The Hundred Years Woman

Yesterday, Friday, the unlikely arrival of Oklahoma Indians had rattled a tattoo in Mike’s heart. Awe and excitement shot through him, from vein to vein, in a palpable blood-rush. If a yard full of Indians was a singular event for the Texas boys, it was ten times more so for a kid from Manhattan. Yesterday had been a unique day, the impossible made possible, a day fit for a lifelong memory. Mike sought, and failed, to find words both strong and true to describe such an event. Marvelous? Wondrous? Miraculous? His extraordinary English vocabulary was too flabby to do the job.

The medicine woman, above all, captured Mike’s attention. First because of the deference, almost homage, paid her by the other Indians. But more significantly because of a bit of magic she had practiced on him. Not stage magic — a yellow scarf turned purple, or a levitating orb — but a sight, a vision. Perhaps a dream. What it was didn’t matter. The important thing was that she, Mary, put it into his mind. Mike believed that. It had been a most peculiar effect, and one he attributed to Mary Smart.

The strange event happened last evening as the Indian contingent unpacked for their evening meal. Mrs. MacKay sent Mike out with an armload of bedding for the ladies in the Little House. For a while, he’d stood at a distance watching the men set up a dining fly between their pickups. They put out a sawhorse table and ironware for a dinner they had in mind. Raven situated Mary’s rocking chair nearby and settled the woman there with a pipe and a lap robe.

Next, Michel rode swiftly, faster than a gallop, across a meadow of tall grass, toward a distant cornfield and a cluster of grass huts in the tree-line beside a creek. He reigned up sharply to watch a lean and handsome Indian on horseback wearing a Union coat. The man had his daughter, perhaps nine, on the horse with him, teaching her to ride. They laughed together. The tiny girl saw Mike, waved, and guided the horse his way.

Instantly, she was a young lady wearing a long flowered skirt, amidst tall corn, pulling ears from stalks. Same cornfield, same village nearby. She looked sideways, smiled to see him, and went back to her task. A boy her age interrupted her work. But then it wasn’t an interruption because he helped put ears into her basket.

Raven woke Mike. Had he been asleep? Had he lapsed into a daydream? “You look dopey,” Raven said with a smug, knowing smile, taking the bed-linens from him.

From across the yard Mary watched him. The other Indians, busy with the evening meal, hadn’t even noticed him. Mary and Raven conferred tete-a-tete, looked at him, Mary nodded sagely, Raven shook her head, laughed, and took the bedding inside.

Whatever the nature of the spell, Mike associated it with Mary. He knew she did it, caused it, cast it on him. It was she, with some bit of magic brought from Oklahoma. Mike wondered why he wasn’t spooked. Why wasn’t he at least startled? He was confused, sure enough, but not afraid, as he thought he probably should be.

•••

Over the lunch table, Raven caught up to Mike as he reached for potato salad. “The man you saw in the uniform,” Raven said, “was a scout… a Wolf scout. Mary’s father.” She took the spoon first, gobbing potato salad on her plate.

“What happened to me?” Mike asked. Apparently Raven knew something about his spell.

“How would I know. You’re the spirit, not me.” She planted the spoon back into the potato salad and licked her finger. “Don’t forget your potato salad, dopey.”

•••

In the afternoon an impromptu drum-circle formed when Atmar’s cousin rolled out a hide-covered slice of tree trunk. He methodically went ’round all the laces checking if they’d worked loose. He tapped around the worn hide top to hear the sound at each tie-down. A couple of other men conferred with the cousin. Deciding the trip to Texas in the back of a pickup hadn’t damaged the huge drum, they began a rhythmic three-way beat. It grew, drawing interest. A bell-stick appeared and presently a song started. The men all seemed to know it and joined in unison.

George, as unfamiliar with the sounds as the MacKay boys, distanced himself from his peculiar kinfolk. He squatted near the other boys, so he was handy for Mike to ask “Are they words, or just… you know, syllables?”

“How the hell would I know? Do I speak Indian?”

“Why not?” Mike asked.

George frowned. “All’s I know about Indians is what you see — my crazy relatives beating drums.”

The unison song segued into Uncle Cutter’s solo repetition of something like “Um ka wa yay oh”. The drums never fell away, but the old man took up the bell stick, tapping it on the ground to time himself.

Once another unison song started, Mike simply said “Well, I have to know.” He stood and walked the distance to Mary.

“Where’s he going?” Momma asked. She’d come out of the house and down off the porch to stand with the boys.

“You know Mike,” Donny said. “If there’s something useless to know, he’ll ask it.”

They watched Mike bend down to Mary. Raven, close at hand, acted as a go-between, converting Mary’s ancient concepts into 1960s English. Raven reframed Mike’s words into ones that had meaning for Mary. Mike nodded, seeming to understand. He made no move to rejoin his own tribe.

Women patting their hands in time with the persistant drumbeats began a heel-toe, sliding dance step. Mary reached out for Mike’s wrist and pulled him down to sit near her. He made himself comfortable on the ground beside her chair, assuming his common cross-legged position.

Momma said “I suppose if you want to know something you ought to go to the source.”

“Looks like he’s there for the long haul,” Larry muttered.

“When she gets tired of his questions,” Donny said, “she’ll send him back.”

Momma took a dollar out of her apron pocket. “If one of you boys would go to Boudreaux’s for a block of ice… I made two gallons of Kool-Aid.”

“I’ll go,” George offered.

“Not me,” Willy said. “I don’t want to miss the part where they scalp Mike.”

Donny said “You want me to tell you what’s going to happen, Willy?”

“Like you would know?”

“Mike finally gets fed up with you picking on him, and he tears off your arm and beats you with the bloody end.”

“He could try.”

Larry said “He could, but he wouldn’t. That’s the only reason it won’t happen.”

•••