The Snake River (19 page)

Sima saw the kids were transfixed. And Flare and Miss Jewel, even Mrs. Full and Mrs. Leslie. The fat Reverend Leslie was staring off into space. Dr. Full was fidgeting. Sima wondered why they didn’t give the respect of attention to a story.

“Pachee Goyo,” he went on, “was perched on a branch trying to sleep when he heard their low, growly voices. They poked about in the trees, looking for human beings. Pachee Goyo could hear them muttering, ‘Nothing here. Ugh. Nothing here.’

“Finally the man-eaters came to the tree Pachee Goyo was perched in, and stuck their long poles upward, searching. One jabbed Pachee Goyo in the stomach.

“‘I feel a person,’ rumbled one of the Joahwayho, ‘right here in this tree.’

“Pachee Goyo quietly climbed higher.

“The sticks jabbed at the air.

“‘No one’s up there,’ said a Joahwayho. ‘Let’s try another tree.’

“‘No,’ insisted one of the scaly monsters. ‘There’s a human being in this tree—let’s shake him out.’

“So they shook the tree with all their strength. It was like an earthquake. Pachee Goyo hung on with all his might. He got banged around. His knuckles and shins got barked—his head got banged. His teeth got rattled. When Father Sun began to make the sky light, his fingers were worn out—he was about to give up and lose his grip and come crashing out of the tree.

“Suddenly the tree stopped shaking. Pachee Goyo heard sounds of struggle below, sounds of hitting and thumping and kicking. Otter, Muskrat, and Weasel had heard the monsters stomping around and come to his rescue!

“The uncles wrestled the monsters—they broke their arms and hands. ‘We are scared!’ wailed the Joahwayho. They ran off as fast as their scaly legs could carry them.”

One of the Leslie girls clapped her hands. Dan Full cackled out loud, and got a sharp look from his stepfather.

“When Pachee Goyo climbed down, his uncles told him about the perils on the way home. They gave him some food. They sewed him some moccasins with rawhide soles, and gave him some thick leggings to wear. Pachee Goyo thanked them sincerely and set off, set off again into the unknown, set off toward home.

“He walked for days. Once he came to some ground covered with sharp fragments of obsidian. There he pulled on the heavy-soled moccasins, and they got him through. Thinking more and more of his people and their country, the land of smoking waters, he hurried.

“He walked for many more days, digging roots and killing small game for food. When he came to a desert, he put his thick leggings on and walked straight through, knowing there would be rattlesnakes everywhere. The snakes slithered about, they coiled, they whirred, they struck at his legs, they bit his leggings. On the far side he stopped and looked at his leggings—they were slimy with venom. He took them off carefully and traveled on.”

Sima thought his audience might be getting tired now, but he could not end the story improperly. He plunged forward into the last trials.

“Pachee Goyo came to a great gorge. He looked down in, but it was completely dark. Suddenly an owl hooted. While the hoot sounded, it lit up the entire gorge. When it fell silent, the gorge was dark. Again—hoot and light, silence and darkness.

“Pachee Goyo got ready and timed the hoots. When the next one came, he ran and jumped with all his strength. He sailed all the way across the gorge, and sailed into daylight.

“That night Pachee Goyo slept on a hill in moonlight. During the night, cries awakened him, cries of people. He saw they were carrying a dying Indian in a buffalo robe. They put the robe and man on top of Pachee Goyo and circled the two of them, wailing and weeping.

“Pachee Goyo shouted impatiently, ‘Who’s dead around here? Nobody’s dead that I see.’

“The people laughed and tittered and ran off. The dying man laughed, too, and ran after them. Everyone disappeared into the night.”

“Walking for days and days, Pachee Goyo came to a clear, sparkling stream. He took a bath in it. Afterward he covered himself with white clay powder.

“A stranger approached, with a sparrowhawk perched on his shoulder. The stranger took the sparrowhawk off his shoulder and threw it at Pachee Goyo. The bird flew straight at Baldy’s face and landed on his head. Pachee Goyo stood perfectly rigid in his white clay. He didn’t even blink.

“The stranger called out, ‘What is this thing? Is it human? Surely it is, it has eyes, it has nostrils. But it’s not moving.’

“Pachee Goyo stood absolutely rigid.

