Sacajawea (111 page)

The sun warmed her. She scraped the mud from her leather tunic, kneeling on the ground, with her weight on her right knee. Her left leg touched the ground little, doing only the job of helping her keep balance. She finished cleaning her tunic, then sat with her back against the stone. She shivered. It was cold. She limped back to where her blanket had fallen, then sat again with her back to the stone. She tucked the blanket around her legs. She listened and heard nothing. No one came. The pain in her ankle had numbed. There was no one to come. No one knew she had gone into the night. No one knew that she had been afraid and had started toward Chief Red Hair’s lodge. No one knew that she was concerned over the well-being of her boys, Baptiste and Tess. Not even she admitted that, but she knew that was why she had fled into the night. She knew it as well as she knew she was the one called Sacajawea. But she would not say it aloud as she would not say her own name aloud. No hunting party would come here. No trapping party would come out here far from the stream.

She held the knife firmly and all afternoon dug niches in the mud wall. The wind did not touch her; she dropped the blanket, and the working kept her warm. She felt small tremors in the earth, but there was no rumbling and she kept digging. Finally, before the night fell, she dug deep into the pouch for pemmican and ate the last mouthful of pounded meat. She dug her feet deep into the niches, and her hands gripped the edge of the niche above as she pulled herself upward. She remembered the firesticks, but did not go back down to look for them.

Out on the grass she rested, then looked for the path that led to the town. The winds sighed softly in the upper air. She drew the blanket tightly around her body. Her breath came in short gasps. There was a tingling in her hands and arms. Her ankle had swollen more. She lay beside the long wide crack and thought that the Great Spirit searched for her. He came in the form of rabbits and ground squirrels. He leaped and laughed and mocked her, and his laughter was terrible. “Look at this squaw,” he said. “She climbs up out of Mother Earth and is afraid of the dark night.” A rabbit sniffed at her and turned its tail toward her saying, “She follows the crying of papooses, but is afraid to go to them. Afraid she will find herself in another crack.”

Her breath came more easily, and her ankle throbbed into her inner-most being, awakening in that being an anger that filled her. A shout rose in her mind and traveled to her lips. “A mother will face anything to comfort her child! Move forward!”

She sat up and, cutting off a wide strip from the bottom of her tunic, bound her ankle tightly, pulling the soft leather until it was smooth and shiny. For a few moments she crawled along the ground, feeling for cracks. She saw the hills swell up boldly in front of her. They were gentle hills, and the swales between them broad. She knew if she could not find the trail she could stick to the high ground. One oak ridge would lead her to another; if she took the bottoms, they would lead to other bottoms. They were not like the mountains. The mountains were far away, in a dream. She’d have good going; no mountains to get in the way. She’d had enough ups and downs. It seemed as though there was no such thing as level going; it was all up and down and in andout. There was no sense to the troubles she faced trying to reach town. “Good Lord,” she said aloud, using one of Lewis’s favorite terms, “I could use a little level going.”

She limped along the slope of a hogback and heard the rushing of the small creek. The ground was smooth. It felt good to her feet. It felt familiar, somehow. The woods smelled familiar. It was like coming home. In a way it was. It was like getting back to something that she’d been away from. She thrust her hand into the water and brought it out, cupped, and drank deeply. Again and again she drank. She felt a rise of nausea but fought it down. Soon she was on her feet, slowly feeling her way along the trail. The moon rose and lighted her way. She skirted two more cracks in Mother Earth. As the backbone of the ridge behind shut out the terrifying days, the notion took her that it was not only the feel of the ground, nor the woods’ smell, nor the rolling hills that gave her that queer feeling. It was the same feeling as in the aftermath of the flood when she and Chief Red Hair had stood alone, except for her papoose. She was alive. She was at the edge of the town. She knew that the glow from the place closest in her line of vision came from the live candles in Chief Red Hair’s lodge.

Things had not changed much. Six years ago she’d been obliged to Chief Red Hair, and she still was. He was sending her boys to school. And they’d taken to spelling books and cropped hair like a bear took to sugar. She wondered if she’d ever be of much use to the boys again. She had set so much store by reading and writing like the whites. But now the boys had changed. They were not so pleased to have her hands on them anymore. Her lips quivered. She set her jaws together, hard, and pulled her cheeks in tightly against her teeth. The muscles at the corners of her mouth made knots and pulled her lips out straight.

