by Mark Wildyr
That was—of course—beyond human endurance, even Cut Hand’s. At length the pace of his movements increased. His eyelids slowly closed, lowering long, curled lashes to his cheeks. After what seemed an incredible length of time, he ceased his movements with his torso resting against my knees as he fought for breath. Finally, the handsome Indian raised himself to his knees, his heavy chest heaving from his exertions.
As he started to withdraw, I locked my heels behind him. Understanding, he pressed against me again. Never had self-abasement been more wonderful. When we rested, he dipped into the seed smearing my belly and sniffed it curiously before wiping his finger on my chest. I laughed, and that was the signal for us to move. Side by side we strode back to the rushing stream, where he unceremoniously threw me into the pool and bathed us both. It was a lustration, a ritual cleansing with water.
At nightfall, I luxuriated in his presence, lying against him to watch a firmament of stars without number. Completely comfortable, perfectly at ease, I marveled at the lack of disgust, at the absence of shame or mortification. I experienced no withdrawal from him as I had noted after the tumble with that girl so long ago.
We spoke little except to comment on a meteor or an especially bright planet. The words were meaningless, yet their import was as clear as the crescent moon. When we went to our blankets, I lay with my back against him. During the night, I woke to find him spooned against me. His arm across my shoulders gave me a feeling of safety so complete I failed to sleep with one eye open for the first time since arriving on the frontier.
The next morning we stalked and shot a yearling buck as it came to water. I butchered the animal while he scouted to see if the gunfire excited any unwelcome interest. After a meal of fresh venison, he fashioned a bow of bois d’arc and arrows from dogwood, making a quiver out of the green deer hide.
Late in the afternoon, as we stood shoulder to shoulder to pass water, he playfully turned his stream into mine. When things were stowed away properly, he sat nude on his blanket while I lay beside him in the same condition. He looked at me intently, but I sensed he was not contemplating sodomy. At length he pointed to my eyes and said a word. Finally understanding what he was about, I responded, “Eyes.”
“I-ze.”
I shook my head. “Eyes.” He did better the second try. He patiently worked his way down my body. Nose, ears, chin, neck, chest, nipples, belly, right down to the toes. After we repeated the process three times, he touched each part of me and mouthed the words. This aroused me again and occasioned learning the English vernacular for the male penis in repose and in a state of excitement.
He motioned me to sit beside him and drew stick figures in the dirt. The first was a standing male with another on his knees, head joined to groin. Embarrassed, I provided the vulgar word for fellatio. He then drew stick figures in a position requiring a term for intercourse.
He repeated the words dutifully and then put together his very first sentence in elegant King’s English. “Cut… fuck… Bil-lee.”
“Quite adequately!” I agreed, blushing furiously.
Before we were finished, he knew I had no family, and I understood his parents yet lived. He had one sister and no spouse. He sat in deep thought a few moments before venturing conversation again, pronouncing my name and adding a strange noise that sounded like “windy.” Frustrated, he used his fist and forefinger for the unmistakable sign of sexual intercourse. “Splitrum? Red?”
Hiding my shock, I made it plain only he excited my interest.
The light was fading and with it, the warmth. He placed a blanket around my chilled shoulders. I awakened in the darkness as he used me for an oyster basket to deposit his semen, thrusting like a stallion mounting a mare. When he finished, I fell into a dreamless sleep, untroubled by images of a vengeful God. That came in the early morning hours as a wave of belated shame and self-loathing wracked me so violently Cut Hand pulled me against him to share his warmth. An hour of silent pleas for forgiveness eventually allowed me to drowse.
MY COMPANIONS returned on the morrow. Split laid a calming hand on Red’s arm when they spied Cut Hand standing unfettered at my side.
“The Injun’s free. He might as well skedaddle for home,” Red said, his voice holding a dangerous rumble. His body language made it clear he was not happy with this estate.
