Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher) Page 26

  During roundup and sheepshearing, a dozen buckaroos or more filled up bunkhouse beds, ate hearty meals I helped serve three times a day. Sometimes, after supper, they held their hats in hand and asked me for advice as I dropped a fishing line into the river, brought home strings of chubs. The presence of my company seemed desired—or perhaps my fishing skills.

  Like kindles of kittens, travelers stumbled off stages on their way to and from Canyon City and points beyond. I anticipated their wishes, ignored the looks of curiosity they gave me when they saw chains of colored beads grace my neck or commented on the beaded belt that held the split skirts I liked to wear not just for riding.

  Visitors and buckaroos, travelers on a steamship, Sunmiet’s people across the river were all curiosities to me, formed a tapestry of blends, all shape and light and color, not unlike the photographs I saw in one of Mrs. Sherar’s books painted by someone named Renoir.

  I watched these visiting people with my eyes. I smiled. I saw how they used their hands to speak to bolster up their words, how quickly they made decisions, acted as though each new day belonged just to them. I did not unfold myself to them, never sure how much acceptance they would grant to a young woman who wore a dark mark from her past and carried it with her.

  Still, I opened up to some. A seed needs water. It was an act permitting both satisfaction and some sting.

  Most guests at the inn spoke as though I was not present, did not exist, was just a spirit hovering to pour more coffee, clear their bread-wiped plates. When they left, I wiped up snow and mud left by their boots set at the door, slipped cattail fuzz (to dry up moisture) inside moccasins Mrs. Sherar asked all guests to wear when they slipped their feet beneath her table. I was like a moth near light, wanting to be close to gather in the news they brought yet fearful of the pain they might just speak of in their conversations over biscuits and broth.

  It was how I learned of the people’s devastation in the spring of ’79, overhearing while waiting on tables at the inn.

  “President Grant done gave them redskins some of the best rangeland in the territory, that’s what caused it all,” said a rancher from John Day country as he cut fresh venison at the table. “Marshes and lakes and that bottom land along the Silvies. Best grass in the territory. They tried to wrap it up inside that Malheur reserve. Wasn’t enough space left for those of us who’ve done the work, carving out a living there on that less than God-forgotten land. Not to mention how it cut into our duck huntin’!” Bursts of laughter from the other guests settled down as he continued, warming to his subject, fork poking the air. “Got nearly a hundred acres fenced in now. No easy task with them Indians skulking around all these years. My granny still aches in her hip from an arrow wound from back in ’68.”

  “That’s why there’s the army. Did their job, I’d say,” reported a banker from the east.

  “Yep. Put poor Lo in his place at last,” said the rancher, and I wondered what had happened, what the army did. “Parrish, that first agent? Way too soft on them. Taught ’em things only a white man should do, like blacksmithin’ and buildin’. Hired away my best man, Johnson. Never did understand that. And then ol’ Parrish couldn’t manage those siwashes. Too kind, from what I hear.” He wiped juice from his chin. “Now Rinehart knew better. ‘Treat a dog like a human and they’ll treat you like a dog.’ Can’t accuse Rinehart of treatin’ those dogs like humans!”

  “Agents can make or break the reservation, you know. That’s our experience taming eastern tribes.”

  “Paiutes. Snakes! The lot of them. Phooey!” This from a woman with fat cheeks fluffed like a hen on a chair across from the banker. “My husband—he’s a military man—stationed at Fort Harney for a time. Those redskins give themselves fancy names, they do. And why should they? Just crude people, really. None of them, in fact, have a place on this earth except as interesting history. I’m surprised they camp so close here.” She poked her fork toward the river where Standing Tall and Sunmiet camped. “Must be tame ones.”

  “Not many o’ those left,” chuckled a lawman through his thick black mustache. “Old Henry Repeater made a good Indian out of a whole lot of ’em. Course having some of their own act as army scouts didn’t hurt none.”

