Alligator Bayou - Donna Jo Napoli [18]
In 1867, two years after the end of the war—just two years after slavery ended. I bet there isn’t a Negro in the state whose father or grandfather was a registered voter in 1867. I’m sure there is no Sicilian. “Confederate thinking. That’s what Francesco hates. So how can Jefferson Davis not have been bad?”
Frank Raymond smiles. I smile back. We love these debates.
“He made a reputation for himself of treating people fairly,” says Frank Raymond. “Black Hawk, the great chieftain, was his prisoner and Davis won his respect.”
“What’s a chieftain?”
“Don’t you know what Indians are? I really am a bad teacher. We’re going out.” Frank Raymond puts on his shoes and flips through the canvases of paintings, choosing one of a deer in a field. He rolls it up. “Time for experiences. Are your horses free?”
“Everyone gets Sunday off. Even animals.”
“Well, I hate to rob them of their one day off, but we can feed them something nice when we get back. We’ll talk as we ride and keep our time together an English lesson. Officially.”
eight
We ride east toward the river, Frank Raymond on Granni and me on Docili. Frank Raymond talks about the Indians, who lived all across this country once. They were here long before the Europeans.
He cuts off the road, and we wind through trees draped in moss. “Stay behind me from here on. The ground gets soft, so you need to know the way. There’s a small swamp south of here.”
The trees thicken and the sky grows narrow between them, so when we finally come out at the river, it seems the world is opening up to us, water and sky forever.
The Mississippi River thrills me. Wide and rolling. The first time I saw it, Giuseppe and Cirone and I went to the town of Delta and watched the Vicksburg port from our side of the river. Wagons pulled up at the dock and bales of cotton were loaded onto a steamboat. Steamboats bring millions of bales to New Orleans all the time. Tallulah people say this is cotton land like nowhere else on earth.
But where Frank Raymond and I have come out today, there are no boats. Nothing to look at but the river itself. I’ve always loved water and swimming. From the hilltop where the cathedral stands in Cefalù, you can watch the sea. This river is different from the sea. No waves, no tides. But it calms me, all the same. The air above the water shimmers alive with spirits. Ghosts—but good ghosts. It makes my soul feel…cradled. It’s as good as stepping inside any cathedral. I make a promise: when I’m grown, I’m going to live near water.
“For a long time the Mississippi was the dividing line in America.” Frank Raymond walks his horse beside mine as we turn north. “Everything civilized happened to the east of it, and no one got too flustered about what happened to the west of it. That’s why the government decided to make the Indians move west, across the river. But Black Hawk stood up for his people. He said they didn’t want to cross over.”
“So there was a war?”
“You understand American history!”
Sicilian history has plenty of invasions in it, I think. “Will I get to meet Black Hawk?”
“Black Hawk’s long dead. No, we’re going to visit my friend Joseph. I haven’t seen him for a month.”
The horses pick their way along the bank of the winding river, then we cut inland through grasses, till we come out on a small, still pond with a cluster of purple flowers in the water at the far end. There’s a little shack on one side with a stovepipe sticking out the top.
We get off and drop the reins so that the horses can wander, drink, and graze. They won’t run off.
The sun is high and hot. I walk to the water and kneel to drink.
“Hana!”
I turn at the strange word.
An old man emerges from the trees with a musket pointed right at me. All I can see is the wavering mouth of that barrel as he approaches.
“Hello, Joseph,” says Frank Raymond.
Joseph squints at Frank Raymond and