The beast v1 0, p.16
The Beast (v1.0), page 16
“You really had yourself a time, I guess,’* Johnny said, chewing on a piece of fried bread. They were lying on the sand among the spread-out congregation, who were eating, joking, talking in tow^ones. Occasionally one would say something to Barry in English and grin. He responded automatically, still dazed, chewing the bread with its slightly burned tang, dipping out the canned peaches with his fingers.
“Quite a time,” he said absently. “Yeah. Never had anything like that.”
He was silent again, unable to speak for remembering everything that seemed somewhere to be still going on, as if he had only walked away from a theater where it was all playing still, a spectacle that had not stopped, that never stopped, that he had visited for a time, for a nontime, and then had walked away from. But it was still going on somewhere. He looked around at the Indians sprawled on the sand under the willows and cottonwoods, some of the women passing among The People, giving them food, tin cups of coffee. Everyone felt good, relaxed, at one with each other and with him. Barry felt together with them, more relaxed than he had felt for a long time, even hopeful, not tired, not sleepy, although they had been awake all night. Or had it been a dream?
He looked at Johnny, who was sitting cross-legged beside him, grinning, his black hair mussed. He looked for the woman who had sat across from him in the hogan. She might have been there with her back to him, but he could not see her.
“Is it always like that?” Barry said, beginning to feel like himself again.
“I don’t know what happened to you,” Johnny said. “But it’s always a good experience for me. I didn’t know you could sing in Navajo.”
“I sang in Navajo?”
“You said something like:
“I call down thunder beings,
Hear me, thunder beings,
I call down thunder beings,
Hear me thunder beings:
Break me asunder
Break me asunder
Make me whole
Make me whole.”
The young Indian chanted it in English and then in his own language. Barry listened to the words, but then in Navajo he could not understand one word of the simple litany.
He shook his head. “I said that?”
“Got a nice voice, too,” Johnny said.
“I don’t know a word of Navajo. I can’t even understand what you’re singing now.”
“Well, you really became one of The People last night,” Johnny said more seriously. “I’ve heard of things like that, but this is the first time I’ve ever really seen it happen.” “Speaking in tongues?”
“Welcome to the Church.”
“There were other things, too,” Barry said, still abstracted. “Things from another world.”
“You found your paradise?”
“I don’t know if it was that, but I never suspected I had all that inside me.” He thought a minute as he took a swallow of coffee. “And there were some things I guess I did know I had inside me.”
Barry felt extraordinarily good for a couple of hours after the informal ritual breakfast, talking with some of the people who had been at the ceremony and taking notes on their responses. None of the ones he talked to told stories of anything like the experience he had had, most of them speaking of feelings rather than images, saying it was a Blessing Way made successfully, speaking of their own prayers and translating some of the songs that had been sung during the night. One older woman said she had watched the spirits of her ancestors moving through the hogan blessing everyone, and she said, too, she had seen the Bear-that-walks-like-a-man standing over the fire with his head in the smoke hole, and that he also blessed them. But for the most part their stories were of the songs, their feelings and the blessing.
About noon Barry sat down under a stand of willows, looking through his notes and watching a group of children working among the garden plots, pulling weeds and chopping at the wild grass. He looked up at the high blueness of the sky above the canyon rim, closed his eyes against the glare and fell soundly asleep.
When he woke, lying full length on the sand and cramped from being doubled up, the sun had left the canyon, bringing early dusk, and he could smell meat cooking. He slept well that night too, and it was as if the ceremony had extended over a day and two nights, for when he woke on the following day he felt it had only just ended.
I have had to wait a long while tonight before coming out. The old Indian man, Albert Chee, has been in and out of the shelter several times. He speaks in his language, walks around in the rocks mumbling to himself and comes back to lie down again. Finally he falls asleep. I slip out into the late moonlight and shift.
Tonight I will not venture downstream but explore the top of the cliffs. I find the trail and go leaping up it in the deep shadows, eager to gain the top and the moonlight which awaits me there. At the top of the trail I see Barry’s car still sitting on the edge of the cliff and sit down behind a juniper to get my breath back. The mesa at this point is thinly forested with pinon and juniper, nothing more than twenty feet high, but enough to give cover. It might be a good place to hunt. I lie on the gravelly ground listening to the night noises, feeling to the limits of my spatial sense, watching the moon shadows beneath the stunted little trees. It is very quiet, late in the night, perhaps two hours before dawn.
Do you hear, Big Pussycat?
I am startled by the sudden voice. It has been a long time since Mina communicated with me in that way, and her voice is so much stronger than it used to be. I look for the position of the half-moon. It is low on the horizon
now in the west. We will only have a few minutes to talk.
Ihear you, Mina.
Mommy’s asleep, but I’m out in the yard in the tire swing and the moon’s almost gone already. Are you and Daddy all right?
Yes, dear Mina, we are doing very well.
Why are you in two places, Big Pussycat?
There is no mistaking what she has said. I think for a moment
I don’t understand, Mina. I am lying at the edge of the canyon by myself.
