A Sweetness to the Soul (53 page)

“What is it?” Sunmiet asked, her voice weak but excited. “Is it all right?”

“A girl,” I said, laughing and crying at the same time. “And she’s perfect.” I raised and lowered her lightly. “Weight like a silver salmon. Itsa-right,” I crooned to baby and mother, “Itsa-right, now.” A prayer of thanks rose from my heart, another asked for blessings on this child’s life.

Sunmiet sighed, eased back onto the floor-bed. I dabbed gently over the baby’s eyes with a piece of soft cotton, laughing, smiling at her and squeezed the mucous from her nose and ran my finger gently inside her mouth. I heard her take in breath. She did not really cry, just sucked at life as I handed her to Sunmiet. “So warm,” Sunmiet said, stroking her, eyeing her in wonder as though she’d never seen an infant before.

“Cut the cord,” she said. I looked surprised, but of course, someone had to do it. “It is the father’s right he gave up, as he is not here, so it is your privilege.” I remembered that my father had been absent at Baby Pauline’s arrival. Lodenma must have cut the cord.

My fingers shook. I found my sewing scissors and some flax thread. I tied two places on the cord and clamped them tightly, then cut between them. Blood spurted. It was done. “I will save the cord, and the twist at her belly when it drops off,” Sunmiet told me. “And put it with her things. Tie it in a buckskin bag and hang it on her cradleboard when Kása brings the one she made. She will always have something of her time when she and I lived as one, and something of you, for being here at her beginning.”

“I’ll get a blanket.” I remembered that my father had laid out swaddling for the first birth in my memory. His thoughts must have been there with his newborn even if his body wasn’t. “Then we’ll get you washed up too.”

By the time I returned with a swaddling blanket, the infant had coughed and fussed until she settled skin to skin, against her mother. In a peaceful presence, Sunmiet held her daughter to her breast, aided her to nurse and nuzzle, caressed her tiny fingernails.

I put some water on to boil, kept busy, wore a constant smile as I thought about this birthing business. It surprised me, but I did not feel deprived for never having experienced it myself. Instead, I felt blessed to have received the gift of Sunmiet’s willingness to share this precious moment of her life. My prayer was one of gratefulness, fullness, not of longing, and I recognized it as something that had eased into my life as I was ready, able to let go of distant dreams and pains and accept just what was.

Sunmiet talked softly as the infant nursed. She winced again. “Must push,” she said and for an instant I thought she might have another! She acted as if she had a small contraction, pushed. “Save it,” she said of the red moon tissue I held in my hands. “We will bury it tomorrow. In the choke cherry ravine where first we talked of Standing Tall.”

Joseph stomped back in, breaking into the pleasant mood. He slammed his rifle down, then calmed when he saw the infant. “Well,” he said in wonder. “From the dregs of a miserable night comes something soft and warm. Congratulations, Sunmiet.”

“And her father?” Sunmiet asked, eyes wary.

Joseph sighed. “Rattled Teddy with his surly talk. Should have put John to watching him, too. That’s why Teddy came to get me. Time we got back,” he nodded toward the baby, “her father was gone. I’ll wait by the bridge for him. Has to cross to get a horse. We’ll get him, don’t you worry.”

“Unless he goes the other way,” Sunmiet said, resigned. “Farther away from the Big River and the reservation.” She sighed. “It is already the direction he is going.”

Joseph set himself up beside the bridge for the rest of the night, but no one crossed. To my knowledge, Standing Tall has yet to cross it though it’s been fourteen years since.

In the morning, Joseph stretched and walked back in to share the day with the infant and Sunmiet’s other five who now hovered over the baby, begging to hold it, marveling at its perfect, tiny features. The infant yawned.

“Quite a night,” Joseph said.

It was an understatement made even more so when Alice and Dr. Crickett arrived back with Ella and Monroe.

“Bet we can top your evenings,” I said to Ella and Alice, leading them to view the baby in Sunmiet’s arms, resting now in one of the bedrooms. Monroe and Crickett lounged in the saloon. I could hear Spirit howling.

“She’s a wonder,” Alice said, “What’s her name?”

“Inanuks,” Sunmiet said. “It is a Wasco word to honor her father’s people. It means ‘otter.’ She came slippery into this world.”

“Such big eyes,” Alice said.

“I will think of her,” Sunmiet said, smiling at me, “as a young Huckleberry Eyes.”

