Charity (17 page)

And its ghosts. Gustie saw them—those who had lived and died on this land, beneath this sky: the Dakotah, the first white settlers, even the horses and the buffalo. She saw them in the shimmer of a heat wave rising from the earth in the distance, or a sunspot dancing off a spider web glassy with dew, in a trembling curtain of rain, in the shadows that lurked among the cottonwoods at evening. She saw them out of the corner of her eye and felt them like a feather against her cheek on windless days. Gustie knew these feelings and visions were in her mind, but it was this land that gave rise to such mind stuff. She had never had such thoughts before coming here. Perhaps they were real. Perhaps not. She knew for certain that she was seldom lonely out here. She felt presences, whether or not she really saw them in the shadows and sunspots.

Over the farthest rise in the land appeared a tall Indian on a handsome bay. Gustie took it for a ghost until Jordis rose from the porch steps where she was seated and walked out to meet him. She was wearing the split skirt and yellow blouse Gustie had given her.

Jordis had hesitated to accept it but finally conceded, “It will make it easier for me to ride.”

“That’s the idea,” Gustie said.

Dorcas, on the other hand, was ebullient with Gustie’s presents. She took them for what they were—gifts given in friendship.

As Gustie unloaded her wagon, handing parcel after parcel to Jordis to carry into the cabin, Dorcas had teased, “What did you do, rob a bank? It is not Christmas.”

Dorcas liked her new clothes and, at last, when Gustie pulled out the bloomers, the old woman clapped her hands, grabbed them and pulled them on, and danced around lifting and swinging her skirts. Then she took up residence in her new rocking chair, sucking her hard candies, and would not be moved until it was time for bed. Gustie said nothing about the origin of her new wealth or the occasion for the giveaway.

Gustie sipped her tea. What wind there was blew high and warm, just enough to fluff the clouds and descend occasionally to ruffle her hair pinned loosely at the back of her neck. Nevertheless, she felt chilled and kept her blanket tucked around her.

As Jordis got closer to the rider, he dismounted and walked in leading his mount to the cabin. He was not a ghost after all, but a man dressed in rather ordinary worn blue work pants and a gray shirt. His hair was shoulder length. He wore a folded bandanna as a headband. He had the vaulted chest and narrow hips characteristic of Dakotah men.

Jordis introduced Gustie. “Little Bull, this is my friend, Augusta Roemer. Gustie, this is Little Bull.”

He took the three porch steps in one stride and reached for Gustie’s extended hand lightly with no comment on the bandages. “Miss Roemer.” He did not smile.

“Please,” Gustie waved away his formality. “Just Gustie.”

Dorcas had spoken of Little Bull. “Little Bull will be our chief,” she had said. “His father Good Wolf will not live another winter. Little Bull will be a good chief.” Talk of him always made Jordis jumpy. So Gustie didn’t know much more about him.

Little Bull stepped back and Jordis took the reins of his horse. She cooed softly into the stallion’s nostrils, “Whooo, Swallow. Will you come with me?” The stallion whickered softly. To Little Bull she said, “I’ll take him back with Moon and Biddie. Grandmother is inside. She’s been asking for you.”

Jordis and the bay disappeared around the corner, leaving Gustie alone on the porch with Little Bull. He said, “My cousin likes my horse better than she likes me.” He smiled enigmatically and made no move to go inside.

Gustie asked, “How are things going with the school?”

“We finished the building. We should be able to do some teaching in there pretty soon. We need books.” Little Bull was dark complected with a face as sharply cut as Jordis’s. He had an expansive forehead, a large aquiline nose, high sharp cheekbones, a wide mouth and a strong prominent chin. Next to him Gustie felt small, pale, and plain. She snuggled deeper into her blanket. “You will teach the children yourself?”

“Yes. Me and my wife, Winnie. To get started, I’ll have to teach. Till I can convince Jordis to help us.” He looked at Gustie and she thought she saw flint striking somewhere behind his eyes. Jordis returned and the conversation about the school came to an end.

“They’ve invited us to dance at the Fourth of July celebration in Wheat Lake,” Little Bull announced.

“Who has?” Jordis stood at the bottom of the steps looking out.

“Emil Withers. Farley Scroggins...a few others planning the celebration.” Little Bull looked out focused upon the same vista as Jordis. “It will be good to dance again.”

