Picture Perfect (38 page)

That's where Will was sitting now, holding the Big Twisted Flute that Joseph had carved sometime before Will was even born. It was a knotted tube of cedar, long and thick, painted with the image of a horse. It had the ability to give a young man power over a young woman, and Will remembered Joseph telling him the story of how he had seduced his own wife. “I dreamed of the music,” Joseph had said, “that came from her soul. And when she heard it she left her parents' lodge and followed the melody until she realized she was only following me.”

Will ran his fingers over the air holes of the flute, the mouthpiece. He touched it to his lips and blew once, making a sound like an un-milked cow. Then he rocked back and forth, tapping the flute against his wrist, watching the moon slide through the cracks in Joseph's front door.

He recalled a dream that began with thunder. He was in the middle of a storm, the rain lashing his bare shoulders and his back, and he was screaming for the doe to move. He knew that the lightning was coming, that it was going to hit the spot where she stood, but she was perfectly still, as if she didn't even know it was raining. She was the most stunning creature Will had ever seen, with a high curved back and chains of dandelions around her stepped ankles. A road opened up before him; he saw that he could walk to where the doe stood, or move off to the right where there was no rain at all. It was so easy to just turn and leave, and he didn't want to be flooded by the rain.

He started toward the doe. He shouted, pushing her with his fists, and finally she bolted down the other path into the sun. Will tried to follow, but at that moment the lightning that he had known was coming split down his back, searing him with fire and breaking his bones. He fell to the ground, amazed that there could be this much pain in the world, and he knew that he had saved her.

It stopped raining, and he lifted his head—the only part of him he could still move—to find the doe standing over him, nuzzling the palm of his hand. Then the doe was gone and Cassie was there, touching him, healing; and safe, because of him.

Will looked up when the door swung open. Joseph Stands in Sun pulled off his jacket and sat down on the edge of a picnic bench. He waited for Will to say something.

Will shook his head clear. It would mean coming back to Pine Ridge—not just physically, but in his
ton
, his soul. Then again, he realized, he had fit in no better in California than he had among the Sioux; maybe it was his fate to shuttle between the two worlds for the rest of his life, until he found some hybrid oasis like the home his parents had created.

He handed Joseph his Big Twisted Flute. There was only one strain of music that Cassie would hear, because she herself had played it a thousand times. Eyes glowing, Will leaned toward the medicine man, and asked how he could take away her pain.

M
ARJORIE
Two Fists looked up from the pair of child-size moccasins she was beading and watched Cassie make another mistake. “
Hiyá
,” she said, pointing. “If you don't concentrate, you'll have to throw the whole thing out.”

Cassie pushed her needle through the soft leather, knowing she was inept at something these old women could do skillfully, despite their failing eyesight and arthritis. “I'm sorry,” she murmured.

Rosalynn White Star glanced over her bifocals. “She's always sorry,” she said.

At that, Dorothea snapped her head up. “Better sorry than stupid,” she said pointedly to Rosalynn. “She's got other things to think about.”

Cassie heard Dorothea's words, but she didn't pay them much attention. It was the end of the Cherry Ripening Moon, the month she called July, and her baby was due in a matter of weeks. Her body seemed too heavy to carry, although this was nothing compared to the weight of her mind. With every kick and tumble of the stranger inside her, Cassie was reminded of Alex, of what he still did not know.

She still missed him. In her dreams, she imagined Alex forgiving her, pulling her close to his side. She saw his face in the deposit line at the bank in Rapid City; in a play of light over the Black Hills; reflected in a rain puddle. She tried to think of the things he would say when she showed him his son or daughter, but that meant seeing herself back in Los Angeles, away from these rolling plains, and this Cassie could not picture at all.

It had become more comfortable than home. She couldn't deny that she still loved Alex, always would, but neither could she forget that the five months she'd spent in Pine Ridge, she had been free. She hadn't spent her afternoons guessing Alex's moods and acting accordingly. She hadn't awakened in the middle of the night, terrified she had again done something wrong. She hadn't been beaten, bruised, punched.

Once, when she was in Pine Ridge town, she'd seen an adolescent boy kick a stray dog that had run off with a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. The dog was old and half blind, probably had mange, but Cassie had run up and thrown herself between the boy and the mongrel. Some people on the street had pointed, laughing at the pregnant lady bent over a mutt, her belly grazing the earth, her voice screaming at the boy who'd done the damage. “
Witkowan
,” they had called her.
Crazy woman
.

But for Cassie it had been instinct. She had re-created the reservation as a sort of neutral ground, a place where safety was guaranteed. She wasn't willing to let her image be threatened.

These days Will was never around—Cassie felt she saw him even less now that he'd moved back temporarily to Pine Ridge. He spent a great deal of time with Joseph Stands in Sun, and he wouldn't tell Cassie anything, except that he was finally learning the ways of the People.

