The Great Plains (30 page)

Jerome picked out a flash of movement below, a blur of tail and mane. The Blums' horse, Ernst, was running beside the train at the gallop.

‘Now that's a nice piece of horse flesh,' Charlie commented, dragging heavily on the cigarette.

The animal kept pace with them, his rippling flanks showcasing sinewy muscle as the gelding's stride lengthened. Those men dangling their legs over the side of the freight car cheered the horse onwards. There were bets laid on how far and fast the animal could run, whether a horse could outrun a locomotive.

‘Ernst!' Mark shrieked.

Jerome laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. ‘Shush up.'

Mark began to sniff uncontrollably. Another cry rang out from the passengers riding the rooftop as Ernst veered into the timber.

‘You know that horse, boy?' Flicking the dying cigarette over the side of the train Charlie looked intently at the twins.

Mark's bottom lip dangled, his droopy eye focused on Jerome. ‘No.'

‘Mark gets a bit confused sometimes,' Abelena explained. ‘And he's worn out from the travelling, we all are.'

The man looked unconvinced. ‘A person would have to be in a bit of trouble to leave a horse like that behind, yes siree.'

‘Horses ain't worth nothing these days,' Jerome answered. ‘Why, I know a man who took a couple of mares into town to sell and ended up bringing them home.'

‘Well, that's what I'm saying,' Charlie continued, ‘if you couldn't sell a horse like that one, then you'd keep him. What were you doing at the water tower anyway? Why didn't you all just hop a train earlier?'

‘Can't a person get on and off when they choose?' Jerome replied.

Charlie's face creased. ‘I don't trust him,' Jerome said softly to his sister after the man had moved on to sit with some other men.

‘Good, neither do I.'

Jerome took a steadying breath. As the train moved across the land, he watched the railroad growing smaller in the distance. With every mile of track covered, the possibility of escaping the law grew. There was a chance that they would all have a future, one with jobs and food and a home to share. The thought of such freedom rallied his spirits and for the first time in weeks he thought of what it would be like to stop moving, forever.

Abelena leant towards him. ‘What are you smiling about?'

‘What our lives could be like.' He shifted the sleeping child in his arms. The little girl woke, rubbing her eyes with balled fists.

‘Safe,' Abelena answered, ‘I just want us to be safe, with food and a house to live in.' She clucked Tess under the chin. ‘I want a proper life. A white person's life,' she whispered.

‘Our life has nothing to do with the colour of our skin. Money makes the difference in the world. Either you have it or you don't.'

‘And why are we poor, brother?' Abelene asked bitterly. ‘Because of our blood, because the Wades turned away our mother when she asked for help. Because our great-grandmother was abducted by Indians. That's why.'

‘Keep your voice down. You must let go of this bitterness you carry, sister. No good can come of it.'

‘It has grown to be a part of me, brother, and at times it gives comfort.'

Jerome didn't pursue the conversation. Who was he to lecture if the anger within his sister helped her, helped them all to survive?

The twins soon became impossible to control. They raced back and forth along the freight car roof as some of the men dared Mathew to jump across to the next car. The older boy pulled up short on the first three attempts, much to the mixed response of the spectators. Mark delighted in the attention. He yelled and clapped his hands, not understanding that the handful of men who spurred them on were also making fun of him.

‘Don't let him jump, Jerome,' Abelena pleaded, taking Tess from his arms. ‘He'll fall.'

Getting unsteadily to his feet, Jerome balanced on the moving train and, careful not to step on any hands or feet, joined Mathew. The boy was walking backwards from the end of the wagon, clearly measuring the distance. He stopped when he saw Jerome and they both spread their legs slightly as they braced their bodies against the moving train.

‘What if you jump and Mark follows?' Mathew clearly hadn't considered such a possibility for he did not respond immediately. ‘He'd fall,' Jerome continued. ‘We both know that.'

The older boy jammed his hands in the pockets of his pants.

‘What's worse, some of these men are making fun of him.' Jerome had caught a number of the passengers mimicking Mark.

Mathew wet his lips. ‘Then you hang onto him, Jerome. That man there said he'd give me a quarter if I jumped, so I'm a-jumping.'

The man Mathew pointed to held up a shiny coin and bit it as if to prove its genuineness.

Mathew took a single step backwards and began to sprint along the car.

‘Stop him!' Abelena called.

