Nahoonkara

by Peter Grandbois

  I want to say something. No one can take over for Mother, least of all me. There are so many things I don’t know about her, things I need to know.

  Alone in the fur room, I listen to the wind howling beneath the door, passing through the pile of furs in the corner, carrying their death smell to me. No one else smells them. The truth is, they’ve gotten so used to it they don’t know the difference. They don’t know that smells keep changing in death, the same way they do in life. Just after the animal’s been skinned, the pelt smells sour, the smell of bile, but over time the smell softens to the bitterness of wood smoke. The scary part is that no matter how they smell in life, they all smell the same in death: bear, beaver, fox, or coyote, they all smell the same.

  The wind keeps blowing, and it gets so I can hardly take the smell anymore. I get the wheelbarrow from the shed and pile all the pelts in it. The fox’s fur is downy soft, the deer’s hide rougher than my own hair. It should be the other way around, I think, or at least, since they all smell the same, there should be no difference in the feel.

  Outside, the wind blows harder still, and the pelts fly from the wheelbarrow. I try to catch them, but all I can get are the bigger pelts. By the time I get to the river, all the smaller animals have flown, lynx, fox and rabbit escape on the wind.

  I take the bear, deer, wolf, raccoon, and badger pelts that remain and throw them in the muddy pine needle water one by one. I watch as the pelts spread their limbs upon the surface.

  When Father comes home and asks what happened to the furs, I tell him the smaller ones flew away, the rest chose water. He strikes me hard across my face, knocks me down on the front porch, the very same spot where I shuck corn with Mother. “Those pelts would have brought in enough to feed this family through the winter,” Father says. He leaves me in the darkness of the cellar for a long time. But when I come out, he takes me in his arms and holds me so long it seems as if we’ve always been together like that. Then, he reaches into his pocket and hands me Mother’s shiny, gold locket, the one she used to keep a picture of him in. Only now, it has a picture of Mother in it, her hair pulled back in a bun, her face irritated with sitting so long before the camera.

  Father piles his gear on the front porch. When he goes inside to see Mother, I follow. She’s sleeping and doesn’t know he’s there, and he doesn’t wake her. He just takes her hand in his and kisses it, bringing each knuckle to his lips. Then he places his cheek on her fevered brow. He stays there awhile, breathing heavily. It’s then that Mother calls out his name, as if she feels his presence in her dream, as if he’s closer in spirit to her than he actually is. The sound of his own name startles him, and he backs away. I hide in the fur room, watching as he throws on his pack and heads down the road along the line of elms.

  “Tell Frank, I’ll be back soon.” The wind carries his voice to me.

  Mother wakes, coughing blood. I come running, bringing old towels, as I know she doesn’t like to stain her fine handkerchiefs. She looks at me after I wipe away the blood. “Were you standing here before,” she asks. “Or did I dream it?”

  I don’t tell her the truth. I don’t know why.

  All through her first bout with consumption, I take care of her, while Uncle Frank handles the rest. It’s not bad. I take to her duties naturally. The doctor says her first bout is shorter than normal, and everyone thinks her speedy recovery is a sign she’ll stay well.

  Father comes back less and less often, aware of the rumors that death comes to our house on the backs of his pelts. And when he does return, his gaze is hollow, his movements slow, unsure, as if he’s confused by the two men he’s become—one who brings home money and food for his family, the other who brings home death.

  Routine anchors me. Saturday baking, Sunday church, Monday wash . . . Mother, who is used to working harder than any beast of burden, watches, sometimes from her bed, other times from the porch steps. It seems to me that only her love keeps her sane, her faith in the continuity between mother and child. But then I catch her gazing out to the horizon, out beyond the elms, and I don’t know. She loves me, yes, but that love is not all that keeps her alive.

  At night, I read her the letters from Eli among the Hutterites. I read each letter over and over until a new one arrives, but Mother doesn’t seem to mind. She makes sure to answer his letters right away, and when she can’t write them herself, she makes me sit at her bedside and do it. Henry doesn’t write, even though he’s away at school. Mother says he’s not gone so far as Eli. She says that of all a mother’s children, the one farthest away has the strongest need to be close.

