It was raining when we crossed the border at Sweetgrass and saw the Turkey Track, the narrow-gauge railroad between Lethbridge and the Great Falls. What a strange crossing. The bighorn sheep stared at me like they recognized an idiot.
Looking at my maps I saw the paper was so wet the words were leaking.
Thunder rolled in with the evening from the northwest. The winds seemed warm. My father always said that the winds from the northwest blow warm. I knew that I must find a river. I determined to try at dawn because it was only at dawn and at dusk that I was sure which direction I faced.
I stood in the dark in the rain with my mouth open trying to drink. I filled my satchels with water caught in a circle of tin cans. I knew my horse had been thirsty all day so I watered her first. I felt I might die of thirst even while I drank. What, I wondered, is wrong with me?
TEN MORE days passed like this. Rain slowed, stopped, commenced and continued. In the brief breaks the air filled with loud clouds of mosquitos. On about the eleventh day I stalked and killed a long-tailed grouse to eat. I watched it for so long I almost couldn’t kill it, but I was hungry and sick of deer jerky. I plucked it and cooked it in a pan over the fire. Having heard its neck break I had no nerve for slaughtering it properly. When it started to smoke I removed it from the fire and I bit into its breast and gagged until all the air came out of me. It tasted like dirt-bird dragged in poison. I had been too hurried to get all the damn feathers off and the fire took too long to burn deep and hot so the bird was half cooked with charred spiky feathers. I threw it on the ground and stomped on its smelly body, swearing and hating myself.
On the thirteenth or the thirtieth day or the three hundredth day we passed through a forest of dead timber to some sort of dividing ridge where clean waters ran thick and white over the rocks. I remembered that all the rivers flow either to the Arctic Ocean, Hudson’s Bay or the Gulf of Mexico. I wondered to where the Bow flows. My God, I was happy to see those beautiful spotty brown trout flip over each other in the shallows. I would have traded my clothes for a fresh brown trout fried in butter, but my clothes weren’t worth a minnow’s lunch. I washed and swam in the water and drank and splashed. I let my horse rest for an hour while I napped in the sweetgrass. When I woke I saw the brown body of a dead mouse beside me. I closed my eyes and I could feel myself shrinking. My father arrived beside me and crouched down.
Shall we bury it? he asked.
Yes. Will it go to Heaven?
Take my hand. Look at me. It’s just a mouse, Miette.
HOURS LATER, close to night, which barely touches down in summer, we descended into the great canal of a coulee so deep that when I looked up from the bottom I saw the raised sides of the riverbed, the sediment stripes of purple, red, tan and black, and the way they towered all around me; it looked like I was surrounded by mountains, mountains eroding underground. We walked along a dry, braided channel made treacherous with ancient debris. Sinkholes gaped at intervals along the path. We passed protruding tongues of solidified lava. A sparrowhawk floated, looking for the little sweet meats cheeping in holes scattered across the walls. My horse stepped gingerly around rattlesnakes. As we rose out of the valley I saw a band of wild horses, watching us. A shaggy brown and white mare and her foal stood apart from two larger, smooth-coated grey horses.
A fort stood on the east side of the trail. It was a rectangular stockade of cottonwood logs with elevated blockhouses on two corners and over the main entrance. The main door was gone, leaving a broad gaping hole in the front wall. The other walls had been partly disassembled and some of the logs were chopped and piled near a large firepit. The burnt ends of dessicated wood lay crumbled in the centre of a large black circle in the grass and dirt; streaks on the ground traced the absence of long flames.
Hey, I cried, hey out there. The valley behind me threw my voice back.
A figure appeared in the doorway. The sun was shining directly in my eyes and I could not make out if it was a man or a woman.
Come here, the figure said, come here.
I stilled my horse.
Come here. I want to see you.
I dismounted and walked slowly towards the voice. Come here; let me look at you. Oh yes, it’s you. You are the one I have been waiting for!
Who are you?
The voice laughed. Well, I am Calamity.
I stopped walking and blinked and squinted, trying to squeeze the sun out of my eyes so I could see her.
Come here. Come here, she said. She held out her arms to me. Her bony fingers moved like feelers in the air. She was small and her face was wrinkled and sunburnt. Her little eyes scanned my face. She gestured at the sky and I glanced at the white sun. When I looked back, her features were blacked out. She trembled and the smell of alcohol was strong on her breath. She smiled. Her naked gums were brown from nicotine.
At last. I’m so glad you’re here.
Who do you think I am?
I have been praying for you to come. Follow me.
I walked behind her, watching her narrow body. She muttered to herself as she teetered along.
We circled the fort to a hole in the ground. It was the mouth of an abandoned well. A thick rope was tied to a fence post nearby and the length of the rope fell down the well.
Go, go down there, she said, pointing. Her arms and legs were shaking as if she would collapse or dance.
I looked down the well. No. Why do you want me to go down the well?
You have to. You have to. It’s a dry well. It’s not so far. There’s gold down there, a box of gold, and bones, the bones of all my children. Go down and get the gold and get me the bones so I can bury them properly. I will pay you. I will pay you in gold to bring me the bones. I need them. I need to bury my children.
