3 
Moon Song stood on the shore of Bay City and watched the congested boat traffic, trying to get used to the idea of getting onto one of those gigantic vessels. It would be like getting swallowed by a giant animal and it frightened her more than she wanted to admit.
There was a bit of everything on the water today. In addition to the logs bobbing inside their corrals, there were working steamboats, sailing ships, ornate paddle wheelers, and smaller vessels down to a one-man rowboat. Far to one side was a sight that made her sad—a lone birch bark canoe, beautifully made. The woman who had made that canoe—and among her people it was almost always the woman who built the canoes—had been a true artist. One of her people had probably brought it here.
There had been a time when that canoe and others like it would have been the only things skimming silently through the water on these sparkling lakes. Now the bay was filled with steamships belching smoke, a calliope playing tinny music on one of the paddle wheelers, and the sound of workers yelling over one another.
She’d heard the steamship stories as she’d walked about town. Too many had their wooden decks catch fire from sparks from the smokestacks. Some had blown up while racing with other ships. Some had simply wrecked or torn apart in heavy waves.
No, it was better to walk the few hundred miles home. It had taken her and her husband less than one moon to make the trip.
Skypilot seemed to think it foolish to even consider such a thing. Since he was so determined to accompany her, and since she did not want to inconvenience him any more than necessary, she had agreed, even though she didn’t like the idea.
“Are you looking forward to our trip tomorrow?” Skypilot asked.
“On big gray boat?” She pointed at the steamship upon which she had been told they had rooms. “No.”
“I am.” She could tell that Skypilot was completely at ease as he gazed out over the water. “They say that in good weather, those things can travel up to twenty miles per hour, and I can’t wait to see what that feels like.”
“Why go so fast?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I guess just because we can. There are lots of things happening these days, Moon Song. Inventions I’ve been reading about in the newspapers that I would never have dreamed of a few years ago. Things are changing fast. A person has to hurry to keep up.”
Moon Song thought that the people she saw hurrying along the wooden sidewalks of Bay City needed to slow down, but she kept quiet. That was their problem. Not hers.
“I go back now, to Katie’s house,” she said. “Sarah said she help pack.”
“Sure thing,” Skypilot said. “I’ll walk you there.”
As they left the bay, Moon Song glanced back over her shoulder at the giant hulk of the steamboat. It did not give her a good feeling. She wished she had simply started walking north with Ayasha when she first decided to leave, before anyone else could get involved. The ship looked like a monster to her, but she would walk onto it because Skypilot was her friend and she did not want to disappoint him.
“The postman brought something for you, Isaac.” Mrs. Wilcox, the woman who owned Skypilot’s boardinghouse, nodded toward a letter lying on the corner of a square worktable where she was busily kneading bread.
“For me?” That was odd. He got one letter a month from his brother back east, and he wrote one per month in reply. That was it. He had received his brother’s monthly letter only yesterday.
“From the handwriting, it looks like it might be from a lady friend.” Mrs. Wilcox was middle-aged and genial in her nosiness about her guests. She meant no harm, but their lives were her principal form of entertainment.
He didn’t have any “lady friends” and hadn’t since his former fiancée had broken their engagement.
The envelope was of heavy, lilac-colored stationery. He had seen this stationery before. It also had a generous sprinkling of flour upon it.
“Sorry about the flour,” Mrs. Wilcox said. “Sometimes things get a little out of hand when I’m making bread.”
He knew it would make her day if he sat down and read the letter out loud to her, but this was a letter he needed to read in private.
“I’ll see you at supper, ma’am,” he said.
“Oh.” She was visibly disappointed. “All right, then.”
As soon as he got to his room, he kicked the door shut, locked it, and sat on his bed. The letter was from Penelope. The palms of his hands were beginning to sweat, and he wiped them off on his pants leg. It surprised him that after all this time, the mere sight of her handwriting could cause this kind of physical reaction.
“Father, give me wisdom,” he asked aloud. “Whatever this letter might hold, please give me wisdom.”
He glanced at the envelope again and realized that there was something peculiar about it. Instead of her customary black India ink, Penelope had used pokeberry juice to write it.
