Angels Make Their Hope Here Read online

  Duncan Smoot’s house was on the site of the original Smoot homestead. Rebuilt after a big burnout, it nestled on a ridge on the western chain just south of the Beaulieu house. On the next southerly ridge were the house and brewery of Ernst Wilhelm and his wife. Their land came as Hat’s inheritance and was much improved by her husband’s industry. The pretty farmland on the next ridge south of the Wilhelms was also Smoot land—that part belonging to Cissy Smoot and her son, Jan. Until Jan was considered ready to manage it, this farm was administered by Duncan and leased to Mensah Paul.

  Noelle’s home was as peculiar in Dossie’s eyes as the woman herself. Most noticeable were the strong odors that emanated. Questions arose as to what was being boiled—what concocted. The aromas were complex and confusing. In fact, the interior air was thick with smoke at most times as pots of heated unguents created clouds of steam. The fireplace, at the median point of the large rectangular room, kept fire and was attended to throughout the day. An opening to the sky, governed by a long pole, was opened so that some smoke escaped. A shelf of stones at the back of the pit formed the place for cooking food, and a further, hotter place was used for boiling and rendering.

  On the first chilly evening in Miz Noelle’s longhouse, the fire high and hot, Dossie sat close beside the woman and thought, with some displeasure, that she smelled like Mr. Duncan. Dossie recalled his stern last words. “You must learn to read and write, girl. Surely, it is what your mama would want for you.”

  Dossie’s head still spun from seeing Miz Noelle’s grandfather’s room for his books, the place for winter book studies. This had been Noelle’s mama’s schoolroom and was adjoined to the cooking rooms and storerooms by a breezeway. Here the Smoots, Noelle, and other children in Russell’s Knob had learned lessons from Madame Beaulieu, had smelled Madame’s patisserie, and had become beguiled by her mysterious domain. A central feature of Noelle’s and her mother’s instructions involved the books of plants and their descriptions of the uses of herbs and fruits. Noelle’s grandfather’s library included many texts of the drawings of naturalists. Both Jan and Pet liked to peruse the books of animals and plants that occupied an entire shelf of the room, and Noelle spurred them to gather herbs with challenges to find a tree, a plant, or a rock depicted. Both were much less the mischief-makers in Noelle’s domain of fascination.

  The boys welcomed their forays into the woods for kindling and aromatics for the women’s industry because it was lighter work than the winter chores at the brewery. They came as often as Ernst Wilhelm would allow. After supper, Noelle tackled Jan’s hair with her combs, tugging and pulling out detritus and plucking him about the ears because he resisted her. She loped off his tufts haphazardly when his chatter began to annoy her, though he was still handsome when she’d done.

  Warm near the fire and worn out, Pet leaned on his mother and slipped to sleep. When he was roused for his turn wth Noelle, his pale face had become very red.

  “Is he ill, Hattie? Has he caught a chill, you think?” Noelle asked solicitously when she pulled the drowsy boy close.

  “No. He’s likely been very naughty in his sleep is all. He is like his father when he misbehaves,” Hat replied.

  When Noelle’s brushing caused Pet’s hair to crackle and Jan refused mulled ale for himself and Pet, the boys left to sleep elsewhere. Hat and Noelle pulled out mats and pelts and arranged them around the fireplace. Ah, winter candlemaking time was the time for stories, too! Hadn’t Noelle confessed her dalliance with Edgar Vander one winter and admitted that she’d gone with him to Phillipsburg? Hadn’t she smiled and gloated and related all of the salacious details? Hadn’t Hat told Noelle the tale of her rescue and the things she’d done so that Mr. Wilhelm would bring her home? What a pity the boys had left before Noelle spun a story for them all.

  “Who brung you?” Noelle asked and pulled Dossie into her lap. Noelle gently pushed and tugged on Dossie, handling her head. It was a prerogative—a social habit of the mature women. They groomed young girls in their laps and exchanged palaver. The girls didn’t balk. Hairbrushes were applied with vigor, and youngsters were accustomed to be stung but relished their time between an auntie’s or a mama’s or a sister’s knees.

