At least in the winter one didn’t have to worry about the rattlesnakes.
Lucia feared snakes, dreadfully.
But she thought it kind of young William Buckhom to think of her, and the baking-powder can filled with rattles was one of the few things that she cared for on this forsaken prairie.
Lucia, sweeping the broomstick before her, started down the hill toward the building.
Yes, she said to herself, it has seen its better days. And, she said, I am only twenty-two, and I look like I was thirty, and the prairie does that to a girl, a woman, and there are no young men here, and I am lonely, so lonely.
In what was supposed to be the play yard of the school Lucia had arranged for two swings, but the timbers from which they should have hung were as lonely as Hunkpapa burial poles. The ropes of the swings had been stolen the first night, two years ago, presumably to be applied to some more utilitarian purpose.
It was morning, a few minutes before the time to ring the bell. The children would be waiting in the draw behind the school. They would come when the bell rang. They had no wish to jeopardize their family’s share in the rations, distributed every second Saturday.
There was a single teeter-totter in the play yard, but it had not been popular with the students.
It had been pointed out to Lucia by several of them that it was poorly built, for there was a leg in the middle rather than one at both ends, and of a consequence it was unstable, and perhaps dangerous.
Nonsense, had said Lucia, and had attempted to demonstrate its use, which was not easy alone.
But then she had placed two of the younger boys on the other end and had bounced up and down several times, grimly. It is fun, had said Lucia feeling very silly. But it does not go anywhere, had said William Buckhorn. It just stays where it is.
And then he jumped up and down for her.
Just the same, he said.
And Lucia and the two boys had climbed off the teeter-totter, and, to the best of her knowledge, no one had been on it since.
But she had firmly refused to permit it, or the swing frames, to be chopped into kindling for the stove. Not even on the coldest days. Some things, Lucia had told herself, are matters of principle. Besides, under the snow, there were plenty of cow chips. But perhaps this winter? It was, after all, not of much use. No, said Lucia. Someday-someday perhaps-the children will learn to use the teeter-totter-and someday I will buy some more rope and they will learn to swing. My children will learn how to play.
Of course, as Lucia was forced to admit to herself, the children-the younger ones-could and did play, with pieces of string and sticks, and tumbleweeds, and by throwing rocks, and running after one another-but it was not the same.
There will come a time for the swings and the teeter-totter, she told herself. If we don’t burn them first, she added. But we could always build others.
Lucia was not a great deal older than some of her pupils. The oldest was Joseph Running Horse, who was nineteen. The youngest was William Buckhom, who was probably about nine. There were twenty pupils in all, crowded indiscriminately onto the same tiny benches, regardless of their age or size. There was only one girl, who was seventeen, Winona, the daughter of a subchief named Old Bear, whom Lucia had never seen.
Lucia would have liked to have had more girls in the school. She was pleased that Winona was an apt and dutiful student. It would do her good, and the boys good, that she should study with them, and show them that girls were quite as good at schoolwork as they. The Sioux had too little respect for women. Unfortunately the fact that Winona was quite as good at schoolwork as the boys had convinced some of the boys that schoolwork must be unfit for men, as must be anything a woman could do as well as a man.
Aunt Zita-God’s crowbar, as Lucia called her, in her own thoughts-was a missionary, one of several whom God had appointed to illuminate the heathen with diverse and contradictory messages. It was because of Aunt Zita that Lucia had come to Standing Rock. Lucia had taught school in the East, in Saint Louis, in a large stone building with three floors and four high windows, with shades, in each classroom. Thus she was a woman of prestige at Standing Rock. The reservation needed teachers. The pay was eight dollars a month. But Lucia had had a small inheritance from her parents, and Aunt Zita had had the call. Without Lucia, Aunt Zita would not have been permitted on the reservation. The spiritual needs of the Indians were already amply supplied. But a teacher, a real teacher, that was something different.
Lucia reached the door of the schoolhouse. She leaned her broomstick against the side of the school. She took a heavy metal key from the pocket of her cotton dress and opened the door. Inside she went to her heavy oak desk and from the bottom left-hand drawer took out a wooden-handled brass school bell.
The room was cool, but Lucia decided it was too early in the year to light the stove. She glared at the stove. There would be time enough later to fight those battles.
Carrying the bell, Lucia then went outside, and stood looking down toward the draw where the children would be waiting.
She didn’t want to ring the bell yet.
Aunt Zita had been the one with the call, she told herself, not me.
