thirty-eight
The Métis crowded close, while Trouffant took center stage.
“Ah, Monsieur Skye, it is time to make you one of us,” he said.
There were instant translations, those who understood English offering the thoughts to others.
Dirk liked that.
“We have this thing for you,” Trouffant said.
Someone handed him a long Métis sash, intricately corded in several colors, including red, orange, blue, and white. It had tasseled ends. The one in Trouffant’s hands was a beauty, richly woven in bright hues, so that it shone in the lamplight.
“See now, this sash is the emblem of our people. I will tell you about it. See all the colors, all the strands. They have meaning. They are the different peoples and bloods that make the Métis, oui? They are the colors of the French, the Cree, the Scots, the Ojibway, the Canadians, oui? They are bound together with the white thread of God, oui? See how long the sash is. It goes round and round if we want it to. It is wool. We tie our pants with it. We wrap it around our waist to tie our coats tight. We sometimes use it as a scarf to warm our neck, eh? We use it to keep our pants up, and we give it to you to keep your pants up, but, monsieur, no man should have his pants up at all times, so there will be times when you undo this sash, and that is good. But meanwhile, it is made so your pants will not drop around your ankles when you don’t want them to.”
The translators were busy, and the people were smiling.
“So, mon ami, Dirk Skye, we make you one of us with this sash. The colors blue and white, they are the colors of the flag of our nation, oui? Wear the blue and white and you are one of us!”
He handed the handsome sash to Dirk, who swiftly wrapped it around his middle three times, and tied it so that the tassels hung to his knees, just as these people wore their sashes. The red and blue and white and orange somehow added to Dirk’s austere wardrobe, making him as gaudy as these Métis men around him.
The Métis cheered, handed Dirk their flasks, and he was obliged to sip on every one. The women touched his cheek and smiled. Therese stared, unsmiling.
“I will wear it proudly. I’m Métis now, and glad of it,” Dirk said hoarsely. “How can I thank you?”
But Trouffant wasn’t done. “Monsieur Reilly!” he bellowed.
“Oh no, ye don’t!” the hog farmer bawled, but he let himself be manhandled into the center of the ring.
“Ah, monsieur, rescuer of our people, feeder of our people, we have a Métis sash for you as well,” Trouffant said, even as someone handed him a beautiful sash, this one more blue and white and black, with less red corded into it.
“I can’t even speak your tongue, ye bloody fools,” Reilly bawled.
A large Métis male with huge mustachios handed Reilly a flask, and Reilly obliged them with a sip.
“You who sheltered us, you who fed us, you who fought for us, you who gave your ranch to the hungry, the cold, the poor, the desperate, now we make you one of us,” Trouffant said. “Wear this sash and be one of the people.”
There was only quiet. Reilly took the long sash gently, kissed it, folded it, and draped it over his shoulders. It had become a stole.
These people caught their breath. It was as if this gift had become an ordination.
“Ye bloody people, ye have made me whole,” Reilly said. His hands pursued the sash running over his neck, following it up and down, catching the woof and weave of the cords, memorizing its sacredness.
“Aw, I got to look after the roast,” he said.
The Métis reached out simply to touch him. One by one, they pressed their hands upon his arms and shoulders, or touched his hands, or touched his hair. Then Reilly fled to his fire and roast, the long sash flapping around him, and the fiddlers began a jig, a step dance, with a great scrape of their fiddles.
The women returned to their cooking, swaying to the rhythm.
Some of the crowd was dancing now, mostly outside because the cabin was jammed.
Dirk saw Therese at the kettle, her back to him, slowly stirring a stew.
He approached quietly, and somehow she knew he was approaching.
“Would you dance?” he asked.
She handed her wooden spoon to another woman and nodded solemnly, and she followed him through the door and into the cold night, where the fiddle music made the fires dance and the crowd clapped and sang.
