A Sweetness to the Soul Read online

  I heard that question; knew the answer. The weight of it burned my stomach like a hot poker from the fireplace stabbing me inside: a walk to the water, shoes off, toes dipped inside.

  Mama said nothing. She looked at me and I knew we shared the thought.

  Then Pauline took ill.

  The house became awash with steam and rags and bloody phlegm and sweat; and it was as though I began to die myself watching these little ones I once could comfort without effort slowly slip away. Mama and Papa were tireless at their babies’ sides, taking only the short time it took to lay Loyal to rest to leave their bedsides.

  At Loyal’s funeral, Mama and Lodenma talked of Beatrice’s health and Lodenma reported she was fine. I remember feeling both relief and a sense of jealousy all at once and then guilt for having such a thought.

  “Why not let me take Baby George with us?” Lodenma offered. “Keep him from harm’s way until the girls are better. Free Jane up to help you more and you won’t worry so about the baby.”

  Mama cried, her faced pressed into Papa’s chest after she sent Baby George home with Lodenma.

  There was never any question that I would stay.

  All through the night, whenever I awoke, I saw Mama in the shadows of the oil lamp, leaning over Pauline or wiping Rachel’s perspiring brow or heard Papa scrape his chair as he moved closer to the bedside, pulling blankets up, pressing hot rags to their throats to push the swelling down. Their breathing rattled like branches scraping the isinglass windows in a wind storm and while it sounded wretched, I was relieved each time I woke to know they both still breathed.

  Pauline did not awake on Wednesday.

  She still gripped the tiny carving I had placed inside her hand hoping it would keep her safely. Mama took it from her, saw the baby’s face carved with the open mouth, and wept as it dropped from her hands. I put my arms around her and she stiffened, just so slightly before she set her shoulders solid as a granite rock, withdrew, and pulling the hankie from her sleeve, tended next to Rachel.

  Mama began dying that day too, I think. What mother wouldn’t? She whimpered when she thought me sound asleep and Papa held her till she dozed. Then he’d leave, go out into the cool night, and I could hear him cleaning stalls in the barn by oil light until all hours, then come in, the scent of pain and manure dripping from him as he tried to work his grief out through his pores.

  Doctor Jessup returned, exhausted as he went from house to house, an epidemic in the making now, he said. He listened to Rachel’s breathing, and we all hovered over her, the sassy one we hoped would spit in the Grim Reaper’s eye.

  He checked Rachel’s wheezing. He told of many children dying. Grown-ups too, in Fifteen Mile Crossing, some on the reservation. No one seemed to know the reason. Some said once the fever broke, the sickness went away. It was keeping the air open to the lungs that mattered. Said he’d heard of folks sticking reeds down, breathing like a man was underwater, but he didn’t hold with that approach. “Have to cut the throat inside and could just bleed to death,” he told us. “Best to keep the fever down with cool baths.” He felt my cool forehead as he added: “And pray.”

  Sunmiet told me later that many died on the reservation. More were saved by desperate mothers poking sticks of fat-slicked cockleburs down their children’s throats, poking air holes in, pulling the mucous and the breath of death out beyond their children’s reach.

  Rachel fought hard, she did, but her future lay in the memories of those who loved her, not in the vivid enchantment that had been her promise.

  She died on Friday, the third within five days; my mother’s fourth. Only Baby George and I remained.

  Of course, it was not the creek nor the cold nor the wet that really did it. I know that now. Medical science pushes forward with its explanations I could have used then, though it would not have changed the end result. But for years I did not know. I blamed myself, as did another.

  Neither did I understand why God spared me. What could be so important that God would let me live?

  I consider that dreaded time in 1860 as though preserved in brine—meant to look at every now and then but to never know the sour taste again. Only recently, with the words of Reverend Doctor Thomas Condon of the Congregational Church have I had reprieve.

  “Each dark place has God in it,” Reverend Condon assured me. “God promised he will never leave us or forsake us no matter how deep we sink or how heavy the burden we are asked to bear. And there is purpose in that darkness, some plan God is working out. We will recognize the light the better for having seen the dark.” He patted my shoulder gently as he added, “We must trust his wisdom that when his time is right, the plan will come to light.”

