Charity (16 page)

“Thanks.” Lena drank.

Gustie said, “I hear Will is out on bail.”

“Yes, it’s a blessing.” Lena passed the dipper back to Gustie. “Surprised me though.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t go to the funeral.”

“Well, you missed a fracas at the open house afterwards.” Lena looked around for a place to sit and found a three-legged milking stool. She brought it out to the middle of the barn where she could continue her conversation with Gustie. “Those Kaisers can’t behave themselves even for a little while. Not even for death and damnation can they mind their manners.”

“What happened?”

Lena enjoyed telling a story. Even an unpleasant one. “Ma hauled off and popped Walter one for bringing whiskey to the open house. He sure had that coming!” Gustie resumed her work, and Lena had to raise her voice to be heard over the sounds of ripping boards and pounding hammer. “Then Oscar kicked Julia’s cat and got her in such a tizzy. She was crying and carrying on over that cat...she had to go home and no one has seen her since. Except Frederick I guess. He brings her groceries and looks in on her. It’s the least he can do. He’s got nothing else to do.”

“Why did Oscar kick the cat?”

Lena shook her head. “Who knows? Just his meanness. He thinks the cat is a nuisance. Though why he should care one way or the other I don’t know. Pa Kaiser gave her that cat a few years ago. It was nice of him I thought. She sits over in that house alone most of the time. A cat is good company. He was killing a litter and he saved one in his pocket and brought it home to her.”

“How is the cat?”

“He’s all right.”

“I would have come to see you yesterday, but something came up while I was in town.”

“Mm hmm. Alvinia told me.”

“Told you what?”

“About taking those squaws home with you.”

Gustie stopped tugging on the crowbar. “I’m not fond of that word, Lena.”

“What word?”

“Squaw.”

“Well, that’s what they are. What should I call them?”

“Women.” Gustie pulled hard against a rail. “They’re
women
.” It fell off at her feet.

“Hm. Well out here, we call them squaws.”

Gustie hurled another board at the wall. It landed with a crash.

“What are you so mad about?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood for company, Lena.”

“Well, I’m sorry, too, but I’m stuck here till Iver shows up because I sure don’t feel like walking.” Undaunted, Lena continued. “So, anyway, Alvinia came to see me yesterday.”

“How is Alvinia?”

“She’s fine. She brought Eldon. He’s her third to the youngest, I think...I can’t keep track...such a beautiful little boy. He sure liked my sugar cookies. She said that Betty and Severn told her about what happened at Olna’s and Doc Moody’s.”

Gustie threw Lena a sharp look.

“She didn’t mean any harm in telling me. Alvinia just wanted me to know before the gossip train started running.”

“What’s there to talk about? I just tried to give them a decent place to stay the night.”

Lena sniffed at Gustie’s emphasis on the word ‘decent.’ “Now I know you were just doing a good deed—not knowing it didn’t need doing.”

For once, Lena was right. “I guess not. They chose to sleep in the barn out here too.”

“See? That’s what they’re used to.”

“Sleeping in barns?”

Lena bobbed her head around between a nod and a shake. “Well...barns...you know...their little shacks...tipis...”

“They’re used to sleeping in white people’s barns, perhaps.”

Lena took umbrage. “You don’t know these people. After all everybody tries to do for them, they always end up back in the same place...a tipi...or living like they’re in a tipi whether or not they’re actually in one. And they’re all beggars! Nyla’s mother had a nice quilt. It was cold and she had it with her in the wagon once on a trip to Wheat Lake, and I don’t know exactly how it happened but she saw this family of Indians in town there asking for things, the way they do, and she felt sorry for the little children, I guess. She didn’t have anything else so she gave them the quilt. She found out later from Joe Gruba, when he had to go out there to that Indian’s place for something, that he went in, and there was that quilt on the floor just like it was some old rag. They don’t appreciate nice things. And then there was Mercy Krieger. Poor Mercy. She went to teacher’s college in Argus and met this Indian—he was also in school—and, oh, she thought he was the best thing, and she married him. They lived for a while in a house in Wheat Lake, but it wasn’t long before she had a little half-Indian baby. He wasn’t working any more, and, don’t you know, they were all three of them back living with his mother in some shack on the reservation. The poor little baby died. He run off, and Mercy had to move back with her own folks. You know, now no one else will have her. Even Nemil Glasrud won’t look at her. That’s what happens. It doesn’t matter how far they come—they’ll always end up right back in a tipi.”

