Rejoining the fold—Josiah’s sermonizing—Letters of Neha
It was spring. All in the town spoke of Anne’s remarkable transformation from gloomy and brooding victim into the energetic woman they assumed she would have been, minus her captivity. They congratulated themselves on having erased the effects of the previous seven years as if they had never been.
Her baking and her embroidery became famous. Every local celebration brought a request for her cakes and pies. Her vanity was kindled by the attention she received from the eligible young men in the area. For the first time in years, she took an interest in her appearance and put on weight, nicely filling out the stylish dresses she now sewed herself. At social gatherings, she became a great favorite, singing and dancing with more grace than any girl there, arousing considerable enviousness.
The jealousy thus engendered kept alive conjecture over her time in captivity, how she had bartered with an Indian chief to retain her purity. They gossiped that she had dressed as an Indian woman and participated in massacres of white people. One homely girl went so far as to claim that in her room she kept scalps hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser that she intended to sew into a dress.
Anne docilely turned her cheek to such maliciousness. She attended each and every church service, sometimes twice a day, and sat in the front pew with her attention riveted on Josiah’s words, so much so that he found it unnerving. Often he would lose his train of thought until he stood dumb on the podium, conscious only of the blinding sun streaming through the windows, and the expectant, upturned faces of the congregation, most especially Anne’s steady blue gaze, which made a mockery of his shepherding.
He sensed a dark, cold spine of rebelliousness in her that needed to be broken. It could almost be described as diabolical, how even as he complained of her recalcitrance to his wife and others, they protested that she was the very embodiment of an angel.
The town was aflutter with gossip of two cowboys who ran a ranch outside the settlement coming across an Indian boy wandering the plains. Horseless, dehydrated, he did not seem to know where he was. They hailed him and asked him his purpose in crossing such a desolate area as they grazed their herd on. He glanced at them and without reply continued on his way. Outraged, the men lassoed him and dragged him behind their horses for sport till he died. Only a few days later did his mother and brothers appear, claiming him deaf and mute.
Anne betrayed no emotion on hearing the story, although Josiah studied to find out her sympathies. When Lydia later found her crying, she attributed the tears to the girl’s natural softheartedness, never guessing it was due to horror at such barbarity.
Her latest outrage was to resist his plan to take her to the state legislature to seek restitution after being ignored by General Custer. He had read in the papers how other captives had grown prosperous in such manner, yet she showed no interest in pursuing this, somehow feeling superior to it and him.
“You can’t expect to rely on my charity forever,” he said.
“I work for my keep,” she said quietly. “If it is not enough, let me go elsewhere.”
There it was. Tacit acknowledgment that the desire to remove herself from the homestead lingered still. The capricious child wished to return to her savage state.
“Your mind has been so defiled you do not know what you say.”
Josiah closed his eyes and began to pray. Unable to hold his tongue, he blurted out his provocation.
“You are blind. Your Mary is on her way to be turned out into the wilderness to fend for herself.”
He would not tell her the details and give her satisfaction. During the last months he had exchanged letters with the uncle of the half-breed Neha/Mary. Mostly they were letters of pleading that Josiah take the girl and allow her to live with Anne.
Dear Pastor Josiah,
… She is impossible. We believe she is quite out of her mind. Whenever she is loose, she attempts to run away. It is so bad we have resorted to the un-Christian act of tying her to a tree. And she much prefers it! She begs to be left outside the entire night. Cooks her bit of meat herself over a small twig fire. She then smudges soot on her face till it is black. She sings and chants, yells in her unintelligible tongue. My wife fears that she is possessed by the devil.
More practically, do you know the meaning of her tribe’s customs? We gave her a knife to cut her meat, but when we turned away she cut off half her hair with it before she could be stopped. The other night, her face blackened, she plunged the sharp end of a stick into her breast and allowed the blood to drip into the flames. Regularly she eats dirt. She repeats a dirge that depresses us all. Simply put, we are afraid. Do you think these satanic rituals or merely the expression of aboriginal sorrow?
When I was a young boy I was a great collector of wild animals and brought all manner of birds and varmints home: swallows, quail, frogs, turtles, field mice, and prairie dogs. I was quite the trial to my parents. A young boy does not understand the concepts of life and death, suffering and imprisonment. The outcome was always the same. The animals fought for their freedom for a long while until they finally resigned themselves to their confinement and then inevitably death quickly followed. My father, our Mary’s grandfather, told me it is in the nature of a wild thing to remain free. Take away that nature, and you have taken away their very being. Could it be the same for our Mary? We could not bear her death on our conscience. I have prayed fervently and come to entertain the unthinkable. Should we give the girl her heart’s pleading and release her to return whence she had come? The very idea saddens us, and yet we must trust the Lord to guide us to the right decision. We anxiously await your council on these matters.
Sincerely,
Edward Mulford