A Long Bridge Home

by Kelly Irvin

  Her face escaped him. Photos existed, but Grandma Velda never displayed them. Adeline had been her only child with Grandpa Evan Old Fox, who drowned in the Kootenai River when his daughter was a toddler. That Gramma Sadie had foreseen these deaths in visions didn’t diminish the impact on their family’s life.

  “I’m hungry. How does a grilled cheese sandwich sound?”

  “Men hunt and fish. Women cook.”

  An old argument born of Kootenai cultural heritage that had men hunting while women gathered. If she could stand long enough on the hip she’d broken last fall, Raymond would have bowed to her desire to honor their culture. Or she would have insisted. Just as she had held out against an indoor bathroom until she could no longer make the trek to the outhouse. “A Kootenai does not poop where he eats.” One of her many pronouncements that as boys made Raymond and his brothers snicker behind their hands. “I bought your favorite cheese. The smoked horseradish cheddar.”

  “A grilled cheese is good. Not moose steak, but good.”

  Gramma’s teeth were bad, making it hard for her to chew meat. Besides, she liked the Amish cheese from the Valley Grocery Store. That truth brought Raymond full circle back to the thoughts that had chased him like hungry grizzlies along Highway 93 the sixteen miles from St. Ignatius to Arlee. Christine of the demur pale-lilac ankle-length dress and white prayer covering. Her inquisitive expression and eyes the color of blue flax flowers that bloomed throughout Montana summers.

  Women of all shapes, sizes, and colors appealed to Raymond. Despite being a student of his tribe’s history, his heart and his nature held no room for bitter dismissal of an entire race because of what their ancestors had done. All were created equal at the time of their conception. Under their skins, painted a multitude of colors, lay blood, muscle, and sinew fashioned from the same materials.

  Raymond’s head, however, chose to limit his choices to Native women. He chose to honor them and to do right by them. As a sign of his passion for the history and culture of the continent’s indigenous peoples. They were profoundly affected—and nearly decimated—by contact with non-Natives throughout history. He also wanted to do better than his mother had. She had made a baby with a white man who then abandoned them both.

  Grandma had been punished by St. Ursuline nuns for speaking her native tongue at a school to which her parents had been forced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs agent to send her and her siblings. She didn’t need to hear his thoughts on his mother’s mistakes. Raymond busied himself making the sandwiches.

  “What has happened that you don’t share your day with your ka’titi?”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Did you forget who you are talking to?”

  Never. Gramma Sadie was also a medicine woman. Her knowledge of herbs and roots coupled with her visions meant many from the reservation still came to see her when illness struck or family problems boiled over. “I talked to someone today—a woman—who remains in my thoughts unexpectedly. That’s all.”

  “A white woman.”

  Her body might be old, but Gramma’s mind made leaps that mountain goats could never accomplish. “An Amish woman who has started working at the Valley Grocery Store.”

  “The Amish are a new kind of interlopers on the reservation.”

  The first Amish moved onto the reservation in 1997 when they bought property near St. Ignatius, which by Kootenai elders’ standards made them newcomers. Compared to the white people who bought allotments after the Flathead Allotment Act in the early nineteen hundreds, they were. Raymond had given them little thought, one way or another, until now. “She is searching for something.”

  “Most people are. Although the Amish search within the confines of their own beliefs, for the most part. They don’t mix with outsiders.” Gramma’s tone sounded as if she might admire this attribute, however grudgingly. “You would think they would have a better understanding of our need to reclaim the allotments taken by non-Natives on the reservation.”

  “From what I’ve read, their education is confined to what they need to know in order to maintain their way of life.” Raymond had first become aware of their presence on the reservation as a teenager. He looked them up online, trying to understand the buggies, the head coverings, and their choice to fund and build their own schools. “It’s weird to think they came to this continent from Europe to escape religious persecution while we ended up being persecuted by European settlers who thought we should adopt their religion.”

