Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 6

  What waited for her out there in the light? In the morning? In a camp of savages? She cowered under the robe, too frightened to move or peek out. She knew she couldn’t hide there all day, but she intended to try. The sun was already warming up the side of the tent. She could feel that part of the bed getting hotter, and she was beginning to sweat. Maybe they’d forget she was there and she could sneak away. But she could hear someone moving around inside the lodge, and she would have to get up soon. She had the same pressing need she had every morning, no matter what else might be happening. Her very life was in danger, and all she could think about was that she had to relieve herself. Where did Indians do that sort of thing?

  She would have to face whomever was out there. And she would have to make them understand her need. What would they do to her? What did they want with her? She had a horror of peering out from the covers into the stony eyes of Cruelest One. She’d heard that Indians roasted babies, and tortured captives or made them slaves. Would she have to work from dawn till dusk hauling and chopping and toiling for them? She prayed her family would rescue her soon.

  Low voices sounded nearby. There was a clatter of wood and kindling dropping, then silence. She tensed in the suffocating blackness, trying to guess everything—personalities, intentions, motives, attitudes—from the small, anonymous noises that reached her. Then she felt something warm and alive snaking up under the covers. It brushed against her side. She screamed, threw off the robe, and scooted across the narrow bed until she was backed up against the taut wall like a cat cornered by a dog pack. A small brown hand and arm lay on the robe that covered the pole and rawhide bedstead. It belonged to a doll with an impish face and shiny, shoe-button eyes. A tiny, perfectly-curved mouth lined with even white teeth grinned from behind a curtain of wavy, black hair.

  “Hi, tai, hello, friend,” she said. “Asa Nanica, Star Name.” And she pointed to her own small, naked chest. The imp laughed and, stretching all the way across the bed, tickled the yellow hair. Cynthia squealed and hit out, pushing harder against the hot tent wall that pressed like a drumhead at her back. She heard a noise like hens settling in for the night, a clucking and rustling of feathers being shaken out and roosts disputed. The tent was filling with people.

  They all looked alike and they all smelled alike. The odor of smoke and sweat, leather and bear grease made the air almost too thick to breathe. Outside she could hear the thud of running feet as more women and children ran to join the crowd already at the door. An audience had come to see a show, and the main attraction was naked. Cynthia grabbed the stuffed deerskin pillow and held it in front of her. There were boys in that mob. It was easy to tell since they had nothing on either.

  “Go away. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, will you!” she yelled at them. But they only laughed, the women tittering behind their hands. The group bobbed forward, pushed by those crowding in behind them. The air thickened like barley soup boiling down. Children crawled between the legs of the adults and squatted down in front, staring up at her with big. black eyes under their tousled hair. One of them inched forward to touch her and she looked wildly around for a weapon, a missile, anything.

  Then the woman who lived in the lodge gave a quiet command. The crowd began to melt away, backing out through the opening like a scene played in reverse. One last urchin peered in, his hair standing out in spikes around his head, even white teeth flashing in his brown grin. Takes Down The Lodge shooed him with the buffalo rib she used as a stir stick. It was such a familiar gesture, so like her own mother waving her big wooden ladle at little John, that Cynthia was for an instant home again. Then the instant was gone.

  It was quiet in the tent. The air thinned out. Only Takes Down the Lodge, her husband’s mother, Pohawe, Medicine Woman, and the child, Star Name, remained. They stood staring at their guest, who had found a heavy stick by the bed and now brandished it at them. Cynthia’s hair stood out in tangled tendrils around her face, and the sunlight filtering through the leather wall ignited the tips of it. Tears had left salty tracks in the dust on her cheeks. Her sturdy body was tense, and one muscle in her shoulder twitched. Her wide blue eyes had a deranged look in them.

  As though approaching a cornered and dangerous animal, Star Name crooned in a low, soothing voice while Takes Down The Lodge and Medicine Woman watched. Star Name reached out a tiny hand and touched Cynthia lightly on the wrist. The gentle touch released the tension. Cynthia dropped the L-shaped club, Takes Down’s shinny-ball stick, and collapsed onto the bed. She sobbed into the pillow and burrowed back under the covers like a desperate horned toad digging into the sand.

