In Calamity's Wake (9 page)

T
HERE ARE POINTS WHERE TIME ACCORDIONS
. It is as if the past, the present and the future are pressed together in a concertina, every minute touching, and then every minute open to be viewed. It was like that while I lay there in the pointed dark of the teepee at night, with the warm bodies of Lizzy and Poesa sleeping beside me. Often I dreamed of my father, and then I would wake to recall the past.

In dreams he lifted me from my boots and we rose in the sky in a great balloon, my horse beside us. The balloon carried us over oceans churning with dolphins, whales and giant turtles. Together we crossed purple mountain ranges and white deserts, the sand braided and ropy, moving with the wind as if alive. My horse nuzzled my neck and breathed in my ear. I held my father's hand and I could feel the specific weight
and the shape of his fingers. I inhaled the smell of him and it was warm and edged with soap.

And then I woke and he was gone. The dark was so complete it hurt to try to see so I closed my eyes and covered them with my hand.

Father—

J
OSEPH, WHY
come here?

Forgive me, Father.

Come in.

I busied myself with the dishes in the hot water while my father steered one of the mission priests to the main room. I peeked around the corner. The old man was in his robes but the dust from the ride had reached his waist. A sunburnt circle of skin showed beneath the thin dark hair on the crown of his skull. His neck was creased over the collar. I had seen him before but not in our house. He was from the mission closest to us. He rode a pinto around in the afternoons and stopped to talk to the children. I remember his tanned neck squeezed by the white collar.

Come in.

I won't until you tell me.

Tell you what? Tell you what?

Until you tell me that you will take my confession. I have come to repent. You must take my confession.

I will, of course. Come in. Come in and sit down.

My father arranged the chairs and the screen. I stood quietly by the sink. The rooms baked with August heat. The father rushed in and knelt on the floor not bothering with the screen or any pretense of privacy. My father put his hands on the man's shoulders in compassion and then drew a chair into the middle of the room and sat with his back to the man.

Please, turn the chair. I don't want to hide from you or from God anymore.

My father turned his chair around and sat, legs crossed, hands folded at his knee.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. My last confession was two days ago.

My father recited: Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. Say the sins you remember. Start with the sin you find most difficult to say. After confessing all the sins you remember since your last good confession, you may conclude by saying, I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life.

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell.

Say them. Say the sins you remember. Ask me for help. Ask God for forgiveness.

Help me; I have abused my authority. I have a lover.

You committed to be celibate.

I have broken that commitment. I have been with an Indian girl. I have been with her many times. I am sorry for this sin. I am sorry too for riding to the mission in the south and confessing there.

Why do you confess confessing?

Until this day I rode to share confession with a priest who does the same as me. I came to you today to make a real penance. I need forgiveness. I hurt this girl.

What do you mean, you hurt the girl?

I hurt her by taking her trust, Father. I feel real affection for her. I would never injure her, but I hurt her family and the trust they gave me. I hurt myself, Father. I abused myself when I could no longer bring myself to abuse her. I betrayed my vows. I betrayed God. Father, I come to you to ask for punishment. I must have forgiveness.

There was a long silence that I did not understand and then my father said, Our acts have grave consequences but forgiveness does not depend on penance. When you ask God for forgiveness you are forgiven. Listen to the words of absolution, the sacramental forgiveness of the Church. Make the sign of the cross with me. God has already forgiven you. It is not to me
or to God that you must atone now. It is not inside the Church that you must seek forgiveness. Apologize to her. Apologize to her family. Make it right with her and them. Leave the Church and give thanks to God for your freedom. Give thanks for his mercy which endures forever. But leave the Church. Brother, be who you are. Be with the girl if she will have you, if that is what she wants. Otherwise go home to your family. Brother, you are no longer a priest. You are only a man. Look me in the eyes. You don't have to be a good man but don't be a fool; don't be a liar and keep on pretending.

S
HH
.

I opened my eyes and Grandmother leaned over me. Her face was as evenly dark as the room surrounding us. She left me and moved to adjust a smoke-flap. She returned to me and by the thin light filtering in, her moving hands were visible.

You were fighting in your sleep, she signed.

With who? I signed.

With God. You were fighting with God's eyes.

E
YES ARE BEAUTIFUL, SHE SAID
. E
VERYONE
has beautiful eyes.

