Nakoa's Woman (21 page)

“Are they just going to leave him there to bleed to death?” Maria asked Anatsa.

“If he becomes conscious they will tie the thong to his horse and let the animal pull him free. If he does not become conscious, he will not be touched until he is dead.”

“Oh, dear God, dear merciful God!” Maria moaned, looking at the inert boy. The whole world stank of blood. Blood flooded the earth; there was no need for streams or rivers of rain. And Sikapischis watched it all, all of the torture upon this afternoon of her son’s death without even a tremor. In rage again, Maria looked at the painted face. Behind its red mask lurked a woman animal, a woman who did not wail at her only son’s death at but six years of age. The black eyes met hers, and Maria felt tears coursing down her own cheeks, but the regal head turned with no open recognition of a woman’s suffering. Maria wanted to spring at her and claw her for her indifference, this spirit of the sun. Damn you! Damn you! Maria thought, her hands pressing each other until her flesh trembled. Then from behind the red mask, the expressionless black eyes that still met her own, she heard the singing of a woman’s voice. Clearly and sweetly it sounded through her soul, and it would not be stopped.

I accept.

The love and the pain,

The sunlight and the rain,

I accept.

“No! No! No!” Maria screamed, standing and drawing every startled look in the Medicine Lodge. She had to end the woman’s song; she had to staunch the flowing of blood; she could not remain still while Siyeh, her father and Ana all died. “I will not accept this!” she cried. “I will not accept!” She wept until she was weak, and except for the first glance, those in the lodge went back to watching the ceremony.

The last day of the Sun Dance was near conclusion and it was dying in bloody sunset. The boy hanging limply from the Sun Dance pole was left there, and the boys who had become braves filed solemnly outside and knelt upon the earth, facing the west.

They crossed their arms over their bleeding breasts and bowed their heads in prayer. Now the Sun Dance Woman and Isokinuhkin and Natosin left the Medicine Lodge followed by the spectators in absolute silence. Anatsa had helped Maria to her feet, and the fresh air outside drove some of the nausea from her. She saw the fourteen new braves kneeling in the light of the fading sun. In its last appearance it burned in greatest strength. All of them and all of the tipis, and all of the prairie as far as she could see seemed bathed in a red glow.

Natosin came forward and stood before them all. He wore the dress of the head chief: the polished horns that Nakoa had worn before his battle with Shonka; shirt, fringed from shoulder to hand with locks of human hair; and leggings, bearing scalp locks from hip to feet. The polished horns gleamed in the pale light above the ermine skins of his crown. He raised his right hand in sign that he would speak. “Hear me, Nokosaki,” he said. “Hear me, my children. I speak, and what is upon my tongue is in my heart. This day ends in a fire that lights our mountain and our tipis and the prairie around us. But we know that night comes and that in its darkness we will have the light from our fires. Our hands bring the flame, and our hands have been nourished from the strength of the earth too. We have grown upon the earth, and we have walked forward in our lives. We chase the buffalo, but we still walk forward, and we have walked in our own path. Now we will look at the sun, and behind it, our Father will speak. Before the night comes the sun’s greatest power, and in darkness its reflection is not gone. The Wolf Trail travels across the stars and because we see it in night does not mean it is gone in day. Know then that when the earth part of us rests in sleep, and the spirit enters a place of darkness, we know not in our wailing how many suns there are in the night sky.”

Natosin looked at Sikapischis, mother who had lost her only child. She stood stiffly before him. His words were for her and at his feeling, the mask of Sun Dance Woman began to crack. The chin moved, the lips quivered, and then with a cry of anguish that smote all of their hearts, this woman who was supposed to bear the strength of the sun, crumpled in her grief and fell to the earth.

Maria turned away from the sight. Where rage had consumed her heart at the other’s strength, pity now became an agony in her soul.

Natosin spoke again. “We must know that we feel the touch of the sun, but we are not the sun. The sun is light and warmth, and so are we. But we are also shadow and coldness. The sun moves in light. We move in light and darkness.” Natosin looked down at Sikapischis, still upon the earth, her face colored with it, all of the sacred red of the sun washed away by the force of her tears. “We are not the sun,” Natosin softly repeated. “But though we move in light and darkness, it is the sun that casts the shadow that stretches before us!”

Slowly Sikapischis sat up, and then rose to her feet, her eyes meeting Natosin’s. Her face stopped its tortured working. “I am but a bridge to the stars,” she said, her voice shaking. “I am an empty bridge between two worlds,” Sikapischis wept.

“You touch both,” Natosin replied. “In the last light you can be both the traveler and the bridge, as the last light of the sun flames upon both earth and sky.”

“I hear your words,” Sikapischis said, and her face was filled no longer with unbearable agony.

