Life at the Speed of Us
Page 23
“Towéiyak,” I said over my shoulder.
“Towéiyak?” Súmáí’s mom said.
“For teaching me to sew.” I smashed a tear from my cheek. “That is my mother.”
Súmáí’s mom nodded. “She is beautiful.”
I smiled and said in English. “Did you hear that, Mom? Beautiful.”
40
T hat evening, I sat on one of the willow beds in our tepee, staring at nothing. Once, the space Súmáí and I inhabited had held only two words, but it had never, ever, been simple. Now, it spanned three languages, and I was more confused than ever. Always, beyond any words, I’d felt drawn to him. Just then it seemed we were connected by a bungee that was stretched to its limit, and I sensed it preparing to recoil, to hurtle us toward something we could not control.
“Come home, Súmáí,” I said for the hundredth time. This was our first separation since I’d arrived in his world. I picked up the water basket and headed to the creek, glad our tepee was on the camp’s tip, where there were fewer eyes to follow me.
At the grassy bank, I knelt down and, gripping the basket tight against the current, dipped it in and watched water eddy into its pine-pitch lining. Would this water live on? Had I drunk it 136 years later? I set the heavy basket beside me and spit into the creek. I watched my bubbly saliva wash downstream. Maybe someday I’ll drink a molecule of that, I thought and looked at the sky. Maybe a falling drop of it will hit me. I held up my palm and studied my lifeline for signs of this world.
“Sovern.”
I flinched. “Don’t do that!”
Súmáí’s face was grim. “Whites camp over Big Ridge. Whites that seek the shiny rocks.”
“Miners?”
“And soldiers.”
My hand flew to my mouth. I rose, facing him.
“The men gather in my father’s tepee to smoke and consult the spirits.”
“Can I come?” I spoke through my fingers.
He shook his head. His eyes held a thousand words, yet he just turned and walked toward his father’s tepee.
While Súmáí’s mother, aunt, and Túwámúpǘch prepared the evening meal, I stitched beads—a new amulet bag for Súmáí—with my ears tuned on the voices in the tepee. All I could make out were muffled words. Túwámúpǘch took her baby from its cradleboard and, folding down one side of her dress, nursed him. His little hand reached up, his fingers so tiny, even down to his miniature fingernails. Túwámúpǘch held out her finger and he gripped it.
“He is handsome,” I said.
She actually smiled, sort of.
Súmáí stormed out of the tepee.
“Súmáí!” his mother scolded.
“I am no longer a child, Mother!” he snapped. Then he looked at me like someone had stabbed him, and my pulse skipped a beat. He spun on his heel and stormed toward our tepee. I looked at his mother.
“He always battled his cradleboard,” she said.
I packed up my beadwork, pulse pounding as Súmáí’s uncle emerged, followed by Panákwas and Mú’ú’nap, who walked, stern-faced, toward their tepees.
“We will move camp at dawn,” his uncle said. “Panákwas and Mú’ú’nap will keep watch tonight.”
The other women seemed to expect this news. I just about choked. I looked at Túwámúpǘch, and she nodded toward our tepee.
I found Súmáí inside, on a willow-bough bed, glowering as he sharpened his knife against a stone. I’d never seen him so tense, such an echo of Gage it froze me. I’d always wondered why Gage, who had both parents, money, and intellect, was so angry with the world. Was it a ripple of this self?
After a while, I moved behind Súmáí and slid my arm around his waist. I kissed the tip of his ear and lay my cheek against his back. “I heard.”
He swiveled to me and cut a lock of my hair with his knife. He opened his amulet bag and folded it in.
“Why won’t you look at me?” I said.
His eyes met mine, and their barely contained fury stole my breath. “You must go.”
“What?”
“I was wrong to keep you. Return to your world. I do not know where my people will make camp. There could be no trees. Or different trees.”
“I’m not ready!”
“Sovern, my father will not fight! We have no hope.”
