People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past) (33 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Weeping Eye (North America's Forgotten Past)
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Irony laced Violet Bead’s voice. “She might be a matron, but now she’s just a slave.”
Wide Leaf’s jaw muscles tightened the way they did when she knew better than to say what was on her mind.
Heron Wing slapped her hands to her hips. “Let’s get her out of that dress.”
“Indeed,” Violet Bead replied. “I want to see what kind of prize would drive our husband to risk his precious neck on a Chahta square.”
Morning Dew didn’t resist as they sat her up and pulled the dress over her head. That she was young, with a ripe body, came as no surprise.
Wide Leaf inspected the dress, her critical eye absorbing the quill work and the patterns of pearls. “Good workmanship. As good as my own.”
Violet Bead bent down, wet a cloth, and extended it to Morning Dew. “You can wash yourself, can’t you?”
The woman gave no response, her face slack and listless.
“Gods,” Wide Leaf muttered, reaching over to pull the woman’s hair out of her face. “Hey! You in there?” She lightly slapped Morning Dew on one cheek. “Come on. Is that all they breed into you Chahta bitches? You could be a lump of mud for all I care. Pampered matron!”
For the first time, Heron Wing saw the eyes flicker. They cleared, and glared for a moment before going blank again.
“Well, lay her out flat,” Heron Wing decided. “We’ll just have to do it the same way the
Hopaye
cleans a corpse.”
 
 
T
rader stood in the doorway and stared glumly out at the slanting rain. Just down the slope, their canoes were pulled up and hidden in the tall grass. What once had been a canoe landing was overgrown and almost invisible.
Shelter had come in the form of an abandoned village a half day’s journey up the Tenasee, or the Sister River, as the Illinois called it. As the first drops had fallen from the
brooding sky, Two Petals had pointed, saying, “That’s no place to make camp.”
With the storm brewing, no one had objected. They had searched the abandoned village, checking the repair of the houses that still stood. Then they carried the packs up to the house that remained sound. The roof seemed to be good; and its bark construction suggested that it had once belonged to either the Illinois or the Miami. The place was strewn with trash that they swept out, and once a fire had been kindled in the old hearth, it was almost homey.
Then Two Petals had surprised both men, saying, “You know, the last thing I need right now is a woman’s lodge.” She’d stared through the pouring rain, pointed, and declared, “I definitely don’t want that one.”
So saying, she had picked up her bedding and strode off.
Now Trader could crane his neck and see a faint blue smoke rising from around the cracks in the bark roof.
“I just wonder why it didn’t happen sooner,” Old White said from where he nursed their fire. “Of course, sometimes starvation, hard work, or tough times can make a woman miss her moon. I knew of an A’khota woman warrior once who kept herself so fit she claimed she didn’t have to go to the Women’s House except on rare occasions.”
Trader crossed his arms, watching the patterns of rain on the river. “To be honest, I’ve never studied the problem much.” He turned. “The way I was raised, women were kept strictly separate. You know our ways. Men do the things men do, and women do theirs. Then, once I got out on the river, I ran into many different beliefs, most of them contradictory to what our people accept as normal. Where does the truth lie, Seeker?”
The old man poured water into one of their bowls, setting it on three stones over the fire to boil. “That I can’t tell you, Trader. There are as many ways of believing as there are people, and each and every one of them thinks
their way is right and proper. Most of them think that their gods have given them the true and correct rules of behavior. Up in the northeast, and among the Charokee, it’s the women who really rule. In other places kin is traced through the men, and the men rule. Or, take the Sky Hand; we trace our lines through the women, and the men still rule. I think it depends on what you learn as a child.”
Trader considered that as rain pelted the forest around them, dripping from the bare trees. In a lower voice, he asked, “What about Power?”
“Now, there you have me.”
“Do you think Power remembers?”
“I think it just is.”
“So, Power doesn’t hold a man’s actions against him?”
“You thinking of this man you killed?”
“My brother. That’s a pretty serious burden to bear. To have killed one’s brother—no matter where I’ve traveled—is considered very wrong. To many it is the most hideous crime a man can commit outside of incest.”
Old White’s voice lowered. “Trader, tell me: Did he deserve it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. All of my life, up to that moment, I had done everything I could to be different from him. We are taught that life is a balance of opposites: the white and red forces of nature, constantly in opposition. Different yet equal. Rattle and I were like that: twins—equal, and completely opposite of each other. I sought harmony, goodwill, and acts of kindness; while he plotted, schemed, and envied. I never understood. Rattle always got what he wanted; but it was never enough to satisfy his cravings. If I received a gift because of a kindness I had done, he would stare at it. He would be obsessed with possessing it. I knew how it consumed him, so I always put up with his scheming, letting him talk me into something lesser in exchange
for that thing … perhaps a toy bow, or a little clay sculpture. In return, I’d let him concoct his intricate lies.
“Once it was a whelk shell gorget I was given by the
Hopaye
. I had run to fetch his medicine bag when a man was dying. The
Hopaye
saved the man’s life, and in gratitude he gave me that gorget. It was a beautiful engraving of two rattlesnakes circling, the center open to represent the passage from this world to the Underworld. The cord it hung on was strung with polished shell beads. It became my prized possession.” He paused. “Oh, how Rattle wanted it.”
“What happened?”
“Well, he couldn’t steal it. Not and be able to parade around with it on his chest. So he started offering things in Trade. First it was a crudely carved stick that he claimed our uncle had given him. He told me wondrous stories about how it was filled with Power to call the lightning. Once, he said, he had thrown it into the air, and an eagle appeared, grabbed it in its talons, and dropped it back to him. He even showed me the imprints the talons had supposedly made in the wood. I refused. Just that once, I wanted to keep that gorget.”
