An Undisturbed Peace (31 page)

Fifty yards before he got to them, the gates were opened that he might enter. A powerful stench of human waste, rot, and disease was released. He stopped to tie a kerchief around his nose and mouth. Swarms of flies, mosquitoes, gnats, along with every other flying thing that thrives on blood, flesh, or filth coursed through the air in drifting clouds of black and gray. He pulled his cap down low on his brow and lifted his collar against them. Following the direction of the guard at the gate, he picked his way to the command post past people without shoes, whose feet were black with mud, whose cheeks were hollow with hunger, whose skin was full of scabs from scratching at the relentless insects, and yet none accosted him or tried to filch so much as a pot or a blanket from the wagon bed. Instead, full bloods and mixed bloods both followed his passing soundlessly with mournful eyes. From a place where uncovered corpses awaited disposal, the wails of grieving women came in waves that rose and fell like an unholy tide. His eyes followed his ears to the sight of rows of the day's dead lain out one after another. He saw the medicine men, painted, chanting, with no sticks to burn or purses of healing stuff, guiding the souls of the women's loved ones into the next world with their prayers but without even the clear water necessary to purify them first. Hart tossed his head, pulled against the reins.
Get us out of here,
he seemed to say with his strong neck and prancing feet,
get us out of this hive of misery!
But Abe kept him back until they reached the command post, where he wound the reins tight around the brake post, descended his seat, and went forward to the horse's head, which he embraced. Taking off the kerchief that was around his lower face, he put it over the horse's eyes as if he meant to lead him out of a barn on fire. “Be brave, my friend,” he whispered to the beast. “With luck, we'll soon be out of here.”

“Who's in charge?” he asked two uniformed men who sat smoking roll-your-owns on barrels set up at either side of the command post door. “Captain Willis this watch,” one said. He opened the door. His companion grinned, revealing an acute lack of teeth. “You're just in time for the show,” he said, and winked. Abe did not bother to ask what he meant. It took every ounce of focus he had to walk into the command post without trembling, to assume an air of authority and control. “Look to my horse, boys,” he said, “and there'll be something in it for you. Take heed though to watch out for my goods. I've all of it counted and a list sent ahead to Lewis Ross. If there's something missing, I'll know.” The soldiers scowled, affronted by the suggestion they might be thieves, yet their mouths twitched as if they held back smirks.

Abe walked into a scene of disputation. A minister, identifiable by his black frock coat, big-brimmed hat, white ruff, and clerical collar, stood in front of Captain Willis's desk, slapping one hand into the open palm of another, making his point. “Her crime is against nature in the eyes of civilized people,” he said. He slapped his hand into his palm again. “And what's more, it's against her own law as well. Their Council voted to abide by the whole of their laws during and after removal. In the name of Jesus, why should she not be punished?” Captain Willis was a fat man in late middle age with round red cheeks and a white mustache as thick as a paintbrush. His snowy muttonchops drifted from temple to jowl like the shields of a Roman helmet. He shifted in his seat. “She's just a woman looking for her husband and child,” Wright said. “I hardly think that a terrible crime worthy of extreme measures.” The minister huffed and puffed and went slightly blue. “You're a military man, Captain. I am a lifelong servant of the community, sworn and anointed. I think what I understand as disruptive to the social fabric of not only our world but theirs, more cogent, shall we say, than the word of a brave man accustomed to the irregularities of campaign. A number of her own people have come to me to complain.”

Sighing, Captain Willis looked to the heavens for the wisdom of an appropriate response and, finding none, searched the corners of the room for the same. That was how he noticed Abrahan Bento Sassaporta Naggar standing near the door. “Ho, who's this?” he asked. Abe promptly introduced himself. Hands were shaken all around. Abe's nerves were high. He got to the point a little too soon.

“I've been contacted by Chief John Ross to assist his brother, Lewis, in supplying the removal,” he said. “I have a wagon outside carrying samples of what I am prepared to provide. But also I seek a family friend who is”—he caught himself before saying “imprisoned,” which might be impolitic—“housed here. She is known as Dark Water to the Cherokee, Marian Redhand to me. Do you know of her?”

