Nakoa's Woman (20 page)

Outside, Maria felt the cool air of dusk and at approaching night was stabbed with loneliness. She would go to Anatsa. She had seen her every day, but they had sat apart at the ceremonies and had not talked. Now she had to have talk with her and be touched by her gentle eyes.

Maria walked to Apikunni’s lodge and standing by the door, called Anatsa’s name softly. Anatsa came out immediately, joy and pleasure shining upon her face at the sight of Maria. They clasped hands.

“Why didn’t you come sooner?” Anatsa asked.

“I didn’t want to intrude on the first days of your marriage,” Maria answered. “Tonight, I have brought you a wedding gift.” She unclasped a little golden locket of her mother’s that she had worn around her neck from the day her mother had died. “This is all I have to give you. My mother left it to me—and I give it to you in love.”

Anatsa took the locket and held it in her slender hand. She went inside the lodge and held it reverently up to the firelight. “It is beautiful,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I know the feeling you must have for it.”

“It is of white man’s gold,” Maria said, “but it carries the light and fire of my mother. I give it to you that you might have light and love in your marriage, and walk a long and happy path.”

Anatsa looked down at the shining locket. “It shines with your light, not your mother’s. I will wear it and never take it off, for it will carry your warmth.”

“Anatsa,” Maria said, “my heart is filled with such joy for you, for your love and happiness in a good marriage. Apikunni is worthy of your love.”

“If all of the days left to me were to be filled with agony, I could pay their price with my happiness tonight! Maria, now that Nitanna is here, when will you and Nakoa marry?”

A darkness came into the lodge. The fire flickered upon the wedding gifts, the new robes, the backrests, and parfleches that Apeecheken had given her little sister, and suddenly the fire itself was without life.

“You do not answer,” Anatsa said gently.

“I do not have a mother or a sister to bless my marriage,” Maria answered.

“I am your sister,” Anatsa said. “When is your marriage to be?”

“In eight days from now.”

“I am glad for you. Nakoa’s name is known in every Indian land, but he is gentle.”

“I know,” Maria said sorrowfully.

“Why do you grieve?” Anatsa asked.

Maria turned impulsively toward the fire, not wanting Anatsa to see the trembling of her lips. “Anatsa, why doesn’t he come to the ceremonies? Why hasn’t he sought me out? He said that he would be with me every night of the Sun Dance!”

“Nitanna is here. I have heard they are married.”

“No!” Maria said in agony.

“I do not believe this,” Anatsa said quietly. “They are too important to marry without ceremony.”

“Anatsa,” Maria said wildly, “we love each other so! Our worlds are one!”

Anatsa smiled. “I know.”

“He does not want Nitanna.”

“I hear your words, and I believe them.”

“He will not marry Nitanna. He is going to send her back the way she came, unmarried.”

Anatsa turned away, and put more wood upon the fire. Her face had saddened, and Maria felt new fear. “Maria,” she said, “shall I speak to you with a straight tongue?”

“Yes,” Maria answered in a small voice.

“Nakoa cannot do this. It would be deep insult to the Kainah.”

“I know. But Nakoa cannot do what neither of us could bear!”

“Maria, that which cannot be borne is not known, for it has silenced the tongue.”

“Anatsa, if they didn’t marry, would the Kainah make war?”

“I do not think so. They are Blackfoot.”

“Then why should he marry her if there would be no fighting?”

“There can be things worse than fighting. Even without fighting there is no peace. There would be nothing between us then but the empty prairie.”

“I can’t help it! I will walk in the Indian way, but I will not share my husband with another woman!”

“Then you are not walking the Indian way.”

“Nitanna will love another! She can go back to her own people!”

“Maria—so can you.”

Maria was stung, and showed her pain.

“Maria, we all carry the fire of the Great Spirit. If you put out the fire in another, you stand in coldness. I do not want this for you.”

Maria bit her lip. “Anatsa, then I am weak and of little fire. I am not Indian and I cannot stand for the man I love—to …”

“If it is so close to your heart, I should not have touched it. I have spoken as I have, not for the sake of Nitanna, Indian woman I do not like, but for Maria, white woman as loved by me as my sister Apeecheken.”

“I can’t help myself!” Maria almost sobbed.

Anatsa touched the locket. “None of the white man’s gold can measure what you have. How can you trade it in the name of Nitanna? How can you grieve because he would sleep with her? What is said and shared in sleep?”

“I don’t want him making love to her!” Maria said bitterly.

“If he loves you, he can lie upon her and not make love to her!”

“I will not have him—after her! Would you want to share Apikunni with another woman?”

