A Sweetness to the Soul

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  He’d offered to teach me, said with the Yakimas unsettling up north and our living so close to the reservation, I should learn to help patch at least, in case there was some kind of argument. The Warm Springs Indians, Sahaptin-speaking people, had yet to even disagree about the weather with their neighbors, but one never knows the future. I wanted to shoot more to know I could bring in game if needed or chase off cougars that frequented the timber and terrified the stock. Either reason, Mama had to grant permission for such “unlady-like” lessons.

  On the big day, she was mixing up gingerbread cookies, the scent of molasses seeping through the logs to the open air. It was early August and the weeds were coming on thicker than a bee swarm on the lilacs, and Mama said I had to work the potatoes before I could shoot.

  Then she did the worst: made me choose which of the girls I’d take with me. Rachel could weed good when she wanted but she was a scamp. She usually found something else to do. Once she started digging in some soft dirt near a hole in a hillside, shoveling sand between her legs like Hound would if he’d been with us. It struck me funny until I spied a striped animal with rolling fat moving quickly toward us like he was the landlord and we were about to be visited with an eviction! He stopped and rose up on his toes and I saw that he was huge, weighing more than either Rachel or me. “Rachel,” I whispered as loudly as I could. “Back up slowly and stand behind me.”

  She must have heard the fear in my voice because she actually listened and did just that. I caught a glimpse of her eyes as she turned and saw the animal which we later learned was a badger. It stayed where it was and we backed away. Then Rachel lunged for it, teasing. I could have hit her.

  It hissed at us and we took off running like newly weaned puppies until we reached a rock pile. There we sat for a long time, hunkering our feet up, until that badger changed his mind. He headed straight into the hole Rachel’d been invading.

  We were late getting home that day, and Mama had words for us and Rachel told about the animal and Papa said what it was and shook his head, amazed. Mama said she was glad Hound hadn’t been with us as the badger would have sliced him alive with its claws and teeth. Us too, Papa said, if the Lord hadn’t provided us with the rock pile.

  Mama said the Lord should have provided us with better sense. Mama often brought up the incident to remind us of our foolishness. Mine, mostly, as I was the oldest and responsible and “should have known better.”

  What I should have known was that Rachel would tell. She was sassy, that girl, and she couldn’t keep a secret. But she had a quick mind and the cutest dimples where she wore her charm.

  Usually, she had more charm than ambition, though. She’d drift off from the potato patch into the fir trees or she’d stop by the privy on the way to the field and snatch hollyhock blossoms and beg me to make her little dolls from the blossoms and buds. Taking her with me that day would have been interesting; who knows how much work we’d have done.

  Pauline on the other hand was still a baby, really, just six, but I confess, she was my favorite. While she cried a lot after she ate, it seemed to me, she was generally easy to entertain in the field. Not so at home. Curious, she was always getting into things, wandering too close to the river, pawing at the ashes Mama set aside for soap.

  So when Mama made me choose who to take with me that summer day, I chose Pauline. I wanted Mama happy, so she wouldn’t change her mind about letting Papa teach me how to shoot.

  Papa saw Rachel stick her tongue out at me when I chose Pauline. He didn’t say anything, just smiled and patted her head when she weaseled her way around his leg. Mama told her she had to help with the wash and look after Loyal and then Rachel really scowled at me. I didn’t care. I took a piece of deer tallow, dipped it in some molasses, grabbed a length of rawhide, filled the water bag from the rain barrel and Pauline and I headed out. Hound lapped water from a mud hole and loped after us. I didn’t even feel the heat of Rachel’s eyes on my back as we left.

  Pauline was especially good. I watched her faded blue bonnet bob up and down in the tall grasses. Later, she sat in the dirt, picked purple phlox and chattered while I was free to pull weeds and dream.

  Toward noon, I finished and should have gone home with Pauline. Instead, I rested a bit. Hound sprawled in the grass and even Pauline had curled up sucking on her tallow. I tied the rawhide to it and then to her toe so if she slept with it in her mouth, her foot would jerk the tallow out.