“‘It must be a human being,’ said the stranger. ‘It has big ears. Bald, too—nice, shiny bald head. Gray hair, too.’

“In his white clay powder Pachee Goyo stood still as a rock.

“Finally the stranger stepped forward. Right into Pachee Goyo’s face. He stuck out one hand, picked up the sparrowhawk from Baldy’s head, turned his back, and walked away.

“Pachee Goyo breathed. If he had moved, if he had even blinked, the stranger would have struck him dead.

“He washed the powder off, got dressed, and walked on over a mountain. And there a wondrous sight! A circle of brush huts and tipis.

“He hurried toward the camp. Outside the circle, alone, stood a man in a white buffalo robe, his head bowed in mourning.

“"Why are you out here alone?’ asked Pachee Goyo.

“‘I have lost my brother,’ said the man. ‘Many winters ago we went on a hunting trip and he disappeared. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.’

“‘The brother Giant Owl flew away with?” asked Baldy. ‘Pachee Goyo?’

“‘Who are you?’ asked Big Knife. He peered at the stranger and at last recognized his long-lost brother. ‘Pachee Goyo!’ he cried.

“He ran into the circle of the camp. ‘My brother is back!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll give a feast in his honor tonight!’

“And there was singing and dancing and feasting for several nights, in honor of the return of Pachee Goyo.”

Full and Leslie sent the kids out to play. That meant it was time to correct Sima’s thinking. Holy Mother of God, back to learning the bleedin’ catechism from bleedin’ priests.

Dr. Full drew himself up. He looked sidelong at Sima, who looked scared. Full tapped a finger on empty air.

“Sima, my boy,” he began, “that was a story of your people, the Shoshones?”

Sima nodded yes.

“A religious story? Or just a story?”

Sima looked at Flare for help. Sink or swim, boyo.

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s see,” Full went on. “It had gods in it, did it not? The giant owl was a god? The snakes were sent by gods? The stranger with the hawk was a god? Or represented a god?”

Sima looked at Flare. The Irishman shrugged his shoulders in an I-don’t-know way.

Sima did the same at Full.

Full put on a benevolent manner like an ill-fitting coat. “I sense that there were beings and doings in your story that were supposed to be divine.” He paused. He said softly, firmly, tapping each word out separately, “We cannot have that.
There is but one God, and His name is Jehovah.

“You do not come to us
tabula rasa
,” said Full, enjoying the fancy words. “We understand that. You have a religion.”

He wheeled on the boy. “You seek true religion. And I believe your mind is susceptible to it. God is opening you to it. That is a blessing.”

Sima felt hot with humiliation. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew he had told a sacred story, a story filled with Spirit and wisdom that comes from Spirit, and that Dr. Full was spitting on it. And on him for telling it.

He glanced at Flare and Miss Jewel. Flare looked mad. Sima didn’t know what he was going to do. He couldn’t be rude in return, and he couldn’t get mad. What the devil?

“This stuff is superstition. Men or gods taking the form of animals, childishness, stuff the human race has outgrown.”

Dr. Full paced. Sima could see he wanted to say a lot more, and a lot worse, than he let himself say.

Sima didn’t understand. He was willing to learn the wisdom of the whites. Were they unwilling even to listen to the wisdom of the Shoshones? Did they think they knew everything? People who couldn’t find water on the plains without a guide? Or find game before they starved? This didn’t make sense.

“It’s not just that we don’t want you to tell these tales to the children. Though their minds don’t need to be full of…fancies. It’s that we want you to scourge
your
mind of it.”

He turned to Sima and opened his arms in appeal. “Make room for the one God in your mind. Make room for His son, who gave his life for you. Make room for His spirit, who will guide you. You must empty your mind before we can fill it with truth.”

Sima was bewildered now. He would not let Dr. Full make him speak rudely or intemperately. He saw nothing he could do but keep silent.

“Do you understand, Sima?” pressed Dr. Full.

Sima struggled with his feelings. It was mad. He didn’t know the truth, but he knew he could never abandon Magic Owl or the
poha
Owl gave him. Never. That would be death.

Finally Sima said respectfully, “I hear your words, Dr. Full.”

Sima slipped between Flare and Miss Jewel as they left the Leslies’.

