Angels Make Their Hope Here (11 page)

“Where you steal them chickens from?” one of the men yelled.

The other man spoke and kept his gun right next to Duncan’s ear.

“Where you steal that gal from? She a runaway? We was watchin’ you down in the town. You was takin’ her aroun’ like a lady.”

They knew she was a runaway! They knew she was hiding out? Instantly Dossie felt herself filling up with dread that they would tear her away from Duncan. Dossie looked around at the man next to her. Was his voice familiar? She jumped when she saw his red face.

“Yeah, you know me. You recollec’ me, don’t ya?” he said. Dossie did. It was the boy, Owen Needham.

“I know you, too, gal. You the one that left off from the Logans. I was s’prised to see you in these parts. I woulda thought somebody had caught you an’ sol’ you south. Those
people that you was ’scape from, they lookin’ hard for you. Yeah. They lookin’ for ya. They post an advert and a reward and I’ma get it. They sayin’ you burnt their barn ’fore you run off. I b’lieve the law is lookin’ for you.”

Dossie quaked. She didn’t remember setting any fire. She remembered the smell of burning and the sight of Owen Needham packing up. She thought he was the one had burnt the place. They were looking for her? Her clothes began to feel clammy against her.

Any Negro could be accused of burning. And any opportunistic rowdy who could scare somebody who’d been running and hiding could make a bit of money capturing them or threatening to. A certain type of people didn’t care whether the right one was caught up—one less was one less, and all to the good.

Duncan sat still like he was waiting for a signal. He seemed to be smelling the man who was menacing him because he made a shushing noise in his nose. He didn’t shake with trepidation. He drew up tight and seemed to twist down in his gut like a rope setting itself in a coil. His coil seemed to get tighter with each thing Owen Needham said.

The man holding the gun began to tire. It often happened just so when a contest reached an impasse. The man had pulled the gun too soon. He ought to have used it, and now he wanted to rest his arm. The arm shook visibly. Perhaps if he faltered he would make a mistake and shoot Duncan, Dossie thought. Perhaps he would falter and shoot himself, Duncan thought. Dossie remembered then what Noelle said about the people of Russell’s Knob. They would always come and help one of their number. Dossie figured they were close to home—close enough maybe for the crow call to be heard. “You give out the
crow’s call and they will come on the run,” Noelle had said. She’d led a practice with Dossie and the boys, and Dossie had, of course, been the best at the call. She looked from the corner of her eyes, and Duncan seemed like he was saying,
Gwan and sing out.
So she did it! Before the men had a chance to tie her hands, Dossie stood and called out a crow call very loud. She cupped her hands to send the sound far and to make it perfect. She repeated it quickly again and again so the People would know it was not the true crow.

The men jumped in fear. Dossie’s call was loud and thrilling. They might have shot her, but they were not confirmed outlaws, and they lacked the killing instinct. Duncan drew his arm back and cracked his elbow on the nose of the man holding the gun on him. That man’s blood shot forth, and his gun arm dropped. Owen Needham raised up his arm to strike Dossie with his fist, but he dropped his hands when he saw Pet’s mastiffs come running out of the brush. Those two sloppy pusses that drooled spittle and nuzzled the hands of their friends burst forth from the wooded surround like hellhounds. The barking and growling spooked the horse that Needham’s confederate was mounted to, and his gun went off in the air. Two more rifle reports sounded, and Jan and Pet came out of the dark followed by Mr. Gin Barlow. Barlow had on his “hiding-out” clothes and could hardly be distinguished from the deep surround. Two other men came out of the dark with rifles. One of these was Ernst Wilhelm with soot smeared on his face.

Duncan grabbed the weapon that had fired, but the man stayed on his horse. He rode off holding frantically to the fleeing animal with blood from his nose flying behind. Pet’s dogs chased him and ran him and his horse off a high drop.

The hollering and shooting upset Dossie’s fowl, and she got down from the wagon to settle them. The fowl quieted quickly. They had all been brave, Dossie thought, though all she craved now was to grab on to Duncan and bury her face.

Pet’s dogs trained on Owen Needham when they were done chasing the other man. They sat up next to him and had the smug look of good hunting dogs that will not bruise or harry their game.

