Ghost Dance

by T C Donivan

  Providence had further blessed us in joining Sebastian’s company, for otherwise we would have been bound to travel with a slow moving band of immigrants, the trek being too dangerous to undertake with only the three of us. We were indebted to the youth, but the company we provided was invaluable to him as a necessary contrast to the surly scouts and puckish Zenobia.

  “I’m going out to bag some game. Join me?” Sebastian asked. Knowing my likely reticence, he quickly added, “Bog says there are likely to be wild turkeys and prairie chickens about after such a blow!”

  “Not me,” I declined amiably. Sebastian’s expression collapsed and it seemed as if he might break out in sobs. Seeing the crestfallen look upon the boyish face, I quickly recanted. “All right, but just for a little while. I’ll change into some dry clothes first.”

  Sebastian seemed oblivious to my condition. “That was quite a storm. We weathered it indoors, Dr. Zenobia and I. We took turns reading from Macbeth. Dr. Zenobia has a wonderful voice. I think it comes from his having lived among the British for so long. They originated the language you know.”

  “A lovely time I’m sure,” I concurred, catching an ironic glance from Zenobia.

  Titlark marched up to Sebastian, a well chewed leather horse bridle in hand. “You ought to ease up on them reins a bit sonny. This is the second time I’ve had to patch this,” he growled.

  I was surprised at the complaint from the usually obsequious scout. I could see Sebastian was taken aback, so I spoke up in his defense, “The bridle’s too light for that large an animal. Use a heavier braid.”

  Titlark glared at me from the corner of his eye. “I don’t take orders from you.” He focused again on Sebastian, softening his tone a bit. “I’m just saying, the more we patch, the weaker the reins. There ain’t no blacksmith out here so we got to make do with what we got.”

  “Certainly,” Zenobia answered for the boy.

  A commotion broke out just then and I turned to see Spence and Mozart entering the camp, the sound of a jaunty harmonica tune filling the air. Mozart slid from his spotted pony like an eel on a slippery rock and began an odd jigging whilst Titlark clapped out a rhythm totally unrelated to the melody. Trotter started up a conversation with Spencer, the young artist being the only person in camp he would deign to speak with on friendly terms, other than his employer Sebastian. Spencer disengaged himself from the scout and came over to where I was standing near the cook fire. He gestured toward the cup in my hand and I passed it to him.

  “You look like a drowned chicken,” Spencer said to me.

  “Elijah and I were caught out in the storm,” I explained.

  “Well, supper’s not far away. I suggest you change,” he replied.

  “Will it be formal tonight? Shall I wear hat and tails?” I inquired.

  Spencer’s face broke out into a broad grin. “You are droll for a wet chicken.”

  Chapter 4 – Campfire Tales

  We found the promised poultry in short supply, but supped well that night on a stew of rabbit, fox and other small creatures that the scouts had collected for our larder. As we had no baking equipment, our diet consisted mostly of meat. Knowing the dangers of scurvy from my brother’s experiences as a sailor, I made sure to stock up on whatever sweet fruits we happened upon and shared them with the others. On this night our desert was Pawpaws and Persimmons. As we savored the treat, we watched the flaming red ball of the sun sink into the western horizon. The air had become as thick as a swamp, steaming with the remnants of our departed storm.

  “Tell us about India Dr. Zenobia,” I asked, hoping for a tale I could weave into the journal I kept.

  He stared into the twilight, his eyes distant, as if traveling back to that place within the realms of his mind. “It is wonderful and squalid. Filthy mud huts exist alongside exquisite marble palaces. The country is hot and dry for the most part, much like the great desert they say lies to the south of us. The people vary in shades of color, some nearly as light as you, or I and others dusky as little Mozart. The women are beautiful and exotic. The religion is an amalgam of paganism and complex mysticism.”

