Charity (8 page)

She could feel the wind blowing from as far back as the early 1800s, maybe even before—before this earth had been stuck by the plow, before Dorcas’s people had known the scourge of the white man—his diseases, his wrath, his greed. A purer, sweeter wind blew now, she thought, than would ever blow again. She felt it blowing straight into the future and she wondered what, if anything, of herself would be on that wind, except the scent of rushes from her hair. Tiny seeds born in tufts of white cotton filled the air around her as the cottonwoods let loose upon the wind their own hope of the future. Gustie raised her arms, closed her eyes, and began to turn. She could feel the wind billowing her shift, lifting her hair, buffeting her gently from all sides as she turned around and around. She felt light as a seed pod, transparent as a snail’s egg.

Gustie stopped turning and opened her eyes. She was light headed, and the sun was suddenly so brilliant she thought she was seeing an apparition—the dark figure veiled in a steamy radiance astride a pale horse, poised like a flame on the grass. Gustie covered her eyes with her hand, took a moment to clear her head, then she put on her glasses, and shielding her vision from the direct rays of the sun, looked again. The figure was still there. An Indian woman. The horse, not of fire but very real horseflesh after all, was cream color, almost white. Her long mane blew about and looked like sea-froth. The woman rode without a saddle.

Gustie remembered her manners. “Can I help you? Dorcas isn’t here.” As she moved in closer to the side of the horse and looked up into the woman’s face, she was met with large black eyes that held her in a studied gaze. The eyes looked out from a face that might have been carved by a consummate, bold hand in love with stone. Sharp cheek bones, high and wide, balanced a strong wide chin and a full, sharply chiseled mouth. Her large nose sloped straight down in line with her wide, sloping forehead. Her black hair was cropped short just above her ears. The woman was young—younger than Gustie, to be sure. When Gustie tore her eyes away from the face and looked down, she found herself level with a dark, sleek expanse of thigh where the woman’s skirt was hiked up and tucked under her allowing her freedom to ride. Her leg was well muscled, relaxed, but ready to meld into the sides of her horse. Gustie barely restrained herself from touching it the way she might have touched a piece of fine sculpture. The young woman said nothing. Just continued to study her.

“Would you like something to drink? Some water? There’s coffee, I think.”

The woman unfastened a bag that hung around her waist. Something moved inside it. She handed it down with a strong large hand and Gustie took it from her. Whatever was inside struggled harder. The bag was not heavy.

The woman said, “I will be back.”

The horse, responding to a command that Gustie could not discern, edged away from her, turned and trotted off. Gustie stood with a wiggling bag in one hand, her other hand once again shielding her eyes so she could watch the retreating figure.
She sure knows how to sit a horse,
thought Gustie.
Remarkable eyes. Remarkable face. Could have been struck out of stone, it was so perfect, so defined.
Gustie looked down and recalled how she was dressed—or, rather, undressed—bare feet, and her hair a mess down her back. She took a deep breath.
Well, it can’t be helped.

She opened the bag a crack and saw brown and white feathers. She released the two chickens who were delighted to run around in circles in the light and scrabble for tidbits on the ground. Gustie took a handful of cracked corn from a sack by the door and sprinkled it on the ground for them. The chickens pecked eagerly.

Gustie retrieved her dry clothes from the tree limbs and put them on. Then she sat on the porch and combed the tangles out of her hair and pinned it up again. She missed the feeling of lightness and freshness she had without her clothes on.
But I can’t run around here half naked all the time,
she thought, and her mind went back to that chiseled brown face, the vision that had come on a shaft of sun light and blown off on the wind; except visions did not leave behind live chickens.

The low cloud no longer touched the horizon, but hung suspended just above it with a thin patch of light between.

Gustie watched a pelican float on the lake. He did not seem to move at all, and yet he made rapid progress back and forth. His mate appeared from around the bend and they floated together for awhile.

