Book of the Little Axe

by Lauren Francis-Sharma

  “I leave early in the morning,” Father said.

  Ma noticed then the expressions of the other men, as if they meant to suggest that she should let Father alone.

  When Father woke the girls the next morning, he wore the Yellow-Eyes’ clothing—buckskin trousers with buttons and a loose tunic hidden beneath a fringed and hooded capote. He performed his usual ritual of sweeping the twins into his arms, their four cheeks like hitched wheels, their smothered cries achy to the heart of anyone within hearing. “We’ll meet again soon.” Father set the girls down and lit an offering, fanning the spectral billows of smoke, sprinkling dirt over water, left to right, to bless his family in his absence.

  “Come,” he said to Victor, touching the crown of Victor’s head, then he moved toward Ma who requested that he bring back a diary and a quill pen. Father told her he liked when she gave him tasks and would do his best, then he touched Ma’s face, as she regarded him with anxious eyes, the quarrel from the previous night no longer in view.

  “Please mind yourself.” Ma thumped his chest. “That man, Glass, plunged into the stream to save his own life. But not you,” she teased him.

  Ma, of course, was speaking of some years earlier, when Father had been traveling with a Yellow-Eyes named Hugh Glass, and they’d come under attack. Every man in his crew, save Father, retreated, including Glass, who’d plunged into the water, while Father, alone on the shore, covered them against an advancing clan of Cheyenne.

  “That was war,” Ma said, “so you had to make the enemy cry. But now, you’re a guide. There is no honor in dying while leading Yellow-Eyes across this land. You have children here. Remember you are to return.”

  Father nodded and grinned an uneasy grin before pulling Ma aside. This was all Victor overheard:

  “Akbaalia says you must do it first,” he whispered. “For the boy.”

  Ma stared at Father as if to say something she could not speak. They pressed their heads together before Father gathered his belongings and departed from camp.

  3

  The other women laughed and teased Ma, said she was heartsick that Father had left. That she didn’t know her toes from the hairs in her bum. Ma giggled, clapping her cheeks coyly, her eyelashes batting like marauding moths, pretending the worry that had made her mouth a worn horseshoe was because of Father. But Father was gone much of each year, and Victor, though certain that something else was the cause of Ma’s worry, did not know the cause was him.

  It was nearly a week after Father’s departure when Bluegrass sent the girl to live in a lodge across the valley, a half-hour’s walk from Like-Wind. There she would be welcome, would be given work. Bluegrass told Like-Wind he was no longer permitted to see the girl and that he—Bluegrass—had arranged for a two-party delegation to ride east in search of Shawanwa who might claim her. It was only a matter of days after this that the girl found her way back and began seeking out Victor. Victor knew the girl hoped to be in proximity to Like-Wind, but that didn’t lessen Victor’s elation. He wanted the girl to favor him. It was a fact that both shamed and propelled him. And though perhaps he should have thought better of his pursuits, Victor felt Like-Wind had given this opening to him, for he’d made himself scarce, refusing to complete his chores, skipping their hunts, hiding himself away in his mother’s lodge as if in sufferance. When Victor visited him in the mornings, they ate in a cloak of quiet, and afterward, Like-Wind wouldn’t accompany Victor to care for the horses or to make arrowheads. So the girl and Victor were left alone and all seemed well between them until one misty morning when they roamed along the edges of a field and noticed horses struggling to find fodder. In the four days prior, rain had come down with such cruelty that some of the earth looked to have been bashed into the muddied pools where it now swirled.

  “We’ll need to move the horses to higher ground,” Victor told the girl.

  As they trampled into the morass to tether the horses, the girl stood smiling beside the runtiest of the stallions, and pointed her pinky at its tangled tail.

  “Your hair is like this, yes?” she said.

