniper. “That might serve as a lean-to.”
As I collect firewood, I pick dandelion greens and edible roots, freezing every time I hear a noise. Now that we’ve stopped moving, I worry again about Deputy Granger. What if he decides to double back? We’ll be easy targets.
May night roost soon, so that she may cover us with her black feathers. He won’t be able to search for us very well in the dark.
Annamae arranges stones to contain our blaze. She wraps a char cloth the size of a playing card around a flint, then scrapes it against her cooking pot. The ignitable cloth catches a spark and soon a fire roars before us.
After witnessing Annamae butcher the snake and rub it with salt from her saddlebag, I doubt I will ever eat again. But once the meat starts popping on the fire with the greens, my hunger pangs return. If I’m going to survive the prairie long enough to find Mr. Trask, I must get used to blood and entrails. Father always took care of the cooking—another hobby of his. Now we only have our hands and Annamae’s saddlebag, which surely has a bottom.
I pick at the hem of my shirt as I wait for our dinner to finish cooking. My throat aches from thirst even though I just sipped from the canteen not five minutes ago.
I catch movement from the direction we came.
“Annamae,” I whisper sharply.
She whips her head around. “Lord, not already.” Quickly, she pulls on her coat and buttons it up.
“Maybe they’re Argonauts and not the law,” I say, trying to keep the doubt out of my voice.
“What kinda knots?”
“Argonauts. Gold rushers.”
I feel for my gun as Annamae closes her hand around her cooking knife. I pray that the threat of the gun is enough to deter violence, for I do not know if it is loaded.
The moving cloud of dust is now a hundred yards out. Surely they saw our fire.
My breath comes too shallow so I inhale a lungful.
Annamae pulls her hat over her eyes. “Act tough. Remember, you’s a rattlesnake.”
If we weren’t so short on time, I might have attempted to explain my complicated past with snakes. But horses and riders are already tumbling into view. Three men—two white and one Mexican—stare at us as their horses bear them forward. The Mexican pulls along a fourth horse, a bay, its
Ride on, I implore them with my mind. But the clopping slows, and the horses squeal as their riders rein them in right before our camp. Dust blows into our faces and threatens to put out our fire.
The men loop around us, their horses stepping in perfect synchronicity with their heads held high. The movement makes me dizzy so I focus on my lap. My stomach drops as I remember that Indians circle buffalo to confuse them before the slaughter.
7
AFTER THREE CIRCLES, THEY STOP. ONE OF THE riders, a man less than twenty years old, swings his leg over the saddle and slides off his pinto in a single swift movement. He adjusts the waistband of his trousers and cocks his head at me, smiling with half his mouth.
Despite my terror, I cannot look away. If eyes left footprints, this man’s face would be worn as a welcome mat. He’s both attractive and inviting with grass-green eyes and a light tan that makes his skin appear golden. Beneath his wide-brimmed hat, sandy-blond locks curl boyishly around his nape. He’s younger than I initially thought, perhaps seventeen or eighteen.
The three of them study us, and Annamae returns their gaze, chin lifted and bottom lip jutting defiantly. I do my best to mimic her.
“We havin’ a stare-out or something?” Annamae says at last.
The green-eyed man stops squinting and his half smile doubles, showing white teeth and a collection of well-placed dimples. “Something sure smells good. You kids expecting company? Old Zach Taylor maybe?”
He turns toward his friends for appreciation and gets a snicker. “Looks like you have more than your pea pods can hold. We can lend a hand. What say you?”
If a posse were chasing two dangerous fugitives, would they ask for supper before the apprehending? Annamae relaxes her grip on her knife.
The Mexican hops off his gray giant of a horse and murmurs something to her in Spanish.
The last rider sizes me up from atop his horse, a sorrel with a flaxen mane and white socks. I put him at the same age as Green-Eyes. Something about him and his horse ring familiar. I drop my gaze from the man’s dark eyes to the series of dime-sized scars on his arm that trail up to his rolled sleeve.