The Sublime Seven

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  ***

  Five months later...

  “I am well rid of her. She is a thorn in my side,” Shoe said as he finished dismantling his tepee. He had left it up over the summer to make his visits easier, he had said. Jacob knew the truth, though. After all they had been through, it would still be frowned upon by his people to stay in the house of a white man.

  Even if that white man was married to his sister.

  “Your loss is my gain.” Jacob smiled as he watched Asha from a distance working in their vegetable garden. He caught little notes of her song on the late summer breeze. She had the prettiest singing voice he had ever heard, but it was her laughter he had fallen in love with. That and about a million other things. He would miss Shoe over the winter, but he wouldn’t be lonely. “Are the elders any closer to accepting the marriage?”

  “They seem to be warming to it. As with learning the white man’s language, they see wisdom in establishing bonds between our people. They understand your kind is here to stay. Now that my sister is with you, you will probably not lose your scalp, unless it is her knife doing the job.”

  Jacob laughed. “I’d best keep her happy then.”

  “Indeed,” Shoe grinned. “When I return, I may not be alone. You have inspired me.”

  “Thinking about getting hitched?”

  “We will see.”

  When the travois was assembled and Shoe’s belongings properly stowed, the two men stood facing each other, both at a loss for words, a situation in which Jacob rarely found himself. Finally, he reached out to his friend and pulled him into a hug. He was fairly certain Cheyenne braves didn’t engage in hugging, but he didn’t care.

  “Shoe, you are the best friend a man could have. Not only did you save my life, you brought Asha to me.”

  “You may curse me for that later.”

  “Perhaps. But for now I just feel grateful. I wish I could think of a way to repay you. It weighs on me.”

  Shoe looked at him with those wise eyes, and said, “Gratitude should not feel like a burden. It should feel like a gift. It opens one’s eyes to the endless opportunities for treating one another with compassion and love. That is how I felt when you tended my leg. No burden, just mindfulness. In this way, our gratitude is like a pebble thrown into a pond, creating ripples of kindness that will travel far and wide.”

  “I thought I was supposed to be the poet.”

  “You are the poet. I am the philosopher. Farewell, Jacob Payne. May your heart remain light and your scalp intact. Do not let Asha boss you too much. She will try, believe me.”

  ***

  The frigid months passed more quickly than seemed possible, thanks to Asha. It wouldn’t be accurate to say she completed him, since human beings were born complete from the moment they wriggled out of their momma’s wombs, squalling and gooey, and into the world. But her gifts – her intellect, her sense of humor, her sound judgment – were the perfect complement to his in every way.

  And perhaps most importantly, she didn’t mind all his questions.

  Shoe returned in the spring, as promised, and he was not alone, just as he had intimated. When Asha saw the blond-haired woman riding next to her brother, she squealed in delight and ran toward the two. It seemed that Miriam, the preacher’s daughter, had carried a torch for Shoe as big as the one he had carried for her. They were married and expecting their first child in two months.

  Their tepee, larger than the one from last year, was soon assembled. That fall, the couple decided not to return to the tribe for winter. They would stay on the homestead with Jacob and Asha.

  In the years that followed, more tepees were erected and a second soddy was built. Eventually, there would be a sprawling two-story home constructed with lumber from Yankton and large enough to accommodate current and future generations of Paynes.

  All except one tepee would disappear in later years. Shoe’s progeny all moved away, but never Shoe himself.

  More years passed, quicker than Jacob could fathom. It was odd how the hands on the mantle clock seemed to move at a faster pace than they used to. Maybe one of the grandkids had tinkered with the inner mechanism.

  He sighed, and pushed himself out of his favorite porch chair. He meandered – carefully, as is prudent for old people – out to the prairie. He walked past the neat crops, the horse-filled corral, and the handful of homes that belonged to his grown children and grown grandchildren.