  Sometimes she feels good enough to get around. On those days she goes right back to her routine, working alongside me. “I should have had you work with me all the time,” she says. “We could have made enough raspberry pie to last ’til doomsday!”

  When she’s healthy, she works so hard it’s as if she’s never been sick. And she smiles all the while, as if she’s keeping a secret that’s in danger of bubbling out.

  It’s Friday, chickens and dandelions. We’re sitting on the porch, sewing work clothes out of potato sacks. Even though Mother says she’s having a good spell, I can see she’s pale, and where her arms used to be thick they’re chicken bone, her once-strong back curved with a weight I don’t understand. I ask her why she looks as if she has the devil in her whenever she works.

  “It’s because I do have the devil inside,” she says with a look as serious as any I’ve seen. “And work’s the only thing that keeps him from getting out and raising Cain!” Then she laughs just the way I remember from the tavern, turning red in the face and gasping for air. I still don’t understand, but I smile anyway because it seems so right.

  The rest of the morning I try to stir up my courage to ask where the dandelion smell comes from. I’m not afraid of Mother; I want to understand. But I’m afraid the answer, like her humor, will be beyond me, and I’ll have to settle for the feeling of rightness and not the thing itself. I know she doesn’t help with Uncle Frank’s wine. That’s too simple. And besides, she’d say that’s his business. She’s got enough work to do.

  Finally, as the morning sun rises in the sky, stirring the color to robin’s eggs, Mother stands and holds the new trousers up against me. “Too short,” she says. “You’re a man now, I keep forgetting.”

  I think it’s funny, though she didn’t mean it to be. And, somehow, that gives me the courage to ask.

  Mother looks at me as if she’s forgotten that no matter how old children are they are always full of surprises. She takes me in her arms, and I inhale the scent of raspberries from the day before. It seems to me as if Mother is crying, though I can’t see her face. But she doesn’t want to let go, and I don’t struggle as Henry or Eli might do. Sitting under the cottonwoods beside the river or wrapped in Mother’s arms, it all seems the same to me. There is so much to feel, so much to let in, that it’s impossible to distinguish one moment from another. I just sit and let it all wash over me. And now I feel the beating of her heart, the coarseness of her hair—like mine—and the stiffness of her dress, not yet warmed to softness by the sun. And as soon as the smells and the images they carry with them arrive, they’re gone, overwhelmed by something else. If I don’t let each moment go, I’m sure I’ll drown in the next.

  When I can no longer remember who I am, Mother releases me. “The greatest mysteries have the simplest answers,” she says.

  Jake Mulenbach stands in his overalls in front of the elms, his thinning hair combed over to the side just the way he used to, though now there’s scant left to comb. In his right hand, which he presses to his heart, he holds a bouquet of dandelions.

  Mother gestures him onto the porch for coffee, and he steps hesitantly, assessing me and my knowledge of the world. But Mother makes the decision for both of them, embracing him, trapping his arms and the dandelions between them, the yellow pollen staining Mother’s apron and Jake’s overalls. I want to ask if he comes every Friday. I’m afraid of the
answer, but this time it’s not because I don’t think I’ll understand. It’s the opposite.

  Most of the time, though, Mother doesn’t leave her room, sometimes for so long the sheets smell like bile, and I think death is coming. I sleep beside her at night, pressing cold towels to her head, holding her as she shakes, using my shirt to wipe the blood from her mouth. On those days, I don’t go out. It doesn’t matter. The sky changes in my mind. It’s Mother’s changes that frighten me, the oak color of her skin, fading to gray ash. The way her skull is creeping out of her face, as if death is looking for her not from without but from within. Still, her scent fixes me to her.

