The Snake River

by Win Blevins

  He looked at her. And looked. “Yeah,” he said, “but this is just crazy. So are the Scriptures. That’s what I think.”

  She seemed to shiver and withdraw from him a little.

  “These Methodists are heretics,” she said. Protestants. Not the true church.

  They sat together. Sima felt like her hand kept him from going mad.

  Dr. Full asked if he could speak to Sima alone.

  “Not now,” said Sima, gripping Lisbeth’s hand even tighter.

  Dr. Full took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “You understand, my son, that the blacksmith was merely crazy? His madness was…private. This was not the act of a civilized man, a true Christian.”

  “Sure,” said Sima. He resented the way Dr. Full treated him like a child.

  Dr. Full punched him lightly with his fist, gave him a quick nod, and went on his way.

  Sima had learned to tell white people what they wanted to hear. They didn’t take less.

  He held on to Lisbeth.

  He missed Flare. He missed Flare bad.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Sima woke up on the floor at the Winesons, two mornings later, with the awareness that he’d been lax. Mom-pittseh, Owl, had told him to heal, walk well again, then prepare himself, and finally seek his poha, his spirit power.

  He’d had the cast off for several months, had walked fine for a couple of months. He had accepted Owl’s help, yet was slow in taking on the task Owl had given him, in gaining power, in becoming a man. Yes, he was afraid to touch the bird that brings words of death. Did this mean he would be a white man and not a Shoshone any longer?

  He knew it was time.

  And it would be a relief to be away from these white people for a few days. The smell of the death of Alan Wineson was rank in his nostrils.

  Since they would be intolerant of his mission—even Miss Jewel—he wouldn’t tell them. He’d just leave, and listen politely to their corrections when he got back.

  At French Prairie he asked old Pierre for help in preparing for his mission. Sima knew a little of the customs of the takuslitoih kahni, sweat lodge, and knew he should have an older man of his people to help him prepare, newe pohakente, a man of experience, a man of spirit power.

  He did not have such a man. Not even among his people was there such a man for him—he was banished. And if he was not banished, help would have been granted reluctantly or not at all—he was a numah divo.

  So he was on his own. He was deciding this was the nature of his life, to grow as a solitary plant rather than in the garden of a people. Left on his own, he would take help wherever it lay.

  Old Pierre was willing to help. But he didn’t want the drawings Sima offered to him. Drawings meant nothing to Pierre. Since Pierre knew that Sima had nothing, however, he would accept Sima’s old horse, Messenger.

  That gave Sima a pang. He was afraid Pierre meant to make Messenger into stew. But the horse was little enough to ask, and what you gave should mean something to you. Done.

  Pierre assured Sima that he had lived among Indians all his life, had many Indian wives, many Indian children, had sweat many times, knew well how to run a sweat lodge, how to solicit the help of Spirit.

  Sima suspected that Pierre had never been given the way to conduct the ceremony. Otherwise he probably would have said so. To observe the ceremony and copy its gestures were not enough. A man blessed with the power had to give it to you. But there was no choice. Sima accepted preparing in this half-correct way as simply another sign that he was an orphan in the world.

  The two of them built the bonfire, heated rocks from the size of Sima’s fist to the size of his head, shoveled the rocks into the hole in the center of the low sweat lodge, crawled inside, and closed the door, creating utter blackness.

  Pierre prayed in a language Sima did not recognize—not French—and poured water on the rocks. The steam rose, and Sima felt again the familiar, welcome stinging. He switched himself with white sage. Pierre prayed once more, then Sima. Then they opened the lodge door and cooled off, and closed it for another round.

  In the first round, the round of four pours of water onto the rocks, Sima asked Owl for guidance in what he was about to do.

  In the second, the round of seven pours, he asked for a proper attitude.

  In the third, the round of ten pours, he asked for strength to endure.

  In the last, the round of uncounted pours, he asked for perseverance and courage. For whatever power Owl might be willing to grant him. And for the presence of Spirit in his heart always.

