Foxfire (25 page)

Amanda knelt on the cowhide beside Dart, her heart beat thickly and her eyes were blinded with tears. “Yes, Shi-Ma—” she whispered. “I am here.”

Saba lifted her hand from Dart's shoulder and touched Amanda's cheek. She took Dart's right hand and Amanda's left and clasped them together. “It is well,” she said and the words drifted through her pale lips like the sighing of the wind. Her hand dropped from theirs and she sank back on the blankets. “Now leave me with Shi-ja-yeh—with my son.”

“My cousins'll take care of you, Andy,” said Dart very low, then he turned back to his mother.

Amanda rose, and at once the young Indian girl Rowena. John's wife, came forward. “Come with me—” and she led Amanda from the wickiup, and through the darkness to her own dwelling. In here there was a smaller fire, and a rickety camp cot as well as a pile of red and gray store-bought blankets. Seeing that Amanda looked dazed and very pale, the Indian girl pushed her gently down on the cot. “Sit here. I'll give you some tulapai. You'll feel better.” She went out to the ramada, an open twig and branch lean-to, to fetch the tulapai jug.

Amanda sat on the cot and gazed around the wickiup. It was made of willow sapling, laced with yucca leaves, and thatched with bear grass. Strips of canvas and old flour bags insulated the outside, where in the old days they would have used deer hides.

Inside on the stamped earth floor there was no furniture except the cot, and an obsolete treadle sewing machine. An iron pot, bought in Globe, hung on a tripod over the fire and emitted a rank odor which mingled with the smell of stale sweat from the blankets. A faint noise attracted Amanda's attention and upon examining its source in the shadows by the doorway, she discovered a plump baby, tight-swaddled and strapped on a cradle board, propped against the brush wall. The baby was thus sleeping bolt upright, with a contented smile on its face.

His mother reappeared with a gallon can of tulapai, and giggled when she saw Amanda. “You like my baby? Pretty soon you have one too, mebbe so?”

Amanda smiled faintly. “Someday. I hope so.” She could think of nothing but food and sleep, and she did not know how either was to be obtained. Her hostess offered her an enamel cup full of tulapai, which turned out to be a strange grayish concoction made of fermented corn and mesquite beans, with the addition of yeast and raisins to make it strong, and a dash of tobacco juice for flavor. Amanda, fearful of offending, gulped down a little of it, and the heat in her stomach revived her and gave her the courage to say, “Could I beg a little something to eat from you? And do you know where I could rest for a while?”

“Sure,” said Rowena. “You sleep here with me and my little sister. John go someplace else.” She picked up the cradle board from which there had come a snuffling cry. She went outside a minute and came back with a cold tortilla and a strip of jerky in her hand. She held them out to Amanda. “Here,” she said smiling. “Eat. Drink more tulapai. It will make you not so sad. Then rest on the cot.”

She squatted down on the pile of blankets holding the cradle-board flat on her lap. She raised the short blue Mother Hubbard blouse and began to nurse the baby.

Amanda nibbled a little at the clammy tortilla and the tough salty beef. She docilely sipped the tulapai. She had had nothing to eat since the bread and jam at home after her walk up the canyon. Twelve hours ago according to her wristwatch and it felt like weeks. This Amanda who sat in an Apache wickiup while her husband kept vigil with a dying mother seemed disembodied from all the other familiar Amandas; the one who was Dart's passionate and responsive mate or the discontented little Lodestone housewife. These seemed as remote as did the earlier Amandas of New York and Greenwich and Vassar and Europe.

If Tim could see me now, she thought, but not with amusement, rather with a remote wonder that life which had always seemed all of a piece could offer such extraordinarily disjointed contrasts. What sure continuity was there but ego?—and love perhaps. It was because of love that she was here. She had thought during the wild ride through the night that there might be another link. Deep down, suppressed beneath the sympathy for Dart and the sadness of their mission, there had been a hope that if Saba were not too sick she might ask her about the lost mine—about the Pueblo Encantado. For Saba, who had put the relics in the basket, might feel differently from her son about the search. But during those minutes in the other wickiup she had felt shame for her thoughts, and she had known that even if Saba were well she could never ask her.

