by Win Blevins
“Sure.”
Three
NAMELESS.
An hour before dawn Sam saw himself walking, stepping forward ceremoniously, slowly, into the steaming clouds of the Valley of the Smokes.
He was perfectly aware, in reality, that he was comfortably tucked into his robes and across the fire from his partner. Yet this other experience, this walking—it was more real than real.
Without words he knew—I am seeing beyond. Years ago, during the sun dance he gave, he had seen beyond.
Now he stepped, hesitantly, through the valley, blinded by mist. He was searching for something, and he had no idea what.
A jolt of fear surged in his blood. Something I will never find. The mist invaded his nostrils and filled his body and it was fear, wild, crazy fear.
He stood still and groped with one hand for something to hold on to. Fog wafted through his grasping fingers.
He brought back a memory. Several summers ago, at rendezvous, he had been taken over by a feeling this strong and strange. After hunting, he had walked to the edge of a cliff to spot the easy way down to the camp.
Suddenly, the feeling took over his body. It was a weakness in his knees, a yearning to take a single step forward into the empty air.
He leaned back against this inner force. Still the wild lure of walking into air held him. He shook. Finally, he threw himself backward onto his back and bottom.
Then he found his feet and his sanity and walked back to his horse. He shuddered, shook the feeling off, and for years thought no more about it.
Stop. Don’t remember. Be here in this seeing beyond.
In the Valley of the Smokes he padded forward, feeling disoriented, stupid. I am looking for something, but what . . . ?
He was half-blind, half-deaf, wandering. . . .
A huge snake appeared in the air in front of Sam, coiled. He had never seen a serpent like this. It was blue as a sapphire, and not smooth but faceted, like a gem. Even in this fog each surface gleamed, as though radiating its own sunlight.
Sam felt no pang of fear of the snake. It hadn’t come forward to strike him. It cocked its head and looked into Sam’s face.
Sam thought, It is a messenger, and now he felt fear wriggle up his back.
The snake squirmed, and flake by flake its facet-scales began to pop off its body.
Sam had seen dried husks of rattler skin hundreds of times in the West. He had always supposed that snakes let go of their old skins without noticing, whole, as an entire scab drops away without a pull.
That was not happening to Snake. He sent mighty spasms up and down his body. The scales bubbled up on his flesh like small blisters. Up and down his length the surges ran again. Amazingly—it was beyond amazing—each new scale was a gleaming new color, red, yellow, green, orange, or purple.
As a few scales dropped off, a hundred new ones blistered. Snake was turning into a sunburst of colors before Sam’s eyes.
Suddenly Snake drew Sam toward his own yellow orbs, divided by one black slit. Something in the look said . . .
Sam tried to see into the slit. He tried to ease his spirit out of his body and enter. . . . Fear quaked him, and he drew back with all his might.
Snake disappeared.
And Sam?
Stunned, disoriented, Sam shook in his robes. He reached around himself with his ears for the night sounds of camp and could not hear them. Wherever he was, it was not the Valley of the Smokes.
For a stabbing moment he thought he’d lost something important, something had drifted away like the steam of the hot springs. Then he remembered with a pang. Something nameless.
He wanted to be back on the earth, on the ground in his bedroll. An unaccountable nostalgia swooshed over him like a wave running up the sand, and he wanted the Yellowstone country. He loved this place. He decided to find it by reminding himself, like counting on his fingers, of some of the particular spots he loved. There was a lake in the heart of Yellowstone country that flowed toward the Atlantic Ocean from one end, to the Pacific from the other. A mountain studded with petrified stones, which always brought to Sam a sense of wonder. Another mountain of obsidian, good for making sharp blades and for trading to Indians. Yellowstone Falls, both lower and the upper, which seemed to Sam perfectly magical, gestures of a god bored by the practical and entranced by grace. Sometimes Sam imagined walking through the bottom of these long tumbles of waters, beyond the visible and into a trembling darkness.
The nameless feeling sloshed cold against the walls of his chest, but his mind knew no words for it.
