“We have for too long allowed ourselves to be slowly charmed, like antelope. We permitted what is not of us to be among us and allowed bad spirits to roam. All of us have allowed this by giving shelter, food, names, and accepting what was offered. It is why the antelope did not give enough of themselves to feed us, why the wada were taken by the wind.
“I made it, my greed. I found it and did not walk away. I brought it here like a sore treated wrongly. So it has spread. I wished an obsidian wehe.” Wetness oozed from his closed eyes. “I did not see how such a namaka would cut.”
My breath came in short gasps, my chest heavy from the weight of the eyes of those who turned to look at me. My heart beat steady, not fast yet, but loudly in my ears.
“We will dance the dance that will take us from this bad state,” he continued. “Our dancing will cause the earth to tremble, rocks to fall from the ridges. Snow will fall in summer, and the sun will burn up. Rain will water the dry earth. The lakes will rise and rivers flood. But we will be safe on high ground.”
His talking of the dance had taken people’s eyes from me, and I thought perhaps his attacks were not at me.
“We will be joined by the dead who will rise from their sleep as I was raised, as you see before you. Only the people will dance. Only the people will rise up. Only the people will live.”
Then he opened his eyes, and though he did not know where I was sitting when he started, his eyes stared wide at me.
THE ELEVENTH KNOT
GATHER FARTHER, STAY OUT LONGER
A turbulence like the swirl of leaves picked up by a dust devil opened the flap at the door and whirled into the headman’s lodge. Willow Basket twisted around to see me. Her eyes grew large before she snatched her child from me, an act that cut deeper than Wuzzie’s words.
Lukwsh rose to stand beside me, and for one moment I thought she would speak for me, that her strength would be enough to keep me safe.
“Take her out,” Wuzzie said to no arguing.
Dancing began almost immediately.
I could hear the drums and the singing behind me as I step-hopped to keep up with Lukwsh walking with long strides to her lodge.
“What will happen?” I whispered.
She touched her hand to mine, looked away and shook her head, as though she did not know. It was then the tightness in my chest began to choke me, to argue with the pounding of my heart.
In the days that followed, someone from each wickiup danced at all times until the people fell exhausted onto their blankets as though dead. While they rested, another replaced them in the field that turned to mud by the tromping of feet and the thaw. My sense of separation grew with each swirling body I watched.
They left me, more than sent me off, avoided me as though I were a spent dog—though someone stayed always with me.
The dancing continued into a spring that spoke to faces filled with distant, vacant eyes. We accomplished little work. I heard Grey Doe speak without a mumble to Wren that dancing to exhaustion would bring an end to all intruders, so fixing tule mats or fishing weirs no longer mattered.
Several became skinnier, with flaps of skin hanging from bones. Grey Doe’s sister faced death from lack of food. Vanilla Leaf’s family, who did not dance as intensely as the others, rode to the army to gather food from their wagons as they had some seasons past, but she refused even those meager rations.
“I cannot dance,” the sister said, “but I cannot put anything from the tibos in my body.” So she died.
I watched her burial from a faraway place, saw smoke rise from the greasewood and sage piled over the mound, wondered if she had believed that she would rise from the dead through Wuzzie’s dancing.
My movements among the people were not challenged. I loaded my arms and back with firewood, ate small amounts from pots of watered stew prepared for all. I wondered why no one stopped me, why they let me eat when they had no wish that I would live. No one spoke when I appeared. All eyes seemed to know my presence, though they did not gaze my way. I felt as though I lived inside the thickness that precedes a violent summer storm.
Lukwsh worked beside me in the cold water, reaching deep for tule tubers that appeared in our hands smaller and less tasty than in anyone’s recent memory. Some of the women chattered as they worked, talking above the sounds of the drums which were as constant as the chirps of red-winged blackbirds nesting in the reeds. Our breasts were bare but for the chains of shell necklaces, and I could see how hunger had pushed our bellies out, our chests in. The snow melting brought relief for me, a hopeful promise of spring.