Jerome just had time to grab Mark and stop the younger boy from following as Mathew leapt. The red-headed boy's legs and arms flailed the air as shouts of encouragement rang out. Patchy sunlight filtered through the trees, throwing Mathew into shadow as he landed safely on the next freight car, and pumped the air with a clenched fist.

‘Thank heavens.' Abelena clasped Tess tightly to her chest as the train shuddered and slowed. The locomotive rounded a corner and, unprepared, Mathew lost his balance. Jerome pushed Mark towards his sister and broke into a run as Mathew fell over the edge.

‘Help him!' Jerome yelled. Mathew was hanging from the side of the car. Men rushed to his aid but as Jerome took a running jump across to the freight car, Mathew lost his grip and fell.

The boy tumbled down a ridge, his slight body blurring with bushes and trees. There was a moment of noise and light and rushing wind as Jerome leapt after him. Then he landed heavily on the ground and began to roll.

May, 1935 – Broken Arrow, Tulsa County, Oklahoma

It was nearly dusk when the train entered Broken Arrow. As it wound slowly behind rows of timber houses, some of the men jumped off and began knocking on doors asking for food. A water tower and grain elevator were silhouetted against a pink-tinged sky and roses bloomed along picket fences. Abelena thought it a pretty place. The town had been built in the middle of a prairie and there were green pastures filled with cows and hundreds of cattle calling out from a corral.

As the train drew closer to the distinctive green walls and red-shingled roof of the depot, a number of short, sharp toots sounded. A man ran across the tracks and waved at the engine driver before skirting a small stack of corn and a pile of hickory logs on the depot platform. The train stopped with a shudder and a blast of steam.

Wind-blown and cold, Abelena climbed down the side of the carriage to where Mark waited. Her legs trembled and it took a moment to become accustomed to the lack of movement after so many hours sitting on the train's roof. Above, men stared and whispered.

The boy tugged on her hand. ‘Mathew?'

Having spent most of the day since the accident trying to explain to Mark what had happened, Abelena was growing tired of placating him. ‘We'll find him,' she promised again, as one of the passengers threw down their rolled blankets. The material landed with a thud on the ground.

‘There'll be a sheriff's office in town,' a man yelled from above her. ‘Best you go straight there. They'll find your man, missus. Look, I'll be betting that there's the stationmaster.' He pointed to the silhouette of a man standing in the doorway of a building. ‘He'll give you directions, I'm sure.'

Abelena thanked him and stepped back from the railway tracks. She shifted Tess on her hip. The child hadn't made a sound for hours.

Men were loading and unloading goods. They wheeled wooden crates on trolleys, laughing and talking as they worked. Further along the line a whistle blew. As the engine let out a burst of steam, a group of men talking to the stationmaster ran to the locomotive, quickly climbing aboard as the train chugged away. Abelena was left alone with the two children. They appeared to be in the middle of Broken Arrow for the glow of house lights flickered on either side of the tracks and the scent of cooking smells made her stomach turn. She looked back along the railway line in the direction they'd come as the sound of the locomotive gathering speed echoed. It was growing dark quickly now that the sun had set and Mark squeezed her fingers.

‘What?' Abelena asked the boy. In response Mark tugged at her hand.

A light appeared to be travelling towards them, a lantern. There was another man smoking at the far end of the platform. Abelena felt the breath catch in her throat.

‘Somebody expecting you?' the male voice enquired.

Abelena lowered her face against the brightness. Tess grew heavier by the second. The man peered at her intently, at Mark and then at the child in her arms. Gradually the lamp was lowered. ‘No. Well, I'm waiting for my husband. We're to meet here at Broken Arrow. But we're looking for work.'

‘Half the country is looking for work,' the man replied. ‘That man there,' he thumbed at the figure further along the platform, ‘he says your husband fell from the train. That a boy fell as well. Is that right?'

‘No.' Abelena tugged on Mark's hand and walked quickly away from the railway tracks.

‘Hey lady, come back here.'

‘Where are we going?' Mark whined.

‘Shush, I don't know.' She could feel the man's eyes on them as they left the platform and walked out onto the main street before returning to the rear of the station. It was too dark to wander far and Abelena was exhausted. She slid down the rear wall of the station building and pulled the children close to her on either side. There was a warm patch on the boards no doubt created from a stove on the other side. ‘Sleep,' she told them quietly, squirreling them all closer to the warmth. ‘Sleep and tomorrow we'll find Jerome and Mathew and get some food.'