All became silence. Natosin turned to the rest of them in the still village. It was strange to Maria, this silence. Not even a dog barked, nor did the mountain wind touch the bells upon the tipis.

“I will speak now to all my children,” Natosin said, “not just to a woman lost from herself in her grief. Today the Sun Dance ends. We have seen the young boys who have become braves; in becoming braves they become men. As men they will protect their women and children, their sick and their old. They will be a guide for the younger to follow and a source of pride for the old who have walked most of their path. Our nation will be fierce and proud with what began within them today.

“Men have smoked the Medicine Pipe together, and its smoke has carried all bad feeling away that existed between our tribes. Women have felt the warmth of a pure heart, in sacrifice and in talk to the Great Spirit. In the winter ahead the warmth of this day will comfort us. Tomorrow our friends who have ridden here will leave, and another winter will lie between us. As the sun leaves the sky now, let us speak together to our Father.”

Natosin turned from the Blackfoot, the Dahcotah, the Sarcee, Kainah, Kutenais, and the Gros Ventres, allies who had come to the Pikuni camp from across prairie and mountain. He faced the west and the last glimmering of the day:

Father, the Sun, I pray for my people.

Let them be warmed in their winter

With the burning of your fire.

Mother, the earth, receive the Sun,

And in your warmth let the grass and berries grow.

Give us the spring

And in our thirst

Let us know

That it comes from you.

Father, the Sun, Mother, the earth,

We come from your union.

Let us be humble in this

And not proud,

For we are of both and not one,

Neither of flame nor dirt,

Neither soaring nor still,

But crawling as babies, even as the small ant

You have created.

We have been created,

And will know your warmth,

And will burn with your fire.

Bless us in our struggling;

Let us walk a straight path

And at its end find ourselves.

But upon the great Wolf Trail let us remember,

Our mother was the earth!

Natosin had finished. Twilight was gone; the stars had come out above their bowed heads. A long “ah-h-h-h” came from them all, the closing of a prayer. Maria felt the touch of her own tears. The sound of Indian benediction was not unlike the last sad sigh that had escaped the doomed wagon train. And Nakoa was not with her, and where he was in the village she did not know.

There was a last hush before parting, the long “ah-h-h-h” still lingering, sacred. Sun Dance Woman slowly walked back to her empty lodge; Natosin left them, then Isokinuhkin and then the Mutsik and the new braves. The Medicine Lodge loomed black and silent against the bright stars of the Wolf Trail; in it a youth hung limply, losing too much blood to regain consciousness. All around Maria the shadowed forms silently dispersed and the last night of the Sun Dance ceremony ended.

By the next twilight the Pikuni camp had shrunk to its original size with most of the visitors gone. Out upon the prairie, by the restless horse herds, there was nothing to indicate that they had ever been there at all except the ashes of their fire pits now abandoned in brooding silence.

Chapter Nineteen

Nakoa’s marriage to Nitanna was announced two days after the Sun Dance ceremonies. The five day announcement was made in the traditional manner. Nitanna made moccasins and took them to her future father-in-law, and for five days she prepared food and walked with it in ceremony to Nakoa’s lodge.

Maria would not accept the announcement. She would not watch Nitanna take food to her future husband. She would not look at the Indian girl once. Let the others line up and watch her. Let the others exclaim over her beauty and her dignity!

She fled with Anatsa to the lake.

“I cannot believe this!” Maria cried to her, in anguish.

“It is true,” Anatsa said quietly. “Maria, I have said this to you before, when you gave me this white man’s locket of gold for a wedding present. For your wedding present I have no riches to give to you, but you have so many riches already. Know them.”

“Know my body? Oh, yes, I have heard people say that it is pleasant to see. Even that old Atsitsi says I am beautiful. Is this my wealth? The way my eyes meet my brow, the size of my waist, and my breasts? Can I stand always before a mirror of this beauty and stare myself to sleep? Anatsa! Anatsa! What do I care what Atsitsi, or Nitanna, or anyone sees—but Nakoa! And if he is lost to me, and cannot be accepted, I am not rich in beauty! My body is my transport—to him!”

“Maria, think of Natosin’s words, his prayer of this Sun Dance. At the end of your path, you will find only yourself.”

“No! No!” Maria was weeping, and Anatsa moved to shield her from the other women at the lake.

“I have to have him!” Maria wailed.

“Have him. Love him. Be loved by him. Let his manhood enrich your womanhood. The sun brings life to the earth, but the earth stays the same!”

“He doesn’t have to marry her! His father said that he would walk in his own way!”

“Then this is his way. You cannot change it.”

“I will! I will! He will not make love to that—bitch!”

“Nitanna is a woman and not a dog in heat. Because she loves the man you love does not make her a dog and leave you a woman.”

“Then we are both dogs in heat.”

“No, Maria. No.”

