Hour Glass Read online

  “I been meanin’ to tell you that. The thanks part. But I’ve been so scared to leave my room. Silly, ain’t it? I used to feel cooped up to be in here too long, and now, it’s the only thing that feels safe. I go out there and everything starts swirling around, big as life. Bigger even.”

  “You had a bad shock. You’ll feel better soon. I know it.”

  “And I see that man, that beast of a man, every time I shut my eyes. Every time I sleep, there he is waitin’ fer me. Like he ain’t dead. I know he’s dead, but his ghost is hauntin’ me.”

  “He ain’t gonna hurt you no more,” I said, trying to sound soothing.

  “I know, I know. But my mind doesn’t seem to. Anyway, I heard a commotion outside, and when I looked ’round, I saw the whole thing with you and that sister of yours. I saw Jane save you from the horse, but before, I was so scared. I was scared you was gonna die and then I’d never get a chance to thank you. And then there’d be two ghosts hauntin’ my dreams.”

  I smiled. She was worried about me. The prettiest girl on the earth was worried about me.

  “Well, maybe that would be good. Then I could fight the other ghost and make him leave you alone like he ought.”

  She smiled for the first time in days and hugged me again.

  “Miss Dora says to take my time getting better. She says it’ll all be waitin’ fer me when this has passed. What if it never passes, Jimmy? What if I’m ‘fraid of men forever, and every night is a nightmare to me? How could a person stand it?”

  “I don’t know, Missy. Am I ‘nuff to be called a man?”

  The girl looked at me fondly. Maybe not like she’d look at a grown man on a horse, asking to take her away, but it was a look beyond that of just a friend. I weren’t no boy with that look.

  “Yeh, I reckon.”

  I moved to the edge of her bed and sat down. Patting the spot next to me, I invited her to join me. To my utter delight, she sat without hesitation and laid her head on my shoulder. Cinnamon clouded my vision, and I began gently stroking her hair.

  “Okay, no funny business. I promise. Tell me whatever’s on your mind. Anything at all. Confide whatever you got, Lil’ Missy. I’m here to listen.”

  The most miraculous part was she did.

  She had ridden to Deadwood with Molly Johnson’s wagon of girls. One of the girls had been pals with her back at Belle Fourche and told her Deadwood was the next up and coming place to make a little money. Thing was, when she got there, there were already three blondes working for Molly and they held onto their places in the brothel with teeth and nails dug in. Missy was more than relieved when Dora found her outside Molly’s joint and offered her a job.

  Missy’s real name was Melissa Elliot. Her parents had gone at the same time during an outbreak of yellow fever. Ever since, she’d been working her way up through the ranks in saloons and brothels all over. She was only sixteen, but she had traveled about more than most grown men I knew. She loved it with Madame Dora and wanted to stay on with her as long as she could.

  It weren’t long before she got me talking. I told her about how I never really knew my mom, and what a strange woman Hour’s mother had been to me. She wasn’t bad or good, just odd in her Indian ways that I didn’t understand. How she named my sister Flower and told stories of ancient people who revered children like her. Being unusual wasn’t something to fear. It meant she was closer to the spirit of the eagle, and we weren’t to force her to live here like we did when all she wanted to do was fly. My words filled with sadness when talking about the woman’s passing.

  By the time we got to the part where I had to take care of Hour myself, Missy and I were laying on the bed next to one another, her head cradled on my shoulder, her legs bent up around my knees. Occasionally, her cat Puddin’ climbed up to play around on our entwined bodies, but for the most part, it was just the two of us. I knew of what men and women did together, and the parts of me that knew that sort of thing without my brain knowing it were whispering ideas to me. The thing of it was, my heart didn’t want to oblige.

  We were friends, she and I. Real friends. I wasn’t about to ruin that minute or the many minutes that followed it by trying to turn it into something it weren’t or shouldn’t have been. Minutes turned into hours, and before we knew it, night had settled into the little room with us, like an old friend and not a ghost.

