by Jim Harrison
Ruth called again this morning with good but tentative news. Sex has returned her sense of playfulness. Her voice is no longer dry and fatigued, though I worry a bit that this is a vaguely manic phase that the family is susceptible to. What she did is have the priest in for dinner, along with his “bodyguard” or chaperone, the older priest with the drinking problem. It was a well-planned campaign to win her last chance to get pregnant: she poached Maine lobsters, chilled them, and served them as an appetizer with a Montrachet. Ted is an oenophile and sends her additions to the cellar they began together. Next was some quail she had marinated, then grilled, and finally a rough-cut filet covered with garlic and pepper, with a Grands Echezeaux and her last bottle of Romanée-Conti. The old priest was a delightful talker and had studied in France in the thirties. He had always been poor and had never drunk such wines, though he had read of them, and he’d be damned if at age seventy-one he’d miss the chance to drink them. I teased Ruth then about her somber and pious comments on prostitutes when she had served over a thousand dollars’ worth of wine in order to make love. She said the old man never did fall asleep, so she had to settle for a quick act standing in the bathroom over the sink looking at each other in the mirror. Now all she had to do was wait and see if she was pregnant while the father went off to work among the poor in Costa Rica.
Here is how it happened to me, how I had my child early in my sixteenth year. It has often occurred to me that I may be a grandmother at forty-five. I tried it out in front of the mirror, whispering grandma at myself softly but it was all too unknowable to be effective. But now I am drifting away from it again. Naomi and Ruth feel wordlessly upset that the land will go to Ruth’s son, there being no other heirs in the prospect, another reason for the priest mating. None of us mind the name Northridge disappearing, but it would be a shame to see the land leave the family, and Ruth’s son professes to hate it and has not visited since his early teens. Enough!
His name was Duane, though he was half Sioux and he gave me many versions of his Sioux name depending on how he felt that day. Grandfather’s place, which is the original homestead, is three miles north of the farm. The homestead was a full section, six hundred and forty acres, onto which the other land had been added since 1876, to form a total of some thirty-five hundred acres, which is not that much higher than average for this part of the country. Our good fortune was that the land is bisected by two creeks that form a small river, so that the land was low and particularly fertile, and could easily be irrigated. The central grace note, though, is that my great-grandfather studied botany and agriculture for two years at Cornell College before he entered the Civil War. In fact, an accidental traveler down the county gravel road near Grandfather’s would think he was passing a forest, but this is a little farfetched since the farm is so far from the state highway that there are no accidental travelers. All the trees were planted by Great-grandfather to form shelter belts and windbreaks from the violent weather of the plains, and to provide fuel and lumber in an area where it was scarce and expensive. There are irregular rows of bull pine and ponderosa, and the density of the deciduous caragana, buffalo berry, russian olive, wild cherry, juneberry, wild plum, thornapple, and willow. The final inside rows are the larger green ash, white elm, silver maple, black walnut, european larch, hackberry, wild black cherry. About a decade ago Naomi, through the state conservationists, made the area a designated bird sanctuary in order to keep out hunters. Scarcely anyone visits except for a few ornithologists from universities in the spring and fall. Inside the borders of trees are fields, and ponds, a creek, and inside the most central forty, the original farmhouse. Enough!
Duane arrived one hot late August afternoon in 1956. I found him walking up the long driveway, his feet shuffling in the soft dust. I rode up behind him and he never turned around. I said, May I help you? but he only said his own and Grandfather’s names. He was about my age I thought, fourteen, scarred and windburned in soiled old clothes, carrying his belongings in a knotted burlap potato sack. I could smell him above the lathered horse, and told him he better jump on my horse because Grandpa had a pack of Airedales who wouldn’t take warmly to a stranger. He only shook his head no, so I rode ahead at a gallop to get Grandpa. He was sitting on his porch as usual and at first was puzzled, then intensely excited though noncommittal. He had to wait at the pickup as I patted each of the half-dozen Airedales on the head before they jumped in the back of the truck. If I didn’t pat each one in turn they would become nasty to each other. I loved these uniquely cranky dogs partly for the way they welcomed me, and how wildly excited they became when I went riding and invited them along. I never took them when I rode into coyote country because the dogs once dug up and ate a litter of coyote pups despite my efforts to fight them off with my riding crop. After they gobbled up the pups the dogs pretended to be ashamed and embarrassed. Enough!
We found Duane sitting cross-legged in the dust. The dogs set up a fearsome howl but never dared jump out of the truck without Grandpa’s permission. We got out and Grandpa knelt beside Duane who wasn’t moving. They spoke in Sioux and Grandpa helped Duane to his feet and embraced him tightly. When we got back to the house Grandpa said I should leave, and to tell no one at our place of the visitor. Despite the passage of seven years or so he still partly blamed Naomi for letting father go back to war, and they were frequently at odds.
