In Calamity's Wake

by Natalee Caple

  A hush was upon these boys and in less than two minutes the mob had vanished into the darkness. Bill went back to the boy in the dust but he was already dead. Bill carried the policeman in his arms, like some sweetheart, to the coffin-maker and bought him a fine coffin. He paid all the expenses for the man’s burial, including bringing his mother from Kansas to claim the remains. He felt real guilty about killing a man who surely was rushing to his aid.

  My father killed two men?

  Oh, he killed more than that! But things like that just happened all the time. Blame it on the moon, blame it on the stars or the whisky.

  Blame it on the stars.

  Or the whisky.

  Well, thank you.

  No never mind. Don’t feel too bad about the killings. He got shot himself playing cards. Revenge killing, if that makes you feel any better.

  It does not.

  Martha

  SHE BEGGED POKER ALICE TO READ HER THE report of Bill’s death in The Special Correspondence of the Chicago Inter Ocean.

  A pistol was fired close to the back of the head, Alice read. The bullet entered the base of the brain, a little to the right of the centre, passing through in a straight line, making its exit through the right cheek between the upper and lower jawbones, loosening several of the molar teeth in its passage, and carrying a portion of the cerebellum through the wound.

  Martha gagged hard and fell forward. Alice caught her by the shoulders and pushed her back in the chair, holding her as long as she could. Alice won three four-hour games with Martha crying on her, soaking the lace at the neck of her dress, until the men said they wouldn’t play; they couldn’t bluff over her weeping.

  Most mornings she could be found sleeping in the mud under a wagon. She had a little plot of land but she let it lie fallow. Bill was in the ground. Plagues took over. Locusts and beetles churned the plant matter. Nothing could reach through the grief; she just drank and drank and drank and drank and drank.

  Bill’s death was the beginning of hard times in Deadwood. Gold nuggets turned into frog bones, pans turned into colanders, piggy banks turned into rattles. The crowds that had flocked to the hills fled. Poker Alice couldn’t get a game going. There were days and days when the only things said out loud were sorry and goodbye. Everyone said they were coming back, just going home to take care of something quick and planning to return. For a while Alice kept promises to watch belongings, keep an eye on families. Eventually all the families were sent for but not the belongings, and so she treated those as hers, an inheritance of dead hopes.

  Those that stayed did so because they didn’t have anywhere to go and they were getting richer. Women left in the town had more dresses than dancers, more pots and kettles than a big hotel, shoes for every occasion. The whores at Mollie Johnson’s collected twenty-seven cats, ten dogs, five horses and nine canaries. They lined the canary cages with shredded claims.

  On winter nights under skies bent with stars, Poker Alice, Martha and Dora DuFran went riding in abandoned carriages. They tore up and down the empty streets under the falling snow whooping loud at the wind. They stopped at every bar and had a drink and got back in and raced up and down the main drag again. When Alice, Martha and Dora laughed at once it was like the sun coming up.

  Miette

  THERE ARE POINTS WHERE TIME ACCORDIONS. It is as if the past, the present and the future are pressed together in a concertina, every minute touching, and then every minute open to be viewed. It was like that while I lay there in the pointed dark of the teepee at night, with the warm bodies of Lizzy and Poesa sleeping beside me. Often I dreamed of my father, and then I would wake to recall the past.

  In dreams he lifted me from my boots and we rose in the sky in a great balloon, my horse beside us. The balloon carried us over oceans churning with dolphins, whales and giant turtles. Together we crossed purple mountain ranges and white deserts, the sand braided and ropy, moving with the wind as if alive. My horse nuzzled my neck and breathed in my ear. I held my father’s hand and I could feel the specific weight and the shape of his fingers. I inhaled the smell of him and it was warm and edged with soap.

  And then I woke and he was gone. The dark was so complete it hurt to try to see so I closed my eyes and covered them with my hand.

  Father—

  JOSEPH, WHY come here?

  Forgive me, Father.

  Come in.

