Laughing Boy (17 page)

The afternoon and early evening were better, for his host re-counted the second part of the Coming Up story to his children, the part about the Twin Gods, Slayer of Enemy Gods, and Child of the Waters, which Laughing Boy loved best. He noticed that Slim Girl listened intently. Some day he would be telling his children. It seemed a long time for them not to have had any, but he really did not know very much about these things. It was the woman's business; the children were hers, after all. She would arrange it in due time, according to her wisdom. He drowsed and was soothed by the tale of the familiar, strange adventures, the gate of the Clashing Rocks, the trail over Boiling Sands, Monster Eagle and Monster Elk and Big God, lightning-arrows and cloud-blankets. After supper the close air drugged him; his eyes were nearly closed as he listened to the last of the myth.

The snowflakes, drifting through the smoke-hole, fell into the fire with little hisses. The even voice went on, telling the end.

'Slayer of Enemy Gods came to the Hunger People, they say...'

But it was not his dream, there was nothing portentous about this voice. Slim Girl had slain the Hunger People. He smiled and listened, cradled in drowsiness, distantly conscious of a louse biting him, and comforting himself with the thought that to-morrow all that would be attended to, to-morrow they would be home again. These poor people, they could not know. He half-opened his eyes, seeing his wife's thoughtful, delicate face, and said, as sleepy people will, much louder than he realized,

'Hasché Lto'i!'

'What was that, Grandfather?' asked the man.

'Nothing.'

'I thought you said something about Hunting Goddess.'

'No, I said "
hashké yei itei,
" the gods are brave.'

'Unh! That is well said.'

Slim Girl reflected. Hashché Lto'i was one of the few real goddesses, but she had nothing at all to do with the Coming Up story. He had covered his slip neatly, that man of hers. He was no child. They two would go far, far, under her direction.

The story-telling ended, and the flakes had ceased falling through the smoke-hole. To-morrow would be clear. The banked fire became a dull redness, scarcely glowing.

 

III

 

They covered the fifteen miles home at a racing pace, on a morning of clear, brilliant air and dry, fresh snow. They both felt glorious, released from the cramped hogahn, glad to be approaching their goal. Though she had no great endurance, Slim Girl rode well, and now, with their ponies prancing in the cold, played tricks and frolicked on horseback as Indian men and women rarely do together. They both yipped and waved their arms; she snatched his hat, and threw it for him to pick from the ground on the run; he swung low under his pony's neck and sent an arrow skimming ahead of them. Before they reached it, the special quality and privacy of their home reached out to them, and they were
almost definitely conscious of reentering their own way of living as though one entered an enclosure.

He admired anew the fireplace, with its smokelessness, its draft that set the flame quickly blazing, the heat thrown out from its shallow back. She prepared food while he tended to the ponies. The house became warm, but the air was sweet, the adobe walls and clay floor were clean, and now, with lively appetites, they smelt the good food cooking. She sat back from the fire while things stewed and bubbled. Kneeling beside her, he kissed her—to him perhaps more than anything else the act symbolic of their life apart—and they smiled at each other with grave pleasure. For a minute she was limp in his arms, then she pushed him away with an affectionate, scolding word and returned to a pot that was boiling over. He lay back on the sheepskins, watching. Domesticity, his wife, his home, perfection.

The loom-frame hung near the door; on the other side was the anvil. The place was permeated with an excited happiness, fulness, completion. Had any religious-minded Navajo, sensitive enough to the reiterated doctrine of
hozoji
to feel it without words, entered that place, he would have felt that he had, indeed, entered the 'house of happiness.'

