Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

by James Welch

  PART FIVE

  34

  THE INFANT HAD DIED during the early night, but still, in the gray light of dawn, the young woman hugged the body to her. Earlier she had bared a breast and put the small mouth to it, as though life would begin again with the simple act of suckling. But the mouth did not move and the body did not move, so the woman put away her breast and rocked back and forth, whispering soothing words into the tiny ear.

  Her husband and his two other wives had tried to take the infant from her, but now they sat and watched and listened to the gentle murmur of the mother. They knew it would be for the best to get the infant away from camp, to bury it someplace far away. One of the other wives had prepared a winding cloth, a small dress and moccasins and some food to accompany the infant on the journey to the Sand Hills.

  There was an air in the lodge of both expectation and resignation. This was the first death caused by the white-scabs in the winter camp of the Lone Eaters. It had not been a drawn-out death, full of agony and grief. Less than two sleeps ago, the mother had first noticed the red sores on the infant’s scalp and chest. They were small and the women thought they were a rash, and like a rash they began to spread, first to the upper arms and then down to the belly. The women put a salve on the red areas that they had obtained from Mik-api. If they had been more observant, they would have noticed his silence as he made the paste. But these wives were young, the oldest not yet twenty winters, and so they chattered among themselves and did not remark on the old man’s faraway face.

  The end was very quick. No sooner had the women applied the salve than the infant, whose name was Long Tail because it had cried like a long-tail when it appeared in the world, convulsed and passed into the Shadowland.

  Now the mother hugged the small body to herself, then handed it gently to one of the other young women, who placed the infant on the winding sheet. She and the other wife then dressed the infant and rolled it and a small sack of pemmican in the sheet.

  The husband, who had already saddled and bridled his horse, took the bundle and left the lodge. The women inside heard the squeak of leather as the man put his weight in the stirrup. Then the horse danced a bit before it took off at a fast trot. The women listened to the muffled hoofbeats on the frozen earth. The mother began to sing to herself, a sleeping song that her mother had sung to her. The other two looked at each other. In spite of their youth and inexperience, they knew, had known for some time, that the infant had died of the white-scabs. One stood, as though in that silent communication she had been chosen, and hurried out of the lodge.

  The sickness spread rapidly. There was no longer any talk of moving the camp to the land of the Siksikas. Three families who appeared to be still healthy did leave the winter camp but they traveled in the direction of the Four Horns agency. Some who watched them leave felt both envy and betrayal. Most of the others were too busy caring for the ill ones to notice the three circles of bare earth on the edge of the camp.

  During the first three or four days, Mik-api and Boss Ribs went from lodge to lodge, performing their curing ceremonies. Fools Crow, who had returned to camp the night the infant died, stayed busy too, conducting purifying sessions in the sweat lodge, taking whole families who had not yet been touched by the sickness into the small skin-draped lodge. In between sessions he mixed medicines and took them to the two many-faces men. He built up the fires, heated stones, sweated, prayed and even tried his own healing on two members of Sits-in-the-middle’s family. Soon after the long ceremony the two were dead. It was then that Fools Crow knew the ceremonies were futile—the healing and purifying were as meaningless as a raindrop in a spring river. Even if the healing worked, by the time the ceremony was over, twenty others would come down with the sickness.

  Boss Ribs seemed to share this feeling of hopelessness. On the fifth day Fools Crow went to his lodge to deliver some fresh-ground medicine. Upon entering, he noticed that the many-faces man sat alone, hunched over a small fire. Beside him, the Beaver Medicine bundle lay open, its many skins and paraphernalia strewn about. At first, Fools Crow thought that Boss Ribs had been conducting the beaver ceremony and he felt his heart quicken with faint hope, but when he looked into the deep, sad eyes, he knew that whatever magic the keeper of the bundle had been searching for was not there.

  “Are we lost then?” said Fools Crow as he squatted before the heap of objects. He was tired and his own words did not alarm him. The dying had begun and would continue. He had seen it on the yellow skin.

  “The Above Ones will stop the suffering when they see fit. Our medicines are as powerless as grass before Wind Maker.” Boss Ribs indicated the contents of the bundle. “I have been through the bundle three times since daybreak, searching for a ceremony, a song that might have some effect....”

  Fools Crow looked at the packet of herbs in his hand. “This white-scabs-it takes the strong as well as the weak, the young, the healthy ones, just as easily as the old and the sick. Whole families have perished!”

  “How is it with your family, Fools Crow?”

  “Nothing in my father’s lodge, or in Yellow Kidney’s. And Red Paint, she is healthy too. I have asked her to stay in the lodge, to open up to no one, but I saw her this morning going into her mother’s lodge. I’m afraid for our soon-to-be son.”

  “You should take her away. Leave this camp. Go into the Backbone until this is over. There is plenty of meat there and no sickness. Sun Chief will watch over you.”

