Winter In The Blood

The narrator reflects on the economic gains Lame Bull made by marrying Teresa:

Lame Bull had married 360 acres of hay land, all irrigated, leveled, some of the best land in the valley, as well as a 2000-acre grazing lease. And he had married a T-Y brand stamped high on the left ribs of every beef on the place. And, of course, he had married Teresa, my mother. At forty-seven, he was eight years younger than she, and a success. A prosperous cattleman. (10)

The morning after the couple returns, Lame Bull and the narrator get up early. They drive the tractor and wagon upriver to Lame Bull’s cabin, where they retrieve his possessions and lock up the house. On the way back they see the cow and her calf, separated by the fence; the cow is licking the calf’s head. In the distance, the narrator sees Old Bird, one of the family’s older horses. The narrator thinks that the old horse perhaps “felt he had as much right to this place as we had” (11).

Teresa tells the narrator a story about Amos, a duck the family used to have. The narrator’s father, First Raise, won Amos at the fair along with four other ducklings. The boys, Mose and the narrator, were responsible for preparing a tub of water for the ducks to live in and had painstakingly dug a hole big enough to fit the tub and deep enough that the lip was even with the ground. They filled it with water, but they hadn’t realized the ducks would drink and splash so much. After a few days the water was an inch lower; not a lot, but enough that the ducklings were unable to escape and drowned.

The narrator asks what happened to Amos, the only surviving duck, and Teresa says they had him for Christmas dinner. The narrator replies that he thought they ate the turkey, but Teresa explains that a bobcat killed the turkey. They recollect how the turkey used to chase the kids; they used to take a baseball bat with them to the outhouse to fend off the bird. As Teresa and the narrator reminisce, Lame Bull works the grindstone to sharpen the sickles. The narrator asks who killed Amos, him or Mose. Teresa says both kids talked a lot but didn’t have the stomach for slaughter. The narrator assumes First Raise killed Amos, but Teresa says he wasn’t around. This confuses the narrator because he remembers his father soothing him after the turkey attacked him. The stories mix up in his mind, but his mother clarifies that she killed Amos.

The narrator asks why his father stayed away so much. Surprised, Teresa says he was around enough and got things accomplished. She tells the narrator that First Raise built the extra bedroom onto the house, for example. She reiterates that he was around enough, and that “he was on his way home when they found him, too […] He was pointing home, they told me that” (15). The narrator tells her that her memory is failing; he has a memory of finding First Raise’s body themselves. As he tries to grasp this memory, the details become hazy; he can’t remember anything pertaining to actually finding his father. He can only remember the moments before he knew his father was dead, when he asked about him in his usual bar, and the moments in the aftermath, when he dug First Raise’s grave. Nonetheless, his belief that he and Teresa found his body is unshaken.

Teresa says that First Raise was a foolish man. The narrator suggests that he wasn’t satisfied with his life, but Teresa argues that he accomplished many things. The narrator insists that none of those accomplishments satisfied him and he was unhappy, but Teresa asserts that he wasn’t unsatisfied, just restless, a wanderer. She asks if the narrator blames her.

She changes the subject, saying that she doesn’t understand the narrator because, after his second knee operation in Tacoma, Washington, the doctor’s office wanted him to stay on to work there. The narrator says he stayed two years but left after a cruel nurse told him he’d been hired to fill a quota for a grant. His mother scoffs and replies that he shouldn’t take comments like that too personally, and that a job is a job.

The narrator thinks about First Raise and his mother’s question about blame. He wonders if Teresa’s lack of support and attention were the reasons his father stayed away so much, drinking in town and joking with the white men. The white men, the narrator thinks, provided more emotional fulfillment for First Raise than Teresa did, since they respected his skills as a mechanic. He wonders why his father never left Teresa and assumes he stayed for the kids. Though his father never told them he loved them, they could tell through his actions. After Mose died, their father changed, never truly staying or leaving. The narrator reflects on how nothing significant has happened to him since his father’s death.

Regarding Agnes, Teresa mentions that the old woman hated her and deserves to be there more than Agnes does. She adds that Agnes wasn’t happy there and “belongs in town,” which the narrator silently translates to “in the bars” (18). Agnes doesn’t matter to him, but he can remember seeing her naked in the moonlight, and notes that “the memory was more real than the experience” (18). Lame Bull finishes sharpening the sickles and Teresa tells the narrator that there isn’t enough for him at home, and that he should start looking for a life elsewhere.

