I Am Regina

by Sally M. Keehn

  I slip new moccasins that I have made on Achgook’s feet, not knowing how to answer her, but feeling the familiar burden of guilt and sorrow settle on my shoulders.

  “Achgook’s spirit will not rest, knowing that you scorned him.”

  The people of our village observe a mourning silence before Achgook and Gray Fox are lowered in their graves. No Thought’s new baby wails, breaking the silence with his hunger. No Thought takes him to her breast. Tiger Claw watches, impassive. While the baby nurses, we commune with the dead.

  If I had married Achgook, would he still be alive? At night, I will throw fat upon the fire and the smoke will feed his spirit. The smoke will let him know I meant no harm. Will smoke erase the guilt I feel?

  Woates, Gray Fox’s wife, shrieks as her husband’s body is now lowered in the ground. “Gray Fox. Do not leave me!” she cries, tearing at her hair, her dress. We join her in loud wails of mourning.

  Through the days that follow this sad burial, I throw fat upon the fire. Achgook’s spirit must be at rest. I do not sense his presence here. But the loss of Gray Fox haunts his wife. Each night, Woates places a kettle of food upon his grave. A silent sickness feeds on Woates. I bring her pottage, but she will not eat.

  Before the snow flies, Woates joins her husband and I fear this is the beginning of the end. The white man’s cord has choked us. We have no fine clothes to dress her body in nor kettles of food to place upon her grave. We have eaten summer’s fruits and they are gone. We have little meat, for the men have had no time to hunt. We have no furs to trade for the guns, ammunition, knives and blankets that we need. And even if we had these furs, there is no one with whom we can barter. The English drove the French traders from our land and we cannot barter with the English. We are at war with them.

  The sky is as gray as lead. The air is thick with the smell of snow. Tiger Claw, Clear Sky and Gokhotit, who brought the cold bodies of Achgook and Gray Fox into our village then stayed to mourn their passing, prepare to leave us now. “We travel north to speak with the Frenchman,” Clear Sky says. “We must convince him to join Pontiac in the war against the English. When the leaves are green, the French and Indian will attack and finally defeat the Yengees at Fort Detroit. Then we will return to you in triumph, bringing the guns and knives and blankets that you need.”

  They depart, and the snow begins. We hole up in our hut like mice in straw—Quetit, Woelfin, No Thought, her baby, Tummaa and me. Outside the snow falls silently for two long nights. We eat a rabbit Tiger Claw trapped before he left and chew on the bones. My stomach cramps with hunger as I suck the marrow from the backbone. I find it hard to sleep.

  On the third morning, the sun breaks through the clouds and melts the snow’s white face. Oh, how we rejoice! Quetit, No Thought and I wade through the snow to visit with others. We share our hope for catching rabbits and wild turkey once the snow has thawed.

  By night, the biting cold returns. The next day, I discover with alarm that the top layer of snow has frozen into a thick hard crust. I cannot hunt in it! My feet break through the crust and make loud noises which frighten all the game away.

  I strap in my stomach to ease its cramping and anxiously wait for a thaw that does not come. Quetit and I try to gather bark from the sugar tree to eat, but the snow is too deep and the crust, too hard. It cuts into our legs and makes them bleed.

  Desperate for food, I lead No Thought and Quetit through deep snowdrifts, searching for the deer bones we had thrown outside our hut in the peaceful days when deer were plenty. I boil the handful that we find and everyone drinks the broth. For a moment, the gnawing in my stomach eases.

  All too soon the broth is gone. Two more nights pass filled with hunger. Quetit’s eyes grow large in her thin face. Tummaa grows old overnight, gray bones and sweet brown eyes. But Woelfin stays the same, thin and hard. I wonder, if I had married Achgook, would we hunger now?

  On the morning of the seventh day, Chief Towigh enters our hut. He is the only man left in our village and he is old and feeble. But now a strange light gleams in his watery eyes. “I have had a dream,” he tells us. “A black bear sleeps in the hollow of an oak tree. I know this dead oak, as big around as five large bears. It stands where the stream divides in two, a one night’s walk from here. In my dream, I saw bear knuckles strung around my neck. My belly was full.”

  “Follow this dream,” Woelfin says, licking her lips. The thought of bear meat makes my mouth water, too. I have known hunger, but never like this—bone deep.

