Summary:  Season 15 – Episode 11 (Finale to the Honor Series)

Rated: K  Word Count:  14200

Honor series:

Changes
Steps Forward and Back
The Most Important Job in the World
Broken Promise
Reclaimed Love
Whisper My Name
When Little Boys Grow Up
Romantic Interlude
I Do, I Do
Twenty Years
Old Shadows

Old Shadows

Carson City, Nevada, April 1965

 She didn’t know what to expect when the nurse at the old folks’ home showed her into the bright sunroom. An old crone, perhaps, toothless, with a wandering mind and curled into a knot sitting in a chair? That was the picture she had conjured up mentally when her newspaper editor had told her to go interview the 106 year old woman for an upcoming article. She was pleasantly surprised to find her puttering about, humming under her breath as she repotted a plant.

  “Hi, I’m from the Carson City Gazette,” she started, her hand outstretched.

 The other lady looked her over just once then returned to her planting. “I know who you are and why you’re here. I’d shake your hand but mine are rather dirty at the moment.” Then, turning her steady brown eyes back on the woman, said, “And I could hear you coming so you don’t need to raise your voice.”

 The reporter clutched her steno pad to her chest and had the good graces to apologize, all the while staring at her feet. She looked back up quickly when the woman chuckled softly. Yes, if she looked closely, she could see the many years in the crinkles around the black woman’s eyes. Her head was covered by a deep purple silk turban but wisps of white hair escaped it to frame her angular face. There were smudges on her white blouse where she had clearly wiped her hands. When she stepped from behind the pot and plant-strewn table, the reporter noted that she wore jeans.

 “Now tell me something, missy,” she challenged and let her hands ball up on her hips. “Is it that you’ve never met a black woman or never met one a hundred-plus years old? Or did you forget something in your journalism classes about interviewing folks? Like, you’re suppose to ask ’em questions?”

 The young woman giggled briefly before she answered. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve met black women before but you are the first one that was a hundred and six years old.”

 “Pooh! That’s nothing! You want to know the secret to living to be a hundred and six?”

 She brightened for her subject was now guiding her to a pair of rocking chairs in one corner. An outstretched hand with dirty nails gestured to one and she took it. She settled her steno pad on her knees and said, “Doesn’t everyone?”

 “It’s simple. Don’t die at a hundred and five.”

 Joint peals of laughter echoed through the room. Still chuckling, the black woman pushed a button on a side table and asked the disembodied voice if they could have some drinks in solarium. It asked if she would have her usual and her reply, after a moment’s thought, was that she would forego the beer. Ice tea would be fine.

 “Well, like I said, the paper sent me down here to talk to you. To get your story.”

 Settling herself back in the rocker, she pushed her own chin back with a long straight finger and seemed to think on what the reporter had said. As she sat so still, the drinks arrived but she appeared not to realize they were there. It was as if suddenly she was gone. The young woman was about to speak again when she broke her silence.

 “Get your pen out, honey, and get this all down. I’m only gonna tell this story once so you’d best make good notes. I was not born Helen Dupres…”

 It was long about the end of the 1850’s when I was born in Charleston, South Carolina. I was born a slave. My mother was the cook in the home of Master and Mistress Alexander Stone. I have no idea who my father was. I don’t remember any other Negroes around the house and there were only two men who lived there anyway. One, of course, was the master, Master Stone. He was a good man, as I recall. Tall with a pleasant voice. I truly don’t remember much about him because when the Troubles came, he went away.

The Troubles? That was how the genteel folks called the War Between the States. Troubles was a better name for it, though, especially in Charleston. They blockaded the harbor and things became real hard to get. I know that now, but I was just a child then and didn’t understand things like wars and blockades. Troubles, I understood.

 The other man in the household I didn’t think of as a man, you understand. His name was Tristan and he was their son. Like his daddy, he was tall and I thought he was mighty handsome with his dark hair and dark dancing eyes. How old was he? In his body or in his mind? His body, well he was maybe ten when the troubles came. In his mind he was ’bout my age. A little child.

 I stayed shy of the mistress. She had a terrible temper and when she got riled up, her voice would screech something awful. It would hurt your ears, it was so bad. With the master gone, and things getting so bad, her temper stayed frayed most of the time. So I learned to hide when I could. I’d found out the hard way that her tongue wasn’t the only sharp thing she had. I’d been playing with Tristan in the garden and he’d gone into one of his staring-off times and the mistress showed up and caught me sitting there just watching him watch the world. She hauled me up by one arm and commenced beating on me. I tried to get away but that just made her beat harder. Finally, her arm wore out and I got away. After that, I was a little more wary.

 His staring-off times? Yes, there were times when he would stop what he was doing and find a place to sit and just rock back and forth. Tristan didn’t speak and didn’t even seem to hear during those times. How long did they last? To me, as a child, it seemed like a long time because, after all, he was my playmate. And I wanted to play some more. Yes, now they have a name for it. A fancy five dollar name. Autism. But just like the War Between the States was the Troubles, he just had staring off times.

Finally, one afternoon when we playing hide and seek in the side yard, I heard the Mistress call my mother into the parlor. I can still remember the words she said.

 “Don’t play me for the fool!” Mistress Stone screeched. “I know about you and your voodoo. You put a curse on my son! That’s why he has those fits! Well, its all over for you, you devil-worshiper. I’ve sold you to the Appletons up Charlotte way.”

 Hiding in the bushes under the open window, I heard my mother say something but I didn’t know what it was. Even though the mistress laughed, I don’t think she thought it was truly humourous.

 “Not on your life! What? Let you keep her and raise another spell-caster? No, that devil’s spawn I sold to a trader. By this time tomorrow she’ll be on her way…”

I didn’t hear the rest. I knew the she they were talking about was me and while I didn’t understand all of what they’d said, I knew my mother was going away and I wasn’t going with her. I bolted from my hiding place, right past a startled Tristan, rounded the back of the house and ran into the room I shared with my mother. There, not knowing what else to do, I hid under the bed.

 It wasn’t long before I heard something glass breaking then the floor shook beneath my hands. Mother came into our room and I ran into her arms, seeking solace. She hugged me hard to her breast and for a little while, I could pretend that I hadn’t heard those words but then she pushed me back. I remember that her face was very somber.

 “What are you afraid of, child?”

 “I heard Mistress. She said something about you going to Charlotte.” I had no idea where Charlotte was but in my child’s way of figuring, it must have been a long way away.

 To my surprise, she laughed. “That’s right. We’re going away. Both of us. The mistress is…is letting us go away.”

 “Because of the troubles?” I scrubbed tears off my cheeks. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

 “Something like that. Look here, you take this here carpetbag and put our clothes in it. I got to get some things from Mistress Stone. Hurry, now, child. We have to leave right away.” When she said that, I got busy. It didn’t take long to pack up our few belongings and it barely filled the bag half full. When I finished I went looking for my mother. I found her in the parlor, going through the master’s desk, making a mess of things. She looked up panicked when she saw me.

 “Mistress said there was something here for us,” she said but even as a child, I knew she was lying. When a drawer popped open, she gave it her full attention and began putting gold coins in the scarf she usually wound about her head. She tied it up and slipped it into her bosom.

 I told her that I was finished packing and asked if I could go say goodbye to Tristan. She about bit my head off. Naturally, I took a step back. That’s when I saw Mistress. She was lying on one of the sofas. Her eyes were open but she wasn’t moving. I remember thinking that she was in a staring-off time like Tristan but she’d spilled something red that was dripping from her fingers onto the carpet. That was, I do believe, the first time I’d ever seen a white person’s blood and I wasn’t sure it was supposed to be red.