Lame Bull is happy as “proprietor.” He smiles all the time, as he works and at home in the evening. He lets his beard grow long. Teresa complains about his sloppiness, facial hair, and the way he teases the old woman. They seem to have an active sex life. Lame Bull and the narrator bring in the first crop of alfalfa; Lame Bull insists on doing both the cutting and baling of the hay, leaving the narrator to rake it into rows. Lame Bull spends a lot of time working on the baler and trying to make it as efficient as possible. Everything goes well until they hire Raymond Long Knife to help stack bales.

Long Knife’s family line is full of cowboys. His mother, Belva, is notorious not only for her livestock skills, but also for eating the balls of castrated calves while staring directly at the men who worked with and for her. Long Knife gets by on his hard-working mother’s reputation but is lazy. Things go smoothly for a couple of days as the three men work the fields. The weather is cloudy, but it doesn’t rain, which makes Lame Bull happy. On the third day, Long Knife decides he wants to quit. He asks the narrator how much they’re being paid and is disgruntled to learn that it’s $10 per day (roughly $60 in 2022). Lame Bull arrives and starts to give instructions, but Long Knife is evasive. The narrator knows what’s coming and tries to stay out of it, while Lame Bull ignores Long Knife’s attempts to quit.

Long Knife asks the narrator to give him a ride back to town in exchange for a beer. When this doesn’t work, Long Knife tells Lame Bull that his hands are cut and bleeding and he needs to see a doctor. Lame Bull says he’ll pay for one after the job is done. The narrator tries to tell Lame Bull that the two of them can finish it alone and that they should let Long Knife leave. After some coaxing, Lame Bull throws a $20 bill at Long Knife and walks away. When Long Knife pesters Lame Bull for a ride back to town, Lame Bull punches him hard in the face and puts him into the bed of the truck. He and the narrator get in the truck and drive away.

After the altercation with Long Knife, Lame Bull stops smiling so much. His hand becomes infected from the abrasions inflicted by the punch. During a visit with a man named Ferdinand Horn and his wife, Lame Bull says the problem with “these Indians,” referring to Cree people, is that they’re too tricky for their own good. On the other hand, he says, Long Knife has some value. Ferdinand and the wife find his reflections entertaining, but Teresa does not; she hates fighting.

Ferdinand tells the narrator that he saw Agnes in Malta that day. She was with one of her brothers, as well as a white man whom she seemed to be dating. Lame Bull continues to ruminate silently about Long Knife. The narrator muses aloud about going after Agnes. Teresa calls to the old woman to check on her and then asks the narrator if he plans to pursue Agnes. The narrator reflects on how his mother has become “handsome” in her later years.

Ferdinand, his wife, and Lame Bull carouse with more alcohol. This time, when the wife asks if the narrator is going to go after Agnes, he nods. Lame Bull laughs and falls backwards in his chair.

The narrator reflects on the stories his grandmother told him about the Cree people. She holds a strongly negative opinion and describes them as drunkards who start fights and associate with the white men. He remembers her attitude towards Agnes: “Though almost a century old, almost blind and certainly toothless, she wanted to murder the girl, to avenge those many sins committed by generations of Crees” (27). He remembers a night when his grandmother told him and his brother, Mose, stories about her life. She was a young teenager when her father gave her in marriage to Standing Bear, who was 30 years older than her and had two wives already, one of whom was her sister. Despite the age difference, she was glad for the marriage, asserting that Standing Bear was gentle and a good man.

The medicine man, Fish, warned the old woman’s tribe that the white men would soon come to the mountains, so they dismantled their camp and moved away. The old woman’s band had joined with another group that autumn at a campsite they called Little Badger. They intended to winter together, but on the third night the medicine man made his prediction and the bands broke up and headed in different directions; the grandmother’s band travelled to the Milk River valley, where they would endure one of the hardest winters the old woman could remember. Many people starved to death and Standing Bear, the chief, died in an unsuccessful attack on another tribe. The old woman was only a teenager at the time and very beautiful but, “because she was the widow of Standing Bear, a great leader, the young men of the tribe shied away from her, and the women treated her as an outcast” (29).

In his bed, the narrator thinks about his grandfather, who died when he was four. He does not remember the man’s face. Twenty-five years after Standing Bear’s death, the old woman married a man named Doagie, who was half white and never around, and who may or may not be Teresa’s father. A tall glass cupboard contains childhood mementos, and the narrator looks at the jar that once held Mose’s coin collection. It is empty now, but it still has a label written by Mose attached to it: “DO NOT TOUCH! THIS MEANS YOU! M” (31). The narrator goes outside to pee and looks around the landscape, predicting that it will rain.