Gardens in the Dunes (5 page)

Now it was so quiet only the fire's crackle could be heard; no one spoke as they waited their turn to take a squash flower. Later, when Indigo and Sister Salt discussed that night, they remembered with amazement that whenever the Messiah or the Holy Mother spoke, all the dancers could understand them, no matter what tribe they were from. The Paiutes swore the Messiah was speaking Paiute, but a Walapai woman laughed and shook her head; how silly, the Messiah spoke her language. When Grandma Fleet and Mama knelt to pick up blossoms, the Holy Mother blessed them in their Sand Lizard language. When the Mormons approached the Messiah, Sister Salt stayed nearby to listen for herself; she was amazed. As the Messiah
gave his blessing to the Mormons, Sister Salt distinctly heard the words he spoke as Sand Lizard, not English, yet the Mormons understood his words and murmured their thanks to him.

When Sister Salt excitedly told Mama and Grandma what she had heard, a Paiute man standing nearby smiled and nodded his head. In the presence of the Messiah and the Holy Mother, there was only one language spoken—the language of love—which all people understand, he said, because we are all the children of Mother Earth.

The sky went from dark to pale gray, then from milky to pale yellow as dawn approached. Indigo left the others and went to their lean-to as the dawn lit the sky in flaming reds, yellows, and golds. Away from the people and the campfires, the air was cold and damp though much of the snow had melted. Indigo pulled her white robe closer to her body. She was careful not to crush the squash flower; she wanted to keep it as long as she could.

At home, with the big quilt all around her to keep warm, she sat propped up, facing the east; orange-gold light from the rising sun shined between the lattices of willow and tamarisk branches. Inside the lean-to, everything the sun's light touched turned warm and golden. Indigo took the big orange flower in both hands and held it to her face, with her eyes closed. She inhaled the old gardens after a rain when the edges of the dunes were crisscrossed in all the brightest greens—moss green and grass green and the green of the big pumpkin leaves.

As Indigo drifted off to sleep, she heard one voice and then another voice address the dancers. Wovoka led the dancers in the final rituals of the dance: they all must clap their hands and shake and wave their shawls vigorously to repel diseases and sickness, especially the influenza. They had just completed the final rituals when the alarm was shouted. The dancers remained calm because the Christ was with them and his Mother had already told them the soldiers would come.

The next thing Indigo knew, Sister Salt was shaking her, telling her to get up! Get up! She heard horses' hooves, the sound of wagons clattering, excited voices and shouts. Indigo felt so tired, just sitting up gave her a sick feeling in her stomach; but Sister Salt jerked her to her feet. She was breathing hard as if she had been running.

“Hurry! Hurry! No! You can't take those! We have to run!” Sister Salt pulled her along by the hand while Indigo tried to look back to see what was happening. She saw white men on horses and white men on foot seizing the Mormons, who put up no struggle; she saw dancers running in all directions with Indian policemen chasing them.

The girls ran south into the tamarisks and willows along the riverbank. The deep sand was tiring to run through, and when the sounds of the shouting grew faint, they stopped in the cover of the willows to catch their breath. Indigo knew the rules: when they were on the run, no one must speak even one word; but she wanted to know what had happened to Mama and Grandma Fleet. And the Messiah and his family—were they able to escape?

When Indigo was rested, Sister Salt stood up and pulled her to her feet. Off they went again, not running now but still walking fast; they no longer heard any shouts behind them. Sister Salt followed a game trail down the bank to the river's edge, where the cattails hid them while they drank.

They no longer ran, but they walked steadily until the sun went down; then the cold air from the snow on the mountains drifted down to the river. In the side of a sandy bank above the river, they scooped away the sand with their hands to make a trench; then they wrapped themselves together with both shawls. They laughed at how they must look—two-headed, with four legs; they laughed at how awkwardly they moved wrapped together. They got down into the trench and arranged themselves comfortably before they began pulling sand into the trench over their legs for warmth.

