Where the Broken Heart Still Beats (10 page)

Not long after dark, Elder John leads them in prayer, and the families drift to their own cabins. The great gate has been closed since the men came in from the fields. Everyone goes to bed; all is quiet save for the sound of the family's deep, even breathing. She drifts off to sleep, unafraid.

The next morning they are all up early, as usual. Her uncles have already left for the fields where they will work all day. She watched them go out through the gate, left standing open to catch the fresh breezes. Her father is preparing to join them. She is washing the bowls and cups from their breakfast and keeping an eye on her baby sister for Mama when she hears her father shout: "Indians! Indians! There are hundreds of them headed this way!"

She peeps out and sees them, all those men on horses, fiercely painted, riding toward the stockade in a billowing cloud of dust. Fearfully she snatches up the baby and runs to find her mother.

In a moment there is confusion everywhere. And no one thinks to close the massive gate.

Cousin Sarah is already running out to the fields a mile away to warn the men. And then she sees her uncle Benjamin walking bravely out to speak to the Indians who are gathered menacingly just outside their fort.

Scarcely daring to breathe, she and her brother John cling to their mother. She can tell that her mother is frightened, too; she keeps whispering to her father, "Silas, what's going to happen? What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," he answers, his voice flat.

Benjamin comes back, white-faced. "They want beef," he explains shortly. "They also said they want water, although that don't make much sense, because they've just come from the river and their horses are still wet."

"What's their mood, brother?"

"They're carrying a white flag, they say they've come in peace. I don't trust them, but we have no choice." He begins to gather the food and water they have demanded.

Her father steps forward. "Benjamin, don't go."

"I have to," her uncle says, and he brushes Silas aside and goes to gather the supplies for the Indians.

The others watch, paralyzed with fear, as the youngest Parker brother strides out to meet the Comanches. "They're going to kill him," Silas says to her mother.

And then the killing begins.

The Indians, with chilling whoops and yells, immediately surround Benjamin and drive their spears into him. Cynthia Ann hides her face as they scalp him, cutting off a circle of skin and hair from the crown of his head and brandishing their trophy with more yells.

Then the Indians charge into the fort, pouring through the open gate. A few of them roughly seize her cousin Rachel, who clutches her baby, James, in her arms. Silas is suddenly galvanized into action and rushes to help the shrieking, struggling Rachel. Moments later Silas lies dead and Rachel and the baby are being dragged away.

"Come! Hurry, Cynthia Ann! John! Oh, hurry—hurry!" Her mother is screaming, sobbing, trying to drag the girl and her two brothers and the baby away from the howling Indians, toward the small rear gate. She sees her grandparents and Rachel's mother running that way, too.

But several Indians, their horses snorting and stomping, Surround the five of them, and thrusting their bloody tomahawks in her mother's face, force her to let go of the girl. She is dragged away from her wailing mother and thrown on a horse behind a snarling, almost naked warrior. The man yells something, and she sees her brother John being seized and put on another horse. The captors wheel and dash out of the stockade. The dust is so thick she can scarcely see, but she does recognize her father's body and then her uncle Benjamin's as the horses gallop over them.

Blood is everywhere.

At first she is too terrified to cry out, to scream, to do anything. She looks back as her captor rides away from the fort and sees two warriors scalping the bodies of her father and her grandfather. Other Indians are running through the cabins, stealing and plundering, grabbing whatever weapons and ammunition they can find. Some of them are setting fire to the fields and outbuildings. In a frenzy of killing and destruction they slaughter some of the animals but leave others. What has happened to her mother and the others? There is no sign of them.

Then she sees the Indians rip open the feather mattresses from the beds with their spears. The last thing she sees is the feathers swirling through the air, thick as snow. She thinks about that afterward: it has been a long time since she last saw snow.

T
HE
I
NDIANS AND THEIR CAPTIVES
ride half the night. For a while she is too dazed to do anything. Her tongue is swollen with thirst, but she dozes a little, slumped against her captor's back. When they stop and make camp on the open prairie, someone ties her hands together behind her back, lashes her feet with leather thongs, and flings her onto the rough ground near the fire.

The Indians dance around them, yelling and shaking something in her face, something made from white hair. After a moment she realizes that it is her grandfather's scalp, and she turns her head away. One of the Indians strikes her with his wooden bow and forces her to look. They kick her and beat her. Once she catches a glimpse of her brother John, his eyes huge with fear and pain, and she hears the cries of Rachel's baby. After a while, the baby's cries grow weaker and then stop altogether. Is he dead, she wonders?

Throughout the long night the torment continues. Then for a time it is relatively quiet while the Indians rest, and she falls into an exhausted sleep.

At first light she is jerked awake again and thrust on a horse behind a warrior, but she is not certain if he is the same savage or a different one. She begs for food or at least something to drink, but he refuses and slaps her when she cries.

This is how it goes on day after day, night after night: a long, hard ride with nothing to eat and only enough to drink to allow her to survive, followed by a long night of abuse as the Comanches continue to celebrate their victory at Parker's Fort.

All that keeps her alive through those days is her concern for her brother John, six years old, his face and body swollen with purplish bruises. Mama always told her she must look out for him. Her own body looks much the same, and she knows that her face must also be distorted from the blows she has received. They are still alive—but who will ever come to save them?

And what has happened to Rachel and the baby, James? And to Aunt Elizabeth? They disappeared, and she does not know if they are dead or alive, or if they have simply been taken away. She looks around frantically for her brother to reassure herself that he is still here, that she is not entirely alone.

