by Gayle Rogers
“What about you—and her father?”
“It was agreed upon. Nitanna did not want to stay.”
Maria looked searchingly into the kind eyes watching her. “Natosin,” she said, “I am proud to call you ‘father.'”
“I am glad for this. You are my son’s woman.”
Maria turned away. “How can I be any man’s woman?”
“You are young. You will heal.”
“Will I?” Maria asked with sudden bitterness. She saw Nakoa walking past her with Nitanna. She saw Nakoa rejecting her outside of his lodge, and she began to shake. “He did not want me enough,” she said.
“Should he have wanted you with the passion of Siksikai?”
“Atsitsi says all men rape!”
“Siksikai was not a man. He was killed by my son and dumped out on the prairie for the wolves, because he was not a man. Live with my son, Maria, and know a man!”
Time passed, slow days and long nights, and before she rose to walk again, he returned. One dusk his tall form shadowed the doorway, and he came to her. She called his name, and he sat upon her couch and gently touched her face.
“You are the most beautiful of women,” he said. “You are the softness of all women!”
Maria smiled and touched his hands.
“I did not let you go,” he said seriously. “You wanted to leave me, Maria, but I did not let you go!”
“You are a stubborn man,” Maria said.
“I had the strength of the sun behind me.”
He tenderly kissed her face. “Culentet, my culentet, my little culentet—”
Maria began to sob, and he held her in his arms and kissed the tears on her lashes.
“We can never have a marriage,” she wept. “Never!”
“Never,” he pretended to agree.
“Now you mock me!” she wailed. “How can you be so cruel? The pain …”
He kissed her lips. “Pain is not lasting. Life is. Pain, culentet, is always the introduction to life. Life without pain is a toy for children.”
“You sound like your father.”
“Do you like my father?”
“Very much. I have love for him. He has given me much comfort.”
“I am glad.”
“Did you find Anatsa’s murderer?”
“Yes.”
“Did Apikunni kill him?”
“Yes.”
“How can I bear it without Anatsa? How can I bear to think that she is dead when she had Apikunni?”
“I had no words for Apikunni. There are not words for everything.”
“Nakoa, we cannot have a marriage. It is not just my body and what Siksikai did—”
“No, it is not so. The woman in the river that you feared so much—she will come to me again. I know it. And then we will have our marriage.” He kissed her again, gently, but lingeringly. “I will prepare our food, or have it prepared.”
“Please, not by Atsitsi!”
He smiled. “Sleep, my wife. I will bring the food to you when it is done.”
She lay back, and sat partway up again, thinking of something. “Nakoa, did you lose the chieftainship of the Mutsik?”
“Yes,” he answered.
Tears came to her eyes again. “And you did this—for me.”
He looked almost angry. “No, Maria. For myself,” he said, and went outside.
The day after Nakoa’s return, the village moved to the mountains. Nakoa carried Maria outside, and she watched the dismantling of the lodges, Natosin’s first, and then all of the other tipis, like giant mushrooms swept away in the wind. Most of the morning, the horses stood patiently during the loading of the travois. The old and the young who could not ride a horse sat atop the loads, and the Pikuni moved out, scouts in the lead, then the high chiefs, the societies of the Ikunuhkahtsi, and last, the women and children.
Natosin came and said good-bye to his son and Maria. Sikapischis, more gaunt than ever, called on Maria for the first time since her sickness, and neither of them mentioned Anatsa or Siyeh in their brief farewell. Atsitsi, even dirtier than Maria had remembered her, halted at Nakoa’s lodge as the camp was leaving. “She woman again soon,” she said cheerfully to Nakoa. “Maybe Siksikai get rid of silly bird song!”
I’ll stop being bird song if you take a bath!” Maria said grimly.
Atsitsi laughed and leaned toward Maria. Her horse shifted unhappily. “Winter come soon and why wash in by-damn cold?”
Smiling to himself, Nakoa slapped Atsitsi’s horse, and the animal moved dispiritedly toward the other horses leaving the village. “Can Nakoa take big surprise if find wife a woman?” she shouted back at them.
“Do you suppose she ever was human?” Maria asked Nakoa.
He looked at her seriously. “She saved your life as much as did Anatsa and Isokinuhkin.”
Maria saw Apeecheken pass, dressed in mourning, her head bowed in grief. Maria remembered Anatsa’s words: “I shall rest on the burial platform, and it will not be my time. The sky is yellow, and voices from the grounds call to me, and I am afraid of the coldness there.” Maria waved to Apeecheken, but Anatsa’s sister did not wave back.
The scouts were already lost in the rank grass of the prairie. She and Nakoa watched them leave in silence. When they were gone from sight, they heard faint cries from the children, the barking of dogs, and then nothing but the wind moving through the desolate village site. Never again would Nakoa’s lodge stand in the circle of the high chiefs. It is such a waste! Maria thought bitterly.
In darkness that night when they had eaten and she lay quietly watching the fire, she missed the drums, the voices, the sounds of dancing and chanting.