Jordis responded with a little sound in the back of her throat.

“Will you join us?” he asked.

“No,” Jordis said sharply, “I won’t dance for the wasichu.”

“We haven’t danced in many years. Some of the white people are interested. They would enjoy our dancing. Besides we can charge them ten cents a head.”

“We are just a curiosity, something laughable. You want to parade around for them in your feathers and beads, go ahead. I don’t. Not even for ten cents a head.”

Gustie watched Little Bull’s face, but she saw nothing.

“Granddaughter is stubborn.” Dorcas appeared at the door.

“I figured it was useless, but I thought I’d ask. Will you come, Grandmother?”

Dorcas nodded. “It is good we dance again. Yes, I will come. Might dance. Show off my bloomers.” She lifted her skirt just enough to show a bit of white lace and did a little step on the porch slats.

Little Bull grinned and the severe lines of his face lifted and softened. He asked, “Gustie, will you?”

“I don’t know.” Gustie didn’t know how to feel after hearing Jordis’s remark about dancing for the wasichu.

Little Bull acknowledged her dilemma with a nod. “Well, I hope to see you there.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “We’ll only charge you a nickel.” Gustie smiled back. He turned to Dorcas, “Grandmother, can we use some of your things in the dance?”

She pointed with her chin. “In the box in there.”

Little Bull followed Dorcas inside, ducking as he passed through the door frame. Gustie heard a scraping sound of something heavy being pulled across the floor. She felt light headed.

“Jordis, I need to lie down. And I’d like to see what Dorcas has stowed away in there.”

Jordis put an arm around Gustie’s waist and helped her inside. Gustie lay on her side so she could watch Little Bull sort through the contents of one of the crates that had supported Dorcas’s mattress. He took out a large beaded medallion and a beaded headband. The items seemed old but in good condition; the colors were only slightly faded. He handled them reverently as he laid them on the table. He held up a small buckskin shirt that was covered with beads, mostly blue with a smattering of red. Leather thongs laced up the sides. Fringes hung from the sleeves. “Ahh. This should fit Leonard.” He explained to Gustie, “My son. He is twelve. This is his first dance. He has been practicing. This will make him very happy.”

He took out more buckskin shirts, not so finely decorated as the first, and a breastplate of slender bones sewn together and trimmed in leather fringe. The last item in the box was in excellent condition—a creamy white doeskin dress with blue bead work across the front and along the bottom of the skirt. Long fringes flowed from the sleeves and the skirt edge. Gustie sucked in a breath and propped herself up on an elbow. “Dorcas, that’s lovely.”

He brought out the leggings that went with the skirt, fringed up the sides with a floral beaded design as well.

“Belonged to my aunt, Pretty Star,” Dorcas said. “She never got to wear them much before she died. She work a long time on them, too.”

“They are so beautiful,” Gustie repeated.

Dorcas eyed them. “A lot of work, a dress like that.”

“My goodness, how much does it weigh?”

Jordis responded dryly, “Too much.”

“About twenty pounds I’d say,” Little Bull estimated the heft as he held it up.

“Cloth is better,” said Dorcas. “Skins still good for ceremonies. No one to wear it now.” She addressed Little Bull. “Any of your dancers want to wear this?”

“No, the ladies all have their own things. I’d give it to Winnie but she’s too big now.”

“Winnie is pregnant. Very big.” Dorcas put her hand out in front of her stomach to show how big. “Little Bull, stay and eat with us.”

He nodded and began to put the things he had chosen in a large pouch he had brought with him. With some regret he folded Pretty Star’s dress, leggings and moccasins and laid them back in the box, which he slid back into the corner and reassembled Dorcas’s bed.

While Dorcas began stirring up the frybread, Jordis went outside to prepare the morning’s catch of fish. Gustie felt useless and embarrassed by her weakness. Little Bull poured himself a cup of coffee and sat in a chair. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and turned toward Gustie. His eyes were kind and shrewd. Gustie found it a disarming combination.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked.

She was not sure if he knew about what she had done, or if he was merely being polite, noting her obvious state of ill health.

“I’m weak, but that will pass. Maybe you heard...I sort of...ran amok yesterday.”