“She is beautiful,” Ella said. “But we’ve a startle of our own. Show her, Alice.”

I looked at Alice M, her face ablush, her eyes sparkling with anticipation as she pulled a piece of paper from her wrist purse.

“What is it?” I asked, opened the envelope to read it, then turned to her, astonished. “It’s a marriage license!” I said.

“I know!” Alice said, twittering. “Dr. Crickett—Spike—promised he’d take good care of me. And now, he says, we’ll be wed within the week.”

“I think not!” I exploded. “You barely know him!” I was angry with myself for not seeing this coming. “He has no right to come in here and fill your head. Ella! How could you have gone along with this—this ridiculous thing!”

“She’s of age, Mother Sherar. And we have no right, really. I mean, I’m not her sister, nor you her … her mother, really.” I knew she hesitated with the word, wanting to walk both sides, comfort each of us yet face the situation.

“Yes. Well,” I said, only later realizing why that sounded so familiar. “I’ll be having words with Mr. Sherar and then with Dr. Crickett. You, my dear Alice, will stay right here.” I lifted my long skirts to move the faster into the men’s saloon, annoyed to discover both Ella and Alice right on my heels.

The cat howled in the cage and I dealt with it as the distraction I needed. “Please, retire the cat now or give it water or do something to stop its howling.”

“It’s quite happy, don’t you know,” Crickett said brightly. “That’s why she sings.”

“I’d prefer a miserable cat then, if I’d get silence,” I said, spiteful.

Crickett blinked once or twice at my vehemence, rose to lift the cage, and set it just outside. Monroe lounged at the table, arms resting on the arched canes of the chair. He wore a slightly amused look
on his face as he stood to offer his arm to Ella, a chair to Alice. Joseph’s look was quizzical.

“If it’s the marriage you’re concerned about,” Crickett began as he turned back from the cat, “I know it’s quite a rush. Love can be like that sometimes.” He had an uncanny ability to anticipate my arguments. “We can visit often. She won’t be far away. I’ll take the best care of Alice—”

“Alice!” Joseph interrupted.

“I’m not an old man, truly,” Crickett pleaded. “Well able to provide.” He looked at Alice whose eyes glowed with admiration for him. “It is as though I’ve found that missing spirit of myself with Alice. Please, don’t let it slip away.”

Too many events to deal with. Too many people to care about. Too many futures to manage. I could see my life changing minute by minute and knew I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it; at the moment didn’t think I would try. I wondered if this was what Mama felt the years after, when she lost what she loved and her world began spinning away.

But I could make a different choice—love my “children”—and let them go.

At least Crickett understood the enormity of what he proposed. And I supposed it was not all that unlike my learning to care for Joseph in an instant though I came to love him in a longer time. I looked to him now when he spoke. “Let’s give the idea a few days, Mother, and see where we are by then,” my husband wisely counseled.

On the Thursday stage, almost a week after Crickett’s arrival and Sunmiet and Inanuks’s departure to her people’s camp across the river, the letter posting the death of Joseph’s brother arrived. Riding right behind the stage came the sheriff. The latter took our attention from the former.

The sheriff thought he was merely stopping for the noon meal.

“Plenty of sage grouse at Chicken Springs,” he said. “Always worth the extra here for Tai’s peppered steak.” The barrel-chested
man chewed happily, alone in the dining room having seen the stage off before eating. “And that great tomato sauce you have him make.” He smothered the steak with ketchup.

Crickett had spent much of his time with us, fishing. He took evening walks with Alice. Later, I was always grateful that I’d given up my reservations and had joined in with Ella and Alice preparing for the younger’s wedding. It would have been a double tragedy if she had not at least had the pleasure of anticipation. Unaware of the hour, Crickett rarely appeared for meals. Instead, he said he “lived on love.” At night, he wrote in a little book. “Notes on patients,” he said. I assumed at the Salem asylum. Only for Spirit did he seem to have some sense of timing. At noontime, he released the cat to stretch in the shade beneath the rimrocks. The cat’s long gray hair fairly frothed around its face as it stood, nose into the gentle breeze. Spirit rolled on its back next to Alice when she and Crickett sat together on a quilt, purring contentedly, rarely howling at all while Alice scratched its belly in the shade of the cinnamon rocks.

