Fervent Charity (9 page)

“When it’s done right,” Gustie echoed with emphasis.

“Indians do not perfectly fulfill all their traditions any more than white Christians do.”

Gustie was suitably chastised and didn’t answer. Jordis continued kindly, laying her hand on Gustie’s cheek. “I know why you killed the dog. So do they. They are not unreasonable people. But you have to understand how it feels to them.”

“Like I did not respect them.”

“Yes.”

“Is that how you feel?”

Jordis poked the fire with a green stick. The smoke began to rise again. “I interfered with Indians trying to kill Moon, and I knew at the time what they were doing and why. I did not just interfere, I fought them.”

Gustie remembered the story of how Jordis had seen Indians, not of the Red Sand, chase a white man on a white horse. The man had been responsible for the death of one of their children. He escaped by jumping from his horse to the train pulling out of the Wheat Lake station. They had been full of rage and grief, craving some justice, and since they couldn’t kill him, were set to kill his horse. Jordis stepped in, drew her knife and fought two of their young men before they gave up, disheartened and not wanting to fight a girl. They left and that was how Jordis got Moon.

“I know why you did what you did. Little Bull knows too, although he could not walk with you. But Winnie and Carrie did. They are your friends.”

“Will they...suffer for what they did?”

“Suffer?”

“I mean, will they be reprimanded or shunned...”

Jordis laughed, delighted with the idea. “I would like to see someone try to reprimand Winnie or Carrie! Even their husbands! And, no...they will not be shunned. They are too respected. Too many people depend on them. Do not worry about them. First thing in the morning, you and I should go back to Charity.”

“What about Dorcas?”

“Leonard will stay with her.”

“I thought you wanted to be the one to take care of her.”

“I do. But, after this, my being with her all the time might keep some people from visiting her. That would not be a good thing.”

“You said Winnie and Carrie would not be shunned,” Gustie said. “Why would they shun you?”

The darkness gathered around them. The firelight played on the smooth, sharply chiseled planes of Jordis’s face. She said softly, “I am different.”

Gustie never tired of looking at her exotically beautiful face.

“When I came back from the east I had no place to go. My mother was dead, her people scattered. Dorcas...everyone on the Red Sand welcomed me. But I had been with whites too long.”

Stars appeared and suddenly brightened, leaving the little moon only a modest place in the heavens.

Jordis continued, “Little Bull and Winnie have tried to connect me to the others. But they cannot give me what I lost. And what I lost was not just the language. I lost everything but this.” She brought a long finger down hard across the dark skin of her forearm. “I do not belong in white society either.” She stirred the fire one more time, then threw the stick into the blaze. The fire hissed. “I turned out to be a poor investment. They never got out of me what they wanted. I did not embrace their ways, their church. Only their language. They stole me from my mother then pushed me far out on a limb, and the line they tossed me I would not grab. So here I am. Living on fish and berries and Dorcas’s fry bread, riding Moon between Shoonkatoh, Crow Kills, and Charity. I take care of Dorcas knowing Little Bull and Winnie could do as well or better. But I owe her my life and taking care of her is the only worthwhile thing I do. I am one of the most educated, useless people in the state. To whites I will always be just an Indian. An Indian with an education, but still not quite as useful as cow shit.”

Gustie lost her mouthful of coffee, mostly through her nose. Jordis grinned. Gustie wiped her dripping face with her sleeve. “Well, today I’ve insulted the only people who have ever been unfailingly kind to me, and I have taken from you the only thing that made your life worthwhile. My work here is done.”

They both laughed and kept laughing until they sat with their arms around each other staring into the fire. Gustie could smell the sage in Jordis’s hair, and hear, in the spaces left by frogs and crickets, the whisper of bat wings overhead.

Chapter 7: October 1900

“C
ome on, ladies.” A lead
rope in each hand, Gustie led the two mares out of the barn. The black nuzzled her neck and she responded with an affectionate cheek.

The grass was stiff with nearly frozen night rain. The only sound was the gentle plop-plopping of water from the eaves of her house and barn. As she passed through the barn door, a big drop landed on her shoulder like someone wanting her attention.