“It is the Indian way, Maria. If his love for me goes I cannot get it back, and if he loves me, ten wives cannot take love away.”

“I do not believe this. I will not have it. We have laws against this. It is evil and wrong. Our Great Spirit says it is evil and wrong!”

“Evil?”

“Adultery! Adultery is against God’s law!”

“We have strict laws against adultery too. If a woman is adulterous once, she loses her nose, and if she is adulterous the second time, she loses her life. But we do not speak of adultery, for Nakoa and Nitanna will be married.”

Maria clapped her hands to her ears. “Dear God,” she moaned, “I cannot be a second wife. I will never share Nakoa with another woman!”

Anatsa took Maria’s hand, and her luminous eyes were haunted. “Maria, you have the beautiful body that I always yearned to have. You have a spirit to go with your beauty, and your mind is quick and sharp. You are strong. I am crippled and weak. My face is thin and ugly. My tongue is slow. I do not have your fire. What I am has to be found with much patience—and no one but Apikunni knows me as I am. Beside you I am pale and cold. Yet going to Nakoa, you would hold nothing in your hands, if you would not go to him after Nitanna! Maria, with all that I am, and I see what I am, I would go to Apikunni after every woman in the world!”

The gold of her mother’s locket shimmered through Maria’s tears. “Then I am poor,” she whispered. “I am poor and deprived, and am more crippled than you.” She started to leave, for she did not want to be in the lodge when Apikunni returned. “I do not know my riches,” she almost wept.

Anatsa gave her a parting glance and this was the only time she was ever to look at Maria fiercely.

“Then learn then!” she said.

Chapter Eighteen

The last day of the Sun Dance dawned hot and still. The time had come when the boys to be initiated into braves would bear the ordeal of torture. Crowds gathered slowly and quietly at the Medicine Lodge. The chief Medicine Man, Isokinuhkin, was already there, preparing the fire, the knife, and the thongs. Sikapischis, Sacred Woman, had not yet appeared. Maria walked to the lodge alone, and then was joined by Anatsa, who left her new husband this day and walked by Maria’s side.

“This will be hard for you to watch,” Anatsa said.

“I am prepared,” Maria answered.

The morning was new; the prairie still shadowed, and the river in mist. Little Siyeh, tired with all of the days of his mother’s fasting and praying, and bored with his grandfather staring endlessly at the sun in prayer, begged the old man to accompany him to the river to gather lodge sticks for a miniature village he was building. “We will be back for the ceremony,” he pleaded, pulling his grandfather away from his mother’s lodge.

“Yuh,” the old man said gently, and let himself be led to the river trail. From far ahead of them, muffled by bunch grass, he heard faint voices. “There are women ahead?” Mequesapa asked Siyeh.

“I do not see any, Grandfather,” Siyeh answered.

“I hear their voices. We will see them at the river. They come for wood too before the ceremony.”

“When my time comes at the Sun Dance pole, I will be brave,” Siyeh said.

“You will, my Siyeh. You will be very brave, and you will be very generous, for both your mother and father have brave and generous hearts.”

“My father is gone.”

“No. Your father walks with us now. I feel your father walking with us now!”

“Grandfather!” Siyeh looked around at the tall bunch grass bordering the trail, frightened.

“Fear is in your voice. If you are a little boy, you would know your father loves you with great tenderness. If you are a man, you would face any ghost without fear! Are you neither now, my little Siyeh?”

“My father is dead,” Siyeh said in a small voice. “Do not feel him any more, Grandfather!”

The old man smiled, and took Siyeh’s hand. “If he is here, he is here with reason, and I have never questioned the actions of your father.”

“If we go back to the village, will he go away?”

“Siyeh! I have heard you cry many times for your father.”

“Well, I do not wish to bother him! Is he gone and sleeping now, Grandfather?”

“No. He is not sleeping.”

“Let’s go back!” Siyeh almost wailed, looking ahead at the empty trail, and the mist-shrouded river.

“I hear the water. We are here, and I hear the voices of others. Women are ahead gathering wood, and you are not alone with your father and your grandfather.”

“I will gather my sticks quickly,” Siyeh said in a shaking voice. They came to the river and Siyeh peered into the mists but could neither see nor hear anyone else. He looked into the gray water and shivered. Moving upstream, he came to thick brush. Here were all of the little sticks he would need.

