Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction) (40 page)

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Authors: James Welch

BOOK: Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)
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Then the design faded but its image lingered in Fools Crow’s mind. He wanted to call it back, to learn of the hairy faces’ destination. All of the bands were camped in that direction, along the Two Medicine and Bear rivers. The seizers’ journey in such weather most certainly had an object, a mission. Were they after Mountain Chief? Who would they make cry?

 

Fools Crow looked at the skin again for a trace of the design. Instead, it had become all-over yellow with wandering dark lines and splotches of blackness like fresh blackhorn dung. Gradually he began to see the features of the design, and it was the Pikuni country with its creeks and rivers and small mountain ranges. He noticed the Two Medicine River, but the winter camp of the Lone Eaters was not there. He could see so far he thought he must be on a cloud high above. He recognized the Bear River, the Sweet Grass Hills, the Bear Paws and the Little Mountains. To the south he saw the Big River and, farther south, the Yellow Mountains. Off to the west, he saw the upsweep of the Backbone, its forested darkness giving way to gray spires that rent the yellow sky. His eyes were filled with wonder at the grand sweep of prairie, the ground-of-many-gifts that had favored his people. After the other designs, this one filled him with peace and humility and his spirits rose up. The moon of the yellow grass meant good hunting, abundance for all. Fools Crow began to look for those places which the blackhorn herds favored this time of the year. He searched around the Sweet Grass Hills, the Yellow River, the Shield-floated-away River, Snake Butte and Round Butte. But he did not find the blackhorns. He looked along the breaks north of the Big River, and he looked to the country of the Hard Gooseneck and the White Grass Butte, the Meat Strings. But there were no blackhorns. And there were no long-legs and no bighorns. There were no wags-his-tails or prairie-runners.
It was as if the earth had swallowed up the animals. Where once there were rivers of dark blackhorns, now there were none. To see such a vast, empty prairie made Fools Crow uneasy. Perhaps the magic of the yellow skin had chosen to hide the blackhorns from him. Perhaps they were there but he was not meant to see them. As he thought these things, his eyes were focusing on something that seemed not to fit in the landscape. He looked closer. It was a square dwelling place like the Four Horns agency on the Milk River. But this one was farther north, on Badger Creek, in the heart of the Pikuni country. Then he saw the lodges pitched around the square compound and there was snow on the ground. He saw people standing around the tipis and the buildings. They were huddled in worn blankets. Some had scarves tied around their heads. Many had scraps of cloth tied around their feet. They were a pitiful people, and Fools Crow did not recognize them.

 

Near the entrance to the compound he saw a large-wheeled wagon and a team of large gray horses. There were three long boxes in the back. The horses started and they pulled the wagon across the flat and up the incline to the south. At the top of the ridge the wagon stopped and the four men who had been riding in back unloaded the boxes near a pile of other long boxes. As Fools Crow watched the wagon return to the compound, he felt something dark pass through his heart and he knew that the boxes contained dead ones. But what did they die of? There were more boxes on the ridge than he could count. Was it the white-scabs? And why didn’t the people bury their dead in the proper way?
Once again he searched the yellow skin for an answer. But the yellow land told him nothing. Then he saw a woman carrying something from the compound. It was a metal bucket and it was filled halfway with guts. As he watched her hurry along, he recognized something about her. The gaunt hollow-cheeked face, the eyes that stared at nothing as she walked—they hid somebody that Fools Crow had known.

 

Three women who had been sitting beside their lodges got to their feet and began to approach the woman. They had their hands out and their voices were weak and piteous. The woman tried to walk by them but they blocked her path. As two of the women distracted her with their weak pawing, the third reached into the bucket and came up with a handful of intestines. She began to run away, followed by the other two. Fools Crow looked again into the familiar woman’s face; in its gaunt hardness, he saw the girl his mother had wanted him to marry in happier days. Little Bird Woman, daughter of Crow Foot, hugged the bucket to her breast and hurried on.
Fools Crow began to frantically search the drab village. He saw many other familiar faces, but he did not take the time to identify them. Many were marked by the pocks of the white-scabs; many were too hollow to be recognizable. He saw four men carrying a burden in a blanket. As it passed beneath his eyes he saw it was the body of a boy, not much older than ten or twelve winters. One of the men holding a corner of the blanket looked up and Fools Crow looked into the face of Eagle Ribs, the horse-taker, the brave who had scouted on Fools Crow’s first raid against the Crows. He shouted to Eagle Ribs but the man did not look up again. It was all he could do to carry his share of the burden.

