There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees, and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
The brisk hammering of a woodpecker echoed through the forest of oak and pine, and Hannah, smiling, paused in her work to see if she could spot the bird. Woodpeckers always amused her; they were one of the many creatures that reminded her that God had a sense of humor. How else could there be such a thing? – an animal that got her food by banging her head against a tree so hard and fast it was a blur to a human eye – and then flying off pretty as you please like nothing unusual had happened.
Hannah was working in her garden. It was a small patch of ground that had been cleared of trees, and got enough sunlight during the short Sierra growing season to produce some sustenance. Today she was digging up the last of the potatoes, and tilling the rest of the plot. Hannah thought of it as tucking the garden in for a good winter sleep.
She was lean and still strong, though she didn't rightly know her own age. A few times, Rachael and Leah tried to work it out by what Hannah could remember, but the closest they could get is that she was born sometime between 1818 and 1823, making her somewhere around 56 years old. Hannah had always been a small girl, petite and young-looking, so that even into her teens she looked like a child. Hoping to protect her daughter from the auction block, predatory white men, and hard labor, Hannah's mama took advantage of her childlike appearance and kept changing her birthday to obscure her age. Hannah was blessed to be able to stay with her parents throughout her childhood, but the time came when her adulthood was seen and treated as the financial asset it was, given her skills as a cook and a seamstress, and being strong and healthy for outdoor work as well. She was sold and taken far away, north to a plantation in Kentucky, and she never saw her parents again.
It was on this plantation that she bore her only child, Asa, at the age of 20. He was big, strong boy for his age, and he was torn from her arms and sold at the age of 8. She was never told where he was sent or who bought him. She became crazed. She was beaten frequently, ate little, and was about to be sold off as damaged goods to some hellish fate way down river. Much of that year remained lost to her memory, but that threat sank into her like a hook and yanked her back to life. She was in Kentucky. One state north was Ohio, and freedom. She was in Hell, but she remembered that there were worse places. It was possible to go deeper into Hell, and she chose not to. She decided to live, and she decided to escape.
Hannah made it across to Ohio in 1847, somewhere around the age of 29, and made her way west with the Gold Rush of '49. Skills such as hers were in demand in the mining camps. She kept to herself, traveled alone, and needed little to survive – she kept moving, from one boomtown to the next, no clear idea where she might end up, just putting more and more miles between her and the place where her family had been ripped away from her.
Hitching a ride on a supply cart, Hannah rolled into Strawberry one day in 1851 and went looking for work at the local hotel. She cooked in the kitchen there for a short time, but found working for the Simmons was far too much like being a slave. They seemed to feel they had a right to much more than just the labor for which the employee was paid; it seemed the help was expected also to bear the brunt of the couple's drunkenness and violent moods. Martha raised her hand to Hannah once, after a customer complained about a meal. Hannah quit right there and then, much preferring to scrounge for food around her shack in the woods than work for someone who thought they could hit her. She was a capable scavenger; she went for a whole week once just eating nuts from the cones of the ubiquitous Digger pines.
Martha did not take this dismissal well, and became threatening and enraged. As Hannah turned to leave the kitchen, Martha's drunken advance was deflected by a very pretty young mother, whose charming little blond toddler Hannah had seen out on the edge of town laughing and playing with a dark-haired woman.
"Relax, Martha, Hannah won't have time to work here anymore anyway. She's going to be working with Rachael as a seamstress, isn't that right Hannah?"
"That's absolutely right, uh –"
"Leah," she mouthed, her back to Martha.
"- uh, Leah, yes, that's true. Gonna get started jes' as soon as possible. Good day, Miz Simmons."
Hannah turned to look at the small cabin, empty now, feeling the absence of her dear friends. There had been so much love in that little house, sometimes it seemed it would burst the walls.
Heath had done most of the clearing for this garden, over the years, starting when he was just barely big enough to manage an axe and a saw. Once he was older he took on the harder work of pulling the stumps, so the plot could be tilled properly. There were many years this garden kept the four of them alive, when times were really tough and they couldn't buy enough to eat. Rachael and Leah would join her in the planting and weeding and harvesting…but now it was just her, and she didn't need much. Heath had made sure she had money for what she did need. She liked growing her own food – but what she really missed was the family she had fed with this garden.
Returning to her collecting of potatoes, Hannah glanced from time to time toward the path that led up from the main trail, watching for Heath. He had written that he was coming up for a visit – Mary, the schoolmistress, had brought her the letter a few days ago.