Maria clung to Anatsa’s hand. “I love him.”

“Then do not use your love as a weapon. Do not take his blood with the power of your love.”

“Anatsa, this is only the first day of the announcement. He will come to me before it is finished!”

“He cannot. He cannot even seek out his announced bride these nights.”

“He will come. He will come, and when I have seen him again, he will not marry Nitanna!”

“Maria, you will not speak with him until he has married Nitanna. You will not be alone with him again, until the consummation of your own marriage.”

Rage lit and blazed with unholy strength. “I am clean, and untouched by men, and I will not have one crawling to me in the night like Siksikai!”

“Like Siksikai?” Anatsa’s face paled. “Has Siksikai come to you in the night?”

“Yes! Yes! He tried to lie with me—but I could not accept with my body what I did not love with my soul. I—am not—Indian!”

Anatsa looked quickly away. Maria’s face flamed. “And when will your great Nakoa consummate a marriage with me?” She had hurt Anatsa, hurt herself, and now she had to hurt more.

“When you sleep in his lodge you are considered married,” Anatsa said.

“Ah! Will Nitanna and I sleep on the same couch? And when he wants a woman, how will he know which of us he is having? By lighting the lodge fire?”

“You will not sleep in the same lodge,” Anatsa said. “Nakoa and Nitanna will spend four days in their marriage tipi, and on the fifth day, or the fifth night, you will move to Nakoa’s lodge. He will come to you there.”

“He will crawl to me like a dirty animal, weak with debauchery of a first honeymoon.”

“I do not know all of your words,” Anatsa said sorrowfully.

“And I do not know all of yours.” Maria laughed bitterly. “But Atsitsi would. Atsitsi would. My good Blackfoot godmother would understand every one!”

“Why do you strike yourself? Why do you draw pain from this marriage you have to have?”

“I have to have?” Maria mimicked.

“You said that your body was transport to him.”

“In love. Only in love! And if it is not in love, I would give this body to Siksikai to destroy.”

Anatsa gasped, and held herself as in pain. “Maria! Maria!”

“Who is she?” Maria mocked. “She is a fool who would love an Indian who would destroy her and suck away her sweetness.”

“You are made not of sweetness, but of blood. Blood is the sacred color of the sun.”

“I know blood. The Indian has smeared my world with blood. There is none left in the world—for me!” Fury vanished in new pain. “Anatsa—Anatsa—you would not want Apikunni to seek another wife!”

“He is Mutsik. The day will come when he will take another wife.”

“How will you greet this fine day, Anatsa? Will you meet this new wife happily? Will you share your husband with joy in your heart at his fine and new pleasure?”

“I have already accepted this.”

“Accepted! We accept life! But how will you feel?”

“Acceptance is what I feel.”

“No! It is not all! You will feel hurt and jealousy! You will feel lonely and cold! You will hate him, and you will hate her!”

Anatsa looked deeply into Maria’s eyes, and her own eyes had never looked more beautiful. “I can not answer with a straight tongue what I would feel then, for I feel now Apikunni’s love meeting my own. In the warmth of summer sun it is hard to feel the coldness of winter. In the midst of feast, it is hard to imagine famine. I love and am loved. I look ahead to this other wife, or these other wives, and I think not of them, but of the love between my husband and me.”

“With other wives it would be gone!”

“It is not that way with us. It is not that way with Nakoa.”

“I know. Your men take other women for wives so the first wife can have help with her sewing. Why don’t you have other husbands, so they can have extra help with the hunting?”

“That is not needed. One man can hunt for his family.”

“And so can one woman sew for hers!”

“The woman’s work takes longer than the man’s. Bringing the meat and the skins is done more quickly than working the meat and the skins for the lodges and clothing.”

“Then I will struggle along with last year’s lodge!”

“You cannot. The skins are worn from traveling on the travois, and they become worn around the lodge poles. Lodge skins have to be replaced after every winter.”

“Then I’ll be cold!”

“But you do not live in the lodge alone.”

“Anatsa,” Maria said quietly, “if this moon of the homecoming is our month of August, then I have already had my birthday, but I do not know my age. I have seen my father and my sister and my old life all die in blood. There is nothing left but the life here, because here is the man I love, the man who will make me complete. My love for Nakoa made the strangeness of savagery warm! I was no longer cold and apart. But when he marries Nitanna, I am alone again, all alone!”

Anatsa bowed her head, her eyes moist. “My heart hurts with your hurt, but for this my tongue will remain silent. You will not hear my words.”

“You have said them and I have heard. You would have me go to Nakoa as his second wife, and be starved from him for the rest of my life.”

“You will only starve when you refuse to eat.”

“I will not do it. I will be a wife to him or nothing.”

“What will you do?”

“I do not know.”

But she did know. The announcement of his marriage would let her do nothing else. When Atsitsi slept, she would steal from the lodge and go to him.

