The Darkness Rolling (10 page)

When the Dineh made their emergence from the Third World to this Fourth World, where we live now, they rose into a climate rough as a cob. This land between the Four Sacred Mountains flips from frying your skin in the summer to freezing your ass in the winter. Such is our life.

Here’s another “such is life”: Tomorrow Cathy Downs would arrive. That meant this would be my last night with Linda. Mom was creating a kind of farewell, and a peace token to me, by inviting Miss Darnell to dinner.

Mose Goldman heard tires on gravel and pivoted his wheelchair to look out the window. The town car stopped in front of the hitching rails. Yazzie got out and looked around. He must have been relieved at what he saw. His clansmen Katso and Oltai had gotten a lot accomplished—corrals tightened, roofs repaired, and plenty more. That would raise his hopes that Mom was happy, and he was doing well by his family.

Yazzie handed Linda Darnell out and escorted her toward the front door of the family part of the rambling building. Mose couldn’t see the lady clearly in the deep shadows of the cottonwoods. A movie star didn’t make his heart go bumpety-bump. Except for taking Yazzie to Hopalong Cassidy shows in Flagstaff twice, he’d never seen a motion picture, nor laid eyes on a movie magazine.

He turned the chair again, and with his good left arm propelled himself to the heavy wooden door. As Yazzie pushed it open, Mose caught the last of what the lady was saying to his grandson, “… in your home we will be informal with each other, just plain Yazzie and Linda.”

Hmmm. Mose smiled to himself.

He raised his good arm to offer his boy an embrace and made it a hearty one. He was getting stronger every day, right leg and arm improving. Unfortunately, his speech was still garbled.

Yazzie was saying, “Linda Darnell, this is my grandfather, Mose Goldman. Whatever that is good in me is a gift from him.”

Nizhoni sailed out of the kitchen, crossing to the front door in her stately way. His daughter was a woman even more beautiful in her forties than her twenties, so her father thought.

“And this is my other great teacher, my mother, Nizhoni Goldman. Grandpa, Mother, this is Linda Darnell.”

Nizhoni said, “Miss Darnell, welcome to our home. We’ve heard so much about you.”

Mose lifted a hand in affirmation.

“Gracias,”
Linda said in a demure tone. “I’m so glad—”

Just then Iris burst in the back door. Bursting was the way Iris did things, plus always being late and carrying the cat on her shoulder. Striding across the room, she inspected her hands, which meant she’d just been painting, had cleaned her hands with turpentine, and was making sure of not getting paint on anyone else.

“Miss Darnell,” Yazzie said, “Iris Goldman, my aunt. Iris, Linda Darnell.”

Iris stuck out a hand and Linda shook it. She looked at Iris peculiarly, then at Cockeyed, and at Iris again.

They both said, “Glad to meet you” at the same time.

“Yes, I know,” Iris said, “I hate it when he calls me his aunt. I’m not old enough. Life is crazy like that sometimes.”

In fact, thought Mose, Yazzie was twenty-four, Iris twenty-six, and the famous movie star looked younger than either of them.

“Nuestra casa es su casa,”
said Nizhoni.

“In that case,” said Miss Darnell, “will you call me Linda? Then I’ll truly feel at home.”

“We will all be on a first-name basis,” said Nizhoni.

Mose nodded his assent. Damn, but he hated not being part of the conversation.

Over the first glass of wine at the coffee table, Linda was gracious. She turned herself from a star into the respectful guest of honored elders. Mose could see his grandson relaxing. They were lovers, of course, and Yazzie’s lover wasn’t going to usurp Nizhoni’s role by playing the grand lady here.

“I want to tell you,” said Linda, “it is a privilege to be in your home. I am eager to know the parents of so fine a man as Yazzie.”

“Nuts to all this courtesy,” said Iris. “You’re stunning, you’re gorgeous.”

Linda said, “Aren’t you kind?”

Mose could see Linda was puzzled by Iris, or maybe by the cat’s aberrant eye.

Iris plunged straight ahead. “So who do you think is the best-looking man in Hollywood? I go for Clark Gable.” Arms high like a touchdown had been scored. To keep from falling off, Cockeyed pinched her blouse with his claws.

Linda suppressed a laugh. “I’d say Tyrone Power. And he’s great to work with.”

Mose slapped his knee. He liked this conversation.

“Next to you,” Iris went on, “who’s the most beautiful woman?”

