He continued for years to come to have flashbacks and suffer at the hands of a man who had long passed on. Frank sat up on the couch and looked towards the bedroom. She had left the door open and he saw her passed out still sleeping. He pulled his shirt down slightly off his right shoulder, looking at his deformed arm. He gently touched it. He still remembered how the real pain came when he had gotten back to camp and gone to the doctor.
They first had to dig the bullet out of his arm, with hardly any anesthetic but a lot of whiskey. Then, after the tortuous few days in the hospital, his arm was infected. At that point, he needed surgery, where they removed part of his soldier and clavicle bone. It took him months to heal, in fact he still wasn’t fully healed.
Whenever it was about to rain, he could feel it deep inside. “Can I make you something for the pain? It’s a simple tea like you drank last night, only it won’t make you feel as relaxed, so you don’t need to worry about sleeping all day,” he heard her voice call out from the bedroom.
He looked up and quickly pulled his shirt up, not wanting her to see him disfigured. He grunted and shook his head, not liking a woman to cater to him. He had never been married, but he imagined when he did their marriage would be completely mutual. He wanted to be able to cook some meals and clean the house with her, instead of her doing everything for him.
“Let me just make this tea and I guarantee you will feel less pain, and have a great day,” she said happily as she went and began making them both some tea. She didn’t have severe pain like he did, but she was going to drink some tea with him because she had felt his paranoia yesterday.
For some reason today, he looked so much better than yesterday. “Did you sleep well,” she asked him. “I feel really bad about you sleeping on the couch in your own home,” she continued to say to him.
He smiled at her, as he stood up and stretched. “You know, I don’t want to stay in this small house. I have dreams on getting a farm, with horses, cows, maybe some chickens,” he said to her.
“Do you know anything about farming?” She laughed.
“I’m from Kansas. My people live on a reservation and that’s all we do is farm. We grow all of our own vegetables and fruits,” she told him. She brought him some tea and they sat down together and both drank out of their own mugs.
“I actually had great sleep last night. I can’t believe it. I had the same nightmare that I have had for years now,” he started.
“Oh no, I’m sorry,” she said sympathetically.
“No, you don’t understand; the ending was different. I always die in the end, every single time. This time, when I heard the bang, I didn’t die, but I was saved. The wildest part is...” he paused, not knowing if he should tell her about his true feelings. He decided that if she was going to be the woman by his side, she was going to learn about this one way or another.
She had an interested look on her face and she was almost begging him to continue by the way she listened, leaning in with her elbows on her knees as if saying, “Yes.”
“When I was captured, I wanted nothing more than to kill the leader who had tortured me. In reality, I held a gun to his head.” He watched her expression, waiting to see something, anger, pain, anything.
He saw curiosity.
She realized that he wanted to know what she was thinking, so she let him know some of her thoughts. “I can’t imagine what you felt in that moment. I can imagine that you were angry, relieved, and hurt. I can honestly say that in that situation, I would have not shot him in the head, but shot him all over his body.
“I’d have wanted to see him suffer as I had suffered.”
He was shocked at her words. Here was this beautiful, quiet Navajo woman who wanted nothing more than to heal everyone she met, saying she’d want to torture someone. Normally, he would have felt fear of her, but now everything was different.
“Exactly,” he said, excited. His face lit up with realization that she understood him.
“I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t shoot him even once.”
Her face now was unreadable. She put her hand over her mouth and tears formed in her eyes. “I let him leave. We were bringing him back to the camp, to put in our jail when God chose to punish him. A landmine was stepped on.
“Miraculously, none of our soldiers were badly injured, but all of the kidnappers were killed. I had to stand up and make sure, but the leader was dead. I should have been released then,” he said to her.
“You have something that is like an anxiety and depression after suffering from a traumatic experience. Doctors do not yet have a name for this, but I do know that sometime in the near future they will,” she told him.
“The medicines my mother has made up for you is to treat that exact illness. That is why you feel so much better now,” she told him. She then reached forward and put her hand on top of his hand. She squeezed gently as she looked into his eyes.
“I want to be here and help you heal,” she said to him. His eyes lit up for the first time in years with hope. Hope for the future, hope for the present, hope for him, and most importantly hope for them.
She gave him three cups of tea a day from her bag of herbal medicine. A few days after moving into his house, she took some of the seeds her mother had given her in the bag and planted them out back, to make sure they kept the medicine coming.
The medicine helped Frank tremendously. He came alive again.
When David came to visit his friend, and meet his new girl, he couldn’t believe the change he saw. He almost didn’t even recognize him. The house had changed from a dark dreary house to a loving clean bright home.
Within six months, Rebecca and Frank were married. Just as she promised her mother, she sent for her. Her mother gladly came out to Arkansas to attend her daughter’s wedding. After hearing Frank’s story, she came to a realization that she would take to her grave.
Her husband, Rebecca’s father, hadn’t died the way she had said, in fact, he had gone to the war. He was the leader that had actually kidnapped Frank. The chances of them meeting under the circumstances were unthinkable. The truth would have broken them apart and her mother could see how much love they had for one another. Her husband had done some horrible things that she wasn’t proud of.
She hadn’t known about it until a few Navajo had come back and told her about what had happened. To save the family name, she had made up a lie. She would stick to and live by that lie until the day that she died.
Frank and Rebecca moved after they got married. They both fulfilled their dream of living on a farm because that’s what they did. They moved to a big farm with three bedrooms, and a ton of land for her herbs.
They grew all the herbs that she could ever need. Her name became big and she helped heal others in the area. Woman would come to her when they were pregnant. She had herbs to help during childbirth so the mother wouldn’t be in so much pain and the babies would come out healthy.
She was happy two years into their marriage that she had learned so much about childbirth and children. She fell ill and after a few days, she knew immediately what the problem was. She herself was pregnant.
Nine months later, they not only had one healthy baby boy to carry on Frank’s family name, but twins. They had a boy and a girl. Frank had built the house as a three bedroom having no idea that she was going to have a baby, let alone twins, but it turned out perfectly.
The boy was named after his father, Frank Jr.
The baby girl was name after Rebecca’s mother, Elsie.
She passed on her love of medicine, and Frank Jr. became a doctor, as did Elsie. Their life couldn’t have been better.
THE END
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The Navajo Medicine Woman & the Civil War Vet Page 4