  Pierre showed him where the owls flew along the bottom, helped him trap several mice, helped him build the trap. They had a different kind of owl in these woods, he said, one he’d never seen anywhere else, a spotted owl.

  It was a pit big enough for Sima to sit in and move around, covered with sticks. A round of firewood provided a big step for him to get out. Sima would put the bait on top and wait.

  Old Pierre fixed Sima with a wry, quizzical eye. “You know better’n fall asleep, don’t you?”

  Sima flushed. But the old man couldn’t know he’d fallen asleep trying to steal Paintbrush, getting himself banished. No one here knew. And that failure had been the beginning of miracle in his life.

  The first night it seemed easy. He neither ate nor drank. He never got desperately sleepy. He waited. He sat still. He imagined the drawings he would do on the dirt walls if he dared move. He talked to the spotted owl in his head.

  Nothing happened until the sun came up. He went back to Pierre’s, ate with the old man, slept, and waited for nightfall.

  The second night it was nearly impossible. He was fidgety from the start. Then his body grew heavy, and he felt a great torpor come over him. His mind fought it, but his spirit was languorous and lethargic. He could see sleep alarmingly near. At the same time, at random, he was shuddery.

  He grew desperate. He had known a man of his people who fell asleep in an eagle trap. Pia-kwinaa, Eagle, had stiffened one of his knees, and he walked with a limp afterward. Sima dreaded being crippled.

  Once he pricked the back of his hand with his knife. That brought him alert for a while.

  Another time he wanted desperately to go jump in the river to wake himself up bristlingly. But he dared not leave the trap.

  Finally he did what he thought he dared not do. Pierre had given him a powder to help him stay awake, with an amused warning about how it smarted. Sima rubbed it in his eyes. For ten or fifteen minutes he wriggled and writhed and wept from the burning. It kept him snappily awake for an hour or so.

  The sun came, but no owl.

  On the third night, before the Seven Sisters even indicated the middle of the night, something happened. A sound, or a change in the sounds of the night. A shadow, a flicker of blackness. The faintest snapping sounds among the twigs.

  Sima nearly panicked. Owl was here, but Sima could not see him.

  Tick! Shifting of shadow!

  Sima grabbed.

  His left hand grasped air, but his right got a stiff, scaly leg.

  Owl made a whuffing sound. Slapped its wings violently against the wind. Sticks flew out of the way.

  Sima got hold of the other leg.

  Stab!

  Sima jerked his right hand away.

  Ow! He bit off curses at the owl.

  He grabbed and grabbed with his right hand until he got the leg back.

  Ow! He stepped up on the firewood and jumped out onto the ground.

  A flurry of pecks on the left hand. Pecks on the right. The wings driving him crazy.

  He would go mad. He had to do it. Now.

  Sima began to dance. Holding the owl high, he darted back and forth. He fluttered his elbows like wings. He hopped, he weaved in imitation of the owl, he circled, and he did it all again.

  As he danced, Sima raised his voice to the night sky in song:

  Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

  Mom-pittseh, Mom-pittseh,

  Coming to me through
pieces of light and dark.

  He sang solemnly. With reverence.

  Then he sang the song once more, smilingly. The owl still pecked at him, and hit him with its wings, but he hardly noticed. He sang, he bellowed, and he laughed while he sang. He loved the earth and the sky. And wind. And flowing waters. And the powers. Most especially Owl. Gladness flowed through him like blood.

  Finally, reluctantly, he ended the song. He stopped dancing. He brought the owl to eye level. It had stopped fighting. Perhaps it was exhausted, giving up. Perhaps it was surrendering its power to Sima willingly. By the moonlight he could see a dark, oval shape, faint lines of wing and face, and a pair of lustrous eyes. The eyes glowed bright, mysterious, utterly unreadable.

  He gripped both legs with his left hand, put his right behind the bird’s head, grasped hard, and twisted. Twisted firmly, for a long time. He heard cracking, crunching sounds.

  He set the dead owl on the earth. With his knife he opened its chest. He put a finger on the small heart, still quivering. He cut it open.

  Now. He held the bird high overhead, as though offering it to Father Sky. The heart’s blood flowed down, onto the heels of his hands, down his arms, onto his chest and belly.

