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Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads

Page 19

by S. R. Mallery


  “What kind of trouble you have?” Papa leaned in, his eyes instantly alert.

  “Oh, injuns mostly, up the next valley. I had to hide the wagon behind some rocks to wait for a couple of their scouts to pass before movin’ on. They sure did look mean, though, like they was just itchin’ for trouble if ya know what I mean.”

  Surprised, Papa took a step back. The Chinooks, avid traders with the white settlers for years, had always remained peaceful, trusting, filling their bellies full of the salmon that swam up the well-stocked Columbia River.

  “Yep, seems there were a couple ‘a settlers, mean men, who killed an Injun and his family. Now there’s talk of revenge, and…”

  Mama wouldn’t let him finish. “What if they come and burn down the cabin or the barn? Why, they would destroy my beautiful sewin’ machine!”

  Papa stared at her for a couple of seconds, one cheek muscle twitching. “Well, if that don’t beat all! You care more for your blasted machine than you do about your own home! Don’t that take the puddin’!”

  Mama crossed her arms over her chest and the salesman cleared his throat while the children made imaginary drawings on the floor with the tips of their shoes.

  “Well, suit yourself. Where d’ya want to put this thing?” Papa continued, his voice flat.

  Mama clapped her hands. “I know. In the cornfield! We could hide it in there, ‘specially before harvest. The corn’s so high, no one would see it from the cabin!”

  “How you gonna protect it from the rain?”

  “Well, lemme see…why, we could use that heavy covering we used last year for the plow. That seemed to work gist fine!”

  Suddenly, the salesman took an active interest in his own shoes. Domestic arguments were definitely not part of the delivery package. A couple of seconds later, he begged off, claiming he was exhausted from his long journey and where was the barn they had promised him he could sleep in for the night? Mama nodded and handed him the balance due, then Papa led him down to his sleeping quarters in the stall next to their only mare.

  Early the next morning, the two men carried ‘The Devil’ out into the cornfield and watched Mama plop down and begin mending a pair of Papa’s torn pants. By afternoon, the salesman had departed and the mended pants replaced by some new curtains for the cabin. Soon, every spare minute she had she was sewing in the field and although the family did miss her, they all agreed the cabin had come alive with quilts, pillows, and curtains. In addition, everyone got new clothing and at week’s end, even Papa had to admit maybe it was a good thing after all.

  But as with any addiction, she couldn’t stop; sewing granted her far too much pleasure and soon, a disgruntled Papa began spending more and more time away from the cabin. There was always an excuse—pheasants to be shot for supper, a deer waiting just beyond the bend. As his trips extended, Mama’s good-bye waves turned increasingly absent-minded, and after six months, their time together was more often than not choked with silence.

  Kolote closed his eyes. His stomach, fluttering like small butterflies that hover over the fields, suddenly surged, churning its way up into his chest and throat. His father had reportedly prepared him for this day, the day when he would be old enough to launch his own Spirit Quest, but although his entire life had been a foreshadowing of this moment, now that it had arrived, it was too difficult to face. If only he could be a little boy again, safe in their Longhouse, surrounded by comforting horsehair blankets and familiar foods roasting over a smoky fire.

  “My son, now you must go forth into the world, to places you have not yet seen. Do not travel up the river, but instead, go into the forests to find your yuhlmah. There, you shall search for your Spirit Helper who will then guide you into manhood.” Tyee turned away, stifling his disappointment with his motherless son, a boy who, unlike the other young braves from the village, had always appeared so fragile, so uneasy, and so fearful of everything.

  Kolote nodded dutifully, ruminating about all the fasting he would have to do for several days while traveling over unknown terrain. As he slowly walked away from the village, he could hear a baby crying in its papoose, its mother chanting a soothing song and from out of nowhere, he wished with all his heart that he could be the one in her strong arms.

  Unexpectedly, he shivered. Dark gray, swollen clouds had gathered over the tops of the trees and picking up his pace, worry covered him like a blanket. What if there was a heavy rainstorm? He searched for shelter, but spotted only thick underbrush and moss-covered trees.