  Victor had never thought of his hair as being like that of a horse’s. In his hands, his hair felt like the lacy leaf of a maple or the ruche of a spider’s web, but if the girl was asking if he had ever wondered why his hair, why his mother’s and father’s and sisters’ hair, was so very different from all in their tribe, the answer, of course, was yes, he had. He’d admired, sometimes even envied, the straighter hair of others, occasionally wishing for the easy flow and the growth that descended. But Ma seemed to know that such desire would come and she’d told him long ago that in the faraway world of their ancestors, straight hair was an anathema. She laughed when she said the word. Said that it meant her people would have wondered what there was to do with such straight hair, would have wondered why it did not have the same powers of stability and dexterity, did not have the ability to captivate light and resist air. And any time Victor questioned why he’d been made so different, Ma would smile with her eyes and touch his hair, and her hands inside his twisty strands, softly grazing his scalp, always made sense to him.

  But now, looking at the girl’s gnawed lip curl up as she pointed at the tangled, coarse hair of the horse’s tail, he could no longer remember the feeling Ma’s fingers had offered him. And so he laughed, hoping his feelings of inadequacy did not reek.

  It was not long after that the girl asked Victor to walk with her, south alongside the creek, down its shaded path, the claret cliffs in the distance like cones. He had hoped she would offer a declaration of some kind, for those banks were known to be a lover’s place. Ma had warned him against “sins of the flesh” when he’d before met other girls there, and Victor remembered laughing at the earnestness with which Ma spoke of unrighteousness, of a man-god named Jesus, but as the girl walked alongside him in her blue robe jingling with elk teeth at the shoulders, appearing graceful and regal and lovely, Victor understood better why Ma had spoken of tempering desires.

  They searched for spent arrowheads that afternoon, climbing up the chilled earth, the limbs above them still low from the weight of winter’s snow. When they came to the top of the hill overlooking the creek, the girl stopped and stared into the frothing waters.

  “When the sun warms the earth, we’ll look for arrowheads in the water,” he told her. “I’ve found many at the bottom, between stones.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “I can’t swim.”

  For Victor, to swim was as natural as to walk. There was joy in water. And at that time of the year, water was everywhere. Trickling down the face of mountains like a profusive sweat, overflowing onto the banks, flooding already muddied soil that seemed to wish for no more. “Then we must teach you.”

  The girl said nothing more until she asked that they stop and sit in the striped light of the afternoon. Victor reached for a shiny pebble and began showing her how to chip at its skin to create a head. The girl nodded, but her eyes flitted about as if she’d heard something.

  “Who’s there?” She stood and Victor readied his bow but heard nothing for some time until limbs began to shake and dried leaves snapped, and from behind a thicket of branches came Like-Wind, his large hands outstretched before him as if waiting for a proper welcome.

  The girl’s face, slightly cracked with worry, tightened until Like-Wind moved forward to embrace her. Like-Wind mouthed “thank you” to Victor and when the two broke from each other, Like-Wind held out the girl as if to inspect her and said to her, “I thought we would now be alone.”

  The girl turned to Victor as if Victor should’ve known what to do next. Like-Wind arched his eyebrows and cocked his head, and the girl peered up at Like-Wind and grinned as though the two of them shared some special love language. And Victor heard blood ringing in his ears.

  “You don’t need that tree here.” Victor said this about Like-Wind, speaking in Apsáalooke, the words coming sharp as if from a snake’s tongue, before kicking up his leg in a slow arc, pitch
ing dirt onto Like-Wind’s thighs, though still surprised when Like-Wind steered a solid punch into the side of his neck.

  The girl cried out as if she’d been hit, and Victor looked to her before leveling his head into Like-Wind’s midsection, locking them together in a way that feigned a momentous battle, entangling his arms between strands of Like-Wind’s hair.

  The girl hurried away and Victor broke from Like-Wind, running after her, pulling her into him. “Don’t touch me!” she said.

  “What did I do?”

  “I didn’t come here for you,” she said.

  Like-Wind was behind them now, his breaths heavy and shrill.

  “You don’t know your place,” the girl said. “You think you’re the same as them—as us—but you’re not.”

  “Did he tell you to say this?” Victor pointed at Like-Wind.