“That’s about the way of it,” Split agreed. He spoke to Cut, who nodded but made no move to leave as Split explained to me they determined to build a boat for the next part of the trip. When Cut and I returned to gather my gear and the butchered stag, he detained me with a hand on my arm.
“Bil-lee,” he said in his beautiful bass. He pointed to himself and swept his hand in the direction we had come.
“Yes,” I answered with a plucking of my guts. “Cut’s going home.”
He frowned. “Bil-lee. Cut.” He pointed to the northeast again.
“No, Split, Red, Billy.” I waved to the south.
Shaking his head, he held his hand to the northeast. “Cut. Bil-lee.”
“You want me to come with you?” I asked. “But… but that’s barking at a knot. I can’t! I’ve got to go to Fort Wheeler.”
“Bil-lee come,” Cut said firmly. Frowning in frustration, he labored to create a sentence in English. “Cut talk Splitrum.”
“No!” I panicked. “You can’t talk to Split about this.”
“Cut talk,” he said resolutely. The matter was obviously settled in his mind.
As I studied his black, gold-flecked eyes, my objections floated away like suds in rinse water. “Billy, Split come here.” I surrendered to his determination and made a walking motion with my fingers. “You wait.”
He set about gathering our things as I went to fetch Split. Upon my return to the glade with Split, I couldn’t figure how to start, but since Cut was not so inhibited, I blurted out something before he had the opportunity.
“Uh, Split. Cut Hand… I think he’s asking me to go with him.”
“What? Ere that so, son?” Split turned and barked something in Cut’s tongue. The Indian nodded solemnly. “Be damned. That’s what he wants all right.” Split slung out another series of staccato sounds, and when Cut answered, the old man’s eyes widened. “What the hellfire’s been goin’ on? Damnation, Billy, what’d he do, bugger you?”
I felt the flush rise in my chest and paint my entire head a bright crimson. My ears burned. I grew near unto floundering. The dizziness passed; my embarrassment did not. I nodded dumbly.
“Well, I’ll be a sum-ma-bitch!” Split cussed. “Shoulda seen it a coming. Ever since Cut Hand joined up, you been scheming to git off by yourself. You think I don’t ken, son? Hellfire, been times I ain’t seen a woman for months, and I git a hankering for some handy fella. Been eyeing your arse for a while now. I seen plenty of bachelor marriages in my day. Mighta been in one myself a long time back, but I ain’t sure.”
He laughed as I blushed again. “This here’s ’bout the best-looking feller I ever cast eyes on, so I can see how it happened. Go tell Red we ain’t leaving till the morrow. Go on. I wanna talk to this rascal and straighten this all out.”
Red did not take the news well. He was all for packing the horses and starting out right then. “Damnation, I don’t like it a ’tall! We oughta be hitting the trail.” Red halted me as I set off for the glen. “Oughta be advantaging these good days. Won’t all be like this, you know. Weather’s gonna git us one of these short days!” He changed the subject. “That buck give you trouble?”
“No.” I swallowed hard. I was not anxious for Split to learn of my folly, but I certainly did not want Wild Red Greavy knowing about it. “Just got free of the chains and took me hunting. Showed me a plant they use for soap. Got my clothes and blankets clean,” I rattled on.
“What you so nervous about?” He shifted an uneasy eye in the direction Split had gone.
“Nothing. Cut Hand’s staying tonight, so we’re gonna split camp again.”
“How come he ain�
��t lighting out? Guess it’s for the best if we’s lollygagging around here another sunrise. Warn the Injun I got my short gun right handy.”
“I’ll tell him not to shoot you with it,” I snapped, leaving Red staring after me as I started for the bower once again. Cut and Split were seated cross-legged in the middle of the clearing, talking animatedly. They ignored me until Cut got to his feet.
“Set down!” Split ordered, indicating the spot Cut vacated. “Well, you done got yourself in it. That big buck wants to be your sannup, your Injun husband. Wants you to split the blankets with him like a squaw!”
“Like what?” I gasped.