Aunt Zita-who would never even let the Indians inside the soddy.
Once Joseph Running Horse had been invited in by Lucia, and Aunt Zita, seizing a broom, had ordered him from the room. Afterwards, Aunt Zita had spent fifteen minutes sprinkling Sanitas into every nook and corner of the soddy. I am interested only in his soul, had said Aunt Zita, which-thank God-does not smell. If it did, she added, God help me, I do not know what I should do. Lucia wondered if Joseph Running Horse truly smelled, and granted that he probably did, though she had never noticed. She did know that she could, upon occasion, particularly in July and August, smell Aunt Zita, who continually wore the same, high-collared black dress, with the long sleeves and the four blue buttons on each cuff, and the petticoats over petticoats, sometimes as many as five. I suppose I smell, too, thought Lucia. There isn’t enough water, or soap. To her disappointment, Joseph Running Horse never approached the soddy again-nor did any of her pupils-with the exception of young William Buckhorn, who, when Aunt Zita was absent, would occasionally come to the door, drop his head shyly and put up his hand to drop a pair of rattles into her hand, and then she would give him a piece of brown sugar, and he would turn and run away as fast as he could.
Lucia lifted the school bell and swung it up and down at arm’s length.
Her pupils emerged from the draw, wearing their hats, in their overalls and cotton shirts.
Last to emerge, following the boys, as she always did, was slim Winona.
How lovely she is, thought Lucia.
The first one to the school was Joseph Running Horse, because he was the oldest and strongest of the students, and thus by right their leader and first.
Joseph Running Horse-or “Little Joe” Running Horse, as some of the horse soldiers from Fort Yates called him-was small for his age, but his frame was supple and wiry, and his face old beyond his nineteen years.
He like the others, was Hunkpapa Sioux. His father had had him baptized by a white man who had worn a black dress and had given two handfuls of bullets and a quart of sugar for each head on which he was permitted to pour water while mumbling words that many white men themselves did not understand, medicine words. This had occurred several years ago, and the bullets had then been needed very badly, and the squaws liked sugar.
As the pupils filed past, it occurred to Lucia that the only religion not represented officially on the reservation, except for some of the minor Christian organizations, was the traditional Sioux faith. Lucia smiled a heretical smile to herself
The old ways, she knew, had not been forgotten. Water on the head and two handfuls of bullets and a quart of sugar and words did not change a man’s heart. The old faith was not forgotten and the tiny crosses handed out usually ended up in the skin medicine bags which hung in the cabins, or in the summer, from the poles of the skin lodges. If the medicine of the white men was strong medicine, it would do no harm to let it work too for the Sioux.
Lucia entered the school last and checked to see that all the boys had removed their hats, and then went to the front of the room, and rapped sharply on the desk with her knuckles. The gesture was she recognized, unnecessary, for no one was not paying attention, but somehow it reassured her, making her seem more prim and teacherly, making this handful of planks on the windy prairie seem more of a school.
“Joseph Running Horse,” she said, “come to the board and write your name.”
This was a morning ritual for the entire class.
The first thing the Indians were to be taught was the marks for their own name. There would be papers for them to sign. After this one could teach them to read, and later to write the words they read. Finally they might be taught to do simple sums.
Lucia usually managed to avoid the geography lesson, particularly since the time the class thought she had lied to them. Probably they had never forgotten it. She had said the earth was round and that there was water in great seas on the other side of the earth. But, they had reasoned, even a white woman should know that the water would fall out if that were the case, and besides, they had listened to warriors who had ridden for more than three moons and these old warriors assured them that the earth was still flat, even so far away.
Running Horse had scrawled his name on the board, taking care not to do it too well. After his name he drew a stick figure of a galloping pony, that to let Lucia know what his name really was.
“Winona,” said Lucia, “please come to the board.”
The slim brown girl bashfully left the bench. She sat in the rear of the room, and none of the boys would sit close to her. She was barefoot, to save her moccasins for more important times, when the weather would be cold.
When she reached the board she dropped her head shyly.
Joseph Running Horse was still there.
“You may return to your seat, Joseph,” said Lucia.
Winona drew from memory, rather than wrote, her name on the board, forming the letters of the white man as carefully as she might draw a diagram in the sand. Then she added the sign for first daughter, which in Sioux is the word Winona. Lucia had known that there were no other daughters, or sons. Winona was the only child of Old Bear, her father. Her mother had died somewhere away from the reservation.
Joseph Running Horse, who had not left the board, stood watching Winona.