Ophelia's War

by Alison L. McLennan

  My horse stood by the creek. At least he had water, but how long would he last without food? He’d eaten all the greenery from the bushes and was sniffing around for more. If I could make it to the creek, I could get water and untie him. The creek wasn’t far from my spot under the big rock overhang. I put the canteen strap around my neck and used my hands to scoot myself toward it. As soon as my leg moved, pain shot through my body. I held still and scrunched my eyes as the horrid sensation exploded in my brain.

  It had seemed so simple—just scoot down to the creek. But with the promise of agony every time I moved an inch, the journey to the creek felt impossible. I thirstily licked the salty tears that ran down my cheeks. My sole desire, my single point of focus, was the creek. The water called me.

  The sight of my mangled leg made me gasp and pant. I took a deep breath. Cuts and scrapes had caused some bleeding, but luckily there was no deep wound. Although my lower leg was twisted and my foot faced the wrong direction, at least the bone was not protruding. I lay flat on the rock and reached for the saddlebag. From inside, I pulled my clasp knife. I carefully squirmed out of Zeke’s old clothes and cut them into long strips. When finished, I straightened my leg and foot the best I could and wound the strips tightly to stabilize the bone. The pressure made my leg feel more secure.

  This time my leg didn’t flop when I moved, so the pain wasn’t as bad. I lowered my upper half from the rock onto the sand below and then reached up to lower my leg with my hands. Once down, I scooted on my belly, careful to avoid cactus and spiky plants, through sand and over rock until I finally reached the creek. From all the effort, my thirst had grown even stronger. I lapped water like a parched animal.

  I could have followed the creek downstream to a place where the water ran faster and clearer, but my thirst was too great and the distance too far. I drank as much as I could, filled my canteen, and started crawling back to my spot under the rock. The homing instinct drew me to my bedroll and my meager belongings spread out around it. I lay down and propped my head with the saddlebag. At least I had accomplished a few things. I had set my leg straight and bandaged it. I had water. If I could figure a way to eat, I might survive.

  I fell asleep and awakened under starlight. My stomach cramped and ached so badly, I wished for death. I rolled onto my side and vomited into the sand. After throwing up the small amount of apricot in my stomach, I heaved and threw up bile. My body shook and convulsed. The pain and misery was so great, I prayed for the Lord to take me. The stomach malady seemed a fate worse than death, and I wanted an end to my suffering. If I’d had the strength, I would have taken the Henry and shot myself. But I couldn’t even raise my head. I squirmed, moaned, and pleaded to the stars. I cursed, prayed, cried, and whimpered.

  Sleep was my only comfort. I went in and out of it with no will of my own. A thin thread held me to the world. I closed my eyes and conjured the emerald pools I had swum in with Zeke. It wasn’t long ago, but it seemed an eternity. I opened my eyes. A hairy tarantula crept across the sand close to my face. I looked briefly into his black beady eyes before the weight of my own eyelids became overwhelming. I slipped back into sleep. In my dreams, Pa pushed me on the swing he’d just built, the wind blew my hair back, and sunlight warmed my face.

  I opened my eyes to a chilly, starry night. A coyote sat on a rock across from me, watching, wondering, and panting. I closed my eyes and dreamt of the crossing. Snow melted and dripped into my worn shoe. My mother pulled a shawl around me. I kept walking, pulling stuffing out of Dolly and eating it. My dry mouth was full of cotton.

  I opened my eyes to circling coyotes. They sniffed the saddlebag and taunted the horse, who neighed and stomped. I didn’t have the strength to lift the rifle or shoo them away. Cotton filled my mouth. I looked at the canteen, but I couldn’t drink the water. Not that water, which had made me sick.

  During the heat of the day, my skin burned. Flies swarmed a pile of my vomit. The odor made me wretch again, but there was nothing left inside me. A slice of sun penetrated my rock shelter. Red ants marched over me like an angry army. I spent my last bit of strength swatting them off. I poured the useless water over my body and drowned them. I fell back into a black hole of sleep and woke up in the middle of the night trembling with cold. I wrapped the blanket around myself and curled up like a scared baby. As I listened to the night life, demons of terror descended upon me.

