Often in the stillness of the night, when all nature seems asleep
about me, there comes a rapping at the door of my heart. I open it; and a voice
inquires, “What of your People? What will their future be?” My answer is, “Mortal
man has not the power to draw aside the veil of unborn time to tell the future
of his race. That gift belongs of the Divine alone. But it is given to him to
closely judge the future by the present, and the past.”
--Simon Pokagon of the Potawatomi
What Came Before
Dangling by her leg, still wet from birth, the newborn howled
along with the wind. The man grasping her thin leg looked at the silent lodges
of the village. How could they still be asleep? How could they have not heard?
“Stay back,” he commanded. His voice shook with his fear.
“Please, please give me my child.”
He looked at the face of his wife twisted in anguish and still
covered with the sweat of childbirth. She knelt in the pelting snow grasping a
deerskin she had decorated for the daughter she hadn’t yet held, spatters of
birthing blood decorated the snow near her. He felt more fear of her blood than
the evil spawned child.
“You saw her eyes; you saw them,” he said.
“Husband, please, it was nothing, a trick of the light. Please,
she will freeze.”
The infant’s wails stopped. She no longer wiggled in his grasp.
A thin tendril of pain gripped his chest. He’d touched his wife’s stomach, felt
their child move under his hand, not an evil thing. Not a monster with glowing
eyes that saw into his soul when he’d shoved the lodge cover aside not
realizing
his wife had gone into labor too quickly for her to get
to the birthing lodge and the mid-wife. That alone added to the signs--the child
was not human.
Hadn’t it happened before? Certainly it had--a woman’s pains
came too quickly and the child’s urgency to join the world too fast for the
mother to leave her home. Everything inside would have to be burned that was
all--burn everything and start new.
But in the dead of winter? What child would curse her parents
so? He held his daughter up expecting her face to be blue and death to have
taken her. In time, his wife would understand.
Large brown eyes stared back at him from a pink face. A trick
of the wind made infant laughter spring from the trees around his lodge. Why
had they chosen this isolated corner among the trees? At night, branches
brushed the sides of the lodge, and the woods creaked and groaned with spirits.
How could he have thought his child would be fine--when the very first night
they’d slept in this winter camp he’d heard voices in the woods? Night after
night until he believed the words of his wife and the medicine man: the wind in
the trees made the sounds, no one stood in the woods tormenting him. The child
blinked her large eyes. Not green now. Not glowing. He’d been cursed on every
hunt. Others landed fat deer, numerous quail, fat rabbits and even the old men
came upon a lost buffalo bull. He came home with a thin half-starved squirrel,
if luck favored him at all.
His wife cowered in the snow; her silent sobs made her shoulders
shake. Her fault. How else could this have happened? She never wanted the
others in their home. The mid-wife had never come to see them, and his wife
never went into the village center. She always stayed out here, away from
everyone else.
He knew what he had to do. He couldn’t lose what little he
had. When he started towards the circle of lodges and the bright central fire
of the meeting circle, his wife scrambled to her feet and started to follow
him, making noises that echoed in his head, but didn’t form words. She became
an annoying insect swarm of sound, and he smacked that sound away, taking step
after step through the blowing snow. He’d leave the child. He couldn’t kill it.
No, that would only make whatever evil had spawned it angrier. If he took his
wife and his belongings and left, the blizzard would hide them, no one would
even miss them if they ever realized they were there to start with.
And the evil grasped in his hand would be someone else’s problem.
Ebook on sale for $3.99 for a limited time. Print editon contains a bonus chapter.
Ebook on sale for $3.99 for a limited time. Print editon contains a bonus chapter.
Chapter One
Chance by Design
I parked the
Jag in the usual spot, well away from the trees and the unwelcome contributions
the birds always delivered to the reflective midnight-black paint. The front bumper
blocked the pedestrian crossing; recognized wealth had its advantages. The
police wouldn’t ticket the car. From the sidewalk, I surveyed the small kiosk
before me.
