Marian Sloan

1. 1852

When we left Fort Leavenworth, smoke
from tar barrels smudged the sky,
the lining of my nose—a talisman
against cholera. But on the trail,
tents became Japanese lanterns lit
by the lamps inside. Gray ribbons of smoke
rose from each campfire. Twice a day
I gathered buffalo chips in my skirt
like a windfall of apples. I learned
to kick each chip with the toe of my shoe,
to expose what was hidden in its scant shade—
red spiders that uncurled to the size of
my hand; scorpions that scurried away,
their tails curled like dark questions.

2. "Steal the Dead Man's Bones"

At Fort Marcy, walls crumbled, wind
and rain eroded the soldiers' graves, stranding
bones to bleach in the sun. We piled them up
like firewood, then—as one child counted to fifty—
the rest of us ran to hide. One by one,
we snuck back, free only when a bone was snatched
from the stack. What did we know
of respect for the dead?

Late one afternoon, I walked past the jail.
Through the door's bars, I watched
a prisoner pull a cigarette from his pocket.
He smiled and asked my name, then told me his
daughter had braids as long as mine.
To make me smile, he sang,
Shoo-fly, don't bother me, then swung
his silver pocket watch as if it was that fly.
The next morning I carried him two cookies
that smelled like molasses and ginger.
There was a red stain on his shirt. His head
was lowered as if deep in prayer.
At his feet, the cigarette, still unlit.

3.

Once a month, when the Indian scouts paid
my mother for their room and board,
we went to Spiegelberg's store for supplies,
its dirt floor still damp from an early morning
sprinkle to keep the dust down. In a glass case,
a display of candy—fat licorice babies and
strings wound like a bullwhip,
cinnamon drops as hot as the red chilis
that hung like witches' fingers outside the door.

But it was rock candy I craved, the mysterious
way the crystals clung to the wick, each sharp edge
and odd angle a terrain my tongue longed to explore.
With the handle of a knife, I could break off one
piece at a time, tuck it under my tongue
like a sweet secret. Sometimes
the crystals were faintly cloudy,
sometimes they seemed almost amber,
as if trying to transform themselves into gold.

4.

I made myself a pouch—like an Indian's
medicine bag—from a Bull Durham tobacco sack.
Inside, three gray horsehairs wound around
a chicken feather, a moss agate, a nugget
that glittered when tipped toward light.
When I tied the bag around my waist, I became
invincible. My mother's heart was
her medicine bag. Inside, she bundled the spirits
of her husbands—one, an Army surgeon killed
in the Mexican War; the other, a scout ambushed
by Indians. How often did their restlessness
snag like tumbleweeds inside her veins.

On the trail, livestock were corralled at night,
loosely bound so they could graze at will. Still,
by morning several found their way out,
as if the stars were salt licks waiting
for their dissatisfied tongues.

5. Diamond Creek, 1856

Pools were thick with tadpoles, a lush feast
for hungry rattlers. A few feet away,
on the far side of a sod wall, children gathered
to toss dirt clods until dust rose like smoke.
We were thrilled by our own temerity,
by the angry rattles that peppered the sky.
I heard that if you pull out a rattlesnake's fangs,
new ones will grow like slivers of venomous moon,
that if you don't die from a snakebite,
at the same time every year you'll writhe
on the ground as your skin mottles like a snake's belly.
Deep in the sod wall, another rattler stirred.
The arrow of its head inched from a crevice,
its tongue flicked forward...