Book of the Little Axe

by Lauren Francis-Sharma

  XVII

  Kullyspell, Oregon Country

  1

  1830

  The first snow came the day before they were to leave. They had already made preserves and prepared pemmican with leftover fall berries. The clouds were lace thin and stretched, as though they had been asked to perform too big a task. It was a sawdust snow, covering only the base of trees and branch tips, but it left a dazzling rime over the landscape.

  “That’s one helluva story he put down in that lil book.” Gerard and Margaret had come through again on their way to their homestead. Ma didn’t think it right that Victor shared with them so much of Creadon’s story. Ma had told Victor that if Creadon had wanted to share all his story with Margaret, he would have done so. But for Victor, the telling made Creadon Rampley more real.

  “Wish I could read it.” Margaret sipped Ma’s elk stew. They’d run out of fat a few weeks earlier, so Margaret drank it like a bitter tea, face pruned, showing three less teeth than when they’d passed through before. “Are you certain you don’t wanna see winter through? It’s dangerous to ride now. Storm’s coming,” Margaret said.

  “The old gal might not make it to spring.”

  Ma had had a dream that a Yellow-Eyes who ruled all the territories had demanded that horses have ownership papers. She said that in the dream she and Victor were headed southeast toward home, and when they arrived at the place in the woodlands where they had left Like-Wind’s and the Frenchmen’s corpses, they were stopped by a short and muscular Englishman. Ma said she was afraid the Englishman would chain them and take them away, but the man didn’t want them, he wanted Ma’s horse, and when Ma couldn’t produce the proper ownership papers, Martinique fell into the earth and died.

  A few hours after, Ma and Victor sent Gerard and Margaret off with as much as they could carry. They said they didn’t need much, that the kind of life they had couldn’t hold things. Before leaving, Margaret told Ma that Creadon was as good a man as she’d ever known, and she held Ma in an embrace that lasted longer than it should have.

  Victor didn’t sleep well that night, thinking of what his life might be upon his return, wondering how they would explain Like-Wind to Bluegrass, wondering what life at camp would be without him.

  The next morning Ma woke Victor while the sky still shone black. The wind blew snow in a blinding northwest swell. Martinique whinnied as they mounted. Their pace was swift, and though they’d made layered clothing for the harsh weather, it remained bitter cold. Ten miles outside the perimeter of the post, Martinique, who had begun stumbling along the old buffalo trail, braked. Ma dismounted, whispered in her ear, and the two remained like that for some time while Victor girded the packs. As the sun lightened the sky enough to make the three of them different from shadows, Ma examined Martinique. She stroked her flank, inspected her hooves, her muzzle, her legs; then Ma offered her a breakfast Martinique refused.

  “We’ll return to the post, eat a bit, wait until tomorrow morning,” Ma said.

  When they arrived back at the post, the door sat ajar. Ma gathered the musket. The re-boarded windows offered no point of vision inside.

  “Did we leave that portal open?” Ma whispered.

  Victor moved forward, ready with his bow and arrow.

  “You see?” Ma smiled. “They came back and took everything we offered them yesterday.”

  Anything that wasn’t affixed to the post had been taken. Ma didn’t much care. Said she expected as much. But Victor did. He’d told those people—Margaret and Gerard—Creadon Rampley’s story. One does not give up one’s father’s story to thieves.

  “Go and rest,” Ma said. “I can’t have you and this horse dragging behind me.”

  Victor must have appeared as tired as he felt. Gerard and Margaret had taken the blankets, so Victor remained in his coat and folded into himself for extra warmth. When Ma came in, she laughed at the sight of him. Ma may have nodded or said something about being lucky that Margaret and Gerard had left the floors, but Victor did not hear. When he woke, Ma was at the front door, her hand gripping the jamb.