  The day had begun with one of the worst moments of my life. I thought I had lost my sister forever. But the strangest thing happened afterwards. I spent the best afternoon of my life talking with a girl I had only met not a fortnight ago. Perhaps it was what love felt like. I was so young, I had nothing to compare it to. We confided such secrets and such tiny, trivial things in that room, she and I. Was that love? I didn’t know, but I wanted the afternoon to last forever. In any case, it helped to exorcise the spirit of the Bear Man to leave her be for a while.

  Outside that door was the real world. No wonder Missy wanted to stay inside here. In here, secrets were kept, company was invited, and hugs were always welcomed as hugs. Nothing was owed and nothing was paid but words. For her, outside meant customers to cater to and fears to overcome. For me, it meant a sister to care for and a dying father. We didn’t want to ever leave.

  The time came as sure as it ever did. I knew Hour would need me when Nancy got busy with the dinner rush, and there would be a lot of questions about me coming down from Missy’s room if there was a crowd in the saloon to watch me do it. When I stood up to go, Missy grabbed my hand and held it for a long minute. She walked me to her door. We hugged, and I told her everything would be all right. I breathed in the spicy smell in her hair before we separated, a scent I planned on cherishing for a long time, but she did me one better before she let me go.

  Just as I opened the door, Missy reached out and grabbed my face with both of her hands. That girl, the most beautiful thing in the world, kissed my lips right there and then. It lingered for only a second, a breath in an hourglass, and then it was over.

  “Thank you, Jimmy.”

  I left her room, and she closed the door behind me. The world seemed to rotate a little, and I wondered if I was in danger of falling down. A quick shake of the head allowed me to right myself and walk straight through the hallway and down the staircase.

  There weren’t anyone in the saloon yet except Joseph, who was arranging the liquor the way Dora liked to get ready for the rush of after-dark customers. It was a blessing he didn’t notice me walk through the saloon. I tried to be as silent as one of the damn cats, and apparently, I was doing just that.

  A few of the girls were eating dinner in the dining hall. I found Hour with two plates of food waiting for me at a table. She wasn’t fond of eating in front of a bunch of people, especially not without me. It was something she’d never liked. When I approached, I smiled at her, and without a word, I picked up the plate I knew she had made for me and followed her back to our room to eat.

  Missy’s kiss was still warm on my lips. I would leave it there for safekeeping in case I wanted to remember it again later.

  16

  I felt Cage coming before my eyes even had time to shut completely. She was like gray smoke snaking her way to where I laid my weary head down. My lungs breathed her in deep as she crashed over my person. Her whispers of things long since passed encompassed and pulled down on me until I not only fell asleep, but tumbled down deeper and deeper into a memory that would never go away. I didn’t want to go to that place. Memories of it were a seething torrent hiding just below what seemed to be the calm waters I pretended to swim in. There was no use resisting it of course. Cage had her ways, and she would show me what needed showing.

  Before I knew what was happening, rain fell on my face. It was a warm sort of rain, the kind that fell in the summer. Normally, playing in the rain of the late afternoon would be a thing of fun, but when I looked around me, a foreboding sat heavy with the moistur
e in the air. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to remember this.

  Flower sat under the shelter of her favorite tree, a girl of maybe four years old. Modesty hadn’t found her yet, and she sat splay-legged, like a boy might, across the roots that jutted up from the ground. Her eyes stared forward in a sort of trance. She neither moved much nor did she draw with her stick. Only someone who really knew could see the concern painted on her face.

  Moaning came from the shanty we called home. It was the sound of pain, the call of the dying.

  Pa pushed back the canvas flap and hurried out into the rainy afternoon with me. The look on his face was tired, and he held an empty pail in his hand.

  “Jimmy, I need you ta go keep Cage company, okay? I’m gonna take Flower to go get some more fresh water fer her. She keeps throwin’ everythin’ up.”