Cyrus and Dorothea and everyone else were busy getting ready for the
wacipi
, the big powwow held at the start of August. With some of the other elders, Cyrus went out looking for the forked cottonwood tree that would be used for a pole during the Sun Dance. Dorothea spent all her free time canning blackberry preserves and gentian root tonics, which she planned to trade at the festivities for the intricate shawls and rough woven rugs that others had crafted. When she had finished packing a large carton with her wares, she told Cassie she was going to Marjorie Two Fists's lodge to do quilling and beading, and asked Cassie to come to take her mind off her troubles.

So Cassie sat for the third afternoon in a row with a group of old women, feeling less and less adequate as she ruined the beadwork on bracelets and jackets and moccasins. Dorothea laid aside the pouch she'd been embroidering and picked up the edge of Rosalynn's quilt. “This will make a good trade,” she said. “That's the best part of the weekend.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Marjorie said. “Even if I'm too old to dance, I like seeing the young ones in their costumes. I like listening to the drums. So loud.”

Dorothea laughed. “Maybe if Cassie stands close enough to the music the baby will come early.”

It was the last thing Cassie wanted to happen. She didn't know anything about infants; she hadn't considered the actual facts about this one, like diapering and burping and nursing. She was thinking of the baby more as the means to an end, but there was something about that end—the finality of it—that she didn't really want to see.

The door swung open, and there, framed by the light summer rain, was Will. Without realizing what she was doing, Cassie stood up, letting the moccasin she'd been working on fall to the floor so that beads scattered and rolled into the cracks of the smooth pine boards. “Oh,” she gasped, bending down as best she could to collect what had fallen.

“I know, I know,” Marjorie murmured. “You're
sorry
.”

“Afternoon, ladies,” Will said, grinning. “How's it coming?”

Dorothea shrugged. “It'll be done when it's done,” she said.

Will smiled; that fairly summed up his philosophy of life. He looked at Cassie. “I thought you might want to take a walk or something.”

Marjorie stood up and took the beads from Cassie's palm. “That's a great idea,” she said. “Take her before she destroys anything else.”

Dorothea looked from her grandson to Cassie and then back again. “She's in a mood,” Dorothea warned. “Maybe
you
can snap her out of it.”

That was exactly what Will had planned to do. He imagined Cassie should be in high spirits these days, knowing that soon she'd be a good thirty pounds lighter, but she seemed to slip further and further away by the minute. Almost as if, Will admitted, she was already making the break.

He had one chance, and it was coming. The day of the big powwow, he would make her understand. But in the meantime, it couldn't hurt to try to make her smile. “What do you say?” he pressed.

Cassie peered over his shoulder at the open doorway. “It's raining,” she said.

She shifted her weight to her other foot. She had wanted to see Will for days now; she was restless; she should be jumping at the chance to leave this dreary little tea party—what was her problem? “We'll get wet,” she said. “We can't go for a walk.”

Will's eyes began to shine. “Okay,” he said. “We'll do something else.” Suddenly he was standing in the circle of women, trying awkwardly to fit his arms around Cassie's bulk. He started to hum and whirled Cassie around in an offbeat two-step, crushing moccasins and knitting bags under the heels of his cowboy boots. Rosalynn, delighted, began to sing in a high sweet soprano.

Cassie's face turned bright red. With no sense of balance, she found herself clinging to Will's shoulders for support. She barely saw Marjorie stand up, grinning, to move her chair out of the way as Will steered them toward the open door.

Dorothea, Marjorie, and Rosalynn stood eagerly pressed against the streaked windows, watching the couple and clapping, remembering days long ago when they had whispered beneath a blanket with a lover; or had shaken the package of their future, trying to see inside; had maybe even danced in the rain. Cassie listened to the rich, woven sound of the old women's laughter, a different kind of music entirely, which seemed as fresh as the giggles of young, courted girls.

She stared into Will's eyes as they crossed the threshold into the storm. Splashing through puddles, she could feel herself stepping on his feet, feel the baby in her rolling slow, feel the rain cool against her cheeks. It washed everything away. For a lovely, sodden moment, Cassie truly believed that it could stay like this.

 

H
ALFWAY BETWEEN
M
ARJORIE
T
WO
F
ISTS'S HOUSE AND HER OWN
home, Dorothea sat down to think about the ways that history repeated itself. It wasn't that she was tired, or that the bag that contained her beadwork had suddenly grown too heavy. It was that all of a sudden the spirit of Anne, her late daughter-in-law, had been walking beside her, and the frost of her breath on Dorothea's neck made it impossible to go any farther.

Zachary, Dorothea's only child, had fallen in love with the white schoolteacher thirty-six years earlier, and although she had never wanted to hurt her own son, Dorothea had done everything in her power to stop the attraction. She had left the appropriate roots and dried flowers under Zachary's mattress; she had prayed to the spirits; she had even consulted Joseph Stands in Sun. But this was meant to be. In fact, the day that Anne left Pine Ridge to distance herself from Zachary, the day that Zachary saddled a horse and rode miles to find her, Dorothea had been standing only yards away, watching the whole thing and shaking her head.

