I Am Regina (6 page)

Barbara and Marie are gone. Peter Lick, Elizabeth, the others are gone. They parted from us two days ago at a fork in the Indian path. Peter told me I would be going to the Ohio region. He said the land there is gentle and rolling ; rich with game and broad green meadows. He told me not to be afraid. Perhaps I would be fortunate. Perhaps I would be given to an Indian family who would care for me, who would treat me as their own. It happens.

Barbara and I cried at our parting. Barbara said, “We must be brave, Regina.” Those were her last words to me.

I watched Galasko and Shingask lead the horse carrying my sister and Marie away. Barbara kept looking back. Strands of brown hair fell across her face. She smoothed them back with her long pale fingers so that she could see me. I kept repeating the words to the hymn we sang when the Indians tried to burn her—“a mighty fortress is our God.” But even these words, even Sarah's warmth as she clung to me, could not fill my sudden emptiness. Barbara was all that remained of my home and family.

I try to be brave now as Tiger Claw approaches me, but Father's scalp hangs from his belt, a reminder of what Tiger Claw did, what he might do to me. There is always the crack of whiplash in his voice. I cringe as he comes near.

He barks words at me. Although my body aches from sleeping on the ground, I quickly stand and back away from him—three steps, four.

Tiger Claw unwraps the shawl from a sleepy Sarah and hands it to me. Reluctantly, I don my shawl that doubles as a harness. I feel the hard knots settle into the sores which fester on my collarbone and shoulders.

Tiger Claw lifts Sarah up from the leafy bed. She rubs her eyes, slow in awakening, then stiffens, sits like a wooden doll in Tiger Claw's arms while he carries her to me.

My shoulders burn and my back aches, for I have carried Sarah for the past six days. I say to myself, please, do not make me carry Sarah today. I will die if I must carry her.

Tiger Claw is about to place Sarah into the harness when, suddenly, I find I cannot help myself. I drop from beneath her and curl like a caterpillar.

Sarah screams on the ground beside me while Tiger Claw beats my back and shoulders with a willow branch, over and over again. Piling pain on top of pain. I feel as if I were truly dying. Let this be the end. Dear God, I cannot go on.

But I do. As if I were outside myself, I watch Tiger Claw fit a whimpering Sarah into my harness. Sarah clutches my neck, afraid. But I find I cannot calm her anymore. I have no strength. Burden in place, I follow Tiger Claw through a darkly wooded hollow and down the narrow Indian path that seems to know no end.

These past two days, I have had nothing to eat but withered crabapples. I dream of Mother's johnnycakes as I climb through windfall. The johnnycakes are warm with venison gravy. I am sinking my teeth into one when the thorns of a locust branch pierce my feet. I scream at the pain. I scream until I am numb. I scream until I cannot think.

 

I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death. There is no food to eat save grubs and tree bark. There is no shelter. Blood surrounds me. It lies on the ground where my feet have trod. It stripes my back where Tiger Claw has beaten me. It fills my body but it does not keep me warm. I will never be warm again. There is frost in this wind. I feel as naked as the trees.

I ford streams. I wade through marsh and swamps. I climb mountains. I am a pack horse. Sarah rides me. Tiger Claw whips me on. Day after day after day.

 

 

 

I
t must be November now. My eleventh birthday has passed and I have had no time to mark it. The cries of geese no longer fill the sky. Frost coats the ground and ice skims the wide and shallow stream we have been following southward through this wooded valley. I do not know how many days it's been since I was separated from Barbara. Maybe nine or ten.

I have seen no white people since I was parted from my sister. I have seen no towns or wagon paths. We are on the far side of the Allegheny Mountains. Giant sycamores, their trunks as thick as five large men, rise from rich bottomland. Vast herds of elk gather at the scattered salt licks. Yesterday, the south wind brought us rain. At home, the east wind brought it. This is a strange new land, a wilderness to me.

My stomach aches with hunger. Nuts and corn flour have been our only food for Tiger Claw has not stopped to hunt. But early this morning, after we had forded a rushing river and come upon this stream, Tiger Claw tied Sarah and me to a white oak tree and left us for several hours. When he returned, Tiger Claw had a deer slung over his left shoulder.