  “What’s wrong with her, Pa?”

  “Don’t likely know. Might be the Yella Jack. There was rumor the fever been goin’ ’round. Just watch her, okay?”

  “Should we take her to see a doctor?”

  His weary face looked defeated.

  “No doc ’round these parts will tend to an Injun. You know that. Please, just fetch her whatever she needs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on, honey. Come with Pa to get some water.”

  Flower rose and walked away with our pa without question. They didn’t hold hands like a father and daughter might, but she stayed close to his hip. I watched them disappear into the rainy mist before turning to go in the shanty.

  When I opened the flap and stepped inside, the smell was that of bile and sick. It felt stiflingly warm inside our home, as if the added heat of Cage’s fever was acting as a furnace. Without thinking, I rolled the front flap back and made to tie it off in the hopes of creating a bit of breeze for her.

  “No, please do not, Jimmy,” said Cage through chattering teeth.

  The short glimpse I got of her made me want to turn away immediately. It weren’t a proper thing, Cage looking that way. I let the flap fall shut as it had been before. There was one of our chairs perched next to her bed, so I sat in it and made myself look at my step-mother.

  Her black hair was loose and wet with perspiration. It curled and snaked around her head in matted tendrils. The skin hung from her bones on her face, sallow and waxy. Those dark eyes of hers popped out by contrast when she looked up at me, red-rimmed and desperate. She shivered something awful despite the fact I could feel how hot her skin was sitting a foot away from her.

  “Another blanket?” I asked.

  Cage shut her eyes and nodded.

  I grabbed the quilt at the end of the bed and draped it over her. It was their wedding quilt made by Cage’s mother and sisters and given as a gift the day they married. The very center had a star pattern with various diamonds and triangles of reds, yellows, and oranges. I tucked it up underneath her chin, and she breathed its familiarity in deep.

  “I see things,” she said.

  “What things?”

  “There on the walls. Beetles. Dark bits crawling around. Do you see them?”

  I followed her gaze but saw nothing unusual. It was just the canvas walls as they always had been. No spiders or beetles.

  “No, Cage. I don’t see nothin’.”

  She mumbled something in Sioux.

  “Cage, Pa went to get some water. You’re gonna get better soon.”

  “It’s Keya, I think.”

  “What’s Keya?”

  “The bits on the wall. Little Keya. They come to me.”

  “Cage, there ain’t nothin’ there.”

  She turned her eyes back on me then, a sudden urgency in them. Her hand shot out from underneath the quilt and took mine. Her skin was burning hot as she squeezed my fingers together.

  “Jimmy Who Watches, know they are here. They watch. I will too. Know that.”

  “Cage, you’re hurtin’ me.”

  She was so frightening to look at. This wasn’t Cage, not my Cage. I wanted nothing more than for her to stop and bring my Cage back. Fear filled up my belly, and I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to have to be brave.

  “The Keya, they speak . . .”

  “Cage honey, let go of Jimmy. You’re hurtin’ his hand.”

  The sound of Pa’s deep voice broke her from her reverie a little, and she released my hand back to me. Cage’s eyes went out of focus a little then, and she turned away from us. I wanted to run away, to cry somewhere, but I held my spot long enough for Pa to come up behind me and place his warm hand on my shoulder. The sound of sloshing water echoed when he set the bucket down next to the chair.

  I stood and watched him dunk a rag into the fresh creek water and ring out the excess. He laid the rag on Cage’s forehead with more tenderness than I was accustomed to seeing in him. Still, the shock of the rag’s presence startled her and caused her to flinch a little. Pa whispered soothing sounds to get her to calm.

  “Sleep now. It’s gonna be all right.”

  Cage nodded slowly, her eyelids heavy.

  “Tell Jimmy . . . I . . . I am sorry.”

  “You ain’t gotta be sorry. Sleep now.”

