The Animal Wife (34 page)

Small as he was, the baby knew me. Even when his eyes were shut, he knew my voice, I could tell. His mouth twisted into a smile when I spoke to him, and he took my finger when I touched his hand. He was very, very strong. There was no one I could talk to about how much all of this pleased me, since the other men seldom spoke of such things. So my joy was secret, unless his mother knew. Yet joy it was. As he lay between me and his mother in my deerskins at night, I sang in a very low voice the songs the people on the Fire River sang to their children. Or I whispered to him, telling of the things I would make for him and the things I would show him. But most of all I told him that the Bear Himself would see him and would not forget him, knowing he would be a hunter, a feeder of foxes, a man of meat.

***

It hurts me to remember that I let something happen—helped it happen, really—that could have harmed my little son. Yet on our third night on the trail, I was so new at being a father that when my father and Pinesinger came to me with the wolf pup, I didn't think clearly. I understood at once that they wanted me to make Muskrat give her breast for the use of this animal. I saw how Muskrat was the perfect answer to the question of feeding the pup, since Muskrat wasn't the same as Pinesinger and no one would be insulted if we used her. For a while it even seemed like a good idea. It never came to me that I should defy or disobey Father for the sake of a captive woman, and it never came to me to get rid of the wolf, as Pinesinger had asked of me, since the wolf was Father's. Instead I brought the pup to Muskrat and pointed to her breast.

At first she refused. She pushed the pup aside. When I told her, with Pinesinger's help, that I would make her an ivory necklace if she nursed it, her face grew bitter, and when I insisted that she help us, she snatched the pup away from me and threw it to the ground. Of course it cried very much, a high, wailing
yi yi yi
that brought all the people to their feet to see what was happening. Muskrat began to weep, and the baby began to scream. I hate to hear a young baby screaming—the breathless
kaa kaa kaa
sets my teeth on edge and makes me want to choke the mother. Nor did the other people like it; some of them came to stand over Muskrat, telling her to control herself and calm her baby, all in words she didn't understand. She got up and went to sit at the edge of camp, hushing the baby by putting her nipple in his mouth.

Meanwhile the people looked at me to see what I would do about my woman. Would she do as I asked, or would she not? Afraid to let her think she could defy me, I caught her by the arm and pulled her to her feet, then dragged her to the far side of the fireberry thicket, where the other people couldn't see. There I took off my belt and shook it at her. She stared as if she didn't understand. I lashed the belt through the air so that it made a frightening whistle, then cracked it noisily against the ground. Again I swung the belt and hit the ground, and again and again. A second time I shook the belt at Muskrat.

She was weeping silently, her eyes wide open, tears shining on her face. Giving me a long look, she sighed deeply, wiped her face with both hands, and opening her shirt, took out her breast. Then she turned her head to gaze at the horizon, at the sky, at the plain, at anything but me, but she left her breast bare. So in a way she consented. In the opening of her shirt I saw the tiny hips and thin, bent legs of my little newborn son, asleep again in the sling she used to carry him. I felt angry and very much ashamed.

We went back to camp, I leading, Muskrat following, and from that time on she nursed the pup for Father. It hurt me that in no time some of the other women and even Pinesinger made fun of her for nursing it.

 

All the next day I walked last in line, with Muskrat just ahead of me. To her fell the task of carrying the pup, whose mouth and feet were again tied with string. At first she carried him by the string like a bag, but later that same day she cradled him in the crook of her arm. By the end of the day she had untied him. The pup seemed to know not to struggle and even to realize that Muskrat's feelings toward him had changed. How did I know? I had all day to watch her walking ahead of me while I worried about what I had done.

Father had very little interest in the pup, but seemed to be satisfied that Muskrat had him in her care. In fact, her care of the pup surprised us. Very soon he began to fold his ears and lower his head when Muskrat looked at him. But not in fear; he seemed to like her. He would even lie on his back for her, his tail trembling between his legs, his ears flat, his eyes watchful. Otherwise he sat near her, ready to get up when she got up. If she spoke to him, which she did only in her own language, he would listen, now and then tipping his head because he didn't understand her. Of course he didn't. Neither did we!

