Dancing with the Golden Bear

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Dancing with the Golden Bear Page 15

by Win Blevins


  “These we beat by hand,” said Angel, “very delicate.”

  “First I will prime the surface with a flat paint, then size it,” said Gideon. “Then the part I am nervous about. These leaf of gold, they must be pick up with this pointed tool and this brush and place gently on bear.”

  “I help him with that part,” said Angel.

  “Bear country, bear man, golden bear,” Gideon said happily.

  “Bear man, you are some,” said Sam. “Let’s go to supper?”

  It was a big event for Sam, an hour with his oldest friend from the mountains, a drink with men other than friars. He learned about Gideon’s new vocation. “From trapping to the art, from the cold creek to the warm climate, from the hardship to the money,” Gideon said with a big grin. “Not bad for a French man grizzly bear, no?”

  Sam clapped him on the shoulder.

  “We have business plenty for two,” said Angel.

  “This California, she is shining time,” Gideon said, his florid face suddenly shifting into … Sam didn’t know what.

  “Me, I pour us all to drink,” Gideon said. He filled their wine glasses.

  Gideon proposed a toast. “This is thank you,” he said. “This is thank you, Sam Morgan. You cut off my leg.”

  Awkward silence. Angel nodded and said softly, “He tell me all about it.”

  They drank.

  “Another one,” said Gideon firmly. He poured.

  That terrible night by the Green River, the gangrene, the smells, the constant requests for sharp knives, the flesh, the blood, the tendons and ligaments, the blood, the cartilage, the blood … Sam could still feel, in his hands, the dead weight of his friend’s leg, severed from the knee down, a piece of useless human being to be … What? What do you do with a friend’s severed leg?

  “Sam, I never yet say thank you. My heart, she was not good. Me, this child, I wanted to die. I make self miserable-miserable, all the way miserable.”

  Gideon lifted his glass high.

  “Now I say, Sam Morgan, thank you. You save my life. You save my life. Thank you!”

  They drank.

  Sam felt damn good.

  “So I make you gift.” He looked proudly at Sam. “First I make one like practice for me. Now I make very, very good one for you.” He fixed Angel with his eyes. “Let me show you.”

  Gideon reached for his belt buckle, tugged, and off came …

  Out of the belt came a dagger, very sharp. The buckle was in Gideon’s fist, acting as a handle. He handed it to Sam. The buckle was a silver rectangle with the silhouette of a bear scribed into it.

  “Watch again.” Gideon popped the dagger back into the end of the leather belt, which acted as a sheath. The little prong that kept the belt at a certain length (Sam didn’t know what it was called) seemed to work in the normal way.

  Now Gideon showed him how it worked. Clever. “It is Angel’s invention,” said Gideon.

  “Many smiths have done it,” said Angel.

  “Is good. Now we measure.” Gideon used a piece of twine and a knot. The big man didn’t mark down inches because he didn’t read and write. “Two days, you see, I have something special for you.

  “You have knife in hair. Now you have dagger in belt. Maybe next time we give you very dangerous earring.” They all laughed.

  “I like that idea.” Sam realized he was a little drunk. Normally, he didn’t talk about his hair weapon, but … These were friends, and Angel admired things that were well crafted.

  He reached to the back of his head. First off, every morning of his life, he tied his shoulder-length white hair back out of his way and fixed the tie with this deadly ornament.

  He brought it out and handed it to Angel. The goldsmith admired the polished walnut, the four painted circles—“For the four directions,” said Sam—the smoothness of the join, the sharpness of the blade. Angel handed it back.

  “A friend gave it to me,” said Sam.

  “You should meet this Hannibal,” said Gideon to Angel. “A most, most remarkable Indian.” He turned to Sam. “This bear man will have your belt dagger for you … two … maybe three days.”

  Sam put his ornament back into his hair. He said his thanks several times, and meant them. His happiness for Gideon, his fun in being with his friend—these were big.

  But he wanted to get back to Meadowlark.

  Gideon and Angel promised to come to her room the next morning, to wish her well.

  Gasping, gasping.

  Sam looked around in his dream—he knew it was a dream—but he couldn’t see air anywhere. Air! Where was air? What color was air?—he couldn’t remember.

  Gasping, gasping.

