When Winter Come (4 page)

Travel light.

Pray for a worthy adversary.

Always track game downwind.

Don't waste ball an powder if steel blade will do.

Kill only to eat.

Spare the young an them heavy with calves.

Make the wounds quick an clean.

Don't let the animal suffer.

Give thanks for the hunt.

Pour some water for the ancestors.

Apologize for bringing death to the living.

Leave some behind for the forest.

Taste the tender liver, but always eat the heart first.

York's hatchet

When my onyx captain mean biz-ness,

when he feel threatened

he don't reach for nothin' small 'n pretty

he don't bother fumblin'

with no powderhorn 'n ball neither.

When the choices be life o' death

he know he need a steel tooth killer like me

that know nothin' 'bout no ticklin'

or caressin'. Gentle ain't never been my song.

When a grizzly need to be stopped

dead in his tracks, already fulla hot lead

an madder for it, he gone reach fo' me

t' silence his gapin' mouth 'n angry tone.

He gone ask my steel kiss t' cleave an gash

t' hew 'n chop like lightnin' strikes.

He gone want me t' get loud 'n mean

to unlock that monster's skull

t' run my tongue 'cross his brain, t' burrow

through his ribcage 'til I can taste his heart

t' fill the air with blood 'n guts

'til dere ain't nothin' left

but a bear skin 'n a pile a steaks.

Ya see, killas only respect killas

neva nothin' weak 'n shiny

neva nothin' that hide 'n spit atcha

from behind trees

from fifty paces 'n maybe tear

a lil' hole in ya flesh.

Nah, killin' is what we do

'n the reason he sleep with his fingers

'round my throat.

The captains would say Sacagawea's gift

was being sister to the Shoshone chief

who give us horses to cross the all-winter

mountains. They write 'bout her rescuing supplies

out the river an trading her own belt for food.

I will always remember her quiet

an how she kept her boy cub alive

with rattlers an grizzlies an hunger 'bout.

She strong as a rock an never complain

'bout the unkind storms or snow or words.

When Capt. Clark offer to take her boy to raise

I catch myself hoping one a the captains write down

my face, scratch out a small York on paper

after a hunt, wild game strung over my shoulders

so somebody knows I earned some rewards too.

Sacagawea

When I was stolen as a child

and taken far from home and girlhood

I learn to hate

and I cried all the tears I had.

When I become second wife to Charbonneau

I learn to serve.

He older than my own father

and not ride me hard or long

if I lie still and quiet and swallow all my tears.

When I become a mother to my little hunter

his eyes meet mine and melt my stone heart.

This teaches me to love again but my work doubles itself

and soon I have two men to serve.

Sacagawea

The white man seem to always move and think

in straight lines, while my people put everything

in a circle, including York.

I laugh quietly when I hear the party complain

that when the “savages” circle up it's hard to know

who is in charge. As if even a circle need a captain.

Then I reflect on how a full moon, the bright sun

ball, and even my son's hungry mouth all seem

round and perfect as the way my people see things.

Sacagawea

As the ocimbamba seeks the low lying tree so friends
gather to the friendly person.

—African Proverb

When I follow my husband

who agree to be tongue

for the white man

I meet another who serve like a wife

but he is black as an eagle's claw

big as a tree and a man.

Others call him Big Medicine

and the children run and hide in fear

when he round his eyes and show his teeth

but when he look and smile at me

then hold out a night sky for hands

he make me feel safe and warm.

Sacagawea

When I meet the Great Water

she who the Raven call Yemaya

I close my eyes and feel her fingers

pull me out toward her circle

away from men, birthing a joy

warmer than any I've ever known.

But when I can no longer smell her salt

in the air and her song gets too soft to hear

my own water breaks again, but this time

instead of a brave little hunter or dancer

I give birth to a great emptiness

I know I'll carry on my back forever.

York's knife

Thunder might spook a horse,

but lightning is the knife that strikes.

Death is never as simple

as that loud-mouthed hatchet makes it out to be.

He's just extra weight

when there's no killing to be done.

Big dumb clumsy chopping

doesn't require thought or skill.

A blade can cut down a tree or a bear or a man,

but what else can it do?

It can't skin a buffalo

or change its wooly back into rawhide.

It's useless when York needs to scale and clean a fish

or lance a wound.

It might hack off a piece of meat

but can it peel the skin off a piece of fruit?

Size means nothing when the right vein

and the blood that courses through it need separating.