There was a soft pad of footsteps at the door, and a little girl of twelve slid in and stopped dead at the sight of Amanda. The child flung up her hands to cover her mouth, and her round fawn eyes grew black as dewberries. Rowena said something quick in Apache, but the little girl shook her head and backed out of the wickiup.

Rowena laughed a little, lowering her blouse and propping the baby against the wall. “That was my sister. She is afraid because you are here. She will not come in.”

“I'm sorry,” said Amanda softly. “Is there any other place I can go?”

The Indian girl shook her head. “They wouldn't let you in. We don't like white people to come into our homes, especially those of us who live in the old way. But for John and me it's different. He is blood brother to Ish-kin-azi—to your husband, and we're not afraid of white people. We went many years to the Indian school.”

“You hate us.... ” said Amanda sighing.

“No. Not all. Only those who want to change us, only those who come asking rude questions, and taking photographs, and laughing at us behind their hands. Only those who make us ashamed because we could no longer feed ourselves and must take charity.—But it's better now.” Rowena got up and brought a blanket from the pile over to Amanda. “Now we have the cattle. Our own herds to sell for ourselves. Our clan here at Blue Springs”—she added, her eyes shining—“owns many fine head of cattle.... Sleep now, our cousin's • wife,” she said, putting the blanket over Amanda. “The tulapai will make you sleep.”

Amanda tried to say something, but her weighted lids dropped. She stretched her legs out on the hard canvas cot and the flickering firelight on the grass and brush ceiling dissolved into darkness.

 

She awoke at six to see Dart's face bending close to hers, his gray eyes looking down at her with anxious affection and some humor. Forgetting where she was, she gave a soft cry of welcome and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her and said, “How're you doing? I gather you got some sleep.”

She struggled up on her elbow, staring around the dim, deserted wickiup. She looked down at the rumpled gray blanket, at her camel's hair top coat in which she had slept. Then she remembered.

“Oh, Dart—your mother

“She's much weaker but peaceful. The women're tending her. She says that she will go away as the sun sets. I think she knows.” Instinctively he used the Apache euphemism for death.

“Come along,” he said briskly. “I've rustled up some coffee for us. Then I'll take you downstream a bit. We could both use a wash.”

She clambered stiffly off her cot and shook herself. She took her pocket comb and compact from her purse. “Holy heaven, what a mess—” she murmured trying to comb her hair. “Dart, I itch all over,” she looked up at him startled, scratching vigorously at her stomach. “Fiery itches. What's the matter with me?”

He bent over, pulled up her cotton shirt and examined her stomach. “Fleas—my love.” He grinned at her expression. “Maybe one or two other bugs as well. I'll delouse you as soon as we've eaten.”

She moistened her lips, her eyes moved from his amused face to the blanket, and it seemed to her that all her flesh crawled. “Disgusting.” she whispered. Filthy savages—she thought. Nothing would induce me to spend another night in this horrible place. And Dart could laugh. Could laugh because he was really—She clamped her lips tight over the sudden bitter words that rushed against them.

“Come get your coffee,” Dart said. Her thoughts were transparent enough and he was no longer smiling. “I can get someone to take you back to the superintendent's house at the Agency. They have modern plumbing and all the comforts. They'll let you stay there until—until I can come.”

She said nothing. She followed him out to the outdoor cooking fire and accepted the tin mug of coffee he poured for her. She ate one from Rowena's stack of cold tortillas, and some small cakes like hamburgers made from acorns, and the dried sticky fruit of the giant saguaro, all of which Dart handed her silently. She found that she was so ravenous that the strange flavors were unimportant.

While they ate nobody came near them. Rowena was in with Saba. John had ridden off into the hills with the other men to look for newborn calves amongst their clan herd. There were people around the more distant wickiups, women walking in and out of the ramadas in their flounced, brightcolored dresses, and children playing, but nobody even glanced in their direction.

As Amanda finished the last bite of tortilla, there was a commotion on the rutted road and a horse-drawn wagon app ... red by the side of the farthest wickiup. Some of the children began to climb up the wheels and jump into the wagon. Dart watched them a moment, then poured himself another cup of coffee. “The kids are going to drive to the Agency school,” he said. “You can go into San Carlos with them.”

