before her. “Close your eyes and follow me,” it said. And Mabel did as she was told, only to find herself in a dark cave where poison was being ground by an old woman on a red rock. She screamed, as she always did, and waited for Sarah’s arms.
Sarah began to feel desperate. She thought of things. Like the fact Mabel was never blessed, dedicated in the traditional way. She was not given a name in the Roundhouse. But what Roundhouse? The one at Lolsel was closed a long time ago. What Dreamer? What spiritual person? What Lolsel? What people? A lonely old woman in a one-room shack who takes care of white people’s children? The other one who washes clothes in the valley and carries around a sickly grandchild? Lolsel was a dream now, a memory that seemed useless. Richard Taylor had said there would be a new world. So this was it. A world of white people and strangers. New world that was no world. Why, then, this child in a place that was not home? A mean trick played on a woman burdened by enough mean tricks already.
McKinley, who was the only son around on a regular basis, suggested that Sarah move to Cortina. He thought she would feel better up there. He said the Indians were friendly, that they took in strangers, and that they still performed the Hesi and Big Head dances. McKinley danced with the Rumsey Wintun there. He thought the ceremonies would do her good. Maybe someone there might even be able to help Mabel.
In the fall, after the last crops were in, Sarah gave notice and left Rumsey. She wasn’t going to a place where she didn’t know anyone. Her son, Anderson, lived in Cortina, after all, and when Sarah showed up at his door on the small reservation, Anderson’s wife took Sarah and the girl right in. The woman’s name was Rosie. She was a stout, attractive woman who kept a neat house and food on the stove. She was happy her three children had a grandmother and a cousin.
By now Sarah knew enough Wintun so she could converse easily. While Anderson worked, finishing the pruning in the fruit orchards, Sarah and Rosie cooked and visited. Rosie knew everybody, and everything about them. Sarah saw that she was respected and well liked among her people. At times, Sarah felt that she wasn’t contributing enough. The crop harvesting had ended, and there wasn’t a white person around who needed clothes washed. She knew no white people in Cortina. She had to depend on what Anderson brought in. But she didn’t have a lot of time to worry about herself and what she could or couldn’t do just then.
Excitement was everywhere. The old-time dances were on, and people from all over came to dance. People from Sulphur Bank in Lake County. Grindstone people. Colusa. Rumsey Wintun. Pomo. People Sarah hadn’t seen in years. People she had never seen. They came on horseback, piled on wagons, alone on foot, and camped in view of the Round-house, whose roof rose up to a peak in the middle of the open field. The women cooked up black and green pinole and acorn mush. They prepared baskets of fresh clover and pepperwood balls. Old-timers from the valley toasted grasshoppers. Meat was baked in large underground ovens. Everybody had some specialty to offer.
The men who danced wore elaborate and colorful Big Heads, great feathers on top, and streamers of yellowhammer feathers down their backs. The women sometimes wore headdresses, but not nearly as large and lively as the men’s. Some wore shell pendants, abalone and clam, over their faces and on their dresses. In their hands they held long scarves, which they moved and waved as they danced in a wide circle around the men in the center. Frank Wright and Charlie Wright were Sectu, Roundhouse bosses. Frank stood on top of the Roundhouse, just in front of the smoke hole, and called in the different groups. Sarah went in with the Rumsey Wintun, because her son danced with them, and because she had been living in their territory and wanted to show them her respect. Only she did something she wasn’t supposed to do: she brought a small child into the dance house.
Mabel cried. She did not want to be left alone. She hid under Sarah’s dress. Tiny feet that danced when Sarah danced, sat when she sat. People saw and laughed. How cute, Sarah Taylor’s granddaughter, the little sick one. Only the Moki did not think it was funny. That was the clown, Moki. A man covered head to toe in a striped black-and-white eagle feather cape. Nothing showing but his eyes and nose, so that no one knew who he was. The crucial element of the Hesi dance. He said nothing and was still only when Frank Wright came into the Roundhouse after everyone was gathered and named each plant and animal that had been harvested for the people. Each thing that was to be danced for. Once in the fall and again in the spring. If anything was forgotten, it would not grow anymore. The people would have to do without. And the Moki checked to see that all the rules were followed. He passed each person. Some he shook a stick at, or a cocoon rattle—that meant they were supposed to sing or leave a larger offering by the centerpole. He squealed, made high-pitched noises that were unearthly. Sometimes, he imitated people, their voices and gestures. The first three nights he took no notice of Mabel. On the fourth night, the last night, he went mad.
He started scooping up hot coals in his hands and throwing them around the Roundhouse. The rafters caught fire and people’s clothing. The place filled with smoke so no one could see a thing. People panicked and made for the front and back doors. Sarah was closest to the back door, so she started out there. “Grandma, Grandma,” Mabel screamed, clinging to Sarah’s long dress. “Grandma, Grandma,” Mabel heard someone saying in her own voice, and when she turned, she saw that it was the Moki coming up behind her with a burning ember in his hand. He forced the hot coal into her shoulder, as if it were a cattle brand, and she screamed with all her might.
It was odd. The next day there wasn’t a mark on the girl. Nothing. But Sarah stayed hidden in Rosie’s house. She heard the talk about how the Moki was enraged. It had been announced that the Moki would not appear again. People were saying that they had to put away their eagle feathers. The dances would be different from now on. Their feathers would be from turkeys, tame birds. A lot of the old foods would be gone. Sarah felt it was her fault.
An old Cortina woman convinced Sarah otherwise. She was Mary Wright, the mother of Frank and Charlie Wright. One night, not too long after the fall Hesi, she visited Sarah. She had two men with her, who were even older than she was. She told Sarah that the trouble was not her fault, that the dances and the people were changing. She talked about the white man’s rule forbidding them to kill eagles. So much has changed, she said. Then the old men spoke. They were Stiffarm Jim Coper and his cousin Johnny Cline. They had grown up far in the south, below Mount Diablo, where their ancestors had prayed since the beginning of time. They escaped the Spanish who leveled their village, and fled north to Cortina. They talked about how no one was left to pray and give thanks for that sacred mountain. Sarah nodded. She understood. “Mary took us in, adopted us here,” they said, “and that’s why she is here tonight. She’s going to adopt in your granddaughter. Give her a name and a place.”
So it happened. Just a few people in the Cortina Roundhouse. Old people from here and there. They witnessed the old woman pray for the sickly girl who stood staring beside her grandmother. They heard the name Catanum given to the centerpole, the name that was not new, but that her mother had given her shortly after she was born, a name that had a place now. Good old Grandma Mary Wright, who offered her own beautiful baskets to the centerpole and prepared a dinner of the finest old foods Sarah would ever see again. “For my new girl,” Grandma Mary said. Grandma Mary, who said in the Rumsey orchards that the girl was special. Mary Wright, whose voice Sarah listened for even after she left Cortina so she wouldn’t have to take from her son and his family, after she found herself back in Rumsey, at the same place along the creek, with the girl who was just the same as before . . .
Sarah tried to think of good things, even as her eyes caught the sheriffs clothes draped over her wagon. Again, she thought of someone who had been watching Mabel, not to harm her but to help her. Someone like Mary Wright. But why didn’t they show themselves? What did they have to hide? Where were McKinley and the others when she needed them, when she needed eyes in the back of her head?
Somehow she made it through the afternoon. Hadn’t she always? Good thoughts, memories, fear for the girl went around and around in her head until it was late afternoon. The birds were singing and darting in the long shadows across the water when she had packed
