Laughing Boy (19 page)

No. He was remembering last night, and that had been terrible. He put it down, and stared at the ashes of his fire.

'Coffee,' he said aloud.

He drank a lot more water when he went to fill his pot. The heat of the flames was unpleasant to him; he was beginning to feel badly again, and wanted a drink. He put a lot of coffee in.

That had been all true, what he had thought last night, but incomplete and exaggerated. He was homesick, he was afraid of losing her, but what kind of man could not wait a few years, three at the worst, for so reasonable a cause. She was wise, she was right, and he was sure she loved him. Well, then?

The whiskey now, this magic. It did drive the clouds out of his thoughts, but it made everything appear twisted.

He lifted the coffee off the fire. It was strong. Without waiting for the sugar, he tried to drink it, burning his tongue.

It was not magic. It was just something like jimpson-weed. Under its influence he had seen himself, but there was nothing holy about it. He remembered quite clearly how he had placed those cigarettes in a crevice in the rock. There had been nothing wrong about it. That old coyote had made a lucky guess, and followed it up with lies to make money, that was all.

He saw a very clear picture of Yellow Singer and his wife as he had first met them, sober, and reaching for the bottle; he saw other scarecrow Indians he had met in this American's country. He looked at them, and behind them saw incoherently the great, ominous cloud of the American system, something for which he had no name or description.

That was another thing about which Slim Girl had been right, that drink. She knew how to tame it. She had the secret of how to prevent American knowledge from doing harm; she made it serve a good purpose.

He set down his cup of coffee, picked up a rock, and deliberately smashed the bottle. The liquid ran into the coals of the fire, caught, and for a moment the dampened sand burnt with a blue flame. That startled him. To drink something like that! He threw in the fragments of the bottle, in the bottom of which were still a few drops, and watched the blue light flicker briefly above them.

He drank another cup of coffee, with sugar, then unearthed the second bottle from its cache. That had cost money, much money. Well, he'd had his money's worth. From now on he could think without the help of blue flames. He poured it over the fire, and the drenching put the fire out. Eh! This was strange stuff!

To try to round up horses seemed out of the question. He stretched out in the shade of the rocks, craving sleep, his limbs feeling as though he had been through a furious wrestling bout. The sky was too blue, it hurt his eyes; the circling of a distant buzzard made his head ache. He turned over and fixed his gaze on a crack, studying it, sleepy, yet unable to keep his eyes shut.

Yellow Singer and all his kind were bad. They were like an offensive smell. But a smell came from a carcass. Those people were the way they were because of the Americans. The town of Los Palos in the drenching sunlight, quiet, dead-looking beside its irrigated fields. What was it? Something in the air, something that perverted the world. Where they were was no place for Earth People. They had done something to Slim Girl, one could see that, but she seemed to have risen above it. But they were bad for her, too. It was beyond him.

He smoked, and at length slept fitfully through the noonday heat, wakened now and again by flies, to drowse delightfully and return to sleep. In the late evening he went to where a waterfall in
the arroyo made a trickling shower bath. The water refreshed him; he was hungry once more, and felt better.

What he had thought last night had been true, but unbalanced; and all this about Americans had been just because he felt sick. He had always known Americans, traders and such, they were all right, just people of a different tribe. He stretched out, fed, smoking, surprised at his desire to sleep again. It would be pleasant, it would be beautiful, returning to T'o Tlakai rich, very rich, with her, and to settle down somewhere near there and have children. They needed children. Meantime they would make their way together. Oh, beautiful.

 

III

 

Next morning he felt better. The drunkenness and the emotiorial outburst had cleared his system. In pouring out the liquor, he felt that he had destroyed a bad thing; the enemies in his head had indeed proved to be nothing but cobwebs, and they were gone. Like the man who burned the tumbleweed when the Eagles were afraid of it, he thought.

He rounded up the three horses he wanted, good ones. Only the best horses sold this year, and they did not bring so good a price. He rode home contented, quiet, and determined to do better with himself.

He found his wife waiting before the door.

