Charity

by Paulette Callen

  The evening settled upon them gently. Gustie realized they were sitting in near-darkness. She took down the lamp from its hook on a ceiling beam and lit it.

  Quick steps sounded on the porch and the cabin door was pushed open. Gustie started and nearly burned herself on the match before she could shake it out. Jordis entered. She wore the same clothes she had on that afternoon—a full skirt in a dark blue-gray fabric, and a long-sleeved blue shirt rolled up to just below her elbows—clothes very similar to those worn by Dorcas. Gustie wondered if these clothes, too, were government issue. She greeted Gustie with an almost imperceptible nod. Then she murmured a greeting to the old woman who reached up with both hands and patted the younger woman’s cheeks tenderly.

  “Granddaughter, you have been away a long time.”

  “Little Bull keeps me busy.”

  “It is good. You stay out of trouble that way. Thanks for the chickens.”

  Gustie felt invisible watching this exchange between the two women.

  Before she could offer her own chair, Jordis pulled up the wood crate that rested against the inside wall by the door and sat down at the table. She tore apart a piece of frybread and laid a fish on each half. The food disappeared quickly. Gustie poured her a cup of coffee and sat down.

  She could not take her eyes off Jordis who proceeded to devour the remaining fish and frybread. The Indian woman’s hands were strong and large with long tapering fingers. Everything about her was strong, rock solid. Her every movement had about it a wholeness. Though it was only her hand that moved grasping her coffee cup, or her arm that reached out for another piece of bread, it was her whole body that was involved, not tensely, for she was perfectly relaxed, but with total awareness of what each part of itself was doing. Gustie had never seen a human body so collected. She had only observed that in horses and barn cats. And still the woman had not spoken one word to her since walking through the door. Clearly she had no meaningless pleasantries in her, no chit chat. Gustie had been around Dorcas long enough to not take offense at the lack of spoken words. Besides, something inside herself felt very communicated with. She felt like she was encountering a new language. Gustie was patient and determined to learn it.

  The tin platter was empty. “Would you like some more?” Gustie asked. “I could fry some eggs for you, too.”

  Jordis looked at her squarely and said, “Thank you. I am not hungry now.” Jordis had no trace of the accent that colored Dorcas’s speech—the Rs that sprawled across the back of her tongue, the soft thickening of the “th” sounds, the way she had of speaking through her teeth in a level pitch like the steady lapping of Crow Kills against the shore.

  Dorcas said, “Tell Little Bull it is a long time since he comes to visit me.”

  “He will come. The chickens are from him. We have been working on the new building. It is almost finished.”

  “My granddaughter is helping Little Bull with a new school building. But she is a stubborn child to me.” The old woman shook her head and made a face of grief that was, Gustie felt, a little exaggerated. “She should not be making buildings. She should be teaching children.”

  Jordis’s mouth tightened, and her body became quite still. She responded in a low voice, “Little Bull knows I won’t do that. He’s stopped asking. I agreed to help him with his building so he would stop pestering me.”

  Gustie was interested. “Are you a teacher?”

  “No. They want me to be a teacher. I am not a teacher.”

  “I teach at the section school between Charity and Wheat Lake,” Gustie offered lamely.

  “I know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Grandmother speaks of you. She thinks you must be a very good teacher.”

  Gustie was pleased. She asked Dorcas, “Why do you think that?”

  “Because you are a good learner.”

  Gustie felt childishly happy in this praise. “I didn’t start out to become a teacher. But I do the best I can. Why don’t you want to teach?” Gustie blushed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask.”

  Dorcas spoke quickly. “No. It is good to ask. Granddaughter, tell Augusta Roemer why you do not teach Dakotah children.”

  If Jordis were a cat, thought Gustie, her tail would be twitching dangerously right now. Gustie regretted her question and was mystified by Dorcas’s taunting manner.

  “I just came back to visit with you. It is late. I am tired. I will speak with you in the morning.”

  Gustie was alarmed. There were only two sleeping places in the little cabin, each being nothing more than a straw mattress laid upon wood crates, and she was using one of them. “Please, let me sleep in my wagon tonight. I am taking up the place that should be yours.”