She glanced at his impassive face, withdrawn from her as completely as her anger and physical revulsion had withdrawn her from him. And why shouldn't she go? She thought of the avenue of trees and lights at the Agency, the neat stone houses, the grass plots in front of them, the sidewalks. She thought of the stone pillars at the entrance which marked the gateway between the two worlds. There were lights and baths and telephones in there at the Agency. There would, in fact, be more actual comfort than Dart had ever given her since their marriage.... And here what was she but an alien intruder, tolerated only because of Dart? Why then should she hesitate? Why should there well up from the depths of her soul a cold and secret spring of conviction that this was no trivial choice which confronted her. No logical matter of cleanliness, or even of contrast between two ways of life. For one instant only, there sitting by the morning fire in an Apache rancheria, she saw clearly, then the insight faded as arrow-swift as it came, leaving only an unconscious decision for her guidance.

“You better hurry—” said Dart, putting his cup down on the ground. “They're about ready to start.”

“I'm not going,” and she added in the sad contrite voice of a child who has been scolded without knowing why, “I don't
want
to run away.”

Dart drew in his breath. He looked at the slender little figure sitting hunched on the packing case in the crumpled camel's-hair coat, at the delicate fair skin, blotched red in two places and filmed with dust, and at the wide blue eyes which did not meet his but rested their gaze on the distant mountains. Her sense of values was so different from his that he found it difficult to be aware of her inward and recurring battles. But his love for her partly bridged the gap, and he put aside his own deep sorrow to treat her with the protective tenderness she best understood from him.

He led her down to the little stream that flowed beneath Blue Spring, and there in the cold mountain water they bathed together, until both their beautiful young bodies tingled with vigor and renewed zest.

He assuaged her fleabites with an herbal Indian ointment he had borrowed from Rowena as they passed Saba's wickiup and forbore to smile at Amanda's continuing disgust. He showed her how to shake and brush her clothes with a handful of leafy twigs, and he promised her that he could scour the camp for a clean blanket that night, but he was too honest to promise her exemption from renewed attack.

“I know—” she said making a wry face. “What can't be cured must be endured. But I'm not crazy about endurance. It's such a wishy-washy virtue when you can get anything you want with a little gumption.”

Dart looked at her sharply. Something in her voice reminded him of one of the arguments she had used during that idiotic fight they had had about searching for the lost mine. But she had taken her compact out and was frowning over the exact line of her lipstick, oblivious to anything else, so he answered lightly. “I'm afraid Indians don't think a few assorted bugs worth spending gumption on.... I've got to get back to my mother now, Andy. I don't know what you'll do with yourself, poor kid.”

She smiled at him. “I'll be all right. I'll manage.”

He left her, swinging up the trail with his light quick step. She sat on by the stream a while, watching the water purl by over the rose and white pebbles. The sun grew warm on her back, though a breeze rustled through the willows and the cottonwoods and stirred the silvery white blooms on the desert broom. A large red-tailed hawk uttering a sharp “Quee-quee” flew over her head to perch in a cottonwood. She sighed and got up, wishing she had brought a book. That would have passed the time. She wandered back to the camp and saw Rowena on her knees outside her wickiup pounding corn in a stone metate. The Indian girl called a low greeting and Amanda went over to her.

“What are you doing?” she asked idly, smiling at the baby who was wide awake, strapped in the cradle board on his mother's back, and gazing wide-eyed at a rattle and a tiny bell which were hung in the basketry hood and dangled just before his eyes.

“I grind for meal,” said Rowena. She surveyed the disconsolate girl and her black eyes lighted mischievously. “Try it,” she said. She put the oblong stone mano in Amanda's hand. “It's good for women to work together. You can help me.”

“Of course,” agreed Amanda with all the enthusiasm she could muster. She squatter' down by the trough-shaped metate and attacked the parched corn. The task took more strength and skill than she expected, but gradually she discovered a pleasurable sensation of a type she had never known. Not only the joy of working outdoors, but a satisfaction generally denied to white women in the modern world—the satisfaction of companionship—of shared tasks.