  I dreamed of eagles swooping down, dogs barking. A spider crossed my face and I batted at it and felt moisture. Dogs barked louder and suddenly, I woke.

  My heart pounded so loudly I thought that Hound could hear it. He stood, barked his deep, warning bark as I reached for the loose flesh behind his neck to push myself away from the horse that stood so close to me I could see the hairs in its nostrils. It snorted. A feather was knotted in the horse’s forelock. I couldn’t see its rider.

  I couldn’t see Pauline, either, and my heart raced, half hoping she was nowhere near; the other half praying she was.

  The rider had a deep, canyon voice which I heard when he said “Chchuu txanati!” Then he said, in English: “Still!” I noticed other sounds I’d heard, sounds of voices, stopped. “She awake,” he said and several pairs of painted pony legs came abreast of him and formed a half-circle around me.

  “Where’s my sister?” I demanded, standing. I hoped my voice was louder than my heartbeat and held more courage than I felt.

  The canyon-voice rider backed his horse up. I could see him then but his face was still silhouetted against the noon sun. Long strands of straight black hair hung on either side of his head and flowed onto his shirtless chest. His legs on either side of his pony were bare above moccasins.

  He raised his hand and a woman on a horse next to him slid off, her dun buckskin dress sliding up her thighs as she descended. She walked under her horse’s neck and reached behind the canyon-voice man and gently pulled something from the seat behind him.

  It was precious Pauline!

  Settled on the ground, Pauline took her time reaching me. Purple dirt smeared around her mouth. She had the good sense to be still.

  “Nana,” the canyon-voice man said nodding once toward Pauline. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I said thank you and pushed her behind me. Hound had calmed down and in fact had gone sniffing past the ring of riders toward skinny-tailed dogs scrounging behind the circle.

  A paper-thin woman, wearing faded calico cinched at the waist by a wide, beaded belt, scowled at me. I felt terrible that I’d fallen asleep and left Pauline alone, and it seemed the woman knew of my guilt, made her eyes memorize my thoughtless person.

  I’d had some contact with natives, mostly in Dalles City where their blanketed bodies sometimes walked the streets. Papa traded beef with them once or twice. A reservation just a few miles away from us had actually been formed with all kinds of pomp and circumstance four years before. The Indian agent had gathered several bands together including Wascos and Warm Springs or Sahaptin-speaking people and some Indians who had lived along the big river, the Columbia. Later, Paiute people came too. Perhaps the government agents felt the very different tribes would be so busy arguing among themselves they’d have no time to harass settlers moving onto former Indian lands.

  I stood now on land that had once been the Indians’. I was still trying to decide how to fill the gaping silence, calm my pounding heart, and break the stare of the old woman when a young girl, about my age, said something in the click-click and swoosh language and the canyon-voice man nodded his head, one quick nod. The girl slipped from her pony in a flash and walked toward me.

  In all my born days, I’d never seen a prettier girl. I was conscious for the first time of how skinny and awkward a thing I was. She was slender as a feather and fringe from her buckskin fluttered against her calves as she walked toward me, her hips swaying gently.

  The girl blinked long eyelashes at me that seemed to rest for just a second on her high cheekbones.
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  “Sunmiet,” she said tapping herself with her fingers at the center of her chest. “Name. Sunmiet.” She pronounced it as three words: “Sun My Et.” Her voice was clear, soothing, like spring water. “Means Morning Bird. You?” she asked.

  Later I learned she went to boarding school and knew English since the matrons swatted their students’ knuckles with a paddle if they heard the click-click swoosh language of the native people. The pain made English easier to learn, but in the summers, away from the school, easier to forget.

  “Jane Herbert,” I answered with conviction though my name had no special meaning as did hers.

  She had trouble pronouncing “Jane,” wanted to say “James,” and we giggled at that.

  She told me they were headed to the mountains, to pick huckleberries and that later, they’d be at the big river the white men called Deschutes. Huge falls pushed through a narrow gorge there and it was where the Chinook returned each year to feed her family. How odd now, it seems to me, that years later that falls should be a part of my existence, too.