The army man's bushy eyebrows shot up. The Jesus man sucked in his breath and grabbed at his collar with one hand. “Well, yes. As a rather odd matter of fact,” the captain said, “we were just discussing her case. It's quite sensitive.”

“Her case?”

Abe feared the worst. Marian's strong nature had gotten her in trouble. Of course it would, he thought, she would never take these conditions lying down. Willis got up from his desk and came around to put an avuncular hand on the trader's shoulder. “She's in confinement. Why don't I have one of my men take you to her. She can tell you about it herself.” He opened the door and directed one of the men outside to take Abe to Marian Redhand. The sentries blinked. For a long moment, they did not move. Then one stepped forward and gestured to Abe that he was his man. He reached inside the door to fetch a large ring of keys from a wall hook. As the captain returned to his desk and the door was yet open behind him, Abe heard him tell the man of God, “You see? She has her admirers everywhere. This will backfire on you, I'm sure of it.”

He was taken to a structure built up against the stockade walls. A crosshatch of split wooden posts filled in the frame of its padlocked door. The soldier unlocked it, then stood outside at ease while Abe ventured within. Inside was a dim, lantern-lit corridor lining a half dozen cells, each one blocked by another crosshatched wooden door. They were dark, windowless, fetid. He peered into them one after the other, making out only shapes and shadows so that he called out, “Marian!” and “Marian!” There came a rustling from one of the boxlike rooms. Suddenly, a pair of hands, dirty, cracked, and red in the knuckles, shot forward to grasp the bars of the last cell. “My peddler! Help me!” Marian said in a rough, dry voice. Abe's heart leapt at the sound of her. “Oh dear God,” he cried, “what is this?” He sought and found a key that would open her door. “Oh dear God.” He opened it, then froze at the sight of her.

Leaning against a wall with one hand, she stood in the lantern light, a worn and fragile version of her earlier self, her strong body thin, shorter somehow as if the very marrow had been sapped from her bones. Her thick, glorious hair was lank and twisted into knots, her lush lips as dry and cracked as the skin of her knuckles. Her shirt and buckskins were in tatters, her shoes worn so badly her blackened toes stuck through the leather and so did the thickly scarred heel of her damaged foot. A hot lump of compassion lodged in Abe's throat, waking him from his shock. He took her hand and quickly led her outside the jailhouse, where he told the guardsman in words thick with barely restrained emotion that it was alright, he was in charge of her now. The guardsman stared at the helpless woman squinting in the sunlight, assessed the odds of their making it out of the stockade when every gate was locked and heavily guarded, then nodded and looked the other way. Abe found a spot not far off where the man could not hear them talk. Others walked by, Cherokee all. They glanced away from her, purposeful in their delicacy.
Thank you,
he wanted to tell them,
thank you for that
. Marian stumbled. She looked as if she could not stand for long. He sat her down on a tree stump, then took her rough, dirty, tormented hands in his and said, “Marian, Marian, what has happened to you? Why are you locked up like a dog? What have they done to you?”

For all her sufferings, her eyes remained clear and bright. She captured him within their light and said, “First you must promise to help me. Will you help me? Will you help me even at a risk to your own self?” Abe nodded vigorously. She looked up to the skies and thanked the heavens. “Good. Good,” she said. “I must have help or I am lost.”

“What do you mean?” Abe asked. “Please, explain to me.”

She smiled. It was a rueful smile. One of her teeth was missing on the upper-left side, yet despite everything, her smile lit up her face making it beautiful again. It took his breath away.

“Why not? I have the time. They punish me at noon, I hear, and Father Sun yet climbs to his heavenly seat. But please, could you get me some soup? It's vile, I know. The soldiers take our meat for themselves and give us only the bones to boil. But if I am to have the strength for my ordeal, I must have it.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Abe elbowed his way through the queue four and five men deep to reach the nearest cauldron. Ripping the ladle from the hand of one of the ravens muttering “Praise Jesus” to each supplicant, he filled a bowl as full as he might, then hurried back to Marian, who slurped the thing whole and sent him back for more before telling him the tale of her disaster.