The only thing real is the Moon against my flesh. She gallops and I rock with her. There is only coming and going and the pauses between are only waiting for the next going. It is no way to live but it is all there is for me. Moon is a good horse. She is my horse. I fought for her and I won her. Still, I am hers much more than she is mine. When I named her, some of the people laughed, “Jordis on her moon.” But it is her name. It suits her. Grandmother needs the chickens so I take them to her and find the white woman dressed in cotton that when the sun and wind play with it I can see through it to the body I know so well, that is still thin like a child’s though she is not young. She is not old either. She reminds me of the inside of a shell. That shining has its own light kind of smoothness. So delicate that a wave lifting and dropping it will shatter it. Her eyes are gray and there are lines around them, as around the eyes of all white people except the very young, and a red scarring on the cheeks by the sun. Grandmother told me she comes back when the dreams take her. Strange. A white woman comes to an old Indian for comfort when her mind is full of storms. Usually they go to their churches and their preachers. But this is no woman to go to a church or a preacher. I can see that. Perhaps the old woman is right. The spirits of the land have not all been driven off. Fly, Moon.

To the west, the two pelicans slipped out of sight around a bend in Crow Kills. The afternoon was softening into evening and Dorcas was still not back. Gustie had spent most of the afternoon sitting on the porch, watching the lake. She felt more relaxed and at ease than she could remember.

Certain that Dorcas would return before dark, Gustie went inside, lit the stove and started the coffee. From a jar on a shelf above the sink, she spooned lard into Dorcas’s deep iron pot.

Dorcas had taught her how to mix up dough for frybread. For supper they would have frybread and fish. Early this morning, Dorcas had cleaned the fish and left them headless, tailless, and gutless in a pail of cold water waiting for the hot fat.

The dough was almost ready, springy and not too sticky. She had just formed it into a smooth oval and was letting it rest in a bowl when she heard heavy footsteps on the porch. Dorcas swept through the door, the freshness of the prairie whirled in about her. Her bag, made from old blanket material, was full of plants, their leafy tops ruffled out from the draw-string opening.

While Dorcas hung up her scarf and shawl, Gustie poured her a cup of coffee and placed it on the table alongside the can of sugar. “You had a visitor.”

Dorcas sat down heavily and took her time stirring spoon after spoon of sugar into her coffee, and sipped it with satisfaction for a few moments before she asked, “Who?”

“She didn’t say. She left a couple chickens.”

“She ride a white horse?”

“Yes. Quite a beautiful horse.”

“Jordis.”

Gustie observed the old woman squinting hard at her from behind her coffee cup and said, “What?”

“Nothing.” Dorcas took another sip of the sugared coffee and wiped her mouth with her hand. “Missionaries name her.”

The fat had melted down golden and hot. Gustie tore off pieces of the dough, flattened each one a little between her palms and slipped them into the fat. The hot grease sizzled on contact and the dough puffed out and browned. Just when the outsides were crisp and the insides fluffy and steaming, Gustie lifted them out with a pair of iron tongs and piled them on a tin platter. Then she rolled the fish in flour left from the bread making and dropped them into the fat. More sizzling and popping and the aroma of frying fish filled the cabin. The fish cooked quickly and Gustie piled them on the platter next to the frybread.

Dorcas nodded her approval. She flourished an unusually happy mood all of a sudden. “You cook like a good Indian. Next I teach you how to do it over the fire.” Dorcas cocked her chin in the direction of the tripod outside. “No stove. Tastes better that way.”

The first time Gustie had tried to make frybread, she had burned herself on spattering fat; some of the pieces had cooked to little brown bricks, and the rest remained doughy and sticky inside. She had to throw the whole batch out feeling utterly miserable as she wasted Dorcas’s precious flour. Dorcas had her small share of annuities. Like everyone else on the reservation, when it ran out, she had to buy what she needed until the next allotment, and money was very scarce on the Red Sand.

The evening settled upon them gently. Gustie realized they were sitting in near-darkness. She took down the lamp from its hook on a ceiling beam and lit it.

Quick steps sounded on the porch and the cabin door was pushed open. Gustie started and nearly burned herself on the match before she could shake it out. Jordis entered. She wore the same clothes she had on that afternoon—a full skirt in a dark blue-gray fabric, and a long-sleeved blue shirt rolled up to just below her elbows—clothes very similar to those worn by Dorcas. Gustie wondered if these clothes, too, were government issue. She greeted Gustie with an almost imperceptible nod. Then she murmured a greeting to the old woman who reached up with both hands and patted the younger woman’s cheeks tenderly.