  As if cued, Mozart took up his violin and began to play a mournful tune that sounded vaguely classical, yet oddly disjointed as he wrapped the melody about an unfamiliar rhythm. Trotter popped his knotty knuckles, the sound crackling across the camp.

  “Is it true about the caste system – that an Indian’s fate is set at birth according to their parentage and cannot be changed?” I wondered.

  Zenobia nodded. “Yes, the station of their birth and color of their skin determines their life. There are no exceptions.”

  Spencer spoke up, “The Mexican Spaniards are much the same. The conquistadors took native wives and now their bastard offspring, the Mestizos, are sorted out by the shade of their complexion. The upper class marries their daughters off only to those who could pass for white in the hope of emulating European society.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  He smiled condescendingly. “I know many things.”

  “Truly, is it any different here?” I said with a nod toward Mozart who seemed indifferent to it all as he softly plied his horsehair bow upon the catgut strings of his battered instrument.

  “Quite,” Zenobia said.

  “How so?” I challenged.

  “Look around this camp. You would not find such a mixing of classes so casually assembled in New Delhi, or Calcutta,” Zenobia told me.

  “But do they keep slaves?” I asked.

  “The lower caste are little more than slaves,” Zenobia said.

  Spencer nodded his shaggy head. “We shall not keep slaves much longer. The practice will be abolished within our lifetime.”

  I stared at him. “Again, you’re so certain. Can you foretell the future?” I joked.

  Spencer pressed the fingers of his left hand to his temple and closed his eyes. “You shall marry a tall woman with dark, flashing eyes.” He grinned at me.

  Sebastian inserted himself into the conversation, “You’ll like their religion. Tell them about it doctor.”

  Zenobia seemed almost to go into a trance. “They believe that we have lived many times, that the soul reincarnates a new body as it cycles toward a higher plain. That is how one moves between castes,” he explained.

  “It sounds like a fairy tale meant to mollify the lower classes,” I commented.

  “And the meek shall inherit the Earth,” Spencer said.

  I understood his meaning, but would not be drawn into a religious debate. “What do you think of it doctor? Does any of it make sense? Do they have a Bible?” I asked.

  “It is complex. You see it predates Christianity. The ones I knew called it Sanatana Dharma, though the common reference is Hinduism. There are three major subdivisions within it and the Moorish Moslems have a toehold in the region as well. The Vedas, their books of knowledge, are similar in importance to the Christian Bible, but dissimilar in structure. A basic tenet is that of Karma, in that one’s actions follow them from one life to the next seeking balance and reparation. I lived among them for a decade and I would not call myself an expert in it at all.”

  Sebastian was agitated. “Doctor, tell them about the Kama Sutra, not that Karmic nonsense.”

  Zenobia eyed the youth warily. “That is no nonsense my boy. The scales must be balanced, that much I came to believe.”

  Spencer chuckled. “Like the three witches of Macbeth, the pot boils. The Norn Fates look down upon us, calling out our doom. St. John peers over our shoulder reading his Revelations,” he said with dramatic flair.

  Sebastian ignored him. “I want to hear about their humping. I’m sure Spencer and Clayton will too. It’s quite intriguing.” He grinned at us like a mischievous schoolboy. “They do it like rabbits in every conceivable, wicked fashion.”

  Zenobia smiled sadly. “What Sebastian refers to is the Vatsyayana Kamasutra, or Vatsyayana's Aphorisms on Love. They are collected in a book the Hindus call the Ka
ma Sutra. It is an explicit manual of how the relations between men and women should be conducted.”

  “In their detail?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Has this been published?”

  “Not in English,” he answered.

  “I have seen illustrations!” Sebastian said, his eyes blazing brightly.

  “A colleague of mine sold a small collection to Sebastian’s father,” Zenobia said.

  Sebastian eyed Mozart. “Tell us how the Africans do it Moze. They say the women are like panthers in heat.”

  The young Negro’s put aside his violin and took a long draught from the water skin beside him, milking the moment. His eyes were like dark, polished stones sparkling with the reflection of the firelight. He wiped his mouth and gave a slight grin.