A new moon had come to the sky on August thirteenth, the last day of the Sun Dance. By the fifteenth it lit the prairie faintly and promised to shine with full light upon Nakoa’s wedding. Walking to Atsitsi’s lodge, Maria looked at the sliver of light and remembered her dream of marriage to Nakoa in the moonlight. She was the one who married him in full ceremony when the prairie was silver with a full moon—not Nitanna!

When she reached the lodge she found it lit by a fire within, but the door laced tightly closed.

“Atsitsi!” she called. “Let me in!”

“Where big fool been?” Atsitsi growled, unlacing the flap.

“I have been walking,” Maria said quietly.

“Now Nakoa take Nitanna, big Maria look for more Siksikai?”

“No. Have you eaten all of the food?”

“Little left. Has sweet Maria seen Nitanna yet?”

“No.” Maria started to eat, her heart pounding in fear at the name.

“I watch Nitanna carry food to her lover. Still beautiful.”

Maria cringed.

“Sweet Maria want to keep all beauty for little bird song! Nitanna know what to do with her beauty.”

“You have already said,” Maria said bitterly.

“Oh, Nakoa and Nitanna sleep together already. I know this. Last Sun Dance he on her all of time.”

“Were you watching?”

“I hear she in his lodge. Meet by river too, ‘cause Atsitsi see them there.”

“I suppose you followed them to the bushes!”

“He take her to ferns. What need to see more? I know what happen then very well.”

Maria’s food caught in her throat. He had made love to Nitanna in the ferns, but he had restrained her when she had begged him.

“Sweet Maria unhappy? Sweet Maria want Nakoa pretty little virgin too?”

“I thought an Indian kept his bride clean. I thought this was part of sacred prayer to the Sun, and that is why you crawl around in the dark earth all of the time!”

“Nitanna Indian princess. Any man want Indian princess, even if known Nakoa get to her first.”

Maria started to eat again. He had made love to Nitanna before he had ever seen her. Most of the pain of his taking the Indian girl left, and Maria pushed the rest of it away. “Why did you have the door laced closed?” Maria asked, deliberately changing the subject.

Atsitsi’s expression changed. “Siyeh, little boy, killed by Sokskinnie. Sokskinnie kill anybody now! She friend to Sikapischis too!”

“Atsitsi, Sokskinnie is dead!”

“Moccasin right at where Siyeh found. Sokskinnie moccasin. Now I lace door closed every night, and if big damn fool walk around looking for more Siksikai, then she sleep all night with him! Tomorrow night big Maria in here before dark, or stay away!”

Maria yawned elaborately. “I am tired.” She took her knife belt off and moccasins and lay down and closed her eyes.

She heard Atsitsi lie down on her couch. For fifteen minutes, she feigned deep sleep before she looked furtively over at the old woman. Her eyes were wide open, and she was staring at the door. She saw Maria watching her. “Why not drums beat?” she whined. “If drums beat, Sokskinnie stay away!”

“She is only wandering around by the river!” Maria said flippantly, and turned her back to Atsitsi and the fire.

“When you go to river to meet her?”

In seconds the old woman began to snore. Maria waited for a while, and slipped noiselessly to the door. She unlaced the flap and left the lodge.

The small moon cast a faint light upon the silent tipis. The camp circle was mostly in shadow as Maria made her way to the inner circle. Dimly she recognized Nakoa’s lodge, south of his father’s. Kutenai turned to her and nickered softly, and she would have touched him, but an iron hand seized her, and jerked her backward. She gasped and struggled, and in her terror all she could think of was Siksikai. An arm brushed her breasts, and then the awful grip loosened, and she was spun around, and Nakoa looked into her face.

“Maria!” he breathed. “I could have killed you!”

“For touching your horse?”

“You know that Kutenai would be sought in coups!” He was shaking. Maria trembled too. Why hadn’t she thought of this? Why hadn’t she remembered that they not only walked like cats, but heard like them?

“It is so dark. I heard you walking and I thought—Maria, Maria, why are you so foolish? Did you want me to kill you?”

“No,” she moaned, touching his chest. “I want you to love me.” It had been so long since she had seen him, touched him. It had been a century of five days. “My darling! My dearest!” she whispered in English. “I love you! I love you!” she said in Pikuni.

“Maria, you cannot stay here.”

“I am not in your lodge!”

“I am to see no woman now.”

Maria looked around at the silent and dark lodges. “The high chiefs sleep. We can whisper.” She touched his beloved face, the tender lips. “Kiss me, Nakoa,” she begged.

Wordlessly, he bent and kissed her. Their bodies met and clung, and through her excitement she felt greater passion in him. “You want me, you want me!” she whispered.

“I always have,” he replied.

“But more—tonight!”