Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher)

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  I walked toward him and he stood, tongue hanging. He let me put my hand out to his nose, smelled the back of my fingers, and then he lowered his bony head and invited me to run my palm between his ears. His soft fur brought with it a piercing ache of what I missed.

  The dog tolerated me for just a moment, then shook as though I were a fly. He trotted toward the men and looked back as if to see if I would follow.

  I looked over the side of the road, seeking a way to keep on going but still avoid the men. Too steep. They had picked a strange place for a road, carving out deer tracks, through sparse grass and sage, around exposed ridges. It seemed to go nowhere, circle dance with the river. I looked behind me. I had to go forward, just keep going and hope they let me pass.

  The men stopped their work to stare as I followed the dog. I noticed some of the lighter-skinned men scowled at me. One or two placed eyes on me that seemed to pass through the sagebrush and buckskin clothes that hid my skin burned dark by the sun. I wondered if like the dog they were aware of my scent before they even saw me.

  A round-faced Indian with hair sliced short beneath a dark hat saw me and pushed his hat back. An eagle feather honored the hat band. He shouted something to another man who squatted at a mule’s hoof.

  That one turned to look, then stood with the ease of someone small, though he filled up the sky. His eyes wore a look of question beneath his flat-top hat casting a shadow over an intent face. A dark beard with spider webs of white rested on his broad chest and covered portions of a vest dyed the color of dried raspberries. He pulled on his face hair, buttoned his coat with one hand, then said something to the short-haired Indian, who joined him as he strode toward me.

  Their eyes spoke questions.

  The man with the vest could look fierce, I thought, his jaw set in seriousness. But his blue eyes were as gentle as a fawn’s. He squatted down to me, so close his breath brushed against the bones of my cheeks. His voice had a deep rhythm like Lukwsh’s lullaby, and he spoke words such as ye and sure that carried no meaning to me but sounded as gentle as a summer rain.

  Perhaps it was the eyes or my tiredness or not caring any longer what pain awaited me, who knows? I did not bolt and run, did not set my feet to search for Sunmiet’s place.

  “You need something?” the Indian said in words I could understand.

  I looked up, surprised.

  The owl said more I did not understand, except I heard the word Jane, and my heart began to beat a little faster.

  I had made Sunmiet’s “Jane” bigger in my mind, someone who would recognize me for what I was. But I did not let myself hope long, remembering that Sunmiet’s friend did not live at the river, she said, would only be found with them fishing when the salmon ran. I saw no one fishing.

  Both men talked in low tones. Finally, at the big man’s direction, the Indian brought a horse up beside us, and I felt my eyes get wide as I watched him step into the stirrup from the left, the white man’s way. He extended his palm to me. The owl’s eyes reassured.

  When I hesitated, the big man motioned and the Indian turned the horse. Then the big man made a cup of his hands and motioned for me to step inside his palms, to mount the animal on the right, as an Indian.

  The gesture caused my eyes to water in the wonder at this kindness, this recognition of who he thought I was.

  He raised his palms again, and though I could swing up onto the horse as I once did in joy behind Shard, I accepted this man’s offer, felt light as a wada seed as his fingers pressed around my blistered feet and lifted me up.

  I sat on a good horse behind a man I did not know.

  The dog mounted next, with no help at all, landing in a soft plop in front of the Indian.

  We rode the twisting trail down, winding in and out along the edges of ravines as large as any I had seen since leaving Steens Mountain. Rocks pierced the sky across the river, a wall of rocks that looked like horse-hair ropes on end, so high they made the sun set early in this canyon. I took deep breaths as I rode deeper into the ravine, away from safe heights and hills.

  We approached the river roaring through stone walls. Long, nubby rocks like fallen cattails sliced into the river. White water surged over chunks of granite, formed a frothy boil as the river spilled and dropped. A roar like a wind reached my ears, and I saw water twisting and plunging, swirling beneath a narrow bridge we rode across. I scraped my memory for something of Sunmiet’s description but did not find it.

