She had to let go of the flashlight. It tumbled down into the nothing. The plastic split into small yellow pieces as it flipped over and over, until the light finally gave out.
“Shit.” Usually she didn’t speak. Something about the caverns and the dark made her go silent the deeper in she walked. Her heart flooded blood to her organs. It pummeled her rib cage. With her arms up above her and her legs splayed in awkward directions, she clung on like the wall was made for rock climbing. The bumps and divots were the usual ones, just larger in places. She didn’t dare move. Her muscles were pulled to their limits, and she could feel a tug in one shoulder. If she moved, she risked not catching a hold. Eyes closed, she held her breath and reached out one hand.
She scrambled along until she found the ledge, her fingers and hands moving across the rocks as guides. She had never known what pitch-black meant until this moment. Light did not exist in this part of the cave—maybe it never had.
The walls felt of grooves and dips and sharp angles. Walking hands up the wall, she touched ceiling. Everything had become tighter, closer, warmer. Sweat trickled into every crevice as air turned to moisture.
The only sound came from the taps of her feet and hands and from another distant water source. She worried that she grew closer to water and couldn’t see its depths. She had been afraid of heights a long time, since having nightmares about falling down a canyon. The place in her dreams looked like the Lower Falls at Letchworth State Park. But the grainy replay in her mind left her wondering each time.
This thought froze her. Where are the other handholds? She used her hands against the walls as if she were smoothing wallpaper. A flat surface with no protruding ledges. The same when she felt the wall with her feet. Sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eyes, where the salty wet stung. She tried to blink it away.
Her grip loosened. And she could feel the wind rushing past her, a scream lost in the caverns below. Her body floated among the rocks. The boys would never hear her. A deep voice entered her mind, her dad’s. His voice reminded her of Sam Elliott. She watched movies he starred in just to hear that voice after her dad died—even the ones where he was a cowboy and there were Indians.
“If you pack your bag right, you will have everything you need. And put stuff in your pockets.” As much choice as she had in what she carried, her dad had stopped her each time at the cave’s opening, making her show her pockets and rummaging through her backpack. The last tugs tightening her straps.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself still clinging to the handholds, her body against the wall. She didn’t want to let go of even one. But she knew she needed the items in her pocket. She steadied her feet, pushing them against the small ledges, tightened her grip in the right handhold, and slowly let go of the left, moving her hand down her body inch by inch.
The Velcro of her cargo pants released with a tear one by one of the fibers gripped together. She pulled out a crampon and a light stick, which she shook and smacked against her leg. The gesture almost unbalanced her, so she grabbed back onto the rocks. With the stick lit in neon green, she searched the wall for some softer part. One small crevice gave way to the crampon. She moved like this along the wall in painstaking and calculated movements, finding small rocks for her feet, too.
Eventually the ledge grew wide enough to come down. And again, mists of some unknown water sprayed her face in tiny droplets. A long sigh emerged from her belly, one that had waited, tight in her muscles, until she knew life still moved within her.
The darkness turned lighter. Perhaps this way led out beyond the cave. Prickles suddenly ran up and down her right arm, sharp and constant. She rubbed her arm, an attempt to settle what she thought were muscle spasms. But they weren’t. She hadn’t ever experienced this. It felt like what her mom called sleepy legs, but moved with a current, back and forth.
Wider and wider walkways emerged and the ceiling slowly drifted farther from her head. A large arched opening appeared, visible by some yellow light brightening. It didn’t fill the room, but with such darkness, anything was enough to catch her eyes, even this small, round glow.
The air cooled. And once she passed through the arch, the ceiling reached cathedral heights, but bent and twisted into the art of the rock’s own erosion. She couldn’t find the light’s origin. Her eyes adjusted and moved along the walls and down to the floor. Here, it rose and fell smoother than the cave’s path, like someone had polished solely this part. Water had probably whorled its way through here over time, ending in this smooth pattern. She walked, her hand on the wall, her eyes roving, taking in each detail. Sometimes her fingertips and palms hit bumps or holes or cracks—imperfections that let her know she was still underground. About halfway around this room, she set her pack down and sat on the ground, legs crossed.
Her entire body filled with the cool wall and the floor. But the prickles in her arm continued, not increasing and not decreasing.
With her head against the wall, she stared at the opposite wall. There was a pattern on it, somewhat like a painting.
Up close, the paint cracked and peeled in places, or was worn away—as if other fingers had touched it like she wanted to. The colors muted like the earth they may have come from. Slowly she lifted her hand and worked the tips of her fingers, those necessary connective swirls really, across the bottom part of the painting. Nothing lifted off of the wall and the surface grooved with dips.
As she stood back to take in the figures, the images swirled along the walls. It wasn’t that they moved where the people walked or the deer sprang into a sprint. They simply swirled. Her feet remained planted in place, her body unmovable. And the prickles along her right arm intensified. The movement of air became louder. It didn’t howl as wind storms do. It moved along the tiny hairs in the inner ear—caresses tuning the vibrations in her head—seeming like words, but not quite. The picture blurred and became one large swirling chaos.