  Noelle used her comb to separate sections of Dossie’s hair down to the scalp. Grease she applied to the hair was pungent, and it traveled up into the girl’s nostrils and caused a lethargy—a calm and trusting feeling.

  “Mr. Duncan brung me here,” Dossie said timidly. She answered the woman politely but was puzzled that she’d asked so obvious a question.

  “No, little one, you were brought. You were rescued here. Where Duncan pluck you from?” Noelle continued.

  Dossie sat cross-legged with her head fully forward at rest on her chest. Well—how was she to answer? She decided to stare downward and hold her mouth closed like butter would not melt in it. Maybe the woman thought she had beguiled Mr. Duncan—put a spell on him? No, no. She couldn’t think that.

  “Young one, go and get that bag yonder,” Noelle ordered and gently pushed Dossie to her feet. “Where he pluck you out of?” the woman repeated when she came back. She took the skin bag and used a sharper bone comb from it to cut through Dossie’s thick fluff and reach her scalp.

  Fond of a range of hair dressings, women in Russell’s Knob exchanged ribbons and trinkets merrily. It was frequently a point of erotic humor that the men of Russell’s Knob enjoyed undoing and stealing hair ribbons. Noelle’s own braids, gathered into beaded thongs and hanging like horse tails, were a source of fascination for their thickness and their length.

  “What god do you follow, child?” Noelle asked as though seeking an orientation, some guidance. “No matter. All gods are welcome here. Your god must b’lieve in you. You’re here aren’t you?”

  Puzzled, unable to raise her head and study the woman’s face for clues to her meaning, Dossie spoke tentatively, with her head clamped forward onto her chest, with all of the sincerity in her small, untutored soul, “God love a turtle.”

  “Dossie,” Noelle asked in a beckoning, facilitating, prodding voice. She used her fingers on Dossie’s head to reach and coerce her. “Where you came from? Whose baby child are you?”

  Was it a song? Was it a question? Dossie began to speak before she really knew she had.

  I don’t have to show wet on my face to weep. Ooma know that. She not looking at my eyes. Every bone in me is shaking, trembling. I bite my own tongue and I taste blood in my mouth. Ooma will crush my heart with squeezing me between her hands. She pinch and twist my jaws. She grind me soft and pummel me like a round of dough. She buss me close and fill her nose with the smell of me. I bury my face in her shift for I know I must remember her this way. I must learn her good ’cause I will tear away. Me and my Ooma part from each other. My heart los’. It sink to the bottom of me. I feel sick and I lose the few little bits in mah stomach. I think bad at leaving mah Ooma. Would no child leave her mama and go forth alone what the kingfisher call. She talk loud in her rattling caw-caw. She know the surround.

  Is this the place that Ooma’s prayers had sent her? Yes, it was Ooma and Bil who had fanned her to this place. Maybe they would leave the island one day and come here?

  “Give her off to the protection of the Lord,” Bil said to Ooma.

  “We’uns on a spit of groun’ floating in the surround of water, little girl. You know it?” Dossie shook her head to say she understood, but she was uncertain. Dossie had no way of knowin’ the wide world. Bil knew that. He was putting the baby in a bulrush basket and setting it off to its fate the way Moses’s mama had done.

  Bil loaded the chest and put the crates and boxes ’board his punt. Dossie squatted on the straw—her knees hugged up to herself—chewing on a biscuit. The furniture was lashed to the boat so it would not cause the craft to heel, and other crates were pressed beside it to make a tight cargo. Bil told Dossie to let her body fall and sway with the movement of the boat and not to cry out no matter what. Bil hummed to settle to a rh
ythm. Dossie was steady enough on a small boat—been born at the Island Plantation. The sound of rushing and receding water lulls babies to sleep there.

  Bil poled away from Kenworthy’s island—steady and sure—headed for Havre de Grace, the beautiful harbor at the crux of the Big River and the Bay. Sweat rolled down his body, and his fear added an odor. He stewed in his own trepidation.

  At the helm of the shallop, Bil urged it to be fast and careful and single-minded in reaching Havre de Grace. With shushing and sighs the boat responded, and Bil and little Dossie and all of the new wife’s inherited furniture bore off to the port.