For many years,
it had been a concession stand serving those who frequented Lake Side Park.
After undergoing major renovation, it bore the name Salaam’s Kebabs. Instead of
hotdogs and hamburgers, it would now sell gyros and the side items to go with
them: stuffed grape leaves, Greek salads, rice, and fries. The park offered a
good place to try out this new venture. On a tour of Europe, I couldn’t get enough
of the sandwiches the European kiosks sold and the wonderful cucumber sauce, tzatziki, they put on them.
A stiff
breeze came in off the lake. I pulled my hair out of my face and dug in my
pocket to find the leather lace I always kept there and tied it back. My father
had worn his hair in braids his entire life. My grandfather never failed to point
out, as a man of the Niitsitapii, The Real People, my hair belonged in braids. I no longer lived among The People, much
less on a reservation, so I let mine hang free all the way to my waist.
Dried
leaves, now free from a Wisconsin winter’s snow, skittered across the red
bricks of the patio. The benches wore fresh coats of gray paint. The tables had
new matching surfaces with closed red and white striped umbrellas springing
from their centers. Things looked ready for the Memorial Day weekend opening
when the park would be full of holiday revelers. I glanced at my watch.
It would be
more than an hour before Carlos, the cook and manager of the kiosk, showed up.
I hated any reference to Indian time so I always arrived early. In life, there might be time enough for everything,
but I saw nothing wrong with the
everything being on time.
Black storm
clouds were piling up in great angry layers on the horizon. An icy wind whisked
across the surface of the lake and whipped the water into a froth of
white-capped waves. The air felt charged with electrical current and smelled of
freshly thawed earth. It would rain soon; most likely it would be a true
thunder banger. The weekend forecast called for clear skies and sunshine, but I
put little faith in those weather predictors of Television Station, WTMQ. They
were wrong more than they were right.
Near the
edge of the lakefront, barely out of reach of the waves crashing against the
shore, a woman sat on the back of an olive-drab park bench with her bare feet
on the worn seat. Many people sat the same way. Her lack of shoes struck me as
odd since winter still lingered in the chill breeze. The way she sat puzzled me
the most. Her arms were outstretched and her palms turned skyward. Her
oversized red and black flannel shirt flapped, scarecrow-like, in the breeze.
The gray watch-cap on her head, with her long black ponytail sticking out, only
added to the strange picture.
The seagulls
hovering around her hands dashed in to snap up whatever food she offered them.
Occasionally, a bird would land on her arm and grab more than its share. She didn’t
move and her arm never wavered, as if the weight of the large birds meant
nothing.
A rolled-up
sleeping bag, a bulging backpack, and a pair of worn men’s work boots, sat
under the bench. Great. The season
hadn’t even started and already homeless people were waiting to raid the trash
bins.
A huge wave
crashed into the breaker rocks. Momentarily drowning out all other sounds, it
sent a spray of water several feet into the air. One of the gulls squawked and screeched.
The bench-sitter grasped a completely white gull around its legs. It beat
against her arm with its wings. With an arched neck, it drove its large sharp
beak against the flesh of her hand. My stomach turned at the thought of this homeless
woman killing the bird and eating it raw.
I extracted
my money clip from my pants pocket, unrolled the bills, and peeled off three
fives from the outside. I placed the ones around the hundreds left inside
before I shoved it back into my pocket. With determined steps, I made my way to
the bench. I would offer the fifteen dollars in exchange for the trapped bird’s
life.
At the
bench, despite the bird’s upset screams and pecks, the woman turned to look at
me. I forgot what I wanted to say. She gazed back at me with startling dark
brown eyes, surrounded by a ring of green, set in a face with cheekbones as
high as my own. She’d been without enough food for some time judging by the
prominence of those bones.
I felt like
a boy taken by his first crush. My tongue wouldn’t work. I just stared at her.