 “I’m scared,” I said in a little voice, not even understanding why I should have been frightened. My mother just shook her head and told me that we were leaving. With her hand on my shoulder we started for the door but she stopped and went back to Mistress. She grabbed up the purple silk shawl that Mistress Stone always had close by her for cool evenings. Defiantly, she wrapped it around her own shoulders.

 “Mistress will give you a whippin’ for that,” I cautioned, feeling suddenly grown up.

 “Not any more, she won’t.” That, I knew then – and now- was the truth.

We walked for a long, long time but then time really means nothing to a child. I did think it was a little strange that my mother preferred the night to walk. Sleeping alongside the road, in barns or in bushes during the day kept us hid. Mother said it was because of the soldiers. That was why one night when we stumbled across some men dressed in blue, it struck me as odd that she didn’t seem afraid of them. No, she was glad, I would say.

Now those soldiers, they didn’t look like Master Stone had looked like when he rode away in his uniform. These men, ever’last one of them a white man, had dirty beards and their clothes were torn and downright filthy. They gathered around my mother and I heard her say something like “one at a time, boys,” and gave a queer high-pitched laugh. Before I knew it, she was on her back and one of those men were…you know what they were doing. My mother didn’t fight them. It truly appeared to me that she was enjoying it.

 I didn’t know what to do with myself and Mother seemed to have forgotten I was even around so I sat down next to their fire and hugged my knees. My belly was growling, I was so hungry. One of the men must have heard it because, when he finished doing what he was doing with my mother, he came over next to me and hunkered down. He offered me what I thought at first was a cookie but it turned out to not have much flavor at all.

 “Hardtack,” he called it. “Won’t give you much energy but it’ll fill your belly enough to keep it quiet.”

 Quickly I finished it and asked him if I could have another piece. He barked a short ugly laugh and said my mother wasn’t that good. Clearly, then, I didn’t understand him and I said so, claiming that she was a good, God-fearing, Baptist woman. He laughed again and rubbed the top of my head, ruffling my hair. Then he got a queer look in his eye and dropped his hand down to my leg. His breathing got faster and I got scared.

 One of the other men called out, “Harrison! For God’s sake, she’s only a little girl. Leave her be! You done had the woman!”

Harrison, the man before me, his eyes glittering now, shouted for them to mind their own business and he’d mind his. “You want some more hardtack, little girl? I got some and I’ll give it to you if -“

 What he was about to say, I never found out. The man who fussed at him came over to us and hit him, knocking him away. It gave me the opportunity to jump up and run but I had nowhere to run except into the dark night. That frightened me but I was more afraid of the man with the glittering eyes than I was anything that might be in dark woods. I don’t know how long I ran or how far but it couldn’t have been too far. Before the moon rose fully, I heard my mother calling to me and I ran to her.

 “Come on, now. We’ve got to hurry along.” She grabbed my hand and we went on into the woods, the carpetbag banging against her legs as we walked.

 For the first time, I gathered the nerve to ask her. “Where are we going, Momma? Charlotte?”

 She snorted and I could see that she was concentrating on watching where our feet went. Before long, we made our way back onto a road and we followed it.

 “Maybe New Orleans?” I pushed. I remembered hearing Master Stone talk once about it and it sounded like one of those places where the folks were all good and kind to one another- like the Bible said Heaven was.

 Again she snorted and tugged on my hand, urging me to hurry. Half running as I was, trying to keep up with her longer strides, it left me with little breath for talking and asking questions. She wanted it that way, I’m sure.

The sun was just showing some faint color behind us when she said we would stop and rest. Down the side of the road we went. It being early winter, the grass was dry and brittle and it cut at my legs. I cried out and she appeared anxious, her eyes going wide as she looked around. She put a finger to her lips, begging for silence. Then I heard it too. A cow lowing in the field before us.

 We found her, a boney, slip-hipped jersey with a bag about to bust with so much milk. There was only one problem. We didn’t have a bucket for it. My mother told me to watch her and to not let her leave where she was then she was gone. A couple of times, the cow took a few steps in the direction she’d gone but, with my arms in the air, I held that cow. Looking back on it now I can imagine what the cow must have thought. There I was, a slight bit of a child, pigtails and big eyes, no more than six years old, thinking I could make that cow do my bidding.

Wasn’t long before she was back and Mother had a bucket. Quickly, we set about milking the cow, the bucket filling with that rich, white creamy froth. When it was half full, she stopped milking and standing up, slapped the cow on the rump, sending her away.

 “We dare not take more. Can’t carry it no way. Here, child. Drink.” She didn’t have to tell me twice.

 When we had drunk our fill, we took the bucket and made our way into a small thicket of willows. We were both tired of our long nights of walking and with a full belly, you would have thought we’d have fallen right off to sleep. Didn’t though. With my head in her lap, my mother started talking and suddenly it was if a dam had burst within her.

 “You asked where we were going. I’ll tell you but you don’t tell no one else, you hear? It’ll be our secret. We’re going to Kansas. One of your uncles lives in Kansas and that’s where we’re going. It’ll take us a while to get there but we will get there. There’s just one little problem. We don’t want anyone to know our real names ’cause then they could …well, they could make problems for us. So, we’re gonna make us some pretend names. You understand?”

 I didn’t, but that wasn’t going to stop her that morning.

 “What would you like your name to be? I want me a fancy lady’s name. What do you think about Serena? I always thought that was a right nice name.”

 Drowsy, I must have just grunted something in reply. “What about you? You got to have a fine new name too! You want a name from the Bible, maybe?”

 “Why I got to change my name?”

 She insisted; with just one word, she insisted. “Because.”

 “Well,” I said through a yawn, “Master Tristan used to call me Helen Two Feet.”

 She laughed long and lustily then explained that it was Hell on two feet. He’d called me that when I was being particularly obnoxious. “Well, we’ll just have to call you that but we need to fancy it up some.”

 I was maybe six years old. I owned nothing but the clothes on my back and I didn’t have a pair of shoes that fit. Now I know that we were running from the Law and that my mother would do anything to feed us, including using her body and stealing. There wasn’t an uncle in Kansas but there was hope there because all slaves thought Kansas was the way to the future. That long ago morning, with my belly full of stolen milk, I knew nothing of the world and even less of the future.

 But I had me a fancy name. I had become Helen Dupres.

 Yes, I guess it is a little funny now. Hell on Two Feet. Helen Dupres. What? No, just a little tired. Remembering like this always seems to bring a tear to my eye, thinking back about people and places and such. Give me a minute, would you?

 See? Better now. Where was I? Oh, yes.

 We went to Kansas, all right and of course, she found herself a man to take care of us. She called him Uncle Toby but I knew he wasn’t any kinfolk. He made her take a job at a bawdy house. Do they still call them that? A bawdy house is what they call a place where the women…yes, one of those. This one was a busy one in Kansas City. Lots of days, I wouldn’t see my mother at all, she’d be so tired from the night before. By this time I was eight or nine years old and still didn’t have much meat on my bones but I was nimble. Uncle Toby had me doing stuff around the house like dusting and emptying chamberpots and the like. You know, household chores.

 Then one night, the law came knocking. Uncle Toby offered those men wearing shiny badges all sorts of free services but they weren’t in the market. Finally he offered them money and that, they took. To celebrate their near-escape, Uncle Toby closed the house that night to all but a few select customers and they all proceeded to party it up. That was the night my mother made herself a new friend. No, not a man nor a woman. She was introduced to opium.

What happened next…that’s a hard thing to talk about. You probably know already what happened to her. I can’t say that it was a hard thing to have happen because we just didn’t understand – or I didn’t, at least- about the power of addiction. Everybody does now but this was a long time ago and things were different. The world was more naive, I guess the word would be.

