Between Earth and Sky(98)

Minowe’s eyes fell to her lap. She cradled her teacup but did not drink. “None of us are innocent.”

Alma waited for her to say more, but Minowe remained silent, her gaze sweeping the room, restless, anxious, avoiding Alma’s face. “Let’s start with Agent Andrews. Can you tell me more about him?”

Her old friend’s hand tightened around the cup, the tendons bulging beneath her dry copper skin.

“Several complaints had been lodged against him,” Alma prodded. “What did he do?”

Minowe folded her arms, unfolded them, and folded them again. “He was a cheat. Always promising things—seeds, tools, foods—that came too late, too fews, or never came at all.”

“And for that someone shot him?”

“No, we was use to that. But then he took our timber lands.”

The story Minowe told filled the gaps between what she and Stewart had learned from Zhawaeshk and uncovered at the agency. The entire process had been corrupt from the start. Before the allotment, land speculators snuck onto the reservation to survey the land and spread their finding to those Indians willing to sell. An official land report went out before the allotment, but those who could not read English or understand survey maps could make no use of it.

“And Agent Andrews allowed all this?”

“He got a cut from every acre sold.” Minowe explained how deeds were crooked, boundaries redrawn. The land was given out to whomever arrived first, with mixed-bloods and white Indians up from the cities camping out to get in line early. Agent Andrews said not to worry; there was land enough for all. But he’d miscalculated the acreage and hundreds of people—mostly the less educated, more traditional full bloods—walked away with nothing.

Alma was leaning in, her elbows propped upon the table, her tea long since cooled. “How do you know all this?”

Minowe pursed her lips and looked out the window. “I worked there for a time, at the agency. It’s all filed away there, if you knows where to look. Most of it anyways. There were letters,” she hesitated, “between the agent and lumber company . . . but I doubt if they’re still there.”

“You read them?”

“I wrote them, transcribed them, that is. I didn’t make the connection between it all until after, though.”

“Even so, surely he wouldn’t be so bold?”

“If you ain’t white and ain’t a man, he assumed you had no sense.”

A smile found its way to Alma’s lips. “Miss Wells would smack you silly with her ruler if she heard you saying ain’t.”

They laughed together at this, sisters again for a fleeting moment.

“Would you help my husband find those files?” Alma asked when their laughter dwindled. “And make a sworn statement about those letters?”

Minowe rolled her mug back and forth between her hands, her face once again somber. “I don’t know. They won’t sell us back our timber. Give us back our lands.”

“It might help Askuwheteau’s case.”

“How?”

“Any one of those people who didn’t get an allotment has more cause to kill Agent Andrews than he did.” Her mind was running now. Excitement edged into her voice. “Or someone from the lumber company. With the agent dead, they don’t have to pay up.”

Minowe continued to work the mug between her palms. Her eyes skirted Alma’s, shifting about the room, and at last settling on the four small dolls in the corner. “I have to think of my childrens.”

“You don’t want their uncle killed for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Tears had returned to Minowe’s eyes. Alma fished through her dirty purse for a handkerchief and handed it to Minowe.

A fragile smile broke the tears. “You broughts a silk purse with you to the reservation? Whatever for?”

“Well . . . for moments like this, I guess.”

Minowe shook her head, laughing even as she cried. “You’ve become like your mother.”

Alma frowned and straightened. “I beg your pardon.”

“Only in little ways.” Minowe wiped the last of her tears with Alma’s hankie. “She was not all bad, your mother.”

Alma looked down at her hands—not yet wrinkled or marked with age spots, but no longer as smooth and supple as they had been as a girl. “No, I suppose not.”

Minowe held out the square of silk.

“Keep it.”

Minowe breathed in deeply and smiled. Her eyes remained bloodshot and her nose red. Dozens of pin-scratch creases lingered on her skin—yesterday’s joys and sorrows—and suddenly Alma found it difficult to remember the carefree face of her friend’s youth. Her fingers fluttered over her own skin and she wondered if Minowe saw a similar battle-scarred stranger.

“You don’t think Asku did it, do you?” Alma asked. “Killed Agent Andrews.”

“Before the shooting people said bad things about him. They couldn’t see he wanted to belong but didn’t know how. Now they call him Wenabozho, a hero.”

“Were they true? Those bad things?”

She shrugged. “Some. Most of them, I guess. But he came alive after this whole mess with the timber—like he’d been visited by a spirit or something—he stopped drinking so much, he set a council to get the allotment repealed, he wrote a letter to the head man in Washington and got nearly four hundred men to sign it. He was his old self again.”