  He turned this way, turned that way, searching, desperate.

  Realization—truth—crushed the dream.

  He leapt to his feet, dizzied, bleary. He looked at Meadowlark in the gray light that leaked through the cased window above her bed.

  She was laboring for breath—whooping, wheezing, whooping. Coy was licking her hand.

  Sam grabbed her. “Meadowlark!”

  She trembled. She shuddered. Then her whole body, lips to fingertips to toes, began to shake.

  The shaking came in waves, larger and longer and larger and longer.

  Madness.

  Sam grabbed a boot and pounded on the wall that was in common with Flat Dog and Julia’s bedroom.

  He seized Meadowlark by the shoulders, and she quavered, all up and down the length of her body she quavered. Her entire body was like chattering teeth. Her hands went wild in the air. Her feet tatted out a bizarre rhythm on the bed.

  Sam held her tighter. Futile, but he held her tighter.

  Julia and Flat Dog rushed in.

  “Convulsion!” Sam shouted.

  Flat Dog grabbed Meadowlark’s feet. One foot got away and kicked him in the chin. He grabbed them again.

  Julia dipped a corner of her skirt in the water pitcher, knelt by Meadowlark, and held the cool cloth on Meadowlark’s forehead.

  Meadowlark trembled.

  From time to time she earthquaked.

  Her husband and brother held on, and she shook. And shook. And shook.

  Sometimes she only trembled. Sometimes she gave way to long tremors that racked her entire body.

  Sam had a wild fear that she was going to break in half from bottom to head, and the baby would spill out. “Meadowlark!” he cried over and over, urging her back.

  But her mind was far away somewhere, stampeding.

  At dawn the comadrona came in. Meadowlark was sleeping fitfully.

  While the midwife examined the patient, Sam fetched Julia.

  “Rosalita,” said Julia, “how did you know?”

  The comadrona gave no answer. She was not due until after lunch.

  Sam wanted to spit out something like, Why didn’t you come quicker?

  Rosalita knelt beside Meadowlark, felt of her cheeks, forehead, hands.

  Meadowlark was asleep, maybe.

  “Convulsiónes?” said Rosalita.

  “Convulsiónes,” affirmed Julia.

  Rosalita studied Meadowlark’s face, started to peel back the sheet she lay under. “Hombre, vayase aqui!” she ordered.

  “Out!” exclaimed Julia, brushing Sam away with her hands.

  He was already on his way.

  Flat Dog walked up. “Paladin has a filly,” he said.

  Sam pushed his back harder against the closed door. “The women are attending to Meadowlark. I can’t go now.”

  “Good-looking filly. Marked same as her mother.”

  Another medicine hat—Sam wanted to smile, but he couldn’t. “I’m not going one step down the walkway, either direction.”

  Flat Dog went into the bedroom he shared with Julia. Just as Sam was feeling relieved to be left alone, Flat Dog came back.

  “Let’s smoke the pipe,” he said. He had his pipe bag in his hands.

  Sam gave him a wild look.

  “That’s what it’s for, times
like these. Ask for help.”

  Ask for help? Sounded crazy to Sam.

  “The friars are praying their way, and we’re going to pray ours,” said Flat Dog. “Come on.”

  Flat Dog guided Sam, almost pulled him, to the fountain in the center of the courtyard. There they performed the ceremony—the offering of smoke to the directions, the earth, and the sky, the ritual handing of the pipe from smoker to smoker. Sam didn’t know what Flat Dog’s silent prayers were. He himself could scarcely calm his mind enough to form any words, any requests, any pleas.

  When they were finished, he felt a little more calm. Within a couple of minutes his mind was rampaging with fear again.

  This was the longest wait of his life. At first he threw himself up and down the walk in each direction, pounding on the mission walls with his fists. After a while he grabbed the door latch and held on as a drowning man holds to a timber. He refused to budge. Mad energies raged up and down his body.

  Coy was inside with Meadowlark. Maybe he was a comfort to her.

  Suddenly Gideon and Angel walked up. Sam wanted to clap his friend’s shoulder, but he couldn’t.

  “The friar says this is a bad time,” said Angel.

  Sam nodded.

  “Then we only leave you a gift and go.”

