The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles Page A

angled face. Soon the true cold would set in; she and Jube must be allowed into a lodge, or they would not make it through the winter.
    Jube worked hard on his two spoons. He bent off the handles and put them away and begged a nail of Old Man Komah. The freighter had been born to a Mexican father and a Kiowa captive mother and at some time in the past decided to come and live permanently with the Kiowa as their interpreter and storyteller and blacksmith. In the carreta he carried a stack of old newspapers and pieces of leather, buckles, birds’ wings, jars of colored beads, and a toolbox. From this long box he held up a tenpenny nail to Jube as if he were granting him his dearest wish, as if the nail were the keys to the kingdom. Jube took it and thanked him and then ran.
    Jube shaped his fire coals as he thought best and heated both the
    nail and the dishes of the spoons. He made himself a pair of tongs of green mesquite. The tongs smoked and burned and only lasted a short while but there was no shortage of mesquite. He drove a hole through the spoons and used a stone to wear down the broken edges where he had broken off the handles. Komah sat and watched him and said nothing. He rolled cigarettes out of square pieces of the Dallas Courier with its fragmentary news of Grant and Lee at each other’s throats in Virginia and its advertisements for hair dye, and smoked silently and offered no advice.
    Jube let the silver cool. He reached into his mother’s carrybag and found the piece of broken bottle. With great care he broke off small points and then more points of green glass.
    Komah nodded and then at last bent forward. He held out his hand for the chips of green glass. Jube gave them to him. Komah pulled a small leather sack out of his back pocket and filled it with sand. Jube sat on his heels in the kindliness of this man’s regard, his interest and care. It was like being someplace warm and out of the wind.
    “Too sharp, ya veas ?” he said. “If you put these on an earring it’s going to cut somebody. Now here.” He poured all the glass chips in and shook it, rolled the bag of sand and glass between his hands. “So.”
    Two days later the sharp edges of the green glass were dulled and Jube strung his spoons on agave-fiber thread, and Old Man Komah boiled a glue for him from buffalo hooves. Both of the concave discs glittered with emerald-colored glass chips. Jube had quickly learned Kiowa words, and the most important was ahô, said with a falling tone at the end, which meant Thank you, not to be confused with ahó, said with a rising tone at the end, which meant Kill him.
    Nocteawah was a young man who had been on only one raiding trip into Texas and had never taken any scalps and was somewhat boyish still so that he could not entirely hide his delight in the ear- rings. Jube saw his eyes widen slightly and then Nocteawah looked away. Jube had learned the Kiowa word for knife , and he said it. He started to hold up one finger and then changed his mind and held
    up two. Nocteawah would not take the earrings from him by force because everyone could see that Old Man Komah had begun to help Jube. Had boiled up the buffalo hooves for him. Had rolled a ciga- rette for him and let him smoke it.
    Nocteawah waved his finger back and forth in the Mexican way for No and held up that one finger. “P!ah,” he said. One knife.
    Jube waved his finger back and forth as well and then said,
    “Yii.” Two.
    Nocteawah looked up into the brilliant yellow cottonwood leaves, held up one finger again; P!ah . Then he made himself busy with a goose wing. He carefully chose two feathers for f letching. Jube put the earrings in his carrybag and stood up. He turned away. Then suddenly he turned around and thrust his arm out straight and held up two fingers and then began to dance around and around his own two fingers. He held them to his face with a puzzled expression as if he did not own them. He grasped them with his other hand and