Without another word, Storm Arriving walked over to her. He reached out with his free arm. Mouse Road did likewise, and together they enfolded her.
Speaks While Leaving wept against his chest. Storm Arriving felt years of pain build up in him as he held her and thought of the many times he had wanted to hold her thus, only to have refused himself. He tried to speak, tried to find a way to express the regret of lost years. No words came, but two.
“Forgive me,” he said, and felt her arms reach out around him. She squeezed and held on tightly to him, and wept all the more.
George walked slowly over to where Picking Bones Woman sat holding her daughter’s body. The woman was nearly catatonic with grief, but as he knelt down, her eyes snapped back to awareness. She screamed at him and flailed at his chest. She beat him until Laughs like a Woman came and hid her face in his arms. She melted against him, her wails calming and growing weaker until they finally subsided into tattered sobs.
George exchanged a look with Laughs like a Woman and it was clear that the Contrary had undergone some sort of transformation. His gaze was softer, and George did not sense the feral danger that had surrounded him. There was more of the human in him now, and much less of the wild.
The Contrary stroked the old woman’s wet hair. He pointed to George’s chest and then pantomimed taking off a garment. George looked at his chest.
Navy blue wool. Brass buttons. Gold trim. The uniform of her daughter’s killers.
He took off the heavy jacket. Laughs like a Woman made another gesture, a tossing motion. George stood and threw the jacket over the incline of the lodge. It landed with a wet splat, out of sight.
Laughs like a Woman unfolded his sheltering arms. Picking Bones Woman did not scream as George put his arms beneath the dead girl. He lifted her. The hot knife of pain jabbed him in the side, but it was of little matter to him. As he looked into the girl’s staring eyes, he wished for a great deal of pain, enough to burn away the massive guilt that gripped his soul.
Laughs like a Woman led the girl’s mother inside the lodge. He picked up a buffalo robe and laid it down near the hearth. George put Blue Shell Woman down upon it. He set her hands upon her belly, then reached up and closed her eyes.
Outside, a wail separated from the general noise and drew nearer. It was a young woman crying, and soon it was at the door. Storm Arriving stepped inside, Mouse Road at his side. The girl hid her face in her brother’s chest and wept out loud. The tall man said something to his young sister and she shook her head in refusal. He exhorted her and with reluctance she turned to look upon her sister’s body.
The crying stopped and Storm Arriving released her. She knelt near the body. She touched the dead hand and recoiled, then reached out to touch it again. She held it for a breath or two, then turned and flung herself into her mother’s arms.
Picking Bones Woman awoke from her grief. She blinked and looked down at Mouse Road, then wrapped the girl in her arms.
Storm Arriving knelt beside his mother and one by one they began to sing.
Laughs like a Woman motioned to George. They both stood and left the family to mourn their loss.
The rain had let up and the westering sun poked holes through the billowed clouds. In the center of camp, riders gathered and with a whoop, headed off toward the retreating Army soldiers. George shivered in the slanted light. His shirt—wet, blood-stained, and muddy—clung to him like an unwanted skin. He held himself against the wind’s chill.
Laughs like a Woman stepped around the side of the lodge. He returned a moment later, the army jacket in hand. He offered it; against the cold, he gestured.
George looked at the destruction around him. He looked in the doorway at the family singing for their lost one and thought of the hundreds of others around the camp who did likewise. He thought of Stant and his guilt for defiling the flag of truce and attacking a civilian population. He looked at the offered jacket, its brass stained with the results of the crime.
“Hová’âháne,” he said. “Néá’eše.” No, thank you. He did not know the Cheyenne words and so used French instead. “It is yours. A gift. A present.”
Laughs like a Woman seemed to take his meaning but gave silent inquiry once more to be sure.
“Yes,” George told him. “Take it. I shall never wear it again.”
Custer finished reading the message.
“Dear Lord.”
The paper trembled in his hand. The block letters shouted at him, accused him, berated him.