  It was mid-summer. The sky was the same shade of blue that he had seen through the doorway of his old soddy all those years ago, framing his beloved Asha. The color was called cobalt. He had confirmed that with the apothecary on his next trip into town that year.

  The thought made him glance down at the gravestone, where he now stood, at the foot of the tallest cottonwood tree for miles. His gaze shifted a few feet, resting on a new marker and the fresh mound of soil below it.

  “You wouldn’t think so much happiness could fit into such a shriveled old body,” he said to the soil. “Somehow I find room for infinite joy. I wonder where I store it. Maybe between my liver and my gall bladder. When I look at the newest baby, I realize there’s always a space to squeeze in some more. You were right, Shoe. We white folks have a societal imperative to produce blue-eyed offspring, although there seem to be a few brown-eyed ones in the mix as well. I credit your people for that development.” Jacob smiled, lifting his face to the sun so it could warm his soul.

  He took a deep breath of the sweet air, then let it out slowly.

  “I’ll miss you, my friend. I know you don’t believe in white man’s heaven, and frankly, I don’t think I do either. I don’t know what happens next, but I sure hope I get to cook biscuits for you again someday.”

  His memory traveled back to another burial, the one from his first summer on the homestead.

  “Go, young man, into Mother Earth and Father Sky. Your body will soon become part of them, just as your spirit already has. Let your energy flow with the wind that turns the tall grass into a sea. Let it dance with the clouds that float in the heavens. Let it reside in the soil and rock of the prairie and the mountains. In this way, you will live forever.”

  Jacob dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief he always carried these days in the back pocket of his trousers. It was interesting how emotional a person became when they got old. The sight of a new great-grandbaby or Asha’s grave set him off every time. Now that Miriam and Shoe’s markers had joined hers, he reckoned he’d have to start bringing a backup hanky.

  “I wonder how soon it’ll be until I join you all,” he whispered. “Everybody above ground is getting mighty tired of my questions.”

  The In Between

  When Jacob opened his eyes in the black void, it reminded him of the day he pried open his crusty eyelids three weeks after the wolf attack. Unlike back in his soddy in the Dakota Territory when he was healing from half a dozen bite wounds, here in the In Between, he felt no pain. Just a satisfying lightness and a profound sense of well-being. He remembered his first time here after dying in that convenience store robbery in Kansas, and he was happy to be well past all that. In hindsight, he must have seemed naïve to Sarah then. All the souls she mentored probably were in the beginning.

  When he thought of his Spiritual Guide, he closed his eyes again and pictured Asha sitting next to the fire pit on a starlit summer night. The soddy had felt stuffy and cramped those first few years before they built a bigger one, so often they would spend their evenings outside, under a canopy of black velvet punched with millions of pinholes for the light to shine through. He always wondered how many stars there were in the night sky, and whether there were people living on the planets which orbited those distant suns.

  It was just one of countless questions he had ruminated on during the ninety-two years of his past life. He had been given answers to many of them, but not all. He supposed that was as it should be. If a person knew all the answers to every question, what would then occupy his mind?

  He sat on t
he old willow stump in the In Between, stoking a dung fire with the special charred stick used only for that purpose – no other was the perfect length. Asha had decided early on that his Indian name would be Sits With Stick. It always made him laugh when she called him that.

  So he wasn’t surprised to see Sarah appear in the form of Asha, with her dark braids and her mischievous grin.

  “Jacob, it’s lovely to see you,” Asha-Sarah said.

  “Hi, Sarah. It’s wonderful to see you, too. I have to admit, I was ready this time. I lived longer than most folks do. Sometimes a life can go on too long.”

  “Do you think yours did?”

  “No. I think I learned a bonus lesson because of it.”

  “What was that?”

  “Grief. Loss. You can’t fully experience joy and all the other pleasurable emotions if you don’t endure their dark opposites.”

  “Excellent,” she said, smiling. It was Sarah’s smile on Asha’s face. “What about the other lessons? Curiosity? A Sense of Humor? Did you receive a side helping of Gratitude?”