They faced each other, not touching, arms falling languidly to their sides, for this was a dance of the legs and feet. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but it didn’t matter. It would be whatever his feet decided to do. There wasn’t time to learn anyway. So he began, tapping, forward, back, and she followed intuitively, a slow smile building on her face. He wasn’t sure what her smile meant. But then she stopped following him and struck a tap on her own, and her smile widened. He saw how it went and caught her movements and duplicated them. And then almost before he could fathom it, they were tapping out elaborate rhythms, and the fiddling reached into their bones, and they stamped and tapped and sidestepped and clicked, almost a tango for toes. It wasn’t until a long while later that they realized the others had stopped their own step dancing to watch, and that he and Therese had been dancing all alone to the fury of the fiddles.
At last the fiddlers fell into softer strains, and she tossed her head, throwing her jet hair to one side, and they headed into the warmth of the cabin, now filled with savory aromas. She paused, touched his cheek, and headed toward the knot of women ladling pork stew into bowls.
She was carefully ignoring him, her back mostly turned toward him, but he sensed she was aware of his every step. He decided on some roast pork and headed into the night, where Reilly was slicing slabs of white pork from the roast, his sash still dangling from his neck and shoulders, floating about like the vestments of a priest.
“Ah, it took ye long enough. Don’t like my meat, eh? Can’t stand Reilly, eh? Well, take this and suffer, Skye.”
Reilly forked two slabs of dripping, steaming meat onto a tin plate and handed it to Dirk.
“Have a knife and fork?” Dirk asked.
“What do you take me for? Find your own,” Reilly said. “And stop your whinin’.”
“I danced with Therese,” Dirk said.
“And it was a mortal sin if ever I saw it,” Reilly snarled.
“You wouldn’t know a sin from a good sip of whiskey,” Dirk said.
“Is that how you treat me? I put a man up in me cabin, and this is how I’m paid.”
Dirk headed for the cabin, searching for anything that would let him eat politely, but there wasn’t a piece of silverware in sight. And then, oddly, Therese showed up with a fork. She had been watching him.
“Eat,” she said.
He took it gratefully. She whirled away again.
The party evaporated as swiftly and mysteriously as it had formed. People ate and vanished into the night. The fiddlers put away their instruments in cases they had fashioned along with their fiddles, and walked into darkness.
Dirk couldn’t imagine where they went. There were perhaps a hundred Métis in the vicinity, somehow sheltering themselves against the elements. A dozen were here at Trouffant’s wood yard. Another bunch were staying with Reilly. Still more at Blanc’s grist mill. But there were scores more.
“You set to go?” he asked Reilly.
“Always nagging are you?”
“Thought you might like company.”
“Company’s the last thing I need.”
Reilly took his knives and forks into Trouffant’s cabin and climbed into the wagon seat and started his dray north. Dirk tied the rein of his buckskin to the wagon and sat beside the Irishman.
“Wanting a free ride, are you? I should charge.”
They rolled over frosted ground that rattled the wagon, and soon were far beyond town and its lights.
“Therese Trouville and I are married, I think, but I’m not sure,” Dirk said.
“Not sure you’re married? What ki
nd of blather is that? You been sipping?”
“No, I’m not sure. Maybe you can help me. You’re some kind of clergyman.”
“Laddie, you are off on the far side of the moon, and that’s the last I’ll say.”
“Nope, I’m going to talk. Therese and I were married in Miles City.”
“By what? Some heretic?”
“Priest.”
“And now you want to get out of it, that it?”
“She fled. We were having a celebration in a saloon there and she disappeared.”
“Our little saint did?”
“Out the door.”
“And you’ve not spent time with her since? I mean, spent time?”
“We’ve talked.”
“Then you’re not married, least that’s how I see it.”
“How would you know?”
“Are you being nosy or what?”
“Were you a clergyman in Ireland?”
“Get this straight, bloody Skye. I’m a hog farmer.”
“Why do I think you’re a clergyman?”
