Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  "I mean, he may keep it."

  The man continued to unfasten the shirt.

  She tried again. "It’s all right. I don’t need it. He can have it." She pulled the collar of the shirt back around Hintsuli’s neck. "Take it. Please. Take it."

  The man looked up at her, and she wondered how he could still seem so overwhelming, crouching at her feet.

  "I..." she said breathlessly, "I don’t need it. It belonged to my...my husband."

  The man’s brows lanced sharply downward. He didn’t bother unfastening the rest of the buttons. He tore the front of the shirt, and the remaining buttons popped off like kernels of dried corn over the fire.

  Hintsuli wailed, and the man muttered something in hushed anger.

  Abruptly, the boy stopped his tears and looked askance into his father’s eyes. "Hudesi?" he asked.

  The man shot her a disparaging glare and nodded. "Hudesi."

  The boy then let his father take the shirt from him. The man wadded it into a ball and cast it back toward the door.

  Mattie knew she should bite her tongue. It was no concern of hers whether they took the shirt or not. It didn’t matter if she never saw the two of them again. Why should she care that Hintsuli’s father had looked at her as if she were the devil incarnate?

  "You know, this wouldn’t have happened," she said, wagging a finger at him, "if you hadn’t let your son run around loose like a wild In—" She choked on her words.

  The man gave her one last thorough inspection from head to toe that stole the breath from her before he grabbed Hintsuli by the hand and started off across the clearing.

  She muttered after him. "And what kind of a mother is your wife to let a child his age gad about unsupervised?"

  Mattie hadn’t noticed before, paralyzed by fear, but now that she had the leisure to look, she saw that the man was dressed in no more clothing than the boy. As he ambled off, she could see all too clearly the bronzed contours of his back, his narrow hips, his muscular legs. The edge of his loincloth flapped up suddenly, revealing the hollow of one buttock, and her heart leaped into her throat. Sweet Lord, he was magnificent.

  "Wait!" she cried before she could stop herself. "Your drawings, Hintsuli!" She scrambled to gather them up from the porch, cursing the blood that rushed to her cheek.

  For a long moment, no one moved to close the distance. The man stared at her, still clutching Hintsuli’s hand, while the boy looked up at his father for approval. Mattie felt something flow between her and the Indian, some current, some force like lightning that seemed to darken the rest of the world until there were only the two of them, caught in space and time. She heard her heart beating in a rhythm not of its own making. A breeze rustled the man’s sleek hair, and then swept her way, as if the wind carried his spirit to her, and she gasped as it enveloped her soul.

  But then a hawk wheeled high overhead, splitting the silence with a hungry screech. The spell was broken. The moment was lost.

  Sakote released Hintsuli’s hand, and his little brother raced to get his "toys." Sakote, of course, didn’t dare go near the property, the cabin, the woman again. That was not the wind of The Great Spirit that had brushed by just now. It was the ghost of the hudesi, the monster who had lived there, and he’d given Sakote a warning. How else could Sakote explain his sudden weakness when he looked at the white woman and the way his soul felt pulled from his body when she returned his gaze?

  His heart shivered as he thought about Hintsuli wrapped in the hudesi’s garment. Didn’t the woman know that it was dangerous to keep the possessions of such an evil man? The Konkow would have burned all the hudesi’s things, forcing his condemned spirit to wander elsewhere.

  He watched as Hintsuli took the papers from the white woman. All day he’d searched for his troublesome little brother. He’d driven himself half mad with worry, fearing the boy lost or mauled by a bear or shot by miners. To find him with the woman he’d told him was Coh-ah-nuya, the child-eater, happily whiling away the afternoon, had filled him at first with relief, then with the desire to turn the boy over his knee.

  The woman stood not much taller than his little brother as he watched them together on the porch, and she could be no heavier than one of the fawns they’d seen earlier. With her delicate skin, pinkened now by the sun, and the wisps of tawny hair as fine as spider’s web circling her face, she looked about as defenseless, too. But she’d tried to protect Hintsuli. Despite her weakness, she’d stood bravely between him and harm. She had a brave heart, a warrior’s heart.