  “I realized how crucial being curious was to learning. Not just about the big stuff, but trivial stuff too. The more questions you ask, the more you learn and the more you know. The more you know, the more enlightened you become. And that’s what this,” he gestured to the void beyond the campfire, “is all about. Enlightenment.”

  “It is indeed. What about Sense of Humor? How significant was it in your journey? Did you come to grasp it fully?”

  Jacob pondered both parts of the question for a long time before answering. In the In Between, time meant nothing, so he might have contemplated for hours or days.

  “It might just be one of the most important aspects of being human. I don’t think I realized that when I created my list. Hilarity and merriment have a way of sweeping away negativity, if only for a while. I think having a sense of humor is what keeps us sane. Laughter is like the steam valve on a pressure cooker. Life can be bleak and depressing much of the time, so having a sense of humor helps us get through it. And yes, thanks to Shoe and Asha and my blue and brown-eyed offspring, I laughed a lot. Certainly more than during any of my other lifetimes.”

  “So we can mark that off?”

  Jacob nodded. “Yes, definitely.”

  “What about Gratitude?”

  “As you knew beforehand, Gratitude could easily have fit into a life all by itself. For me to just tack it onto two other lessons was arrogant. I understand that now.”

  Sarah merely smiled. Her blond hair was back, but her skin was still the reddish-brown color of a cottonwood sapling.

  “As with a sense of humor, Gratitude is vital. Without being thankful for the kindness others show us, or appreciating when we have good health or enough money in the bank to pay bills or a warm coat to wear when it’s cold outside, what are we left with? A feeling of entitlement. Like the universe owes us something. Well, it doesn’t owe us a damn thing, so we must be grateful for every positive thing in our lives, no matter how small – the handmade quilt on our bed, the headache that finally went away, the batch of biscuits that came out light as a feather.”

  “Shoe loved your biscuits,” Sarah said.

  Jacob nodded. “That he did. He was happy to get them most mornings. Being thankful is what keeps us from being jerks. And we can well do with fewer jerks in the world. When Shoe and Asha saved my life after the wolf attack, I felt a burden to repay them. But when Shoe explained that Gratitude is about mindfulness rather than a debt, it made sense. I spent the rest of my life applying that philosophy to the way I lived. Gratitude gave my life more joy and meaning than it would have had otherwise. I hope I was able to pass it on to others, like Shoe’s water ripples. I wonder if I’ll ever know how many lives we touch indirectly because of it. The number must be colossal.”

  “Larger than we can imagine,” Sarah replied.

  “So did I get everything right?” Jacob anticipated, as he always did, the familiar words he knew would follow.

  “Do you think you got everything right?”

  “Yes. I know I did.”

  “Onward and upward, then.”

  “You realize the next life will be the final of my Sublime Seven.”

  “I do.”

  “Let’s work out the details.”

  Chapter 7 – Kindness with Compassion and Empathy, and Patience, Benevolence, and Tolerance too...they all seem to go together.

  Proxima Centauri – 37962 PC-CE (2657 CE)

  “Are you dreading the meeting this morning?” Jox’s favorite husband asked at the morning meal. She had never told him he was her favorite for two reasons: it might hurt the feelings of her other two husbands, plus it might make him insufferable. He was already full of himself because of his beautiful face and body. Thankfully, his intellect was only average. Otherwise, he might have contemplated world domination, not an impossible notion on their tiny planet.

  “Yes, these meetings are like juggling flaming torches and venom spitters,” she replied. “They don’t appreciate how fortunate we are. They always want more. More land, more water, more everything, even if it means taking it from someone else. It’s infuriating.”

  Durbin kissed her good cheek, then whisked away the dirty dishes. “You’re too kind. They’ll take advantage of you if you let them.”

  “Hardly. They’re terrified of me for reasons that are self-evident. And putting those haughty she-devils in their place is the highlight of my day.”

