Big Waters patted the baby boy on the back tenderly. She disapproved of the way the Hatterbys had stomped through the infirmary, their heavy boots waking any sleeping child within earshot, and taken Clement’s sister with them. They passed all the other children without reaching out to touch or smile or bother about them at all.
Big Waters massaged the back of the baby’s head and neck. It felt good to have one so vulnerable depend upon her again. Clement. He weighed less than a rabbit. He was pale and cold. He nuzzled in close to her breast. Already her pains eased. She brought him to her mouth and dripped a little tobacco juice into his. He livened at that. His arms pushed against his blanket, and his eyes watered.
They were a good pairing: he young, she old. He an orphan, she a discarded wife. He tended toward the chills, she toward hot flashes. He bony, she full of fat. His skin dry and peeling, hers shiny with oil. His eyes wild and mismatched, hers black like tree knots and steady. He ugly, she ugly too. Both unwanted but for each other.
Big Waters took the child to her own bed that night, and she tucked herself and the child into the blankets. When the baby cried, she leaned toward the table and dipped a corner of cloth into milk, then placed the cloth in the child’s mouth. When he sucked it dry, she repeated the process until he was sated. They slept like mother and child, warm and cozy as bears in the sun.
At first morning light, Big Waters strapped Clement to her back and carried him to the kitchen, where Mother St. John stood drinking coffee and chewing on a piece of pemmican while she scraped the frost off the window with her fingernails. Loaves of grainy bread sat cooling on the counter for breakfast, raising a yeasty steam. “He will be as my own,” said Big Waters.
“Very well, old woman,” said the nun. “Though he is small and sickly, surely he’ll thrive under your care.”
Big Waters understood. She brought Clement to the barn with her and placed him in the straw on his blanket while she fed the mules and milked the cow.
Big Waters was born in the time when the voyageurs sought the water passage from the East to the West. Each new season, new men came. Yellow haired, red haired, brown haired. Many with blue eyes, some with green. Dressed in strange clothes—hooded capes the color of the sky, red caps, cloth pants. All of them stroking canoes up the river, waving the flags of their people. As a girl, she had learned English and French and even a little Spanish. In that time, Big Waters spent her days traveling with her father, and then later her husband, to make negotiations or trades or help the voyageurs navigate the maze of waterways or the land routes to the best trapping places. In her opinion, and among the talk of many other women, Big Waters had saved the people from certain starvation many winters. How quickly the men could be tricked into bad deals after a few drinks of whiskey. They never seemed to learn. Each time they’d come away from such an affair, their heads would hurt, they would vomit on the trail, they would be ashamed by how lightly the horses and women could walk under their empty packs. They would begin the cursing of the white man. They were cheaters. They were devils. This was an endless conversation. It had already lasted many generations.
Each season, the people would bring their pelts to the trading station or fort where the French or the British, for a while even the Spanish, and finally the Americans staked claim by raising big cloths that waved on tall poles. For many seasons, the men had given away more of the people’s hunting grounds, their fishing places, their settlement lands, while singing and drinking with the white ones, while making fools of themselves, dancing with broomsticks and with tin buckets on their heads. At each session, Big Waters and the other women were expected to stand off along the wall, to wait to carry the goods, and to be quiet. They had been silent so often that many children had died from hunger. The next season, Big Waters simply stepped forward among the men at the long table at the fort and said, “I would like to read that paper before these fools put their marks on it.”
That was the end of her time among her people. Though she’d saved the people from giving away another parcel of place, from agreeing to remain confined in a bare space with no animals or water, she’d insulted the men, her husband in particular, and he had declared her banished.
The next day, he had a new wife. In the same way her mother had disappeared all those years before, Big Waters then walked into the tall grasses. Her children were directed to turn their backs to her as she left.
