Shattered Lives (Flynn Family Saga Book 1) (4 page)

“Who did you lose?  In the massacre?”  Ridgeton’s
voice was so soft that Eagle Heart barely heard him.

He hesitated.  “My mother.  Cousins.  A lot of
friends.”

Ridgeton sighed.  “I’m sorry.  Good night, son.”

Eagle Heart hesitated.  “Good night, sir," he
said in English.  "And thank you.”

In the morning, they reached the orphanage in Lancaster. 
White towns always smelled bad, but the orphanage was ten times worse.  It
smelled of urine and boiled cabbage.

Eagle Heart almost turned and ran.

But that would have shamed Pathfinder.

So he squared his shoulders and entered the
building.

A woman met them at the door.  She was almost as
wide as the doorway, and she looked as if she had never smiled in her life.

Alexander Ridgeton took off his coonskin cap.  “Good
afternoon, Mrs. Josephson.  Colonel Henderson sends his regards.  And this boy.”

Mrs. Josephson glared at Eagle Heart and wrinkled
her nose.  “He smells like an Indian.”

“He was raised by the Lakota, ma’am.  But he’s
white.”  Ridgeton touched Eagle Heart’s shoulder.  “His name is Flynn, Robert
Sean Flynn.”

Mrs. Josephson snorted.  “Irish.  That’s just as
bad.”  She grasped Eagle Heart by the ear.  “We’ll wash that stink off you and
teach you to pray the right way.  No papist mumbo-jumbo here.”

Eagle Heart reached for his knife, but it was gone. 
The white soldiers had taken it from him.  For the first time in a long time,
he was glad that he could not cry.  He did not want to shame himself in front
of this horrible woman.

Ridgeton grasped his arm.  “Remember what I said,
son.”  He spoke in Lakota.

Eagle Heart nodded slowly.

Alexander Ridgeton nodded back.  He turned and left
him alone with Mrs. Josephson. 

Mrs. Josephson took Eagle Heart to the kitchen.  She
poured steaming water into a tin tub.  Then, she tried to strip Eagle Heart of
his clothes.  When he fought her, she called for help.  A tall, thin man came
into the kitchen.  He grabbed Eagle Heart’s arms and held him while the woman
pulled down his trousers.  The two of them lifted Eagle Heart into the scalding
water.

Eagle Heart clamped his jaws together to keep from
crying out.  She scrubbed him until he bled.  The harsh lye soap stung the
cuts.  Then, she held out a towel, made from a flour sack.

Eagle Heart stood slowly.  He wrapped the sack
around himself and met the woman’s gaze coolly, levelly.

Her face reddened, and she looked away.

*  *  *

For one month, Eagle Heart endured the orphanage. 
The other boys laughed at him, and Mrs. Josephson singled him out for every
infraction of the rules.  He bore it in silence, like a warrior.  He pretended
not to understand English, even though the skinny man, who was Mrs. Josephson's
husband, beat him.  He refused to let either of them see his fear or sorrow. 
At night, he felt the loneliness the worst.  His heart ached, and he was both
glad and sorry that he could not cry.

Then, one afternoon, a man in a black frock coat
brought in a small boy.  The boy’s hair was blond and his eyes were as blue as
the prairie sky.  He looked scared.  Mrs. Josephson swooped toward him, like a
fat vulture.

Eagle Heart stepped between them.  He stared at her
with his hands curled into fists.

“Mr. Josephson!”

Her husband and sons came into the vestibule.  The
two boys held Eagle Heart while Mrs. Josephson dragged the new boy away.

That night, in the dormitory, Eagle Heart heard the
boy crying.  He started to get up when he heard the voices of the older boys. 
The years fell away, and he was back at Lewisburg.  He ran to the new boy’s cot
and stood between him and the bullies.

The oldest one, whose name was Edward, grinned.  “So. 
The Injun wants to protect the little crybaby.”

Eagle Heart said nothing.  He merely stared at
Edward.

Slowly, Edward’s grin faded.  He scowled.  “Come
on!  What are you waiting for?  There are six of us and only one of him?”

Eagle Heart reached for the stillness.  It was
faint, but it was there, and strength flowed into him from the earth.

Edward swung.

Eagle Heart kicked his legs out from under him.  He
took the next boy with a blow to the gut.  He spun around and kicked the third
boy in the groin.  His cries woke the rest of the dormitory.  Twenty boys
hooted and cheered as they fought.

Eagle Heart knocked out the last boy just as all
four Josephsons entered the dormitory.  The two boys held Eagle Heart while
Mrs. Josephson tended the wounded.

Then, she wheeled on Eagle Heart.  “You savage!  I
knew it was a mistake to take you in!  If Colonel Henderson wasn’t my brother,
I would have turned you away.”