Split sighed and took out an old ivory toothpick he carried. Worrying the thing was his substitute for chewing. Tobacco was hard to come by except for the kinnikinnick he got from the Indians now and then. “Billy, these folks don’t think like we do. They’s been berdaches amongst the tribes for a long time.”
“Berdaches?” I asked.
“Sodomites. Double-faces. Men that likes men and lives like females.”
“I-I don’t want to live like a woman,” I stammered, thinking of Cut Hand’s pipe buried in my fundament, playing my nerve endings like a drum.
“Didn’t thank you did, but you got yourself all mixed up with this feller, and he’s got pretty firm idees about how things oughta be.”
I shook my head. “This is all my fault! It was me. Not him. I forced myself on him when he was shackled.”
“Don’t take me wrong, son, but you ain’t got the ability to force nothing on that young buck he don’t want. He mighta let you make the first move, but he don’t allow nothing he don’t countenance.” Split paused for a minute. “Billy, I knowed a few fellas gone Injun. I even knowed a couple went to live with bucks. Seen one ten years later, and he was satisfied on his life. The other one ended up a wore-out old man before his time. Didn’t have no sane word to say about Injuns. So I ain’t got no value for you on this. A Injun looks at this world a lot different from whites,” he went on. “Everthing has its place and use. If things is in harmony, the world’s okay. If they git outa balance, then they needs putting right.”
“But aren’t people like that out of balance?”
“They don’t figger it thataway. In some of the nations, berdaches got a place of respect. Something about their connection to the spirit world. Always some folks that don’t like them, but that’s just the way folks is, red or white. Like as not, a berdache don’t make no waves, they’s as welcome as anybody else.”
“What do you mean, make waves?”
“Well, for instance, like chasing boys.”
“Hellfire, Split, what do you think I am?”
The old man fixed me with a pale blue eye. “Son, we jest been talking ’bout that. Ain’t you accepted it yet?” He ignored my shocked look and continued. “Some of the bucks marries berdaches.”
The concept staggered me. “Marry men?”
“Not ’zactly. They figger winktes—thet’s whut the Sioux calls ’em, so that’s likely how Cut Hand knows them—ain’t a man nor a woman neither.”
Winkte! Was that the word Cut used back in the grove?
“They’s a whole different thing, I guess you’d say,” Split continued. “I ain’t got no idee how they’d take to a white berdache, but they ain’t likely to look on it as bad medicine if you behaves yourself.” The frontiersman took a deep breath. “Son, it ain’t none a my business what you do. You’re a free white man, and if you want to be Cut Hand’s country wife, that’s your affair. He’s a fine figger of a man, and I got a suspicion he’s a rum ’un too. But I cain’t see him going without no woman for long. They’s a good chance he’ll git you back with his people and sooner or later just cut you loose.”
“What will they think about him if he brings me home… like that?”
“Likely ain’t gonna bring him no harm. That buck’ll be the man whoever he marries. But then there’s the problem a who he be. That’s the stumper. I ain’t tryin’ to poke a spoke outa your wheel, but one of these days his daddy’s gonna die. If they look to Cut Hand to lead them, he’s gonna have to live in the middle a them with a proper wife and family. They puts great store by families and small fry. Headman or not, making babies is his first duty, else the band dies away. They’ll come a time he’ll have to own up to his duties. And I figger he’s a standout, the kinda man who faces them right square. He marries and gets little ’uns, the seed he wastes on you ain’t gonna bother nobody.”
We talked a mite longer without settling anything until Split suggested we ask Cut Hand to come help build the boat while I considered his proposal.
“Does Red have to know?” I asked.
“Sooner or later he’ll figger it out, but I ain’t gonna tell him.”
Cut joined us in the grove, his face solemn—formal even. This was serious business to him. He spoke gravely.
Split turned to me. “He wants to say somethin’ to you and wants me to deliver the straight goods.”
The next few minutes turned bizarre as the tall, handsome Indian spoke earnestly in one tongue, and the short, dumpy man translated Cut Hand’s declaration of devotion and kinship into his own version of the King’s English. Then, using Splitlip Rumquiller as my tongue, I expressed pleasure at Cut Hand’s words but said I needed to think hard about changing my life so drastically.