Yes, you’re right. I am making excuses but this was my mother. She was the center of my universe. She took care of me! Even when she’d get woozy with the opium, she was still my mother. And…I forgave her long ago for what happened next. Every cloud has a silver lining, they say but what they don’t tell you is that to see that silver lining, sometimes it has to rain on you awful hard. That’s what happened to me. I got rained on really hard and I didn’t have nobody around to pull me out of it.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break down and cry like that. Been a long time since I remembered this part of my life. I’ll be okay. Really, I will. You just drink some more of your ice tea and give your note-taking hand a little rest. Me? I think I’m gonna have that beer now, if you don’t mind. Settle my nerves.

 No, you don’t need to go. You’d just have to come back another day to get the rest of your story, wouldn’t you? And your editor might not like you having to spend so much time out here with an old woman who should have lost most of these memories years ago. Isn’t that the way memories are? You can’t hang on to a lot of them ’cause your mind can’t hold ’em all. But the ones you want to lose, you can’t.

Can we go on? Sure, if your hand is rested. My beer is finished….

 Uncle Toby finally had enough and put us out on the street. My mother, she was sick a lot of the time because of the opium. She needed a lot of it to keep her going and without any money to get it…no, she was well beyond trying to hold a job by then. Folks would take one look at her and turn her away. I was ten, I think, and they wouldn’t even consider giving me work on a regular basis. So we drifted from town to town.

 Mother finally collapsed for good when we were staying in Monterey. We’d taken to squatting in a run-down livery stable. It was the end of winter but in California, that doesn’t really mean anything if you’re talking about bad weather. We didn’t have much but the old Negro man who took care of the horses there had pity on us and let us stay. I got odd jobs around town but that barely gave me enough money to buy us some bread and maybe a little milk. Mother was needing more money than I could earn just so she could buy her drugs. That’s why she did it, I’m sure.

 I’d been working that rainy week at the home of one of the white folks there in town. Seemed that the lady of the house was down sick and her husband hired me to take care of the children and cook and such while he was away at his job. I still remember those children and how much fun I had with them. We played games, sang songs and the oldest boy – he was maybe seven- he could read so he read us stories. I cooked them up some real fine suppers and the man, he let me take some of it with me after I’d cleaned up the kitchen every night. But that last night, he said his wife was feeling better and they wouldn’t need me anymore. I understood. He’d asked around, I was sure, and found out about my mother. It had happened lots of time before.

 When I got back to the stable there was a man, a white man, waiting there with our friend, Josiah.

 “Are you sure she’s good with children?” he asked Josiah and studied me real close. He made me turn around in the thin lamplight then open my mouth so he could see my teeth.

 “Judge North said so. She’s been taking care of his for the better part of a week.”

 “How about very young children? How about it, girl? You good with kids, say two or three years old?”

 I swallowed hard before I answered him then spoke very softly. “Yes, sir. Any age. I can also cook and clean.”

 His eyes squinted down almost closed and he stroked that funny little beard on his chin. “How old are you?”

 “Not rightly sure. Maybe thirteen or fourteen.”

 “You got any of your mother’s bad habits? Answer me truthfully, girl.”

 I looked at my bare feet and shook my head.

 “What’s your name?” he demanded, grabbing a hold of my chin and forcing me to look at him. Just like years ago and that soldier, his eyes were glittering and he was breathing fast and shallow.

 “Helen Dupres,” I answered and pulled away from him.

 He smiled but it stopped at his thin lips. “She’ll do. Here.” He proceeded to count some greenbacks into Josiah’s upturned hand. “Get your stuff, girl. We’re leaving tonight so make it quick.”

 Josiah grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me into the back stall where my mother was at. “Don’t worry about her,” he whispered. “I’ll use this here money to take care of her. You just go with Mister Whitaker like a good girl.”

 I understood then that I had been sold after all. Took a bunch of years to make it happen but I had been sold just like Mistress Stone had wanted. Kneeling beside my mother, I tried to wake her but she only came half-to. I called to her but she was in deep rapport with her friend Mister Opium and couldn’t be torn from him. Josiah begged me to hurry; the man wanted to leave right away. In the end, I took the purple silk shawl that my mother had kept all those years from the carpetbag. It had a few holes in it but it was all I could take to remember her by and I knew it was still serviceable. It was also the only thing in the carpet bag.

“Bye, Momma,” I whispered, trying hard not to cry as I kissed her cheek. “I’ll come back for you.”

 I did go back but it was many years later. The stable was gone. Josiah was gone and, of course, my mother was gone. For two days I hunted through the cemeteries, looking for her grave. Never found it, of course. The flowers that I insisted on buying so I could put on her grave? I wound up throwing them into the ocean. Older and much wiser, I left Monterey a second time, never going back.

 That, young lady, is how I came to Nevada. If it hadn’t been for Thaddeus Whitaker, I would never have met the people who turned my life around. Yes, the Cartwrights turned out to be the silver lining in my cloud.

 But I am getting ahead of myself a little because, before I met the Cartwrights, I had to deal with Thaddeus Whitaker. But I had to wait in line behind Adam and Joe Cartwright as they had first call on his life.

 He claimed they were his sons. He and his wife had been divorced before they were born and he was going to have them, he said. Come hell or high water, he was not going to let another man raise his children and call them “son.” So we were off to take his sons away from his philandering wife and new husband.

 Jouncing along that mountain road in the stage, I kept silent. Since I’d met and gone off with Mister Whitaker, I’d done a lot of that. Stay silent. Asking for simple things, like a drink or something to eat, could set him off worse than Mistress Stone. There was one difference. He didn’t screech when he ranted. He just swore a blue streak then he’d grab a’hold of me and shake me, reminding me that I owed him if I didn’t do what I was hired to do. I recall thinking that if he treated his wife the way he was treating me that it wasn’t any wonder she’d left him.

 We pulled into Virginia City, Nevada on a pretty spring afternoon. Mister Whitaker got us rooms at a boarding house. Him in a fine room upstairs and me in a basement storage room. Then he left, saying he had to go for a buggy ride. That struck me as a little funny because we had been riding in that stage coach for the best part of a week, seemed like. With nothing else to do, I watched out the grimy basement window. I saw him go down the street to the stage depot and pick up another carpetbag and some funny looking packages then he reversed his steps but went into the hotel across the street and up from the boarding house. Curious, I stayed put, watching. Sure enough, about ten minutes later, he came back out of that hotel empty-handed. He headed up the street then and I lost sight of him.

 I plopped down onto my cot and stared at the walls. Part of me wanted to cry. After all, I’d been parted from my mother by a man I was learning to hate real easily. I recollect that I wanted to cry but I know I didn’t. Crying had gotten me whipped by Mister W. He said it wasn’t seemly and made people think something was wrong when there wasn’t. Maybe for him, there was nothing wrong. He was getting back his sons. I’d lost my mother.

 It was dark when he came to get me.

 “What do you need to take care of two little boys?” he asked.

 “How old be they?” was my response.

 “About three, I’d guess.”

They were babies, still, I thought. And he was taking them away from their mother? He asked his question again, grabbing my arm and my attention.

 “Need diapers, I guess, since they most likely ain’t breached.” That was the word we used a long time ago to say a child wasn’t potty-trained. Most young’uns then weren’t trained until they were a little older, outhouses being what they were.

 “Anything else?” he snapped.

 My first instinct was that they needed a mother but I knew better than to say such. The way he’d talked about his wife, he made her out to be some sort of terrible person. She’d broken their wedding vows by living with one man while she was married to him. Adultery, Mister W called it and said it was a mortal sin. Said the Ten Commandments preached against it, even. I figured that was why he’d divorced her and, even though I was pretty wise concerning some worldly things, I couldn’t fathom that the babies he was after weren’t his.

