When Mountains Move

by Julie Cantrell

  As her emotions peak, her voice becomes strained and her English more broken. “Jack sixteen. He yell. So Boone turn on Jack. Chase him with knife, curse. John younger. He hide in corner and cry. I hit Boone with chair. Hard on head. But it not stop him. He grab me. Here.” She puts her tea on the table, next to mine, and her hands shake so hard, she spills it. Then she gestures as if she’s being choked. “Jack see this. Then, Boone begin to …” she mimics the act of stabbing. “Again. Again. Fourteen times.” Now a tear falls.

  Oka pulls the long sleeves of her dress up to reveal raised scars, thick bubbled skin where a blade has been. Pulls her collar to the side to show marks on her neck. It is hard to look, the proof of such a vicious attack. I am flooded with memories of my mother, broken and bleeding on the floor, and I, too, fight tears.

  “He too big. Too strong. Then I hear gunshot. Boone fall. Blood everywhere. On wall. On me. What happening? I not move. Jack run to me. Hold me. Say, ‘I love you, Sashki. Don’t die. Please don’t die, Mama.’ Last thing I know.”

  Oka and I sit together for a long time. Quiet. Staring out at the bright green birth of spring. Like Jack, I listened to my father beat my mother and leave her for dead. I begged my mother not to die. I hated my father for what he had done. Turns out, we were not so different after all, Jack and me. Just two terrified kids, hoping to save our mothers.

  Isabel cries, and I stand to tend to her.

  “She outgrow this soon,” Oka says.

  “Let’s hope,” I reply, pulling Isabel into my arms. “Not sure how much longer Bump can stand it.” I think of the way Bump turns from me in the night. How distant he seems. Is it really that he’s tired? Sleep-deprived? Or is it something more? At first it was me resisting intimacy. Now it’s him. We never seem to be on the same page. I might expect this after years of marriage, but so soon? I worry he regrets bringing me with him to Colorado. Or worse, regrets the wedding, the baby, the whole idea of us. There’s no doubt his life would be much easier without the strain of a child and a wife.

  By the time I finish feeding and changing Isabel, Oka has moved to the porch and I try to focus my thoughts back on good things. “Beautiful day!” I tell Isabel as we pass outside to join Oka. It’s the first warm day we’ve had since winter, and I’m eager to enjoy every second of sunshine.

  Oka sews as she glides gently on the porch swing Fortner made for us.

  I spread a blanket for Isabel in the yard and return to watch as Oka’s hands move in slow, even strokes, pulling and pushing the needle through dark green fabric, one small stitch at a time. She’s teaching me to make a traditional Choctaw dress. There’s no pattern to follow, nothing to buy in stores, so I pay careful attention and try to remember every step. I hope to teach it to Isabel someday, so she’ll understand what it means to be Choctaw.

  It has taken nearly six yards of cotton—a splurge even without a war—but Oka insisted she use earnings from her basket sales to give me this gift. For weeks, I’ve watched her slowly transform the cloth into a beautiful gown, with three rows of loosely flowing ruffles across the bottom of the skirt and long, full sleeves to balance the weight.

  Oka chose the green fabric saying, “Okchamali, green for earth.” Now she’s adding contrasting white lines to trim the ruffles, the neckline, and the bottom hem. “Lines,” she says, as she embroiders the elaborate pattern, “like a river. See?”

  I nod and pay careful attention.

  Next to Oka sits an unfinished apron and collar, both cut from white cloth. Oka passes the dress to me now and encourages me to continue her series of perfectly symmetrical triangles, “half diamonds” she calls them, all lined up with a white borderline both above and below. It’s an incredible work of art. “They look like mountains,” I say.

  “Road of life,” Oka explains, again tying every part of the dress to something meaningful. “In life, Millicent, you take path. You try to stay on path. But sometime, you make mistake.” She turns the half diamonds so the peaks point down, showing me that’s not the way we want to go. “Make it right, you back on road of life.”

