It was no mean feat that I accepted he might like me, no easy task to let myself begin to care for someone as I once had cared for Shard, no simple chore to say the name of one my memory holds and trust my Spirit prayers to protect me from any ghostly harm for having done it.
Ella falling in love with Monroe Grimes and planning their wedding only added to the fluff of fantasy that filled the air that summer of ’79. It culminated the night the four of us (with Spirit, too) drove two buggies up the Tygh Ridge Road to a dance in the Nansene Hall.
My head was so sparkled with the joy of his laughter, the tenderness of his touch on my back as we danced, that when he suggested at sunrise that before heading home we should take a runabout to The Dalles to snatch a marriage license, I agreed, “Swept off my feet,” as Ella said.
We brought ourselves back with me still sparkling to tell the Sherars that more than one wedding would be planned. They did not take kindly to the idea, thought it too soon, too unpredictable. They were wary, I suspect, and maybe feeling odd, too, since I was of an age to marry and did not belong to them. Or anyone.
And then before we even had a chance to give ourselves a moment to reconsider, the sheriff came, called Crickett an impostor, a charmer, a patient not a doctor who would have to leave with him.
It was a terrible morning, though the sun was bright and brought out the green lichen on the red rocks. A photographer, Jesse Shep she said her name was, noticed the effect of light and shadow and asked to have her camera unloaded from the stage for one quick photograph of her fellow travelers.
Everyone obliged, and the sheriff even relented, took the cuffs off Crickett so he could stand like other men for one last time.
It was not a choice I would have made for Crickett, not ever, even when I realized that the charming circle had been crossed by the reality of his making. Because before the sheriff could put the cuffs back on him and take him back to the asylum—Spike plunged into the swirling river and was gone.
“Twas a mind sickness,” the sheriff ventured, though no one asked. “Fellow never did no harm. He’d get real sad, so quiet his family couldn’t talk with him. Other times, I guess he stayed up all night, chattering, thinking out loud, and in the morning he’d be waiting over other people’s beds, scaring them to death when they woke, a red-haired giant staring back like a cat! Tells ’em all these grand plans with his nieces and nephews and shoppin’ while his aging mother walks behind him puttin’ everything back. Quite an interesting case, they said. Sorry to have lost him. Should have left him cuffed.”
It might seem strange to some, but I asked the photographer for a copy of Crickett’s likeness.
“It’ll take some more time to develop,” she said, a little rattled I think from being a witness to a death. “I’m opening a studio in Portland. Come next time you’re in town. What was his name, so I can file the negative for you?”
“It wasn’t Crickett,” I said and started crying.
She reached out to hold me. But her care for me as one woman offering comfort to another, or the arms of Mrs. Sherar as she walked me to the inn, or the firm hands of Mr. Sherar as he held me to his chest and stroked my head could not remove the weight I carried, could not set aside the guilt attached to me.
One more loss because another stayed for a time with me. He could have traveled on to where the sheriff might not have ever found him, but he had stayed, for me.
One more disappointment. He had charmed me, wasn’t who he said he was, and I risked believing him. I thought that we belonged, one to the other. How could he do that? I wondered to myself. What was wrong with him? With me, that I attracted such distress? I had thought Crickett was the answer, was what my plan was for, to partner up with him, become his wife. But I was wrong. I had misunderstood, or perhaps I had made it up.
I would belong to no one, I decided, then no one could charm me, no one could send me away, slice my heart two ways. I would not belong. That was the safest place.
In the days that followed, Mrs. Sherar watched me from the corner of her eye. She found moments to speak of subjects better left unsaid. She spoke of losses while we churned. I think to help me know that other people lived with wounds well hidden.
“I had three brothers and sisters who died very young, within days of each other,” she said. “It was the worst time in my life. I still miss them. And my mother … I know it was hard on her, but she accused me of causing it. And I hadn’t.” Her voiced defended as though she were still a child.
“Maybe she looked for someone to blame besides herself,” I said.