O
N THE LAST DAY OF MY RECOVERY A HAPPY
little boy brought me a small trunk painted brightly with beautiful forms. Inside was a blanket and food. I thanked him and shook his small hand and hitched the trunk behind my saddle. I set out with Poesa and four young riders to get back to my journey. There was the most astonishing difference between the morning and the afternoon. In the morning it was cool and windy but in the space of four hours we experienced a wonderful wonderful transition back to summer. I was near insensible with the heartless blue sky. My friends had fun with me, making jokes with each other as if I wouldn't notice. They moved like angels, joints all made of butter, and they had high smooth voices. I enjoyed just listening and following and watching the world as it changed. They left me at the Bozeman Trail. It was a sadder leaving than I had expected.

We rode on. My horse snorted frequently to remind me that I was not alone. We rode over hills and through ravines. On the top of a high hill we stopped. A great Indian burial ground was spread out before us. There were some thirty large coffins and seven small coffins. Around the coffins were the artifacts of domestic life: spoons, hair combs, copper nails, leather belts, shoes, beads, books. Most of the coffins were closed but some were open and empty. Several had broken lids and the bodies that lay inside were bleached by sun and rain, wrapped in blankets and skins. One hand bore rings and the arm of another skeleton was ringed with bracelets. Wildflowers grew between the coffins in abundance, flowing over the hill as far as I could see. It was quiet and as clean and clear a day as I had ever known.

We travelled on and, some hours in, weakness overcame my ambition. I felt a pain in my ankle. I steered us to the river and let her drink while I rested. Removing my boot I saw a huge black boil.

Who-oo, I whistled at the hard swelling. When did you arrive?

I fell back in the grass feeling as if I was made of infection. Full of fevers of every kind and my thoughts breaking apart. The little river beside us was about ninety yards wide with bright rapids. Staring at it
cooled me. Fish were jumping or getting tossed into the air over the slick rocks. The beds of the streams were formed of smooth pebbles and fine gravel. I rolled to the edge and sank my foot into the water, which was perfectly transparent when I stared down at my boil. While my boil cooled I looked around. It seemed deep enough in the river proper that you might be able to canoe for quite a ways. I sat there for hours. At times I saw deer drinking at the opposite bank and ducks paddling by.

I measured the likelihood that I'd have the energy to build a lean-to to give me a bit of shelter and maybe to stay the night here. The evening was beautiful, the sky a brilliant red. The mosquitos and the gnats were suddenly thick with the dusk but come night the wind would blow them all away.

Dear Boil, I asked, should we go on from here or stay where there is water, fish, firewood and no annoying crazy people?

Well (I answered in the voice of Boil), you can stay a little longer with your boots off to let me breathe.

Dear Boil, does the soft gravel in the beds of all these streams come from the mountains?

Yes, said Boil, I think it must because it is the same colour and likely stones just keep falling and falling down the steep sides of rock smashing and
smashing until they splash into the river and break down into tinier and tinier pieces rolling all the way to the river's end.

Dear Boil, I asked, is that thunder or did a tree fall?

Well, said Boil, it could be a tree unless we hear it again.

Dear Boil, if there was lightning would we be safer in our hut or on our horse?

Well, said Boil, I don't know but the water helps the lightning so let us not go swimming.

H
OURS PASSED
before I heard thunder. The thunder swallowed and I saw lightning divide the air overhead and then great big balls of rain fell hard upon me from what still seemed like a clear sky. My horse whinnied and blowed and snorted. I put together a lean-to as quickly as I could and and pulled on warmer layers, mostly just to keep them dry. The raindrops hitting the water exploded as if they fell from the sky only to be shot by some invisible marksman. My poor horse, outside, was tense in the sudden squall. I watched her, thinking, I hope she does not get rain scald. If she does it will take weeks to heal and no more riding every day.

Boil, I said, this is bad news.

I half considered if it was a smart or a stupid idea
to build a little fire inside my hut, measuring in my head how high the flames might reach, how close to the branches that made up my walls, how smoky it could get and what stinging my eyes might be able to take before I would be driven out. I half considered getting on my horse and riding as fast as we could in whatever direction looked clearest. But she was already so wet and if I rode her too long without letting her dry it would cut her skin to ribbons.

One time, Boil, I began, when I was ten or eleven, a horse that was dark like mine ran into the town along the trail at daybreak. My father and I were in Rosebud to get supplies and sell some eggs. It was winter so daybreak was almost noon. I watched the horse run down Main Street so fast it looked as if its front legs were going to buckle, as if it would roll head over hooves and break its long neck. It was the horse of the butcher, who had just been shot by his wife on the doorstep of the barbershop for twisting and breaking his son's arm. The horse pulled free of the rails by the trough where he was tied while his master had a shave. He ran into the town and out the other side and through the cemetery and at the end of the cemetery he fell, hooked by a prairie dog burrow. He broke his leg. And the woman who, dry-eyed, had shot her husband dead came weeping down Main
Street until she fell on her knees in the cemetery and shot his horse.

