The Snake River (10 page)

Chapter Ten

Sima’s English improved faster than his leg.

“Urinate,” he said.

Miss Jewel heard and came to help him. He was leaning against the travois, as he had been for the last week. He rode there, tied to the lodgepoles so he couldn’t fall out and mess his leg up.

He wouldn’t be able to ride anyway. He wasn’t up to Messenger for a while. Owl, the messenger of death, had scared the horse named Messenger of Death. Had broken Sima’s leg. Had sent Sima through death, the little death. Had used Messenger to bring Sima back to life, to bring the white people to Sima in a miracle. Though he could not ride for a while, he was glad Owl had used Messenger.

For now his life was the travois. He ate there and slept there. He rested on it in camp, the poles propped against a tree, as they were now. His only relief from the travois was when someone helped him away to urinate or defecate. His tasks: Heal, walk, prepare, trap an owl.

Miss Jewel pulled him up on his good leg, got her arm around his waist, and walked him toward a cedar to stand behind. She was tall, almost too tall for him to get a good grip on her shoulder, and strong for a woman.

Urinate
and
defecate
. These were new English words he learned from Miss Jewel, who helped him with his English. Flare thought this was funny, and offered different words for the same things, but Dr. Full forbade Sima to use Flare’s words. Which made Sima think English was a weird language. Why have good words and bad words for the same thing? Did people on the red road speak good words, and people on the black road speak bad ones?

The whites shortened his name to Sima. Like Flare shortened his real name, O’Flaherty, to Flare. They liked to shorten names. That was okay. He liked Sima. The First.

Everyone but Flare and Miss Jewel found Sima’s need to go to the bushes embarrassing. They pretended not to hear, or were too busy to help. Dr. Full clearly thought it was beneath his dignity. Sima knew grown-up Shoshones who were too good for things, and was amused by them, too. Now he waited until Flare or Miss Jewel was nearby to say his new English words, and they helped him gladly.

Now Miss Jewel let him go, he got balanced, and she turned her back while he splashed. After growing up in one family after another, and more brothers than she could remember, she said, she had no delicate sensibilities. Sima like to have her help him. She always seemed tickled at the others’ embarrassment.

He liked Flare to be around him because they spoke Shoshone. But when Dr. Full caught them, he would correct them. Only English, he said sternly. The way from barbarism to civilization is to learn to speak English.

Sima didn’t know what barbarism was, but he wanted to learn English, and he wanted to be civilized. Flare called this a dubious proposition, but Sima didn’t understand.

Flare didn’t know about Owl. No one would know about Owl.

Miss Jewel helped Sima back toward the travois.

She and Flare were the damnedest pair. He was short, wiry, and a wit. Also a skeptic about everything. You had to watch his lively eyes, which spoke—roared—passions he’d never own up to.

Miss Jewel was tall and had that attention-getting hair. She wore it high, and artfully arranged, like a headdress she’d grown herself. It shone beautifully in the sun, like the wire of a copper bracelet, and made her look even taller than she was. (She spent a lot of time fixing it in the morning—he’d seen that.) With her hair up, she looked taller than Flare.

The odd thing was the way the two of them acted around each other. Not only did he think she was some punkins—that was his own phrase—she also noticed it, liked it, watched him back like she had the same thing on her mind, and teased him about it. No Shoshone woman would have been so brazen. From the look of the other women, they wouldn’t, either. Just Miss Jewel.

But Miss Jewel wasn’t Flare’s woman. No, he said, she was a schoolteacher. Lots of times it was hard to ask anything—the white-man way seemed to be to figure things out without asking.

That schoolteacher business bothered Sima. He’d noticed the three women teachers slept together in one tent, without men, like women separated in a taboo. They couldn’t all be bleeding with the moon all the time. He wondered if
teacher
meant a woman who had never started bleeding, or at least a woman who had no man. If they’d started bleeding, why would they have no men?

At least Miss Jewel wasn’t scrawny and dried-up-looking, and sour, like Miss Upping.

Miss Jewel helped him lower himself onto the travois. “Talk?” he asked.

She leaned against the tree next to him. They often practiced his English after she helped him. Today he was going to take advantage, just a little, of his right to ask anything.