There’s two of you.
I look around me, feeling suddenly alert, my spatial sense coming alive to everything within range. Small animals, one larger animal nearby. I rise to my feet cautiously and sense about again. It is not as large as me. Then I scent it. A deer.
There is only me here, I say back to her.
I am talking with both of you, Mina says, puzzled, an emotion of surprise coming through to me.
?
She says she can’t talk to you yet because you’re not awake, the little girl says across the distance. It is as if she is inside my head, but far back in the darkness. Her words are clear and sharp, but far away. I strain to hear something else. Is someone else speaking?
Idon’t understand.
She says you will pretty soon.
Who is this you are talking to, Mina?
She’s like you, Big Pussycat, but she’s not able to talk to you like Ido.
Now I am thoroughly aroused and frustrated. If there is another of my kind I must know it. My skin prickles at the thought I recall what the coyote said.
Mina, tell me where she is.
I can’t tell. And now she’s gone.
What did she say, Mina, exactly?
She said you would wake up pretty soon and then you could talk.
But l am awake, I say, frustration making me pace about and feel anger.
Her voice becomes faint then, and I notice the moon is near the far horizon. It must be out of sight now from where she is in Albuquerque. Why our talking depends on the moon being up I do not know, but it was that way last summer. I ask her again, but her reply is so faint that I cannot make out the words. I tell her goodbye and begin trotting along the edge of the cliff in an upstream direction. Another like myself! The thought makes me almost miss my footing at one point and I move back from the edge to run just inside the line of junipers. A fall from there would be inconceivable. I wonder absently as 1 trot between the little trees if I could shift in time to a winged creature in order to save myself—and that brings memories of the peyote ritual last night. I push those thoughts out of my mind, for they are in some way painful to me. I will think about that later. What I need now is action.
I sense a large animal to my right at the same time as it scents or hears me, and it goes leaping away. I turn suddenly and take out after it. The deer. 1 am so close at the start that his musky odor, something like that of a very clean fox, is hot in my nostrils. But he is clever, and within two hundred yards I have lost him. 1 pause, not breathing, feeling in all directions, listening. Wise animal. He has stopped not a hundred feet away, down inside a dry arroyo with only his young antlers sticking out
I stay still, suppressing my breath and scent. He is still as stone for another minute, then he moves slightly, turns his head from side to side. I am quiet and frozen. The deer thinks he has eluded me and walks out of the little arroyo, doubles back and comes past me on the right I wait until he is as close as he will be to me and with a sudden leap to the side am after him.
He is so fast that I miss him with the blow I thought would knock him to the ground. He has leaped almost straight up in the air and turned away at the same time and is off again through the little trees faster than anything I have ever chased. I am excited by his scent now, running heedlessly through the trees, through cactus patches, breaking branches from the trees in my rage to catch him. I am almost on him again when he swerves impossibly to the left as I strike and only graze his hindquarters. What a fast animal! But I can turn almost as short as he can. The sand cascades up around us, and he leaps away. I get in another swipe, drawing blood from his right hind leg this time.
I have extra traction in this soft sand and am gaining on him as he leaps wildly toward the cliff edge. I am aware he is heading for the cliff and slow down. The try my powers that way. He gains a bit from my delay, but then he reaches the edge and has to turn sharply on the bare rocks. Almost he loses hold and goes over into the canyon as I come racing out of the trees toward him. Between two deaths, the young buck deer scrabbles away from the fall, his hindquarters slipping over the edge. It delays him, and when he turns downstream it is the wrong way. I have outguessed him and catch him by a foreleg.
His antlers swing down toward me, but I have already changed my hold and have his throat. He is down and killed before he can bring the horns near my face. His blood pumps out, hot, carrying the last breath from his body. He looks up at me with one dark wide eye before death takes him. I pick him up by the neck and straddle-drag him back into the junipers, where I lie across the quiet body that was a few minutes ago the swiftest game I had ever tried.
In the midst of the pleasant business of taking apart my meal, I sense a large animal at the edge of my perceptual field. I pause, the liver half eaten, listening for confirmation. Yes, a coyote or lynx, probably, from the size and movement. I remember the creature outside of Albuquerque that night last week, that miserable shape-changer, I throw a query at him.
Is that you, coward?
?
The reply is not in words, but it is a declared thought that no dumb animal is capable of. I get up from the carcass, licking my lips. I would give much if it were the same creature and I could get my claws into him.
Come have some, if you dare.
I am hungry, not stupid.
I feel rage inside me, not a pleasant sensation when one is eating.
Are you the one l have met before?
Come over here, Big Kitty. Ihave another lesson for you.
I cannot stand his mocking voice. How can he have come this far just to taunt me? Is he the one who was talking with Mina? I stand for a minute or two, tom between finishing my meal, which that coward will not dare to disturb, and trying to catch the rascal and tear him up first I decide I cannot eat when he is mocking me like that and take out after him.