Sam looked at the sky now and saw its stars, so clear they looked like clusters of shiny horseshoe nails. At lower altitudes they always seemed far duller. They revealed themselves only to people who rode high enough to see their truth.
Suddenly, he had a nutty idea. He would reshape the stars with his eyes. He would place them where he wanted and make words of them. Since he’d learned to read in his twenties, he’d grown very fond of it, and he even carried a volume of the verses of Lord Byron in his possible sack. The book was so much fun he could stand the word “Lord” in front of Byron.
Now Sam bent his mind hard to the task and pushed the stars around the sky until they formed words. He couldn’t hold more than one word at a time in his mind, though. He couldn’t tell what the words were, and none seemed to be the right ones. The nameless held itself aloof from words. He would start one word—he tried to shape “alone” from one herd of stars—but it seemed wrong. Then he’d rub it out in his mind, just like using an eraser on a blackboard, and start again.
He tried to make “hard times.” Those words sure spelled out the last couple of years. But the stars began to get fuzzy. He realized they weren’t nearly so bright. He didn’t have much to spell with.
Instead the stars said something to him. They turned into tiny animals. He could barely make out the shapes, but clearly they were humped buffalo, long-necked cranes, slinky coyotes, spry ants, and all the other animals of creation. And they started marching off. Step by measured step, they began walking off the black slate of the sky. They would need forever to empty out that slate—the stars were almost numberless, like the animals—but there they were, the vastest of herds, moving on.
Just then he heard Hannibal get up and step to the dead fire.
The stars were gone, and Sam didn’t know the nameless.
He heard a clank from Hannibal. Sam was half in a magical world with a blank sky and half in the ordinary world. He squirmed. He opened his eyes and looked at his partner. He didn’t dare glance at the dark sky. He rooted himself here on the ground in the steamy valley.
Then he smiled at himself. Aha. Eureka. Whatever words applied—words were Hannibal’s specialty. I still don’t know what the nameless is. Don’t understand myself or the world. But by God I know what to do.
He rolled over in his blankets, away from Hannibal.
Sam felt stuck. He wanted to talk to Hannibal and he couldn’t. Hannibal was the wisest man Sam knew. Sam was hoping to work his way to the banner Hannibal said he rode under, “Rideo, ergo sum” (I laugh, therefore I am).
But Sam couldn’t talk about what he saw beyond except to a medicine man. The tradition was that you did a sweat with him and told him what you had seen. It was like what Sam understood of the confessional, sacred and to be shared with no one.
The medicine man didn’t give absolution, and he might not give interpretation. A few questions, some hints, and a suggestion that only the seer could understand the vision, that would be all.
Sam wondered if he would get to things the right way with a Crow medicine man again, ever.
He sat up. He had to say something, even if it violated morning coffee silence.
“I can’t name it,” he told Hannibal, “but I can do it.”
Hannibal raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Let’s go get Esperanza,” Sam said.
Hannibal waited for his partner.
Sam sat up in his ro
bes. “We both know the truth. This trapping life, it’s finished. We know what comes next. Let’s get my daughter and head for California.”
Hannibal ran some thoughts through his mind, but he felt the need to speak only one.
“All right,” he said. He handed Sam a hot cup, poured himself one, looked across the rim of his cup at his partner, and said, “How are we going to keep the Crows from killing us?”
Four
FROM THE FIRST “Get along” Sam felt hard-minded about the job ahead of him, and he was impatient with everything that got in the way.
They stopped by Fort Hall to pick up their mail and buy some presents. Half-broke or not, they couldn’t go see Sam’s daughter and his in-laws without presents. The factor at the fort also gave Sam a long-awaited letter and an important package.
Then they rode east in a restless silence over the Salt River Range as fast as they could and into the valley of the Siskadee. Sam didn’t trouble to think or remember consciously. His memories were music tapped out by the horses’ hoofs.
