Nahoonkara
Page 10
Other days, when I preached at the mine, I felt sure she could not breach the heavy dank odor of earth, the sulphuric aroma of blasting powder, of burros and men who had not washed for weeks. And as I lie there, attempting to quiet my mind, she seeped into my skin like an underground stream, saturating my pores. She carried me down further until I traversed the dark damp of the deepest shafts.
Nearly a year passed before the answer was revealed to me in Job 28. I will find my way, I said, and I marched to the schoolhouse that Sunday ready to deliver a sermon the people of Seven Falls would talk about for years after.
There are mines for silver
and places where gold is refined
The trembling of my own voice, its weakness, startled me. But that same quivering took hold of the people. Even the men in the back, squeezed into the desks meant for the children, leaned ever so slightly toward me.
Iron is won from the earth
and copper smelted from the ore.
Men master the darkness.
To the farthest recesses they seek
ore in gloom and deep darkness.
The men and women all nodded, as if they knew of what I spoke, as if they could see into the darkness of my own heart, when they could not even see into their own.
Man sets his hand to the granite rock
and lays bare the roots of the mountains;
he cuts galleries in the rocks,
and gems of every kind meet his eye;
and brings the hidden riches of the earth to light.
And now I held them in the palm of my hand. It is the moment when any man of God knows to deliver the breath of the Holy Spirit. “Ye who search the darkness beware!” I shouted, and then finished the scripture:
But where can wisdom be found,
and where is the source of
understanding?
No one knows the way to it . . .
How could I not have been prepared for the last line?
The Lord holds all cards and refuses to let even his servants know what hand he will play. I wavered upon the pulpit, sweat dripping from my brow. And the people waited. I stuttered then started again: “God alone understands the way to it.” But I could not finish. Her scent held me even here, the smell of vertigo and obscurity.
“Come on, preacher, give us the Word,” Frank Foote shouted, and the crowd grunted its assent.
It is the smell of dead grass, the smell of falling cinders, of emptiness and absence. It is the smell of the forsaken, and it was upon me. I opened my mouth to speak but no longer knew what I said.
And he said to mankind:
“The fear of the Lord is wisdom,
and to turn from evil,
that is understanding.”
And what does the Lord say to one who is lost in the darkness?
I woke, startled by the fact that the scent had penetrated my dreams. The smell of insanity, of the horrible indifference of stars. Yes, for a moment I was sure that was it. Then, like a dream, the image faded, and I knew I was no closer. I must leave or die. So, I began to pack my things, but the dark splash was upon me, its legs encircling, squeezing me until I could no longer breathe. I followed her, downward, ever downward until she was waiting for me in the shadows of the kitchen, waiting without knowing what she was waiting for. I tracked her scent through the dark until the force of her stillness stopped me. I waited until she could scent me too, not understanding that we’d recognized each other long ago. Each of us breathed in slowly, deeply, until we were buried in the other, until we coughed up air, needing still more space.
Before I knew it, I was upon her, but she did not stop me. I tore at her silk robe, the one she wore that first night. I ripped it open, searching for the answer I thought I’d found in scripture, looking for the way God promised. And still, she did not respond. What had I expected? Arms about me, lips pressing against mine, hands pulling me closer or at least beating me away? She did none of these things. Instead, she turned away from me slowly and bent herself over the kitchen table, offering her darkest regions to me.
I fell to my knees as if in prayer, burying myself in her, losing myself completely now in the darkness. No moan escaped from her mouth, no cry of pleasure or anguish. Nothing. In fear, I tried to climb back to the surface, fighting the thick odor of my own craven desire, but it had gone too far. On my feet again, I plunged into her, sure that she could not stand the weight of my need. And still she did not move. I wanted to cry out, to scream to her to stop: Do not smother me with your silence! Do not take me with you into that chasm of darkness! But all I did was shudder over and over as I spent myself inside her.
Only after, as I lay slumped upon her back, did she turn, her eyes two black pits in the darkness. And she clasped my head in her hands, her fingers fated reigns upon my face. I searched deep within her gaze, looking for some semblance of myself but found only barren trees rising from those orbs. “Elizabeth, . . .” I wanted to say more. Words alone could transform our carnal act. But no words came.
I collapsed behind the teacher’s desk that served as my pulpit. They rushed to me, fearing that my passion for the Lord had been my undoing, not understanding the terrible manner in which He works.
“He feels the words of the Lord too much,” they said. “He is too good a man!” They dragged me outside, sat me in a chair in front of the schoolhouse.
“Leave me be!” I shouted, waving the crowd away, but they would not move.
As I shut my eyes, I could feel them closing in about me. “The preacher has taken on too much,” one woman said. “He needs his own church,” said another. “No one can preach in a schoolhouse, especially one that used to be a saloon.” And then the words that bit me like a snake even as I tried to shut out the world. “Who else but the preacher will show us the way?”
I never went back to her house. Instead, I took a shack up near the mine, and still I cannot escape.
FINDING THE LOWLY
Killian | Colorado
I tell them, wake, it’s right under your skin. Webb and Molly don’t understand and look at the skin on their arms. Henry Jr. says he doesn’t want Molly coming along, he says babies just slow us down, but I tell him it’s Molly that we’re going to follow.
