A Sweetness to the Soul (52 page)

W
e both heard the commotion at the same time. It came from in front of the inn. A horse, run hard. A woman, crying, screaming almost. Both of us turned with a start, headed out to the rock wall. Joseph grabbed a lantern at the door, night having fallen. He shouted, “Who’s there?” and started moving toward the woman before he even heard her answer.

“Sunmiet!” the woman said, sobbing. I saw her slide from the horse, holding her stomach, leaning, steadying herself with the mane of her mount, one arm hanging limp.

“What is it!” I said, reaching her, my heart pounding.

Joseph passed me up. He handed me the lantern and lifted her. Blood oozed down her arm. In the arc of the light, I could see white bone beneath red muscle and I was instantly furious.

“Who did this?” I demanded as I followed them inside. She sobbed again.

“The children … Aswan.”

“It was Standing Tall, wasn’t it?”

Sunmiet cried, didn’t answer.

“Get Tai,” I told Joseph. “I’m going after him.”

My husband, to his credit, did not attempt to stop me. Tai would tenderly care for Sunmiet. Joseph planned to ride with me, but he had to order up his horse, get John to saddle the big gelding, while I could simply throw myself on Sunmiet’s cayuse. I did just that, grabbed my pistol on the way out.

The night air burst cool on my hot face. Rain sleeted in patches. I didn’t care. Their camp was on our side of the river and I could ride right to it. My outrage masked my fear. He had finally done it, finally injured Sunmiet so severely she could no longer bend.

The horse responded, moved faster with my knees pressed to his neck. I rode low over him, to speed him, and he made the mile in record time, stopped in a slush of mud in front of Sunmiet’s tule lodge. I spun off the horse, cocked my pistol, and opened the flap, willing my eyes to adjust to the pale light I expected before Standing Tall could react.

Both his eyes were droopy, not just the one he was born with. From the dirt floor, both looked up at me, a mixture of anger and confusion. His hand held the dark bottle loosely. Aswan, tall like his father, and Anne, nearly thirteen, sat with arms around Ikauxau and Ikawa and Baby Ida, all huddled in the corner, eyes large. Blood stains darkened a wide swath beside the center fire.

“My mother, she is safe?” Aswan asked. “I stood between them, sent her to you.”

“You did well, Aswan.”

To Standing Tall I said: “It’s over,” and remembering my father’s instruction long ago, pointed the pistol at his head. He grunted, made an effort to rise. I stepped back, ordered him to stay. I wished, almost hoped, he would lunge for me though my heart pounded against my ribs. I felt sick. Until that moment, I did not know if I could kill another human being. That night I knew I could.

Standing Tall gave me no reason. He settled back, deflated as an empty elk bladder. His hand dropped in resignation.

“Aswan!” I said, my voice in charge. “Take the bottle from your father.” The boy stood, did as he was told and I noticed that his once
long, shiny hair had the boarding school cut. Standing Tall did not resist. “Go, now,” I said. “Take the little ones, to your mother.”

“Is she all right?” Anne asked, gathering blankets to drape around them.

I nodded yes. “I’ll stay,” Aswan said.

“The river’s too close. They need you. I’ll be fine.”

“You white woman, intruder,” Standing Tall snarled. He spit other insults at me, but his words were not accompanied by actions. As the children scurried out the flap, he said he did not like my treading on his place as “provider.”

“You provide misery for your family,” I said, adding nothing more. I learned early on there is no value in arguing with someone who is not present with his mind.

In moments, I heard Joseph’s big gelding approach and felt a wave of relief. Together we tied Standing Tall’s hands behind his back and walked him in front of the horses past the inn, over the toll bridge where we stopped, pounded on the blacksmith’s door.

Teddy, our farrier, roused from his cot, looked startled as he let us in. “What’s it to be?” he asked in his thick Boston accent.

Joseph tied Standing Tall, arms forward, around the center post telling Teddy what happened. “I stay awake, watch him,” Teddy said though his eyes shifted back and forth and I suspected he gave great power to Standing Tall’s height and demeanor.

“Just till we get the sheriff or the tribal elders, whichever might get here faster,” I told him. “We’ll send someone in the morning.”

