The Snake River

by Win Blevins

  As though sworn to silence, they didn’t talk, didn’t laugh, just set off fast for the cave.

  It wasn’t really a cave, more of a big overhang, a recess in the bluff. It had a seep. Sima had brought firewood there, bit by bit. It had pieces of rope for snares. It had blankets. Though less than an hour’s walk from the mission, it was well hidden.

  This was Sima’s special place. He came here when he got worn out with the mission people. Except for Lisbeth and Miss Jewel, that was all the time these days. He fantasized about living alone here, snaring and shooting game, drawing, spending his days in beauty without the encroachment of another human being.

  For some reason, they whispered, like they were on a secret mission. Sima built a small fire—the March day was cool but not cold. Lisbeth stuck the strips of side meat on forked sticks and broiled them in the small flames. The fire made the recess cozy.

  They ate. They sipped at the cooling run of water on the rock wall. Sima spread the blankets, and they lay on their backs. Sima nervously began to tell her about his fantasy.

  He wanted to make a huge painting on this slanted ceiling. A painting done with strong, vibrant colors made from red and ocher and white clay, and the black of ashes, and other more modulated colors made from bitterbrush, lichens, raspberries, and blueberries. When you faced the rock wall, he pointed out, you were facing east. Where earth met gray rock, he would paint the beginning of every day’s sunrise, a molten, red, bubbling….He made gestures to show how the red would flow and undulate.

  Next to the sun, near the ground, the figure of Magic Owl, flying. Hesitantly he opened his shirt, holding her eyes with his, and showed her one of the two owl claws tied against his inner arms. She would understand.

  Above Owl, like the sun itself, a wheel of the four directions. Black for the west, where the thunder beings live. White for the north, the home of the white buffalo and the cleansing winds. Red for the east, whence beginnings come. Yellow for the south, where we are always looking.

  When you slept here, ate here, sat here, and looked out on the forested hills of the Oregon country, you would be sitting in a place made sacred by the painting.

  He saw this painting in his mind as clearly as a dream. He used that word consciously, knowing she would understand that he meant waking dream, vision through power. He was not yet sure this was the cave Power meant him to paint. When he saw more clearly, he would begin.

  He looked at her. She seemed to be paying more attention to him than his imaginary painting.

  He pointed to both ends of the recess, where the rock walls curved in. These he would populate with smaller figures, another Owl there at the south, War Eagle at the west, Magpie at the north, Meadowlark in the east. Then still smaller figures, Coyote and Spider, and maybe….

  She leaned over him, smiling impishly. She touched his lips with a finger. She kissed his lips, ever so gently.

  His body tingled. He moved his lips against hers, exploring. Sensations rose in him like waves, lifting him, swirling him.

  He held her face with his hands and looked at her. He kissed her eyes and eased her back onto the blanket.

  He kissed her—hard, soft, with passion, with tenderness, more ways than he could imagine.

  After a while he put his hand on the top button of her cotton blouse. He undid that button and kissed her collarbone. He undid the next button, and the next, and kept kissing, farther down, between where her breasts would be.

  At last he folded one flap of her blouse to the side. He looked at her breast, a warm brown with a rose-colored nipple, small, exquisitely shaped. He kissed delicately around the outside of it, then around the nipple, then the nipple itself, gently, sweetly.

  He had never felt anything like he felt here, now, touching Lisbeth. He was tremulous with…fear? Excitement?

  He lay her blouse completely open. He nuzzled her breasts.

  He stripped off his shirt, pulled her against him, felt her breasts warm and sensual against his chest. He kissed her lips.

  After a while, perhaps a very long while, he took off the rest of her clothes. And his own. And came over her.

  She wrote it blindly, in haste and rage. Otherwise she knew she wouldn’t have written it.

  St.Patrick’s Day 1838

  Dear Dr. McLoughlin:

  I write to ask you formally for a position teaching Indian children at Fort Vancouver. I am trained for this work at the Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts, and have for some years regarded it as my life’s work. My commitment to bringing these children the light of civilization is complete.