Now we grill the deer meat above a fire on a spit Tiger Claw has fashioned out of saplings. I warm my hands over the flames, impatient for the meat. Sarah plays beside me. She lines three stones up, one behind the other. She moves them, one at a time, through a maze of furrows she's created in the dirt. I know why Sarah likes this game. The stones are hers. She controls them. Sarah decides which direction each will take, what its fate will be.

Tiger Claw allows us only a small portion of cooked venison. Even though we don't have salt to season the meat, I savor the rich wild taste. Five bites and my portion is gone.

“Please, may I have more?” I ask, instantly regretting the white man's words, for Tiger Claw raises his hand, threatening me.

“No speak like white man! You are Indian now!” he says in his tongue, fixing me with dark, angry-looking eyes.

I look away, glance at the whiteness of my hands, my feet. I
am
no Indian. I never will be. Indians are savages! They scalp fathers, steal their children....

Sarah places a small gray stone into my white palm and then another, until I hold all three. She climbs into my lap.

Sweet Sarah, trying to comfort me with gifts. I rest my cheek against her tangled hair, wishing she could talk. I
need
her to talk to me.

Sarah feels so slight as she cuddles in my arms, no more than skin and bones. She needs food.

Tiger Claw watches us, his teeth tearing into deer meat.

Resigned, I put aside resentment, and
I sign
to him the way that he has taught me. “May we have more meat?”

“Too much meat make you sick,” he says in his tongue. I speak and understand too many of his Indian words. I have no choice.

But Tiger Claw cannot control my thoughts. Like Sarah's stones, my white man's thoughts belong to me. She crawls out of my arms. I hand her the stones and she resumes playing with them.

Tiger Claw sits on his heels, poking the fire with a small forked branch. There is deer meat cooking on the spit, but he takes no more. Cold and hunger do not seem to bother Tiger Claw. The cat who scarred him must have given Tiger Claw unnatural power. He never seems to weaken or grow tired.

Tiger Claw lifts his eyes and they meet mine. There is an expression in them I have never seen before—a softening to their gaze. He says strange words to me. I shake my head, trying to tell him that I do not understand, hoping my ignorance will not provoke his anger.

Impatiently, he walks his fingers along the ground, meaning travel. He points to the fire, then, in quick sharp movements, outlines in the dirt the shape of houses.

He must be speaking of a
village.

Tiger Claw makes a fist. He strikes his chest, once, at the spot where his heart beats.

Tiger Claw must be speaking of his home.

“Soon?” I ask him, my voice trembling.

“One night,” he replies, stretching as he stands.

He cannot fathom what these words mean to me. At night, curled around Sarah with only the wind at my back, I have kept myself alive with visions of a warm cabin with a knothole in the floor. I have dreamt of a log barn filled with cattle and sweet smelling hay. I have pictured people unlike Tiger Claw—good, kind people who take Sarah and me into their arms, feed us, then wish us Godspeed as they set us free.

We douse the fire and cover its ashes with wet leaves. I slip my arms through my woolen harness, the knots settling into calloused grooves. Tiger Claw lifts Sarah to my back. I feel the hard fist of her hand clenched around her stones. I pray silently in the white man's tongue, “Lord, guide us safely to a home,” while we walk the Indian path following a stream.

The next day, the sun shines weakly through a graying sky. In the afternoon, the wind picks up, bringing the scent of wood smoke. Tiger Claw halts. With his knife, he cuts down a sapling which grows along the path. In horror, I watch as he now removes my father's scalp which he's carried tucked in his belt and fixes it to one end of the sapling. He carries the gray-haired scalp dangling on the stick before him as if the scalp were a trophy.

Sarah lies uncommonly still and silent on my back. She must sense my fear. What kind of people would welcome the sight of a white man's scalp?

“We go to village,” Tiger Claw says. And when I do not immediately follow him, he grips my arm, forcing me.

We pad silently down the path, just up the bank from the winding stream. “Everything will be all right,” I whisper to Sarah, trying to believe my words. The land is gentle and rolling, unlike the Alleghenies with their steep slopes and sudden valleys. Perhaps it is speaking true. Perhaps we will be welcomed.