  “I wouldn’t know, I preferred the massa’s daughter.”

  His answer provoked Sebastian to instant rage. “You lying black devil. No white woman would allow a nigger to touch her!”

  I saw Trotter put a hand to the knife at his belt, a look of pure hatred on his face. I felt panic rise in me anticipating murder. Mozart chuckled and replied, “I was a Moor in the service of Suleiman, who gave me twenty Greek virgins with silken skin as pure as driven snow for saving his life and every one of them loved me.”

  Spencer began to laugh out loud at the absurdity of the statement and I joined him, the others following, one by one, though I doubt Trotter or Titlark understood the reference. Mozart tucked the fiddle beneath his chin and began to play again, the melody an odd rhythm I had never heard before, its sound striking my ear like a discordant, yet familiar tune.

  “Indian music,” Zenobia whispered in amazement. He looked at me and expanded his remark, “East Indian, like they play in Bombay and Calcutta on their gourd backed sitars.”

  “What of sacred prostitutes?” Spencer asked breaking the spell.

  “That is not India. You are thinking of Herodotus’s writing of the ancient temples of the Near East in Sumer,” Zenobia told him.

  “No, no, it is practiced in India as well. I read it in a book somewhere,” he insisted.

  Zenobia gave him a stern look. “It is an ignoble practice that does not bear repeating.”

  “Do not the royal princes bid for the most beautiful woman, the Bride of the City, and all the women compete for the honor?” Spencer asked.

  “Sometimes, in isolated regions. The more enlightened do not participate,” he answered.

  “Why do the British not stamp it out? They outlawed the slave trade so they could look down their noses at us,” Spencer said haughtily.

  “The British are in India for profit, not to implant their civilization,” Zenobia told him.

  “A practical people,” Spencer said.

  “I knew me some holy whores down in St. Louie,” Trotter put in. His remark brought guffaws from Titlark and Sebastian.

  Having brought up the subject, Spencer determined to outdo them all, “Not to cast aspersions upon your rural whores, but the prostitutes of Paris are like no others. Their nipples are like rosebuds and their clitties, moist clams that suck a man dry as the bone and leaves him aching for more. I remember in particular a girl named Jodette. She worked in a café on the Palais de Chaillot. Her body was a work of art worthy of the classical Greek sculptors with dark hair and eyes, marred only by a Roman nose that in truth did not diminish, but enhanced her allure. She must have fairly reeked of pheromones as every man who came near her was compelled to try and bed her, a vocation she was not adverse to, though she was no whore. Rather, she enjoyed sex like a man, staking out her conquests and reveling in them. I must admit, I lost my heart to her, but retained enough perspective so as not to make a complete fool of myself.”

  “Did you bed her?” Sebastian asked wide eyed.

  “Of course,” Spence answered. “And her best friend, Helene as well. Now she was a flirt, a cock teaser as the French put it. She would lead a man on until he was randy as a Billy Goat, then flit off into the night. One besotted fool tried to force himself on her and she dumped him in the Seine. Though small, she was no trifle. I pretended not to care and she could not resist me. And finally there was Avril, blonde and lithe, too skinny for most, but I found her compelling. Her blue eyes were pale as moonlight and her skin translucent as parchment paper. Alas, she suffered from the moon sickness.”

  “What is that?” I asked.

  Spencer grinned. “When her time of the month came, she would bay at the moon like a dog and become crazed as a bat.”

  “Did you sleep with her? What was she like?” Sebastian demanded.

  “Her kisses were like honey and her pussy wet velvet,” Spencer answered, then said nothing more.

  I could see the dumb, animal longing overwhelm the faces around the campfire and am ashamed to say that even I felt a stirring in my loins at his words. An uncomfortable silence hung over us.

  “Saltpeter is the only remedy for this group,” Zenobia intoned. It was my turn to laugh out loud. “You are familiar with the cure?” He asked.