Eagle Heart wanted to say that he didn’t want to be
there.  He wanted to say that Colonel Henderson was a murdering coward.  But he
knew it would only make the beating worse.  He kept his mouth shut as they
dragged him down the stairs to the potting shed.

The beating was bad, nearly as bad as the one his
first night in Lewisburg.

Eagle Heart endured.

When they were done, he fell to the floor.  The door
closed.  He heard the bolt slide home.  He closed his eyes and fell into
darkness.

CHAPTER
FOUR

When he came to, light filtered between the boards
of the wall.  For a little while, hunger bothered Eagle Heart.  But he had
fasted before, and after a few hours, his hunger left him.  Thirst was another
matter entirely.  By nightfall, his mouth was dry, and he felt sick.

Then, the door to the shed opened.

The small blond boy crept into the darkness carrying
something.

It was a bowl of stew.

“I snuck out when they weren’t looking.  I know you
haven’t had anything to eat.  Here.  We can share.”

Eagle Heart sighed.  “You’ll get into trouble.”

The smaller boy shrugged.  “You got into trouble on
my behalf.  It seems like we ought to look out for each other.”

Eagle Heart hesitated.  A part of him feared caring
about anyone again.  But a part of him longed for company.  And the boy had
given him food.  That was a sacred thing.  Eagle Heart nodded.  He accepted the
gift of the stew.  He took a spoonful of stew and chewed it slowly.

“I’m Timothy.  Timothy Brown.  But my friends call
me Timmy.  Well, they would if I had any friends."  Timmy looked sad for a
moment.  Then, he drew a deep breath and smiled hopefully.  "What’s your
name?”

“Eagle Heart.”

Timmy stared at him.  “That’s a funny name.”

“It is Lakota.”

Timmy frowned.  “What’s your real name?”

Eagle Heart sighed.  “Flynn.  Robert Sean Flynn.”

Timmy nodded slowly.  “That’s too much to remember. 
Would it be all right if I called you Flynn?”

Eagle Heart nodded reluctantly.

Timmy smiled and munched contentedly on his stew. 
They ate in companionable silence.  When the stew was gone, Timmy sighed.  “I’d
better get back before Mrs. Josephson misses me.”  He grinned suddenly.  “I put
a frog in her teapot.  She had hysterics and ran into the kitchen.”

Eagle Heart laughed for the first time since the
massacre.  He tousled Timmy’s hair.  “You get on back.  I’ll be all right.”

Timmy nodded.  He picked up the empty bowl and ran
back to the gray stone building.

*  *  *

From that night on, Flynn and Timmy looked after one
another.  Whenever Flynn got into trouble—which was often—Timmy sneaked him
food and water.  And whenever the larger boys tried to gang up on Timmy, Flynn
defended him.

Then, one morning, Timmy took too long getting
dressed.  Mrs. Josephson beat him with a switch until he bled.

A week later, the welts were infected.

Flynn touched his belt, but the soldiers had taken
his pouch of herbs as well as his knife.

Flynn sighed.  He waited until the dormitory was
silent, except for the sound of twenty-six boys breathing.  Then, he dressed
silently and crept out of the room and down the stairs.  He knew that the cook
always kept the window in the kitchen open, and he climbed out of the window. 
He ran to the river.  A willow bowed gracefully over the water, its leaves
silver in the moonlight.  He searched the ground for a sharp stone.  He shaved
the bark into his handkerchief and tied the four corners together, forming a
sack.  He scoured the ground, looking for a particular type of moss.  When he
found it, he added it to his sack.  Then, he ran back to the orphanage.  He
boiled water on the stove and brewed the infusion.  He carried the steaming tin
cup up the stairs to the dormitory.  He put his arm around Timmy’s thin
shoulders and helped him sit up.  The younger boy took a sip and made a face.  “Bitter.”

“I know.  Drink it anyway.”

Timmy sighed, but he obeyed.  When the cup was
empty, he sighed, and his muscles went slack beneath Flynn’s hands.  Flynn made
a poultice of the moss and bound it to the boy’s inflamed back.  Then, he sat
beside Timmy’s cot, chanting the prayers that Keeper had taught him.

Night after night, Flynn kept vigil with the younger
boy.  Finally, Timmy’s fever went down and he began to breathe easier.

Flynn sighed and went back to his own bed.

For the first time since the ill-fated hunt, he
slept well and deeply.

*  *  *

Christmas came.  Using a knife he had stolen from
the kitchen, Flynn carved a dog out of a piece of wood.  He wrapped it in
tissue paper and gave it to Timmy on Christmas morning.