Paradise Lost

S
he began by asking him an obvious question. “How did you find me?” He told her about his misadventure supplying the second Choctaw removal, his trip of protest to Washington, and what he had learned of her fate from John Ross. “And how did you come to this place?” he asked. “I'd have thought you well hidden somewhere in the high places.” She moved her head up and down. Yes, yes, they were. “How did they find you? How did they take you against your will?” Marian confirmed John Ross's suspicions.

“Jacob and I were in our cave,” she said. “It was one sacred to the old ones. Our walls were painted with images of buffalo and wolves romping under the sun, with the imprints of the hands that painted them, but who these painters were even the old ones do not know. When we found it, we rejoiced. There was a fire pit already dug, as if waiting for us. Birds and deer, mountain goats aplenty to eat. Beyond the living water, fields of wild potatoes and beans planted by ancient hands. We were happy there. Our son flourished. The day our idyll ended, I'd sent him to the stream not twenty paces off to bring us water. He returned in the saddle of a soldier, who held him before us by his neck, threatening to bash his head against the mountain stone if we did not come immediately with him to the place of our deportation. What could we do? We left with the clothes on our back and nothing else. After a week of walking with other Cherokee as unlucky, we came to this fort.”

“I'd like to get you out of here,” he finished, “but I'm not sure how.”

She put out a skeletal hand and gripped his wrist. “I'm not what matters. It's Jacob and our son you must find. They separated us. We walked through the gates and it was ‘Blacks over here! Injuns there!' She made rude, abrupt gestures demonstrating those of callous authorities who'd broken up a family without a second thought. “My husband refused to be moved. I held our son in my arms. Two of them dragged Jacob off. A third ripped my boy from me. That was three months ago. I haven't seen them since.” Her eyes filled with tears in the telling. “They are both so vulnerable, you know. I can't bear the thought of either of them without me to look after them. How will they survive? Jacob doesn't admit it, but his infirmities are worse with age. And my boy, he has a cough in the best of seasons. Oh, I wonder daily if they are alive or dead!”

She began to sob. Abe embraced her. Her troubles dampened his shirt. After a few moments, she pulled away and looked up at him. Though they trembled, her cracked and swollen lips pursed in defiance while her eyes blazed with light.

“You don't think I suffered it without a fight, do you?” Her voice chafed like two metal chains ground together. “I have bothered and pestered them daily. The soldiers shrink from me now. They know at the sight of me that I will come and harangue them with the vilest words because words, you know, are the only weapon I have left. And the priests! At first I went to them for help. Foolish me! I thought they were men of charity. No, they are only interested in harvesting souls for their thirsty god. If you want meat, if you want medicine, your soul is their price. ‘Kiss Jesus!' their man said, holding a cross to my lips. ‘Kiss Jesus and I will help you!'” She shuddered. “Oh, may the Great Beings forgive me, but I did it. I kissed the feet of his idol and asked again. ‘Help me,' I said, ‘please help me.' And he told me then he could not help, that I must ask Jesus to accept my fate, to beg not for my husband and child but ask rather that the Great Judge of All grant me peace of heart. If I did this, he said, Jesus would forgive me all the depravities of my sinful life and one day I would dwell in paradise.

“Anger took hold of me at his deception. Anger like a fiery brand pressed against my heart. I spit at his cross. I spit at him. I went again to the soldiers but the priest got there first and poisoned their minds against me. The commander here, Captain Willis—that fat, white-haired man who looks so kind, like a grandfather who spoils little ones with treats—put me in my prison cell. He sees me once a week. The guards take me from my cell to his offices. He asks me will I apologize to the priest. If I do so, he can keep him, he thinks, from insisting on my punishment for a life's worth of crimes. But I tell him no. Only if they will give me back my son and my husband. If they do that, I will do even as their righteous whore did and wash their feet with my hair.”

“There's something wrong here,” Abe said. “I don't think they can lock you up for simple blasphemy. Or for such a slight assault.” He paused. He knew the law in an army prison was whatever the authorities decided it was. They enforced what they wished and ignored the rest. “What is your crime exactly? And what the punishment?” Abe asked, although he feared he already knew.

