Love to Water My Soul (Dreamcatcher) Read online

  She lifted one of the greasewood sticks Lukwsh had lying between them, poked it into the tule frame she worked in her hands.

  “Too hard to know who friends are,” Lukwsh said.

  “Talk only with the soldiers,” Sarah told her. “They are wiser than the agents. Get them to move the agents to bring you seeds and what you need to harvest first, before you agree to anything the agents say about the land. We have had our own problems on our reserve.”

  “But if they are family?” I said, confused by the mixture of people who could touch the Paiute lives.

  “Even good families can have bothersome brothers,” she said to me and laughed, but it sounded like a sadness.

  “Soldiers,” I said, clinging to the faint memory of my father.

  “It is not my decision who to speak with,” Lukwsh said. She moved away from Sarah ever so slightly, as though her words brought a space between them.

  “Each will need to choose.”

  “But the army does not come this way. Nor agents. We gather our own food, make no trouble.”

  Lukwsh pulled a small cattail rope around the bundle of tules she held in her hand, doubling three and four of the wide reeds to form the duck decoy’s body. I had seen these made before by Lives in Pain, but Lukwsh worked faster, her hands surer in the waning afternoon light.

  Sarah shook her head, looked at me directly while she spread the tules of her decoy like a fan of feathers. “Each will cull, like separating ripe huckleberries from hard ones,” she said. “They will spread us out like these tail feathers, separate us, make us wonder where we belong. We might forget that we are from one source.”

  “My people at Warm Springs signed a treaty,” Lukwsh said, defense in her voice. “They do not need to stay in one place.”

  “O ho!” Sarah said. “You Warm Springs and your Teninos and Wascos think you have no trouble now. It will not last!” She spoke as though she had visions of some future time. The tules rested on her wide thighs; the rings on her fingers peered out from the reeds like noses beneath a threadbare blanket on a cold morning.

  “The Bannocks and the Snakes do not like the reserve set aside for them or their agent who they say cheats them. Soon they will come here, wonder why you are allowed to wander where you wish while they are asked to stay in one spot. You will remember what I say when that time comes.”

  Sarah looked around, missing something, stopped her work with reeds, and added: “Then only the army will stand between you and empty bellies.”

  “There is always more than one way,” Lukwsh said.

  Sarah’s eyes searched as though she had not heard her or wished to talk no longer. I could tell she sought the dead duck. Neither she nor Lukwsh could go further making their decoys without dead birds, without real feathers and hides to stretch across the tule frames. To fool a live, flying duck required first something of its own kind to land beside, belong with. I started to share this, tell her there were no ducks, when Shard entered, and what he held in his hand by their necks made my thoughts a lie.

  “Good,” Lukwsh said, a smile on her face. “We need the dead to make this one look alive. It is a strange thing.”

  Sarah clucked her tongue, admiring the plump mud hens. She took a bird from Shard’s hand, held it, neck and head down, so the fluff of the feathers fanned out.

  “Life could not be recognized without death,” Sarah said.

  “I would try a time without it,” Lukwsh said and nodded her head once to Shard in thanks.

  She stood among a cluster of men and women beyond the main fire, her head bent to Sarah. Lukwsh spoke softly, and then she and the men stepped back in laughter at what was said. Lukwsh smiled, and it pleased me to see this woman in a warm place, among hitse. No more gatherings were planned before people returned to their wintering sites, and it appeared that I would stay. Lives in Pain had not renewed his argument with Lukwsh. No one else had claimed me as their marked child. Tonight Shard and Stink Bug would roll mats on their side of the lodge, and Wren would roll hers next to mine. Wren told me of this, and it must have been their coming and going through my drift of hazy sleep and pain that I felt but did not see.

  Shard appeared beside me and lifted his hand, a swift movement. Without thinking I crouched low, squeezed my eyes in habit, waiting to be hit or kicked. My face flushed warm.

  “I would touch the shadscale wrap, to make it fit tight through the night,” Shard said.

  I expected pain instead of gentle touches.