  The sky is gray. A bitter wind tears at Chief Towigh’s deerskin cloak as the women and children in our village watch him leave, carrying the only gun that we have left. He slowly walks through waist-deep snow, hunting the bear whose sleep is not disturbed by the sound of footsteps. I wish him a fruitful journey and a safe return.

  Dreams are all we have to feed us while we wait for him. At night, in our small comer of the hut, Quetit and I pray quietly together while No Thought and Woelfin rock with hunger. No Thought’s baby wails.

  “The Lord will keep you from all evil,” I whisper to Quetit. “He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in.” I see these words as clearly as I see Quetit’s face. Through many winters, I have kept the Lord’s words in my mind, like stitches quilled in deerskin.

  Quetit holds my hand. Her blue eyes shine with love. Our prayers give us strength and we hold fast to them.

  Through the nights, death stalks us. I hear him moaning through the trees outside. I feel his breath as I stumble through snowbanks, my fingers blue and frozen as I break through the crust trying to find a bone, something to boil in water. I crave the taste of meat. No Thought’s baby grows pale and silent. She continues to nurse him, but her breasts are empty. I am afraid that he will die.

  Three nights pass, then four, before Chief Towigh finally returns. Everyone gathers in his hut to hear what he has to say—Mauwi, Proud One with her baby boy, Flat Nose, Stone Face, Running Water, Nunscheach and Otter Woman with her three small children. Chief Towigh’s lips are blue with cold, his wrinkled skin is gray. “The snow in the forest was as high as this.” He points to his chest. His hands are calloused, gnarled like bark. “The crust cut into my legs like hunting knives.” He pauses.

  We hang on his pause, gazing hungrily at his empty hands.

  “One night it snowed. I slept inside a hollow tree. The next day, travel was hard and slow. By nightfall, I found the dead oak and lit a fire beneath it. A large black bear, his sleep broken by the heat of fire and smoke, climbed out.”

  “Old man. Where is this bear? Does he live only in your dream?” Woelfin asks.

  A weary smile lights Chief Towigh’s face. “Old woman. The bear meat waits for you outside; behind this hut. I made a sled out of branches and brought back all the meat that it would carry.”

  Woelfin’s eyes widen, reflecting her wonder and her disbelief. I know just how she is feeling. This bear meat is like the miracle of sunlight after many cold and bitter nights.

  Mauwi and Woelfin roast the meat and we devour it like hungry wolves. I make certain Quetit and Tummaa get their share. The fat is sweet. It makes us strong. Milk begins to flow through No Thought’s breasts. As I watch her nurse her son, I feel a kinship with her, with all the people gathered here. We have suffered. Most of our men have died in battle and we have hovered on starvation’s biting edge. But Chief Towigh’s gift of bear meat gives us life and, with it, hope. This snow cannot last.

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  The people of our village have banded together. We are like one family with Chief Towigh as our father. Warm winds finally thaw the crusted snow, and we share the rabbits that we snare, the sweet sap that we tap from the sugar trees. When the leaves on the oak tree are the size of a mouse’s ear, we sing softly as we plant our corn and wait—one man, seven women and nine children—for Tiger Claw, Clear Sky and Gokhotit to return. But the men do not come back. At night, seated around a council fire, we talk together and dream o
f better times when the loud talk of men will fill our huts and deer will hang once more from the drying racks.

  Now, in the month in which the honey bees swarm, Quetit, Nunscheach and I harvest blackberries. The bleak winter months seem far away as we pluck plump berries warmed by the sun. Black juice stains our hands and a sweet taste fills our mouths.

  Quetit’s and Nunscheach’s baskets are only half-full, but now they sprawl together in a patch of sunlight, plopping ripe berries into each other’s mouths. Tummaa lies beside Quetit, licking her face. She giggles and pushes him away. I wish I could lie down and enjoy the sunlight with them, but I know winter lies ahead. I must prepare for it.

  Thorns scratch my arms as I stretch to pluck the ripened berries. Why is it that the big ones always hang beyond my reach? Something rustles through the grass. A black snake slithers across my feet. I leap backward, startled.

  “Tskinnak,” Quetit whispers.

  “What?” I call, my hands trembling from the close encounter with a snake. I know black snakes are harmless, but all snakes frighten me.