 

The scene began to fade into the design, and that too faded, until there was nothing but the yellow skin. This time Fools Crow did not attempt to call it back. He had seen the end of the blackhorns and the starvation of the Pikunis. He had been brought here, to the strange woman’s lodge in this strange world, to see the fate of his people. And he was powerless to change it, for he knew the yellow skin spoke a truth far greater than his meager powers, than the power of all his people.
As he sat in his hopeless resignation, he heard the sound of children laughing and he recognized it as the sound he had heard since entering this world. The laughter and chatter mocked him, but he was weary deep in his bones and he had no spirit to despise it. It took him a long time to realize that he was looking at another design on the skin. In the middle of the design was a long white building with four of the Napikwan square ice-shields on each of the long sides. The building was not far from a grove of big-leaf trees that marked the course of the Milk River as it spilled out from the Backbone. Fools Crow could see Ear Mountain and Danger Butte with its war lodge. The lodge was caved in, its poles and logs scattered in the long grass. He looked back to the white building and saw faces through the ice-shields, and they were young and open with laughter. Outside, there were other children, running and playing, laughing. The girls wore long dresses and high-topped shoes. They held hands and danced around and around in a circle. The boys, in white shirts and short pants, chased each other. But a small group of children stood on the edge, near the white building. They were dark-skinned, and they watched the other children. The two dark boys wore clothing like the other boys and their hair was cut short. The three girls wore cloth dresses and they stood timidly a short distance from a large white woman who held a brass bell. Around the building and the ground the children played on stood a fence made of twisted wire and pointed barbs. Beyond the fence there was nothing but the rolling prairie.

 

“You have seen something,” said Feather Woman.

 

They walked together down toward the river. Sun was still high above them. Morning Star and Star Boy were up there too but hidden by Sun’s brilliance. It is difficult for her to know that they are up there—far away, but there where they can look down upon her any time they wish, he thought. And for the first time, he came to think of them, the Above Ones, as cruel spirits to allow Feather Woman to suffer so. And to allow what he had seen.
“Yes,” he said. His voice was flat but edged.
“It makes you angry?”
Fools Crow stopped and looked at her. “No,” he said. “I am not angry. Anger can sometimes do a man good, but now it is futile. I am not angry now, and I will not be angry then, when it all happens as I saw it on the yellow skin.”
“There is much good you can do for your people,” said Feather Woman.
Fools Crow looked toward the river. His black buffalo-runner stood patiently, saddled and bridled, his eyes studying something far downstream.
“You can prepare them for the times to come. If they make peace within themselves, they will live a good life in the Sand Hills. There they will go on to live as they always have. Things will not change.”
“I do not fear for my people now. As you say, we will go to a happier place, far from these Napikwans, this disease and starvation. But I grieve for our children and their children, who will not know the life their people once lived. I see them on the yellow skin and they are dressed like the Napikwans, they watch the Napikwans and learn much from them, but they are not happy. They lose their own way.”
“Much will be lost to them,” said Feather Woman. “But they will know the way it was. The stories will be handed down, and they will see that their people were proud and lived in accordance with the Below Ones, the Underwater People—and the Above Ones.”
Fools Crow stood for a moment, considering Feather Woman. He thought of her transgression in digging the sacred turnip. Morning Star had said she would bring misery not only on herself but on her people by that act. And the misery was only beginning. But she was a good woman; her only sin was one of loneliness, then and now and forever. She had been punished and the people were being punished for a reason that Fools Crow could not understand. The people had always lived in harmony with their sacred beings. Always they had performed the ceremonies to the best of their ability. They sacrificed often and without stinginess. And yet they were being punished.

 