Gradually Abelena relaxed. She stretched out her legs on the gritty earth and wiggled the toes that were sticking through the front of one shoe. She was asleep when the sound of horses woke her. The pound of hoofs and the squeak of leather grew loud and ominous. There was time enough to run, even with the children, but a great weariness stymied all thoughts of escape. And there was something else, an awareness of time having run out, of her life having travelled full-circle. Abelena's earliest memory was of flat lands, a dirt house built out of a hill and a hairy man who picked her up and spun her above his head. But there was also another recollection, whether real or imagined she couldn't tell. This secondary person was a great man, a man of medicine. There was strength in him. A resilience. Abelena thought of him now as she sat and waited.

The men came riding in from the west following the railway line. Their hoofs crunched gravel and dirt as Abelena listened to the snorts and whinnies of the animals, to the low voices of the men who gathered only feet away. A loud knock on the station door was answered with a complaining mutter from within the building, and then the door squeaked open. A bell tingled. There were a number of voices, deep, unformed, polite and ignorant. One of the voices belonged to the man on the train, Charlie. Strangely, Abelena was unafraid.

‘Can you send a telegram to Oklahoma City?' The first man's voice was demanding.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Where's the sheriff's office?'

‘Down the street apiece, but it's late so unless it's real important.'

‘Yessum, he's the one I was telling you about. He jumped from the train after the youngin. Did he kill that homesteader's boy? Cause I'm figuring there'd be a reward. Saw the wanted poster I did in Stillwater. It was the kid with the droopy eye that set me onto them. Soon as I saw that boy on the train I thought to myself, that's them. Yessum, they're the ones that killed that boy.'

‘You were on the train?' the first man checked.

‘Yessum. Heading east for work when they got on at the water tower back apiece. They were real edgy, the lot of them. I told the stationmaster to stop the girl when she got off here, with them other two kids, but he just let her walk. Plain as day. Just let her walk. When do I get my reward?'

‘You best organise a search party and spread out. She can't have got too far.'

‘And my reward?'

‘Did you find him? Did you track that boy for nearly three weeks? Were you with me and my men? No. So don't talk to me about a reward. I don't reward people for nothing.'

Abelena got to her feet and, lifting Tess, dragged Mark upwards. ‘C'mon,' she said tiredly.

‘Where we going?' Mark cried.

‘To see Jerome.' They walked around the side of the building to the station entrance. There were a group of men standing outside. Charlie among them.

‘That's her, see, and the two brats. I told you, I told you I'd found them.'

Abelena tugged free of the men who reached for her and walked into the east waiting room designated for whites. It was warm in the station. There was a wooden bench and a pot belly stove and a grey-haired woman. The stationmaster was serving coffee to three men wearing long coats and big hats. Abelena looked past the strangers to the young man sitting hand-cuffed on the floor. Jerome gave a wistful smile.

Abelena burst into tears. ‘Jerome. Jerome, are you all right? Are you hurt?' She tried to go to him but one of the men barred her path.

‘I'm fine, Abelena. Just fine.'

‘Jerome?' Mark clung to his half-sister's hand.

‘It's all right, Mark, everything will be all right,' Jerome replied. He looked exhausted, but strangely relieved. His face and arms were grazed with cuts and scratches.

‘Where's Mathew?' Mark cried.

‘The boy with your brother?' The man wore a sheriff's badge. ‘En route to the hospital with a broken leg. And who might you be?' He walked towards Abelena, sipping the steaming coffee, taking in her bedraggled appearance.

‘I'm Abelena. Abelena Wade.'

The sheriff was grey-haired and old looking, but his eyes were clear and sharp. ‘Of course you are. And these two?'

‘A half-brother and a half-sister.'

‘Go and sit down on that bench, son,' the sheriff said kindly to Mark, ‘and Mrs Monroe will bring you out something to eat.'

‘Go on,' Abelena urged, pushing Mark towards the seat. ‘Mathew's just fine. You'll see him soon.'

‘Is he a halfwit?' He stared at Mark's deformed eye.

Abelena didn't answer.

‘You might want to give me the child,' the sheriff suggested. He peered at little Tess who was half-covered by the rough poncho Abelena had made from the blanket they'd found at the ghost town.

‘No, no she's fine, mister,' Abelena replied, cupping the child's head against her chest. ‘I'd rather hold onto her.'

‘Abelena, my name's Sheriff Cadell. I'm a friend of Edmund Wade. Do you know who he is?'