  “He doesn’t have to. Look at your mother.” The girl said the words as though certain they would feel like icy lances in Victor’s heart. But he would not let on that she had hurt him.

  “This is the news you carry?” Victor said. “I’ve told you my mother is from Trinidad.”

  “She probably escaped from wherever that is.”

  “Escaped?” he said. “You mean, like you?”

  Victor thought of Ma’s chest, the scars about which she never spoke, meandering from her neck to her waist like a wild river, and he wondered what the girl had heard about Ma, wondered what he didn’t know about his own mother.

  “She’s making you believe you’re free,” she said, “but you can’t be free.”

  Victor didn’t wish to hear any more from this girl who had only just arrived. He was angry in a way he hadn’t been ever before, and so he left them and returned to camp. In the smoke lodge, he found Bluegrass, lying on his back, his eyes open as if he’d been waiting to hear what more he must do to keep the girl from his son.

  Victor could not draw the line between confusion and anger. Night after night, he sat alone at the nightfires, biting his nails into flat-top hills, watching the girl, who sat far from him, gnawing at her lip, waiting for the one moment when she would catch Like-Wind’s eye.

  But Like-Wind did not look her way. And he did not look toward Victor either. Not long after Victor told Bluegrass of Like-Wind’s meeting with the girl, Bluegrass and the ā´sa‘kua called a meeting with Like-Wind to remind him that he had been chosen by the First Maker. The men told him that one day he would be a great chief of the tribe and that his destiny was predetermined so long as he remained on his path. That path, they’d said, did not include the girl.

  Victor knew Like-Wind had only ever wanted the future the elders now promised him. They had both dreamt of growing up to be wise counselors, brave men. The boys had agreed that after taking their first wives, they’d build their lodges side by side. They planned that their children would be the best of friends, that their mothers would grow old together, and that their wives would make meals over the same fire—meals the two would share as they discussed how to maintain all Apsáalooke ways upon Bighorn, how best to hunt, how to raise up their children in a world free from the Europeans who swelled in number each year.

  Victor was certain the girl’s hopes had been dashed and was not surprised when she sat beside him and told him she was sorry for her words. And Victor was happy.

  Each night thereafter, the girl told him more of her life in Arkansaw Territory, told him about living without knowing if a future was promised. “My mother hoped only to be free,” she said one night. “And now that I’m free I do not know what else there is to hope for.” So Victor told the girl she could share the life he and Like-Wind had planned. In Victor’s mind, the girl would be his wife and Like-Wind would choose another, but that evening Victor watched the girl find Like-Wind’s eyes across the nightfire circle; eyes that were big and wanting and filled with regret.

  Victor was not often one to despair, but over the coming days he felt himself low, with a new rage forming beneath his skin like a slow burn. He felt he was a man with an innocent boy’s heart, a boy with a man’s wicked desires. As the days passed, Victor worried, but Ma, she worried more. She kept watch over him, setting his favorite stews before him at the far end of the lodge, encouraging the twins to ply him with questions, until one night Ma told him she’d been having unsettling dreams and wished her children close in the night. Father had told Victor long ago that Ma sometimes had terrible dreams, that in her homeland, history had been written and the memories she brought were not pleasant. So, Victor waited until the twins slept before finding a place next to Ma’s mat. That night rain fell like pounding fists, the mountain’s walls fended off lightning while the torches shook to dim and the lodge grew cold. Ma, half awake, reached out to touch Victor’s hair, and as he began to sleep, Victor felt himself loosen, felt a relief he’d forgotten he could feel. And he thought he might lie next to Ma forever, happy.

  There was only darkness—a glaring, impenetrable darkness—when he felt his breath stymied. The palm smothered his mouth, the thumb bore down upon his nostrils, and he flailed, bitter and urgent, as he heard the mountain wind rush into the open flap of the lodge, shouting gusts as if pained. Victor was certain he was dreaming, yet he was unable to open his eyes. He smelled the breath of someone he could not name, a warm and pickled air, and through a blur of raindrops, he thought he saw in the light of a torch the salt whites of eyes and an expression, hardened and terrible.

