Between Earth and Sky(101)
He pushed back his shirtsleeve and brandished his arm. “Time won’t change the color of my skin!”
Alma flinched and pulled back from the bars.
He glared at her a moment, then hung his head and sighed. He looked like a weatherworn scarecrow whose straw stuffing had blown away with the wind. “At Brown I was too Indian to fit in. When I returned home, I was too like the white man.”
Alma rose, ignoring the dirt smudged across her skirt. He followed her with eyes as dark and empty as the void between the stars. “You could have put your learning to use. Worked at the agency or taught at the day school.”
“So my people could despise me even more?”
“You could have done anything. Been anyone you wanted to be.”
Asku righted his chair and collapsed onto it. “Except be an Indian.”
She crossed to a nearby window. It was yet afternoon, but the narrow opening strangled back the sun. Her thoughts clattered, one against the other, impossible to right or tame. “I think it best you don’t take the stand. I’m sure Stewart will agree. Even without your testimony we can win your case.”
“I don’t want to win the case, Alma.” The edge returned to his voice. “I’m guilty.”
“Judge Baum might dismiss the case outright.”
“No, go back home.”
Her eyes clung to the sliver of pale-blue sky visible through the window. “At the very least we can show mitigating circumstances. Plead for a lesser sentence.”
“I said I don’t want your help!”
“I’ll not let you die to prove some silly point.”
His chair legs scraped against the floor. The cell bars shivered beneath his grasp. “I spent every day at Stover ashamed to be Indian and every day since ashamed I am not Indian enough. I killed Agent Andrews in the name of Anishinaabe justice. In the eyes of my people I am whole again—not Harry Muskrat, but Askuwheteau, son of Odinigun. I would rather die beloved by my people than live a ghost in their world.”
Alma shook her head, as if doing so would dislodge his words from her ears. “That’s suicide.”
“It is the way I have chosen.”
She still could not look at him. The blue sky bled into the gray stone walls through the prism of her tears. “You’re going to fight these charges. Fight them and win.”
He shook the bars so violently the bolts whined and bits of the stone ceiling struck the floor like hail. “It is right that I should die. I will hear the drums of my forefathers and dance with them in the sky. Don’t rob me of that honor.”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. The lighter step of the boy watchman and another heavier set. She did not turn around when they entered the room. Did not turn around as they berated Asku for the ruckus and told him to prepare for transport. The cell door creaked open. Chains clanked. Locks snapped shut.
Again, the world seemed to wobble. How dare he ask her to let him die. After all she’d done to try to save him. After she’d already watched another loved one hang. Alma braced herself against the wall. The chill of the stone reached her through her gloves, traveling up her arms and down her spine until her whole body shivered.
“Azaadiins, please.”
Even his voice, raspy with emotion, a voice as familiar as the churning Mississippi, could not compel her to turn. His shackles rattled down the stairs. It was a halting sound—the thud of a footstep, the clang of metal, a moment’s pause, and then another thud—that harried her nerves. None of this made sense, his confession of murder, his will to die. Another stair. Another thud and clang. Why hadn’t he told her sooner? Told her the truth from the beginning. Why had he let her believe they’d ever been happy?
CHAPTER 41
Minnesota, 1906
Alma’s eyes climbed the red and white edifice of the Ryan Hotel, lighting on the fifth floor. Behind her, carriages and bicycles rattled. Automobiles honked. Streetcars whined along their tracks. Her bounding pulse had not slowed in the hour-long ride from Fort Snelling, nor had her mind quieted. How could she face Stewart? What would she tell him—that Asku was guilty? She hardly believed it herself.
Her feet echoed as she crossed the marble foyer. The gears of the elevator worked her nerves. Inside the room, Stewart was already preparing for dinner. “Hurry and change, darling,” he said, slipping an arm into his freshly pressed dress shirt. “We don’t want to miss our reservation.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and watched him dress. He worked through his buttons and donned his waistcoat—white on white. Embellished satin upon starched cotton. His face, reflected in the vanity mirror, wore a cheerful expression she’d not seen since they crossed the Mississippi. A good meeting with Mr. Gates then. Agreement all around they could win the case. Save for one small detail: Asku wasn’t innocent. Just thinking the words pained her. How could she utter them aloud?
Stewart picked up his bow tie. Also white, though black was in fashion now too. He whistled as he worked it round his collar and began to tie. She could see the deft movement of his hands in the mirror. Over, under, fold, around. “I thought you might like your blue chiffon,” he said, and gestured toward the chaise. “I already laid it out for you.”
She glanced over at the dress. The window above the chaise looked out over the skyline. Shadow had fallen and the sky colored over like a bruise. If only she’d passed over the morning paper that day, left its stories silenced between the pages, thrown it out with the breakfast scraps. She would never have returned to Stover and seen the injustice her childhood eyes could not. She would never have lost her fantasies of prosperity to the reality of life on the reservation.