Jan and Pet tied up Owen Needham, who was too scared to talk now. Dossie felt a pull of sympathy. She knew he’d had a hard time of it with the Logans, too. And she felt scared about Jan and Pet doing something to Owen Needham—whatever Duncan might tell them to do.

The men began to whisper, throwing around what they thought ought to be done.

“Take him in han’,” Duncan said finally to his nephews. “Make sure he don’t come here lookin’ for nobody again.” He clapped both boys on the back and shook their hands. Ernst Wilhelm scowled, and his sweat created sooty streaks on his face. He didn’t like that the boys went off to do what Duncan wanted.

“Duncan, how you let these stumbles follow you from town?” Ernst Wilhelm demanded.

Duncan was himself unclear how these obvious amateurs had got the drop on him. He hadn’t been careful. He’d been distracted with so much satisfaction. The presence of Dossie. Her small butt, a lovely lump of coal giving off heat on the wagon seat next to him, was a cause for distraction. He had moved closer to her and ignored the tingles of danger.

“My wife entranced me, Wilhelm,” Duncan said softly. His words were caught by the boys as they made to ride off with
Owen Needham. Jan lifted his head suddenly, dropped his jaw, and looked at Dossie. Pet looked at Jan and prepared to make a noise to cover any words his cousin might utter.

“Come get in the wagon, Dossie,” Duncan said. “We got to take ’em hens home.”

He turned his back on the boys and left the finish to them.

Dossie knew Duncan was slightly shaken. He was uneasy, though he knew the boys could settle his scores with Owen Needham.

As soon as they reached home, Dossie changed out of her town dress, installed the new birds in the chicken house, and petted the old ones despite the late hour.

“Dossie, you a bold gal,” Duncan said when he came to see how things were with the birds. “Maybe you’re scared, but you don’t falter. You call us out of danger. I’ll never forget that. You’re like my far-grandmama, girl.” Duncan continued to praise Dossie’s bravery, likening her to his heroic ancestor. “Lucy Smoot walked away from a Dutchman that aimed his gun at her. She walked off with her eight children and brought ’em here. You know who Russell Sitton is?”

“Yes,” Dossie answered. She had learned—as all of the Knob’s young’uns did—the stories about Russell Sitton and the founders. Yes, she knew Lucy Smoot’s story. She knew that Lucy Smoot was Duncan’s and Hat’s forebear. To be compared to Lucy Smoot was a badge of honor.

“Russell Sitton took them wayfarers in and fed ’em and protected ’em. When the Dutchman came to claim ’em and take ’em back, Russell Sitton and his band gave a show. They vowed they would not let no runaway be grabbed up and taken away from this place. A big part of it was that Russell Sitton admired Lucy and was insulted by the Dutchman. How dare an outsider
come here and say who was who and who belonged where?” Duncan said with true vehemence, as if he was confronting the Dutchman himself, and spat on the ground.

“I’m proud to say I ain’ gon’ let no man take you off.” Duncan pulled her into his arms and bussed her, his mustache and the chicken feathers tickling her face. She felt the wind squeeze out of her but felt the magic. She was well protected by him. Duncan was the brave one.

The boys were brave, too, and bloodthirsty. In the morning, Jan gleefully recounted the rest of the night’s doings. He and Pet pulled Needham’s clothes off and chased him through a maze of holly bushes. They used the dogs and leather crops to run him around on the rocky ground all of the rest of the night. Needham cut and slashed himself in the bushes. When the sun came up, they let him run off home naked and cut. Jan assured Dossie—as he stroked one of the new hens with his middle finger—Owen Needham won’t come back to Russell’s Knob. She supposed she ought to be pleased.

T
HE THING BETWEEN THEM
was new and unruly. For Dossie, managing the new relations between Duncan and her was the same as taking the reins of a new donkey. She hadn’t learned the ticks and clicks of the animal.

“You got to go, Duncan?” Dossie asked. Duncan was a little startled. He’d never heard her use this seductive tone, and she was pleased at his surprise.

“Yes, Dossie. I am goin’,” he answered.

Then Dossie asked Duncan point-blank if he had another woman. “Another woman what, Little Bird?” He stopped cinching his horse and looked at her.

