Beauty for Ashes (8 page)

Sam did, and watched in intent silence as the smoke rose through the branches of the lodge and evaporated into the blue, blue sky. Pictures from his dream rose into his mind, sharp and clear. He focused on them.

When Sam finished smoking, Bell Rock said, “Put the covers back on.”

Blue Horse did, and Bell Rock began the third round, the round of ten pours. This time he sang a song, a song that sounded extravagantly emotional, plaintive. Sam held the pictures of his dream in his mind, his attention entirely on them. He did pick up one phrase of the prayer several times—“Take pity on us.”

This time Sam felt no need to lie down and reduce the heat. He lived in his dream.

“Take the covers off!”

This time Blue ripped them off with a big whisk, and cool air rolled onto Sam like spring rain.

When they had drunk some water, Bell Rock said, “Now tell me what you saw of the spirit world.”

At this Blue Horse considerately walked out of hearing.

For a moment Sam was taken aback by these words, and couldn't speak. Then he brought himself back to the task at hand. He told his dream, and what led up to it.

“Before the dream, I was caught in a prairie fire. No way out—I was going to die. The animals all around me were fleeing toward the river, deer, coyotes, rabbits, mice, buffalo, everything. But the fire was on us, and they were being eaten.

“A coyote pup, the one right outside this lodge, came scrabbling desperately for a place to hide. There was a buffalo cow I'd just shot and gutted out. The pup scratched at its slit belly, trying to get inside. Just as desperate, I took the lesson and crawled inside the cow, dragging the pup with me. That saved us. When I saw the scorched land afterwards, I knew that almost all the other four-leggeds died, and whatever two-leggeds were in the path.

“A few days later I dreamed. I saw a buffalo cow laying on her side, and somehow she looked like she was waiting for me. She wasn't the same cow, though. This cow was whole, healthy, waiting for me. What she wanted, I couldn't tell. There was something special about her but I didn't know what it was. I was simply drawn to her, powerfully drawn.

“So, without knowing why, I laid down next to her in the dream, my back to her belly. Then it happened. I passed through her flesh into the center of her. Not just her middle, the center of everything she was.

“I began to change, or we began to change. I became her or she became me, I didn't know which. My hair turned into her fur. My arms reached up, my legs stretched down. I moved into her forelegs and her hind legs—my bones knitted into hers.”

Sam looked at Bell Rock to see if the medicine man was laughing at him. Bell Rock showed no expression but high and grave attentiveness.

“My muscles, they joined up with hers. My belly swallowed her food. Then the amazing part. My heart pumped in the same rhythm as hers, and then my heartbeat was her heartbeat, not two sounding as one, but one beat, just one. Her blood was my blood. When I breathed, I smelled buffalo breath in my own nostrils.”

He gazed into Bell Rock's eyes, and he could not have said what passed between the two of them.

“Then I stood up from the buffalo cow, except I wasn't just me. I was us. I looked around the world and wanted to set forth into it, ramble around, and I was man and buffalo.

“I woke up. I hugged Coy close. And I said something. ‘I am Samalo.'”

“Samalo?” It was the first question Bell Rock had asked.

“My name, Sam, combined with the word for buffalo in English. Samalo.”

Bell Rock nodded. He sat, saying nothing, his eyes far off. After what seemed a long while, he said, “Blue Horse, bring us some more hot rocks and put the covers back on.”

The fourth round, the round of uncounted pours, went on forever. Bell Rock lifted an impassioned plea to Sun, more chanted than spoken. Sam's mind drifted into a netherworld. It felt lost, like it was floating on the steam he couldn't see, swirling this way and that without knowable reason. Part of his mind was moved, maybe, by the Crow words and phrases—
“Take pity on this young man, grant him…Heed our cries…. Send us…Reveal to us….”

The heat came at him in waves, and he refused to lie down. A big part of mind was occupied with enduring. He told himself repeatedly that he was making this sacrifice of pain in exchange for a blessing to the spirit. And part of his mind was pleading,
Let it end, let it be over.

“Take off the covers,” yelled Bell Rock.

Blue Horse was quick about it, maybe knowing how it felt. The air felt as good as ice in the mouth on a hot day. Sam got a picture of himself cannonballing into the deep spot in the freezing river, and loved it.

They drank. Now Sam had lost his embarrassment, and poured four or five dipperfuls into his belly.

