The Snake River (14 page)

Chapter Fourteen

At the end of each story, Sima and Palea had to sum up the tale, to show Miss Jewel that their English was coming along well enough for them to understand.

The fisherman found a brass bottle in the sea and opened it, they agreed. Smoke poured out of the bottle, and an Efrit, a monster as big as a hill, formed himself from the smoke. The Efrit announced that he had been in the sea one thousand eight hundred years, and now he would kill the fisherman.

Afraid, the fisherman pretended not to believe such a huge Efrit could have ever fit into such a small jar. When the Efrit proved he could get into the jar, the fisherman popped the stopper back on and held it fast.

The Efrit begged to be let out once more, but the fisherman was too clever now. He was going to throw the jar back into the sea for another one thousand eight hundred years. Citing the commandments of God, though, the Efrit begged the fisherman to let him out. Finally the fisherman agreed. Then the Efrit gave the fisherman a new kind of fish. It was so wonderful the king paid handsomely in gold for it.

They loved this story from
The Thousand and One Nights
, and agreed that the fisherman had done right to take a chance and repay malice with kindness.

“Palea understands these stories better than we inland people,” Miss Jewel said, breaking the spell. “His people are people of the sea, and fishermen.”

Sima breathed out. It was a wonderful story, and a wonderful book, full of monsters and mysteries. Miss Jewel had a whole volume of it, and a fund of other stories she could tell from memory. Sima and Palea had spent the whole afternoon sitting in front of the tent in the autumn sun, hypnotized.

Palea was Sima’s new friend, a youth his own age from the Hawaiian Islands, slender, brown, shy, with a beautifully shaped head and speaking a soft, hesitant, melodious English. His people were truly seafarers, he said. He had taught Sima and Miss Jewel from the first moment to say not Sandwich Islanders, as the whites called them, but Hawaiians. The white men took your home from you, he said, and they even took away its name. Sima had decided never to use the name Sandwich Islands, and Miss Jewel agreed.

Sima thought Palea was like Mr. Skye. Mr. Skye had been forced into the British Navy, and Palea had been forced into the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Both of them were torn away from their families, and ended up far, far from home with no way to get back. Mr. Skye jumped ship and made a place for himself in a new land. Palea wanted nothing but to go back to his home country. He spoke of the flowers there, the rich smells, the soft rains, and the gentle sweetness of life, though oddly, he didn’t mention his family. Palea hated the chill of this country, which did not seem cold to Sima. But in Hawaii, said Palea, it was never cold, or for that matter hot, but always gently warm. Hawaii was the perfect place. The gods gave it to the Hawaiians, and the whites took it away. Worse yet, they took it away in the name of saving it.

Here Mr. Skye showed that he had white man’s disease. For Skye, being forced into the Navy was enslavement. For Palea, Skye said, being forced to serve the Hudson’s Bay Company was a chance to improve himself. Skye put this view with simple conviction. It angered Palea and amazed Sima.

Of course, Dr. Full had the same disease. Disappointingly, Miss Jewel did, too. Sima wasn’t sure about Flare.

Sima was coming to understand white men better and better. Their main affliction was thinking that their way of looking at things was the only way. The way of progress, they called it. Other attitudes they regarded simply as childish, and gave them no further thought. White man’s disease.

Sima had made up his mind he would not get this affliction. He would merely add white-man knowledge, or medicine, to his Shoshone understanding. He would become something greater than either. He would turn his father’s curse into a blessing.

His gullet tightened. He ignored it. He must not think of his father. Spring would be time enough for that.

Meanwhile, he was going to make a book of drawings of the wonderful creatures in
The Thousand and One Arabian Nights
. Miss Jewel’s copy had one illustration, and Sima was going to make a book full of them, starting with this Efrit, whose head was a dome, his legs masts, his mouth a cavern, his teeth stones, his nostrils trumpets, and his eyes lamps. Hearing of his skill with colored pencils, Dr. McLoughlin had given Sima a drawing tablet. He started with one eye like a lamp.

Crack!

“Ow!”

Crack again!

Sima grabbed his head, laughed and howled at the same time, and ran. Palea just ran. It was Mr. Skye again. Sima ran like hell.

“Enough!” bellowed Skye. “Excuse, Missy,” said Skye to Miss Jewel softly. He always called her Missy. “Come here!” he hollered “I warned you!” He tossed a belaying pin in each hand, like a juggler. “Got to have a different kind of lesson now,” he told Miss Jewel.

