I tried to speak, to tell him I would go with him so he would cause no harm to this lodge or any others, but the words stuck in my throat.
Lukwsh pushed back, both hands on his shoulders, her jaw set. I had never seen a woman challenge a man in this way.
“We are a gentle people,” she said in the trade language so I could understand. “But we will not be jabbed at. You are not welcome here.”
He took steps backward. To catch himself from falling, he grabbed the flap that covered the door opening. He snarled out more words to her I didn’t understand, but Lukwsh acted as though she didn’t hear him now, as if he had already left. She turned back toward me so she couldn’t see him glare at me and shake his fist.
“I’ll be back for you,” he said, his finger pointing at my heart. “A bargain was offered. It will be kept.” He shouted something more to her as he disappeared into daylight. Her face flushed.
“He is all wind,” she said to me.
I expected her to tell me he was getting a headman or that Wuzzie had changed his mind. Or that she had, and that I must prepare to leave. I expected it. No damaged child was worth such trouble brought into another’s lodge.
“I’ll go,” I told her. “He’s not so bad.”
“No,” she said, motioning me to be still. “An agreement has been made and will be kept, but it was not with that one.” She nodded her chin toward the empty door opening. “Rest now. He will not bother you again. It is my promise.”
A promise? She gave me a promise? A warm and sheltered promise given as a gift? She turned back to put another warm rock into the water basket. The soft hiss as it hit the soup sounded like a sigh. A warmth moved through me that grew from more than her filling soup.
She had stood for me. Offered shelter and protection. Me. A marked child in the shelter of another.
Her eyebrows raised at me in question, and I wondered if I had made a sound, had not caught the cry of cautious joy before I shamed myself with tears.
She knelt beside me, then, sat on her heels. She touched my head gently and stroked the snarls of my hair and pulled at the bits of moss and earth collected by my fall. She dabbed at my face with a rabbit skin blanket.
Then Lukwsh did something I had longed for, something that the thought of now still causes me to tear. She began to sing.
She sang a sweet song with no words that I could recognize, only a rhythmic melody I heard women singing from a distance, songs sung to an onga’a in her board. Her voice eased low like a summer breeze, the sounds swooshing like grain thrown to wind, like precious seeds caught in winnowing baskets for safekeeping.
I leaned into her side, expecting her to move away, hoping she would stay. She placed her arms around me and rocked, her voice far away as though she sang of a time and a loss much greater than mine, a place where I did not belong, but her voice invited me, perhaps to soothe her wounds. She smelled of earth and dried onions and warm rocks. And no change of leaves and grasses will ever come my way without the company of Lukwsh’s lilting song drifting to my mind.
Tears eased their way down my cheeks and into my ears. I sniffed, afraid to wipe my nose and eyes with the back of my hand, afraid to do anything that might send her away.
I must have slept, for what I remember next was awaking with a start to Lukwsh’s back and a beaded barrette of butterflies clutching at the flow of her hair as she bent to her fire.
Someone coughed, and I wondered if Lives in Pain returned and if that was what woke me.
But Wuzzie stood at the opening. He motioned toward the sagebrush staff that lined a side of my leg and then entered, bent to unwrap the thongs that held my limb still if not straight. I sensed without knowing why that when the staff was gone, pain would stab back, and I grimaced.
The two exchanged words, and Lukwsh knelt beside me before Wuzzie crow-hopped away.
“Be strong, na?” she said.
Wuzzie returned. His skinny body broke the dusky light spilling in through the opening of the lodge. He handed Lukwsh a bowl and then disappeared. The wind from his leaving moved flicker feathers hung on strings that floated like a live bird above the flames.
I drank from the bowl. I saw the swirl in the bottom of the basket, had time to think that its maker was a skilled weaver, and then fell into blessed sleep.
In a dream I felt pressure on my leg, faces huddled over me. Lives in Pain scowled, a woman hit me on the wound sending shafts of pain and light swirling to my head. A dog talked, told me, “Drink.” Wuzzie sang and wrapped me tightly like a baby in my board. Then Lukwsh sang too as I rose upward, watched from high up in the lodge, close to the smoke hole, shimmering between earth and stars.