As he registered her statement, his eyes took on a gleam that reminded Gustie of Dorcas —the way her eyes could light up and shoot sparks even when her face didn’t twitch a muscle. Finally, he grinned. “That’s what happens when you hang around Indians too long. You...run amok.” A quiet laugh shook his chest.

While Dorcas and Jordis prepared an elaborate meal, Gustie and Little Bull chatted. She was more and more impressed that here was someone of seriousness, intelligence, and humor, aware that his people were sitting on the edge of a precipice in history, and knowing that any wrong moves and they would fall over the edge and be lost. He was committed to the welfare of the tribe and already burdened with his impending chiefdom. And yet, he did not seem to feel it a burden of doom for a streak of optimism shone through him. Gustie found this miraculous, given what little she knew of the conditions on the Red Sand. Maybe it was not optimism, but a warrior’s fighting spirit she saw.

During a meal of fish, frybread, turnip and onion stew, and dried fruit, the conversation remained light. Dorcas said, “This is good. You visit and eat with us. Someday you will be very big man. You won’t have time for us anymore.”

Little Bull replied through a mouthful of frybread, “Hmm, between Winnie and Jordis, I’m not likely to get too chiefy.” Everyone laughed.

After the meal, and when the last of a second pot of coffee was drained, they bid him farewell.

“Grandmother,” Little Bull said, “On the Fourth we will stop here and pick you up. After, we will bring you home.” To Gustie he said, “Gustie, it is good to meet you at last.” She took his hand again and said goodbye.

As the door closed behind him, Dorcas said to Jordis, “You should help him more.”

Jordis abruptly left the cabin. All the good feelings of the afternoon were gone in a moment.

“Why do you do that? Make her so angry?” Gustie could not fathom it at all.

There were times when Dorcas looked simply ancient, when her face looked as old and lined as a mountain that had endured the wind and rivulets of water down its face for centuries, when out of her eyes gleamed a consciousness that was old as time itself. She turned such a face and such a look upon Gustie and said, “My little wounded bird must learn to fly again. She must learn to fly.”

Gustie lay back on her bed and felt sorrow for Jordis, for Dorcas, and for Little Bull, a young man with the future of his people on his heart. Before she got around to feeling sorry for herself, she dozed off.

Gustie was awakened by angry voices outside the cabin. Jordis’s voice carried a strident quality that she had not heard before. The other voice, quieter, but no less angry, was Little Bull’s. Next she heard the sound of hooves thudding away from the cabin.

Gustie wrapped herself in her blanket and went outside.

The sun had shifted, flooding the prairie with a softer light. Gustie stepped down off the porch and out away from the cabin. She still clung to her blanket even though the day remained warm.

She felt heavy from her nap which had been brief but sound and dreamless. She breathed deeply to clear her head. To her right a dragonfly hovered just above the spears of grass, its wings visible as a blur, its blue-green back iridescent and jewel-like. Young grasshoppers jumped in all directions before her. She turned and walked around behind the cabin to where Jordis sometimes tethered Moon in the shelter of the cottonwoods. Jordis was standing with her head against Moon’s forehead; her hands rested lightly on the horse’s neck. Gustie did not now think it strange, as she would have a few years ago, to see a woman communing head to head with a horse. Since coming to Charity she often found herself talking to Biddie. Once after a harrowing night of dreams, she fled to the barn in the early morning hours and sank her forehead into Biddie’s exactly as she saw Jordis doing now.

Moon, sensing Gustie’s approach, raised her head and snorted. Jordis looked around, one hand still rested on the long white neck.

Gustie said, “She is a beautiful horse.”

There were moments with Jordis when Gustie did not know what to do or what to say, when Jordis seemed aloof, feral, as close to the wild as the pale horse who ran unshod, unsaddled over the prairie, not ruled by but in partnership with the dark woman on her back. Jordis was from another world about which Gustie knew nothing beyond her terrible time at the mission school. Jordis’s arm remained around Moon’s neck. Horse and woman seemed extensions of each other.

Gustie felt her heart swell; it was a time when words might drown her, but she would choke for not speaking. “Did you get her as a filly?”

“No.” Jordis moved to the side of Moon and began to run her hand flat along the mare’s neck in long even strokes.

She worked systematically from the neck to the shoulders and withers with firm pressure. Moon stood still. Here and there a muscle quivered in pleasure. Jordis had no brushes, no cloths—only her hands with which to groom the white horse.