  “How do you make it right?” I ask, remembering Bump’s belief that we could move mountains.

  “Do good things, like for Isabel, or sick person. Help people.” She rotates the half diamonds again so the peaks point toward the sky. “Go right way.”

  Now, Oka looks out at the pasture. Bump and Fortner are trying to break one of Doc’s mustangs. Bump gets bucked off the horse, and Fortner reaches a hand down to help him. Oka laughs and says, “They make good pair.”

  “Yep,” I admit. “I’m not sure we would have made it here without you and Fortner.”

  “I not do much,” Oka says.

  I laugh. “Oka, please. You do more in a day than most people accomplish in a lifetime.” I begin to list all her strengths, ending with, “And you grow the biggest vegetables anyone’s ever seen.”

  “Magic.” Oka laughs. The truth is, she mixes straw with horse manure to fertilize the garden, adding ash to improve the soil. “But even magic not grow swamp cane. Not in mountains.”

  Oka uses the cane to make her baskets. No matter how hard she tries, it just won’t take in this climate. Fortner showed her some ribbon grass mats, suggesting she look for other options, but she insists nothing works as well as swamp cane.

  “It’s nice of your friends to send you the cane.” I rub my fingers across the beaded medallion Oka has made for the dress.

  “They like money.” Oka laughs. She’s started paying them with part of her earnings, which keeps the cane coming her way from Mississippi.

  I’ve learned to weave a bit too, but it’s a slow process, one I have little patience for. I can dye the cane though; I do enjoy that part. We gather berries and blooms when possible and create vibrant shades of blue, yellow, and red. Now, Isabel stirs on her blanket in the yard, and I picture her sitting with me when she’s grown, choosing just the right shades.

  “My eyes tired,” Oka says, standing to stretch. She pulls her sleeves up to check strips of cane in a bucket. They soak in water with slices of deep-red sugar beets. “Almost,” she says, letting the cane steep a little longer. Her scars run thick across her arms, permanent reminders of wounds delivered long ago by a violent man.

  Oka steps to the next bucket. I have watched her for months, moving through this world with grace and compassion. She doesn’t seem to hold any bitterness, and even she was able to trust Fortner before me. I can’t understand how she has managed to live a happy life after such a brutal attack. “Oka,” I ask, moving to take a stick away from Isabel before she pokes her eye. “How did you forgive Boone? For what he did to you?”

  Oka stays bent over the buckets of dye and works a forked branch through the solution, pulling strips of cane to examine the results. She takes time to answer. “Forgive? It not easy, Millicent. But I must forgive. Even if he never say he sorry. I do my part. Leave Boone’s part to God. That not for me to control. So, not for me to worry about.”

  I let her message soak in, as if I’m a strip of cane in the bucket of beets. Like the cane, I hope to be changed.

  “You know Chahta story about potato famine?” Oka asks, sensing my struggle.

  I sit on the blanket next to Isabel and pull her into my lap. I shake my head and wait for Oka to tell the tale.

  “You know Nahollos—white people—make Choctaw leave Mississippi, motherland, and go west.”

  I nod while I silently play peek-a-boo with Isabel, making her erupt in beautiful bursts of giggles every time I reappear from behind my hands. I’m hoping we’ve seen the worst of her colic and that Bump can sleep better again soon.

  “It start 1831. Three years they send Chahta to new land. Now call it Oklahoma. Thousands go. Thousands die.”

  I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know the whole story of the Trail of Tears, only bits and pieces I overheard from Jack.

/>   “What happened?” I ask.

  “Some starve. Or freeze. Disease. Many children stuck in hard winter. No clothes. Think, Millicent, you with Isabel, air more cold than ice, nothing but small blanket. No food. No shoes. No shelter. Nahollos tell you, ‘Keep moving.’”

  It’s hard for me not to feel conflicted. Sad for the Choctaw part of me, ashamed of the other part. Mixed. I’ll always be mixed. “But weren’t you born in Mississippi?” I ask, not sure why Oka’s family didn’t head west with the others.

