Sandia Molina...she was here, he thought. She was actually here in paradise...with him.
Caleb couldn’t believe it. He’d fantasized about this moment for years. Sure, he’d traveled the world many times over at this point, but nothing could ever compare to the thrill of his first jump or the magical encounter he’d had with Sandia.
He’d been back to New York during the ‘two-thousand teens’ to look for her. He’d caught glimpses of her success after learning her name. Watched her from afar, at odds with himself. Conflicted about whether he should approach her or not.
Caleb looked down at her peacefully passed out on the creek bed. She was here, she was actually here. Unconsciousness was a common side effect for folks on their first time dance.
He laughed at what a greenhorn he was back when they’d first met, almost ten years ago...for him. Three years for her, but hey, that’s time travel for ya. Still, he did what he’d set out to do. Save his sister.
She was the only family he had left and he’d do anything to protect her. His Great, Great Grandfather had come to Caleb in a vision and told him how he could save her. That he must become a ‘Time Dancer’ to do so. That he must claim his destiny and his purpose on this earth. Caleb hadn’t believed a word of it but he was desperate to try anything that might save his sister’s life.
Ensey, Caleb’s sister, had been sent away as a child to the Cherokee School in Indian Territory, even though she had not ‘lived’ as an Indian her entire life. None of them had. They had lived a normal, peaceful life in Fort Smith until more and more settlers started to come west. Didn’t matter that he and his sister had a white father, they were half-breeds in the white man’s world.
Although Ensey looked much more ‘Indian’ than Caleb did. She was also much younger. She’d been a surprise for ma and pa. Caleb had grown up with the best Fort Smith had to offer, as far as education. He was treated no differently than the other white kids because he didn’t look much different. He had dark brown hair and skin that took well to the sun but his eyes were light.
At thirteen, Caleb went off with his father to join the Union Army in the Civil War. He started out playing the drum and fife but was quickly recruited for fighting. Caleb had a talent for combat, whereas his father did not.
Pa was far too gentle and kind to be a soldier, but he believed in the cause. He believed no man should be enslaved or denigrated by another. He believed all men were created equal by God, which is what had brought him to America in the first place. He was seeking asylum from religious persecution in England.
Pa was a tough man, he just wasn’t a violent man. Caleb found he had violence in himself; from where, he didn’t know.
By the time Caleb was fifteen, he’d survived several battles, including Gettysburg, where he was among the Union soldiers present for President Lincoln’s moving address.
However, his father had been sawed in half by a cannon ball, or so he was told. Caleb had not been by his father’s side at the end, which haunted Caleb with guilt to this day. He’d taken a promotion to George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry and left his father behind in the infantry. Much of what Caleb has done since the day he lost his father has been to make up for not being there when the man met his end.
As a decorated soldier for bravery and gallantry on the field, albeit reckless at times, Caleb was assigned to continue under Custer’s command and go fight the Indian Wars, which were still a hindrance to the young nation’s progress out west. This is where Caleb’s conscience began to become a problem.
Custer was just his kind of man, an arrogant, thrill-seeking rebel who Caleb had learned a lot from. But on the other hand, Caleb had practically grown up in Indian Territory, what would eventually become Oklahoma in the future.
His mother and his sister were still out there. However, the twenty or so tribes that had been relocated to the territory some thirty years prior were peaceful, including the Cherokee. It was farther west the wars were still raging. Once he got out there and saw what was happening with his own eyes, the hypocrisy of it all slowly ate away at his soul.
After fighting to free the slaves from the South, the government turned around and committed acts of atrocity to the rightful inhabitants of this country? Sure, plenty were still fighting back, mainly the Lakota in the north, referred to by whites as the Sioux, and the Apache down south. The 7th Cavalry was assigned to the north. But the government was waging war on all Indians. Didn’t matter whether they were fighting or not.
At least that seemed to be Custer’s approach to the Indian ‘problem’ and Caleb found he just couldn’t go along with it. He couldn’t stop thinking about his father and how ashamed he’d be to see that Caleb had wound up fighting on the wrong side of right.
His mother was full blood Cherokee, marched west by the Indian Removal Act from North Carolina and sole survivor of her family on the Trail of Tears. She was a force to be reckoned with and the true head of the household.
Again, not that his father was weak, he wasn’t, he just had such great respect for his wife that he deferred to her judgment on most things. His father, Thaddeus Wolfe, had traveled from the comforts of England at the age of sixteen in 1844 when his parents disowned him for converting to Mormonism. Thaddeus was no stranger to injustice. He’d made his way to Chicago for a few years before gold was discovered in California. He’d then decided to head west in search of adventure and fortune like many men did.
However, he never made it past Fort Smith, Arkansas, having met Caleb’s mother, Adaline. Ada, as his father liked to call her, ran a very successful boarding house and livery in the bustling town. She was one of the only female business owners in the state of Arkansas at the time. Fort Smith was right on the border of Indian Territory, a place where everyone stopped for supplies and rest before plunging further into the wilds of the west. His father fell in love at first sight and started working for her in the stables.
Ada was not a romantic like Caleb’s father. She loved Thaddeus, to be sure, but she only agreed to marry him because his name was ‘Wolfe.’ Well, that and the fact he took a team of horses back to Chicago and pulled a thresher all the way to Arkansas as a bribe of sorts for their betrothal.
