Night Birds, The (22 page)

I was quiet again, thinking on this. It was a strange vision, but I had learned not to make fun of this proud old medicine man. We talked further and I told him the parable of the sower and how Jesus speaks of an enemy who sows weeds among the wheat. I told him how the farmer stays his workers’ hands, because if they try and root out the weeds, they will destroy the good crop as well. “That is what I think of the army’s campaign,” I said.

“Ho,” the old man said. “But why does this Jesus let the enemy be in the grass?”

“I don’t know if he lets this enemy enter,” I said. “It seems like the enemy has been there all along.”

Blue Sky Woman came to lead her daughter back across the river. She glanced once in my direction and I said, “Winona grows tall,” and watched as a flush of pride spread along her cheeks, visible even in the dark. A fine-looking woman.

“She marry,” Blue Sky Woman said.

“Your daughter?” I said. “Who?”

“His name is Lean . . . Elk. She promise to him.”

“And you?” I said. “Are you promised?”

Asa had come out on the porch and seemed to frown at this question and conversation. I watched her walk into the gloaming and down the bank to the river, Asa forgotten by my side. I kept thinking how with each passing day even the nearest town seems so distant, how what I long for is not the white society but for things to be as they are now. Then I looked over and saw Asa watching me through half-lidded eyes. I tried to think of something to say to him, something cheering, something fatherly, but nothing came, and if I had expressed some sentiment, it would have been false.

ASA
J
ULY 15, 1859

Jakob did not come home last night after going to visit with Blue Sky Woman. He has fallen under their spells. He has forgotten my mother and does not hold true to his eternal vows. There is not one of them who understands. As we prepared for bed I told Caleb, “Dirty, to be taking up with Indians.”

“You should get your own mind clean,” he said. “You don’t know why he isn’t back.”

“So he can tell us more lies? You’re too lovelorn to see straight. You just want to sleep and think of Cassie lifting up her dress back in the woods.”

Caleb’s face darkened. I waited for him to strike me, steeled myself so that I would not flinch when the blow came from that stupid ox, but he only swallowed, saying, “Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself,” and walked off.

It’s not inside me, like he thinks. That night as I struggled with sleep, I turned over in the dark. And I was thinking of Jakob in the teepee with its dream figures etched into walls made of skin. The cloth rose and fell with each passing wind and the figures danced in the firelight. “Dirty,” Caleb says. He does not know adults, even though he is older. His imagination is too dim to reckon what is happening in that room. I saw how Jakob watched her walk away, his eyes following the curve of her hips. No, they are not talking in that teepee made of hides. I began to sink into dream and it was not Jakob that was there but myself, not Blue Sky Woman but Winona, and she was sleeping under a trader’s blanket, her cheeks plum-colored, her pretty lashes flickering. I shook the image away. No. I won’t let Jakob dishonor my mother in this fashion. I will bring this to an end in my own fashion.

DANIEL
J
ULY 18, 1859

I am the best Indian when we play Caleb’s game even if I cannot run fast. But I do not like to bother with girls. Girls slow a boy down. I can run faster and hide better without them. Caleb says I miss the point. But if I was a real Indian I would not take a white girl because they talk too much. Nobody can find me because I have a secret place with my dogs within the hollow of an old cottonwood tree. My dogs do not like the eaglebone whistles. They are good hiders too but the whistles make them perk up their long ears and whine like they are afraid of birds which I know they are not. Caleb says if I was a real Indian I would be kicked out of the tribe because I miss the point and do not like killing or girls. But if I was a real Indian I would kick him out of the tribe because he is mean to dogs and has hair growing in funny places.

One time I followed Asa. But I will not follow him again after what he did. When I am a soldier I am good at finding the other hiders because nobody knows about my secret place and my dogs can smell and hear far. I like to sneak up so that the Indians do not know that I am there and my dogs will lay down when I tell them to. One time Asa was an Indian. But he is a terrible Indian on account of his hair is red as a crabapple and he is no good at hiding. I was not surprised that he captured Winona because he is always staring at her. They are both terrible Indians even if she is halfway a real one because they were giggling as they went to hide. I was not sure who captured who since she was leading him by the hand. They were giggling so much they did not know that me and my dogs were on their trail.

She took him to a spot where the grove opens to a grassy meadow. Right away I saw that it was a poor hiding spot. But they did not seem to care for following the rules. They just stood there right out in the clear sunlight and all of a sudden got real quiet so that I had to make my dogs lie down. They were not giggling anymore but looking at each other in a way that I did not like. Winona brushed back her hair and called him Tatanyandowan.

Who? he said. Asa tugged on his ear to show if she meant the same one we called by that name. He frowned when she laughed at him. Yes, she said, it mean one who is singing good. Then he did not seem to mind so bad to have the name of an Indian who is ugly.

They were quiet and Winona showed him an empty place in the grass. Wakan, she said. But there is nothing there, he said. She did a little dance around the place and said some words in Dakota. I don’t understand, he said. Why are you showing me this? She was not laughing anymore and her eyes were very serious. Far away I heard the eagle-bone whistles that signaled the battle had begun and I was afraid my dogs would whine. But they did not.

God, she said. Here. She touched the empty place. Then she touched the place above her heart. Here, she said. Asa seemed to get very angry about this. No, he said. There is nobody here but us. Winona cast down her eyes and then she looked over to the spot where I was hiding but she did not see me and while she was looking away Asa stepped close and put his arms around her. She looked surprised. Then he put his mouth over hers and they both sank into the grass. She started to push him away and he got mad and pushed her down. I had seen enough so I went away because my dogs did not like this business either and were getting upset. I went quickly but I could still hear them. No, no, no, she was saying. Sh! He was saying, Quiet! Tatanyandowan, I am Tatanyandowan and you are my squaw. She was making hurt sounds and I heard the ripping of cloth. I thought of Pifpaf and the time I was a hero and thought about going back. But I was afraid. Even though I had my dogs I did not want to see. When the game was over Asa came back by himself.