“You want to get off this wagon, right now?”
“No, I want to dig into your past and find out what sort of trouble you got into. That’s not a sash you’ve got around your neck; it’s a stole.”
Reilly flailed his arm. “Off!”
“I’ll drive the wagon and you can ride my horse.”
“It amazes me, Skye, that you have survived as long as you have. I don’t know how that happened. It must be blind luck. No one’s shot you yet.”
The wheels ground over frozen clay, but little by little they were approaching Reilly’s ranch.
“She’s written the bishop in Helena. She wants to consecrate the church and all. That means getting a priest here, which isn’t easy in winter,” Dirk said.
“That should be entertaining. Say, Skye, you got a nip?”
“Nope.”
“Usually, when they have a new church they send a bishop. Fat chance eh?”
“Well, when you build a church, you want it started up right.”
“We’ll see,” Reilly said. “Sometimes, they don’t want help. They’ve got budgets and goals and plans. And they don’t like surprises.”
“How do you know?”
Reilly sighed. “I’m not going to talk to you anymore. I thought you were a friend. But you’re the serpent in the Garden of Eden.”
“I sort of like the idea,” Dirk said. “How about boa constrictor? Or cobra? And what’ll I say to Eve?”
But Reilly had clammed up.
When they reached the ranch yard, it was plain that the bunkhouse was empty. No smoke rose from its stovepipe. Reilly’s guests were staying in town, no doubt to continue on the church while the weather lasted. Dirk wondered where all those people had collected.
Reilly was still angry, and he stomped into his cabin, leaving it to Dirk to unharness the dray and take care of the horses. When Dirk finally did get to the cabin, he found it cold. Reilly had climbed into his bedroll. Dirk lit the wick of a lamp, built a small fire in the stove to take the chill off, and was heading for bed when he saw Reilly’s sash, carefully hung on a peg, its tassels just off the floor, hung with all the care of a vestment.
Dirk unwound his own sash, which wrapped his waist. It was odd; he wasn’t the owner of a Métis sash; it was just the opposite. The sash owned him.
thirty-nine
Snow wrapped the little church. It settled on the shake roof, plastered itself against the log walls, mounded around the foundation, and skidded past the stairs to the double front doors. But snow couldn’t find its way inside, where the Métis people were finishing the last of the pews, setting a simple altar in place, and walling off a sacristy.
A stove and stovepipe, supplied by the mercantile in exchange for a season’s firewood from the Trouffants, heated the building. The Métis had fitted wood together so skillfully that there were no drafts, even though the storm eddied into every seam and joint and juncture. There were things still to do, varnish to be applied, stained glass for the windows someday, and yet all that could wait. The church was ready, and it awaited a dedication even as the first storm of December hurled its might against its solid walls. It was larger than Dirk had supposed.
It was dark for a midafternoon, between the storm clouds and the low sun, and now the Métis simply sat in pews, feeling the strength and grace in what they had built. Dirk, who was never comfortable in white men’s edifices, felt serene there. Reilly sat beside him, scowling, looking ready to burst. Some of the Métis women entered, wrapped in shawls and coats. They genuflected even though there was nothing to genuflect to; not yet. One of these was Therese, who was returning from Lewistown’s business district. She bore an envelope.
“Please read this to me,” she said, handing it to Dirk. “I tried, and don’t know enough.”
The letter bore the return address of the Diocese of Helena.
Dirk studied the letter, which was from the vicar. “They’re welcoming you and pleased to hear from you, and saying they knew nothing about your church, Therese. This is from the vicar, the deputy of the bishop. He says this is not the time of year to send anyone, but in the spring they will begin an inquiry. That’s necessary according to the laws of the church to learn about the unknown congregation, and your church records. Baptism, confirmation, and all that.”
“But we have none! They’re in parish churches in Canada.”