  Fools Crow thought of Feather Woman in the green bowl of the Backbone of the World. In the small pause that filled the lodge, the two men could hear the wailing of women in the next tipi. It was difficult to tell how many there were or who they mourned. Wailing no longer carried the urgency of grief; instead, it seemed more a ritual to be enacted because the Pikunis had always mourned their dead. Even the young had become inured to the deaths that surrounded them. Fools Crow placed the packet of herbs before Boss Ribs, then stood.

  “And what of your family?” he said.

  “A daughter died during the night—Bird Rattler. She was six winters.” Boss Ribs pointed with puckered lips.

  Fools Crow saw the small winding sheet. He touched the many-faces man on the shoulder and left, his thoughts far away and centered on the woman who mourned each new dawn with the wailing of a thousand geese.

  He saw it in her eyes even as he entered his lodge. It was a look he had seen much of recently.

  “One Spot and Good Young Man have the sickness!” The words came out in a breathless rush, but it took a space of time for them to register.

  “Where?” he said dully.

  “In my mother’s lodge. She won’t let me in!” And now Red Paint began to weep. Her small shoulders shook beneath the blackhorn robe and her sobs drove the yellow dog slinking out the entrance. Fools Crow crossed to her, his mind alert, and held her to his chest.

  “She won’t let me in,” wailed Red Paint. “She won’t let me help, she says I am not needed—and yet my two brothers are sick and dying of the dreadful spirit. I pray and pray to the Above Ones, but it is not enough. They know Red Paint is not significant and they laugh at her puny voice. Oh, she is a nothing-one and her own mother doesn’t want her around!” She put her face into the folds of Fools Crow’s shirt, but the muffled sobbing only increased.

  As he held her, he felt her round belly jump each time her breath caught and he imagined the life within and he wanted to take her away, to the Backbone, to the land of the Siksikas, anywhere. But it was too late now. She would never leave her family. He caught her hands in his and pressed them flat against his chest. Her fingers were cold.

  “Your mother is right to send you away. You must protect our child. He must be born strong, full of life. I am afraid for the Pikunis now, but we must think of the moons and winters to come. Our son must survive.”

  Fools Crow was gone all that day and far into the night. Three times Red Paint left the lodge, each time intent on going to her mother’s. The second and thir
d times she walked across camp and stood outside the lodge where her brothers lay sick. She heard the drumming and Fools Crow’s husky chant. When darkness fell, she looked up at the stars and saw the Seven Persons and the Dusty Trail and the Star-that-stands-still. They were far away and bright and she noticed that Moon was not among them. She has chosen to hide her face from our troubles, thought Red Paint. She had always thought of Night Red Light as a protector, one who watched over the people while Sun Chief slept in his lodge. She was strong and her light betrayed many an enemy that sought to steal Lone Eater horses to take revenge on the sleeping village. Once, as a girl, Red Paint had become lost with two companions and had wandered across the monotonous prairies until Moon rose and showed them the way home. Now, not even Moon would help her people against this powerful sickness.

  Red Paint returned to her lodge and lay down in her sleeping robes. There was a dull ache in her stomach and she knew she should eat something; instead, she closed her eyes and saw her father and brothers in happier times. She saw herself as a girl in that lodge with all of life before her. She shuddered as she thought of the day the men brought Yellow Kidney’s body in on the makeshift travois. She had thought she would have to be strong for her mother’s sake, to help her through the mourning period. But her mother surprised her by displaying very little emotion. The next day they had taken the body up into a grove of quaking-leaf trees in the upper Two Medicine River. There, they built a platform of branches and hoisted her father’s body in place. When they rode back to the village, Red Paint noticed the look of peace on her mother’s face.

  A wave of guilt passed through her body and her cheeks burned. The thought confused her but the feeling was real enough. She would have remained that girl forever—she would have forsaken her life with Fools Crow—if it would have brought her father back healthy from the Crow raid and restored her mother’s spirit, and if it would make her brothers well and happy again. If it had not been for her exhaustion, if she had not slipped away into a deep sleep, she might have made a vow that would have taken away what little comfort and happiness she knew, a vow as irretrievable as the leaves which fell each autumn.

  As it was, when Fools Crow returned and lay down beside her, his arm flung over her shoulder, she became aware, for the first time since their marriage, that he was a person apart from her. She smelled his odor and she felt the weight of the arm, and she tried to remember his face, his smile of reassurance, but she couldn’t. She lay there and thought of her family and of the new life within her, and she trembled beneath the dead weight of his arm.

  35

  ON THE MORNING of the thirteenth sleep of sickness in the Lone Eater camp, Fools Crow and his father, Rides-at-the-door, walked through the village. They went from lodge to lodge and called to the people within. There were still many sick and dying, but the number of new victims had gone down. The rage of the white-scabs was subsiding. It seemed impossible that it would last such a short time and leave so many dead or scarred for life by the draining sores. Others were out walking listlessly in the warm sun or just sitting outside their lodges. There was none of the bustle that usually occurred on a morning of winter camp. The people did not greet each other. If they met on the path to the river, they would move off the path and circle warily until they were well beyond. If a child was caught playing with the children from a family hard hit by the bad spirit, he would be called inside and scolded. But it was one old woman, the only survivor of her lodge, who sat and wailed and dug at the frozen ground until her fingers were raw and bloody—it was this old woman who made the people realize the extent of their loss. Gradually they emerged from the deep void of sickness and death and saw that they had become a different people.