I’m sorry but I have to go.
Spittle gathered on her chin. She shook her head. My children are down there, she cried. You have to help me get them up.
No.
You have to! She clutched her head and wept and gasped. I waited for you! I prayed and I waited for you to come and help me. You can’t leave me here alone. Don’t you see how dark it is down the well? They were only children. If I can just give them a decent burial. I—Oh please help me. I need for them to go to Heaven. I don’t care about myself. I only need my sweet children to be safe in Heaven. They are your sisters and brothers on this earth. You must see how wrong it is for their little bones to stay hidden in a well.
How did they get in the well?
I put them there! She turned and stomped in a circle. Goddamit, should I have let the animals feed on them? Should I have abandoned them? I was young and strong and I climbed down into the well with each dead one held against me one last time, as if they were sleeping. I let them slip down and I promised I would come back and get them when the war was over. I promised them that I would bury them and mark their graves and they would go to Heaven.
What’s your other name?
What?
You called yourself Calamity when I rode up. What is your whole name?
I don’t know. I don’t have no other name. I’m just Calamity.
Who named you?
The troopers. I followed them and they gave me a name. Get down in that well. Get down there and bring me my babies! Get down in the well! Get down in the well!
I edged towards the well and got down on my knees and peered down the endless cylindrical dark. I took a match from my pocket and lit it and let it fall. I took a stone and dropped it too and listened. There was nothing.
Please. P-please, she stuttered. It’s not so deep. The well is dry. I would never spoil nobody’s water. My children are down there. I need to bury my children. I will give you all the gold but what I need to bury them. Please, please. I need my children.
I tested the rope and it held. There were knots tied every few feet and I used these like the rungs of a ladder as I climbed down. The sides of the well were slimy beneath my hands. I felt around and held on with my other arm. Finding nothing
I descended deeper.
There’s a ledge, she called. Feel for the ledge. That’s where the gold is. It’s all wedged in a big hole there, halfway down. Have you felt it yet?
No.
I ran my open hand around the wall, rotating on the rope. I slid down another few feet and tried again. I could see nothing. A few more feet and a few more.
There’s nothing here, I called.
Can you see the bottom? Can you see the bones?
No. There is nothing here. It’s the wrong well.
Nothing? No bones? No skulls? No bag of gold?
No, nothing. I’m coming up.
The rope burnt my palms as I pulled myself up. At the top I climbed out and faced her. She was livid, stomping in the dirt.
I see with perfect clarity, she shrieked, what you have done. You stole my babies. You stole their sweet little bones and the money I hid to pay for their burials.
Tears mapped her cheeks.
No, I said.
Yes! she shrieked. You have robbed me! You have robbed me!
I did not. I looked. The well is deep. I do not even know if it is dry, but there are no shelves, no places money could be hid. You said you were young; if the bodies were ever there I don’t think I could find them now.
I raised my hands in a gesture of peace and between my fingers I saw the little black O of a gun muzzle shaking at the end of her arm. Her whole being was aiming itself at me through the mouth of that gun. I thought of the little gun tucked in my belt but I could not bring myself to draw on her.
I swear I have not robbed you. I looked hard. There’s nothing in the well, I said. It’s not the right well!
I heard a clap and I looked at the ground and watched the grass and stones get sucked back into the earth as I reached up to hold my ear.
You shot me, I said as I fell.
Martha
THESE ARE THE KILLED (BY BILL): DAVIS TUTT, a good friend; Bill Mulvey, tried to sneak up on Bill; Samuel Strawhun, a foolish cowboy causing a disturbance in a saloon; John Lyle, a disorderly soldier of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment; Phil Coe, a saloon owner with whom he had an ongoing dispute; Special Deputy Marshal Mike Williams, by mistake when the man rushed to Bill’s aid. Also, Indians, a number debated depending on the politics of the day.
THESE ARE the killed (by the international shooting sensation, Calamity Jane!): No one.
Miette
I WOKE FACE DOWN WITH MY MOUTH FULL OF dirt and blood. The pain in my ear was so great it was almost beyond feeling. I lifted my hand to touch my wound and I could not be sure if the raggedness dried into my hair was complete or if I had lost the ear. It was perfectly dark, perfectly silent. I dragged myself to a sitting position.
My horse, seeing me rise, walked over to me and touched my head with her muzzle. I rubbed her face and held her to help myself rise. I was weak and bleary-eyed.
Together we stumbled towards the fort thinking to sleep in shelter until sunrise. Near the entrance was a burnt-out firepit with wood piled beside it. I set a fire and peeled off my bloody clothes. I used water from my canteen to try and clean the wound but the pain was such sharpness I could not force my hand to finish. I did not want to stand long, naked in the firelight, so I pulled the black dress from my pack and drew it on.
As I dressed I felt so bitter, I conjured and twisted that beloved voice.
Make her pay, daughter, for all of the years that she put you out of her mind.
Why don’t you turn around? another voice said behind me.
I spun and saw the Hag standing there. Did you follow me? I asked.