“I don’t like competition,” Linda answered.

Mose grinned. Iris gave a twisted smile that the old man read as,
I knew that.

“Iris,” said Linda, “you sound New Yorkish. Do you feel at home in Monument Valley?”

Iris gestured to Mose, who noticed everything. “In my family here Mose is my uncle, Nizhoni is my sister,” a nod at Mose’s daughter, “and I guess Yazzie is my nephew. Uncle Mose had a stroke, they needed my help, I came.” Her smile turned coy. “And I fell in love.”

“With Yazzie?” said Linda, arranging surprise on her face.

“Not hardly,” said Iris. She stroked the head of Cockeyed.

Yazzie put in, “I never met my aunt until the night before I left to meet you at the train.”

Iris gave Yazzie a funny look. Then she said to Linda, “I’m in love with painting this country.”

“You mean…?”

“I mean real painting.”

That was a surprise. And a hint.

“May I see?” asked Linda.

“Sure. Let’s go.”

*   *   *

Bouncing outside and up a gentle hill, Iris led them toward the old well. Mose still felt good about the way he’d dug that well out, then had it drilled deeper, then sluiced the water downhill to give the post running water.

When Yazzie took hold of the wheelchair, Mose growled at him and muscled himself up. He wanted to negotiate the slope of sand, stone, greasewood, and sagebrush on his own.

Just beyond the well stood a timeworn grain shed, and Mose saw from the doorway what a fine studio Iris had made of it. Endless energy, that young woman.

Gazing around the shed, Linda exclaimed, “Iris!”

Mose could see why. Huge charcoal drawings were pinned to the old wooden walls, and they were dazzling. He’d guided scores of white visitors as they tried to capture the canyon country in paint. They traveled thousands of miles to get the chance, but the landscape mocked their efforts. The scope, the grandeur, the magnificence of vistas like the Grand Canyon—such marvels could not be captured and straitjacketed on canvas and in paint, still less on paper and in watercolor. The scale of Mose’s homeland spoke with the sky-booming voice of God, beyond man’s ability to imitate.

So Iris had gone at things slantwise. She’d sketched the shed skin of a rattlesnake abandoned on slickrock. A branch of driftwood stranded on a sandbar. The bleached skull of a coyote. The head of an elderly Navajo man, his hair bound back traditionally in a white
chongo.
The figure of a Navajo woman weaving at a loom.

No vistas, no mesas, no canyons, no skies. His country seen, and treasured, in its details. His skin prickled with love for his niece.

“These are studies,” said Iris. “Want to see the paintings?” Her body wriggled with excitement, but it didn’t come off as bragging.

“Please,” said Linda. She sounded genuinely impressed.

Iris lifted the paintings out of big portfolios, oils on canvas. They were even more impressive. Her colors were vibrant, audacious, almost outrageous. She was not so much painting Mose’s homeland as her own amazement at it. His heart surged.

She held each one up for a long moment, set it down, and showed the next one, all without a word.

“Enough?” asked Iris, her fingers drumming on the last canvas.

Linda nodded. “Your work is extraordinary.”

“I know,” said Iris.

“Iris!” said Mom.

Cockeyed snapped his head toward Nizhoni, the crazy eye wayward.

Iris put her hand gently on his neck. “She wants me to be modest and demure,” she told Cockeyed. “A real lady.” Then to everyone, “My motto is ‘Well-behaved women seldom make history.’”

Linda laughed merrily. Then she asked, “For sale?”

Iris considered, trying to hold still. “I don’t know. I have a show in Santa Fe in July, and I need twenty paintings for that. You’re welcome to come.”

“How about a sale while I’m here?” said Linda.

Iris pursed her lips, thinking. She looked into Cockeyed’s straight eye.

“Just two or three,” said Linda. “Good to be able to say you’re collected by a famous woman.”

“Then sure,” said Iris. “Pick two or three, any you want.”

The walk back down the hill was quick and animated. Trailing, Mose saw that Iris had a bit of an
I won
swagger.

*   *   *

Zopilote watched the five of them come out the back door of the house single file, his son and the old Jew last. The young woman led the way, and Zopilote still didn’t know who she was. She looked like the old man, and was probably family. She spoke English with a queer accent and punctuated it with hand gestures that would make Zopilote want to back away.