She looked at me, and her expression held surprise. “Perhaps you’re right, Alice. Perhaps you’re right.”
At the river, she would sometimes start a conversation that would lead to wondering how I was, whether I could talk about my Crickett yet without it salting a hidden wound. Sea gulls squawked at each other, plunged at the base of the falls seeking salmon bits and bugs.
“Sunmiet says we must forgive ourselves as well as others,” Mrs. Sherar offered. She tossed a line into the river. “I think my mother did not forgive herself, let alone me. And I have work to do in that regard.” She sighed, dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “Knowing doesn’t take away the sting, now does it?”
We sat a time, and I suspected she wanted me to talk, yet she let me hold the silence. She spoke then of other disappointments, her unfilled hopes.
“You know, Joseph and I think of you as, well, almost as one of our children. At least your being here, walking down Joseph’s road, is like a quiet answer to something we both longed for. You will always have a place here, Alice, always belong here. Nothing will ever change that. Not anything you do or say, nothing. I hope you know that.”
I believed she meant it, and her acceptance gave me confidence to speak of those that I had loved, some who cared for me, who I had failed. I told it as a kind of warning to her, to not hope for much from me, for my presence promised harm. Spike Crickett was but one sign.
“But you can’t think you caused his death? It was his choice to stay behind that day. It’s what he wanted. We can’t be responsible for other people’s choices. Being answerable for our own takes time enough.”
And then I told her, softly, about Shard, who gave his life for mine and how I harmed the people by my disobedience. And now this Crickett who had left this life because he came back to live in mine.
She did not turn away at the depth of suffering I’d caused others, held me close instead, and I felt the stone of shame I hung around my neck feel one pebble lighter.
“So there was a first love,” Mother Sherar said as we walked back to the inn, arms linked like young girls. “I didn’t think you old enough to have cared so much. But then I fell in love with Joseph when I was just fourteen.”
We were followed by the cat, wishing to be held.
“I think that’s good,” she said, handing the cat to me. “I know it doesn’t feel that way now, but loving Crickett was a gift, one you invited and honored with your acceptance. What you must remember is not that he deceived you or ‘charmed’ you as you put it, or any of us. Or that he had a mind sickness you couldn’t cure. You didn’t do one thing on this earth to make it worse. But that he loved you and wanted only the best for you.” She stopped then, turned me to her so I faced her piercing eyes, her mouth, her words. “And you gave something to him, too, Alice, by loving him so deeply before he died.”
It was a strange feeling to be a part of someone else’s filling, taken from what seemed an empty storehouse of my own.
“Each ending is also a new beginning,” Ella said one evening just before we lowered the lights to go to bed. “Like a circle, really.”
It was a memory knot from her sisters, I suspected, though at first I could not hear her words of comfort and new hope, could only see the charming circle and the consequences of it being crossed.
But I looked for the new beginnings.
Crickett’s passing gave me practice in my praying
, to take away my grief, not let me think I caused only pain.
“It isn’t your fault if someone chooses to end their life,” Ella told me, patting my hand.
She knew so little.
“And if it were, you’ve already been forgiven for it anyway.”
I think of moving on. Gather farther, stay out longer, and do not return.
Above the river, east, beyond the rolling breaks, I rode several miles on a good mule I traded from Mr. Sherar in exchange for my work. He was surefooted, this mule, made his way around the boulders tumbled in ravines, walked in quick-quick steps where deer browsed, then twisted toward Hollenbeck’s point. It was a spot that Peter said still showed the marks where immigrant wagons were held back by juniper logs years before. And I could not ride by there after that without looking for the gouges that marked the bunch grass ridge and shallow soil, though thirty years had passed. Some marks of troubled times lasted a lifetime.
On top, past the Buckley place, I rode into dimples of land, noticed plowed fields of homesteaders beginning to dot the distance. By evening, I turned the mule, faced west, and was free to watch the sun set against the white mountains. The wide expanse reminded me of the desert. I surveyed the red and creamy streaks melting like butter across the horizon, spilling across the ravine of green grasses that flowed like a river marsh and marked this place.