  By sunrise when clouds stretched like pink blankets over a soft blue sky and the tall red rocks glowed as if they were on fire, I finally felt at peace. I waited for the Lord to cut the thin thread holding me to life. My throat was dry and parched. I was close to death. Yet somewhere I found the strength and voice to sing. In hardship and trouble, Saints had always sung.

  I remembered reading of Frederick Douglass and slave songs born from the deepest misery and suffering. Maybe I’d gone mad, but the impulse to sing filled me even though my life had not been noble. Instead of a fallen woman dying alone in the desert, I imagined myself a dying soldier who had fallen fighting for justice and freedom. I didn’t witness The Civil War, but I’d heard plenty of stories. Deep inside, I feared that I would soon be damned to eternal darkness.

  Even as my emaciated body approached death, I sang the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” loud, soul-stirring, and strong as if I could perhaps sing my way out of sin and into heaven. The echo of my voice in the rocky canyon startled me. Like Shakespeare’s poor Ophelia I too became mad with babble and visions. I whispered strange lyrics in tune with The Battle Hymn . . .

  I have seen the fury of the coming of the Lord

  He frees the horses and they gallop across a ford

  The devil presses on me, until my legs must yield

  The Lord strikes him down and I run across a field

  Glory, glory, hallelujah

  Somewhere in the canyon, boulders broke loose and exploded like gunfire. The sound was worse than a waiting demon gnashing his teeth. To keep the fear at bay I kept babbling my song.

  The crack of gunfire breaks sunrise’s quiet mood

  Mourning doves are deafened by the musket’s ball and groove

  Ricocheting lead leaves mothers with no brood

  I imagined soldiers on the battlefield, writhing in pain, begging for mercy. I wanted to kiss their pain away. I wanted someone to kiss my pain away.

  Beside each fallen soldier a Valkyrie will kneel

  She will kiss the righteous and to their fate will seal

  Glory, glory, hallelujah

  I see my mother writhing and my father in a box

  In the desert lays a piano beside a fallen ox

  His bones are blanched and polished; her keys are marred with pox

  I was poisoned by the river and broke my leg on rocks

  My hour is coming soon

  FIFTEEN

  Smoke tickled my nostrils. It felt as if someone was moving my leg. The sweet, pungent smell of burning sage awakened me. I opened my eyes and tried to raise myself. A hand—fingers spread across my forehead—gently pressed my head back down. Bracelets dangled in my face. Some were made with tiny colorful beads. One bracelet was braided with fiber that resembled my hair.

  As my focus became clearer, I realized the bracelet was made from my hair. The wrinkled person stood, and I realized she was a woman. Her naked breasts sagged unashamedly. A necklace of smooth pearls hung around her leathery neck and a bandolier of bullets crossed under her naked breasts. She wore a tattered top hat with three feathers sticking out of a maroon band. A hip holster with one rusty six-shooter held up her buckskin skirt, which came to just below her knees. Worn moccasins that came up to her ankles looked like a second pair of feet.

  I could not stop staring at the pearls. Who was this savage woman, and how had she come by such an extravagant strand of pearls? If not for the jewelry, her bare breasts, and the skirt, I would not have known she was a woman. Her face was deeply etched with wrinkles and fell somewhere between masculine and feminine. For in her
countenance, I could see both, depending on the angle of her head. She looked about as old as the towering rock walls surrounding us.

  She walked down to the creek and washed some clothes. Her breasts swayed as she swished and wrung the fabric. She seemed neither aware nor ashamed of her nakedness. She moved as if completely clothed, her posture upright and yet natural. I longed to be in her skin, to have the movement of my leg again and not feel ashamed of my body. I sat up. My head felt light, but the nausea was gone. A splint had been created with sticks and some unrecognizable woven material, which immobilized my leg.

  A mule, laden with strange objects, stood near the creek and swatted flies with its tail. The woman spread the clean clothes out over his back, took the bit, and led him toward me. She looked like a jack-ass miner going to stake a claim. But instead of pickaxes and miner’s equipment hanging from her mule, there was a cast-iron pan, a stringless violin, a Confederate saber, a blanket, and a human head.