But then, she was not bad off. Charbonneau was not home to badger her. Chief Red Hair kept her supplied with meat and skins. Nothing was so bad. She had moved ahead on her trail of life, that was all.

She eased her feet along the ground. The moon rose and lighted her way. She went around to the back of General Clark’s home. The door opened. Old Rose’s eyeswere wide. “Oh, child, what’s the matter with your leg? Come in here to the kitchen.”

Sacajawea limped in. Rose, her hands running over the swollen ankle, her fat cheeks fluffing in and out, reassured herself that the bone was not broken. She wrapped the ankle in cool, damp cloths.

A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over Sacajawea as she sat by the kitchen hearth. She was placed on a pallet beside the hearth. She slept and dreamed that Miss Judy held one new papoose after another in her arms. No celebration was held for one papoose, however, as it was a girl, a thing to be cherished, but not as important as a boy.

For the next several days, Sacajawea’s thoughts moved about, but she did not. She seemed drawn to the pallet and lay on it, motionless as a stone. She took no note of the lapse of time. She knew when anyone besides Rose entered the kitchen. She could understand most of what was said, but she could not answer. To open her mouth and move her limbs was nearly impossible. Miss Judy and Chief Red Hair appeared in the kitchen once or twice a day. They whispered above her.

“It is well that Rose heard her at the back door that night.”

“Yes, she might have been dead next morning. I wonder what she went through to get here?”

‘The rumblings and quaking ground were enough to frighten her out of her wits, alone, way out there in that desolate cabin. Primitives are slaves to their environment.”

On the third day, she was better, on the fourth she could speak, move, rise, and turn on the pallet. Rose brought her gruel and dry toast, which she ate with relish and felt stronger for it. On a chair beside the pallet were all her things, clean and dry. The traces of mud were removed from her tunic, the creases left by the rain smoothed out, and the bottom sewn with fringe. It was quite fine. Her moccasins were cleaned and softened. After a weary process she dressed herself. The tunic hung loose, but she pulled it tight at the waist with a leather sash and smoothed out her braids. Then her nose noticed the fragrance of new bread. Rose was baking.

“Ah, this here morning when another earth tremor shook us all from our beds, you don’t notice a thing, child. Now you is dressed.” She smiled. “Come sit in the rocking chair.” Rose bustled about, looking at Sacajawea from the corner of her eye every once in a while. She took the loaves from the stone oven. There were more tremors during the day; dishes rattled, and pots slid from their hooks.

“I can help cut up the potatoes,” offered Sacajawea, as Rose brought out a pan of them.

“You ought to rest, child.”

“But I must do something,” pleaded Sacajawea. “Let me have them.”

Rose consented and brought a clean scrap of muslin to spread over her tunic. “Lest you soil it.”

When the potatoes were pared, Sacajawea asked where Chief Red Hair was that day.

“Gone to fetch the children. They ought to be back soon.”

“Children?” asked Sacajawea.

“Yes, ma’am. The boys from those schools in town.”

Then they came in by the kitchen door. Clark had Baptiste by the hand, and with the other he shoved Tess into the room.

“Janey, I’ve brought you a surprise. I hope you’re strong enough to stand the chatter from these two. Schools are closed early so that Mr. Welch can have the chimney repaired on his main building. Father Neil said he no longer had control over the boys and sent them to parents or guardians until after the holidays.”

“The noise of a chimney falling woke everyone. We thought the sleeping room had split apart,” laughed Baptiste.

“A brown bear wandered into the yard around Father Neil’s quarters,” said Tess, edging closer to Sacajawea. “He was looking for a place to hide from the ground grumblings. But I was not scared.”

Sacajawea nodded her head, her eyes wide to show she knew how the bear himself felt—afraid.

Baptiste said, “Mr. Honoré, who keeps our records and gets our wash done, told us to get up and look at the school. Bricks were all over the yard from the chimney. Then he took us to his parlor and showed on a slatehow there was a shifting within the earth. When this shifting settles down, everything will be quiet again.”

“I was not scared when the candles went out and my cot bumped the wall,” bragged Tess, his thumbs stuck under his belt. “I closed my eyes, and it felt like I was in a canoe going through white water.”