  He spoke freely. “Numee Nan-kak Ook.” Hear me, O Spirit. He thanked Spirit. He thanked Owl. He poured forth his heart in a new gladness.

  He left the blood on his body—later he would draw himself so he would always know where to put the paint. He took the owl’s claws. He took the heart. He took the skin. By moonlight he walked back toward Pierre’s cabin, an empowered man.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  After the second night, at dawn, Flare packed Skye out of the eastern side of the bay by Yerba Buena, head down on a mule.

  Odd how it seemed fun when Flare was drinking, and dumb when he was sober. He knew what was coming. The boozing would go on for three or four days and the foul-spirited sobering up for three or four more. There was still the whoring and card-playing for Flare, but he’d had enough. He felt too old to enjoy fighting, or watching others make asses of themselves. It hadn’t even been a sailors’ port, just a dirty little town and a cantina.

  He used the rest of Skye’s express money and a hundred of his own dollars to get outfitted. He bought a new saddle horse—Wolf Tone was at French Prairie, for there was no honor in taking your best horse on a pony raid. Since it seemed to have a haughty attitude, he called the new horse Doctor. He bought himself a new Californio saddle with his guiding money, complete with silver-embroidered mochila and bridle. He got another saddle horse, and some mules, including an extra-stout one just to pack Skye. He tied the drunken sailor on with a diamond hitch and packed him north. He got to Santa Rosa the second day.

  He didn’t bother with sight-seeing around the mission. To Flare, Spanish priests were even spookier than Irish. You didn’t even get a “Top o’the mornin’ to ye” before you got the eye, searching out your shame. And no sense in sticking your puss in the fathers’ faces, for them to remember. They liked to have something to hold over a man.

  There was a garrison of Mexican soldiers at the village, which had a jail to put a man in.

  Skye was sober enough to ride before they got to Crawford’s place, three or four miles from the little village, and a fine place it was.

  Jim Crawford was affable, but something seemed wrong. They’d ridden together, the three of them, for six or seven years. Craw was some, as the mountain men said—trapping man, drinking man, fighting man. Best hoss throwing a tomahawk Flare knew. Up to beaver in every way. And he was still their friend—greeted them with bear hugs, and joy in his eyes. Yet in some way he was different, Flare couldn’t say how. It was elusive, like a floor that looks flat but is slightly slanted. Or was it Flare’s floor that was slanted?

  Craw showed them his place and his life with pride. Acres and acres of orchards. Two wives, a Crow and a Blackfoot—got on fine, he said, when their tribes never did. Fine litter of kids, too many for Flare to keep track of the names. Three of them were teenagers, and not Craw’s to start with, but a Nor’west man’s—mine now, he said happily. He didn’t know if he wanted to run off horses, said he didn’t sport around the country much anymore. But he knew who would want to, and he might go along himself, for old times’ sake. They’d chew on it after supper.

  Billy Wells was making himself a right nuisance about getting married.

  Right nuisance—Miss Jewel thought it was funny she would put it that way. That was O’Flaherty’s language.

  She didn’t feel quite so harsh toward Mr. O’Flaherty anymore. They’d never be friends again. But when you were lost in Satan’s darkness, you acted bad. That was that. She should have known, and expected it.

  But Billy Wells didn’t have that excuse. Billy Wells had the light of Jesus in his life. And Billy Wells wouldn’t leave her alone.

  “Miss Jewel, I cain’t wait. I don’ wonna wait. I yearn for you so.”

  Again: “Miss Jewel, God made us so man would wont woman. God told us to be fruitful and multiply.”

  Et cetera, et cetera.

  She held her pipestone-colored hair with her left hand, the pins between her left fingers, and tucked and pinned the hair, as she did every morning. She turned her head from side to side. This morning she felt like pinning it truly high, making a mound on top of her head. Then she would be tall, tall as Billy Wells or any man around the place. She cocked her head this way and that. She liked it.

