Read Online The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Paulette Jiles
Tags: Fiction, Historical
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Grandma.” She stepped back with the stick in her hands.
The bois d’arc wood was bright yellow and smooth, barkless, and shaved to a chisel shape on one end. When the woman stood up with the red water streaming down around her, Elizabeth drew the digging stick back like a baseball bat and struck her across the throat and then again across the top of the skull and again on her forearms as she lifted them in defense. Then again across the back of the head, a terrific blow, as she fell into the water and began to scramble away.
Elizabeth yelled and raised the digging stick above her head and shook it. Her broad heavy face with deep lines cut like parentheses around her shouting mouth. She yelled in triumph.
The Dismal Bitch reached the bank and ran toward the horse herd, beyond the encampment. She did not know where she was going except away from the river. She was seeing double and so ran into a travois and then tripped over a dog with puppies and then lay there.
Elizabeth stood breathing hard and silently. The tipis had blos- somed in white cones all along the banks of the Wichita, and there was laughter and the dogs barking at something and the smell of woodsmoke. The tall red grasses were tipped in shakos of white cotton lit by the late sun like spirit hair.
On the grassy bank the second wife, the young happy wife with the pleasant face, sat down beside Lottie and patted the girl’s shoul- der. Lottie lowered her eyes and began to open and shut her dirty hands and then a spreading stain appeared on the grass as her urine ran down in yellow streams, over the grass and cottonwood leaves.
After a while the Dismal Bitch got up and wavered into the horse herd, and then vomited. She went back to the tipi with the thunderbird painted on it and collapsed.
Happy Wife came and gave Elizabeth and Lottie pemmican wrapped in some fibrous inner bark and a wooden bowl of prai- rie turnips. Elizabeth and Lottie sat beside the fire outside Eaten Alive’s tipi. They ate the greasy mass, ate it all, relishing the bits of
agarita berry. They drank from their cups made of the bitter buffalo gourd. Then Happy Wife came out and signaled that Lottie should sleep inside the tipi, just inside the entrance, and the three-year-old collapsed like a small dirty figurine and people coming in stepped over her carefully when Happy Wife shouted at them. She shouted at them and then turned and picked up a heavy red blanket and laid it over Lottie.
Eaten Alive sat up on a bluff of the river far away from the argu- ments of the women. He poured songs from a bone flute. They had passed the Wichita and would soon pass the Red. They had captives and horses and a harvest of winter skins. Little Buffalo and sev- eral others were dead, but they had died honorably, in battle. Eaten Alive tipped out a lilting current of mourning from the bone flute for Little Buffalo. All men must die and we must rise into the other world with a self whole and unchanged with the hair streaming un- cut from our heads and so he had died. Eaten Alive owned five songs now, all love songs, love of winter and rain and horses and the morning sun and love for his young second wife. The humpbacked trader of the Tewa people came invisibly with his delicate music. His name was Kokopelli, and he bore melodies and seeds and he lived beyond the ages in the plains air, drifting with clear grace notes and tremolos.
Chapter 6
W
A
s th e y wa l k ed on, Elizabeth recited silently all she had ever memorized in school. Bits of speeches on Inde-
pendence Day, verses of the Bible, the names of her neighbors, her children’s birthdays, whispering to herself under the chill sun of the November plains. Pillars of dust the color of madder rose up to mark their passage.
Overhead vultures wheeled high on the updrafts over the Red Rolling Plains, some rising and some sliding downward, descending in an airy mobile whose center shaft was in the remote blue zenith. They circled at great
The bois d’arc wood was bright yellow and smooth, barkless, and shaved to a chisel shape on one end. When the woman stood up with the red water streaming down around her, Elizabeth drew the digging stick back like a baseball bat and struck her across the throat and then again across the top of the skull and again on her forearms as she lifted them in defense. Then again across the back of the head, a terrific blow, as she fell into the water and began to scramble away.
Elizabeth yelled and raised the digging stick above her head and shook it. Her broad heavy face with deep lines cut like parentheses around her shouting mouth. She yelled in triumph.
The Dismal Bitch reached the bank and ran toward the horse herd, beyond the encampment. She did not know where she was going except away from the river. She was seeing double and so ran into a travois and then tripped over a dog with puppies and then lay there.
Elizabeth stood breathing hard and silently. The tipis had blos- somed in white cones all along the banks of the Wichita, and there was laughter and the dogs barking at something and the smell of woodsmoke. The tall red grasses were tipped in shakos of white cotton lit by the late sun like spirit hair.
On the grassy bank the second wife, the young happy wife with the pleasant face, sat down beside Lottie and patted the girl’s shoul- der. Lottie lowered her eyes and began to open and shut her dirty hands and then a spreading stain appeared on the grass as her urine ran down in yellow streams, over the grass and cottonwood leaves.
After a while the Dismal Bitch got up and wavered into the horse herd, and then vomited. She went back to the tipi with the thunderbird painted on it and collapsed.
Happy Wife came and gave Elizabeth and Lottie pemmican wrapped in some fibrous inner bark and a wooden bowl of prai- rie turnips. Elizabeth and Lottie sat beside the fire outside Eaten Alive’s tipi. They ate the greasy mass, ate it all, relishing the bits of
agarita berry. They drank from their cups made of the bitter buffalo gourd. Then Happy Wife came out and signaled that Lottie should sleep inside the tipi, just inside the entrance, and the three-year-old collapsed like a small dirty figurine and people coming in stepped over her carefully when Happy Wife shouted at them. She shouted at them and then turned and picked up a heavy red blanket and laid it over Lottie.
Eaten Alive sat up on a bluff of the river far away from the argu- ments of the women. He poured songs from a bone flute. They had passed the Wichita and would soon pass the Red. They had captives and horses and a harvest of winter skins. Little Buffalo and sev- eral others were dead, but they had died honorably, in battle. Eaten Alive tipped out a lilting current of mourning from the bone flute for Little Buffalo. All men must die and we must rise into the other world with a self whole and unchanged with the hair streaming un- cut from our heads and so he had died. Eaten Alive owned five songs now, all love songs, love of winter and rain and horses and the morning sun and love for his young second wife. The humpbacked trader of the Tewa people came invisibly with his delicate music. His name was Kokopelli, and he bore melodies and seeds and he lived beyond the ages in the plains air, drifting with clear grace notes and tremolos.
Chapter 6
W
A
s th e y wa l k ed on, Elizabeth recited silently all she had ever memorized in school. Bits of speeches on Inde-
pendence Day, verses of the Bible, the names of her neighbors, her children’s birthdays, whispering to herself under the chill sun of the November plains. Pillars of dust the color of madder rose up to mark their passage.
Overhead vultures wheeled high on the updrafts over the Red Rolling Plains, some rising and some sliding downward, descending in an airy mobile whose center shaft was in the remote blue zenith. They circled at great
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