The Snake River

by Win Blevins

  “Miracle,” said Sima firmly. “You not understand.” He considered his English carefully. “I dream white man be.” He had not admitted to them that he was kicked out of the tribe. “I long way to white man go. All to Fort Vancouver. Dangerous. Many days. Want with white man be.”

  “I fall down.” He patted the splint on his leg. “Break. To little death go.” He mimed passing out.

  Sima gave thought to his words. “Flare me wakes up. Different. Different world all way. Splinted leg. Thirsty not. Main thing, among white people. Went long, long way while little death. Among white people. Safe, not dangerous. Fall down to little death, rise up to new world.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Flare with a little heat. “You woke up right where…

  Beholding this conversation, Dr. Samuel Full beheld his luck. He could hardly keep from grinning night and day. It was delicious.

  The boy Sima was riding astride. For the first day. The boy had been impatient, extremely impatient, to get on horseback again. Dr. Full had prevented that, on medical grounds, for the boy’s own good—spiritual good, not physical good.

  Oh, perhaps the boy could have ridden a few days earlier, perhaps even a week, now that Dr. Full saw that he rode without his feet in the stirrups, and was beautifully balanced, graceful even with the splint on his broken leg. It must feel a lot better than scraping along on that travois, thumped by every stone this miserable country put in the way. But Dr. Full couldn’t afford to have the boy ride too well. Not until today, when they left Fort Boise, a new and miserable pretense at civilization in this vast wilderness. Not until they were so far from the boy’s homeland that he’d never think of going back. Back to savagery. Oh, no. This little savage was going to be saved.

  He was the one Dr. Full had dreamed about, the one Dr. Full thought of as the Alchemized Savage. The alchemists were false scientists who studied endlessly to find ways to turn dross into something precious, to convert lead into gold. Dr. Full knew how to use God’s grace to convert the barbaric to the redeemed. Thus the Alchemized Savage.

  And being converted, Sima would become Dr. Full’s luck.

  For who would be the instrument of this alchemy?

  Dr. Samuel Full, at your service.

  Of course, it was the hand of God, any soul could see that. The boy said he was going to the white man to find his father, a man known only as Harry. The fool. A father who sired him in a casual act, bestial, mere rutting. A father who showed how much he cared by disappearing the next day, or next week, or next month, his appetites sated. A father who didn’t know of the boy’s existence.

  Dr. Samuel Full would bring the boy to know the father who mattered. His heavenly father.

  It was immensely important. Jameson LaLane had labored for three years in the mission field without a single convert. Dr. Samuel Full would make his first convert before he even got to the mission.

  That would bring other savages into the fold. It would make Dr. Full’s leadership manifest. The missionaries, discouraged at sowing but never reaping, would flock to Dr. Full’s strength. To the glory of God, and Dr. Samuel Full.

  Dr. Full smiled in ecstasy. Samuel Full was born—this was the theme of his life—to show what God meant men to be. It was grand how all things came together for the good of those who love the Lord.

  Dr. Full looked at Sima and grinned. To arrive with an Alchemized Savage. The boy was a gift of God. Maybe even a miracle.

  Chapter Eleven

  The boy drew exquisitely. Miss Jewel felt awed. He was modeling Flare’s head. The mountain man was grumbling but holding still. Sima had put his head just so. The boy knew exactly what he wanted. The evening sun struck Flare’s profile so that shadow created a line down the middle of his forehead, nose, and mouth, light and dark on either side. If Flare moved his head even slightly to the left, light bled onto the dark side of his face, and Sima sternly put it back.

  Miss Jewel had taken drawing lessons. Though she drew poorly, she had learned to see well. Well enough to know this boy saw naturally, beautifully. He drew from life accurately, but with a gift of sight that made everything lovely.

  Miss Jewel’s teacher had said, repeatedly, that you did not draw or paint objects, really. You drew the light that was on them. And that was what Sima did—drew sunlight enhancing the things of the world. He also had a fluid, graceful line.

  The boy was not without thought, either. He put Flare’s head that way and made a little joke. Flare was a mountain man, he said—half white and half Indian. So Sima would draw him half and half. The Indian half light, he jokingly suggested to Miss Jewel, and the white half dark. But he made the white half light, and then altered the eye and cheekbone subtly on the dark side to look Indian.

