Free Effigy by Alissa York Page A

fluidly, like a lamp wick turned up high. The garment is a precious one, a bed jacket of buff and grey feathers worked in a cunning design. Thankful fashioned it four years ago—she remembers, it was more than a month’s work. Its front panels mimic the face of an owl. Two well-placed holes allow her nipples to stand in for the glowing eyes.
    “Careful with that.” She smiles. “It’s one of his favourites.” Then she sees that the other hand too holds something in its grasp. A shape like an unnamed organ, pale pink and shimmering. Thankful feels her smile stiffen. Mother Hammer lets the owl jacket fall and, in a counter motion, brings the small, scented pillow hard against her nose. Thankful’s breath deserts her. She’s grateful for the support of the jamb.
    “You think this will hide it?” The first wife gives the sachet a violent squeeze before casting it to the floor. “You think a few petals can cover the stink of your sin?”
    Silence swings like a footbridge between them, and then Thankful giggles, a sound that surprises them both. It shakes the older woman. She snatches up her lamp, says nothing as she pushes past.
    Thankful watches her shunt away down the hall. “Sleep well, Mother Hammer,” she calls softly. She can’t help herself. The first wife hasn’t a clue.

    The Tracker sits cross-legged before his fire, loosing the leather-bound book from his thigh. It’s been in his possession for a decade, and though he has paged through the journey it depicts a thousand times, he has yet to do so by the light of day. Tonight he confines himself to those drawings that move him distantly, taking care not to smudge the dark lines of which they’re made.
    One, about a third of the way in, shows a wide plain peopled with giants. It is the only buffalo herd the Tracker has known, his own land closed in by mountains, the great beasts present there in legend alone. So much meat, so many heavy hides. Little wonder the people of the plains are mighty.
    Turning several pages in one, he lands on a drawing that never ceases to make him frown. A stone-faced Mormonee stands with his arms knotted across his chest. Behind him countless sacks spill corn. His stance is familiar to the Tracker, a certain stiffness that comes of refusing a hungry stranger food.
    Closer to the end of the book, the Tracker finds a picture he cannot help but like. A white man, young and keen, drives a path through waist-high grass. The Tracker is neither white nor nearly so young, but he has lived this drawing untold times. His earliest memories are set in such meadows, deep sinks of grass girded by slopes of juniper, piñon, sage.
    The first time he was allowed along on a rabbit drive, he plunged into the high growth to one side of the path and found himself in over his head. A panicked spinning on the spot wound the four directions into one. He came close to yelling, reducing himself to a nuisance—or worse, a funny story to tell the women and elders—but managed to bite back the cry.
    Only then, heart in his mouth, hammering at the backs of his teeth, did he remember the fifth direction—sky. Suddenly all was open. The sun hung where he’d left it, climbing up from the land beyond the camp. Turning the back of his head to its glow, the Tracker brought his palms together and parted the way, keeping on until his own thin path met the beaten-down track of the men. Rabbits are not buffalo, but still he gloried in the hunt that day. Still the People were fed.

— 5 —
    May 15th, 1867
    Dear Daughter
    Forgive my wretched lettering. My every finger has puffed up fat as a field mouse. Do you recall the set you left behind Dorrie? The papa mouse sitting up on his heels begging. The mama with her cheeks full of seeds. Such fine work. Such a clever girl. But I lose my thread. The way my thoughts wander these days your poor mother cannot help but fear this cursed swelling has found its way to her brain.
    Why on earth should they call it dropsy? A