  I busied myself with the dishes in the hot water while my father steered one of the mission priests to the main room. I peeked around the corner. The old man was in his robes but the dust from the ride had reached his waist. A sunburnt circle of skin showed beneath the thin dark hair on the crown of his skull. His neck was creased over the collar. I had seen him before but not in our house. He was from the mission closest to us. He rode a pinto around in the afternoons and stopped to talk to the children. I remember his tanned neck squeezed by the white collar.

  Come in.

  I won’t until you tell me.

  Tell you what? Tell you what?

  Until you tell me that you will take my confession. I have come to repent. You must take my confession.

  I will, of course. Come in. Come in and sit down.

  My father arranged the chairs and the screen. I stood quietly by the sink. The rooms baked with August heat. The father rushed in and knelt on the floor not bothering with the screen or any pretense of privacy. My father put his hands on the man’s shoulders in compassion and then drew a chair into the middle of the room and sat with his back to the man.

  Please, turn the chair. I don’t want to hide from you or from God anymore.

  My father turned his chair around and sat, legs crossed, hands folded at his knee.

  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. My last confession was two days ago.

  My father recited: Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. Say the sins you remember. Start with the sin you find most difficult to say. After confessing all the sins you remember since your last good confession, you may conclude by saying, I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life.

  O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell.

  Say them. Say the sins you remember. Ask me for help. Ask God for forgiveness.

  Help me; I have abused my authority. I have a lover.

  You committed to be celibate.

  I have broken that commitment. I have been with an Indian girl. I have been with her many times. I am sorry for this sin. I am sorry too for riding to the mission in the south and confessing there.

  Why do you confess confessing?

  Until this day I rode to share confession with a priest who does the same as me. I came to you today to make a real penance. I need forgiveness. I hurt this girl.

  What do you mean, you hurt the girl?

  I hurt her by taking her trust, Father. I feel real affection for her. I would never injure her, but I hurt her family and the trust they gave me. I hurt myself, Father. I abused myself when I could no longer bring myself to abuse her. I betrayed my vows. I betrayed God. Father, I come to you to ask for punishment. I must have forgiveness.

  There was a long silence that I did not understand and then my father said, Our acts have grave consequences but forgiveness does not depend on penance. When you ask God for forgiveness you are forgiven. Listen to the words of absolution, the sacramental forgiveness of the Church. Make the sign of the cross with me. God has already forgiven you. It is not to me or to God that you must atone now. It is not inside the Church that you must seek forgiveness. Apologize to her. Apologize to her family. Make it right with her and them. Leave the Church and give thanks to God for your freedom. Give thanks for his mercy which endures forever. But leave the Church. Brother, be who you are. Be with the girl if she will have you, if that is what she wants. Otherwise go home to your family. Brother, you are no longer a priest. You are only a
man. Look me in the eyes. You don’t have to be a good man but don’t be a fool; don’t be a liar and keep on pretending.

  SHH.

  I opened my eyes and Grandmother leaned over me. Her face was as evenly dark as the room surrounding us. She left me and moved to adjust a smoke-flap. She returned to me and by the thin light filtering in, her moving hands were visible.

  You were fighting in your sleep, she signed.

  With who? I signed.

  With God. You were fighting with God’s eyes.

  Martha

  EYES ARE BEAUTIFUL, SHE SAID. EVERYONE has beautiful eyes.

  Miette

  ON THE LAST DAY OF MY RECOVERY A HAPPY little boy brought me a small trunk painted brightly with beautiful forms. Inside was a blanket and food. I thanked him and shook his small hand and hitched the trunk behind my saddle. I set out with Poesa and four young riders to get back to my journey. There was the most astonishing difference between the morning and the afternoon. In the morning it was cool and windy but in the space of four hours we experienced a wonderful wonderful transition back to summer. I was near insensible with the heartless blue sky. My friends had fun with me, making jokes with each other as if I wouldn’t notice. They moved like angels, joints all made of butter, and they had high smooth voices. I enjoyed just listening and following and watching the world as it changed. They left me at the Bozeman Trail. It was a sadder leaving than I had expected.