  “The leg heals well,” I said, pulling away from him, looking around for his dog. I had not talked with him since he tended to Pinenut.

  As though he knew my mind, he said, “The dog is taken care of. His paws were not webbed. He would have fished poorly.”

  “He was useful for hauling and for flushing ducks.”

  Shard shrugged his shoulders. “Flake fishes,” he said, though I could not imagine the big dog entering the lakes to fish.

  Shard eased himself down beside me as though he thought I wished it.

  I didn’t.

  It was Sarah who I wanted to sit close to now, Sarah who moved between two worlds, both of which I lived in, though one was only in my mind. It was Sarah who I imagined could expand my plan for searching. I would find out how long she’d be here, when in the spring she’d return. If the food lasted and I lived, made myself useful in this lodge of many people, perhaps I could go with her when she went to the cities. Perhaps she would understand my wish like a deep thirst to search another world to find where I belonged.

  But Sarah stood with a circle of men and women, laughing and sharing stories in a language I did not understand.

  Maybe in the morning, I told myself. I will find her in the morning.

  Lives in Pain hobbled on the other side of the fire, and I thought he glared through the lifting smoke. I chose not to touch that trouble. He should be gone in the morning, back with the Modocs.

  Across the grass circle I watched Wren run errands for Grey Doe’s one-hand commands, bringing sweets to her and a blanket to cover her thin legs while she and other old women sat in places of honor where they could see the dancers without straining. Drummers beat out the steady rhythm, the fire flickering on faces intent on the dance. I watched people pair off, step back away from the grass flattened by moccasined feet.

  Only Stink Bug took away from the quiet of the moment. I had not seen him for some time. He had skill in avoiding places of work. When I did spy his chubby frame closer to the wickiups, farther from the fire, I wished I hadn’t. And I wondered if what he did with the dogs was what he meant someday for me.

  I watched him in unsettled silence, the sounds of the drums still beating in my ears. He poked with a stick at a litter of pups, causing growls and snarls. I started toward him. Seeing me, he stopped and disappeared into the crowd.

  “What’s wrong?” Shard asked behind me.

  “Just puppies,” I lied, not telling him how my heart beat watching the dogs scatter, defending themselves weakly against a larger intruder, one who did not belong.

  THE SIXTH KNOT

  STRUGGLING SPIRITS

  In the year I interfered with what Wuzzie called “Wren’s spirits,” spring came early but did not forewarn.

  Cool rains and early snowmelt from Snow Mountain and the Strawberries flooded little Mud and Malheur Lakes and created another lake beyond them, washed over marshes and willow-lined sloughs. The Silvies River ran swiftly, carrying gifts of winter to the Malheur. From Snow Mountain into the Malheur River, sheets of ice cracked and clattered in the night, waking us. We thought at first that someone attacked with the pop-pop of rifle shots, but it was only the Silvies’ ice breaking up, announcing the spring.

  In the meadows, not far from where I first fell from the lava rocks, flowers bloomed. Large blossoms of a dozen tints and sizes spilled over the plains like stained rocks beneath a fast moving stream, bright and brushed with color.

  Our cluster of wickiups sat near the Silvies Rive
r on the north side of the growing Malheur Lake. At the lake’s edges, in the warm spring sun, bare-breasted women squealed as they splashed and dipped their strong arms deep into reedy water seeking tule roots so tasty in spring. Dogs watched in wonder, and small children scampered about in the first warmth of the season. Older ones looked after younger brothers and sisters in their cradle boards, while others directed the moving of wickiups, helped build new ones away from the slow seeping lakes. Boys took their dogs to corner marmot pups, with plans to turn them into pets kept on a leather string. Grey Doe trained another young hawk.

  I had not seen Sarah for nearly two years.

  She took her leave without excitement the morning after I first met her, and I wondered if the Pyramid Lake Paiutes too lacked the word for good-bye. Rumors flew about her, though. About her travels, what she shared with tibos about the people, that she was too friendly with soldiers, or that her skin had turned white. Even Lukwsh found speaking of her troublesome, must have, since she rarely chose to do it.

