Between Earth and Sky(59)
He took a few more sips of soup. “Estotkeh auptoonnauwaukun? No words for me today?”
She bit her lip and thought back on the day’s events. “Frederick and Walter got ten demerits today for speaking out of turn in class.”
“Unnunnaumpauk?”
“No, in English. But it was supposed to be silent study. Walter slept through reveille and was late to drill practice. Fifteen demerits for that.”
“I no miss that.” Charles put down his spoon and leaned back. A grimace spread across his face with the movement.
Alma rescued the tray just as the soup began to slosh over the side of the bowl. Beads of sweat had broken out across Charles’s forehead and his eyes remained scrunched shut. She fumbled in the bedside drawer for the bottle of laudanum and coaxed open his mouth. His lips puckered when the drops of reddish-brown liquid hit his tongue, then relaxed. The deep furrows around his eyes softened.
She put away the laudanum and continued, mostly to fill the silence. “I do have one bit of good news. Father received word today that the Woman’s National Indian Association has awarded Asku a scholarship to continue his studies after graduation. I don’t know if he’s selected a college yet, but—”
“Azaadiins, can you sing at me?”
“Oh no, you wouldn’t like that. I have a most unlovely voice. Let me get Minowe. She sings so well.”
Without opening his eyes, Charles groped for her hand. “I no mind. Please, a song.”
Her eyes traveled from his face to his gauze-wrapped stump and back. She sighed. “What shall I sing?”
“Anything.”
She knew many piano melodies but few of the accompanying lyrics. Several church hymns came to mind, but she settled instead on a tune with more levity. Leaning in close, she took a deep breath and began to sing.
The girl that I lov’d she was handsome,
I tried all I knew her to please,
But I could not please her one quarter so well,
Like that man upon the trapeze.
He’d fly thro’ the air with the greatest of ease,
A daring young man on the flying trapeze.
She stopped after the chorus. Charles’s chest rose and fell with the heavy rhythm of drug-induced sleep. Was it folly to believe he would ever recover? Even with his ambidextrous skill, one limb could never match the speed and precision of two working in concert. Was Stover to blame and she by extension, or had fate eyed him for this tragedy since birth?
Alma shook her head and stood. These questions had plagued her since the accident and still she had no answers. Guilt gnawed at her. She knew he longed for other voices—those of his mother and father—and other words, Mohican words. Perhaps for now the opium could sweeten and transform her song, but it would not last forever.
The ceiling creaked. The other girls were undoubtedly gathering upstairs with her mother for sewing instruction. Six mechanical sewing machines now crowded the upstairs parlor—a far cry from the early days of simple stitching. The girls rotated between machine work, where they made new uniforms and linens to supply the school, and handiwork like crocheting, knitting, and detailed cross-stitch and embroidery.
The sway of the wrought-iron treadles soon hummed down from the rafters. She thought of the crowded parlor, her mother’s reproving eye, the concerned looks passed between her friends after glancing in her direction.
She fled the infirmary, but instead of ascending the stairs to join in the needlework, grabbed her cloak from the hallway chest and hurried through the kitchen to the backyard.
Work had resumed in the wood shop. Steam billowed from the grease-and soot-covered engine along the shop’s far wall. The usual din of hammers, saws, and spinning lathes reached her across the snow-covered lawn. She imagined the unvarnished floorboards, stained and warped with blood, now covered, forgotten beneath a blanket of sawdust. How could they all go on—her father, her mother, Mr. Simms—as if nothing had happened?
Around the far side of the schoolhouse, she found a measure of peace. Her breathing slowed and her heart regained a steady rhythm. The trees pressed in closer here than on any other side of the house, leaving but some thirty yards of clearing. She seated herself on a long wooden storage box nestled alongside the schoolhouse. Swollen gray clouds crowded the sky, dropping the occasional snowflake, but the eaves of the house shielded her from their assault.
In the open silence, she set about unspooling her thoughts. The hateful gossip at the dance, the recent accident, the cemetery whose headstones she could just make out through the trees. To all this, her father was blind.
Her eyes wandered the blankness of the clearing. A lone archery target stood nestled against the tree line. The painted rings had faded and the burlap covering had frayed. Two years back, the school had staged an archery exhibition at the La Crosse fair. Alma remembered the hearty applause. The lace-fringed hands of a dozen ladies had shot into the air at the offer of one-on-one instruction. She could almost smell the rich scent of popcorn and roasted peanuts that had wafted from the food stands. Were such carefree days gone for good?
She stood and heaved open the lid of the storage box on which she sat. Several dusty bows and quivers of arrows lay inside. She grabbed a set and fit one loop of the bowstring into the bottom nock. Next, she braced the bow against her leg and bent the upper limb forward. The stiff wood whined in resistance. Her hand slipped and the upper limb sprang back, missing her nose by only inches. She tried again, putting all her weight and strength into the endeavor; the loop slid into the nock.