“I am so lonely,” she said. “It is so lonely here, all alone.”
“You are still apart from yourself,” he said quietly. “That is why you are lonely. It is not because the village is gone.”
She smiled. “The two women again?”
“You are apart from them both.”
“Both? What am I?”
“The shock from Siksikai’s act. You are unknowing.”
“Nakoa, your words are so strange.”
“You will know them to be true. It will take time for you to change from numbness to feeling, to become a woman, to become my wife.”
Maria looked quickly away. If he talked of physical contact between them, she could not bear it. He had kissed her lips in sweet ness, but if he kissed her in hunger she would become sick. He saw her expression, and his face looked haunted. “I accept,” he said softly. “I was a glutton, so I will accept my hunger. Maria, Nitanna is gone, and Siksikai is gone. Let not their names be mentioned between us again. We build our lives without them.”
“Build our lives?”
“First in your healing. Your healing is first, so that you will live again—as two women—as one woman—and my wife.”
He was right; she was numb. Though her body grew in strength, though she could walk, she wanted to lie still upon her couch. She wanted to stay within the lodge. She wanted to turn her face to the wall, and look at nothing else. She relived her past. She suffered all of her old griefs, and even when moods of sadness left, she sought them, and was disappointed that they didn’t stay constantly. Nakoa brought her food. He built the fire, brought the wood, and the water for bathing and drinking. In her moods he did not speak to her, and absented himself from her in her self-inflicted pain.
Then came the evening he decided she was to remain numb no longer. He had returned to the tipi with freshly killed deer. He stood for a long moment at the door, looking inside at the shadowed lodge with its fire unlit. “Maria!” he said sharply. “Maria!”
Dozing, she sat up, surprised at the anger in his voice. “What is it?” she said weakly. “What is the matter, Nakoa?”
He put the deer down and strode to her, smelling of blood, of pines, of the outdoors, and he was so strong and powerful that his strength was sickening to her. “What do you seek in sleep? What do you see upon th
e walls of this lodge that, when you are awake, it takes all of your time to watch it? Maria, get up!”
“I can’t!”
“You can! Stand up, Maria!”
“I am sick.”
“I say you are not! You are sick no longer!”
“And who is saying this—God? Are you the voice of the Great Spirit, Nakoa?”
You are taking a life! Stand!” The violence in his voice drove her to her feet.
“All right,” she said bitterly in English. “Now what do you want me to do? Go butcher that awful deer?”
“You are my wife. You will speak in Pikuni.”
“Do you want me to butcher the deer?” she asked, still sarcastic.
“I will cut the meat. You cook it, and then you will have the hunger to eat it. The blood in it will make you strong.”
“I have no hunger. I will not eat.”
“I have hunger, and you will cook the meat for me.”
She glowered at him but cooked the meat he cut for her. When it was broiled, tender and juicy in the inside and crusty on the outside, she could not resist it, and ate with him. When she had finished she looked at him for approval.
“And now,” he said, “we will walk.”
“You are mad!”
“We will walk and then you will sleep tonight, and not lie awake and watch the lodge fire.”
“It will hurt me to walk!”
“It will hurt you not to. We will walk tonight, and then you will ride the bay. You will heal, Maria.”
“I will not!” she blazed.
He smiled. “You will not?”
“No!”
“How will you keep yourself sick? By lying on that couch?”
“You just want to climb on me and rape me!”
He was incredulous.
“You will not rape me!” she almost screamed.
“I would not rape you.”
“You tried once!”
“And so you did with me,” he said.
Angrily, she threw a robe over her shoulders and left the lodge. She walked in such fury that she forgot to be in pain.
He joined her. She walked far from their lodge, and would have walked farther but he restrained her. Without speaking to him she went to bed that night, and was so tired that she fell asleep. She woke up furious with herself and was so ravenous that she ate. “Dear God!” she said, when her stomach was satisfied, “now what do you have planned for me today? Do you want me to hunt a little deer?”
“We have meat,” he said seriously.
“Then we can take a nice long horseback ride!”
“All right,” he said simply.
“No! You fool! No!”
“It will not hurt you.”
“Of course not! Then tonight, you can climb all over me!”
“Maria,” he scolded, “can you think of nothing else?”
She kicked over the water paunch.
He smiled. “We will ride to the river for water. You see, your strength is returning!”
She hid her face. “I am a fool!” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“You don’t understand English!”
“I understand you.”
“Dear God, what will I do?”
“Ride to the river.”
He helped her mount the bay, and he mounted Kutenai, and the two horses walked easily to the river. In the fresh running water they filled two paunches, and then rode back along the deserted trail. The land was so quiet, so fearsomely, awfully quiet. The shadow of the burial grounds stretched out from behind them, and weighed heavily upon Maria. She looked sadly at the ground, at the abandoned prairie Anatsa would not walk again when the new camp was made.
“You can go and see her,” Nakoa said. “You can see how peacefully she sleeps.”
“I don’t want to see her dead.”
