Charity

by Paulette Callen

  the children who had made them proud: Willow—a quiet little beauty who showed signs early of inheriting some power from her mother; Little Shield—a strutting warrior-child who made his father’s eyes bright; and Pretty Hand—who couldn’t get enough of horses and was always missing, only to be found running and giggling among the grazing herds who tolerated her tugging their tails and disturbing their peace;

  the winter that Turtle had no power against the white man’s sickness. Over half of her village died, among them Many Roads, Willow, Little Shield, and Pretty Hand;

  Turtle medicine returned. She lived alone with her herbs and roots until Louis Butler, a white trapper who brought her meat and furs and taught her English. She cooked his meat, kept him in winter moccasins, and warmed his bed at night. She was content with Louis Butler. He was kind and did not drink too much. Louis Butler fell out of a tree and broke his neck. She never found out what he was doing up that tree. She missed Louis Butler, but she did not grieve for him as she had for Many Roads, Willow, Little Shield, and Pretty Hand;

  many winters and summers when her people came to her for help. She could cure almost anything but the white man’s diseases. Against those terrible sicknesses, she could only comfort, and ease a little, the dying;

  the night they came for her—two white women, shaking with fear—of her, of the night, for the child they told her about. Dorcas wrapped herself in her blanket, climbed into their wagon and went with them to the mission school. She followed them, creeping, up a narrow black stairway to the child with the bloody back—her back oozing blood and foul green and white matter that smelled of death. But Dorcas saw the power in her, prayed to the Great Mystery, and called to Turtle to add to the child’s own power. That night and every night for three moons, she anointed the little one’s back with ointments and made her drink cup after cup of the soups and brews she spent her days concocting. The child healed and called her Grandmother and made her heart rise again.

  Now, the old woman had to summon Turtle once more. She had to ride Turtle’s back. It would not matter if she could not return. She only needed the strength to get there.

  Without flinching, Gustie had watched Doc Moody remove the bullet. When the bandage lay white across Jordis dark forehead, he answered the question in Gustie’s eyes. “I don’t know. The bullet was deep, but not so deep as to...you know, I’ve seen people die from this kind of a wound, and I’ve seen them get up and walk away from it too.” He raised an open palm in a gesture of helplessness. “We have to wait and see. If she makes it through the night, she’s got a chance.” Doc Moody left the room.

  If she makes it through the night.

  Had Gustie been alone in the house she would have flung her head back and howled in rage. If she had been in her own house, she would have smashed every dish, every cup, ripped her papers, broken her pens, and torn apart her books. But she was not alone and she was in someone else’s house. The picture Lena saw when she came in later to check on Gustie was so disturbing that Lena ran back into the kitchen to sit alone with the dying light of the cold November afternoon, waiting for Will’s return.

  In the last six months Lena had seen many things she would rather not have seen and would never be able to forget: her husband behind bars, Tori’s body hanging from a rope, the pale moon of Frederick’s face as he appeared in the barn only this morning, and Gustie holding Jordis, bleeding and still, in her arms. Now, here was another picture for Lena to hang in her gallery of sorrows: Gustie, her mouth open, teeth bared in a voiceless scream, her hands clenched into fists pounding—beating upon her thighs, as she sat, silent, and upright in her chair.

  I am not dreaming, but I recognize this place as the place where dreams are born. This place is as real as any other. The landscape is different, that’s all, and different rules apply.

  I see the face of Turtle in the rainbow that curves over this winter land. She beckons me with ancient eyes. I cannot get too comfortable here.

  I do not know how to get back.

  ‘You did not know how to get here, but here you are.’ There is a smile in those ancient eyes.

  I want to go back into the tipi of my mother and my grandmothers, eat soup and heart berries, and swap stories. I turn, but the tipi is gone. I turn again. The rainbow is gone and the face of Turtle, her ancient eyes smiling, is gone. I am alone and the snow is deep.

  I know that even in the birthing place of dreams I will freeze to death if I do not move. So I begin. One direction is as good as any other in the trackless snow.