“Who you been listenin’ to? I’m makin’ a run. Then I’m going down to Paterson to see a woman. She’s a businesswoman, Dossie. She runs a business of women that sell themselves—prostitutes. Prostitute is what happens to a gal who is too willful.” Duncan pinned Dossie with his lecturing scowl. “I sell her liquor and cigars and oysters that I get from the boats and barges. I don’t screw no other gal since I been screwin’ you if that’s what you askin’. And don’t you fuss at me now ’cause you ain’t my real wife in front of the law.” He looked at her with a hot, angry glance that melted to desire like butter atop a biscuit and caused him to want to stop talking and make love to her.

“How come I’m not your real wife, Duncan?” Dossie asked him.

There was only one thing he did not like about Dossie. She could stop him with a look, a wholly trusting, wide-eyed, straightforward gaze that made it difficult to deceive her or even to give her less than all of the truth.

When Duncan came back home in the morning, Dossie gave him his coffee and a happy smile. He touched her hand when she set down his cup and said, “Good mornin’, Little Bird.”

“Mornin’, Duncan,” she replied. She noticed that he twitched a little in his shoulders. Well, Dossie had changed his call for good. As Jan said, it was lewd for her to call him Uncle. Dossie had made the house smell good and she knew that pleased him. The air was freshly stirred. There were aromas of all of the things Duncan liked most—coffee, frying pork, biscuits, and Dossie.

“You got a way with those chickens, girl,” Duncan said in a loud, cheerful voice when she set a plate before him. “These’re the prettiest eggs I have ever seen.” He pulled her dress when she turned away, and she lost balance into his lap.

Later when he finished eating Duncan came toward her and put her face between both of his hands. He looked and looked at her as if putting together a puzzle. She kissed the palm of one of his hands and then kissed the other. She kissed him on his neck and his shoulders—standing up on her toes to reach him.

“All right then,” Duncan said the following morning. She was working with her birds and was consciously putting on a show of great industry because there was a charged air between them. Duncan said the same thing a couple of times more and drove his feet into the hard-packed dirt. “I figure I will put up a better chicken house. I’ll get a dog to keep the foxes out and
give you company. Then I guess you ought to marry me on purpose, Little Bird—legal. What you think?”

Dossie thought she’d never seen Duncan Smoot act so flitty-fly—being silly like a boy.

“Dossie, you gonna marry me?” he asked.

What will Hat say? How will it be for Noelle? What will Jan and Pet think? It will not matter! Duncan is chief among them.

“Yes.” First and foremost she was pulled to say yes, because she’d never said no to Duncan Smoot. Since Dossie had put her hand in his when they walked away from the Logans, she hadn’t ever said no. A tickling came up from her vitals. She said, “Yes.”

And then she thought some about the chickens. Duncan is gonna make a pretty new chicken house, and we will grow our own baby chicks and have a dog! “Yes,” Dossie said.

“No one will stay home when the Smoots give a fest!” Hat cried out at the news. Determined to make a moment of Duncan and Dossie getting married, she took up planning the wedding party the very moment she heard it from her brother’s lips. Her absolute delight was unmitigated by any consideration of the magnitude of the tasks involved with executing a wedding dinner party. She insisted that the entire town would come.

“No,” Duncan protested weakly. “Your party is a lot of fluff and fun, Hattie, but…” He broke off when he saw Hat’s face fall. When had he seen her look so joyful? Perhaps he could endure her excitement. Duncan laughed and gave Hat the cudgel.

Hat engaged Miz Mary Figgs Van Waganen, a noted seamstress in Russell’s Knob, to sew a bride’s dress, various other
essential clothing for a bride, as well as undergarments and a negligee. Miz Mary Figgs Van Waganen’s fee for the trousseau was a case of good Scots whiskey. Miz Mary Figgs Van Waganen raised her glass for more of Hat’s berry liqueur when she made a contract that Duncan would conduct her into the town of Paterson to purchase the cloth goods.

The hustle and bustle of wedding preparation made Dossie melancholy despite Hat’s infectious good humor. Her escape had come when the Kenworthys and all of their people were making preparation for Helene Kenworthy’s wedding. Dossie and the young mistress’s dower furniture had left Kenworthy’s island aboard Bil’s punt in the midst of the excitement.

“He did not pluck you from the sky or from the river, did he?” Hat asked in a sweet, solicitous voice when they sat and sewed. She had a feeling about Dossie’s sad face—that she might be sick for her home.