“Not again,” Henry Jr. says to me, pulling on his pants, his eyes still glued shut with sleep. “Why can’t we go on a real adventure instead of following the little ones?”
“How do you know if you’re on an adventure until you’re on it?” I ask him in return, but he just shakes his head, too tired to respond.
I dress Molly while Webb pulls his clothes from the dresser, throwing them all over the floor until he finds his favorite shirt and pants. Then, to keep her warm until the chill air of the autumn morning breathes itself away, I set Molly inside my coat, the same way I used to set Webb, and she squeals with delight, liking it there more than Webb ever did.
Henry Jr. heads straight for the kitchen cupboard, hoping to scrounge up some food, but I tell him that’s part of the adventure. His eyes finally open. “Raspberries aren’t going to fill me up,” he grumbles. “I need some real food.”
“All you have to do is look,” I say.
“I know, it’s right there under my feet,” he replies, finally giving up or at least realizing the cupboards are empty.
We walk right out the back door and along the path until it takes us above the river. The smell of raspberries drifts up from the gulley below.
“I can’t see where they are,” Webb shouts. “I can’t see the river any more.”
“I know,” I reply and close my eyes. I have been here for years, I think. Maybe I was never anywhere else.
The children know by now to still their bodies, to quiet their mouths and listen. The crunch of the dried and yellow aspen leaves beneath our shoes nourishes us; the steam rising through the cracks in the ground quenches our thirst. Molly squeals from inside my coat and points at me. “Lian,” she says, as if I’m all there is in the world.
“It’s called finding the lowly,” I say.
And, as if in response, Webb stops and lowers his hand to the ground. A spider with a body half the size of a silver dollar crawls onto his palm. It’s striped yellow and black like a bee.
“Can’t eat that,” Henry Jr. says.
“No, but you can feel the tickle of its legs upon your skin,” I say. “A spider can walk on water, can you do that?”
“Only Jesus can walk on water,” Henry Jr. replies, taking a stone and throwing it down into the gully.
“Jesus and spiders,” I say, and Webb laughs before setting the spider back on the ground.
I take Molly from my coat and set her on the ground, she’s off running immediately, and it’s all we can do to keep up. Then she stops.
“Uncle Eli always brings his gun,” Henry Jr. says, stopping a short distance from Molly. “He says nature allows us to measure who we are.”
I nod along, though the heavy, root smell from the aspen grove before us draws me forward. I can’t shake the smell of gashed earth, the crushed grass and tumbled places where she rolled on her back, scratching an itch. The smaller marks, the scuffs everywhere in the dirt, signs of play.
“Lian!” Molly screams. The trees shake before her.
“There’s something in there,” Henry Jr. says. He and Webb stay where they are.
I know it’s not the trees that excite Molly. She smells it, too. She has my nose, a dog’s nose.
The trees tremble and shower Molly with gold rain. Webb jumps up and down, shaking his hands like they’re wet, and he needs to dry them.
Come back, Molly. But I’m not sure if I’ve said it or only thought it because at that moment the bear dam emerges from the grove followed by her three cubs. She’s big, the biggest I’ve seen, and she’s swaggering around, trying to make herself look even bigger.
As if from the force of its breath, Molly falls back on her butt. She stays there. She looks so small, and the bear is too big.
Without thinking, I put myself between her and the bear. One of the cubs runs toward us, thinking I mean to play, but the mother swats it back with one large paw, and the cub goes tumbling into the brush behind her. The dam wags her head from side to side.
“Is she a mean bear?” Webb whispers from behind me.
I signal Webb to be quiet. But then the dam raises her nose to the air, scenting us, and I wake to the bits of raspberry sticking to the sides of her gaping mouth. I feel the fetid stench of her breath upon me, the thick weight of hide. The flaring nostrils engulf me. I smell my own blood, my shit, and the fungus that eats away at the skin on my elbows. My tongue lolls about in my mouth, fighting off that wretched odor. I’m roaming in circles, looking out through narrow eyes, drizzly eyes. The icy waters call, steam rising from my skin, the sharp berry smell demanding me. I want to run and go on running, to eat deer scat, to claw myself upon a tree. And again I wake.
I shout, clap my hands as much to fight back the dream as to scare the bear.
The dam lowers her head, wet eyes gazing into me. She shakes her head back and forth violently and growls. A warning. The air quivers, but I am rooted to the earth. The dam waits, completing the ritual. I clap again, loudly.
Suddenly she turns away, nudging her cubs with her nose, grunting after them. The cubs run in a line up the mountain, and the mother lumbers after.
“Lowly,” Molly says, shaking her own head from side to side. And I smile because I know she’s right. We can’t find the lowly. But I’m not sure if she means that we can’t because we are the lowest of creatures, or if she is saying that everything is so big, everything including us. I want to ask her, but she’s already running back to the others.
SPINNING
Eli | Colorado
I liked the scared girls most, the ones who, no matter how many nights they’ve been in the dancehall, bow their heads and slouch their shoulders before they approach. It was the tension, the uncertainty as they wavered between the intoxication of seduction and their own sobering abasement that made them interesting.