Hannah was worried for Heath, and was feeling a bit impatient to see him. It had been a strange summer of unsettling news and ugly rumors. Hannah had no one with whom to talk or confide, now that Rachael and Leah were gone – and while she still talked with them often and at length, anyway, those conversations did not calm her fears over what she heard around town.
Hannah had never learned to read well. Rachael had taught her some, but she still found newspapers very difficult to decipher. Over the summer the papers – and thus the gossip around the saloon and the hotel and the general store – were full of news about the "Barkley bastard"; the horrific crimes he was thought to have committed; the strident calls for his lynching; and the manhunt that pursued him all over the eastern slopes of the Sierra.
Of course all of Strawberry now knew who the "Barkley bastard" was. His whole life, Heath had been "Leah Thomson's bastard", and had he quietly left town to join the Barkley family, it might be that no one would have made the connection. Unfortunately, the trial and conviction of Matt and Martha Simmons for the murder of Rachael Caulfield, and their attempt to extort Victoria Barkley, was huge news, especially in such a small, sickly town. There had been widespread jealousy, resentment and suspicion at what appeared to be Heath's good fortune – and just as much enthusiastic glee and righteous satisfaction when, a year later, they heard the mongrel upstart was being hunted in the hills like a rabid dog.
No one noticed Hannah as she went about the town. When she was a child, her father had told her that's how it went. He told her if she kept quiet and did her work, she would be invisible to white folks. He told her to use that being invisible, and keep her eyes and ears open.
"That way you learn what they're about, and keep you and yours safe as best you can," her father had said. But what she heard of her neighbor's thoughts and feelings regarding the boy she loved as her own – well, it was disturbing and dark. There were nights when she couldn't stop imagining what might be happening with him, being there in prison and all, or alone and on the run. On those nights, nightmares would come to her that she hadn't had in years.
Then, in the fall, the newspapers stopped reporting on the Barkley affair. All Hannah had to go on for a while was the mean-minded speculation about Heath's downfall that bubbled through the town. Finally, a month ago, she got a letter from Heath, saying he was safe at home in Stockton. She should have been able to stop worrying at that point, but she didn't. She was still all-overish and unsettled when it came to her thoughts about that boy, and she was certain something wasn't right.
Heath said in his next letter that he was coming to Strawberry with Jarrod and Audra. She remembered Jarrod Barkley: the oldest brother, the lawyer. He was a righteous man, Hannah felt that strongly. He was determined to do the right thing in handling Rachael's estate, such as it was. When Rachael was killed, Hannah became crazed again for a while, overcome with grief. She remembered meeting Victoria Barkley, but her memory of that day was unclear. Hannah had been more or less back in her right mind by the time Heath brought Jarrod to see her the first time.
Jarrod was a righteous man, and he had been so polite and respectful, but he didn't quite see her. During his visits to Strawberry last year, Hannah had tried to joke with him a few times, to jostle him out of his duty-bound seriousness, with no success. Maybe she'd have more luck this time.
Hannah was willing now to think about coming down to the valley, for the winter at least. Her Leah and Rachael were gone. She'd had her time to grieve for them, and perhaps it was time to move on. She could admit now that she was lonely. Those two women and that little boy were the only reason she settled in this town. They had been a family of outcasts, all four of them, and Heath now was the closest thing to family that she had left. With the exception of a few friendly acquaintances like the schoolmistress, there were no ties to bind her to this place.
When Heath had begged her to come with him last year, though, she hadn't been yet ready to leave the place where her two friends were buried. She'd needed some time to tend their graves and say goodbye. She also could see the desperation in him, and knew he was struggling with grieving and trying to find his way with that new family. Had she gone with him last year, Hannah had thought that she might have gotten in the way of him finding comfort with the Barkleys, but now she wasn't so sure. The last time she had seen Heath he had knelt by those graves in the woods for hours, and as he hugged her goodbye, she did not see in his eyes any sign that he had found peace or solace in his grief.
Another look down the trail, and then she resumed her tilling, doing what she most often did when worried or afraid or sad. She sang, her voice strong and loud, keeping time with her shovel.
Paul and Silas thought they was lost
Dungeon shook and the chains come off
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
Freedom's name is mighty sweet
And soon we're gonna meet
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
I got my hand on the gospel plow
Won't take nothing for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
As if she had sung him up out of the earth itself with the rhythm of her song, she heard galloping hoof beats, and she looked up to see Heath riding toward the house. He was speeding ahead of a wagon coming more slowly through the woods. He jumped off his horse and ran to her.
"Hannah, I could hear you singing all the way down the trail."