The smell of wood smoke grows stronger. We round a bend in the path and suddenly come upon a clearing tucked among the trees. Crude log huts with bark-shingled roofs are scattered throughout it. Animal bones litter the ground outside the huts and a deerskin, stretched out on a rack to dry, ripples in the wind.

Tiger Claw raises his left hand and halts us beneath a tall maple tree that marks the forest's edge. I search the village for orchards, neatly tended gardens. I see dry corn stalks still standing in ragged patches; charred logs jumbled in a heap within a circle of large stones. I search for a log barn and find a crudely built rectangular log house erected by the stream. This village is not what I have pictured in my dreams. This is a mistake.

Tiger Claw raises the sapling which dangles my father's scalp. He shouts a chilling cry. It sounds like a wounded rabbit, only louder.

Sarah throws her arms around my neck. Her stones tumble to the ground. Tiger Claw shouts again—a wild, savage cry that chills me to the bone, for it speaks of blood—of death.

Men, women and children pour out of the log huts. They wear torn and dirty clothes, mostly made of deerskin. Although the air is chill and damp, some children wear no clothes at all. I don't know how they can survive the cold.

Tiger Claw halloos his awful cry. The people halloo back at him. They stare at me with hate-filled eyes. If I were brave like Barbara, I would escape. Now.

“I bring you one scalp! I bring you two girls, two naked frogs, to replace our brothers who have died!” Tiger Claw yells above their cries.

The people mill around us. A small boy with a pock-marked face pinches my arm. He's hurt me! Frightened, I pull away from him. The crowd parts. An old woman, dressed in a tattered deerskin sacque, walks slowly through the path the people make for her. I touch Sarah's cheek, trying to comfort her while the woman's dark, hooded eyes appraise us. A snakeskin curls around her graying hair.

Tiger Claw speaks to her. I cannot understand all the words he says, but his tone is prideful. The old woman gives me a sharp look that speaks contempt, spits, then turns away, walking stiffly through the crowd. Now a tall, aged man with sharp, uneven teeth and wearing a necklace made of bear claws, pounds Tiger Claw on his back, as if congratulating him. He shouts to the other villagers and they disperse, talking excitedly among themselves.

I don't know what they plan to do to Sarah and me, but it cannot be good. I back away from Tiger Claw—one step, two—wanting to escape, find a hollow log, a cave to hide in. Tiger Claw's hand snakes out and grabs me. His hard fingers burn into my shoulder. I am trapped.

The Indians emerge from their huts. I shrink at the weapons they now brandish-sticks, axes, clubs. Even the children carry them. They form two lines in front of me, one line facing the other. A small boy jumps up and down, bashing his club against the ground. A dark-skinned girl shrieks, circling a sharp pointed stick through the air.

So this is our welcome. Our journey's end. We are going to be beaten by these people. Sarah starts to cry.

Tiger Claw points to a painted post which stands on the far side of the clearing, between a rack of drying meat and two upturned canoes. “You must run between my people. Run to post.”

“No,” I tell Tiger Claw, signing frantically that my legs are too weak to run. I point to Sarah who is still strapped to my back. Sarah will receive the burden of their blows.

“My people wait.” Tiger Claw pushes me and I stumble forward into the gauntlet.

Sarah squeals as a boy whips his branch across our faces. I lift my arm, trying to protect us both and the dark-skinned girl pokes my stomach with her sharpened stick. Ahead, a lean man raises his axe, waiting to cut us down. Sarah screams. I weave to the other side and the old woman in the deerskin sacque clubs my arm and then my shoulder. Three times she clubs me. Then the old woman grabs my arm and drags me downhill, my body bruised with pain. Behind me, people shout as I stumble down a rocky bank to the stream.

Four young women join the old one at the edge of the water. I struggle to escape from them as they unstrap Sarah from my back. She kicks and screams and I throw myself at them, trying to pry Sarah out of their arms. The old woman pulls me around, grabs my dress and rips it off me.

“Sarah!” I scream as two women wade into the stream, holding Sarah up between them. They lift Sarah's thin white body up, then down into the rushing water.