He thought,
She better leave soon, or she’ll find herself buried here.
Why should he spare anyone from the Goldman family, except maybe his son? Very maybe.

He had no idea what they were doing now, walking uphill in the dark. He especially wondered what that movie star was doing there, at an old trading post.

They came up the path to the shed. Zopilote slid lower behind the rocks until he could see with only one eye. As the path got a little steeper, his son tried to push the old man’s wheelchair, but Mose made a garbled sound, closer to a bark than a word, and his son backed off. But the old man couldn’t do it alone, and he had to be helped.

Old Goldman can’t get the chair up that easy grade with just one arm. Good.

They went into the shed, and he heard some exclamations and made out a word here and there, but he couldn’t tell what they were talking about.

After a few minutes they pranced back down the hill. Zopilote heard some words about how wonderful the young relative was. Apparently her name was Iris.

He watched his son hold the old man’s chair back so it wouldn’t roll downhill too fast.
My enemy is helpless.

He would wait until he saw the strange young woman—Iris, he reminded himself—until she left on one of her walks, and then slip into her shed.

*   *   *

We all four of us sat at the dining table, and Mom brought the good silver and napkins from the kitchen. I was glad Grandpa had bought real silverware in Santa Fe and brought it to Oljato. It made my mother feel special, as if part of her lived in an oasis of the raw desert.

Straight to the point, as usual, Iris said to Linda, “You like misbehaving.”

“When I can get away with it,” said Linda.

“Are you misbehaving with Yazzie these days?”

Mom said, “Iris!” banged a plate down in front of her, then laid one at each of their places and steamed back into the kitchen.

Grandpa slapped his knees. Ordinarily he would have hee-hawed. I felt pretty uneasy about how that might come out.

I decided to take a risk. “I think we should find a movie star to misbehave with Grandpa.”

All of them hooted. Grandpa rocked in his wheelchair until we were afraid it would fall over. Then he clapped me on the shoulder with his good hand. Cockeyed rested on Iris’s shoulder in perfect calm.

“You are a fine figure of a man,” Linda said to him. “How tall are you?”

That got Grandpa going. He whipped out his blackboard and wrote:
6-8
.

“Oh, my,” said Linda. She threw me a mischievous look and glanced to make sure Mom was out of hearing in the kitchen. “Eight inches. I hope you’re not like Fats Waller.” She sang a few wordless notes and said, “And, I hope you’re misbehavin’.”

Grandpa gestured toward his lap and scratched on his blackboard,
CAN’T
!

We all laughed. Cockeyed raised both eyes to the ceiling, one behind the other.

Mom emerged from the kitchen, and we all straightened out our faces. She set a platter of steaks on the table. “Backstraps,” she said. “Jake Charlie shot a deer.”

She placed saucers and bowls in front of everyone, kneeldown bread, our Navajo version of tamales, and pinto beans spiced with chiles. They were grown in our backyard and watered with runoff from the roof. Green chiles weren’t a bit Navajo, but Grandpa looked at them fondly. From his rearing in Santa Fe he loved them.

Mom sat down and said, “I hope you like green chiles, Linda.”

“I have a home in New Mexico, and my cook has taught me to love them. It’s practically addicting—almost as good as margaritas.”

All set to it, Linda eating heartily. “I really like being here tonight,” she said. “You’re regular people, like the folks I’m most comfortable with.”

Mom said, “Not so regular. My extraordinary father has read the classics in Spanish and English, and his family has a big house in Santa Fe.”

Grandpa gave his lopsided grin.

“So how did he come to live here?”

“A story for the next time we see you,” said Mom.

“Hmm,” said Linda. That mischievous look came back. “A sophisticated city or a gorgeous hideaway. I wonder which Yazzie will go for.”

Mom said, “That question scares me.”

Silence. It scared me, too.

“Well, if everyone is finished,” said Mom, “let’s move back to the living room. The dessert needs to cool off a little. Yazzie, would you build us a fire?”

Three of them couldn’t fill the oversize leather sofa, but they sat close, shoulders touching. I got a flame started with pinyon in the big lava-rock fireplace. I remembered watching Grandpa mason every stone of it himself. If home could take on a sensuous smell, I was sure it would wear pinyon.

Iris got up and stood on the hearth, her back to the fire. She must have liked the warmth, but Cockeyed jumped down and curled up on the coffee table. I could hardly remember Iris ever keeping her hands so still.