  I had not seen the falls nor the bridge from the road above, nor the low building surrounded by a rock fence where we stopped. The Indian dismounted and helped me down. The little dog already panted at my feet. He scattered chickens and guinea hens pecking about.

  “No, no,” he said to the dog who looked as if he wanted to herd the chickens toward a fenced pen. “Not now, Bandit,” he said and squatted low to scratch the dog’s head.

  Standing, the man reached for an object like a metal basket hung upside down near the opening of the fence. He hit it with a stick, causing a sound so loud and clanging that my ears protested with pain. The clanging continued until I felt him beside me, prying my hands from my ears.

  “No danger,” he said.

  My eyes opened to greet a tiny woman with chestnut hair pulled straight back from a face the shape of a duck’s egg. A strip of white cloth pinned over her dress held tight her tiny waist. Despite the heat, she hurried in quick-quick steps from the porch as my head rang with the clanging.

  “You … old … Bandit.” I recognized these words.

  “Missus says, ‘Either go out and stay with Mr. Sherar or don’t go out at all in this heat.’ She talks to dogs,” the Indian told me with a smile, and I knew then I would like her.

  She dabbed at her forehead with a corner of white cloth, fingertips tapping at perspiration. Her words to the dog were quick, carried scolding as she looked from the dog to the chickens, but she grinned and scratched the dog’s belly as she squatted to talk. When she bent to him, I could see her hair knotted at the back of her neck, held by a beaded barrette.

  The dog panted, sat satisfied. It pleased me to see she had words for the dog. It gave me time. Bandit yawned, and the woman faced me.

  “What … Peter?” the woman asked.

  “Bandit dragged it in,” Peter said first in jargon, his dark eyes twinkling. Then he translated to the woman.

  She answered him with quick-bitten words that I thought from her tone would take the twinkle from his eye, but they appeared to be friends, these two. She watched me, her tongue clucking gently, her eyes like a new fire on a cold day. I thought of Sarah’s Christians with their flame inside and wondered which box this white woman would fit into.

  Finally, the dog content, she stood, hands clasped in front of her, and boldly studied me while the man spoke.

  Then her hand came to my chin and she touched me, and I did not jerk back. She said something to my eyes as though speaking inside of me. The man nodded. To me in jargon he repeated: “She says you carry sadness. Wants to know your name.”

  The request surprised me, for I had begun to see myself as indistinct, someone who could simply disappear, someone barely here, whose sorrow and her person lay hidden deep within.

  And what name should I give her? Shell Flower, the name that meant I once was loved? Thocmetone for where I spent my life? Or Asiam, the one who made mistakes, was banished for her being?

  “Asiam,” I answered her in truth.

  “Alice M?” the woman asked.

  The Indian, Peter, shook his head. “Ashiem,” he assured her, shrugged his shoulders as though it was not a word he knew. “She does not get it. Say your name again,” he said to me in the trade jargon.

  “As-i-am,” I repeated, eyes down.

  “Al-ice-M,” the woman repeated, then when I did not answer, she said with certainty in her voice, “Alice M.”

  What did it matter what they called me or who I was? Not even the wind would know my name nor should it.

  “
I am Mrs. Sherar,” she said just as I said my new name to myself. “Jane Herbert Sherar.” She continued talking, but her name stayed in my ears. Could she be the Jane of Sunmiet’s speaking, the one who might help me find out things I wished to know?

  If there had been Indians fishing, camped on the river’s banks, I would not have wondered, been surer of this place. But she did not live at the river—that’s what Sunmiet had said—only felt at home with it.

  I would ask the man, Peter, when I could. He translated her words to me. “She tells you I am Peter, the foreman. You met her husband, Joseph, on that ‘road of his.’ She would feed you. You look all bones.”

  My body felt no hunger, though I had not eaten much for days. I said so. He said something and she looked at me, squinted then grunted.

  “Go with her,” he said. “She is a good woman.”