  “It is true they did not come out west with the intent of converting the heathens who had peopled the earth here since before the age of the big ice.” Gramma snorted. Raymond swiveled from the stove long enough to make sure she hadn’t choked on the milkshake. She made a face.

  He turned back to flip the sandwiches and smash them down with the spatula in a cast-iron skillet as old as he was. Gramma’s harrumph didn’t tempt him to turn again.

  “It is also true they have fought for the right to educate their children in their traditions and their faith. They have braved the white justice system in more than one battle.”

  She sounded almost impressed. As impressed as a woman could be who’d served on the tribal council and worked with other leaders to set up an education committee and eventually the tribal college, Salish Kootenai College, where Raymond earned his degree. She knew what it took not only to survive but to thrive in a place where the majority held all the power. Treaties and legislative acts had allowed Native lands to be overrun by outsiders, but the tribal leaders were now buying back the allotments as they came up for sale. Paying to recapture their birthright.

  “They also mate for life.” He dropped the sentence into the lake of silence to see if the words would sink or swim. “They believe in love only in the confines of marriage. And they don’t believe in divorce.”

  “In theory, I believe the same thing.” Her quick retort was as tart as an unripe lemon. “But our human resolve often crumbles in the face of desire and circumstance and the evils of this world.”

  Did that make his mother and father evil? Or simply human?

  “You have mixed with Amish people before.” Gramma wouldn’t be diverted by a historical-philosophical discussion of the differences between Native peoples and the Amish. Nor would she take the bait regarding the circumstances of his birth. Who was his father, and why didn’t he stay or make himself known? She chose not to share those facts that were missing puzzle pieces in her great-grandson’s life. “Why does this one occupy your thoughts now?”

  “She asked me a question, when most would’ve only wondered.” Spoken aloud the words didn’t begin to explain why her presence behind a deli counter made such an impression on Raymond. English words often seemed inadequate to him. Gramma, whose first language had been Kootenai, had insisted that her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandchildren learn it. A rarity even in those days. Kootenai was an isolated language, spoken by no other people in the world. Only a few hundred at most spoke it now. “The outside didn’t match the inside. The incongruity struck me.”

  “They teach you all those big words at the college.”

  “She’s a mystery to me.”

  “A mystery best left unsolved.”

  There it was. The elder had replaced the great-grandmother. Raymond laid the sandwiches on her favorite blue china plates, added grapes, and carried them to the couch. He settled on a footstool across from her. “I’m just naturally curious.”

  “Curiosity can have consequences.” Her expression fierce, she tugged absently at the two long, white doubled-up braids that lay on her chest. “Remember when you stuck your hand in the crevice of the rocks and the snake bit you?”

  “Don’t you always say it’s important to learn for learning’s sake? Isn’t that why you insisted we go to college?” To SK College, of course. When he’d argued for his dream of archaeology at the University of Montana in Missoula, she’d put down her high-arched bare foot and said no. Simply no. He would never go agai
nst her will. Now he was twenty-three. A man. A man whose heart held a void left by a white father who didn’t stick around and a Native mother who died too soon. “She had life questions written on her face. I recognized them because I have those same questions all my own. I’m not thinking of marrying her or even dating her, simply knowing her.”

  “All this across a deli counter?”

  “Those moments are available for all who seek them. You yourself say that. Be present in the moment. Listen to what the wind says. Listen when the rain speaks.”

  “Now I say watch out. The snake will sting you again.” Gramma took a big bite of her sandwich. “Mmm, good. For a man you cook good.”

  End of discussion.

  Raymond laid his half-eaten sandwich on his plate and set it on the coffee table. He gently tugged her glasses from her wizened face and cleaned them with the cloth he kept in his jean pocket for his own glasses. Her eyes, made colorless by age, remained hooded. “Thank you, ka’titi. It is an honor to cook for you.”