“Don’t worry about it, lad,” Flare said when they were outside.

“What do you think, Miss Jewel?”

He watched her. She was deliberating carefully. “I think you need not reject one wisdom to gain another, Sima.”

He nodded. That did not seem a bad thought.

“Lad, I want to say something,” put in Flare. “Miss Jewel won’t like it.”

They both looked at Miss Jewel. “Everyone is free to express his opinion,” she said.

“The Shoshone way seeks to liberate your spirit and give it power,” said Flare. “The Christians want to subjugate your spirit.”

Flare was in a blue funk.

He’d been at French Prairie a week and fallen into an absolute funk. Nicolette Marais had quickly offered him half a cabin. Old Jacques had died in the fall, and she needed the company anyway, she said. She was a prickly creature of middle age with a face permanently screwed into a scowl and a lively tongue. Though she’d looked unhealthily skinny for at least fifteen years, she had some spirit. (Jacques’ other wife, Cora, had moved in with another Frenchie and lived a mile or so away. Flare had known all three of Jacques’ wives.)

The first night Flare moved in, Nicolette indicated she wanted to share a bed as well as a cabin. And she just wanted to have a lark, she made it clear. No strings attached. She did mention a couple times, though, that two priests were coming, right here to French Prairie, and all the hell-raisers here could make their peace with heaven. She cackled at that.

Flare had a rule about sex. It was like his rule about food: Take what you can get whenever you can get it, for you never know when the next chance will be. So it deepened his funk that he wasn’t interested in Nicolette. He rolled up in his own blankets in another room. Made her tongue turn caustic, too.

He stayed innocent the second night as well, and the third. Couldn’t figure out what was wrong with himself. Didn’t want to go to Mission Bottom and see Sima. Didn’t want to flirt with Miss Jewel. Didn’t want to ride about the country. Didn’t want to yarn with old friends. Didn’t want to get laid. Finally he spent two days doing absolutely nothing but sitting against the front wall of the cabin, moping. He couldn’t remember ever doing that before, and he couldn’t sleep the night between. He wasn’t interested in eating. He was in trouble.

It never did get better until Skye came.

Crack!

Skye got a huge kick out of it, sneaking up on an old mountain man like that.

Flare rubbed his noggin, but Skye had used the belaying pin lightly. “If this child had a been an Injun,” he roared with glee, “you’d-a lost your topknot!”

He could see Flare didn’t take to it, getting the sneak put on him right against his own cabin. Showed that civilization made a man careless, which would make him dead. Aside from that, Flare looked like he’d lost the pleasure in life. Skye wondered what happened. Didn’t make no sense—Skye liked the grand game every minute, even when he was hung over. Couldn’t understand those who didn’t.

They had a drink, Sima and Nicolette whiskey and Flare coffee. They had a fine supper, with boudins. Later, since Nicolette hinted that Flare was doing her no good, Skye did her plenty of good, and made her cry out with the fun of it.

Next morning Flare looked a little more cheerful.

Skye told Flare he had to be off. The emp hired him to take an express to Walla Walla. From there someone would hurry it on to Montreal. And the emp had told Skye to come up to Mission Bottom first and take whatever mail of the missionaries along, free on the prairie. The emp was generous these days, wasn’t the old rascal?

Then Skye remembered, “What you make of this, old hoss?”

He handed Flare a letter.

It was addressed to a woman, or girl, Flare had never heard of Miss Amanda Perkins, in Boston. The back said it was from Billy Wells.

Oh, Miss Jewel’s fellow—fiancé. Flare knew what it was. The letter Miss Jewel demanded. To his former fiancée.

“So?” Flare handed it back to Skye.

“So the chap gave it to me, quiet-like, and asked what it cost to send it to the States. Naught, says I, courtesy of the Honorable Company. Well, says he, I’ll give you two dollars to take it down the road and…”

Mr. Skye walked to the fire theatrically and set the letter on the flames. The edges began to brown and curl.

“…throw it on a fire. Be sure it burns, he says, every bit of it. And tell no one here. Bugger give me the two dollars, too. What do you make of that?”

“I make it we’d best mind our own business,” said Flare.

Flare knew what else to make of it. Billy Wells was cheating Miss Jewel. But why?