'I did not know you were going to be gone so long; I have been lonely without you. Bring in your saddle while I get supper. I am glad when you come back.'

'I am always glad to be back.'

'As long as you feel like that, I shall continue to be happy.'

Why should he worry himself about this woman? And why should he worry about anything else as long as he had this woman? He slapped the ponies' flanks to make them run around the corral. He looked at his growing corn, and as he broke the little mud dam across his irrigation ditch, he felt the coolness of evening seep along his veins as the bright water spread through the narrow channels. Clay bluffs were not as fine as painted rock, there was too much adobe in this sand, but it was a fair place. The fire gleamed before his house, he heard the flow of water and the occasional stamp of a horse in the corral.

Slim Girl brought out the bottle and an orange.

'Do not make the drink, little sister, I do not want it. I think I shall try not taking it.'

She kept herself from looking at him. She was troubled.

'All right.'

What was this? Probably nothing. When one walks on the sheer edge of a precipice, the meaningless fall of a stone over the side momentarily stops the heart. She studied him while they ate. She began to talk with him gravely of the life they were to make together, of the happiness that was in store for them.

He said to himself, 'She was bothered when I refused that drink, the way she looked at me afterwards. She is nervous about me. I have done that, by acting as I have. Now she is trying to tell me how she really is; she is talking true; I know. I have wronged her.'

She saw the last trailing clouds pass from him. That evening was perfect, so perfect that, with his doubts banished and the feeling of intimacy upon him, he almost told her everything he had done and thought, but he postponed. It was the last of its kind for many days.

Like an ancient magician who, by saying the forbidden names, evoked genii whom he could not then drive back, Laughing Boy had given form to thoughts which were not to be forgotten. Unhappily for himself, he was no fool, and of an honest habit of thought. There was love in that place, and sometimes happiness, but if a religious-minded Navajo had entered there, he would have felt that the air was empty.

 

IV

 

Slim Girl continued weaving despite the poor sales, because she found relief and, one might say, a confidant in her craft. And
then, they two, working side by side, reconstructed at least the outward signs of the harmony that was gone.

He eased his soul by shaping the half-stubborn, half-willing metal. It is a matter of patience, from the lump or the coins to the bar, from the bar to the bracelet. This, the most precious and beautiful of metals, is the easiest to work. That is a gift of the gods. Slow, slow, under successive light strokes the bar becomes longer, flatter, thinner: it is struck and it grows towards its appointed shape.

I am impatient these days, I get tired of the finishing. One must have one's mind made up to it from the start, from four Mexican coins to the finely finished ornament; one must see it as it will be, and not stop short of what he has seen.

Having woven about a foot of blanket, the head-sticks of the loom are lowered, and the finished part is rolled around the foot-sticks, out of sight.

This is like time. Here, this little part showing, where I am weaving, is the present; the past is rolled up and gone; there are those empty warp cords above me. The weft is like handling a nervous horse; I lead the blue strand gently to the green, or it will break; I hate to break a strand, the knot where it is mended will always show, a blemish. But then, I pound the fork and the batten down hard, hard; they lock the weave and that much more is past.

He was curving the strip of flattened silver. This bracelet is coming out just as I thought of it. One must know his design before he starts; when this strip was still four coins, I knew that there would be tracks pointing one way from each end to the centre, clouds at each end, and that stone where the tracks meet. How do I know it? Not all men can; what is it I have? The Mexicans are lazy, their money is pure, soft silver; the American coins have something in them to make them hard, they are hard to work with. Those Americans!

Her fingers were deft, and she pulled at the warp like a harp-player. I am not sure I like this pattern, but it is too late to change it. No, it is a good pattern. Should I unravel all I have done, when it grows so slowly? When the blanket has been started, it is too late
to change. The man who is always coming back to where he started, to figure out another road, will never get far from home. I wish I could just think my design and have it woven at an American mill. No, I don't; it is because I toiled over them that I love them.