  You will wonder why I do not wish to continue in my similar position here. The fact is that I am falsely accused of indiscretions. That has made my situation intolerable, as I’m sure you will understand. I believe it would be more acceptable were I not innocent.

  As I wish to leave this community immediately, I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

  Yr obdnt servant,

  Margaret Jewel

  Miss Jewel took the letter to French Prairie and found a Frenchie who would take it to Vancouver for twenty dollars.

  Lord, twenty dollars. That was more than half the money she had in the world.

  What would she do if Dr. McLoughlin said no? Walk to St. Louis? Alone?

  Sima and Lisbeth went to the school at noon. They’d stayed at the cave all afternoon, all night, all morning enjoying what they’d discovered, exploring its textures and dimensions.

  Sima was happy. And amazed. He felt like a wall had crashed to the ground and a new world shone behind it.

  Through the window they saw that Miss Jewel wasn’t doing the teaching. Miss Upping was in there.

  Sima didn’t know what to think of that.

  They were probably in trouble. The families they stayed with had surely reported them missing. The trouble seemed trivial, like some people scurrying about, seen from high on a mountain.

  It would be just as well, though, to see Miss Jewel first. They went to her cabin.

  She told them she’d been dismissed as the teacher for the Indian children. In the blankness of her face Sima saw her pain.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.

  Sima told her they’d been out all night together, at a place he liked to camp.

  They put their arms around each other’s waists, and looked into each other’s eyes, and let Miss Jewel see.

  It wasn’t necessary to say more.

  Miss Jewel felt a pang of joy. Strange—feeling joy, through the awfulness.

  She took them both into her arms. She smiled at herself. If she hugged them, they couldn’t ravish each other in front of her. Which they were aching to do.

  “I love you both,” she said.

  More briskly, “Now. You’re in trouble.” She thought. “Don’t let anyone see you, and get out of here. I’ll say you went to French Prairie yesterday. You told me you were going. Lisbeth is staying at—what’s the name of your neighbors there?”

  “Langlois,” Lisbeth said.

  “Lisbeth is staying at Langlois’. Sima is staying at Nicolette’s.”

  “Why did you go?” She considered. “I’ll just say you were upset. Everybody’s upset.

  “Now get. Be sure no one sees you.”

  Sima guided Lisbeth to the door, turned back to say thanks to Miss Jewel.

  “Nicolette’s is empty, you know,” she told him. The old gal had married Pierre, who was ancient.

  “You’d best come back tomorrow,” she added.

  The thrill in their faces was embarrassing. Sima nodded at her with restraint and was gone.

  Aiding fornicators. Was she terribly wicked?

  Helping love blossom, she corrected herself.

  Sometimes this damn religion seemed to nurture hatred and root out love.

  20 March 1838

  Fort Vancouver

  My dear Miss Jewel:

  Your request touches my old heart. The world is unjust, and it is unjust that so
fine a person as you should feel herself in a difficult situation.

  You are most welcome here, of course, and I personally would be glad of your company.

  I cannot offer you quite the position you ask. Our pupils here are all Catholic, like their fathers before them. You can see the unsuitability.

  I do, however, open the door of hospitality wide. You would be a welcome guest, of course with no charge, for as long as you like. At a time of your choosing I could arrange transportation to the States for you on one of our ships.

  I personally look forward to your arrival at your earliest convenience. The bearer of this letter is authorized to escort you to this fort if you choose.

  Yr. obdnt servant,

  John McLoughlin

  She thanked McLoughlin’s messenger, told him she would need no escort, and dismissed him. She thought she should give the man a few dollars as a thank you. But her financial situation was desperate already.

  In this vast wilderness, she had nowhere to turn.

  “Sima, I want to talk to you about your future.” Dr. Full was groping. He didn’t know how to approach the boy. Didn’t know where the boy’s mind was.

