By Air Mail Ch.04

But once you leave, that's pretty much it. He never made much money, so he had to sneak back now and then, just because he couldn't make ends meet outside. He could live in a tipi for free, though it was still a hard way to go, the way we lived.

He told me once that he didn't belong there. He came up from southern Oklahoma off the Kiowa reservation. He was near Dodge sometimes, and sometimes stayed at the Osage reservation where I went. Other tribes may not like you like a brother - if there were hard feelings once long ago, but they won't turn away a traveler from another tribe in need if they can help it.

But what he always wanted to do was to go home - the old home where the Kiowa came from, originally. It was somewhere in Montana, I think, thought I don't know much about it all. I know that the people got squeezed out by other tribes who were being squeezed themselves so the people moved south until they had enough room. They also joined forces with other tribes and they would fight to defend each other from outsiders. Their friends were the Kiowa Apaches and the Comanche. My father said that alliance pushed the Spanish right the hell out of the plains and down into Mexico where they came from.

He told me that the people have a rich culture and history, but that it was fading away now like the people who really know the language. He said that once, every Kiowa child knew how to speak and only learned English if they had to. He said now, they only learn Kiowa if they have to. They go to schools that teach only English.

He taught me my last name and he accepted my first names, though sometimes, he just called me yaw koye - young woman. I'd know then that what was coming was more lessons, but I never minded because I was like a girl in the desert, wanting water. That was how it felt to me when he taught me.

He told me that if I stayed with him, we would go to live in the mountains because he knew that we could live there. The big problem for him was me. He loved me, but he didn't want me to then be stuck there with him. He told me that I should meet other people, not like the ones in Dodge City, but also not like the ones on the reservation - that one at least.

He admitted to me that he didn't know where I might fit in either, but he thought that I might have a better chance at a life if I could get away from there altogether. He said I might meet a man that I liked sometime, but he didn't know when or how that might happen, but that he'd take care of me until that time, or until the time that I made my choice.

The cops drove out on their own time one day to tell me that my mother was going to be released and that she wanted me back. So I asked my father what I ought to do and I could see that he was upset over it no matter how he tried to hide it from me.

He sat me down and he told me that if it came down to that kind of fight, then he'd need a lawyer and that he didn't have the money for one. He told me that if it came down to a fight between a white woman and an Indian man over who their child stayed with, that he didn't think that he could convince any judge that it was best for me to stay living out on a reservation that wasn't even the right one for where he came from and had no tribal connection to me."

Emmy shrugged and her voice came out of her slowly in more of a croak, "When my mother came out to get me, I went."

She looked down and was silent for a long time while Quinton flew the plane. When she looked up, she saw him looking at her with very sad eyes.

"I don't know what he was expecting me to do, but the way that I saw it, I didn't really have a choice. I asked the cops and they told me the same thing that my father did. They also told me that to them, it was better for me to stay with my father, but they didn't see a way that he could win that.

As I packed what I had for the trip back, I looked at my father and he hugged me and said goodbye to me, and he told me that he loved me and that he always would. I never really cried before that day. I always told myself that I could handle anything."

Emmy exhaled heavily in a big, sad sigh, "I bawled all the way back to town. The only thing that saved me from getting a cuff across the face from my mother was that she was under a peace bond and a couple of cops were in the car with us to drive us back."

Emmy wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and she said, "I never saw him again.

The next time that I saw some of the people from that reservation in town, I asked about my father and they said that he'd gone to the northwest alone. The man, he took me aside and he told me that my father had said to him that he was very proud of me. He said that he waited for me to make a choice but that in the end, like a lot of things about our people, the choice had been made for me."

Emmy started to cry then and she was awhile at it. Quinton wanted to sit with her, to put his arm around her, but somebody had to be flying the plane so he couldn't. When she looked up, she spoke in a quiet voice as she said, "I'm nothing and I never was.

But I am the daughter of John Looking Cloud."