“Why you say the devil is in Flare?”

She took a minute to speak.

Sima had lots of things about it figured out. The devil was a bad spirit. He’d heard a lot about the devil in the past week. But what did the devil have to do with Flare, who was a good man?

“Flare isn’t wicked,” Miss Jewel said, “he’s good. When we say the devil’s in someone, sometimes we really mean he’s bad, and sometimes we mean he’s full of fun. It’s really hard to tell what we mean, Sima, I know.”

She hesitated, and for a moment Sima thought she wouldn’t go on. But this was a woman to say what should stay unsaid. “If I were to speak seriously about Flare, I’d say he doesn’t know God. I’d say he’s as fine a man as
nature
can make.”

She chewed a lip. “What I want to do with my life is rise above my nature. I ask God to bring out my higher nature.”

Sima didn’t understand that at all.

“But,” Miss Jewel went on, “that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the juices of life. With discretion. Even if this bunch of sticks in the mud
disapproves
.” She drew the word out mockingly.

Sima smiled at her and touched her arm in thanks. Listening to English wore him out. She put a hand on his shoulder, and they enjoyed the evening in silence.

“Why don’t they think you act right?”

“I’m not demure,” she said, “or shy, or deferential.” She spoke with a hint of resentment. “I’m not what the ladies’ magazines call a True Woman. The four virtues of a True Woman are purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness. I fail on the last.” She searched for better words. “Among the Shoshones, do women keep their eyes down, not look men in the face, not speak up about what they think in public, not speak in council, and not let on which man they’re interested in?”

Sima nodded.

“Well, white people do, too. And I don’t care—I won’t live that way. God made woman the equal of man. Which this bunch of lamebrains hasn’t figured out. They’re too busy
disapproving
.” She emphasized the word with her voice, and her merry eyes.

“Miss Jewel,” called Dr. Full. She snatched her hand away from Sima’s shoulder and went to Full. Sima thought one of the things Dr. Full disapproved of was their touching.

Sima wondered why Miss Jewel said Flare knew nothing of God. He wore the circle cross around his neck. That was an ancient symbol among many Indian people. The two bars of the cross meant the good red road against the turbulent black road, light against dark, good against evil, east-west against north-south. The circle resolved all the conflicts in the wholeness of life. It was the symbol of a man of spirit power.

Flare seemed like he was walking the good red road. Maybe Miss Jewel said that because Flare was what Dr. Full called a papist, which was another kind of Christian. But wasn’t Christian all the same white-man spirit power? If you had one kind of power (
poha
), guidance from the eagle, perhaps, or the kit fox, why did that make wrong someone else’s power, maybe the
poha
of the owl? Why should two kinds of Christians be mad at each other?

Whether it made sense or not, Sima was determined to learn it.

Miss Jewel had asked him about his religion, too. Sima said honestly he didn’t have any. Asked what he believed, he said at first, “Nothing.” When he understood better, he said he didn’t believe—he
saw
. Saw the power (
poha
) of the sun, of the thunder and the water, the four-leggeds, wingeds, and rooteds. And, of course, he honored these things, as was plain good sense. Many of his people could do more—ask for such powers to be theirs, ask for
poha
. And have the request granted. He didn’t mention Owl.

Sima did say he’d sought a vision with no success. Though he prepared himself, and made the sacrifice, no vision power came.

Miss Jewel kept her lip buttoned, but Sima could see she didn’t like hearing about the powers he saw. Well, he might add some white-man powers for himself. But they would be added. He had Owl. He had Apa. And others anyone could see plainly.

Dr. Full wanted to teach Sima the white-man powers. If these powers could be understood only in English, that made sense. He would learn excellent English. He would say his Scriptures in excellent English. He would tell his father, Goddamn Hairy, in excellent English what an ass he was. Or he would say something else to his father—he hadn’t thought that out.

But he would definitely learn about the white-man powers. With Shoshone powers you could make the thick rawhide of a war shield hard like metal. You could make your arrows fly straight. You could bring food to the people. You could see at night, evade the enemy’s Wows, and chase away ghosts. And you could have your eyes cleared, to see the good, red road for yourself and for the people.

