Winding Stair (9781101559239) by Douglas C. Jones Page A

but even though she had known him as a neighbor and had seen him many times, there was no sign of recognition on her face.
    Oscar Schiller took a lamp into the attic but was back almost at once.
    â€œWell, that’s one of them anyway,” he said to George Moon. “But there’s no sign of the other one up there.”
    â€œThis is Jennie,” George Moon said. “I better send Charley Oskogee for his wife. We need a woman here now. It don’t look to me like you’ll get much from this girl tonight, Cap’n.”
    â€œNo, I don’t think so either. But don’t send Charley. He ought to be here with the girl, because she knows him. Send one of your other boys.”
    The girl stared at us blankly, her eyes blue above pronounced cheekbones. I was struck by the long neck and delicately small head as she lay with her hair on the pillow framing her face. She reminded me of a print I had seen of Bronzino’s Lucrezia , even to the length of her straight nose and the finely sculpted upper lip, all so much admired by the Florentine artists. Such a face in this wilderness seemed a startling contradiction, and if from that moment I was not actually in love with Jennie Thrasher, most certainly I was at least infatuated by her face.
    Schiller quickly moved everyone out of the room excepting me and Charley Oskogee, myself because I was white, I supposed, and near the girl’s age. We tried to comfort her, telling her we were friends and she had nothing to fear, but she obviously didn’t hear a word we said. Once, as Schiller bent over her, she seemed to shrink back from the unblinking stare, and seeing that, he made no attempt to question her.
    Joe Mountain came in with a white enamel chamber pot. “She been up in that attic a long time, I bet, Cap’n,” he said. “I found this slop jar in another room for her.”
    â€œAll right,” Schiller said impatiently. “Put it down, Joe. When the woman gets here, that can be taken care of.”
    We sat around the bed, watching her, the rain pounding on the roof as it came straight down. Twice, her eyes went from one of us to the next, but it was a long time before she spoke. We could hardly hear her when she did.
    â€œWhere’s my papa?” she whispered. “What happened to my papa?”
    â€œHe’s gone, missy,” Schiller said in his sandstone voice. Her eyes seemed to draw back from him. “We’re here to find who would do such a thing. I’m the law and these men are friends.”
    Her expression did not change as she turned her head toward the dark window where the faces of Choctaw policemen looked in.
    â€œI knew that was it,” she said, more loudly now. “I knew that was it when they did all that shooting.”
    â€œWhat shooting, missy?” Schiller asked, bending over her. But the urgency in his voice had no effect and she said nothing more. Finally he turned away from the bed and shrugged.
    She did not cry; her expression did not change, as she became aware for the first time of her father’s death. She appeared strangely detached, or perhaps resigned to it, as though she not only expected such a thing just then but had been expecting it for a long time. She lay with her pale Florentine features, staring without seeing toward the Indians at the window, their faces as expressionless as her own.
    Charley Osgokee’s wife came in finally, having ridden from her farm with one of the Choctaws, her shawl and long gingham dress plastered to her fat body from shoulders to knees. She was wearing a wide-brimmed man’s hat, which she threw into a corner, taking us all in with one quick sweep of her black eyes, saying nothing. She shooed us out like a flock of reluctant chickens and closed the door behind. In a moment, she opened it again and said something to her husband in Choctaw. Charley Oskogee hurried into the kitchen for hot coffee and meat gravy from the