Of his own will the pup stayed with Muskrat even after we reached the cave, which was all cool and shadowy, smelling of dust and so quiet that even our whispers echoed from the dome of its ceiling, where in some of the deep cracks bats clung. Father, my uncles, and their wives settled themselves in the back of the cave but left the pup with Muskrat, whose place of course was near the front. We soon saw that she wouldn't need to tie him. By that time he followed where she went, pressed himself against the back of her legs when she stood, sat by her when she sat, and lay beside her when she slept. Sometimes at night I would open my eyes to see my little son's face right beside mine, his eyes squeezed shut, his lips open; then Muskrat's blue forehead, frowning even in sleep; then, like the edge of her hood, a crest of fur behind her head, which was the little wolf pressing against her, lying curled at the back of her neck. He stayed close to her long after she stopped feeding him from her breast.

One day Muskrat came home with a bundle of yew she had found growing upriver in crevices of the ravine's walls. We didn't like to see the yew, because of its poison. But using her teeth, though taking care to spit afterward, Muskrat peeled the bark in strips so thin they were like hair, then rolled the strips on her thighs and made twine, and with the twine made snares. With the snares she set a trapline.

Off she went one evening, looking as if she were alone but with my little son in his sling hidden under her shirt and the wolf pup behind her hidden by the grass. Watching, all I could see was one woman knee-deep in grass, with the red sun casting her shadow. Really, though, the three of them were there. Muskrat came back just before dark. At dawn she went out once more, again with our little son in her shirt and the pup at her heels, and this time with my small carrying bag, which she had borrowed, over her shoulder. When she came back the bag was bulging. She turned it upside down and shook it. Out fell mice and little birds.

Then we began to laugh. "Bobcat food. We don't eat it," we told her.

"Io? I eat it," said she.

At last I understood the cleverness of this woman. Her catch would not need to be shared. Yet she did share it—the wolf pup ate the heads, the feet, the feathers, and the little piles of guts.

***

The trouble with Father's cave, that second summer I spent in it, was that food and fuel were scarce. People had used the cave for many summers, and the women had picked the plain clean of food. When we tried to hunt the bison, they seemed to know what we wanted, and they moved downriver. Each time we went west along the river, we saw them.

Father told us of another cave of his, a cave in the south wall of the ravine, right under where the bison grazed much of the time. There the asparagus and onions would be plentiful; there would be frogs, sedge, and bulrushes by the river and cranes, bustards, and marmots on the plain, where they could be snared. True, if we went there we would leave behind the steep ravine with its dangerous trails that helped us hunt, but mammoths wouldn't drink from the river until the pools of meltwater on the plain went dry. Not until then would mammoths use the trail near the cave, and only then could we stampede them over the edge of the ravine. We could come from somewhere else to do this. We didn't need to live in that particular cave.

We ate frogs and fish, waiting for Graylag's people. At last some of them came, Graylag among them. The others had stopped to visit relatives on the Grass River summergrounds. Graylag also favored going to the new cave. The rest of his people would find us later, he said.

So again we set out. We followed the river for about half a day, keeping to the plain as the land fell away. In time we saw a line of blue hills to the southwest, and soon afterward Father showed us a faint trail leading down the side of the shallow ravine and disappearing under the bank. We had walked right by this trail on our way from the lodge to the old cave, never thinking that it was more than a simple trail for horses or other animals to reach the river, never thinking that a place to live lay right under our feet. Father had his secrets.

The new cave was very different from the old one, and not as good. The old cave had a comfortable feeling to it, because of its long use; the echoes were familiar, the smells too, the people all had places, the floor was clear, all sharp stones had been thrown out, and there were places for the fires. Even if the fires weren't burning, the ashes showed us where to sit. But the new cave was strange to most of us. We didn't know where the good places were—not that such a thing would matter to me, since I was too young to have a good place. Even so, I always felt uneasy if I didn't know where to put myself. I might sit somewhere only to have an old person scold me for sitting in his or her place. Such mistakes could be shaming.

