And he never said she was Apache. Why? It doesn't matter. It didn't matter then. It doesn't matter now.
Except it does. He got up, lit a candle, went to the old cigar box on his dresser where he kept every letter Leland had ever brought him. Years of them, seven brides, seven matchmakers letters, seven replies in Leland's neat hand signed with Anel's name and Odessa's letter. The first one, the one she wrote to the matchmaker in St. Louis that the matchmaker had sent on to Copper Hollow. He unfolded it, and for the first time in his life, Anel Branick tried to read a letter himself.
It took him an hour. One word at a time. His big finger moving across the page. His lips shaping the sounds. Getting it wrong.
Going back. Getting it right. My name is Odessa Hail. I am 41 years old. I am a widow.
I was trained in medicine by my first husband who was a doctor. So far so good. That was what Leland had told him. I must tell you plainly that I am Chiricahua Apache. I was taken from my people as a child and raised in Ohio.
Anel's finger stopped. He read it again. To be sure, I am Chiricahua Apache. Leland had read him this letter, sitting right there at the kitchen table, and Leland had skipped it. He kept going slower now, his heart pounding.
I must also tell you that I am accused of a crime I did not commit. My late husband's brother believes I caused his death. There may be people looking for me. I will not hide this from any man who answers. If you cannot accept it, I understand.
The candle flickered. Anel sat in the dark with the letter in his lap. She told him, she told him everything right there in the first letter, and Leland read it twice and looked Anel in the eye and said, "A doctor's widow, Ohio. Sensible, steady, and sent for her anyway, knowing there were people hunting her, knowing trouble would follow her up the mountain like a wolf follows blood." Why would he do that? Why would he?
Anel's eyes fell on the other letters in the box. the replies in Leland's neat, careful hand, and he froze because he could not read most of those words, but he could see shapes. He had always seen shapes. That was how he carved. A bird hidden in a block of pine, a horse hidden in a knot of oak.
He did not know the names of the letters. Not really, not yet. But he knew the shape of them, the way they curved, the way they leaned. He got up, went to the drawer, took out the two threatening notes. Singa's note, the barn note, laid them on the table beside Leland's letters and looked there, the letter S.
In every one of Leland's letters, the S curled back on itself at the bottom. A little hook like a fish hook. And in the notes, the same hook. The same fish hook as the candle burned down, and Anel Branick sat in the dark and could not breathe. Leland.
Leland who brought him every letter, who read every word, who chose every bride, who wrote every answer, who told him seven times that this one was different. Leland, who had stood on this porch a 100 times and said, "I'm on your side." He felt something tear loose in his chest, something old, something that had been holding up the whole roof of his life. Anel Odessa in the doorway in her night gown, candle in hand. She looked at the table, at the letters, at the notes, at his face. You read it, she said softly.
You told him in the letter. You told him everything. I did. He never told me. He chose you because of it.
His voice was shaking. Because they were coming for you. He wanted them to come. Why? I don't know.
Anel, why would a banker want? I don't know. His fist came down on the table. The whole table jumped. Candle wax spilled.
He stared at his own fist, then slowly unclenched it. "I'm sorry," he whispered. She set her candle down, came around the table, and put her small hand flat on top of his huge one. "Don't be sorry," she said. "Be smart.
The bank was dark at 2:00 in the morning. Anel had never broken into anything in his life. He had never so much as stolen an apple. Turned out a back window latch was no match for a man who could lift a freight wagon. He climbed through, barely, scraping both shoulders on the frame.
What are you doing? What are you doing? You're going to get caught. You're going to get hanged. You're 39 years old and you're crawling through a window in your night shirt like a Shut up.
He lit a single match, cupped it in his hand. Leland's office. A big oak desk, ledgers, a safe in the corner, locked, and a tall wooden cabinet with little brass labels on every drawer. He could read some of the labels now, not all. Some B bra.
He pulled the drawer. Inside was one folder, and inside the folder was one long sheet of thick paper, old yellowed at the edges, covered top to bottom in tiny, tight lawyer's handwriting. And at the bottom, a mark, an X, his X from 1870 the day he turned 21. The day Leland sat him down at this very desk and said, "Just a formality, son. sign here so the bank can look after your land.
He had made his mark. He had trusted. He held the match closer. It took him three matches. Three.
His finger crawling along the lines. Most of the words meant nothing. Long words, lawyer words, but some of them he knew. Land, ridge, and then a sentence near the bottom. And he read it so slowly that the third match burned down to his fingers, and he did not even feel it.