  The Indian child crawled up next to her and pulled the robe back. She wrapped her arms around her and rocked her gently, smoothing the snarled, dirty yellow hair and wiping the tears away with the side of her palm. Star Name was dressed in a breechclout and was as brown as saddle leather, polished smooth.

  “Ka taikay, ka taikay, Tohobt Nabituh, don’t cry, blue eyes. Toquet. It’s all right.”

  It was the first warm, human contact Cynthia had had since the attack on the fort. She huddled in the lean brown arms, inhaling the sweet, smoked smell of Star Name. She clung to her like a baby squirrel to a tree limb a hundred feet in the air.

  “Mi-pe mahtaoyo, poor little one,” said Medicine Woman. Backing slowly off the bed on her knees and one hand, Star Name pulled the yellow hair, still clutching the pillow, onto the bare hard-packed dirt floor, studded with worn-down tufts of stubborn grass. Cynthia allowed herself to be tugged to the small fire in the center of the lodge. The smoke spiraled lazily up from it and was sucked through the hole fifteen hazy feet above. She stared around her. The tent was as big as the cabin she had lived in at the fort, once she got used to its cone shape.

  Motes of dust danced in the shaft of morning sunlight that sliced, straight-edged and solid looking, through the open door. Around the curved wall was a jumble of furs and buffalo robes on the three raised bedsteads. The light that came through the translucent leather washed the heaps of bags and bulging rawhide boxes in a warm, golden haze.

  On one of the beds lay a half-finished shirt of smooth, soft doeskin. The bone awl, worn to polished ivory with use, was stuck into a seam. The rib stir stick, a turtle-shell bowl, and a large butcher knife lay on a piece of hide next to the fire. Hanging from a peg driven into one of the tent poles was a plain, square shaving mirror with holes punched through the wooden frame and feathers dangling from it. Clothes and weapons hung from pegs or were draped over a line stretched between the poles. Permeating everything was the smell of roasting meat.

  Cynthia glanced nervously toward the door, cowering behind her pillow. Through the oval opening she could see camp life going on as usual. No one even glanced her way, and it didn’t seem necessary to be embarrassed in front of the three who were with her. Takes Down The Lodge was short and plump, with a plain, round face and a shy smile. Medicine Woman was older, tall, and slender, with kind eyes. Star Name squatted on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, as though trying to contain her excitement over the yellow hair. The glint in her eyes made her seem like a jack-in-the-box about to explode.

  The lodge looked as though a high wind had passed through it and the survivors were still living in the wreckage. But Cynthia knew better. In spite of the curved walls that tapered up to the smoke hole, the lodge poles crowding through the opening, it didn’t seem very different from the cabin she had left. The tools and clothes were simple, but made with skill and care and cherished by those who used them. Everything was where it could be reached easily when needed. She was in someone’s home. Someone without pretense. She was in the kind of home she had always lived in.

  Takes Down The Lodge handed her a pointed stick with a piece of blackened meat dangling from it, drops of grease falling and leaving dark stains in the dirt. Cynthia bit through the crisp, charred crust into the pink, juicy flesh underneath. Wiping the grease and cinders off with her fingers, she transferred them to her thigh and a
te the meat off the stick. She squatted to dip her fingers into the glob of corn mush that lay like a lump of gray clay in a bark dish. The main seasonings were grit and bark chips, but it eased the hollow hunger ache in her stomach. If the place only had a privy, she’d be almost content.

  Takes Down The Lodge worried a hot stone from the coals, balanced it on the broad end of her stir stick, and dropped it into a paunch full of water. When the hissing stopped, she dipped a piece of rag into the warmed water and began scrubbing off the layers of dirt and grease, black paint and dried blood that had accumulated on her new daughter. Medicine Woman opened a small, elaborately beaded bag lined with fresh leaves. She scooped out some of the spicy smelling salve and smeared it onto the cuts and scratches that hadn’t healed yet.

