Thirteen Moons Read Online Free PDF Page B

kind of Indians own slaves and plantations, dress in tailcoats, eat off china plates with silver cutlery, and have grand crystal chandeliers swinging over their mahogany dinner tables. That rich bunch speaks English as well as any man among us and better than most. A lot of them can’t even speak their own language.
    He paused and said, You understand what I’m saying?
    I said, Yes sir. Even though I didn’t understand at all.
    With that, he was apparently done describing the ways of the Cherokee, and he looked down the front yard to the paddock by the barn where the new young horse stood.
    —That your horse? the man said.
    —No sir. Not that I know of. They just got him.
    —How old?
    —Three or four.
    —Which?
    —Three, I believe.
    —And not cut?
    —No sir.
    —So still a colt.
    —Yes sir. If four’s the mark.
    —At four, he’ll be a stallion. And maybe a good one, the way he’s put together.
    We looked at the colt together awhile, and then he said something strange. He said, Will, when it comes right down to it, not many men can afford to cross the woman they bed with. Not and live in any peace. I hope you won’t think too bad about your uncle.
    I studied on his comment and then just said, Yes sir. For I knew even then that it is often good to wait for events to unfold around you.
    He went back to the porch where my aunt and uncle sat rocking and looking anywhere but my direction and not speaking with each other at all. I tried to go back to Virgil but could not attend to him. I watched the antique man as he crossed the yard and effortfully climbed the steps up to the porch and took a chair. He drew a sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his coat. He talked and they listened. He went through the papers each by each and pointed out particular features with his index finger. Then they all rose and went inside, and I figured it was for a quill and inkpot to invoke the law and, as if by sortilege, foretell my life.
    That night my aunt and uncle asked me to keep my seat after supper and dismissed their own children to bed. My cousins were ill-tempered ignorant little beings, a brown-headed three-year-old boy who had yet to utter a word of human language and a somewhat older girl barely more inclined to converse. I generally paid no more heed to them than to the yard chickens.
    When they had trudged up the narrow stairs to bed, my aunt set a plate of cold cornbread and a glass of buttermilk and a sugar bowl in front of me by way of dessert. I crumbled the bread into the milk and sprinkled it with sugar and mushed it around with a spoon and began eating. We three sat awhile in the dim kitchen without talking, and there was just the sound of my spoon clicking against the glass. The flames of the cooking fire died out and the embers sighed and settled into a bed of ash on the hearthstones. A sphere of motes and minute insects vibrated around the flames of the pair of candles on the table. I pushed the glass away with one finger and held my face still, blanking my mind.
    This is where they lay out my life, I figured.
    —I can’t hardly stand it, my aunt said. He’s but a boy to send off like this.
    She dabbed at her dry eyes with a wadded handkerchief.
    —He’s twelve, my uncle said.
    She thought a moment and then added, Going on thirteen. As if that larger number had some further power to settle the matter.
    My uncle pushed his chair from the table and went into the parlor and came back and set a big iron key in front of me and unrolled a map on the table.
    —That’ll let you in, he said, touching the key. And this will get you there.
    He smoothed the map two-handed against the tabletop and set the pewter candlesticks on each end of the paper to keep it from rolling back up.
    The key was hand-forged and fancy on the butt end, which was shaped like a lover’s knot. The business end, though, was crude and had just two cutouts to bypass the wards, and anybody with a nail or a rattail file and half a mind