  Thursday morning Lena woke before Will and started the coffee. She hoped that when she peeked into the bedroom, she would find Gustie asleep.

  In three days Gustie had neither eaten nor slept. Her face was mere skin stretched over bone, the normal ruddy tones of her complexion were gone. She was now dead white with bluish gashes under her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks. Lena brought Gustie a cup of coffee that was half milk. It was the only nourishment she could get her to take.

  Doc Moody came morning and evening to look at Jordis. Each time he said, “We just have to wait and see.”

  Dennis had come on Tuesday to question Lena. He tried to speak to Gustie, as well, but she did not seem to hear him and would not respond to his questions, so he left her alone.

  Lena felt nothing when she heard Frederick was dead. She was sad about Julia and blamed Ma for everything. Frederick had said right out that she killed Pa. Gertrude had wished her sister dead, and Lena told Dennis so. She didn’t understand why the sheriff didn’t arrest the old thing.

  The Kaisers were as nothing to her anymore, except for Will, of course, and Mary who stopped in once a day and quietly made herself useful. She brought cooked food, did some of the washing up, and tidied the kitchen. She chatted a little with Lena and even sat for a while each day with Gustie and Jordis. Mary was not bothered, the way Lena was, that Gustie would not speak.

  Once Lena went to Gustie’s house to get her a change of clothing and a pair of shoes. Gustie thanked her for the clothes. When Lena offered the shoes, Gustie looked down at her moccasins and said, “These are my shoes.”

  Jordis’s breathing was so shallow, her pulse so weak, it was barely perceptible. Gustie put her mouth close to Jordis and breathed into her nostrils and tried to discern her breath coming back. She kissed Jordis lightly on the lips and left the room.

  Will and Lena sitting at the kitchen table were surprised to see her out of the bedroom. “I’m going out to the barn,” she said. “Just to see how the horses are getting along.”

  “I took care of ’em this morning,” Will assured her. “Don’t you worry.”

  Gustie went out as if she hadn’t heard. She did not take her coat from where it hung in the shanty. She wore Jordis’s red shawl around her shoulders over her thin dress.

  Will rose from the table to go after her but settled back into his chair when Lena said, “Just let her go, Will. It’s good to see her out of that bedroom. Let her go to the barn. She has no place else to go.”

  The cotton sky was turning to gray at the northern horizon. Wind blew from the north as Gustie slid the barn door open and closed behind her.

  The barn was snug and fragrant with fresh hay in the mangers and clean straw on the floor. Each horse had a bucket of water and another of oats. Gustie lit the lamp that hung on a large nail from the center post. Its yellow light reflected softly off the shining coats of the four horses: two browns, a black, and a white. Gustie petted each horse wordlessly and sat on the edge of the manger between Moon and Biddie. Over the rim of the stall, she could see the place where Frederick had pushed Lena against the wall. She saw the place where Jordis had slipped in front of her growling like a mad cat at the first sight of the gun, taking the bullet that had been aimed at Gustie. Over the last three days, Gustie had lived that moment over and over again. Why hadn’t she stepped forward herself? Why hadn’t she pushed
Jordis aside? Why hadn’t she... Each time she relived it she tried to keep it from happening. But each time, the shot cracked and Jordis fell heavily into her arms.

  Clare had not been so heavy. Clare was a small woman, wasted by her illness. She weighed practically nothing at all. It seemed to Gustie now that Clare had come all this way just to die. There were no good places to die back east. Here there were many.

  After two years of only nightmares, Jordis had enabled Gustie to dream. After two years of making no plans, Jordis had given Gustie a future.

  Gustie’s dream had been simple: A happiness she could take for granted, like the comfort of her moccasins—the feeling of your feet not being cold; the feeling of a shoe not pinching too tight.

  Gustie had endured a life of loneliness, mitigated briefly by Clare, then by Jordis. Both small flarings of joy had been swiftly, brutally extinguished. She did not think there would be any more.

  She knew what she would do. One bitter cold night, she would walk far out onto the prairie and fall asleep. This time, she would go somewhere where no one, not Dorcas, not anyone, could rescue her.