  She motioned me to follow her inside the rock wall and enter the building. My steps shunned the clanging thing, and I looked behind me to see Peter catch up the reins of his horse and head toward the barn, past sagebrush fences lined with drying coyote hides. Chickens squawked and scattered.

  The house was made of boards as though a wagon floor had been dismantled. I had never seen a wooden house from inside out. A long table with stiff chairs set tight to it squeezed the room. Over the table hung a giant spray of glass and shiny gold metal, a Shooting Star in late afternoon, and I wished that Wren could see it. Like a rabbit’s den, several openings led from this space, but the doors were closed. Most had small markings on them.

  On the walls between windows hung likenesses of people not present, such likenesses that might have helped me find my mother if I had them.

  She motioned me into one of the smaller rooms. It held a mat on legs covered with a white blanket. Beside it sat a small table topped with a bowl. Pale cloth fluttered at the window that looked out onto a steep rock wall.

  While her hands waved and her words rushed out, a slender man with narrow eyes like slits of dark mud shuffled into the room. His eyes searched the floor. He wore cloth the color of summer sky, and a single dark braid swung over one shoulder, shiny against his blue shirt. The woman spoke to him and he backed out, returning with a basket made of wood filled with steaming water. He glanced at me without warmth, looked at her as he poured the water into a metal log she had dragged, sweating, into the room.

  The man grumbled something. Her one word response proved sharp enough to make him drop his eyes again. He glared like a cornered marmot, almost losing his blue hat as he backed out, barely avoiding the dog who scooted by him to lie at my feet.

  The water steamed up. “Tub,” she said, pointing to the water.

  She dipped her hand in it and jerked it quickly out. Her long skirts swished past me and I peered around the door to watch her in an adjoining area lift a tail that forced water into another metal box. She dipped the wooden basket into it and poured that water into the log.

  “Well,” she said and pretended to rub on her face and shoulders with a white bar, smelled it with a deep breath, then dropped it into the steaming water.

  I stepped closer to watch it sink. When I turned back, I saw a glass next to the bed like the one in Wuzzie’s lodge. In it reflected my image.

  I jumped back, startled by the thin cheeks, eyes like rocks sunk into months-old snow, tangled strands, missing places and mats of hair, dirt all around my mouth, cracked lips, as dark and as thick as my eyebrows. Even my nabawici lay hidden beneath the dirt. Sores oozed from the side of my nose. One eye appeared swollen and draining, the other held an empty, distant look, though it could have been caused by the ripples that moved in the glass. What I saw in that mirror did not look like Asiam. It must be this Alice M.

  This woman had not even winced when she saw me; nothing crossed her eyes in judgment. She motioned me with her hands, but I could only guess at her meaning until she slipped off her shoe, turned, removed her dark stocking. She unpinned the white patch from her dress, started to work the tiny buttons. With one quick movement, she hiked up her skirt and dipped her toe into the water. She looked back at me, spoke.

  She stepped away from the tub, held her arms out, motioned me to do the same. Closer to me now, she began to pull the shredded sagebrush from my breast. I clutched at my clothes. She backed away, a look of regret on her face.

  Only the presence of the dog moving closer to me kept my feet from bolting out the door. But should I be frightened of people who lived with dogs? Yes, I told myself, remembering.

  She chattered like a magpie, motioning with her hands, and suddenly a great tiredness washed over me from the watching and the listening and the wondering, the uncertainty of it all. And when she motioned to me again, I permitted it, held my arms out like a child, asking for her help.

  Her touch was gentle as she lifted away the shredded sage, slowly, kindly, careful not to bump the scabs and sores that marked my body like angry welts. She seemed troubled by the circle of knots tied around my waist, not sure what to do with the dirty string. I lifted it over my head, wrapped it like a precious gift inside my fist. She tapped the little table next to the bed and I set it there, placed my memory in a knotted circle on a stone-topped table.

  She did not seem offended by my odor which I noticed in this small, warm room. Instead, she pushed her sleeves up beyond her elbows, dipped her hand into the tub, and pulled the bar out.

