The Canyon Jack Schaefer

by Les Weil

  Yet when the winter was old and the snow dwindled on the ground and did not fall again and the first faint flush of green ran tracing along the bushes, she became very quiet. This was the time when she should be talking long with the old women of the village and there were no old women for any talking. This was the time when she should be asking the younger women of her choice to be ready to help her when the child came and there were no younger women to be asked. She was very quiet and there were long periods when she would not speak and when she did speak she was irritable and her voice snapped. Sometimes she shut her face against him as if he were not there. He saw all this and was troubled. He did even more of a woman's work and that was wrong because it made her remember that there was no mother or mother-in-law or woman cousin to help her do her work in her home at this time and she was even more irritable and spoke sharply to him.

  He made a cradle, padded with moss under the lining, and she looked at it and looked away and said nothing. A cradle should be made by a woman who has had children, by a woman relative of the father-to-be or, if not, by a woman relative of the mother.

  He made all things ready and kept them ready; the bowl in which the child would be washed and beside it the knife to cut the cord, the small soft robe in which the child would be wrapped and the pouch of powder from the prairie puffball which would be used to keep the tender skin of the inside of its small legs from chafing. She saw him arranging and constantly rearranging the things and her face opened and she smiled at him and told him how to find the right bark and to make the medicine that would ease the delivery for her. But when he did this her face closed again, for she remembered that such medicine made by a man was not as strong as that made by a woman who had borne children.

  Yet when her time came, he was the one who was afraid and she was the one who spoke the cheerful words. The sweat ran down his face as if the pains were his and she had to tell him what to do and he was so startled at the first cries of the small one that he fumbled when he tried to wrap it in the soft robe and she had to make him lay it beside her so she could do the wrapping and it was a boy-child, small and well formed with legs that would be long and strong for fast running. ...

  The spring was not kind. It was chill and damp. Rain fell and did not stop for many days. The stream swelled and the ground was very wet. Only by making a ditch around the lodge and leading away could Little Bear keep the water from working under the lodge skins. When there was no rain, fog rolled down the mountains at night and into the canyon and fought long with the sun in the mornings. The smoke of the fire in the lodge would not rise as it should out the smoke hole. Only by hanging their robes on ropes close to the fire could Spotted Turtle keep the dampness out of them. And then their little-slim-person, their small-fuzzy-one, their Little Fox, caught a cough that would not leave him.

  Spotted Turtle gave him tiny drops of tea made from the elk mint that was said to be good for lungs sore from much coughing. That did not help. She hurried all through the canyon and at last found a plant of the red medicine weed and rubbed the leaves to a powder and boiled this in water for many hours to make the thin syrup that was said to loosen and drive away a cough that lasted long. She gave him tiny drops of the thin syrup and it did not help. She did not know what else to do and Little Bear too did not know. She kept the small one warm and nursed him when he would eat

  but he would eat only a little and after a time none at all. He was very weak and very sick.

  She would not leave the small one for a moment. She held him in her arms and rocked him in them and leaned her head over him and nothing would stop the coughing. It was a small sound with no strength in it yet it filled the lodge with a big fear. It beat at the ears of Little Bear and he did what he could. He put more wood on the fire and blew upon it and forced it to burn better and send its warmth through the lodge. He made a soup, strong and savory, and took some to her and she would not eat. He put some in his own mouth and it was good soup but the taste was bitter in his mouth and he too could not eat. The coughing was very feeble and still it beat at his ears and he stepped out of the lodge into the night. Clouds covered the ragged crescent of the half-moon and the night was very dark. He stared into the blackness and then he walked. Back and forth he walked in front of the lodge and black thoughts whirled in his mind. If he could see this sickness, then he could fight it. He would let it tear at his own body with coughings worse than the tearings of the claws of the big puma so that he could be close to it and drive the knife into its evil life-center. How could a man fight what he could not see? Back and forth he walked and the black thoughts whirled in his mind.

