Grass and Sky.
Grass and Sky and vultures. Many of them now. All soaring down low in the distance. They swooped and dipped over the only mark of relief in all the prairie spread out around us – two scraggled trees of an unidentifiable species poking up out of the grassland. There was some commotion going on under the trees, and although ethereal, I deduced that the voice resonating from that spindly copse was not one of joy, but of a whelming sorrow.
“Bother!” I sighed. For I was growing sore weary of melancholia.
And yet, this disturbance in the otherwise uninterrupted expanse of our monotony did indicate, at the very least, a variation to our forlorn venture.
“Well,” I said, wiping the sweat from my neck. “I suppose we had better go and see what is happening there.”
My enthusiasm was thin, but perhaps God, plural or otherwise, had not abandoned us after all.
MISTER POE HIMSELF COULD not have contrived a spookier spectacle than the one that confronted us now. It even surpassed the ghastly ruins of Ablutia in its weirdness and gruesome spectacle. It solicited from the closet of my sublimated amnesia the memory of a nightmare I had suffered as a boy, and as all that childhood scariness came rushing back at me, I found myself somewhat paralyzed in the saddle, and loath to proceed forward. But Brownie seemed determined that this was where we needed to go. He disregarded my panicked tugging at his reins, blatantly overriding my command to halt and assess the situation from a safe and reasonable distance.
“Whoa, boy,” I fairly whimpered. “Please whoa!”
But by the time he had finally stopped, we had reached the trees and were positioned right before the bizarre siren.
She stopped her song and squared to face us.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph!” I murmured.
Yes, I thought to myself, and marveled at my déjà vu. The witch was most assuredly an exact copy from my childhood dream. I could not guess how she had come to find herself manifested in physical form right here on the American Frontier, so far as it was in time and space from my darkened boyhood bedchamber across that wide fishpond of the Atlantic.
“Hello,” I said, and perfunctorily tipped my hat.
She did not reply, only glared. Her face was painted with white clay, and her hair was chopped in haphazard fashion, at places right down to her scalp. Tufts of black hair hung like decorations on the tall stalks of grass, and appeared as if it had been sawed from her head with a bowie knife that was none too sharp. Her ripped skirt and blouse revealed secret glimpses of the cinnamon colored skin underneath, indicating that she was not Caucasian.
“Pardon me.” I could not help but ask. “Have you ever been to Cherbourg, France?”
But she said nothing, only stood stock still, as if waiting for us to be on our way so that she might continue with her arcane rite.
Behind her, in the crotches of two stunted thorn trees, were what appeared to be giant cocoons made of buffalo hides. They were held in place with twisted ropes of grass. A white painted face stuck up out of each cocoon – one of a man, the other of an infant. One could have supposed that they were some sorts of human-bug-being crossbreeds wrestling to break free and take flight in the form of hideously mutated butterflies. The eyes were closed on each face, but someone – the siren – had drawn large wide-open eyes in black charcoal on their foreheads. This gave me a severe case of the willies, and an unsolicited tremor swept from the top of my hat to the toes of my boots. Both of the bug people were clearly deceased, and with their big unblinking eyes, it looked as if they were peering out from the other side of this earthly existence.
I quickly surmised that we had happened upon a private funeral to which we were not formally invited. Still, I was a deliverer with a mission, perhaps even chosen by God, and not to be daunted by the woman’s stony manner.
“My name is Didier Rain,” I said. “Versifier, word collector, and would-be entrepreneur. These are my associates, Puck and Brownie.” I motioned toward each of my horses. “And this,” I said, holding a hand against Virtue, “is my precious child.” (The words just came out that way. I do not know why. I suppose it was my nerves that made it so.) “She is in a bad way, very thirsty for milk.”
Virtue did not stir as I spoke, and I feared for an instant that she had already slipped away. But then I felt, very faintly, her heart was drumming softly once – twice – thrice against my palm.