The sun rose and the world lightened in spite of thick cloud cover. In the east, above the horizon where the clouds thinned, lay a brilliant sash of orange, like prairie fire.

October. The Dakotah called it
Falling Leaves Moon
. This was also the time when insects lost their vigor and the broad-winged black and orange butterflies drifted through the air in a final, sad and majestic dance of death; when honking lines of low-flying geese swept overhead on their way to warmth and sun; when the prairie began to doze and the sound of wind gained ascendancy over all other sounds as they receded into the stillness of winter.

Gustie turned the horses loose in the fenced pasture behind her house. Biddie trotted her dignified way around the perimeter of the enclosure, while Moon leapt like a filly and pranced in the opposite direction. The two mares came together and stood side by side, tossing their heads taking in all the scents carried on the early morning air. Gustie caught her breath. What a lovely picture they made!

Gustie brought in her cream jug. She started the coffee, tapped through the thin crystallization of water that topped the cream and spooned a generous portion of thick yellow stuff into her coffee cup. The aroma of boiling coffee permeated the house.

Before she could enjoy her first sip, she heard the thudding of hooves outside. Besides Jordis, Gustie’s only regular callers were Iver with his deliveries, and Mary or Lena and Will, but their horses were all shod. This was an Indian horse. Had Moon jumped the fence? Gustie opened the door and dropped her gaze to Leonard, Little Bull’s son. Behind him, his father’s horse Swallow foamed sweat, his head held low.

“Leonard! Come in here. What’s the matter?”

“Jordis.” The boy seemed dazed and cold.

Gustie turned toward the bedroom. Jordis was standing in the doorway, still in her nightgown.

“My father wants Jordis to come. There’s a sickness on the reservation.”

Jordis whirled to get dressed.

Gustie went down on her knees in front of Leonard to be eye to eye with the boy who was small for his thirteen years. “What kind of sickness?” Gustie placed her cup of hot coffee in his hands.

“People are dying. They have fevers.”

“Did your father send for Dr. Llewellyn?”

Leonard nodded. Gustie urged him to sip the coffee. He did.

“Does the doctor know what kind of sickness? Did he give it a name?”

“Father says it’s the rotting face.”

“Rotting face? What…?”

Behind her, Jordis said, “Smallpox.” Gustie heard a moan and realized she had made it herself. She looked over her shoulder.

Grim and silent as stone, Jordis was tucking her shirt into her split skirt.

Gustie grasped Leonard fiercely by his shoulders nearly spilling his coffee. “Leonard, have you been vaccinated?”

“I... I don’t know...”

Gustie took away the cup and set it on the floor. She pulled Leonard’s poncho over his head, fumbled with his buttons, pulled his shirt down over his bare shoulders, and examined each of his arms in turn. There, on his left arm was the light puckery oval. “You have been vaccinated, Leonard. You won’t get sick.” As Gustie helped him back on with his shirt, she said, “Surely, most of the people on the reservation have been vaccinated. Little Bull would have seen to that. Wouldn’t he?”

Jordis was buttoning her wool shirt. Gustie knew that she bore the scar—a smallpox vaccination being the only legacy of good from the mission school that still haunted her memory, the only scar from her time there that did not still hurt. Gustie asked again, “Wouldn’t he?”

Jordis said, “The chief does not give orders. He cannot make people do what they will not do. He serves. He does not rule.”

The terror that had subsided for a moment filled Gustie once more. She said to Jordis, “I’ll follow you in the wagon. I’ll tell Doc Moody and pick up some supplies.” She stood up, unable to get enough air into her lungs, though she tried. Leonard took back the cup and drank the thickly creamed coffee.

After a moment, Jordis said, “I’m going to take the train. The morning freight is due here in a few minutes. Willie will find a place for Moon and me in a boxcar.” They embraced fiercely. Then Jordis was gone.

Gustie poured more coffee and again loaded it with cream for Little Bull’s oldest son, the joy of the chief’s heart, the future chief of the Red Sand Dakotah, if they had a future. She fried him some eggs and put a loaf of bread on the table along with bowls of butter and jam.

