Chapter Eleven
AN ICY RIVER • OLD MAN MAKES PEOPLE • LEAVING THE RESERVATION • LIONEL’S SECOND DREAM
ULYSSES STRUGGLED as they navigated their way along the river’s icy banks. The riverbed consisted of large loose rocks that caused the horse to slip and stumble, and Beatrice and Lionel had to stop twice to retie the load.
As they rode, Beatrice recounted what their grandfather had told her during the night after Lionel had fallen asleep. She told Lionel that a long time ago, their grandfather had been made to join the government’s army, and that he had been taken by a large boat across a great body of water where they fought other men who spoke different languages. Many men died, including two of Grandpa’s older brothers.
They gave Grandpa a medal like the ones the captain wore, but Grandpa didn’t want it. He thought that it was given to him because he had somehow survived while so many others were killed. Grandpa buried the medal for his brothers on the banks of the river.
As they rode, the mountains got closer and closer, and Lionel thought that they might reach them that very afternoon, but he was wrong.
Midday, as Grandpa had said, a stream joined the river. Beatrice led Ulysses up onto a sandy snow-covered bank of the tributary, where they stopped to rest and eat. They ate cold elk meat and some of the hardtack biscuits that their grandfather had packed for them, and then were back on their way.
As they rode through the afternoon, Beatrice told Lionel more about Napi the old Man, as their grandfather had explained it to her.
“Grandpa said that after the old Man created the world, he realized that he was lonely and that he needed someone to talk to. So one day the old Man decided that it was time to create people—us, I reckon. The old Man made two figures of clay, one of a woman and one of her son. The old Man buried ’em in the ground by the river and left ’em.”
“Why would he leave them?”
Beatrice stared at him blankly, then continued, “The old Man returned on the second day and noticed that the clay figures had changed but still didn’t look like people. on the third day, he came back and once again, although they were different, they still weren’t people. on the fourth day, Grandpa said that the old Man returned and unburied ’em. He told the clay people to get up and walk; and they did…”
“They did?” Lionel asked, turning to look at Beatrice.
“Yup. ’Cause now they were people.”
“How did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” Beatrice answered. “Grandpa didn’t say.”
Lionel surveyed the vast landscape and the approaching foothills of the mountains. The land slowly changed as Beatrice spoke. The rolling plains gave way to foothills. The foothills grew bigger and seemed to sprout clumps of trees, mostly pine, aspen, and birch.
“Grandpa said that the old Man led the clay people to the water at the edge of the river where he told them, ‘I am Napi. Napi the old Man.’ But the old Man knew that like him, the people would be lonely, so he took more clay and blew onto it. The clay became more men and women, but now the old Man figured that his people were hungry, and they didn’t have no clothes. So he took more clay and made the buffalo. He told the clay people that the buffalo and the other animals were their food, and told them to hunt ’em.”
Lionel thought about Napi the old Man building the mountains and telling the plants where to grow. Then he thought about the clay people and the buffalo.
Sometime late that afternoon the children reached the dilapidated remnants of a barbed wire fence that Beatrice, although unsure, figured to be the boundary of their reservation. Neither Lionel nor Beatrice had ever left the reservation. Lionel was not sure if the same could be said about Ulysses.
They paused before the fence and marveled as it snaked north and south as far as their eyes could see. Lionel looked across the fence and thought that besides the proximity of the looming mountains, the rough terrain looked remarkably similar to the land that they had traveled for the majority of the afternoon.
Beatrice seemed nervous and turned Ulysses in a circle, surveying the snow-covered desolation that surrounded them.
“You think you’re ready?” Beatrice asked, breaking the uneasy feeling that the immense border brought.
“I guess” was all Lionel could think to say.
“We may never be coming back, you know. we may never be allowed back,” Beatrice added, and then dug in her heels, asking Ulysses to proceed.
The horse stepped forward, and with that step, completely alone and without permission or legal permit, the children rode through a gaping hole in the fence, leaving the reservation and all that they had ever known.
It grew dark, and Beatrice led Ulysses toward a small rock outcrop that jutted up from the bank. That night they slept off the reservation for the first time in their lives, wrapped in the buffalo robe in the shallow of a small cave at the foot of the mountains. They roasted the elk on sticks and ate; then Beatrice lay down and did not move until morning. Lionel wondered how much she had slept the night before.
Lionel fell asleep listening to the crackling embers of the small fire they had built. He dreamed that he stood on the side of a great river. There, he saw the bighorn sheep, the antelope, and then the buffalo rise from the earth and run across the river and out onto the open rolling plains. Lionel heard a low rumble from the earth, and Beatrice and their grandfather rose from the banks. They also crossed the river and followed the buffalo and the other animals. In his dream, Lionel tried to follow, but could not make it across the great river. The river’s opposite bank was moving farther away, moving to well beyond the distant horizon.