Dalva

by Jim Harrison

  It was a relief to be home and my energies returned despite my bedraggled sleep. I ignored the mail except for a postcard from Naomi saying she would be home by late Friday which was this evening, in order to get ready for the arrival of Paul and Ruth. She and her friend had been offered the possibility of a National Science Foundation grant for their work, which she was reticent about accepting.

  Lundquist gulped his beer in a trice and went back to work, after requesting a pat of butter for Roscoe, the dog’s favorite treat. I made a pot of coffee, and Hopped on the den couch in order to finish Michael’s manuscript, knowing that he was eager for a response. I was in a hurry because the day was pleasantly cool and I wanted to take Peach on a long ride.

  Michael wrote well, if eccentrically, on the “threat of dance,” and the irony that after all the years of the Indian Wars the settlers and government had now whipped themselves into a virtual frenzy over the fact that many tribes, but foremost the Sioux, were being allowed to perform this new Ghost Dance. The attitude can be best summarized by an editorial in the Chicago Tribune in the spring of 1890 that stated, “If the United States Army would kill a thousand or so of the dancing Indians there would be no more trouble.” This presented the solution rather succinctly though it was difficult to get that many Sioux to stand still in one place to be shot. The most the government was able to manage were the three hundred or so Sioux men, women, and children, though two-thirds women and children, who were massacred at Wounded Knee later that year in December during the moon of the popping trees. But again this was a matter of the frequently ignored public record. One can imagine a Caucasian witness to hundreds, perhaps thousands of Sioux joining hands and dancing slowly in a circle for days on end, wildly painted but dancing without the accompaniment of drums, quietly with rain falling, then by late November with snow covering the perfect circle. Wovovka had assured them that if they continued to dance “the earth would shake like a rattle” and all dead warriors and ancestors would return to life, and the great herds of buffalo would sweep back across the prairie.

  April 3, 1890

  Kicking Bear’ returned in the night from his trip to the Paiutes, rather gaunt & fatigued, though in haste after a few hours’ rest to be on his way home. I dissuaded him from this as his health needs mending & in private Small Bird is angry as she sees him as a threat to our peace. I tell her she has become a mother first and a Sioux second, though the difficulties of her life justify this.

  Late in the afternoon Kicking Bear prepares a jug of water & takes an elk-calf bag & we walk across a field and up the same draw where I shot an elk winters before. We sit on adjoining rocks & he draws from his bag a dozen small cacti which I recognize from my correspondence with Grinnell to be Lophophora williamsii or “peyote” as it is commonly called. We ate these bitter fruit as one would crabapples, then gathered wood for a fire. When we had a fair-sized heap of wood we both began to bitterly retch & flush ourselves with the jug of water. Soon enough the plant took over & I was inside the skull of my mother looking into the eyes of my father & out the back of his head into the prairie. I was the thoughts of my mother & father and through the evening and night I was a buffalo, a rattlesnake, a badger deep in his hole. I was the open sewer at Andersonville & the guts of horses, I was a woman in the city of Chicago, and then, alas, I was with my beloved Aase flying slowly over the continents & oceans looking down at whales & ice floes & great white bears. Intermixed with our visions we chanted before the fire, oftentimes new songs:

  The world of the dead is returning,

  over the earth I see them coming,

  our dead drive before them

  elk and deer and herds of buffalo,

  as the Father has promised.

  Near dawn in my last vision I was with Crazy Horse and his daughter & we played with her toys on the burial platform & the sky was thick with birds. He told me not to take the cacti again which troubled me into consciousness . . . .

