The Holy Road dww-2

by Michael Blake

  Kicking Bird detected a small smile in the beard that covered most of Lawrie Tatum's face but the slight expression of support barely registered. The words poured from his mouth with a fluency that made it seem as though someone else might be speaking them, and as he stood before the white men, he imagined that what he was saying was rolling over his listeners like some magical vapor.

  "It is good that the Great Father in Washington looks for peace. It makes me happy to take the hand of white men in friendship, because I seek peace as well. But we do not need what you are offering. All we need from white people is to be left alone. We need white people to stop killing the buffalo. I have been told many times that the white man loves money above all things. Maybe you can understand when I tell you that the buffalo is our money. What would white men feel if all their money was taken away? The buffalo was given us by the Great Mystery to feed and clothe ourselves. The buffalo is more than money. . he is our brother. . blood-related to all of us. When he is carried away, our hearts go with him. This must stop before there can be peace between us."

  Commissioner Hatton wriggled his sizeable bottom from side to side and cleared his throat.

  "The Great Father and all his people decreed several summers ago that no one can hunt buffalo south of the Red River."

  "Then it must be that the Great Father's promises are no stronger than any other white man's, because there are more of these hunters in our country than ever before. They are hard to kill because they have far-shooting guns, but we do what we can. What does the Great Father do to stop people he has forbidden to come into our country? I have never seen them punished."

  What Kicking Bird said begged a response and, in the silence that followed, all eyes turned toward Bad Hand. Moments before his soft, thin voice sounded, the mangled digits of his left hand made the odd clicking sound.

  “My soldiers cannot be everywhere at once," he said flatly.

  Kicking Bird met Bad Hand's stare with equal force, never averting his eyes through the response and translation.

  "What the soldier chief says is true," he began, his gaze still unwavering. "The country of the Kiowa and Comanche is vast. It makes all men puny. The country of the Texans is as big, but when one of our warriors kills a single, bony cow to feed his starving children, soldiers saddle their horses and come after him to avenge the white man whose worthless cow was lost. Your white hunters come without permission. They kill our buffalo. . more than can be counted. . as fast as they can, taking the robes and tongues and leaving the rest to fester on the plains. No soldier saddles his horse or blows his trumpet when this is done."

  Bad Hand remained still during Kicking Bird's talk, so still that the Indian delegation, who were impressed with his warrior-like bearing, could not be certain if he had blinked during all that time. But beneath this tranquil surface were currents of emotion that were expressed once again in the clicking of his ravaged fingers.

  "Tell me when you find them and I will send soldiers to punish them."

  "If we make a ride of one or two sleeps to tell you this what good can it be? The hunters will have quit their camps when your soldiers arrive. These men must be stopped before they come into the country.”

  Bad Hand shook his head.

  "That is not my job," he said. "I am a soldier, not a politician.”

  Kicking Bird turned his head and looked down on Hatton. But the commissioner also gave a little shake of his head.

  "I do not have the power to keep people from going where they want to go."

  Kicking Bird looked from Hatton to Bad Hand and back again but nothing more was forthcoming.

  "Our young men will kill as many hunters as they can," he declared. "So long as these men take our money without asking, there will be trouble. That is all I have to say."

  In the hours that followed, warriors rose again and again to address unfulfilled promises, while the whites, with equal obstinacy, returned unfailingly to their plan for peace that would deny the aboriginals all freedom of movement. It was nearly dark before the meeting broke up.

  Nothing of substance had been achieved, yet by virtue of having met, a certain progress had been made, and there were handshakes all around as the deadlocked delegations took leave of each other in front of the lodge tent.

  The warriors said little as they followed Lawrie Tatum back up the hill to their horses, having decided only that since the moon was up they would travel awhile rather than camp close to the whites. Though none of them said so, each man was hungry for open space after the grueling talk in the stuffy tent.

  If Lawrie Tatum was disappointed with the meeting he didn't show it, for he was his usual ebullient self as he took each man firmly by the hand, making it clear to all that he was glad they had come and would continue to pursue the friendship he so eagerly desired.