She nodded. She was dressed in trousers and a man’s shirt and a hat, all the fabric dusty and falling apart. The clothes must have belonged to another of her long-ago guests.
What do you want from me?
She smiled and stepped forward.
Go away, I said. You turn back and don’t follow me. I don’t care that you knew him.
I loved him, she said.
No. I loved him. I loved him so much and that’s why I came here, because he asked me to go to her.
I know that, she said.
For a moment I thought I could see through her.
Go away, I said.
But a lot has happened. He didn’t know what he was asking of you.
I shook my head and began to pull her dress off my body. It caught on my ear as I yanked it over my head and I screamed. I heard it rip. I threw it at her and she caught it. We stood looking at each other until I covered my eyes with my fists, leaning the heels of my hands on the cliffs of my eye sockets. After a few seconds of brilliant stars I lowered my hands and turned to my horse and swung my body up into the saddle and we rode away from her as fast as we could.
After twenty minutes, forty minutes, whenever it was that it started hurting to run, we stopped. I looked behind me to make sure she wasn’t there. The crickets were silent. The dark was thinning and although the moon was low I could see through the trees of the forest. The trees lined up as if receding bands of soldiers stood at attention and between those slim lines I saw the body of a wolf stepping so smoothly it might have been bicycling. I stopped and stared. The black creature also stopped and held my gaze, thinking. My heart about to explode, I stirred my horse to trot away.
Martha
SHE WAS BORN FOR THE FOURTH TIME IN Montana at the confluence of three rivers. It was May 1859. Around the world, society was at its height. Gounod’s Faust was being performed in Paris. Whistler was painting At the Piano. A French tightrope walker, Charles Blondin, was walking across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Dickens and Darwin were writing their masterpieces. The Baseball Club in Washington was being organized and the steamroller had just been invented.
But her birth went uncelebrated.
Her mother’s name was Mollie Bliss Connoray. There were complications and Mollie died in childbirth. Her father’s name was John Connoray and he died in a thunderstorm riding for help for his struggling wife. So the baby came into the world and within the hour was completely alone. By the time someone found Mollie Bliss’s body, the infant had been spirited away. She was never found but all around the cabin were the broad footprints of wolves as well as pointed scat containing bone fragments and Mollie’s hair. It was assumed the girl was eaten. No search was made. But in 1865 a boy living in the area claimed to have seen a naked girl with hair down to her knees fishing with her hands in the river. She was, he said, tanned and quick. She grabbed the fish and threw them behind her onto the dirt where they flapped together, sending teardrops of mud into the air. Later someone claimed to have seen a girl in the company of wolves attacking a herd of goats. For years similar stories accumulated, until footprints were found with pawprints and a hunt was organized.
On the third day of the hunt the girl was cornered in a canyon. A grey wolf stood in front of her snarling and bristling until it was shot dead. The girl collapsed and cried over the body of the wolf, rocking and holding the head of the beast to her breast. When the hunters approached she growled and barked and as they grabbed her she bit and tore their flesh with her teeth. One hunter cracked her head with the butt of his gun and she fell down unconscious. They bound her and took her to a nearby ranch and locked her in a room. When she woke she howled and howled and howled until the men were on their knees with hands over their ears.
That evening a large number of wolves, apparently attracted by her incessant mournful howls, came to the ranch. The cows and horses and all the domestic beasts on the ranch panicked. The men shot into the dark, killing their own livestock as well as the wolves. In the battle she escaped.
Several years later a surveying team reported a teenaged girl playing with two wolf pups on a sandbar. After that she was never seen again as the wolf girl.
She emerged in Deadwood as Jane, who had learned hunting from the wolves and how to travel great distances between territories without supplies. She forgave the men who tried to rescue her but she longed for her wolf family, most of whom had
been killed that terrible night. She drank until the human words left her mind and then she howled.
Miette
I WOKE WITH MY EAR SCREAMING HOT AND IN terrible pain. I was naked, asleep on the back of my horse, who stood drinking from a river. The Hag was gone. The awful woman who had shot me and who was not my mother was gone. My skin was stained from sweat and blood that had soaked the black dress; there were dark grey rings around my wrists like cuffs. I took my normal clothes from my pack and walked into the river with them, letting the water do what it could. I waded out into the chill, turning and rubbing until I was restored to my original colour. I wrung out my clothes and hung them over the branches of a nearby tree to dry. I fed my horse and held onto her for warmth, embracing her until the steam off her skin reminded me to take the deerskin from my pack, which I did and wrapped myself in. I fell on the ground and shook.
The sun rose and dried my clothes. I saw patches of the purest blue between the clouds. The wind made its shapes over me and a few hours later I got on my horse and began riding through a dictionary of pain.
AIR IN ear.
Air, bubble in left ear.
Air, coming out of ear, alternate currents of cold and warm.
Air, forced into ear on blowing nose.
Alive in ear, something is.
Animals burrowing in ear.
Animals, crying in ear.
Artery, large, throbbing behind ear.
Balls, circulating in ear.
Band, or cord, drawn tightly from ear to ear.
In Calamity's Wake Page 6