  As a missionary of the Wesleyan Methodists, a sect that forbade dancing, Northridge now began seven months of dancing, and the ingestion of the cactus whenever his spirits flagged or whenever it was available, or so he wrote later—there are no journal entries until a month after Wounded Knee when he had traveled to the homestead with his wife and son. He had been brought to his senses by a grotesque event: When he arrived late on the scene of the massacre at Wounded Knee with Black Elk and twenty warriors, Black Elk had instructed him to stay well back from the gunfire. Northridge later reflected that Black Elk’s sense of the appropriate never left him, and he wouldn’t allow Northridge, who was ill with pneumonia, to offer himself up in this manner. Consequently, Northridge watched the cessation of rifle fire for a few minutes through his telescope, which then caught the dozen or so small children, none of them over five, emerging birdlike from a covert, thinking the battle was over. All of the children were sliced to ribbons by the resumption of fire, so light in their bodies that the bullets sent them rolling and tumbling down the hill toward their dead parents. After the “battle” Northridge was arrested by the army during his maddened efforts to bandage back together what was left of these children. He was incarcerated, then put under medical care, then released on orders by General Miles under the condition that he not return to the Dakotas or make further contact with the Sioux.

  There are only the briefest entries throughout the winter and spring of 1891 and they are mostly agricultural in nature, though some of his tree-planting notations beginning in mid-March are transparent code for his other activities: the hiding of escaping chiefs and warriors including Kicking Bear (who was later “sentenced” to join Buffalo Bill’s show for two years, including the humiliation of having a cast made of him at the Smithsonian as a perfect specimen of Indian); and the hiding of cherished artifacts from the collectors and the government which had proscribed all obvious signs of Indianness. The limited use of the subbasement as mausoleum came about because of the Sioux fear of indignities after death-after Sitting Bull’s murder some businessman had offered the army a thousand dollars for his body in order to display it for profit.

  Northridge’s activities gradually came to the notice of his Cornell classmate the lieutenant colonel, who now commanded the intelligence activities for the army in the region that included the Dakotas and Nebraska. It wasn’t a question of active interest or pursuit by this man since all the primary escapees had been captured and there was no current law against storing artifacts. Army and newspaper records of the time show that the lieutenant colonel, accompanied by a sergeant and a private, was riding north toward the railhead at Valentine to intercept a rail carload of new horses destined for Fort Robinson, in order to select the best mounts. The homestead was only a day’s ride off his route so the lieutenant made his way to Northridge’s, perhaps to rub salt in his wounds. He demanded food and shelter which he was entitled to by law.

  June 21, 1891

  The blessed event of the Solstice disturbed by the arrival of the Lieutenant and two men. He makes an elaborate show of friendliness as if the past is done & I attempt a feeling of Christian forbearance with his kind father in mind. When they gallop into the yard in the late afternoon my three Swede tree planters are frightened, having escaped conscription in their own land.

  There is an ample stew in the pot in the fireplace and we sit at the table discussing horses & the weather which has been fair with good prospects for the crops. The Lieutenant drinks whiskey quickly and his mood becomes mean by the time he eats his dinner. He looks at Small Bird who tends the fire & says in half jest that we must acquire a license of marriage or she would be returned to the Reservation. I say we will do so. He then teases little John about the doll he carries around which was owned by Aase. John is abashed and puts the doll on the table. Small Bird senses the evil in the man’s voice and takes little John away. The man becomes abusive to the embarrassment of his men whom he forces to join him in more drink. Finally he picks up the doll and with no reason tosses it in the fire.
Just as quickly I draw out the .44 I have concealed under the table and shoot him in the head. The sergeant draws his weapon & I shoot him in the heart. The private runs to the door & I shoot him twice in the back. Small Bird returns from where I saw her peeking from the kitchen. She helps me drag the bodies down under the basement & then boils water to scrub the blood away. I go out into the barnyard and see the three Swedes standing in front of the bunkhouse. We stare at each other until one says, “I hear only the birds this evening.” 1 re-saddle their horses and my own mount and travel north across the Niobrara & turn their horses loose, praying for rain which is gathering in the sky to wipe away our trail. I return home.

  It was several days before the army launched a search party and found the stray horses a hundred miles to the north in the possession of two petty criminals who were summarily executed for the murder of the three men. Except for twenty years of farming and planting trees the story of Northridge was ended.