CPT CUSTER STILL CAPTIVE
ENEMY POSITION DECIMATED
HEAVY LOSSES AMONG CIVIL POPULATION
SUBSTANTIAL LOSSES AMONG ATTACK FORCE
MUST REGROUP
STANT
“Dear Lord,” he said again, and crumpled the message in his hand.
Samuel had retreated toward the door after delivering the message. The others—who had been so eager when word had finally come—now stared in gaping disbelief.
Meriwether scowled. “What the devil could have happened?”
“At least he’s still alive,” offered Jacob Greene.
Custer threw the wadded paper at his Secretary of War. “Still alive? And how long do you think that will last once they return to their camp? Dear God, he’s probably dead already.”
“Do you intend on operating under that assumption?” Meriwether asked.
“What? Why you cold, son of a—”
“I’m sorry, sir, but it is a valid question. Do you wish us to proceed under the assumption that your son has been executed by the enemy?”
Custer stared at the general. He was mad enough to spit in Meriwether’s Carolina eye, but his training came to his service and stopped him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let the air drain from him like blood. The anger bled out with it, and Custer rolled the question around in his mind. Should the forces in the field assume that George was dead?
“It is a valid question,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “And, no, I do not want us to assume that he is dead. I’m sure that if he is, the Cheyenne will want to offer us proof. We may have misjudged them, but I at least know them well enough for this: if they kill him, they’ll want to rub my nose in it. They’ll want me to suffer. My apologies, General.”
“None needed, sir. Entirely understandable.”
Custer placed his hands on his desk between plates and cups and papers. He leaned on the desk and felt every year and every wound he had ever endured.
“Gentlemen, we are in a bad situation. In order to make anything of it, we need to know what happened and where we are now. Find out. We will reconvene in an hour. Have Cook brew up some coffee. It’s going to be a long night.”
He walked out of the room and closed the door gently behind him. The hallway that crossed the breadth of the White House was empty and the gas lights had been turned low. The house was quiet. Libbie and the girls were still at the theater.
Libbie.
He lit a taper from the hall sconce and took it with him into the family library.
The large room resisted the intrusion of the candle’s light. Shadows lingered at either hand and the curved windows were dark.
Custer walked in and sat, placing the candle on the side table. He sat there in the stillness and gloom and stared out through the mullioned panes into the blackness.
Beyond the balustrade and the dark void of the south grounds, the lights of the city shone like wan fairies. A carriage made its way up Hamilton Place, its lamp jumping and swinging through the night.
He sat there and watched its progress and suddenly he felt a pang of grief for lost things. He thought back to ‘68 when he had traveled down to Kentuckee to survey a horse farm he was considering for purchase. He and Libbie and the infant George had arrived by carriage when the sun was just preparing to crest the mountaintops. The pine-thick slopes created a cascading tide of mist that tumbled down to settle in the meadowed vale. It set the distances apart with gradients of clarity so that the
nearest tree stood crisp and cool against the gunmetal sky while the fence, the barn, the house, and the nearby hills were obscured by veils of progressive density until, at last, the fog-shrouded mountains themselves were made nearly indistinguishable from the roof of clouds.
Horses walked leisurely across the pastureland cropping sweet grass and flicking an ear or a tail at the occasional blue-bottle fly.
Custer strolled through the bucolic landscape, Libbie at his side, his son cooing in her arms. His lungs were full of the clear air and his chest was filled with the excitement that comes from seeing a lifelong dream about to come true.
They stayed on at the farm, the guests of Joshua and Elisheba Hawthorne, an aged couple who owned the place. The two of them had been married for more than sixty years and looked as if they were made of the dirt beneath their feet.
“The good Lord blessed us with three lovely boys,” the tiny Elisheba told them as she served the dinner meal. “But they were taken by the War. We have a daughter in Memphis, but she’s nearly city-folk, now. Poor Joshua, he’s getting on and just can’t….”
