Between Earth and Sky(100)

“Damn your help!” He backhanded his chair with such force it flew across the cell and struck the iron bars. The whole cage rattled. “You force it on us. Insist you know best.”

Alma shuffled backward. In all their years together at Stover, she’d never seen him lose his temper.

Footfalls bounded up the stairs. Flush-faced, the young soldier rushed into the room and puffed out his narrow chest. “What’s all this yellin’ about? You all right, ma’am?”

She swallowed her emotions and steadied her voice. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

The soldier strode to the thick bars of Asku’s cell and banged against them with the butt of his throwing knife. “No yellin’. You hear me, savage? I don’t know why, but this fine lady’s seen fit to see ya. Try to be a gentleman. Gen-tal-man.”

Asku’s nostrils flared and his full lips flattened into a razor-sharp line.

Alma touched the soldier’s forearm. “The outburst was my fault. Please, we’re fine.” He sheathed his knife but continued to leer in Asku’s direction. She drew the boy’s gaze back with a light squeeze to his arm and feigned a smile. “Please, I’ll call if I need anything. You’ll be just downstairs, right?”

Alma watched him peacock from the room, then turned back to Asku. Again the age of his face startled her—the deep furrows that cut across his forehead, the sunbaked skin and hollow eyes. “You haven’t even heard the good news. My husband thinks we have enough evidence to provide sufficient doubt. Especially if you take the stand.”

He drew his weathered hands down his face and shook his head. “Alma, I—”

“Don’t worry about your testimony. My husband can coach you.”

“You don’t understand—”

“He’s already prepared his line of questioning, you need only answer honestly and—”

“I’m guilty, Alma.”

“Be sure to hit on a few key—what?” She recoiled from the bars. “What did you say?”

“I killed him.” He spoke each word with matter-of-fact precision. No emotion. No contrition.

She had the strange sensation of being back at Stover, seated beside him in the classroom. Chalk dust filled the air. Their wrought-iron desk creaked. A cold draft stole through the thin windowpanes. Asku, as he was that first time she saw him—black hair brushing his boyish cheeks, dark eyes wide and curious—stood. I killed him, he said, straight-faced and serious, as if reading a phrase from the blackboard or reciting a line of text. I’m guilty.

The cry of a riverboat called Alma back to the present. She groped behind her, but the soldier boy had forgotten her chair. Her legs wavered. Why was Asku saying this?

“I shot Agent Andrews two times in the back.”

“No, it had to be someone from the timber company.”

“With a .38 Colt Lightning I bought this summer.”

“Another Indian who lost his allotment.”

“I waited behind the general store until I saw him walking down the road.” Still that calm, detached voice. “I raised my gun and fired.”

She flung her hands to her ears. “Stop.”

“I stood above him and waited for his breath to stop.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Then I dropped the gun, walked back into the woods, and waited for them to arrest me.”

“Stop!” She let the weight of her body carry her to the floor, her knees banging hard against the wood. One hand steadied herself, the other snaked around her stomach.

“Minowe said the agent had changed his mind, was considering a new allotment.”

“Agent Andrews was a crook and a coward. He never would have reallotted the timber lands. But that’s not why I killed him.” He crossed to the wall of his cell and stood there, facing away, his finger tracing the crumbling mortar between the stones. “I never wanted to come to Stover. But my father said we must, Minowe and I. Gichi-mookomaan ways were the ways of the future, he’d said. We would help our people survive, shepherd them into a new circle of time.”

He’d never wanted to come? None of this made sense. “You worked so hard. Did so well.”

“I worked hard to honor my father, my people.”

All those years—first to raise his hand, last to quit the study room—it must mean more than honor. “But . . . but you were happy.”

He spread a hand out over the rock, bracing himself it seemed, as if the weight of his body were too much to hold upright. “I don’t know anymore.”

“No!” She slammed her palm against the floor. “You were happy. I remember. Something happened to you at Brown. Everything was fine before you left.”

“Is that what you want to hear? That they mistreated me there? That I didn’t fit in?” He pushed off the wall and stalked the perimeter of his cell. The tremor of his steps reached her through the floorboards. “It’s true. There was no place for a red man in their world. I wasn’t welcome in any of their social clubs or study groups. I was behind in class from the moment I arrived there.”

“Nonsense.”

“Those boys were learning Latin before I spoke a word of English. They didn’t spend half their school day harvesting crops or sanding wood.”

“You just needed time.”