by Win Blevins
She had dreams of getting showy on her crutches, of doing pivots that would amaze adults and delight small children, of striking a figure that would be the envy of all, supported under each arm or not. And then topping the pivot with a curvet. She wished she were as tall as Adam so she could command everyone’s eyes and stun them with the graceful way she comported herself with her handicap. She imagined her full-length skirts swirling and her hair, let out all the way to her waist, waving elegantly in the breeze as she moved.
For now she took one step forward awkwardly, and painfully.
A little head jerked back around the corner of the far house. After a moment two heads poked out, a boy and a girl. They peeked at Elaine from behind the house next door, on the side away from the main street. When they saw her looking back, they giggled. The boy stepped out and gawked openly. Another head, of a younger boy, stuck out from behind the corner.
Elaine bent one arm at the elbow and waved. “Hello, children,” she called, trying to sound nice. She wished she felt nice. She waved again.
The older boy sauntered out, hands held behind his bottom, shoulders held back, in a strut. He was a cherubic-looking child, blond and blue-eyed. The other two stood out from the corner, “Don’t, Jake?” said the girl, but she tittered like she hoped he would. The cherub stopped.
“Jake, is that your name? Jake?” tried Elaine.
The cherub waggled his torso and grinned, all shy tomfoolery, but he said nothing. Elaine thought he had a sneaky look on his angelic face.
“You children could visit me sometime,” Elaine said. “I live on this porch.” The porch which she wanted to move away from as soon as possible. “We could play games together. I’d like that.” She adjusted the crutch under her right shoulder. She leaned more heavily on that one, where her leg was truncated, and it got uncomfortable.
The cherub clawed the air aggressively and growled. Elaine didn’t understand—was he trying to scare her?
He began weaving toward her in exaggerated play movements, like he was sneaking up on something. “Are you a panther?” she asked. “Am I a deer?” She felt tremulous, but tried not to show it.
Suddenly the boy let out a huge, lionlike roar and charged Elaine.
She flinched.
Near her, the boy clawed at the crutch on her right side. His hand didn’t come close.
But Elaine jerked back, tried to pull the crutch out of his way.
She teetered. She lost her balance. She tottered backward, tried to catch herself with a crutch, and failed.
Involuntarily, she stuck out her right leg.
Her stump hit. The pain was excruciating. Her bottom and back slammed in the ground.
Elaine let out a scream—it sounded awful even to Elaine, throttled, unnatural, monstrous.
It took her a minute or two to clear her mind. The children were gone. She supposed she’d scared them off. She shook her head. She trembled all over. She didn’t know whether she was laughing or crying.
The children had run off. Frightened, she supposed. But of her? Or themselves?
Smith went about it all in a deliberate way, a way that honored his grandfather, that showed him respect, and especially that gave room for remembering his grandfather.
He built a scaffold in a cottonwood tree along the south fork of the Platte River, which the Cheyennes called Geese River. He cut the poles patiently from dead cottonwood trees. He rushed no motion and did everything as well as he could.
While he cut, he remembered his times with Sings Wolf when Sings Wolf was a hemaneh, a half-man, half-woman. He remembered when she taught him to play the hoop-and-stick game. He remembered when she played the hand game with him, a game of betting on being able to guess which hand the bone is in. One day she stopped letting him win and took his pocket knife to teach him that you can lose at gambling, and only let him earn it back the next day by splitting a lot of wood, after a night of agony and hatred.
He remembered when she held him, after the deaths of his father and brother. Though he was grown, she grabbed him and pulled him to her breast, wordless, with only a hint of rocking, and kept him there for a long time, until the tears came.
He remembered how she went, with his mothers, and avenged the murders: the three women caught the killer through a sexual wile, knocked him groggy, cut off his penis and testicles, and then skinned him slowly, while he was alive. When he finally died, they cut off his head.
With all these memories Smith honored his grandfather.
