Full Circle

by Rosanne Bittner

  Four

  The call was similar to a howling, yipping coyote. Evelyn could hear it in the distant hills, could see the rider on his spotted horse. She walked out to greet him as he came closer. He was a big man, his long black hair flying in the wind, his horse’s hooves making a thundering sound as they beat the ground. She could see the muscles of the magnificent, broad-chested Appaloosa flexing as it charged, nostrils flaring, mane dancing. Its rider was handsome, his bare chest and arms well muscled, his dark eyes flashing with pride… and something else… something else. What was it? His eyes drilled into hers in a way that left her feeling almost hypnotized as he reached out to her. She knew she must go with him, but where? And what was that look in his eyes? Love?

  She reached toward him, and just as she was sure he would take hold of her hand, he vanished. She gasped and nearly fell and in her sleep the dream made her jump so violently that it woke her. She sat up, panting, drenched in sweat. The room was dark. The oil lamp she had lit had burned out.

  Hot, so hot! And the dream was so real! She almost expected to see a wild Indian man standing at the foot of her bed. She took several deep breaths to gather her thoughts, stood up to walk around so that she could convince herself everything was all right. It was only a dream, but it was the same dream that had plagued her for weeks now. She unbuttoned the top of he flannel gown, grasped hold of the garment and fanned it back and forth to cool herself. These first few days had been ones of oppressive heat, and the nights brought little relief.

  She stopped and sat still when a distant sound sent chills through her blood. It was as though part of the dream had returned, only now she was awake. She heard the same cry she had heard in the dream, like a coyote out in the hills, and she realized that real sound had crept into her dream and awakened her. She hurried to the door and opened it, stepping out onto the little porch of the small, one-room cabin she shared with Janine, who lay fast asleep. A bright moon lit the wide, lonely landscape.

  She listened again, realizing it was a man making the sound. Whoever it was, he was too far away for her to see. Only an Indian would make such cries. Finally, she saw a figure silhouetted on a horse against the moonlight. He rode back and forth on a distant hill at the outskirts of the agency, yipping like a warrior in the same way she had heard in her dream. He carried on that way for perhaps ten more minutes before disappearing over the hill. The air hung so silent then that it almost hurt her ears. She turned and went back inside, wished she could ask Janine about what she had heard, but when she went to stand beside the woman’s bed, her breathing was deep and rhythmic.

  Evelyn sighed and turned away, deciding to take advantage of the fact that Janine still slept and remove her flannel gown to cool herself. She slipped it over her head and threw it on the bed, able to see a little better now that her eyes were adjusted to the dim moonlight that came through the two front windows.

  She grasped her hair and twisted it up off her neck, walking quietly on bare feet over the wooden floor to a rocker, wearing only her drawers. She sat down, still keeping her hair up as she leaned her head against the back of the rocker. It felt good to sit with nothing on. It reminded her of the times her mother took her to that pond down in Oklahoma and let her swim naked. She thought how she would like to do that right now, if there were anyplace to swim. Her thoughts wandered as she closed her eyes and rocked, and she envisioned the cool water caressing her skin. She wondered what it would be like if a man came along and found her that way. No man had ever looked upon her naked body, but for the last couple of years she had wondered what that might be like.

  In her fantasy, she imagined a man coming to the pond. Not Steven… just a faceless man, but nicely built. He gazed upon her nakedness as she emerged from the water, and he was also naked. The thought was both frightening and thrilling. She came closer, and he wrapped strong arms around her, pressing her breasts against his chest. He told her that he loved her and that he wanted to make love to her. She looked up into his face. Now it took form. Wild Horse!

  She opened her eyes, disgusted with herself for such ridiculous and probably sinful fantasizing. She had only been a little girl when she knew Wild Horse. He had been her good friend, had saved her life once. Now he was dead. Not only was it sinful to think of him that way, but to even imagine letting any Indian man look upon her naked body and make love to her. She could not fathom what had gotten into her lately, thinking about men and making love. Just yesterday, when she had taken a bath alone, she had explored her body, touched her breasts, wondered what a man would think of it, how he would touch it. What it was like to open herself to a man and allow him to invade her? It would take tremendous trust and love and desire to permit such a thing. Although she had trusted Steven, she had not felt that love and desire, not enough to let him ravage her body for his own pleasure.

  She got up, disgusted with her thoughts. There would be no man in her life for a while, certainly not out here. She supposed any man at Fort Yates would certainly like his chance at courting her, but she was not interested. Sergeant Desmond was totally unlikable. Janine’s brother John was most certainly attracted to her. She could already see it just from working with him these last few days. He was a good man, pleasant-looking, but she felt nothing for him, except respect and friendship.

  She put her gown back on, anxious to move into the cabin that was being built for her by soldiers and a few of the reservation Indians. She enjoyed Janine’s company and friendship, but she preferred the freedom of having her own place and being able to do things like strip off her gown without worrying about someone seeing her. Her own cabin would be near the little one-room school, which up to now had been empty for quite some time. She was going to change that. Tomorrow she and Janine were going to get to the task of encouraging children to come to school. Janine would take her to meet many of the families at the Little Eagle Station, and she would do her best to convince the elders to allow her to teach the young ones. She was determined to prove to Jubal Desmond and James McLaughlin and all the others who had told her it was an impossible project that they were wrong. Not only would she fill her little school, but she would show everyone how intelligent Indian children were.