Her back grew warm. When she turned, a fire crackled in a small pit. Where on earth? What is happening? The pictographs stopped swirling—or maybe they never had. She drank more water and it hit her stomach, which, empty, felt each guzzle of the water drop into it. When she turned back to the fire, a man and woman sat, their hands held out, palms forward, warming them.
Cold had crept up her body while she explored this room. Maybe it was the loss, too, of endorphins from the climb. The cold must mean that air came from some shaft, though. Flames twisted and turned as they inched over the small logs.
The man nodded at the woman. “I think we’ve caught her attention.”
She stepped forward, and then back again. “Where did you come from?” Peering around the room, she found no exit but the way she entered. “Did you cross the ledge, too?”
The woman giggled. Her gray hair curled at the sides of her face. Brown ringed the pupils of extraordinarily large eyes. “Honey, she doesn’t know.”
The man kept his eyes on her. Their black depths lit with the tips of the fire. “She’ll figure it out.”
“I think we should tell her.”
“Come here,” he said. He patted the ground next to him.
She didn’t want to, but her body moved forward and she sat down. Her knees cracked as she folded her legs under her.
“The fire will warm you,” said the man.
The man and woman busied themselves with shifting the logs to increase the fire. Then the woman pulled out some sort of raw meat. She tossed it onto a hot rock in the pit, but not too close to the flames.
She stared at the couple—watching them interact with eye changes and small, minute gestures someone may not notice. The woman touched his elbow and he would turn the meat. He winked and the woman turned pink. They were probably married.
The way the couple looked at each other seemed familiar—one her dad had given her mom. The long-ago image played fuzzy in her mind, though. But these two did not appear anything like them—different-colored eyes, posture, older dress. Those clothes.
/> “See, I told you,” said the older man. “I can see those eyes with cogs going behind them.”
She furrowed her brows. “Did you know any of my family?”
“Mmm, something like that.” The light played along the ridges of the older man’s face, sparking gray mustache hairs to shine silver. The thick mustache moved with his mouth and facial expressions.
She barely remembered her grandfather. In fact, most memories came from photos. The lift in this man’s eyebrow seemed just like him, how he carried himself and straightened his back—though not quite a mirror image.
The man put his hand to his chin and flipped the meat. Fat dripped from the sides and hissed.
A draft wafted around the cave and passed down her body. Prickles still moved along her arm, though not as intense.
All remained silent, except for the meat turning, the stick tapping the stone, and a pot of something the man stirred. He nodded at her. She knew time wore by, but her watch was cracked, probably from her grappling with the ledge. It had stopped in that moment, and she couldn’t reconfigure time in her mind.
“Is this what Dad was looking for all this time?” She motioned to the pictographs and the cave.
“No, not the cave. What it holds.”
Her father had told her and her cousin stories, most of them the traditional Creation Stories. But sometimes he spoke of family surrounding them, in the trees, in the streams, and along the roadways.
“Just listen,” her dad had often said.
“So does that mean this is where you lived?” she asked the older couple.
“No,” said the older man. “Not us. But relatives came here.”
“Why am I meeting you, then? Why not my Dad?”
“It’s not that time,” the woman replied.
The man touched his wife on the shoulder.
Prickles intensified up and down her arm, and the fire died down.
“We don’t always find what we seek,” said the man.
She stared into the fire. Smoke filled her nostrils, along with charcoaled meat. As the smoke wafted over her, her eyes watered and she blinked several times.
When she turned toward them, the couple seemed again immersed in their own body language and eye contact. They laughed and spoke a few of the old words she didn’t know, yet could sense their meaning. Joy, food, her, her father, the fire.
A connection evolved, her to them, which she could not explain. She knew them in this language of theirs. Not merely the words, but the relationship.
They finally looked at her and smiled. The older woman nodded toward her.
She nodded back.
“Which way is out?” She didn’t want to go and desired to stay a while. But she had to get the guys.
The man pointed in the direction opposite to where she entered. When she turned back, they were gone. The images had not only stopped swirling, they had disappeared, and the stone fire pit had gone, leaving the cave damp again and dark. The scent of animal flesh remained in the air, letting her know she didn’t need to pinch herself. A feel along the cave wall where the pictograph had been no longer revealed paint, just bumps of the cave. Yet those bumps seemed to follow the same pattern as the painting. The prickles in her arms ceased as well. She stared at the wall for a while, thinking maybe they would return. She knew, though, that those were the only moments she would have, however fleeting.
The air moved, and she followed the direction the man had pointed. The exit was a small space and eventually she had to crawl. Soon she came to a point of light where she made her way up out of the dirt and rock and grit and into more rock and scraggy grass. The climb out didn’t take long, so this way in was much closer to the open space of the cave. A white pine stood in front of her, its top branches almost bare of needles. The scent lingered while she walked through trees toward the outcrop more open and holding less vegetation. The walk grew steadily steeper. A half hour later, the cave opening stood up the hill from her—the boys just emerging from its mouth surrounded by rounded boulders. Her cousin saw her.
“How’d you get out here first?” he asked.