I’m sure I loved Duane, at least at the beginning, because he so pointedly ignored me. He came from up near Parmelee on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, and though his looks were predominantly Sioux his eyes were Caucasian, cold and green like green stones in cold flowing water. Technically he was a cowboy—it was all he knew how to do and he did it well. He refused to live in Grandpa’s house but took up residence in a shed that was once a bunkhouse. Two of the Airedales decided to live with him of their own accord. Duane refused to go to school; he told Grandpa that he could read and write and that was as far as he needed to go in that area. He spent his time looking after the remaining Herefords, repairing farm buildings, cutting wood, with the largest chore being the irrigating. The only other hired hand was Lundquist, an old Swede bachelor friend of Grandpa’s. He taught Duane irrigating and jabbered all day on the matter of his own Swedenborgian version of Christianity. Lundquist daily forgave Duane for the death of a distant relative in Minnesota who was murdered during the Sioux uprising in the mid-nineteenth century. The actual farmwork wasn’t that onerous since Grandpa mostly grew two crops of alfalfa a year within his forest borders, and the bulk of the rest of our land was leased on shares to neighbors.
On New Year’s Day of that first year Duane received a fine buckskin quarter horse from a cutting-horse strain, plus a handmade saddle from Agua Prieta on the Arizona border. Normally the gift would have come on Christmas but Grandfather had lost his religion during World War I in Europe and didn’t observe Christmas. The day stands out clearly: it was a warmish, clear winter morning with the thawing mud in the barnyard a little slippery. I had gone way over to Chadron with Grandpa the day before to fetch the horse, and the saddle had come by mail. Duane came riding in on the Appaloosa from feeding the cattle and saw me standing there holding the reins of the buckskin. He nodded at me as coolly as usual, then walked over and studied the horse. He looked at Grandpa who stood back in the sunlight against the barn. “Guess that’s the best-looking animal I ever saw,” Duane said. Grandpa nodded at me, so I said, “It’s for you, Duane.” He turned his back to us for a full ten minutes, or what seemed an unimaginably long time given the situation. Finally I came up behind him and ran my hand with the reins along his arm to his hand. I whispered “I love you” against his neck for no reason. I didn’t know I was going to say it.
That was the first day Duane let me go riding with him. We rode until twilight with the two dogs until I heard Naomi ring the dinner bell in the distance. Duane rode across the wheat stubble until he turned around within a hundred yards of our farmhouse. It was the most romantic day of my life and we never
spoke or touched except when I handed him the reins.
One of the main sadnesses of my life at that time, and on occasions since, is that I matured early and was thought by others to be overly attractive. It isn’t the usual thing to be complained about but it unfairly, I thought, set me aside, brought notice when none was desired. It made me shy, and I tended to withdraw at the first mention of what I looked like. It wasn’t so bad in country school where Naomi was the sole teacher and there were only four of us in the seventh grade, but for eighth grade I had to take the school bus to the nearest town of any size which, for certain reasons, will be unnamed. There the attention was constant from the older town boys and I was at a loss what to do. I was thirteen and refused all dates, saying my mother wouldn’t let me go out. I also refused the invitation to become a cheerleader because I wanted to take the school bus home to be with my horses. I trusted one senior boy because he was the son of our doctor and seemed quite pleasant. He gave me a ride home in his convertible one late-April day, full of himself because he had been accepted by far-off Dartmouth. He tried very hard to rape me but I was quite strong from taking care of horses and actually broke one of his fingers, though not before he forced my face close to his penis which erupted all over me. I was so shocked I laughed. He held his broken finger and began crying for forgiveness. It was stupid and profoundly unpleasant. Naturally he spread it around school that I had given him a great blow-job, but school was almost out for the year, and I hoped people would forget.
If anything ninth grade was worse. Mother insisted I dress well, but I hid some sloppy clothes to wear in my school locker. I played basketball for a month or so but quit after another unpleasant incident. The coach kept me very late, well after everyone had left, to practice free throws, and to play one on one. While I was drying off after a shower he simply walked right into the girls’ locker room. He said he wouldn’t hurt me or even touch me but he wanted to see me naked. I was quite frightened when he came closer saying Please over and over again. I didn’t know what to do so I dropped the towel and turned all the way around. He said Once more so I did it again and then he left. When I got in the car I almost told Naomi but I knew that the coach had three children and I didn’t want to make trouble for him.