The western sky was crowded often with snow geese flushing up from the water, their high-pitched cries like a chorus of concern. Redhead and ruddy ducks and birds the color of vibrant sunsets made nesting sounds, sprinkled color if not comfort into the dullness that had become my life.
Working, Lukwsh and I did not speak. Soft words were exchanged only in the quiet of her lodge when Stink Bug left or Wren, so none but Lukwsh would face an angry Wuzzie should he hear her treating me as though I belonged.
“It is so everywhere, Shell Flower,” Lukwsh said in a whisper. She rubbed dirt from the grizzled tubers with her large hands. Her use of my special name warmed me, reminded me of better times.
“The land is tired this year and so does not wish to work so hard to make the food we need. We will have to slice these very thin, make them last a long time,” she said of the roots filling her hands. “It is not just here, na?” she said then, for the first time speaking of the charge against me in her distant way. “You did not cause it.”
“I am punished,” I said.
“Among others. Even in the east and south they dance to bring the dead alive. Owls die and many others. There are more rumors of deaths than real, even among the Modoc.” She did not look at me, faced forward into the desert spring. “Wuzzie’s upset is not forever. When the rains come and the seeds open wide, so will he. Until then, stay off of his path.”
“Perhaps I belonged with the Modocs. Maybe you should have let Lives in Pain have me. Or I could have left as soon as my leg healed and looked for my family.”
Lukwsh’s eyes looked wounded. “You have family here, or have you never made the choice to stay? No,” she shook her head, “there is no flavor in chewing old meat, Shell Flower.”
I sat still as a cornered marmot, not sure what to say.
“Do not give up so easily,” she said. “While we live, there is always a place for hope.”
She set the meager tubers out to dry, then faced me, her eyes serious, her wide smile gone. “You must tie knots in your memories, keep them to feed your tomorrows when you struggle or feel sad.” From her own waist she pulled a length of tanned leather softened to the smoothness of Flake’s ears. “Make this your memory. This cord will connect you to us, always.”
The slender leather thong was not much wider than the black line of my jaw. But it stretched long enough to take the knots of my memories, knots whose touch would bring back the smells and sounds and sights and touch and taste of this Wadaduka trace.
Lukwsh’s spirit of hope kept me through the spring and into early summer, the strength of her wisdom telling me I too could live despite the feeling of the growing storm that slept with me, woke me every morning.
Shard did not often speak to me. Once or twice I caught his eyes and felt a sharp pain of longing, thought he felt it too, for he always seemed aware of where I sat or stood. When he danced, he was a different person off in the distance. Perhaps he debated with demons of his own. But when he landed in exhaustion in a heap, I noticed he caught my eye before he fell. It was our closest contact.
My life felt as hollow as a fallen cottonwood covered with its own white fluff. I lay inside it in my mind, allowing the image of its decaying sides to mold around me, fighting to keep the short breath and crawling fear from consuming me before I fell into restless sleep.
All changed when Wuzzie’s mind gave him a vision of a large antelope herd, s
outh, near the stream Summer Rain and I once named Home Creek. It seemed late in the year for a herd to be there, summer already well advanced.
“They come,” Wuzzie called out in his fluttering voice, “because so many have danced and abstained from eating flesh.”
The drums stopped, and the stillness into which he spoke seemed as immense as the starlit sky that reached over us.
“We have kept ourselves pure. And apart.” His voice squeaked in its fatigue from singing, his eyes below bare brows sunk deep in his head. “We will all go now to the place I have seen in my dream. Charm the antelope and eat of this namaka of the spirit.” His fingers grabbed at his hide shirt. He pulled something invisible to the ground marking the ending of the dancing and the gathering.
The preparations began and oddly, included me.
“We all go this time,” Lukwsh told me. “Children as well as moo’a, horses and all dogs. So we will not have to load the meat and hides and take them to the people. We can eat there, where the antelope fall.”
“Will I build mounds?” I asked.