  She looked like a vulnerable old lady without her spectacles. But he knew better. The heart of a mountain lion resided in her body. He replaced the glasses. She smiled at him and patted his cheek. “You good boy.”

  She wasn’t one for empty compliments. Her words warmed him. Others might have missed having a mother and father, but he and his brothers had both in Gramma.

  He would keep her words close, but as a man he had to navigate his own destiny, a tiny canoe on dangerous rapids. He would take care not to upend it on the falls and crash into the rocks below. The strange restlessness that followed him, a reluctant shadow that didn’t dissipate in the dark, must be dealt with.

  Raymond ate his sandwich with gusto and finished Gramma’s when she didn’t. Soon they would need more cheese from Valley Grocery Store. Even if he had to eat it all himself.

  12

  Lewistown, Montana

  Even blindfolded and plopped down in the middle of the night, Andy would have known exactly where he stood. The fresh, piney aroma of Douglas fir and the high-pitched whine of the head rig band-saw blade slicing into the logs were unmistakable. Wood chips flew. Sawdust floated in the air. His father’s sawmill smelled and sounded like home, sweet home.

  He trudged along the conveyor belt toward Stephen who stood at the end watching the best opening-face cants. They still had to go through a second run to become secondary cants that would be roughly the right size for finished lumber products. The waste would be recycled as chips or mulch.

  Andy touched his brother’s shoulder. Stephen glanced up. He moved to turn off the machine and remove the headsets that protected his hearing. The sudden silence roared in Andy’s ears. Stephen didn’t immediately speak. Instead, he wrote something on a clipboard, stuck the pencil behind his ear, and laid his paperwork aside. Finally, he faced Andy. “What brings you here, Bruder?”

  “Guder daag to you too.”

  “I didn’t think we were in need of pleasantries.”

  “Maybe not.” Peace, calm, patience. Brotherly love. Fruit of the Spirit. Andy counted off the important qualities needed to repair his relationship with his brother—whether he liked it or not. A mended relationship would be best for everyone involved but especially for their parents. Father didn’t need the dissension. “I came to talk to you about all this.”

  He waved his hand at the sawmill operation that filled a metal warehouse building he and his brothers had helped Father erect so many years ago. The high ceilings and loading dock doors allowed for plenty of light and ventilation for operating the diesel-powered equipment. A huge open space at the far end provided room to air-dry the softwood lumber that could be used for houses and commercial construction from framing to boards used in sheathing buildings and planking floors to beams and posts. All these materials would be needed to rebuild Kootenai’s lost homes.

  “I’m keeping it going as best I can.” Stephen repositioned one of the large-cut cants to begin the resawing that created smaller-sized sections or cants. “Daed had orders that need to be filled, and these logs needed to be processed.”

  “It’s gut that you and Frederick have been keeping up with it.”

  “Frederick is a farmer.” Stephen wiped at bits of sawdust caught in the light sheen of perspiration on his face. “I’d rather be at the dairy working, but we do whatever’s necessary to help Daed.”

  “What if I took the sawmill off his hands—your hands?”

  “You mean run it? You’re willing to move back to Lewistown?” Surprise mixed with pleasure lightened Stephen’s face. From one second to the next, he looked younger and less harried. “That would make Daed very happy. It would be a load off my mind and our bruder’s too.”

  His misunderstanding only made the situation harder. That his brother found this situation so difficult plucked at Andy’s heart. It also stirred guilt and shame. He lived far away. He didn’t have to face their father’s decline day after day. Or be responsible for the work he could no longer do. “I’m sorry. That’s not exactly what I meant. I—”

  “You want the sawmill but not here.” Lines furrowed Stephen’s forehead as understanding rushed in. Of the brothers, he looked the most like Daed, but he and Andy also looked alike. “Like stairsteps,” their mother had once said. All part of a matching set. She also remarked just as often on how different in temperament they were. “You want to run back to Kootenai and take the earnings with you.”