“Leonard, you eat. I’ll take care of Swallow.”

Gustie led the exhausted stallion inside the barn, toweled him down and covered him with a blanket. Then she hitched Biddie to her wagon.

When she went back inside, only the heel of the bread remained. “I’m going into town and then I’m going to head out to the Red Sand. I want you to get in bed and sleep. When you wake up you can go out and fix some hot bran and molasses for Swallow. You’ll find what you need in the bin against the wall in the barn. There’s plenty of food here for you for at least a week. Make yourself at home. Don’t come back to the reservation until you are rested. Promise?”

The boy nodded.

“I have a friend who will look in on you. Her name is Mary. You’ll like her.”

Gustie had never seen the smallpox, but she had seen its ravages on the survivors—the deep scars that pitted the faces of rich and poor alike. She kept Biddie at a steady pace and tried to keep her own fears and dread from rising any higher. She felt ready to suffocate, even as the cool October wind hit her squarely in the face. She pulled her conductor’s cap down and lifted the collar of her coat.

Just this morning, the dawn had warned her of fire, but she hadn’t recognized the omen. Even if she had, she couldn’t have predicted this.
The invisible fire
...so named by those who’d seen it, because the victim’s skin bubbled and burned as if on fire from within. The Indian name, rotting face, was more apt, more descriptive of the raw agonies that lasted for days, even weeks, before the sufferer was released unto merciful death. Gustie did not believe she was ready to confront such a horror.

She had kept the fear at bay while propelled by her sense of urgency and purpose. First she had gone to Doc Moody’s thinking she would be rousing him from his bed. But he was up, packing his last bag and on his way to Gethsemane Church. Mrs. Moody was already there, he said, setting up a temporary surgery. He had received a telegram late yesterday from Dr. Llewellyn. As soon as the young Welshman had diagnosed smallpox, he had telegraphed the surrounding towns as a warning and a cry for help. The sheriff, his deputy and members of the town council were already knocking on doors and posting signs all over town. Every person, without exception, was to come to Gethsemane to be checked and vaccinated if they weren’t already.

Doc Moody had nothing to give Gustie. He said he didn’t know if he would have enough vaccine to handle all the unvaccinated in town until the train came in later in the day. He hoped the vaccine he’d sent for from St. Paul would be on it. Dr. Llewellyn’s supply would be on the same train. It would be unloaded in Wheat Lake. As soon as the population of Charity was vaccinated, he would come out to the reservation to help. Before she could leave, he made Gustie roll up her sleeve and show him her own scar.

Next, Gustie went to Mary Kaiser’s. When Mary opened the door, she looked surprised to see Gustie; she had already been visited by Sheriff Sully. She was dressed and ready to go to Gethsemane. She had been vaccinated. She was going early to see if she could help Mrs. Moody.

Gustie said, “Mary, I need you to check on Leonard, Chief Little Bull’s son. He’s at my place. He rode all night to get here and tell Jordis. He’s sleeping now, but if you could look in on him I’d be grateful.”

Mary responded, “Well, he can’t stay out there by himself. I’ll bring him back here.”

Gustie had discovered the hard way the invisible wall that separated the whites from the Indians in Charity. Once, Dorcas and Jordis, forced to stay overnight in Charity, were invited to sleep in someone’s barn. No one else, not even Dorcas or Jordis, had reacted with outrage. Only Gustie. She looked at Mary with alarm. Leonard was better off alone in her house than here in Mary’s barn, if that’s what she had in mind. Mary read her face.

“Oh fiddle! I’ll tuck him up in our extra room. He’ll be snug as a bug. Don’t worry.” Mary laughed. “You go on now. Gustie?”

“Yes?”

“Take care of yourself now.”

“I will. Thank you, Mary.”

Gustie’s next stop was O’Grady’s store. Both Kenneth O’Grady and his son Morgan were there already. They didn’t always open this early. “Have you heard?”