I am light as the hawk, diving, soaring. I am far-seeing in the unfamiliar, like an owl in the act of breathing in. I am like a wada seed in winter, waiting to unfold, and then I plunge hard like a rock against the rabbit furs into deepest, darkest sleep.
In the night I awoke to sounds of heavy breathing close to my ear. Familiar sounds, like Lives in Pain’s breath. My hand formed into a fist, waiting, my mind wide awake. The breathing stopped. I lay still as a captured marmot, willing my eyes like an owl’s to see into the night. My leg throbbed in time with my heart, but it seemed to hurt less. Fingers of fear crept like spiders down my spine. I sniffed in strange smells of dampness, fish oil, duck grease, and fur, the coiled presence of someone close to me, someone not asleep.
Night as black as the inside of an antelope’s stomach filled the lodge. The other’s breathing began again, more shallow. It moved closer. Lives in Pain come to claim me and his wehe? Wuzzie seeking warmth? My head pounded into a mass of tightness. All tiny noises sounded like shouts. My heart sent up a prayer, somewhere, for protection in this Wadaduka place, and it was answered.
Hot breath, the brush of hide and fur, and then a wet tongue touched me, washed me with dog breath and relief.
“Pinenut!” I whispered to the big-headed dog as he poked a warm nose into my ear. He yawned and whined in his throat. “Shu-shu, Pinenut,” I told him, “be still, now. You are safe too.” I took his wide head between my hands and ruffled his neck. I could not see the dog, just felt his tawny fur as he nuzzled closer, stretched against my body, twisting, moving into comfort, lying on his back, one paw apparently pointed upward toward the stars that shone through the smoke hole. He sighed, and I heard the heavy breathing of a dog, asleep.
I must not find trouble where it does not live, I told myself, for there will be enough walking right through the opening of any lodge I stay in without me holding it in my mind before it comes.
I lay awake, stroking the dog’s head, twisting my fingers in his fur. Despite my injury and uncertain future, I was as grateful and contented as on any day in my life.
What I needed most was time: to heal, to get through winter without trouble, to set my sights again on when to leave. But I was a young girl who had been lost and alone. And for the first time, all at once, I had a full stomach, a woman who watched over me, and a dog to keep me warm. What more did a marked child need?
THE FOURTH KNOT
BRIEF REFUGE
For some days, if anyone had looked, they would have found me in Lukwsh’s lodge with only the big woman and the dog to tend my limbs. Lukwsh said nothing about the dog’s arrival, simply threw it scraps as though it belonged.
The tea she gave me took me in and out of dreams and drowse, night and day. My sleep was fitful with voices that shouted and scraped against my mind with sharp stings and sometimes softness. Once I thought Lives in Pain sat beside me in the night, but perhaps it was the eyes of hawks. The strange face of a young man I did not recognize leaned over me in a dream, tending my leg. And from a far away place deep inside my mind, I sometimes watched the shadow of children moving in the wickiup, felt their ebb and flow like water against the tule mats that lined the lodge walls. But whenever I awoke, the woman Lukwsh was always there with me, alone.
Time passed in this lodge as though walking on an
uneven trail.
“You,” Lukwsh said one morning after I had shared this lodge for some days. An early frost had formed on the ground outside, and I felt the coolness as she woke me with a gentle roll of my shoulder. “Up now. It is time. You have visitors, na?” She signaled with her chin toward the door opening.
Faces as dark as berries stared at me against the back drop of the morning sun. I squinted, cleared my head and eyes as Lukwsh spoke, her words bringing the faces attached to bodies through the opening into the lodge. There were three, and they stood in a line at my feet.
“Learn names,” Lukwsh commanded.
I understood her, though her words did not carry the usual lilt and swoosh of the Modocs or even the Wadadukas I had met. She did not smile, and for a moment I thought perhaps I dreamed her tenderness. Then with the quickness of a hummingbird’s wing came the worry that Wuzzie or Lives in Pain might take me back, that my leg might never heal, that in the spring, they’d move to root-digging sites and leave me behind before I could walk.