  “No, thank you. I do not sleep in here. I sleep outside, except in the dead of winter.”

  “But...”

  “It is true,” chimed in Dorcas, her eyes twinkling up a storm. “Even if you were not here, she would sleep outside in her little tent. She likes to play at being Indian.”

  Gustie thought that Jordis might have slammed the door but for very deeply inbred good manners. She closed the door quietly behind her.

  “She is stubborn.” Dorcas smiled widely, showing perfect white teeth. “Just like me.” She laughed heartily. The scene between grandmother and granddaughter had been tense, full of anger, and yet here was the old woman being quite merry. An infinite number of things had puzzled Gustie about this old Dakotah woman. This was just one more.

  Gustie took out the pail of water that she had used to clean the supper things and dumped it in the grass. The white horse grazed by the sleeping tent Jordis had already put up. Gustie looked around for Biddie. She never tethered her out here. Sometimes she wondered if she should. What if something startled the mare, or what if she just got a horsey notion to take off? It had never happened. Biddie was right where Gustie expected her to be, standing over the pail of oats that sat in the bed of her spring wagon, quietly munching. She went to the mare and stroked her long neck. Biddie interrupted her snack to nuzzle nose to nose with the woman. “Goodnight, Sweet Lady.” Gustie looked up and detected out of the corner of her eye, a figure watching her from the edge of the stand of trees. But when she directed her gaze fully there, she saw nothing.

  Gustie took the empty pail down to the lake to rinse it out, filled it with fresh water for the morning. When she returned to the cabin, Dorcas was already lying on her bed, facing the wall. Gustie undressed quietly, blew out the lamp and crawled into bed. She removed her glasses last, folded them and laid them on the window sill above her head.

  The light from the lantern burned with a steady yellow glow. Gustie, blinking through sleepy, myopic eyes, thought, I’m sure I blew that out. Then she saw Jordis straddling a chair. A blanket, tucked under her arms, covered the front of her body, leaving her shoulders and back bare. Her head was down. Dorcas stood behind her, rubbing into her back something which she dipped out of a small pot on the table. A pungent, spicy smell overpowered the redolence of fish in the cabin. Jordis lifted her head a moment and Gustie thought she beheld a look of pain and relief. Jordis put an arm across the top of the chair back and rested her forehead upon it. The blanket fell on that side exposing one full breast as she relaxed into the chair. The light revealed a look on Dorcas’s face Gustie could only have described as terrible, and it frightened her. She watched this scene until she drifted back into sleep and forgot the night vision.

  Gustie woke to the sounds of gentle clucking beneath her and the aroma of fresh coffee. The clucking came from the chickens pecking about in the crawlspace under the cabin. She could hear them through the floor boards.

  The coffee, she discovered when she poured out a cup for herself, was already half drunk. She dressed, tucked her blanket neatly around the straw mattress and carried her cup outside.

  The plants Dorcas had collected the day before were laid
out on the porch. Dorcas and Jordis arranged them, like plants together.

  Most had been taken roots and all. Some had tiny blossoms, some were just leafy. At first glance they all looked alike to Gustie, but with closer examination she discovered differences in leaf shape, variations in color from light green to bluish-gray, and leaf and stem textures that ranged from waxy to fuzzy and spiny. Still, it would take a keen eye to spot all these nuances in the field. Gustie was only beginning to appreciate the extent of Dorcas’s knowledge of plants. The old woman had made her drink thin teas that stung, then numbed the back of her tongue; thicker brews that felt slick going down, others that tasted simply grassy. She had drunk them without question. She had recovered.

  When the plants were arranged to Dorcas’s satisfaction she took each one and deftly tied a string around the end of it. In the same order as they had been laid out, she hung them from nails that protruded along the inside of the porch overhang. When she finished, the porch roof had a fringe of green swaying prettily in the breeze, infusing the air currents with fragrance.

  From the bottom of her bag, Dorcas withdrew two stones, each a little smaller than Dorcas’s fist. Each had one rounded half, and the other half, sharp edged as if it had been struck from a larger stone. Dorcas placed them side by side in her lap and considered them meditatively.