  “Ay, Ma.” Victor was certain that Ma’s dream had come true. As he moved toward her, he wished to the First Maker that they weren’t a people who believed in dreams. What use was it knowing what’s to come when you could do nothing to stop it? He had imagined, many times, the day Martinique would no longer be with them and what that would do to his mother. He reached for Ma’s hand, sidling up beside her. “It’ll be all right.” He said this as if there were any words to comfort her after the twenty-seven years she and Martinique had shared. Victor looked out now toward Martinique, expecting that she had fallen just like in Ma’s dream. Down on her belly, into the snow-covered dirt. But there she stood.

  “She made us come back because a big storm just turned this way,” Ma said. “I’ll bring her in.”

  Victor gathered firewood from the storehouse. Later, the post’s roof began to bow under the weight of a snow that fell in such heavy thuds that it sounded like a thousand bucks overhead. Victor had become spoiled living indoors, his skin and blood now thinner, more susceptible to misery. Victor fed the fire, but it behaved like a new baby, taking only enough to return to sleep, while Martinique, pressed against the door, remained pitifully wide-eyed, still refusing Ma’s treats.

  In the morning light, Ma noticed that Martinique’s lower lip hung lower and that a foamy drool had begun collecting along the corners of her mouth. Ma determined the cause was ulcers and said it would be a few days before Martinique’s mouth healed.

  That night as they slept, the ice on the lake rended and rumbled, and the corner of the roof caved atop the bed. Victor had slept there every night since their arrival, save that night. That night, he and Ma had slept on the floor next to Martinique.

  “We would have been crushed,” Victor said.

  “You would’ve been crushed.” Ma smiled. “You haven’t shared that bed since we got here!”

  By the third night, Martinique was improved enough to sleep outside, and Ma told Victor they would leave in the morning.

  At dawn, the snow was brutish with its luster. Victor had overslept and woke feeling guilty that he had not packed the travois.

  “Is Martinique better?” Victor retied the moose-deer boots that now pinched his toes. Ma stood in the doorway and Victor was certain she was angry with him. “I’m ready.”

  He looked past her to Martinique who was outside, bright-eyed, her tail aflutter. And past Martinique, between shaky limbs, Victor made out a rider, back straight on the topside of a fine black Arabian.

  Ma stutter-stepped onto the snowy plank to get a better look. The wind blew soft as if it wished to be humane. Victor stood a few steps behind her, bow in hand, watching the man pull his reins for a prompt halt. The man stared at them as though he thought he’d taken a wrong turn. His face was lined and hard, with black and silver stubble along its lower half. He loosed a knot in his scarf, then removed his hat, showcasing thick white-flecked hair, and dismounted. He never once removed his eyes from their faces, even as he steadied his stallion. Ma stood for a moment longer, until finally she set down her musket and inched her way carefully along the plank covered in a churlish snow. She paused at the end of it, then sprinted toward the man as though she were a small child, throwing herself into him, gripping his face, as if she needed to feel what her eyes could not assure her existed.

  Ma sobbed into the man’s neck, then pushed him away and beat his chest until he kissed the top of her head. His lips disappeared into Ma’s hair, and when it resurfaced, the man’s face was flushed, as if all of him had been stuffed inside that big lacy ball.

  2

  They stayed the winter—the three of them together—staring out onto snow drifts that rivaled the height of the post. Between storms, they repaired the roof and made a sturdier bed where Ma and Victor slept. Sometimes when Ma thought Victor asleep, she’d leave the room and she and Creadon Rampley would trade stories of their years apart. They
had a way together—careful, kind to each other—like two people who only wanted to be their best selves.

  On his travels, Creadon Rampley, whom Victor had begun to call Da, had been given a fiddle that he sometimes played at night before they slept. Ma laughed when he first tucked it under his chin, for it was too small and the bow too short, but Da said he had grown accustomed to the misfit, and indeed he had, for the notes were stirring and long and the trills so perfect Victor believed at times Ma had been brought to tears.

  “Would you like to play it?” Da said to her one night. Ma’s eyes softened as she reached for it. Da positioned her feet apart, taught her how to tilt her face into it, how to make her fingers appear as if they were suspended on the side of a magnificent sloping ridge. Ma winced when the spiraling note rang wrong, set the bow down quickly as if hoping the sound had not offended them.