Her own children did this. The one Big Waters had nursed until he could ride a horse. The one she had tended to night and day for many months while he lay crying and recovering from burns suffered in foolish play, in dares of manhood made by one child to another. Had he forgotten how she had held him in the cold river water day and night? Or how she held her hand over his mouth so the other boys would not hear his crying and think him a coward? Even her only girl, the one who was betrothed to a Spanish brute with a withered arm until Big Waters begged on her behalf to her father, saving her from the bad marriage, even she turned her back to Big Waters. She from whom Big Waters later pulled the upside-down baby after three days of pain and delirium, saving both their lives, also turned her back. She who had been stolen by the enemies for a slave and whose return Big Waters had negotiated by trading her own fine beadwork and tunics, she turned her back. Even the two she had taken into her own heart as her own after their mother succumbed to disease. They all turned their backs to her. Never to call her mother again. These were the events Big Waters could not speak of to anyone except the small baby in her arms, the one whose little ear was so near her lips. She would be a good mother to Clement, and he would be an obedient son.
Big Waters introduced Clement to the finicky horse, left by the girl who had birthed the twins. The beast snorted at the baby’s scent. The baby sneezed at the horse’s. Big Waters let the animal sniff the child again, then laid Clement in the straw while she worked; but she didn’t take her eyes off that horse. He showed her his teeth but didn’t try to bite her this time. The warm, stewy air of the barn entered Clement’s lungs. He breathed deeply in a way that swelled his chest, like a river about to overflow. He slept soundly and snored. When he woke, Big Waters mixed milk with molasses and sugar and let him suck. She tried to make peace with the horse and offered it a bit of sugar too, but it snapped at her finger, and she kicked its leg. This horse had a bad spirit. Big Waters called him Hole-in-the-Day, after her husband. But Hole-in-the-Day’s spirit wasn’t as bad as her husband’s. Whereas his breath had smelled of throat fire and bile, the horse’s smelled mealy and grassy, and only occasionally of stomach odor. Even then, its breath worked magic on Clement. While the boy slept beneath the horse’s nose, he grew and strengthened. The vapor healed whatever ailed the baby.
Within a few weeks, Clement was smiling at the animal, which showed an odd tolerance for him. Clement’s cheeks grew fat. His legs plumped from arrows to clubs. Within a few months he reached for the horse’s ears to pull and gnaw at them. The beast was patient. Soon Clement used its nose to pull himself to standing position, which the horse resigned itself to without complaint, even when the child’s sharp fingernails scratched into its delicate pink skin. Because of this, Big Waters forgave the horse its bad disposition. Still, she looked forward to the day when the child, instead of her, could be charged with its care. For Big Waters knew the horse would have a long life, as did all males who were particularly bothersome to her.
22
Beaver Jean Ponders Changes
IF BEAVER JEAN WAS GOING to set out for the nation of the beef, he’d have to get supplies and bundle up his wives and pack them along. Beaver Jean coaxed Alice away from the Schmidt brothers’ place and back toward his own cabin near Stillwater and then on to Fort Pierre, about a month’s journey west. Alice was getting old and tried to sit down every few minutes. The rides with her were getting longer and longer, slower and slower. Beaver Jean had a lot of time to think.
That Schmidt brother had made him mighty mad, suggesting he didn’t know the way to the Dakota
lands. Of course he did! He’d practically written the maps! He’d been out on a voyage that way with a couple of French railroad cartographers who’d worked for Jedediah Smith himself, before Smith got mauled by that bear. Beaver Jean had snatched up poisonous rattlesnakes, eaten the meat, and sold those skins for a good price. Beaver Jean would have bet the toes he had left that neither of those Schmidt brothers had ever handled a rattlesnake. Whoa boy! He chuckled to himself now, imagining the shaky one handling a rattlesnake. Ho! He imagined the snake rearing around and biting Schmidt on the nose. Beaver Jean laughed so hard, he nearly fell off Alice. He righted himself.
“Move along, Alice,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go yet before ye can sit down and rest awhile.” Alice clopped along the icy path. Beaver Jean reached down and patted her neck. She was a good horse, but she probably wouldn’t last much longer.
Beaver Jean now worried. The last trek he’d taken to the big portage had not been fruitful. The men, different from the old traders and trappers, had told him that nobody wanted beaver pelts anymore, that the English now preferred silk hats.