  Quetit runs over to me, followed by Nunscheach. “We hear footsteps,” she whispers. “They come from there.” Quetit points toward the thick stand of locusts that lines the footpath leading to our village.

  “Who comes this time of year?” I say.

  “I hope it is a trader,” Nunscheach says. “I would like a string of wampum, pink and white, like apple blossoms.”

  “You had better hope for blankets and ammunition. Come. Let’s see this trader.” We slip into the woods and quietly move from the shelter of one tree to another. We crouch behind a pile of brush that overlooks the footpath. Tummaa wiggles between us, poking his nose into our faces. Suddenly, his hackles rise along his back. Tummaa starts to growl. “Shhh.” I fold my hand around his mouth, silencing him.

  Five figures slowly round the bend in the footpath. I strain my eyes, trying to see. “Who is it?”

  “Tiger Claw.” Quetit points to a figure who leans heavily upon another. “And that, that is Clear Sky! The third must be Gokhotit. I do not know the others. Come.” Tummaa barks and bounds ahead of Nunscheach and Quetit as they race to the village. I walk slowly behind them, carrying our baskets and hoping that the men have brought the provisions that we need.

  When Tiger Claw, Clear Sky and Gokhotit left last winter to speak with the Frenchman, they departed in hope. But now, as they stand in the village clearing surrounded by our people, my heart sinks, for their faces are lined with despair and their hands are empty, save for some worn gray blankets.

  I do not know the Delaware warrior who stands beside them, dressed in buckskin leggings and a torn red shirt. But I recognize the fifth man. It is Dupré. He has aged. Has it been four winters since he last came here? Or has it been five? His beard is gray. He wears a stained buckskin coat fringed with horsehair.

  “So, Tiger Claw. You still own the white squaw,” Dupré says as I approach. His eyes remind me of a ferret’s. They squint at me while a smile tugs at the comers of his mouth. “Have you found her a husband yet?”

  Tiger Claw drapes his arm across Clear Sky’s shoulder and spits on the ground. “What man would marry Tskinnak? Her nose is too big and her face, long like a horse.”

  I had eagerly anticipated Tiger Claw’s return, the provisions he would bring. But now, stung by his ugly words, I suddenly wish he had never come back. “Where are the guns you promised us? The knives and the sweet talk of triumph?” I ask, wanting to wound him as he has me.

  “The Frenchman would not join us in our cause. Without his guns and warriors, there is no hope,” Clear Sky answers calmly, ignoring the sharpness in my retort.

  “Pontiac’s war is over?” Chief Towigh’s voice trembles with the question.

  “It is over.” Clear Sky hands him three blankets. “We found these at an abandoned white man’s camp. We thought you could use them.”

  “What good are blankets in this heat?” Woelfin says, her sharp eyes assessing Tiger Claw. I notice then how pale he is.

  Tiger Claw grabs a blanket and wraps it around his shoulders. “They ease the chill of sickness. Where is my wife? My son? Why are they not here to greet me?”

  “No Thought gathers sweet grass and berries, Woelfin says, placing a hand on Tiger Claw’s cheek. He brushes her hand away.

  “I will find No Thought,” I say, wanting to get away from Tiger Claw and Dupré. Their presence reminds me of an ugliness I do not want to think of.

  “Tell No Thought to bring me white willow bark,” Woelfin says. “My son burns with fever.”

  During the hot days that follow Tiger Claw’s return, his sickness worsens and we spend our waking moments nursing him. He complains that his body aches and No Thought rubs his joints with oil. He thrashes in the heat of fever and Woelfin brews willow bark to make a soothing tea. When Tiger Claw shakes with chills, Chief Towigh covers him with deer skins and the men place him on a pallet made of hemp and carry him to the sweat lodge where fire, water, steaming stones and Chief Towigh’s incantations are supposed to make strong magic that will drive the evil spirits out of Tiger Claw and make him well. But when he returns from sweating, he is even weaker than before.

  The rank smell of sickness continues to fill our hut. Red and angry-looking pox start to erupt on Tiger Claw’s face and body. Quetit and I gather the fernlike leaves of the kinnikinnick tree. We boil them into a soothing medicine that No Thought and Woelfin use to cleanse and purify the festering sores on Tiger Claw’s skin. I pray that the kinnikinnick leaves will ease his suffering, but ugly memories, like a gray scalp hanging in our hut, stand in the way of my compassion. I cannot make myself go near his bed.