  I would have gone with them, Loyal, Rachel, and Pauline. Ambrose too—all of them—to the quiet, peaceful place they must still be in, if only to save myself from the hole left in my heart and the guilt I knew would live within my soul, forever.

  And so it almost did.

  A PLACE OF BELONGING

  The mind sickness moved inside of me that summer and into the next. I could not walk or sit or sleep without the feeling that something was amiss, that some part of me no longer wandered on this earth. As I swept the house at Mama’s request, I’d turn, thinking I should check on Pauline. When I walked the cows home from the hills with a switch, I’d look ahead, to see if Rachel had opened up the gate, and then with a piercing pain of remembering, make my way through the herd to open it myself. Even Hound who was as old as I, abandoned me it seemed, preferring the quiet of the cabin and the closer huddling that my mother gave to her only surviving son.

  Sunmiet and her family rescued me, pulled me from the pool of pain I’d fallen into. I doubt my parents would have noticed my sinking, so involved were they in the depth of their own grief. But nothing puts the salve to sorrow like the presence of an understanding friend, one who does not ask but is simply there. And Sunmiet and her family—all of them I soon considered as family—were there. That’s why when I encountered Joseph in the year to come, he saw my spunk and strength and not my sadness.

  Sunmiet had risked something of herself to be with me that year. It marked a change in her life as well. I had seen little of her the summer and winter following our losses. Then like the swallows that returned in the spring, she had come to the potato patch where we’d first met. She came alone.

  I heard her approach and hid in the tall timber. I didn’t want to be seen, even after I recognized her.

  Sunmiet stood as still as a blue heron beside the planted patch, her eyes narrow slits scanning the weaving rows of tiny plants poking up through the moist soil. Her slender hand shaded her brown eyes from the hot sun. Above her, wispy clouds streaked the June sky like a finger of vermilion swiped across a blue surface. A light breeze filtered through the junipers and firs, lifted strands of her dark hair which eased like spider webs across her face.

  From a distance, I watched her pulling the wispy strands from her eyes. She told me later she felt eyes on her and hoped it wasn’t Standing Tall. “Ever since his name-giving, he seemed to think he could ‘stand tall’ over me whenever he wished, following me, telling me what to do, to think, expecting I will do it as if he were my father or my husband.”

  She was excited that morning and wondered who was watching at the potato patch beneath the big fir where the nanas, “sisters,” had scratched the ground like raccoons and raised the big brown roots her ruler-teachers from the school called potatoes.

  Sunmiet scowled. I heard her say something in the click-click swoosh language. Then louder so watching eyes could hear her, she spoke. “After all my efforts, my family will arrive and find me alone. Where are those nanas?”

  Together, we heard the crows call and lift leaving the fir branches bobbing from their flight. Together, we watched wilalík, “rabbit,” scamper down one row, but she did not see me or my nanas.

  “What could have happened to them?” she said to her pony but loud enough for me to hear. He shook hi
s head as if he understood her, snot spraying from his nostrils. Sunmiet turned the spotted horse who pulled against his reins. He hopped and bucked once, kicking at the skinny-tailed dog who sniffed too close to his heels. The pony walked slowly along the potato rows while Sunmiet concentrated on the ground. Her long braids hung suspended in the air, away from her as she leaned, looking for tracks or signs that I was near.

  “If I do not find any sign,” she sang out, “I will follow the road to your house even though I do not wish it. Not without my father or my friend.” I think she spoke out loud as much for the courage of hearing her own conviction as to let me know what she had in mind.

  She said something to the horse, k’usi, in Sahaptin, then to k’usik’usi, “dog,” who trotted beside them. “We will walk around the plants once more, k’usik’usi, and then we will ride to the house of Huckleberry Eyes.”

  Sunmiet stopped suddenly, noticed the little weeds I’d pulled that morning. They lay still green between the rows, just beginning to wilt. She raised her eyes and looked around again, searching for me, her bare legs exposed beneath her skirt. She sat quietly, her eyes scanning.

