“No. This is their way o’ saying farewell. Cage told me once it was to coax their spirit to find its way. Tomorrow they’ll bury her.”
I nodded and looked over at Flower. She watched the ritual too, but it was impossible to know what she was thinking. I wondered if the gravity registered with her. Would it have registered with me when I was her age?
People cried and wailed beneath her body without abandon. My white sensibilities said to look away from them. That sort of behavior was for private and shouldn’t have been seen, but then again, this was the Lakota way. It was Cage’s way. Her people grieved out loud for all to see while we hid ours in our bones. Ours was there to suffer us in silence, but who’s to say which was better? Maybe crying it all out bled the bones of sorrow. Maybe it didn’t live with you forever like that.
There was an older couple, Cage’s parents as I knew them, who sat at the base of their daughter’s scaffold. The woman wailed as the others did, but as she did, she cut into her arm with a knife. No one seemed to stop her as she did this. In fact, it looked to be something everyone silently deemed suitable. Cut after cut was made on the top of her forearm as she wept and chanted. The man next to her did the same. He did not cry, but he cut small pieces from the skin on his arm while chanting along with everyone else. I pondered if the cutting eased their pain at all.
“What are they doing, Pa?”
“It’s a grievin’ thing. Parents of a dead child sometimes cut themselves like that. It’s just their way. Them’s her folks.”
My eyes trained on the couple and then the other Lakota around them.
“What do the children do?”
“What?”
“The children. What do Lakota kids do when their mama passes?”
Pa looked around at the children around us.
“I s’pose they cry.”
Standing there, I nodded to myself. Something got decided in me, and I was determined to have it done. I left Pa’s side, and he didn’t say a word. From my belt I retrieved the knife Cage had given me, the one I carried with me everywhere. It was small and didn’t have much of a blade, but it was true and sharp. It slipped from its buckskin sheath easily. Stepping forward, I ran the blade down the length of the heel of my right hand. Sorrow must have numbed me for I barely felt the knife as it opened my skin. A tiny line of red opened into a steady dripping of blood.
The Lakota around her scaffold fixed their collective gazes on me, but to their credit, her funeral song went on. It made me happy because I didn’t want to interrupt it. This was meant to be an addition, not a distraction.
I closed the remaining gap between me and one of the pillars holding her in the sky. My eyes shut as I bid her farewell in my silent fashion and wiped my hand on the wood of the pole. A red smear stained the place where my hand had been. It was my way, my token left for her. Having done the deed, I made my way back to Pa and Flower, my gaze on the ground.
“Why’d you do that?”
“I didn’t much feel like cryin’.”
Pa nodded, and we three paid our respects in the silent way we were accustomed.
We should’ve stayed that night. The tribe invited us to stay and camp with them for the evening, but Pa insisted we needed to be moving on before dark set in. The three of us would camp in the woods somewhere because these weren’t our people, not anymore. I wondered if it was that so much, or if it was the way the women looked at Flower. They were longing looks, the way mothers longed after babies. Perhaps Pa feared they would take her and claim her as theirs. Either way, he lifted Flower onto Betty’s back, and we headed away from the camp and on into the unknown of the evening light.
“Where are we goin’ now?” I asked Pa when we were out of earshot of the Lakota.
“To the Black Hills. There’s talk they’ve been finding gold there.”
“We ain’t trappin’ no more?”
“We can do what we have to. Minin’s a good way to earn.”
“But the Black Hills? Cage said they is sacred to the Lakota. It’s a holy place. She wouldn’t like you goin’ there to mine.”
“Son, those were her ways, not mine.” His voice broke off a little as he said it, and he swallowed something big down in his throat.
“And she’s gone now.”
17
I woke from my dream already in mourning.
Death wasn’t like they said it was. They are the people who tell the tales and spin the legends. Stories tell you that when in dire need, when someone is dying, their loved ones are there every second of their dying days. Stories say that fellas die in the arms of their women, and children stand over their father, crying tiny tears as he slips away gently into a good night. In those stories, no one ever laughs or tries to distract themselves with work or gets kissed by a pretty girl while their daddy is suffering. No one sleeps through the passing of another mere feet away from them.
I figured that when the time came, the gravity of it all would be well known to me. There would be no room for laughter or thoughts of friends. There would be only sorrow and deep lamentation because in the moments before he died, I would know how to feel and I would know how to act. The words that needed speaking would come to my head without issue. Only the silent sorrow of mourning would be in my heart because, after all, there shouldn’t be room for anything else.
The day Jane came to us, her head hangdog and low, I was helping Hour get dressed. Our plan was to try to see our pa again, barring any more runaway horses. I even convinced my sister to leave Fred at home after explaining that the ordeal would be too traumatizing for the little creature. Funny how fast that place was becoming home to me. The shanty near the creek seemed ages and ages away. I was using a broken comb to tidy Hour’s black hair when Jane entered the sawdust room in the state she was.
“Jane?” said Hour.