  Bil was well known as one of Master Perry’s people from the island. The regular patrollers on the river knew him and knew he had leave to go about in his shallop. These men had to consider what they’d do if Peregrine Kenworthy found them messing with his property. Dossie stayed out of sight, though. There were plenty of people who would train a scope on the water to note the passage of who or what and when on the river. Looking, looting, and salvage were big occupations for inhabitants in the spits and coves of the surround. And sometimes salvage meant bond people. Fishing a runner out of the water and taking that catch back to its master or to an auction stage was lucrative commerce.

  She has Ooma’s face, Bil thought sadly as he rowed. Between the eyes and down her nose and to the top of her lips, it is Ooma’s pretty face. Naw. It is what Ooma’s face once was before so many ordeals stamped it. Ah, Ooma’s face too had once been soft like little Dossie’s. To honor this softness Bil fanned Dossie like so many seeds—scattered her to the wind. Yes, it was time to let the breeze take her to a better dirt. Cast her out to the unknown. Master Perry’s world is a knowable horror. Save her from it!

  At Havre de Grace the raucous bargemen went off to their jolly times in the taverns and left the hours between sunset and full dark to runners, sneak-thiefs, and stowaways. Bil walked along the dockside tugging the girl by her hand, looking for the signal. At the two blinks of a lamp he recognized the helpmeet and the steamboat. Bil tangled their hands up and savored the last sight of Dossie.

  He must walk off from her now and go back. It was the plan—his pact with Ooma. He would not bear off by himself as well he might—and might succeed. He’d sworn he would return to cover Dossie’s escape and to wait with Ooma. If she gained back her strength, they would both try to run. Then they could scour to find Dossie.

  Gone, gone, gone. Ooma and him would grieve like hound dogs—moaning and whining to themselves. They would cry out loud as if Dossie had died in the water surround, but they would secretly reckon her gone to freedom. After crying for all to see and hear, in the deep dark they would rejoice. And then they will whine and whimper when they sleep for wanting to see the little girl gone on.

  “They brung us up here from ’Napolis. Don’t ’low nobody to take you back to ’Napolis,” Bil said. “Bear off to north, girl, and ne’er return.” Bil then gave Dossie’s hand to a grease-covered, loose-limbed figure with cunning eyes who shoved her onto a pile of dirty rags.

  “Stay shut—quiet!” he ordered.

  When Noelle and Hat decided there was soap enough and candles aplenty, only mending and letters were left for winter work. Dossie was pressed harder to accomplish and given lap work and Ernst Wilhelm’s honey-mulled winter ale in the evening. Hat and Noelle solicited more of her tale.

  Though now Dossie fully believed that she had been destined to come to Duncan Smoot’s heaven all along, she mused and remembered Mutt, the ragged deck boy whose foul mouth spewed water with every word he said. She recollected the smell of the numerous small cook fires in corners of the vessel and the engine itself that put out noxious clouds of smoke. The husky smell of the dockside at Havre de Grace was nothing to the stench of the steamboat. The air was almost firm enough to hold on to. As smelly as the gassy atmosphere of the boat was, the wiry figure who brought her aboard the boat had a stronger, more startling odor coming from his mouth. Spittle dribbled onto his chin in a steady wave. He reached to remove Dossie’s shift and whispered reassuringly through a flume of water. She understood finally that he was called Mutt and that she must put on a ragged costume. Then Mutt smeared her face with greasy dirt and loudly declared her the worrisome old hag that bore him. He burlesqued a foolish, cursing manner and represented the “old” woman as addlepated and harboring lice. He thus accomplished the disguise by which Dossie began her travel on the river. At dawn she sat topside and watched the water. The river was a lovely blue band, and they coursed it at a good clip. With her knees drawn up to her chin, Dossie faced the dark horizon beyond which, as Bil said, was her freedom.

  The next day the boat reached the thronged landing at Port Deposit, Maryland, a place of fast-moving rapids and busy people. This was the destination for the goods aboard their vessel, and the crew set to lifting hogsheads of tobacco and molasses onto the dock. Mutt roused his passenger, shoved a bundle into her arms, pulled her off the steamboat, and shouted loud curses at her for the entertainment of his shipmates. Mutt then leaned down to whisper that she must wait at the spot to be taken up by the next conductor on the chain.