In the inn, we sent the children off to bed, though Aswan resisted. We relieved Tai of his duties and considered, again, Sunmiet’s arm. Tai had cleaned it, held the wound shut so the bleeding stopped. It needed stitches. “I’ll do it,” Joseph said, and Sunmiet nodded, biting into a linen towel I gave her. She squeezed tight my hand. Her children poked their heads around the corner, eyes large with apprehension. Sunmiet spit the towel from her mouth, gentled her words, reassured them in Sahaptin and Anne herded them, waddling, back to bed.

It did not seem fair to me that she and her children should be the ones to suffer. She who believed in him, stood beside him, bore his children, and then bore the brunt of his frustrations and his pain. “It’s always you who hurt,” I said. “And it should be him.”

“He hurts,” Sunmiet said with sadness. “It is why I could not leave him for so long.” Her eyes watered, filled with tears, “But now I am afraid to stay.”

“You can only bend so much,” Joseph said, gentle. I thought of his coping saw, how too much flexibility meant widening a gap.

“A tree does not like to be uprooted,” she told him.

“It can be transplanted and be stronger than ever,” he said, “but that’s for you to decide.”

“We’ll deal with all that in the morning,” I said. “Sew you up now, so you can rest. Joseph will get the sheriff, find out who sells the whiskey.”

“I wish it was only the whiskey,” Sunmiet said.

She turned down our offer for laudanum yet did not cry out or whimper as Joseph stitched, tied the final knot. Together, we helped her from the chair. “Get some rest,” I directed. “We have all had enough for one night.” I looked out the window to stars faded by a full moon, thought of the safety of dropping to sleep next to Joseph in our bed, thought of what Sunmiet was missing.

We started down the hall intending to tuck Sunmiet in. Instead, she abruptly stopped. She inhaled her breath in pain and her eyes got wide. “What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

She answered in a tone laced both with fear and wonder. “My water breaks,” she said. “We will have a baby.”

Joseph’s invitation to a dance seemed years not just hours away.

“Is it too soon?” I asked Sunmiet.

She shook her head, her eyelashes fluttering. “No. A little early. Baby is big, so it can come.” She sighed. “I did not wish it to happen now, without the father.”

“He’s drunk,” I said, angry once again for her. She didn’t deny it or defend him and I set aside my outrage to tend to her.

In one of my trunks, I found a pale nightdress, cooler than Sunmiet’s buckskin, not covered with the blood of her wounds. Joseph saw himself in the way and said he’d be in the bedroom if we needed him. He did not sleep. Instead, he said he listened for the creak of the floor where Sunmiet and I walked.

In the ladies’ dining room, back and forth, we women walked. Close to the cool spring water available to the kitchen, we walked. Around the dining room table and its benches and chairs, we walked, stopping at each of her contractions, panting, holding. I felt helpless against her grimacing pain, could do nothing but be with her.

Tai stuck his half-shaved head around the corner, wide young-man eyes wondering at the noise. “Go back to bed. This is no place for a boy,” I said. He didn’t need to be told twice. His braid flipped around his neck as he left.

Sunmiet hung on to me when she stopped, squeezed my hand and squatted, panted, eased her way into the wave graduating to pain, then up and over it, down the other side until the next one, dipping and bending into it like the eagle into wind.

She sipped water in between. I thought of what might make her comfortable: wet a flannel and held it to the back of her neck, dabbed her face of perspiration. I checked the bandage we’d put on her arm. Found a hard candy for her to suck on. She wished a bed on the floor and so with quilts and linen sheets we made a resting place beside the horsehair couch.

“If Kása were here, she would sing to me,” she teased, a sparkle in her eye.

“My voice would scare the baby back to Christmas,” I said, combing her damp hair from her temples with my fingertips. “Would you like me to send Aswan or Joseph for Kása?”

She shook her head no. “I do not wish to explain my night to her before it is over.”

It surprised me that Sunmiet would be calm enough between contractions to just talk. It was not how I imagined my mother bringing children into the world.

Sometimes Sunmiet seemed to doze. Watching her, I thought she could have been my taller, fuller sister, wearing my nightdress, her dark braids pulled over her shoulder. I had never seen her in anything but buckskins; seeing her in my clothes made me warm inside.