“You came all the way out here to tell me your Indian stories?” Gustie asked with a weariness that had nothing to do with her present labor.

“You don’t know how things are here.”

“I’m finding out. Actually, things are not so different here than anywhere else.”

“I just don’t want people to think...”

“I can’t help what people think, Lena. What I do is nobody’s business.”

“Well, there’s where you’re wrong. Everything is everybody’s business out here. Especially for a school teacher. I just wanted you to know what people will be saying, that’s all.”

Lena silently stared at her hands. Gustie ceased her battering of the old wood and leaned against the side of the stall, her head down, her back to Lena.

Lena spoke so quietly, Gustie almost missed her next words. “I think the world of you, Gustie. I don’t like to see...I mean, I know how it feels...”

Gustie felt as if the ground had shifted and they were in a new country, with a new atmosphere, new ways, new latitudes for speaking. She turned. Lena seemed so very small, hunched over to keep her balance on the little three-legged milking stool.

“I know what people say about Will, and his drinking and worse... I know how they talk about us. How they talk about me. They snicker one time and feel so sorry the next. But they’re always nice as pie to my face.”

Lena was still looking down, speaking quietly. “People collect things about each other out here. And they don’t forget a thing. People don’t forget, they just die. Don’t ruin your reputation, Gustie. Once your reputation is shot, there’s no getting it back.”

Finally, Lena returned Gustie’s gaze with eyes full of terrible sadness. “There’s nothing I can do about what they say about Will and me. We can never get back what’s been lost. I don’t want to see you in the same kettle of fish, that’s all.”

“I will try not to bring any more shame into your life, Lena,” Gustie said, and Lena’s eyes filled.

But the ground shifted again; Lena swallowed her tears, and they found themselves back in the more familiar landscape as if the other place had never been. Lena said, “Say, I wanted to tell you...me and Will are going to the fairgrounds for the shenanigans on the Fourth of July. It’s going to be lots of fun. You come with us.”

“You sure you want to be seen with me?”

“Oh, now don’t be like that. We’ll show everybody there’s nothing for them to talk about. Come with us.”

Gustie nodded.

They heard a noise outside, and Lena jumped up. The stool fell over and she carried it back to prop against the wall where she found it. “There’s Iver. I’ve got to go.” She smoothed down her dress. “I promised I wouldn’t hold him up. I’m glad you’re back, Gus.”

Lena waved and was gone in the rattle of wagon, cream cans, and horse traces.

Gustie sat down on a pile of fresh hay and leaned against the remaining wall of the stall. She felt deep sadness for Lena, anger and frustration for herself. No matter how far she traveled, she came back to the same place...reputations ruined, gossip, the weight of a community’s disdain. Through the open barn door, she saw white clouds tumbling toward her over the edge of the horizon. Her mind went back over her last days at Crow Kills. The things they didn’t know would give the good people of Charity more to talk about than they had ever dreamed...

Gustie found herself only half awake, in that state where dream, memory, and real time blend into one eternally present moment, and she lived again the miracle of their first morning: waking up to a tangle of curls across her pillows, hair that glowed with light golden strands, mixed up with copper, against a field of wheat, hair that Gustie lost herself in that night. Gustie loved every strand of it. She smiled at how it continually vexed Clare, it was too silky, too fine to be confined by pin or bonnet. Why was it her hair she recalled now so vividly? The feel of it laced through her fingers, in her mouth, as it fell across her face. Oh, God! Something was being wrenched out of her, and Gustie sat up and held her stomach. She bent forward, burying her face in the blanket, and tried to stifle a guttural cry. This was more hellish than the nightmares—the memory of that glorious hair, her flesh, her scent...and it was gone. All of it: the touching, the loving, the being loved. Clare was dead.