  Star Name had slipped out while Cynthia was eating. She popped back in, pulling her mother along with one hand and trailing a long strip of cloth with the other. It was one of her breechclouts, a present for the yellow hair. Her mother, Tuhani Huhtsu, Black Bird, murmured a greeting and stood by the door. She stayed out of the stream of light, as the others worked and chattered around the new child. She was a heavier, even shyer version of her younger sister, Takes Down The Lodge, and she seemed to prefer being part of the furnishings.

  While Star Name and Takes Down showed Cynthia how to put on the breechclout, Medicine Woman flitted about like a hummingbird. She softly chanted a high-pitched song that seemed to vibrate in her sinuses. She darted in and out with a long leather thong, laying it down Cynthia’s back and around her chest, then knotting it in various places. The child stood with her arms held out from her sides and watched the flimsy breechclout cord being tied around her hips.

  She wondered what the old woman was doing. Medicine Woman reminded her of her grandmother in a way. She wasn’t fat like the other women, and she had narrow, sharp features. Her eyes were dark pools with sunlight glinting in them. There were lines in the skin around them, where the laughter had spilled over and run down her cheeks. Cynthia reached out timidly and touched her hand, to see if the brown skin felt like her own. It had the same velvety feel of her own grandmother’s, of denim worn smooth with time. And like Granny Parker’s, Medicine Woman’s fingers were long and deft, and her palms were paved with calluses. Medicine Woman had the strong, gentle hands of a healer. She smiled at Cynthia, laid three spidery fingers lightly on the child’s cheek, and went back to her thong.

  Next, Takes Down attacked Cynthia’s hair, pulling at the snarls with a brush made of a porcupine tail stretched over a block of wood. Still kneeling, her breath soughing on Cynthia’s cheek, she braced one hand on the child’s head and raked the tangles from the long, thick golden mane. Star Name picked up a lock of it, stroked it, and held it up to the light to show her mother its color.

  On the other side of her, Medicine Woman laid her thong, now lumpy with knots, along Cynthia’s foot. She giggled and did a little dance to escape the tickling. In her need to relieve herself she danced anyway, from one foot to the other. The pressure in her bladder was almost painful. How much longer could she hold out? How could she tell them of this most basic need?

  Takes Down The Lodge tapped her on the shoulder with the brush to make her stand still, and began braiding. Cynthia stared straight ahead, unable to focus on the woman’s face so close up. It was a face she couldn’t help liking. Takes Down had large, sad doe’s eyes with an oriental tilt. Her narrow mouth seemed to stretch across her face and dive into the round cheeks on either side. A straight, aquiline nose gave her a look of quiet dignity and intelligence in spite of the moon-shaped face around it. Her hair was cropped short and tucked behind her small ears.

  Star Name plaited a crow’s feather into the thin braid on the crown of Cynthia’s head, and she and Takes Down tied the two side braids with blue ribbons. Cynthia wondered where they had come from. Had they been taken from some settler child as she lay dying? Cynthia hoped they’d been bartered from a trader.

  Finally done with the ritual of the thong, Medicine Woman painted a red line down the center of the yellow hair’s part, using a blunt stick dipped in the thick paste of paint. Then they sat back on their heels to admire her. Cynthia ducked her head shyly under the weight of their attention.

  Takes Down The Lodge heaved to her feet with a grunt and went to get the mirror. She walked as though wading through deep mud, swaying from side to side and barely lifting her feet. She held the thick, square glass out, the bright metal cones tinkling and the feathers revolving slowly on their thongs. Cynthia jerked her hand to her part, startled by the red line there. For an instant she feared she was bleeding, that they had numbed her with their sly kindness while they treacherously cut her. Then she remembered the paint, and she smiled sheepishly. As she looked around at their beaming faces, she felt a little guilty for thinking ill of them.

  “Tsa-tua, Takes Down The Lodge,” Takes Down poked her own breast, her fingers sinking into the soft flesh that billowed out like twin sails. “Tsa-tua.”

  “Chatua?” Cynthia rolled the strange syllables around in her mouth and tried to spit them out as the woman did.

  “Tsa-tua.” Takes Down patted her own chest with both hands.

