Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction) (37 page)
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Authors: James Welch
BOOK: Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)
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30
ONE OF THE DAY-RIDERS guarding the horse herd saw the travois first. He had been huddled down in his robe, half asleep, when he felt his horse tense up beneath him. Still, he did not open his eyes until he heard several horses whicker and snort.
The horse pulling the travois answered them and began to trot toward the herd. The young man, Good Grass Bull, stood in his stirrups to see over the herd. The horse was a red roan, and he held his head high as he crossed the snowy field. The travois poles made smooth stripes in the snow on either side of the horse tracks. Good Grass Bull followed with his eyes the stripes up the sloping incline to the ridge above the Two Medicine valley. There he saw a dark figure on a horse, but he could not make out anything distinct about the rider. Just as he was about to call out a warning to the others, the figure whirled the horse around and disappeared behind the ridge.
Good Grass Bull cut through the herd toward the travois. He saw Calf Looking coming from the other perimeter. He swatted a red-and-white yearling with his quirt and the horse squealed, causing the other horses to make way.
The travois was made of two freshly cut, unpeeled lodgepole pines lashed together with rawhide latticework. Strapped to the latticework was a long bundle wrapped in a yellow tanned-on-both-sides hide. Calf Looking swatted away some horses that had come too near, then dismounted. He was older than Good Grass Bull and prided himself on his fearlessness.
“I saw something up there,” Good Grass Bull pointed with his lips to the top of the ridge. “It was a rider. It could be an enemy.”
Calf Looking touched the yellow hide. It was frozen hard. “It’s a human being,” he said. He glanced up at the ridge. “Someone makes us a gift of a dead one.”
Both young men grew silent, each thinking of the possibility that the enemy was just over the ridge. Although both were prepared to defend the herd, they were perplexed and unsure of themselves in dealing with this strange travois. Finally Calf Looking said, “You go get some men. I’ll warn the other riders.” He patted the travois horse on the neck. Then he swung up on his own horse. “And go with speed. If there are enemies about, it will go hard on us.”
Fast Horse had watched the travois horse pick his way down the slope to the river valley. He knew the day-riders would be half asleep, for he had been one himself when he was younger. He had spent his time dozing and daydreaming, dreaming of the day when his own horses would be many, when his lodge would be filled with wives and children. He had dreamed of war honors and strong medicine, an exalted place among the Pikunis. But that was not to be. Now he was a solitary figure in the isolation of a vast land.
He had told himself many times that it was his failure to find the ice spring of Cold Maker that made everything go bad—and for a while he had come to believe it. Even when he betrayed Yellow Kidney in the Crow camp, he felt that it was Cold Maker’s doing, his revenge on the party for continuing their raid after failing to find the ice spring. But now he knew that it was he, and he alone, who created the disaster that led to Yellow Kidney’s fall. And it was he who brought Yellow Kidney’s body back to his people.
As he watched the travois horse cross the snowy field toward the herds, he felt an impulse to ride into camp, to the lodge of his father. But he knew he could not ask for forgiveness. He didn’t have it in him anymore. The suffering he and Owl Child and the others had caused had hardened him in a way that was irreversible. To ask for forgiveness would be to ask for entry back into the lives of his people, and he was not one of them now; nor was he with Owl Child and his gang. He had left them at Bad Horse Butte after making the travois and strapping Yellow Kidney’s body to it. He would not see them again.
He lifted his eyes across the valley to the rolling plains beyond. There was safety up there, beyond the Medicine Line, and he had some of the yellow dust that the Napikwans valued. He was alone now, but he knew he would be welcome at the whiskey forts in the north. There were many men alone up there.
He heard a horse whicker, then another, and he looked down at the horse herds. He saw one of the day-riders stir, then look up at him. He whirled his horse and galloped out of sight. He had returned Yellow Kidney.
31
THE WOMAN in the white doeskin dress approached boldly, and Fools Crow did not know what to make of her. From a distance she had looked old, but as she drew nearer the years seemed to fall away. Her face, beneath the gray cut-off hair, was wrinkled, but the wrinkles were those of a person who laughs much, who grows old but remains young. And yet she wore the short hair of one who mourns.
“Ok-yi,” she said. “Welcome.”
Fools Crow recognized her voice. She was the figure who had greeted him in the doorway of the small cabin.
“Who are you?” he said.
“The one who left meat and drink for you back there—to give you strength to complete your journey.” She smiled and the wrinkles both deepened and disappeared.
“Is my journey done?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “You are here.”
“Where is this place?”
She walked around him and stood, looking off across the river. She walked lightly, but she stood with a firmness that suggested this was her world.
“Am I in the Shadowland then?”
The woman whirled around and laughed and her laughter was low and throaty. “Do you think you are in the Shadowland? Do you think these are the Sand Hills?” She waved her arm around the bowl to the distant mountains.