Whatever equation existed for this moment, it was the inverse of when I’d arrived here. “Come with me.”
He shook his head.
“Please!”
I took his hand, and he looked down at my grip.
“You’d get used to my world,” I said. “We could buy some land, live where there aren’t so many people. There’s lots of places like that. We could hunt. There’s deer and elk everywhere.”
“Gage lives in your world.”
How could I have forgotten? I swallowed back the guilt of killing my cub-self.
“Dammit,” I said and nudged Súmáí, hoping he’d get the joke. “Okay … we could find a world where you and I didn’t exist. One with lots of game for hunting.”
“That is not the way of the trees.”
“We’ll figure out a way!”
“How would we walk in that world?”
“I don’t know! We’ll figure it out!”
He returned to honing his knife. “My place is with my people.”
“Dammit, Súmáí! There’s so much you haven’t told me! Tell me!” I took a deep breath, felt I teetered on a thin line. I was furious with myself for settling into life here, for not hounding him relentlessly for information. Now we were out of time. “Remember science? The things we’ve figured out about how things work in my world? I’m really good at a type of it. Sort of. Maybe. I’m good at math.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Come with me for now. We’ll get you someplace safe while I figure this out.” I had no idea if I could really figure anything out, but I had to get Súmáí somewhere safe. “Then we can be together. It might take some time, but—”
The flat of his knife’s blade pressed against my lips.
I swatted his hand away. “You mean to die with your people?”
“Would you not do the same?”
That stopped me. I considered the last year, how I’d self-destructed, refusing to accept Mom’s death. Wishing I’d died with her. Or instead of her. I heard Handler say, so kind it hurt, Your mother’s gone, Sovern. I heard Dad say, You’re destroying yourself trying to keep her alive.
Out the hole at our tepee’s top, the sky was twilight. I’d felt like I was healing, like maybe I could accept Mom dying after all. Now I faced losing Súmáí? His tribe? Loving them all as dead things? My pain intensified by a power of ten, and I screamed. With all I had. At dreams and beliefs and love and happiness and the orderly lie of math. At tests. At fate.
Súmáí wrapped me in his arms. He rocked me, and my screams diminished to wails. I started saying “Never!” over and over. When I couldn’t say it anymore, I filled my mouth with his hair and bit down. After a time, I fell asleep with his wrist’s pulse beating beneath my cheek, our legs tangled, the fingers of his other hand weaved into mine.
I woke to something pulling the corners of my mouth and jostling the back of my head. I sat up as my hands were drawn behind me and bound. I wanted to scream but was afraid. Had the whites invaded in the night? Had my screams revealed the village? Súmáí appeared and pressed his finger to his lips, gesturing silence.
He held my snowboard pants to my feet. I knew what he was up to then, and I kicked like crazy. He was so strong, though, and my balance was off from my bound arms. Before I knew it, he’d rolled me onto my side and gotten my pants to my knees. He stood me up, tugged the pants to my waist, and bound them with my belt. He pulled my underwear shirt, long-since washed of blood, over my head. He didn’t bother with the arms.
A horse waited with my parka draped across its back. He crouched and held out his clasped hands as a step. No doubt he’d toss me across the beast—sack-of-potatoes style—if I didn’t cooperate.
I sucked a long breath. I was going to kill him when I had the chance. He chuckled at my expression as I stepped into his hands, and he hoisted me. My butt plopped onto my parka, and my phone in its pocket—long since drained of battery—pressed the back of my thigh. The horse took a sideways step. I’d never sat on a horse, and the sensation of sitting on something alive stole my attention.
Súmáí gripped a piece of mane and swung onto the horse effortlessly in front of me. He tied my rope’s other end around his waist. He steered the horse up the path I’d first arrived on. I laid my head against Súmáí’s back and tugged furiously at my bound hands. He glanced over his shoulder. I let out a noise that sounded like a wild animal.