When Skye was gone, Flare went for a walk and thought it over. Decided he’d best have a talk with the lad. Which would be enjoyable. Flare didn’t like Billy Wells anyway.

Chapter Eighteen

Flare gave it a week, a most enjoyable week. He rode the countryside. A most beautiful countryside it was, forested and rolling. He liked it—when he wasn’t thinking that it would grow crops like weeds, and so would attract farmers, and so attract those who wanted to sell them things, save them, bank their money, and keep them in line, and the other maggots of civilization.

At night he played seven-up with the Frenchies and lined his pockets with coins. When it came to gambling, Frenchies were as childish as Indians. Besides, he was sober and they were drunk. He contemplated how easy life might be from now on. Go to rendezvous, gamble with drunkards, and fill your possibles sack. After the card games, since he didn’t have to listen to Skye and Nicolette making the beast with two backs, he slept wonderfully. Nicolette was considering marrying someone else, she said, and he could have her cabin for twenty-five dollars. Why not?

He thought of Billy Wells’s puppylike face a lot.

Nothing like having one up on your enemies to make a man feel better.

So, on the day after their Sabbath, he rode over to Mission Bottom. He didn’t want to catch them all together, at church services or at dinner after. He wanted to catch Sima alone after school. And see Miss Jewel a tad. And have a fine and private talk with Billy Wells.

Billy shook Flare’s hand eagerly, a tad obsequiously, as was the fellow’s manner. “Billy,” Flare said cheerfully for openers, “you’re a rotter, a liar, and a cheat.” He grinned hugely into Billy’s stupefied face. “And I mean to put an end to it.”

Billy got the damnedest look and lost his fatuous smile and turned back to marking some boards. This lad’s manner was that everything and everybody were wonderful. He was having trouble fitting Flare into that scheme of things. He needed a moment to think things over.

Flare decided to help him out. “What are you making, Billy?”

“A coffin, Mr. O’Flaherty.” He spoke wanly and didn’t look up. “Seems like the main use of a carpenter here in Oregon is making coffins.” He took a quick half glance up at Flare, like he hoped it wouldn’t be noticed, and picked up one of his saws. “God’s will, I guess.” He started to work.

Flare put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Twenty-five years old, maybe, but not grown up, as most American men weren’t. He supposed some American women liked it that way.

Billy slipped away from Flare’s hand. He made a crosscut. Finally he glanced up. “What is it you want, Mr. O’Flaherty?” He put the board into a miter box.

“I
know
, lad,” said Flare. Said it pointedly but gently. Billy pretended to pay no attention.

“You’re two-timing Miss Jewel.” He let it sit.

“I think you’d best say whatever it is you’ve got to say,” said Billy with his back half turned, “and then go along.”

“You promised Miss Jewel you’d write back to Boston and withdraw your proposal of marriage to the lass there. Making you free to marry Miss Jewel. She’s waiting to hear from the Boston lass, Miss Amanda Perkins. But that won’t be happening.”

Flare waited for a response. Billy sawed through a board in the miter box. Without looking at Flare, he reversed the board and started on the other end.

“You wrote the letter, or a letter. I wonder if you even showed it to Miss Jewel, and shed a theatrical tear. Then you gave it to the express to go with the other mail to the States. And gave the express two dollars to take the letter away from here and burn it.

“Too bad for your rotten scheme the express was my friend Mr. Skye. He did burn it. Right after he showed it to me.”

“I think you’d best go on now,” said Billy in his way of pretending to be calm. Flare could see the disturbance in one eye, which warmed Flare’s heart. “I don’t take kindly to your lies.”

Billy kept his back to Flare, fussing with the coffin boards. He wasn’t even going to look at Flare straight.

Flare restrained himself. “Tell ye what, lad, I’ll make you an offer. I’ll give ye a week. You tell Miss Jewel what you’ve done. You tell her and squirm and make it all right somehow, if you can.

“I’ll be back next Sunday. If you haven’t told her, I’ll do the job myself.”

Flare turned and walked away.

Billy Wells began to hammer nails into the coffin. Flare could feel the anger in the blows whacking out at him.

It felt lovely.

Ah, but didn’t things turn out sweet sometimes?