Before dawn, when the air was coldest, Indigo woke Sister Salt with her shivering attempts to snuggle closer. They took turns rubbing each other's hands and arms vigorously; Sister Salt pretended Indigo's hands were a fire drill and stick that would catch fire if only she could rub them fast enough. “Faster-faster-faster,” they chanted in unison until they both started laughing out loud. They watched the light seep into the sky—at first a nearly imperceptible glow out of the darkness. Yesterday they all had been together dancing for the dawn that brought the Messiah, then suddenly everything changed.

Grandma Fleet and Mama would meet them back at the old gardens. That was the last thing Grandma Fleet told Sister Salt that morning, moments after someone shouted a warning; the girls knew how to follow the river south to the big wash that led to the canyon of the dunes.

The Messiah and his family escaped; Sister Salt saw them. His wife and children stepped into the river first, then the Holy Mother and he followed them; the fierce river currents of muddy water closed around them but they were not swept away. Their shoulders and heads remained above the muddy water, and they moved across the river effortlessly, as if they were smoke. When they emerged on the far side of the river, the Messiah and his family hurried up the high sandy hill above the river. The sunlight shone
on the white robes of the Messiah and his family as they paused at the summit in plain view of the soldiers and Indian police overrunning their camp. But the soldiers and police never saw them; the Messiah and his family escaped.

♦   ♦   ♦

Sister Salt made a digging stick out of a piece of driftwood and dug up cattail roots to eat. Cattail roots didn't really taste like anything but water with a little salt, but Indigo forced herself to chew and swallow them to stop the pain of her empty stomach. For three days they followed the river south; late on the fourth day Indigo noticed the air suddenly felt much warmer. On the morning of the fifth day, they reached the intersection of the big wash and the river.

They dug cattail roots all morning to carry along to the old gardens. They filled their canvas shawls with the roots and wore them bundled on their backs. Before they left the river, they gathered wild gourds to make small canteens, which they filled with water and strung around their waists with cloth torn from their skirts.

All day they walked through the sand and sagebrush; the air was cool but the sun warmed them. Indigo began to notice green shoots and sprouts of new growth pushing through the sand. A few miles west of the river, the big wash meandered southwest, and when they rounded a turn, Indigo shouted, “Look!” Along the sides of the wash silvery green brittlebushes were covered with yellow blossoms.

That night when they huddled together to sleep, the air was cold but it was not freezing. They had crossed into the land of summer. The next day, about noontime, Sister Salt pointed to a big sandstone boulder at an intersection with a smaller wash. Here they left the big wash and walked the small wash for a few hours more before Sister Salt took a game trail that ascended the crumbling clay bank. The trail was steep. When Indigo reached the top, she was short of breath and she had to wipe away the sweat before she could see where they were.

Indigo had been so young the last time they lived at the old gardens she didn't remember how anything looked. She had listened to Mama's and Grandma's stories, and she knew they had been forced to abandon the old gardens after refugees came and ate everything. Despite the descriptions of the ravages of the starving people who left the dunes stripped bare, Indigo imagined the old gardens as they had been before the refugees came: tall corn plants swaying gracefully in the breeze, surrounded with bushes of
bean pods and black-eyed peas, their golden-green tendrils tangled around the thick pumpkin vines.

Indigo shaded her eyes with one hand as she surveyed the sandstone canyon; she saw nothing green, nothing growing at all, only sandy ridges covered with dry weeds.

Sister Salt walked faster now, up the path to the head of the canyon. They still had a little river water in their gourd canteens, but for miles Sister Salt imagined how good the springwater would taste. She was grateful to have the river water for their journey, but it was muddy; the water that dripped down the cracks in the cliff was cool and clear.

Grandma Fleet had given Sister Salt instructions: first thing, go to the spring and look for footprints or other signs of people living in the area. Grandma Fleet said they should keep to themselves if they encountered strangers living at the old gardens. Grandma Fleet warned if too many people settled at one location they were bound to attract the attention of the authorities.

Blackened rocks and bits of charcoal from old campfires were partially buried by the sand, but Sister Salt could see that at one time as many as thirty campsites dotted the upper end of the canyon below the spring.

