CHAPTER FOUR
EVERY NIGHT MILLIE watched the canyon man who called himself James. He never yelled at her or hit her. And he never stopped talking no matter how hard she tried to show him that she wasn’t listening. Days passed, the last of the cottonwood leaves fell, the wind howled of winter at night and still he talked.
She couldn’t stop observing his every move. He took the time to show her things. He taught her each detail as if one day he’d leave her alone and she’d have to know how to survive on her own. Fishing, cooking, washing. All the while, he talked and each day she understood more of what he said.
Three nights after she’d cut her hair, he presented her with a hat made of rabbit skins. A week later he tried to make her moccasins out of more hides. As soon as he left camp the next day, she finished the job with much more skill. For the first time since she’d outgrown her boots, she had new shoes. Fur-lined. Warm. A perfect fit. Over the years she’d made many, but they’d always been taken away.
Canyon Man was a good provider. Millie hadn’t gone hungry since he’d traded for her, but hunting wasn’t the reason he was going out each morning. James was looking for something.
As the days passed she took on more of the cooking, finding that she liked being alone all day and didn’t mind his company at night. She wasn’t sure what she was to him. If a Comanche had traded for her, she might have been a slave for his wife or mother, but James had no wife or mother, and he never treated her like a slave. She thought that maybe she was his wife, but he never touched her. Besides, a man like him could find a better wife than her.
The moon made its second cycle over the big, empty sky and Millie felt her mind calm. Her favorite time was at night when he’d lie on his back and point out the stars. He’d sometimes say that his father had known many of their names and that someday he’d know them all.
Each week she watched James wash in the creek but she never joined him. The habit seemed strange, but she remembered years ago being clean. She’d washed in a house with a fire, warming the air even in winter. Slowly the memory of her mother, her father, her little brother, drifted into her mind and for the first time in years, she let them settle there for a while. Another time. Another world. Her world once.
One warm morning, after James had left, she took his soap and went to the water. Slowly she removed her blanket and stepped out of the bloodstained shift she’d worn for years. She remembered she’d had a dress once, until it had fallen off, piece by piece. Then she’d had a petticoat and shift. Now she only had a shift.
As she walked into the cold water, she almost ran back to the shore, but a bath was long overdue. There was no reason for the mud anymore. No one would try to touch her now.
Slowly, one limb at a time, she washed. Her body was so thin. A girl’s body, she thought, not a woman’s. She’d started her bleeding three maybe four years ago. The mark of a woman. Two months later the flow did not come back. That winter had been hard. Food was short and she was always the last one in the tribe to eat. The bleeding that made her a woman had never returned.
As she scrubbed off the dirt, she realized she was no longer the last to eat. James always ate with her, and he cut each portion in two as if they were equal.
Cleaning her inch-long hair with the terrible-smelling soap, she decided she could not put on the shift again, so she walked back to the campsite nude and cut a hole in a blanket James had tried to cover her with several times. Poking her head through the hole, she tied her waist with a rope and pulled on her moccasins.
When he returned, she would have a stew of meat and a potato cooking.
Whirling, Millie felt grand. She was clean and dressed in clothes no one else had tossed away. She couldn’t wait for James to see her. Her name was no longer Mud Woman.
An hour later she watched James climb off his horse downstream from her. He studied her, shaded his eyes as if to make sure what he saw, then yelled, “Millie, is that you?”
She looked down. “I washed.”
As he walked toward her he continued to talk. “You look great, Millie. I almost thought someone else was in our camp when I rode up. Without the mud and that old blanket, you seem half as wide.” His hand lightly brushed over her clean hair. “Your hair is chestnut brown, not mud color. I’m telling you, Millie, in that clean blanket you are quite stunning.”
She moved away from his touch, but didn’t jerk in fear as she had before. Over the weeks together, she’d learned not to be afraid of him. If he had planned to hit her, he would have done so when she’d spilled coffee on him one morning or when she’d forgotten to start the fire one afternoon, or when she wouldn’t answer him no matter how many times he said her name. But he never hit her. James just kept talking as he smiled and shrugged off his frustration. Her canyon man was a good man.
While he staked his horse, she finished cooking supper.
They ate in silence, then both watched the fire. The air was still for a change, whispering around them. Now and then the wind moved in the dead leaves, sounding almost like someone walking.
Finally, when it was long past the time he usually turned in, he looked at her and said, “Talk to me, Millie. It’s so lonely out here with me doing all the talking. I know you understand most of what I say. Just talk to me. I know you can, you spoke today when I rode in.”
“James,” she whispered.
He laughed. “That and ‘good night’ are all I’ve ever heard you say.”
Millie thought about what she should try to say to him. Finally one thing came to mind. “Sleep beside me.”
Standing, he grabbed the extra blanket and spread it out full on the ground beside the fire, then reached for his bedroll blanket and floated it on top. Pulling his boots off, he lay between the two blankets and lifted the top one. “I’d say come to bed, Millie, but I haven’t seen a real bed in so long I’ve forgotten what they feel like.”