Cut Hand responded in his deep voice, echoed by Split’s lighter tones. “He says his heart is yours to hold till you wants to give it back. Even if his duty do git in the way of things, and he ken it will someday, you’ll still have his heart.”
Split drew a deep breath. Sweat broke out on his upper lip as he strained to come up with the right words. “Lord, I sure need some tobac, or better yet a button! Anyways, he’ll help you build a little cabin at the edge of camp. Problem is, these people move ’round, so you’re apt to be building one badger hole after another the rest of your life. And he says whenever the day comes you wants to go back to your people, he’ll accept it even if you carries his heart clear across Turtle Island. That’s their way of saying this here part of the world. He’ll go with us to the river, but he ain’t gonna sleep nowheres near old Red. Course, that ain’t gonna pose no problem for you.” The old man worried his torn lip while he thought for a minute. “Son, I’m gonna come up here after supper and teach you a little more a the lingo.”
Before Split began his instructions later that night, he warned that Red had tumbled to the situation, adding that after Red came off his snort, he wanted it made clear to the gut-eater “he’d never laid a hand on the boy.”
IT TOOK four days to make the day-and-a-half trip to the river. Things were going smoothly until Cut started getting nervous. Then Split put his nose in the air. They exchanged glances, and a few minutes later, Cut handed me the reins and slipped off our pinto to disappear into the woods. Split left the mustang to Red and hoofed it to the opposite side of the trail.
Red spoke quietly, the first words he’d directed my way since learning of my tendency. “Slow and steady, boy. False alarm, like as not.”
I had been so bedazzled riding behind Cut, I failed to notice there was not a sound from the forest. When the wood is truly silent, watch your hair. As soon as we got to a spot where we could put our backs to a small bluff, we reined in and dismounted.
Split showed up first, uneasy even though he found nothing. The better part of an hourglass elapsed before Cut slipped in on cat’s paws and huddled quietly with Split.
“Cut Hand found sign,” the old mountain man said in a near-whisper. “Six or eight barefoot ponies on a game trail to the west. Figgers a raiding party’s shortcutting across the Little Islands. We best wait ’em out. Me’n Cut Hand’s gonna go up the trail a piece and blanket our tracks.”
It was the shank of the afternoon before either Split or Cut rested easy, so we camped at the base of the bluff. My young swain regularly eased away to cut for sign, and that made me nervous. Finally, I grabbed my long gun and fe
ll in beside him, ignoring his displeased look. We found nothing alarming, and the forest was slowly returning to normal—save in our immediate vicinity.
We put the ponies on a picket and hit the blankets early that night. Deciding against a separate camp because of agitation over the mounted party, Cut and I spread our blankets a short distance from Split and Red. During the night I rebuffed Cut, so he settled for putting his arm around me while whispering in my ear. In my imagination he was telling me what our life would be like together. When he finally slept, I lay in the comfort of his proximity and wondered at the absence of guilt. After worrying that to rags, I came to the conclusion it had something to do with the overwhelming feelings I held for Cut Hand. Was that sufficient?
Going north would strike twice at my psyche! I would live with a strong, virile male, at the same time severing all ties to my own people. To travel amongst foreign peoples is one thing. To cut your taproot is another entirely. What I contemplated amounted to abandoning my gender and my culture! Could I do it? More to the point, could I prevent it from happening?
Strange, even while exercising these limbic doubts, I perceived myself safe and comfortable beside him. It impressed me as right and good, not something the Almighty should condemn. I could not imagine Gentle Jesus frowning down upon us. While I am not an ecclesiastical scholar, neither am I a free thinker, so I prayed earnestly for celestial guidance.
WE RAISED the river after three more days of backtracking and laying false trails. This gave Cut and me more time to practice his tongue, but it put horrendous carnal temptation in my way, which I resisted with uncommon strength.
