Laughing Boy (18 page)

Her weaving was winning Laughing Boy's unstinted praise, and, to her surprise and great satisfaction, becoming a source of income. The trading post in Los Palos would pass on to her occasional orders from tourists or people in the East. If she had been willing to weave the entirely un-Indian pictures of actual objects that so many tourists demand, she could have had all the work she could handle at fancy prices; but she refused to do anything, or use any colours not purely Navajo, and she strengthened her husband in his natural reluctance to stamp shapeless strings of swastikas, thunder-birds, and other curiosities on his silver. She was precious about it, as she was about all Navajo things. It was one piece with her eagerness to speak familiarly of everything familiar to them, to participate in every phase of their life, to acquire completely the Navajo gesture. When they were rich and lived in the North, she thought, she would make herself an influence for preserving all native ways; she would use any power they acquired in combating Christianity, short hair, shoes, ready-made trousers, and the creeping in of American-derived words. Already she had amused her husband by insisting on calling coffee by its old, cumbrous name of little-split-round-ones, instead of the much easier
'coghwé,'
that had been taken into the language.

Laughing Boy's reputation was spreading. The Harvey agent had made her a tentative offer for them to come to Grand Canon. In the beginning of spring, at planting time, they moved forge and loom outdoors again. At sunset, laying aside tools, or coming in, tired and at peace, from working in the soft earth, they sang together.

Now was the time when ponies began to grow fat, and the desert was all one mass of flowers. Remembering a good thing from her school days, Slim Girl brought in great bunches, Indian paint brush, fireweed, cactus blooms, and a hundred others, and
stuck them in tin cans about the house. This puzzled Laughing Boy at first, but later he caught on, and enjoyed grouping them, with a good feeling for arrangements of masses of colour, but little interest in the blossoms as such.

There was movement in the desert. Horse-trading picked up again. The first sprouts of corn came through the ground, the peach trees began to put out leaves; one of them triumphantly produced a blossom. The days slipped by. Life was settled, serene, monotonous; there was no detail of it that one would wish to change.

I

 

Any married couple, no matter how perfect the match, will undergo a critical period of strain, and these two were no exception. For all the dances, winter was a hemmed-in time; repetitious days indoors were a searching test of companionship. Slim Girl went into town, Laughing Boy sallied forth to watch over the herd; but they moved out of the home atmosphere together only for those eight or nine ceremonies.

They were attempting a difficult thing. They needed not only to see occasional outsiders when they were apart, new faces made attractive by the mere fact that they break the sameness, but also the presence of a third person when they were together, that their solitude might retain its value, and their unity refresh itself from the sense of the outsider's foreignness.

This same life, so closely together, will make people unusually sensitive to each other's moods; sometimes, if they are fond of each other, almost morbidly so. He did not answer that question; perhaps he thinks it was stupid. She handed me that cup of coffee abruptly; perhaps I have offended her in something.

They came through it remarkably well, and still deeply in love. But Slim Girl, watching her husband with close attention, felt him change and was troubled. Feeling less sure of herself, she was over-careful, and betrayed more than ever that reserve of something withheld that belonged inevitably to her double life. Each increased the other's uneasiness; it was a circle.

He did not read himself. The melting snows refreshed the pasturage, the grass grew tall. He gathered his scattered horses,
shifted them, and watched them fatten. His peach trees grew, his corn was well above the sand. All these were good things, and in each he rejoiced as he enjoyed each detail of his day, the far riding and the loom before the house door, his wife's talk, the ring of his hammer. Each thing was good, and yet the whole was dull and devoid of savour.

Laughing Boy knew well enough that people wore on each other, and that every couple underwent a period of adjustment. He knew that in many households, when the man became seriously restless, his first wife would arrange for him to take a second, to preserve the home. But such was hardly the case here. He was by habit one who faced issues squarely and thought them out tough-mindedly, but now in the back of his head were many thoughts, safely hidden from himself, from which unease, like an infection, flowed through his system.

