It was then that I saw?—?where the tree trunk met the earth, the largest of the roots seemed to writhe & squirm, like a fat snake that has swallowed a living animal whole. I thought it a mad hallucination, surely. But the cry came again, sharper. I crawled closer.
There in the root I spied a small hole, a teardrop rip the size of my hand. I poked a finger into the opening. To my horror, I felt a tiny mouth, opening, closing, crying out. I reached into the root with both hands, tried to rip the opening wider with my fingers, but the skin, the bark, whatever in God’s name that it was, was too tough & thick. I took out my knife, then saw the blood on my hands & pants. Blood! It was bubbling up through the moss & needles all around me.
I feared what my knife would release into the world. Yet I also feared cutting the wailing thing. What could I do? I inserted my knife into the opening, sliced upwards sharply.
It was much like the birth of a foal, slick & bloody & a frightful mess. As I pulled it free of the root, clear fluid gushed from the opening. Trailing from the infant’s belly was a long umbilical string, blue tinged, throbbing with life. I held the baby with one hand, tugged the cord with the other. As the umbilicus continued to snake out of the ground, I began to dread what I would find at the other end. Gradually the cord turned rough & coarse & coated in dirt. I had pulled several feet when it stopped fast. Here at the end the umbilicus was no longer malleable & fleshy. It was a tree root!
How did I manage? I cannot say. I was sick with it, the smell of warm blood in the moss, the infant slippery & wailing in my hand. As close to the child’s belly as I dared, I slashed the umbilicus with my knife. I cradled the thing in my arms to protect it as I crawled out from under the tree.
Numb with disbelief, I found my way back through slough & alders.
I must have been a sight. Slathered in blood. An infant in my arms. The men were alarmed. —?What happened in the woods? Where’s the mother?
I tried my best to tell them. They could not comprehend. Perhaps they thought my mind was unsound. I’ll take you to the place, I said, so you can see for yourself. Pruitt was too weak, Tillman too revolted by it all.
Yet he was the one, the sergeant, who took the baby from me, wiped it down with wet leaves, took off his own undershirt to wrap around its trembling little body. He dabbed the afterbirth away from its eyes & nose. The newborn howled.
Its hair is dark, its skin the warm bronze of the Indians. Yet the infant’s eyes set it apart. They are not the near-black brown of the Midnooskies, but instead a gold-speckled green.
As naked, warm, vulnerable as it seems, can it be human? Born from the earth like a Greek monster?
We were in precarious condition ourselves. It seemed an impossible task, to care for an infant. Without Tillman, I do not know what would have come of the child. I likely would have left it.
The Midnooskies do not seem bothered by my tale. With few words & gestures, I have tried to tell them of the tree, the root, the blood. Perhaps they do not understand.
One of the men seems to serve as a kind of traveling priest among the Midnooskies. While most of the Indians keep their hair neatly cropped & brushed with bone comb, this man’s hair hangs in a three-foot tangle down his back. He is adorned with many necklaces, teeth, & claws, so that he makes a rattling noise as he walks. Equally disconcerting is his lazy eye that rolls upwards so that it is difficult to know where he is looking.
When this shaman overheard my story of the infant, he asked a question, repeated it many times as we tried to comprehend.
?—?I think he’s asking if you are a father, if you have children back home, Tillman said at last.
The question was unexpected.
?—?Soon, I answered.
Tillman cradled his arms, rocked them as if he held a baby. The shaman nodded.
Sophie Forrester
Vancouver Barracks
May 7, 1885
What is it that causes us to fall in love? We are met with those first, initial glimpses?—?a kind of curiosity, a longing for that which is both familiar and unknown in the other. And then comes the surprise of discovery; we share certain aspirations, certain appreciations, and that which is different excites us. Before each other, we are moved to bravery and we come to reveal more and more of ourselves, and when we do, those very traits that caused us some embarrassment or shame become beautiful in ways we did not understand before, and the entire world becomes more beautiful for it. There are, too, those intimate and nearly primitive stirrings, the scent at the neck, the delicious tremble of skin and breath. Yet for all their pleasures, they are as tenuous as light and air, and demand no fidelity.
And then there is this: Does not love depend on some belief in the future, some expectation beyond the delight of the moment? We fall in love because we imagine a certain life together. We will marry. We will laugh and dance together. We will have children.
When expectation falls to ruins, what is there left for love?