A Long Bridge Home

by Kelly Irvin

  Were spirits in trees and talking coyotes any stranger than the virgin birth of her Savior to an unmarried young girl who spoke to an angel who assured her she was carrying the Messiah? Miracles happened. Her mother said so. Her father said so. The bishop said so. Who was an ignorant house cleaner like Christine to argue?

  By the same token, how could she argue with taking presents to a medicine tree in exchange for health? Plain people didn’t judge others. They simply lived their lives according to the gospel.

  Whatever Gramma thought of Raymond’s statement, she wasn’t sharing. Christine glanced at her. Gramma’s head lolled back, her mouth open. The snoring resumed.

  Christine smiled. Tonya smiled back at her, then turned to face the front. “She does that a lot now.” Sadness tempered her words. “She’s a wild woman one minute, an old lady sleeping the next.”

  “She asks a lot of questions.”

  “She never stops being interested in everything and everyone.” Raymond’s words held the same sadness. “It’s all her business.”

  This trip was more than an outing for an old lady. They were saying goodbye to a woman they loved. With each mile, her destination on the other side of eternity came closer. Christine had just met Sadie Runabout, yet the same sadness overwhelmed her.

  “She makes your life interesting.”

  Raymond and Tonya laughed and shared a look, but neither spoke.

  Christine chose another, less volatile topic. “It’s so beautiful here. The fall colors are so bright.”

  “She was right when she said it is the most beautiful place in the world.” Raymond hunched over the wheel and pointed to the right and then the left. “Sapphire Mountains are to the west, Bitterroot Mountains to the east. The trees you see out there are ponderosa pine, alpine larch, and white western cedar.”

  “I wish I knew as much about trees and plants as you do.”

  “It helps to have Gramma.”

  “My family pays attention to vegetables, mostly, but my mother does plant some flowers in the spring.”

  “It’s apple season. We could get some cider.”

  “The medicine tree first.”

  “You know you can’t actually go to it with us.” Tonya glanced back. She looked almost apologetic. “You’ll have to wait in the car.”

  Disappointment welled in Christine. “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  They entered Bitterroot National Forest. The colors blossomed around her. Reds, oranges, yellows, and greens so vivid she couldn’t take it all in. “The land of your ancestors.”

  “Yes.” Raymond pulled to the side of the road near a visitor station. “We’ll be back. You could sit here and enjoy the view.”

  “Is the tree real?”

  “It is. We believe. If you don’t, it’s just a tree.”

  “Faith is believing in something you can’t see.”

  Raymond turned off the engine He glanced at Tonya. She shrugged and got out of the car, then leaned down and looked at him. “You’re the amateur philosopher. Ball’s in your court, big guy.”

  She shut her door. Raymond scooted around in his seat. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Finally, he spoke. “‘Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.’”

  “Hebrews 11:1. For a man who doesn’t believe, you know a lot about my religion.”

  “There’s a difference between knowing and believing.” He returned his glasses to his nose as if they would help him to envision more clearly what neither of them could see. “I took a world religion course in college. I wanted to understand what people believe and why.”

  “Me too.”

  “I wish—”

  “Are we getting out or what?” Gramma popped forward so her bandanna-covered head came between them. “I’m not getting any younger.”

  “We’ll be back.” Raymond smiled at Christine. “This may take a bit, so feel free to sit on a bench and soak up the scenery.”

  * * *

  The scent of pine and fresh air, and the feel of warm sunshine above and soft leaves and grass underfoot like clouds ushered a traveler into a world where humans were small and nature an unending, peaceful space. Raymond inhaled. Nature put her arm around him. She welcomed him like a long-lost son. Be at rest. Be still. Be at home.

  Gramma took the lead, followed by Tonya who had said nothing when he got out of the car and left Christine sitting there alone, contemplating a world so different from her own. Raymond took up the rear, contemplating the same topic.

  Gramma’s steps grew lighter. She leaned into a wooden walking stick taller than she was. Her smile grew while her breathing quieted. They didn’t speak. No words were needed as they surged deeper into the forest away from the relentless cacophony found even in a state as sparsely populated as Montana. Their pace slowed to allow Gramma the space to commune with the spirits that greeted her in the same way.

  She began to hum a tuneless song. They entered a small open area surrounded by yellow larch and screaming red and orange maple trees dwarfed by their friends the ponderosa pines farther up the mountain. A gentle breeze greeted them as a parent welcoming wayward children returning home after running away.

  Gramma’s tune evolved into mumbled Kootenai words. Some were unintelligible, but a few stood out. Present. Thankful. Offering. Peace. Health. Giving.

  Raymond leaned against a tree and rested his hands on the gnarly bark, rough under his soft fingers unfamiliar with manual labor.

  Tonya knelt a few feet from the old woman and lowered her head. Her eyes were closed, her fingers splayed across her thighs. A stillness came over her. A peace. A woman who never stopped moving or talking rested.

  She had never looked more beautiful.

  Tsk-tsk. Gramma shook her head. She peered at the sky and then at the ground. Finally, she dug three quarters from the pocket of her shirt and tucked them in the crook of the tree’s lowest bough.

