Finally, when Mary heard that an Albany doctor was in the area, she summoned him to examine Hiokatoo, and when he arrived he looked at his patient and then doubtfully at what was obviously a white woman.

“This old man is your husband?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been married?”

Hiokatoo saw only shapes now, but at this he lifted his head to fix the precise outline of the physician.

“A long time,” Mary said, looking at her husband.

“Well.” The doctor looked as if he was not sure he wanted to hear the details of this story. “Well,” he repeated in almost a whisper, “this—Indian man has a heart that is failing him. It is a congestive condition.”

“Excuse me,” she said. “What is ‘congestive’?”

“His heart is weak,” the doctor said again in a whisper, “and his lungs therefore suffer.”

Hiokatoo had a sonorous and harsh voice that carried across a whole field. Not for nothing had his whoop terrified Indians and whites and all who heard it. Now he drew himself up. “I,” he said—and the doctor took a step backward—“I may be blinded, but my ears are large and my powers of hearing are untouched. Address me when you speak of my own bodily illnesses.”

HER HUSBAND lost his taste for food but not for talk. His one satisfaction consisted in the telling of stories.

His dear, huge body began to shrivel, but as he talked his mind, as if taking sustenance from that which wasted, seemed to kindle. I repented me in my heart for moments of impatience with him, for wishing he was other than he was, for wishing he was younger than some ninety years, for wishing he was Simon or some other man.

He was the noble, fierce Hiokatoo forever. He was also the Hiokatoo of the tender touch; he especially liked to lift his hand and brush my hair and the hair of our children, should it be hanging close to our eyes, back from our faces. The lightness, the fineness of Jane’s hair always seemed to astonish him.

Once we obtained a hairbrush from a trader, and he often held it, felt the weight of it, touched its back, its bristles, its handle. He became the keeper of the brush and seized any excuse to solemnly neaten our hair with it. He was ever kind to us and to his friends.

But sometimes in later years he tested me with his tales and the repeating of his tales. I will be able to recount them in detail until the day I leave this earth for a fuller life with the Good Spirit.

WHEN she sat with him, she could tell that he was preparing to tell a story by the workings of his arthritic right hand. He would make as if to grasp with it in slow motion, as if to make it into a loose fist. Then he would relax this hand and open its fingers. As she saw him repeat this process over and over, it appeared to her that his hand was acting as a lung or a bellows might act.