And then he is gone, too. The group has split and taken him away.

The terror does not end. She is a slave, she understands that. When she weeps in misery and loneliness for her mama and papa and the rest, they beat her. She learns to hide her tears, to present a stoic face.

After a time she is sent to live with some people in the tribe, Speckled Eagle and his wives, Calls Louder and Walking At Night. She has to serve them, do whatever they demand. Speckled Eagle doesn't beat her, but the women do, slapping her and hitting her with a stick whenever she does something wrong, or she is too slow, or they feel like it. She has to work hard, carrying water, gathering wood, doing much harder work than the sons and daughters of Speckled Eagle and his wives. She learns not to complain, that it only makes things worse.

Time passes. Her wounds and bruises heal. She begins to understand what is being said to her. She learns to answer in their words. Her body grows taller and stronger. They begin to treat her better.

Then she becomes a woman and goes to stay in the tipi of the women who are in their period. She discovers that she likes being there with them.

It is soon after that time when the white traders come and try to speak to her. Their words sound strange. She can't think what to say to them. There are things she wants to ask, things she wants to say, but she is afraid—afraid of what they will do, afraid of what the People will do. Besides, something has begun to change inside her. She is no longer a terrified child. She is a woman. And no longer a slave, but one of the People. She has begun to find her place among the People. Gradually she stops thinking about the bad things that happened to her.

In the beginning she thought all the time about running away. She made plans—that someday her chance would come, and she would go back to her home and her family. That is what the traders want her to do; she understands that.

But her home is destroyed; her family dead. She pictures again her father lying in a pool of blood, her uncle Benjamin with a spear through his chest, her grandfather's white scalp that was part of their dance those first horrible nights. She sees once more the terror on her mother's face. Surely they killed her mother, too, and the other children. And who knows what has become of John? She remembers the snow of feathers, drifting through the warm spring air, and confusion rises in her heart.

Where would she go then, with neither home nor family? She has no idea. What would these white traders do with her, where would they take her? Could they give her a better life than the one she has? The People have taken away her old life as cruelly as they took away her family. But they have also given her a new life. Hard as it is, she is afraid of losing what she has now. She knows that she cannot survive away from the People, so she says nothing, only stares at the ground. The traders go away.

The seasons pass, one after another. She marries. She bears children. She lives among the People, sharing their life. It becomes her life. The white drift of feathers comes to her only in dreams, swirling around the faces of her mama and papa and the others, like snowflakes.

The river of Sinty-ann's memory flowed strongly all through the night. She leaned against a tree trunk, eyes open and staring, seeing again the scenes of long ago in vivid clarity.

Then she saw something else: the golden eyes of a cat, all black except for those eyes, watching her from the limb of a tree. A panther, hunting for food. She knew this animal: if it was hungry, it would kill a human. She knew that this panther was not from her memory but from right now. But she was not afraid. This panther would not harm her. This was her
puha,
her power.

Shakily she got to her feet and spoke to the panther in the language of the People. She told him that she knew he had brought her medicine, and she thanked him. Then she turned her back on him and began to make her way slowly through the wilderness; the big cat gliding silently from branch to branch through the trees above her.

I shall never forget last night as long as I live.

Cynthia Ann had been gone for three days. Mama and Ben believed that she had found a horse, perhaps a wild one, and was already far away. (It seems there is no horse she cannot ride, and astride, as men do, not sidesaddle.) Papa and Martha had another opinion, that she had been killed by some wild animal. Whichever way it was, Jedediah claimed we were well rid of her, and Grandfather was not yet back from Dallas to disagree and set things right.

But I knew in my heart that she was somewhere in the woods, in some hidden break or draw or thicket, able in her Indian way to endure the storm that stripped the pears from Mama's tree, and able to remain completely still and undetected while Papa and Ben and Jed might have passed within inches of her.

At last I could stand it no longer and determined to go in search of my cousin. I would take Prairie Flower with me, trusting that the sound of the little girl's voice would draw her mother out of hiding. But I dared not tell anyone my plan, especially Mama. Her time is nearly here for the birth of our new baby sister or brother, and she is nervous and rather delicate. Papa has not stayed out searching for Cynthia Ann as long as he might, saying that his place is with Mama. I cannot disagree—but whose place is with Cynthia Ann?

During the night I awoke to the sound of Prairie Flower's quiet sobs—she missed her mother dreadfully, partly, I suppose, because she is still nursing. Or was, until Mama gave her milk from our cow, Lulu, in a small cup. She took to that quite readily, but I think she misses the closeness of her mother.

And so I got up to soothe her, walking her to and fro to keep her sobs from waking the others. The nights now are very hot, and we have taken our pallets out on the gallery to sleep where there is a breeze. I stepped carefully over the sprawling figure of my brother Ben, and tiptoed past Sarah and James. I could make out Mama's rounded shape curled next to my father's long, skinny form.

Without much thought to what I was doing, I carried Prairie Flower across the yard and led Boots, Mama's gentle old bay with its two white stockings, quietly out of the shed. When we reached the edge of the clearing I set the sleepy Prairie Flower on Boots's back and used a fence rail to mount, and finally we were on our way.

There was not much of a moon, and what there was hung so low in the sky that it offered scarcely any light. I gave Boots a free rein, since I did not have any plan as to where we would go, and let her pick her way through the thick, dark greenness however she wished.