“Come here, Tess, let’s see who is the taller,” said Clark. The boys stood with their heels to the kitchen wall and let Clark make a mark with charcoal above their heads. “Well, Pomp,” Clark coughed, “I do believe Tess is eating more meat. He’s the taller.”

“But I learn more at my school,” insisted Baptiste.

“What do you know?” asked Tess.
“Rien du tout.”
He spoke French, the language he learned in school.

“Yes, tell your mother what you’ve learned,” said Clark, sitting down beside the hearth with a cup of tea in his hand.

“I know what is the shape of the earth.”

“What?” asked Sacajawea. “All sensible persons know it is about the shape of Rose’s pancake, round and flat and smooth except for the mountains on top. The sky—why it is all over just like if that kettle were turned over the pancake.”

“Do we live on the inside or the outside?” asked Rose.

“We live on top of the pancake, which is under the kettle sky. That kettle sky covers us all over just like Miss Judy’s parasol,” said Sacajawea.

“Under there we would all smother,” said Baptiste, wrinkling his nose.

“Well, take my strainer instead of the kettle then,” said Rose.

“No, the earth is round, and we live on the outside,” said Baptiste.

“Good boy,” whispered Clark, grinning.

“All round? Where did you get that foolish thought?” said Rose.

“I learned it in my geography. Now, this big gourd hanging by the door—”

“Don’t you take that gourd!” cried Rose. “I keeps my best sage and herbs in that there gourd. Why don’t you experiment with that nice round pumpkin over there on the table. But don’t go bustin’ it.” “I won’t. I’ll just stick this pin in here on the top, and we’ll pretend that’s you.”

“That’s pretty thin for me. It’d better be your mammy.”

“Then I’ll stick another pin near the bottom, and that is a black man in Africa—like old York, a long time ago. Now I’ll light this candle.”

“Who’s that, the light of the Lord?” asked Rose.

“That is the sun. Now, the earth moves slowly up to the sun, and it gets lighter and lighter until it’s daylight.”

“Don’t you drop that even if it is getting lighter,” said Rose, her brown eyes wide.

“Then it moves around until the earth gets right under the sun. That’s noon—dinnertime at school.”

“Careful, now, or there won’t be a dinnertime.”

“Then it goes around, and it keeps getting darker on your side until it gets here and it’s night for you.”

“I’m standing all alone in the dark?” asked Sacajawea, marveling at her son and his knowledge—or foolishness.

“But look at the man, old York, in Africa—he is in the daylight. Then the earth moves around again, and you are again in the daylight. Now, all this time the sun has stood still, and the earth has been moving.”

“I think you should put the pumpkin down and stop this moving foolishness. You ask me to believe that nonsense?”

“It is true. Mr. Welch said so.”

“You expect me to believe that I live on a slippery yellow ball that goes sailing round and round with my head now up and now down? You can’t fool this old squaw that is your mother. You better go to York on the other side of that pumpkin. See if he will listen.

I’m no ignorant, uncivilized savage that knows nothing.”

Miss Judy had come in, and she began to dance around the kitchen, giggling to herself. Clark guffawed twice, then stopped when Baptiste looked crosswise at him.

“Umbea,
don’t you understand it?” Baptiste asked Sacajawea. “You have lots of imagination.”

“Ai, I do. But I have sense enough to know that if Iwas like that pin, hanging on the side of that pumpkin, I’d just fall off and break every single rib in my body, and when the world turned over, I’d just pitch headfirst to the who-knows-where, and then crack my head clear open, and when I get around again to this side, I’d fall over backward and break my neck.”

“But,
Umbea,
the pin does not fall out.”

Tess began to laugh and stomp his feet on the floor.

“You are a foolish child, my son. Foolish! That pin is sharpened down to a point and stuck in the earth, but am I sharpened down to a point? Look at me and say so. Now, if that was the case I’d stand right here and you’d starve to death. If what you said was so, I’d be afraid to go to bed at night—afraid I’d roll off to nowhere. And besides me, what would happen to the soup kettle, the water pails, and the woodpiles? What—wake up in the morning and find everything spilled and gone way down to nowhere? Uuuhh, not me!”