The Year the Cloud Fell

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  He put the list down on the lectern and stepped back. He hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets and looked at the worn carpeting at his feet.

  “It is not an easy thing I ask you gentlemen to do. War is an ugly business and even at its most glorious it is still painful and bitter as bile.” He looked up then, and never before had he seen a group of men more grave than the senators and representatives before him. “I trust you, though. I have faith in you. I have faith in your courage and I have faith in the wisdom of the framers of our Constitution who reserved for this august body the power to declare war. I leave it to you, then, to help us overcome this terrible situation.

  “Thank you, gentlemen. I await your response.”

  He folded his papers lengthwise and put them in his coat pocket.

  The assembled houses of Congress rose as Custer stepped away from the lectern. There was none of the pomp, none of the cheers and approbation that always accompanied his State of the Union addresses. He turned and shook the hand of Speaker Carlisle and of Vice-President Hayes.

  “You know what needs to be done,” he said to his second-in-command.

  “I’ll see to it,” the elder statesman said.

  There were a few more handshakes and words of support as he made his way down the broad aisle, but not many. The senators and representatives had already begun talking amongst themselves.

  Samuel met him at the door.

  “The speech went well, don’t you think?” his aide asked.

  “Yes,” Custer replied. “The speech went well. Its reception, however, is another matter entirely.”

  The Speaker rapped his gavel repeatedly as the doors to the House Chamber were closed. Custer and his aide walked through the Statuary Hall and down the newly-marbled corridors of the Capitol Building. The flames of the gas lamps made reflections that fluttered within the polished stone. Custer was silent, consumed by the magnitude of his actions. He gave silent thanks that Samuel was not one of those men who felt it necessary to fill an awkward silence with insubstantial prattling. They let the silence wreathe them. As they walked, as their footfalls echoed down ahead of them, the silence lost its awkwardness and became a thing of comfort. They shared it easily, and Custer felt his burdens lighten.

  The noonday sun bounced up from the new white stone steps like a thrown ball. The men squinted, emerging from the Capitol’s dark halls into the brilliant day. Carriages rattled along the dusty streetstones and touring visitors gawked at their President as he approached the curb where his own conveyance waited.

  “Is Libbie home?” he asked as they climbed in.

  “Mrs. Custer? Yes, sir, I believe so. At least there was nothing on her schedule for this afternoon.” The carriage shifted as the two Presidential guards stepped up on the rear and then it lurched off on its short trip up Penn’s Sylvania Avenue. The whole contraption swayed and vibrated as it shuddered over the cobbles.

  “I haven’t told her yet,” he said. “I can’t wait any longer, though. The newspapers will learn of this soon enough.”

  They fell silent again as the carriage bumped across 8th Street. Custer thought for the thousandth time how much he hated carriages. He would have much rather ridden horseback or even walked the short distance between the Capitol Building and his current domicile. He didn’t bother his aide with his opinions, however. The old man had suffered them often enough.

  He wondered how Libbie would take the news. The girls he knew would be frantic, but they were at the age when melodrama permeated their every fiber. He consoled himself with the fact that their histrionics could hardly be worse than the tantrums the whole household had endured when Maria spilled on her new gown and had to go to a ball in an old dress, or when Lydia had been forbidden to go to the theater to see Miss Bernhardt perform. They would cry and wail, to be sure, but Custer could withstand that.

  But Libbie…. Libbie was a different matter altogether.

  Throughout their married life, Elizabeth Custer had always been the epitome of the officer’s wife. Always resilient, always resourceful, she had never complained of their post or their quarters or the roughness of their existence. She had suffered through years of frontier living amongst rough men. She had run the household with inadequate and incompetent servants. Custer knew he had not furnished her with the life a judge’s daughter expects or deserves, and yet she had accepted it all with sweetness and strength and had given him in return three wonderful children; three gifts far in excess of his talents at providing. And now he must tell her that one of those gifts was in danger.

  As they turned up onto the curving drive that led to the White House, he hoped that she would be able to forgive him should he fail to recover their lost son.

  An hour later he and Libbie were sitting near the hearth in the Yellow Drawing Room. Her left hand covered her trembling right, a quail held to by a trapper’s net. On the floor a cup and saucer from the rose-patterned tea service—a gift from the Earl of Norfolk—lay shattered in a pool of cooling tea. Janie, the colored serving maid, knelt at Libbie’s feet sopping up the spill and collecting the pieces of damask china. The room was made cavernous by the silence of his wife’s shock. The tiny sounds as Janie placed shard on shard were amplified into a tooth-grating cacophony that threatened to drive Custer mad. He bore it, however, with patient fortitude, taking it as a form of penance for his deed.

  Finally, with exaggerated care, Janie finished and retreated to the hallway. The butler entered with another cup and saucer, which he set on the tray next to the teapot.

  “Leave it,” Libbie said as he began to pour. Her voice was heavy, thick: an anguished contralto. Her eyes were looking at the tea service, but she was seeing other things.

  “Thank you, Douglas. That will be all for now.” The aged Negro bowed slowly from the waist but his gaze never dropped. In the man’s eyes Custer saw sorrow and the consolation of one father to another. He smiled sadly in response, and Douglas exited, closing the door behind him.