  He stopped. There was no sound anywhere. He stepped into the lodge. In the dimness of the fading fire he saw her sitting as she had been sitting. She was not rocking the small bundle in her arms. There was no sound of coughing, of a small throat struggling for breath. There was no sound at all. He tried to speak and he could not. There were no words. He went to her and sat beside her and she rose and went with her still bundle to the other side of the lodge and sat there. He did not follow. He sat still. He was empty of words and it was as if he was empty of all feeling. His head sank down as hers was down and they sat very still and the fire faded to embers and these flickered out and it was as dark in the lodge as in the night outside. . . .

  In the first light of the dawning he lifted his head. His neck was stiff but he did not notice that because his mind was stiff too with strange thoughts and these hurt him. Across the lodge she sat as before but her head too was up and she was looking at him. Her face was closed against him. It was a mask that meant nothing and she was withdrawn behind it. She looked away. She rose to her knees and laid the small bundle on the ground before her and began to prepare it for burial. She acted as if he were not there in the lodge with her. He went to her to help and she turned from him and there was nothing that he could do but stand and watch her.

  When she finished and stood upright with the small bundle ready in her arms, it was still as if she were alone in the lodge and he was not there. He stepped in front of her. "I am the father." Her face closed but she looked at him and after a moment she reached and laid her small burden in his arms. He waited while she gathered together the things that had been for the small one and he led the way out. He stood in front of the lodge and she stood behind him and he looked about. All around his canyon he looked and chose the place. On the far rock wall at about the height of a man's head was a short ledge with a depression behind it forming a shallow cave. It was a good place and the right size. He went there and she followed. He laid the small bundle on the ledge, inside the cave. Carefully he pointed it eastward towards the rising sun. He took the things that had been the things of the small one from her and laid them about the bundle. And a fresh sadness gripped him. There was no painted pony to be killed by the grave so that the spirit of the small one could ride the spirit of the pony and travel fast along the path where all footprints go the same way. There was no old man of the tribe to sing a death song passed down from the forefathers to cheer the small spirit on the path. There was only a grieving father who could not speak and behind him yet not with him a grieving mother who would not speak. . . .

  He sat cross-legged on the ground before the lodge and smoked the pipe and it brought no peace. The grief was great in him but there were no words for it. She was in the lodge and her face was closed against him and he could not be where she was. He heard her moving about. She came out and went past him and it was as if he were not there. She was looking for something. She found it, his axe, the axe with the sharpened stone head and the stout wooden handle, where he had left it when he had broken branches for the fire. She went past him again with it in her hand and into the lodge. And yet another sadness was upon him for he knew what she would do and he could not stop her. He could take the axe from her and she would find another way and wait until he was not near and watching. And he must not stop her, for it was according to custom.

  He waited. H
e heard the dull sound of the axe falling and cutting and hitting against stone. He waited. She did not want him near. But he could not wait longer. He stood in the lodge entrance. She had stopped the blood and was bandaging the stump of the middle finger of her left hand which was cut off now at the first joint. The grief and the many sadnesses swelled in him but her face was a mask, hard against him, and he could not go to her. A man must not cut off a finger to show his grief. A man needed strong hands for hunting and fighting. He ripped off his shirt. His right hand took the knife from the sheath on his thigh. He drew the blade across his chest once and then twice, cutting through the skin and into the flesh. The bright blood ran in rivulets downward.

  She saw his blood running in bright rivulets downward. Her face opened toward him.

  He could speak. It was not his grief he spoke. The running blood spoke that for him. It was the bitterness growing from his thoughts. "If there had been other women here, they would have known what to do." It was the bitterness and the sadness. "If there had been a man skilled in medicines, he would have known what to do. . . ."

  And Little Bear, the strange one, the different one, went forth into his canyon. He walked along his stream and saw his fish in the shallow pools. He saw his buffalo eating the good grasses. He saw the high protective rock walls of his canyon marching around him. "My mind has lived too long in the light of the moon of the night. Let it be in the light of the sun of the day."