  Sunmiet stopped suddenly and stared at me. Her look was bold, as though there was something in my eye. Cocking her head from side to side the way Hound does when he hears a sound he cannot place, she moved closer to peer at me. She said something in the click-click swoosh tongue and the people in the circle murmured and nodded agreement.

  “Huckleberry eyes,” she said. “You,” pointing with four fingers toward my eyes, “huckleberry eyes. Black with pools of blue. Fruitful,” she finished firmly, nodding her head once.

  She reached out as though to touch my eyes. Then coming to her senses, she snatched her hand back. She stared shyly at the beadwork on her moccasined-feet.

  I didn’t grasp the significance of that statement of my “fruitfulness” until years later. I tried to ask her where they’d found Pauline but she laughed, a tinkling laugh, and said something about huckleberries again and touched her mouth, nodded to my sister. I realized then that Pauline’s purple dirt was huckleberry juice. With delayed anxiety, I realized she’d have been deep in the timber to find berries. I swallowed, frightened, knowing she could have encountered a bear there or been easily lost, forever. I was grateful she’d been returned safely, didn’t know exactly how to tell them.

  We would have talked more, Sunmiet and I, she being the first Indian of any age I’d introduced myself to. But the canyon-voice man spoke, raised his hand and faster than a flick of a fawn’s tail, Sunmiet twirled from me. She nodded her head at me once, then grabbed the mane of her pony and leaped onto his back, reins already in her hand.

  In seconds, the whole band turned as one and headed out, dust puffing up from their horses’ feet. The old woman still scowled as she looked back at me. Sunmiet turned, waved. Her fingers were delicate, like Rachel’s.

  I waved back and so did Pauline, with a pudgy fist. That’s when I noticed Pauline held something. I pried at her tight fingers all the while she was saying, “It’s mine!”

  “You can have it,” I said. “Just let me see.”

  Her palm opened to reveal a tiny carving no larger than her thumb. Round, like a marble, it bore a painted face of two tiny eyes and a circular mouth that made it look like a hungry baby. “Where’d you get this?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “She gave it to me,” she said.

  “Not likely,” I said. “Where’d you find it?”

  She shrugged her shoulders again, reached for the carving I held beyond her touch. “Did you take it?”

  “She gave it to me!” she repeated, pouting at my disbelief. “For my berries.”

  I turned to call to Sunmiet but she and her family had already disappeared from view.

  “Don’t tell Mama,” Pauline whined as I tied the carving into the hem of my dress.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her, knowing what terse words Mama would have to say about our taking time to talk and trade with Indians.

  Mama had words of another kind. I was as sweet as I could be and kept my eyes to the floor as she spoke. “Almost had to send Rachel to fetch you,” she snapped.

  I swallowed hard, grateful she hadn’t as Rachel would have told about the Indians or worse, found me asleep with Pauline in their hands.

  Papa waited outside with the Kentucky. Rachel whined that she wanted to go. “My back’s aching,” Mama said, her hands holding her baby-broadened back. “You’ll need to finish hanging laundry. Watch Pauline. Loyal, too,” she sighed, pulled her hankie from her sleeve and dabbed her forehead.

  Hound paid attention as soon as he saw the Kentucky and headed with us toward the stumps.

  I’d never been allowed to touch them, Papa’s guns. Mama complained that he had too many though I only saw the Kentucky hung in its place of honor over the fireplace. I could never appreciate the Kentucky as much as Papa wanted me to, but I could try.

  “Butt’s the shape of a new moon, isn’t it?” he said more than asked. “Now run your hand up along the cheek piece,” he instructed. “Feel the star there, on the left side? That’s strictly American, that brass star. Idea came out of Pennsylvania. Shoulda been named the Pennsylvania but it’s always been a Kentucky. Always will be.” He smiled, proud. “That box on the other side? Open it.”

  I remember moving my face from the stock and lifting the hinged brass lid on a box no wider than the palm of my hand attached to the stock. I caught the scent of the tallow-greased buckskin patches resting there.