  Sakote blew out sharply. He had to turn his own heart aside. Hintsuli’s life depended on it. The lives of his people depended on it. The Konkow must stay away from the willa and their evil ghosts. The woman was dangerous. To Hintsuli. To him. To his tribe.

  The woman squeezed Hintsuli’s shoulders, and then sent him on his way. As she gave him a wave of farewell, Sakote noticed that the skin of her forearm was as pale as sycamore bark, and he wondered if it felt as smooth.

  He grimaced, and then shook his head like a muskrat shaking off water. He mustn’t think of such things. He mustn’t think of the tiny brown dots that spattered her nose, the dimpled acorn point of her chin, the way her hair glistened gold in the setting sun, how her eyes shone greener than deergrass.

  Hintsuli joined him then, and Sakote almost succeeded in walking away without a backward glance. But the woman’s lilting voice summoned him again.

  "I wish you would let your son keep the shirt!" she called, hefting up the garment. "It’ll be cold, come winter."

  He didn’t mean to reply. It was wiser to leave in silence. But she spoke with such concern. Words fell out of his mouth, unbidden, like a trickling spring from the earth.

  "I won’t let him go cold,” he said. “And he isn’t my son. He’s my brother."

  Then he turned to go.

  There was no earthly reason why the Indian’s reply should have sent Mattie’s heart rocketing skyward. It shouldn’t even surprise her that he spoke English. After all, white men had lived here for twenty years or more. She shouldn’t care that Hintsuli was his brother and not his son. But somehow, she did. Somehow, that bit of knowledge sent her thoughts wheeling in all sorts of unwelcome directions, wondering how old he was, what he was called, whether he had a squaw of his own.

  She would have liked him to linger, to answer some of her questions, to tell her about his life and his world. Lord, she would have liked to just gaze at him a while. But by the time she collected herself, the two savages had vanished into the forest.

  Of course, the man’s image was penned in India ink on her brain. She’d always had good powers of observation. It was what made her a decent artist. Every bone, every shadow, every eyelash was as vivid to her now as when he stood before her. He lived in her mind’s eye. But she feared losing him. Already the light was fading, but perhaps if she hurried...

  A half hour later, Mattie rocked back off of hips that had grown numb from sitting on the hard pine porch. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, despite the coolness of the encroaching evening. Her shallow breath barely stirred the air, but her heart hammered as if it sought escape, and she knew that if she looked into a mirror, her eyes would appear haunted and hungry.

  At last she let the pencil fall from her fingers, a stubby, dulled instrument that had sacrificed itself to create this—a portrait that rivaled SIREN AND SAILOR. The paper shivered in her hand like a living thing. The lank, sculpted figure seemed to charge from the page, every muscle taut and quivering. Wind appeared to flutter the deerskin slung about his hips and lash his chest with whips of his long hair. Tension curved his mouth downward and carved deep wrinkles in his brow, and his nostrils flared in agitation. But the eyes, they were the window to his spirit. As shiny as polished jet, they stared out at her in accusation—demanding birth, demanding life, demanding release from the page.

  The rendering was inspired, and yet it terrified Mattie. It was the portrait of her dream, the one she couldn’t see clearly.
She knew it was. Yet, trembling here in the falling shadows of twilight, she could hardly remember drawing it. How long had it taken? Where had she started? What had forced her hand to such uncharacteristically bold strokes? She couldn’t say. She didn’t know. And that shook her to her very core.

  "I don’t s’pose you’d be willin’ to part with that one, would you, Miss?"

  Jasper Colton wiggled the twig from one side of his mouth to the other as he scowled at Mattie’s latest sketch. It was a drawing of him, thigh-deep in the stream, washing the gold in his pan. His rumpled hat was kicked way back on his head, exposing an unruly lock of lank black hair, and his shirt showed stains of sweat under the arms. Around him, the creek eddied in sparkling play, as if winking at the man’s folly, and scrub pines leaned their feathery heads forward to watch.

  "My ma’d be right happy to see her son ain’t some no-count squatter like his old man." He rubbed his stubble-peppered chin. "How much you want for it?"