He remembered how Sings Wolf, then Calling Eagle, received a great dream of death, and in that dream saw herself as a fallen warrior. He remembered how Calling Eagle accepted the call to manhood with dignity, despite her personal inclination and a lifetime of custom. He recalled how she announced her vision in a beautiful ritual, how she transformed herself into a man, how she seemed as fitting and attractive a man as she had been a woman. He remembered how, shortly thereafter, the man-warrior Sings Wolf led a war charge that turned away the soldiers and saved the Human Beings. In these memories he honored his grandfather.
He remembered how his grandfather, sometimes his grandmother, had been the wisest human being he had ever known. He remembered her warmth when he came to her with the problems of growing up. He remembered the depth of her understanding when he spoke to her of the pain of being a white man and a red man at once, how she spoke of herself as among the people but not quite one of them. He remembered what she said—that a human being has one fundamental choice in life, to live joyfully according to his particular nature, or to fight his nature and have no life at all. He remembered her sympathy when he began to want to go to civilization and learn science and maybe—hope beyond hope!—become a scientist himself, even a doctor, and remembered pondering her words about fulfilling his nature then. In these memories he honored his grandfather.
After a couple of hours, he had the scaffold ready. Then he walked along the river and cut some willows. It was surprising to him how fresh the world seemed in the face of death, how sharp the sounds, how keen the colors, how savory the smells, how warm and gentling the wind.
He hoisted Sings Wolf to his shoulder, then heaved him onto the scaffold. It was an awkward effort, and he flushed with its humiliation. He climbed onto the scaffold, wrapped Sings Wolf in his blue blanket coat, and laid his knife, tomahawk, spear, and bow and arrows around him. Then he patiently built a little basketwork of willows over his grandfather, to keep the birds off for a while.
At last it was done as well as it could be done, with no effort spared. His mother would likely want to come back here, in a month or a year, after the flesh was gone, and pay her respects to the bleached bones.
Still, words were needed now, and gestures, and a spirit of awareness of the Powers.
Smith lit his pipe. He offered it, starting in the west and proceeding sunwise to the south, to the Maheyuno, the four sacred persons who dwell at the four corners of the universe. He offered it to Maheo, the All-Father, also called more formally Maxemaheo, and to mother earth. And then he spoke.
“Maheo,” he said, “and all the other Powers, Maheyuno, Maiyun,” and he named some of the Maiyun—“sun, thunder, moon, morning star, the whirlwind, badger, and you other Powers, my grandfather Sings Wolf has taken the Milky Way trail to the good place, Sehan.”
Tears swept his face now, with no holding back.
“I commend his spirit to you.”
“I regret that his children and grandchildren and all his other relatives do not stand here beside him. They revere and honor him, as I his grandson honor and revere him. I regret that his horse does not lie here beneath his scaffold, so that he might ride swiftly along the trail. But the Human Beings are in desperate need of horses, Powers. My grandfather would rather walk himself than make the small children and their mothers walk.
“Powers, of few Human Beings, almost no other Human Being, could I say this: He was a good man, and a good woman. As a boy he heard you Powers calling, and took the call
to his heart, and set aside the ways of men and of the warpath, and became as a woman, dressing as a woman, speaking in a woman’s way, being a woman in the lodge, comporting himself as a woman in every way.
“He made a splendid woman, Powers. He was the sits-beside-him wife to my grandfather Strikes Foot, and for many years they filled the lodge with their love for each other and for their children. Their hearts were big, Powers, and they took many children born to others into their lodge, and called them son and daughter, and reared them with loving kindness. This they did with my mother, Annemarie.”
As a mother Sings Wolf cooked well, kept a handsome lodge, made attractive clothes, and worked hard at all a woman’s duties. “Yet as hemaneh she did more. She made the fires for the scalp dances. She created love songs. She brought man and woman together in marriage. She helped them conquer the troubled waters of living together. She brought power to our men on hunts and pony raids. She came to excel at making beautiful patterns in quillwork and beadwork, and to supersede other women in these crafts that belong to women.