The siren woman stood motionless, but for her eyes. Her gaze flitted over Virtue, and in spite of her preoccupation with her own personal sadness, the woman’s white mask softened at the pathetic sight of the sick child bound with a strap to my front side.
“Mon fils est mort,” she rasped. “Et mon mari.”
I observed the corpses in the trees and deduced that they were the dead child and husband to which she referred.
“I am truly sorry for your loss,” I said. “Mes condoléances.”
She slowly bobbed her shaggy head.
I gazed up into the sky, past the twirling vultures, looking to see if perchance I could catch a glimpse of my blue star. Then I looked back at the woman.
“Life,” I said, “can be mysterious. Tres mysteriuex. The Big Spirit, it seems, has seen to it that our paths cross right when they should.” I laced my fingers together in the air before me, for visual effect to my point. “We have a need. Nous avons bessoin du lait.” I laid my fingertips over the tattoo hidden under my shirtfront. “And you must now fill the hole that is in your broken heart.”
She thought about this, and then nodded again, seeming to understand what I was getting at. A single tear glistened in her dark brown eye, and then trickled down, making a tiny rivulet in the white clay powdering her cheek.
I climbed down off of Brownie, hugging Virtue close, and stepped closer. “You have milk,” I said, and gestured toward her breasts.
The woman looked down at the front of her torn blouse, lifting both of her hands like bowls beneath her bosom. It was every inch an exact duplicate to the gesture she had performed so long ago in my boyhood dream, and I knew right then that this life, for all of its grim reality and submerged joy, was more than it appeared on the surface.
The sad siren helped me transfer Virtue from my makeshift papoose into her own arms. She studied the girl’s face. She fingered a tendril of Virtue’s yellow hair.
“Syatapis,” she said, as if identifying something about Virtue that was familiar and significant. “Syatapis!”
It was an Indian word that I did not know, but it seemed to mean something important to the woman. She grew somewhat excited. She carried Virtue over to the foot of the tree with the dead child hanging in it, sat down on a root, and opened her blouse.
At first, Virtue did not take to the offering. She seemed to be in a coma and was unresponsive to the nipple being rubbed so enticingly across her withered lips.
I whispered something like a prayer to the sky.
I waited.
Then, a single droplet of milk leaked onto the girl’s tongue. She squirmed. Her mouth puckered into a pout. Her tongue started going. And then, at long last, even from the depths of her sleep, Virtue began to drink.
*****
I do not remember ever feeling more relieved. Maudlin tears gushed forth from out my eyeholes, and I had to turn away from the woman, pretending to adjust a saddle strap so that she would not get the wrong impression and think me a pansy.
“Maybe we will survive this ordeal after all,” I mumbled to Brownie.
But then a vulture lit in the tree over the nursing siren. And then another. And another.
Foreboding. Evil. Ugly pink bald heads.
Dead people bound up in trees. Ghost faces. A half-starved white child taking suck from a crazy witch I had once met in a dream while scavengers waited above to dine on the dead folks’ livers.
The whole situation was enormously disconcerting.
And at that moment I realized that – even though we had survived yet another in our continuing string of peri
ls – there was just as much fighting against us as was fighting for us. Although there were no trees to see in any direction I turned, I felt for certain that we were not yet out of the proverbial woods.
Everything good has its bad side too.
I knew that for a fact.
It was a lesson I had learned long ago – the very platitude with which I had rebuilt my own broken heart.
THE SIREN’S NAME WAS Turtle Dove.
She came from the Blackfoot tribe of Indians, or “Siksika,” as she called it.
At first, she was generally stoic in temperament, and not forthcoming with personal information, but in time I was successful enough in my interrogations to learn that her husband had been a Frenchman fur trapper who had made some trade for her as a wife. After Europe’s demand for beaver pelts had fallen off, the trapper had found himself with too much idle time, grew introspective, and so, with nothing much better to occupy his days, became a seeker of God. Boredom being just one of the many byroads to sanctity. This inevitably led them to Ablutia where, after being filled up to the brim with fervor, the Frenchman had himself and his little son baptized. But as the Blackfoots are wary and respectful of the spirits who live under the waters, Turtle Dove had declined to partake in the soul-cleansing practices of the Ablutionites. This reluctance was to preserve her mortal life, as both her husband and child soon succumbed to the Dark Angel’s dirty water plague. Although their spirits now most certainly were enjoying their new home in heaven.