She laughed. Madly, of course, but yet it was still a laugh, a frog's laugh in her ruined voice, to be sure, but yet a laugh so that her face transmuted once again from the mask of torment to one bathed in grace.

“Why, twenty-five lashes, of course. For the great evil of diluting Cherokee blood. For marrying a black slave.”

Abe thought, It will kill her. Straightaway, he said, “I'll go to the commander. I'll plead your case. I'll bribe the damn priest if I have to. I'll get you out of this and away from here.”

She put a hand on his cheek with the tenderness she'd once displayed to him in the days they spent together in her cabin in the foothills, in the time before he found Jacob, before he took her to him.

“No.” She let her hand slip back into her lap. “I would rather bear it and be free. Here's the thing. My people have decided that if we are to remain ourselves through this transplantation at the hands of our neighbors, the only thing that will keep us whole is the law. Some of those who would whip me hate me. I know this. They have nursed their resentments of me for many years, from back in the days when I would beat them at the games and refuse their offers of marriage. Others who would whip me regret my fate but believe only if the law is obeyed will the people survive. ‘No exceptions!' they cry on all occasions. ‘No exceptions!' To be honest, I understand them! How do you like that? I may suffer from the law, but I'm proud of my people who would preserve it. If the law is unjust, it must be changed in the right way, by Council and vote. We are not like whites, who break every treaty and promise without a care.” She paused. Her lips curled in a grim smile. “Of course, just this once I would not object if the law were suddenly suspended.” She sighed. Her frail shoulders sunk a little more. Then she shook herself and straightened her spine as if renewing her determination to face her fate.

“Forget saving me from punishment. If you would do something for me, find out where my husband and child are. There are other depots in Tennessee where we are taken. Go to them. Find out for me if my beloveds are there or if they were sent west already. I beg you. I will only live if I can see them again.”

Abe agreed to do whatever he could. He would find them, he promised, although he had no idea how he was to accomplish it. He returned her to her jailer and went directly to the command post, demanding answers from Captain Willis, who said, “Don't you think I would give her that information if I could, sir? Here's the problem. We don't list the blacks by name. Our records might say, ‘Blacks: fifty men, thirty women, twelve children, slaves all, ferried across the river on July twelfth.' Or, ‘Seven blacks dead from fever, left at the crossroads.' The truth is I have no idea where her husband and child are. For all I know they're in the new territory already. Maybe they're dead. In the meantime, I have missionaries and Cherokee both who want to see her flogged. I can't suffer insurrection from either here. If you wish to help her, convince her to apologize to the reverend and beg forgiveness from her people. You have two hours.”

For two hours, Abe searched through the stockade for Cherokee who wanted to see Marian suffer, thinking if he could persuade or bribe them to withdraw their complaints, she might be saved. He spoke in English. Many were full bloods who could not understand him. Those who could kept mum. Who were these mysterious Cherokee who wanted her whipped? He began to believe they did not exist, that they were figments of the captain's imagination or the product of the reverend's lies. Still, he searched, desperate, exhausting himself in the summer heat, tormented by insects and the stench that even a brisk breeze could not dispel. Everything he said made less and less sense as the hours flowed through his hands like water.

The time came and the bugles sounded, calling the people to witness Marian's degradation. By then, Abe had only prayer left and Ha-Shem, it seemed, had gone deaf. He stood among the witnesses of stone-eyed Cherokee; soldiers who swayed on their feet as if drunk and probably were; clergymen, some distraught, others righteously expectant; and Captain Willis, a man who had survived four wars and seen worse than the whipping of a willful Indian woman. They brought her from her prison cell and walked her, chains hobbling her feet, constraining her hands, to the center of the stockade, where a post and platform had been set up for the purpose of her torture. One soldier pushed her to her knees and tied her arms to the post so that they reached upward, embracing it. When she was secured, he removed the chains on her wrists while another soldier ripped the shirt from her back. She was so thin. Abe could count the ribs at her back. Her breasts, the breasts he'd loved so, the soft, beautiful breasts on which he'd lain his head in a delirium of pleasure at the age of nineteen, were crushed hard against the post. Captain Willis read aloud her offense and sentence. Abe moved to position himself so he could look directly into her eyes, thinking perhaps it would give her strength. She locked her own onto his, which gave him the strength he wished for her. Throughout her ordeal, their eyes held each other fast, making it impossible for him to weep outright no matter how the scene tore his heart. A strong burly man, a full blood Abe judged, in a fringed buckskin shirt with Indian beading, approached the post and platform, whip in hand. It was a whip with only one business end of knotted leather rather than the cat-o-nine tails Abe expected. He thanked Ha-Shem for that small miracle. Perhaps she might live after all. A drum rolled.