“I came out a different end.” She pointed.
His eyes narrowed, but he shrugged.
“So,” the boy with glasses said, “what did you see on your end?”
She knew he meant rocks or weird creatures. That one loved to find all the creepy things.
Her cousin tugged on her pack. “Let’s go guys, get it together to leave. You can swap stories on the way down.”
She put her hand on his arm. “I don’t think we should go yet.” Her voice was soft. She tried to pull her cousin back. The hours during the funeral returned to her. She remembered her cousin in a corner, silent tears streaming down his face and dripping onto his shirt. Her shadow in the doorway made him look up. His eyes had turned black. He turned, staring out the window, unmoving. She put her hand out to touch his shoulder, and he flinched. So she had left him there by that window.
He pushed her off. “We’re later than planned. It’ll get dark.”
“I saw them.”
“Saw who?”
“Our ancestors.”
He stopped, all body movement frozen except his breath, with chest raising and lowering, raising and lowering. “That’s not possible.”
“Of course—”
“No. Now we found his cave. That’s going to have to be enough of him.”
“I wasn’t looking for him.”
“Weren’t you?”
“What was it you were looking for?” she asked.
Red crawled up his neck in several blotches. His mouth clenched shut, then opened. “Listen here, boys. This one says she found her ancestors in that cave.”
The other three suddenly became quiet.
“Isn’t that funny. Ghosts in all that wet and rock.”
“We see them,” she said. “You know we do. They’re here for us.” She reached out to touch his arm, and for a few seconds, he let her hold her hand there.
“You think just because we have brown skin—we can see that stuff?” Her cousin swung his eyes to the corner of the lids and made a phhuh noise. “Oh, but wait, maybe the milky white skin can.”
The boys laughed and hiccupped—more out of nervous habit. They turned to go, leaning over laughing hard. Their backs grew smaller as they started on the trail back down the hills.
She walked down the hill. She knew what she saw. Her cousin’s hair swayed along his back, brown and longer than hers. She turned around, noticing the outline to the cave changing, darkening in the falling light. Soon, it would be engulfed in the black.
Even when she was young, she recognized these differences between her and her cousins. Her tribal relations made connections harder when the line evolved from the paternal side and she lost status. A chasm seemed to exist within that and her off-rez upbringing.
Perhaps her dad always walked so deeply into the caverns—carrying out rocks, quartz, and mica—to tie him to these moments.
“It’s pushing through. It will reach you. Don’t forget.” Her father stroked her hair. At seven, her head met his chest.
“What does, Daddy?”
“Your blood. It is Haudenosaunee.”
“Why don’t we live on the reservation, then?”
He shrugged. “Not quite right, I guess. Your grandfather thought this was better.”
“Is it?”
“Better? I don’t know. It’s what we know, though.”
Nya:weh Dad.
His voice echoed in her head. It floated in the trees. It moved over the line of boys dropping down rocky embankment. And it reverberated behind her in the caves, hanging from the stalactites, and crowding the dark spaces.
The Crack in the Bridge
I peer down past the stone wall. Those damn muskrats are there again. Circling in the Genesee River for no reason. This wasn’t exactly cattail land, though. But they’ve been there my whole life, pretty far back. I shake my head. Avoid.
&nbs
p; The Lower Falls stand to my right, splashing down, making rapids out of the water below. Some white person’s legend says that there’s a white doe, a woman who jumps over the edge with her man and turns into a deer. Who does that? Certainly not a Seneca woman. Apparently when you see the white doe, that’s her protecting you or the land or some craziness like that. I’ve never seen one. But my uncle’s got bunches he photographed and framed. Some obsession.
The muskrats chirp when they surface. So annoying. I cross the other side. The bridge makes getting to the other canyon part easier. I wondered how anyone did that before the man-made connection.
Some of the steps look slick with mud from constant dripping water and runoff. You can tell the water comes often because some stone steps are now just mud, degraded so far you wonder if they will wash away with a heavy rain.
There’s not much to this side. I can walk to Mt. Morris from here. Why I even cross over, I don’t know. When I climb the boulders near the steps, I can see far below where rocks and water meet and crash against one another. There is a large-trunked tree growing up and over the boulder. Higher than most trees. The sign says to stay off. But this view is always worth disobeying. I can’t feel the falls misting. But it wouldn’t rid the September-extended summer humidity anyway. I wipe my neck and try to get rid of the ugly sweat forming.
And they’re calling to me. I’ve learned their language over the years. So I kind of know what they say, but I can’t put it into English. They’re not speaking Seneca, either. I’ve had these moments growing up where I’d watch YouTube videos over and over, them calling, making striking noises when they dive, me deciphering what it all meant.
Mom tells me from when I am little and on up to listen to dreams. I so often wondered if I dream when I see the muskrats. Like daydreaming. I do that a lot. Some teacher could be talking, or my new boss, and off my mind goes imagining a different life or the upcoming evening I might spend with friends. Only I see these muskrats. That can happen with things we’re led to know. But why they show up when I don’t want them to, I don’t know.
Living on the Borderlines Page 12