 “Okay then,” he muttered and began to stroke his pathetic chin whiskers. That clued me in that there was something wrong. I’d noticed that when he was agitated about something, he did that. In a way station down in California, he’d lied to another stage passenger, a lady, and said he was taking me back to the South because I had family there. He spent the rest of that evening building himself up as some do-gooder and all the while, he kept rubbing those whiskers.

 “What are we gonna do when you got your sons back?” I asked.

 “Leave that to me, missy. You just stay here, stay quiet and out of sight, you hear?”

 I did as he asked. When the lady who ran the boardinghouse offered me something to eat, I ate it in her kitchen, quiet as a mouse. She asked me to help her on the second day. She had some laundry to do. Anxious for something to do, I figured with Mister W away, he wouldn’t know any different. I helped her but she got to asking questions about what sort of work Mister W was in and seemed suspicious when I told her I didn’t know.

 “Said he was a salesman but he didn’t have any sample cases.”

 I just shook my head and started cranking on the wringer while she fed the wet sheets through. She wouldn’t give up though. Finally, she got real agitated and asked me point-blank if he used me.

 “No, ma’am. Not the way you’re thinkin’,” was my answer.”He hired me to take care of his-“

 “Helen!” Mister W’s voice cut in sharp and loud. Before I could spit, he had me by the arm and was sending me busting headlong down the basement stairs. He reminded me that I had promised to stay quiet and in the room. All the while he was talking, he was taking off his belt and backing me into a corner.

 You can pretty much guess what happened next. It wasn’t anything new to me to be spanked but he went beyond spanking. He beat me. Bad, he beat me with that belt of his. It raised welts every place it hit and it hit in lots of places. My legs, my arms, my back, my bottom. Lots of places. When he got through, I couldn’t have left that room if I’d wanted to.

 “Now listen to me, you little bitch. You cause me any more trouble and you’ll get more of this. You understand?”

 Of course I did.

 Late that night, I heard voices coming down the stairs. Soft women’s voices. I stayed curled up in the corner of the room where Mister W had left me, hoping they would see the empty cot and figure I’d run off.

 The boardinghouse lady was saying, “He beat her. I know he did ’cause I heard it. That child has got to be hurtin’ a powerful lot.”

 There was another woman’s voice, younger sounding. It said, “You think she’s still here, Mrs Tatum? You’re sure he didn’t take her out?”

 “I’m sure. He’d had to’ve gotten by me and he didn’t. Not with her, at least. There’s a lamp down here somewhere.”

I heard the scratch of a match then saw the older lady, Miz Tatum who owned the boardinghouse, light the wall lamp. That was when I saw the other lady for the first time. Oh yes, she was a beauty, she was. Long red-brown hair that she wore loose and bright sparkling eyes that looked so sad when they found me.

 Her hands began touching me but it was such a soft touch that I didn’t mind. She made me get up and supported me to the cot. The boardinghouse lady was making clucking noises but the other lady wasn’t. She was asking my permission to see where he’d hit me. I was so in shock and so afraid that he would find me talking to these white people again that it didn’t enter my mind that she was asking permission! Ask permission of a Negro child? Unheard of in those days but she did.

 Miz Tatum gasped but the other lady was just as calm as could be when she saw the marks his belt had left. Over her shoulder she asked for some warm water in a basin. From a bag she carried, she took out some things. One was a little packet of powder that she poured into the water. She bathed this concoction over my body, telling me that I was going to be okay. And she was so convincing sounding that I believed her and you know what? I was! Of course it took a little while.

 If I had known who that lady with the soft hands was, this story might be ending right here. But I didn’t know then who she was. All I knew and cared and heard was that she was a nice lady with a pleasant voice and delicate touch. Miz Tatum never said her name, never called her nothing.

Yes, child, she was Honor Cartwright. Doctor Honor Cartwright and before she’d married Joe Cartwright, she’d been Doctor Honor Whitaker. That evening in that boardinghouse basement I didn’t know that. Wish I had’ve.

 Anyway, back to the story the way it really happened, not the way I wished it would have.

 The lady tended to all the hurting places on my body and she tried to get to the ones I kept hidden inside. Like the man I was with – did he do things to me he shouldn’t have been doing? Miz Tatum had heard him say something about me working for him. Was that right? Mister Wickham had said he was a drummer – a salesman- was he telling the truth?

 It hit me then that he had lied to Miz Tatum. His name wasn’t Wickham.and I knew he wasn’t a salesman. I blurted out what I knew then wanted to lay down and die when I saw their faces change. I closed my mouth and it stayed that way until after they left. I only opened it then to cram the corner of my shawl into it so nobody would hear me crying.

 The next morning bright and early, Mister W came and got me out of bed. He looked plenty angry and sounded it, too, when he told me we were leaving. I didn’t see that he had gotten his sons and I asked him where they were.

 “Still with their mother, but not for long. Come on, girl. We got some miles to go.”

 I followed him right meek and quiet as we left the boardinghouse. Miz Tatum stood on the steps with an ugly scowl to her face. She tried to tell me that I could stay with her if he beat me again but he snapped at her. Told her to mind her own business and we left her standing there in the early morning sunlight. We went to the General Store and bought things that a person might need if they were starting to keep house but it was only the very basics. A fry pan, a coffee pot, a big pan and some tin plates, and small things like that. He bought some foodstuffs too. Flour, some tins of meat, a ham and coffee beans and such. In amongst everything, he threw in some cloth, ’bout two yards. I wanted to tell him that wasn’t enough to do much with but I figured out he wanted that for diapers.

 We loaded this all into the back of a buggy and, climbing onto the seat, headed out of town.

 My sense of direction has never been real good unless I could see where the sun was. That morning, I figured we were headed south, mostly, and we stayed headed that way for the morning. He made lots of turns and before I knew it, even though I could see the sun, I couldn’t have told you where we were. When he rounded that last bend in that washboardy lane, I saw a battered little cabin.

 “This is it,” he exclaimed and pulled up at the door.

 Even by my calculations, it was a poor place to live, much less raise a couple of boys. The porch was more like a stoop, two planks of wood laid on the ground the width of the door. Inside wasn’t any better. Cobwebs and dust everywhere; broken down furniture and no stove, just a fireplace for cooking and heating.

 “Get with it,” he snarled as he started unloading stuff from the buggy. “I’ll be back with the boys before sundown and I want this place livable by then.”

 When he left, I stood there in the middle of it all and wondered where to start. Wondered if I should start at all. One good stiff breeze and the place would come tumbling down, I was sure. If I’d had half a mind that day, I would have packed my carpetbag full of the food and started walking. I could have been a long ways off when he come back. But I didn’t. Instead, I found some stiff dried grass and made a broom – sort of a broom- and set to cleaning.

 It was well after dark when he came back. Truth was, I heard the babies crying long before he came around the curve. I stepped into the yard with the lantern lit so I saw what he’d done. The boys, both of them, were trussed up like hogs in the back of the buggy. They’d been frightened, surely, and had soiled themselves. Both of them poor boys were bruised too, their eyes puffy from crying. What did Mister W- the man who said they were his sons and that he had to have them- what did he do? Did he pick them up and hold them, tell them it was going to be all right? Did he try, even in the least, to console them?

 “Get them out. Clean them up. Give them some supper. But most of all, shut them up!” he screamed, making the poor horse nearly bolt.

 I did as I was told. By the time he came in from tending to the horse, I had them quieted down and was cleaning them up. They looked to me to be about three and four years old. The bigger of the boys had bright blue eyes and sandy red hair. He spoke rather well, I thought and said his name was Hoss but when I expressed some doubt, he claimed that it really was. The other boy, the littler one, was dark haired and dark eyed. Hoss told me that his name was AJ and that they were brothers.