Dorothea would never have admitted it at the time, but Anne became her obsession. When it was clear that Zachary was going to marry her come hell or high water, Dorothea told him not to expect her as a wedding guest. But she made a point of watching the woman who would be her daughter much more closely. She stood outside the classroom of the school where Anne taught and familiarized herself with the lifts and valleys of her voice. She followed her into the general store and kept track of the items Anne bought: talcum powder, ginger drops, blue eyeshadow. She went to the government offices and memorized her credentials, her blood type, her Social Security number.

Three days before the wedding Anne had fallen asleep beneath a cottonwood outside Dorothea's house while waiting for Zachary. Dorothea had silently knelt beside her and touched the incredibly translucent skin of her cheek. Mesmerized, she crouched for nearly ten minutes, committing to mind the map of pale veins that crossed the white line of Anne's throat.

“What are you doing here?” Anne asked in English when she woke up.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Dorothea said, speaking Lakota.

Anne struggled to a sitting position, aware that ‘Waiting for Zack' was not the answer to the question Dorothea was really asking. “I love him just as much as you do,” Anne said quietly.

“That,” Dorothea answered, “could be the problem.”

She stood, ready to make her way back into her house, but she was stopped by Anne's voice. “I'd like you to come to the wedding,” Anne called out, in Lakota.

Dorothea immediately switched to English. “I won't set foot in a white man's church,” she said.

“Still,” Anne said, almost casually, “I'll see you there.”

Dorothea whirled around. “And how do you know this?”

Anne smiled. “Because nothing could keep you away.”

The day of the wedding, Cyrus had begged Dorothea to reconsider, if only for Zack's sake, but Dorothea remained in her housecoat, sitting on the worn brown couch. The minute he left, however, she dressed and walked to the nearest road, hitchhiking her way into town. She arrived at the church, and true to her word, stayed outside, peeking through a crack in the makeshift wooden walls. The minister was offering his final blessing, after the damage had been done. Muttering to herself, Dorothea watched Zachary's dark hand gently squeeze his new wife's.

When Dorothea looked up, Anne wasn't staring, besotted, at Zack, or even paying attention to the minister. She was half turned to the back of the church, looking right through the crack in the wall at Dorothea. She winked.

Dorothea stumbled backward into the dusty street, and then she let herself laugh. It was the first of many times her daughter-in-law had exceeded her expectations. The first of many times Dorothea had admitted to herself how much she liked Anne, how much respect she had for her, and—now that she was gone—how much she missed her.

“You know that after the accident, Zack let go because of you,” Dorothea said aloud. “He wouldn't have lived without you.” She knew it would be that way with herself and Cyrus, too—once one of them joined the spirit world, the other would die quickly so they would be together again. It had taken Dorothea years to understand, but now she was a firm believer: love was that way. You could not render it in black and white. It always came down to the strange, blended shades of gray.

 

C
ASSIE SAT BESIDE
C
YRUS ON A LOW FOLDING BEACH CHAIR IN THE
shade, waiting for the beginning of the Sun Dance. The four flags at the top of the sacred pole waved in the dry wind: white, yellow, red, and black, like the four races of man. An eagle looped lazily overhead, which sent a cheer up from the observers. “Good medicine,” Cyrus whispered to Cassie.

It was the final day of the powwow, and Cassie was entranced. She had walked with Dorothea among the heavily laden trading tables, picking out a wide hammered bracelet for herself and a brightly woven swaddling blanket for her unborn child. She had peeked into the canvas tipis set up by the families who lived farther away, amazed at the juxtaposition of eagle-feathered war bonnets and Levi's blue jeans, draped side by side on wire hangers.

Today was the last day of the Sun Dance, the most sacred dance of the festivities, the only one that required months of preparation and training on the part of the participants. Cyrus had not told her much about it, just that it was a ceremony in praise of the sun, a ritual for growth and for renewal. For the past three days, Will had been one of the dancers, much to Cassie's surprise and delight. She liked seeing him dressed like the others, stamping and whirling around the central pole the way his ancestors had been doing for years. “I don't know what made you do it,” she had told him after the first day of dancing, “but you're a wonderful Indian when you try.” And Will had grinned at her, had almost looked proud to see himself through her eyes.

Cassie sat forward as the men filed out of the sacred lodge, led by Joseph Stands in Sun. Like him, they were all wearing long red kilts, their chests striped with blue paint. They wore wreaths on their heads woven of sage, and they carried eagle-bone whistles. Cassie tried to catch Will's eye as he moved past her, to wish him luck or to say break a leg, but he kept his face turned up to the sky.