  “Small group stay behind, try to keep land. My grandfather, he stay.”

  Isabel pulls my hair into her mouth, and I remove it. She cries.

  “My grandfather work with missionaries. Help build school. Church. Back then, most white man and Chahta good friends. Work together. Marry, too. Peace. Not like new nahollos who come with money and make us leave. Our friends try to help us. But even good nahollos not stop bad treaties.”

  “So what happened?” I ask, finally solving the mystery of the old letter with the perfect penmanship. The one Oka mailed to my mother’s parents when she learned Jack would be marrying Mama. When Mr. Tucker gave it to me, I had very little information about Oka. I pictured her as well-read, educated, and proper. Now it makes sense. Oka must have had one of the English-speaking missionaries write the note for her.

  “Chahta break apart. Families go away. People die. Bad times, Millicent. But we hear of famine in Ireland. We feel bad. People suffer. We care.”

  “Ireland’s pretty far away.”

  Oka continues. “Hunger is hunger, Millicent. We understand. We know this ... suffering. So we send money from Oklahoma. From Mississippi. We try to help.”

  “You sent money to Ireland while you were still suffering over here?”

  Oka nods. “Always can find someone who have more pain, more hurt than you. Always can find someone who need help. And you always have something to give. Even when you think you have nothing.”

  Isabel pulls my braid back into her mouth, and this time I let her chew it. Oka moves to the next bucket of dye and continues working. She pulls a batch of red cane and says, “Perfect,” a broad smile stretching across her face.

  Later, in bed, I rub Bump’s sore muscles and snuggle next to his warm body. This time, he pulls me close and holds me. I no longer flinch when he touches me, even when he traces the back of my neck, a spot that used to be a certain trigger for panic. Isabel has changed me, in more ways than one. Oka has too. I am softer now. Maybe not completely healed, but healing.

  “You okay?” I ask. Bump’s muscles are tense.

  “Just worried, I guess.” He stares at the ceiling and seems deep in thought.

  “Worried about what?” I move my fingers through his hair.

  “You wouldn’t understand.” He sighs.

  “Try me.”

  “I don’t know how to say it, Millie. I guess … I’ve been poor all my life.”

  “And I haven’t? This isn’t Kat you’re talking to.” I smile encouragingly, not sure where he’s going with this. We’re both better off here than we’ve ever been.

  “I gotta get this right. With the stallion.” Bump finally looks at me, and I smile.

  “You will.” I rub my fingers down his arm, circling his wrist.

  “But what if I don’t? I saw my folks bend too many times. They never could stand up to those greedy planters.” He’s never talked so openly about this before, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing.

  So I listen. Move my hands across his chest, feel a scar across his right side where a horse bit him earlier this year.

  “I worked too hard to get out of that life. I ain’t goin’ back.”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of?” I whisper. “Being poor again?”

  “You ain’t never been a sharecropper, Millie. It ain’t no way to live. And tenant farmin’ ain’t much easier. I just wanna do more. For you, for the baby, for us. And for my folks back home. For Mr. Tucker, too. I got too much ridin’ on this to mess it up.”

  “You’re not going to mess it up, Bump.”

  “One bad move, Millie. That’s all it takes, and we could lose everything. We’d never get to start that clinic. We’d go home no better off than my folks. Worse maybe.”

  “Look how much you’ve already accomplished, Bump. You’re the first person in your family to go to college. You finished vet school. You’ve started a ranch from nothing. And you’re taking good care of a family on top of all of that. I’m proud of you,” I say, kissing him gently.

  “You are?” His voice quavers.

  “I am.”

  Bump rolls over and unbuttons my nightgown, one small clasp at a time. He bends and caresses me softly, slowly. I close my eyes as he moves with such tender, honest desire, I am overcome with emotions. He touches me in ways he’s never done, and I respond openly, without restraint or fear. Together, we enter into a beautiful, sacred giving. In the end, we are both near tears, safe in each other’s arms. In love.