Mequesapa sat down, smiling, and looking around him with his blind eyes. His son-in-law had gone. So fleetingly had he stayed! It was strange that the dead returned for just a flashing of time. He had loved his son-in-law, and he had been warmed by his presence. But now he was not warm. A coldness struck him, though he felt no wind. Coldness flowed over him, like the cold water of the river. Had he slipped into the water? He was not in the water, but he still felt as if he were drowning. He gasped for air, then something seared his throat in white-hot pain. His throat had been cut; struggling, he staggered to his feet. He clutched at his wound, but to his amazement, his hands came away from it dry. He was not hurt. Nothing had touched him. Then revelation came, and his heart pounded in terror. “Siyeh!” he whispered. “Siyeh!” he shouted, when he found his voice.

From upriver where he had heard the sound of women’s talking, a woman screamed. In his blindness he had a clear vision of blood flowing in running water, and he shook so he hardly could walk. “What is it?” he shouted, moving toward the sound of voices. “What is it?”

The awful coldness returned and touched tears upon his cheeks. He groped along his way frantically, wailing Siyeh’s name like an old woman. Now he knew why his son-in-law walked with them no longer! “You can’t have him!” he cried, falling to the earth and clawing his way forward. “You can’t have him!” His hands clutched earth, rock, pebbles damp with the river, and then he felt a moccasin, a leg, and Siyeh’s little back. Women sobbed nearby. With a strong jerk, Mequesapa pulled his grandson from the water. “Keep still!” he shouted to the hysterical women, and felt Siyeh’s wet lashes and hair. His eyes were closed. “Siyeh!” said the old man. “Speak to your grandfather!” His hands groped to the throat and found that it had been cut. He looked in rage around him. “He will not die!” he shouted, feeling a pulse beneath the flowing blood. “He will not die!” he shouted again, after his son-in-law.

The women led him to the trail, and he carried little Siyeh cradled next to his heart.

Sikapischis, Sacred Woman, walked slowly to the Medicine Lodge. Paint was still upon her face on this her last day of fulfilling her vow to her Father, the Sun. The men and women of the village followed her in slow and dignified procession, but ahead of her she noticed some women wailing and wringing their hands. An old man was in their midst. He was burdened with something and his face was a mask of frenzy; she did not know it.

He carried her son.

His hands were red with her son’s blood.

Sikapischis stopped walking—her legs had failed her. Her father carried Siyeh to a lodge before her, and from its interior came the beating of Sacred Drum. Again the drum was beating to the beating of her son’s heart, but that was last winter when the skies were cold and gray and the strength of the sun had been hidden. That time had passed; the snow had melted from the ground and the earth was green with summer grass. How could time be one and the other—the sky storm-dark, and clear blue?

The drum beat on. When Sacred Drum beat, a spirit was seeking the Wolf Trail. Her son was dying—still dying and yet she had made famine and sacrifice in all of the ways in which she knew to give. Woodenly, she began to walk again. Her legs had not been taken from her after all. She had to walk to the Medicine Lodge and as Sun Dance Woman give help to the boys who were, in agony, to become men.

She stopped again. At her feet was the stain of her son’s blood. What would the sun bring from its mark? What thing, what wonder beyond richness would spring unknown to the earth from her son’s blood? Would it be endless food, endless warmth, endless light? Would all of the snows be gone and a bridge built with them to the stars? Napi—if there is such a bridge so conceived with the body of my son—I will never walk upon it. I will never walk, even to the Great Spirit, if I have to walk upon my son’s blood.

Yet, she walked around the darkening stain, and entered the Medicine Lodge. The drum beat on. Siyeh lived still. Sacred Drum would save her son again. And she was Sun Dance Woman in her last day of voice to the Great Spirit; this day she would succor fifteen youths that would be braves. Her body was painted in sacred red, but she had not stepped upon her son’s blood.

Isokinuhkin stood waiting for her by the fire, and she saw his knife, the thongs, and the Sun Dance pole. The fire burned brightly, in great strength, and she wondered if it could be shielded and never extinguished. Beat, beat went the drum, the sacred Medicine Drum, the last convulsion between life and the great Wolf Trail. Napi—let strength flow from these hands and light all fires, and banish the coldness from the prairie!

The fifteen boys waited quietly before her, stripped to the waist, with their heads reverently bowed. She touched-their shoulders and with her hands gave them blessing. By twos they then walked to her, and she anointed them with black paint upon their faces and their wrists. When she had blessed the last one, and he had returned to all of the rest, the sound of the drum stopped. Sacred Drum stopped and its silence thundered out and froze the prairie. The world had died without color. All of the blood had drained away, and there was only the deepest snow and beneath it there would never be new warmth or another spring. The sun had gone, reeling behind the other fires of the sky; left in coldness they would die too, and the blackness of the earth and the darkness of the sky would be one, devouring each other in timeless death. Sikapischis held her hands before her face; from these fingertips the blood of her son had flowed and she had anointed the sons of other women. She had become the bridge to the stars, but without the eyes of a mother she could not see their fire or know their warmth. She was neither of earth nor the sky.