Joshua sat at the head of the table, the scowl of Job on his face. He was a man made of sticks and cord. His fringe of white hair hovered around his head as if held there by static electricity, and his deep-set, dark brown eyes were hooded with a private pain.
Elisheba never finished her sentence; not then, perhaps not ever. The old man’s look said it all, and in it Custer saw his own dreams die.
The next morning, with much apology, Elisheba saw them off.
“A change of heart,” she told them. “He just doesn’t want to sell it no more, is all. He never thought it would happen, I guess, until you folks came and, well….”
Another sentence left undone. She apologized to them all the way to their waiting carriage. Custer had stopped listening to her, though; he was looking at the old man.
Joshua stood a little bit off the path that meandered the distance from the creaky planks of the run-down porch to the gate in the post-and-rail fence. He did not look at his departing guests; he had not looked at them through the whole of their visit. Instead, he stared off toward the pastures. A pair of bay geldings ran across the lea.
Custer knew the real reason behind Joshua’s change of heart and he could not blame the old man. He stepped up into the open carriage, tipped his hat to Mrs. Hawthorne, adjusted his gloves, and brushed a stray hair from the breast of his military longcoat.
The coat, the braid, the uniform, and most especially the name; these things had changed old Joshua’s heart. In the old man’s eyes, Custer saw the death of those three sons, a family’s hope thrice slain. That sight had killed Custer’s own hopes, for nowhere in Kentuckee or Tennessee or any place in the South would his name be welcome. Not in his lifetime, anyway, and he had no desire to raise a family beneath that kind of onus.
They returned to Monroe and the lingering cold of the Michigan winter. In the spring, Custer and his brother Nevin bought a hundred-sixteen acres north of town and that made an end to the dream.
He was generally not the sort of man to dwell on past regrets, but tonight they all came home to him and thundered on the bastions of his mind.
The carriage swung from Hamilton Place onto the long curving drive to the White House. Custer pulled out his watch and checked the time by the candle’s light. The theater was letting out. He did not know whether he should give Libbie the news when she arrived or wait until morning. Her mood, he decided, would tell. If she was happy from the night out, he would let her stay that way until morning.
No harm in that.
Chapter 10
Wednesday, May 26th, AD 1886
Cheyenne Alliance Camp, Fishing Lizard Creek
Unorganized Territory
When Speaks While Leaving came out of her family’s lodge, George was waiting for her. She carried four empty waterskins. Her dress still bore the stains of yesterday’s violence. She blinked in surprise when she saw him.
“One Who Flies,” she said. “You are up with the women.”
She looked tired, but he did not remark upon it. “I waited for you last night,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you, but you were very late coming home.”
She stifled a yawn. “There were many who needed my help. My help, and the help of others. I would have liked to talk, but your fire was out when I came back. I did not want to wake you for my own sake.”
Speaks While Leaving’s mother came out of the lodge.
“Ame’haooestse,” she said with the barest of nods. Her tone was icy.
“Mo’e’haeva’e,” he said, greeting her by name in return. He did not know the words that might thaw her heart, so he bowed. It was a gesture that meant nothing to the Cheyenne, but the intent was understood. Her expression wavered. She challenged his gaze, then looked at him with openness, then avoided looking at him altogether and went on about her chores. He had seen that look a dozen times and more since the Army’s butchery. The ties that bound him to these people were near to breaking. That he would die if they snapped was unquestioned in his mind, but there was something else that meant more to him even than that.
“Your mother tries not to hate me,” he said to Speaks While Leaving. “I can see it in her face when she looks at me. I see it in others, too. That they who have such reason should even try…I just wish I could tell them all how much it means.”
“You will find a way,” she said. “You look cold. Where is your soldier’s coat?”
“I threw it away.”
She smiled. “In the language of the People, that phrase means much more. In Tsétsêhéstâhese, to throw something away means to discard it completely, to divorce yourself from it.”
He thought about it, and then said, “That is what I did.”
Her demeanor turned serious and she questioned him without words.