Timmy’s eyes widened, and he smiled.  “I used to
have a dog.  Thanks, Flynn.”

Flynn nodded.  His throat was too tight to speak.

April came, and a warm wind blew from the south. 
Hope stirred inside Flynn like a seedling after a long, cold winter.  That
night, he woke Timmy, and together they descended the stairs silently.  Keeping
to the shadows, Flynn led the way from alley to alley until they reached the
edge of the city.

The wind blew through the prairie grass, like the
footsteps of an invisible giant.  Timmy stared open-mouthed.  "I've never
seen grass this tall before!  It was always short and prickly."

Flynn smiled at him.  “Where are you from?”

“Philadelphia.  We don’t have anything like this in Philadelphia.”

“What happened to your folks?”

Timmy’s eyes filled with tears.  “Indians attacked
our wagon train.  They were killed.  The wagon master sent me to the orphanage
with a preacher who was riding this way.”

Flynn looked away.  He wondered if Pathfinder was
the one who attacked the wagon train.  He sighed.  “We’d better go.”  He led
the way into the tall grass.  With each step away from the orphanage, his heart
lightened.

The next night, they slept under the stars beside
the Platte.  Flynn sighed.  He felt at home for the first time since he topped
the rise and saw the ruins of his village.  He stared up at the stars, watching
a few shreds of clouds whisk across them.

He fell asleep with a smile on his face.

In the morning, a hard, bitter wind roared eastward
from the prairie, bringing with it the scent of snow.  Fear nipped Flynn, like
the Josephsons’ yellow dog.  He woke Timmy.  They ate hurriedly and began to
walk north and west.  Near twilight, they reached a stand of pines.  Flynn stood
and watched as the gray clouds hid the sun.

Then, it began to snow.  The snow fell so thickly
that Flynn could not see beyond the shelter of the trees, and the wind was so
cold that his hands were numb.  He built a shelter for the night, using the
kitchen knife he had stolen.  It wasn’t as good as the knife Pathfinder had
given him, but it would have to do.  He cut pine boughs and lashed them
together.  They huddled under the makeshift lean-to.

Beside him, Timmy shivered.

Flynn built a fire, and the two of them held their
hands over it.

Two days later, the snow stopped.  Flynn felt weak
and dizzy with hunger, but he gave Timmy the last morsel of their hoarded
food.  Then, he stood and studied the land around them.  He saw rabbit tracks
and grinned.  He started to leave the shelter.

Timmy grabbed his wrist.  “Don’t leave me!”

Torn, Flynn knelt beside the younger boy.  “I need
to hunt.”

Timmy’s large blue eyes filled with tears.  “Promise
you’ll come back?”

Flynn nodded solemnly.  “I promise.  And we’ll have rabbit
for supper.  And you can eat as much as you want.”

“Honest?”

Flynn nodded again.  “Honest.”

“All right.”  Timmy snuggled down deeper into the
thin blanket.

Flynn bit his lip.  He hated leaving the boy behind,
but without meat, they would starve.  He drew a deep breath and started to wade
through the powdery snow.

An hour later, more clouds blew in from the west.

Flynn turned and tried to get back to Timmy before
the storm, but it started to snow again, thick and fast, obliterating his
tracks.  He made it to a solitary pine and took shelter under its branches,
waiting out the storm.  He chanted to keep awake—and to pray for strength.  For
a moment, he thought he saw a white buffalo standing a few yards away, but the
snow fell harder, hiding the animal from his sight, and when the snow stopped,
there was no sign of it.

Or of the shelter he had built for Timmy.

*  *  *

Three days later, starving and desperate, Flynn
found the stand of trees.  The shelter was buried in snow.  Frantically, he dug
through the snow with his bare hands.  “Timothy!  Tim!”

Only silence answered him.

Finally, he found the boy.  For one brief moment, he
thought Timmy was asleep.  But his skin was cold, and his chest did not rise or
fall.

Grief clawed at his heart like a wildcat, but he
could not cry.  Flynn swallowed his grief and began to build a scaffold.  He
wrapped Timmy’s body in the thin blanket he carried with him everywhere.  He
placed the small carved dog beneath the scaffold.  He had no drum, no pipe. 
So, he stamped his feet against the frozen ground and chanted the prayer for
the dead.  As he chanted, he forgot about the rough fabric of his trousers and
the constricting collar of his shirt.  He felt a part of his
tiyospaye
for the first time since Pathfinder banished him.  All that existed was Earth
and Sky and the song.

And then the song ended.  Eagle Heart heard the
silence of the prairie.  It was as if he were the only living thing in the
entire world.

He fell to his knees and bowed his head.

“Who died?”

Eagle Heart rose and turned, drawing the kitchen
knife.