  “What are they?” Gustie asked from her usual place on the step, where she sat, reclined against the pole, sipping her coffee. Jordis was leaning against the other support pole, her hands clasped behind her, eyes closed, her face windward. Gustie was distracted by her profile.

  “Stones. Sacred,” Dorcas said. “From the sacred rock.”

  “What sacred rock?” Gustie’s attention flew the short distance back from Jordis to Dorcas.

  “Maybe sometime I take you. Maybe. These were on the ground. They were broken off the top of the rock. They are a gift to me. Very sacred thing.”

  “What rock is this? Where is it?”

  “Over by the western tip of Shoonkatoh Lake.” Jordis answered the question, opening her eyes and sitting down on the step across from Gustie. “The rock is huge and just sits out there in the middle of some pretty flat land all by itself. It has always been a sacred site.”

  Dorcas picked up one of the rocks and turned it, examining all sides of it. “First the Black Robes, then the missionaries say it is bad to go to the sacred rock. Say there is no power in the sacred rock. No power in rocks.” Dorcas paused and placed the rock by the side of its fellow in her lap. “They should be hit by one sometime. Then they feel the power of rocks.” She burst into laughter.

  Gustie laughed, and for the first time in Gustie’s sight, Jordis smiled. Gustie felt the weather change.

  Dorcas continued, “They think the only power places are churches they build. How can power be in a thing you build? Now, Big Sacred Rock. It is there. No Indian put it there. No white man put it there. But it is there. Put by Something. The power is there. It is very old. Very sacred place.” She shook her head. “The white man is real smart about some things and real stupid about some things. Trouble is you never know ahead of time which.”

  Gustie laughed again. She had never seen Dorcas in such a merry mood. Jordis no longer smiled. Gustie wondered at the old woman’s traveling regularly on foot the considerable distance between Crow Kills and Shoonkatoh.

  Dorcas, a stone in each hand, got up and went inside. A moment later she came out again with the bundle that hung just inside the door. The old woman squatted on the wood slats of the porch floor, carefully untied the leather thongs that bound each end of the bundle, and unrolled it slowly. It was a remnant of a blanket decorated with floral designs applied mostly in red paint. The piece was worn and faded, but its beauty was still apparent. As Dorcas began the unrolling, Jordis moved up to the porch and knelt opposite her grandmother to view the contents.

  Dorcas’s face softened and lost a few of its years as the items appeared on the open blanket: a small piece of decorated leather roughly in the shape of a lizard, a stone spear point that looked old and sharp still, a tiny cloth pouch gathered and tied at the top with sinew and feathers, a turtle shell, a bundle of porcupine quills, a piece of bone, a long narrow object that could have been a bone or a polished stick.

  Dorcas picked up the shell and held it. “This is the shell of the turtle.” It filled her open hand. “Turtle is strong medicine for me.” She placed it down on the blanket and fingered the piece of decorated leather. “This is the cradle guardian of my first daughter.” She laid it gently beside the turtle shell, her fingers lingering on the leather a moment before reaching for the next thing. “My grandfather’s spear point.” She contemplated it in a moment of silence, then laid it back down. She picked up the tiny cloth bundle with the feathers. “Tobacco bundle. Medicine man make for me. Oh, long time ago.” She put it down and reached for the next thing. “Quills. Old things. Never did anything with ’em. Never throw away. Hmm.” Dorcas recited the contents of this bundle like a litany. Gustie was mesmerized.

  Dorcas picked up the bone. “Buffalo bone.” She pronounced it ‘buff-lo.’ “All I have left of the buffalo. Pretty old.”

  “Tell me about the buffalo,” asked Gustie softly. “I’ve never seen one except in a picture.”

  “Big shaggy walkers. Wouldn’t think they could run so fast, but they run real fast, against the wind.” Dorcas put her head down and her hand went up in front of her, palm out, and she pantomimed pushing into a strong wind. “Always into the wind. Into a blizzard even. The calves are born red. Turn brown. Black tongues. Not pink like horses or dogs. Black. They run with their tongues out and their tails go slap slap up and down. Would not think they could run so fast.” Dorcas shook her head remembering.

