Character sketch: Leta Howard

[aithne]

Character sketch for something Storm and I are starting. This one jumps the priority queue, since we have a deadline. It's the first straight historical we'll have written (and it's not really even all that historical, honestly, we're monkeying around with a few details.)

Note that there's some antiquated words and attitudes in this one; we're dealing with racial prejudice during the Civil War era.

Near Sioux Falls, Dakota Territory, late June 1863

Leta stood in the doorway of the house, shading her eyes, trying to see the place where the route off the farm became an actual path, where it rounded a hill and was lost to sight. “John? John! So help me, if you're hiding from me, I will hide you to within an inch of your life!“

There was no answer. Leta rolled her eyes and stepped out onto the porch, banging the door of the house closed behind her. House was really a glorified term for this little cabin built in the lee of the hill, backed by a good barn. In a few years, Thomas promised, they would start to build a proper house. For the moment, the little house was big enough, and John was small enough still that it was no trouble to tuck him into a trundle bed at night. It was more important to build the herd of cattle, and keep the garden going. Five hundred head, Thomas said. Five hundred head and we won't want for anything, you'll see.

She smiled at the memory. Five years ago, a sweet-talking Yankee had started flirting with her over the counter at the dry goods store in St. Paul, where she had been born. “Thomas Howard,” he'd told her when she asked him his name. Then he'd asked her to go out walking with him.

Four months later, she had plucked up her courage and introduced Thomas to her mother. “I have something to warn you about,” she had told him. “My mother...well...”

He had just looked at her. “I know, Leta. I know she's a Negress, and so are you. I've heard the talk. It doesn't matter to me.”

I am going to marry this man, she thought.

They were married two months later, and she was pregnant only a few months after that. How they had dreamed together, curled up on the narrow bed under the eaves! Her mother had been so happy and so proud. You listen to me, Leta, she had said. You love him, I can see that. Not so many get that chance. Lord knows I didn't. Go with him. Come back to visit when you can. I will be all right.

Her mother worked as a washerwoman for one of the rich families in St. Paul, had since she had come north. She would never tell Leta what she had escaped, if she had been freed or if she had simply picked up and left in the dark of night. Leta didn't even know if she'd gotten pregnant in St. Paul or wherever she had been before. She would only say, “It wasn't by my will, little one. I am glad to have you, but I hope you never meet your father.” Whoever Leta's father had been, he had gifted her with skin fair enough to pass for Italian and hair in that uncomfortable place between white-folks curly and her mother's kinky hair. She had asked her mother again and again when she had been small why she looked different. Her mother was beautiful, and she had longed to look just like her.

Her mother had always shushed her. “It's God's blessing that you look the way you do. You won't be a washerwoman. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

It was her that through her extensive network of friends had gotten Leta the job in the dry goods store, found her a tutor for reading and figuring, helped her dress every morning so that she could walk along the dark streets, to open the shop. It was her that had helped Leta sew her dresses from the fabric that she bought with her earnings, even the calico dress that Leta had been married in.

Leta and Thomas had lived on his father's farm until John had been born in the late winter. She had loved her son from the moment she laid eyes on him, but...

John took after Leta's mother. He had the dark skin and lovely strong features that Leta had so longed to have. But she was older now, and she knew those features meant trouble. Her marriage to Thomas was illegal. There would be questions; Thomas's parents already had those questions in their eyes. This was a gentler place than some, but there still were rumors of what happened to men and women of different races who had the temerity to fall in love with each other. They disappeared, and the Mississippi River carried them away.

They spent that long winter under the eaves, trying to decide what to do. The government was giving any man who wanted to go west a hundred and sixty acres to homestead on. “We wouldn't be bothered out there, Leta,” he told her. “Dad's going to sell some cattle, give me a few more. I've always wanted to go out West. Now we can.”

So the moment that the roads were passable, they piled everything into a wagon and set out. Their destination was a place called Sioux Falls, which a friend of Thomas's father had said was the best town for hundreds of miles around. Best, it was, but only for lack of anything to compare it to. It was a lawless little town, the target of frequent Indian attacks. They had settled about thirty miles away, close enough to make the trip into town a few times a year, far enough away that they were rarely bothered by the Indians who lived nearby. Sioux Falls had been abandoned about a year ago, though there was talk of building a fort by the marshals that occasionally came through.

They saw very few people, and when the neighbors did make the trip to visit, Leta made sure that John was safely hidden away. This was the safest place in the world for them, out under the big blue sky.

She heard childish laughter to her right, and turned. There was John, his bright eyes peeking out from under the trough in the corral. Ginger, their red mutt, was crouched next to him, and a couple of the horses were peering at them curiously. Leta rolled her eyes. “Young man, you are not allowed in the corral without boots on! Get out of there right this second!”

Chortling, the boy came out from under the trough and slipped through the fence rails, running across the dusty yard to Leta. “I fooled you, Mama! You couldn't see me!”

“Naughty thing!” She swung him up, hugged him. “Didn't you promise your Papa you'd be good for me?”

John nodded solemnly. “When is Papa going to be home?”

“Tonight, you know that. So come help your Mama in the garden, so we can be all ready when he comes home from town.” At least, she hoped he would be home tonight. There was so much work to be done, and doing Thomas's work as well as her own was wearing her to a thread. The dog ran in a circle around them and barked happily, and she set John down.

Then she felt it, the skin-crawling feeling that she was being watched. She turned, frowning, looking up the hill.

Nothing.

“Go to the garden, John,” she said. “Mama will be right there.” He went, Ginger at his heels. Leta went back to the house, picked up her rifle, slipped a box of shells into her pocket. She kept the rifle nearby. Lord knew it might only have been one of the local Sioux watching them, but she was always aware of the possibility of Indian attack, especially when she was alone.

Thomas will be home soon, she told herself. It'll be all right.

The big blue sky looked down, and gave no answer.