Sam had written his life on every piece of this country. He’d been in the first trapping party to cross the Southern Pass and wander into the beaver heaven of the Green River Valley. That was Jedediah Smith’s 1824 outfit, the first to winter with the Crows. Bedazzled youngster that he was, Sam fell in love with Meadowlark. The next winter he came back and courted her, won her heart, disgraced himself, and eloped with her.
Sam rode and felt the days of his life in the morning’s dawn and the evening’s sunset, in the curve of the river, in the swaying of Paladin’s back at an easy lope. Paladin herself, a gift from Meadowlark’s uncle Bell Rock, was now Sam’s saddle horse of seventeen years, the binding of his comradeship with Meadowlark’s dead brother Blue Medicine Horse, still his fleshly connection to the family.
Sam couldn’t fall asleep at night without Meadowlark coming to him in touches, glances, warmth of body next to him. The hold of their eyes was the dancing of soul mates.
He pulled the blanket of sleep over his memories before they got to what happened. The lovers eloped and married. They went eagerly to California, because Meadowlark yearned to see the great-water-everywhere. They were incredibly happy. At Monterey she died in childbirth.
He brought his daughter back, after big troubles, to the Crow village east of the Yellowstone country where she belonged. The chief, and the child’s grandparents, told him to get out and stay out. He did, twelve long years ago.
Daylight brought Sam back to the here and now. He and Hannibal swam the Siskadee—in May the river was at flood tide—and pushed their way up the Southern Pass. They made primitive bivouacs at night, doing nothing but throwing down their bedrolls and hobbling the horses. No need to speak.
Hannibal had watched for twelve years as Sam lived the hard terms of his exile from the Crows. Each year he had trapped and traded and had adventures. Each July he saw Esperanza at rendezvous, because his brother-in-law Flat Dog was kind enough to bring her. But Esperanza never treated Sam as her father, not really. She was no American. Her first language was Crow and her second language Spanish, her mother Julia’s native tongue. Esperanza’s world was Crow, her habits Crow, her thoughts Crow.
Hannibal also knew Sam felt the loss of more than his daughter. He lost the Crows as his people, the Kit Foxes as his warrior society, the path of the sacred pipe and the vision quest as their shared religion.
The tribe gave him no choice. So Sam set his heart against the pain and with Hannibal made another life, winters lazing in Taos, autumns and springs wading creeks full of beaver, in summer rendezvousing with friends and Sam’s fragment of family. Together Hannibal and Sam made two trips to California to buy horses, drove them back to the mountains, and made good profit selling them.
Sam seemed happy—hell, they were young men on the adventure. But he seldom talked about Esperanza.
As they started down South Pass, not far from the village now, Sam kept his mind clear and refused to worry. He watched the ridgelines for movement, for signs of game or enemies. He gave himself to the task at hand, minding his mare Paladin and his second mount.
He refused, even at night in his blankets, with every chore down and every precaution taken, to think about the words he was going to say to his brother-in-law and sister-in-law, who had raised his daughter. He didn’t ponder what they might say in answer. He forbade himself to imagine what Esperanza would say.
Life was not his to control. He was doing what he saw he had to do.
Knowing what occupied his partner’s mind, Hannibal angled his own to the practical. How the devil were they going to ride into the village of Chief Rides Twice and not get shot? And back out?
ON THE POPO Agie River they picked up the trail of the village. Near the big bend of the Wind River they spotted it in the distance through their field glasses. The village bustled with people and dogs, and women were covering high wooden racks with slabs of buffalo meat, laying them broadside to the sun to dry.
“They just finished with the hunt,” said Sam.
After each cold winter in the high valley of the Wind River the village traveled to these buffalo plains and made meat for the summer. Bones swelled with flesh again. The elderly gave thanks for surviving another season of cold and hunger. The young men made plans to win honors in ventures against their enemies. Because bellies were full, it was a good time.
Sam and Hannibal looked at each other. “Nothing else for it,” Sam said.