  She wondered what that meant to Sima, who was himself half white and half Indian. He was going to his white father, which was a beginning. But he was divided about his fattier. Sima was going from his home to an utterly alien world to find the man, but the boy spoke of him sadly. Or bitterly. She felt an inchoate passion in him about his father, and wondered what went into it of love, and what of hate.

  Well, he had a right. He was abandoned.

  The past was past, though. Whatever Sima’s feelings, God had given him genius, and God’s gift of genius was not to be wasted.

  That was why he was going to be Miss Jewel’s prize pupil. She would civilize this heathen child, and he would make a contribution to the world. He would show God’s beauty to men. And women. Miss Jewel didn’t like saying “men” for the human race. Men did enough putting themselves first.

  Sima held the drawing up. Miss Jewel could see in it how good-looking Flare really was. Sima showed how finely shaped his face and head were, under the long hair and ragged whiskers, and Sima had replaced the dust and the hints of gray with the original sandy color.

  “Sima,” she said, “it’s not enough to be half white, half Indian. You must be all civilized.”

  “Why?” said the boy. He was concentrating on a small touch of modeling on Flare’s nose.

  Miss Jewel smiled devilishly at Flare. “Take Flare here. He’s a man of intelligence and ability, a man who could contribute. Instead he’s roaming around to no point.”

  Flare gave her a mock evil eye, and Sima pushed his head back where it was.

  “Back and forth, back and forth,” she said. “Missouri, Oregon. Taos, Oregon. No point.”

  Sima shrugged. “Prolly right,” he said. “My father half white, half Indian. He ever done no good.”

  “What’s civilized?” objected Flare.

  Sima moved Flare’s head back. The lad was a nuisance.

  “If you want to help the boy, don’t talk about civilized,” Flare pushed on. “Tell him good men, and what they did.”

  “Like Martin Luther, for instance, Mr. O’Flaherty?” It was Dr. Full, come to spoil the fun.

  When Flare turned his head to look at Dr. Full, Sima pushed it back and put a bulldog look in Flare’s face. Meaning, Keep still, damn you. Flare saw the doctor was bearing his black medical bag.

  “Martin Luther had a splendid righteous anger,” said Flare, “I’ll grant him that. But you give the boyo Martin Luther as a model. I’ll give him Wolf Tone.”

  “We thought Wolf Tone was your horse, Mr. O’Flaherty.”

  “Only an American could be so ignorant.”

  Dr. Full smiled, appreciating the banter.

  “Wolf Tone was an Irish hero of the Year of the French, first of a thousand heroes.”

  Flare saw Sima was going to quit pushing his face around and let him talk. “See, the Brits captured him, they did, Wolf Tone. And hanged him. But he didn’t die, did he? That’s starters for heroic, nay? Bounced at the end of their bloody rope and lived.

  “Then comes the good part. He’s lying in hospital, and a doctor warns him he mustn’t move his head.

  “‘Why not?’ says Wolf Tone.

  “Bloody doctor tells him, ‘Your neck’s broke, if you move your head, you’ll
die.’

  “‘Thank you for your kindness, Doctor,’ says Wolf Tone graciously. Then he jerks his head to one side, and is gone.”

  Dr. Full paused to comprehend, then challenged, “Heroic?”

  “Bloody magnificent,” said Flare, “to those with eyes to see.”

  “Tincture of laudanum,” said Dr. Full.

  Sima lay between Dr. Full and Mr. O’Flaherty, asleep, or whatever you called passed out from laudanum. The doctor held up the vial. He grinned at Mr. O’Flaherty and said mockingly, “A miracle that sends the boy to his little death. And we will raise him up—Lazarus.”

  Mr. O’Flaherty, in his usual half-insolent way, started cutting with his John Wilson knife. Down the brittle, cracking splint from Sima’s knee.

  The new splint was ready. Mr. O’Flaherty had shot the elk during the two days they stayed over at Fort Boise. Now the piece of hide was half stiff—still flexible enough to wrap around Sima’s leg and tie, but hardening fast enough to give him support. In a couple of days it would be rigid as a board.

