Gloryland (26 page)

The lieutenant didn’t seem at all upset by any of this, but I felt bad hearing it. It made me think of Grandma Sara and the Seminole. Well, the Indians who survived those times seemed to figure that
resisting anymore would just get them killed, so they tried to get along with the strangers who’d invaded their lands.

The lieutenant also told me, with a wolf ’s smile, that most of the Indians hereabouts used to go almost naked in the summer, when it could hit 100 degrees in the valleys. Being from South Carolina, I could understand that just fine. But some of the white folks considered it improper and made the Indians cover themselves. So the women got used to wearing those calico dresses, I guess.

Now this old woman was standing in front of us, her knees bent, arching back with one arm shielding her eyes as if she was blinded by what she was seeing or recoiling from a blow that hadn’t fallen yet.

We didn’t do anything. We just sat there, listening to insects feeding in the meadow, the bees droning, the wind. After a long spell, her arm went down and she stood up almost straight. Then she surprised the hell out of me by saying loudly, “What you want?”

It wasn’t that I’d never heard an Indian speak English before. Some of the ones living in Yosemite Valley or around the outskirts of the park worked for stock packers or traded skins for food or dug latrines for the army. But here we were in a place that seemed like it had been the same since the beginning of time.

I finally found my own tongue. “Hello, ma’am,” I said with a nod. “We don’t want anything at all. We’re just on patrol in this part of the park.” I stopped, not knowing how much she understood, but also on account of how hard she was looking at me. It was a bit unsettling.

“Well,” I went ahead, “we had a report of sheep grazin over here, and we got orders to find out if that was true.”

There was a long pause, which the river filled nicely, otherwise it would have been quieter than a grave.

“No sheep here, soldier.” The old woman spoke quickly when she did respond. She jerked her head toward the southeast. “You go away now.” She understood a fair amount, it seemed. But now I could feel the fear in her, even stronger than the fear that was so obvious in the girl. The old woman had kept it hidden till now. Along with the fear was anger, too.

I had to do something, so I dismounted slowly. A cavalryman is always at a disadvantage if he’s dismounted. I figured she might know that if she’d spent any time around soldiers. Before I got down, I looked back and smiled at McAllister and Bingham, not saying anything but telling them to stay on their horses. They understood and smiled back.

So we were all smiling when I turned to face the old woman again. I thought about the people in history who’d been killed by men who were smiling. How do you tell someone you ain’t a threat when you’re a soldier wearing a uniform and carrying weapons, and they’re Indian?

I decided it was best not to talk anymore just then, but to behave as if I was an invited guest. So I yawned and sat down with my back to Kolana Rock, facing the old woman. There were lots of things I wanted to know, like what tribe was she from and how did she come to speak any English. But I figured that just being still might settle things down right then.

“Ma’am,” I said softly, “we been ridin a long time, so you don’t mind if I sit a bit?”

She looked back with just a sly hint of a smile herself.

“Soldier,” she said, “you sitting now.”

I nodded again and said in as clear and as level a tone as I could find, “Yes, ma’am, I guess I am, but I meant no offense, and I’m sorry if I offended you or the girl.”

The old woman was small but had a power in her. She didn’t answer right away but looked at me steady. Then her eyes went inside, and she started talking. “When I . . .” she pointed to the girl, “was like her, soldiers come. They kill, but not all. They chase. The people . . .” she bent over and reached down, grabbing some dirt with her right hand. Then she straightened and opened it to the wind, “go away, many places. Most never come back. Cold. No food.”

She stopped talking and her eyes looked away, then came right back at me. “Soldiers burn everything,
everything
.” Her voice rose higher as she spoke, but she whispered the second “everything”
much softer than the first. “The people not killed,” she continued, words emptying out of her, “much sickness.”

The little girl urgently pulled on the woman’s arm, making her lower her head so she could whisper something to her. The woman said something back just as quick, and her body seemed to give off a coldness as she spoke. The girl lowered her head then and turned to stone.

The old woman carefully sat down a few feet from me.

“Why you here?” she asked again, calmer this time.

“Like I said, ma’am, we’re just on a patrol, and we don’t mean you or anyone here any harm.” I was trying my best to sound reassuring. “We’re not that Mariposa Battalion came through here years back, we don’t soldier for the state of California. We’re Ninth Cavalry, United States Army, and we’re here patrollin the park, that’s all, lookin for sheep or cattle grazin where they shouldn’t be, lookin for poachers, ma’am, lookin for timber thieves and fires that weren’t put out proper. We’re just doin a lotta lookin, ma’am, but one thing we ain’t lookin for is families like yours here, cause there ain’t no Indian war I know of goin on in Yosemite.”

She looked at me and smiled a little, but her eyes were small and cold like two stars barely lit in a winter sky.

“Good speech, soldier,” she said. “You say no killing people, but I think long time about soldiers killing my relations, there.” She pointed toward the east, and I wondered if that meant she was Paiute. I knew they came from the east side of the Sierra. She hesitated. “Maybe you the same?”