On a rise above the village they dismounted and waited in full sight. The sentries came quickly. Immediately Sam saw that they were teenagers, too young to remember him the last time he entered this village. He told them in the Crow language, “I have come to see my brother-in-law Flat Dog.” Sam sounded a lot calmer than Hannibal felt.
The lead sentry nodded, and one of his companions rode back toward the circle of tipis. He met Flat Dog halfway there, coming at a gallop.
Flat Dog leaped off his moving horse and handed the reins to a sentry. Flat Dog grinned broadly and strode forward. Only Sam and Hannibal could see the slight quiver in his stride. The Crow gave Sam a Taos greeting, a clap on both shoulders and a buss on the cheek. “Welcome, Brother-in-law.”
“Welcome, friend,” to Hannibal, and an abrazo for him, too.
“Your daughter is well, Julia well, the children well,” said Flat Dog. These words were as much for the sentries as for Sam and Hannibal. The young guards drew back and let them ride toward the village.
Fifty paces out Flat Dog’s voice lifted up the song of their warrior society. “You dear Foxes, I want to die, so I say.” Sam joined in immediately. This was his declaration, his shield. “I am a Kit Fox,” it announced. “I am a Crow warrior.”
Hannibal’s eyes ate up everything. Because his friend was banned from this village, Hannibal had been here only once, a dozen years ago. He remembered Rides Twice but had no idea what the chief’s brothers and nephews looked like. Their hands would wield the weapons.
Sam, you dumb bastard, how could you have killed the chief’s only son? Hannibal knew and understood perfectly—he had watched it—but the creepy crawlies along his spine weren’t thinkers.
The women stopped their work of drying meat and stared. Children quit playing and gaped at the strangers. The old men watched through lidded eyes. Some of the young men reached for their bows or their war clubs. But all stood still, frozen by the song and its announcement in their language, “I am a Kit Fox. I am one of you.”
Sam’s face was the picture of concentration and devotion. A part of him, Hannibal knew, still longed to be a Kit Fox among his comrades.
Flat Dog led them to his tipi. As they staked the horses next to the lodge, Sam saw Esperanza walking up. Her steps were hesitant and a little crooked. “Papa?”
She was beautiful, her hair auburn, eyes brown, skin the color of cream stirred with powdered chocolate. Sam held out his arms to her. She put on a face of confidence, stepped up to him forthrightly, and offered her
hand to shake.
Sam shook it. He was so tickled that she would try out a white-man custom that he didn’t tell her that ladies don’t shake hands.
Pleased with herself, she stuck out her hand also to the man she called Uncle Hannibal. He bowed over it, and she made a funny face.
Flat Dog said, “Let’s do this inside.”
Ducking through the tipi flap, Hannibal took a last glance and thought, I feel naked here.
Five
SAM WAS GLAD that Crows were not people to plunge straight into questions, because he felt funny about the answers. He gave Julia the sack of coffee beans he’d brought as one of her gifts. She stepped outside, visible through the open flap, to build up the fire and make the hot brew.
Few words, many smiles. Sam’s vision swam a little. Daughter, brother-in-law, sister-in-law. Relatives, companions, people he’d faced death with. Flat Dog and Julia’s two boys must be somewhere around, probably off playing kids’ games or with their grandparents.
Sam fished in his possible sack, brought out the box sent by Grumble, and handed it to his daughter. She looked surprised. He enjoyed bringing her a gift each summer and thought it opened Esperanza’s heart more than she acknowledged.
She slid off the wooden lid.
“It’s called a marionette,” said Sam.
It was a carved wooden horse, each part painted brightly in red, green, blue, or lilac, with strings going up to a hand control. Esperanza looked at it, mystified.
“Let Hannibal show you,” said Sam.
She handed it to him, and he dangled the horse from the strings. He showed her how to make the head and tail move. Then he made the horse walk across the dirt floor, using motion of the head and tail to make it look more realistic. Everyone knew his skill in training real horses, and he handled this wooden creature deftly.
Esperanza squealed and clapped her hands. “Papa,” she said, “it’s wonderful.”