“I come off an island. We rowed from before sunrise, set sail, and reached the port of Havre de Grace before sunset,” Dossie answered. “Mr.… Duncan knows the place Bil first brought me to. He showed me where on the map is the port of Havre de Grace. He knew I was put aboard the boat in Havre de Grace. He showed me where the island of the Kenworthy people must be, though there was no spot on the map for it. I started out there, Miz… Hat.”

Dossie was a changed gal from that day. She remembered the storm of activity to complete Miss Helene’s wedding clothes. Master Kenworthy had given his wife the choice of the two slaves who would be sold to raise the extra funds, and Mistress had decided to get rid of old bent-back Ca’line and Sister, the incessant young chatterer who attended Mistress Helene. Sister was expendable since Helene’s husband wanted no slaves, just a
hired woman, to attend his wife. Sister figured to bring a bright price for she was a skilled lady’s maid. On the first news of her impending sale, Sister fell silent and her face collapsed in horror. She appealed to her young mistress, but Helene refused even to look when Sister was attached on Mr. Woolfolk’s coffle.

Jan wanted to resist the wedding party altogether. But whatever they said and whatever they did, the Smoots were his people, and he had to be with them on Uncle’s day. Dossie’s day, too. Yes indeed, it was going to be Dossie’s big day. And if he truly loved her, he’d want her to have a special, happy day, wouldn’t he? What he really wanted was to talk Dossie out of marrying Uncle. He wanted to trap her in her hen yard when Uncle was not there to see, to grab her, to shake her shoulders. He wanted to tell her he dreamed about her and dreamed that she would slip out from under Uncle’s grip.

The truly shameful feeling he harbored was that he loved Uncle, too, and missed him because of her. He and Pet had lost out to her. Uncle didn’t belong to them so much anymore. Pet didn’t care because he had his papa. Ah, it hurt that Uncle had shoved them off so easily, so thoughtlessly! What had Jan done to be pushed off so? How had he lost his place with Uncle?

And now it was awkward as well. Where was he to stay? With Noelle, of course. But she was in a boil about Uncle’s new arrangement. Her feelings were raw.

Two days earlier, Jan had driven a wagon into the clearing laughing and calling out with high hilarity, “Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!” His boisterousness startled Dossie. Jan had begun calling her Auntie in a loud, teasing voice, and it annoyed her and Duncan. Alarmed, Dossie had run out to the clearing, and
Jan hollered again, “Auntie, Auntie, Auntie, come and look at your butter and cream!”

He showed her three tightly packed crates covered with straw and one large crock of cream. He was very animated. He danced about. Dossie gave herself to duties in the chicken house to escape him. She was frightened of Jan in this condition.

When Duncan came, Jan was snoring, sitting on the side of the porch with his pants undone where he’d gone to pee. Dossie tried very hard to pretend that she hadn’t been hiding from him. Duncan did not upbraid him until the spirits had worn off in the morning. At sunrise Duncan slapped Jan to rouse him to his senses so that Jan’s face was slightly bruised when he stood before his uncle. Duncan fumed and demanded that he drink coffee in large amounts.

It was never a contest of strength or skill at fighting or self-defense. Uncle beat him, and he accepted the punishment as he had always done. He was, as Uncle said, a drunken fool. He was not fit to live amongst decent people. Duncan’s last, most cruel remark was that, though he had tried to pound away all parts of Charlie Tougle from him, Jan would never be anything more than wild and dangerous like his father.

It was planned that Duncan and Dossie would go before a justice of the peace and formalize legally in Paterson, as Wilhelm and Hattie had done. Ernst Wilhelm thought it mattered to be on the books amongst the whites and, for once, Duncan agreed when Ernst Wilhelm said colored people needed as much good legal paper on them as they could get. Only to himself did Duncan acknowledge that he was nervous of Dossie’s free status. He wanted to be sure couldn’t nobody drag her off.

At least twenty chickens were to be killed for the sake of the wedding feast. Swine were to be slaughtered, and rabbits, squirrels, and possums would give their lives to celebrate the day. Hat arranged a veritable army of hands to handle the food preparation, and the Smoot and Wilhelm homesteads were a hive of enterprise. Children sat chomping cakes on the steps of the Smoot house when Noelle strode up one week ahead of the day. She dropped off two large sacks of nuts and set some young children to cracking them out of their shells. She went to the kitchen to pay respects to the hostesses but announced she was looking for Duncan.