She curled in beside him, pressing her back against his chest. The nights were getting colder and his warmth along her back felt so good.
To her surprise, he wrapped his arm over her and tugged her closer. “I’m going to have to fatten you up if we’re going to cuddle through winter.”
She fell asleep on his arm feeling something akin to happiness.
* * *
BY THE TIME the moon turned from full to a slice she’d grown used to him sleeping beside her at night. She liked the way his low snoring tickled her ear and how he often covered her shoulders with the blanket in the night. Now frost would be on the top of their blanket at dawn, but she always felt warm.
On clear nights he’d point out falling stars, laughing as he counted them as if each one was putting on a show just for him.
One cloudy night he asked her to talk to him again, though she thought she was managing several words a day. Her body had filled out a bit and her hair was now almost as long as her little finger. It seemed to curl around her face and she didn’t mind when he brushed his fingers through it.
“Talk to me,” he said against her ear.
Millie shook her head. She didn’t know the words to say.
“Tell me what would make you happy, Millie.” He rested his hand on her waist. “I don’t have much out here but if I could make you smile, I’d count myself a lucky man.”
She had no words. How could she tell him about all the things she was grateful he never did? He didn’t yell at her. He didn’t beat her. He never made her go to sleep hungry. He hadn’t been angry when she’d cut up one of his blankets or forgotten how to do the things he’d showed her.
James sounded frustrated. “What can I do, Millie? Except when I feel you next to me at night, I’d swear I’m invisible to you most of the time. There must be something that you want.”
She’d had enough talk. “Sleep with me,” she whispered.
“I am. I keep you warm, don’t I?”
She covered her hand over his resting at her waist and moved his fingers up to her breast. “Sleep with me,” she repeated.
He rose to his elbow and looked down at her. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking? Do you want me to...to mate with you?”
She nodded, thinking maybe “mating” was the word she had been looking for. She’d seen the old chief mate with each one of his three wives in the shadows of the tepee. They did not seem to mind at all. Once he tried to climb on her, but his first wife had pushed him off. She’d screamed at him that night and the next morning she had beat Millie so badly she could barely walk for days.
After that she’d put more layers of mud over her and slept outside unless the ground froze.
Maybe she was not James’s wife, maybe she would never be anyone’s wife. But, she wanted this. It had been so many years since she had been close to anyone, or cared if anyone around her lived or died. She wanted to feel a kind touch. It might wash away a few of the shoves and hits and slaps.
Deep inside she knew her need was more. Millie couldn’t explain why, but she wanted James’s touch. He mattered to her and for some reason she seemed to matter to him. She might not understand much of what happened between a man and a woman, but Millie knew she wanted to press her heart against his and know she was alive.
Without a word she rose and pulled off the blanket she had made into clothing. Then she huddled back under the cover and waited. Whatever this mating was, she wanted it to happen with someone she cared for. James had made her want to live again.
It took him a while to make up his mind, but slowly he began to touch her and, as he had done with a hundred other things this season, he taught her how to mate.
At first she was not sure she liked it. It hurt a little and he’d whispered that he was sorry and promised it wouldn’t hurt next time. She had lain awake wondering why the first wife had wanted it or why the other wives never cried out as the old chief had moved from one to the other’s blankets. The coupling felt strange, awkward. She liked when he touched her lips with his and she felt warm when he moved over her, but it brought her little pleasure.
He held her when they were finished and fell asleep. She stared into the night sky and tried to make sense of what had happened.
Deep into the night, she shook him awake, asking him to do it again.
This time he did not hesitate so long. He seemed better the second time, more comfortable in touching her. Millie decided all he needed was practice and all she needed was to learn how to do what he liked. Next time she would touch him.
At dawn she awoke to the sound of him whistling as he worked on a shelter for the horses. When she sat up and smiled at him he came to her and knelt down beside her. His hand moved beneath the blanket and brushed along her body as he kissed her lips.
When he backed away, he looked worried. “Are you all right, Millie?”
She nodded once thinking again how kind this strong canyon man was. His heart rested over hers in the night. She knew its rhythm.
“Again, James,” she whispered.
He laughed. “Tonight. The weather promises a storm. I’d like to get the road from the east marked off. When or if I return to this land I want to have everything planned and staked out.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I’ll be back soon.”
While they ate he talked of how he’d mapped the land making sure there was water every mile and where he’d put barns someday.
They didn’t talk about what had happened in the night. Not that morning or the next or the next. Millie silently understood. What happened in the night was not mentioned in daylight.
Someday was not a word either of them knew how to use.
So, as winter raged, she woke him at least twice a night so they could practice until one morning, just before dawn, she decided they got it just right. Finally, she understood why James did not talk about their mating. There were no words.
Leaning back, she let her breath slow as his hands slid along her damp body. She liked this part as much as the mating. He always took his time touching her after they mated, as if she were something very special, and she drifted into sleep knowing she was safe.