She nodded. “But not walk out among the herd. Wuzzie will not challenge the spirit that brings the pronghorns. Perhaps they will forgive you for being—”
“As I am,” I finished for her, hoping there would soon be food enough and no need to blame a young woman for past miseries, for being only what she was.
I wondered if this charming would mark the end of my isolation.
We walked on tired feet toward our belief in Wuzzie’s vision. Wren alone wore a cheerful look, and I wondered if anyone had told her what was happening. She tapped my shoulder with her fingers to point out birds of color or a snake slithering through the sparse grass. But she did not speak.
Only one moment of joy broke into the journey, like a shaft of sunlight on a stormy day. It happened on the day Shard chose to ride beside me as I walked. A burden basket filled with my few belongings and some of Lukwsh’s meager supplies hung from the tumpline that pulled against my forehead. The day dawned hot and dry. Sweat dripped down my rib cage beneath my leather apron.
Silent, Shard sat astride the spotted mount that once held both of us in harmony. His eyes faced forward, though I walked at his side. My heart pounded in my head. I longed to lean into his shoulder, press my hands to his chest, tell him of the loneliness I carried, wait for his words to lift me up.
His bare leg rubbed the horse’s belly and bumped me as he passed. I looked up at him, not sure of his intention. His eyes stayed forward, staring between the twitching ears of his horse, gazing toward some destination farther on. But he spoke out loud.
“It will be well,” he said as to the wind.
I questioned whether I had even heard him speak.
Just before he dug his heels into the horse and sped away, he bent to touch my head. “You are in my mind,” he said. “It is a promise kept.”
Despite the drought, Home Creek ran fast and clear. The willows we cut with sharp knives were easily bent to shape the wickiups. After James and Thunder Caller carried the lighted torches and made the first circle, we would rest in those grass lodges, regain strength for the longer day ahead.
The second day we made the mounds, carrying greasewood and sage. From the slice in the lava ridge where Home Creek began, I dragged branches of cottonwoods and fallen junipers. Hard, dry berries dribbled at my side. Summer Rain worked with me for a time, but she had become the second wife of Thunder Caller now, given up on Natchez, so she stayed closer to elders such as Grey Doe, even Wuzzie.
My distance to gather wood was greater than that traveled by others searching for greasewood, but no one spoke to scold me. Each accepted the material I handed up to Buck Brush or We-ah-wee-wah, while my eyes searched for Shard. I found him building a far mound, taking juniper branches from old ones. Even Grey Doe, with her bad shoulder, lifted wood awkwardly for this important charming.
No one stumbled or fell, told a lie without owning its name.
As before, the charming began with the smoking of sweetgrass, the beating of the tapered drum. For five nights we sang songs to charm the antelope into thinking all this noise and gathering of people is where they too belonged. I spent evenings beside Lukwsh, walked with her and Wren to the small grass lodge recently built. I slept between the two and could almost convince myself that things were well again, I was forgiven for being who I was.
Once Wren woke in the night, cried out, said she saw dark shadows walking within our lodge. Lukwsh burned a strand of Wren’s hair, her own, and mine, said we were protected from the shadows that preceded death. I believed it would take more than singed hair to protect me from a charred juniper I remembered seeing long ago.
On the fifth morning, Thunder Caller and James walked out with the torches, followed by the men and boys. They passed through the opening across from the headman’s wickiup, walked around the circle of mounds, and smoked their pipes. They made a new circle to go around the antelope herd of Wuzzie’s vision.
I hoped they would be gone a long time.
The women who remained used the time to gossip quietly while they rested, weakened by labor and so little food. One or two made attempts to repair a mat with a tule or find a rock on which to grind seeds for stew. Some looked after Wuzzie’s needs as he sat and sang outside his lodge. Others were dispatched to gather up sagebrush gum to keep the children sweet, and to branch out, set dead-falls for squirrels or prairie chickens.
I was one of those.