  The wait was not long. “Take shelter in yon barn,” a woman said sharply yet maternally. She had the voice of a disciplinarian, not a cruel driver. And as she spoke she clapped her hand on Dossie’s left shoulder and pulled away a mote of thread. The child followed the woman’s instructions without hesitation, though shivering in her fears. In the barn Dossie was hurried into another costume. Molly Cropsey operated a boat that hauled farm goods along the Susquehanna with a crew of her own children. Dossie was taken aboard the barge, mixed in with the other children, and fed. “What they tell you to say if somebody ast’ you?” Molly questioned.

  “God love a turtle,” Dossie said.

  On the morning of the second day out of Port Deposit the Cropseys’ barge came to the snaggletooth rapids at Conowingo.

  “You are to stop off here and be carried onward by another,” Molly said stiffly as they approached a landing. “Do not wave us off. Be big, little one.” She punctuated her words with a kiss on the girl’s cheek, and once again Dossie’s face was baptized with the well meaning spittle of her conductor.

  Dossie wondered now what had become of the Cropseys. Hat and Noelle watched her face in silence. Even if Mr. Duncan and the people of Russell’s Knob had taken her in and saved her, Dossie could not forget what life had come before. Under the influence of ale, she was unsure if she told her tale or dreamed it. She lay back on her pallet and closed her eyes.

  That place, the place at Conowingo, had a clean, pleasantly fragrant straw aroma, and little Dossie, tossed and handled and frightened, lay down in complete surrender to what will—sleep, abandonment, capture, pain, or death. The smell of timothy grass and the concert of breathing lulled her.

  She heard a voice. A tremulous and uncertain repetition of prayers. It was a pleading, supplicating tone that became swollen with confidence and became very loud. The voice filled up the animal stalls.

  Dossie left her hide and crept to a place where she could see without being seen. To her astonishment, the exhortations were being produced by a kneeling female figure, who yelled at her God and asked him to help her and guide her and hear her. The woman stood up finally, pulled ever straighter, and opened her arms as if to encircle a congregation of listeners.

  Was no one nearby to hear? Was none other than Dossie fearful of this torrent of prayer and barking? Was the woman scalded or whipped? Why had no one come to see what the great noise was?

  The woman brought herself to an ever-wilder pitch, then fell to her knees in collapse. She murmured prayers and sobbed quietly for some minutes, then went to sleep in the straw. She was long, tall, and her hands were like water dippers.

  Dossie’s own throat became parched in sympathy or in concert with the woman’s outpouring. She became terribly, almost desperately thirsty, but also frightened. She retreated to her corner and listened to the woman’s audible slumber.<
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  Dossie continued to be startled by Evangelist Zilpha Seabold. The woman was the next conductor on the railroad, and she spewed many, many words out of herself in bursts and she barked and stuttered and her eyes blinked and swirled in their sockets.

  The two travelers set out at next sunrise, and the Evangelist took command of their congress along the path. They reached a ferry landing at midmorning. They were to make way to the town of Lancaster, where little Dossie would, to her relief when she heard the Evangelist say it, pass into the hands of another conductor. Around the town of Millersville, Dossie and the Evangelist accepted shelter in the stall of a nervous believer’s barn. Zilpha Seabold slept soundly until a sheriff and two deputies broke in upon her. The girl heard their noisy call to purpose and scattered to the corner of another stall when the men burst into the barn. Fear took her senses—made her eyes dim to blindness and compromised her hearing. She could not understand their words. She felt the first blow that landed on the Evangelist as though it had landed on her own shoulder. There was a loud cracking noise, but no outcry from Zilpha. They hog-tied the Evangelist and took her into their custody.

  She endured the darkness in the stall. At sunrise she saw a man at work in the straw. He had gathered Evangelist Zilpha’s belongings into a burlap.

  “Gwan away from here. Go on before they remember you was wid her,” he said harshly when Dossie opened her eyes and took in the scene. “Do your cryin’ on the road out of here!” he said. “Yonder is the track to some a the colored towns.” He shook her to rouse her up and off. He hoisted the belongings on her back and gave her a hickory stick and a biscuit.