He stepped forward and hugged the woman with the cut-off hair and blue eyes. Her elkskin dress was warm beneath his hands. Then he walked quickly to the black horse and swung up on his back. He glanced at her and she was smiling and her eyes were bright. He dug his heels into the horse’s sides and the horse began that fast easy trot. He was glad to be returning to his people, but he could not help feeling that someday he would like to come back to Feather Woman and this green sanctuary between earth and sky.
PART FIVE
34
THE INFANT HAD DIED during the early night, but still, in the gray light of dawn, the young woman hugged the body to her. Earlier she had bared a breast and put the small mouth to it, as though life would begin again with the simple act of suckling. But the mouth did not move and the body did not move, so the woman put away her breast and rocked back and forth, whispering soothing words into the tiny ear.
Her husband and his two other wives had tried to take the infant from her, but now they sat and watched and listened to the gentle murmur of the mother. They knew it would be for the best to get the infant away from camp, to bury it someplace far away. One of the other wives had prepared a winding cloth, a small dress and moccasins and some food to accompany the infant on the journey to the Sand Hills.
There was an air in the lodge of both expectation and resignation. This was the first death caused by the white-scabs in the winter camp of the Lone Eaters. It had not been a drawn-out death, full of agony and grief. Less than two sleeps ago, the mother had first noticed the red sores on the infant’s scalp and chest. They were small and the women thought they were a rash, and like a rash they began to spread, first to the upper arms and then down to the belly. The women put a salve on the red areas that they had obtained from Mik-api. If they had been more observant, they would have noticed his silence as he made the paste. But these wives were young, the oldest not yet twenty winters, and so they chattered among themselves and did not remark on the old man’s faraway face.

 

The end was very quick. No sooner had the women applied the salve than the infant, whose name was Long Tail because it had cried like a long-tail when it appeared in the world, convulsed and passed into the Shadowland.
Now the mother hugged the small body to herself, then handed it gently to one of the other young women, who placed the infant on the winding sheet. She and the other wife then dressed the infant and rolled it and a small sack of pemmican in the sheet.

 

The husband, who had already saddled and bridled his horse, took the bundle and left the lodge. The women inside heard the squeak of leather as the man put his weight in the stirrup. Then the horse danced a bit before it took off at a fast trot. The women listened to the muffled hoofbeats on the frozen earth. The mother began to sing to herself, a sleeping song that her mother had sung to her. The other two looked at each other. In spite of their youth and inexperience, they knew, had known for some time, that the infant had died of the white-scabs. One stood, as though in that silent communication she had been chosen, and hurried out of the lodge.

 

The sickness spread rapidly. There was no longer any talk of moving the camp to the land of the Siksikas. Three families who appeared to be still healthy did leave the winter camp but they traveled in the direction of the Four Horns agency. Some who watched them leave felt both envy and betrayal. Most of the others were too busy caring for the ill ones to notice the three circles of bare earth on the edge of the camp.

 

During the first three or four days, Mik-api and Boss Ribs went from lodge to lodge, performing their curing ceremonies. Fools Crow, who had returned to camp the night the infant died, stayed busy too, conducting purifying sessions in the sweat lodge, taking whole families who had not yet been touched by the sickness into the small skin-draped lodge. In between sessions he mixed medicines and took them to the two many-faces men. He built up the fires, heated stones, sweated, prayed and even tried his own healing on two members of Sits-in-the-middle’s family. Soon after the long ceremony the two were dead. It was then that Fools Crow knew the ceremonies were futile—the healing and purifying were as meaningless as a raindrop in a spring river. Even if the healing worked, by the time the ceremony was over, twenty others would come down with the sickness.
Boss Ribs seemed to share this feeling of hopelessness. On the fifth day Fools Crow went to his lodge to deliver some fresh-ground medicine. Upon entering, he noticed that the many-faces man sat alone, hunched over a small fire. Beside him, the Beaver Medicine bundle lay open, its many skins and paraphernalia strewn about. At first, Fools Crow thought that Boss Ribs had been conducting the beaver ceremony and he felt his heart quicken with faint hope, but when he looked into the deep, sad eyes, he knew that whatever magic the keeper of the bundle had been searching for was not there.

 

“Are we lost then?” said Fools Crow as he squatted before the heap of objects. He was tired and his own words did not alarm him. The dying had begun and would continue. He had seen it on the yellow skin.
“The Above Ones will stop the suffering when they see fit. Our medicines are as powerless as grass before Wind Maker.” Boss Ribs indicated the contents of the bundle. “I have been through the bundle three times since daybreak, searching for a ceremony, a song that might have some effect....”
Fools Crow looked at the packet of herbs in his hand. “This white-scabs-it takes the strong as well as the weak, the young, the healthy ones, just as easily as the old and the sick. Whole families have perished!”
“How is it with your family, Fools Crow?”
“Nothing in my father’s lodge, or in Yellow Kidney’s. And Red Paint, she is healthy too. I have asked her to stay in the lodge, to open up to no one, but I saw her this morning going into her mother’s lodge. I’m afraid for our soon-to-be son.”
“You should take her away. Leave this camp. Go into the Backbone until this is over. There is plenty of meat there and no sickness. Sun Chief will watch over you.”
Fools Crow thought of Feather Woman in the green bowl of the Backbone of the World. In the small pause that filled the lodge, the two men could hear the wailing of women in the next tipi. It was difficult to tell how many there were or who they mourned. Wailing no longer carried the urgency of grief; instead, it seemed more a ritual to be enacted because the Pikunis had always mourned their dead. Even the young had become inured to the deaths that surrounded them. Fools Crow placed the packet of herbs before Boss Ribs, then stood.
“And what of your family?” he said.