  I had a long and easy ride with Peach, traveling east toward the Lundquist farm to make sure he could come to the picnic tomorrow. He was whittling on the front porch and was delighted by my visit and made a pot of tea. He worked with his knife at a dog whistle, inaudible to the human ear, which was to be a present for me. Regular dog whistles, he said, tended to disturb every bird and animal in the area, while the silent whistle only mystified them. He blew tentatively at the whistle and Roscoe streaked across the yard, leaping at the chicken pen. He said he had been a bit melancholy because it had occurred to him he wouldn’t reach the age of a hundred and two, which meant he would miss the Millennium and the Second Coming of Christ. I asked him if he was sure that was the date, and he answered “Nope” with a laugh. In any event, he looked forward to helping Michael with the barbecue.

  When I remounted Peach and rode away I remembered the evening a few summers before when Lundquist had asked if he might be buried on the “edge” of the family cemetery, and I told him his plot could be plumb in the center next to his friend J. W.

  I took the long way home to allow Peach a river swim since she kept wanting to turn in that direction anyway. I also let her run the length of the drive which was wonderful except that I was smacked in the forehead by a June bug. After I put her away I climbed up in the mow to watch the sunset from Duane’s room. I allowed myself the sentiment of this act once a summer, and every Christmas vacation or so when the cold weather was sunny and the frozen sheen of snow caught the sparkling light and if there was a wind the loose snow moved in coils across the pasture. This evening it was pleasant to feel no weight in my heart while sitting there. There was enough haze in the air so that the sun set orangely behind the distant windbreak—as a small child I had thought that was where the sun lived—and enough breeze so that the white buffalo skull above me turned ever so slowly as if its ghost were looking for a better angle of vision.

  I went in the house when it was pitch dark, warmed a frozen container of Frieda’s chicken soup, and went to bed with a curious book about snow leopards in Tibet that I had already read several times because the book was filled with stillness. Then Naomi called to say she was home and wondering whether we should have the picnic at her house or mine. I left it up to her and she chose my place because it was more “private”—a matter of having no cars pass rather than the one or two neighbors that came down her road every day. She added that when she had arrived Michael and Frieda were drinking butterscotch schnapps and playing two-handed pinochle. Michael had fallen asleep in his chair and Frieda carried him to his bed.

  I had one of those great sleeps, so that when you awake you are a part of the mattress and your limbs are heavy and soft, and everything you look at is lucid and sharp-edged. The world is full of primary colors as if the unlikely had happened and Gauguin had decided to paint this part of Nebraska. My dreams had been rich and varied and over coffee I looked in the Curtis folio for an image that had survived my dreams. When it wasn’t there I was pleased that my brain in its sleep had created a brand-new Edward Curtis photograph.

  At midmorning Frieda swerved in the yard with Michael and Lundquist. Through the window I could see the old man was wearing the usual denim jacket plus a pair of Sunday trousers that were robin’s-egg blue, and his black work shoes were spit-polished. Michael and Frieda started in the house with cartons of groceries while Lundquist lifted a washtub full of ice and beer off the pickup, doubtless weighing over a hundred pounds. He glanced around, pocketed a beer, and headed for the barn, then turned back to lift Roscoe out of the cab of the truck.

  Michael and Frieda were a bit red-eyed but chipper. Michael began making a secret barbecue sauce, the sort of thing men can be proud of though the results are often undistinguished. Frieda began peeling potatoes for potato salad, then unwrapped the halved chickens, looking at the neatly plucked birds critically.

  “Thank Jesus Daddy got up early and butchered. I didn’t have the stomach for it. This bung hole here”—she glared at Michael—“had Naomi lock up her liquor cabinet so we had to settle for a bottle of butterscotch schnapps Gus left in the truck. That shows how goddamn dumb we are.”

  I went to the stove and bit Michael’s ear, watching his face redden. He sighed and burped, then dumped a small bottle of Tabasco into his sauce.

  “He also cheats at pinochle,” Frieda added.

  I went outside and helped Lundquist drag Grandfather’s old cast-iron grill out of the barn. Like the harness the grill had been kept in immaculate condition, and we were wrestling it out to the front yard when Naomi drove in with Paul, Ruth, and Luiz. Luiz was quite shy after so long but had already begun to carry himself with what he imagined was a military bearing. Paul was kind enough to tell me that country life had improved my appearance in a little more than a month. Then Paul and Lundquist took Luiz off for a tour of the farm and I went inside with Naomi and Ruth, who looked tired, having spent, she admitted, a week in the best hotel in Costa Rica with her priest.