  The wind began taking on a life of its own, whooshing, swishing, never settling down for more than a few seconds. Cold, Kolote had to stop. He yanked out part of a bearskin from a large sack he had brought to keep him warm, then, in an effort to create body heat, jumped up and down a few times. At first that worked, but once he became chilled again, he panicked.

  Up ahead was a clearing and he started running towards it, but when a large, knotted tree root caught his foot, he went flying, his arms and legs spread out like a soaring eagle. Still sprawling towards the earth, he could see the rock he was about to land on and by the time his head hit it, he could hear a crunching noise inside his skull. Then, there was only black.

  When he opened his eyes, there was no time awareness, simply darkness and the fact that he was alone, freezing, and nauseous. He tried to sit and nearly keeled over, his head bursting with a rhythmic throbbing. Cupping his hands over his eyes to ease the pain, fresh concerns only aggravated the pounding. Dizziness cascaded over him in waves, and soon he couldn’t distinguish between what was inside his head and what was happening around him. Crawling on all fours, he managed to make it into the clearing, where he headed towards an adjacent cornfield.

  Close by, within the warmth of their cabin, Mama tried stifling her resentment. Papa had set off again, informing her this time it would last for several weeks, and that she had better be more conscientious about household chores by the time he returned. Wide awake in their bed, she could barely contain herself.

  “He doesn’t git it, he just doesn’t.” she fumed. “I won’t go back to gist doin’ chores. If I don’t always have every dish clean and put away, then my family will have to understand. I won’t give up my sewin’! I won’t!”

  Hooting owls kept her thoughts active, restless. But just hearing the wind begin to whip up the leaves, she turned grateful to be inside, snuggled up under her newest quilt. At least she wasn’t outside, where the late summer nights were beginning to carry a nippy edge to them.

  At dawn, Kolote woke up, trembling uncontrollably. His head still ached, but at least he wasn’t nauseous and the world wasn’t spinning. Looking down at his right hand, he noticed dried blood and when he reached up to his forehead, he could feel a crusty scab already forming. He entered the cornfield gingerly. Yesterday, from a distance he had noticed a white man’s cabin, but today, in the midst of the field, he saw only rows of corn bursting out of their husks just above his head.

  The sun was out in full, and with its slow burn, his shivers were diminishing until he heard someone approach. Instantly, he froze. The woman’s song sounded resonant but different from the familiar Indian chants he had grown up with. But it was the other sound a minute later that puzzled him so completely. Rat-tat-tat-tat— Rat-tat-tat-tat. What was that? he wondered.

  Chest pounding, head throbbing, he attempted to walk as quietly as possible toward the clatter. Rat-tat-tat-tat. He could feel his balance shifting, but caught himself from falling over by reaching for a corn stalk. Then, holding onto some ears to keep steady, he curled one stalk backward for a better view. Inching forward he could see the shape of a woman hovering over an object and as the air lay calm, the woman held up some sort of cloth object in front of her.

  Kolote gasped in amazement. Colors that reminded him of late spring flowers blossoming were on this cloth, and in spite of himself, he smiled. Then the woman caught sight of him. No one moved. Narrow blood vessels rose then pulsed inside Kolote’s neck seconds before he
fainted, hitting the earth with a dull, lifeless thud. Mama instinctively jumped up, ready to run towards him, but stopped; he was an Indian after all. When she proceeded, it was with caution.

  With her quilt wrapped tightly around her, she tried hard to stay utterly silent. Maybe he wasn’t really unconscious; maybe he would jump up to attack her. But he didn’t move and soon, she was standing directly over him, peering down.

  His delicate body and splayed feet, deformed from years of squatting, was intriguing enough. But as her eyes traveled up his torso, clothed in the simplest of bearskins, his head, with its peculiar flatness to his forehead, fascinated her the most.

  Suddenly, he startled awake, very much alive and doused with fear. But the pale, yellow-haired white woman had kind eyes and after she started to make little shushing noises while stroking his face, he slowly began to relax.

  “What are you doing here?” Carefully enunciating her words proved useless; the language barrier was far too great. He could only gaze back at her with a slightly baffled expressions, his pupils like droplets of black coal.