Once more Bell Rock called for the sacred pipe, and they smoked.

When they were finished, the medicine man asked, “What do you understand from this dream?”

“Nothing,” Sam blurted out. Then he corrected himself. “I guess it means the buffalo are important to me. Maybe my connection to the buffalo, or animals in general, is important to me.”

Bell Rock waited.

Sam had nothing more to say.

Finally Bell Rock spoke. “There's a lot for you to learn here. Maybe I can guide you a little. But mainly I can help you arrive at it yourself.

“You're right, the buffalo are important to you. The powers have sent you a messenger that took the form of the buffalo. Only you can really understand what the messenger is telling you. I can point out some directions, but really it's up to you.

“From now on you should watch the buffalo for what they might be able to teach you. Watch for spirit messengers in the form of buffalo cows, yes, but also observe all ordinary buffalo. Study them, see what they do. Observe the wisdom of their everyday ways.

“Since you're a man, watch the bulls and what they do. For example, when they fight, the bulls are not quick, they're big and heavy, but they never flee. A bull will fight until he wins, or he will fight until he is defeated. But one thing he won't do—run away. You should think, maybe, whether that's the way you ought to conduct yourself when you go into battle.

“Remember, always look for buffalo cows that might really be messengers. If they are, listen with your heart open.

“Also watch the eagles. Eagles often bring messages from Sun.”

Though all this seemed overwhelming to Sam, he repeated the words in his mind and held on to them carefully.

“Understand, the buffalo cow was sent to guide you. Animals are often people's guides. Most Crow men, almost all of us, have seen an animal in a vision, and those are our guides, our medicine. Probably every man wears something in tribute to his guide, a claw, or tooth, or feather, maybe. Or he paints something on his body. Perhaps you should think of doing something like that. Some men who dream of buffalo make hats out of buffalo hide and horns.

“Sometimes picture in your mind the buffalo cow of your dream. Ask her questions—maybe she will answer. Ask her for help. Listen to her without asking questions. Invite her to come to you, and just watch the way she comes, how she walks—sometimes there's a message there. Pay attention to whatever feelings you get, and whatever words surround them. Lots of times these messages are little feathery things, made of almost nothing, like the seeds that float down from the cottonwood trees. But like these seeds, the wispy messages sometimes bear great fruit.

“Return to this dream again and again in your mind. Don't grill it, like an attack. Hold it gently. Feel it. Listen to it. See if, over the years, it has messages you haven't understood yet.”

Bell Rock waited and thought. “Anything else you want to ask about right now?”

“I dream about snakes, too.”

“What about them?”

“I'm bad afraid of them.”

Bell Rock smiled. “We'll leave that for another sweat, another time.”

Bell Rock waited a while and then went on. “I think your connection to all animals is important. You should pay attention to that. I study you white men, and I see beliefs that are strange to me. For example, you seem to see yourselves as apart from the animals, made separate in some way. You even think you are supposed to dominate the animals. You treat them as things to use, like a hatchet or a knife.

“We Crows see it differently. We think the buffalo and all the four-leggeds have their ways, which we must honor. The two-leggeds, we have our ways, but we are not the owners of everything. Maybe you think about that some.”

Bell Rock waited. “We also think each animal has something to teach us. Maybe you think about that. The buffalo has something to teach you. So does the snake.”

“I don't know if I can remember all this,” said Sam.

“You'll remember what you need to know now,” said Bell Rock. “One thing you haven't mentioned. You are male, the buffalo female. Maybe in some way you joined with the female in that dream, or maybe you should look for ways to include the female in your life path. I don't know how this might work.”

Sam nodded. The female part, it seemed like too much.

“I come back, though, to the two most important things. Whatever message this buffalo brought you, only you can know it. Maybe you won't know it in words, maybe just something you feel in your heart. That's good.

“Also, use the buffalo cow as your helper. Ask for her guidance. Listen to what she says.

“Anything else you want to ask me?”

Sam didn't dare.

“Now comes a good part. You need a new name. You are not the same fellow as before your dream.

“A Crow man gets a new name when he does something worthwhile. Maybe when he gets a war honor, or does something else big.”

Sam was excited.

“Let's go to my tipi.”

When they crawled out of the sweat lodge, Coy bounded all over Sam. “How did Blue Horse make you behave so well?” Sam cooed, rubbing the pup's head vigorously. “How did he get you to act good?”