“If you say so, Mr. Skye,” she answered, and took her book into the tent. She said she enjoyed Flare’s spirit, but Mr. Skye’s wildness was beyond her tolerance. The boys crept back.

Yes, he’d told them. Any time he could sneak up on them, he would crack their heads with belaying pins. If an Injun got close to them, they’d get scalped, not whacked. He was teaching them the habit of constant alertness, he claimed. Sima thought he was also having a good time cracking heads.

Mr. Skye said he kept his belaying pins for sentimental reasons. When he got pressed, he was a young chap of just fourteen, and of only middling size. The older men had bothered him—he didn’t give details—until he learned to use the belaying pins. He practiced and practiced, and learned with an expertise that turned heads. He not only could lay about him with the pins with an astonishing clatter and devastating accuracy—like a bloody savage beating a jungle full of drums, he boasted—he also twice knocked men cold with thrown pins. Later he got his growth, and became truly terrible with them.

When he told Sima and Palea about it, he showed them the carving on the pins. He’d wanted to learn scrimshawing at the time, he’d had nothing but time at sea, but lacked ivory. The bosun’s mate suggested he put his mark on a couple of pins. He carved the face of Thor on one pin, and his hammer and thunder on the other. Skye’s insignia.

When he jumped ship, the pins and a dirk were the only weapons he could lay hands on, and he was more deadly with the pins. When he earned a tomahawk, and later pistol and rifle, he kept the pins. For sentimental reasons, he said. And, besides, truly, a man never knew.

“Chappies,” he said, “tonight Mr. Skye teaches ye something of import. Aye,” he said, grinning broadly, “something of import.”

“Where’s Flare?” asked Sima suspiciously.

“Belay that,” ordered Mr. Skye. “He’s acting serious about leaving at dawn. But you chaps and Mr. Skye are in for a sailor’s last night in port.” He raised high a jug and chuckled.

Somehow Sima became aware just before it happened. He felt light seeping into Mr. Skye’s tipi for a while, down the smoke hole and through the hide covers. Then a faint scratching sound. And a shadow across the floor of the lodge.

Sima didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn about anything in the world but the warmth that was against his stomach and thighs. In a moment he would get back inside that warmth, maybe not even moving this time, just back inside the warmth. From behind, here as he lay, from behind, without effort.

In a moment. His mind was so—

Came a roar: “Asses!”

Flare’s voice. Sima knew it, but he didn’t care.

Whack!

“O-o-w-w!”

Whack!

“O-o-w-w!” This time the screamer was Sima. He covered his bottom with his hands, and the cords bit into his hands. “O-o-w-w!”

Whack! Whack! The girls were crying out and Mr. Skye bellowing and Sima himself wailing. The warm bottom rubbed against him and was gone and he wondered fleetingly if it was gone forever.

The cords got him again.

Bedlam!

Girls running. Out into the day with no clothes. Flare gave them parting slashes. Girlish shrieks.

Mr. Skye dived for Flare, but Flare dodged easily, and brought the quirt down on Mr. Skye’s naked back.

Then on Sima’s ass again.

The little Irishman was laying about him violently, in grim silence, and beating the hell out of both of them.

Sima decided he’d get into the spirit of things. He lunged for Flare. The earth rocked back and forth fast. Sima fell flat. When he got up. Flare put a moccasin into his back and shoved him into lodgepole. He went down in a heap.

“Bloody hypocrite!” yelled Mr. Skye.

Flare said nothing, just faced Mr. Skye, ready for his charge. Mr. Skye lurched forward on all fours. Flare dodged easily. Skye hit a lodgepole with his head, and the pole split. Skye lay dazed. Flare larruped his naked ass.

“Drunk as skunks, the two of you,” he said.

Mr. Skye struggled to get up but couldn’t.

“
Bloody
hypocrite!” said Skye with a snarl.

Flare stepped back, lowered his quirt. Suddenly Sima saw Palea standing in the door of the lodge. Why wasn’t he here with the two of them? How long had he been gone? Why had he brought Flare here? Or had Flare just come to Skye’s tipi first thing anyway?

“
Bloody
hypocrite,” Skye tried once more, at half volume.

“The brigade is leaving now,” Flare said. “Catch up. If you can ride hung over.”