“I come empty-handed except for some nuts, girl. I mus’ talk to your husban’,” Noelle said to Dossie with a tone that was just short of being brusque. Though Dossie was immediately and unquestioningly deferential, she could feel Noelle’s extreme pique, and it worried her. She knew she had the authority to question any woman wanting to speak to the man who was to be her husband, but she knew also that she could not upbraid Noelle, her own teacher in many things.

“What you want him for? What’s the matter, Noelle?” Hat asked, affronted at Noelle’s manner and already wearing a dusting of flour on her bodice. She didn’t want to relinquish the day’s fine humors on a fracas.

Dossie had been gauging Duncan’s mood all morning from her own subtle, intimate indicators. He was excited and a bit nervous, and he had been fuming about Jan.

Wanting to get to the meat of the thing in the air, Hat demanded to know what was going on. Again she asked, “What you want him for, Noelle?”

“Him pounding on Jan,” she answered simply, then turned to face Dossie. “You tell him that Jan was saucy and forward and takin’ liberties with you?”

“No, ma’am,” Dossie replied quickly, anxiously, but wondered if she ought not to have said she did. She wanted to be loyal above all to Duncan. Was it right to dispute him? But she did not want to lie. What did Noelle intend to do?

Hat got absolutely quiet at Noelle’s words. Her first impulse was, as always, to defend her brother. She had a great fear of having to take a side between Duncan and Jan or between Duncan and Noelle, and she knew very well that her cowardice meant that Jan and Pet had suffered. Even when he was wrong, especially when he was wrong, Hat was Duncan’s ally. She wanted to pummel Noelle and make her shut her mouth.

Jan had gone to Noelle, built a fire, hung the aromatics, rubbed himself with grease, and sweated in her lodge. She joined him after some hours of smoking and praying on his behalf. The sweat was cathartic. The hemp pipe she gave him made him light-headed. Noelle built upon the heat and prepared a switch of stinging branches. She slapped Jan’s back with the switches to bring his blood rushing. She stung his chest, arms, and buttocks lightly.

“You are not at all like Charlie Tougle. If it matters to you. I knew the man and you are not like him. You are like your mother. We loved Cissy most of all. She was the head of our band. We were a band: Cissy and Duncan and Hat and me. Then Charlie Tougle came and took her away from us. The one good thing he did was make you. But you do not replace her.” She paused and lowered her voice still further. “And you are not like Duncan either. You have not gone to the mines,” Noelle said, tracing the outer rim of Jan’s ear with her finger. “Forgive me, child, I ought to have stopped him. I didn’t know, child. I didn’t know what makes a man. Here is the child of the ancients!” Noelle cried out loudly—throwing her voice about
the room. “Here is the child of the ancients!” she cried again as if challenging her gods to recognize him. She gave Jan a drink from a gourd, covered him, and let him sleep.

When Jan woke, Noelle made up a tea to purge his guts of the liquor he’d drunk. She prepared his mush. She buttered bread and poured honey on it.

At dusk on the night before the wedding, when the bloodiest work of animal slaughtering was done and the air was saturated with smells of singed hair and roasting meat, the neighbor women collected out back of the Wilhelms’ kitchen. Many had brought elements for stews or cakes, breads, jams, and cheeses for the wedding fest. Hat and Dossie circulated with platters of sweet rolls and hot cider and roasted potatoes and roasted seeds and nuts and apples.

Noelle, the only woman in the gathering wearing the old-style beaded buckskin dress, seemed out of step with the other women. All of them wore calico, even the two young wives of Chief Aaron, a distant relative of Russell Sitton. Old Sarah DeGroot, born when few women wore anything but skin dresses, wore a fancy cotton gown and sat in a rocker covered in shawls and warmed quilts. She was prune dark and frosted with white hair, and she began the storytelling in the old language that few still understood. She still spoke the former masters’ prattle, the slatternly pidgin Dutch of decades before. The younger grown women stood, leaning against a porch rail or against the house, and spun on their drop spindles or used their needles for making stockings. The little gals combed and plaited each other’s hair and listened to words they hardly understood.