  Again she realized that the one thing that would help her win the battle would be to get Black Hawk to allow his son to come to the school. She had mentioned to Janine that she wanted to talk to the man, but Janine had nearly fainted at the idea. No one even tries to talk to Black Hawk anymore, she had told her. He is not the kind of man you just ride out and visit. You wait for him to come to you.

  The remark only made Evelyn more determined. Her mother had often joked that she was independent and stubborn, and that those traits would get her in trouble someday. Maybe so. She only knew that if she could get Little Fox to her school, the others would come. She would start with Black Hawk’s sister, Many Birds.

  She lay back down, wondering what her mother would do in the same situation. She would probably march right out to wherever Black Hawk stayed and force a confrontation. That would be just like the woman. Maybe that was what she should do if he didn’t come to her on his own.

  Seth Bridges rolled over in bed, completely oblivious to the foul smell of his unwashed sheets and the fact that the smell was made worse by the dampness of fresh perspiration. He rubbed Lucille’s bare back, fingered her long dark hair, stringy and tangled from struggling with him. She curled away at his touch.

  “Don’t you be pullin’ away from me, girl,” Seth warned. He put an arm around the front of her body and jerked her next to him. “You know what I done told you. You start givin’ me problems or try to run away, and it’s your little sister who’ll be in this bed with me. It don’t bother me that she’s only twelve.” He grasped at one of her breasts. “Fact is, I ain’t gonna last much past her bein’ thirteen before I’ll have to break her in, too, but long as you give me my pleasure, girl, I’ll leave her alone, just like I promised.”

  Sixteen-year-
old Lucille had long ago learned to shut off all feeling. She turned to look into the man’s weathered, whiskered face. She could barely stomach the sight of him and his tobacco-stained lips and teeth, his ugly, bloodshot gray eyes, his foul whiskey breath. His hair, too, was gray, and receding, and as far as she was concerned, he was the most vile man who ever walked the face of the earth.

  She would never forget the day four years ago when Seth Bridges had come to meet the orphan train back in Omaha. He was clean-shaven then, wearing a neat suit, looking the picture of a respectable farmer from South Dakota whose ailing wife needed help on the farm. Anxious to be rid of his wards, William Carey, who was in charge of seeing that the children he had brought west would get good homes, turned her and her sister Katy over to Seth within ten minutes of meeting the man, asking for no references, totally unconcerned about what kind of man he might be. His job was simply to find homes for all the children on the train. The orphanage where she and Katy had lived in New York since Katy was born was overcrowded. It was time to weed out the older children and make room for the little ones.

  Being taken away to a new land had been upheaval enough, as it was the only home Katy had ever known or could remember; Lucille’s home since she was only four. To be placed with a man like Seth had only added to the children’s horror. They were nothing more than prisoners here, terrified of trying to defy the man in any way for fear of the consequences.

  “I’ll go make you some breakfast,” she told Seth. He let go of her and she sat up. As she rose, he slapped her bare bottom, just hard enough to remind her how much harder he could hit when he thought it was necessary. For the rest of her life she would not forget that first time. She had been barely thirteen. He had tied her to his bed and kept a terrified, screaming Katy locked in a closet until he had raped and beaten Lucille to the point where he had broken her will. She had agreed to fight him no more, and her ravaged body had become numb to his advances.

  She walked into a little curtained-off room to wash his filth from her and get dressed. She had tried to run away once, but he had caught her, and when he was finished with her, she decided it was not worth trying again. Ever since then, if she did not respond to him the way he thought she should, he threatened to replace her with Katy. She had made up her mind she would kill him before she would let him do this to her sister.

  She looked into a foggy mirror, wondering if anyone could ever think of her as pretty. Once people had told her she was. Her sister Katy was pretty, but she was herself so used and abused that she could not imagine ever being pretty again. Her mother had been quite beautiful, from what she could remember, and she had been good to her daughters, lovingly devoted, but the pleasant life they had shared in their simple apartment back in New York ended when their father was killed in a factory accident before Katy was born. There were no other relatives, and no money. She and her mother were quickly reduced to begging. Then her mother had died at Katy’s birth, leaving the two of them orphaned. She had made a vow to her mother before her sister was even born that whatever happened, she would always take care of her baby sister and love her, as she was all her baby sister would have. Her mother had lived only long enough after the birth to name the child, Katy Lynn, after her own mother, the children’s grandmother, who had died several years earlier.

  Authorities had taken her and Katy to the orphanage, where they had lived for eight years. Lucille had never quite gotten over the terror of knowing she was completely alone, that her mother was gone. She had ached to have a normal life, had briefly thought that she might find it by being adopted by some nice farm family who lived near a town, where she could meet people and make friends and go to school, maybe even meet a handsome young man and fall in love.