  After he and Kicking Bird clasped hands, the Quaker pulled the Comanche aside and showed him into the place he called a "house." Passing over the threshold, Kicking Bird was astounded to find that a single footstep could transport him into a foreign, confounding world.

  As he stood fixed to a floor of wood, his head turned slowly, allowing his uncomprehending eyes to absorb fully the numbing wonder of what he saw. This was the box that Lawrie Tatum lived in, and the sight of four walls, a roof, and a floor sent a tremor of horror up Kicking Bird's spine.

  How a person could exist in such a place was difficult to believe. The Quaker was completely sealed inside the box. The air inside did not move, and although the things called windows admitted the moon's light, they seemed completely unnecessary. The whole world was only a few feet away! Who could possibly want to look outside when the opportunity of being outside was as easy as walking?

  Tables and chairs were placed in the room, as if in wait for a large child. A heavy piece of soft material obscured much of the floor's planking. The fire was hidden in a metal box, where it could not be enjoyed. But most startling of all, macabre images of hair-mouths hung in several spots on the walls. For a beat or two of his leaping heart Kicking Bird thought they might be living beings whose faces had somehow been manipulated onto the sides of Lawrie Tatum's box. Then he thought they might be representations of slain enemies, but he quickly realized that Lawrie Tatum could not be capable of killing anything more than a rabbit. . maybe a deer.

  The blur of visions was further complicated by the little white man's frenetic behavior. The moment he entered his box, Lawrie Tatum began gesturing and talking in a vain effort to explain every item to a man who had never seen them before, nor even knew of their existence, and what little Kicking Bird learned of the objects the Quaker was describing was canceled out by the haste with which he drew his visitor across the floor to a far wall, where a tall, dark box, fronted by a similarly colored chair, stood.

  His host sat in the chair, reached up, and opened the box. The inside was littered with pieces of paper stuffed into holes that had been carved into the box's top. The Quaker reached down, took hold of something with two fingers, and pulled out another, smaller box. As he began to dig through it, Kicking Bird interrupted his search to ask what the tall box might be.

  "Oh," chirped Lawrie Tatum, looking up earnestly. “Forgive me. . desk. . this is a desk. Make words here."

  Still unsure what it might be, Kicking Bird could manage only an affirmative grunt as the Quaker laid out several small cases on the desktop and began to inspect them. Inside were the glass discs suspended by wire and, as Kicking Bird stared down on them in awe, Lawrie Tatum suddenly turned to him again.

  “The man. . old. . Ten Bears. . Ten Bears."

  "Uhhh," Kicking Bird snorted. "Tin Bares."

  "For his eyes," Lawrie Tatum said eagerly, pointing to his own.

  “Eyes. . Ten Bears."

  "Uhhh," Kicking Bird answered, lifting a finger to one of his eyes, “aye.”

  "See far," Lawrie Tatum asked, holding a cupped hand at arm's length before drawing it quickly to his face, "or close?"

  He repeate
d the motion and a moment later Kicking Bird took the Quaker's hand and brusquely stretched his arm straight.

  “Thisss,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Ah, nearsighted!" Lawrie Tatum grinned. He turned once again to the desk and went on with his examination.

  The Comanche and Kiowa warriors rode far onto their beloved prairie that night before finding a shelf of sandy soil where they could stretch out and sleep a few hours in the shadow of a looming cut bank.

  Wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on the occasional bag he used for a pillow, Kicking Bird lay awake, his mind crowded with all he had heard and seen. It was thrilling to think of the surprise for Ten Bears wrapped in deerskin just behind his skull but, as he watched the orange trails of stars streak across the heavens, he gave the surprise the same passing attention that other, vivid impressions of the previous day received.

  They were pushed aside by a single, overwhelming question. It was a question about the whites he had long contemplated and had always believed a firsthand encounter like the one in the Quaker's home would provide a simple answer to. Instead, a hundred different potential answers whirled in his mind, while the question itself continued to float in his consciousness, heavy and persistent as a pendulum.