In spite of the way his former fiancée had treated him, this small observation made his heart ache. The South had been hit hard by the privations of war. Evidently, although Penelope still possessed a few scraps of luxurious stationery, she had been forced to use homemade ink to pen her words upon it.
He slit open the envelope, drew out the rich paper, and began to read.
Dear Isaac,
I found out only last week that it might be possible to contact you through the Bay City post office. The word came through many convoluted sources, so I have no idea if this will reach you. I shall pray that it does.
First of all, I want to apologize for the shoddy way I treated you. You need to know that I have spent many sleepless and tearful nights because of it.
My loyalties were greatly divided between my father’s needs and your ideology. It seemed to me at the time that it would be remarkably easy for one to espouse the cessation of slavery from one’s pulpit when one does not have to run a plantation. My father’s health was deteriorating. If he had freed his slaves like you seemed to think everyone in the South should do, his fields would have been overrun with weeds, no crops would have been planted, and we would have been penniless within the year. I begged you not to give that sermon, and was furious with you for having gone against my counsel.
All that is beside the point now. The slaves are gone—at least most of those who are able-bodied have gone. The elderly, infirm, and weak are now ours alone to care for. Because we are Christian people—in spite of what you seemed to think back then—we do the best we can with severely limited resources.
You would not recognize our plantation now. My father passed away at the height of the war. There are only a handful of us living here. I managed to plant twenty acres of cotton this spring. Yes, I said I helped plant—with my own hands—twenty acres of cotton. It will give us a little to live on.
You would not recognize me now, either. I’ve not had a new dress in six years. My hands are the hands of a workman instead of a lady of leisure. I have looked back to the years before the war, when we were young together, and wished I could have handled things differently. I truly did love you.
I still do.
I have told you the situation we are in here. If you were to come home now, there are those who would probably avoid you on the street, but you would be most welcome, so very welcome, to call upon me at my home. I still have one dress that is not too shabby to receive guests in. I would enjoy donning it, on the occasion of your visit, and we could see if there was any chance we could let bygones be bygones and begin again.
Your much humbled former fiancée,
Penelope
P.S. There are many of those among your former congregation who, like me, regret the circumstances under which you left. They remember the many fine sermons you preached and the many kindnesses you performed. I believe there might be a chance you would be welcomed back into your old pulpit if you were to come home. I have heard you have been working in a lumber camp. Forgive me for saying this, but it seems a great waste of your talents and training.
The letter drifted from his fingers onto the faded cabbage roses of Mrs. Wilcox’s carpet. He stood and walked over to the window. The harbor was visible from there, and he could see the ships vying for position, including the one he would be boarding tomorrow morning. He had actually been looking forward to taking that voyage and seeing some new countryside until a few minutes ago. Now, it felt as though Penelope had taken Moon Song’s stiletto and plunged it straight into his heart.
“I know this is best for you and the child, but I will miss you and the baby,” Sarah said to Moon Song. “I never had an Indian friend before.”
“Chippewa.”
“My people are Chippewa.”
“Chippewa?” Sarah looked confused. “I thought someone said you were Menominee.”
“My mother-in-law Menominee. We live with her people many moons.”
“I thought your husband was a French-Canadian trapper.”
Moon Song nodded. “He also French-Canadian trapper, like his father.”
Sarah frowned. “Then you’re telling me that your husband was a half-breed? He had a Menominee mother and French-Canadian father?”
Moon Song winced at the sound of contempt in the older woman’s voice, a woman she had considered a friend. “Yes. He a half-breed.”
And this—she did not say to the older woman—was the very reason she seldom mentioned her husband’s connection to the Menominee. The only thing worse than an Indian, in some white people’s eyes, was a half-breed. French-Canadian trappers were somewhat respectable. Half-breeds were not. Moon Song had long ago become weary of trying to figure out why.
“Oh, all that doesn’t matter.” Sarah dismissed her explanation with a wave of her hand. “An Indian is an Indian in my book.”
Sarah’s rudeness was so incomprehensible, Moon Song did not try to further explain the difference between the various tribes and native nations to Robert’s sister. It was obvious that the woman was no longer interested.
“The thing that is important,” Sarah said brightly, “is that you and Ayasha will get to go home.”