*****
After Turtle Dove revived Virtue, I was greatly gladdened. I felt as if a blacksmith’s anvil had been lifted from my shoulders, and an arrow drawn from out my fretful heart.
“You had me worried, little darling.”
Virtue gazed up at me from Turtle Dove’s lap, smiling like spring sunshine. “Rain,” she said, just as clear and pretty as you please. “Rain.”
That stirred in me an ineffable joy and wonderment. How magical was this reality! How miraculous this blond-headed creature in my care!
But it was not a very cheery spot in which to have a reunion, what with Turtle Dove’s loved ones decomposing above our heads, and so after the woman gave a parting gesture to her family, she led us over a rise to where she had a pair of mares tethered in a lush patch of chicory and sweetgrass near a little spring.
They were truly gorgeous animals, both flaxen palominos sporting braided blond-white manes adorned tastefully with feathers and colored beads. If horses could blush, Brownie and Puck surely did upon meeting those fine equine demoiselles. I had not seen a more embarrassing display of fall-all-over-yourself since I was boy in the play yard. Most unbecoming of their noble stations as my aides du cachet, but quite hilarious to watch.
“Sabrina,” said Turtle Dove, and laid her palm on the nose of one of the mares. She stepped toward the other animal. “Genevieve.”
I tipped my hat to the beauties. “Un plaisir.”
Then Brownie, in a show of animal gentility lost to me, did the only thing he could think to do; he stridently emptied his bladder, creating a large puddle of shimmering amber in the flattened grass between his legs.
“That will surely make a favorable impression,” I whispered, and grinned. But he was not paying attention to my good-hearted jibe. His full courtesy was on Sabrina, and I must say, had I been born a horse, I might likewise have been moved to give her my complete and flattering attention. For she was a most lovely creature to behold.
Puck, in turn, was doing his best to impress Genevieve. Again and again he lifted up his sockless foot, showing off his foppish flare for fashion. “Look at me,” he stomped. “Look at me! Look at me!”
Sabrina and Genevieve regarded my horses as if they were silly schoolboys – tolerant of their antics, polite, but obviously uninterested in starting up a romance. This did not seem in the least to discourage my smitten lads. They kept up their attention-getting strategies. Still, I had to laugh. They did not own a single testicle between them, and I suppose it never occurred to them that a consummation of love would ultimately be improbable, if not downright impossible. I found myself feeling pity for them at first, but then, oddly, was moved to envy. Removal of a man’s procreative hardware would, after all, free him up for other enterprise, eliminating that pesky distraction that lured one into so much turmoil, discomfort, and woe. I scratched my chin. I looked down at myself, considering.
We all drank from the burbling spring. I filled our canteens, and then Turtle Dove commenced to wash up. I left her to her toilet, and busied myself with saddling the horses and tending to Virtue.
Already, after her much-needed imbibement at Turtle Dove’s breast, Virtue appeared to have taken a small leap in vitality and size. It was as if she had rehydrated and had become more full and large. The cornflower dress she had been wearing these last few days was already looking to be exchanged for a size bigger. I found myself amazed.
Even her hair was longer.
And then she did something I wholly did not anticipate – she stood!
She walked!
A bit tipsy, to be sure, but very accomplished, considering.
I chuckled at my own surprise. “Child,” I said. “You never fail to dumbfound.”
She ambled over behind Genevieve and ran her fingers through the long blond hairs of her tail. I had encountered more than one stable boy who had been made dimwitted by the swift backward kick of a horse, but I was disinclined to worry just now. Virtue was blessed. I felt sure that the mare would do her no harm.
The little girl examined the horse’s tail hairs, comparing them to the hair on her own head. I think it pleased her to meet another in this world who shared similarities, if only follicularly speaking.
