Between Earth and Sky(8)

When she looked back up at Stewart, it was through bleary, tear-rimmed eyes. “He needs a better lawyer, one he can trust.”

“I’m a patent attorney,” he said. “I have no experience defending murderers.”

“Accused murderers.”

“My license to practice law doesn’t extend beyond Pennsylvania.”

To this she only huffed.

Her husband sighed and ran a hand through his sand-brown hair. “Help me understand, Alma. Who is this man? We’ve been married five years and you’ve never once spoken of him. Why does this mean so much to you?”

Alma turned back to the window. True, she’d spoken little of her life in Wisconsin. It was easier to live as if those memories belonged to someone else. She’d told him of her family’s move west when she was seven to open an Indian boarding school. She’d told him of her return to Philadelphia at seventeen to live with her aunt. Of the decade in between, he knew nearly nothing. Much of her longed to tell him—of Harry, of Margaret, of them all. How freeing it would be. The words perched on her lips, but she drew them back with a sharp inhale. He could never know. Not all of it.

Another gust of wind stirred the trees, plucking the first of fall’s leaves from the boughs. She watched them swirl and scatter to the ground. The sinking feeling she’d felt at breakfast overwhelmed her again, as if time were folding in on itself and drawing her with it. “Is there no one from your past for whom you would dare the impossible?”

For several heartbeats, there was only silence.

“Perhaps I could appear pro hac vice.”

She turned around. “What does that mean?”

“With the public defender’s permission, I can appeal to the court to assist with the case even though it lies beyond my jurisdiction.”

Alma rushed around his desk and sank onto her knees before him. “Really? You’ll do that for him?”

He took her hands and kissed them. “Not for him, darling. For you. Give me a day or two to clear my schedule and make the necessary arrangements. Then we can go to St. Paul and see what we can do.”

“Thank you, dearest!”

“I can’t promise success.” He kissed her cheek and helped her to her feet. “First, I’ll need to get his attorney to change the plea. Then we need to get Mr. Muskrat talking.”

“I can help with that,” Alma said quickly. “He’ll speak to me.”

Stewart reached into his drawer and produced a small notebook, his eyebrows already pinched in concentration. “We may even need him to take the stand. He does speak English, your friend?”

A phantom smell of tallow and ash invaded her nose, spreading over her tongue and seeping into her taste buds. “Of course he does. The only language permitted at Stover was English.”





CHAPTER 5


Wisconsin, 1881



A loud whack brought silence to the room. Alma flinched and glanced up from her stew. Miss Wells stood at the end of the dining table, her ruler flat against the wooden surface.

“English only, children,” she said.

“But the Indians still don’t know any English,” Alma mistakenly said aloud.

Miss Wells turned and flashed that crooked-toothed smile Alma had come to hate. “Then they should refrain from speaking altogether.”

Alma slumped, leaning her cheek against her palm, and returned to her dinner. For several minutes, only the clank of dinnerware and the rhythmic click of Miss Wells’s footfalls echoed off the dining hall’s whitewashed walls.

Six long tables crowded the room—four on one side where the boys sat and two on the other side, nearest the main door, for the girls. Miss Wells paced the wide aisle in between, her overly starched skirt rasping atop the floorboards. At the front of the room another door flapped back and forth between the dining hall and kitchen, its hinges squeaking anytime someone passed through. At least once every night a howl rattled the conjoining wall when Mrs. Simms dropped a pot or singed a finger on the stove. The Indians would all giggle, Alma with them, and for a moment she didn’t feel so alone.

The wooden bench upon which she sat was hard and splintery and made it impossible not to fidget. To her right sat Margaret. The Indian gripped the handle of her spoon flat against her palm the way a bandleader held his baton. Lumpy brown stew sloshed over the edges as she brought it to her mouth. Only two nights ago, Alma had shown everyone at the table the correct way to hold the utensil.

“Like you’re holding a pencil,” she’d said, raising her arm and taking an exaggerated bite.

A few of them had tried to mimic her for a short while. Others, including Margaret, ignored her completely. Maybe they’d never held a pencil either. She’d have to demonstrate that too.

“It took you months to learn how to use a spoon, kitten,” her father had said when she complained.

But she’d been just a baby then and didn’t remember it anyhow.

Now, a full six days since the Indians’ arrival, she was growing tired of being an example. Maybe if they listened more, tried harder.

The hum of voices rekindled throughout the room, whispers in funny-sounding languages Alma didn’t understand. As the voices grew louder, Miss Wells’s lips flattened and her nostrils flared. “English only,” she repeated, this time from across the room by the boys’ tables.