  We rode on. My horse snorted frequently to remind me that I was not alone. We rode over hills and through ravines. On the top of a high hill we stopped. A great Indian burial ground was spread out before us. There were some thirty large coffins and seven small coffins. Around the coffins were the artifacts of domestic life: spoons, hair combs, copper nails, leather belts, shoes, beads, books. Most of the coffins were closed but some were open and empty. Several had broken lids and the bodies that lay inside were bleached by sun and rain, wrapped in blankets and skins. One hand bore rings and the arm of another skeleton was ringed with bracelets. Wildflowers grew between the coffins in abundance, flowing over the hill as far as I could see. It was quiet and as clean and clear a day as I had ever known.

  We travelled on and, some hours in, weakness overcame my ambition. I felt a pain in my ankle. I steered us to the river and let her drink while I rested. Removing my boot I saw a huge black boil.

  Who-oo, I whistled at the hard swelling. When did you arrive?

  I fell back in the grass feeling as if I was made of infection. Full of fevers of every kind and my thoughts breaking apart. The little river beside us was about ninety yards wide with bright rapids. Staring at it cooled me. Fish were jumping or getting tossed into the air over the slick rocks. The beds of the streams were formed of smooth pebbles and fine gravel. I rolled to the edge and sank my foot into the water, which was perfectly transparent when I stared down at my boil. While my boil cooled I looked around. It seemed deep enough in the river proper that you might be able to canoe for quite a ways. I sat there for hours. At times I saw deer drinking at the opposite bank and ducks paddling by.

  I measured the likelihood that I’d have the energy to build a lean-to to give me a bit of shelter and maybe to stay the night here. The evening was beautiful, the sky a brilliant red. The mosquitos and the gnats were suddenly thick with the dusk but come night the wind would blow them all away.

  Dear Boil, I asked, should we go on from here or stay where there is water, fish, firewood and no annoying crazy people?

  Well (I answered in the voice of Boil), you can stay a little longer with your boots off to let me breathe.

  Dear Boil, does the soft gravel in the beds of all these streams come from the mountains?

  Yes, said Boil, I think it must because it is the same colour and likely stones just keep falling and falling down the steep sides of rock smashing and smashing until they splash into the river and break down into tinier and tinier pieces rolling all the way to the river’s end.

  Dear Boil, I asked, is that thunder or did a tree fall?

  Well, said Boil, it could be a tree unless we hear it again.

  Dear Boil, if there was lightning would we be safer in our hut or on our horse?

  Well, said Boil, I don’t know but the water helps the lightning so let us not go swimming.

  HOURS PASSED before I heard thunder. The thunder swallowed and I saw lightning divide the air overhead and then great big balls of rain fell hard upon me from what still seemed like a clear sky. My horse whinnied and blowed and snorted. I put together a lean-to as quickly as I could and and pulled on warmer layers, mostly just to keep them dry. The raindrops hitting the water exploded as if they fell from the sky only to be shot by some invisible marksman. My poor horse, outside, was tense in the sudden squall. I watched her, thinking, I hope she does not get rain scald. If she does it will take weeks to heal and no more riding every day.

  Boil, I said, this is bad news.

  I half considered if it was a smart or a stupid idea to build a little fire inside my hut, measuring in my head how high the flames might reach, how close to the branches that made up my walls, how smoky it could get and what stinging my eyes might be able to take before I would be driven out. I half considered getting on my horse and riding as fast as we could in whatever direction looked clearest. But she was already so wet and if I rode her too long without letting her dry it would cut her skin to ribbons.

  One time, Boil, I began, when I was ten or eleven, a horse that was dark like mine ran into the town along the trail at daybreak. My father and I were in Rosebud to get supplies and sell some eggs. It was winter so daybreak was almost noon. I watched the horse run down Main Street so fast it looked as if its front legs were going to buckle, as if it would roll head over hooves and break its long neck. It was the horse of the butcher, who had just been shot by his wife on the doorstep of the barbershop for twisting and breaking his son’s arm. The horse pulled free of the rails by the trough where he was tied while his master had a shave. He ran into the town and out the other side and through the cemetery and at the end of the cemetery he fell, hooked by a prairie dog burrow. He broke his leg. And the woman who, dry-eyed, had shot her husband dead came weeping down Main Street until she fell on her knees in the cemetery and shot his horse.