  Without warning, he shivered and immediately, her maternal instincts took over. Pulling the quilt off her narrow shoulders, she carefully draped it around his body and took a step back as he fingered the cotton texture, marveling at how different it felt from the heavy dog-hair blankets of his village.

  “You look so thin. Wait, I’ll be back shortly,” Mama promised, holding up one finger as a gesture for him to be patient. Somehow, he understood and drifting off to sleep again, he awakened in the late afternoon to the smell of something hot and delicious in a porcelain cup placed next to him. He shifted onto his elbow and ignoring all tribal customs, devoured the soup, smacking his lips with unabashed pleasure.

  “So you like our food, ummm?” Mama chuckled, ladling more soup from out of a large cast iron pot and filling up another cup for him. He nodded and downed another portion.

  “You can stay in the barn until you get well,” she reassured him. Noticing his confused stare, she held onto his sack and motioning for him to follow her, steered him towards the barn. The family horse snickered softly, angling for an early supper, but Mama turned a deaf ear and led Kolote straight to an empty stall, well hidden from view. There, she propped up handful after handful of straw, forming a makeshift bed, and when she pointed to it, he collapsed gratefully. She started to leave for bed linens, but Kolote grunted, so instead, she stopped and turned towards him.

  “Here,” he announced in the Chinook Jargon she had heard only a few times in her life. From out of his sack, he extracted a pile of glass ‘pony’ beads, the kind his tribe used as a bartering trade system with settlers. Extending them out to her, he carefully placed them in the palm of her hand without actually touching her.

  When she smiled, he was surprised to see her eyes moisten. Were all white women as tenderhearted as this one was? he wondered as she exited the barn.

  He lay in the hay, satiated, dozing, waking intermittently. When he did sleep, his dreams were filled with colored cloths, a gentle white, faceless female, and cornhusks, floating in and out of his unconsciousness, and when he finally sat up, he felt more at peace than he had felt for a very long time.

  “Mama, where did you get these beautiful beads?” Back in the cabin, Paul stood still, feet apart, hands on hips, expecting an answer.

  “Hush, never you mind. I picked them up on the road while I was berry pickin’, that’s where. Now, go to sleep.” Mama understood too well the consequence of Papa finding these beads; if he found them, he would insist on knowing their origin. After the children had gone to sleep, she got out of bed and shoving the beads into an empty coffee tin, hid it far back in the larder, behind the flour sack. Nobody would ever look there—that was Mama’s domain.

  The next morning, her first thought was of her new foundling. At the earliest sign of light, she hurried down to the barn, bringing biscuits from yesterday’s breakfast, fresh milk, and several apples.

  By the time she arrived, Kolote was already sitting up and looking perky. He dug into his sack, and rifling around, pulled out a brownish-gray small rabbit skin lap robe—thick, warm, and in perfect condition. Mama gasped, clasping her hands together in delight.

  “Oh no, you can’t give me this! It’s just too beautiful!” she exclaimed.

  Kolote thrust the robe out towards her while she shook her head no in tiny little movements, so as not to appear too ungracious.

  “Potlatch! Potlatch!” Kolote tried to explain. How could he make this white woman understand that in his tribe, the giving of one’s own belongings as gifts was as essential as breathing. Besides, the more you gave away, the more prestige you had within the tribe.

  “Potlatch, potlatch!” he repeated, nodding his head vehemently.

  Mama finally took the rabbit skin. Thanking him profusely, she wrapped it under her arm and scurried back to the cabin to hide her treasure before the children woke up.

  A pattern had emerged. Each morning, there would be a little gift left for Mama: more glass beads, a piece of inner Alder tree bark, a piece of Grape bark, even a red onion.

  “An onion?” Mama asked. “What should I do with this?” She turned the vegetable over in her hands as it caught the morning’s rays. Taking the onion from her, Kolote pointed to the old iron pot she had left next to him from the day before. First, he imitated water boiling in the pot, fluttering his hands, then, peeling off the outer sheaths of the onion, pretended to put them into the pot. Next, retrieving a wild yellow flower from outside the barn, he showed it to her, repeatedly pointing to its petals. Finally, he pulled out his sack of sprig lichen and pointed to her dress, a shade of lichen blue.