  “How long has he been missing?”

  “A week, give or take.”

  “Give or take?”

  “We are doing all we can. I have mobilized the army and I just asked Congress to use their War Power to make it official. We’re going to use everything we have to get him back.”

  Libbie stood quickly. The flounce of her dress pushed at the table leg. The tea set rattled like sun-bleached bones. “As if it were not bad enough that my only son is kidnapped by savages, now you are going to put him in the middle of a war?”

  Custer stood, too, hands open and placating. “No, dear. It’s not like that.”

  “Is it not?” she asked, suddenly imperious. “Tell he how it is not.”

  “But Libbie. Dear. He’s not going to be in the middle of it. We intend to draw him away.”

  Her bravura cracked and tears spilled into the breach. “Oh, Autie. You can be so stupid at times.” And she fled the room, leaving Custer to beetle his brow in an attempt to fathom this woman he loved so dearly and thought he knew so well. After a few minutes without success, he set it aside in favor of things he understood far better.

  It was hot. The sky, clear for days, held nothing but the white dish of the sun in its blue vastness. George lay on a rock on the top of a ridge. The sun pressed down and he wished he had left his wool coat back at camp.

  He had been staying as a guest with Storm Arriving’s family since coming to the camp. He had been treated well and with open trust since the return of Speaks While Leaving and the decision of the Great Council of chiefs. He was of course pleased that they had let him live, regardless their reasoning, but the implication that he would somehow act against the U.S. made him nervous. How long would they wait for him to help? What would they do to him when he refused to act? He could not imagine that they would keep him alive after that so, while the Council had decided to let him live, George saw it as only a stay of execution.

  His thoughts turned once more to the idea of escape. Previous days had been w
ithout opportunity, but today! Today everything was different.

  Today was a hunting day.

  He looked around him and considered the morning’s events.

  The crier had come early, passing through the bands, giving the orders of the day. It was an earlier call than had been given on other mornings and George asked Storm Arriving why.

  “Fire Bear says that today is a hunting day. Everyone should make ready for the hunt. He says that the Kit Fox soldiers will be in charge of it. That is my society, so I will help in leading the hunt.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” George asked, genuinely interested.

  Storm Arriving signaled no with his hand. “It is a dangerous business. You would only be in our way.”

  “I have read how you hunt but I have never seen it. Is there some way I could watch?”

  Storm Arriving pondered the request, then spoke to his mother who was rekindling the fire for morning. She replied with open hands and a few words. At that point Blue Shell Woman sat up from her bed and broke her customary silence, speaking to her brother and indicating herself as a willing guide. Storm Arriving said no—that much would have been obvious even if George had not already learned a few of the most basic phrases of their intricate language—but the young woman persevered.

  From the look on Storm Arriving’s face it was clear that he was not pleased with the prospect. He spoke once more to his mother. The old woman pointed to Mouse Road, the youngest daughter. Storm Arriving brightened and, by the same margin, Blue Shell Woman’s level of excitement was diminished.

  “All the men will be involved in the hunt, but my sisters will take you to a ridge overlooking the path of the herd. You must make a promise to me, though. You must guard them and keep them out of danger.”

  “Agreed,” George said.

  “Good. But we must hurry. There is barely time to bathe before the walkers must start.”

  The Indians bathed every day. Usually it was the women who bathed first as they went out early to retrieve the day’s water. The men went down later, after the crier had come. Initially, George had refused to participate, his more cumbersome clothing and his modesty prohibiting such an exposure of his person. On the fifth day of his captivity, however, Storm Arriving had made a comment about meat left in the sun. It was obvious George had to overcome his reservations in favor of hygiene. There was a good deal of snickering and not a few stares at the paleness of his skin, but as he was the first white man many of them had seen and certainly the first naked one, he did not mind too much.

  That day, two days ago, as he had worked on laundering his clothes, a few of the boys came close. They approached him as they would a wild animal, with sidelong steps and wary eyes. He smiled at them but it did not ease their anxiety. Finally, one of the older boys—perhaps nine or ten years of age—came near at the urging of his fellows. He reached out toward George’s arm with one experimental finger. He touched his skin and leapt back. The boys conferred in their language and the same youth advanced again. This time he touched the pale skin of George’s arm with his whole hand. Surprise swept across the boy’s features and he spoke to the others. They all touched George in turn and, curiosity satisfied, ran off to play at mock battles along the riverbank, leaving him to finish his laundry no wiser as to their purpose.

  Today, however, while the dawn had lain like a dream beneath the eastern rim of the world, George and Storm Arriving were scrubbing themselves with river sand when the boys had returned. This time they brought others. Ten or twelve young Indian boys came up to George and, after he signaled his acquiescence, they each took their turn touching the pale flesh of his upper arm. Bemused, George turned to Storm Arriving.

  “What is it they want?”

  “Your skin is white, like the clouds that brought you to earth, but warm to the touch. This is a surprise to them. They thought it would be cold, like the clouds overhead.”

  “Ah,” said George with a laugh, “Tell them that the clouds are always in the sunlight. It’s only cold beneath them.”