  He stuck out a belt to Sam. The buckle was a silver rectangle, and scribed into it was a buffalo. “For Joins with Buffalo,” said Gideon.

  The buffalo was gold.

  “Not solid gold,” said Gideon, “is gilded.”

  Sam looked up into his friend’s eyes. For the first time that day his heart remembered warmth.

  “Is t’ank you, big t’ank you,” said Gideon. “You save my life. With courage you save my life.”

  Sam embraced him.

  Julia opened the door.

  Sam rushed in.

  Meadowlark was sleeping. Or in a coma. Who knew?

  Coy mewled. Over and over he mewled.

  On her knees beside Meadowlark, Rosalita murmured something in Spanish.

  “She says the baby must come today,” said Julia. “Must. It comes or we get it.”

  “Get it?” Sam raged.

  “Again the convulsions? Next time they probably kill her …”

  Sam collapsed into the only chair. His feelings leapt from rooftop to rooftop, and made stomach-lurching drops into black holes between.

  He waited. He wound his legs around each other, he wrapped his arms around his chest. He tossed like a speck of foam on seas of mad emotions, and he waited.

  Twice more, each instance separated by a couple of hours, Rosalita made him leave the room.

  When he came back the second time, Julia brushed past him and charged down the corridor. Flat Dog followed her.

  Sam stared after them, then ran to Meadowlark. Still no change. He whirled on the comadrona.

  “Agua,” said Rosalita, “agua caliente.”

  “Hot water,” said Sam. He’d heard those words plenty.

  “Trapos limpios!”

  “What?” snapped Sam.

  “Clean cloths!” snapped Julia from the doorway.

  “Cuchillos afiladas!”

  “Damn it, woman, speak English.”

  Rosalita came to Sam with eyes wide and touched the handle of the butcher knife at his waist. “Cuchillos afiladas!”

  “Get her some sharp knives,” said Julia. “That’s what she’s saying. Sharpen several knives. She is going to cut the baby out.”

  Sam sat next to Flat Dog in the pleasant courtyard, Coy curled between them. Walkways lined the four sides, hedges kept the world out, and a fountain spouted serenely in the center. Its water soared into the air, captured faint afternoon sunlight, and dropped it back to the pool below.

  For Sam nothing moved. The water was frozen as a mud puddle in winter. The air was fixed, stagnating, rotting. The sunlight didn’t slide upward on the northern wall. The shadows in the courtyard were graves.

  Time was held in a death grip, by his fierce command. Nothing happened. The world stopped, except for the motions of one woman, either a healer or a killer. One woman bent over the sleeping or dying figure of his wife, wielding a knife.

  Sam’s imagination tortured him. He had cut human flesh, and seen it part, seen it bleed. He knew the thousand little wellsprings of blood that were violated, each leaking Meadowlark herself onto the blade, onto the hands of the surgeon, and onto the dead boards of the floor. He knew too much, and too little.

  Sometimes he tried to picture exactly what was happening. The tip of the knife slicing from the navel down. The thin line of blood. The second, firmer cut, through all the layers of skin to …

  To what? His imagination swam in blood, blinded. Something within Meadowlark, some flesh that cradled a child, as every human child was held for a time, some …

  Hands delving deep into Meadowlark’s belly, into Sam’s soul. Hands urgent and bloody that would hold up …

  He could take no pleasure in the thought of the child. What he had desired for months now felt alien. What his heart longed for, his hands yearned to hold, his eye hoped to feast on, all was turned to … Blood. Black blood. Death.

  He fixed his mind on those hands, rising scarlet from the darkness, and raising up life or death.

  Julia’s voice floated from behind them. “You have a daughter.”

  Sam and Flat Dog jumped to their feet.

  Sam’s eyes searched Julia’s face.

  “Meadowlark is doing well,” Julia told both of them.

  Sam leaned against his friend, Meadowlark’s brother. He had not known until now how good it was to have Flat Dog standing beside him.

  “She’s asleep. You may see her if you want. And your daughter.”

  Sam ran into the room and looked down on the two of them. His feelings stormed across his inner landscape, like stampeding buffalo. He looked on Meadowlark’s face, serene now. He looked at her body under the sheet, relaxed. He looked at the naked infant sucking at Meadowlark’s breast.

  Rosalita picked up the infant and handed her to Sam.