My horse rolled an eye at me and pulled sharply against the rope that tethered her to a tree.

Come here, come here, I called to her. Get in here. And I pushed her as far into my makeshift hut as she would go and I stood for the rest of the storm outside in my hat, which became a birdbath, with a stinking muddy mat and the deerskin wrapped around me.

Rain became shooting stars long after midnight. I lit a fire and smoked my clothes by it. She came out of my hut.

Hello, I said. How are you feeling?

She turned her head.

What do you think? I posed to her. Say you had a mother and by all accounts she was a liquor-loving wild whore. And say that in her wisdom, knowing herself, she gave you to a good man and in her wisdom she never contacted you, never wrote to ask how tall you were or if you were still alive. And say the one who had mounted her was a killer and he was dead before he ever knew about you. And say your real father, the man who was both mother and father to you, who made you a safe home and loved you—in his wisdom as he died when you could say nothing but yes to him—set you on a journey to find the woman who chose not to be your
mother. Should you follow her wisdom and leave her be? Or should you follow his wisdom and find her and force yourself upon her?

The night was replete with silences: the silent sky with all its silent stars, the silent ground, the silent birds and insects. My horse was most silent of all. I wished on one star to find my mother and on another to give up.

We have to go on, I said. We can't give up.

I sipped cold muddy coffee from a recovered cup. Soon after that I fell asleep.

H
EAR THIS
. I
CAN'T FREEZE TO DEATH NOR
can I drown. I tried poison but it only nourished me.

I
WOKE TO FIND MY HORSE GONE, MY SHELTER
collapsed and the wolf settled down to sleep at my feet. My heart tried to leave my chest. She was easily six and a half feet long and half as tall. Her muzzle was long and tapered. Her ears flicked in her sleep as did her giant feet as if she were dreaming of running down an animal. I lay still and tried to breathe quietly and recall what I knew about wolves and whether any of it would save me.

Wolves don't get hungry. They are always hungry. They go without food for days, sometimes weeks, and then gorge on meat until they are drunk. I turned my head to look around me for pieces of my horse and saw none. I listened to the deep breathing of the wolf and watched her sides rise and fall. I could smell the damp hay of her fur and a duskiness that penetrated me with shapeless emotion. Her tail twitched and I tried to imagine ways to creep away.

A long time ago there were ten million buffalo and enormous herds of antelope and deer on the Plains. Giant grizzly bears and plains wolves feasted and lived very well. But white men came and all the animals began to disappear in great numbers. Zita had told me about wolves and their hunger. She had told me that if you copied wolves closely enough you became a wolf. There were once two white buffalo hunters who tried to copy Indian hunters. They draped wolfskins over their backs and crept up on a herd of buffalo. The Indians knew to become wolves to hunt but the white hunters did not understand. They did not know that the Indians became wolves and that when they did this, they would be different, merciless. The two hunters were pretending to be Indians pretending to be wolves. Under the skins they moved inside the circle of buffalo, feeling such a gnawing in their bellies. Their desire to kill was greater than their desire to live, and once they began to kill they could not stop. They needed a signal that would not come. They shot until their guns got hot and were in danger of exploding in their hands. But the herd of beasts remained placid. They stood like great trees in a dense forest as if all this were happening on some other plane of existence. The hunters dropped animal after animal. The sight of blood and the bellowing of the wounded did nothing to rouse the herd. They
stood, oblivious, solid, benign, until a gust of wind changed direction and suddenly the sight of so many carcasses materialized, and they stampeded. The two men stood mesmerized by the bodies that lay before them. At the sight of their success the blood hunger instantly abated and shame flooded the marrow in their frail human limbs.

I
SHIFTED
and tried ever so slowly to stand. She opened her eyes, looked at me with irises like honey in the sunlight and stretched her long limbs, flexing the full span of her broad feet. She yawned and I heard her voice squeak and saw the truth of her teeth set in the hard pink gums. I felt the breeze as she shook her head and stood and looked me over and turned and padded away, looking back a few times as if she expected me to follow her. When at last I turned around I saw the long yellow carcass of a cougar with an opened throat lying in its own blood behind me.