  Like Tiger Claw, Clear Sky sickens and then Atank, the Delaware warrior who returned with them. Dupré stays in a hut by himself. He says he does not want to catch this sickness. Once the leaves turn, he will travel south, to trade with the Shawnee. I will be glad when he is gone.

  When the sores on Tiger Claw’s face and body begin to bleed, Dupré quickly packs his deerskin bag. “Tiger Claw has the smallpox. It is a white man’s disease,” Dupré tells Woelfin, keeping his distance. “Burn the blankets found at the white man’s camp. They have been cursed.”

  The war has not ceased. It never will. Dupré walks away from us, his thin dark body disappearing into the trees and Woelfin wails, echoing the hurt and anger that I feel. I help her burn the blankets, but it is too late. A sickle moon shines the night Tiger Claw dies. “Aaaiigh!” Woelfin screams. All night Woelfin and No Thought grieve. Quetit and I grieve with them, for Tiger Claw’s long suffering and this awful curse the white man has placed upon us.

  Now the moon grows full and smallpox rages through our village. We have no breath left to mourn the dead, there are so many: Clear Sky, Gokhotit, Atank, No Thought, No Thought’s baby, Nunscheach. Sometimes at night I think I hear her. A warm wind sings her melody, so high and sweet. I am afraid of who might sicken next.

  CHAPTER Twenty

  A flock of hungry blackbirds perches in the oak tree. Their small hard eyes watch me as I hoe the corn. I scream and wave my arms at them. They fly away, harsh cries and dark wings swooping through the air.

  Tummaa mumbles, as if asking, “What is all this fuss?” He shoves his graying muzzle into my deerskin skirt and I rub his ears. Tummaa sighs. I throw down my hoe and wrap my arms around him. He licks my face, trying to tell me, “Everything will be all right.”

  I wish I could curl into the shade with Tummaa and go to sleep. But I must dig out the weeds which choke the corn. It is a lonely, endless task without the other women hoeing beside me, passing time with song and gossip. And I don’t know who will be here to harvest the ripened ears. Like the hungry blackbird, death perches in the rafters of our huts. Quetit has the smallpox now.

  The squash I planted beneath the corn has withered. The white grub has sucked it dry. Deer flies circle overhead and the air is thick with heat.

  At noon, I stumble through the corn,
back to Quetit, hoping that when I see her she’ll sit up in bed and say, “I’m feeling better now.”

  The village is quiet. A lone dog rolls in the dusty ground outside Clear Sky’s empty hut. Dust coats the two canoes upturned by the sweat lodge. I long for the sounds that are now missing: women singing as they hoe the corn and gather firewood; the rasping sound of men sharpening their hunting knives. It feels as if everyone has died. Even the birds are silent.

  Shadows cast by the smokey fire greet me in our hut. Woelfin hovers over Quetit’s bed, a bowl held in her hand.

  “Is she better?” I ask, kneeling beside the bed.

  Woelfin shakes her head. “The sickness breeds within her throat. She cannot drink.”

  “Tskinnak,” Quetit whispers, reaching out to me. I take her hand, forcing myself to look at her face. The pox have begun to blister her skin, turning it red and raw.

  “You must drink the willow tea,” I say, carefully fingering away the hair sticking to the sores on her face.

  “It hurts to drink.”

  “You must try.”

  “Not now, Tskinnak. Please.”

  “Perhaps you can drink later,” Woelfin says. “It will make you strong. In here.” She places her hand on Quetit’s chest. Woelfin’s fingers curl from the old people’s disease. Her long nails yellow with age. But I know now that this gnarled hand can be a warm and caring one.

  Woelfin’s deerskin dress brushes against my arm. I feel her fingers lightly touch my hair before she turns away.

  The two dolls Quetit made from twigs and deerskin lie at the foot of her bed. I hand them to her now. “Remember the house game you used to play?”

  Quetit hugs the dolls to her chest. “I made mazes in the mud,” she whispers. “Nunscheach and I moved the dolls through the mazes until they found their home. But, Tskinnak. The mother doll you made from corn husks, the one who always waited for them, fell apart.”