  The head swung casually as if it were any ordinary thing. I locked gazes with the head’s brown eyes. They stared back out of a man’s thickly bearded face frozen in terror, as if he had gazed upon Medusa. The horrific sight sapped my strength, and I fell into darkness again.

  When I opened my eyes, the woman was squatting at a small fire with a dagger in one hand and a squirrel in the other. She disemboweled the squirrel, and tore off the last pieces of skin with her teeth. She skewered it and placed it over the fire next to another one that was already crackling. She fetched a woven Indian style jug, came over to me, and pressed it to my lips. I looked toward the creek, put my hand on my stomach, pressed my lips tight, and shook my head.

  She shook her head and pointed at the creek. “No,” she said. “Is good.” These were the first words she had spoken to me. I hoped she spoke more English.

  The water tasted bitter. But my thirst was so great I gulped it anyway. The muddy water of the Virgin River had never made me sick. I’d been drinking it most of my life. I usually drew our drinking water from where it flowed fast. But I hadn’t had that luxury when I drank from the creek. Whatever festered in the stagnant water would have killed me, if the strange old Indian woman hadn’t come along and nursed me. Yet who was she? She seemed part medicine woman and part nomadic scavenger roaming the desert for abandoned treasure.

  I wondered about the pearls and the violin. Wagon trains often fell on hard luck—a wheel damaged beyond repair, or a broken axle, meant precious family heirlooms had to be abandoned. Volumes of rare books, china and silverware, fine dresses, even the odd piano were often left lying in the sand and sage, surrounded by cacti. Perhaps the Indian woman had found the pearls and brooch lying next to a pile of sun-blanched ox bones.

  But what could explain the head? Was it the head of a man who had wronged her? Maybe it was the head of an outlaw, and she would turn it in for the bounty. I tried to convince myself that she had no evil intentions for me. She had, after all, nursed me from the brink of death and done a fine job with the splint.

  I took the squirrel meat reluctantly. When I put it in my mouth, I ate ravenously and my body felt grateful for the food. I gained instant strength from the flesh of the squirrel. I could feel its life enter my bloodstream.

  After we ate, my head cleared and I found the courage to ask her a question. “Where are your people?”

  She stared at me, her face blank of emotion or recognition. “Where are your people?” she echoed and looked off into the distance.

  Was she just repeating what I’d said, or was she asking me the same thing? Either way, it was a good question.

  I spoke slowly. “Who are your tribe?”

  She spoke slowly back. “Who are your tribe?”

  I stared off into the distance, still unsure whether she was asking or simply repeating. My people were dead and I had no tribe. Maybe it was the same for her. She too looked off into the distance, and although it appeared that she looked at nothing, I could tell she saw something—something greater than the sand and rock cliffs all around us. She turned to me and said, “Sing.”

  “Sing?” I kept my focus on her and tried to make eye contact, but she looked away.

  “Sing,” she said and stared at the unseen point.

  She must have heard my death song. My voice had echoed off the canyon walls and led her to me. She wanted me to sing again. But I couldn’t sing as I had when I lay dying. A voice had come out of me that was not my own, and it had both calmed and unsettled me.

  I smiled and shook my head. “I can’t—I can’t sing very well, except when I’m dying.”

  She stared at me. “You sing,” she commanded and kept her eyes fixed on me.

  I couldn’t look directly into her eyes. I smiled, shook my head again, and accidentally caught the eye of the severed head. Would she cut my head off if I didn’t sing, or worse, sang out of tune? I pointed at myself. “No good.”

  She narrowed her eyes and nodded. “Sing.”

  I cleared my throat and began to sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” again. The words sounded weak and pathetic, squeaky and too high.

  Her face looked as if she had just tasted something rotten. She shook her head and looked off into the distance again. “No good.”

  She closed her eyes. We were silent. I was sorry to disappoint her, but grateful she didn’t behead me for my poor performance. Singing had always been that way with me. I could only sing when the spirit moved me. When I tried to perform or impress others, it came out all wrong.