Alexander Ridgeton stood behind him.  “Rob?”

Eagle Heart shook his head.  “My name is Eagle
Heart,” he said in Lakota

Slowly, Ridgeton nodded.  “And my name is Shadow Beneath
The Trees,” he said in the same language.

Eagle Heart turned back to the scaffold.  “His name
was Timothy.  He—he was good to me.”

Ridgeton laid his hand gently on Eagle Heart’s
shoulder.  “I’m sure you were good to him, too.”  He hesitated.  “How did he
die?”

Eagle Heart turned to Ridgeton.  “It was my fault. 
I left him alone, and he froze to death.”

Ridgeton squeezed Eagle Heart’s shoulder.  “I’m sure
you had a good reason for leaving him alone.”

Eagle Heart shook his head.  “Not good enough.”

Ridgeton was silent a long time.  “Let me guess.  You
were out of food, and you went hunting.  Then, you got caught in the second storm
and couldn’t get back.”

Eagle Heart nodded miserably.

Ridgeton sighed.  “Sometimes, no matter how hard you
try, or how wise you are, there are no good choices.”

Startled, Eagle Heart looked at him.

“Come on.  I just killed a deer, and there is too
much meat for one person.”  Ridgeton turned Eagle Heart away from the scaffolds
and led him through the tall grass to a campsite.  “Why don’t you take care of
deer while I build a fire?”

Eagle Heart nodded.  He drew the knife he had
stolen.

Ridgeton made a face.  “Where did you get that
thing?”

“Mrs. Josephson’s kitchen.”

Ridgeton snorted.  He rummaged in his pack and took
out a knife.  He handed it to Eagle Heart, hilt first.  “Here.”

It was the knife the soldiers had taken from him,
the knife Pathfinder had given him.  For a moment, Eagle Heart saw Pathfinder’s
solemn face as he handed his adopted son the blade.  Eagle Heart drew a deep
breath.  He took the knife and began to butcher the deer.  By the time the sun
had set, steaks sizzled in an old iron frying pan that Ridgeton had produced
from his pack.  The two men ate in silence.  Finally, Ridgeton cleared his
throat.  “What are your plans, son?”

Eagle Heart stared into the fire.  “I don’t know.  I
wanted—I had to get Timmy away from there.  They were going to kill him.  I
guess I thought I could track down Pathfinder...”  His voice trailed off into
silence.

Ridgeton sighed.  “He couldn’t take you back.  Not
right now.  In the past six months, there have been massacres on both sides. 
Do you have any family anywhere?”

Eagle Heart shook his head.

“You could stay with me,” Ridgeton said quietly.

Eagle Heart stared at him.  “Why?”

Ridgeton looked away.  “It’s been lonely since Light
On The Water died.”  He looked back at Eagle Heart.  “
I’ve
been lonely,”
he said in Lakota.

Tears burned Eagle Heart’s eyes.  “So have I,” he
said in the same language.

“Light On The Water called me Shadow Beneath The
Trees, because when I hunt, I am as silent as a shadow.  My friends call me
Shadow.”

Eagle Heart nodded, mindful of the honor Ridgeton
bestowed on him by giving him his true name.

“Tell me about your friend.”

Eagle Heart drew a deep breath.  “His name was Timothy
Brown.  He was brave and smart and funny...”  And so, Eagle Heart spoke of his
friend, in the way of the Lakota, in the language of the Lakota.  And Ridgeton
listened.  And when Eagle Heart was finished speaking, Ridgeton spoke of his
wife, also in Lakota.  They talked long into the night, and for Eagle Heart, a
little of his sorrow eased with the telling.

*  *  *

In the morning, they broke camp.  Eagle Heart and Shadow
Beneath The Trees traveled north until they came to a sheltered valley.

Shadow stopped at the top of a hill.  He stared at
the valley a long time.  “I spent so many winters here with Light On The
Water.  We lived in the tipi she made with her own two hands.  I burned it when
I built her scaffold.”  He turned to Eagle Heart.  “But we need to find a way
to live in peace with the whites, Eagle Heart.  So I think we need to build a
cabin.  We won’t live in it, most of the time.  Only in winter.  The rest of
the time, I’ll take you to all the places I’ve seen.  I’ll teach you the trails—and
the ways that aren’t trails but will get you where you need to go when the
trails aren’t safe.  I’ll teach you where to find water from here to the snows
that never melt in the north.  If you’d like that.”

Eagle Heart looked down at the valley.  The brown
grass was beginning to turn green, and there were buds on the trees.  It was
good to hear the language of his people again.  And as Shadow spoke of the
mountains that raked the sky and a canyon so large it could almost swallow the
world, he longed to see these things for himself.  He nodded.