  “Try again,” Da said.

  “My Mamá didn’t want me to play,” she said. “It reminds me too much of her now.”

  Da nodded as if he knew the story. “Do you ever think of going back home?” he said.

  Ma turned the logs, then poured herself another mug of water. “Each day. But I couldn’t risk my children’s lives.” It was the first Victor heard Ma mention her other children—the twins—to Da. Victor could see in the way Da flitted his eyes that he did not like hearing of them. “When I left home, I had to believe I couldn’t go back.”

  It was a night that Ma called “New Year” when Da came into the room and lay upon the bed beside her. “Member when we built that first bed?” he whispered. “I wanted to just lay down in it with you forever.”

  “You wanted to hide me away in it forever.”

  Victor felt Da turn toward Ma. The bed sunk deeper in the middle. “Hide? I wasn’t hidin’ you away. I was tryna give you what you had.”

  “You couldn’t make this place Trinidad.”

  “I was givin you a beautiful, quiet land. A lake like an ocean right outside your door.”

  “This was not your land to give.”

  “But that’s what Demas asked me to do.”

  “What is this?” Ma said. “What did my father ask of you?”

  “You knew your father asked me to take you away.”

  “Yes, because he was angry.” Ma sat up, and Victor could no longer pretend he was asleep.

  “He was protectin’ you. He knew you was only gonna stay away if you thought he ain’t want you. He knew you was gonna fight to the death for that land. He wanted you to live.”

  “And only now you’re telling me this? Do you know how long I believed otherwise?”

  “You left here, Rosa. You left me,” he said. “I thought we’d have time. A whole lifetime.”

  Ma said nothing for a while. “I couldn’t stay here,” she finally said. “We both know all that I had before. This piece of land couldn’t replace all of that. I know you tried your best, but—”

  “But he did it better?”

  “You mean Edward?” Ma said Father’s name, Edward, with such tenderness that Victor felt she must have been speaking of a stranger. “Edward didn’t know what I had before, who I was before, so I could forget with him.”

  Victor thought Da would leave then, for Victor imagined that Ma’s words had hurt Da very much. And there was a quiet, long and full, between them. “I wrote ’em a letter every year after you left,” Da whispered. “I hoped just one would make it, but I ain’t never heard back.”

  “No, I’m sure you wouldn’t have.”

  “You think they got it but just ain’t write?”

  “If they’re gone, they wouldn’t have seen it.”

  “Is that how you do it? Make yourself believe everybody’s gone?” Da paused, then said, “I think Demas got the letter and wrote back,” he said. “I think he was happy we had a son.”

  “And he’d tell me how my mother would expect the child to be christened. That I should find a good priest to do it.”

  Da laughed. “François is a big boy now, and Eve married Lamec.”

  “Lamec? What? Never! That man?”

  “Yes, and I think they got three lovely lil girls. Martinique, Myra, and Rosa.”

  “Eve wouldn’t name any child after me.” Ma paused, as if deciding whether to play, then she added to the story. “And the land is still Rendón land because Papá led a revolution to overthrow the English and won Trinidad’s independence.”

  They sat with that thought for a while.

  “And your Papá wants you to know that when he looks into the lookin glass, he don’t see an old man with grey hair,” Da said. “He sees only your beautiful face.”

  3

  1831

  When the snow began to melt, Da and Victor set out on their first hunt. Victor expected it would feel strange, but, in fact, it felt stranger.

  They rode to the edge of a snow-covered field. The sky was washed white, and branches had been wind-shaken so they alone stood as narrow tunnels of color against the blanched landscape. Victor hadn’t spoken since leaving the post and couldn’t determine if this was due to having too much or too little to say.

  “I’m one of the best hunters in our clan,” he decided to say.

  Da looked over at him with believing eyes. “Your Ma told me that anything you put your mind to, you do good at.”