  I nodded. “My brother Albert is a mate on a whaling ship.”

  Sebastian was nonplussed. “What is it?” He asked.

  “A scourge to cure a man of unnatural desires when he is isolated from female company,” Zenobia told him. When Sebastian looked confused he added, “It is a potion of potassium nitrate that is said to curb the male sexual appetite when applied to the diet.”

  Trotter gripped his crotch with a callus encrusted hand. “A Blackfoot squaw’ll serve the same.” The ignorant remark elicited great laughter around the campfire.

  “I had me a Crow wife one winter, but she died of the pox,” Titlark said.

  Silence fell over the camp. My loathing of the man increased exponentially, his remark spoiling what had been a rather droll, if lewd conversation.

  “Who’s up for a game of cards?” Spencer asked producing the pack he always carried in his shoulder bag.

  We threw a blanket on the muddy ground and fell readily into a game of Twenty-one, the talk of women and religion quickly forgotten. The stakes were smooth stones used as chits. Trotter and Titlark came nearly to blows, as they usually did, but the game ended on a high note when Spencer skinned us all and then shared a pouch of tobacco. We smoked beneath the stars, watching the moon cross the sky as had our ancestors a thousand years before, our kinship with the ancients palpable in the primitive setting.

  Chapter 5 – Death On The Plains

  We set up a base camp on the banks of the North Platte River from which we could hunt, explore, paint and contemplate life as we wished. It was a utopian idyll for the most part, unbroken by human company other than the seven of us. We splintered off into groups, Spencer and Mozart usually going off to sketch, while Sebastian and his crew continued their slaughter of the local wildlife unabated. Though I preferred Spencer’s company, I tired of watching him sketch and drifted between the two contingents. On a day in late June, I was tracking quail with Sebastian and Zenobia, Titlark acting as our guide. Trotter had gone off on his own in search of larger game.

  Monsoon like rains had plagued us since the great storm in which Elijah and I had been caught out in. The day was muddy, with great, roiling gray clouds that hung close to the ground. On such a day, I longed to be off for the west, the myth of California and the Pacific enticing me as the sirens did Jason. I could see Dr. Zenobia was as bored by the pursuit as I, so I used the opportunity to ply my trade of collecting stories.

  “Doctor, how did you come to be in the British Army? There must be a story there” I said.

  He cast an inquisitive look my way as if assessing the merits of my question while he composed his answer. “I was the youngest son of a Boston surgeon. Like my two older brothers, I followed my father into the family trade, but his practice was not large enough to accommodate us all. My mother had relations in London who promised to set me up in business, so I retraced my family’s steps, sailing east to Brita
in. When I got there, I found out the old family’s fortunes were no greater than my own, so I was on my own again. I struggled to make a living for six months then joined the army in search of adventure. I was not disappointed.”

  I had heard Zenobia’s tales of India over the campfire, but my instincts told me the human interest lay in the family he had left in America. “Why did you return?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Homesick I guess. I served in India for fifteen years. After a while a man tires of living among a foreign race, so I went back to London, but found no more comfort in them than in the untouchables of Calcutta. I had saved some money, so I went back to Boston.”

  “How did you find your family and the country after being gone for so many years? How had it all changed?” I wondered.

  A mirthless chuckle escaped Zenobia’s lips. “Not at all, only more crowded and more grubbing for money than before. It had changed I suppose, but only for the worse.”

  “How did you become acquainted with Sebastian?”

  I watched closely as a series of emotions coursed through Zenobia, among whom I would number regret, happiness and fear. “I knew his mother and father when I was a young man, before I left for Britain. We were all friends. I had lost touch with them. When I returned, we resumed our old conviviality as if it had I left only yesterday. That, was my one consolation, I must admit.”

  Sebastian had rode ahead with Titlark well out of earshot so I felt safe in inquiring further. “Has he always been sickly?”