“This is how it must be,” he said.
Whatever. He was not winning this battle.
I finally settled down and molded my body against his. My stomach growled. We’d missed dinner. I glanced at the moon, a spotlight overhead. I’d never realized how unreliable the moon was until I lived here. It was always moving, setting early some nights, late others. I didn’t trust it.
When I felt Súmáí finally relax, I chose an area ahead clear of bushes and rocks. I counted down, gathering courage—six, five, four, three, two, one! I swung my leg behind me and slid off the horse.
Súmáí grunted, yanked backward, and landed on top of me, our bows and arrows brutal lines of impact. I squeaked pain but kicked at him with all I had. I rolled up and started to run, but the short rope stopped me in a one-kneed crouch, like I was starting a sprint.
“Are you hurt?” His voice was so soft, so caring.
My chin dropped to my chest.
He leaned closer—I knew he would—and rested his palm on my shoulder. I’d thought my next move would be harder, but I was driven by rage. I swung my head, clocking him in the temple. He toppled back, the rope pulling me onto him. He was out cold.
I rolled onto my back, falling halfway off his body, and groped for his knife. So that I wouldn’t cut him, I eased carefully onto my side before drawing it from its sheath. It took a while, but I rotated the blade till it faced up. Freshly sharpened, it sliced through the rawhide binding my wrists with hardly any pressure. I slid my arms into my long underwear’s sleeves and pried the gag out of my mouth.
Our bows rested along his side with his arm through them. I extracted mine and then slugged him. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” I said. I fled to the aspens.
41
About fifty yards into the aspen grove, I looked back at Súmáí. I couldn’t leave him lying there unconscious. I trudged to a log and plopped down. I rested my chin in my hands and pressed the tips of my ring fingers against the inside corners of my eyes to dam them, but water still leaked out. I heaved a breath, and my whole body shook.
Who did he think he was? I wasn’t his property! Whether I went back or not was my decision. Not his. I clenched my fists. Then Tara’s black eye and stitched forehead rose in my memory. I heard him say, We are at war with the white enemy, and it hit me one hundred percent that he wasn’t planning to live. He really believed his people would be massacred or dragged to a reservation. He was probably right, and he would never let himself be forced into captivity. He’d die fighting. He was sending me off before that happened.
I heard a faint noise and movement. My ears strained and made out the scuff of a hoof against rock, a low whisper, and leather’s squeak. I rose, head swinging from the noise to Súmáí and back. I glimpsed motion downhill. I whistled low—the hunting signal Súmáí had taught me.
Mú’ú’nap stepped out from behind a tree and I rushed to him, both of us whispering, “Soldiers!”
My eyes darted to Súmáí, and Mú’ú’nap’s gaze followed. He sucked in his breath.
“He’s fine.” I hiked my bow higher on my shoulder.
“He does not look fine.”
“We had a fight. I’ll wake him. We will distract the soldiers.”
Mú’ú’nap smirked and glanced at Súmáí once more, and I knew Súmáí would never hear the end of this. If we lived.
Mú’ú’nap nodded. “Panákwas tracks the soldiers on the other side.” He sprinted off.
I scurried to Súmáí. For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. I needed to burn him into my memory. “Súmáí, soldiers!” I whispered.
He sat up, rubbing the side of his head. His eyes weren’t focused.
“Soldiers are coming. Now!”
He scrambled to his knees, felt his knife was out of its sheath, picked it up, and replaced it.
“Mú’ú’nap has gone to warn the village! We need to distract the soldiers!”
He rose, wobbling, and whispered, “You must go! Go now to the tree!” He led the horse to me and held out one rein. I noticed it was that first horse I’d led, the one with the white oval on its forehead.
“Dammit, Súmáí! This isn’t your choice!”
“You are not meant to die here!” he whispered.
“Maybe I am! Maybe that was the plan all along. How do you know?”