At the tipi Bell Rock painted Sam's face red on the right side, blue on the left, the colors split right down the nose. “This will give you power,” he said. “You must wear this paint tonight as a sign to all that you intend to do something. That will be to kill a buffalo cow from horseback and give the meat and the robe to old people who are poor and need it. When you have done this, I will give you a new name.”

“All right,” said Sam. He wanted to get to the river and look at his new, painted visage in the water.

Then he had an impulse. He said eagerly, “I'll kill a buffalo from the back of the medicine hat.” Almost the moment the words were out, he was sorry.
Ahead of myself as always,
he thought.
I can't even ride the medicine hat.

S
AM KEPT WORKING
with the medicine hat in the mornings and standing with Meadowlark by her lodge at night.

The mare progressed. After letting Sam sit on her in deep water, one morning she stepped gingerly out of the freezing river with him on her back—he just whacked her lightly with one hand on the rump and out she went. There she stood on the riverbank sand, looking around nervously, uncertain what to do when a human being sat astride her. Sam wanted to let out a war whoop, but didn't dare.

Coy darted up and nipped at the mare's heels.

Sam landed
ker-plop!
in the river. O-o-w! He wished he'd come down in deep water. He stood up rubbing his bottom.

Now Blue Horse had Coy tucked under one arm. Bell Rock held the mare by the lead rope. “Lucky she didn't get away,” he said. “Get back on.”

Sam made a wry face and led the mare back into the deep water.

“Calm, easy,” said Bell Rock.

Holding the lead rope again the horn, Sam swung back into the saddle. He let the mare just stand for a long moment. Then he tapped her rump with a hand, and she walked gingerly out of the river.

Man and horse shivered in the down-canyon wind.

“Slip down off her,” said Bell Rock, “and get right back up.”

Sam did. The mare stood still, bewildered.

“Slip down.”

They stopped worked for the morning. Sam was excited.

He made a little progress with Meadowlark, too. Every evening Sam waited for Red Roan to finish romancing her. Even when Sam went early, cutting his own supper short, Meadowlark stayed in the tipi until Red Roan arrived and stepped quickly to him, barely flicking her eyes in Sam's direction. Sometimes Coy barked, like he was trying to get her attention. More likely, Sam thought, he was protesting standing out in the cold while two men flirted with Meadowlark. Coyotes didn't fool around with flirting, he was sure of that.

This evening the wait was even longer than usual. At last Sam took his turn. They stood wrapped in a single blanket, and Meadowlark let him hold her hand. They gave each other the news of the day. They smiled moonily. They looked at the snowy peaks to the west and watched the evening star rise above them. Meadowlark pointed out what she called the Seven Stars, which Sam knew by the name Seven Sisters. She told him how the Seven Stars gave her grandfather an arrow bundle, and now her father was the keeper of that sacred bundle.

Though Sam was puzzled at what a sacred arrow bundle might be, he gave her his mother's story about the same stars. They were seven sisters, all but one in love with gods. The one who loved a mortal was embarrassed, and because of her mortification was the dimmest of the seven. Meadowlark liked this story. Sam liked realizing that his culture had fanciful tales to explain things, just like hers.

“Coy,” he said to the coyote pup near his feet, “talk.” This was a trick he'd been working on for a week.

Coy sat up on his haunches and raised his head to the night sky.
“Ow-o-o-o-o-o!”
he howled.
“Ow-o-o-o-o-o!”

Dogs all over camp set up a howl. Angry exclamations came out of tipis.

Sam and Meadowlark looked into each other's eyes, giggling.

“When the Seven Sisters rise at dawn,” Sam added, “that's in the spring, they're telling us it's time to plant the crops.”

Then he had to explain what crops were, more than a little tobacco planted along the river, and how white people grew their food instead of hunting it.

Meadowlark said, “White people are full of wonders.”

Awkward pause. Sam knew she meant her words and was also trying to be nice.

“I couldn't live white ways myself. They're
too
strange.”

The two lovers broke into giggles. Gray Hawk coughed loudly in the lodge, Meadowlark's signal to go inside for the night.

She squeezed his hands and disappeared.

He and Meadowlark were not lovers, of course. As Sam neared his lodge, he felt grumpy. Here came another night of listening to the amorous adventures of his buddies. Gideon, Beckwourth, and even the Pawnee Third Wing apparently had no trouble getting mates regularly for little trips to the willows, and they enjoyed torturing Sam with endless recountings while the center fire died down, night after night.