Sima was drilling on his writing, and then spelling, so Flare watched from the back of the room. The four students did lots of repetition, like a chorus: “Act, a-c-t. Apple, a-p-p-l-e.” It was the part of school Flare had hated, doing the same thing over and over, like you’d mistook yourself for a clock, forever repeating tick…tock…tick…tock. His father had put poetry into learning, teaching the great lines of the Bard, and Gaelic songs.

Flare thought it would be even harder to bear rote learning when you weren’t a child anymore, but on the threshold of being a man, like these lads. He felt sorry for them, and for Miss Jewel, who had the job of drilling them.

What would it all come to? he wondered. You could teach an Indian to read, but what would he do with that?

Flare wanted Sima to learn to read and figure, and draw if he wanted, but he honestly didn’t know what his son would make of that in his life. No engraved invitations would be coming from Buckingham Palace. A Shoshone wouldn’t be offered a job on a newspaper. Maybe he could be a clerk in a trapping brigade. If there were any trapping brigades five years hence.

He was proud that Sima was ahead of the other lads in spelling, though he’d started just a few months ago. The lad was sharp. But was it not a false pride?

The West was a place of wonders and strangenesses. Life would do a crazy dance on its stage, surely. And the craziest would be through the children Flare and his like had got, white and red at once.

He watched the back of Sima’s head in a swirling eddy of feelings.

“Three plus four is seven. Three plus five is eight. Three plus six is nine….”

Ah, my son.

Sima was distracted. “It’s all right, Flare.” He shrugged and repeated, “I guess.”

Was the lad beginning to see through the missionaries? But he would have to see thoroughly and be convinced. He’d have to
want
Vancouver or somewhere else. And then, lad, I’ll have a story to tell you about your old dad.

“Let me see your notebook,” Flare said. Sima handed it over and sat on a stump—the missionaries had cleared a lot of trees. “This is the worst part,” Sima said, gesturing at the drawings.

He opened a book of Bible stories and pointed. He was copying the illustration onto his sheet. “Dr. Full won’t let me draw what I want. I have to ‘learn from the masters.’” He rolled his eyes. “It’s no fun.”

Actually, Sima was not copying the book’s illustration. He was re-creating it in his own way. It was some disciples casting a net into the sea, and Jesus showing them how, or drawing a moral from it, or something. Instead of sketching the whole, Sima had started in one corner of the sheet and was filling in that corner with complete detail, and giving it all a kind of fanciful touch.

“That’s nice,” Flare said.

“I hate it,” Sima said hotly. “He won’t me let work on my
Thousand and One Nights
drawings. He won’t even let me draw from nature. And when he saw I’d done sketches of Coyote some, he got really mad.” Sima’s English was fast but not always right.

“Dr. Full is not a liberal-minded man,” said Miss Jewel, coming up behind them, “but we’ll get what we want.” She mimicked a dependent, flirting woman with her voice: “Oh, Mr. O’Flaherty, would you help poor little me and Sima?”

Flare chuckled. You couldn’t not like the woman.

He watched her coach Sima a little. Not coach, really, but ask, and learn from him. Flare always liked watching her, and hearing her voice.

She liked the kids. Right now she was teaching the boys and girls, separately. When the man teacher got well, she’d be back to girls only. Teaching them to cook, sew, clean. She wanted to teach them to read—she’d been trained to teach Indians to read—but the deacons said no. Studies useful to women only, they said.

She said she had to go to the girls now.

“How long will you keep them, Miss Jewel?” asked Sima.

“Why?” Miss Jewel asked back. She had a tickled look on her face.

Sima said, “Oh, nothing,” and pretended to concentrate on his drawing.

My, lad, but aren’t you embarrassed? thought Flare.

“The girls will be out in five minutes if they’ve done their work,” Miss Jewel said.

“Hey, Flare, wait, will you?” said Sima. “I want you to meet someone.”

“Aye, lad.” He’d wait if Miss Jewel didn’t come back, too. Flare wasn’t going to be comfortable around her today. Billy’s rotten scheme was poisoning things. Flare couldn’t tell her, not for one bleeding week.

Funny, he didn’t think he was going to feel good telling her then. But he would do it.