Cliché lines came into my head. I refused to utter any of their nonsense. With
her haunting looks, she’d probably heard them a hundred times before. For a
fleeting moment, a smile tugged at the corners of her sensuous lips. My ribs
felt as if they were constricting the beating of my heart. She could’ve been
some legendary sprite who wanted to steal a man’s spirit away. The wind blew in
from the lake in a sudden gust that gapped open her shirt to reveal the curve
of a shapely breast. I tried to look away.
“Do not just
stand there staring at me. Help me,” she said. Her voice commanded and aroused
me.
Help her?
Help her kill the bird? My gaze went to the gull. Bright crimson blood streaked
over her hand and yet she didn’t let go. I couldn’t imagine being so hungry I
would ask a stranger to help me kill something. Then I saw it. The bird’s feet
were tangled in one of those clear plastic things used to hold a six-pack of
soda. She struggled to catch the bird’s wings while she continued to hold the
knife in her hand.
“Drop your
knife,” I told her. “I have one, if you can capture its wings?”
Her knife
hit the ground with a sodden thump. Without it in her hand, she held the bird
tightly around its body with its wings pinned. She turned it so its black feet
were in the air. I worked quickly to open my knife and slice through the offending
plastic. Once the bird’s feet were free, one leg dangled like a broken twig.
Only a bit of flesh held the lower leg to the upper part.
“His lower
leg is dead already. Slice it the rest of the way off,” she instructed as if
there would be no question of my compliance.
I looked at
the knife in my hand and switched my attention to the bird. It watched us with
its small black eyes and its yellow beak slightly open as if it knew we were helping
it.
“The other
birds will pick at it like a worm and damage the rest of his leg if you do not.”
With a quick
nod, I slid the blade of my knife through the small flap of flesh. The bird
didn’t move or squawk. With a radiant smile, the woman scrambled down off the
bench and moved to the turbulent lake’s edge. Once there, she tossed the bird
into the air. It let out an indignant screech, faltered in the air, and flew
out over the lake.
“It was used
to flying with that thing around its legs,” she said to me when she returned to
the bench. After a quick rummage through her backpack, she came up with one of those
water bottles everyone seemed to carry around. Only a bit of white paper still
ringed the blue plastic. She must have refilled the same one repeatedly. She
used her teeth to pull the black sport-cap open and began to pour water over
the gouges covering her wrist and hand. I shuddered at the thought of how much
bacteria lived in the water, and now occupied the wound, on top of what the
bird left behind.
“Don’t do
that. I have a first-aid kit in my car. You don’t want those to get infected.”
Her gaze met
mine, went to the street and to the Jag. She continued to pour water over her
hand. “I am not going near your car.”
I could see
why she would be frightened, or at least cautious. I stood more than seven feet
tall and worked hard to stay close to three hundred pounds with low body fat.
She stood a bit more than five feet and looked as half-starved as a feral cat.
In long strides, I covered the area to my car and came back with the first-aid
kit. Taking out a bottle of iodine, I opened it and held it out to her.
“Set it
down.” Mistrust colored her voice.
“I’m trying
to help you.”
“You ever
been raped?” she asked me with a cold glint in her eyes.
“What? No,
of course not,” I said quickly. I set the bottle down, took out a roll of
gauze, and set it down as well. “Cover the whole area with the iodine. Let it
dry before you roll the gauze around it. You’ll need to change the bandage
twice a day, so the scabs don’t grow into it.” I set another roll of gauze
down. “It doesn’t look like any of those need stitches.”
“Thank you, doctor,” she said. Her voice carried
a biting edge.
I reached
into my back pocket and took out my gold-plated card case. From it, I withdrew
one of my business cards. I set it on the bench.
“Shannon
Running Deer, trauma surgeon,” she read.
“Will you
let me look at your hand now?” I asked her.
“Anyone with
a computer can make those things.”