I

 

The winter passed as swiftly as the summer; more so, in fact, for, feeling more sure of herself, Slim Girl consented to a social life. They went to various dances, becoming better known among the Southern Navajos, who began to accept her as entirely one of themselves. Learning with practice better and better how to avoid being different in a way that troubled others, she was able to be one of them without the fatal appearance of reserve and effort. By a slow process, she saw, Laughing Boy really was bringing her back into her own people. She consented out of policy to undergo the Night Chant initiation, the scourging with yucca leaves, the demonstration of the masks, and having done so found, surprised at her own naïveté, that it was a genuine source of satisfaction to her. Knowing that something of the true substance was forever lost to her, she surrounded herself as much as possible with the trappings of Navajo-ism.

There were obstacles and interruptions: a double life carries heavy enough penalties, and a past is a past, particularly if its locale is much the same as that of the present. Red Man, the wrestler of Tsé Lani, sophisticated and self-willed, was present at many of those dances. Slim Girl had never given him more than hope, and even that, he felt, more because he served a purpose than for anything else. She had used him. Now she belonged to this rustic, who had humiliated him, and who obviously did not know what it was all about. Red Man was too good an Indian to bear much resentment for the wrestling defeat, but it served the purpose of preventing him from amusing himself by explaining to Laughing Boy just what he knew about his wife. Besides, he
shrewdly suspected, such a recital would be dangerous in the extreme.

So he adopted an attitude of smiling implications, of 'I could an I would,' that was as effective as possible for making trouble. Laughing Boy remembered the dancing at Tsé Lani, and he felt disturbed. Watching Red Man, it came upon him that, remarkable though his wife was, she was subject to the same general laws as other people, and he was fairly sure that he was not the first man she had known in love. Many things suddenly aligned themselves in a new way to assume a monstrous form. He became very quiet, and thought hard.

Slim Girl saw it immediately, not knowing what he was thinking, but feeling the reality of her peril. At that dance, she paid no attention to it, continued as ever, and treated Red Man with cool friendliness. At home, she managed to bring him into the talk, told Laughing Boy how he had sought to marry her once, and described with entire truth an ugly scene with him at Tsé Lani. Her husband listened, and was gladly convinced.

Her past was her past, he thought; he knew enough of her to know that it had been more than unhappy, and that she had put it resolutely behind her. There was much suffering, many bad things, of which she never spoke. Some day, perhaps, she could tell him. In any case, he believed what she did say, and even had the case been otherwise, that was all dead.

The next time they met, he contemplated the man, and guessed at the dimensions of his soul. Taking an opportunity when they both were taking horses to water, he rode up beside him, sitting sideways on his barebacked pony, one hand on the mane, one hand on the rump—a casual pose for a careless chat. Red Man greeted him non-committally.

'Grandfather, let us not run around things, let us not pretend,' he said. 'You have not said anything, but you have said too much. Do not pretend not to know what I mean. If you like what you are doing so much that you are willing to fight about it, go on. If not, stop it. I say, not just do less of it, or do it differently, but stop it entirely. That is what I mean. I have spoken.'

Red Man studied him; he was plainly in deadly earnest. He might just as well have acted instead of spoken—those men from up there have not yet realized the power of police and law. Among Navajos, the reasonable and acceptable way to have done, had he acted, would have been from ambush. Red Man felt he had had a narrow escape. He emphatically did not like what he was doing that much. Time would inevitably bring sorrow to the fellow.

'I hear you, Grandfather.'

 

II

 

These occasional absences of from three days to over a week made complications in Slim Girl's arrangements with her American. His trips in to town from his ranch were made on business that was, as often as not, conjured up to excuse himself to himself for seeing her. Each rendezvous would be arranged the time before, or by a note left in the little house, which she was supposed to visit at fixed intervals. Now it was occurring, as never before, that he would demand her presence on a certain date, only to be told it was impossible. Increasingly, as her love for her husband gained upon her, he suspected part of the truth, and tormented himself with jealousy. That husband, whom he had always regarded as rather mythical, seemed in the past few months to have become exacting. In moments of honesty towards himself, he writhed at the acid thought of being used by a squaw for the benefit of herself and some low, presumably drunken, Indian.