It’s where the three of them were when the sheriff arrived. Between bites, he mentioned my brother, now eighteen. “George shows some interest in the law,” he told me. I was a bit irritated that a stranger should know more of my brother than I. The sheriff went on talking and it was only in passing that he mentioned his mission in coming by the falls. “Looking for an escapee,” he said, stuffing potatoes into his mouth, chewing, his black mustache bobbing.

“From the jail?” I asked, pouring more coffee.

He drank, swallowed, wiped his mouth with his palm. “Nope. From the crazy house. Near Salem. Not sure where he was headed. Managed to lift the valise of a doctor going on vacation. Just picked up his things waiting at the hospital. Someone said they sold a man meeting his description a ticket.” He took another bite of steak, caught the juice dribbling with his thick tongue. “A gray cat’s missing too. One that hung around the asylum, that the escapee took a liking to.”

“What’s he there for?” I asked in a daze, staring out through the window at a happy couple, the cat’s paws jabbing at a long feather Crickett held.

“Didn’t kill no one,” he said. “Just fits. Of sadness, forgets who he is, where he is. Tried to kill himself a couple a times.” He washed his meal down with a large glass of ice tea. “Sure made lots of changes here, Missus. Husband still working the roads?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s with the crew now. You say this person never harmed anyone?”

“Nope. But sometimes, he does crazy things. Guess that’s why he’s in the crazy house!” He laughed at his own lame joke. “Anyway, goes from sadness to laughter and then right on back. Pretends to be what he ain’t. Can convince anyone of it, too, he can. Sometimes he’s a steamboat captain. Sometimes a musician. Just whatever hits him. I’m supposed to bring him back. Got a family. Not dangerous, though.”

I watched in slow motion as Crickett and Alice made motions of leaving their serenity beneath the rimrocks, almost willing them not to come to the house as they approached, hand in hand. Torn by the possibility of danger, the same possibility of safety, I suggested the sheriff walk out the side door, away from the rock wall, toward the river.

Unfortunately, Spirit bounded the same direction, toward the river and she was followed close at hand by Crickett.

The cat startled the sheriff, running straight past him as he did. And I saw something register in the lawman’s mind. Perhaps because he knew we kept only the pigs and dogs as pets; perhaps because the cat was so distinctive and would have been described by the hospital staff.

So when Crickett ambled his big frame with his rust hair around the side of the inn, cage in hand, there was little doubt for the sheriff. Though he couldn’t have known—none of us could—what would happen when he “Howdy-ed” him.

“You there!” the sheriff said, his arm upraised in greeting. “Is that a Salem cat?”

“Yes, don’t you know,” Crickett said before he realized his error, “and he loves the country now we’re here.”

“I thought as much. I’m here to take you and him back, Lonnie.” His voice was soft, kind.

Crickett stopped. Alice beside him. “Name’s Spike,” he insisted. “Spike Crickett.”

“You lifted the ‘Crickett,’ ” the sheriff said. “And the doctor’s looking for it back. It’s time now, Lonnie. No harm’ll come to you.”

“No,” Crickett said, softly. “No!” Louder. He backed up slowly.

“You’ve had your outing,” the sheriff continued. He began to ease toward Crickett who hunched like a cornered animal, shaking his head.

I had followed the sheriff outside and called now to Alice. “Come here, dear,” I said. “Just for the moment.” I felt numb and agitated at the same time, reaching out to her as I spoke. I wondered how such a peaceful morning could be converted in a heartbeat to the slow motion of a nightmare. Alice saw me, shook her head. She eyed with confusion the man approaching her beloved. “He’s the sheriff, Alice. He won’t harm either of you,” I said, pleading with her to hear me, trust me.

Her eyes were large, moving rapidly from Crickett to me, to the sheriff. Her thin back stiffened and then with a sinking heart, I saw her reach for Crickett’s hand, hang on.

It must have registered with the sheriff at the exact same moment as with me. Crickett looked to take the river, and Alice with him!

“No!” I shouted, walking with lead feet.

The sheriff acted faster. He grabbed for Crickett just seconds before he reached the water, pulled him back away from the cliff ledges, stumbled over Alice, pushed her to the side where she lay sobbing when I reached her.

Crickett scuffled with the sheriff. Helplessly, I watched them wrestle until the lawman tripped his quarry, and with Crickett on the ground, he closed the metal cuffs to hold him.

I heard Crickett sobbing. “No, no, no, no, no.” Defeated, he moved his face back and forth, scratching his pink skin on the rocks.