  I don’t understand when it happens, but one morning I wake no longer sure what’s in bed with me. The frail form, its skin as tenuous as a dream. It’s not my mother. It’s not the woman who takes my hands, teaching them how to knead bread, or holds me on the porch after we’ve returned from gathering berries, each of us tasting a few and laughing as the juice runs down our chins. The pelts have come back, I think. Borne by wind and water, they’ve come back to haunt me. They cover my mother now like a shroud, their bitter wood smoke smell keeping her from me. Don’t fly away with them, like Catherine! I don’t know if she can hear me. Perhaps if I wash her clean, we can start over.

  TWO

  SPIDERS AND SHADOWS

  Wallace | Wisconsin

  Silky black and about a half an inch in diameter. It sits tucked behind the topmost log on the woodpile behind the house.

  “Kill it,” Father says. “Smash it with the log.”

  With the curiosity of a scientist or a criminologist, I tilt my head to peer beneath the spider, but I can’t make out a thing. I take a twig and knock it to the ground. Before it rights itself, I spy the red hourglass.

  “Step on it,” Father says. “Believe me, it won’t think twice about biting you.”

  The spider stills itself, as if it hopes to become invisible by not moving. I stare at it for a long moment. When I look close, I see the eight eyes staring back at me.

  We don’t read Plato’s Republic in school. My father brought it home from the library, and we read it together each night. He explains the parts I don’t understand. My favorite part is the cave, the fact that we are all prisoners doomed to watch the shadows play on the wall and think it’s reality.

  It dawns on me then that if I’m the prisoner and the spider the shadow, what does the spider see when it looks at me? Am I shadow and substance both? If so, then what determines me? I take the lemonade glass Mother set out for us and drink it down in one gulp, then carefully pull back the log and set the glass over the spider.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Father says, but it’s only force of habit. He knows how my mind works.

  I scrape the glass along the ground, until the spider is at the edge, its feet tucked up making a protective ball. I slide a leaf under the glass and in one quick action tilt it up. I carry it deep into the woods and let it loose. It wastes no time making for the cool shade of scrub oak. A jay perches on the lowest branch of an oak, watching us.

  On the way back I wonder if spiders have directional sense like birds or other animals. If they can find their way home. I picture the hand of my father or mother, or even my own, reaching into the woodpile one evening getting fuel for the stove. I see the spider waiting in the darkness, watching. And I wonder what I might do if I encountered it there again. Plato says that justice is the result of a well-ordered soul. I say it is by our actions that we order it.

  HOW TO OPEN A NAPKIN

  Wallace | Colorado

  By the time I arrived in Seven Falls, the “Meg” was churning out more silver than the next three Colorado mines combined. Seven Falls was a respectable town of three hundred and fifty people, almost a quarter of them women—and not all of them hookers. J.D. Demings was feeling the competition from two other hotels and people didn’t even bother to count the number of saloons. There was so much demand for goods that in ’77 Pete Myers found the perfect excuse to retire as sheriff. Years before, the job had become too much for Pete. They needed a real sheriff, and that’s where I came in.

  I met Henry over a poker game at Guller’s Saloon. He liked me the moment I quoted from Thompson’s Psychology of Criminals as I gathered up my bluffed winnings. Rather than begrudging me, he offered to buy me a drink and proceeded to question me on my theories of the criminal mind. I told him my ideas about how crime was a disease like the flu or pneumonia. I told him that disease rose up wherever man felt a void, whether that void was spiritual, emotional, or physical, and that what he had here in his town was a lot of people walking around as empty as a Nevada well. He offered me the sheriff’s job on the spot.

  He insisted that a jail be built, though I told him that I would consider myself a first-rate sheriff if I never had to use it. And for the first couple of years, I did consider myself first rate. People came from nearby towns and as far away as Denver to see the empty cells. One night, someone even hammered a sign above the jailhouse that read: “Rooms for rent.” I liked the sign so much I left it hanging there until the day I quit.