Jane knelt down to be closer to eye level with my sister. I stood and steeled myself for what I suspected was the purpose of this visit so early in the morning. Normally, Jane would be passed out drunk outside somewhere, but here she was and as sober as she got.
“Hey there, poppet. You feelin’ better?”
Hour nodded.
A little thing it was, this interaction, but so monumental at the same time. My sister struggled with these sorts of social things, but here in our new home, she was getting better. She was thriving. Here, she could talk to strangers and respond to them. The isolation of the shanty loomed over us as well as the news I knew to be on Jane’s tongue.
Calamity Jane, pioneer woman in the buckskins as a man, stood up and looked into my eyes. I had never seen her afraid, but she was as close to it as possible at that moment. My chest began to hurt in a deep place where it was only possible for organs to ache. This was it. This was the part that was going to test my measure of a man. I had to be a man, but more than a man right here and right now for me and my sister. Standing up taller, I tensed my limbs with balled up fists for hands at my side, and I waited for the words that would alter my life.
Jane’s mouth fell open a bit and shut again. She seemed to be struggling to find the words. I wanted to yell at her. A part of me wanted to yank her ears to force the news out of her mouth. I wanted this moment to be over already, but she stood there all the same, searching my eyes for the words to say to me.
“Jimmy. Um . . . I uh . . . have . . . have . . .”
Jane trailed off, and I felt like I might just bust from the inside out.
“Have I ever told you the story of my time with General Custer?”
My heart fell into my shoes. I was ready for anything but this. They warned me, Dora and Joseph, they had both warned me that when Jane couldn’t say it, when it was too much, when my daddy was gone, she’d resort to the Custer story. It was her last defense. Still, I hadn’t expected it. Somehow, the diversion hit me in the gut harder than the actual news. Falling to my knee
s like some sort of coward, I began to weep. It was a silent thing. The tears came in spurts and mucous-filled coughing fits. I collapsed in on myself. All the afore-mentioned strength and preparation had melted away with the mention of one dead General.
The first thing I noticed after a while of sobbing was the pressure of two hands on my shoulders. When I finally managed to collect myself, I looked up to find the hands belonged to both females in the room. Jane’s rough hand was on my left shoulder, deep pools of regret and sorrow in her eyes. Hour’s hand was on my right shoulder, but she seemed to only be doing the act because Jane was. She looked into my eyes but all I saw in them was confusion.
With a little shake, I collected myself and stood on my knees in front of Hour. I placed both hands on her shoulders as gently as I could so she didn’t feel trapped at all. Gratitude flooded over me when she decided she could look at me instead of the floor. Little miracles lit my way in this dark train tunnel of ours.
“Hour. I need to tell you somethin’, and I want you to hear me.”
My sister didn’t seem to respond. I took a deep breath in and let it out slow to give me the patience I was sorely lacking at the moment.
“I need you to hear me now and understand somethin’ important. Tell me you are hearin’ me proper, okay?”
She nodded only slightly.
“Pa died, Hour. He’s gone now, just like your mama and mine. He was real sick. Jane and the doc, they tried their hardest, but he didn’t make it.”
Hour stood stock-still. It was hard to tell if any of this was really sinking in. I didn’t necessarily expect tears with her, but I was hoping for something that said she understood. I looked to Jane, but she only shrugged. Sometimes, reading my sister was like reading a book written only in pictures you couldn’t make out proper.
“Hour, honey, do you understand what yer brother is sayin’ to you?” asked Jane.
Her gaze left my face and went back down to the floor.
“Hour, you need to hear me. Pa is dead. The disease took him. Do you understand?”
“Gone or dead? See him?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Yes, yes, we can see him,” I answered, relieved.
I looked up to Jane, suddenly unsure of what I just told my sister.
“We can see him, right?”
Minutes later we were crossing the thoroughfare with Jane leading the way. Hour held my hand and squeezed extra tight as we passed the place in the road where we were almost run over by the crazed horse the day before. She wore her only decent dress, and me my britches that hadn’t any holes. It was only proper to say our farewells.
The day didn’t seem right for this sort of thing. Funny how the weather just goes about its business even though your world has been cut in two. It seemed that with this much sorrow, the world around you would have the good decency to look sorrowful and melancholy on your behalf. Nevertheless, the sun went on shining and the clouds were mere wisps in the clear blue sky that autumn morning. There was no rain or wind. The world on a whole was still and happy. Folks around us laughed at jokes, and somewhere in the distance, I could smell food cooking. It all felt like blasphemy somehow, yet there it was. A reminder that no one cared about our little tragedy.
Doc was washing his hands in the trough outside the pest tent when we arrived. The rag he wore over his face was pulled down around his neck, and his apron was stained with sick and blood. The already pale man managed to look positively whitewashed when he saw us approaching the tent, and he moved quickly to intervene.
“No, Jane. It ain’t a good idea,” said Doc.
“They wanna see their pa and make their last respects. They got a right, Doc.”
“The risk of infection is too great. Hank Glass wouldn’t want his kids in there.”
“I’ve already been in twice,” I said, interrupting the doc.
He looked down at me with a world of sorrow in his eyes.