From behind the counter, Kenneth nodded and peered over his glasses. He was, as usual, poring over his account book.

“I’m going out there. I need some things.” Gustie felt strangely disoriented, almost wringing her hands. With all she had been through, this was brand new. “I don’t know what would be useful, really. Food, blankets…” she trailed off. Kenneth nodded to Morgan who disappeared into their stock room. She heard him carry something out the side door to her wagon and come back for more. She turned to the senior O’Grady. “I can’t wait till the bank opens, Kenneth. Could I charge these things, please?” Gustie had never charged anything before, though she knew most of Charity’s residents did.

Kenneth shook his head gravely. She heard the door bang again as Morgan came back for yet another load for her wagon. Kenneth said, “Nope. Fraid not.”

Gustie’s heart sank. She had given Kenneth good business since she had come into her inheritance. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t feel anger, just a huge lump of despair lodged in her throat. She would have to wait then till the bank opened. Almost three hours from now.

“Oh, Kenneth…”

She was about to plead with him when he said, “Your money’s no good here today, Miss Augusta. On the house. Take what you need.”

The lump in her throat dissolved and tears filled her eyes. She nodded her thanks and walked briskly to the door. He called after her. “Hey, your friend still have a sweet tooth?”

She turned around in time to catch a brown bag of candies sailing through the air in her direction. When she bought her supplies to take out to the reservation, she had never failed to add a bag of candy for Dorcas. He remembered.

“Thank you, Kenneth.” He nodded, pushed his glasses up his nose and went back to his account book.

Gustie traveled south to her last stop. She couldn’t leave town without seeing Lena. Like everyone else, Lena had been awakened before dawn. Fritz Mulkey had ridden like Paul Revere, knocking on doors south of the tracks. Will was already on his way to Gethsemane. Lena was dressed and Gracia was in her highchair.

In few words, Gustie explained that Jordis was already on her way to the reservation. Mary was going to look after Leonard, and Gustie was taking her wagon-load of supplies out now. She shed a few tears when she told how Kenneth knew what she needed and had given it freely. Lena looked at the back of the wagon where cartons of canned goods were neatly stacked next to bundles wrapped in brown paper that looked to be sheets and blankets. There were bags of flour and salt, sugar and coffee, a pail of eggs and another of butter.

Lena ran in and brought out several jars of her rhubarb sauce. She placed them in among the parcels so they wouldn’t get banged around. Then she looked at Gustie. “I’ll bet you didn’t have a thing to eat this morning.”

“I’ve got to get going…”

“You can take something with you. You’ve got a minute for that. Come in the kitchen. It’s cold out here. You won’t help anybody by going hungry yourself.”

Gustie followed her inside.

Lena poured her a cup of coffee, dosed it with cream, and then went to her cupboard and spread slices of bread with butter and jam, which she wrapped in a dish towel. She took half a roast chicken out of her ice box and wrapped that up in newspaper. Gustie swallowed the last of her coffee gratefully.

Together, they went out to the wagon where Lena placed the food under the seat. “There. Just reach down when you’re hungry. You don’t have to stop. Wait a minute.” She rummaged in the back of the wagon for one of the jars of sauce and put that with the rest of Gustie’s food. “You take care now, you hear me?” Then, uncharacteristically, Lena threw her arms around Gustie and gave her a ferocious hug.

The sun, higher in the sky, was gradually warming the air and Gustie took her hat off. She reached down and brought the paper-wrapped chicken up from the floor and laid it out on the seat beside her. She ate slowly until there was nothing left but bones. By now they were at Dryback Grade. She stopped Biddie and let her drink. She cupped handfuls of the lake water to her own mouth and drank deeply. Then they went on their way. As she got closer to the reservation her fear rose and fell in waves. Fear of what awaited her; fear, she had to admit, of a cold welcome. She had not been included in Little Bull’s request to return to the reservation. Well, she sniffed, a little like Lena, she thought and laughed at how she had taken on this characteristic of her friend, they would just have to deal with it. She was going to help whether they liked it or not. She would bring them her supplies and try to not get in the way.