A Sweetness to the Soul (38 page)

“There’ll be a way,” he said. He walked closer to the roaring falls, stepped off distances from the base of the ridge to the river. “Room for a barn here, this side. For stock changes. One over there, too, for cattle, blacksmith.” He was off on his own. “May sold it to Hemingway. Hemingway to O’Brien. Every time I think we’re close to buying, someone else slips in.”

I heard the frustration in his words but more, his absolute commitment that someday this land would be ours.

I persisted. “It will take thousands of dollars. And years. Look how long it’s taken just to build up the pack trail,” I reminded him. “Now you want to widen that to bring down stages and freighters, too?”

“More people use it,” he told me. “Just like I said.”

“And how will we build? Get everything down here. Who? Let alone the road—”

“There’ll be a way,” he said, reassuring. “I’ve seen it happen time
and again: set your course and amazing things happen. To quote my old friend, Frederic: ‘Plan, then mit faith, do.’ ”

I wanted to share in Joseph’s enthusiasm. Still, the unpredictability of it alarmed me. For a brief moment I remembered Luther up to bat and wondered if marrying him—and predictability—would have really been so bad.

“And where will we live in the meantime, while you’re building and building?”

“At our Inn,” he said to my surprised face. “Small one to begin with, but room enough to serve stageriders and sleep them overnight.” Joseph stared at the choke cherry trail we’d just ridden down. “Put it there for now, close to where the stream comes into the Deschutes.” He talked as if we already owned it. “Have seven or eight rooms. Enough to board and bed until we build the hotel.”

A hotel!
I thought. “You’d better plan to build some privies and keep people for quite awhile,” I said only half in jest. “After coming down that road you propose, people’ll be stopping off at the outhouse for sure; then do some building of their own.”

“They will?” Joseph asked.

“Building courage to go up the other side.”

He laughed. “Look,” he said, pulling me to him, wrapping me against his bulky coat. “Trust me in this. It’ll be a good place for us. With the bridge and the roads, we’ll give to the future, not just take from it. And the change, maybe it’ll be good for us.” He held me still. “Here, there’ll be room enough for all our children,” he said softly. “And for that garden. Even for the fancy parlor you always wanted. Big enough to dance in. Right here,” he said, marking the space with his heel. “In fact …” He moved away from me.

I knew he was up to something. He wore a delighted look on his face pink with the cold. He took my mittened fingers, bowed low, and said: “Is your dance card all filled?”

“I believe it has your name on it,” I said and curtsied in my boots. He lifted my hand, bowed ever so slightly, and we danced while he sang.

There beside the river, to the tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” we danced. While the mules stomped impatiently at their tethers, my fur boots catching on the rough rocks, we danced. Cold air settled down around us like the wispiness of a dream, and we danced. Bandit watched us warily. Joseph limped just a little. I stretched on tiptoes to place my hands on his wide shoulders and he lifted me, swung me gently about, setting me down facing the falls.

“Here’s where we’ll come to then,” he said, his arms tight around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest and his dream. “And God willing, we’ll build it all, Janie. We’ll build it all, together.”

C
LEANSING

S
team rose off Sunmiet’s bare back like the mist over a high Cascade Lake in early morning. Wet, and black as obsidian, her hair cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall at night. My nose tickled from the heat, became more sensitive to the piercing cedar smell. I watched as she bent over the rocks, her face lit by the firelight, her hair a veil on either side of her face. The other women and children had sweated earlier and left. It was just the two of us still in her family’s sweat lodge.

When Standing Tall started the fire, the rocks were almost perfectly round and nearly white. They burned red now, with dark centers that seemed to flicker with life. Sunmiet lifted another rock from the flames with the long-handled rake, slipped the hot rock onto the deer shoulder-bone strapped to the end of the stick, and gingerly carried it to the lodge. “Step into the river,” she said. “Cool your body. Drink some water. Then return.”

Snowmelt from the mountain made the Deschutes River even colder than ice but I did as instructed. It was the fourth time that night I had looked at the moon, felt the cool air tingle my hot skin, braced myself for the cold after bearing the heat. The excitement of the new experience did not decrease my reluctance to face the water.
I overcame it, plunged in, and sucked my breath as the water shocked my pores closed, covered my head with the tingling of a thousand fingers, filled every part of my body. Submerged, I lasted only a second or two before I shot from the water, gasping for air.

With goose bumps for companions, I walked rapidly the short distance from the river to the small rounded lodge covered with mud and hides and blankets, lifted the hide door and on hands and knees, crawled into the welcoming heat inside.

“So sweet it smells,” I said, squeezing water from my hair, dribbling it on the hot rocks. The immediate, steamy warmth of the lodge felt wonderful. I could not see Sunmiet in the darkness, just felt her there. As my eyes adjusted, the glow from the rock pit near the door gave enough light to see her face, a ripple of shadow over serenity.

“Rose water,” she said. Onto the rocks she splashed water from a tin cup. “It has special meaning for us and smells good too.” The water sizzled against the hot stones like water in the spider at the hearth but with a sweet fragrance. “The cedar branches symbolize strength and purity and healing.”

The hot, black quiet drained all cares from my body, made me restful as I had never been. Time traveled over us without leaving tracks.

When my breathing seemed labored, Sunmiet’s voice came from a great distance to remind me to go outside, inhale the fresh air, slip again into the water, drink to cool my parched throat, and then return. “We have already added ten rocks,” she said. “You are doing well for the first time, enduring much heat, taking in much cleansing. Do not harm yourself by trying to remain too long.”

“I’m all right. What about you?”

“A little more time.” She sat quietly, her silence urged me to remain.

“Standing Tall worries me,” she said into the dark. “He is angry at the changes in his life. He blames others but hurts himself. I am afraid for him. And for my children and myself.”