  So much had happened. Mr. O’Flaherty had run off. Miss Jewel disgraced. Alan Wineson dead. Unthinkably, Annie Lee dead. The boy infatuated with Lisbeth McDougal. Dr. Full knew such puppy love had inordinate sway over the minds of the young. Carnal sin had even a greater sway, and the boy might be trapped in that swamp. Dr. Full was worried about his Alchemized Savage.

  Sima sat nervously on the edge of one of the Fulls’ kitchen chairs. The boy refused tea and coffee, refused all amenities, just sat and waited. From appearances, unwillingly.

  Dr. Full never knew what the boy was thinking. Sima would say what white people wanted to hear, Dr. Full knew that. It annoyed him, the arrogance in it.

  “Sima, I see God working powerfully in your life. Do you feel Him?”

  Sima didn’t look up at Dr. Full. He didn’t know what to do, how to answer. How odd for Dr. Full to bring this up. How could he not know that, because of the way he treated Miss Jewel, Sima despised him? How could he pretend that wasn’t between them?

  Sima couldn’t just answer the question simply anyway. Of course, he felt Spirit in his life. He had been born in Spirit, raised to honor Spirit. Spirit was in him and in everything.

  Dr. Full meant something else, though. Something like a code that…Sima wasn’t sure. But he knew he didn’t want what Dr. Full was talking about. He wanted to keep being Sima.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You learn fast—read, write, figure. You draw wonderfully. Where come these gifts but from God?”

  “I don’t know,” Sima said. Being around white people was pretending all the time. Except for Flare and Miss Jewel.

  “When you think back on your life, notice how it has changed. Last summer, when you left your tribe, you were a savage. You have been alchemized into something shining. Only God can do that.”

  Sima wanted to be out of here.

  “Perhaps it’s too soon. This summer, perhaps, you could look back on the year since we found you with God’s help. When you look back, you will see a transformation. A miracle.”

  Sima stared at his knees.

  “Perhaps then you will make a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He shines through you even now, radiant and holy.”

  Sima let it go.

  “Perhaps I can give you now a glimpse of your future. It is glorious beyond imagination.”

  Sima thought, he means beyond the imagination of a savage.

  “We would like you to go to the United States on a ship, perhaps next fall. The Methodist Episcopal Church will pay your passage. Our members there will house you, feed you, clothe you, take care of everything.

  “You will do something for us—speak to our congregations, and let them see what redemption can do for one of your race.” He wants to show off his trophy, thought Sima, his Alchemized Savage, thought Sima. “And we will do something for you—help you apprentice yourself to an artist, a master of drawing and painting.”

  Sima felt flushed. He didn’t know about that. Someone to show him how to do things, maybe, skills of the pencil, the brush, the palette. But maybe someone to order him what to paint and how to paint.

  It didn’t matter anyway.

  “What are your thoughts about this?”

  Sima thought about whether he should answer. After a while, he looked Dr. Full in the eye, and with a deliberately soft eye and soft voice said, “You know. Next month I will be going to Montreal with the Hudson’s Bay men to look for my father.”

  Miss Jewel went everywhere with Sima or Lisbeth, which made it better and worse at the same time. Better because she didn’t have to bear it alone. Worse because everyone spoke to Sima and Lisbeth and acted as if Miss Jewel didn’t exist.

  When she went to the river to fetch water, for a walk, to the privy, she didn’t exist.

  The congregation of Mission Bottom was shunning Maggie Jewel.

  Though she knew Sima and Lisbeth wanted to spend every spare moment alone, they mostly stayed with Miss Jewel. They were gone only at night. She wondered when they slept. And where.

  When just Miss Jewel and Sima were together, and someone did speak to him, Sima answered, “Bottom of the morning to ye, you ass.”

  Miss Jewel corrected him, of course, but Sima paid her no mind. He seemed angrier about the shunning than Maggie was. Noon or night, he growled, “Bottom of the morning to ye, you ass.”