“If that is all there was, this sleeping—then you would see how gently it came to her. If there is more than sleeping, then do not feel sadness at what you cannot know.”
“You said that when the medicine drum stopped for me, you were just a vessel to hear it beat again. Why would it be different for you than for Apikunni?”
“We were unmated. I was not whole.”
“You could lose me then, after…”
“When the circle is completed, wholeness can take loss with more strength. Until we have met, each of us will be empty.”
“What if we cannot meet?”
“We both will suffer and wail at our denial.”
That night they slept again upon separate couches, and she watched the lodge fire flicker lazily upon the shadowed walls. “Nakoa,” she asked, “when will we join the others?”
“Before the first snows. We will join them as they are ready to seek the prairie again. The camp stays in the mountains all the moon of the falling leaves, and then the camp divides, and separate blood bands seek the winter shelter that cannot protect a whole village.”
“Where is this?”
“Usually along the river bank, where the land offers protection from winter wind.”
“Then why do we ride to the mountains at all? If we are just to return to the prairie …?”
“I thought you would be lonely and would want to hear the drums and see Apeecheken and Sikapischis before we were alone for the winter. We can visit your friends and stay in the mountains if you would like. I know a beautiful warm and sheltered valley. We could spend the winter alone—there.”
“All right.”
“It is a beautiful valley,” he repeated softly. “I would like to be there with you when the snows leave it, and spring comes again.”
In the spring, would she be carrying his child?
“While we wait for you to grow strong,” he continued, “we will walk and ride together. I will show you how to find the camas root, and how to cook it. I will show you how the Blackfoot builds snares for the deer and the antelope, and how the Indian makes caches. We will gather roots and berries, and you can ride with me when I hunt, and learn the dressing of meat.”
And so it was. He was adamant about her working. He made her move, walk, ride, and she became so tired that she accepted each night’s sleep immediately.
The old Maria emerged from the shadows and relished the rich earth, the wind, and the sun upon the long prairie grass. She gained weight. Her breasts became full again, and her face bloomed with beautiful color. They became good friends. They laughed together, and talked. He sensed her moods with fearful omniscience, and stood firmly between her and the pathways of the past.
He was friend and teacher. He showed her how to roast entrails Indian fashion, turning them inside out before stuffing them so that the sweet fat covering the intestine was confined to the meat in roasting; how to cook meat with wild parsnip to bring out its natural juices; how to gather the camas root and to cook it in deep pits lined with sweet grass; how to start a fire without coals by using rotten touchwood and rubbing it up and down a sinew bow until an ember was started. She helped him build snares, rubbing the rawhide rope with buffalo tallow to disguise human smell, and they made caches for food by digging a hole four feet deep, lining the bottom with stones, and covering the top with a heavy slab. They cached food in trees, with rattles tied to the parfleche bags to keep small animals away, and they used parfleche bags as caches in water, and anchored them securely with heavy stones. They made fresh pemmican, adding peppermint leaves and wild cherries to the meat Nakoa hunted. He showed her the difference between game and war arrows, and taught her safety and caution upon the trail. He showed her how to read sign of man, the stirrings of the forest animals, and how to make camp in the open and still keep it hidden from a distance, for a lodge must be erected where no enemy could approach it secretly, and still be hidden as much as possible. They lit their cooking fires in the midday, for the wind was strongest then to dissipate the smoke, and there was no glare to serve as guide in the darkness. Their trails followed sheltered ravines and avoided hil
ltops even in Blackfoot territory.
More than a month had passed since they had been left alone in the village. The moon had grown in size and had become full again, lighting the prairie like day. Indian summer clung to the land, but sometimes in the mountain wind Maria thought she felt the first touch of fall.
One night when the moon had risen early they walked after their meal. He held her hand as he had done long ago. There was an urgency in his touch, and he allowed himself to study her.
“You are contented,” he said. “You have finished seeking shadows.
Maria looked at the abandoned village site, and the warm quiet prairie. “I feel at peace,” she answered.
“I am grateful for this. Numbness is gone if your feelings have returned.”
She smiled. “Tonight I am even content with both Marias. You said I would have to accept two the lady in the waters—whichever one of us was the image.”
“You do not have to destroy what you accept. And fighting within the self is fighting an unmatched foe. You do not believe the woman who wanted me was a whore?”
She immediately became wary. “Whatever she was, she was the loser. Her begging did her no good.”
“The victorious one led her to Siksikai.”
“No! Nakoa, you rejected me! I did not reject you! Do you think I will ever forget that night? In the moonlight before my Father, you took her.”
“I could not take what I did not want. Do not speak to me of Nitanna, Maria. She is gone.”
“No,” Maria shuddered. “I will see my own wedding dress, and I will see you walk by me and follow Nitanna all the rest of my life.”
“You will limit your vision to this one incident?” he asked her angrily.
“Yes.”
“Then you have vision as limited, the one patch of sky, as the warm and beautiful woman you assigned to the river. You are then not at peace, and you will never know serenity.”
“I would among my own kind!”
He looked stunned. “This is the first time you have wanted the white man.”