  A girl, yes, he confirmed. He held her against his chest. She felt good. Then, suddenly, holding her felt … wrong. He gave her to Flat Dog, who put her back at Meadowlark’s breast. The child went back to sucking with a vigor that almost scared Sam.

  He stood and watched for a while. The others brought chairs and sat and waited.

  When Sam turned away, Rosalita spoke, and Julia translated. “The danger from the convulsions is past. We did what had to be done, and she has survived that. If she does not get a fever, she will be fine in a few days.”

  If she doesn’t get a fever. Any woman might get childbed fever, Sam knew that, and any woman might succumb to it.

  “With the surgery,” asked Sam, “the risk of the fever is greater?”

  “Sí.”

  His mind spun like a wheel. What are the chances? What are the odds, like the odds of making a lucky draw at cards? Your hand cuts the deck of fate. A heart brings your wife back to you, a spade and she’s dead. Such thoughts raced through the tumult of his mind. He despised himself for them.

  When he turned to ask the comadrona, one look silenced him. He didn’t want to make her more cross.

  Rosalita left them a fresh poultice of herbs and mysterious other ingredients to treat the wound, and then said, “I want to see your new filly.”

  Mare and filly were nursing in the corner of a mission corral. The filly spun away from her mother and pranced a few steps, as though showing off. She was a beauty.

  Sam looked at Paladin with huge pride. A splendid young female sea-changed into a mother, both mother and daughter beautiful.

  “She’s going to be a graceful one,” said Flat Dog.

  “I have done much work,” said Rosalita. “I want the filly.”

  Sam and Flat Dog looked at each other. After a moment Flat Dog said, “Leave this to me.”

  Sam nodded and walked away.

  In five minutes Flat Dog found
Sam sitting by Meadowlark’s bed again.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Flat Dog said, “she’ll come check on Meadowlark and take the filly.” He waited. “Best deal you ever made,” he said, “a filly for your daughter.”

  When Sam didn’t say anything, Flat Dog went to the room he shared with Julia.

  Sam sat down to wait. He made up his mind not to leave Meadowlark’s side until she was out of danger, not for a minute.

  Every couple of hours Julia slipped in with the baby and laid her at Meadowlark’s breast.

  Sam watched his daughter, greedy for milk, greedy for life. He watched his wife, exhausted, perhaps ill, perhaps balanced between … As he watched, he didn’t know whether he was swamped with feelings or empty of all feeling.

  Wait. Wait. Footsteps clomped through his mind, loud and unnerving. Life, said the first. Death, said the second. Life. Death. Life. Death.

  They didn’t get softer and they didn’t go away.

  He set his eyes on Meadowlark’s face. He took her hand in both of his. He waited. And waited. And waited.

  Fifteen

  A Voyage

  On the second afternoon Meadowlark developed a fever. It didn’t feel high, not to Sam’s hand, but it was a fever.

  They sent for the comadrona.

  Rosalita said it was not a good sign, but her face said it was not unexpected. She went over the methods of keeping a fever down, cool, wet cloths on the head, if necessary cool, wet sheets around the entire body. “You never know about fevers,” she said. “Usually they pass.”

  Flat Dog and Julia brought the cloths. Sam stayed next to Meadowlark and held her hand.

  Meadowlark swam through great columns of light, thick as trees. She remembered these trees well, they were her old friends. As before, they were magical, they were ethereal—roots, trunks, and branches of pure light. Instead of amazement at the glow on her skin, she felt … The columns were hot, very hot. She snatched her arm out.

  Then she realized. The water itself was warm, too warm. She swam to another column and touched it—hot, burning hot.

  With a start she realized how hot she was. Awful. She writhed. She swam painfully among the columns of light, casting her eyes about. Somewhere it would be cooler, somewhere …

  When she became aware again, she was far too hot. She looked for the dark areas, outside this region thrust through with swords of light—cool, shadowed regions for relief. But she saw none. On every side, as far as she could see, her seas roiled with light and heat. She tried to bring back the memory of the cool expanses of sea she swam in last time. She tried to cool herself by re-creating their memory, by picturing and feeling again the cool. I want to glide into your wet coolness and hide. But to no avail. Nothing helped. She floated through the hot water, miserable, panting …

 

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