  I’m not sure why I kept myself hidden from her. It must have been my wish to avoid having to explain why I worked alone now, where the little ones had gone, what had happened to the beings that filled me up, gave me my spunk and spirit.

  Sunmiet sat as though she would never move.

  With a sigh, I took halting steps out through the buck brush snuggled in among the giant firs. Her horse startled, did not bolt, and Sunmiet turned to see me walking toward her.

  “I did not believe it could be you, Huckleberry Eyes,” Sunmiet told me later. “That girl with smudges on her face walked slowly, not with the bird-like quick-quick steps of my friend. That girl had heavy shoulders and she was very thin. Almost all bones. Her dark hair hung in clumps that once were braids. Now small sticks and fir needles stuck to them. And that bonnet and dirty string! Not like my friend!” She shook her head amazed.

  I wore a faded, dirty dress with a tie belt that exposed my thinness and I did not care.

  “And her eyes were dull, not pools of blue. But I knew those eyes,” Sunmiet told me nodding her head wisely. “Those eyes had been the watching eyes.”

  I walked directly toward her and once my exposure was begun, I did not hesitate like most non-Indian children who had never seen a Warm Springs Indian before. Sunmiet’s pony flickered his chest to ward off a spring fly and stomped nervously.

  On her horse, Sunmiet towered over me. She must have decided it was not wise to challenge an unknown, and so slipped off and stood, waiting to be equal.

  I walked close, as we who know no Indians often do, until her moccasined feet stood rounded-toe to the bare toes of my feet. Sunmiet seemed confused by my boldness, standing closely, as family.

  “Sunmiet,” I said, and then I knew she recognized me.

  A gasp escaped her mouth before she could stop it. Her eyelashes fluttered nervously as she reached her slender hand out and touched my face. Her thumb slid across the sharp bones beneath my eyes and she cupped her fingers warmly over my small ear.

  “Jane?” she whispered, her eyes searching my face.

  I raised my shoulder to hold my friend’s hand at my cheek and sighed, the first touch I’d felt in months that did not carry sadness with it.

  Sunmiet stepped around me, circling, still running her hand over my head to touch my other cheek, making sense of it. “Are your people gone? Did you not find land animals to eat? You are so thin!”

  I shook my head, no.

  “My uncles and father have success when they hunt,” she said with pride. “I will ask that they bring some meat for you and your family.”

  Again I shook my head.

  “But you cannot have eaten for many weeks,” she said, alarm in her voice. She stared at my meatless bones.

  “We have venison,” I said, looking down. “I haven’t felt like eating.”

  Sunmiet told me later she wondered why I did not wish to eat, but did not want to be rude. She had already been too bold. “I should have waited for Huckleberry Eyes to speak further,” she said, though questions filled her. What had happened? Where are the nanas? Why is she so thin if they hunted successfully?

  I took comfort in the gentleness of her touch and her silence. Crows chattered. Sunmiet looked around.

  “Who are you looking for?” I asked, wary. “Did someone come with you?”

  “For the nanas. And Loyal, the one who looks like all the food he eats is sour.”

  Tears pooled unbeckoned in my eyes. I blinked them onto my cheeks and looked away, wiping my face with a dirt-streaked hand. Her dog licked at the wetness of my fingers that I let hang loosely at my side. Sunmiet shifted uneasily on her feet. “Loyal did have a pinched look,” I said, trying to relieve her discomfort.

  “My people come behind me,” Sunmiet said, straightening. “We wish you to come to the river, to fish for the Chinook and gather eels. Your nanas, too,” she added.

  Again, my eyes filled with tears and Sunmiet spoke to her breath, as if chiding herself for saying things that distressed.

  “We can go to your house,” Sunmiet said, motioning me up onto her horse. “I will speak my wish to the mother and the father.”