“Most of all, Powers, she dedicated the medicine-lodge ceremony. And she kept untouched her male power, the power she was born with and that you asked her to save, unused.”
Smith rested a moment, feeling wrung out by his own tears.
“Therefore, great Powers, she was able to hear your call when it came again, beyond her seventieth winter. You sent a wolf to ask her to take off her dress, set aside her pot and her awl, take up these weapons laid beside Sings Wolf today, and seek the way of the warpath. The Human Beings, you said, needed the maleness of Sings Wolf.
“Against a lifetime of custom, Powers, and I believe against personal preference, Sings Wolf obeyed. And very soon the soldiers came, and on that magnificent day, Sings Wolf led a war charge of Tsistsistas-Suhtaio warriors, of men inspired by his male potency. Strong in their hearts, Powers, they turned the soldiers back and saved the people.
“I believe that this deed was the culmination, the true fulfillment, of the life of my grandfather. Powers, he waited, he listened, and he served. The Tightness in his daily way brought him to his fulfillment. And after that, I believe, he was willing to die. Willing to help the Human Beings in their need, too, but willing to die.
“So here, now, you see his body. Here and now, I ask you, accept his spirit. Oh, I implore you, sacred Powers, accept my grandfather’s spirit. Make his every step blessed.”
Smith spent the rest of the day sitting beneath his grandfather’s scaffold, smoking, not thinking but letting his mind drift in a kind of meditative way.
A little after sundown he grew chill and went to where he had picketed his horse for his coat.
He knew something now he hadn’t known before. He didn’t exactly know the words, but he knew. It was his calling to live among the Cheyennes, as a Cheyenne. Not to be like the agent, the missionary, and the other whites sent to the reservation to help the people, who lived among them, but remained different from them—and let that difference be their central teaching. Smith’s calling was to be not only among the people but of them.
He chuckled. Maybe then the missionary would try to save Smith, too.
He didn’t yet know all of it. He didn’t know whether he should keep offering the Cheyennes his medicine, the white-man medicine. He thought maybe the first step was to ask not what he could teach them, but what he could learn from them. And he didn’t know whether he must give up his white-man wife and take a wife, or more than one wife, from the people.
He was aware of this power today, and he knew he would be aware of it again, perhaps every day. Whatever it wanted from him, he would give. For there lay the good way.
Elaine clopped along, poking the crutch tips out, rocking forward, planting her left foot firmly, leaning forward, and jamming the crutch tips out again. It was an awkward motion, and she felt ugly doing it.
She got to the corner at the end of the Wockerleys’ street and started across the main street, Front Street, full of brittle ridges and deep ruts.
She didn’t care if people looked. At least she felt reasonably confident of not falling now—she was stronger and more skilled. Yes, stronger and more skilled, even hunched over her crutches, hopping about like a one-legged toad, making a racket on the boardwalk. Yes, I’m ugly, damn you, and proud of it.
She was dressed properly for the first time since she broke her leg, and felt better for it. She’d deliberately picked an old dress, but it was an improvement to be out of her nightdress.
She heard a scraping, tinny rattle but couldn’t think what it was.
She nearly bumped into a pair of legs sticking most of the way across the boardwalk. The man didn’t make way for her. She looked at him, propped against the front wall of the Lady Gay Dance Hall there, thinking he might be asleep or passed out. But he wasn’t—he was staring at her, eyes big as a horse’s. A sign pinned onto his coat, penciled as though by a child, labeled the man a “VICTIM OF THE REBELLION.” The tinny scraping sounded again—he was shaking coins in a tin cup.
Then she saw that his right arm was missing—missing entirely, from the shoulder. By his left hand rested a cup.
“Life’s a bitch if you’re short a limb, pardoning my language, missy.”
He still didn’t move his legs. More than thirteen years since the war, Elaine thought, and this man was still begging. She eyed him. He looked old, and dissolute, but her serious guess was that he was only in his early thirties. She felt a clot of contempt for him in her throat.