  She stood not moving for so long it seemed she might have nodded off on her feet.

  Still, no one in his right mind would have interrupted her.

  “You have nothing to say?” She didn’t turn, but her tone left no doubt that the words were directed at Raymond. “Do you laugh like the others? Do you think it is a joke?”

  “No, Gramma. It’s no joke.” He straightened and let his hands fall to his sides. “Your medicine is strong enough for both of us.”

  “The tree is dying.”

  “I know.”

  “People come and dig the coins out of the trunk and leave holes.”

  “The world has changed.”

  “People do not care anymore. They do not reap the roots or dry berries. They do not make medicine.”

  Raymond moved to her side. “But you believe, Gramma. That’s what is important.”

  “No, Son.” She raised her face to the sun. “Those of us who are old are dying off. With us goes all the strong medicine. The ways of our ancestors will be gone.”

  “No.” Tonya opened her eyes. “Never. There will always be those of us who carry on. Believe that, Little Runner.”

  “That’s why I volunteer at The People’s Center and drum at the powwows.” Raymond memorized her wizened face, her hooded eyes, her bony body. This woman was his mother in every way but one. She needed assurance now, close to her end. “I play the stick game. I teach the language to the children. No worries.”

  Gramma sank to her knees in the grass. “You should not have brought her here.”

  “Christine is not the problem. My thoughts are my own.”

  “If you have questions, you should ask them. My time is coming.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “No matter what others say, time is finite. I long to run with the mustangs, free of this body. When the time comes, stick me in the ground and go about your business. Do not mourn. Be happy. I will be.”

  He dared not argue. She was right. Time wafted across the sky with the smoke. It spread acro
ss the universe unencumbered by the past. “Who is my father?”

  “It is about time.” She patted the grass. “Sit here with me. Both of you.”

  Tonya crawled across the grass to be closer. She sat cross-legged within arm’s reach of Raymond. Her scent of sandalwood and earth steadied him. Somehow she knew and she would make it all right.

  The story had ugly fangs. Once told, it could not be untold. Nor could Raymond be a coward, afraid of the shadows that followed him.

  Oliver “Cap” Dawson came and went from his mother’s life like a parcel delivery man. Here one minute, gone the next. But always back with that next package. Until Raymond’s birth. Gramma plucked a piece of grass and held it to her lips. She blew. The faint whistle came and went in the same way.

  “Cap was drawn to your mother like a man dying of thirst who finds a water hole in the desert. He thought it would quench his thirst, but it turned out to be a mirage.”

  “My mother wasn’t a mirage. Her touch was real. Her milk fed me. Her voice sang to me at night.”

  “She was not who he needed her to be. To him she was exotic and beautiful. He wanted to capture her and stick her in his cage. He didn’t understand that caging her would be the end of her. She would no longer be the woman he desired.” Gramma tossed the blade of grass aside. Her expression contorted. “Your mother saw her future in his eyes. She saw your future and let him go.”

  “Because he was white. She chose to ignore that I, too, am half white. Just as you do.”

  “I see nothing of him in you. Not one trace of his lack of gumption, of his whine, of his empty laugh. Look in the mirror and you will see the face of Adeline.”

  “You see what you want to see.”

  “Every action has consequences. Your mother learned that. The spark that drew her to this man died a quick death, but she could never be free of him.”

  “Because of me.”

  “She never regretted you, only that you would have no father.”

  “Yet she learned nothing. She had two more sons who grew up without fathers.”

  “Some horses cannot be tamed. She sought something she couldn’t find. A restlessness filled her like an infection that couldn’t be cured.”

  As a child Raymond loved his mother as children do. Now a fierce anger assailed him. She had not been as perfect as he remembered her. Nor his father the bad guy Gramma had made him out to be.

  Tonya’s hand crept across his thigh and captured his. Her touch was soft but sure. He swallowed his anger, a dry, bitter pill. “Maybe I should seek out this white man.”

  “He became involved in a church that believed in the supremacy of the white race.”

  The words came at him like an arrow shot from a finely tuned bow. Tonya’s hand let go of his and began to rub calming, comforting circles on his back. He leaned into her touch. “How is that possible if he loved a Native woman?”

  “Who said anything about love?”

  “I can’t understand it.”

  “Because you have a sweet, clean heart. There is a difference between love and lust.”

  Grandma could never know how often Raymond had settled for the second while longing for the first. Like his father? “So then he left for good?”

  “He did. Your mother kept seeking happiness in men. She never learned that a man could not give the kind of contentment she needed.”

  “And she died without finding her contentment?”

  “Yes.”

  She couldn’t find it in raising and loving her sons. She couldn’t find it in other people. Contentment came from understanding her place in the universe. He swallowed unmanly tears and cleared his throat. “You don’t find her story sad?”

  “It is her story. Period. Much like the story of many men and women. Especially Natives who drift away from the beliefs of their ancestors. They look for something they think they will find in a white man’s world.”

  “But this Cap, this father of mine, came back. I saw him at the funeral.”

  “Velda sent him away. As she should have.”