I can take the hair off a man's throat or slice it open

without raising my voice.

These fools sit around the fires all night

pining for the love of a good woman.

And they believe a good woman

is always quiet and small and pretty.

But they aren't ready for a real one like me,

who is as dangerous and useful in the wild

as fire is in the kitchen.

Agreeing to be Capt. Clark's man servant

be something like being married

only in joining with a wife I have some power

an with the captain I have none.

I say agreeing 'cause I had many a opportunity

to escape an run away, but I choose to stay

an to keep our agreement of sorts

though many could never make good sense a that.

Some think I stayed 'cause a fear a being punished

fear a losing my privileges like hunting with a gun

or fear a being treated like a regular field hand

an I reckon there be some truth in alla that.

But fear ain't the only thing keep people wedded.

Once them gets past the wedding night

they figures out who gets to say

an who gets to do.

An that be a easy thing if you believe one born

to rule over the other, but if you starts out in the world

believing it's so, an then come to know later

that it wrong like I did, it can be a bitter root.

I was so angry for mistaking blindness an foolishness

for what I thought was loyalty

I tried to drown myself in whiskey.

I'm shamed that I called myself a man

but was never man enough to question if it be right

to keep a boot on somebody's neck

just 'cause they be black

or just 'cause they be woman.

I be even more shamed for not seeing

the double booting a them that was both.

I can read the heart ova woman in her eyes

as easy as a lie in a man's face.

The direction an power ova storm speaks

clearly to me from low-flying bird wings.

I can dip my fingers into muddy hoof or toe print

an tell how many a what I'm gone have for dinner.

The thickness a tree bark, walnut hulls, an tobacco worms

tell me how ugly winter gone be.

I knows the seasons like a book. I can read moss, sunsets,

the moon, an a mare's foaling time with a touch.

I would trade all this to know how to scratch out

my name as more than a X,

to have my stories leap off paper as easy as they roll

off my tongue,

to listen to my own eyes,

make the words on parchment say

This man here be York.

He can come an go as he please,

work for hisself, own land, learn his books,

live, an die free

I introduces Ol' York to coyote

an the best Indian tales I can call back up

from the trip out west

His Rose push him to share one

a her favorites 'bout the keys

an how God give the woman power

over the generations an the kitchen

to even out giving man alla strength

he use to knock her 'round.

I smile knowin' how all these stories

almost makes up for the wisdom

folks who can must gets from books

Later, I thinks back on the look

in Rose's eye an how she stare at me

when the lesson in the story unfold.

On the way over to see my wife

I trys to figure out what she really think

I needs to learn.

Without love . . . little by little we destroy ourselves.

—Chief Dan George, Coast Salish

What I learnt from being married t' Ol' York is dat

love be like a good story dat you can't neva get tired a.

What I learnt from his son is dat love is quiet

an dat it don't talk back.

He didn't learn dat foolishness from us. He learnt dat mess

from his white daddy. York want to be like Massa Clark so

bad he need his own slave t' order an' knock around too.

A man like my York gets knocked 'round out dere

all day. If he need t' do a little knockin' when he

come home, so dat he feel like a man, dat's his right.

Chile it's a heap a difference 'tween serving a man 'cause

he own you an serving one 'cause you want him on you.

Ain't no diff'rence t' me. Dey both can have us

anytime dey wants. Ain't no law stoppin' 'em

from killin' us if dey wants neither. We just

here t' mind dey kids, spin wool, boil dey clothes

clean, keeps the root cellar an springhouse full,

an spread our legs. What use we got wit love?

Chile, you make me wanna cry. You so busy waiting on

some joy in the next life,

you done let dese so-called men kill the only thing

dey couldn't take from you.

. . . the tales that black York told, when he was
liquored up, were as long as Missouri and tall as the
Rockies.

—Donald Culross Peattie,
Forward the Nation

I killed hundreds a grizzlies

with my bare hands

though I owns my own gun.

made myself invisible

an walked in the forest

unseen.

danced with buffalo

climbed mountains topped

with snow in the summer

seen dogs that live in holes

in the ground and deer with heads

bigger than horses

chiefs gave me they daughters an wives

an stood guard outside

while I done my business.

Me an Capt. Clark sired sons

with Indian gals. Many tribes

traded for my seed.

My captain gone set me free

an give me a piece a land

for all I done on the expedition.

I'm gone buy my family

go back out west

an live like a king.

We not on this earth

to be slaves.

He who does not know a medicine defecates on it.