Crooked River Read Free Page A

Thinking about all the stories I'd heard of what Indians had done. Pa and the trappers who came through would tell these kinds of stories in low voices, leaving out more words than they kept in. “A whole family. Four children. And an old woman. Seventy years old. A crying shame. Right in their beds while they slept. Near Black Fork. Burnt to the ground.”
    What if we were kilt by Indians—what would happen then? Would me and Laura open our eyes and find ourselves in the eternalized world? WouldMa suddenly appear next to our bed, wearing her faded green dress, and lead us away? Thinking about it made my whole body turn cold as pond ice. I surely wanted to be saved from the evil to come— and to see our dear Ma again—but I didn't feel ready to die. Not right then, I didn't.
    Ma had always been fearful of Indians. “They are the work of the devil,” she would tell Pa or anyone else who brought up the subject. “No different than rattlesnakes, catamounts, or wolves. Nothing but savage beasts in human skin.”
    Savage beasts in human skin.
    I slid my fingers carefully along the bed ropes, searching for the knife again, making certain it was where I remembered. My throat tightened as my fingers suddenly touched the smooth wooden handle, and I felt as if I would be sick. I wanted to take it back to the hearth. That was the honest truth. I didn't want to keep it under my bed. Nor kill anybody with it. Not even a savage Indian.
    in the night
    i listen
,
    i walk through the darkness
    with my ears.
    seven voices sleep below
—
    the tall man
    with the black hair of the bear
,
    and six other ones.
    they do not sleep softly.
    the tall man snores through his nose
    and rumbles
    and groans.
    a small one is fitful and cries out
,
    and two girls whisper together
    like leaves
,
    sh-sh-sh-sh.
    i close my eyes
    and think
    of my wife Rice Bird
,
    and the two Old Ones
    who live in our bark lodge
,
    and my brave son
    Little Otter
,
    and quiet Yellow Wing
,
    only four winters old
,
    who does not make a sound
    when she sleeps.
    i walk through the other lodges
    in our half circle
    and I think about the men
    who will not come
    for me.
    my father is old
,
    Small Hawk and Half Sky
    are gone to war
,
    Ten Claws is dead.
    in the darkness
,
    the five lodges of our small band
    are silent
    and empty of men.

When the morning birds started up singing and the light in the room turned to a bluish gray, I wanted to cry with both joy and misery at the same time. After a whole night of lying awake, staring into the darkness, I was as tired as death. But me and Laura were still alive. I reckoned that was something to be thankful for, even if it meant another eternal day of cooking for Pa and the boys.
    I watched as Laura slid her legs out of bed and hobbled toward the hearth at the other end of the cabin. I don't know why, but I was awful glad to see things begin in the ordinary way they always did. I was glad for the kindling being stubborn to catch fire, as it always was. And for the soft clang of the iron teakettle being set on the hook. I didn't evenmind when Mercy breathed loudly in my ear, “Wake up, Reb.”
    But cooking breakfast was a trial that morning.
    Maybe it was on account of how tired we were, but I scorched the cornmeal making the corn mush, and Laura missed a pot of boiling water and dropped a handful of good sliced potatoes into the fire. We had to pull them out with a ladle, one by one. They were more than half burnt and covered in ashes.
    Before we finished that, Pa and the boys came stomping in from the morning milking. Pa was raging to Amos about one of our cows who was in a fair way to die if she didn't have her calf soon. In Pa's eyes, it was all the cow's fault, of course. “Dumbest animals on earth,” Pa said, taking off his boots and thumping them down on the floor. “She can just go on and die. Ain't that right, Amos? Let her lie out there suffering for a week and die. Never been nothing but trouble, that dumb old cow.”
    Pa