The turquoise is the important thing in this bracelet. I looked at it and saw the setting for it. But much of the time now I cannot think well, I am not myself. I have no design for myself, I do not know the nature of my jewel. I am hammering a piece of silver, and I cannot stop hammering, every day is another stroke; yet I do not know what it is to be. In the end it may be just a piece of good metal pounded flat. I do not know my design.

This blanket is like the other things. I am always being uncertain now. It is all like this blanket. Shall I unravel it, when I have been so long in getting so far? The design is set, a blanket with a broken design would be absurd, a failure. The only thing to do is to carry it through, with softness and with strength. My design is set.

I

 

As summer drew to a close, Laughing Boy took to spending more time than was necessary with his horses. Sometimes he would crave company, and, if he found it, would be sociable and garrulous; at other times he kept very much to himself. No one who met him then for the first time would have named him 'Laughing Boy.' Locally he was known as 'Horse Trader,' and latterly one Indian had applied to him, in jest, the name of the legendary character 'Turns His Back,' which bade fair to stick. Partly he liked to be away from home because of the chance of a happy return. If she were waiting for him, if she had not been in to town, If he was tired from the long ride and at peace with himself, the old spell would surround them. If she was just back from that work of hers, or if she came in after he did, she overtired, brooding, and a little nervous, it was a failure. Once or twice they quarrelled; she had an amazingly sharp and clever tongue. The quarrels ended in reconciliation and passion which exhausted them both without bringing peace to either.

On one day, when autumn had begun to take the weight out of the noon sunshine, he sat basking on a hillock, smoking, with his pony beside him. He was lazily content, and comfortable enough within himself not to mind the sight of a human approaching. He felt like talking to some one.

The jogging dot drew nearer. Still looking black, the motion of the shoulders told that it was an Indian. Yes, and probably a Navajo, with a flaming scarlet headband. Laughing Boy sat up straight. He knew that bald-faced chestnut, he knew that swing of
the whip hand. He made sure. He was surprised, curious, and delighted. What brought his friend so far from home? He rose to his feet. Jesting Squaw's Son slowed from lope to trot, to a walk, and stopped beside him.

'
Ei-yei,
my friend!' Laughing Boy took his hand. 'It is good to see you!'

'My friend.' He smiled, but he dismounted slowly, and his eyes were hurt. 'I am glad to find you.'

'Sit down. A cigarette?'

'Yes.'

'Where are you going?'

'Just riding around.'

'What is the news at T'o Tlakai?'

'All well. Your people are all well. Your sister, the one who married Bay Horse, has a son. The other one has just married Yellow Foot's Son.'

'Good.'

'There has been good rain, and the traders are paying twenty, twenty-five cents for wool.'

'Good.'

'And you, tell?'

'All well. Our goods sell well, the corn was fine this year. All well.'

They smoked.

'It is good to see you.'

Jesting Squaw's Son made no answer. Laughing Boy studied him; he was too quiet.

'What brings you so far from home?'

'Nothing, just riding around.'

'You will come to our hogahn?'

'Yes.'

They finished their cigarettes, and sat looking at nothing. There was a pleasant, afternoon feeling that tended to make talk slow, the smell of the warm sand, quietness. After about five minutes, Laughing Boy said:

'You might as well show me your true thought. It is all around you like a cloud. It is what you are thinking of all the time you are talking about anything else. You are hurt. What hurts you, whom I have called friend, hurts me.'

'You are right. Give me tobacco.'

He rolled another cigarette and smoked it through before he began to speak.

'You remember that joke we played on Narrow Nose at Gomulli T'o? Do you suppose we did anything bad by accident? Did we start any evil working?'

'What makes you think that?'

'You remember, I said I was bringing back a wife from Maito. That made me wonder. I went to Maito a little while ago.' He was looking at the tips of his fingers. Now he paused.

'We wanted to trade a cow for some sheep. Your brother and White Goat and I were riding along. We saw a Pah-Ute driving a cow he had taken from the Mormons, so we took it away from him. There is no pasture for cattle up there, but we heard of a man at Maito who kept a herd. So we took it down to him. His name is Alkali Water.