  In the kitchen we sampled Michael’s sauce which was a scorcher. He pulled his long glass straw out of his pocket and went outside to have a beer. From the window I could see Lundquist talking intently to Luiz, no doubt telling him he was a member of a lost tribe of Israel. Ruth and I began snipping the tips off the ends of green beans while Naomi helped Frieda with the potato salad. Frieda overheard our talk at the sink and said she was surprised that Ruth got that much “action” what with being so thin. Ruth was kind enough to say her lover was a pervert for thin women. At that moment Naomi’s young man came in the yard and she went out to greet him. He was driving a pickup as old as Lundquist’s and there was a rather comic emblem of lightning on the door panel.

  I asked Ruth what her plans were and she laughed and said she had none. She wondered if I was ready to immerse myself in human suffering again this fall, what with my new job counseling bankrupt farm families. Luiz ran in and asked if he could ride a horse, and I said yes, that Paul could saddle the bay mare for him. Luiz admitted he had only ridden a burro down in Sonora but he was sure he could manage a horse. At the school he was going to there was a whole course in riding and he wanted to get ready. He left and we continued talking and sampled the dressing for Frieda’s potato salad. I turned and thought Ruth was looking at me strangely but I said nothing. I stared out the window and they were all standing by the corral. Lundquist carried a saddle out of the barn and Naomi’s young man, Nelse, was in the corral checking the mare’s hoofs. Then he led the mare out and reached for the saddle in Lundquist’s arms. He stood still for a moment, calming the mare, and I became a little dizzy as if my heart were swollen and constricting my chest. I had never had a good look at him before and suddenly he reminded me of Duane standing there in the frozen barnyard looking wordlessly at the buckskin. I wiped my hands on a kitchen towel and looked down at the green beans floating in the cold water. Ruth touched my shoulder. I went outside and couldn’t feel my feet on the grass. I stood there looking at them all and Naomi walked over to me. Nelse handed the reins to Paul and cam
e slowly toward me, and I was wondering if he was Duane and myself in one single place.

  “Dalva, this is your son,” Naomi said.

  I think I said, “I know it,” and he and I turned and walked beside each other out toward the driveway. We walked up the small road between the trees for a quarter of a mile without saying anything. I didn’t even look at him. Then I looked at the ground and said, “This is where I met your father.” I turned to him and he averted his glance as if comprehending what I said.

  “Looks like a better place than most,” he said. He put his hand around my arm above the elbow and I thought, Jesus this is going to kill me, I hope not right now. What should we do?

  “Why didn’t you say something before?” I finally had the courage to ask. He was a little paler, his hair lighter, but he had Duane’s eyes and his shoulders.

  “You’ve just been home a month, and I wasn’t sure you wanted to know me. Naomi figured it out a week or so ago when we were working. I tracked you down last year. So I called my mother, the other one, and she said you two had met.”

  He still held my arm so I hugged him a little stiffly, looking down at the dust where his father had sat one hot afternoon with a burlap bag full of all he owned on earth.

  “Naomi said my father was quite the young man but not necessarily the kind you wanted in your living room.” Now he smiled.

  “She was trying to look out for me but I guess it didn’t work.”

  Quite naturally he wanted to see a photo of his dad so we walked back to the house and went up to my bedroom. He looked at the pictures unsure of what to say except to admire the buckskin. I ran downstairs and then back up with a bottle of brandy. We toasted repeatedly straight from the bottle, and talked a half-hour until we heard music. We went to the window and looked down at the front yard: Michael was roasting the chickens, Frieda was setting the table, Paul was standing near the tire swing with Luiz, who was petting the mare, and Naomi and Ruth were sitting at the picnic table. Naomi looked up at us standing at the window. We waved and she covered her face with her hands. The music came from Lundquist who was wandering around in the groves of lilacs, among the gravestones, then back into the yard, playing his miniature violin, as if he were at the same time serenading the living and the dead. We went down to join them.