Sima thought on poontang.

That was a word for it he’d learned from the Frenchies.

It was wonderful.

He rocked to the rhythm of his walking horse, half asleep, half drunk. The rhythm kept him half asleep. It reminded him of one of the rhythms of ye olde rub, as Mr. Skye called it. Sima had never imagined it would be so grand.

Ribbon, she said her name was. He had always fantasized about a Shoshone girl named Paintbrush, not a French-Canadian girl named Ribbon. All right, Ribbon would be his woman. While he looked for his father, he would hump Ribbon, body length by body length, from here to Montreal. No matter how far it was, he would get there hump by hump.

Palea rode beside him, all fresh and alert. Palea had hardly touched the firewater, and Sima thought less might be a good idea next time. He didn’t know how much Palea had frigged Ribbon. Or Berry, the older woman. It had been dark in the tipi. The women had come and gone from robe to robe. Sima had topped Berry a couple of times, but he’d been attracted mostly to Ribbon. She was his age, and had a perfect shape, and a humor impish and sardonic at once.

All night long there’d been the sounds of ye olde rub in the lodge, and rasping cries of pleasure, and no man cared what the others were doing, or weren’t.

But Palea had left the lodge early. Sima supposed it was his first time, too, so he was embarrassed or the like. Sima couldn’t imagine that. Godawmighty, as Flare liked to say, once you discovered poontang, your mind was between your balls.

Two women. Sima wanted Ribbon plus one, at least, on his journeys. And whatever women caught his eye along the way.

“So lads, are your minds where your cocks were all night?”

Sima’s eyes scratched as he looked at Flare.

“Aye.”

“I guess so,” said Palea.

“Well, they should be. Natural,” said Flare.

They rode in silence for a moment.

“I want you to know something,” said Flare. “They’re whores.”

“What’s ‘whore’?” asked Sima. Not that he gave a damn.

“Skye gave them a cup of booze and a few beads for their tails. Some other man will do the same tonight. And tomorrow night. And every night. The whores don’t care.”

Sima thought about it. He shrugged. He didn’t know if he cared what Ribbon did, as long as she…

“They’ll give you a disease,” Flare said. “It’ll hurt when you piss. It’ll hurt when you fuck.”

Still…

“For a little more trouble, you can have women as won’t give you a disease.”

Sima looked sideways at Palea. For some reason Palea seemed standoffish about the whole thing. Sima was ready to whoop and holler and reminisce, when he felt awake enough, but Palea acted indifferent.

“It makes sense not to get sick from sex,” Sima ventured slowly.

“Aye,” Palea spat out bitterly. “Aye. Remember the Hawaiians, and you’ll see that.”

Sima noticed Flare looked as puzzled as he felt.

“You don’t know, do you?” Palea went on, almost accusingly. He looked at them hard. Then, not so harshly, he told his story.

Captain Cook, said Palea, came to Hawaii when Kelolo, Palea’s father’s uncle, was a boy. Now Kelolo was an old man, perhaps seventy years. When Cook came—in the arrogance of the white men he said he discovered Hawaii, though the Hawaiians already had done that—the Hawaiians thought the white men were gods. There was an honored story, known for many generations, that one day gods would come to the island, and they would be white-skinned. So naturally the Hawaiian women took every opportunity to have sex with these seafaring gods and so become mothers of gods.

They became mothers of disease, diseases gathered by the white men in every foul port of the world, but unknown to the Hawaiians. Soon the Hawaiians discovered that the white men were no gods, and the women lost interest in the sex. But they spread the diseases to their men. And in the span of two generations, three fourths of the Hawaiian people were dead. Killed by white-man diseases. Palea snapped out these last words.

Sima looked at Flare questioningly.

“They say it’s so, lad. Course, no one did it on purpose.”

“They did it,” said Palea.

“I’ll not be telling you otherwise,” Flare said.

They rode in silence for a bit. “I came to give you boys a bit of friendly advice about poontang,” Flare went on. “Here it is. Stay away from the whores. God’s truth, there’s one under every skirt, and you don’t need whores.”

“Stick to one woman, like Dr. Full say?” asked Sima.

“Truly, I wouldn’t get my mind fixed on just one piece of poontang, either,” said Flare in a kindly way. “There’s one under every skirt. God’s truth.”

Sima looked from Flare to Palea and back. He didn’t know what to think.