Three times I believe I have his miserable carcass in my grasp, but he is too quick with his changes. After finally cornering him, I go into my rush only to have him shift into an eagle and fly up again, mocking me. I have no practice being a bird. He would destroy me in the air. I send a taunting challenge up to him and trot back to enjoy my meal. I arrive at the place where it was to find it dragged away, a bloody trail leading off to the cliff edge. That rotten, tricky coyote has had help. I leap after whoever has stolen my kill and find two other miserable wild dogs just pushing the deer carcass over the edge into the canyon. I skid to a stop, roaring at them as they leap away in opposite directions. The deer carcass slides down the steep sandstone butte, the limp antlered head dragging back and forth as if nodding goodbye, and then it reaches the point where the stone curves under and falls out of sight into the dark canyon.
What terrible creatures these coyotes are to take a meal away and destroy it rather than letting me have it. But then I realize that it is near dawn and I will never be able to stay in my shape long enough to find the deer a thousand feet down and a mile or more up the canyon. By that time it would be dawn, and I will have to resume my Person or be seen in daylight. The coyote is clever, knows my limitations. He and his pack will take their time. They know the canyon, the trails, and they will find my deer soon enough to enjoy it. I look up into the night sky that is growing light in the east, the stars fading, leaving the one bright morning star to illumine the dawn.
Damn you, coyote!
I sit down on the stones to clean my muzzle before going back toward the trail I know. For all its beauty, this canyon has been a very frustrating place for me.
Barry had been sleeping in the Chees’ summer house, eating their food, and he was acutely aware of what this must cost an Indian family who appeared on the bare edge of subsistence. As he and Johnny walked out early in the morning to relieve themselves over by the cliff, he said, “I’d like to pay for my grub since I’ve been here, Johnny.”
“My mother would never let you do that, you know,” he said as they stood in the cool air listening to the birds tuning up.
“She wouldn’t mind if I made a gift in friendship?”
“That would be acceptable.”
“Say twenty bucks or so?”
“Too much.”
“How about some stuff from the trading post?”
“A new big kettle and a couple of fry pans would be nice.”
“Done.”
Back at the shelter they waited outside for a few minutes, hearing Albert Chee and his wife having a before-breakfast argument. Johnny walked away up stream, hands in pockets, and Barry followed. So, even the Indians had problems with marriage, Barry was thinking. He said something to that effect, and Johnny turned on him with an angry look.
“Sure. And getting pushed around on your own land doesn’t help,” he said.
They walked on for a way out of earshot of the shelter and sat down.
“He’ll be out in a minute,” Johnny said. “Probably go into Chinle and get drunk.”
When the short, rather bowlegged Indian man emerged from the shelter, it was more than even Johnny had expected. Albert Chee came storming out, breaking away part of the brush wall as he came, a large old forty-four revolver in his hand. He shouted something and fired the weapon into the air with a boom that reverberated from the canyon walls, back and forth like a whole platoon having firing practice. At the noise, a gaunt mongrel dog that had been hanging around the shelter, and apparently was a stray, leaped out from behind a rock and stood looking at the man with fear, its back hunched.
“Hey,” Johnny yelled, and said something in Navajo. His uncle ignored him. He pointed the long revolver at the dog and fired again, the noise echoing as before. But now he was firing again and again, the weapon jumping in his hand, dust kicking up around the dog. The noise was like a cannonade. When the revolver was empty the dog lay on the rocks with blood spattered around it. Barry and Johnny watched in disbelief as the older man put the weapon in his belt and strode away toward the little corral against the far side of the canyon. He saddled a big brown mare and was away before the other two men could stop him.
Johnny shook his head and said nothing.
“What the hell was that all about?” Barry said, looking at the body of the dog where it lay still now.
“Blowing off steam, I guess,” Johnny said. “Hell, let it go.
Barry decided the less said the better, and they walked back to the shelter for breakfast.
Later that morning, Johnny suggested that his friend from the city take a tour down the canyon to a historic ruin that was nearby before he left. Barry would be going back to Albuquerque alone, since Johnny Strong Horse was needed at home now. The pinto pony was tractable for a beginning rider, Johnny said, saddling the little horse. Barry got on her and went pacing, then trotting off down the canyon on the hard-packed sand and flat sandstone that was almost like a roadway in some places. Johnny had said even a white man could not miss the ruin down there, and that he could climb up to the cliff house if he went to the far side and was careful.
Barry held the little horse to a walk, breathing the cool morning air, riding in the shadow and watching several wild canaries that were flying ahead of him from one cottonwood to the next, thinking probably that he was after them. They were like little yellow projectiles, little butter bullets, Barry thought, feeling almost perfect in his happiness. He would make a trip to the trading post this afternoon, sleep again in the summer house tonight and get an early start in the morning for home. Johnny had said he would find it easier going down to Gallup and straight home along US 89 since it would be almost all paved once he got to the state route and turned south. The pony picked up her pace as they rounded a bend in the canyon, and Barry saw that the canyon widened out again into grassy benches high on each side of the stream, with clumps of trees that looked as though they might have been a cultivated orchard at one time.