Lukwsh nodded with her chin to me and motioned that I should take Flake. “Bring a rabbit,” she said softly. She chipped away at a piece of black obsidian, which now left me with an icy cold sinking in my stomach. “A good stew at the end of the first day of the walking will please many.”
She smiled, and her upper lip caught on her teeth as she watched Flake and me walk away. She raised her hand and held it toward me for a long time, like a blessing. Then I heard Wren call my name and rush to follow me.
It is the image of the people I choose to keep in my mind forever, not those that followed.
Our search for rabbits took much of the day, but we had success. Holding an obsidian knife between my teeth, I stripped the rabbit of its hide in one long piece, knew the pelt was prized and would someday join fifty others to make a cape for Lukwsh. We roasted the meat from the two we caught and shared small bites of one. Wren’s eyes sparkled in a child’s excitement as the fat dripped into the fire. She rubbed the flint pieces in her fingers without looking, as though they did a fragile dance. Grease dribbled from her chin without her wiping it, and then she showed me faces she could make to cause babies to laugh.
“You have a heart for children, Wren,” I said, touching her hand so she would look at me, watch my mouth.
Her smile was full, and I was strangely happy in a moment pressed into a dangerous time.
The rabbit skins hung from hemp strings we wore about our waists when we arrived back. Much commotion stirred the camp.
“Not possible!” I heard Wuzzie shout.
“We walked where you direct-ed,” Thunder Caller told the little man pacing in the dirt, kicking at the dust. “But it is not as you said.”
“Maybe we did not go out far enough,” Buck Brush said. He stood eye to eye with Thunder Caller, though he had a smaller chest. He said his words to the headman with soft-spoken respect.
“We saw no signs,” James said, pushing his hair with both hands behind his ears. “Nothing to circle.”
“Maybe your vision stream is in another place,” Shard said. He wiped his forehead with the headband he removed. All the men looked tired and weary from having walked such a distance.
“Maybe we should go north, onto Snow Mountain,” Shard said. He looked around to the others. “It is more likely the pronghorns would be there this time of year.”
“No!” Wuzzie screamed. “The spirits are not wrong.” He danced around in the dirt, his spider-like fingers pointing toward Thunder Caller. “No!”
No on
e challenged him or suggested he had perhaps misunderstood the spirits.
“You must go out farther. Look better for signs. That is the plan for tomorrow,” Wuzzie directed with finality. He did not even see me when he stomped by.
Dread seasoned the evening meal in our wickiup. Later, at the singing and passing of the pipe, the smoke floated upward into a flotsam of doom.
That night I dreamed of high places where white-peaked mountains glistened in the moonlight, where eagles soared and dipped in cool wind. I stumbled through the air to a strange land of rushing water where leaping fish shimmered against the backdrop of tall, red rocks. Pale hands reached out to me. Unknown people with eyes like Wren’s looked up, and when I touched their faces they were transformed and I expanded, drifted upward and away, into familiar, into my own. I awoke rested.
The men and boys went out earlier in the morning with Wuzzie walking close behind Thunder Caller, closer to the choices. At the far circle we could see the black smoke of the torch drift and disappear in wind.
“It will be better this day,” Lukwsh said. “Sometimes we must work harder, to better appreciate a gift when it is given.”
“Let us make namakas then,” Grey Doe suggested, and we each began in our own way, twisting tules, making spoons, sewing precious cloth. Wren made a tiny spikebrush spoon, the size for child’s play but perfect, like her smile when she showed me. Later, she twisted tules into a small horse and dog.
“Toys,” she said and smiled. I barely noticed the jagged scar on her cheek.
I worked on making tule baskets to hold water, a smaller one for treasures, and thought I’d offer one to Wuzzie. But when the men returned again, even later this time, I understood that no namaka of mine would be enough.
Their faces were lined with dust and dirt collected by their toil. They did not look at us as we were ordered into council.
“Someone has lied or stumbled or done a foolish thing and not told it,” Wuzzie said when we assembled. “It is the only way to explain.”