“But he kept at you?”
“Oh, yes. Rattle did terrible things after I refused. He made it look like I’d broken one of Uncle’s prized ceramic pots, one that supposedly came all the way from Cahokia. He slipped some of the medicine herbs into my tea from a bag we were never supposed to touch. He tied the knot wrong to make it look like a clumsy child had done it. I was sick, throwing up and fevered for almost a week. As bad as the sickness itself, I was whipped for getting into the medicine until my skin was raw with welts. In the end, I gave up and let him have the gorget in return for a woodpecker wing fan someone had given him. After he spilled grease on the feathers, he had tired of it. The grease, he told me, came from a tie snake he’d found one of the Albaamaha cooking. The story he told was that it would enable me to fly.”
“Let me guess. It didn’t?”
“No. When he finally tired of the gorget, he gave it back to me in Trade for something else. But by then, it had lost its special magic. As if by owning it, he had sullied it.”
“Did your family know all these things?”
“Sometimes. Uncle always told me to understand that Rattle was different. He counseled patience and forgiveness. But he had had trouble with his own brother, and it affected his dealings with us. He didn’t want my brother to make the same mistakes he had. But in the end, it was I who lost myself in rage.”
“That was where the woman entered the picture?” Trader nodded. “I loved her from the moment I first saw her. She was the
Hopaye
’s niece. Her brother was my best friend. Because I spent so much time with him, I got to know her very well. As she grew up, she became even more beautiful. We tossed pebbles at each other when no one was looking, sharing smiles and secret conversations. We both knew we would be married one day. I had spoken to Uncle about the girl, and he thought it would be a good match when I came of age. In one of those twists of fate, I won war honors before my brother did, and was sent to the Men’s House. For four days I went through the training, rituals, and purification. Meanwhile, Uncle sent one of his cousins to see the girl’s family.”
Trader glanced at the old man. “Can you imagine how my brother felt? Once again everyone was fawning over me. Uncle was telling people that as a man I would begin taking my place at his side in the tchkofa during Council meetings. Feasts were being prepared for the day I left the Men’s House; my clan was negotiating marriage for me with the
Hopaye
’s niece.” Trader paused. “I think it drove him half-mad.”
Old White listened intently, adding cornmeal, acorns, and pumpkin seeds to the stew.
Trader rubbed the back of his neck. “Rattle came on the first day. As a child, he couldn’t enter the lodge, but
called me over to the door, saying that he saw my girl sneaking down to the river.”
Trader hesitated, wondering why he would confess his innermost secrets to a stranger. “Fool that I was, I asked him to spy on her. He left, promising that he’d be right back as soon as he found out what she was doing.” He paused. “It was three days.
Three days!
I was half-frantic, and of course, I couldn’t ask anyone. I was in the middle of my initiation. When he finally came back it was the middle of the night. He had waited until I was alone and called me to the door. By then I was being devoured by worry.”
“And he told you what?”
“That she met an old Albaamo. That she asked him for a drug that would make her passionate on our first night together. My brother said that she took the drug, and on the trail, he stopped her. She thought it was me, called Rattle by my name. He said that she took his hand, led him off into the bushes, and laid with him, over and over and over again. He said that when the drug left her, she was so pleased with him that she no longer wanted to marry me.”
“And you believed him?”
Trader stared at the rain-slashed river with empty eyes. “About her? No. The only thought in my head was, ‘He’s doing it again!’ Everything in my souls broke loose. I knew that Rattle wouldn’t give up, that he’d figure some way to ruin it all. He would come between me and my wife with some lie about other women, or fix it so that I got the blame for some terrible thing. I just couldn’t let him.”
Trader swallowed hard. “He saw it coming … saw the rage, and realized he’d gone too far. He started to say it was all a lie, but I’d taken one of the war clubs from the wall. He tried to duck, but my blow took him in the side of the head.
“I remember looking down at him, seeing the terrible wound. Blood was pouring out of his head, his eyes fixed
in death. I realized what I’d done. By then I was outside the lodge, having ruined my initiation. Worse, when the story got to the woman I loved, she would think I had believed my brother’s lies, and that I had killed him for that reason. Even if she still married me, that terrible knowledge would lie between us like a wall. Worse, I had brought shame down on my clan … the same shame that my uncle had worked years to overcome. I couldn’t stand the thought of looking into people’s eyes, seeing their disapproval and disgust. Everything I had worked so hard to overcome was gone. So I ran … stole a canoe, crossed the river, and never looked back.”
Old White dropped crushed mint into the stew. “During my years on the river I heard rumors. Your uncle, he killed his brother, too, didn’t he?”
Trader nodded, looking down where Swimmer lay on his folded blanket inside the door, happily asleep. Dogs didn’t bear the burdens of conscience.
With a peeled stick, Old White stirred the stew. “I think madness runs in the Chief Clan. That and dark violence. It passes from generation to generation.”
“I was going to stop that.”
Old White stared up from under lowered brows. “Power works on us for reasons of its own. Perhaps that is why the Contrary led us to you. The time for running may be over.”
“Is it?”
“When we return to Split Sky City, we will see. I have only heard bits and pieces of the doings there. According to the rumors, your uncle has expanded the territory over the years. That is when he’s not been obsessed with keeping his own prestige. You’re right. He has had to work hard to keep his position. I’ve heard that it took years before the Council accepted his leadership without reservation.”
“He and the Raccoon Clan almost went to war with each other when I was a child. The tishu minko argued that the time had come to spread leadership among the
clans, to perhaps elect a member of the Council to lead.”
Old White—satisfied that the stew was bubbling—sat back, removed his pipe from its sack, loaded it with tobacco, and lit it from the fire. “Somehow, your uncle managed to keep things as they were.”

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