The Cherokee are matriarchal, meaning the bloodline follows the women. The women have the final say when the tribe goes to war. They have the final say on all-important matters. The tribe is made up of seven clans. Your clan is your family. It determines who you are and what you’re going to be in this world. When a man married a woman, he became a part of her family, a part of her clan. Adaline was of the Wolf Clan. The Wolf Clan has powerful medicine. They are the protectors of the tribe. All chiefs derived from the Wolf Clan. This probably accounted for ma’s strong personality.
“You are descended from the great war chiefs since time began,” she always said. And then his father would teasingly one up her, and say, “Well, you’re descended of kings on my side of family. That’s why we live like royalty. Now, go clean out the stalls before supper.”
Caleb’s father was always quick with a joke or other witticism. He loved words, written or otherwise, and read to them every night growing up. Shakespeare and the Bible mainly, but occasionally he’d add another book to the library. The tales of Robin Hood were Caleb’s favorite stories as a boy.
Anyway, Adaline thought meeting Thaddeus Wolfe was destiny and that ‘wolves should stick together.’ She’d dissuaded him from pursuing gold, as it was a ‘fool’s errand.’
“It’ll all be gone by the time you get there, believe me. I seen it all before. That’s what happened to the Cherokee back east...we were run out by the gold. I don’t care what the government says, in the end it was our gold they wanted as much as the land.”
They jumped the broom in 1849. Caleb was born a year later.
Caleb had never identified himself as an Indian, or even a half-breed. He’d been picked on as a boy a few times, but as he grew in size and strength, as well as good looks, it was never much of an issue. He tended toward the white side of his family, favoring his father. Mama was always pleased about this, from a practical standpoint.
“Learn their ways so you can do the most good for yourself and your family. No point in denying the way things are. It’s a white man’s world,” she’d say.
And learn he did. All too well. As the injustice toward Indians became unbearable for Caleb in his service to the United States Government, tensions were heating up back home as well. More and more settlers moving in did not take kindly to an Indian owning a business, much less a widowed woman. He was concerned for his mother but knew she was a fighter and could hold her own in most situations.
Then, he received a letter from Adaline saying that Ensey had taken ill. Convinced the illness had been caused by the Army’s incendiary tactics, like disease infested blankets, whether it was or not, this was the last straw for Caleb. He decided to desert the Army and be by his sister’s side, making him a fugitive of the law and liable to be hung if caught. But family was more important. Always had been and always would be.
Two weeks of hard riding put him back in familiar territory, Indian Territory. When Ensey’s condition did not improve after Caleb nursed her for a week, he rode to see his mother in Fort Smith, angry that she had not come to her daughter’s aid. But when he arrived in Fort Smith, he found the boarding house in ashes and his mother lying half-dead on the ground outside. Her body and face were completely covered in black soot.
The townspeople, many he’d known since birth, had stood by and allowed this to happen, doing nothing. Some had started a bucket brigade to keep the fire from spreading to other properties, but there was clearly a new ‘element’ in town. Newcomers that brought money, fire-power, and prejudice along with them.
Caleb was so disgusted by the men standing around that he pistol whipped them with the butt of his gun, “You cowards! Y’all git before I kill every last one of ya!” And scatter they did.
He knelt beside his mother and held her head in his lap. He wet her lips with water from his canteen. She was barely breathing. Caleb couldn’t breathe either, knowing there wasn’t anything he could do to save her.
“Ma...can you hear me? It’s Caleb...Ma?”
Her lashes fluttered and opened slightly, the white of her eyes a stark contrast to her blackened skin. She smiled when she saw him. Caleb could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen his mother smile since Pa had passed away.
“Take...my...necklace...Caleb,” she said, rasping. “It was...always...meant...for you, my son.”
“What? You’re not making any sense, Ma.” She’d worn the necklace around her neck for the entire nineteen years he’d been alive, and long before that, he guessed. It was a smooth, black stone with a white shape carved into it called a shaman’s knot. Essentially, two oblong interlocking circles laid on top of one another to form a ‘t’ or ‘x’.
He took the necklace from her hand and put it around his neck, tears clouding his vision. As his mother took her last breath, the smile remained in her eyes as they held each other’s gaze. How could she be smiling at a time like this? His heart developed several fissures at the loss. He figured they would never mend.
Caleb was grateful he’d been by her side, but the loss of a second parent crushed him and the fractures in his heart shifted, becoming deeper wounds that reached down to his soul. He lay there in the ashes with Ma for a long time. Night had long ago fallen over the town, leaving them alone in the dusty street.
First his father, now his mother. Would his sister be next? He’d prayed to God that Ensey would live. He’d prayed as hard as he’d ever prayed for anything. As time passed, friends of his parents came out of the woodwork, quietly, to pay their respects. Being Mormons and treated as outcasts for their beliefs, they tended to live well outside of town and they hadn’t been close enough to save his mother.
One man from the church laid a blanket over Caleb’s shoulders. Another laid a blanket over his mother’s body. Another brought food and water. There are good people left in the world, he thought.
Unable to find any words at all, as thoughts of gratitude, anger, and grief warred within his mind, Caleb pulled the blanket tighter around himself, mentally detaching from his surroundings. He hadn’t been able to pay any mind to anything besides the overwhelming worries in his head, until sleep finally took him away from the horrible reality surrounding him.