  My horse rolled an eye at me and pulled sharply against the rope that tethered her to a tree.

  Come here, come here, I called to her. Get in here. And I pushed her as far into my makeshift hut as she would go and I stood for the rest of the storm outside in my hat, which became a birdbath, with a stinking muddy mat and the deerskin wrapped around me.

  Rain became shooting stars long after midnight. I lit a fire and smoked my clothes by it. She came out of my hut.

  Hello, I said. How are you feeling?

  She turned her head.

  What do you think? I posed to her. Say you had a mother and by all accounts she was a liquor-loving wild whore. And say that in her wisdom, knowing herself, she gave you to a good man and in her wisdom she never contacted you, never wrote to ask how tall you were or if you were still alive. And say the one who had mounted her was a killer and he was dead before he ever knew about you. And say your real father, the man who was both mother and father to you, who made you a safe home and loved you—in his wisdom as he died when you could say nothing but yes to him—set you on a journey to find the woman who chose not to be your mother. Should you follow her wisdom and leave her be? Or should you follow his wisdom and find her and force yourself upon her?

  The night was replete with silences: the silent sky with all its silent stars, the silent ground, the silent birds and insects. My horse was most silent of all. I wished on one star to find my mother and on another to give up.

  We have to go on, I said. We can’t give up.

  I sipped cold muddy coffee from a recovered cup. Soon after that I fell asleep.

  Martha

  HEAR THIS. I CAN’T FREEZE TO DEATH NOR can I drown. I tried poison but it only nourished me. />
  Miette

  I WOKE TO FIND MY HORSE GONE, MY SHELTER collapsed and the wolf settled down to sleep at my feet. My heart tried to leave my chest. She was easily six and a half feet long and half as tall. Her muzzle was long and tapered. Her ears flicked in her sleep as did her giant feet as if she were dreaming of running down an animal. I lay still and tried to breathe quietly and recall what I knew about wolves and whether any of it would save me.

  Wolves don’t get hungry. They are always hungry. They go without food for days, sometimes weeks, and then gorge on meat until they are drunk. I turned my head to look around me for pieces of my horse and saw none. I listened to the deep breathing of the wolf and watched her sides rise and fall. I could smell the damp hay of her fur and a duskiness that penetrated me with shapeless emotion. Her tail twitched and I tried to imagine ways to creep away.

  A long time ago there were ten million buffalo and enormous herds of antelope and deer on the Plains. Giant grizzly bears and plains wolves feasted and lived very well. But white men came and all the animals began to disappear in great numbers. Zita had told me about wolves and their hunger. She had told me that if you copied wolves closely enough you became a wolf. There were once two white buffalo hunters who tried to copy Indian hunters. They draped wolfskins over their backs and crept up on a herd of buffalo. The Indians knew to become wolves to hunt but the white hunters did not understand. They did not know that the Indians became wolves and that when they did this, they would be different, merciless. The two hunters were pretending to be Indians pretending to be wolves. Under the skins they moved inside the circle of buffalo, feeling such a gnawing in their bellies. Their desire to kill was greater than their desire to live, and once they began to kill they could not stop. They needed a signal that would not come. They shot until their guns got hot and were in danger of exploding in their hands. But the herd of beasts remained placid. They stood like great trees in a dense forest as if all this were happening on some other plane of existence. The hunters dropped animal after animal. The sight of blood and the bellowing of the wounded did nothing to rouse the herd. They stood, oblivious, solid, benign, until a gust of wind changed direction and suddenly the sight of so many carcasses materialized, and they stampeded. The two men stood mesmerized by the bodies that lay before them. At the sight of their success the blood hunger instantly abated and shame flooded the marrow in their frail human limbs.