I
WEPT
and wept over my horse. The physical pain of that grief startled me, the way it ran down my arms and legs, the way it tightened and flexed and heated and chilled inside me. Around me the signs in the landscape seemed to unravel as if I were looking at a map in a dream with nothing written on it. I was afraid to move
for fear I would step farther away from real people. But I was more afraid, I was most afraid, of disappointing my father.

A
S THE
night came on I observed the time and the distance of the sun and moon's nearest limbs. I found myself making lists, reducing everything in me and around me to lists just to force myself to stay with the present, keep sane, keep hold of my thoughts, which were slippery in my loneliness.

M
EASURED THE
width of the river from the point across to the point of view. Measured the curve of the flow around the rocks. Measured how white the foam is on the banks. Measured the height and width of reeds. Measured the length of time I need. Measured my grief at losing my horse. Measured her body with my memory. Measured the hours passed measuring. Measured the likelihood of wolves. Measured the length of the grass in the shade and in the sun. Measured the shadows from clouds. Measured the undertow based on daisy-heads thrown into the water and when they are pulled under the surface. Measured the reasons for continuing. Measured the wound on my head. Measured how much I love my father. Measured how much I still hate her. Measured the limbs of the sun overhead. Measured
the shimmers of heat in the air. Measured the motes of pollen. Measured the missing stirrups. Measured the horn of my lost saddle. Measured the supplies uneaten. Measured the guilt I might feel. Measured the relief from completion. Measured how much I can believe anyone. Measured how long I have been away. Measured the cascading water. Measured the space between stars. Measured how sticky the cottonweed. Measured the smell of clover and columbine. Measured the days I spent reading the Bible. Measured the number of things I remember. Measured the length of his black robe. Measured how small he was after death. Measured the drops of water administered. Measured the rise of the moon. Measured the loudness of my stomach growling. Measured the comets. Measured the streaks of colour. Measured the shock from watching the spirals. Measured the collapse of the universe. Measured the nut of fear in my chest. Measured the strength of my tearducts. Measured the maps unopened, unread. Measured the depths of my resignation.

I
BUILT
a fire and found a good knife in my pack under the collapsed lean-to and I hacked away at the warm skin of the cougar, and then at the meat on the shoulders. I was awkward and the cuts were ragged. Memories of Blackfoot hunters offered only weak
guidance to my hands. By the time I finished my hands and arms felt bruised. But the cooked cougar meat was sweet and rich like some deeper angrier venison.

I stared into the fire feeling my eyeballs shrink and dry and my skin heat. Sweat sprung up on my lip and neck. I closed my eyes and saw the afterimage of the flames. When I opened my eyes night had fallen and the Hag was sitting across from me, her gaunt face illuminated.

She cocked her head and stared at me. She sat like a dog, squatting with her backside suspended just over the ground, her arms straight, hands between her feet, braced. Her small eyes glistened over her cheekbones, one of which looked flat as if it had been broken at some point and healed. She wore the black dress, which was torn and ragged so that one white shoulder and her upper arm were exposed. Her feet were bare and filthy. I felt contempt.

What do you want? I asked her.

Every morning I woke up waiting for him. I had fantasies about him coming back for me. It must have been like that for you too. You must have dreamt of your mother returning to embrace you, to wash your face with kisses, promising to never leave you again. Didn't you?

Sometimes, I said. I looked at the moon and the stars that were nestled in its halo.

Nights around here are filled with ghosts, she said. As soon as it gets dark they come out of the ground. The streets of all the little towns are teeming with spirits on parade. There are hordes of spirits, all the longing, unforgiven souls, wandering in purgatory. There are too many ghosts even to pray for. And because we cannot pray for them we are reminded of our own sins and errors. I begged your father to marry me. I said, The bishop will pardon us, release us from shame. He said, I can't be released from shame. I told him, I can't live without you. He said, Then live alone. I tried to tell him that life had herded us together. It was not our fault. We had to find each other because we were the two loneliest people on Earth. We were the same and so we had to be together. He pushed me into a chair and he broke my door when he left.

She sat across the fire from me with her head lowered, flexing her feet and rolling her hands in the dirt. Her white hair fell forward, obscuring her face. She moaned softly, persistently, until the low sound became almost musical. She rolled her head back and forth and rocked on her heels.

I tell you this so that you know I understand, she said. I understand what it is to be rejected. I understand what it is to spend years imagining someone's return.

I tasted salt on my lips and realized that tears were pouring out of my eyes.