The lass came running up enthusiastically, then stopped short and looked at the ground and across toward the mill and everywhere but at Sima and Flare. Flare kept his face straight. He thought, And after running toward us, lassie. -

“Flare,” Sima began eagerly, “this is Lisbeth. My friend.”

Ah, well, social graces would come later for the lad, after reading and writing.

Yes, Lisbeth McDougal, daughter of Heather and Alexander. “I knew you when you were younger,” he said, “and not yet so very beautiful.” He gave her a small bow. “Michael Devin O’Flaherty,” he reminded her.

She smiled and nodded with embarrassment, and murmured something, her knees rubbing nervously together.

She was truly beautiful, fairer than Sima, but reddish, like mahogany. A lithe figure, not yet as full as would come. A face to break your heart, long and slender and grave, with huge eyes.

No wonder Sima was attracted. Which the poor lad was, and didn’t know what to do about it.

“Lisbeth lives at French Prairie,” Sima said. Flare should have known. “But her father and mother gone now are. Trapping.”

“Her father is a good man,” said Flare. “A Scot. Her mother a good woman, a Sioux. Lisbeth has traveled the country and seen more than you, boyo.”

“She’s my friend,” he said unnecessarily.

And perhaps can teach you about living with a foot in each world, thought Flare.

“I must be heading back to French Prairie,” he said. He didn’t say “home.” Nowhere was home but Ireland, and he’d never be back there.

“We are going to walk down by the river,” Sima said awkwardly.

“Good day to ye,” said Flare, “and good walking.”

“Until Sunday,” he called after them.

Mounted, he thought of his own first affair of the heart. He’d been sixteen, she the same. She hawked fish in the street where the family print shop was. Flare would carry tea out to her, and they’d sit on the dirty cobbles and drink it. Kathleen Quinlan, her name was, and she was black Irish, raven-haired, skin fair as cream, and eyes blue as the sky you never saw in the west of Ireland.

They’d met a few times on the sly. Once they’d taken half a day and walked out along the seacoast, on the high, grassy cliffs overlooking the pounding waves. They’d held hands and looked at the great waves, and Flare had wondered if they could stay forever and never move but always touch in this small way that made him feel what he’d never felt before. They didn’t move for the longest time, until he had to excuse himself to go behind a rock and pee.

Later they’d sat propped against a boulder and talked and fidgeted and kissed once, exactly once, briefly, tenderly….She broke it off and said she had to get home, right away.

When he’d left Ireland, in the autumn of that same year, he hadn’t been able to face her. He’d just sent a note. He wondered what had happened to her. He didn’t want to know. Just wanted to think of that one perfect day.

Their romance had been naught but feeling. One kiss, that one but a light caress. All feeling and no more happened.

Unlike his later experiences, which were the opposite, all doing and little feeling.

Unlike Sima, because that damned Skye had put him with a whore.

Flare suddenly thought, But you’ve lain a-plenty since with lasses of sixteen—Kathleen’s age, Lisbeth’s age. Have you not, my boyo? A bit of cloth, and few bells handed over, and then a lot of the old rub. Aye. With mere lasses, often as not.

The first wave was guilt, the second shame, and after those only a poignant sadness, and longing.

It was Billy who answered the door.

“Did ye take care of it, lad?”

Flare hadn’t been able to wait until after church services. He came early to the cabin Miss Jewel shared with Billy, the rotter, and rapped on the door sharply. He wondered if Billy would still be here—maybe Miss Jewel gave him the heave-ho, as the rat deserved.

Billy gave Flare that damnedest look, again.

“Yes, Mr. O’Flaherty, I spoke with her about it.”

“And?”

“You’d best hear it from Miss Jewel herself.”

She came to the door, looking uncommonly lovely. The only virtue of church, as far as Flare could see, was that the women made themselves look fine for it.

But she was angry. He gawked at her.

“Mr. O’Flaherty,” she began stiffly, holding back. “I must ask you not to come here again, or in any way to approach me or speak to me. As far as I am concerned, you are unwelcome in this community. If you continue to come here, I will tell Sima what you’ve done.”

She whirled away from the door and tried to slam it. But Billy Wells held the door with one hand. He gave Flare a sloe-eyed look of triumph, and closed it gently in Flare’s face.