But I could still recall the lullaby’s rhythm and remind myself not to look for trouble when it might not be there.
“This is Xali-Xali.” Lukwsh said, bringing me back to the present. She hesitated before giving me a word I might know. “Um, bird. Wren,” she said in the trade language. She placed her hand on the girl’s head as she walked behind her, ran her fingers over her ears, down a neck as delicate as a heron’s. Wren was the smallest of the three and was dressed not unlike myself, sagebrush skirt and shirt. Her brown eyes held a dreamy look as she stared at me, direct. “Wrens are powerful,” Lukwsh said. “They kill rattlesnakes in the cliffs. Never threaten a wren’s nest.” She draped her arms now over the girl’s shoulders. “Our Wren is not so fierce, but she is strong.” Lukwsh smiled at the girl, revealing dark spots from ash on her gums around snowy white teeth.
Wren giggled and placed her dirty fingers against her mouth to cover her smile. She looked my age but stronger, had been loved and cared for.
“And wrens like to fly to high places,” Lukwsh continued, “so you two share a wish.
“Tiish, ‘Stink Bug,’ ” Lukwsh said next. She laughed loudly as she stood behind the chubbiest of the three children. “The Paiute word is Po-o-o-zea,” she said, dragging out the sound to the irritation of the boy. Her laughter bubbled like the small springs that rippled out of the side of Snow Mountain, brought light to her wide face. She ruffled the boy’s hair while her upper lip rolled under, stuck to the top exposing her full row of teeth.
“He will receive a new name some day,” Lukwsh said. “But for now he has this one because of what his body does with wild celery.”
She waved her hand in front of her wrinkled nose, and Stink Bug’s round face turned a rosy brown. He dug his bare toe into the earth and cast his dark eyes downward.
“And this,” Lukwsh said, suddenly moving to stand behind a slender young man who held one arm crossed in front of him, grasping the elbow of the other, his finger to his mouth, nipping at the edge, “is Shard.”
I did not know then the place Shard would have in my belonging, my leaving, or my life. No one told me I should pay attention, that he would someday be a stout-hearted man with wisdom to equal any. He did not strike me as someone I should carry in my mind. I noticed, though, that his body reflected interest, though he did not shift his weight to look at me.
He stood sideways to me, perhaps not wishing to expose much to a stranger. A breeze moved through the opening of Lukwsh’s lodge and ruffled the eagle fluff knotted into Shard’s straight black hair. Two short braids framed his face and ended below his ears.
“Where my people began, far from this place,” Lukwsh said, waving her hand to the south, “there is a story.”
I understood then that she did not begin with the Wadadukas, which explained her height, her narrower face, the different way she wore her hair. I thought she would tell me more of how she came to this lodge, maybe where her man was, but instead she moved to the door where she picked up a large pot made of clay. It was the only such container in her lodge. Everything else appeared to be stored in woven things much larger than my missing treasure basket, more practical for traveling than the clay pot.
“The most beautiful and strongest clay pots,” she continued, “the ones that honor their creator as uncommon, come from mixed clay. The old people, they take shards of pots with chips and cracks and broken lips, and after they are old, they throw them out. The desert takes them back. Then, years later, other kasas, grandmothers, they gather those old shards and grind them to a powder and add them to new clay that has never known the fire. The clay comes from two places: one fired and one fresh. The pots will only hold together and be strong because they have been blended.”
She ran her hand around the jar, let her fingers trace the wide lip circling the opening. I noticed a small chip in the lip.
The lodge was quiet except for the gentle beating of the dog’s tail against the earth, and I could tell that Lukwsh had gone away in her mind, was remembering another time. I thought she still spoke of the pot when she said: “This one is of the new clay, blended with the old, made stronger.”
But then she nodded her chin to the tallest boy, set the pot down as if it was the most precious of treasures, and walked behind Shard, her hands on his shoulders.