He did not realize that he was studying his wife critically, as one might an opponent. Once or twice, to his own surprise, he caught himself about to become annoyed with her over little or nothing; once or twice, away from her, building up a quite unreasonable sense of wrong. Then he would be disgusted with himself, and alarmed. The process was really natural enough; being profoundly dissatisfied with something in her which he refused to recognize, the feeling sought to give itself outlet by picking causes of annoyance which could be admitted.

She had always foreseen a period of difficulty and settling down, and was prepared to adapt herself to it, but now she did not know what was needed. She thought she was sophisticated, she thought she knew all about men, and all about herself. She thought she had penetrated to the ultimate truth. She knew only a little of life, not all of herself, and of men there was a half which she knew through and through, and a half which she was just beginning to discover. She wondered if the time had come at last to give up her American and go North. But this was a bad year for them; wool, and hence the sheep which they would have to buy, had risen, while horses, blankets, and jewelry sold badly. The tourists were unusually few. And here she had her one sure source of income.

Then she had a fatal thought. She was learning, from herself and from Laughing Boy, how much more there is to love than what is covered by its lowest terms. She was thinking things out by herself—particularly when she was weaving—like a philosopher. With the realization of the other things that are needed to make love worthy of itself, the bare fact that her husband and herself were in love with each other ceased to be sufficient. She wondered if, by falling in love when she had thought to make a deliberate choice, she had really known what she was doing. She wondered if life with this man, who was sometimes silent and strange, sometimes stupid, and sometimes irritating, might not be dismal in that wild homeland of his.

She did not really believe in her own doubt; it was purely an intellectual concept; but the dominant motive in her life for so many years had been the determination to move coolly towards a predetermined, sure success. Had she studied Napoleon in that California school, she would have admired him, and she might have been warned by him. Now, looking back on her past triumphs, she decided to wait until she made surely sure. Just a few months more, a year at the most, and George was making a lot of money in sheep. Some of that would come in handy.

 

II

 

As summer approached, Laughing Boy became restless and more worried at his own condition. Had he offended a god, he wondered. He took a sweat-bath, sang, and tried a fast. It did not seem to make much difference.

He made up his mind one morning when he was leaving to round up three ponies for sale. Slim Girl had seemed abstracted; he had noticed her watching him curiously, seeming nervous. She had been like that various times lately, yet what could he say about it? It was just an impression. He felt sullen, snapped at her. Her hurt surprise made him miserable. As he mounted his horse, he thought, 'I must surely find a singer.'

There could be no doubt that he had done some unconscious
wrong, deserting the Trail of Beauty. Forces of evil were preying upon him, he was no longer immune from bad thoughts. Stated in the American idiom, he decided he must be sick.

It was the merest chance that he met Yellow Singer walking along the trail with a bundle over his shoulder. Laughing Boy debated consulting him, and decided against it: not that ugly man.

'
Ahalani,
Grandfather,' the medicine man called to him; 'wait a minute.'

'
Ahalani,
Grandfather, I wait.'

The old rogue was standing straight and walking briskly; one saw that he was a tall man. Laughing Boy smelled whiskey.

'I see that you need medicine, little brother.'

'Unh! Why do you think that?'

Yellow Singer noted the grunt and followed his lead. 'I dreamed last night that when you were at the dance at Buckho Dotklish, you put those prayer cigarettes wrong. They fell down into the sand. Now they have put a spider's web into your brain.'

'You are right. I am not well.'

He nodded wisely. 'So I went and got the remedy for you. I am ready to make you all right. You are a good young man; it will be my pleasure to make you all right.' He glowed with benevolence.

Evidently this man had more power than one would think. 'How much will you want?'

'Twenty dollars.'

Laughing Boy considered. It was not a high fee. He counted out six dollars in coin, and pulled three plaques from his silver belt. 'There, that is really worth more.'

The old man hefted the metal. 'All right.'

'What must I do?'