  Mattie bit back a shout of delight and pretended to contemplate the purchase. She honestly had no idea how much to charge for her work, particularly since everything here seemed to be bought and sold with ephemeral gold dust. She wrinkled her forehead and tapped her lip.

  "I could give you half an ounce," he offered.

  Half an ounce of gold for a quick sketch? The rendering wasn’t her best work. It certainly had none of the fire of the portrait wrenched from her soul last night. Half an ounce? Good heavens, at that rate, she’d be wealthy in a matter of weeks.

  Jasper mistook her hesitation for displeasure. He spat the twig from between his teeth and scratched his florid cheek, his eyes never leaving the page. "All right, three-quarters of an ounce."

  "Mr. Colton," Mattie protested, "I have no intention of letting you pay—“

  "Damn!" he exclaimed, licking his lips like a beggar contemplating a three-course dinner. "If that don’t look just like me, spit ‘n’ image. You drive a hard bargain, ma’am, but I’ll give you a full ounce if you let me have that pitcher."

  Mattie was stunned. But she wasn’t stupid. She nodded mutely, sealing the transaction, and watched in amusement as Jasper spat on his hands, wiped them on his trousers, then took the sketch from her by the corners, treating it as if it were the finest Belgian lace.

  "Much obliged, ma’am," he growled, digging in his pocket for a pouch. "This here’s a full ounce. If you don’t have your own scale, you can check it on Tom’s back at the Bar."

  She would have shaken his hand, but he seemed preoccupied with his new prize. Mattie dropped the pouch into the bottom of the empty peach tin she used for her pencils and picked her way downstream toward her second subject.

  Red Boone was even less hospitable than Jasper. He was a large man, heavy of frame, broad of neck, and dense of skull, and Mattie feared that thickness extended to his wits as well. He gave her mistrustful sidelong glances the entire time she sketched him. When she finished, she set the drawing down carefully and drew her skirts around her to perch on a rock.

  Eventually, Red’s curiosity got the better of him, and he moseyed his way over to her.

  "What’s that?" he asked, nodding nonchalantly toward the drawing.

  "It’s a picture of you," Mattie replied. "I hope you don’t mind."

  His laugh was a scoff, but his eyes gleamed with interest. She rotated the drawing so he could see it. The grin vanished from his face at once, and his mouth hung open in awe.

  "How’d you..."

  He studied the sketch with such intensity that she feared he’d brand the paper.

  "I ain’t never had a pitcher done before," he said in wonder.

  "Well, Red," Jasper piped in, sauntering by, "don’t get your longhandles in a bunch." He snickered over Mattie’s shoulder. "It ain’t free."

  "You’re sellin’ this?" Red asked.

  The innocence of his question made Mattie want to press the sketch into his hands as a gift. She supposed, however, that his friend Jasper would have something to say about that, having just paid an ounce of gold for his.

  "Do you like it?" she asked, delaying the inevitable bout of bargaining.

  "‘Course he likes it," Jasper interjected, slapping the bear of a man on the back. "Damn! It’s his spit ‘n’ image, spit and image, I tell you. Ain’t it, Red?"

  The big man nodded.

  "Then come on, pard, pony up. Pay her your ounce, and you can take it home, hang it up in your parlor."

  He snorted at his own joke while Red dug in his trouser pocket and fished out a Double Eagle.

  "Much obliged, ma’am." Red offered her the coin and confiscated the drawing, concealing it against his immense belly as if the sketch were his own private masterpiece.

  Mattie couldn’t help but hum as she merrily followed the stream along its winding path through the canyon. She had enough gold now to buy at least half a month’s provisions, all from two sketches that had taken her less than an hour, and the day was yet young. There were miners all along the creek, miners who so far seemed only too willing to pay a king’s ransom for a little bit of artistry. She might just purchase those chintz curtains sooner than she planned.

  Mattie made and sold three more portraits, sketches of Billy and Bobby Cooper and their Granny, before she decided she’d better return home. She had earnings to cache and a lunch she’d left simmering.