Somewhere in her mind a voice pleaded:
Give me back the dirt, the crawling, snapping things. I can bear them. I cannot bear this.

The death, the burial were easier to remember than the laughter and the warm sweet nights she would never have again. She threw back her head and bellowed in anguish, her face contorted so wide it hurt. She flung away the blanket and staggered out of her bed to the sink. There was no movement from the old woman in the bed across the cabin. Gustie didn’t notice or care. She was the only human being left in an empty world. She drew a knife out of the rack above the sink and threw it down, going for the bundle on the opposite wall. She jerked the strings off the ends. The bundle fell open dumping its contents on the table. Gustie found the thing she wanted and stumbled with it out the door.

I am swimming far out in the lake and I hear her screaming. I swim back, grab my clothes off the willow and pull them on as I run up the hill. I see Gustie running and falling, and running
—
now crawling to the grave. She holds something in her hand. I want to run after her. Grandmother holds me back. She will not let me follow Gustie up the hill. I see now what is in her hand
—
the spearpoint from Grandmother’s bundle. We see her cut herself in the old way. I’ve never seen it before. My grandmother just stands still, nodding her head, holding me back, while Gustie screams and cries and cuts herself. That pale flesh, gouged by stone. The blood is soaking all through her gown and into the grass. It is horrible. She is a one woman battle. I have never heard such screaming. Not even at the mission school.

Grandmother still will not let me go to her. I bury my face in Grandmother’s shoulder so I do not have to watch Gustie killing herself on the hill, on that grave. Now she is silent and stretched out on the grave mound. She is losing a lot of blood. I have never seen so much blood. But now, we both move. I cannot help it
—
I am still crying. I have never cried so before. We pick her up and carry her to the lake and lay her down in the water. I hold her head above the waves. Grandmother lets the lake wash away all the blood, and the cold of the water stanches the flow. The wounds are terrible
—
jagged and wide.

Crow Kills has washed her clean and we lay her on the grass. Grandmother cuts off her bloodied and wet gown. She gets her ointment jar and anoints the wounds of each arm and wraps them up in clean cloth, and now the wound on her breast the same. I carry her back and lay her on her bed. This is twice I have done this. It seems complete this time as we pull the blanket up to her chin and tuck her in. I keep my hand on her forehead until Grandmother pulls me away and makes me sit down. She pours me a cup of coffee. I ask her, “Grandmother, does this mean what I think it means?”

My grandmother kneads the dough for frybread. She asks me, “What do you think it means?”

I say, “Two-spirit woman is free now?”

Grandmother smiles. “Granddaughter,” she says, “you are a pretty smart Indian.”

Gustie had been here before swaddled in a blanket sipping Dorcas’s medicine brew. There were differences. This time instead of perched on crates, she was comfortable in the oak rocker she had brought for Dorcas. Instead of fever and delirium, she suffered weakness from loss of blood and throbbing pain in her arms and chest, which were swathed in bandages. Unlike before, there was no confusion, only amazement at what she had done. She, who had never shed a tear in the presence of another person, who had never raised her voice in public, had gone simply mad. And yet she had never felt as sane as she did now or so at rest.

The land rolled gently upward away from the cabin and lay changeless beneath the ever-changing sky.

This was a land of ghosts. She herself sat bloodless, empty of feeling, transparent, ghostlike.
How quickly we are gone,
she thought.
How little mark we leave.
The mound of earth she could clearly see soaked with her own blood was all that was left of Clare, except for a nightgown that still hung on her closet door and some photographs in the album on her nightstand. But Gustie also sensed that what was lacking in the physical world existed somewhere else. She had no belief in a heaven or hell, only the land and the sky; and the sky, she knew, had moods. Placid, like today with billows of white floating high in the clear blue; dark, as on the days it shed benevolent rain; or black and roiling with clouds that shot hail, whipped lightning, and conjured up deadly twisters. The people suffered it, feared it, rejoiced in it, and died beneath it. The land remained.