 “Brothers, huh? How old are you, Hoss, and how old is AJ?” I asked, not really expecting an answer but I was surprised.

 “T’ree.” AJ answered, holding up three very dirty fingers on each hand.

 “That’s how old you are, but how about brother, here?” Sitting on the floor, I pulled him closer to me so I could take his dirty, smelly clothes off him. He resisted, fighting me like a little wild animal. While I was struggling with him, Hoss told me that he was three as well. Then he said some strange words and AJ quit fighting.

 Because I had no way to give them a hot bath, cold water had to do. I tore the fabric into sizable pieces and proceeded to make them both clean diapers although Hoss claimed he didn’t need them. He seemed rather proud of the fact that he could use the chamber pot. He looked downhearted when I told him we didn’t have one and that he would have to either wear the diapers or go out into the woods since I hadn’t noted an outhouse either.

 When Mister W came in, the boys stared up at him with huge round eyes. I got up off the floor and they promptly hid behind me.

 “Got ’em straightened around, have you?” He hung his hat on the little stick of wood I had pounded in the gap between the logs that afternoon. I’d meant to hang my purple shawl there. Now, a million dollars couldn’t have made me hang it there.

 He sat down at the rickety table and asked if I’d made supper yet. I muttered that a person could only be expected to do so much. His fist slammed down on the table, nearly collapsing it.

 “Listen here, all of you!” he shouted and I could feel the boys trying to hide in the scant folds of my dress. He leaned around the table and caught AJ by the arm and yanked him about. “There will be no crying. You say quiet, you understand? And you, Miss-Uppitty, you mind your tongue and your manners or you’ll get worse than what you got last night. You understand?”

 I could see AJ was pouting up to cry, his little shoulders shaking. But then a strange thing happened. He plopped onto the floor and began slowly rocking back and forth, silently, his arms across his chest.

 “What in the blue blazes?” Mister W yelped and grabbed the child up. It was as if he hadn’t a bone in his body because AJ slipped from the painful grasp and sank back to the floor.

 Me? I stood there open-mouthed too but for a different reason. It was the same way, the same thing…all over again…some many years apart…like Tristan. Like the one friend I had ever had in the world. I swallowed hard a couple of times and while I could hear Mister W saying words, it was as though he was a long ways away. Finally, I squatted down beside the little dark head to make sure. Yes, the same distant stare, unfocused eyes and faint smile. I patted his dark curls and fought to keep a smile from my own face.

 “You just go ahead with your staring-off time, little fella. There’s times when I think we all need to be doing just that – studying the world a little better.”

 Looking up, I met Mister W’s eyes straight on.

 “What’s with the boy? He havin’ some sort of fit or something?”

 Thinking back on it now, I know what I should have said. If I had told him that I was a witch and had put a curse on the boy, and that I could do the same to him…yes, I know I would have been lying. But it might have ended right then and there. I can tell you, the look on that man’s face would have been priceless. Don’t misunderstand me. I wanted to do it. I should have faced him and, remembering how Mistress Stone spewed out her venom about voodoo and such, I know it would have gotten to him. Forget about the fact that I only knew the word voodoo and curse. I had no idea what it would have entailed. I just knew the reaction most folks had to the words alone.

 But I didn’t do that. Instead, I just explained that sometimes, maybe, he’d just have to go stare-off and think about things real deep so they’d make sense to him.

 Mister W snorted and gave a really harsh bark of a laugh. It was full of scorn. Then he sat quiet, thinking to himself while he chewed on the side of his thumb. A time or two, he stroked his beard and sighed. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking. Truly, I didn’t because just looking at the expression on his face, I knew it wasn’t good.

 I picked up AJ and though he resisted me, it was easy to move him so I settled him beside the fireplace. While I made supper, Hoss kept vigil over his brother. Gone was the talkative young child with startlingly blue eyes and easy-manner. Instead he was cautious and wary. And silent. I made them each a bowl of cornmeal mush and sweetened it well. Hoss ate his, all the time, keeping an eye on Mister W and his brother. I fixed Mister W a thick slice of ham and some cornpone with coffee to wash it all down with. He ate with about the same relish.

 AJ came out of his trance about the time I was cleaning up the dishes. Like Tristan, one moment he was sitting silent and stiff and the next he was up and active. He ate the rest of the mash and asked for a drink. I went to give him a cup of water but he shook his head and pointed at the pot on the table and said “coffee, please,” just as clear as you please. Somehow I knew if I asked, Mister W would deny it so I didn’t ask. I just got the boy a little coffee in a tin cup. Just like I would have asked any adult, I asked him if he wanted cream and sugar in it and was surprised when he shook his head no.

 “What we gonna do about beds and such?” I asked, watching AJ, entranced by this little one so much like my old friend Tristan.

 He snorted and stood up, shoving the table away as he did. As if to answer me, Mister W went to the narrow cot-like bed I had fixed up that afternoon. He sat down and pulled off his boots then stretched out on it, one arm behind his head.

 My dignity rose up full-blown. “Where your boys gonna sleep? On the floor? Ain’t no way to raise –”.

 His free arm slashed out, one long finger pointed at me menacingly. I’ll own up to cringing, afraid that I would anger him enough that he would come after me with his belt again. After all, the first set of welts had barely gone down, much less healed over, despite what the lady had done for them.

 “Don’t worry about them. Make sure the door’s bolted tight and fire is banked. Sleep any where you want. I don’t care. Now put out the light. Lamp oil ain’t cheap and ain’t that easy to get.”

 I did as he demanded and by the light from the hearth, I settled into the farthest corner from him. It wasn’t long before the boys come over and curled up with me. We made a sad little knot, we did, sharing my purple shawl for warmth. It wasn’t long before the boys were asleep. Looking down at them, I had to wonder what was going to happen with them.

 No, it took me a while for it to come to me that he’d kidnaped the boys. Remember that I only knew what he’d told me and some of it made sense. But that night, the more I tried to make it all fit together, the less it did. I wished that the boys could have told me more but I just had the feeling that they had no more understanding of it than I did. One thing was certain. Mister W didn’t treat them like he was proud to have them as his sons.

 That set me to thinking that maybe they weren’t his. Maybe they were his wife’s but not his. Why would he want them then? For the same reason one kid wants a lollipop when he sees another with one? Jealousy?

 I wasn’t far wrong but then spite and jealousy are often confused with one another.

The next morning, Mister W had his breakfast then pulled on his jacket and hat and went outside. I thought he was going to tend to the horse but he didn’t. I know because when I went outside with the boys a while later, the horse was carrying on in the corral. Disgusted, I fed and watered the animal then went around the place, looking for him. He was no where to be found. With the boys trailing me, I went for water down to the stream and, filling both buckets, had to lug them back to the cabin. Hoss had to prove to me that he was house-broke and was proud of the fact that he could make water in the bushes. That, I knew, couldn’t go on forever so when we got back to the cabin, I found the little shovel and went out back.

 The boys thought it was great fun to dig so we made a game of it. It wasn’t long before we had a fair-sized hole dug. One of the wooden boxes we’d brought groceries in fit over it turned upside down. Using my fist I was able to knock out one slat. That made a place to sit, even though it was mighty uncomfortable. It would do, I told myself, until I could get Mister W to build us a real outhouse.

 While the little ones took a nap, I washed out their clothes and laid them on the bushes to dry out. The clothes were of good quality material and sewn up by someone who knew what they were doing. Right down to the socks they had been wearing, but where were their shoes? I checked in the buggy that Mister W had pushed into the brush as though to hide it. No shoes. That was a puzzlement that they would have on socks but not shoes unless….they had been napping when Mister W had…taken them.