She looked out of the window for a moment and he heard her voice in his ear through the headphones, "I don't have anything behind me. All that I have is what's in front of me. So from now on, I don't see a reason to keep the name of a woman who didn't love me enough to even tell me.

I'm Emmy Looking Cloud now. I guess that I'll keep it that way if it sounds any good to you."

Quinton smiled, "I like that name the best on you and it doesn't have anything to do with how you might think that you look."

She nodded and sniffled a little, "Well tighten your seat belts a little, Mister. The ride goes down from here."

She didn't know why she told him everything. She just did, holding nothing back. She said that she didn't think that she was attracted to women, or men, or anybody. All that she knew was that it had felt good when she was with Janey and from that, she reasoned that her side of it had happened because it had been the first time in her life that anyone had seemed to care about her from that close up. But that she now knew that it had been nothing but Janey using her.

She looked over at him, "So tell me, Quinton, do you think that I did anything wrong? I guess that I'd like your opinion."

He shook his head, "Not a thing. I just wish that I'd known that there at the park."

"Why?" she asked, "Would you have left me?"

She didn't know what she expected him to say, but he just laughed, "If I'd known all of that Emmy, you'd be exactly where you are right now. I just wish that I knew that then because I'd have done a little more damage to those two, that's all. A broken arm is a far better teaching tool than just a quick punch to the face."

Emmy sort of stared at him, "Quinton, I think you broke both of their jaws the way that you hit them. I didn't see it when you hit Percy, but he was wailing like a little girl, and when you hit Dugan - well I've never seen anybody hit that hard or fast."

"Well that's just rough," he smiled, "Now maybe they know to keep their mitts in their pockets and their mouths shut. Where I'm from men - even young ones who might like to think they're men don't hit women.

The rest of us tend not to like that.

Go on with your story."

Emmy sighed, "What I got out of it was that Momma wouldn't speak to me anymore. She just ignored me or pushed me out of the way if I was where she wanted to go. I don't know how she might have imagined that I'd done something bad to our reputation. We were just the lowest shit white trash as it was. How can you go lower?

But I couldn't get away from it. It followed me around wherever I went. Everybody had heard of it - and every single one of them judged me for it. Like it was something that I DID to Janey, like I had thrown her into a pit or something terrible. I didn't do anything to her that day. She did it all to me! But I had to wear the mark of that dump's judgement.

That was when I decided to leave." She sighed," It just didn't work out that well."

Quinton called her name softly and she looked over at him.

"I understand a lot of what you spoke of with that Janey girl. My mother is like that in some ways, and it wasn't like she just knew that about herself either.

I think... I think that's the way that it is for some people. They just know that about themselves one day somehow. But for others, like my mother and Rebecca, it was something that came about because they were close just because they had to be to survive."

Emmy looked over in some curiosity then, "Quinton... what do you mean? Who's Rebecca?"

Quinton smiled a little as though it was an offering to put Emmy at ease a little bit, "Maybe I didn't make it clear enough and now that I look back on what I told you, I guess I didn't.

When my mother was trying to live through the winter in what was left of Webb Springs, she noticed another woman sometimes. She'd see her in the distance and she always used to wonder where she lived, and it made her a little nervous, since she was out there herself to be alone and NOT near any people.

My mother never thought of it at the time, but nowadays, even she'd describe her thinking then as what I think they call a phobia - an irrational fear. But when she looks back on it now, she just shrugs and says that maybe it served her well after all.

It got to be somewhat troubling for my mother - seeing that woman everywhere, mostly outside Webb Springs. Something that worried her was her horse. One of the few times that she'd had any dealings with anybody was her trip to Arco not long before the real first blast of winter set in. She was there to buy hay and had it carted to Webb Springs. She kept her horse in the shell of a barn next to where she lived and she kept the hay in another part of that, so her horse had something to eat in measured amounts and could move around. She began to worry about her horse being stolen. Where she was, without a horse, you're pretty much dead.