  “That and the weather. They never should have gone along with those Bannocks. Even with old Sarah there to interpret, they should have figured something was up. She actually did the army’s work for ’em, bringing in that whole band without a shot! No offense, ma’am,” the rancher said, nodding to the soldier’s wife, “but Genr’l Howard took his time covering those attacks near Canyon City. If they’d a met up with the Umatillas like they planned, we’d all be speaking Paiute now ’stead of the King’s English.”

  “The army made up for the delays,” the woman answered.

  “Hard to believe as many redskins survived that march as did,” the lawman said, leaning back in his chair, thumbs tucked into a stuffed belt. “I wouldn’t want to make that trip over the Strawberries during a warm summer, let alone travel two mountain ranges and five hundred miles in the dead of winter. They’re tough. Give ’em credit for that.” His chair flopped back on all fours. “More coffee, Miss?”

  “Dead’s what most of them are, squaws and children all,” reported the rancher. “You cold, girl? Shivering like a poplar. Ended up marching even those who stayed home from the war. Anyway, that’s what shoulda happened long before it did.”

  “Heard some fellow bought his wife a white mule for a wedding gift and on the way to Canyon City lost the lot of his stock to a band of those siwashes, including the mule.” A pause to wipe a dribble of jam before the traveling miner continued. “Found half the white mule cut away on the trail some days later. Only part of the stock—or his wife’s weddin’ gift—he ever got back!”

  Guffaws followed. The army wife covered her mouth with her fingers in a fit of modesty. The subject changed, chairs scraped against hardwood floors.

  I was at a loss to speak. A heavy stone hit my stomach. My mind sought memories and voices, the whistle of a grandmother to her hawk, a young man fishing with his dog, finger-talking with a child no longer able to hear. These were people hard to control? I pushed back a sense of helplessness, swallowed, felt a mix of anger and despair that sent me running from the room.

  Mr. Sherar had learned some of it when he found me later near the falls, eyes red, fingers squeezing the leather knots draped around my neck.

  “They’re calling it the Bannock War but sure if the Paiutes didn’t get the worst of it,” he said. His voice was soft and low. “Not unlike the Irish takin’ on the Brits. Word is the Malheur band never intended to fight, just wanted that agent Rinehart to make good on his word. ’Stead they ended up shot at and herded into the Rattlesnake Creek fort like cattle. I’m sorry, Alice. They marched them to Washington Territory couple of days after Christmas. Most Bannocks high-tailed it to Idaho. Strange business.”

  I felt a well of sadness that spilled onto my cheeks. I wondered who survived and who lay dead. I even fumbled with a pang of pity for Wuzzie’s loss of power, his loss of face, if he still lived.

  “Ye knew some of them, Alice?” he asked, and when I nodded he said, “Thought as much. Took them to Fort Simcoe, near Yakima. Lots of casualties, I’m afraid. Especially to the women and wee ones. No blankets, they said, and people already starving. Gets cold in January.”

  “Those who live …?”

  “They’ll hold them. Prisoners of war, of course. More like walking dead. Who knows what ruin took their minds on a march like that?”

  “Perhaps death was a gift,” I told him, sounding dull even to myself.

  “Sure and it is to some,” he said softly before I fell back into a silence.

  I had days and months to wonder if Lukwsh and Wren, Grey Doe, Willow Basket and her baby, and all the rest survived. I pushed down the shame I felt that I was safe planting, weeding, harvesting in season, warm in winter, unfolding as a seed myself while I heard how they were forced to
live—or die—like falling leaves scattered by fierce and evil winds.

  Without knowing it, they had blessed me in sending me away. I did not endure what they did. And so the stone of guilt hung heavier around my neck. All old losses hovered around my bed at night, wetting the pillow and my face. Only exchanging thoughts with the Spirit allowed me to fall fitfully asleep.

  In the mornings, I woke, still seeking to forget. Does your crying help? What work is there for you to do?

  “I can hope for them,” I said and prayed that through Sherar’s Bridge, my labors and my songs, I would be ready for my purpose when I found it.