 A scene flashed through my mind of him sneaking into a house, into where the boys were sleeping like they were then, and stealing them. The thought made me shiver but suddenly it all made sense. He’d kidnapped his sons.

 But why would a man kidnap his own children?

 That’s right, they weren’t his but you’re getting ahead of me and my story.

 Mister W showed up right about dusk. He was carrying a long barreled rifle and had leaves caught in his hair. He’d been in the woods all day, clearly, and from the direction he came walking, I’d’ve bet my last penny that he’d been watching the road. After he ordered up his supper and eaten it, he settled back in his chair and just studied the boys.

 “These boys gonna need some clothes, Mister W. And shoes.” I put down the dish I had been washing but I didn’t turn to face him.

 “After tonight, maybe tomorrow morning, they won’t need anything.” He put a special emphasis on the word “need”. Now you can interpret what he said in two ways. One way, he might have meant that all of their cares would over because he was going to maybe fall into luck and it would be like a rich man saying he had no wants because he could get anything he wanted. Or the other way, meaning that a body had no wants and needs because they had passed on. Dumb me, I took it to be the first. I whirled around quick, a smile on my face.

 It all disappeared in an instant because I could tell by that queer light in his eye that it was the second. And if the boys..if he killed the boys…then he would also have to …get rid of …me. I swallowed hard and felt the stone hearth beneath my own bare foot.

 “Don’t look so surprised, girl! Those boys, they’re worth a whole lot more than you are and there’s two of them. Way I got it planned, once Cartwright comes through with the money, we can leave one of them here and take off. I’ll need you to take care of the kid, you see. Then, when I need more money, we wire Cartwright. Tell him he can have his other son for another fifty thousand dollars.”

 I was suddenly sick to my stomach. Old memories came back of Mistress Stone screaming at my mother; I felt the floor again beneath my hands as I’d hid under the bed, I felt it shudder. Worst of all, I saw Mistress Stone on the settee, red blood dripping off her fingers.

 “Did you…did you kill their…?” I whispered, fear closing my throat tight.

 Again, he laughed that ugly laugh then poured himself the last of the coffee. “I haven’t killed anyone…yet.”

 That gave me a real cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, that “yet”. As I finished up the dishes, I tried to tell myself that he wasn’t really a bad man; that there was decency in him. Yes, I was fooling myself.

 You aren’t making notes any more, child. Is your hand tired? No, I didn’t really mean to talk this long. I suspect that you need to be getting along. Are you sure? You are a good child to be such a willing listener to an old lady relive her memories. I mean after all, all of these folks died a long time before you were even born. Oh, you’ve seen the pictures? Do me a favor some day, if you would? Bring them by so I can see them, would you? It’s been a long time…..

 Well that night, a little storm blew in like it sometimes does up here in the Sierras. All thunder and lightning. Wind whipping through the pines making that moaning sound. It was the first time I’d ever been through something like that and it frightened me. Not as bad as it bothered the little ones, though. Hoss, half crying and hugging his brother asked when he could go home to his mother. Little AJ was real quiet with his eyes wide open and hanging onto Hoss for dear life. Mister W hollering at them didn’t help matters much. Didn’t stop him. When he went to shake Hoss to make him stop crying, I got between the boys and him. He hit me. Oh Lordy, how hard he hit me across the mouth. I was on my knees trying to get up when I heard a shout outside.

 “Whitaker!”

 He looked down at me and smiled. “Get the boys and get back into that corner,” he directed, pointing to the far corner, where it was the darkest. I was slow to move so he kicked me like I was some dog on the street. The boys came to me, skirting him and we went into the corner and hunkered down on the floor.

 “You bring the money?” Mister W shouted, standing beside the closed door with his rifle in his hands.

 “I want my sons first!” came the voice again, caught on the tail end of a roll of thunder.

 He was across the room and grabbing up AJ in the wink of an eye. He snapped at me to hang onto Hoss. With a squirming boy under his arm, he was having trouble holding onto his gun but he shifted him to his chest and started for the door.

 I was a coward right then. Before he opened that door I knew what he was going to do but I couldn’t make my legs work. Like I was made out of stone, I watched as he flung open the door and held that baby out by one arm in front of him. If the voice outside was the boys’ father and was in a mind to shoot, AJ would have been caught in the direct line of fire.

 “Throw the money over here!” Mister W shouted just as a blaze of lightning lit up the rainy sky.

 I heard something hit the side of the cabin with a dull thud then he laughed. Clear as a bell to this day I remember his laugh and the sound of him pulling the trigger back on his rifle. It was aimed right at AJ. As he stood there in the dim lamplight, with that storm raging behind him, he turned to look at me and I saw his eyes. They were glittering like handful of diamonds.

 Where did the strength come from? I never knew and I imagine that I will go to my grave with the memory of what I did next. I had no weapon, you see. There wasn’t even a knife I could have used! So I used what I had….yes, my fancy purple shawl. It went from around my shoulders to around his neck in about half a heart beat. With my knees jammed into his spine, he fell forward and the gun barrel moved enough that when he did pull the trigger, he didn’t hit nothing. I take that back. He did hit something – the ground – his body hit the ground with me on top of him, choking the life from him. I heard something snap and I heard myself screaming. My shawl tore in one hand so I grabbed a little closer in on it and commenced to twisting it around his neck. It tore again and I lost my grip completely so I did the only thing left to me. I beat on his head and shoulders with my fists. All the while I was doing this, I was screaming “No, no, no, no…”

Oh, sweet Jesus, I didn’t mean to start crying again. Just give me a bit, now. It’s not him I’m crying for, you understand. It’s me. For the first time, I’ve told my secret to a living soul. I killed him. Do you understand that? I killed a man with my bare hands. Snapped his neck, I did. I killed him. If I understand things rightly, the law could still arrest me and since I’ve just confessed, they could put me in jail. I’d die in jail, you know. Without my plants, without my afternoon beer, without…without…everything. Let me feel sorry for myself for a minute, would you?

 You want to know something? The scarey part of it? I would kill him all over again.

 So there I was, beating this man who I’d just killed; I was beating him with my little fists and screaming like a banshee. He was suddenly everything bad in my life, my mother killing Mistress Stone, her getting crazy on opium, the men who used her and, yes, the man who took her away from me. I know, the logic escapes me, too, and it has for years but I guess I just couldn’t stand the idea of someone taking that boy away from his mother. Just couldn’t.

 Then, right there beside my ear, I heard this strong voice of a man telling me that it was okay; that I could stop hitting Mister W. When I imagine the voice of the angel Gabriel, it’s his I hear. His hands were pulling at me, trying to get me away from the body and into the cabin out of the rain. I looked down at those hands and they were strong hands. I finally looked up at him. His dark eyes were so full of compassion that I thought he was some angel, come to look out for this poor little black child. He held me close to his chest and I could smell the wet wool of his jacket.

 “Joe? AJ okay?” his voice rumbled in his chest when he spoke. He picked me up like I weighted nothing at all and took me into the cabin behind a smaller man who was carrying AJ.

 The man put me down on the cot. He could have put me on the floor for all I cared because just watching Hoss and AJ and the other man made me feel like I was sitting on a cloud. Those little boys were just clambering all over that man. He was hugging them and crying and saying their names over and over. He’d study one real close then the other. Hoss, he was crying and saying “Pappa, Pappa, Pappa.” Little AJ though, he was just happy to held and he had his arms wrapped around his pappa’s neck and hanging on for dear life.