  Chapter 23

  Isabel wakes this morning happy and calm, and I’m feeling as if we’re all moving into better days. After breakfast, I pull a stack of books to the bed and read random passages aloud, a treat for both of us. First, I skim Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. One passage makes me think of Kat and her search for the perfect fruit.

  Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

  Hemingway reminds me who I am, and my anger swells unexpectedly.

  Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

  I trade The Sun Also Rises for The Great Gatsby. One verse makes me think of Diana and Bill Miller: “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman.… I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”

  I give up on the male writers and turn instead to Louisa May Alcott. She soothes me with softening words the men could never offer: “Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow.” I stick with Little Women, losing myself in the world of the March sisters.

  “Millie!” Bump calls me from outside, his anxious voice carries clear through the open windows. I leave the books on the bed and quickly bring Isabel to the pasture to meet Bump. I find him leading one of our new boarding horses to the fence—a massive three-year-old Percheron draft horse that was proving difficult for her owner.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, relieved to see Bump isn’t hurt.

  “Take a look at this.” He lifts the head of the horse and points to the lymph nodes beneath her jaw. “Look swollen to you?”

  “Hard to tell.” I rub my hand under the jawbone, along her neck. “Sure feels swollen.”

  “Strangles,” he says. “I’m separating her from the others. We can’t share supplies. This is very contagious.”

  “What’s strangles?” I shift Isabel out of reach of the horse. I’ve still got so much to learn.

  “Bacterial infection,” Bump explains. “Attacks the respiratory tract.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “Yes,” Bump says. He seems extremely worried. “Bring me a halter?”

  “Sure.” I rush back to the barn with Isabel on my hip. We gather a halter and a lead rope. As we’re returning to the field, Fortner drives up from a trip to town. He parks the truck and greets me politely.

  “Bump thinks we have a horse with strangles,” I tell him.

  “That’s not good,” he says, taking the tack from me as we head Bump’s way. When we reach the smaller pen, where Bump has moved the horse, Fortner asks, “She the only one?”

  “Far as I
know. But we need to bring ’em in and have a look.”

  “No abscesses?” Fortner examines the draft horse.

  “Not yet,” Bump says. “But feel.”

  Fortner agrees the nodes are swollen. The horse’s nostrils ooze a yellow-colored pus. It’s obvious she isn’t well.

  Within twenty minutes, I’ve got the draft horse isolated in a stall, and the men are heading out to the back of the property on horseback. They plan to bring the herd in for examination. I scrub my hands thoroughly and come back inside with Isabel, who is straining to see everything in sight. “You’re such a strong-willed child,” I tease her. “And I wouldn’t want you any other way.” I cover her with kisses. She giggles, and my heart explodes with joy.

  I start a pot of elk stew and try to get Isabel settled into a nap. Working my way through the rest of the books, I find a copy of River’s favorite, This Side of Paradise. I’ve avoided this one, refusing to let myself spend too much time thinking of River. During all those months of bed rest, there were certainly days when I wanted to sink into the story River loved so much, but I always pushed it to the bottom of the box, thumbing through the rest until something else called to me.

  Today, it is another Fitzgerald favorite that catches me, one I brought with me from Mississippi and have read too many times to count. Tender is the Night. I pull Isabel to me, and she cuddles in my arms while I read aloud. Within a few paragraphs, the words stir chords in me. I am filled with vibrations of desire. The sentences hum from the pages, as if River himself was here playing notes on his harmonica, smiling at me, singing to me. As much as I love this author’s ability to paint pictures in my head, I can’t risk missing River, of giving in to my wondering about where he is and who he’s become and when he may send me another letter.

  I stuff the book back into the box and pull out a collection by Faulkner. I choose A Rose for Emily. I put Isabel in her crib and read aloud to her some more, sharing this story of Mississippi. At least Faulkner makes me laugh.