“It is what I wanted to talk to you about.” He fought for the right words, for to think a thing and to say a thing were suddenly two very different propositions.
“I want to help,” he said.
It was not what he really meant and Speaks While Leaving knew it. “What are you trying to say?” she asked him.
“I want to help. For Blue Shell Woman. For all the others. I…cannot be part of what was done here yesterday. I want to do something so it won’t happen again.” He shrugged. “I want to help.”
She smiled again and he saw her eyes were bright. “I must tell my father,” she said and was gone, back into the lodge. Her empty waterskins lay on the ground, forgotten.
They had left in the night so as to be ready when the day appeared. Storm Arriving rode in the lead, Mouse Road in front of him. On one side rode his mother, and on the other, Standing Elk kept pace.
Behind them, two whistlers dragged travoise. One carried the poles and hides and other supplies they would need. The other carried the shrouded body of Blue Shell Woman.
They had traveled from Fishing Lizard Creek to the Sand Hills in quiet. The miles of grass passed silently beneath their whistlers’ feet. Now, as the morning star rose in the east and the breeze brushed their faces with the taste of salt, the blanket of prairie grass pulled back to reveal the tufts of sedge and sawgrass and creeping sage that favored the lands around the Big Salty.
As they made their way up the final rise, Storm Arriving could hear the screes of diving lizards out on the rocks. The whistlers called out to their airborne cousins. They reached the top of the bluff and halted.
The Big Salty lay before them, a huge watery road that began at their feet and stretched on to the end of the world. The setting moon touched each wave with brilliance, glints of silver atop the brooding darkness. Fern-trees lined the limit in a thick band that rustled and swayed in the wind. The whistlers called again to their ancestral home. It answered them with echoes and, from far off, they heard the long hoot of a swimmer-that-kills-from-below.
They dismounted and staked the whistlers. The horizon was infused with green.
> “We do not have much time,” Storm Arriving said.
Picking Bones Woman took Mouse Road downhill to gather items from the shore. Storm Arriving and Standing Elk set to digging the holes for the posts. The soil was loose and easy but they had to dig deep so the poles would not shift. Soon, the four posts were in place and the two men worked to form the crossbeams and lash them to the supports.
They spoke only by gestures and looks. For Storm Arriving, words were not needed. The tasks were clear and simple. Dig the hole. Cut the pole. Tie the beam. Silence was a friend that worked alongside him, and any words he might use to try to dull the edge of grief would be a dishonor to the memory of his sister.
Picking Bones Woman and Mouse Road returned just as the eastern sky began to burn. The men finished weaving the lattice of leather straps that would be Blue Shell Woman’s final bed. Storm Arriving looked up. Already they had been seen. He showed his mother, pointing skyward. She looked and saw the gathering of angular wings: diving lizards, the large soaring creatures called Little Teeth by the Sage People. These graceful fliers lived only here on the cliffs around Big Salty. They soared on the rising warmth and dove down or skimmed the waters to catch their silvered prey.
The lizards hung overhead on the wind that rose from the bluff. Their leathery wings—each as long as a man’s arm—were translucent in the growing dawn. They hovered, waiting for the family to leave. There were two tens or more already, with more swooping in from the misty cliffs every moment.
His mother smiled. “She will go quickly to Séáno,” she said.
Storm Arriving lifted the body up onto the platform. Higher than a man could stretch his hand, it would keep his sister out of the reach of four-leggeds and leave her to the winged ones.
He untied her shroud and bared her face to the sky. She was still beautiful, even in the ashen pallor of death. He laid a buffalo robe atop her and tucked it in, swaddling her in its richness. His mother had sewn designs upon it with quills and bones and the blue shells his sister had loved so much. Standing Elk climbed up the stick ladder. He and Storm Arriving shared a long look over the body of the woman they both loved. The wind tugged at the young man’s braid. He reached within his shirt and pulled out a long reed, his courting flute.
The Year the Cloud Fell Page 22