The first lash drew blood but not on her back. As it hit, her back arched, her body pitched forward so that her breasts scraped hard against the rough post, raising thin red lines. By the third lash, tiny rivulets of blood ran down her breasts onto her stomach. There were wide welts on her back but no breaking of skin. It took ten lashes for that. Abe could only think the man who flogged her restrained himself out of pity, but by the end of things, when her flesh, ripped raw and open, ran with blood from shoulders to waist, he revised his opinion. The drum rolled again. It was over.

Her body collapsed against the post. Slowly, her eyes shut. Abe looked away from her for the first time since the torture began and found, to his surprise and pleasure, if such can be had at a moment of horror, that most of the Cherokee had turned their backs en masse from the scene before them in protest, refusing to witness the needless cruelty inflicted on their Beloved Woman. Not all of them protested. There were a number who leered at her crumpled form along with the soldiers and the clergyman from the commander's office, their eyes glazed with a kind of lust. But the lion's share of them did not.

Captain Willis, the clergymen, the whip master, and the soldiers quit the scene, leaving her strung up. Several Cherokee rushed forward, scrabbling at her bonds with their fingers uselessly until Abe got to her and cut her down with his knife. Women bore her away, followed by medicine men. Abe went with them. He held her hand when she was stretched out on the ground, his tears fell over her body, which the others tended as best they could with what they had. He learned the supplies of the medicine men were alarmingly low. There was much illness and they were not permitted to leave the stockades to forage for new herbs and plants to make their potions and salves. They washed her wounds with the cleanest rags they had, which were yet unclean. They used what medicines they could spare to soothe them and spare her a portion of pain. When she was able to speak, her first words were directed to Abe. “Did you find them?” she asked. Her voice was a feather of noise brushing against a wall of hurt. He feared the truth would kill her. “Yes,” he lied. “Heal now, and we will go to them.”

It was night by the time Abe returned to where he had left his horse and wagon. Hart was greatly distressed and sweated up all over. There was foam at the places where the harness touched his hide and also between his legs and over his belly. Abe wept. “I am so sorry, old friend,” he said, “forgive me.” He took him outside the gates and found water to cool him with, sweetgrass for him to eat. The goods in his wagon had been ransacked by the soldiers guarding them. There were a few blankets left that had been dirtied with heavens-knew-what. He brushed them and put them over his horse that he not chill. “No more of this,” he told the horse. “Even the brother of the principal chief cannot assure goods will get to the people. No more.”

Before dawn, he reentered that hell, bribing the guardsmen with coin, telling them to turn a blind eye when he exited again with precious cargo. This was easier than he expected. They were not unobservant. They knew what cargo he meant. But now that she'd been whipped, none of them cared much about Marian's fate. He returned to the place he'd left her in the care of the women. She was unconscious but breathing. He took what powders the medicine men
could give him
, a paltry collection, they indicated in broken English, as they must hoard what they had left for the sake of the children. He gave his secret store of hunting knives to those who had tended her, and loaded her into his wagon bed, covering her with what was left of the blankets. With his heart in his mouth, he smuggled her out. They rode the rest of the night away. At first light, he held her naked in his arms as he waded into a clear forest stream to wash her broken body. He burned her bloody clothes and gave her his shirt, wrapping the rest of her in blankets. He tried to make her a soft bed of pine needles and green leaves. She remained barely conscious, mumbling sometimes in Cherokee, making little sense in English when that language found her tongue. Twice a day, he mixed the medicine men's powder with water and wet a cloth, sponging the mixture over her back. To soothe her pain, he brewed the leaves of wild willow into a tea, as she'd once told him to do for a headache. It seemed to help.