  ---A man comes into a canyon and makes it his own. With the cunning of his mind and the courage of his heart he makes it his own. With one leg of bone and one leg of wood he kills the mighty buffalo and he has what he needs for food and clothing and shelter. He keeps the canyon his own when he kills the evil one that would despoil it, the blood-drinking one of the mountains. It is his and he has made it so. But he has not done this alone. . . . In his hand is a knife that was made far away by another man, a knife that was given to him by an old one, a great one. In his mind is the knowledge to make fire and weapons and clothing and to find food and to provide shelter, knowledge given to him by those who taught him when he was a boy and those who showed him by their own doing when he lived among them. By himself he is nothing. Only the courage is his alone. All of those others are with him, even in his canyon, and he cannot ever be free of them for what they have given is with him and is part of him and without them he could not have made the canyon

  his own­--

  ---A man brings a woman into his canyon. That is good. That is what makes complete the goodness of the place for him. She misses the talking with other women, the gossip of the village, the dances of the younger people, the advice and storytelling of the older people, the companionship of the relatives who are close to her heart. For him she will miss those things. She will not talk about the missing and she will try not to let him know about the missing. But it is there. . . . She has a child. She has it alone with only a fumbling man to help her. The child is taken with a sickness. It does not have the care that old women of experience or an old man skilled in medicines could give. It dies. Perhaps that is as Heammawihio, the Wise One Above, meant it should be and no care could save the child. But how can one be certain of such a thing? . . . There can be another child. It can live and be healthy and grow. It is a boy. Who is there to count a coup for it and pierce its ears? It has long legs and strong for fast running. Where are the other boys with whom it will play? Where are the old men to tell it tales of the old days of the tribe and the things it is needful to do? It grows and is troubled in its mind. Where is an old one, a great one, who can direct it in the test of a starving? It grows and the urging of a man begins in it. Where is a maiden who will look with favor on it when it waits in the dusk of the evening and plucks at her robe? . . . It is a girl. Where is the grandmother or other old woman to take the place of the grandmother and teach it the things a girl-child must be taught? Where are the other girls with whom it will play and make the endless girl-talk and practice the cutting of moccasins and the sewing of beads and of quills? Where is the young man on whom she will look with favor and for whom she will sit quiet and speak no objections while the father considers the presents the young man has sent and what is good for the daughter who is close to his heart?­--

  ---What was it the old one meant with his words? A man must be certain that his heart speaks truth to him. ,.. One man cannot change a tribe. But one man can live with a tribe and not let it change him too much­--

  And Little Bear, the strange one, the different one, the son of a laughing father and a soft-voiced mother, the small-fat-person with short legs whose ears were pierced by Standing All Night, went straight across his canyon to where the stones that had been piled into a slanting walkway lay heaved and thrown to both sides and the rock wall rose smooth with no niches up to the first ledge. He bent over and picked up a stone. He began to pile the stones one upon the other.

  And Spotted Turtle, the great-granddaughter of Standing All Night, the sister of Yellow Moon and the wife of Little Bear, stood in the lodge entrance and saw him. She went to him.

  "Why do you do that?"

  "We are going back to our people."

  The happiness of the words leaped in her and shone in her eyes and he saw and he was certain that his heart spoke the truth to him. Yet the sadness was a great sadness in him. It swelled until he thought his chest would burst. He turned away and went among the tall hiding berry bushes where the rocks thrust up from the ground and she remained and watched him go.

  The badger was not there by the flat stone. There had been no meat for several days. It was off on its own secret ways hunting food. That was no matter now. He spoke to the rocks about him. "Oh badger, farewell. The blood of my breast runs downward with a new grief and I alone can see it."

  But she was coming through the bushes to him. "Oh my husband. It is bad. But I am young. I am strong. I will have another child. And another. I will not let them die." She was very tired and her face was drawn from the pain of losing the little one and the pain of the cutting of the finger. But she was beautiful to him. "Oh my husband. I am not a silly woman who must have others clacking about her. It is enough that you are here. I would not take you from the place that is yours."

  His voice was harsh and it grated in his throat. It was the voice of the man of the lodge speaking what was in his mind and what would not be changed. "You are not taking me out of this place. I am taking myself and my woman where we belong as a man must."

  He left her. He returned to the stones by the near rock wall. He began to pile one stone upon another stone in the steep slanting walkway that would lead up to the ledge and the ladder of niches above. She came out of the bushes and stood still and watched him. On her face was a warm wisdom and an understanding. She moved forward to go to him and to help him.