  Victor was certain Ma never told Da that, certain that Da said it only because he thought Victor was doltish enough to believe it. But Victor wasn’t the doltish one. When Victor looked at Da, he didn’t see an Apsáalooke warrior, he saw a Yellow-Eyed loner who’d done nothing save make a son he let be taken away by another man. “You’ll believe anything, won’t you? You think Ma would’ve returned here if she hadn’t been told to do so?”

  Da looked hurt.

  “Did you ever look for us?” Victor said.

  “No.”

  Victor was always surprised by Da’s frankness. “And you’re pretending you’ve been here waiting for us all along?”

  “You’re sore,” Da said. “You got every right to wonder why I wasn’t with you.”

  “I never wondered that. I didn’t know you existed until we arrived here.”

  Da hadn’t known this.

  “I always knew where I could find you. I coulda took you away from your mother,” he said. “I coulda brung you here to live with me. But if I had, we was gonna be right here, right now, and you was gonna still be angry.” Da looked down at the tracks he’d lost beneath the shade of a hemlock. “A father’s got to earn his love. I learnt that from your grandpa,” he continued. “You wear your feelins on the outside just like him. Men like y’all choose to be a man in a different way. And ain’t nothin’ wrong with being that kinda man.”

  Victor felt they had nothing between them but words. But perhaps that’s all there ever was between people—good words, hurtful words, silent words. Da had given Victor his words. Now Victor had to choose whether to give his words to Da.

  So, Victor began: “Before you came, Ma and I went on a hunt.” Victor moved Martinique next to Da’s horse, Caleb. “I took a bull that day. It was my first.” Victor looked over at Da to see if he could find a reaction. “Ma carved out the liver and handed it to me to eat.”

  “That musta been a fine day,” Da said, as if he wished to pat Victor on the back.

  “No. It wasn’t. It was bloody awful. Slimy and horrible and … Ma probably wouldn’t tell you, but I had to ask her to cook it for me before I ate it.”

  “I guess you do take after me. Never could eat raw meat.” Da laughed, then Victor laughed, and both seemed to understand that now there were newer words between them.

  4

  “The most I heard of is twenty-five years, but nothin’ more,” Da said to Ma, as they watched the two horses from the back of the post.

  Before the heaviest snow of the winter arrived, Ma and Da had built a double stall for Martinique to rest beside Caleb. Martinique was an old gal, but Da and Victor knew that Ma had done this before.
r />   “By this time next year,” Ma whispered.

  She said it as if they had forever there.

  Winter was nearly ended, but Ma had said nothing more of their return to camp. And Victor was beginning to prefer their life with Da. Sometimes he pretended Da had always been with him, that those Yellow-Eyes had never come and hurt Ma, that Edward Rose had not been her anchor, that Da had not been only her bridge. When he watched them together, he wanted their good memories to be his.

  “He’s a fine boy,” Da said to Ma one night. “Better than I coulda dreamt.”

  “I want him to grow up slowly. To be a boy as long as he can,” she whispered.

  “I want him to be at peace with his life. Not like me,” Da said.

  “I think he is now. There are times when different things are needed, different people are needed to find your place in the world.”

  There was a long pause, as if Da were thinking on this. “I knew you’d bring him.”

  “I knew too.”

  It was a few weeks after the land turned green and the grasses grew tall and thick that Martinique refused to graze next to Caleb. Ma looked pleased, for this was the surest sign yet of gestation, and the next morning, still buoyant, Ma suggested that they make their way across the lake, where beneath the butterfly mountain, Victor watched Da grip trouts, slippery and squirmy, the hair on his arms flattening and glistening, while Ma gathered berries. By midafternoon, Ma had kindled their lunch fire, but Victor still had no catch, so Da called Victor to stand next to him, urging him to focus, to bend his knees, to still himself in the chilly lake water, showing Victor the heart-shaped formation he would need to clamp them. Victor waited with Da beside him, the whiff of Da’s breath on his ear, and watched as a trout neared, swimming cautiously about his legs. Victor lifted the fish out of the water. Ma said its color reminded her of Da’s hair. Then Victor threw the fish back into the lake and Da’s eyes alighted upon Victor oddly, but he said nothing until Ma called them to shore.