“Granddaughter, you have been away a long time.”

“Little Bull keeps me busy.”

“It is good. You stay out of trouble that way. Thanks for the chickens.”

Gustie felt invisible watching this exchange between the two women.

Before she could offer her own chair, Jordis pulled up the wood crate that rested against the inside wall by the door and sat down at the table. She tore apart a piece of frybread and laid a fish on each half. The food disappeared quickly. Gustie poured her a cup of coffee and sat down.

She could not take her eyes off Jordis who proceeded to devour the remaining fish and frybread. The Indian woman’s hands were strong and large with long tapering fingers. Everything about her was strong, rock solid. Her every movement had about it a wholeness. Though it was only her hand that moved grasping her coffee cup, or her arm that reached out for another piece of bread, it was her whole body that was involved, not tensely, for she was perfectly relaxed, but with total awareness of what each part of itself was doing. Gustie had never seen a human body so
collected
. She had only observed that in horses and barn cats. And still the woman had not spoken one word to her since walking through the door. Clearly she had no meaningless pleasantries in her, no chit chat. Gustie had been around Dorcas long enough to not take offense at the lack of spoken words. Besides, something inside herself felt very communicated with. She felt like she was encountering a new language. Gustie was patient and determined to learn it.

The tin platter was empty. “Would you like some more?” Gustie asked. “I could fry some eggs for you, too.”

Jordis looked at her squarely and said, “Thank you. I am not hungry now.” Jordis had no trace of the accent that colored Dorcas’s speech—the Rs that sprawled across the back of her tongue, the soft thickening of the “
th
” sounds, the way she had of speaking through her teeth in a level pitch like the steady lapping of Crow Kills against the shore.

Dorcas said, “Tell Little Bull it is a long time since he comes to visit me.”

“He will come. The chickens are from him. We have been working on the new building. It is almost finished.”

“My granddaughter is helping Little Bull with a new school building. But she is a stubborn child to me.” The old woman shook her head and made a face of grief that was, Gustie felt, a little exaggerated. “She should not be making buildings. She should be teaching children.”

Jordis’s mouth tightened, and her body became quite still. She responded in a low voice, “Little Bull knows I won’t do that. He’s stopped asking. I agreed to help him with his building so he would stop pestering me.”

Gustie was interested. “Are you a teacher?”

“No. They want me to be a teacher. I am not a teacher.”

“I teach at the section school between Charity and Wheat Lake,” Gustie offered lamely.

“I know.”

“Oh?”

“Grandmother speaks of you. She thinks you must be a very good teacher.”

Gustie was pleased. She asked Dorcas, “Why do you think that?”

“Because you are a good learner.”

Gustie felt childishly happy in this praise. “I didn’t start out to become a teacher. But I do the best I can. Why don’t you want to teach?” Gustie blushed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask.”

Dorcas spoke quickly. “No. It is good to ask. Granddaughter, tell Augusta Roemer why you do not teach Dakotah children.”

If Jordis were a cat, thought Gustie, her tail would be twitching dangerously right now. Gustie regretted her question and was mystified by Dorcas’s taunting manner.

“I just came back to visit with you. It is late. I am tired. I will speak with you in the morning.”

Gustie was alarmed. There were only two sleeping places in the little cabin, each being nothing more than a straw mattress laid upon wood crates, and she was using one of them. “Please, let me sleep in my wagon tonight. I am taking up the place that should be yours.”

“No, thank you. I do not sleep in here. I sleep outside, except in the dead of winter.”

“But...”

“It is true,” chimed in Dorcas, her eyes twinkling up a storm. “Even if you were not here, she would sleep outside in her little tent. She likes to play at being Indian.”

Gustie thought that Jordis might have slammed the door but for very deeply inbred good manners. She closed the door quietly behind her.

“She is stubborn.” Dorcas smiled widely, showing perfect white teeth. “Just like me.” She laughed heartily. The scene between grandmother and granddaughter had been tense, full of anger, and yet here was the old woman being quite merry. An infinite number of things had puzzled Gustie about this old Dakotah woman. This was just one more.