“People ain’t considerate of a man’s handicap, missy.” He smiled with indifferent malice. “Or a woman’s either.” Another man looked on from a bench, smirking.
She didn’t want to speak to him, and certainly not to ask for anything. She had two choices: She could go outside his feet. That would take her perilously close to the edge of the boardwalk, but she could lean against a post there, or grab it if necessary. Or she could plunge straight across the man’s legs. The main risk there was that he would move suddenly, or that she would bang his legs.
She considered. Then she jammed one crutch down right next to his crotch, closer even than she intended. His left hand jerked toward his testicles and stopped. She hopped on across.
As she hurried away, she heard him cussing her vilely.
She spotted the striped barber pole. Fran had told her the barber opened at ten o’clock, and she intended to avoid embarrassment by being the first customer, perhaps the lone customer. She was in fact about five minutes early.
But she wasn’t first. Pushing clumsily through the door, she saw a man stretched back in a barber chair, fully lathered. He appeared to be asleep. The barber stropped his razor.
Elaine got straight to it. “I want my hair cut.” The barber stopped in mid-strop and gawked at her.
She poled across, took hold of the arm of the other barber chair, laid her crutches on the footrest, and laboriously lifted and legged her body into the chair.
“I don’ yet cut ladies’ hair, madam,” the barber ventured. He spoke in some soft Spanish accent and dressed like a bit of a dandy, with a lovingly cared-for mustache and pretty eyes.
The lathered-up man cracked his lids and looked sideways at Elaine. He was a young fellow, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to recognize him again, covered as he was from cheeks to Adam’s apple with foam. If she had to guess, she would have said his eyes were amused. Which was better than she feared in this bastion of maleness.
“I’ll give you five dollars,” she said. It was ten times the usual price.
The barber hesitated. “Don’ know how to do it,” he averred. But this was cupidity.
“I’ll tell you,” she said in a tone of finality.
The barber started his shave. Elaine noticed, across the room, that the coat on the hat rack had a tinned-steel star pinned to it. Oh, my, the sheriff, or the marshal, or some such. Still, she supposed it wasn’t against the law for a woman to come into a barbershop. The crime was cutting hair
you’d let grow for twenty-seven years.
It was not just a whim—it was a need, a compulsion, a … She didn’t know what. She’d been mostly in bed for four weeks. She hadn’t wanted to take care of it, to brush it, to pin it up. She didn’t like the way it got into everything, into her food, onto her books, got pinned under her elbows, got caught in the bedspring. She resented its tangles, its snarls, and the unkempt, disreputable appearance it gave her. She’d come to hate it.
Amazing, she knew, when she thought how she’d treasured it, and Adam had loved it. She’d brushed it out a little this morning, to make it straight for the cutting, and felt a moment of sadness about it.
She’d given thought to how it should be cut, and that was a problem. No women’s hairstyles permitted anything but full-length hair, none at all. The only women she’d ever seen cut their hair were Cheyennes, who hacked it straight at shoulder length when they wanted to express grief. Elaine was feeling plenty of grief, at the loss of her leg, at the absence of her husband—a temporary absence, by the Lord!—so hacked off straight at shoulder length it would be.
The barber finished the shave and covered his customer’s face with hot towels again. Elaine wondered if the lawman wanted to hang around to see the crazy lady get shorn. Well, take a gander, Mac.
The barber came toward Elaine with scissors snicking, smiling obsequiously.
She flipped her hair behind the headrest and shook her head to get it to hang right. “Just straight across, nothing fancy,” she said, “at the shoulders.”
The scissors snicked. She saw the lawman looking out from under his towels at her and wondered idly what he was thinking. She pictured the long hanks of brown hair floating to the floor behind her.
No, she wouldn’t look when she was finished. She wouldn’t ask the barber for the fallen hair. He’d sell it for good money, thinking he was tricky. Which was fine. To hell with the hair. God damn the hair.