The cool springwater tasted even better than Sister Salt remembered; she and Indigo drank and then scooped water over themselves to wash off the dust. They sat by the spring and ate the last of the cattail roots; the sun felt warm, and the sound of the water trickling down the sandstone was soothing. They spread their canvas wraps on the fine sand next to the pool and stretched out side by side. Sister Salt was on her back looking up at the sandstone walls of the canyon and the sky but she was thinking about Mama and Grandma Fleet. Did the Indian police catch them? She couldn't stop thinking about the soldiers and Indian police galloping toward the dancers to encircle them. In their dark uniforms, on horseback, they did not appear to be humans but giant insects swarming down the hills to the riverbank.

Indigo lay on her stomach and up on her elbows, her chin resting in both hands as she stared into the water. She watched the water bugs scurry around their villages in the yellowish sand at the bottom of the pool. The big bugs moved with dignity, but the smaller bugs darted about as if they were playing chase with one another. Pebbles and stones in the pool were hills and mountains; the green shoots of water plants were the forests. How lovely their pool was! They had all the water and food they needed.

From the corner of her eye, Indigo caught the shiver of a blade of grass across the pool, though there was no breeze; she did not move. More blades of grass wiggled, then parted slowly as a big rattlesnake's head poked out cautiously, its tongue moving over the air slowly to read any warnings. The snake's tongue stopped when he caught their human scent. For an instant the snake looked at Sister Salt sleeping, then at Indigo, who held her breath. Grandma Fleet talked about the big snake many times because he was almost as old as she was, and the spring belonged to him. All desert springs have resident snakes. If people killed the snakes, the precious water disappeared. Grandma Fleet said whatever you do, don't offend the old snake who lives at the spring.

“Remember us? We won't harm you, Snake,” Indigo whispered softly. “You know our grandmother and our mother.” The snake seemed to consider her words before he glided to the edge of the pool. Indigo was amazed at how gracefully the snake dipped its mouth into the water, tilting back his head to swallow a dainty sip. The snake was thirsty and dipped his head to the water many times before he stopped, flicked his tongue at Indigo and then Sister Salt, then backed away and disappeared into the grass around the pool.

Later, when Sister Salt woke up and heard about the snake's visit, she said it was a good sign; if soldiers or others were lurking in the area, the big snake disappeared.

The first night they slept by the spring, but all night birds and small animals brushed past them to reach the water. The next day they went to work on Grandma Fleet's house. The old dugout house was not easy to spot because its roof was low to the ground and partially covered with sand. Sister Salt dropped to her knees, then crawled through the opening. Indigo followed, relieved that her sister was first to go inside Grandma Fleet's abandoned house; the old dugout room looked like a perfect home for centipedes and scorpions. Once they were inside, there was a narrow ledge and then three big stone steps down into the room. Indigo sat on the bottom step until her eyes became accustomed to the dim light. Inside the air was cool and smelled of clean sand; Sister Salt poked around the corners. The room was much bigger than it appeared from outside; there was plenty of space overhead, and the roofbeams were solid, although the wind had disturbed the top layer of desert palm branches on the roof.

They finished the roof repairs and were at the spring for a bath when they heard a strange sound off in the distance; someone was singing. At first the singing was too far away and they could not make out the song;
sometimes the singing grew faint, then loud again, as if the singer had crossed a dry wash. They both listened intently; then Sister Salt recognized the song.

“Grandma!” Sister Salt yelled and took off running in the direction of the singing. Indigo started to follow her but Sister Salt was running much too fast. Indigo watched her sister run through the stands of dry sunflowers below the sandhills toward the mouth of the canyon until she was out of sight. Indigo listened. The singing continued, then stopped. Suddenly she felt a strange fear overtake her, a fearful feeling she was about to be abandoned by Grandma Fleet, and even Sister Salt.

Indigo ran as fast as she could through the deep sand, up and down the sandhills, until her sides ached and her throat burned. She stopped to listen for the singing but the sound of her own breathing was all she heard. She ran, and when she stumbled, she picked herself up and kept running, terrified she might lose them.