I hadn’t come for the dancing or for the women, not for the music either. I came each night to drown the memory of her in sweat and beer, to purify myself with whiskey. And each night, I took in the rank air, replaced her scent with the musk of bodies grinding close, the harsh tang of pine floorboards encrusted with silver and dirt.
I didn’t watch them directly but rather through the mirror that backed the bar. Cluskey’s wife, Ellen, had imported the mirror from France. It took ten men to lift the monstrous oak frame, and the exertion probably ruined Old Cluskey’s back. He could never lift anything more than a bag of sugar after that.
The girls all wore white pinafore dresses and would dance with you for twenty-five cents. And for five cents extra they’d even dance a mazurka. Business had been good of late, maybe because the mine was still down after the accident in the second shaft and the miners finally had a chance to spend some of their money. So each night the girls danced, picking miners from the bar whenever they found themselves empty handed or their purses light.
They knew not to pick me. And it wasn’t because I was the preacher. I hadn’t preached a sermon in two months and told them I didn’t think I ever would again.
One of the scared girls liked to twirl. I watched her on the nights when not even the whiskey helped. When she danced with a man, she threw herself into spins. She’d spin and spin until the man got tired of waiting, until the scared look transformed itself into a glassy-eyed smile. Then she’d thank the man for dancing with her and pull another one off the bar so she could get to spinning before that smile faded. If you have hips, if you have hips, trim your dress in the parasol style . . . The music played on.
I never danced with her, but each night when I’d had enough, when my clothes stunk with the smells of the dancehall and I could safely go back to the shanty by the mine I now called home, I would walk up beside her. I timed my walks to coincide with her spins, and each time, as I left the dancehall, my hand found hers and pressed a silver dollar in it. She never stopped spinning, but she’d taken note.
At night, as I lie upon my straw mattress, a voice glides in upon the wind, seeps between the undaubed cracks of my shanty. If you have hips, if you have hips, trim your dress in the parasol style . . . It calls me. There are many ways to make yourself empty, and one of them is spinning.
I rise and kneel at my bed, beseech the Lord to save me. Tonight I leave You. I renounce all that You demand of me. In town, Frank’s fiddle calls to me, a woman’s voice sings: Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep in your baby’s arms . . . . And I follow the voice, letting it fill my mind, my soul, until You are gone. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep in your baby’s arms. The smells of Cluskey’s dancehall waft upon the wind as I walk down Main. But I don’t need them anymore. The voice will carry me. Your scent no longer haunts me. No longer. Your name no longer demands. I name you myself. Elizabeth. No longer.
At the bar, I drink whiskey after whiskey, watching her spin. And still the voice continues, Balance yourself, balance yourself, balance yourself in your baby’s arms . . . And though I know that she is not the one singing, I could swear that the voice comes from her, thrown out upon the air as she spins faster and faster.
The singing stops. The spinning girl twirls to a halt. Her reflection approaches me in the mirror. Her hot breath falls upon my neck, and I hold tightly to my whiskey. Her hand rests upon my shoulder, light as silence. The delicate trace of her finger cascading my arm. She presses her lips to my ear and whispers one word, but that one word calls me out of myself, so that I now see us both standing before the great mirror. “Spin,” she whispers, nothing more. Then she clasps her hand in mine, and I’m gone.
She knows that if you tur
n the horse’s head the body will follow. It’s easy to guide an animal when you understand its nature. Dance with me, her hand says. Spin with me, her hips whisper. And I watch myself go out on the floor with her.
The music kicks up again, and we begin to spin. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep in your baby’s arms . . . The dancehall is falling, and still I’m spinning. The world is falling around me, and I’m spinning, spinning. And though she does not speak, her own name echoes in my mind, growing louder with each revolution: Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte!
THE POWER OF NAMES
Elizabeth | Colorado
When you least expect it, it begins to snow. It falls all day and into the night, and still I have not moved. I pull the blankets tight about me, fearful that I am not ready, that I will never be ready. But then there is a knocking at the door. I roll over, pull the covers over my head. Henry’s out, I know this. The children are asleep. Why doesn’t Killian answer? The knocking comes again, harder than before. And then a voice I recognize, though I have tried to forget it.
“Elizabeth,” the voice says. “You are the only one I trust.”
I open the door, take his arm and lead him inside, then place both his hands within my robe. It is not enough. His hands are ice, and he withdraws them.
“Charlotte’s in labor,” he says. “And we can’t get word to the midwife in Montezuma because of the storm.”
I pull my robe tight about me and turn toward the kitchen.
“She’s not doing well, Elizabeth,” he goes on. “She’s in too much pain.”
“Why me?” I ask, as if there could be an answer.
He offers none.
“Give me a minute to dress,” I say. And without thinking, I go to my armoire and search through the evening dresses and ball gowns, the bustles and corsets until I find the plain housedress Henry’d bought me in hopes it would lead me to housework. Then I lace up my Balmorals, as they seem the most likely to weather the snow. Before I go down, I stand in front of the mirror. Without a hat, my head feels lighter, almost dizzy.