Fools Crow was ashamed of himself and yet relieved. Then he grew annoyed with the woman. “You laugh at my ignorance, but you say nothing that informs me. I have traveled many sleeps to reach this place, and I lose track of time. I have endured hardships. Now I find myself in a land that is always summer. I am far from my people and I wish to return to them.”
The woman stepped closer and touched his arm. “I have upset you. For this I am ashamed.” She turned her head aside. “I do not see many of your people and I forget myself,” she said.
Fools Crow looked down at the hand on his arm. Women do not touch a man so easily, he thought. Not in his world. But her touch was light and warm and it did not offend him.
“I do not live much in your world,” she said. “I do not fully understand the ways of the Pikunis anymore.” The smile returned to her face. “Are you hungry?”
Fools Crow looked at the woman. Her skin was a shade lighter than his, yet she did not look like a Napikwan. He looked into her face, and she looked back, smiling. Pikuni women were not that open; nor were the women of the other tribes he knew. He looked away, down the river where he had first seen her. “I do not feel hunger,” he said.
“No, there is no hunger here.” Her voice sounded almost wistful. “I have tobacco in my lodge.” She turned and began to walk downriver. The dog ran ahead of her.
Fools Crow stood for a moment, confused at her openness, her boldness, but it did not seem offensive. Her touch had startled him, but it made him feel warm. Her smile and laughter too seemed easy, and as he thought about it, he found that he had enjoyed that too. But why had she cut off her hair? Whom did she mourn? He pulled on his winter moccasins and trotted after the woman.
The lodge was set back thirty paces from the river, on a short rise of tufted grass. Behind the lodge, away from the river, stood a grove of alder trees, the gray skin of their trunks standing starkly against the greens and yellows of the summer valley. The lodge itself was made of skins as white as the woman’s dress. It too was unadorned. Fools Crow leaned against a backrest and smoked the woman’s tobacco. It was sweeter and more fragrant than the Napikwan tobacco that his people had come to smoke. As he smoked he looked around the lodge and was surprised to see that it contained almost nothing besides the backrest and two white bighead robes, one on either side of the fire pit. Against the wall opposite the entrance lay a bulging sack, old and worn, filled with what appeared to be round objects. Next to the sack he saw a digging stick, like the one Red Paint used to dig roots.
Although the lodge with its white skins was almost as bright as the outside, the air was cooler, and the sweet tobacco made Fools Crow content. He felt as comfortable here as he did in his own lodge. He laid the pipe on a stone beside him and looked across at the woman. She had her head down, and he saw that she was painting a design on a yellow skin. Then she began to sing, and it was the sleeping song that Fools Crow had heard back in the cabin. He closed his eyes and listened to the sweetness in the voice. He felt no sense of urgency now. He had lost track of time and knew that the woman would speak to him when she was ready. This waiting was part of the journey. And so he listened to the woman’s song and he heard, beyond her voice, the noise like a distant waterfall of children laughing.
He awoke to the blue light of false dawn. The walls of the tipi were blue, and when he looked at his hands he saw that they too were blue. He sat up quickly and looked across the fire pit. The woman was gone. He looked down at the small orange glow of the fire pit and felt a quiet sorrow spread through his body, and he couldn’t account for it. It seemed to enter him from outside, as though the lodge itself were filled with sorrow. He looked around the empty space and spotted the yellow skin that the woman had been painting. He reached it and held it before him, but there was no design, no picture on it. He turned it over and that side was empty of paint too. He held it closer, but there was no trace of pigment on it. How is this, he thought, that she paints, yet there is nothing there, not even a smudge? Did I not see the design with my own eyes? But he could not remember the design or the colors. In his confusion he thought he had dreamed the woman in her world, but as he looked around he saw the white bighead pelts, the embers in the fire pit. She was real, and suddenly he wanted to see her again, to feel her touch on his arm, to hear her strong, laughing voice.
Fools Crow put the skin aside and stood. He was wearing only his breechcloth, and his skin looked pale in the blue light. Then he heard a sound from far off that he recognized as the cries of winter geese. Once, as a child in the big-wind moon, he had crouched on the brow of a hill and watched the geese coming and going, and he was blinded by their flashing wings in the gray sun. The large, shallow lake was covered with the flashing wings, and the commotion excited and frightened him. But it was the noise, the thousands of voices yelping shrilly in his ears, that caused him to fear for himself. For many sleeps after that he heard those voices, and they echoed and echoed deep within him until he thought he had become crazy and would die. Each night he dreamed of the winter geese, until Rides-at-the-door brought in a many-faces man to drive the voices from his body.