She watched him come with joy in her heart, but she could see it in his movement: He's been hurt. He's too thin – He reached her before she could notice much more, and scooped her up into a hug, spinning her around, saying her name over and over. She laughed and hugged him back with all her strength. He then set her down gently and knelt in front of her, as had become their routine since he had grown to be almost a foot taller than she. He looked up at her as she stroked his hair.
"Oh, Heath, it's good to see you. So good. Let me look at you." She searched his face for a long moment. Her eyes became profoundly sad. "Oh, sweet child, what have you been through -?" She touched his cheek, gently, and then shook her head as he started to speak. "Mm-mm. No. Not now, baby. Later. You tell me later. OK?" He nodded, not taking his eyes from her face. "I see you brought two brothers and a sister. I know Jarrod, so is that Nick and Audra?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"That's good, that's good –" Hannah started shooing Heath back toward the wagon so she could meet this new brother and sister. She particularly wanted to get eyes on Nick, as she had sensed from Heath's letters over the year that this brother had been displeased by Heath's arrival, and had done a great deal to make Heath's first few months with the Barkleys unpleasant and dangerous.
A few steps towards the wagon, however, Hannah suddenly stopped in surprise, staring at the big black mare. "How is it you have Nox?" Hannah suddenly asked. "How did she come to you?"
"Nox?" Heath said.
"Yes, the mare – oh, such a sad thing, what happened to that family. I wondered what became of her –"
Before Heath could get Hannah to explain what she meant, Audra had arrived, dismounted gracefully, and was running over. She, too, towered over the older woman.
"Hannah? I'm Audra, I'm so happy to meet you finally!"
Hannah was astonished at the flood of warmth that came from this beautiful blond girl-child. "Audra. My, my, my, you're like a sunflower, so tall and beautiful like you was raised up on love and sunlight. And mercy, but don't you look so much like your brother Heath. I'm so glad you came. You're the one Heath always tells me about with the horses –" Hannah leaned in and winked, whispering, "and don't tell your mother or you brothers – but he says you're the one who makes him smile no matter what."
She looked up at Jarrod, sitting in the driver's seat of the buckboard. "And I remember you, Mr. Jarrod, the righteous man. I remember you, though you lookin' a bit more rugged this time, not so lawyerly as you were. Maybe this visit I can get you to laugh a little bit."
"I'm sure of it, Hannah. Good to see you."
"And so this must be Nick." Hands on hips, she turned to study him as he climbed down from Coco.
Nick walked over, already feeling uncomfortable under Hannah's scrutiny. He cleared his throat. "Ma'am, nice to meet you." He removed his hat politely.
Hannah took a long moment to get a sense of this brother. Then she nodded, looking him in the eye. "You gave my boy a hard time when he first came, didn't you," she said, not angrily, but stating it as a fact.
"Yes, ma'am, I did," he answered, bravely holding her gaze.
"Y'know, Heath has never said a word agin' you, not agin' any of you, but I could tell. I could tell how much he wanted you to let him in. All three of you, sure, but I could tell you was the tough nut to crack. And I'm guessin' – I'm guessin' when you ain't cracked open, you can be not so nice. I'm guessin' you can be plenty mean." Nick was looking ashamed and sad now, and he started to speak, to apologize. "But," Hannah interrupted him, "once you do crack open, Lord have mercy, you as sweet as the land of milk and honey, and care for your own as ferocious as a mama lion." Heath laughed. Hannah looked at Audra for confirmation. "Am I right?"
"Absolutely," she beamed.
Nick was now blushing. He found himself inordinately pleased with her approval, and he was realizing just how nervous he had been about this meeting. "Thank you, ma'am." He glanced suspiciously at Heath. "Y'know, Heath, for an orphan, you've got more mothers than anyone I've ever met."
Hannah laughed out loud at that and raised her hands. "Yes, he do, and believe me, my Leah and my Rachael are right there watching out for him, don't you forget it." She directed this last to Heath with a meaningful glance.
Turning back to Nick, she said, "Heath has got himself some fine brothers and a strong sister around him now, praise the Lord. I already jes' love how you all seem to fit together. Audra is the heart, Jarrod is the thinker, and does that make you – the muscle? The strong arm and back?"
"Oh, there's a whole lot more to 'im than that, Hannah," Heath grinned at Nick. "Don't you let 'im fool you."
"Well, Nick, why don't you come with me - you and me'll get dinner on the table, and let these three take care of the horses and the wagon. Then once we're eating you can tell me how in the world that horse came to be with you?"