But then she saw that the strange woman had a horse of her own and after some long, careful looks, she saw that the woman wasn't white, for the way that she was dressed and how her horse was saddled - as in, it wasn't, not in the way that hers was."

He looked a little frustrated for a moment and then he said, "Mother should be telling this, not that she ever says much of anything about it to anyone, but she'd tell it better than I can."

"Well, she's not here, and I don't know her or anything, Quinton," Emmy said, "Go on, please."

He looked at his charts and out of the window for a few moments. Satisfied after a glance at his heading, he began again.

"After a while, it got a little silly. The woman knew that my mother was there, after all. I know now that she was working up to trying to talk to my mother, but my mother proved to be more skittish than an antelope and stayed away. It frustrated the woman because she didn't live in Webb Springs. She rode a fair distance to try to meet my mother and she had more reason to be shy about it than Mother did.

Finally, it got to where the woman would call out to my mother, waving her arms and everything, but my mother just tried to pretend that she hadn't seen her and wandered away as fast as she could.

The winter set in hard that year and for a little while, they didn't see each other much. My mother took to hunting inside the butte when she could because there were some woods in there and there were some deer that hid out in them. It was unusual because of the high altitude there, but there were also some pronghorn antelopes who'd shelter in there if the wind got too bad as well.

One day, my mother was out hunting because she'd run out of food, so she knew that she had to get something and soon.

She stalked some deer in the trees and was trying to draw a bead on a doe who had stepped out of the woods. The trouble was that it was going to have to be a long shot and she hated wasting ammunition, but there was no way that she could get closer without risking her spooking that doe.

While she was trying to set herself up for that shot, something landed in the snow almost next to her, and when she looked, it was a short piece of branch, so she looked up and saw nothing. Then she heard a soft sound, like somebody sucking a little air through their teeth one time and she looked back.

That woman was standing there, maybe twenty feet away, hiding herself against a tree, but not from my mother. She moved her head a little and my mother looked in that direction and there was a much bigger doe not thirty-five feet away.

My mother looked from one to the other and she saw the woman's hand motion her to stay still. That woman already had her rifle almost up to her shoulder and she went back to aiming her own shot. When she fired, the doe dropped straight to her knees and fell over.

My mother wondered what the deal was, but then the woman turned toward her and waved her over. All that she said was 'Come. Help me. I will share with you.' That was all my mother needed to hear and she knelt on the doe where the woman told her to while she drew a long knife from somewhere and stopped the doe's heart.

My mother was really surprised then because the woman looked a little angry as they worked at gutting the animal quickly. It turned out that she was a Paiute woman who was a fair distance from home herself. She was annoyed with my mother for always avoiding her, when all that she'd wanted was for them to see if they could help each other, since it was the only sane thing to do because neither of them could really go anywhere without risking their horses a lot through the deep snow.

My mother didn't know it then, but unless they learn it from white people, most of the people who were here before Columbus don't lie. Paiute people don't lie." Quinton grinned, "Hell, they don't even curse. They don't have any words to do it with in their language.

But Rebecca was sure doing her best that day. She muttered and scolded as good-naturedly as she could that my mother was 'coyote' - which is about as bad as they can call you. To them, it refers to a tricky, false creature; and she meant the tricky part, since my mother was so hard to catch without actually hunting for her. It didn't fit really, but it was the best that she could do under the circumstances, other than calling my mother a 'crazy girl' a lot.

Rebecca noticed my mother's belly, even under what she was wearing and she stopped then and seemed to understand things a bit better from my mother's side. She pointed and asked when and my mother told her four months and it changed everything right there.

'You still a crazy girl,' Rebecca said as she worked, 'running away from me. You even more crazy. How can you be more crazy than this?

Hold here' she told my mother as she began to work at scooping the innards out into the snow with her bare hands, 'You smell the blood?'

