freedom.
He looked now at Stands With A Fist. She had ignored the intrusion and was staring at the hands folded in her lap. The medicine man thought, trying to pick up the thread of his monologue. Before he could start however, he again heard the soft whir of little wings.
Looking overhead, he saw the sparrow, hovering just inside the smoke hole. He followed its flight as it dived deliberately toward the floor, pulled up in a graceful swoop, and lighted quietly on the cherry-colored head. She didn’t move, and the bird began preening, as natural as if it were nesting in the branches of a tall tree. She passed an absent hand over her head, and like a child skipping rope, the sparrow hopped a foot into the air, hovered as the hand swept under its feet, and landed once more. Stands With A Fist sat oblivious as the tiny visitor fluffed its wings, threw out its chest, and took off like a shot, making a beeline for the entrance. It was gone in the blink of an eye.
With time Kicking Bird would have made certain conclusions concerning the import and meaning of the sparrow’s arrival and Stands With A Fist’s role in its performance. There was no time to take a walk and mull it over, but somehow Kicking Bird felt reassured by what he had seen.
Before he could speak again, she was lifting her head.
“What do you want of me?” she asked.
“I want to hear the white soldier’s words, but my ears cannot understand them.”
Now it was done. Stands With A Fist’s face dropped.
“I am afraid of him,” she said.
“A hundred white soldiers coming on a hundred horses with a hundred guns . . . that is something to fear. But he is only one man. We are many and this is our country.”
She knew he was right, but rightness didn’t make her feel any more secure. She shifted uncomfortably.
“I do not remember the white tongue,” she said halfheartedly. “I am Comanche.”
Kicking Bird nodded.
“Yes, you are Comanche. I do not ask for you to become something else. I am asking you to put your fear behind and your people ahead. Meet the white man. Try to find your white tongue with him, and when you do, we three will make a talk that will serve all the people. I have thought on this for a long time.”
He lapsed into silence and the whole lodge became still. She looked around, letting her eyes linger here and there, as if it would be a long time before she saw this place again. She wasn’t going anywhere, but in her mind Stands With A Fist was taking another step toward giving up the life she loved so dearly.
“When will I see him?” she asked.
Stillness filled the lodge again.
Kicking Bird got to his feet.
“Go to a quiet place,” he instructed, “away from our camp. Sit for a time and try to think back the words of your old tongue.”
Her chin was tilted at her chest as Kicking Bird walked her to the entrance.
“Put your fear behind and it will be a good thing,” he said as she ducked out of the lodge.
He didn’t know if she heard this last bit of advice. She hadn’t turned back to him, and now she was walking away.
Stands With A Fist did as she was asked.
With an empty water jug resting on her hip, she made her way down the main track to the river. It was close to noon, and the morning traffic, water haulers and horses and washers and beaming children, had thinned out. She walked slowly, eyeing each side of the trail for a seldom-traveled rut that would take her to a place of solitude. Her heart quickened as she spotted an overgrown path that cut away from the main trail and ran through the breaks a hundred yards from the river.
No one was about, but she listened carefully for anyone who might be coming. Hearing nothing, she hid the cumbersome jug under a choke-cherry bush and slipped into the heavy cover of the old path just as voices started up near the water’s edge.
She hurried through the tangle hanging over the path and was relieved when, after only a few yards, the footpath swelled into a full-fledged trail. Now she was moving with ease, and the voices along the main trail soon died out.
The morning was beautiful. Light breezes bent the willows into swaying dancers, the patches of sky overhead were a brilliant blue, and the only sounds were those of an occasional rabbit or lizard, startled by her step. It was a day for rejoicing, but there was no joy in Stands With A Fist’s heart. It was marbled with long veins of bitterness, and as she slowed her pace, the white girl of the Comanches gave in to hate.
Some of it was directed at the white soldier. She hated him for coming to their country, for being a soldier, for being born. She hated Kicking Bird for asking her to do this and for knowing that she could not refuse him. And she hated the Great Spirit for being so cruel. The Great Spirit had wrecked her heart. But it wasn’t enough to kill someone’s heart.
Why do you keep hurting me? she asked. I am already dead.
Gradually her head began to cool. But her bitterness didn’t diminish; it hardened into something cold and brittle.
Find your white tongue. Find your white tongue.
It came to her that she was tired of being a victim, and it made her angry.
You want my white tongue, she thought in Comanche. You see some worth in me for that? I will find it then. And if I am to become no one for doing that, I will be the greatest of all the no ones. I will be a no one to remember.
As her moccasins scraped softly over the grass-tufted path, she began to cast herself back, trying to find a place at which to start, a place where she could begin to remember the words.
But everything was blank. No matter how much she concentrated, nothing came to mind, and for several minutes she suffered the terrible frustration of having a whole language on the tip of her tongue. Instead of lifting, the mist of her past had closed in like fog.
She was worn out by the time she came to a small clearing that opened into the river a mile upstream from the village. It was a spot of rare beauty, a grassy porch shaded by a sparkling cottonwood tree and surrounded on three sides by natural screens. The river was wide and shallow and dotted with sandbars crowned with reeds. On days past she would have delighted in finding such a place. Stands With A Fist had always been keen for beauty.
But today she barely noticed. Wanting only to rest, she sat heavily in front of the cottonwood and leaned back against its trunk. She crossed her legs in the Indian way and hiked her shift to let the cool air from the river play around her thighs. Finally she closed her eyes and resolved herself to remembering.
But still she could remember nothing. Stands With A Fist gritted her teeth. She raised her hands and ground the palms into her tired eyes.
It was while she rubbed her eyes that the image came.
It struck her like a bright splash of color.
Images had come to her the preceding summer, when it was discovered that white soldiers were in the vicinity. One morning while she lay in bed, her doll had appeared on the wall. In the middle of a dance she had seen her mother. But both images were opaque.
The ones she was seeing now were alive and moving as if in a dream. There was white-man talk all the way through. And she understood every word.
What appeared first had startled her with its clarity. It was the torn hem of a blue gingham dress. A hand was on the hem, playing about the fringe. As she watched through closed eyes, the image grew larger. The hand belonged to a young girl. She was standing in a rough earthen room, furnished only with a small, hard-looking bed, a framed spray of flowers mounted next to the only window, and a sideboard over which hung a mirror with a large