  My hands occupied themselves, a way to make the mind forget. Outdoors, I tended animals and their injuries. Neighbors brought their ailing cats or dogs my way to see if I could offer them some comfort or a cure. And once word spread about a bullsnake I claimed named Slick, visiting children always asked if they could watch me call him from the grass. They giggled and gasped with wonder when I struck a spoon against the ironstone dish, watched Slick’s diamond skin outline his slither from the bushes beside the house. Easing, without hurry, he made his way to a bowl of sugarmilk I saved for him.

  “How’d ya teach him that, then?” said a boy with brown dots on his nose.

  “When I leave the bowl outside,” I told him, “I see him come, once. After that, I always tap the sides. He teaches me!”

  “I didn’t know you could tame snakes,” the boy challenged.

  “He is not mastered. Just chosen to trust I will not harm him.” The boy gazed at the snake. “Marmots can be tamed, though. If they are taken young in spring and treated like a pup. One will follow you on a string and be your friend.”

  “How d’you catch ’em?”

  “Let your dog help,” I told him, remembering the joint efforts of a shiny black dog and me. “Pick a place to corner them when the mother is missing.”

  My heart lifted at the look of wonder that crossed the boy’s face, the way he skipped away, shared these secrets with a friend.

  My efforts with animals required no great skill, only special ways of listening to how they looked or moved. People told me what their “Freddy” did before he hurt his foot or what “Little Napoleon” ate before he became so ill, but those words did not speak as loudly as the tiny ways the animals talked. Their eyes, their whines and barks, or the way they set their bodies, moved their feet, the feel of their fur, the wiggle and warmth of their skin. Their language was not silent, but like many people, only missing words.

  When Mrs. Sherar told me there were books that I could read that might help animals heal, I was stunned. So in Portland, she took me to a cave-like building full of musty smells and quiet carpets and people bent with muffled coughs. She read to me in a whisper experiences of a healer put down on paper, not just remembered in a mind! Memories of people I did not know, would never know, things that happened in a time no one alive could still remember. We were allowed to take the book, to borrow it, she said as the ideas inside it did not belong to us.

  On our return trip, I held the book like fine china on my lap, gloved fingers pressed across its pages. Ella said as in passing, “God’s words are in a book.”

  My eyes looked to Mrs. Sherar’s to see if this was true, and she nodded her head. Twice in one day I was stunned. That such a sacred Spirit took the time to write things down for simple souls such as mine was beyond my comprehension.

  I learned to read, then, sitting next to Sunmiet’s Ann and others in a class conducted by Mrs. Sherar, helped out by Ella.

  “Let them teach needlework and farm chores at that reservation school,” Mrs. Sherar said, her nose raised as though she had smelled a varmint behind the butter churn. “We’ll spread your minds, not some manure from the calf barns.”

  We gathered daily for a time to read. “Cor-o-na Coff-ee Blend,” I said, my finger moving along the name of the green tin Ella carried from the kitchen shelves.

  “What is ‘blend’?” I asked, and she told me, to my delight, a word that had strong meaning in my life.

  “Roy-al Bak-ing Pow-der?” read Ann, handing the dark can to Mrs. Sherar.

  She nodded. “Excellent!” as happy in our learning as in her teaching. Stories from a children’s book soon found their way inside my memory. Once I even read a Scripture verse all on my own that Ella showed me, though I still struggled with its meaning. “Let all that thou doest be done in love.”

  And then we worked on making letters, writing words ourselves that someone else could read. Mrs. Sherar was a demanding teacher, enlisting Ella in her cause. But they encouraged, were a patient pair. They also had no difficulty with us peppering our lessons with our Indian phrases.

  “Learning those words makes us students, too,” Mrs. Sherar said and told me later it was one small way she could take revenge on the boarding school teachers who would not let the Indian children speak their language while at school.

  “It is only the very strong who do not forget the words that allow them to communicate with their kasas,” she told me sadly.

  Only the memories of the very determined are not washed away with time.

  “We are all students,” Mrs. Sherar reminded us as she rubbed out the words on the dark writing slate at the end of our lesson, “and should always be. No matter where you are, no matter how frightened or how bored, there is always something new to learn, something to help yourself with. Or someone else.”