  Supping on a substantial meal of beans with salt pork, Mattie wondered idly what Hintsuli was eating for lunch. Did his big brother catch fish for him? Or rabbits? Did they eat like squirrels, living on nuts and berries they found? The more she thought about it, the more curious she grew. What did their homes look like? What did they do for entertainment? Who were their gods?

  She’d learned two of their words, utim and tem-diyoki, acorn and deer. But there was so much about the Indians she didn’t know, so much about him.

  The features of Hintsuli’s brother crystallized again in her imagination as if he’d been waiting for her. Even in memory, he took her breath away.

  What was his name? How many brothers and sisters did he have? What did he look like when he smiled? When he slept? When he bathed?

  Even as her cheek flushed with the wicked turn of her thoughts, her fate was sealed. She must know the answers to her questions.

  With three pencils, a tiny sharpening knife, and her sketchbook, she set out through the forest at the spot where the pair of Indians had disappeared the night before. She had no idea where she was going, but if a six-year-old boy had found his way to her cabin through the wood, there must be a clearly marked trail back to his home.

  "Mati," Sakote whispered to himself, shifting the two freshly slain rabbits slung across his shoulder and climbing from rock to rock along the canyon rise. It was a Konkow word. Acorn-bread. A strange name for a white woman. But Hintsuli insisted that was what the willa called herself. "Mati."

  The sun was high now, and the day was hot. There was little chance that wildcats or bears would rouse from their midday naps to thieve his kill. Still, he longed to finish his journey, a journey that seemed more and more foolish the farther he walked.

  He’d yearned to speak to the elders last night about the white woman, to ask for their counsel at the evening fire. But he couldn’t. The incident with the white doctor was his sister’s secret to keep. He wouldn’t betray her trust. His little brother, however, was not easy to silence. Sakote had had to dangle Hintsuli’s precious pictures over the flames before he’d agree to keep quiet.

  And now, because of the promise to his sister, Sakote brought food for the willa woman so she wouldn’t starve to death. It was...what was the word Noa used? Harebrained. The woman would either live or die, according to Wonomi’s will. She would either learn the way of The Great Spirit’s earth, or she would be conquered by it. Sakote couldn’t change the course of her life’s river. Yet he longed to guide her along the current.

  He wouldn’t speak to the woman again. He still regretted revealing his command of English to her. As he’d lear
ned from his sister, once you began talking with a woman, it was often difficult to make her stop. But there was something else. She was a white woman in a camp of white miners. If Sakote were seen near her, on her doorstep, in her house, the willa would probably wind a hanging rope around his neck.

  No, he decided, he’d quickly drop the rabbits just inside her door and leave.

  "Mati," he murmured once more, wondering what the letters looked like in the white man’s writing. Perhaps Noa would show him.

  He crested the ridge, slipping into the pines that surrounded Mati’s house. He avoided the trail as always, choosing instead his own path over thick needles that would hide the marks of his passing. It was something the Konkow had always done, for it disguised one’s presence to the enemy. And now that the willa arrived like flies on fresh venison, threatening the shrinking world of the tribe, it was a necessity.

  The noise from the bushes ahead caught him by surprise. He froze, and then slowly melted back into the bark of a camouflaging oak. He cocked his head, listening for more sounds, and peered through the fork of the oak’s branches.

  "Damn it all!" she bit out.

  It was Mati, struggling out of a patch of deerbrush as her hair snagged in the branches. She bent to examine her skirt. Something had ripped a fist-sized tear in the cloth.

  "Oh!" She stamped her foot.

  Then she straightened and scanned the forest around her, her gaze crossing blindly over him. She wiped her forehead with the back of her arm and sighed.

  "What happened to the trail?" she asked the trees.

  Choosing an opening in the manzanita, she marched forward, so close to him that he felt the air of her passing. He couldn’t breathe or blink.

  Where was the woman going? This passage joined up with a rough trail that traversed the canyon wall in a more conspicuous incline. But there were many offshoots of that trail. If she lost her way...

  He had no choice but to follow her and make sure that didn’t happen. After all, what good would it do to leave supper at her door if she never found her way home to eat it?