  She laid the buffalo bone down and picked up the long narrow stick. She held it out for Gustie to see, but there was no invitation to touch. “Sacred whistle. Eagle bone. Was my uncle’s. Stands By Himself. Carried it on his first Sun Dance.”

  “The Sun Dance?” Gustie questioned eagerly.

  “Gone. With the buffalo. The black robes, then the missionaries, then gov’ment say we can not dance to the sun, our Father. It was a good thing, the dance. It made the people strong. When I was small child, I saw my uncle Stands By Himself in the Sun Dance. He danced a long long time in a brave and sacred manner. After, I followed him to the hills above our camp. We were up north then. I found him crying from the pain of his wounds. I gave him some water and some pemmican I brought with me and some willow bark. He would not take them from anybody else, but he would not insult a child. So he took them and ate and drank. He was a brave man. Killed by the Rhee in battle. My uncle. Stands By Himself.”

  “Is this a medicine bundle?” Gustie asked. She had heard of such things being of great value to the Sioux.

  “No, not real medicine bundle. Not real sacred bundle like some have. But good things to me. Good memories. A memory bundle. Sometimes good memories is good medicine.” Dorcas laughed again. “A good place for sacred stones.”

  She laid the stones alongside the other things, rolled up the blanket, and tied it securely. She hung it back on its nail and seemed to forget about it.

  Not since her illness had Gustie spent so much time at Crow Kills. During these long, warm and easy days she felt a deepening peace come upon her that she had never known. And, there was Jordis.

  Jordis taught her to fish. She taught her to recognize wild turnips and onions. Together they ranged over the prairie looking for these edible roots, which they scrubbed in Crow Kills and added to Dorcas’s ever-simmering stews. Once they found a patch of dark leaves with tell-tale spots of red. Jordis reached beneath the leaves and plucked out a large red berry. “Look,” she said. “Heart berries.”

  “That’s a strawberry,” said Gustie. “I’ve never seen them this early.”

  “Why do you call them strawberries? They look like hearts. We
call them heart berries.”

  “Yes, they do. They look just like hearts.”

  Jordis nipped off the end of the berry and swallowed it. She held the other half to Gustie’s lips. “Very good for the blood,” advised Jordis seriously.

  Gustie snapped it up. “Really?”

  “I have no idea,” replied Jordis. They both laughed.

  Not many of the berries were ripe. They left them for picking later.

  Gustie experienced a curious sensation of timelessness with Jordis that she could not explain until one day she realized that Jordis never spoke of anything in her past, nor did Gustie. Gustie was accustomed to not talking about herself, not even with Lena. The people she knew in Charity went on and on about where they came from, the things they had done, never noticing that Gustie did not do the same. With Jordis, she had found a woman like herself, who never spoke of anything but the moment at hand. It gave her a sense, not unpleasant, of fluttering on an edge.

  Jordis, who loved to take off on Moon and ride for hours all around the hills between Crow Kills and Shoonkatoh, was amazed that Gustie did not ride. When she offered to teach her that, too, Gustie said, “I’ll just break my neck and annoy my horse.” So Jordis alternated riding Moon one day and Biddie the next, and both horses were kept in good condition. Biddie took to Jordis as if she had always known her.

  One afternoon Gustie and Jordis were lakeside with their fishing poles and Gustie got a bite. By the feel of it, she had caught something big. Her squeal brought Dorcas running down the bank with a bucket. Dorcas tucked the hem of her skirt into her waist band and rolled up her sleeves before wading out into the water, ready to scoop Gustie’s catch into the bucket as soon as she brought it in close enough.

  As Dorcas rolled up her sleeves, Gustie had a flash of recognition and almost dropped her pole and lost their supper. The lightning that she had seen repeatedly in her dreams when she was ill, it was there—white zig-zag scars along the insides of Dorcas’s arms. Of course. When Dorcas had cared for her, bathed her, her arms would have been exposed. Gustie would have seen those scars. In her delirium, they registered as lightning for that is what they most resembled.