His piercing gaze reeled back a million miles and a sort of understanding settled in his face as a frown. Resignation moved down his body. His expression scared me more than anything I’d seen in his world. More than the approaching soldiers.
“What?” I whispered. “Please, tell me!”
He half-nodded, half shook his head, closed the distance between us, and held me so tight I lost all my air. He touched that freckle riding my lip and looked up at the moon. He held up his crossed fingers. I held up mine and pressed my wrist to his.
“This way,” I whispered.
At the log I’d been sitting on, I could hear the soldiers again. Súmáí cocked his head, listening too. The horses gave them away, and I realized how wise Súmáí had been to leave our horse behind. We moved diagonally up the hill, and the soldiers’ sounds grew louder.
My hunting lessons paid off. I moved almost silently except for the crackling yellow grass, despite my clunky snow boots. The sounds were suddenly close, and I smelled, of all things, Ivory soap. Súmáí slid behind an aspen trunk. I slid behind one a few feet away.
Soldiers were descending, bodies swaying side-to-side from riding horses downhill. Over every shoulder bobbed a rifle. I hadn’t considered guns. I knew Chief Úwápaa kept rifles in his tepee and that probably every Ute brave but Súmáí, the purist, had at least one firearm in his tent.
I’d counted twenty-three soldiers when Súmáí eased his bow off his shoulder and notched an arrow in its string. I did the same. Our eyes met, and he nodded. We both turned and shot. Shot again. Four soldiers fell, and their horses lurched to the side or trotted a few steps. One whinnied.
The soldiers just ahead of them spun their horses, rifles sliding to the ready.
“Attack!” someone called.
Súmáí took off up the mountain, and I sprinted behind him. At our heels came the sounds of horses moving fast and men’s shouts. One voice yelled, “Steady, men!”
“Indians, there, sir!”
“Steady!” the voice yelled again. “Cover that direction!”
The forest turned from aspens to pines. Súmáí stopped behind one. I stopped behind another. We rested our hands on our knees, panting. Our eyes met, and I chewed my lip. I’d just shot two guys.
Guys on a mission to kill us, but still.
Súmáí slunk forward. I followed. We got close enough to spy four soldiers scanning our direction down their rifles’ barrels. How dumb could they be, just sitting on their horses in the open?
Súmáí notched an arrow, and so I did. He shot. I shot. Two men fell. He shot and I shot, and one man fell. Súmáí had missed, and I hadn’t. A bullet grazed Súmáí’s tree, and he flinched in a spray of bark. Bullets sailed between us, and one thudded into my tree.
A war whoop rang out, and suddenly there were shots on shots. I flinched as death cries pierced the night. Gunpowder’s sulfur scent floated on the air, tinged by blood’s metallic one. And a sweet scent too, that I recognized as terror.
Súmáí took off and I followed. He ran this time till we stopped behind two trees grown together. Below us, the gunshots and the death cries continued.
“No one can pass us,” Súmáí whispered.
I nodded. If one of the soldiers escaped, he would tell others what had happened. A full-on army would come. I bit my lip against this futility. There was no stopping the white invasion.
I notched an arrow in my bow and prepared to skirt the sound of fighting, but Súmáí whispered, “You are a great hunter now.” He watched me intently as my throat clogged with bile.
He chin-pointed up the mountain, so I moved uphill, toward the route back to Big Ridge, and he mirrored my progress fifty yards above.
A ways off, too far for arrows, a soldier streaked away from the battle on foot. Súmáí lit off after him, letting out a whoop I’d never heard. As I followed, a second echoing whoop sounded. I thought of my low whistle to Mú’ú’nap earlier and realized I was learning a fourth tongue: the language of battle. I pushed back the images of the guys I’d shot falling from their mounts, glad their faces had been obscured by their hats’ night shadows.
Behind us, the sounds of fighting stopped. Moments later, victory whoops filled the night. So cliché, so big-screen, yet I’d never considered they could be communication.