He rode into Los Palos through the bottomless mud and wet of a spring thaw, only to find a note on the table:

 

DEAR GEORGE

My husband make me go too dance I will come day after tomorrow afternoon, pleas not mind.

love
LILLIAN

 

The poor fool cursed, got drunk, and waited over.

That had been a very pleasant dance; they had ridden part of
the way home with as likable a crowd as the one that rode from T'o Tlakai to the trading post. She still tasted the flavour of it as she changed into her Sears-Roebuck dress and set out for Los Palos. Laughing Boy had surprised on her face, once or twice, that look of triumphant hatred when she returned. He would have been astonished could he have seen her now.

She looked back on their house, on the corral and the still leafless young peach trees, visualizing the dance, her people, and him. Her face was tender, almost yearning. Then she turned away towards the town, and braced her shoulders. For a moment she smiled, a war-path smile, and she was hard. Her upper lip curled back, showing her small, even, white teeth. Then her expression was blank; that passive look upon her oval face that made one turn to it again and again, wondering what deep, strong thoughts were going on behind the lovely mask.

He was in the house before her. She braced herself again at the door, then blotted everything from her eyes, becoming a happy, pretty woman with nothing on her mind. He rose as she entered. He did not answer her smile or move to touch her; that meant there would be a scene. Oh, well!

'Look here, Lillian, this is getting too thick. Here I come in here just to see you—we made the date, didn't we?—and you've gone prancing off to some dance. It won't do. I don't ask so much of you, but you've got to keep your dates, do you see? Don't make me suspect you...'

She hated scenes, loud voices, turmoil, protestations. God damn this man.
Juthla hago hode shonh.
She sat still, looking at him with wide, hurt eyes and drooping mouth. By and by he ran down.

'You tink lak dat about me! You tink I forget everyting! What for you tink dose tings, hey? I'm sorry I go away. I do it because I got to, you see? My husban', he tink someting bad, I tink. So he act mean, dat man. But you know.'

'The trouble is I don't know. I wonder about you. I wonder if you try at all, or just do what's handiest for you. I've got some consideration coming to me, you know.'

The man was truly jealous, he was miserable, she had him right
in the palm of her hand. She didn't have to say much, just let him do it. After he'd got rid of all this, the fact remained that he loved her, and that was all that mattered.

He drew her towards him, she sat on his knees, her hands on his shoulders. He bent her face back and stared into her eyes. They were deep, deep, and swimming. There was a look in them that thrilled him, a look that must be true. Now there was an imprint of real truth in her words and gestures, and the fierceness of her kiss.

She was not acting any longer, she did not have to pretend this. There was no more falseness in it than there is in an arrow leaving a bow. She hated him. On him she had concentrated all her feelings towards Americans in general, everything that she had ever suffered. In him she was revenging herself upon them all. Her kisses were weapons, her tendernesses were blows struck in the full heat of battle. She was revenging herself, and she was acquiring the means to her perfect life.

Bound by those hours of happiness, he could not break away. These days, he gave her more money than he ever had before, more than he could well afford, seeking to bind her to him, knowing that that was no way to arrive at truth, but craving, if she were lying to him, to be lied to so well he would be convinced. He made many efforts to improve her, feeling how remarkable a woman she was. He wanted her to read books, but her distaste for them was deep and sincere; he wanted to make a superior American out of her. He would have liked to raise her to a position in which he could respect himself if he married her.

She was afraid always that he would ask her that, but he was not quite so lost. She kept him at tension, administering happiness and unhappiness carefully, accepted his increased gifts, and in her mind shortened the time of waiting. But it did not make a smooth road to travel.

 

III

 

She was beset by difficulties and entanglements, but she was conquering them one by one, even turning them to her use, as
though she were taking weapons from her enemies. She could shape and bend men, she could control her destinies in theirs. In her thoughts, she tasted in advance the happiness of the goal towards which she aimed, and she felt her power, power, power; and so, as far as she could tell, she was happy.