  “Soap,” she said and rubbed it against a cloth she then stroked gently along my jaw, pressed against my cheek below my eyes.

  Her hands touched soft as a lily pad, gentle, not unlike Lukwsh’s, especially the last morning when she had washed and dressed me, prepared me for my journey to another place and time.

  The woman leaned close enough for me to smell her breath, sweet like bee’s honey. It reminded me of healing. Tiny beads of perspiration glistened beneath her nose.

  I stepped into this tiny lake, turned and sat, slid under. The metal felt cool against my neck, and I could feel the warmth fill every crevice of my body, wash over every ache and exposed sore. It was unlike soaking in the lake, different than the sweat lodge heat that went deep inside while sitting surrounded by a circle of friends and steaming rocks. But I had stepped into a different place, must gather strength from both old and new.

  I leaned my head back, let steaming water soothe.

  She squeezed warm water from the rag. It foamed softly over my shoulders, slid down my back. The air felt sultry. A heaviness wiped over my eyes. I fell asleep.

  Fingers pulled at my scalp. I felt my hair pulled upward, crossed wehe flashed by my eyes. I grabbed at the bearer’s wrists, held her, twisted, water splashing against her dress forming dark stains. The woman startled. She was strong and wiry. The dog barked. She shook her head, said something in a pleading voice, her eyes moaned pain into mine.

  I searched the room, frantic, and found the door. I let her go, grabbed the tub’s wet sides, tried to stand, slipped and plunged like a wounded calf in water. The dog barked and lunged at me. A hot anger with myself flushed my face, anger that I slept.

  “Alice! Alice M!” she shouted. Her words, so strong, forced me to look.

  If she had gazed at me in that moment, she would have seen someone with mouth open in amazement. But she was busy, showing me on herself what she would do with a crossed wehe, pulling at her hair as though slicing through unseen tangles. Then she pulled a strand into the wehe and she snipped. A lock of her chestnut hair floated gently to the floor.

  “Scissors,” she said. Her eyes wore that pleading look again, offered apology, and she handed me the weapon—a place for fingers first—if I chose to take it.

  My fingers slid over the cool knives, then reached to stiff mats of my hair. I could barely pull them through the knots. My heart beat slower with my decision. I handed back the scissors, motioned with my hands for her to cut and snip—but not cut short—then slipped back into the water.

  The smile she extended seemed to light her face. Wisps of hair clung to her
cheeks, and she wiped her eyes and forehead with the back of her hand. Her voice began again the pleasing chatter as she talked to the dog. His skinny tail pounded the floor at his name, Bandit. She called me by name, Alice M, a word I recognized in the flow that drifted and moved from her mouth like sweet rice grasses dancing in the wind.

  There was something soothing about the chatter, something I had not known I missed, another loss wrapped in my separation from the people. Someone always talked there—aunties cooking, telling stories; uncles twisting tules for the duck boats, chiding their wives and sisters. Digging roots, drying salmon, skinning ducks—whatever people did, they did together. Children, cuddled or chastised by aunties, uncles, older sisters, and their parents or grandparents, sat in the center of things. At the gatherings, the weddings, the feasts, the rabbit hunts, a dozen voices might be talking all at once. Even babies put to sleep were kept within the chatter, a cloth laid across the board’s brace to block out sight but never words or laughter.

  And in the din that I had just begun to be a part of before being forced to leave, within the ebb and flow of words and laughter, the families of the people wove a shell around their children and each other, a shell that gave protection and said they all belonged.

  I pressed away tears.

  She tugged as gentle as a dog’s lick on my hair. I closed my eyes, amazed that while an owl I did not know pulled at my hair with crossed knives, I lay naked in a lake inside a wooden lodge.

  My journey to this new place had taken away my strength, and for many days I lay on the soft mat, my hands in fists like still brown clubs against the snow of cloth called sheets. Inside my skin I felt as though two women quarreled. One said I was the cause of so much ruin and should let my body drift away and die; another told me, Listen: gather farther, stay out longer, and do not return.