Once we heard little whispers and scuffling and turned to see five pairs of eyes at the door. Sunmiet shooed the children back to bed after words of reassurance. “I am well. Your
nana
or
yáiya
comes soon. Go now. Rest. Huckleberry Eyes and I have work to do. You can see the baby in the morning.”

Sometimes Sunmiet just sat, ankles crossed, rocking gently. She spoke softly about the baby, pointed when the baby’s feet pushed into the wall of her stomach as it turned. She put my hand there to feel the flutter of feet. “It is floating,” she said of her baby, preparing its entrance into this outside world. It developed hiccups and we laughed.

Once or twice, following a particularly difficult pain, she reached beneath her gown, withdrew her bloodied hands and said, “Not yet.” With great effort, like the wind rising from the depths of a deep ravine reaching for the timbered top, she stood, and we walked and talked once more.

She told me of the argument. Aswan’s arrival back from school, his hair having been cut, started it. There had been no choice about his going. All the children were required. Along with being forced to make his way with farming, being pushed back from the Big River, having to use Sunmiet’s family’s fishing sites here at Sherar’s, Standing Tall had been pushed too far, his strong and caring spirit spent. The mean and hopeless part that lives in all of us finally taking over in him. A knife and whiskey both close at hand, he’d struck at Aswan and Anne, then at Sunmiet when she’d intervened. Blade met flesh and pulled to bone.

“Worst,” Sunmiet said, “was leaving the children. Aswan said to go, come here, he would keep his father calmer if I left. Could make better time without the babies, but I am glad you brought them here.”

Another contraction. This time I could see the pain wash over her face, last a long time. It struck me that even with my mother’s last two, Loyal and George, I had been more like the little eyes in the doorway, not there in a privileged place beside my mother.

And it was a privilege, to be present when new life came. In all my years, I had never asked to be part of someone’s birth. Others may have thought it too painful to request me to midwife for them, having had no infants of my own. A reasonable thought. One I’d had myself! No more, not after this!

I knew this was the closest I would come to bringing life into the world. And for the first time, I truly understood what my mother must have felt when she lost the gifts of her womb, understood why she looked for someone to blame. I understood and could finally forgive.

Again Sunmiet squatted, reached beneath her skirt, shook her head. “It is good you stand with me,” she said, sweat beading on her forehead. In the lamplight our bodies made bulky shadows on the wainscoting. The Seth Thomas clock struck three. “Not good to have baby reach this world in the company of only its mother. Needs to know at once it has a family.”

“Here I am thinking I’m the one getting the gift,” I said, “just to be present when you have this baby. Didn’t think I was giving a thing.”

Sunmiet’s smile turned into a grimace of pain and she gritted her teeth, grabbed at my hand, leaned against the table, and cried out. Squatting, she reached again beneath herself, the flounce of the gown draped across her arm. A slurpy sound, then a wad of mucous struck the floor. More liquid. A pungent scent. She squatted lower, her knuckles white in my hand, panting, panting, reaching for the table edge to grip now with the other.

“Do you want to lie down?” I asked, knowing it was close, feeling helpless, wanting to do something, anything, to make it easier.

She shook her head. “Here,” she said, and released a long, low moan that rose and fell into a pant. “Be ready,” she directed. “To catch it.”

Catch it! Good heavens! My heart pounded. I felt my own sweat
beneath my arms. This was such a moment! “I’m ready,” I said, breathless, and was about to ask her if she was when someone pounded loudly on the front door.

Sunmiet’s eyes grew large. “Don’t worry,” Joseph said rushing past in his undershirt and jeans. He barely glanced in our direction. I heard the blacksmith’s voice, heard Joseph shout, heard him stomp his feet into his boots, angrily yell he’d be back and slam the door.

I had to concentrate, not wonder, reassure her with my eyes. Sunmiet moaned again, reached, started panting. My heart beat faster, my fingers ached against her strong grip. Her breath came in short gasps between her gritted teeth. She panted, the pain rising, rising and reaching into pain and then a push and strain before she wailed, “Take it!” I shook loose my hand. She took one deep breath, laid back. “Next push will be the baby!”

And so it was.

With tears I didn’t know were hiding there behind my eyes, I reached to catch Sunmiet’s child. Into my hands slipped a fine, wet, dark-haired girl with plump and perfect skin of bronze beneath a sheath of water. Somehow my trembling fingers hung on to the warm and fussing form.