  “Why do you think he came? Had he changed his mind about the supremacy of his race?”

  “I do not know. Does it matter?”

  “To me, it does.”

  “A boy thinks he needs a father.”

  “A boy needs a father. White or Native.”

  “A boy needs a man who guides him in the right direction. Cap Dawson would take you on a road that leads to a world that will forsake you. Is this why there is a white woman waiting in the car for you? You think you are white inside because of this man?”

  Tonya’s hand stopped rubbing for a second. He hazarded a glance in her direction. Fierce emotion flashed in her eyes, then disappeared. Her hand began to rub again. He breathed.

  “No.” He couldn’t be sure. Nothing in this world was sure. “You can’t know that he will lead me down a bad road.” Maybe she could. Maybe she’d seen something in those strange visions that visited her in the middle of a bright sun-drenched day. “Is he dead?”

  “I do not know the answer to that question. Only to your other question.”

  “What question?”

  “Should you seek him out?”

  “Should I?”

  “Yes. It is the only way to quiet the naysayers in your head.”

  “Even if it takes me away from you?”

  Or from the woman who sat next to him, rubbing his back, offering him comfort despite the white woman in the car.

  “Nothing will take you away from me. I am stitched by love and time into every muscle, every sinewy tendon, every drop of your blood. I am you and you are me.”

  The drumming of his heart slowed. His breathing did the same. “I find peace in that fact.”

  “Me also.”

  They stopped talking then and listened to the music played by the wind and the tree branches and the trickling water of a nearby stream.

  The concert soothed Raymond. It settled the thoughts that wanted to do battle in a boxing ring inside his head. Those that would fight chose instead to sit around a table and mull over this new information. They nodded and rocked and hummed to the tunes played by leaves rustling in boughs overhead.

  “I will go to the university in Missoula after you’re gone.” The words spoke themselves. He had no knowledge of them until they fell into the air and made themselves heard.

  Tonya’s intake of breath offered her thoughts on this plan. Her hand found his.

  “You should go now.”

  “I want this time with you. I want to soak up your thoughts so I can take them with me. Once you are gone, so are they.”

  “You have learned enough from me.” Gramma held out her hand to an orange-and-brown butterfly. It fluttered as if waving but flew on. “Stop loitering around an old woman, and get on with it.”

  “Make up your mind. You told me to stay and go to S&K. Now you want me to go. Which is it?”

  “Bitterroot Valley was the home of the Salish.”

  “I know.”

  “Their women are beautiful.”

  Tonya giggled.

  Even now Gramma had the need to meddle.

  “I’m not a meddler.”

  “Stop reading my mind.”

  “Stop being so predictable.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Her eyes closed. She lifted her face to the sun. “I’m tired. Let me rest for a few moments.”

  She curled up in the grass like a child, jacket rolled up under her head.

  Raymond’s love for her made his bones ache. What would his life look like—feel like—when she was gone? No matter what religion a person espoused, the suffering was for those who were left behind, not those who moved to the lands beyond eternity’s gate.

  “Why do you think you and I come and go from each other’s lives?” Tonya unfurled her long legs and slipped around so she knelt facing Raymond. “Have you given that any thought during this time when our relationship has laid fallow?”<
br />
  An interesting choice of words. What he deemed irretrievable she saw as simply dormant, waiting for the right time to be reseeded. “I know that I missed you when you were gone, but I could never put my finger on why you left.”

  “I didn’t leave.” Her smile tinged with bittersweet, she shook her head. “You did.”

  “You let me go.”

  “You always go. I won’t try to catch the wind and wrap my arms around the air. You weren’t ready. You still aren’t.”

  “Ready for what?”

  She traced the line of his jaw, touched his lips, leaned in and kissed his cheek, a quick kiss that somehow lingered when her lips moved away. “For the rest of your life.”

  “How do you know?”

  She cocked her head toward the trail. “Have you forgotten you have a guest patiently waiting in the car? You invited her here, knowing she couldn’t come to the tree. Why did you do that?”

  “She seeks answers.”

  “And so do you.” She scrambled to her feet. “Time to go find them.”

  A sweet sadness like a light seen through lacy curtains on a cold, dark night permeated her face. She squatted next to Gramma and helped her struggle to her feet.

  Together the two women, one shortening her stride for the other, started for the path. Neither looked back.

  A cloud passed over the sun, creating sudden shadows. Panic curled up in a ball in Raymond’s gut. If he didn’t move quickly, he would be left behind.

  He might never find his way home.

  25

  Lewistown, Montana

  The faint scent of dish soap tickled Andy’s nose. He leaned away as Winona set a huge bowl of mashed potatoes on the table in front of him. He averted his eyes to the pork chop on his plate. His entire body still ached in the aftermath of the accident, but the dull throb in his heart bothered him more. This warm, raucous gathering of children and adults breaking bread around the table served as a reminder that not every family sat down together tonight. John’s boys would sit at a table with an empty chair at its head. Everyone, even Father, sat around these two tables, one for adults and one for kids, such was the size of their combined broods. Such a blessing. One for which he had not shown true appreciation.