I scratched my nails in the dirt, grabbed a rock and threw it at her, not to hurt her but because I did not believe she could be real. The rock hit her shoulder and rolled down the length of her arm into her hand. She squeezed it and looked at me. She tossed the stone back to me and I caught it.

If you want to throw stones at someone you can throw them at me, she said softly. She stood up; the skirt of the dress was torn off at the knee and I saw the thin bones of her shins shining under her pale skin. Then she stepped around the fire until she was almost at my side. She moved back a few paces so that there were five or six feet between us.

Throw the stone.

I squeezed it and then I threw it. I winged it at her face with all my strength. She ducked and smiled. She leaned over and picked up another stone and tossed it to me.

Again.

I aimed the second stone at her eye, which suddenly seemed brilliant and yellow over her cheek. She turned her head and it flew past her lips. She tossed me another stone. I yelled when I threw the third stone, some unintelligible accusation. It grazed her temple
but left no mark. She didn't even wince. Then I was scrabbling in the dirt, grabbing and throwing stones and handfuls of sod and grass and animal hair and she was weaving and spinning. She was whirling, ecstatic at the precipice of another world I could not see. I couldn't hit her. I heard my own voice grow louder, echoing in the darkness. I heard myself screaming, Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?

Suddenly I was tired. My echo faded in the distance. We were face to face, each in our loneliness. Suddenly she stood still.

I like you, she said. Good luck. I hope you reach her in time.

A fine line of bright blood ran down her forehead.

I'm sorry, I said, shocked that I had hit her. There was a shudder of a small earthquake beneath my feet and a human-sounding rumble and then it was daylight again. The ground where she stood was empty.

I
T WAS
not quite dawn when I woke and began to walk. My feet clove the sandy earth. My hat had begun to smell and so I tied it upside down on my head with some twine to let the sun bake out the soggy bell of it. An intermittent breeze shook the tree branches overhead loosing sprays of dew. Birds shook their wings. As the clouds retreated, rising higher in the sky and
becoming white, the sun lit up the new spaces of blue. I stared up imagining red kites with tails that whipped behind. I could feel the burning tug of the cord on my finger. My father laughing, tucked his robes into his pants so that he could run with me. The wind in my ears.

O
H
, F
ATHER
, I love you. I could hardly hear your laugh but I could see your lovely teeth. You told me once that to be a good priest, to be a man of God, to do God's work, did not require simply the ability to love but the ability to fall in love endlessly with every person, with humanity.

Let out more string.

It's pulling on me.

It's very high. Let's run.

We ran in the long grass; the dandelions stained my legs and the cuffs of his trousers; the kite and I tugged at each other. When we stopped running we stood side by side breathing fast. My father put a finger beneath his collar to wipe away sweat. I scrunched up my eyes because the sun was so compelling. My arm was stretched out long. The kite waited in the sky. A hawk veered to avoid us.

I'll help you study your Latin after dinner.

Can I grind chocolate for dessert?

There's no more chocolate, but there is some honeycomb. I have letters to write. We had best be on our way. Zita is waiting.

Father, I love you, I said.

God loves you, he said touching my hair as if it might break.

Z
ITA AND
my father understood each other's silences. He steered me to her and she showed me warmth in ways his propriety could not allow. It was Zita who lifted me from my boots and held me when I wept. It was Zita who sang to me when I raged against my outcast state. It was Zita who rubbed my arms and legs when I was sick.

This was before the Indian Act forbade the Indians to leave the reservation without a pass. There were so many children then. They were like herds of deer running up and down and around the coulees and sloping hills. So many children were adopted into families within the reserve it seemed as if there were twenty for every adult. My father reminded me of this often. He told me too that tens of thousands of children across the States were adopted every year. He tried to make me see myself as less alone.

Mighty Miette, he said. So many parts of being who we are start as fictions about belonging. You belong, as much as anyone.

But the children on the reserve were not like me. They had lost parents and siblings and even whole families to illness and war. But they were kept in, whereas I had been pushed out. I watched them play and I wanted to join them. They called to me and gestured invitations but I couldn't move my legs. I watched them pump their arms and run with wide smooth steps and fall and roll and get up and jump and run some more and I just couldn't move my legs.

We lived on the border of the reservation. He said this was respect; if we lived on one side or the other we would do so as spies. Truthfully, I think that he did not want to be watched by either side. He was as solitary as he could be and still perform his duties. But if he rejected other clergy, he welcomed the Blackfoot to visit us in our little shack.

Zita helped us to bake bread and make soup to deliver to the poorest homesteaders. The poorest were also the oldest, as if life had been sucked out of them with their wealth.