It was a little obvious what she meant since there was steam coming out of the doe's carcass then because it was so cold. 'I see wolves here only yesterday. Crazy girls need to be gone soon. They smell this and they'll come fast. Crazy girls have real trouble then.'

She covered the mess as best she could and swept snow over everything and then she called out and her horse was there like magic. My mother didn't even see it coming.

'Where's your horse?' she asked my mother and they got the doe onto her horse and walked off as quickly as they could to where my mother had her horse tied. They rode from there to a cave that my mother hadn't ever noticed before. There was room for the horses in there, but they had a time with my mother's mare because she didn't want to go inside for a little while.

Rebecca got her horse in and came back, telling my mother to try to light the fire inside, and not more than a minute later, Rebecca came in, leading mother's horse. My mother was amazed and she asked. Rebecca only told her that she'd asked the horse to come in.

'You ASKED my horse?' my mother asked and Rebecca nodded, 'You not the only crazy girl. I'm crazy too.'

It was much later that my mother learned that though she went through a lot of elaborate preparations, Rebecca could charm the antelopes into coming close enough for them both to shoot a couple pretty easily.

Anyway, she went right back outside and swept the snow out there with a pine bough and threw down some pine needles that she crushed with her hands as she did it. She came back in and called my mother over and they stood in that narrow opening while Rebecca pointed off toward the other rim of the crater. The wolves were already heading toward where she'd shot the deer.

They stayed together for the rest of the winter and they're still the closest two women that I've ever known and they laugh that the crazy women are still together and still crazy.

The next day, they went to Webb Springs and brought everything my mother had over to the cave. The rest of the hay took a little while, but they were determined not to waste anything, since Rebecca said that it was going to be a long winter yet.

My mother learned a lot from Rebecca and it went both ways too because they each wanted to know about the other's life. My mother was a little pleased to hear that Rebecca didn't know a thing about the flu and she got to know a lot about the way that the Paiutes lived originally.

The Paiutes, like a lot of the tribes, had already faced their own epidemics. They came to them through the same diseases that white people had already lived through, but the Indians had no defences against that and a lot of them died from things like smallpox.

It turned out that they were both young widows, Rebecca's man had died in an accident while working in Elco, Nevada for the railroad and after that, she said that she probably did go a little bit crazy and since she didn't have a lot of family left but a very few cousins far away and had no real friends because she wasn't from the band there, she just left and went her own way.

Rebecca was the first person to see me when I was born and I grew up with two mothers, even after we got to Cascade. My mother married Deke Potter and Rebecca married Deke's brother Harry. They have a daughter."

Emmy tilted her head, "But... I thought that...

Huh?"

Quinton smiled, "When they met, remember that I said that they were widows. From the first night, Rebecca slept next to my mother naked. She explained that she had a lot of furs for them to sleep in - which she did, since she never wasted a thing when she hunted if she could help it. Then she told my mother that she could wear clothes if she wanted, but the clothes would only heat her inside them. Where she slept would never be really warm.

'You are a little cold right here,' she told my mother, 'even with the fire. You might be a little warm like that, but feet will never be warm. Skin needs to breathe all the time. You stay in clothes; you wake up cold when you get up anyway. You never get warm the whole day.

Sleep like me, pull clothes in when you wake up and then put them on. You don't know anything? How you live this long?'

"It was like that between them the whole winter," Quinton smiled, "and now, my mother admits that without Rebecca showing some common sense - well, more than my mother did, she'd likely have lost a foot or some fingers to the cold. The first nights that she was ever warm enough was there in that cave with Rebecca once she wised up and slept naked in a mountain of furs.

I have to guess that they started between them not long after that. I know that my mother was a little shocked to find that when she woke up, she had somehow moved over to Rebecca almost every time, probably for more warmth. Finally, she just gave up out of having to listen to Rebecca laughing at her because her body was smarter than her head was.