Mother Sherar had found this marshy spot, directed me to what she called the Finnigan Place located along the Dalles-Canyon City Military Highway on the east side of the river. It was not far from Ella and Monroe’s ranch, and so she often rode a little farther past their place when she visited them, to this green river at Finnigan. She did not yet own the land, but had set her heart on it. Stages still changed teams there, stopped for fresh spring water, the green grass available to stock like an oasis in a desert land.
I rode alone that day to let myself enjoy the high, wide-open spaces that flowed like a lake beneath the Cascade Mountains. There I watched the wind make waves across the grasses that grew breast high, reminding me of the marshes near Malheur. Fed by an underwater river, the area stayed green long into fall when every other piece of ground in the area was covered by a hot and drying brown.
The cat named Spirit traveled with me in his cage of willow tied behind my saddle. He liked the ride, I decided. He let the breeze blow his long gray hair back around his flat nose, round face. “A Persian look,” remarked Mrs. Sherar, who tolerated the cat, preferred the dog.
Dogs’ ears always stood alert when Spirit was around. The cat used his charms, walked close to Peter’s cattle dog, lifted and sassed its long tail beneath the dog’s nose as it swiped by him on the way to water and food. Spirit came to a whistle-call, not unlike a dog. He slept often on my bed, my chest mostly. And at the first crow of the peacocks, if I did not rise, Spirit pushed his paws ever so gently on my eyelids and tap-tapped, pulled back, and waited. If I was too slow to open up and see his green eyes staring, he tap-tapped my eyelids once again, a dance he continued until I said his name and opened wide my eyes to celebrate the day.
He was a great mouser. And as long as he was held often, he did not wail or whine even when forced to ride a mule while lying in a cage.
We rode often to this Finnigan Place the spring after Crickett met the water, the year after the Wadaduka people were forced to march to Yakima. My feet sank often into the green that reminded me of soft mud when I once dug for tule tubers.
I rolled my bedroll out, made a circle marked by powdered lye to keep the snakes from crossing, and built a low fire inside the circle. The cat joined me in the bedroll, and I counted the stars that flickered until I fell asleep.
I found this Finnigan a dwelling of welcome, a place to heal, made all the more so when I discovered roots that were familiar.
“These are tsooga,” I told Sunmiet.
She had joined me the next day, she on a slender horse, me on my mule. They grazed now side by side on the lush grass, the horse hobbled, the mule, herd bound, willing to stay close by. Children and other gatherers from Sunmiet’s people dotted the side hills, too, above the grassy field. The soil was skimpy on the sidehills, barely covered rocks that stuck like noses out from the ground.
“Our willow sticks dug these near Dog Mountain,” I told her, my chin pointed to the foliage. “I am surprised to find them here, so far from the lakes.”
“Oh hayah!” Sunmiet said, the fringes on her hide dress and the ends of her long braids brushing the ground as she squatted. “We find good roots in surprising places.”
Yellow and purple flowers, low green and pinks crept over the pebbled earth. A faint smell of wild celery brushed the air, soft as a baby’s breath. Geese called in the distance, heading north.
“This one you show me?” Sunmiet stood, sank her kapn into the ground still soft, not yet baked hard by east winds and sun. She leaned her root digger back, bent to pull at the short green foliage, lifted the hard, dark tuber from the earth. “You call tsooga?”
“Grey Doe used that word.”
“It bears the name lukwsh in our language.”
“Lukwsh? Like her name? It is the name of a root that you know, too?” I am pleased with the connections, flooded with a thousand memories Lukwsh’s name can bring.
“We are like a large family,” Sunmiet said, “scattered everywhere, like the roots. Some know us by different names. But we are nourished by the same sun and water, began with the same Creator.” She brushed at the root, raised a musty smell of wet dirt, inhaled it. “We argue and disagree and gossip about each other like magpies. But if anyone is troubled, we defend them as our own.”