  Her absence did not stop my yearning, my wondering what her life was like, how I might find a way to travel with her to a target of my own.

  Several of the young men, Shard included, had taken jobs away in the winter with tibo ranchers. With their earnings, they rode to Canyon City to purchase grain and blankets they delivered to us, then rode back to the “bunkhouse” at night. We saw little of them, but they remembered us, still kept us in food like a good son or husband.

  When spring came, their visits were a little longer, and I hovered around, listening for stories of how they lived and worked in white men’s worlds.

  A blond-haired smithy they called “Johansen” showed Shard ways to fix wagons and make tools. He brought one or two for Lukwsh that spring.

  “O-o-o-h. So smooth,” she said of the kapn he handed her. “I will dig deep with this, put lots more camas in my Sally Bag.”

  He beamed with her praise and would have stayed longer, told her more, if Grey Doe had not appeared with her scowl.

  “Take it away!” she said when he handed one to her as well. “My hands will not touch that thing.” She raised her one good hand. “What that Swede man shows you to make could hurt the roots. Next you will bring us hoes and tell us to dig up the fields and plant corn. Uch!” she said turning her back, dismissing his gift. “You challenge each spring enough with the cattle your ranch-man lets graze on the prairie.”

  Her lip curled, her chin lifted toward me as she added, “And with that one still with us.”

  He had made no kapn for me and gave the one Grey Doe rejected to Wren. She took it with her toe-tapping dance, movements that became more complex as she entered each spring.

  His gift to Wren was expected, though it did not stop the prick of shame I felt for failing to warrant his favor. Neither did it stop my wish to speak with him and question what he knew.

  Flake followed him toward the place where the men worked on tule boats, getting ready to gather duck eggs. I had made peace with the dog, even laughed at his nose caked in mud from his sniffing at the lakes, liked to watch his brown eyes almost sleep when I scratched that place along his nose. I started after them.

  I walked past moo’as who clucked their tongues, giving directions for the right way things should be done while others peeled tule roots in the afternoon sun and stacked them beside grass shelters newly built. Women handed wet roots to others, moisture dripping off tiny cold bumps along their brown arms. With bones aching from the wet spring, older girls—like me—moved the cradle boards heavy with plump babies so the sun’s rays gently filtered through woven willow hoods that arched out over the babies’ heads. The thinness of a long winter could be seen in the moo’as’ faces as they watched and sang their soothing songs.

  I moved with fragile force, my leg still aching from the cold that found its way along my healed bone. I hoped any who noticed me would assume I had a purpose. And I did.

  “You walk as fast as you ride,” I said, breathless, catching up to Shard. He looked surprised to see me, moved his head to the side as if uncertain who walked beside him. “I’m the same,” I said, giving Flake wide distance between us.

  Shard grunted, and for a moment my boldness frightened me. Perhaps I had assumed too much. But I persisted with my effort, trying what I’d seen older girls do to find favor.

  “The kapn is a good one,” I said. “Lukwsh likes it.” The dog sniffed at me, and my fingers wiped at his head. “You make other things?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. I didn’t know then he carried with him the sting of Grey Doe’s words, his own struggle with whether leaving was the thing to do, if blending with the ranchers to help feed the people would bring comfort or confusion. I did not occupy myself with such thoughts then.

  “What do the women do?” I said into the pause that always preceded Shard’s statements, as though he heard the words but took extra time for them to travel to his mouth.

  “Who notices?” he said.

  “Is it as Sarah told us? That some speak kindly? That they wear necklaces to remember their religion? Have you seen soldiers who are friendly, or did she tell that as a story?”

  Silence, then, “Such a meddler,” Shard said, a smirk on his face like an eagle pestered by a magpie. “I thought Wuzzie told you not to meddle.”

  “Just stretching my wisdom,” I said.

  He laughed. “Your meddling gets more skillful.”

  From a distance, Wren waved her new gift at us, then turned back to show more friends, tapping her head with her fingers.