For another thing, the new cave was shallower than the old cave, and its ceiling was lower. Also the new cave was not high above the river, since the river was very wide there, and the plain was low. There were no bats. Perhaps the cave was too damp for them. But where there are no bats, Ohun sends mosquitoes instead, and these swarmed on us as soon as we went in. The smoke from the fires would discourage them, but to choose between smoke and mosquitoes discouraged me, since to get away from these bad things was the reason I was always ready to leave a lodge in spring.

What made the women most dislike the cave was that lions had lived there. True, no lions seemed to be there at the time, but perhaps as recently as the past summer lions had filled the cave with scats, bones, and fleas. With the smell of lions in our nostrils, we sorted through the litter on the floor, stirring the piles of little dead willow leaves that the wind had brought in the fall. We were looking for bones, since they burned better than dung. Hidden in the leaves we found plenty of bones left by lions after years of summer hunting—the hip sockets, skulls, and horns of bison, the gnawed skulls of deer and saiga, and the heavy leg bones of a young mammoth, perhaps the calf we had killed. Andriki even found the bones of lion cubs, three skulls about the same size and all close together, their milk teeth loose or missing. Something had killed them here.

Finally, in a corner, Andriki found a human skull. "Hi!" he cried, stepping back. Then, "Hona."

We all came to look. The skull lay half hidden in damp leaves, near enough to the opening that snow would have blown on it. The lower jaw was missing, the face was broken between the eyes, and the bone was not white and clean like some of the other bones, but brown and dirty. It was very strange to see. Whose was it?

Father and the others began to think. No one had been killed by a lion that they knew about, and they would know, since only Father's people lived on Father's hunting lands. No one had been lost or was missing. Either the lions had robbed a grave or they had found a passing stranger. At an earlier time, the idea of a stranger would have been laughable. But by then, of course, there was Muskrat.

We looked around for her, thinking to ask if she knew anything about this person. But she was gone. Snatching up my spear from the sleeping place Father had given me under a low overhang beside the opening—the worst place in the cave, without a doubt—I hurried to the plain. Not this time would Muskrat get away from me. Yet I needn't have worried—she and the pup were sitting with their heads above the grass, she nursing the baby, the pup looking on.

"The skull," I asked. "Did you see it?" She seemed puzzled. She didn't know "skull." "Head. Head bone." Of course she had seen it. "You know him?" I asked. It was a mistake to put it like that. Muskrat's eyes flashed, and she suddenly stood, turned her back, and walked away. When she felt she was far enough from me and my rudeness, she sat down. I saw that we needed Pinesinger.

This time Pinesinger came quickly to help us, glad to get out of the cave. Behind her all the young women came out to wait, to sit on their heels in the afternoon sunlight until Father and the old people decided what to do about the skull. Soon Muskrat spoke to Pinesinger with much feeling.

"What does she say?" I asked.

"We are talking of the skull," said Pinesinger. "She thinks the cave is spoiled by it. I agree. She doesn't want to stay here. Neither do I."

"1 want to ask her a question," I said.

"Later," said Pinesinger. "Not everything I say can be the words of another person. Some of the words have to be mine."

Ah well. It went against me to be angry at these women. I was learning patience, it seemed. "Then please, Stepmother, ask if her people passed here."

Again Muskrat spoke to Pinesinger a long time.

"What is she saying?" I interrupted finally.

Muskrat hardly stopped her conversation to let Pinesinger answer. I went to get Father.

With Father standing over them, the women took more notice. Father finally pried from Muskrat the fact that her people hadn't lost anyone to lions. Her people had been further east. Nor had anyone died near this river.

Then Muskrat looked boldly up at Father and spoke for a long time. I kept hearing the words "ila" and "ilasi," which meant "person" and "people." When she finished, Father looked at Pinesinger, waiting to learn what Muskrat had said.

"I'd rather not tell you," said Pinesinger. "When you hear her words, you might blame me."