My shoulders slumped a bit at that, and I got frustrated and sad cause she wasn’t understanding at all. But I couldn’t fault her opinion. How would my mama and daddy have responded if a group of Klansmen had come knocking on our cabin door, offering to help us out?

“Ma’am,” I started again, “look at me. You ain’t the only one who’s seen bad times. My men here and myself, our people were slaves once, and when that ended, they were beaten and whipped
and strung up under trees just so they’d never forget who was who, so I understand how—”

“You know nothing!” she choked out. “Nothing about us, understand nothing. You not white, but not our people . . .” Her voice trailed off.

I let a little quiet get in before I tried again.

“Ma’am, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just a colored soldier from South Carolina, a soldier who’s African and Seminole and who knows what else. So I guess when you look at me you could just as easily be seein a friend as an enemy, and right now I’m under orders to be a friend.”

I paused, knowing how that must’ve sounded, then added, “I’m a soldier and I follow orders, that’s true, but I got a heart, ma’am, and I got family like you, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my people. So I appreciate why you don’t trust a word I’m sayin, and I appreciate you talkin to me at all, but please watch our actions, ma’am, before you decide.

“We’re headin out now, and I’m sorry for comin in here and scarin you and the girl, but we got a job to do, and our job is takin care of the park. And maybe we can’t do that like you, but that don’t mean we don’t care bout it, cause we do.”

I was a bit out of breath after that. The girl still looked scared but now wondering too. That woman smiled that little smile again, and spoke to me like I was a child.

“Soldier,” she said, “your park a new thing, but my people live many lives in these mountains.” She spread her arms wide and said a name I couldn’t understand. “I born in Ah-wah-nee.” Now, I knew that was the name the Indians called Yosemite Valley. “Ran away when those soldiers came. Long time after, I come back, work in hotel, speak American.

“Now new soldiers come but not stay. You go away, but we stay. Maybe you come back, we talk. Maybe not. Go away, soldier. Bye bye.”

I got up and so did she, and at least she was still smiling.

“My name’s Elijah,” I said to her.

“My name not for you,” she responded with a small shake of her head. “Name of this place not for you. You don’t know where you are. You lost, soldier, you lost.”

She paused as I mounted Satan again.

“Maybe you come back, Elijah,” she went on, “maybe I tell where you are, and you get off that mule. Stay off, stay on ground.”

“That’d be nice, ma’am,” I said back. “I hate not knowin where I am, so I’d appreciate hearin that bit of information.”

I nodded to my men and we rode off. But as we started to get some distance between us and those two, I kept on thinking bout them. Did the old woman and the girl live there all the time or move from place to place? It made sense that these folks would head down to the foothills before winter and return to Hetch Hetchy in the spring.

One question in particular had been gnawing at me since we first came upon them, and it finally got clear in my head. I sat back deep in the saddle and pulled gently on the reins, stopping my mule. Bingham and McAllister were riding ahead and didn’t notice, went on cantering toward the trail out of the valley.

I rode slowly up to the old woman, who had already gone back to her work.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I called out, “but you’re all alone out here. Where are the rest of your people?”

Then her eyes got a look in them that cut and stung. In a voice halfway between a sob and a cry, she answered, “All dead, all gone, you go away too!” And she put her back to me and kept gathering her acorns. I sat there for a bit, but that was all. Then I put spurs to Satan and rode away to the others.

It didn’t take long to catch up with Bingham and McAllister, who had waited for me just around the first bend. They never asked for an explanation, and I was done talking for that day. From halfway back up the trail, the old woman and the girl had shrunk to almost nothing, or maybe they were just such a part of the place that you couldn’t really pick them out. I never saw them again.

That old woman of Hetch Hetchy reminded me of my grandmother, both full of pride and anger and fear all mixed in. Grandma Sara and this woman, they had the same defiance, the same fire, but the Indian woman was still in her home and Grandma Sara had been torn away from the place she loved. This old woman and her grandchild hadn’t been taken from their home, at least not yet. They were what made Hetch Hetchy a place that lives in my head even after so many years have passed.

When we got to the patrol cabin back at Rogers Lake, I wrote in the ledger about the day’s patrol. After the date, I wrote: “Entered Hetch Hetchy. Found Indians, inquired about sheep in area, none found, continued patrol.”

What I didn’t write was how quiet the valley was when we left, quiet the way a lake rides over something you can’t see or touch, something that’s drifted down slow through water. And the weight of coldness keeps it down so you never see it again unless you jump into it and pull yourself to the bottom.

Some might call that suicide. But what did the old woman and the girl call it? I don’t know if it had a proper English name, but it felt like a kind of sadness so deep that it would make you want to die and never stop praying for the deaths of others.

Or maybe it would make you want to live, and never stop praying for the lives of others. Yeah, I been there too.