  Storm Arriving related this to the boys, who suddenly grew fearful and ran for camp.

  “What?” George asked. “What happened?”

  Storm Arriving shrugged. “I only told them what you said. That, and that when you break wind, lightning bolts shoot from your rear end.”

  George gaped, then recalled the look of terror on the boys’ faces and broke into laughter. The laughter convulsed him and he sat down in the river. Storm Arriving was laughing, too. As the moment faded and George was wiping tears from his eyes, he felt purer. Sitting there, naked, with the live water swirling around his body and the breath of dawn paling the crystal sky above him, he felt a freedom in his soul. Then that, too, faded. The world returned, and he was once more a lone man adrift upon the unknown deep.

  A short time after that, George had stood with Big Nose as the hunt began to organize. Big Nose explained the events occurring around them, translating each command as it was issued.

  Storm Arriving stood with the other Kit Foxes at the lead of the gathering hunters. Almost all the walkers were in place and ready to go. The riders of whistlers were only just beginning to congregate, their mounts skittish and at a respectful distance from the monstrous walkers.

  Two Kit Foxes arrived on their walkers. Storm Arriving immediately directed them to the front. “These two men,” Big Nose explained, “White Feather and Has No Blanket—they will set the center. All others will spread out in a line to either side. Those four….” He pointed to a group of Kit Foxes at the end of the column. “They will be the ends. They will split into pairs and be the ends of the line.” Storm Arriving addressed the others and Big Nose continued to translate. “The rest will watch these men, he says. They are in charge of the line. Do not attack until they do. He tells the young ones to be patient, and to learn from the experience of their elders.”

  The walkers were agitated. Big Nose pointed to one of them. “These are not grazers like whistlers. They do not crop at the grass every day to fill their bellies. These are hunters. They eat a great deal, but not often. They have not eaten for a week and they know a hunt means food for their empty bellies.”

  Other soldiers were organizing the whistler riders, keeping them in check until the walkers were clear and it was time for them to take up their own positions.

  “Walkers!” Storm Arriving shouted. “Nóheto!”

  The riders whooped once and then toed their mounts into action. The huge beasts pushed off toward the south with long, ground-shaking strides. In moments they were gone, lost in the mist that hung low against the ground, their chuffs echoing from the black hills in the pre-dawn air.

  George felt a tug at his sleeve. He turned to find Blue Shell Woman and Mouse Road with two whistlers standing nearby to take them all to their vantage point. The girls mounted, Mouse Road tucked up behind her sister and hanging on to her waist. George climbed aboard the other whistler, and they took off, heading northeast out of the camp, away from the direction taken by the walkers.

  They traveled quickly and though George had come to trust the lizard-like beasts and their abilities, his stomach still lurched as they leapt across unseen rills and swerved around shadowy obstacles. They traveled back over the ridge George had crossed on his way into camp, down to its foot, and then turned southeast along its base. Blue Shell Woman squealed and slapped at Mouse Road’s hand. Mouse Road giggled and George could see the flash of her grin through the gloom.

  The air was fresh and moist, but the sky was cloudless and hung above them like a star-shot shell, promising a day both hot and humid. Miles passed beneath them.

  They circled back around to the south, then turned to climb a slope to their right. They reined in near the top and Blue Shell Woman tied their mounts to the bough of a nearby alder. She and Mouse Road motioned for George to follow, and they led him in stealthy approach to the crest.

  George and his two guides crept through the dew-wet grass until they reached a f
lat boulder that leaned out towards the plain. They climbed upon it and peeked over the edge. Beyond, the prairie lay like a frozen sea, becalmed in geologic time. It rolled away from the world in motionless swells until all details were lost in the morning mist and the purpled distance of the south. Blue Shell Woman was on his left and Mouse Road was on his right. They talked to one another, barely audible, whispers in a whispered language. Mouse Road began to shiver. She snuggled up close to George, continuing to talk through chattering teeth. Blue Shell Woman came close to him on the other side. She was shivering as well. There, keeping one another warm, they waited.

  An hour passed before the sun shot its first rays over the eastern horizon. Mouse Road tugged on George’s sleeve and pointed. Down on the flat, the horizontal light accentuated every irregularity in the nearly featureless plain. With her help, however, he was able to study the scene and soon discerned several odd shadows forming a long curved line stretching out away from them like a string of dark pearls in the green grass. The nearest was at the base of the hillside, a quarter mile away; the furthest was two or so miles distant. George concentrated on the nearest and saw the hint of movement. It was a walker, prone in the grass, its body flattened down in a shallow trench of its own digging, its head raised so only its eyes were above the level of the knee-high grass. Beside it he spied its rider, crouched down as well, his hand on the first rope.

  He looked at the other lumps in the long line. Each was a walker lying in wait. He had neither seen nor heard them arrive, but nevertheless, there they were. The sun ticked higher and the long shadows shrunk to nothing. Even though he knew of their presence, he could no longer spy them in the grass. They were virtually invisible now, an incredible feat for a group of beasts so large. Only the nearest one could he still see, and that one only through an application of determination and focused attention.