“Yes.” That was something on which she and Sarah agreed. Home. The word sounded sweet to her, even in English.
“Is there anything else you’ll need?” Sarah asked.
Moon Song took stock. Even though she had been so angry yesterday that she had been ready to head off with nothing but her baby and his cradle board, packing the right supplies for her journey was important. After the steamship docked, there would be a long trek through the wilderness. She needed to be prepared.
Ayasha was still nursing, so feeding him would not be a problem. Feeding herself might be. Sarah’s kitchen did not afford the rich pemmican she would prefer for the overland trip she would make after the boat docked at Copper Harbor. That combination of dried meat pounded to a powder, mixed with venison fat, flavored with dried berries, and mixed with powdered wild rice was so nutritious and satisfying that she had spent much of her young life helping her grandmother prepare it.
Unfortunately, pemmican was complicated to make and there was no time to prepare it now. Living in the lumber camp where food had been plentiful had lulled her into a regrettable unpreparedness.
Still, she had all the skills she would need to forage for food as she went along. The Michigan forests and swamps in the spring were a very different thing than the barrenness she had faced in October when she’d made her way to the lumber camp. She was young, strong, and well versed in her people’s woodcraft. There were a hundred ways to fill her belly, and in so doing, fill Ayasha’s.
She could feed herself, but keeping Skypilot full could become a burden if he insisted on accompanying her all the way to her people. She’d watched that man put away towering stacks of Katie’s flapjacks at the logging camp. She hoped he wouldn’t expect to stay with her people long if he did insist on accompanying her all the way back to her grandmother’s wigwam. The Chippewa were a hospitable and peaceable people. It was not unheard of for them to sacrifice too much of their own food supply in order to feed guests. Unfortunately, in the early spring, their winter supply of food would already be depleted. They would be on short rations until summer came and the earth began to give generously of its abundance.
She knew that Skypilot was good with an axe and good at reading a book. He had been very good at running the day he had saved Robert’s small daughter from a falling tree, but she had no idea if he had any other skills. Her guess was that he did not. At least, she had never heard him boast of any, and most men she knew liked to boast. At least the braves in her tribe did. Of course, their boasts were a great deal more empty these days since moving to the reservation.
“I hope you’re doing the right thing,” Katie said. “I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you.”
Forgive herself? Moon Song wondered about this statement. Once Skypilot left her, if she did get hurt or meet with an accident, she doubted Katie would ever hear about it.
The death of a great chief was one thing. Word would go out even among the whites. The death of a squaw and fatherless baby? It would barely make a ripple. There were only a few people to whom it would matter—her grandmother and maybe some members of her tribe.
Right now, apart from the lack of pemmican, her biggest concern was gathering enough soft, absorbent moss to get Ayasha through the next few days upon the steamship. White women used cloth on their babies’ bottoms and then laboriously cleaned that cloth. In the lumber camp, Katie had pressed something she called diapers upon her. To make Katie happy, Moon Song had gone along with it since it was winter and moss was hard to find, but in all other seasons it seemed such a waste of time. White people could be so impractical.
For instance, she did not understand why white mothers found it necessary to keep their infants covered with clothes once the weather was warm. Allowing a baby or toddler to play naked outdoors meant no diapers to wash. A baby secured upon a cradle board, wrapped in leather and surrounded by absorbent moss, was so much easier. The soiled moss had to be removed only a couple times a day, and the child washed and allowed to play for hours in camp to strengthen its little body. The whole process would only take minutes out of her walking time versus hours of scrubbing and drying diaper cloths. She marveled at the fact that white women didn’t use such a method.
She had little to pack for herself. A few articles of clothing and the money Robert had been gracious enough to give her for her work in camp. A comb she had purchased. A few sweets she kept in her room. That had been her greatest luxury in Bay City, the purchase of penny candy. None of it, in her opinion, was quite as delicious as the cones of maple sugar her tribe made every year for the children, but it was still very good. And so many colors and tastes! Yes, she would miss the counters of candy.
She decided she would spend the rest of the afternoon finding and bundling the proper moss. One couldn’t always depend on finding a ready supply. No doubt Sarah would insist on coming with her. The woman seemed to think she had to watch her all the time since the incident with Stink Breath.