“Not if they belong to different bands,” I said with some bitterness. “Look how the scouts led the army to the Modocs, how others helped against the Wadaduka. Some hurt without intending, but still hurt. No,” I said with certainty, standing to look at the cold snow glistening on Mount Hood. “If they do not belong, they are sent away and not invited back.”
Sunmiet bent to dig another root and placed it in the woven Sally Bag that hung at her waist. She risked a thought then, spoke it barely above a whisper. “I am sure Lukwsh would be pleased to see you, if she lives, no matter what has passed between you.”
Her eyelashes fluttered on her high cheekbones, in nervousness, I believe, for having suggested something so directly, not using the gentle circle ways to help me find my thought. She retrieved another root, rubbed the black skin off between her fingers, scattered the seeds it bore to replenish the land.
My mind stayed quiet.
I watched red-tailed hawks dip into the air above the lush fields that flowed like a river toward the road. I heard their high-pitched whistle as they eased beyond, dipping and diving in a dance that took them along the green ravine for as far as my eyes could see. Sunmiet pointed to a scrubby juniper where we could sit in shade, then started walking toward it.
“I am not welcome,” I told her. “This is something that I know will never change.”
“ ‘God began,’ ” she said, and I was surprised because she spoke as though from something memorized, “ ‘by making one person. And from him came all the different people who live everywhere in the world. God decided exactly when and where they must live. God wanted them to look for him and search for him and find him though he is not far from any of us.’
“You have heard these words?” she asked, sitting down with a gasp of air. She continued when I shook my head no. “They are what I remember from a reading, from the Christian’s black book. But it sounded like words we believed. Maybe I have even mixed the words, but the meaning is the same. I think they are said for you, Asiam. We are all of one family whose steps are guided, if permitted.”
We sat for a long time before she spoke again. “You would be forgiven for whatever it is you believe keeps you away, Asiam. Perhaps your leaving was your path. Maybe for you to help them find their way back, their tools to find how God wished them to be.”
“They are a memory in a pla
ce where I do not belong,” I told her, wishing it were not so.
“Sometimes our memories charm us, Asiam,” she said softly, stroking the cat who jumped into her ample lap. “They keep us inside fences of our own making.”
I felt the breezes of a hot spring day. We sat side by side in a silence broken by Sunmiet’s new direction. “We must look for tools to take such fences down, Asiam, or we will end up like pronghorns: dead inside a charming circle we were too frightened to walk beyond.”
THE SEVENTEENTH KNOT
HAMARTOLOS
Red Moccasin, an Indian twenty years old, who lived a few miles above the agency, committed suicide Monday. The reason for so doing was a peculiar one, and is calculated to overthrow many opinions as to an Indian’s character. His sister, who lives in Idaho, had entrusted two or three horses to his care. Being offered a good price he sold the animals and was accused by a half-brother, who lived near, of stealing the horses and appropriating the money obtained therefore. His heart was nearly broken at the accusation against his honesty and he immediately rebought the horses and returned them to his sister, proof that the accusation was false. But even this did not soothe his lacerated feelings and the knowledge that he, an honest Indian, had even been suspected of thievery, so worked upon him that he committed suicide. This shows that poor Lo, contrary to nearly all opinions regarding him, sometimes possesses a sensitive nature, a conscience, and a feeling of self-respect, which cannot bear insinuations against his character.—Grant County News, Canyon City, Oregon, 1887
Alice, have you seen my stethoscope? I’m sure I hung it on the … ah … thank you. My one poor brain would be lonesome if I had another.”
“As your thumb,” I said to his laugh.
It was Dr. Thomas Crickett speaking, smiling. He counted on me, during the rare times I left Sherar’s Bridge to visit him, to find things he misplaced.
“As always, you rescue me. Now then,” he said, holding my shoulders so I faced him. “Let us get our breakfast and then perhaps I can convince you to come with me to the wards. The patients seem to perk up so when you come by.”