It was clear that the Crows saw no particular virtue in chastity. Men chased whatever woman they had a yearning for, and that was regarded as natural, what a male of any species does. Women were less obvious about their adventures, but the beaver men soon learned that various married women had boyfriends. Their husbands disdained to notice, as jealousy was supposed to be beneath their dignity. And even more women would take a lover for an hour, especially if enticed with a string of beads.

Sam ducked through the lodge door and discovered, to his relief, that his lodgemates were all asleep. He stripped and crawled beneath his own blankets and on top of two buffalo robes. Coy was already curled where Sam put his bare feet.

The next morning, though, Gideon, Beckwourth, and Third Wing made their stories ricochet around the lodge again. While Sam built the morning fire to take the chill off, they lay in their blankets and traded stories of adventures among the willows. The way Third Wing told it, he pleasured a young woman named Muskrat every evening. Sam pretended not to hear.

“Hand me the
charqui,
” Gideon said. He made it sound like a mock order.

Ignoring his tone, Sam picked up the parfleche box of dried meat and handed it to Gideon.

“Me too,” said Third Wing.

“Me too,” said Beckwourth.

Sam gave all of them a look, but handed the box from bedroll to bedroll. When Coy mewled, Sam gave him some meat too.

Third Wing took out a dried stick and held it stuck out from his groin. “Oh, Muskrat, Muskrat,” he cooed.

Beckwourth did the same, crying “Oh, Sweetheart, oh, Sweetheart.”

Suddenly Gideon stopped the laughter with a loud, “Sam needs a woman.”

“That's right,” said Third Wing.

“Damn right,” said Beckwourth.

“Enough!” Sam growled.

“No, I mean it,” Gideon went on. “You need to take a woman to the willows. If you don't, the Crows are going to think you're a weakling.”

Sam ducked out of the lodge and came back with an armload of aspen for the fire.

“You need to think on this,” said Beckwourth.

“Think on getting jollied in the willows,” said Gideon.

“You're afraid it would make Meadowlark mad,” Third Wing said.

“Actually, it would make her respect you,” Gideon said.

“When in Rome,” said Beckwourth.

“Half of the men are married to two women,” Third Wing said.

“Makes you more of a man.”

“Shut up,” said Sam. The truth was, he'd made a resolution not to touch any woman until he got Meadowlark. Why, he couldn't have said. But he wanted it that way.

Scratch-scra-a-a-tch!

The beaver men looked at each other. They couldn't remember when anyone had scratched at their lodge flap, which was the Crow way of knocking on the door.

Sam called, “Come in.”

A shadow darkened the entrance. Then the big form of Red Roan loomed, and Sam saw he was smiling.

“You want to learn the bow and arrow?” These words in Crow were aimed at Sam.

“Sure.”

“Come at midday, over by the big yellow boulders.” He motioned to the southwest. Sam knew the place.

“Good.”

 

S
AM AND
C
OY
walked toward the big yellow boulders in good spirits. A week or two ago, when Red Roan first mentioned working on bow and arrow, Sam gave Blue Horse a butchering knife to make him a good bow. Though Blue Horse was only twenty-two winters, everyone agreed he had a knack for making bows. At the same time Sam made a dozen arrows in the slow, meticulous way Blue Horse taught him last winter. He had to throw away several, but the dozen left were good. When he showed Blue Horse the arrows, Sam asked why Red Roan would help him with his archery. “He's a good man,” Blue Horse said, “and he must teach his sisters' sons to shoot the bow and arrow.”

Sam was sorry Blue Horse, who'd gone hunting, wouldn't get to see this new bow shoot.

On a flat area in front of the big yellow boulders, Red Roan, Blue Horse's younger brother, Flat Dog, and five twelve-or fourteen-year-old boys were shooting arrows at a target of grasses tied together with rawhide. They stopped immediately. “Time for our game,” said Red Roan.

“Who wants the white man?” teased the biggest kid. “He won't be able to hit anything.”

Sam gave the kid a look and got nothing but impudence back.

“This one is called Stripe,” said Red Roan. “He has no manners.” Red Roan gave Sam the names of the others. Sam knew Little Bull, the youngest brother of Meadowlark and Blue Horse, but he felt frozen in his brain and couldn't remember the others' names.