  She stood up to go to the school. The part of the day she enjoyed the most, now that it was exasperating to be around Billy Wells, was teaching Sima. The boy took to book-learning only moderately, but he loved to draw, and had wonderful skill. She was learning from him.

  The thought that Sima’s skill seduced Alan Wineson into suicide crossed her mind, but she banished it. Alan Wineson got crazy all on his own.

  When she opened the door, Billy Wells was coming back along the path. She stayed on the doorsill. Whatever he had to say, and she didn’t want to hear it, she meant to be towering over him while he said it.

  He looked up at her. He was hangdog and insolent at once, a particular talent of his. She was getting plenty fed up with Billy Wells.

  He angled this and that a couple of times, in his usual way.

  Finally she said, “Billy Wells, if you have anything worth saying, spit it out.”

  He shuffled his feet. Appeared to decide. “Miss Jewel,” he said, slyly as could be, “everybody would want us to go ahead and marry right now. Dr. Full included. Everybody. If we was to tell them the whole truth about us.”

  The look on his face was a schemer who’d won.

  Well, that was that.

  “Billy Wells,” she said, enunciating with great clarity, “I am now breaking our engagement. I forbid you to set foot in this cabin again. When you finish work, your belongings will be piled in front of the door.”

  He didn’t get it. He still whined. “It’s gonna snow.” He pointed up at the hazy sky, which, as far as Miss Jewel could tell, snowed once in a blue moon. “What will I do?”

  Madness got hold of her, real madness for a moment. She said, “Go stick it in a knothole.”

  She slammed the door.

  She leaned her forehead against it.

  She sobbed furiously. She pounded the door with her fists. She banged her head against it.

  After a minute or so, she made herself stop. No man was going to make her act that way. No man. That’s what they wanted. They wanted women to depend on them helplessly. They could all go stick it in knotholes.

  But she wanted…she wanted…

  It was insane. Impossible.

  She looked through a crack in the door to make sure Billy Wells wasn’t still standing there. He seemed to be gone. She opened the door.

  She had to get to school. She had to teach…dear Jesus, she had to teach four Indian boys to read and figure. While all the Indian girls learned to cook and sew.

  She stepped outside. She looked around at
the pleasant morning. The men were all at their jobs, making the mission run so it could spread the Word. The women were all in their cabins, washing the men’s clothes and patching their long underwear. She cupped a hand to her mouth and hollered out to the fresh morning, “You can all go stick it in knotholes!”

  Craw said at breakfast that his boy Garrett and Garrett’s friend Innie did want to roust some hosses, so he reckoned he would, too. They’d start today by rounding up some fellow thieves over in Napa Valley.

  On the ride over, Craw showed them the country with the pride of a proprietor, He was right. Flare had a sense of a blessing on it. It wasn’t just the rolling hills, or the fine tree cover, or the orchards on the slopes, or the pleasant valleys warming up green with new grass, even in February. This country had two seasons, Craw said, spring and summer, both gentle. That sounded grand to Flare. But it was not merely that. It also was the blessing.

  He pulled up his horse at the top of a divide and just looked around. Craw was right, it was shining. And Flare got a kick out of sitting at the top of the ridge. In Indian country, you didn’t silhouette yourself.

  Then Craw told the damnedest story. Said a painter fella came out from Philadelphy on a ship, landed at San Francisco, come out to Santa Rosa with a pack horse of easel and big, stiff sheets of fancy paper, wanted to hire Craw to show him around. Fella didn’t need any showing around, country safe as the back forty, but the dollars would pay for more fruit trees, and he wasn’t such a bad fella anyhow, even if he was an artiste. So Craw sent Garrett here along with him during the day, and fed and lodged the hoss at night.

  Well, this artiste couldn’t hold his tongue from going on about the light. Said it had a way about it here. Reminded him of the sunlight in the North of Italy, which was a similar climate, and the most romantic place in the world, whatever that meant to say. In the paintings, fella said, the light wouldn’t look like it came from the sun, would seem to kind of glow forth from the countryside itself. Said he’d get it down in watercolors here and then big oil paintings out of them in his studio. Sell the oils to people in Philadelphy who had too much money, which sounded right enough.