She nodded.

‘Well you ain't in no trouble, Abelena, but the boy here, Jerome, well I reckon he's going to have a date with “Old Sparkie”. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your brother here has done murder.'

‘It was an accident,' Abelena replied. ‘We only ran because we knew no-one would believe Jerome.'

The sheriff held up three fingers. ‘That may be so, but you can understand the problem I have. A dead white boy and two dead men.'

‘They were outlaws,' Abelena replied, looking at the sandwich Mrs Monroe handed to Mark.

The sheriff disagreed. ‘Actually they were bounty hunters, which I guess in the scheme of things doesn't make them much better than outlaws, but the end result is the same. And this isn't the Wild West anymore. A person can't just take the law into their own hands.'

‘Those men killed Uncle George,' Jerome cried out.

The sheriff rubbed a stubbly chin. ‘Ah yes, the old Injun, I heard about him, never had the pleasure. Tell me, where's your mother Serena?'

Abelena shifted Tess from one hip to the other. The child was floppy with overtiredness. ‘Dead.'

Mark finished eating and promptly fell asleep on the bench, his bad eye partially open as if awake.

‘Now,' the sheriff continued, ‘I don't want any trouble or yelling, Abelena, there's just no need for it. You can see Jerome back in Oklahoma City, all right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good.' He pointed to her brother and one of the men, a deputy, pulled Jerome to his feet. ‘Go and wake the town sheriff and tell him we need a cell and see if you can find us a place to bed down for the night.'

‘Sure thing,' the deputy answered.

‘I'll come and see you, Jerome, I promise.' Tears ran down Abelena's cheeks.

‘I know, I know you will. Everything will be okay, sis, you'll see. Everything will work out just fine.' The men walked Jerome out the door, Abelena was left with an image of their Uncle George, of tired eyes and the long cheeks of their ancestors.

‘Your brother had some things with him, Injun things,' the sheriff told her.

The painted hide of the Apaches and what appeared to be a small bag with coloured leather thonging sat on the ticketing bench. ‘Whether you want them or not is up to you but they're yours. Right now I'm gonna take that there child from you and then Mrs Monroe is going to get you cleaned up and fed.'

‘I am?' The stationmaster's wife blanched.

‘Tess stays with me.' Abelena felt a lump rise in her throat.

Placing the coffee mug down on the ticketing bench, the sheriff reached out for the child.

Abelena stepped backwards. ‘Leave me alone.'

‘Give me the child, Abelena.'

‘No.'

‘Give me the child,' the sheriff repeated, cornering Abelena against the wall. He grabbed the little girl and managed to tear her from Abelena's embrace. The blanket partially covering Tess's head fell back as the child's head flopped lifelessly to one side.

‘Give her back, give her back!' Abelena screamed, rushing at the man.

Mark woke and began to cry.

Cradling the child, Sheriff Cadell touched Tess's cheek.

‘Tess? Give Tess back to me!'

‘Stop it.' His features softened. ‘I'm sorry but she's dead.'

Abelena turned pale, her hands dropped to her sides.

Sheriff Cadell handed the child to the stationmaster.

‘She can't be …'

The sheriff held Abelena gently by the shoulders. ‘You've had a hard time of it, I can see that, girl, but you've a chance now at a decent life.'

She tried to run to Tess but the sheriff restrained her as the stationmaster stared at the lifeless child in his arms and left the room. ‘Please, give her back. Give me back little Tess.'

‘Abelena, stop it. Tess is dead. Do you hear me? Dead. You can't do anything for her now. Do you understand what I'm saying?' The girl didn't reply. ‘I shouldn't be telling you this but Edmund Wade is an old friend of mine. Now there's a man with gravel in his gizzard. If I was him I'd walk away and leave you to your kind, but the past's been eating at him and he's decided to give you another chance. You can thank that mother of yours Serena for your good luck. By retaining the Wade name we knew it was you on the run when they listed your name next to your brother on the Wanted posters. You should be grateful, especially considering your brother's troubles.'

‘Please, let me have my sister.'

‘Girl, she's
dead
.'

Abelena felt her knees buckle. The sheriff held her upright.

‘After Jerome's sentenced, the Wade name will be plastered all over the gutter press, so I'd be thanking my stars if I was you. Don't make the mistakes that your mother and great-grandmother made. Don't keep trying to be a renegade Injun when you have the chance to be white.' He turned to the stationmaster, who'd just re-entered the room.