  “Tsa-tua.” Cynthia was a fast learner. “Asa Nanica,” she added, reaching out and giving a light tug on Star Name’s shiny black hair. Still standing by the door, even Black Bird laughed, hiding behind the deerskin she was chewing. The tall, delicate woman stepped forward.

  “Pohawe, Medicine Woman,” she said.

  Cynthia reached solemnly to shake Medicine Woman’s hand. Not understanding the gesture, Medicine Woman took her hand and pressed it to her heart. Cynthia could feel it fluttering under her fingers like a bird caught in the bony cage of Medicine Woman’s chest. Then Star Name pulled her over to introduce her to her mother, Tuhani Huhtsu, Black Bird. Black Bird bobbed her head and smiled shyly around the hide she was chewing as part of the tanning process. She kept it in her mouth as much for cover as for the need to be chewing it.

  Now Cynthia knew them all by name, but they didn’t know her.

  “Cynthia,” she said, pointing to her pale chest. “My name is Cynthia.”

  “Tsinitia?” They burst out laughing and chattering.

  “What’s so funny?” She stamped her feet and hugged her elbows, shut out by their laughter, unable to understand her own joke. Were they laughing at what she said, or what she was? She wanted to cry again from the loneliness and frustration.

  “Tsinitia.” Takes Down The Lodge grabbed her in strong, plump brown arms and hugged her, jerking her off her feet and immobilizing her. As she was crushed against the rough deerskin her arms were pressed into her stomach and she could smell smoke and horses, dust and wild onions. Please, God, don’t let me wet myself and this woman. She might kill me for it. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, tensing until her muscles ached. As Takes Down set her down, she heard her name being passed from mouth to mouth. If only she knew what it meant. Tsinitia, Little Stay Awhile. It was a wonderful omen for her new family.

  Star Name took Cynthia by the hand and started gaily for the door, chattering as though her new friend understood every word. Cynthia planted her feet so firmly and suddenly that Star Name almost fell over backwards.

  “Oh no you don’t. I’m not going out there.” She knew they couldn’t understand her, but she didn’t care. After all, they didn’t care that she couldn’t understand them. Her mouth set in the stubborn Parker line, the line that had brought her family through thousands of miles of howling wilderness. The whole tribe of savages was outside, waiting to grab her and taunt her and throw things at her as they had the night before. She was staying right here, even if she had to wet herself where she stood. It wouldn’t be the first time since she had been kidnapped by these people.

  Anyway, she didn’t have any clothes on. In her nakedness she felt vulnerable and exposed. What would her mother say? Or her father? She blinked and gave a small shake of her head, trying to rid herself of th
e image of her father as she had last seen him. What would Grandpa say? She could hear Elder John at the evening worship, preaching about modesty. His deep, booming voice had always sounded like a cannon to her, blasting at the forces of Satan. She used to bow her head more to get out of the line of fire than from reverence. “I was afraid because I was naked: and I hid myself. Genesis three, ten.”

  Not only was the breechclout shameful, but it was embarrassing. She was wearing a diaper. Little John would laugh at her if he could see her. The rough wool felt itchy and tight along the crease at the top of her thighs. She was so aware of her bare legs and chest and buttocks that she could feel them tingling with shame. Besides, she could never run away from anybody in this thing. It tickled her legs. It would probably fall off. What if the cord broke, or she caught it on a thorn and pulled the cloth loose? And the sun would burn unladylike freckles on her shoulders and face.

  She tried to back up, pushing against the rock-steady hands of Takes Down The Lodge as they pressed into her shoulder blades. Her feet plowed furrows in the dirt as she was shoved and hauled toward the door, while Black Bird and Medicine Woman called encouragement. She teetered in the opening, a fledgling about to be pushed off the edge of the nest. The noises of camp, the barking and neighing, the shouting and pounding and scraping and laughing, seemed to crescendo.

  “Mea-dro, Tsinitia. Let’s go!” Star Name grinned at her as she tugged her hand. Cynthia stepped over the threshold and took a few tiny steps into the sunlight. She looked around, ready to jerk away and flee back to the safety of the cool, dark hole in the lodge wall. She shivered in the heat and waited for God to part the sky, lean down, and scold her for her shamelessness.