“Pretty,” she said, and smiled.
Genevieve stood still and patient throughout.
Turtle Dove came from the spring, all scrubbed clean of her clay mask. She had traded her tattered dress for a new one of white doeskin. She looked to be a different person altogether, and I found myself tipping my hat to her as she walked up, as if we were meeting for the first time. Yes, her blue-black hair was still hacked and teased, but I was deeply surprised at her loveliness otherwise displayed. Her face was fetching, with a white scar along her brown jawline, like a primitive mark of beauty. Her figure reminded an admirer of a Roman statuette.
“Well…” I said. “Uh… Wha…”
My lips somehow got twisted up with my tongue and teeth. My gift for eloquent gab took a momentary hiatus, and I was sore pressed to find words correct expressive of what to say I wanted.
My flusterment did not faze Turtle Dove. She walked past me and knelt before Virtue, speaking to her softly in a flowing mix of French and Blackfoot.
Virtue nodded at what she was saying.
Turtle Dove stood and lifted the child onto the back of Genevieve, and then she gracefully leapt up onto the horse’s back herself, positioning Virtue so that she was right up close to her front. She reached around the girl, took hold of the reins, and peered down at me. She shrugged. “Allons?”
“Uh,” I stammered. “Uh, sure. Let us now be on our way.”
TURTLE DOVE USURPED THE role of nursemaid. Justifiably so, I suppose, as she was better equipped with the proper mammarian apparatus to fulfill such lactictory employment. My own duties were – if not exactly eliminated – significantly diminished. I admit with a blush that at first this caused me a small degree of jealous irritation. Yes, I had asked the Indian woman to step in, and again yes, I did appreciate her help (we were surely lost without her), but I did not expect to feel so worthless as a result.
I had grown accustomed to having Virtue near to me, making jokes with her along the way, and telling her parts of my favorite poems while holding her close. Now, and suddenly, I was thrust to the periphery – a minor moon orbiting the distant radiant sun – and I did not enjoy the lonesome sensation. One wondered if he was even needed at all. Turtle Dove was well versed in the ways of wilderness navigation – maybe even mor
e so than myself – and seemed entirely capable of delivering Virtue to the Prophet without my assistance. I felt like a father who, after depositing his seed to the proper plot of feminine soil, was rendered obsolete, perhaps even no more than tolerated. (Albeit, it was an even more inequitable scenario since I had not even been allowed to enjoy that first husbandry stage of delivering my seed to said feminine plot.)
But by and by, I adjusted to my demotion, looking upon it as a paid holiday to be enjoyed. After all, that thirty thousand dollars would be mine, with or without help from collaborators along the way. Although we were still many treacherous miles from the City of Rocks, our success was looking surer with each passing day.
*****
In the evenings, in camp, my vacation continued.
Turtle Dove not only tended to Virtue, she did the cooking too. Our stuffs were running low, but no matter. The Indian woman knew no end to finding manna from Nature’s cornucopia. She prepared flavorable stews made up of roots and savory grasses. She formed seed flour cakelets spiced with wild herbs. For dessert she always found some bounty hidden in the grass. One evening she came to me and held out a handful of crimson berries. I took pause, and did not immediately devour her succulent treat. In a fit of uncharacteristic discretion, I was unsure that it was wise to partake of such an offering of fruit from an unknown and exceedingly enigmatic woman. Perhaps she wanted me poisoned and out of her way. Perhaps she wanted Virtue for her own daughter, a replacement for the child she had lost.
It was a stupid insecurity, I admit, one born from that old dream I had suffered as an adolescent in which the same feminine archetype had molested and tortured and titillated me in nightmarish fashion.
Rain, I assured myself, this is not a dream, but waking life.
But still, my hand would not reach out to accept her gift.
“Amostsi mííímistsi likááhsiiyaawa!” she said. She thrust the hand toward me. The berries glittered like rubies. “Les fruits sont bons!”
Delivering Virtue Page 9