As soon as I can I will tell Caleb about this because this is not part of the rules and Asa is wrecking the game.

HAZEL
J
ULY 19, 1859

Even as we played the game there was a sense that this was the last time. That Winona was not here troubled me, but Wanikiya only shrugged. It was a humid day, sluggish with low clouds and that heavy feeling that the air takes on just before a storm breaks. When the game began, the boys running low through the tallgrasses, I knew it was done with. All the terror we had once felt was gone. There was only the mystery of whether we would die or be taken captive. The battles had begun to degenerate into massive wrestling matches, all the rules forgotten. Still, on that humid morning it was Wanikiya who came to find me and led me past a wide calm pool in the river, around a bend, to place I had never seen before. We were far from the others now. Embankments of rose-colored stone rose up on either side of brown river. Teal-winged cliff swallows hunted insects from the cliffs and skimmed over the surface of the water, their wings brushing past us. A great burr oak towered over the bank, and beneath its roots a small waterfall trickled down and blackened the stone with moss. Wanikiya cupped his hands to the waterfall and then brought the water to my mouth. It was cooler and sweeter than the brown murk from the river. Far away we heard the tinny shrills of the eaglebone whistles.

It began to rain. We saw it dimple the surface of the water and heard it in the leaves of the woods on either side. Then a clap of thunder resounded and in the wake of the sound the rain increased and began to drum on the water and pelt us where we stood in the middle of the river with the sluggish current coiling around our legs, my dress wet to my knees.

“Come,” Wanikiya said. He showed me a place where a natural stone staircase climbed the rose-colored cliffs. The swallows chittered around us as we began to climb, Wanikiya pushing me from below so that I would not lose my balance. The cliffs were only twenty feet tall, but the stones were slick with moss and I scraped the skin of my fingers pulling myself up. We climbed to small shelf that overlooked where the river fell away into another valley and we could see a great forest and the slow-moving dark clouds that coasted over the treetops like a flotilla of black ships. The clouds ate away what blue remained in the sky, a boiling orange light at their edges, and then turned the air vivid with lightning. The wind picked up. For a moment it felt wild and wonderful to be standing on the edge of that shelf while the clouds whisked around us. It seemed we were inside the clouds themselves and I thought about the thunder beings Winona said lived inside them and how sometimes they kidnapped humans and took them away with them into their cloud citadels. I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be taken out of this world and into another where the ways we were different no longer mattered?

My dress was soaked through to the skin. I tasted the rain in my mouth, but then it began to hail, little ice beads that battered us on the promontory. I could no longer hear the sounds of the distant eaglebone whistles and figured the other children had long ago fled for shelter. The clouds above us began to swirl and rotate and the hail increased. Solid pellets of ice dropped from the dark clouds and pitted the trees and water around us. The swallows had retreated inside their caves. A large hailstone struck me in the shoulder with enough force to bring me to my knees.

When I struggled up I saw an ugly, yellow-green light pulsing in the belly of the clouds and the wind ripped leaves and branches from the bur oaks and whirled debris around us. “Here,” Wanikiya said. “Hide.” He showed me a small cave the falling water had hollowed into the side of the cliff. We had to squeeze ourselves into the tight enclosure to be sheltered from the hail. The small dwelling place was shot through with sticky spiderwebs. Brittle animal bones or branches crackled beneath us in the musty darkness. We could only fit by lying close together. I smelled the dry leavings of some creature that had taken shelter here just like us. It should have been terrible. A storm raged outside and thunder echoed through the enclosure. A sharp rock jutted in my back. My shoulder ached where the hail had struck me.

But I was lying next to a boy in the wet darkness. I could feel his heartbeat close against my own. He smelled of sweetgrass and cedar smoke and the rain. He was so close that his mouth pressed against my cheek, the heat of his breath washing over me. The only place for me to put my hands was around his slender waist. Outside the hail drummed into the stone promontory as the storm tore through the valley. I lay against him, wet and filled with wonder, an unfamiliar lightness in my belly. The boy’s body, his ribs and elbows sharp, felt rigid and coiled so close, as if I had him paralyzed. Lower I pressed against him and felt his response and remembered the shape of him the night I undid his breechclout. His breathing quickened.

I prayed then that this storm wouldn’t stop. That we could stay here like this, laying together in the warm dark, his mouth against my skin. That we would disappear and people would say the thunder spirits had carried us away, one white girl, one red boy, riding black steeds among lightning and villages made of cloud. Did Indians kiss? The boys said not.

I kissed him on the mouth and felt a quick pulse of light and warmth spread through my blood. And he kissed me back. Later, when I returned to this memory it seemed that the kiss lasted only five or ten seconds. In that short time I felt my spirit lift straight out of my skin and fly among those cloud citadels on a black mare with a mane of thunder, the blood hot in my face and ears. I drew back from the pulse of power, from that opening I felt coursing all through me. Outside the hail dissipated and the storm cities sailed into the distance and the sharp stone pressing against me woke me back to reality.

Wanikiya pushed away from me and I wondered if I had gone too far and frightened him somehow. I squirmed my way outside onto the dripping promontory, a throbbing pain in my back from the stone, and looked on the surging river and the dripping forest.

The forest was emptied of sound as we walked. Small willow trees had been uprooted by the wind’s passage. A shredding of green leaves carpeted the forest floor and floated in the sweeping brown river. Pellets of hail lay thick as snow on the ground. It was so silent in the storm’s wake that it seemed we were the last boy and girl on earth.