  Sometimes in the evening while I mixed dried herbs quietly at the dining table after the guests had all retired, I wondered at my staying in this place beside the river as though I waited. It reminded me of the time I waited for my bones to heal, how that happened because others tended me, brought me food and water. There could be no greater sign of loving, I told myself, than having healed bones to show or noticing the way a painful edge of memory was worn down to dull by the kindness of another.

  I watched the Sherars, observed the ways they tended each other, the intricate thread they wove all through their lives. In an evening they might argue with the vigor of the ninth pig at suckling time over some small thing they later did not remember and then laugh while they tenderly massaged each other’s aching feet before the nighttime fire. Then as though they sent a signal without words, they decided together to say goodnight, douse the lamp, and head for bed. They filled each other up, and I was pleased for them, felt a lonely ache inside myself. I pushed aside the feeling, didn’t want to think that my listening Spirit wished for me to go through life alone.

  I watched other families, too, saw Sunmiet’s grow, and in one night learned that the gathering of Sunmiet and Standing Tall had shattered. I had no means to comfort Sunmiet when her husband struck her, cut her, marked another victim of his “corn spirit consumption” as Ella said. I did not know what to say.

  Sunmiet escaped from their camp to the Sherars’ inn where Mrs. Sherar gave her what she needed: a friend and understanding stated without advice. But Standing Tall’s wehe sliced a pain she never healed from, though she lives still beside the river when the salmon runs. I could do nothing, could not stop Standing Tall from disappearing on the very night their youngest child was born. I was not even present.

  How odd it seems to me now that all that happened on the night I first thought of being married to an owl, though not the way I did.

  I was charmed at first. All of us were.

  It began when a red-haired someone claiming the name of Dr. Crickett arrived on a Wheeler Stage, all smiles and sparkling blue eyes despite the muddy conditions of the road, the rugged trip down the grade from The Dalles. He carried a crying cat he called Spirit in a cage.

  Unlike many whose loud and boisterous ways sent me quietly inside, I loved the flood of this man’s words that reminded me at once of several people gathered in a wickiup together, sharing joys and laughter. His great laugh bubbled up from his large belly. His eyes were dressed with childishness and joy. And while his clothes looked a tight fit, legs cut high above his boots, ja
cket sleeves shorter than his shirt, he knew so much and willingly shared it with me—with all of us—I soon forgot his oddities. And of course, the cat calmed down as soon as we released it from its cage. Oddly, it just wanted to be held.

  This Crickett made it easy to ask questions, to answer those he asked of me. I could unfold myself with him because he built no barriers to his heart.

  “Doctors have to be good listeners,” he told me and touched my hand, a pleasing feeling I did not mistrust. “Good ears are more important for healing than good hands,” he said, wiggling his ears with his fingers.

  He was to spend just a night or two on his way to somewhere else. And this whirlwind left on the red-and-yellow Wheeler Stage. Then when the morning dishes were all steamed, I heard the cat wail in its cage and saw it carried once again by Crickett striding down the Bakeoven grade, returning to this place as though he had nowhere else to go.

  The light feeling his returning brought me held confusion in it, too. His presence captured all my thoughts, and I wondered if this was why I had not moved on, was meant to be here for the meeting of this Crickett I had suddenly attracted.

  I was of little use to Tai, the new Chinese cook the Sherars lured away from the Canyon City mines. I felt muddled in my daily routines, spilled herbs.

  Mother Sherar smiled at first, scooted me out, and said, “Go! Have a good time,” and it seemed to please her that I did.

  And so this Crickett—who called himself Spike—let me show him my special walking places along the high bare mountains of Tygh Ridge, my private fishing haunts, silent sites to sit and chew a fresh-baked roll, swallow cool iced tea. I loved the snappy cast of his bamboo rod dropped into Eagle Creek, could sit for hours watching the quiet way he worked a deep hole of the White River or how he drifted his hand-tied fly of bucktail and silk thread into the shady Deschutes to lure out a trout. My eyes caught the way the red hairs of his wrist glistened in the sun and water when he dipped his net to take his catch. There was little about Spike Crickett I found I didn’t like.