  Then four years ago Seth Bridges had come. She had not liked or trusted him from the first moment she set eyes on him, and her suspicions had been right. Now there was no going back. Even if she could get away from him, what respectable young man would want anything to do with her? She probably couldn’t even have children now. Seth had gotten her pregnant once, then had forced her to drink whiskey until she was so drunk she did not feel the pain of whatever it was he had done to her to make her lose the baby. He could not “allow” the baby to be born, he had cursed, or outsiders would know what he was doing. Once the whiskey wore off, there had been the awful pain and bleeding. That was nearly a year and a half ago, and she was convinced, after all of Seth’s attacks since then and no pregnancies, that whatever he had done had left her barren. She was of no use to anyone now, and this big farmhouse was the only home she had. With no place else to go, and because it was too dangerous for Katy to be running homeless in a wild land full of Indians and outlaws, she had decided she might as well give in to this life and accept that things would never be any different for her.

  She finished dressing and went downstairs to start breakfast. Katy came into the kitchen with an armload of wood just as she took down a black fry pan. “How long have you been up?” she asked Katy.

  Katy, skinny and unkempt, dropped the wood into a woodbox. “I heard Seth in the bedroom,” she said quietly. “I knew what he was doing to you, so I came downstairs and went to fetch the wood. I don’t like to hear it.”

  Lucille felt the flush of shame come into her cheeks. “There is no way out of it anymore, Katy. As long as I lie with him, he’ll leave you alone.”

  Katy blinked back tears. “I saw a new white lady come to the reservation the other day. She was with that preacher man and his sister. They rode past the house in a wagon, and the new lady, I could tell she was real pretty. Maybe she’s a teacher or maybe the preacher’s new wife. Maybe she’s somebody who could help us.”

  Lucille picked up a butcher knife to go outside and hack some bacon from a slab hanging in the smokehouse. “Nobody can help us, Katy. We’re legally adopted, papers and all. We belong to Seth, and we’ve got no rights. I’m going to wait till I’m eighteen. Then I’ll be old enough to have some say in my life. Then maybe I can think of a way for us to run off without getting caught next time. We have to be real careful about it, because if Seth catches us again, you’re the one who will suffer, not me.”

  Their eyes held in mutual terror and understanding, and then Katy’s gaze moved to the knife in Lucille’s hand. She looked back at her sister.

  “Don’t you think I’ve thought about killing him? But what if people didn’t believe our story? We could be hanged, Katy! Even if they believed us, to just walk up and kill him would still be considered murder. He’d have to be coming at us with a weapon. If they didn’t hang us, maybe we’d be sent to some awful prison that’s worse than being here. Maybe I’d be the only one to go, and we’d be separated forever.”

  Katy puckered her lips. “I’m going to find out who that lady is and I’m going to talk to her.”

  “You mind your business. If Seth gets wind of you trying to get him in trouble, he’ll take you upstairs.” Her eyes teared and she shook her head. “You don’t want that, Katy. Please just do your chores proper and keep quiet. You let me do the thinking. I’ll handle Seth.”

  Katy suddenly hugged her big sister. “It’s not fair, Lucy! I can’t hardly stand it when I hear him yell for you to come to his bed. Sometimes I throw up.”

  Lucille drew a deep breath, determined to put on a brave front for the girl. “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she lied. “And when he’s with me I just shut off my mind, stop all feelings till he’s done. Right now we’ve got to be careful and keep things like they are.”

  “I don’t smell no bacon!” Seth suddenly shouted from the top of the stairs. “You better get the goddamn bacon started right now, Lucille Bridges, or I’ll set your bare ass in a fry pan and cook it for breakfast!” The man started down the stairs, and both girls charged out the sagging screen door at the back of the kitchen. Katy went to gather eggs from the smelly chicken house, and Lucille went to the smokehouse to cut off some bacon. She turned back to the house to hear Seth in
side cussing about no breakfast yet, fuming that a man couldn’t do his chores properly without a decent breakfast in his stomach.

  She smiled in a hateful sneer. What chores? she wondered. The man hardly lifted a finger all day. All the chores were left to her and Katy, which was why he had adopted them in the first place. There was no “ailing wife.” His wife had run off on him, and she could certainly understand why. Seth Bridges was a lazy, drinking man who just wanted women around to cook his meals and take care of the livestock and the crops. She kept the house up as best she could, but it was impossible when the man would spend no money on paint or decent furnishings or the basic necessities for keeping house. Besides, with all the cooking and washing and outside chores, there was little time left to try to make the house pretty and clean, and Seth himself certainly didn’t care about cleanliness. The parlor, where he sat drinking most of the time, was a cluttered, smoky mess.

  She shivered, gathering her courage to go back inside. She knew how it would go. He would scream and yell and complain about her being too slow. She would pay no attention. She would cook his breakfast and gladly go do her other chores just to get away from him.

  She looked down at the knife in her hand. Yes, she could kill him, and she would feel not one ounce of remorse. What if she tried it and didn’t quite do the job? What would he do to her and Katy then? Between that and not being sure what the authorities would do to her, she had decided to just bide her time; but if Seth began to get more serious about touching Katy, she could not be sure what she would do.