  He and I stepped out of the shanty to leave her to her rest. I looked around for Flower and found her back in the spot she had occupied previously. She wasn’t drawing in the dirt or rocking or anything. The girl just stared forward.

  “She said she seen bits on the walls,” I told Pa. “She said there was Keya crawling everywhere. What’s that mean?”

  “Cage’s just feverin’, son. When your fever’s bad ‘nuff, a person sees all sorts of things that ain’t there.”

  “Is she? Is she gonna die?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  We both turned to look at Flower together, two men contemplating a strange little girl. Flower didn’t so much as move a muscle. For a second, she lifted that far away stare of hers to meet our eyes. We three were locked there in a shared gaze, connected by something we couldn’t explain. Maybe she understood us then, maybe she didn’t. Either way, just as quick as the moment came, it left, and Flower was back to staring at the dirt in front of her.

  “She won’t draw or nothin’,” I observed out loud.

  “Nope.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “My bet is she knows somethin’ we don’t. It seems to be the way of things with her.”

  Cage passed sometime in the night. It shouldn’t have been that way, but there it was. My sister and I slept in our cots on the other side of the shanty as we always did, and Pa bedded down on the floor next to their bed to give her room to fever. The moaning lessened enough where we all slipped into our individual dreams, but come morning’s light, Cage was still. She had gone quietly as we dozed, like a late night visitor, tiptoeing her way around our bodies on her way out without wanting to wake us.

  The sadness she left in her wake was consuming. So much so I couldn’t seem to feel it all completely right that moment. The loss settled into my bones and promised it wouldn’t leave me any time soon. Without my asking, it had become a part of me in the night. I couldn’t even find it in me to cry just yet. It all was too much, and maybe a dream. Perhaps this was a terrible dream or a mistake?

  Sorrow shook its dark head at me. I knew Cage wouldn’t be coming back. This was life now, and it would never be the same again.

  Few words passed between us. There weren’t anything to say. We wrapped Cage head to toe in their wedding quilt, the star pattern fanning out from her chest and shining up to her head. All of us took a last moment to see her face before we covered it, never to look upon it again.

  Pa had Flower and I help him pack not only a few things, but all of our things. He had bought an old cart a few months back that he hooked up to Betty. We loaded the few meager possessions we had worth keeping into it, a
nd Pa tore down the canvas around our shanty. Cage’s body was the last thing to add to the cart, and we laid her among our supplies with all the care we had in us.

  “Are we movin’ away, Pa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “This place is haunted now.”

  “Ain’t we gonna bury her?”

  “No son. We gotta take her to her people.”

  Her tribe of Lakota moved around as they were wont to do. Their summer place was not too far away from us. Pa lifted Flower onto Betty’s back and we made our way solemnly through the woods.

  The birds had the nerve to sing. That seemed like a mean thing for them to do to me, but they did anyway. I reckoned maybe birds didn’t care none when one of ours died any more than we cared if one of them died. Still, the world went on past us, as it always tended to, as we journeyed to Cage’s people. No words passed between us. Flower had just begun to talk in strings that made sense, but none of us wanted to try.

  We reached the meadow where the tribe normally camped and were relieved to find them still there. Our slumped backs and sour faces told them the reason for our visit before any words were spoken. It was a good thing as they spoke little English and we knew only a bit of broken Sioux.

  Without hesitation, a scaffold was erected at the edge of the camp with poles and saplings. The women chanted and cried over her body as they placed it, still wrapped in her star quilt, high up on top of the structure. It seemed everyone from the tribe came to pay their respects. Eagle feathers and beaded bags were tied to the scaffold poles, and there was a constant song being chanted from those who seemed to know her best. For our part, we stood a piece away from the memorial, bearing witness to the event.

  “They ain’t gonna leave her up there, is they?” I asked Pa. “They wouldn’t leave her for the buzzards out in the open, would they?”