  How could Lawrie Tatum, or any other man, in exercise of free will, eschew the sun and stars and wind, spurn the earth itself, to sleep and eat and laugh and cry and bathe and smoke and procreate in a box?

  Kicking Bird thought to himself, I am glad I have never dreamed of such a thing.

  But then he thought, Now that I have seen it, perhaps I will dream about it. That would be bad.

  He shut his eyes and tried to push the possibility of dreaming out of his head.

  Chapter XXV

  The nightmare came in stormy weather and clear. It came in good health and bad, and it came with every sleep. There was a box within a box and people were trapped inside. People slept in the box. Often they defecated and urinated in the box. The stale air they breathed was hard to filter and made them cough.

  A small square had been cut in one of the box's walls and glass had been sized to fit the square. Thin, metal spikes driven into the outside held it fast so that the glass would not open.

  On the opposite wall another, larger square had been cut then filled with a large, similarly shaped plank that reached to the floor. Attached to this plank was a round, metal knob below which a small hole was visible. Every night, as the sun started behind the earth, measured footsteps sounded outside the box within a box, and moments later the sound of metal on metal was heard. Something turned and clicked and, no matter how much the knob was turned, the plank would not open.

  Footsteps came again when the sun's light began to reveal the world. The metal in the plank turned and clicked as it had before; then the plank opened and the dream reached its chilling climax as an expressionless white man or woman appeared.

  What made the nightmare especially horrible was not that it came each night. What gave the nightmare its terror was that it was not a nightmare at all. Everything in it, as far as she could tell, was real, and as the bad dream nights began to pile up behind her, Stands With A Fist feared that her mind was no longer able to tell her what was real and what was not. Sometimes she smiled inwardly at the irony, and when she did, those whose custody she was in would purse their lips in sympathy at the poor woman who had been so diminished by her lifelong ordeal that she smiled when there was no reason.

  They were allowed out in daylight, and Stands With A Fist tried to work as often as possible in the garden beside the big box where she lived. Though she was always watched, her captors were often out of earshot when she was in the garden, and she could talk to Stays Quiet in hushed Comanche. She could fill her nose with earthly things as her hands worked the rich loam in an effort to coax flowers and vegetables to life. Despite her inexperience she was extraordinarily successful, and the luxuriant Gunther garden growing at the hands of Christine, the former captive, quickly became a regular topic of conversation among the survival-minded citizenry dwelling in the rough-hewn settlement called Jacksboro.

  But the talk about Christine ranged far beyond her skill at gardening. The presence of one so unusual — and famous — held the town in continuous thrall, and no day passed without reference to the other-worldly woman who had landed in their midst. The hem of her dress, the tone of her skin, the way she threw her hands around in the rare moments when she uttered words, the wild-born child constantly at her side. All these things and many more were discussed through every waking hour. A lion caged in the center of town could not have evoked more interest.

  But as her residency passed thirty days, a change took place. Passing comments and trivial anecdotes gave way to an issue of far greater weight that inflamed and divided the populace. It was becoming apparent that she was having problems adapting, and the question of whether she would ever fit in split the people of Jacksboro.

  A large number of citizens believed that she would eventually embrace her white heritage, arguing persuasively that no one could predict how long it might take for someone who had lived with savages for twenty-five years to reenter the fold. Through God's guidance and the generosity of His flock, assimilation might yet be effected. The Lord had taken her away and the Lord had given her back. That was proof enough to believers that she belonged among them.

  But nearly an equal number of colonists had come to the conclusion, after careful observation, that she was an unredeemable heathen and a racial embarrassment of no apparent social worth and should be cast out.

  Some held the opinion that she should be institutionalized, this despite a visit from a representative of the governor, who eloquently argued that the reclamation of Christine Gunther was of the highest priority in that it would provide hope for other captives' families, who were constantly appealing to the governor's office for help. He also reminded the inhabitants of Jacksboro that should they lose the battle to win back Christine Gunther it would have national repercussions. It might leave the impression that the people of Texas did not take care of their own.