In contrast to other males Duane hadn’t shown a trace of affection in the year and a half since his arrival. All that we shared was the love of horses but that drew us together sufficiently to give me enough solace to keep going. At one point I had become so depressed I thought of maiming myself, burning my face, or ending my life. Naomi wanted to take me to a psychiatrist in the state capital but I refused. One evening she gave me my first glass of wine and sent Ruth out of the room. I told her much of what was bothering me and she held me and wept with me. She said that what was happening to me was the condition of life, and that I had to behave with pride and honor so that I could respect myself. When I found someone to love who loved me it would all make more sense and become much better. I didn’t tell her I loved Duane because she thought him so rude as to be mentally diseased.
One Saturday I was hazing some young steers for Duane so he could practice his buckskin on cutting, which is when the rider allows the horse to enter the herd, select a steer, and “cut” him out of the herd. My job was to keep the steers from dispersing and running off in every direction. The oldest Airedale understood the game and helped me to turn back especially recalcitrant steers. I think the dog stuck it out merely for the outside chance of getting to bite a steer.
That day it began to sleet so we went in the barn and practiced roping on some old steer horns perched on a pole. We practiced team roping together when the weather was good. I was the “header,” that is, I lassoed the horns while Duane was the “heeler,” which was much harder because you have to lasso the back hoofs of a running steer. Duane seemed especially cold and removed that day so I tried to tease him about a necklace he wore. He wouldn’t tell me what the necklace meant no matter how I badgered him.
“I heard two footballers down at the feed store say you were the best-looking girl in school,” he said, knowing how much it bothered me. “They also said you were the best fuck in the county.”
“That’s not true, Duane.” I had broken into tears. “You know that’s not true.”
“Why would they say it if it wasn’t true?” he asked, grabbing my arm and making me face him. “You never offered it to me because I’m an Indian.”
“I would do it with you because I love you, Duane.”
“I’d never fuck a white girl anyway. Not one who’d fuck those farmers.”
“I’m a little bit Indian and I didn’t fuck those farmers.”
“There’s no way you can prove it,” he yelled.
“Make love to me and then you can tell I’m a virgin.” I began to take off my clothes. “Come ahead you big-mouth coward.” He only glanced at me; then his face became knotty with rage. He ran out of the barn and I could hear the pickup starting.
When I rode home I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to die but couldn’t decide how to go about it. I stopped along a big hole in the creek, now covered with ice, that we used for swimming in the summer. I thought of drowning myself but I didn’t want to upset Naomi and Ruth. Also I was suddenly very tired, cold, and hungry. It was still sleeting and I hoped the ice would break the power line so we could light the oil lamps. After dinner we’d play cards on the dining-room table beneath portraits of Great-grandfather, Grandfather, and Father. I would think, Why did he leave us alone to go to Korea?
After dinner Grandpa pulled into the yard in his old sedan, which startled us because he always drove the pickup. Naomi and I had to go into town with him because Duane was in jail and they needed my part of the story. In the sheriff’s office I said I had never had anything to do with the bruised and severely battered football players. Grandfather was enraged and the sheriff cowered before him. The parents of the football players were frightened, perhaps unfairly, because Grandfather is rich and we are the oldest family in the county. When they brought Duane out of the cell he was unmarked. The football players tried to sneer, but Duane looked through them as if they weren’t there. The sheriff said that if anyone slandered me again there would be trouble. Grandpa said, “One more word and I’ll run all of you filth straight back to Omaha.” The parents begged forgiveness but he ignored them. I could see he was enjoying his righteous indignation. Out in the parking lot of the county building I said thank you to Duane. He squeezed my arm and said “It’s fine, partner.” I almost fell apart when he called me “partner.”
I was not bothered by the boys at school after that, though I was lonely and I was given the behind-the-back nickname of “Squaw.” I didn’t mind the nickname; in fact, I was proud of it, because it meant in the minds of others that I belonged to Duane. When he found out, however, he laughed and said I could never be a squaw because there was so little Indian in me as to be unnoticeable. This made me quarrelsorne and I said, Where did you get those hazel-green eyes if you’re so pure? His anger seemed to make him want to tell me something, but he only said he was over half Sioux and in the eyes of the law that made him Sioux.
After that we didn’t have anything to do with each other for a month. One summer evening when Grandpa was over for dinner he took me aside and told me it was a terrible mistake to fall in love with an Indian boy. I was embarrassed but had the presence to ask him why his own father had married a Sioux girl. “Who knows why anybody marries anybody.” His own wife, whom I never saw and who was long dead, had been a rich girl from Omaha who drank herself into an early grave. “What I’m saying is they aren’t like us, and if you don’t behave and stop chasing Duane I’ll send him away.” It was the first time I stood up to him. “Does that mean you’re not like us?” He hugged me and said, “You know and I know I’m not like anybody. You show the same signs.”