  Dyes! He was describing dyes! So the next time she couldn’t get dyes from the trade post in town she could make her own, using materials she hadn’t thought of before. Looking at him, her grin was particularly broad and he nodded, pleased. But in his heart, he knew he had to return to his village; his sojourn had lasted far too long, and as comfortable as he felt with Mama, he kept thinking of his own people and of his father—disapproving, and perhaps even worried.

  The following morning, when Mama appeared at the barn door she was met by a downcast Kolote, packed to go. Her shoulders sagged. She wanted their friendship and all the little exchange gifts to continue. Racing back down to the cabin, she returned with a small, lap-size quilt tucked under her arm, and handing it over to Kolote, slowly nodded at his tears.

  Then, she did the unthinkable: she hugged him. He sprang back like a wild animal, then catching sight of her expression, looked around to make sure no one else was present, stepped forward, outstretched his arms, and hugged her back.

  “Mama, what is going on?” Little Paul’s voice at the stall edge ended in a squeak. Mama and Kolote jumped apart like guilty lovers.

  “Nothing, darlin’.” Mama gulped. “This is our new friend. He was hurt and I helped him, that’s all. Nothin’ to worry about. But he has to go now, so we’re gonna have to say good-bye, all right?” The thought of Paul telling Papa about the incident made Mama’s stomach flip over.

  Watching Kolote take off through the cornfield, together they could hear the faint sound of horse hooves plodding up the road behind them.

  “That’s gotta be Papa!” Paul burst out.

  Mama attempted a smile. “Yep, it’s gotta. Listen, Paul. Can you keep a little secret? Not a big one, mind you, just a little one. Can you?”

  Paul’s eyes grew larger. “Sure, I can.”

  “Let’s keep the Indian’s visit between us, all right? I don’t wanna upset Papa any and he might not understand. All right?”

  A quick nod and he was off to join his sister in welcoming Papa. Mama sighed. She would just have to trust him.

  “Got some pheasant and fish and some fresh flowers for you!” Papa announced, searching his wife’s face for a reaction. Getting down from the horse, he hugged Paul and Martha, but over the tops of their heads, his eyes still rested on hers.
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  Mama came towards him, broadening her smile into a full crescent. “It’s good to have you at home. I’ve made some fresh bread and we’re gonna have stew for dinner. It’s good to have you home.”

  Papa breathed a sigh of relief. She had obviously come to her senses after all; maybe a little time apart was all they needed. However, by breakfast, his uneasiness had returned. The night before, their reunion had been somewhat of a reminder of earlier married days, but just before dawn, Mama was already up and boiling water in one of her big old rusty pots.

  “In the Name of Thunder, what kind of chore are you doin’ so early?” Papa was incredulous.

  “I’m tryin’ a new thing I heard about. I’m taking onions and lichen and making homemade dyes for my…” She caught herself. Too late. The same old tension sparked instantly. Snorting and buckling his pants belt, Papa raced out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him.

  Later, Mama’s hands wouldn’t stop trembling as she hung laundry out to dry. Why won’t Papa understand how important quilting is to me, she fumed. I can’t give it up, I just can’t.

  Martha broke her train of thought. “Mama, can I play in the kitchen and pretend to make a pie?”

  Nodding absently, Mama was grateful that at least Martha had something to do. Soon, the morning sun had entered her pores, calming her down and letting in renewed hopes, when all of a sudden, a sweeping shadow loomed over her.

  “Where the hell did you get these?” Papa snarled.

  Mama gazed up towards him, stunned. Holding the glass beads in one hand and the rabbit skin robe draped over his arm, the veins on his neck were popping. Behind him stood Martha, looking scared and ashamed.

  “It’s nothin’. Just something I picked up…” She trailed off when she caught sight of Paul ambling up to them, shuffling his shoes in the dirt, like he always did when he got into trouble.

  “What in the blazes is goin’ on with that heathen? I swear, Matilde, if you don’t tell me now…”

 

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