Fools Crow shivered now, as he listened to the distant yelping, and a thought crept into his mind: I have been tricked by Nitsokan. He has brought me to this place to die. He has summoned the winter geese to kill me. And Wolverine helped him. Wolverine led me to this place. Ah, Skunk Bear, why do you betray me? Have I not helped you in your trouble? Twice I released you from the Napikwans’ steel jaws, twice I have saved your life. Treacherous creature, your brothers are right not to trust you. You steal their kills. I have seen you steal the long-legs from the little bigmouths after they have brought it down. I have seen you steal even a mouse from Sinopa, the fox. You are evil, Skunk Bear, and that is why you roam these mountains alone, stealing kills and killing others for pleasure. And today you wish to steal my life too.
Now the winter geese were even closer, their cries entering Fools Crow’s ears and plunging into his heart. He stood naked before the shrill onslaught. He did not even have a weapon with which to fight and die honorably. As his heart fell down, he thought of the woman and wondered why she had taken part in such a cruel trick. Had she not touched him, and had not that touch been warm and trusting?
Fools Crow quit the woman’s lodge and began to walk toward the alder grove. The flashing wings and cries were all around him now and he knew that his power was gone, but he walked ahead as a man does who is dreaming. And like the dreaming man, he did not see the geese, for they were all within him and they consumed his power, and he walked among the gray trunks of the alders in the false dawn.
The woman knelt in a clearing beyond the alder grove. Her white dress was as bright as new snow in the blue light. She sat back on her heels and lifted her arms to the horizon on the eastern edge of the bowl. Beside her lay the bulging sack and before her, at her knees, lay the digging stick. She had fastened in her hair a yellow feather. In one hand she clutched a juniper bough. A spider’s web was woven among the shiny fingers of the bough.
Fools Crow squatted at the edge of the clearing behind her, his back resting against an alder trunk. It was quiet in the bowl and he became aware, once again, of the absence of bird and animal. But as he thought this, he felt a presence behind him, a slow breathing. He turned his head quickly and saw the woman’s dog, three paces behind and slightly to the side. The dog was sitting patiently, as though he had witnessed this scene in this clearing many times. Fools Crow looked into the dark eyes and the dog glanced at him, then returned his gaze to the woman.
“Sa-sak-si,” whispered Fools Crow. “Come, Freckle-face.”
The dog did not hesitate. He walked the few paces, then sat down beside Fools Crow.
“Tell me what your mistress is doing.”
But the dog did not look at him.
Just then the woman began to sing. She sang softly, but her music filled the bowl; it was as though it were made to hold her song. The words echoed round and round, and Fools Crow was filled with awe.
“There is my son, and there is Morning Star,
Together they ride forever, across the morning sky.
Many have wanted to marry me,
I love only Morning Star.”
Three times she sang this, then three times more, and when Fools Crow looked up at the horizon before her, he saw Morning Star and his son, Poia, against the deep blue of the false dawn. The woman began to wail, and her wailing filled the bowl with the voices of a thousand geese, and Fools Crow closed his eyes and clapped his hands over his ears, but the sound was once again in him and he was outside of himself, a child again, staring at the wintry lake and the flashing wings.
And then the wailing stopped. Fools Crow opened his eyes, and Early Riser and Poia were gone. The horizon was streaked with the pale yellow of dawn. There was the sound of a drum, and the sky turned lighter and lighter, and then Sun Chief himself entered the bowl, casting his brilliant light down to the small clearing, and the clean night smells gave way to the dusty odors of the moon of the burnt grass.
The woman sat with her back bent and her head down. Her arms were at her sides, and although she still held the juniper bough, it lay on the grass, dusty and limp. Fools Crow wanted to go away, to shrink back into the trees, but he could not bear to leave her this way. He walked quietly into the clearing, and when he reached her he touched her shoulder. He squatted beside her and looked into her face. The tears had dried, but something in the face told Fools Crow of a grief so deep it would always be there and no words from him could help. She opened her eyes and looked at him without seeing. Her eyes were the blue of the light in her lodge that Fools Crow had seen earlier, the light that created no shadows. Just then, Freckle-face, who had never left the edge of the clearing, barked and the woman blinked, and when she looked up the sun filled her eyes.
“Are you well?” said Fools Crow.
The woman slowly moved her head, taking in the clearing as though she were seeing it for the first time. “I was digging turnips,” she said. “I must have lost my way.” She heaved herself up from the ground, tired and heavy, like an old cow. She sighed and picked up her sack and digging stick. When she straightened up, she looked at Fools Crow and smiled and the youthful look returned. “Look, I have a whole bagful.”
Fools Crow looked off to the eastern horizon. The mountain was a dusty green. Near the top, beneath the granite face, he could see a small pocket of yellow snow. On the other side of the peak, it would be winter, and his people would be there, waiting for a direction or a sign. Would they wait forever? Fools Crow turned back to the woman.
“Who do you mourn?” He was surprised by the anger in his voice. “Who are you?”
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