Marian Sloan

Abstract

1. 1852 When we left Fort Leavenworth, smoke from tar barrels smudged the sky, the lining of my nose—a talisman against cholera. But on the trail, tents became Japanese lanterns lit by the lamps inside. Gray ribbons of smoke rose from each campfire. Twice a day I gathered buffalo chips in my skirt like a windfall of apples. I learned to kick each chip with the toe of my shoe, to expose what was hidden in its scant shade— red spiders that uncurled to the size of my hand; scorpions that scurried away, their tails curled like dark questions. 2. "Steal the Dead Man's Bones" At Fort Marcy, walls crumbled, wind and rain eroded the soldiers' graves, stranding bones to bleach in the sun. We piled them up like firewood, then—as one child counted to fifty— the rest of us ran to hide. One by one, we snuck back, free only when a bone was snatched from the stack. What did we know of respect for the dead? Late one afternoon, I walked past the jail. Through the door's bars, I watched a prisoner pull a cigarette from his pocket. He smiled and asked my name, then told me his daughter had braids as long as mine. To make me smile, he sang, Shoo-fly, don't bother me, then swung his silver pocket watch as if it was that fly. [End Page 166] The next morning I carried him two cookies that smelled like molasses and ginger. There was a red stain on his shirt. His head was lowered as if deep in prayer. At his feet, the cigarette, still unlit. 3. Once a month, when the Indian scouts paid my mother for their room and board, we went to Spiegelberg's store for supplies, its dirt floor still damp from an early morning sprinkle to keep the dust down. In a glass case, a display of candy—fat licorice babies and strings wound like a bullwhip, cinnamon drops as hot as the red chilis that hung like witches' fingers outside the door. But it was rock candy I craved, the mysterious way the crystals clung to the wick, each sharp edge and odd angle a terrain my tongue longed to explore. With the handle of a knife, I could break off one piece at a time, tuck it under my tongue like a sweet secret. Sometimes the crystals were faintly cloudy, sometimes they seemed almost amber, as if trying to transform themselves into gold. 4. I made myself a pouch—like an Indian's medicine bag—from a Bull Durham tobacco sack. Inside, three gray horsehairs wound around a chicken feather, a moss agate, a nugget that glittered when tipped toward light. When I tied the bag around my waist, I became [End Page 167] invincible. My mother's heart was her medicine bag. Inside, she bundled the spirits of her husbands—one, an Army surgeon killed in the Mexican War; the other, a scout ambushed by Indians. How often did their restlessness snag like tumbleweeds inside her veins. On the trail, livestock were corralled at night, loosely bound so they could graze at will. Still, by morning several found their way out, as if the stars were salt licks waiting for their dissatisfied tongues. 5. Diamond Creek, 1856 Pools were thick with tadpoles, a lush feast for hungry rattlers. A few feet away, on the far side of a sod wall, children gathered to toss dirt clods until dust rose like smoke. We were thrilled by our own temerity, by the angry rattles that peppered the sky. I heard that if you pull out a rattlesnake's fangs, new ones will grow like slivers of venomous moon, that if you don't die from a snakebite, at the same time every year you'll writhe on the ground as your skin mottles like a snake's belly. Deep in the sod wall, another rattler stirred. The arrow of its head inched from a crevice, its tongue flicked forward...