 That man, I thought, that was their real father. Mister W was nothing to these boys. Nothing. With that thought, I looked towards the doorway. The other gentleman was dragging the body away from the door, out into the night rain. When he stepped back into the cabin, I caught my first real good look at him.

 My heart stopped beating for a minute when I saw him in the thin lamp light. He was tall and broad shouldered with dark hair and he was wearing dark clothing. My child’s mind put a name to him for he looked like Tristan but all grown up. Trying to make sense of it, I just couldn’t. Things were happening much too fast for me.

 “You don’t need to look so frightened,” he said, that wonderful voice whispering to me as he squatted in front of me. He took his hat off and I could see his face better. When he turned to lay it aside, I breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t Tristan.

 “What’s your name?” I ventured, shaking with the cold and the fear that I might be wrong. Or right.

 “My name is Adam Cartwright.” He nodded to the other man. “That’s my brother Joe and those are his sons AJ and Hoss. What’s your name?” As he asked me, he touched my knee.

 Stammering and with my teeth beginning to chatter, I told him. Then he did the darndest thing. He took off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. He asked me, real gentle still, if I was hurt. I shook my head, not taking my eyes off of him. With his fingertips, he wiped my cheeks then laid his hand against my face.

 “Joe, the boys okay?” he asked but he wasn’t even looking in their direction.

 “Yeah, they’re okay. We got to get ’em home, Adam.”

 Adam shook his head, finally tearing his eyes from me. As he opened his mouth to speak, a bolt of lightning hit real close. It scared the boys – me, too- and they really cut loose with the wailing.

“We can’t get them home in this weather. Think about it.”

 “If we go straight over the ridge-” Joe began but Adam cut him short.

 “At night? Even if you take one of the boys and I take the other, with Miss Dupres here behind one of us, in the dark, in the rain? That’s foolhardy.”

 “There’s a buggy in the woods,” I offered.

 “Can’t get a buggy over the ridge. Only way back would take us too long. I don’t want to risk these young ‘uns, either, but, Adam, I need to get them back to Honor. The sooner the better.” There was real pain in his words and for the first time, I took a good look at him.

He sat on the floor, his sons gathered up to his chest. At one point, he laid his cheek atop Hoss’ head and squeezed his eyes closed like he was trying not to cry. He was wearing a long coat that they used to call a stockman’s coat and it was soaking wet. Somehow he’d gotten his hat knocked off and his hair was damp. I figured that he had to be older than Adam because his hair had lots of gray in it while Adam’s was still dark.

 Oh, you’ve seen pictures of them? Is that so? I don’t believe I ever have but I can still see them in my mind’s eye. Handsome men, weren’t they? Don’t you go telling anyone but I fell in love that night but for the life of me, I couldn’t make up my mind with which one. Seeing how in those days, the races didn’t mix, it was all just a pipe dream, my loving either one of them.

 Adam finally convinced Joe that they would be better off heading home in the morning and while he went out to take care of things, the horses and what-not, I made a pot of coffee. Joe asked me if there was anything to eat.

 “Yes, sir,” I answered him, suddenly very much aware of him in the small cabin. “You want me to fix you some ham and cornpone? That’s about all I know how to cook, sir.”

 He laughed and I liked the sound of it. “I’ll fix us something, okay? You go sit on the bed and cover up. You’re still shivering and I can’t have the person who saved my sons getting sick. My wife would have my hide.” Even as he talked to me, he was pointing me back to the bed. I went without resistence.

 “You married to these boys’ momma?” I asked, curling my bare feet up under me to warm them. I longed for Adam’s coat but he’d taken it back to go outside.

 “Yes,” he answered, hauling the ham down from where I had hung it from the rafter. “Have been for some time. She’s a nice lady and I think you’ll like her when you meet her. Her name’s Honor and she’s a doctor.” He smiled as he spoke about her and I knew he loved her from just the way he said her name.

 I gathered AJ and Hoss up to where I was and they came willingly. Joe asked me how long I had been with Mister W. He asked real careful like.

 It was beginning to dawn on me that I was in some trouble here. For all these men knew, I had been in cahoots with him so I had to make them understand that I hated him worse than anything. Still, I dared not breathe a word about my mother and Josiah. There was a gnawing fear that they would send me back to my mother and a different fear that I would not be able to go.

 For the most part, I told him the truth. That I’d been born in the South before the war and that it had taken me a while to come west. That Mister W had hired me to take care of what he claimed were his sons. I left out all mention of my mother, of being sold to feed her opium habit, of her killing Mistress Stone.

 “Missus Tatum at the boardinghouse where he stayed said he beat you pretty bad. That so? The lady who took care of you, that’s my wife, Honor. Had no idea you’d become so important to us.”

 I shrugged my shoulders, wondering what else I could say. AJ saved me from making a fool of myself when he patted my face then laid his little head against me. Hoss, full of himself, snagged a hold of his father’s trouser leg and told him that AJ had been sick again. Immediately, Joe turned from his work at the fire.

“He wasn’t sick. He just had a staring-off time,” I explained. Then, before I could stop myself, I was telling about Tristan. “You leave ’em alone and they’ll be fine after a bit. Tristan, his mother tried shaking him and screaming at him but it didn’t do any good.”

“So you’ve seen this before? With your friend Tristan? Where’s Tristan now? He’s older now, right? Did he outgrow it?”

 “Don’t know what happened to him,” I answered, a part of my soul just trembling, thinking about what would have happened to him without a mother or a father. I prayed that Master Stone came home from the war and took him away from Charleston and the troubles. Knowing what I know now, that probably didn’t happen but even then I knew I couldn’t do anything about his situation. Now, AJ, I could help his and I said so.

 “How?” Everything about Joe Cartwright that night pounced on that one word.

 “If I tell you, you let me go? I mean I done killed a man and, by all rights, I ‘magine that tomorrow morning you gonna take me into the sheriff.”

 “You killed Thad Whitaker in self-defense, young lady. There won’t be any need for you – I take that back. Yes, you’ll have to talk to the sheriff but Adam and I were witnesses. So you name your price. Tell me how I can help my son and whatever you want is yours.”

 I was relieved that he said he’d stand up for me at the sheriff’s and that it was self-defense and all. But I hadn’t an idea in the world how to cure that baby. There still isn’t a cure today for autism. Nor did I have any idea of what I would have asked for even if I had an answer. So I sat real still, that same little boy warming my hands and my heart. Joe was at the end of the bed, leaning forward and I saw that he was hurting because of his son.

 “I don’t want anything. All I know to do for this ‘un is just love him the way he is. If he goes to looking at things real close and quiet like, you just let him be. That’s all.”

 Oh, the pain I saw on his face made me want to cry. It made me want to do something – anything!- to make it go away. In the end, all I could do was say that I was sorry that I made him think different.

 He thanked me, his voice rough with emotion and then he turned back to his cooking.

 Adam came in, dripping water everywhere. He made a big show out of sniffing the air then he smiled. “Please, Miss Dupres, tell me you made the coffee. If Joe made it, we’re liable to have to cut it with a knife to drink it.”

 Real late that night, with the storm outside still blowing good, but the fire banked and warming the cabin, we tried to sleep. The boys were on the end of the bed, curled up together like a pair of kittens. Their father had made sure they were cleaned up before he bedded them down and even said a little prayer with them, thanking God for their mother, a bunch of other folks and, to my surprise, me. Made me feel right special, it did. Then he and Adam turned their saddles up and stretched out before the fire.

 I dozed on and off. Once, when a crack of thunder woke me up, I heard them talking between themselves.

 “I imagine Cathy feels pretty bad but what could she have done, Joe? You saw the knot on the back of her head where Whitaker knocked her out. And she came to find you as soon as she could, didn’t she?”

