Free Charity by Paulette Callen Page A

the two chickens who were delighted to run around in circles in the light and scrabble for tidbits on the ground. Gustie took a handful of cracked corn from a sack by the door and sprinkled it on the ground for them. The chickens pecked eagerly.
    Gustie retrieved her dry clothes from the tree limbs and put them on. Then she sat on the porch and combed the tangles out of her hair and pinned it up again. She missed the feeling of lightness and freshness she had without her clothes on. But I can’t run around here half naked all the time, she thought, and her mind went back to that chiseled brown face, the vision that had come on a shaft of sun light and blown off on the wind; except visions did not leave behind live chickens.
    The low cloud no longer touched the horizon, but hung suspended just above it with a thin patch of light between.
    Gustie watched a pelican float on the lake. He did not seem to move at all, and yet he made rapid progress back and forth. His mate appeared from around the bend and they floated together for awhile.
     
    The only thing real is the Moon against my flesh. She gallops and I rock with her. There is only coming and going and the pauses between are only waiting for the next going. It is no way to live but it is all there is for me. Moon is a good horse. She is my horse. I fought for her and I won her. Still, I am hers much more than she is mine. When I named her, some of the people laughed, “Jordis on her moon.” But it is her name. It suits her. Grandmother needs the chickens so I take them to her and find the white woman dressed in cotton that when the sun and wind play with it I can see through it to the body I know so well, that is still thin like a child’s though she is not young. She is not old either. She reminds me of the inside of a shell. That shining has its own light kind of smoothness. So delicate that a wave lifting and dropping it will shatter it. Her eyes are gray and there are lines around them, as around the eyes of all white people except the very young, and a red scarring on the cheeks by the sun. Grandmother told me she comes back when the dreams take her. Strange. A white woman comes to an old Indian for comfort when her mind is full of storms. Usually they go to their churches and their preachers. But this is no woman to go to a church or a preacher. I can see that. Perhaps the old woman is right. The spirits of the land have not all been driven off. Fly, Moon.
     
    To the west, the two pelicans slipped out of sight around a bend in Crow Kills. The afternoon was softening into evening and Dorcas was still not back. Gustie had spent most of the afternoon sitting on the porch, watching the lake. She felt more relaxed and at ease than she could remember.
    Certain that Dorcas would return before dark, Gustie went inside, lit the stove and started the coffee. From a jar on a shelf above the sink, she spooned lard into Dorcas’s deep iron pot.
    Dorcas had taught her how to mix up dough for frybread. For supper they would have frybread and fish. Early this morning, Dorcas had cleaned the fish and left them headless, tailless, and gutless in a pail of cold water waiting for the hot fat.
    The dough was almost ready, springy and not too sticky. She had just formed it into a smooth oval and was letting it rest in a bowl when she heard heavy footsteps on the porch. Dorcas swept through the door, the freshness of the prairie whirled in about her. Her bag, made from old blanket material, was full of plants, their leafy tops ruffled out from the draw-string opening.
    While Dorcas hung up her scarf and shawl, Gustie poured her a cup of coffee and placed it on the table alongside the can of sugar. “You had a visitor.”
    Dorcas sat down heavily and took her time stirring spoon after spoon of sugar into her coffee, and sipped it with satisfaction for a few moments before she asked, “Who?”
    “She didn’t say. She left a couple chickens.”
    “She ride a white horse?”
    “Yes.