“Well, he goes on to say that if the need is found to catechize the people here, that would be the next step, and if the inquiry comes to a happy conclusion, the bishop himself would arrive here sometime in the next year to consecrate the church and make it a part of his diocese.”
Reilly, who was listening closely, was cackling. “Do it as slow as possible,” Reilly said.
Therese clouded over. She sat rigidly in the pew, lost in sadness. “That is how they are, how they were, how they always will be,” she said. “We are Métis.”
“You mean they would do it some other way if a European congregation petitioned?” Dirk asked.
“They’d stick to all the forms no matter who’s involved,” Reilly said. “They have to; it never changes.”
Therese stared out the window into the whirl of white outside. “I have done what was given me to do,” she said.
Some of this must have caught the attention of the Métis men still finishing the interior because they stopped their work and stared.
She eyed them. “It’s nothing. The bishop will come to us. It will take a little time.”
“How much time?” asked one.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Can’t someone come and bless this church and send us a priest for now?” asked another.
Reilly stood. “Dirk, tell them there’s no way to hurry the church. But you could organize prayers here while you wait.”
“How do you know this?” Therese asked.
“Don’t ask a man questions that aren’t your blooming business.”
It was odd, but the Métis set down their saws and chisels and hammers until all work ceased, and came to Therese in her pew and sat down close to her. The place had grown very quiet.
Trouffant stood. “Mademoiselle, we need to do other things, then. There are many of us here, barely sheltered, who don’t know where their next meal will come from. And they have no good place to stay. Some can stay here. This is a good, warm building. It is a haven for the Métis. From here we can walk into Lewistown. Some of us can find work. Food and clothing and shelter, eh? We have made a house.”
It seemed a good idea to Dirk. These people had been building their church even before they found food and shelter and jobs to support themselves and their children and grandparents and the injured and sick. Most of them were on the edge of grief.
But Therese sat silently, lost in her own reverie. Dirk knew what was afflicting her. It was as if her vision had been nothing but a foolish dream, and now reality had arrived.
&n
bsp; Reilly stood again. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”
He unwrapped his Métis sash from around his body, draped it over his neck as a stole, and walked to the bare altar.
“I’ll serve ye,” he said.
The silence thickened. Instead of staring at Reilly, people looked every which way, every direction except the bare altar with Reilly standing before it, his back to them, apparently talking to someone, the something that lay beyond.
Then he turned.
“Skye, you tell these Canadians what I’m saying. I’ll go slow.”
Dirk rose, stood before these people, and waited.
“Far across the sea,” Reilly began, “I left behind me a broken woman, two daughters and a son, my own blood. I left behind me an unhappy bishop, yes, and a hundred others wearing the cloth. For I was one of them. Now I’m a hog farmer, but these are consecrated hands, and that never changes, and if ye want a priest, ye have one, and we’ll proceed even if the bishop and all think it ought not to be, or it’s irregular, or it’s this or that or the other. So I’d be a rogue in a rogue church, if ye want it, but these hands, straying as they may be, are consecrated and could serve ye if ye wish.”
Dirk struggled with words, not because he couldn’t make Reilly’s ideas plain, but because Reilly was talking in poetry and he didn’t know how to turn Reilly’s poetry into Métis poetry. Still, Reilly’s body, his gestures, and the very tone of his voice were poetry also, and that might carry meaning even more than anything Dirk could manage.
They listened from their pews. The silence thickened. Dirk knew what these hardworking people were thinking: it was not their decision to make.
Therese sat quietly, and then suddenly stood, softly and gently, and walked forward toward the altar, where Reilly stood. She paused, stared into Reilly’s face, and took both of his hands in her own, and kissed each hand.
Then she turned to her beloved people. “We are a rogue people,” she said. “We will have our own rogue church.”
Then she returned to her pew and placed her hands upon her face, and knelt.
“Skye, tell them to come at six this evening, all of them. Tell them to fill every pew. Tell them to gather here, every last bloody one,” Reilly said.
The First Dance Page 26