I didn’t know what to say so, like a listening friend, said nothing.

“Sometimes, I hear the elders who have gone before,” Sunmiet told me. “I see them, too, in the faces in the rocks. They speak to me of what to do.” She was silent. “They are friends. And old
kásas
. Go out now or you will bring yourself damage. This is a healing place, but we can let it harm.”

I crawled out through the opening, my knees taking on the impression of the cedar twigs and branches on the ground. I gasped in the cool air, aware that my lungs seemed fuller, more expanded. The fir tree offered balance. I waited, caught my breath, felt the rough bark against my skin, the dizziness in my head.

The sweat was cleansing even if it did nothing to increase my chance to have a child. None of the specialists’ suggestions had worked though we’d visit any new one we heard of. It was almost the new decade and we still waited for a child of our own. We had not yet made the trip to the herb doctor and Joseph had finally, reluctantly, only to honor my judgment, agreed to the sweat.

Once more, I plunged into the creek, noting the thin ice lining the water’s edge like lace. Shivering, I rejoined Sunmiet in the lodge.

“It is a time to pray,” Sunmiet said. Hunched over, I could feel the willow sidewalls, the low, arched ceiling, sense the branches that kept the heat from escaping. My nose burned with the dry heat; my hair felt heavy on my shoulders, smooth and wet beneath me as I sat on my own long strands.

Sunmiet sang a song in a language I did not recognize. She spoke a prayer out loud in words I did. Her prayer spoke of thanksgiving, then asked for strength for me, to heal my heart of sadness, to help me forgive so I could make room for new life to be planted in me, “if such is to be.” It was a prayer not unlike what I prayed for myself each day except for the forgiveness part.

“What’s forgiving my mother got to do with it,” I said when she ended, tossed rose water on the rocks. The lodge was as dark as the inside of a cow’s stomach.

“
You
were forgiven,” Sunmiet said. “Though it is your not forgiving her that will matter.”

“She still blames me! What do I have to forgive? And what difference does it make anyway?” I felt disoriented in the dark. A rock suddenly glowed brighter in the corner so I could see shadows on Sunmiet’s face.

“The ruler-teachers say we are all forgiven, for wrongs we never even tell ourselves, by Someone who cared and died for us. He is as the liquid of the water, they said. And the Creator as ice, and his spirit as the steam. They are all children of one family, each with its place in forgiveness. If you do not give up your suitcase of anger toward yourself and your mother, you will not have room for the good things the Creator has planned for your life. Your vision will be clouded by steam and you will miss the Creator’s other forms.”

“Do you think we pray to the same God?” I asked her, diverting her.

“The Creator made the world,” she said. “Gave us all we have. Roots and berries, land animals and fish, each other. We have done nothing to deserve them, we must care for them, only. It is what keeps them in our lives. Is that not like your God?”

“God created everything, yes,” I said. “And gave us people, each other. And more.”

“The power to heal,” she said, and I could almost sense her single headnod of finality. “The ruler-teachers say healing is from the Son. Do you believe that?” she asked.

My skin felt tight as though stretched in one large thin piece across the bones of my body. My thoughts were light. I wondered if I would hear music as Sunmiet said some did. A rock shifted in the pit, glowed brighter, settled next to another, taking strength from the flame beside it, like friends, bonding. I felt a strength I hadn’t before, clarity.

“I wish that believing would answer my prayer,” I said. “I wish the memory of my brothers and sisters,
yáiyas
and
nanas
, would not cut so deep. I wish my mother would give up Ella. I wish I could bargain so God will give me a child.” I took a deep breath. The scent of cedar pinched my nose.

Sunmiet did not fill the space with her words, allowing the hot darkness to open up more than the pores of my skin.

“But do I believe he can heal?” I asked, repeating her question into the darkness. More time to consider, more water sprinkled on the rock pit, more time to remember, to attend to my breathing, to pray. “Yes,” I told her. “I believe in him. And I believe he can heal me if I let him.”

“Then it will be so,” Sunmiet said with sureness. “You will be healed whether you are chosen to bear a child or not when you forgive and accept his gift for yourself.”

How ironic, I thought, Sunmiet bringing light to my beliefs, the religion of my parents. Joseph would be surprised to see my faith grow stronger with the sweat, not more distant, giving me a future and a hope.

I had envisioned living an interesting life with Joseph Sherar, and so it was. We had our differences but shared more preferences. Like the cattle and sheep we raised and his willingness to let me become a greater part of the work considered “men’s” by most standards of the day. I think that was a difficult shift for him, his always treating me with such deference. He wanted to take care of me, I knew that. But he also loved me enough to let me be myself.

As a result, my interests on the ranch kept with the general operations more than the usual household activities. Oh, I performed many duties typical for a woman: provided medical aid to young buckaroos, even soothed a lost love wound or two. Only a few years older than me, most buckaroos still found any married woman reminding them of their mother and they let me advise them not knowing I had so little experience of my own. I mended and canned, helped Anna with the wash, organized the cleaning and the meals.

But my greatest love, I discovered, was working with Joseph.
Together, he and I planned the day’s events, the jobs that needed tending. After, I drew up the work lots, decided who would go with whom to do what tasks. I had a good sense of how long things would take, whose skills best suited the effort, and after very little experience, Joseph trusted that judgment.

There were occasional encounters with buckaroos who disliked taking orders from a small woman. They either got over it or left. In general, both my husband and his men treated me with respect for my thinking and my mind. I found I liked the feeling. Joseph seemed to enjoy my ability to outline work for the men and handle conflict with their ways. “Better’n me,” he said. “Keep wanting to find excuses for them, give them one more chance. But you,” he told me with a certain pride, “you just clear the bunkhouse.”