  Her hat sat on the rock next to her like a small quiet companion. Wind stirred a strand of her silver hair. Otherwise, she was still enough to be just another rock in God’s desert garden. What a strange savior he had sent me. His ways were indeed mysterious. Fatigue filled my weakened body. I was about to shut my eyes and lie back down when the woman began to shake. She opened her mouth and sounds came out. She didn’t seem to be making the sounds. It seemed as if they were pouring out of her like water. If they were words, I didn’t know them, but they didn’t sound like words.

  The sounds reverberated and seemed to express some kind of truth that predated spoken language itself. My body responded to those sounds in the most powerful way. Overwhelmed by emotion, I choked, unable to breathe as if I were frozen. Those sounds expressed both the origins of life and the inevitability of death. Those sounds could create and destroy worlds.

  In the past, my spirit had been moved by hymns, but the sounds she emitted transcended any hymn I’d ever heard. I began to question my whole conception of the world, the Heavenly Father, and everything I been taught about the spirit. For this woman, this nomadic savage, was a Godless heathen in the eyes of society. Yet I witnessed in her presence, in her song, a miraculous manifestation of spirit. Tears poured down my face, for I had been transformed—transformed and saved by a head-toting, nomadic heathen scavenger, who wore a strand of pearls and a bandolier of bullets.

  SIXTEEN

  The next morning she rummaged through my belongings. She turned the pages of my diary, put it down, picked up my mother’s steel pen, and studied the tip. I wanted to show her how it worked, but in the chaos of fleeing Grafton, I’d thrown the diary into my saddlebag and forgotten a bottle of ink. “It’s a pen,” I said and mimed writing. “But I have no ink.” I shook my head. “No ink.”

  She put the pen down and picked up the Henry. I prayed she didn’t want the Henry. Not only did I need it, but it was the only thing I had that reminded me of Pa and Zeke. She held it up, aimed at something in the distance, and put it down without firing.

  “No bullets,” I said. “Only five or so left.” I held up my hand to indicate five. She held up her hand back to me. Her mule stood in the sand near the rock overhang. All of the things attached to his back had been unfastened and were spread out under the rock overhang, not far from my belongings. Flies swarmed the decaying head, which at least faced away from me. The old woman untied my horse and brought him over to stand by the mule. She fed him some grain from a sack.
I could tell by the way she handled him that she hadn’t lived with horses her whole life, and so I figured she must be Paiute.

  She emptied my saddlebag and began to pack my horse. Terror and fear spread through my body. Was she going to take my horse and belongings and leave me here alone? Maybe she planned to leave me with the head—maybe she considered it a fair trade. She seemed to sense my panic. As she continued to pack the horse she said to me, “Come back. Two suns. He need food.” She pointed to the horse.

  Before she left, she placed a woven jug of water beside me and a sack filled with pinon pine nuts. I spent the next two days crushing the tiny brown nuts with the handle of my knife and sipping the water. Their hard shells released a pleasant pine odor and the pure white nuts soothed me for a while. By the time she returned, I had tired of them and wanted something else to eat.

  In the evenings, frenzied cricket chirping gradually slowed, and the nights came fast and cold. Aspen and oak leaves turned gold. At night I shivered, and each morning I had to rub the tip of my nose and my fingers to keep them from going numb. The old woman went on a few journeys, but she always returned after two or three days. I figured we were within a few days of some kind of settlement, or at least a trading post, because she seemed to be bartering items. I hoped the settlement wasn’t Grafton. I was relieved she had gotten rid of the head. I wondered what she had traded for it and with whom. On her final journey she brought me a crutch and a woolen shawl.

  With the crutch and her assistance, I limped along with the slow, pained gait of a cripple. But at least I was up on my feet. On the day she began packing our makeshift home for good, I felt sad. For all the anguish and suffering I’d endured in that spot, you’d think I couldn’t wait to leave it. But I was afraid of what would come next, where I would go, how I would survive, and most of all—of being alone.