'You must go to a place alone, you must wash your hair. Then pray to the Divine Ones whose cigarettes you offended. Then take this remedy.'

Out of the bundle he took a bottle of red liquor, looked at it a moment, and then, benevolence conquering, took out a second and handed them over.

'What is this?'

'It is a special kind of whiskey. It is very holy. The Americans drink it; it is so good they try to keep any one else from having it.'

'How do I take it?'

'When you have prayed, just start drinking it. By and by you will feel your mind becoming all right, your heart will be high. Then you will sleep. When you wake up, you will feel badly, but if you take some more, you will feel all right. One bottle should be enough. Put the other away until something tells you you need it.'

I see.

'I shall go on the trail to Buckho Dotklish, and make a charm there, to prevent any more bad things coming to you from those cigarettes. Tell no one about this, above all no woman. It is very holy and secret; if you speak of it, it will do you harm. It will make you jump into the fire.'

'I see.'

'If you need more, let me know. I may be able to get you some.'

He rode to his usual camping place by Natahnetinn, and went solemnly about the prescribed ceremonial. Then he tasted the drink. It was unlike the white whiskey; not so bad, but still pretty bad—low-grade, frontier tanglefoot rye, dear at a dollar a bottle.

After the first few drinks it came easier, but it did not make him feel very happy. As he grew drunk, he longed more and more for his own country, and for a truce from the constant feeling of the presence of alien things. About the time it grew dark, he stopped drinking and walked up and down. At first he sang, then he was silent.

Liquor, taken in solitude, sometimes has this effect. Along with a megalomaniac sense of his central position in the universe, a man grows bluntly honest with himself. All the secret, forgotten, stifled thoughts come out of the closet in his mind, and he must face them in turn, without a saving sense of proportion. This now was Laughing Boy's portion.

I am not happy in the house at Chiziai. It is too lonely, too strange a life; no one ever comes. We see people only at dances.
That American town, what is there there? What is this preacher's wife? The look in her face when she returns—I do not know. There is something wrong, always something hidden. She is always hiding something. Let us go North, go North, to T'o Tlakai! Oh, my mother!

When I told her about her weaving; when we rode together that time, then she needed me, then I, too, was strong. We were happiest then, both of us. She is stronger; it is she who leads me.

I am afraid to speak to her.

He stopped short and clutched his hands together.

Why? I am afraid to lose her. Am I losing myself? Oh, I do not know, I do not know; this life she has had, this wisdom of hers. What went on before? Who was the man, and what does Red Man know? Perhaps if I spoke to her, she would say no. She makes her own life. I am losing myself. And I cannot leave her, Came With War, Came With War. Oh, no, can't leave her. She would say 'No,' and I should say 'All right,' and then I should be dead.

How long will it be before we are rich enough to suit her? Why will she not herd sheep? All women do. I do not know. This American life she has led, she will not leave such things. It is my enemy. Our life is not good enough for her.

She wants so much money. A year, another year, who knows? So long, long. When will there be children? We should have had children. I want children. I want to go home. What is happening to me? I am losing myself. She holds the reins and I am becoming a led horse. Two, three years, all like this, and Sings Before Spears, who was a warrior, will have ended, and there will just be that part of a man which worships a woman. Not the rest of him, just heat. A bowstring without a bow. Only good for a woman to tie something with.

I need some more medicine.

Another stiff drink sent him over the borderline into incoherent plans for performing wonders. Three or four more put him to sleep.

He was in pretty bad shape when he awoke, late, with the high
sun beating upon him. He went down to the arroyo and dabbled in its shallow, unfresh water. He was not as sick as the other time, but he was sick.

'When you wake up, you will feel badly, but if then you take a little more, you will feel all right.'

He would try it. The smell made him feel worse. He poured some into a cup, returned to the arroyo and weakened it with water. Then he downed it in one straining gulp. He did feel better. Perhaps he might take a little more, he thought, reaching for the bottle, and paused with it half-tipped for pouring.