Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Debra Magpie Earling is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation. She teaches at the University of Montana in Missoula. This is her first novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Perma Red

Blue Hen Books

Chapter One

Louise and Yellow Knife

The Old Marriage

When Louise White Elk was nine, Baptiste Yellow Knife blew a fine powder in her face and told her she would disappear. She sneezed until her nose bled, and Baptiste gave her his handkerchief. She had to lie down on the school floor and tilt back her head and even then it wouldn't stop. She felt he had opened the river to her heart. The cloth he had given her was wet with her blood. She felt hot and sleepy. Sister Thomas Bernard pulled her up and told her to go to the bathroom and wash her face. Sister pinched the bridge of Louise's nose. Louise kept the handkerchief pressed to her face, embarrassed by all the attention she was getting. She could feel her blood cool in slow streams between her fingers. She remembered at one point Baptiste Yellow Knife had knelt down beside her. Her head was empty. She imagined the veins in her temples quivering. Her skin draining color. Her face glowing, a candlelit egg. Suffering. A saint. Awkward Baptiste. Pigeon-toed and dusty Baptiste was kneeling beside her cradling her head with his cool, dry hands, his voice tickling her ears. He was leaning over her, whispering to her, whispering a story. His voice was in her ear. She felt Sister Bernard pull Baptiste away from her. The back of her head danced with silver stars and Louise fell back into dreaming, a snagged fish released again to water.

Grandma squeezed her hand as she blinked awake. Louise's hands were cold. "We got this back," Grandma said. She held up the handkerchief that Baptiste had given her. It was crumpled, stiff and black with her blood. Louise didn't understand at first and then she remembered Baptiste standing close as the school nurse lifted her into the car. He shyly asked the nurse for his handkerchief back. As they pulled out of the school yard, Baptiste smiled at Louise and lifted his bloody handkerchief up so she could see all he had taken from her.

Her grandmother had told her to stay away from him. He was the son of Dirty Swallow, the rattlesnake woman. Baptiste Yellow Knife's mother could direct the rattlers to do her bidding. Last summer a rattler had tapped the back of her grandmother's skirt as she sat on the stick-game lines. Her grandmother had won too much of Dirty Swallow's money, and she wanted it back. Now the son of Dirty Swallow wanted something from Louise.

There was something about Baptiste. Baptiste was from the old ways and everybody hoped he would be different from his mother. He knew things without being told. He knew long before anyone else when the first camas had sprouted. He would inform his mother the night before the flower would appear and he was always right. He knew stories no one but the eldest elder knew but he knew the stories without being told. "He knows these things," her grandmother had said, "because the spirits tell him. He is the last of our old ones, and he is dangerous."

On the day Louise's great-grandmother had died Baptiste foretold her death. It was in the spring, on a day so clear clouds faded overhead like wide ghosts. Louise's great-grandfather was branding horses in the high field and, she remembered, Baptiste had come over with his grandfather to watch. Louise was six years old at the time but she still remembered Baptiste, because it was one of the few times she had seen him out of school then. But she remembered him most because of what had happened that day. And that day Louise sat up on the hillside with her mother, her grandmother, and Old Macheese-her great-grandmother. Louise thought at first Baptiste was frightened of Old Macheese and had chosen to sit away from her.

Old Macheese had survived everything, even smallpox, but her grandmother said her face had always been pitted. Louise could still remember Old Macheese's face, places where disease had died beneath her skin, bruised places where the blood had pooled for good. Old Macheese liked to rub her knuckles down Louise's spine, liked to laugh at her when she tripped or cried, whenever she hurt herself. And after the old woman died Louise's grandmother had told her Old Macheese was just that way, mean.

Louise had wondered if there was something wrong with Baptiste that day, because he stared at her, and even when she made faces at him, he did not stop his watching. She had heard stories about him, how he could see and hear things other Indians could not, how his mother had the rattlesnake power. He sat away from the others, rocking back and forth, digging his slender fingers deep into the black soil while his grandfather worked. He wasn't called down to the corral like the other boys. His grandfather had let him be alone and quiet on the hill.

Old Macheese had just started to tell a story when Baptiste had stood up, so thin the dirty seat of his pants hung almost to his knees. Old Macheese spoke up, saying he probably had tuberculosis. He wore a belt that had once been his grandfather's horse bridle. He had two white splotches clouding his face and still he was the darkest Indian Louise had ever seen, a beaver-dark boy who stood with a strange certainty Louise recognized even then as trouble. When his grandfather saw Baptiste stand, he slipped the knot off the colt he was holding and headed fast toward Baptiste. Louise remembered the old man had leaned over Baptiste, listening and nodding. But Louise could not hear Baptiste.

"Baptiste has seen a salamander," he called, "a lizard turn red."

Louise's great-grandfather, Good Mark, shut the corral gate and made his way up to Baptiste. Louise stood silent beside her grandmother. The other men had stopped working and had turned to see what was troubling Baptiste. The horses crowded one corner of the corral as the workers gathered at the bottom of the hill. The men crouched suddenly to the ground. They were patting the dirt, searching, feeling for something. She could see Good Mark weaving his fingers through the faded grass, his white braids were tucked in his belt. Louise's mother shook her head, then cupped her hands together on top of her head. Louise's grandmother tapped Louise. "Look for a lizard," she had told Louise half-whispering. "See if you can find the lizard."

Louise got down on her hands and knees with the men. She combed the grass with her fingertips. She picked up a branch and brushed the ground but she saw nothing. Baptiste Yellow Knife crept up behind her and Louise looked up to see his knife-bladed hair, his dark face. "You won't find it," he said. She pushed at his feet, but he did not budge. "Move," she said. She didn't like being told by Baptiste, a boy she barely knew, that she couldn't do something. "You're in my way," she told him. She turned over stones, picked at the sage and grass, looking. She glanced at Baptiste and noticed his watching was dim. His eyes lazy. His lashes flickered and she saw the glare of black irises swirling back in his head, and then only the whites of his eyes, spooky, almost blue. "It won't do no good," he said, his dizzy eyes closed. "Someone will die." Louise saw the dirt in the slim cuff of Baptiste Yellow Knife's pants. She saw clouds bleaching to wind, a haze of dust changing light like silt changes water. She saw her great-grandmother standing on the hill, and then Old Macheese was falling back, falling, while the wind lifted her olive scarf from her head.

Louise asked her grandmother how she had gotten the handkerchief back. How did the old woman manage to snatch back her blood from Baptiste Yellow Knife's tight fist, his ugly...