But with white-man powers you could make metal, which was a great medicine. And from the metal you could make guns, knives, kettles. You could make blankets, find lots of tobacco—so much you traveled with it in big ropes—whiskey. His father’s compass. You held it in your hand, and a stick inside pointed to the direction where the white buffalo lives, which the white men called north. Even in the dark. Sima didn’t know why you would want such a machine, but it was a wonder.

They were odd, white people. Most of them didn’t see the red road. They lived quarrelsomely, with no attention to the common good. They even killed each other sometimes, and acted like it was no great matter, or actually congratulated one another on murder. Sima had seen it.

But that didn’t matter. Sima wanted to get the power to make wonders. He wanted his father’s power. And then? He didn’t know. Could you live among the white people and still walk the red road?

“Miraclee?” Sima repeated, testing the word. He looked at the writing paper he held and pronounced the last syllable,
klee
, as it looked to him.

They were passing the miles on horseback. The good Lord knew, Dr. Full thought, there had been many miles to pass in this mad country. They’d been spending it teaching Sima to spell.

“Mira
kuhl
,” emphasized Dr. Full. “Like the virgin birth,” he said again. Dr. Full had told the story of Christ Jesus’s coming to earth by a virgin several times. If he weren’t feeling so good, he would have been frustrated with his first savage pupil. The boy didn’t get the Christian meaning of
miracle
—something divine, something done by God, not by nature. Something not in the ordinary scheme of things. But the boy couldn’t make the separation. He had some funny heathen notion of what a miracle was, and kept saying the hand of Spirit was in everything, and nature was Spirit.

Sima’s face lit up. “Like you find me dead,” he exclaimed.

“No,” said Flare, chuckling, “that was not a miracle.”

“I think maybe it was,” said Miss Jewel. “I see the hand of God bringing Sima to us.”

Dr. Full motioned with his hands for them to keep it up. The boy was intelligent, and would profit from a discussion like this.

“It wasn’t even that much of an accident,” Flare protested. “You were lying within less than a mile of the Oregon road. I saw your horse and followed him to you. Because I was looking, not by accident.” He cast a mirthful eye at Dr. Full and Miss Jewel. “If one of you priests had seen it,
that
would have been an accident.” He loved to call them priests, because it tweaked their blue noses. “You don’t look.”

“Miracle,” said Sima firmly. “You not understand.” He considered his English carefully. “I dream white man be.” He had not admitted to them that he was kicked out of the tribe. “I long way to white man go. All to Fort Vancouver. Dangerous. Many days. Want with white man be.”

“I fall down.” He patted the splint on his leg. “Break. To little death go.” He mimed passing out.

Sima gave thought to his words. “Flare me wakes up. Different. Different world all way. Splinted leg. Thirsty not. Main thing,
among white people
. Went long, long way while little death. Among white people. Safe, not dangerous. Fall down to little death, rise up to new world.”

“Now wait a minute,” said Flare with a little heat. “You woke up right where…

Beholding this conversation, Dr. Samuel Full beheld his luck. He could hardly keep from grinning night and day. It was delicious.

The boy Sima was riding astride. For the first day. The boy had been impatient, extremely impatient, to get on horseback again. Dr. Full had prevented that, on medical grounds, for the boy’s own good—spiritual good, not physical good.

Oh, perhaps the boy could have ridden a few days earlier, perhaps even a week, now that Dr. Full saw that he rode without his feet in the stirrups, and was beautifully balanced, graceful even with the splint on his broken leg. It must feel a lot better than scraping along on that travois, thumped by every stone this miserable country put in the way. But Dr. Full couldn’t afford to have the boy ride too well. Not until today, when they left Fort Boise, a new and miserable pretense at civilization in this vast wilderness. Not until they were so far from the boy’s homeland that he’d never think of going back. Back to savagery. Oh, no. This little savage was going to be saved.

He was the one Dr. Full had dreamed about, the one Dr. Full thought of as the Alchemized Savage. The alchemists were false scientists who studied endlessly to find ways to turn dross into something precious, to convert lead into gold. Dr. Full knew how to use God’s grace to convert the barbaric to the redeemed. Thus the Alchemized Savage.