 

“A daughter died during the night—Bird Rattler. She was six winters.” Boss Ribs pointed with puckered lips.
Fools Crow saw the small winding sheet. He touched the many-faces man on the shoulder and left, his thoughts far away and centered on the woman who mourned each new dawn with the wailing of a thousand geese.

 

He saw it in her eyes even as he entered his lodge. It was a look he had seen much of recently.

 

“One Spot and Good Young Man have the sickness!” The words came out in a breathless rush, but it took a space of time for them to register.
“Where?” he said dully.

 

“In my mother’s lodge. She won’t let me in!” And now Red Paint began to weep. Her small shoulders shook beneath the blackhorn robe and her sobs drove the yellow dog slinking out the entrance. Fools Crow crossed to her, his mind alert, and held her to his chest.
“She won’t let me in,” wailed Red Paint. “She won’t let me help, she says I am not needed—and yet my two brothers are sick and dying of the dreadful spirit. I pray and pray to the Above Ones, but it is not enough. They know Red Paint is not significant and they laugh at her puny voice. Oh, she is a nothing-one and her own mother doesn’t want her around!” She put her face into the folds of Fools Crow’s shirt, but the muffled sobbing only increased.

 

As he held her, he felt her round belly jump each time her breath caught and he imagined the life within and he wanted to take her away, to the Backbone, to the land of the Siksikas, anywhere. But it was too late now. She would never leave her family. He caught her hands in his and pressed them flat against his chest. Her fingers were cold.
“Your mother is right to send you away. You must protect our child. He must be born strong, full of life. I am afraid for the Pikunis now, but we must think of the moons and winters to come. Our son must survive.”
Fools Crow was gone all that day and far into the night. Three times Red Paint left the lodge, each time intent on going to her mother’s. The second and third times she walked across camp and stood outside the lodge where her brothers lay sick. She heard the drumming and Fools Crow’s husky chant. When darkness fell, she looked up at the stars and saw the Seven Persons and the Dusty Trail and the Star-that-stands-still. They were far away and bright and she noticed that Moon was not among them. She has chosen to hide her face from our troubles, thought Red Paint. She had always thought of Night Red Light as a protector, one who watched over the people while Sun Chief slept in his lodge. She was strong and her light betrayed many an enemy that sought to steal Lone Eater horses to take revenge on the sleeping village. Once, as a girl, Red Paint had become lost with two companions and had wandered across the monotonous prairies until Moon rose and showed them the way home. Now, not even Moon would help her people against this powerful sickness.
Red Paint returned to her lodge and lay down in her sleeping robes. There was a dull ache in her stomach and she knew she should eat something; instead, she closed her eyes and saw her father and brothers in happier times. She saw herself as a girl in that lodge with all of life before her. She shuddered as she thought of the day the men brought Yellow Kidney’s body in on the makeshift travois. She had thought she would have to be strong for her mother’s sake, to help her through the mourning period. But her mother surprised her by displaying very little emotion. The next day they had taken the body up into a grove of quaking-leaf trees in the upper Two Medicine River. There, they built a platform of branches and hoisted her father’s body in place. When they rode back to the village, Red Paint noticed the look of peace on her mother’s face.

 

A wave of guilt passed through her body and her cheeks burned. The thought confused her but the feeling was real enough. She would have remained that girl forever—she would have forsaken her life with Fools Crow—if it would have brought her father back healthy from the Crow raid and restored her mother’s spirit, and if it would make her brothers well and happy again. If it had not been for her exhaustion, if she had not slipped away into a deep sleep, she might have made a vow that would have taken away what little comfort and happiness she knew, a vow as irretrievable as the leaves which fell each autumn.
As it was, when Fools Crow returned and lay down beside her, his arm flung over her shoulder, she became aware, for the first time since their marriage, that he was a person apart from her. She smelled his odor and she felt the weight of the arm, and she tried to remember his face, his smile of reassurance, but she couldn’t. She lay there and thought of her family and of the new life within her, and she trembled beneath the dead weight of his arm.

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