  “Now,” Ma whispered. “Wake up.”

  Victor wiped spittle from his mouth and fought to put time between breaths. Ma hovered and her skin smelled of outdoors, sap and dew, the odors of dawn and sleeplessness. He listened for the sounds of war—the earth rattling beneath them, the dogs yowling, a drum thumping—but heard little more than the heavy resting breaths of his sisters, one wrapped within the other like a budding flower.

  “It was a dream,” he said.

  “You too? I suppose I’m not surprised.”

  “I couldn’t see a face.”

  “We are in for something. And not a good something.” Ma dusted her hands as if to wipe away the thought and began to leave before turning back toward Victor. “Give yourself a break from that troublesome girl. And get to the horses early. The rain fell heavy again last night.”

  As Victor exited the lodge he noted that the aspens were budding and the mountain goats grazing a little lower than expected for that time of the year. It seemed spring had fully arrived. And he felt his tread lighter for it. He ran for the day’s water, tended to the horses, and it was late afternoon when Victor found Bluegrass among the other elders, near the foot of Wolf Mountains, drinking chilled water they’d carried from a spring. There, Victor saw wildflowers blooming as plentiful as pine needles in bell-shaped blues and purple whorls and spiky pinks on bright green stems. Bluegrass looked as surprised to see Victor as Victor was to see those early flowers. Victor assured him he’d not come to deliver death news.

  “Like-Wind and the girl are not over.” Victor said this as if Bluegrass had asked for the news.

  Bluegrass tilted his head, for the sunlight dressed the side of his leathered face. “You wish for him to make room for you. Yes?”

  Victor wanted the girl. This, he knew, was not a well-kept secret. But as he stood before Bluegrass, Victor did not know his true motive for going to speak to him, save he did not believe things had turned out in the best way.

  “What I want for my son, I want for you,” Bluegrass said. “Cut Nose is my brother, and he would not like this any more than I.” The other men had finished resting, so Bluegrass stood along with them, his stomach less firm than it had once been, falling over his belt like an udder. “Neither of you should be thinking of a future with this girl,” he said. “Men who lay claim to her are searching for her. She’ll have to go soon.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “How do you know the sun has risen? What kind of question do you ask your ā´sa‘ke?” Bluegrass adjusted his bow. “There are enough
Apsáalooke girls here. It’s insulting that you and Like-Wind fall over this plain girl who is not Apsáalooke.”

  “Ma is not Apsáalooke. But she has been a good wife to Father. You must’ve told him the same when he brought her to the mountain.”

  Bluegrass almost smiled. “That was different. Your mother has never been plain.” Victor had never heard any of the men speak of Ma in this admiring way. More than once, Ma had been honored for her contributions against their enemies. Though she was not exceptionally strong, she was known to be vicious in battle. Yet this felt different. “And you, Circles the Earth with His Toe, you are not like this girl.”

  “No? We are both outsiders.”

  “Young eyes are not yet strong eyes.” Bluegrass shook his head, touched the strap that lay upon his chest. “But tomorrow, take her across Little Bighorn and wait by the big chokecherry. I will send Like-Wind. He’ll tell her that she is to forget him. He is ready to be done with her. This I know. After you return, we will smoke and I’ll tell you some things.”

  The next morning Victor sent the twins with a message for the girl to meet him. The horses had taken another wicked battering from the heavy rains, and Victor brushed them, led them to drink, inspected the frogs in their hooves, then brought back those to be used for the day’s hunt. He hoped to meet the girl before the end of morning, but Ma had other plans.

  “I sent the girls to Eagle Foot,” she said, referring to the third of Father’s three wives. “She will mind the twins. You and I have much to do.”

  Victor was certain the twins had told Ma he was meeting the girl. This is how, later, he would make sense of the lying. “You’ve run out of your salve. Martinique has a little cut on her hock. I’ll see what I can forage for her,” he said.