  The camp was quiet. Miss Jewel wasn’t helping. Though she said she wasn’t a bit squeamish, Dr. Full knew all ladies were. She should learn her rightful sphere.

  The only thing was to get it done fast, before Sima woke up to the pain.

  Mr. O’Flaherty flung the old hide splint away and reached for the new one.

  “Wait,” said Dr. Full. “We need to check this leg carefully.” He began to wash the area around the wound.

  Impatiently, Mr. O’Flaherty fingered Sima’s toes.

  And then the man acted crazy, even for him. Went down to one knee, spread the big toes away from their companions, felt of them.

  Threw Dr. Full a mad look.

  Dr. Full took Mr. O’Flaherty’s hands away and spread the toes himself.

  Between the big toe and the second toe was a web, as on a duck’s foot.

  Unusual. But why did the man look like he swallowed a frog alive and kicking?

  Mr. O’Flaherty ran. He stumbled, heading anywhere. Away.

  Dr. Samuel Full watched him with the greatest interest, suspecting an opportunity for advantage.

  Flare was sitting on a boulder, chin propped up on his knees, staring somewhere toward the goddamn sun, which was setting somewhere over the goddamn Pacific Ocean. Seeing nothing. Dr. Full had said he would make Sima comfortable for the night. The boy would just pass from the laudanum sleep to natural sleep, Full said.

  Flare had both moccasins off, and was holding his toes between palms and flattened fingers. He felt like he was cradling them. And practically rocking yourself, lad, like a wee child.

  Flare heard Full’s footsteps. “Let me see,” said the doctor. When Flare hesitated, the doctor reached out and pulled his hands away.

  Dr. Full spread the toes with professional matter-of-factness and looked at the webs between the big toe and the one next to it, one web on each foot. He felt them, looked again. “Even the same big wrinkle,” he said. “I’ve never seen one of these, much less two. There’s no doubt about it.”

  He looked Flare hard in the eye and spoke hard. “So are you going to tell him?”

  “Not yet,” murmured Flare. “Not yet.”

  “You’re right,” said Dr. Full briskly. He looked at Flare hard, then nodded, as though to himself. “It’s not you he wants.” He studied Flare. The mountain man hung his head. “Or maybe he does. So he can rise up and stake you down.” Dr. Full was amused. Suddenly his voice changed. It was almost intimate, a parody of understanding. “No, you can’t tell him, can you?”

  What have I done, Flare’s soul wailed, with my wretched life?

  “What was your mother’s name?” asked Flare.

  He looked at Sima’s face. The boy looked young in the dawn light, and vulnerable. He had just wakened from the little death. Flare had brought him coffee, thick with sugar Flare bought at Fort Hall, the way Flare and Sima liked it. Sima lay on his travois, and Flare stood beside him.

  The outfit would not move today. They had changed Sima’s splint on Saturday night to give him a full day of rest before he rode again.

  Flare had no rest. He’d sat by the fire all night, ana remembered his life phantasmagorically, a nightmare. He’d remembered his women. He’d pondered the progeny he might have, all over the West. My get, as the Americans called them. None of them white.

  Flare had come out with the Northwest Company from Montreal twenty-three years ago, a sixteen-year-old lad. Instead of going back to the city with the pork-eaters, he’d spent the first winter at Fort William, and headed to Slave Lake in the spring. Before he was twenty, he was an old hand, not only a hivernant, a man who’d spent a winter in the wilderness, but also a clever and respected one. When the Hudson’s Bay Company offered him a smart bit of money and the chance to go to the Pacific Coast, to Fort Vancouver, he grabbed it. And then he led brigades into the lands the Americans claimed, reaping fortunes in furs. He cared nothing for the fortunes other men made on his efforts. He loved the life, and scorned them for caring more for the money than the adventure.

  When the time came to make contact with new tribes, it was often Flare who was chosen. He had the knack. He was superb with the sign language, he picked up spoken languages quickly, and he understood the Injun mind. He’d lived among tribes the boiled shirts on the HBC board of directors in London had not imagined in their most fevered nightmares of barbarism.