Her cynical
tone, and obvious street sense, led me to believe she wasn’t new to the life of
the homeless. I couldn’t even guess her age. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, and yet
she seemed far older. She had to be in her twenties. The good old Fond du Lac
police were hard on underage runaways and the homeless. Minors got funneled
into the hospital before their parents were located. After which, social
services returned the lucky kids to whatever abusive situation they’d escaped from
in the first place. Justice at work.
“Will you at
least let me buy you something to eat?”
Her stare
cut right into me. Her gaze went to the Jag and flashed back to me.
“I am not. .
.”
“Getting in
my car,” I finished for her. I held up my hand.
“We can
walk. The 101 Club is at the end of the street.”
“I am
certainly dressed for dinner.” She laughed while she continued the struggle to
wrap the gauze around her injured hand. I smiled. Her laughter sounded
completely natural, almost childlike--filled with playful innocence. It gave me
an idea of what she would be like if the streets weren’t her home.
“The Wharf?
They have a bar where the fishermen pick up sandwiches. You can walk on the
other side of the street,”I said with a shrug and a smile of reassurance.
She looked
down the street toward the lighthouse. Just beyond it, The Wharf restaurant
stood. Did she find food in their dumpsters? With a grunt, she moved around the
bench and shoved her feet into the scuffed work boots. She tied their speed
laces with a quick yank and tucked the frayed ends inside the top of them. They
were Army surplus. I’d spent ten years in the same sort of boots.
She slung
her backpack over her shoulder, picked up her sleeping bag, and started for the
sidewalk without a backward glance to see if I followed. I trailed behind her
in silence all the way to TheWharf.
“They are
not going to let me in there.” We ducked under the flapping blue awning in
front of the door together.
“You’ll be
with me. They’ll let you in.” I moved around her to open the door. She sprang
away from me like a cat whose tail had gotten stepped on. I stared at her for a
long moment. I’d expected her to smell unwashed. Instead, the scent surrounding
her was musky, in a raw outdoors way—a bit of wood-smoke and clean skin,
overlaid with something exotic and arousing. I swallowed hard and cleared my
throat.
“I know the
owners,” I told her.
In one
graceful motion, she sat on the sidewalk and crossed her arms over her chest.
“All right.
I’ll bring you something. What do you like?”
She pulled
her knees up and rested her head on them. “Anything hot,” she answered, her
voice muffled.
When I
returned with a large order of the soup of the day, a hot ham sandwich, and a
huge green apple, I expected her to be gone. She still sat in the same
position.
“Glad you
waited.”
In one fluid
movement, she got to her feet. Her tongue went over her lips. I knew she could
smell the food. Her apprehensive, wide-eyed look reminded me of a caged panther.
She mirrored the same seductive form, standing totally still, yet tense with
the desire to bolt--watching, waiting--expecting treachery in some form.
Carefully, I set the bag with the food in it on the walk in front of her and backed
up a step.
She rushed
forward and snatched up the bag. I almost expected her to devour the meal right
there while I watched. Instead, she straightened her back and met my gaze
again.
“I thank you
for the food.”
With the bag
clasped tightly, she stepped off the walk. The thin fog rolling in off the lake
entwined itself catlike around her feet and legs, making it look like she
floated above the blacktop.
“Would you
tell me your name?” I called after her.
“I am called
Morning Dove. My People are the Siksika
of
Silver
Creek.”
The
Blackfoot of Silver Creek? Impossible. What would someone from my ancestral
tribe be doing here this far from Canadian Alberta? It seemed an odd
coincidence.
“Excuse me,
sir. I believe you dropped something.”
I turned to
look at the man behind me and down at the quarter he pointed at. With a grunt,
I waved him off and turned back. I caught only a glimpse of her before she vanished
as if the fog devoured her. There didn’t seem to be any place she could have
hidden so quickly. I shook my head.
A chill of
unease made its way through my insides. For a brief moment, I thought I’d seen
her in a white buckskin dress with her hair in a fan across her back.
No comments:
Post a Comment