  She knew it was conscious and deliberate. They were making a point of cutting her off from succor. They were unanimous about it. The only person who said anything to her, once, was Parky. He spoke to Sima, got the usual vulgar rebuff, looked off across the river, and murmured, “I’m sorry, Maggie.” After that Miss Jewel would head back the way she came to avoid Parky. She felt it would kill her if even he snubbed her.

  Miss Jewel decided the shunning was fair. They were within their rights. But they couldn’t know how it hurt her. She was on the outside once more, looking in on human society, as she had been in the temporary homes she’d been in, foster homes. There she languished, suspended in an awful pain. She saw what other people had and hardly noticed. Family, community, belonging—she had none. It made her take two resolutions: She would always be independent, able to take care of herself, able to support herself, because you never knew. And she would find a place where she belonged. That was what her church meant to her.

  Now Miss Jewel had lost everything. How could she be independent two thousand miles from civilization? How could she even earn a living? How could she belong to people who despised her?

  She swung from utter despair to deep despondence. Mostly it was despondence. She sent Sima off to school, though the new teacher, Elvira Upping, wasn’t equipped by training or temperament to deal with Indian students, especially Indians at completely different levels of learning. Then Miss Jewel lay around all day, doing nothing. She wrote a lot in her journal at first, all the lurid details of the lies and the maneuvers, but soon she didn’t care. She didn’t leave the cabin except to go to the privy, because she didn’t want to be snubbed. She just lay about.

  She wondered what would happen when they ran out of the stores of flour and beans they had in the cabin. Sima said he would hunt and make sure they ate. Would the congregation try to starve them out? Surely not, but…

  From Miss Jewel’s journal:

  My mind is still cast down. I pray—I agonize—but still something rests upon it which I cannot describe. My spirit groaneth within me as I go about my work; my mind is restless and I do not find peace. It really appears to me that God is preparing some event for me which now I do not understand. I have met so many disappointments as to cause me to be weaned from earth….Perhaps I am wrong and take erroneous views, but I have prayed that if I am deceived the Lord will undeceive me. I want very much to know the will of God concerning me, and I think I can never
rest contented till I do. My case is, I think, singular. I know of no Christian that ever felt as I do. I am sensible that some unseen hand is leading and directing the events of my life, and shall I not be grateful that I am so much regarded as to be led on, even through affliction, for some wise purpose? I will be thankful and bless God that he afflicts me and deigns even to notice me.

  In the evenings Sima read stories from The Thousand and One Nights and Miss Jane Porter’s Scottish Chiefs to Miss Jewel and Lisbeth. The two were her last contacts with the world of human beings. She made tea for the Indian students one night when Sima brought them, but they were uncomfortable, and she asked him not to bring them again. She fantasized sometimes about telling Flare that she knew now who was a liar and who wasn’t. But mostly she withdrew from human contact.

  She didn’t care. She was dead to the world.

  She wrote a poem in her journal:

  Though waves and storm go o’er my head—

  Though strength and health and friends be gone,

  Though joys be withered all, and dead—

  Though every comfort be withdrawn,

  On this my steadfast soul relies:

  Father! Thy mercy never dies!

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Flare patted Doctor. He liked to keep the critter nearby on watch. Flare could hear in the dark, but

  Doctor could smell. Smell Injun.

  Unfortunately, Flare was hearing too many noises that told nothing. The horses snuffling, clomping, occasionally nickering. Once in a while a shout, or voices raised in song. Skye’s loud, half-drunken bellow, mostly. The men were celebrating, and tippling.

  He guessed they did have something to celebrate. Flare and the lads caught those Klamaths and took care of them. Brought the ponies back. Mainly they’d gotten the herd over the roughest country and were down on the Willamette, at Mackenzie Fork. Safe country, sort of. Not far to go to French Prairie, where they’d trade lots of the horses. An easy go on to Vancouver, where they’d trade the rest of them. And head home with some dollars in their possible sacks.

  But Flare felt wearied by it all tonight.

  He shook himself. Got to get out of this feeling of deadness.