  He’d had women in every one. It was the way you became one of them. Country wives, the HBC called them, privately approving. A woman for a summer here, a winter there. An adopted family, adopted people, adopted loyalties. It was politic, it was good business, and it satisfied Flare’s nature.

  He liked the women, by God he did. He liked their company, truly. Though he liked adventuring with his comrades, he liked long camps with a big family and a companionable female. He liked sharing his thoughts, which was easier with women than with men. And he liked the feel of them in the buffalo robes, the ancient, rhythmic rub of them, for sure. He’d been a young man, uninhibited, and heedless of consequence.

  Besides, it was the way of the country. His principle for living with the Indians was, When among wolves, howl.

  Twice he’d nearly settled down for good. The first time he’d got sent away from her, far to the Pacific shore, to Fort Vancouver. It was a great opportunity, he told himself, and he couldn’t stay behind. The second time he’d even had a child, a girl, by a Cayuse woman he lived with for two years. But his infant daughter died during the second winter, driving Flare half mad. Right then old Skye suggested that he and Flare join the American trappers—to hell with HBC, anyway—it didn’t have the old Northwest Company spirit, and the Americans did. Flare rode with Yanks ever since, and stayed away from the Cayuses.

  Did he have progeny all over the West? Wondering, he looked into Sima’s face.

  In the Shoshone language, he said, “What was your mother’s name?” He repeated in the Shoshone language, “Hi-na enin pia nani hii-ukkan?”

  “Epa Waapin,” the lad said. “Of the Pia Kuittsun Tekkah, her father Beak, her mother Black Shawl.”

  Yes, as Flare thought. He remembered Pinyon of the Buffalo-Eating Band well. Comely, she was, with a devil of a sense of humor, on the wild side, that girl. He’d lodged with her the very first winter he came up the Snake River. Stayed all winter, an open winter, and the brigades came upriver early that summer. He’d had three or four months with her, all told. Liked her a lot. She was the cheerfulest woman he’d ever been around, and a little wild.

  It was a long time ago. He’d been twenty. Now he’d take her to his lodge and his robes and spend an eternity there with her—hell, an eternity every night. Then he’d told her he’d be back in the autumn, meaning every word, even leaving his compass with her, and headed downstream. When it came time to go back to Pinyon, he got the bloody fever. Sick for a month. When he healed, the Snake River brigade was gone, McLoughlin ordered Flare south, down to the Umpqua, instead.
And there another fine bottom had caught his eye. His eye wandered, those days.

  “What happened to her?”

  The boy kept his eyes cast down. He didn’t like talking about it. Flare thought tears were close. Speaking his own tongue made the lad more emotional, too.

  “She died a few days after she bore me. I never knew her.”

  Flare thought how it would have been. Pinyon would have held the boy, nursed him. Held him, at least, before the fever came on her. Murmured to him, surely. Then the fever would have taken over her body and mind, until she didn’t know her child, and lost her hold on life itself.

  Black Shawl and Beak would have blamed the white man who abandoned their daughter, partly. Among them the father was forbidden in the birthing hut. If he so much as looked on a woman while she was menstruating or giving birth, he would bleed from the nose or mouth until he died. He had certain duties while she was in labor and in childbirth. He was to eat only light food—no meat—and drink lots of water. While the newborn was being washed in warm water, the father went into the cold creek and washed his genitals. For the next several days—the mother would not be restored to him for a full moon—he was to rise early and move about, to inspire like behavior in the child.

  Pinyon’s parents would have thought Flare’s failure to act in the right way contributed to disharmony of the physical and spirit world, and so to Pinyon’s death.

  Bloody rotten world. That’s how he knew there was no God, or God had wound up the world like a clock and gone off to play billiards with his mates and pay human beings no mind. Surely He wouldn’t kill teen-age mothers as they brought their children into the world.

  Most likely He’s off in a far corner of the universe rutting, Flare thought self-mockingly. He flings his get about creation, filling the skies with new solar systems.

  “And your father?”

  Sima shrugged, feigning indifference or scorn. “He went fur-trading with some Frenchmen. He said he’d come back, but he never did.” His eyes out across the long distance, unfocused.