  I wondered why Henry needed a jail when he seemed reasonable in so many other ways. But then again, I didn’t come to my understanding of Henry and Elizabeth right away. In my line of work, it’s the meticulous observation that pays off, the continual study of a person’s daily habits. You’d be surprised to know that people repeat ninety-nine percent of their actions day in and day out. We are, to use a common figure of speech, “creatures of habit.” It’s the moment when we break the habit that the unconscious gives us away. And the habits of Henry and Elizabeth were not hard to follow.

  Each morning at eight sharp Henry left Elizabeth in bed and made the walk to the mine to check on his affairs, though he knew Will Markey managed things perfectly well without him. At noon, he took lunch at Demings’ Hotel, passing the afternoon in one of the hotel’s suites, which he permanently rented as an office. There, he poured over topographical maps, searching for the location of his next mine. At six, Henry took dinner with a different member of the town’s council.

  Though Elizabeth scarcely rose from bed during the day, her patterns weren’t any more difficult to figure out. Henry’s brother, Killian, took charge of the household chores, even changing little Molly’s diapers. Of Elizabeth’s other exploits, I will not recount here. We all have our secrets. A lady is no different from a man in that regard. It’s strange, but I believe sometimes, when I wake in the middle of the night, that it’s those secret selves that later give us our strength.

  And I noted how once a week, to keep up appearances, Henry and Elizabeth dressed up for a dinner engagement with various members of the town’s growing upper class. So, one night, several months after I’d arrived in Seven Falls, when Henry had asked his wife to accompany him to meet the new sheriff, I wasn’t surprised when Elizabeth walked into Demings’ lobby dressed in a flowing green, taffeta gown, one that had clearly cost Henry a fortune. Nor was I surprised by the care in which she’d painted on her face or the light manner in which she held Henry’s arm. What did strike me was the fact that while Henry entered the hotel covered with snow, his wife remained strangely dry, as if the softly falling flakes outside would rather dissolve into the air, disappear forever, than land on such a creature.

  “It’s my hat,” she said, affecting a smile. “It protects me from the elements.”

  I laughed, as of course the wide brim of her hat was dusted with snow.

  “My wife, Elizabeth,” Henry pronounced.

  “Remind me to get one of those,” I said, stooping to kiss her offered hand.

  “A wife or a hat,” she replied pulling her hand away a split second too soon, a gesture hinting at nervousness, the need to hide.

  It wasn’t until long after we sat down to dinner that Henry broke the silence. “You better slow down, Elizabeth,” he said. “Or they’ll have to bring you another trout.”

  “Yes,” I continued, eager to foll
ow any trail. “Your healthy appetite suggests an active mind.”

  “It certainly couldn’t be an active body,” Henry said. “I mean, Elizabeth has little to do during the day.”

  Elizabeth finished chewing before setting down her knife and fork, one on each side of her plate. “How would you know what I do?” she asked, her jaw pulled tight until I was sure it would break. “You spend so little time at home, I mean.”

  Henry cut himself a large chunk of steak, but left it on his fork. “Observing behavior is Wallace’s job, my dear,” he continued. “So it’s best to be on your guard. That is, if you have any secrets.” He took the napkin from his lap, dabbed at his mouth and laid it between them.

  Elizabeth dropped her hands to her own napkin in her lap. Held it there.

  “Wallace swears he can stop a crime before it occurs, before a man even thinks of committing it.” Henry shielded his face with his glass, inhaled the wine’s aroma.

  Elizabeth’s gaze flitted about the room, as if she might take flight at any moment. She’s like a bird, I thought. A fearful bird.

  “It’s my firm belief that no man wishes to commit a crime,” I said in hopes of stilling her. “No one wishes to do evil.” It worked. Her gazed fixed on some pattern on the wallpaper.

  “Tell Elizabeth about the book you’re writing,” Henry said before finishing off his glass of wine.

  “When a man commits a crime, it’s only because society has failed to hear his calls for help. The crime is his final cry. It’s the same whether it’s a crime against society or a crime against the self.” I stopped and sipped my wine.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, she turned her head toward me. “And what, then, does your trained eye see in me,” she said, speaking just slightly above a whisper.