  “She does the dance often,” I said.

  A meadowlark warbled, landed on a blade of grass that barely held the bird’s weight.

  “We were to watch her,” Shard said, his eyes far away, remembering a time past, “Stink Bug and I. One day we did not. She walked behind a new horse, a spirited dog beside her. The horse was not pleased and kicked both. She almost died. But Wuzzie made her well.”

  “Wuzzie says she speaks with spirits when she dances or falls.”

  Shard said nothing.

  “I do not believe in them—spirits,” I told him, my slender shoulders standing straighter. I pushed long strands of hair the breeze blew into my eyes.

  “It has grown, the time she takes,” he said. “Now that I am gone I see she adds the finger dance.” His own fingers repeated Wren’s movements. He shook his head.

  “She says she must do it. I tried to make her stop once,” I said. “But she cried.”

  I waited for Shard’s pause then heard him say: “You must have upset the spirits. They make her complete the dance to stop her crying.”

  As an older, wiser woman, I know there is one Spirit, the One and only One. I know that now. And even then I questioned in my mind what Shard had said. But such things were new to me, the talk of spirits moving through some dance. The closest I had come to even sensing such a Spirit then had been one night when I had raised my eyes to a moonless sky dotted with blinking stars and wondered who had made it, had caused the glitter and the raven sky. Oh, I remembered asking once for help, behind a disappearing wagon, hoping someone would keep me from harm while I hung onto a gold chain and my fleeting memories. The Modocs came, but I did not think of them as answer to a prayer, though perhaps they were. For here I am now, a grown woman, granted keenness and a clarity about who controls all things, who quenches every thirst, who is the one true Spirit.

  But then, Shard’s words troubled me like the heavy snap and friction that precedes a summer storm.

  “You found a way to be a good brother,” I said.

  He grunted, not sure what to do with my noticing of how he solved his problem.

  “I can set it aside,” I said, “except when she falls down. Then it is hard not to touch her.”

  “Who says Wren cannot be touched?” Shard asked, surprised.

  I hesitated. “Perhaps it is the language. I do not speak it well yet, just trade words.”

  “Who tells you this?” he said, hi
s voice demanding now.

  “Wuzzie. He said I must never touch her when the spirits speak to her, when she dances or falls down.”

  “This is new,” Shard says. “I will speak to him.”

  “No!” I said, clutching his arm, dropping my hand when he stopped. “Wuzzie is like an old marmot: he does not like to be bothered with young pups.”

  Shard’s shoulders eased and he smiled. “This is a good picture of Wuzzie, one to keep in mind.”

  I relaxed until he added, “When I ask him why he says we must not reach out to Wren.”

  I wished I had not spoken, at least of Wuzzie and his spirits. I wanted to talk about what happened in the other places, to gather up news as I gathered grasses for winnowing. I would winnow the ideas, decide what would work when I was ready to leave.

  Even the narrow land place between the lakes disappeared under the spring flood. The men gathered tules and cattail leaves strong enough to have withstood the winter storms and spent their mornings soaking and twisting leaves into rope, making slender, sturdy boats. Buck Brush, Oytes, and Shard and the many uncles and cousins used the boats not just for harvesting ducks and mud hen eggs but to ease their way across the narrows in high water, to go from the north to south side of the lakes, to gather up ducks the dogs had helped push into nets.

  I watched the making of the tule crafts, silence required. Shard’s elbows reached out like arrowheads from his hips as he stood to see what had been done. From a distance he could be selected from many by those elbows, poking out.

  My eyes had witnessed the making of boats and the gathering of tules many times now, and I felt suddenly grateful, with the warm sun on my face and the smell of spring earth in the air, to live where all that the people needed had been supplied.

  “Not so strange,” Grey Doe said when Lukwsh handed her the tubers dripping wet from the reedy lake. “This much water has happened in my life before, that time when Oytes and Ega—when my son broke the new colts in the corrals. We could barely see the tops of sagebrush in places. Remember? Those horses tired fast.”