 “I just think she could have done something. Fought him off, maybe. Hell, Adam, she said he introduced himself as traveling salesman but owned up that she didn’t see a peddler’s wagon or even some satchels. She was suspicious of him but she turned her back on him anyway…and it nearly cost me my sons.”

 “All I am saying is that you need to go easy on her. She was trying to help Honor by watching the boys. Jesus, Joe, what are you gonna do when Honor has this baby she’s carrying now? Three little ones, Joe.”

 “Done figured that out, Brother. Helen up there. AJ has taken a shine to her and you know how bashful he can be. She says she has no family. I’m gonna offer her a job taking care of the boys.”

 What do you think I was doing? I was smiling into the dark, hearing him talk like that. From what I could gather, I had just found myself…yes, sirree. I’d just found the silver lining to my cloud.

 Come morning, they’d pulled the buggy out of the woods and hitched the horse to it. They left the cabin just like it was. Said it was only the right thing to do to leave some foodstuffs in it, what with folks maybe needing it. They wrapped Mister W’s body up in a tarp and slung it across the saddle of a handsome pinto horse. Got to say that they didn’t do it none too gentle. Joe was ready to let it rot where it lay but Adam had just glared at him until Joe threw his hands in the air to give up.

We rode back into Virginia City, giving the body to the undertaker. Joe gave him twenty dollars to bury the body. The sheriff was out of his office so they left a message that he was to come out to the Ponderosa when he could. That was the first time I ever heard the name of the ranch. I rolled it around on my tongue for a while. See, back in South Carolina, all the fancy plantations had names. Some were real French words but others just sounded like it. With a name like The Ponderosa, I figured it was some sort of fancy plantation we were headed to.

 You could tell that Joe was anxious to get home. He kept that poor old buggy horse going at a good clip but every once in a while, he had to let up. That was when he would take one of the boys onto his lap and let them hold onto the reins. The more I watched him with them, the more I knew that he was a good father to them. Moreover, listening to Adam teasing, he knew it too.

 “Just wait until you and Athena have young ‘uns,” Joe shot back after Adam had made a typical comment.

 “Who’s Athena?” I asked, trying to keep AJ occupied since Hoss was driving.

 “She’s the woman Adam’s gonna be marrying in a few months,” Joe explained then tacked on “finally.”

 Adam made like there was something wrong with his coat then he cleared his throat and stared straight ahead. I took it to mean that it had taken him a while to work up the courage to ask this Athena to marry him.

 “Some people don’t fall in love overnight, you know,” was his quiet answer.

 We finally pulled up the yard of this great big log house. All of a sudden, there were people everywhere but right in the middle of the hubbub was the woman who’d taken care of me. She was kissing the boys and Joe and crying and laughing all at the same time. There was this white haired man who I thought must have been Moses, he looked so grand. And this little old Chinese fella darting in and out.

 I was drawn into it as well and I swear, it was like being in the middle of a human tornado. A redhaired man shook my hand and a lady dressed in old fashioned clothes, and carrying a baby, kissed my cheek. It was overwhelming to be greeted like that and I wanted to do the same thing Hoss was – cry.

 Then I saw her. She had just stepped back from giving Adam a hug and a kiss and her hands were still on his shoulders.

 Give me a stack of Bibles and I would take an oath on them. She looked just like what I remember Mistress Stone looking like. When she spoke to Adam, I heard her voice draw out with a very Southern softness. He’d said something and turned towards me when my world came unglued.

 I turned and fought my way through the crush of people. Blinded by the tears in my eyes, I stumbled into the barn and made my way to the farthest back corner. There I knelt down, squeezing my body between the wall and feed bin. I buried my head in my hands and tried to pray. I couldn’t. I was so scared, so frightened, I couldn’t even make a sound. Mistress Stone wasn’t dead. She’d come hunting for me and my mother. She would take her vengeance…

 “Helen? Helen, where are you? Helen?” It was Joe calling me. Of course he found me but he didn’t try to pull me out like I would have expected him to. No, he hunkered down before me and touched my arm. “Helen? What’s the matter? Helen?”

 “It’s her. My old mistress from Charleston. She’s come lookin’ for me because we – I – ran away.”

 He snorted then said over his shoulder, it sounded like, “She’s right here. Let me talk to her alone a minute.” Then his voice come back to me. “That’s Athena. She’s the woman Adam’s gonna marry. Remember us talking about her? She’s Southern, there ain’t no getting around that but I don’t think she’s the lady who used to own you.”

 “It’s her,” I repeated and tried to fold myself into an even smaller ball.

 “She might look something like her but I don’t think she’s who you think she is.”

 “It’s her. I heard her voice.”

 “Look at me,” that soft Southern drawl demanded and even though I had left it all behind me, the training I’d taken from Mistress Stone’s hand shone through. I looked at her. “My name is Athena Dawson. Before it was Dawson it was not Stone. Before I came to Nevada, I lived in England. Before that I lived outside of Atlanta, Georgia.”

 I shook my head. There was still a lot of Southern in her speech for her to have lived long somewhere else like she was saying. “There’s still a lot of fuzz on that peach!”

 That made them all chuckle and I looked away. Her hand caught my chin and would have made me look back but Joe took her hand away.

 “Listen to me, Helen,” he said and his voice had a no nonsense tone to it. “I can promise you right here and now, no one will ever harm you if I can help it. I want you to stay here. To live here. AJ needs you to look out for him when he has one of his – what did you call it? A staring-off time? Hoss needs you, too, because I’m sure you can keep him from getting too adventurous. Honor, my wife, the doctor that helped you when you needed help, she’d gonna need help soon. She’s gonna have another baby soon. But most of all, I need you, Helen. I can trust you to look out for my family when I’m not here. You can do that, can’t you?”

 I chewed on my lip, tears welling up in my eyes. He was the first person to ever, ever, put that kind of faith in me. Made me feel real grown up, it did.

 “And you can trust me when I tell you that Athena is not now, or ever, going to hurt you. How about it? Do we have a deal?”

 From the corner of my eye, I saw his hand, stuck out like he wanted me to shake it. Slowly, I put my hand in his. Before I knew it, I was wrapped in his arms, crying but this time from happiness……

 So that’s the whole story, young lady. Little more than you bargained for, isn’t it? No matter. I’m an old woman with lots of memories still knocking around in this old head. Have to wear my purple turban to keep them all in. Yes, that was part of the bargain with Joe. He kept me in purple shawls until he died, then AJ did, then…they all did. I was with them for a long, long time. I helped raise all Joe’s young uns and Adam’s, too, when he and Athena finally got around to having them. Joe was right, I fell in love with his wife. I also had a great fondness for Mister Cartwright. I even took to calling him Father Ben like Honor did. That little Chinese man, Hop Sing? He taught me to cook. That funny talking lady in the old style dress? Her name was Anne, and she was the foreman’s wife. She taught me how to read and write. He taught me to ride a horse.

 Yes, I learned a lot from the passel of folks at the Ponderosa. But I never did get around to really liking Athena a whole lot. We were civil to one another, of course, but she always had two strikes against her. She was Southern – she went to her grave with that honeysuckle accent. Yet there was something I held against her even more: she married Adam and I –

 What are you laughing about? Yes, to this day, I still love him. Joe, too. First loves are hard to put aside, even when they’ve been dead many a year. They aren’t dead to me. I still hear Adam’s soft voice and Joe laughing. Just like it was yesterday when I first met ’em.

 Yes, any time you want, you can come back and visit with me. I’ve got plenty of stories still to tell.

Do me a favor, will you? When you come back, would you, please, bring me those pictures of Adam and Joe so I can see them again?

 The End