  “I’m surprised to hear that from you. You’re the sweetest person I know.”

  “If you believe that, I’ve failed miserably in my intimidation campaign. Besides, you’re seeing a façade. Lurking beneath this regrettable face is the soul of a depraved fiend.”

  “Not true. You’re kind to everyone.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw me speak at the Table.”

  “There’s no fear of that happening, since I was born with a penis. Speaking of, it’s been a while since you’ve visited Little Durbin.” He batted his eyelashes and licked his full lips. Coming from most men, those affectations would have looked ludicrous, but a beauty like Durbin could make it work.

  For a half-second, she considered taking him to her bed, but she decided there wasn’t time before the meeting. “We’ll remedy that tonight, darling.”

  “I’ll be counting the minutes. When you come home, don’t let Vyg distract you with his attempts at clever conversation, nor allow Sawl’s dinner to seduce you away from me. We have a date.”

  Her other two husbands were as jealous of each other as Durbin was of them both. It was a pity, too, because she enjoyed them all for their individual talents and company. Why couldn’t they just be satisfied with being married to the One Who Sat in the Tallest Chair? That she had only three husbands should flatter them. Some members of the Table had dozens. She certainly could have afforded more, but she felt no need to grandstand. She barely had enough time to give the three the attention they deserved. Why would she accumulate more just to impress her peers? She wouldn’t do it, even if her status and wealth practically demanded it of her.

  All those unmarried men could work or enter into legal unions with other men, an acceptable option in a world where men outnumbered women fifty to one.

  Besides, the men had brought it upon themselves.

  “Don’t kill each other while I’m gone,” she said.

  “Very well. Vyg has been pestering me to play Strategy with him. Maybe I will accept, although I think he only asks me because he knows he’ll win, and then he can feel smart.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?” She kissed him, then reached for her wrap. “People who aren’t born beautiful need to feel good about themselves too. I should know.”

  “No, I suppose not. He is smart, but I am handsome.”

  “That you are. Goodbye, love.”

  Before opening the door, she strapped the green-tinted goggles over her eyes, then draped one of her woven wraps around her dark hair
and most of her face. When she stepped out into the wind, only partially blocked by the massive walls of her compound, she was happy to note the gusts weren’t as strong as they had been the day before.

  She tried to be grateful for every gift the planet gave her, no matter how small. They weren’t abundant.

  She trod along the rock pathway to the nearby underground terminal, then headed for the tunnel marked TR1. Additional tunnels ran spoke-like from the station positioned just beyond her compound. They led to various locations – the markets, the libraries, the hospitals, the services quarter – but the most important was TR1 because it connected to her seat of power: the Table Room.

  The security was necessarily severe at its entrance. Even though the Guards recognized her, she was still required to provide a blood sample and to correctly answer the questions asked – only a member of the Table could accurately do so. The answers were given out at the previous meeting, so they were always unique and fresh. It was a simple yet elegant solution to ensure no one entered TR1 who shouldn’t. The blood sample was to make sure the civil servants who traveled it hadn’t been infected with chime-Ra. A concentration of the most valuable people in the world – women – populated the tunnel daily. Since they were particularly susceptible to the virus that had nearly ended humankind half a millennia ago, everyone had to be screened every single time, despite there being no cases of the disease in more than a hundred years.

  “Greetings, Guard Ralork. I hope your evening was pleasant,” she said to the man with the stern expression and the scar spanning from temple to angular jawline. His arms were folded in an unfriendly manner, but that wasn’t unusual. He always exuded disdain, even though she made a point to be polite to him. Being on the receiving end of disdain was a familiar facet of her world. She had come to terms with it a long time ago.

  “Sample, please.” He grabbed her offered index finger and shoved it into the open end of the med kit. She blinked when she felt the stab but didn’t register the pain. She was conditioned to it. Even though she had done this countless times, it was always a relief to see the little purple button light up. He waved her toward the next man.