  This land sucked feeling out of people. She knew now why these people were stoical. She had not understood before how amid such beauty, people could go crazy. How all faith and hope could be siphoned out of you by this vast, shadowless land until you were a husk floating along the surface, blown by the winds, then merely dust. She no longer cared about the land. Only the sky and her stars. She could still walk among them. The stars were hidden now, but they were there waiting for her. When Jordis was gone, she would pick her starry night.

  Gustie, calm in her decision, petted the horses once more on her way out to return to the bedroom, where Jordis lay, not alive, not yet released into death.

  When Gustie slid open the barn door, she faced a wall of white, through which she could see nothing. The house was only a few yards away, a little to the right. She pulled the barn door closed behind her, adjusted her angle toward the house, and headed into the snow.

  The wind blew from all directions, first batting her in the face, then pushing her from behind. A swift buffet to the side knocked her down. When she got to her feet, she no longer knew in which direction she faced. Everything was solid white—blinding white. I fell to the side, she thought. I was facing that way. I got up, still facing that way...I think...well...she pushed ahead.

  She walked, knocked about by the wind, seeing nothing but her hands in front of her trying to shelter her face from the biting snow.

  When Gustie realized she was lost and that she must still be only a few yards from either house, or barn, or outhouse, she smiled. Not exactly how she had planned it, but nearly so. Therefore, it did not matter whether she found her way back or not, if she kept walking or sat down. Oddly, she was not tired now, nor did she feel the cold. Caked with snow, her glasses were useless. She took them off and slipped them into her pocket. Feeling certain now that Jordis was gone, she experienced no surge of sorrow, only the thought: Everything has been death since I came to this country.

  As Gustie plodded on, she felt as if she were pushing through whirlpool after whirlpool in a sea of snow. She could not tell how much snow was actually falling because the wind did not let it rest. She did not have drifts to wade through yet. At most, the snow was ankle to mid-calf deep.

  Gustie was numb. She no longer felt the sting of the snow or the push and pull of the wind. She felt, in fact, as if she had no body at all. She was merely an impulse to keep going. Then, ahead of her, the whiteness, in places, congealed to gray. The grayness seemed to have form and substance. “Who is there?” The wind howled in her ears so she could not even hear her own voice. A trick of the snow in her eyes and her poor vision without her glasses—the gray form was no longer there.

  Beneath the howling she heard a blowing sound behind her, like the sound a horse makes to clear its nostrils, but it wasn’t a horse. She did not know what it was. She turned, and turned again, for she thought she saw another gray-brown shadow in the snow. Something brushed against her side. She had been beaten by the wind so much she was not certain if it was wind she felt, or something more solid. She turned and saw something black. She found herself turning in circles to grasp the fragmented visions of this thing that moved around and around her like a phantom. Then, peering out of the white flurry was a large warm brown eye that blinked once and disappeared. She looked up and saw a curve of bone. What is this thing? A black nose breathing silver steam. A squared-off rump materialized in the maelstrom and disappeared again. How many are there? She could only see one, but there seemed to be many...then she saw the complete form of one as the snow cleared a moment. A stag, with flaring antlers, stood before her. He stamped the snowy ground once, twice, three times in measured, quick succession, then the snow swirled about him again, and all she saw was a patch of brown hide to her right. She blinked her eyes hard and wiped her frozen hands over her face. The shapes were in a circle around her...or was there only one? Oh! She couldn’t be sure. Deer!

  Of course. They have come close to people because there are barns here. They must smell the hay. They are hungry. Gustie could not speak. Her mouth was frozen, but she thought, If I knew how to get back I would give you some hay. A circle of warmth closed in around her. She was surrounded by hides and outlines of gracile limbs as they picked their way deliberately, delicately through the lashing snow. Gustie had no choice but to go with them. They can smell the barn. She heard a cry, faint on the raging wind. She kept walking, forced to keep pace with them, as they surrounded her, even bumping her if she slowed. The cry on the wind grew more distinct.