“With Jane. I wore the mask. We was careful.”
Jane shrugged at the good doctor, “What can you do? It’s their right.”
Doc sighed deeply and reached over to grab the bag of face rags. He pulled three fresh ones for us and we fastened them on properly. I had to help Hour with hers. It took us a long minute to get her situated seeing as how the face handkerchief was confining for her. Several times she fought me when I tried to tie the thing around her neck. Every time, she shook her head vehemently against the rag. When she finally began to squeal in protest, I had to tell her the truth.
“Hour, you hafta wear this. Pa was real sick, and the people inside are real sick too. You gotta wear this or you might get sick like them.”
Hour’s head shaking got more violent as a reaction. I knew she was slipping. This was all just too much for her to take in. No part of me wanted to force anything on my sister in her delicate condition, but there was only one way I knew to stop this. I felt like a right bastard the second I said it.
“Hour, if you don’t, you can’t ever see Pa, not ever again. He’ll be gone forever. Like your mama. Dead and gone! We’ll hafta leave you out here alone. Is that what you want?”
Her head stopped shaking suddenly, and I could see, in that blank stare she had at the ground, tears rimming those big eyes of hers. I wish I hadn’t said it. It was wrong and mean and she probably wouldn’t speak to anyone, not even me, for weeks because of it. The thing was, I couldn’t worry about that right then. Right then, I had to get her handkerchief on over her mouth, or else she’d regret not doing this for the rest of her life.
My sister allowed me to tie the rag around her face, and we all walked into the pest tent in a silent procession.
There were fewer occupied cots than I remembered. I wondered for a moment if that was a good sign or a bad one. Had these people, who once laid here like Pa, died or got better and went home? I hoped they were better. Somehow, the thought gave me comfort that they were home somewhere with their families, and their kids weren’t having to do this terrible march.
Pa was where I had left him, except it just wasn’t Pa anymore. It was him, but it looked like someone had come in with a body that sure looked like his. On the surface, it had his features, sure enough, but the meat of him wasn’t there. When you got up close, there was no Pa in it anymore. It was as if he left long before we got there and just left this husk here. The sight of it should have been sad and frightening, but it wasn’t so much. My pa had left this terrible tent already. No longer would he suffer, no longer would he bleed and hurt and smell the putrid scent of decay and sick. All this time, and he was already gone.
No one said anything. I suppose we were expected to say something. In the stories, they said things that mattered. Maybe the doc knew what to say? Or Jane? But no, they stood beside us silent. Looking down at Hour, I noticed that she was looking at our pa. Not the ground, his face. She stared into it, searching for something she couldn’t seem to find. I knelt down beside her.
“What do you think?” I whispered to her so only she could hear.
Hour turned and looked up at the doc and Jane standing over her. Something about her gaze clued Jane into her intentions, and with a quick nudge to the doc, they turned their backs on us to give us some privacy.
“Pa’s gone,” whispered Hour.
“Yeah, honey. He is. He died.”
“He flew away.”
I gaped at her, a little perplexed by this specific response. We hadn’t any religion to speak of. I had heard people speak of angels and souls flying up to heaven and the like, but Hank Glass wasn’t a religious man at all. He put on the airs, if he needed to, when in mixed company, but I couldn’t remember ever taking Hour to a church.
“He flew away?”
“With Mama and the eagles. He flew. It’s all okay.”
Let her be, her mother had told us way back when. Don’t force children like her. They were closer t
o the spirits of their ancestors, she had said. She was only a breath away from the eagles. Let her fly. She knows more about flying than we ever will while still drawing breath. Let her fly.
Amen.
18
On the second day, the weather finally caught up with the news that a man had died and orphaned two children. The clear skies and bright sun of the day previous might have still been present somewhere, but dark rain clouds and the gray mood of a storm covered them like a blanket. The whole of Diddlin’ Dora’s was quiet because everyone was readying themselves for the funeral, with best dresses and tailored britches stacked high for the ironing.
Dora had placed a sign on her door, warning would-be customers from trying to come inside.
Closed until dinner for family funeral.
A funny thing that was to me. She didn’t even know Pa. None of them knew Pa other than the doc and Jane, and they really only knew the sick version of him. I suppose they knew us, and that was enough of a thing to consider this a family tragedy. We had turned up not even three weeks ago as strangers to them, and now, we were family. A strange sort of world this was, but I was eternally grateful for their kindness.
The details of burying a man seemed an odd thing to consider. With the absence of Pa from this world, there was a cavern in my chest that ached all empty-like. How did one go about the task of burying the thing that left the hole? To even think of all the logistics seemed barbaric and wrong, but there was a coffin to consider and a funeral.
We didn’t have much in the way of money. Before leaving the shanty by the creek, I had collected the tiny bit of money we had on hand for fear thieves might make off with it during our current handicap. I met with the undertaker and handed him all the money we had. By the look of the fella’s face, I could tell he was used to seeing more. We stood there together for a long minute, staring at all I had in the world.
“Son, this all you have, eh?”
Hour Glass Page 15