“We're going to play a game, rolling the buffalo chip,” said Red Roan. He picked up a chip off the ground, an ancient one, very dry. A hole about the size of a boy's fist had been punched in it and in a stack of others nearby. “It's a simple game. I roll the chip across in front, and you boys shoot at the hole.”

“The hole,” Sam muttered in English. He also found it odd, at twenty, to be included as one of the boys.

Red Roan rolled a chip as a demonstration. Stripe pantomimed taking a shot at it.

Coy pranced forward and grabbed the chip in his mouth.

“Coy, no,” called Sam in English. The pup looked back, chip poking out of his mouth.

“Coy, come.”

The pup did.

Sam took the chip and handed it to Red Roan.

“Sit,” he said.

The pup did.

“Stay put,” Sam said.

“What did you say to him?” asked Flat Dog in Crow.

“I said no, uh, come, sit, and stay there.”

“In your language?”

“Sure.”

“Would dogs do that?”

Flat Dog had a face that looked put together out of mismatched pieces and a half smile that said everything in life is funny.

“Yeah.”

“If you told them in Crow?”

“Yeah.”

“What if you told the coyote in Crow?”

“No, he learned in English.”

“The game,” Red Roan interrupted. “If you miss, you let your arrow lie. If you hit the chip, you get your arrow back, but you don't get anyone else's arrows. If you put an arrow through the hole, you get to pick up all the arrows on the ground.”

Sam nodded that he understood. “I probably can't hit a moving chip,” he said.

The boys all looked at each other and nodded, like “We know.”

“First we divide into teams.”

Uh-oh,
Sam thought,
bad news.

“The game's over when one team gets all the arrows.”

“And they keep them?” asked Sam.

“Sure,” said Stripe, like “What do you think?”

“So Stripe and Little Bull, you choose sides,” said Red Roan.

“I don't play,” said Flat Dog softly to Sam. “Too old.”

“Stripe, go first,” said Red Roan.

“Beaver,” said Stripe. A youngster as wide as he was short went to stand by Stripe.

“Straight Arm,” said Little Bull immediately. He was a skinny kid with an angry face.

Stripe looked lingeringly over the faces of the two players remaining. He had a superior smile.
I'm going to be the last one chosen,
Sam told himself, and it made his gut ache. “I choose Spotted Rabbit.” This was the youngest-looking kid, with a big smile and baby fat still in his face.

“You belong to the other team,” Stripe told Sam. He flashed a giant smile that made Sam sick. “White man.”

“My name is Sam,” he said.

Coy whimpered.

“Sam,” Stripe repeated softly, almost laughing. He gestured for Sam to stand by Little Bull.

Sam looked at Flat Dog, hideously embarrassed. He was willing to bet any of these boys could outshoot him. And he was older even than Flat Dog.

The two teams faced each other.

“Sorry you were last,” said Flat Dog quietly.

Sam tried to shrug nonchalantly.

“The truth is,” Flat Dog said, “no one wants to lose his arrows.”

Sam was beginning to catch on, and he didn't like the setup one bit.

Red Roan put a stop to their talking with, “Who wants to go first?”

Stripe said, “Go ahead, show us what you can do, white man.”

Sam ignored the gibe and took a shooting stance. About twenty steps away, very carefully, Red Roan rolled the chip across his front, giving it a good thrust so it wouldn't curl off one way of the other.

Sam let the arrow go, and his heart jumped up.

No, a miss. The arrow slipped by just behind. He felt good at coming so close.

Beaver shot first for the other team and put the arrow right through the hole. The chip spun a little on the arrow and stood up, pinned. Beaver collected Sam's arrow, and his own, without even a glance at Sam.

“That's all right, white man,” said Stripe, “you have plenty of arrows to lose.”

Then Sam noticed that the other players had only six or eight arrows each. “My name's Sam,” he said.

Stripe flipped him an indolent smile and walked off without a word.

“Nephew,” said Red Roan, “treat our guest respectfully.” But the two grinned at each other.

“Should we have everyone start with the same number of arrows?” Little Bull asked.

“No,” said Stripe, “the white man will need all he's got.”

Straight Arm shot and ticked the edge of the chip, knocking it over. Red Roan tossed his arrow back.

Spotted Rabbit shot, a clean miss.

Little Bull hit the chip and knocked it into fragments. He collected his arrow.

“Are you ready, Stripe?”