  As Fools Crow and Rides-at-the-door continued their count, they passed the painted ermine lodge of Three Bears. Prairie Runner Woman knelt outside the entrance, her eyes closed, her face raised to the sun. Neither man spoke out in greeting, for she was still numb with the death of the old chief. Rides-at-the-door had been present when Three Bears died. During one of his last lucid moments, the old man had given Rides-at-the-door his red-stone pipe. In that way he chose the younger man as his successor. Young Bird Chief had died, so there would be no opposition.

  “There are thirty-seven dead ones,” said Fools Crow.

  “There will be more.” They were walking in the shadows of a grove of big-leaf trees. They stopped to watch a man leading two packhorses from camp. There were two robe-draped bundles across the horses’ backs. Rides-at-the-door pulled his capote tight around his neck. “The time before, the disease hit three different times. Just when it would appear to be over, a new wave of sickness would visit the people. I pray to the Above Ones that such a thing not occur again, but we must not allow ourselves to think we are out of it.”

  “There are only five newly stricken.”

  Rides-at-the-door grunted. After a time he said, “We must organize a hunt while some are still healthy. I’m afraid Cold Maker will visit any day and then it will go hard on us.”

  “The blackhorns will be south of the Big River, maybe along the Yellow River, maybe farther south.” Fools Crow, even as he spoke, remembered the vision on the yellow skin, the vast plains empty of blackhorns. He had told his father and Three Bears—just before the old man got sick—of this vision, and of the others as well. After much deliberation, the two men had decided that the people should be kept ignorant of these designs until they grew stronger and were capable of deciding what should be done. But a feeling had been growing inside Fools Crow that there would be little deciding, that any decisions would be puny in the face of such powerful designs. He did not mention this feeling to his father.

  “Go see the camp crier,” Rides-at-the-door was saying. “Tell him to announce a meeting of all the men’s societies for tonight. Our hunting parties will have a long way to go, and the sooner they start the better.”

  As Fools Crow hurried off, he realized, that he was passing the lodge of Heavy Shield Woman. The only sign of activity was two dogs playing tug-of-war with a strip of deerskin. They were flattened almost to the ground and their low growling made a buffalo-runner, tethered in front of the next lodge, dance warily, his ears forward and eyes trained on the dogs.

  Good Young Man had died the day after Fools Crow had performed his healing ritual. The convulsions had lasted a long time, and both Fools Crow and Heavy Shield Woman had breathed exhausted sighs when the end finally came. Fools Crow got directions from his mother-in-law and took the young body out to the quaking-leaf grove where Yellow Kidney rested. Heavy Shield Woman stayed behind to care for One Spot. And the boy survived. He came up out of his delirium and asked for soup. Because of his youth, he recovered rapidly. For the second time in three moons, he pulled back from the shadow of the Sand Hills. But he was changed, like all the Lone Eaters.

  For two days Wind Maker howled from the north and kept the hunters in camp. The snow drifted into Two Medicine valley, until in some places it was as high as a man’s waist. It covered the debris of the camp and filled in the prints of man, dog and horse as soon as they were made. Soon, nothing moved and only the smoke from the tops of the lodges gave away the existence of life in the village.

  Each day at midmorning Fools Crow made his round of the camp, taking count of the sickness. Two of the five newly afflicted had died, and there were three new cases, including one of Boss Ribs’ wives. She had been very active during the height of the plague, going from lodge to lodge, bathing the sick ones, feeding the others, caring for the children. Now she lay in her own robes, the disease sucking the life from her breast in spite of Boss Ribs’ desolate songs.

  Fools Crow reported his findings to Rides-at-the-door, then returned to his lodge. He drank a cup of broth and watched Red Paint, who had been quiet for the last couple of sleeps. He thought it was because of the death of her brother, and he thought she would get over her sadness in time, maybe when the weather broke, when she could safely visit her mother’s lodge. B
ut something about her made him think of Feather Woman and the way she looked that morning in the clearing, shoulders slumped, chin on her breast, oblivious to everything but her failed plea to Morning Star. Fools Crow picked up his many-shots gun and ran a greasy rag over the action. He had not shot it in a long time.

  The third day dawned clear and cold. The sun was pale and high and the air was gray. The snow had ended and the hunters stood ready at the edge of camp. There were to be three groups of seven each. One group would go south, another southeast, and the third, of which Fools Crow was a member, would go directly east, following the course of the Two Medicine and Bear rivers until they reached the country between the Sweet Grass Hills and the Bear Paws. Although there would be hunters from other camps, maybe even from the Entrails People and the Cutthroats, the herd that often wintered there was large. The thought of encountering an enemy was almost welcome to the hunters after the ordeal within their own camp. They were mostly young and restless and, in spite of the intense cold, ready to risk anything out on the ground-of-many-gifts.