The boy turned to face me straight away then. His cheekbones were high, and the sun had burned a line across his cheek, just below eyes that seemed to travel far and carried something familiar in them, something warm yet distant, something deep yet safe. He did not appear interested in any translation of what she had said, understood the trader language, too. He simply looked at me, boldly. His eyes were the color of obsidian and appeared as shiny. They bore into me. Full of judgment, I thought. He opened his mouth as if to speak, his tongue wet his thin lips, but he remained silent, wary.
I decided he did not like me.
My eyes found my fingers while he stared in silence.
“And your name?” Lukwsh asked.
I looked up to her and felt a catch in my voice as I tried to speak my name, so surprised that someone asked.
“Asiam,” I answered, the word sounding foreign, and I wondered for the hundredth time what my mother must have called me, tried to bring that memory back.
Stink Bug chuckled, scratched at his hide breech, and tried to say it.
“And your dog?” Lukwsh asked.
“Pinenut,” I said. “But he isn’t mine, just one who followed me.”
“You belong to him, then,” Wren said. “And so he stays.”
“Unless he does not get along with mine,” Shard offered, his first words spoken from his silence.
I looked around, wondering how they could decide such things about Lukwsh’s lodge. I scratched at the neck of Pinenut, grabbed him a little tighter while he panted beside me, but saw no signs of another dog.
“Yours is large enough to settle his own problems,” Lukwsh said.
Shard did not smile. He wore hide clothing for the cool fall, and I was surprised, aware now he must have had his first kill and then a second, given hides to his grandmother to make into breechcloths for him. That meant he was older than he looked, almost a warrior.
“They will take you into the sunshine, Asiam,” Lukwsh said, stepping over the discussion of dogs. My name sounded strange on her lips. “Your leg will heal better now with moving. There are things for you to do, to make your way here. You have rested enough.”
A part of me did not wish to leave the routine of this lodge and go with these new children, even though I knew my future lay in how quickly I could heal and make myself useful. For a moment, I was still a small, wounded child.
“I must make water,” I whispered to her.
“Yes. Make water,” she said in a loud voice. “Then you help gather wada.”
“It hurts,” I said, attempting to stand.
Lukwsh grunted. “Not as much as it might if you refuse to do what you are told
. Come now. Before Stink Bug honors you with his namesake.”
She signaled the others. I caught Stink Bug in a scowl.
Tiish, Stink Bug, moved slowly to assist me to stand, and I noticed when I looked down that my leg looked different, was thinner. Twists of sagebrush wrapped around the area below my knee held shadscale leaves over the wound. Something itched beneath it. There was little swelling.
Wren moved to help and performed a small dance with her hands and her feet as she moved toward me, tapping her head, rubbing her hands. My broken leg stayed straight when Wren pushed her slight shoulder under my other arm to hold me up. Stink Bug, with stocky legs and dough-like arms, took my elbow to assist but waited for Wren to finish her movements. I noticed a jagged scar on the side of her face that grew darker with her effort to help me stand.
I had no time to consider what her movements meant as together, we hobbled to the outside, to the brightness of the cool morning. A mist drifted over the lakes in the distance. The large geese that fly as an arrow’s point were overhead, calling to each other as they headed south. The reeds and grasses were browner than what I remembered before I entered Lukwsh’s lodge, the air cooler. I must have been in drifting sleeps for many days.
“I take her now,” Lukwsh said.
She was so tall and strong she could walk with me by herself to the waste area some distance from the lodges. Quiet, she helped me bend and squat. A marsh hawk lit on a sagebrush, lifted its feet, clasping and releasing, looked down on me with stone eyes, arched beak, watching.
“Here,” she said, handing me a juniper limb I hadn’t noticed she carried. “Shard cut this, for your balance.” There was no tenderness now in her words. She was all distant.
The hawk lifted, too, when I stood, spread its wings, but flew low as though leading us back toward the lodge.
“He is trained by Wren’s moa’a,” she said, her chin pointing toward the hawk. “Likes to eat scraps if you have any.”
I hobbled with her help.