  “Greased patches make for faster reloading,” Papa told me. “So you can get more than one shot, maybe, at a buck, four-legged or two. Barrel’s got eight sides,” he continued. “You can count ’em. Shoots a thirty-six caliber. ’Member that,” he said. “There’s the rod, for ramming the balls.” He dabbed at his watery eye.

  “Use both triggers,” he continued, stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket. He gave more details, something he was known to do. “The rear one cocks the trigger. When you’re ready to fire, you barely touch the first one and it fires. There’s the sights you line up. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He held the weapon carefully, lifting the rifle to his shoulder. He kept his only working eye open. “You close your left eye,” he said. “Look through at your target and when they line up, you got a good chance to hit what you’re aiming at.”

  He brought the weapon down again, this time carrying it to a stump that seemed to be just the right height to rest the weapon on and still have me look down the sights to the canvas circle he’d placed in the notch of a cottonwood tree.

  “Got to make it your friend, feel safe with it. Your mother never has been,” he said, wistfully, “but you can, child. Never know what might happen.”

  I concentrated as he poured a black-powder charge into the barrel, then pulled a patch slightly larger than his thumb from the box. This he laid over the muzzle. From his pouch, he took a lead ball and cradled it like a marble in a hammock over the patch ramming them both down with the brass end of the hickory rod. With precision, he half-cocked the hammer, then lifted the striker exposing a tiny steel pan. Here he tapped a small amount of black powder into the pan and closed the striker. With his thumb, he cocked the hammer to a full cock. He took a deep breath as he pulled the rifle to his face, set the stock on his shoulder, and sighted the target. “Like this, Janie,” he said, and he set his feet, bracing himself against the recoil.

  I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut tight, waiting.

  Instead of firing, he turned, saw me with eyes pinched shut against the anticipated crack and brought the weapon down. “Won’t learn that way,” he said. “Don’t get soft on me now, Janie, and close your eyes before you shoot. Won’t hit nothin’ that way. Got to face what you fear. Here. Put your cheek to it.” I could tell that he would have rather shot the rifle himself.

  With his arms around me, his bushy beard close to my face, I tried to line the bead at the end of the barrel in the notch closer to my eyes. Papa placed his arm over mine as I stretched my left arm along the
barrel and with the right, placed my fingers over the cold metal of the trigger. It felt safe with him there, his wide hands over my smaller ones. He smelled of tobacco and gun powder, friendly scents that even today bring back memories of my childhood and sweet days with Papa and his children. I knew I could please him; I was sure.

  In fact, the whole day pleased me. I’d helped Mama and kept her happy. I’d met an Indian named Sunmiet, shared a secret with Pauline, hid a treasured carving we could speak of (and tell Rachel about when she could keep a secret); now I was learning to shoot Papa’s Kentucky.

  “Take a deep breath, child,” Papa said. “Pull the rear trigger till it clicks. Good. When I say so, let out part of your air. On three, stop breathin’, hold the rifle as still as a fishing-heron and squeeze the front trigger. Just a whisker of pressure on it now,” he said. “Ready?” And when I nodded he added, “All right, child, on three.”

  Then, just before he began the count, he gave me one more instruction, one that distracted me though spoken in his softest voice. “Just pretend it’s an Injun’s head there in that circle on the tree,” he’d said. “When I say ‘three’ just aim for that Injun’s eyes.”

  I don’t begrudge him his jaundiced view. It’s doubtful he would even have seen it as such what with Indians uprising, neighbors manning forts. It’s just that his image made me think of something I didn’t wish to.

  I held my breath, blinked away an unplanned wetness in my eyes, let air out. Then with feather-light fingers, I touched the cold trigger.

  “Papa! Papa!” Rachel interrupted, shouting, just as I sent an explosion and a cloud of dirt high into the air. Papa cursed. “Get Lodenma!” Rachel said, breathless, pulling at Papa’s sleeve. “Baby’s coming early!”