  “Gustie!”

  Then, “Will! Will! She’s here! Oh, Gustie! We thought we’d lost you. Will! Will!” Lena tugged hard on a taut rope that was fastened to an iron ring just inside the shanty door and extended out disappearing into the blizzard.

  Will appeared, pulling himself back to the house, hand over hand on the rope. “Oh, Will!” cried Gustie. “We need some hay for the deer. They are hungry.”

  Gustie felt herself pulled and shoved into the shanty. Two pairs of hands brushed snow off her roughly and rubbed her icy hands.

  Gustie thought she was speaking clearly, but the looks on her friends’ faces were clearly uncomprehending. Maybe she was babbling. Her mouth and jaw still felt frozen stiff. She tried to force each word out slowly. “The deer. They are hungry. We must give them some hay. Can’t we give them a little hay?”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Lena kept rubbing and slapping her all over. To Will, Lena said, “She’s off her head with cold.”

  “No. I must go to the barn. I promised them some hay.”

  Will, half pushing her, half lifting her off the floor, maneuvered her into the kitchen where a blast of hot air hurt her face. How could one live in such heat?

  Lena was already busy at the stove, and Will was back in the shanty stomping the snow off his legs and feet and hanging up his coat and hat.

  “The deer,” Gustie pleaded again.

  “I told you. She’s delirious,” Lena said over her shoulder.

  Lena filled a saucepan with milk and waited for it to warm up. She suddenly turned on Gustie. “You foolish woman! What do you mean going out into this weather like that? You knew we would come and get you. We waited because we thought you needed some time to yourself, and then Will went out to the barn and you were gone! Haven’t I told you time and time again...” Lena, close to tears, grabbed Gustie and hugged her hard and then pushed her away and went back to the stove. “Oh, my milk is going to scald.”

  Gustie sat down. “I’m sorry, Lena. I didn’t think.”

  “Oh, I know. I know. You just scared ten years off the both of us.” Lena filled a cup with hot milk and sprinkled ginger into it.

  “I wish you would see to the deer now, Will. They are with me. They’ve come back for the hay.”

 
Lena put the cup in Gustie’s cold hands. It burned. “Gustie, there is nothing out there. You came right up to the door by yourself.”

  Jordis opened her eyes that evening. She had been unconscious for nearly four days. “I’m thirsty,” she said. Her voice was low and scratchy. “Why are you crying?”

  Gustie just shook her head. She could not say a word.

  Lena appeared at the door and saw Jordis’s eyes open and Gustie’s full of tears. She clasped her hands together. “Oh, my! Oh, my. Thank you, dear Lord,” and she ran to tell Will.

  Dennis found the letter, sealed and addressed to Lena, placed carefully in the center of Julia’s kitchen table and weighted down by a vase of dried flowers. Next to it was an opal ring.

  Before he could deliver it, the storm swept in and raged for several days. When the sky cleared and a cold sun bounced off a landscape of endless white snow, the sheriff put on snowshoes and trudged to Will and Lena’s house with the letter in his pocket.

  “For heaven sakes!” was all Lena could say when she saw him at her door. Dennis grinned sheepishly and stamped the snow from his feet in the shanty before entering her kitchen, where he was made to sit down and drink several cups of hot coffee.

  Lena took the letter into the living room, and Gustie and Dennis stayed in the kitchen so she could read it in private. Will was outside shoveling. Jordis was asleep. Gustie and the sheriff rushed into the living room when they heard Lena wail.

  “I can’t read it!” she cried. “You read it. Take it. I don’t want it.” Her hands were shaking as she held the sheets of paper away from herself as if they were on fire. Then she dropped them.

  Gustie gathered them up. She knew what they must contain because Jordis had told her what she had seen in the ice house. Since Frederick and Julia were both dead, they thought it was not necessary to tell Lena. There had been enough dreadful revelations. But now it was to come out anyway. The letter was dated the day Lena, Gustie, and Jordis had come back to Charity and looked into the ice house. She must have written it that night.