  The year before, Sunmiet had ridden with me to our home where Mama nursed Baby George, my sisters and Loyal played, and Papa washed his hands in the store bowl on the plank table beside the house. Sunmiet told me then that she had two brothers, younger, who looked exactly alike. “Same-as-One” she called them though they had their own names. We spoke like older sisters, full of stories of our charges.

  Mama and Papa had been wary at first when they met Sunmiet; pulled their children to them. Then, like a dog who sniffs a danger and discovers it of no harm, they lost their alarm. Mama even asked if Sunmiet would like some sweet-smelling tea before she went into the house. Sunmiet had pressed the tin mug to her lips, drinking slowly, looking about.

  “We will learn to hold the dip nets and help my uncles and Standing Tall,” Sunmiet told me as we approached the house. “Scrape the slimy eels from the rock walls near the falls. Hold the baskets for others at night.” Dismounting, we tied her pony. “We will laugh.” She looked at me out of the side of her eye. “If you wish it.”

  A small smile formed on my face. Sunmiet returned it, lifted her eyebrows in a question.

  I wondered if I wished it. I had not wished for anything for so long, except to be rid of the large hole in my chest that had once been my heart. For so long, nothing had mattered. Mama and Papa grieved apart from me and kept Baby George in their care and no one else’s. They wore black and spoke in whispers when I came into the room. I thought my face would not recognize any creases made in it from laughing.

  A long summer of the same seemed overwhelming and I made a decision for myself.

  “We can ask,” I said. “If you wish it.”

  I heard the falls some distance from the river before I ever saw it. A roaring like the winter winds that surge through the tall firs filled my ears as the small band made its way over the ridge and began the steep switchback descent down the deer trails toward the white and turquoise water of the Deschutes. Captain Hood’s mountain with its south notch gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight.

  This country between the mountains and the river, east, is difficult to describe. In tiny script I once read what a Surveyor General had written on a map across this large expanse of land: “Heavily timbered ridges separated by immense ravines,” he’d penned. We rode now into one of those “immense ravines.” A rock ripped loose from the horses’ feet and bounced, bounced, down the rocky ridge as we rode below the crestline.

  My knees ached. I tightened them into Puddin’ Foot, my mule, as he made his way, far back in the line, in and out of the ravines of the canyon. Sometimes, I could see the wide eyes of a chubby baby looking through the wildrose brace of its cradleboard. It stared at me as it bounced on
the side of the saddle of its mother riding several horses ahead and descending. A rawhide circle with a spider web mesh hung from the cradleboard. A feather attached to it shifted violently with the breeze and with each bounce of the board as the horse stepped. “Same-as-One” waddled side-by-side close to the horse of Sunmiet’s father, Eagle Speaker.

  It surprised me that I rode here among these Indians. That they wanted my presence surprised me. That the old woman with the face of wrinkles did not spit in disgust at my arrival surprised me, though I noticed she also did not smile.

  But my parents giving permission surprised me most of all. And yet it shouldn’t have. My parents had so many things to think about, had Baby George to care for, had other help to handle cattle and then crops. Papa’s tolerance for “Injuns” as he called them, had increased what with the calming of hostilities, their help with the harvests. And he sold cattle to the Indians, found several pleasant to deal with. So he’d agreed when Sunmiet’s parents caught up with her. If I wished it, I was free to go with her family to the river.

  Thinking back, I might even say my parents looked relieved when I left.

  Sunmiet looked over her shoulder at me as we rode. She smiled, her teeth displaying dusty grit collected from being close to the back of the line of horses and dogs and people making their way to the summer camp. Though the river was a half-day’s ride from our home, I had never seen the rush of white rapids known as “the falls” that raged through the lava rocks.

  “You wished this?” I said, permitting my tongue to rearrange my grit, speaking the words loudly to my friend.

  Sunmiet laughed. “I wished it! And what I wish, the ruler-teachers say happens.”

  “Then wish us there, quickly,” I said tightening my knees into Puddin’s withers to keep from sliding forward over his neck. His sure-footed steps slid us down the hill while his round rump seemed to push up against my back. The trail crossed creeks at the end of spring runoff with just enough water to permit the dogs to lap and the horses to splash.