Michael Blake - Dances With Wolves

“Stands With A Fist,” he said softly, bending through the entrance to the lodge.

She looked up at him with her wide eyes but said nothing.

“I would talk with you,” he said, disappearing into the darkness of the lodge.

She followed.

It was tense inside. Kicking Bird was going to say things she probably would not want to hear, and it made him uneasy.

As she stood in front of him, Stands With A Fist felt the kind of foreboding that comes before questioning. She had done nothing wrong, but life had become a day-to-day proposition. She never knew what was going to befall her next, and since the death of her husband, she had not felt up to meeting challenges. She took solace in the man standing before her. He was respected by everyone and he had taken her in as one of his own. If there was anyone she could trust, it was Kicking Bird.

But he seemed nervous.

“Sit,” he said, and they both dropped to the floor. “How is the wound?” he began.

“It is healing,” she replied, her eyes barely meeting his.

“The pain is gone?”

“Yes.”

“You have found strength again.”

“I am stronger now; I am working well.”

She toyed with a patch of dirt at her feet, scraping it into a little pile while Kicking Bird tried to find the words he wanted. He didn’t like rushing, but he didn’t want to be interrupted either, and someone might come by at any time.

She looked up at him suddenly, and Kicking Bird was struck by the sadness of her face.

“You are unhappy here,” he said.

“No.” She shook her head. “I am glad for it.”

She played with the dirt halfheartedly, flicking it with her fingers.

“I am sad without my husband.”

Kicking Bird thought for a moment, and she began to build another pile of dirt.

“He is gone now,” the medicine man said, “but you are not. Time is moving and you are moving with it, even if you go unhappily. Things will be happening.”

“Yes,” she said, pursing her lips, “but I am not much interested in what will happen.”

From his vantage point facing the entrance Kicking Bird saw several shadows pass in front of the lodge flap and then move on.

“The whites are coming,” he said suddenly. “More of them will be coming through our country each year.”

A shiver ran up Stands With A Fist’s spine. It spread across her shoulders. Her eyes hardened and her hands involuntarily rolled themselves into fists.

“I won’t go with them,” she said.

Kicking Bird smiled. “No,” he said, “you won’t go. There is not a warrior among us who would not fight to keep you from going.”

Hearing these words of support, the woman with the dark cherry hair leaned forward slightly, curious now.

“But they will be coming,” he continued. “They are a strange race in their habits and beliefs. It is hard to know what to do. People say they are many, and that troubles me. If they come as a flood, we will have to stop them. Then we will lose many of our good men, men like your husband. There will be many more widows with long faces.”

As Kicking Bird drew closer to the point, Stands With A Fist dropped her head, contemplating the words.

“This white man, the one who brought you home. I have seen him. I have been to his lodge downriver and drunk his coffee and talked with him. He is strange in his ways. But I have watched him and I think his heart is a good one. . . .”

She lifted her head and glanced fleetingly at Kicking Bird.

“This white man is a soldier. He may be a person of influence among the whites. . . .”

Kicking Bird stopped. A common sparrow had found its way through the open flap and fluttered into the lodge. Knowing it had trapped itself, the young bird beat its wings frantically as it bounced off one hide wall after another. Kicking Bird watched as the sparrow climbed closer to the smoke hole and suddenly disappeared to freedom.

He looked now at Stands With A Fist. She had ignored the intrusion and was staring at the hands folded in her lap. The medicine man thought, trying to pick up the thread of his monologue. Before he could start however, he again heard the soft whir of little wings.

Looking overhead, he saw the sparrow, hovering just inside the smoke hole. He followed its flight as it dived deliberately toward the floor, pulled up in a graceful swoop, and lighted quietly on the cherry-colored head. She didn’t move, and the bird began preening, as natural as if it were nesting in the branches of a tall tree. She passed an absent hand over her head, and like a child skipping rope, the sparrow hopped a foot into the air, hovered as the hand swept under its feet, and landed once more. Stands With A Fist sat oblivious as the tiny visitor fluffed its wings, threw out its chest, and took off like a shot, making a beeline for the entrance. It was gone in the blink of an eye.

With time Kicking Bird would have made certain conclusions concerning the import and meaning of the sparrow’s arrival and Stands With A Fist’s role in its performance. There was no time to take a walk and mull it over, but somehow Kicking Bird felt reassured by what he had seen.

Before he could speak again, she was lifting her head.

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

“I want to hear the white soldier’s words, but my ears cannot understand them.”

Now it was done. Stands With A Fist’s face dropped.

“I am afraid of him,” she said.

“A hundred white soldiers coming on a hundred horses with a hundred guns . . . that is something to fear. But he is only one man. We are many and this is our country.”

She knew he was right, but rightness didn’t make her feel any more secure. She shifted uncomfortably.

“I do not remember the white tongue,” she said halfheartedly. “I am Comanche.”

Kicking Bird nodded.

“Yes, you are Comanche. I do not ask for you to become something else. I am asking you to put your fear behind and your people ahead. Meet the white man. Try to find your white tongue with him, and when you do, we three will make a talk that will serve all the people. I have thought on this for a long time.”

He lapsed into silence and the whole lodge became still. She looked around, letting her eyes linger here and there, as if it would be a long time before she saw this place again. She wasn’t going anywhere, but in her mind Stands With A Fist was taking another step toward giving up the life she loved so dearly.

“When will I see him?” she asked.

Stillness filled the lodge again.

Kicking Bird got to his feet.

“Go to a quiet place,” he instructed, “away from our camp. Sit for a time and try to think back the words of your old tongue.”

Her chin was tilted at her chest as Kicking Bird walked her to the entrance.

“Put your fear behind and it will be a good thing,” he said as she ducked out of the lodge.

He didn’t know if she heard this last bit of advice. She hadn’t turned back to him, and now she was walking away.

Stands With A Fist did as she was asked.

With an empty water jug resting on her hip, she made her way down the main track to the river. It was close to noon, and the morning traffic, water haulers and horses and washers and beaming children, had thinned out. She walked slowly, eyeing each side of the trail for a seldom-traveled rut that would take her to a place of solitude. Her heart quickened as she spotted an overgrown path that cut away from the main trail and ran through the breaks a hundred yards from the river.

No one was about, but she listened carefully for anyone who might be coming. Hearing nothing, she hid the cumbersome jug under a choke-cherry bush and slipped into the heavy cover of the old path just as voices started up near the water’s edge.