Beaver Jean had hoped for many years to discover some kind of new material that could make him rich, but he’d had no luck yet. Some said there was copper to be found in these parts, but Beaver Jean was sure that was nonsense. He knew there was gold in the Dakotas, but the Indians from those parts would never allow a white man to stick a pick or shovel into their sacred land. Others said that trees were the way to wealth, and Beaver Jean saw truth in an economy based on timber, but cutting and shipping trees didn’t seem very exciting or noble. The trees were in plain sight and didn’t fight back when you chopped them down. Where was the thrill of the hunt? The contest between man and beast? Others were talking of moving the Indian nations farther west to open up land for planting crops, as they’d done in the East and in the South. Beaver Jean hoped agriculturing wouldn’t happen to these wooded parts, but he supposed eventually farming would come here, the way it, along with Bible preachers, smallpox, and bad smells, accompanied the New Englanders wherever they went. These parts had recently been overrun with New Englanders, the kind who talk a lot about politics, money, exploration, farming, fine clothes, good tobacco, abolition, and even privileges for women.
Though men like Beaver Jean and the Schmidt brothers had lived here for decades and should rightfully have been in charge, the newcomers were claiming this spot and that one, putting docks and nets and boats in the river, building bridges, developing stores along the main roads, naming places and pounding stakes into the ground, and building up houses with deep basements, churches made of limestone, a courthouse with jail cells. Everything they made now was built to stay. They were staying, and the world was changing from wild to civilized. Beaver Jean’s pappy would have said these changes were right. Beaver Jean felt they were wrong and that the natural order should prevail. Beaver Jean intended to teach his own son the right ways, the traditional methods of hunting and trapping, once he was old enough. Beaver Jean was eager to teach all he knew to his own seed.
Beaver Jean turned Alice toward an abandoned dugout left by a trapper who died in it one winter and wasn’t discovered until the next spring.
“We’ll warm up here for the night,” he told Alice. Into the darkness, Beaver Jean shouted, “Jean-Pierre LaFoilette, if yer half-bred ghost be in here, it’s yer old friend Beaver Jean askin’ permission to spend the night out of the wind with his poor ol’ nag, Alice. We both got achy feet, one of which had some toes removed from it not so long ago. We remember how ye in life were as pleasant a person and skillful beaver trapper to ever have walked these woods.” Beaver Jean listened for a disagreeable spirit but heard no objection, so he brought Alice inside with him.
It was cozy in there, and he and she would keep each other warm. He built a fire, took off his boot, and unraveled his bandage. The place where the toes used to attach to the foot was swollen and very white and puffed up like the underbelly of a fish. “That looks better than I thought it might,” he told Alice. “We’ll both of us rest our feet tonight and then pick up them squaws tomorrow. Then we’ll head out to get that runaway woman and child and hopefully find Lydian, the one who used to braid your mane, somewhere along the way. A girl like that won’t likely last long without the care of her man.”
Beaver Jean rested alongside Alice’s belly. He spread a buffalo blanket over himself and over her hind legs. He dreamt that night of a man who was his son, but grown up and sitting across a log floating on a river.
His wives packed up for the journey agreeably. For thirty-three days, Beaver Jean and In the Trees and The Girl with Friend Eyes enticed Alice across the long prairie, through cold rivers, and into the land where the Dakota fought with the Arikara, a farming group with feisty work dogs running around. When last Beaver Jean had been out this way, the Arikara had been a robust and populous group, spreading from horizon to horizon across the world, it seemed. But now their numbers were sorely diminished, and their earthen homes sat abandoned on the plains. According to one old one, who’d been left behind because of her sore eyes and old age, a terrible disease had taken many, and big fighting with the Tetons chased away the others. Beaver Jean moved his horse and wives along. They passed among grave mounds and over burned fields now sprinkled with snow. The wind talked to him and told him this place was haunted.