  Though the governor's position did not change many minds, it blunted the drive to remove her to arr asylum, while at the same time giving rise to a variety of other wild schemes. A tiny knot of Comanche-haters pointed out that she had already attempted to escape twice, and that it would be best to incarcerate her. A plan to make her a kind of townwide domestic, rotating from home to home, was advanced by a group of women who advanced the notion that hard work would speed her rehabilitation. A cabal of enterprising businessmen proposed a plan designed to capitalize on both her celebrity and her obstinacy by turning her into an attraction for visitors. A dwelling of three walls, one wall being left open for viewing, could be erected for her and her issue to live in, with regular hours for viewing established and ample daily breaks provided in the name of privacy and humane treatment.

  None of these ideas found much in the way of popular support, and so, faced with no other option, the townspeople simply continued to watch as the Gunther family attempted to restore their long-lost relative to Christian respectability.

  Most of the family she had known as a little girl were dead and the authorities had consigned her to the care of a cousin and his large, relatively prosperous family. The Gunthers' original euphoria at her arrival was, to their great consternation, shockingly short-lived. The lovely bedroom they had created for her, complete with a metal-frame bed, a ceramic wash basin that had survived the crossing from Germany, a lady's vanity painted light pink, two bottles of recently purchased scents, a refurbished wardrobe with three oversized dresses inside, and an array of cheerful bunting that encircled the room, had, by her second day in Jacksboro, been utterly destroyed.

  The bed's mattress she had pulled to the floor; the scented water she had poured out; she was using the dresses for blankets; and the basin, now filled with a mixture of bunting and wooden shards from the legs of the vanity — a precious Old Country heirloom — no
w stood in the center of the room, perched on its metal stand. In it she made her fire, and when, upon smelling smoke, the elder Gunther raced to her door, he found he could not get through. Knocking, then pounding, to no avail, the taciturn cousin to Stands With A Fist put his shoulder to the door and burst into the room, only to find her seated cross-legged in the middle of the floor, Stays Quiet in her lap, rocking lunatic-like in front of the blazing basin.

  At the first family dinner, conducted at a long table in the formal dining room, her cousin was somberly caning a roast when she lunged across the table, snatched a fresh-cut slab of meat, and stuffed it into her mouth.

  She would defecate or urinate in public, refused to bathe except in a nearby stream, cried without warning, hardly spoke, and, after only a few days, had driven the entire Gunther family to distraction. Not a moment seemed to pass without crisis. Children complained about the interminable labor of "watching Cousin Christine," a steadfast wife's nerves began to fray, and the cousin who had so righteously stepped forward to claim his kin now found himself lying awake at night, vainly wondering how life could be returned to normal.

  Faced with a dilemma beyond his ability, the elder Gunther, with the eager support of his family, turned to a higher authority, who appeared a few days later in the pallid, squeamish form of a man named Tooey, reputed to be the most mesmerizing preacher in the district.

  Firm and soft-spoken, Reverend Tooey assured the rattled Gunthers that there was nothing to worry about because while he taught Christine the rudiments of English he would be instructing her in the basics of scripture — a potent formula in which he had every confidence.

  But by the end of the second full day of "instruction" he had stretched the narrow limits of his imagination to their fullest. The woman in his charge seemed unable to grasp any of what he was trying to teach. When he was certain that she was poised for a breakthrough, the dull-witted creature would lapse into a litany of mumbles and grunts that comprised the only language she seemed capable of speaking. At last he turned to God, expecting that if she were anointed with the power of prayer, the light of understanding was sure to fill her eyes. For twenty minutes he tried to explain what he wanted, talking, cajoling, and pantomiming until uncharacteristic beads of sweat appeared at his hairline and ran downward in tiny, determined rivulets until they reached the reverend's brow, causing the single-minded preacher to swipe constantly at his face as he tried to prepare Stands With A Fist for a profound encounter with the Almighty.