Yehudi or Aesop, but with Mother Sioux I let the ducts give way on countless occasions, blubbering in her arms like some hapless mama’s boy. Once, I remember, I even went so far as to touch on the subject of flying, and what she said was so unexpected, so calm in its assurance, that it pacified the turmoil within me for weeks to come—not because I believed it myself, but because she did, and she was the person I trusted most in the world.
“He’s a wicked man,” I said, referring to the master, “and by the time he’s through with me, I’ll be as hunched and crippled as Aesop.”
“No, sonny, it ain’t so. You’ll be dancing with the clouds in the sky.”
“With a harp in my hands and wings sprouting from my back.”
“In your own skin. In your own flesh and bones.”
“It’s a bluff, Mother Sioux, a disgusting pack of lies. If he aims to teach me what he says, why don’t he get down and doit? For one whole year, I’ve suffered every indignity known to man. I’ve been buried, I’ve been burned, I’ve been mutilated, and I’m still as bound to the earth as I ever was.”
“Those are the steps. It has to be done that way. But the worst is nearly behind you now.”
“So he’s suckered you into believing it, too.”
“No one suckers Mother Sioux into anything. I’m too old and too fat to swallow what people say. False words are like chicken bones. They catch in my throat and I spit them out.”
“Men can’t fly. It’s as simple as that. Men can’t fly because God don’t want them to.”
“It can be done.”
“In some other world maybe. But not this one.”
“I saw it happen. When I was a little girl. I saw it with my own two eyes. And if it happened before, it can happen again.”
“You dreamed it. You thought you saw it, but it was only in your sleep.”
“My own father, Walt. My own father and my own brother. I saw them moving through the air like spirits. It wasn’t flying the way you imagine it. Not like birds or moths, not with wings or anything like that. But they were up in the air, and they were moving. All slow and strange. As if they was swimming. Pushing their way through the air like swimmers, like spirits walking on the bottom of a lake.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because you wouldn’t have believed me before. That’s why I’m telling you now. Because the time is coming. If you listen to what the master tells you, it’s coming sooner than you think.”
W hen spring rolled around for the second time, the farm work was like a holiday to me, and I threw myself into it with manic good cheer, welcoming the chance to live like a normal person again. Instead of lagging behind and grousing about my aches and pains, I surged along at top speed, daring myself to stick with it, reveling in my own exertions. I was still puny for my age, but I was older and stronger, and even though it was impossible, I did all I could to keep up with Master Yehudi himself. I was out to prove something, I suppose, to stun him into respecting me, to be noticed. This was a new way of fighting back, and every time the master told me to slow down, to ease off and not push so hard (“It’s not an Olympic sport,” he would say, “we’re not out here competing for medals, kid”), I felt as if I had won a victory, as if I were gradually regaining possession of my soul.
My pinky joint had healed by then. What had once been a bloody mess of tissue and bone had smoothed over into an odd, nailless stump. I enjoyed looking at it now and running my thumb over, the scar, touching that bit of me that was gone forever. I must have done it fifty or a hundred times a day, and every time I did, I would sound out the words
Saint Louis
in my head. I was struggling to hold on to my past, but by then the words had become just words, a ritual exercise in remembrance. They summoned forth no pictures, took me on no journeys back to whereI had been. After eighteen months in Cibola,
“He’s a wicked man,” I said, referring to the master, “and by the time he’s through with me, I’ll be as hunched and crippled as Aesop.”
“No, sonny, it ain’t so. You’ll be dancing with the clouds in the sky.”
“With a harp in my hands and wings sprouting from my back.”
“In your own skin. In your own flesh and bones.”
“It’s a bluff, Mother Sioux, a disgusting pack of lies. If he aims to teach me what he says, why don’t he get down and doit? For one whole year, I’ve suffered every indignity known to man. I’ve been buried, I’ve been burned, I’ve been mutilated, and I’m still as bound to the earth as I ever was.”
“Those are the steps. It has to be done that way. But the worst is nearly behind you now.”
“So he’s suckered you into believing it, too.”
“No one suckers Mother Sioux into anything. I’m too old and too fat to swallow what people say. False words are like chicken bones. They catch in my throat and I spit them out.”
“Men can’t fly. It’s as simple as that. Men can’t fly because God don’t want them to.”
“It can be done.”
“In some other world maybe. But not this one.”
“I saw it happen. When I was a little girl. I saw it with my own two eyes. And if it happened before, it can happen again.”
“You dreamed it. You thought you saw it, but it was only in your sleep.”
“My own father, Walt. My own father and my own brother. I saw them moving through the air like spirits. It wasn’t flying the way you imagine it. Not like birds or moths, not with wings or anything like that. But they were up in the air, and they were moving. All slow and strange. As if they was swimming. Pushing their way through the air like swimmers, like spirits walking on the bottom of a lake.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because you wouldn’t have believed me before. That’s why I’m telling you now. Because the time is coming. If you listen to what the master tells you, it’s coming sooner than you think.”
W hen spring rolled around for the second time, the farm work was like a holiday to me, and I threw myself into it with manic good cheer, welcoming the chance to live like a normal person again. Instead of lagging behind and grousing about my aches and pains, I surged along at top speed, daring myself to stick with it, reveling in my own exertions. I was still puny for my age, but I was older and stronger, and even though it was impossible, I did all I could to keep up with Master Yehudi himself. I was out to prove something, I suppose, to stun him into respecting me, to be noticed. This was a new way of fighting back, and every time the master told me to slow down, to ease off and not push so hard (“It’s not an Olympic sport,” he would say, “we’re not out here competing for medals, kid”), I felt as if I had won a victory, as if I were gradually regaining possession of my soul.
My pinky joint had healed by then. What had once been a bloody mess of tissue and bone had smoothed over into an odd, nailless stump. I enjoyed looking at it now and running my thumb over, the scar, touching that bit of me that was gone forever. I must have done it fifty or a hundred times a day, and every time I did, I would sound out the words
Saint Louis
in my head. I was struggling to hold on to my past, but by then the words had become just words, a ritual exercise in remembrance. They summoned forth no pictures, took me on no journeys back to whereI had been. After eighteen months in Cibola,
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