  “Kootenai can use the jobs, and they’ll need the finished wood for rebuilding when we finally get back in.” Andy ignored the word run and its implications. Don’t bite. Be the peacemaker. The meek shall inherit the earth. He didn’t want to inherit the earth. He only wanted to make his own small place in it with Christine and, someday, their children. “You said yourself you don’t want the job, and neither does Wallace or Frederick. I can make this work in Kootenai.”

  “Why ask me? Why not Daed?”

  “I wanted to talk to you first. He’ll ask me if I have. He’ll say jah if you agree.”

  “Think about what it would mean to him if you stayed. Mudder too.”

  “I have. You’ll be here, and Frederick and the girls.” Andy inhaled the heavenly scent of fresh-cut wood. “The woman I want to marry longs to settle in her home. In Kootenai. I promised her we would. Mudder and Daed understand that.”

  Stephen shoved his straw hat back and wiped sweat from his forehead. He cleared his throat. “You need to do what you need to do . . . to be happy. You have a right to that, I suppose.”

  The closest Stephen could come to admitting the role he played in Andy’s situation. “Then you won’t fight me over moving the sawmill?”

  “Nee.” Stephen threw the switch, and the head rigger sprang to life. The conversation was over.

  Andy used the thirty-minute drive from the outskirts of Lewistown to his father’s farm halfway to Moore to gather his wits. Stephen carried a heavy load. Be a peacemaker for your father’s sake.

  Which father? His heavenly Father expected even more than his earthly father.

  He parked the buggy and stomped up the steps. Father sat in a hickory rocker on the porch while Mother sat in the other, pitting a bowl of cherries.

  “That’s one sour expression.” Father removed his reading glasses and folded the newspaper on his lap. “You’ve been talking to Stephen.”

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s the only time you look like you’ve bitten the rear end of a skunk.”

  “Ha, ha.” Andy plopped into a nearby lawn chair. The seat sank under him as low as his spirits. “I did talk to him, and now I need to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  “I’d like to take the sawmill off your hands.”

  “You’re always welcome to work at the sawmill. Stephen could use your help. He’d like to get back to the dairy. He prefers cattle to machinery and all the noise it makes. Did he say something different?”

  “I want to move the equipment to Kootenai.”
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br />   “Ach.” Mother stopped rocking. She tossed a pit at Andy. It pinged against his shirt, leaving a tiny purple mark before it fell away. “You’re determined to go away again.”

  “It’s just down the road.”

  “It doesn’t seem that way.” She sniffed and went back to pitting. “I thought you were over the tiff with your bruder.”

  “It wasn’t a tiff.” He stopped and closed his eyes for a second. Peacemaker. “I’m fine with Stephen, but Kootenai could use a sawmill. It would be a source of jobs, and the finished wood will be needed when we start rebuilding.”

  Plus it allowed him to have his own business and an income with which to support his wife and future children.

  “I never thought I’d give up the sawmill. I spent many good years there.” Father leaned into the late-afternoon sun that graced the porch. His eyes closed. He murmured something Andy didn’t catch. Mother set her bowl aside and stood. His eyes opened, and he waved her back. She sat. “Did you talk to your friend?”

  Andy had no need to play coy and pretend he didn’t know what Father meant. “Nee.”

  “Talk to her, Suh. Marry. Have children. Gott has a plan for you. I want to see how it unfolds. I hope to see how it unfolds. You’re welcome to the sawmill, but I would like you to keep it here. Your fraa will go where you go and stay where you stay.”

  The words scented the air with sweet fatherly love. How could he go against his father’s wishes? “I’ll think about it. I promised Christine we would stay in Kootenai, but that was when her family was there.”

  “Talk to her. Don’t wait. It would be nice to have a wedding to look forward to.”

  It would be nice for all of them. “I’ll do it soon. I promise.”

  “I think I’ll go in.” Father rose. Mother popped up from her seat and held out her hand. “I’m not an invalid, woman. You don’t need to follow me around.”