The Girl with Friend Eyes shamed In the Trees by saying her Dakota people ought to stop pestering the Arikara and quit burning up their corn and scaring the little Arikara children and dogs. In the Trees slapped The Girl with Friend Eyes and said the Ojibwe started it by pestering the Dakota out of their lands and pushing them to this barren territory in the first place.
Beaver Jean used the reins to slap both of them in the legs. “Ye both make right points, but now is the time to be peaceful squaws and quit bickering amongst yerselves.” Beaver Jean sighed. Then he raised his arm and pointed from one side of the earth to the other. “Look, ye women. The world is empty, with enough places for everyone to lay down their head or plant their corn or fish the rivers or hunt the buffalo.” He pointed at first to one wife, then the other. “No need for fighting. There is, always has been, and always will be enough room for all of you if you don’t get too greedy, which ye women tend to get.”
He thought to himself that he had managed the women’s troubles with great skill. Finally, after more days of walking, the trio spotted a stone fort to the west, surrounded by encampments.
“We made it,” said Beaver Jean. “That Negress and boy should be here and will hopefully agree to come dutifully.”
Among the tipis and mud houses, In the Trees found some people who knew her sister.
“Stay and enjoy yerself for a while if ye want, but take yer other one too, and I’ll take Alice with me to ask about our bounty.” In the Trees and The Girl with Friend Eyes sauntered off.
Beaver Jean entered the fort and swelled up with air. Trappers draped in capes and skins walked here and there. Soldiers sat on stumps, spitting on their boots and wiping them shiny. Some Arikara men led a pack of dogs pulling a cart of tubers and onions toward a shack that looked to be a store. After so many adventuring weeks, it was nice again to see people alive and well on the earth. Even Alice lifted her nose and seemed to be smelling the interesting scents. Beaver Jean showed every other person Eliza’s wanted paper.
“Ye seen this one?” “Ye know her?” “Ye heard about a runaway woman and child?” But no one knew anything. Then a Negro blacksmith motioned for him to come near. Beaver Jean showed him the paper.
The blacksmith scoffed at him. “Yull come all dah way from Stullwater? Yull don’t even know how dumb yull are. Whatchu chasin’ hepless woman and chile for?” he asked, holding a horseshoe in blazing red tongs. “Big man like yursuf. Whyn’t you chasin’ sumfin else, that’s hurtin’ somun.”
“This woman ran away from her rightful owners,” said Beaver Jean. “If she were a free woman, I’d not hound her in the least bit. But this
be a fair pursuit of a criminal according to the law.” He stepped back as the blacksmith sunk the horseshoe into water. It sizzled and fizzed and splattered.
“Yull talk like dat round me more and yull fine this tongs up your asshul,” the blacksmith said. He smacked his tongs against the side of a hot cauldron.
“There’s no call for yer foul talk.”
The blacksmith launched into a rambling then. “I’ll talk what I wunt to talk. Um free with papers whut saw so. Yull better nut threatun me. Ill thretun yull better thun whut yull can say to me. Ill threatun a brand yull on the face and burn that beard uff yull stupid jaw.”
“I don’t have to stand here and take this abuse from ye!” said Beaver Jean. “I don’t tell ye how to do yer employment, do I?” Beaver Jean crossed his arms and leaned back, satisfied that he had made a convincing argument.
The blacksmith went on. “Yull too dumb to find anybody. I knowd lotsa bondaged ones prolly going right under yull nose in dat Stullwater place. Yull sure is dumb. They be long gone by now. Yull prolly passed ’em on the road. But they bes flying away from yull and all yull dummies chasin’ ’em. Yull sure is dumb.” The blacksmith threw back his head and laughed.
Beaver Jean was confused by the blacksmith’s talk. “Come on, Alice.” Beaver Jean pulled the horse away from the blacksmith. “And ye just lost a customer with yer bad mouth. This horse needs new shoes real sorry, but ye won’t be getting money from me even though I’m limping under the weight of how much coins I have! Ye’ll be sorry now as I walk away to do my blacksmithing business with a less abusive smithy!”
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