All the spectators who had come to see the ceremony of the Sun Dance heard the drum stop and knew that little Siyeh had died. Tears came to the eyes of every woman in the lodge, but no tears came to the eyes of his mother. Women clasped their hands in grief; men looked down in sorrow, but not his mother. Her face a mask of sacred red, she stood frozen and apart from them all.

It was time for the Sun Dance to begin. Drums in the Medicine Lodge began to beat, an echo of Sacred Drum. Other hearts lived. Still others would grow to bear the agony of this dance, to be men, to fight, to take women, and bring their sons after them. Other fires burned. All over the world other fires burned, and other hearts beat. There would always be others to touch the sun.

When the drums began, Maria felt a spasm that shook her body. By her side Anatsa sat with bowed head, weeping silently. Maria looked into the face of Sikapischis, and rage and despair shook her. Sun Dance Woman stood straight and as still as a statue. No emotion appeared to mar her stillness. Maria then looked to the widow of Kominakus, killed in the same way, and saw another Indian woman standing in deep calm. But this woman, Awasaki, wore her hair loose, no longer parted and neatly braided, as if she were saying, “I wear my hair in the manner of an old woman because my husband is dead, and with him is gone my desire for youth.”

Maria moaned, seeing in her mind Siyeh with his grandfather as Mequesapa played his deerskin flute.

The fire was fed with fresh wood, and in its new flame Isokinuhkin cleansed his knife. The first two youths of the fifteen stepped forward to be prepared for the dance. Quickly Isokinuhkin made two Long deep gashes in their right and left breast. His bloody knife ran under the two-inch width of skin between each cut, and under each he ran a thong, tying the skin up tight. The boys stood with two rawhide thongs sewed into their chests, and these were attached to a longer thong hanging from the Sun Dance pole. Isokinuhkin thus mutilated all of the boys, and not one showed, by look or cry, a sign of pain.

“What are they going to do now?” Maria whispered to Anatsa.

“They will dance around the pole until they have pulled themselves free,” Anatsa replied.

“Won’t they rip away all of the skin and muscle of their chest?” Maria asked.

“Yes,” Anatsa answered.

“How can you watch?” Maria asked. “How can any of them watch?”

“They bear the pain,” Anatsa said. “I give them recognition for this.”

The drums began the Sun Dance song, and the boys began to dance around the pole, straining to tear loose the heavy thongs. The smell of their blood permeated the lodge.

“They will be maimed for life!” Maria said.

“The scars of this agony are borne with pride.”

“It is useless,” Maria said.

“No,” Anatsa answered, “pain is never useless.”

The frozen woman of the sun watched the boys who moved in a red haze before her. If she could take long steps backward and go back through the years, what would she do differently? To save her son’s life she had vowed to make herself a vessel to the sun, and it was as an empty vessel, starved and still in fast, that she had suffered him to go with a blind old man to his death.

The sun still moved across the sky. It would follow the same path through the different seasons and through endless years ahead. Why then did their Father, the Sun, move crazily in guiding their path? Had the Great Spirit created a life with a tongue and a heart, and regretted not the heart, but the tongue? Was all of this blasphemy? Were the consecrated tongues, the bleeding flesh, the starved vessel, ugly profanities? Was there to be no crossing the heavens to the glittering Wolf Trail? If a man were to be but a bridge, he must be forever still, and not follow the path of the sun like the earth.

Maria watched the Sun Dance with growing horror. The boys began to strain violently in an effort to jerk themselves free from their torture. They danced faster to the increasing tempo of the drums, chanting while they moved, and their mothers and fathers and relatives who watched them chanted too. Sweat poured from the youths’ backs, streaking down the muscles that stood out in ridges.

But the flesh upon their chests remained too strong to be torn loose quickly, and as they tried to work it free, it drew as far away from their bodies as their outstretched arms. At the sight, the sound, the smell of their blood, Maria became ill, and clapped her hands to her ears and closed her eyes to fight the waves of nausea that cramped her stomach. She bent over the ground at her feet and was sick. No one noticed her. When she looked up again the first boy at the pole suddenly threw himself from it with great violence, ripping his flesh and muscles away, and at the sight of him, mutilated, Maria became sick again. In time, the second boy freed himself in the same way, then the third and the fourth. The fifth youth could not tear himself loose, and as he struggled in desperation, in red and bleeding nightmare, the rest of the fifteen were freed. Dimly, Maria saw them go to Isokinuhkin to have their wounds treated with herbs while the fifth boy hung limply at the Sun Dance pole, unconscious.