House Made of Dawn (4 page)

This, according to Father Olguin:

Santiago rode southward into Mexico. Although his horse was sleek and well bred, he himself was dressed in the guise of a peon. When he had journeyed a long way, he stopped to rest at the house of an old man and his wife. They were poor and miserable people, but they were kind and gracious, too, and they bade Santiago welcome. They gave him cold water to slake his thirst and cheerful words to comfort him. There was nothing in the house to eat; but a single, aged rooster strutted back and forth in the yard. The rooster was their only possession of value, but the old man and woman killed and cooked it for their guest. That night they gave him their bed while they slept on the cold ground. When morning came, Santiago told them who he was. He gave them his blessing and continued on his way.

He rode on for many days, and at last he came to the royal city. That day the king proclaimed that there should be a great celebration and many games, dangerous contests of skill and strength. Santiago entered the games. He was derided at first, for everyone supposed him to be a peon and a fool. But he was victorious, and as a prize he was allowed to choose and marry one of the king's daughters. He chose a girl with almond-shaped eyes and long black hair, and he made ready to
return with her to the north. The king was filled with resentment to think that a peon should carry his daughter away, and he conceived a plan to kill the saint. Publicly he ordered a company of soldiers to escort the travelers safely on their journey home. But under cover he directed that Santiago should be put to death as soon as the train was away from the city gates.

Now by a miracle Santiago brought forth from his mouth the rooster, whole and alive, which the old man and woman had given him to eat. The rooster warned him at once of what the soldiers meant to do and gave him the spur from its right leg. When the soldiers turned upon him, Santiago slew them with a magic sword.

At the end of the journey Santiago had no longer any need of his horse, and the horse spoke to him and said: “Now you must sacrifice me for the good of the people.” Accordingly, Santiago stabbed the horse to death, and from its blood there issued a great herd of horses, enough for all the Pueblo people. After that, the rooster spoke to Santiago and said: “Now you must sacrifice me for the good of the people.” And accordingly Santiago tore the bird apart with his bare hands and scattered the remains all about on the ground. The blood and feathers of the bird became cultivated plants and domestic animals, enough for all the Pueblo people.

 

The late afternoon of the feast of Santiago was still and hot, and there were no clouds in the sky. The river was low, and the grape leaves had begun to curl in the fire of the sun. The pale yellow grass on the river plain was tall, for the cattle and sheep had been taken to graze in the high meadows, and alkali lay like frost in the cracked beds of the irrigation ditches. It was a pale midsummer day, two or three hours before sundown.

Father Olguin went with Angela St. John out of the rectory. They walked slowly, talking together, along the street which ran uphill toward the Middle. There were houses along the north side of the street, patches of grapes and corn and melons on the south. There had been no rain in the valley for a long time, and the dust was deep in the street. By one of the houses a thin old man tended
his long hair, careless of their passing. He was bent forward, and his hair reached nearly to the ground. His head was cocked, so that the hair hung all together on one side of his face and in front of the shoulder. He brushed slowly the inside of it, downward from the ear, with a bunch of quills. His hands worked easily, intimately, with the coarse, shining hair, in which there was no appearance of softness, except that light moved upon it as on a pouring of oil.

They saw faces in the dark windows and doorways of the houses, half in hiding, watching with wide, solemn eyes. The priest paused among them, and Angela drew away from him a little. She was among the houses of the town, and there was an excitement all around, a ceaseless murmur under the sound of the drum, lost in back of the walls, apart from the dead silent light of the afternoon. When she had got too far ahead, she waited beside a windmill and a trough, around which there was a muddy black ring filled with the tracks of animals. In the end of July the town smelled of animals, and smoke, and sawed lumber, and the sweet, moist smell of bread that has been cut open and left to stand.

When they came to the Middle, there was a lot of sound going on. The people of the town had begun to gather along the walls of the houses, and a group of small boys ran about, tumbling on the ground and shouting. The Middle was an ancient place, nearly a hundred yards long by forty wide. The smooth, packed earth was not level, as it appeared at first to be, but rolling and concave, rising slightly to the walls around it so that there were no edges or angles in the dry clay of the ground and the houses; there were only the soft contours and depressions of things worn down and away in time. From within, the space appeared to be enclosed, but there were narrow passages at the four corners and a wide opening midway along the south side, where once there had been a house; there was now a low, uneven ruin of earthen bricks, nearly indistinguishable from the floor and the back wall of the recess. There Angela and the priest entered
and turned, waiting, conscious of themselves, to be absorbed in the sound and motion of the town.

The oldest houses, those at the west end and on the north side, were tiered, two and three stories high, and clusters of men and women stood about on the roofs. The drummer was there, on a rooftop, still beating on the drum, slowly, exactly in time, with only a quick, nearly imperceptible motion of the hand, standing perfectly still and even-eyed, old and imperturbable. Just there, in sight of him, the deep vibration of the drum seemed to Angela scarcely louder, deeper, than it had an hour before and a half mile away, when she was in a room of the rectory, momentarily alone with it and borne upon it. And it should not have seemed less had she been beyond the river and among the hills; the drum held sway in the valley, like the breaking of thunder far away, echoing on and on in a region out of time. One has only to take it for granted, she thought, like a storm coming up, and the certain, rare downfall of rain. She pulled away from it and caught sight of window frames, blue and white, earthen ovens like the hives of bees, vigas, dogs and flies. Equidistant from all the walls of the Middle there was a fresh hole in the ground, about eight inches in diameter, and a small mound of sandy earth.

In a little while the riders came into the west end in groups of three and four, on their best animals. There were seven or eight men and as many boys. They crossed the width of the Middle and doubled back in single file along the wall. Abel rode one of his grandfather's roan black-maned mares and sat too rigid in the saddle, too careful of the gentle mare. For the first time since coming home he had done away with his uniform. He had put on his old clothes: Levi's and a wide black belt, a gray work shirt, and a straw hat with a low crown and a wide, rolled brim. His sleeves were rolled high, and his arms and hands were newly sunburned. The appearance of one of the men was striking. He was large, lithe, and white-skinned; he wore little round colored glasses and rode a fine black horse of good blood. The black horse was high-spirited, and the white man held its head high on the
reins and kept the stirrups free of it. He was the last in line, and when he had taken his place with the others in the shade of the wall, an official of the town brought a large white rooster from one of the houses. He placed it in the hole and moved the dirt in upon it until it was buried to the neck. Its white head jerked from side to side, so that its comb and wattles shook and its hackles were spread out on the sand. The townspeople laughed to see it so, buried and fearful, its round, unblinking eyes yellow and bright in the dying day. The official moved away, and the first horse and rider bolted from the shade. Then, one at a time, the others rode down upon the rooster and reached for it, holding to the horns of their saddles and leaning sharply down against the shoulders of their mounts. Most of the animals were untrained, and they drew up when their riders leaned. One and then another of the boys fell to the ground, and the townspeople jeered in delight. When it came Abel's turn, he made a poor showing, full of caution and gesture. Angela despised him a little; she would remember that, but for the moment her attention was spread over the whole fantastic scene, and she felt herself going limp. With the rush of the first horse and rider all her senses were struck at once. The sun, low and growing orange, burned on her face and arms. She closed her eyes, but it was there still, the brilliant disorder of motion: the dark and darker gold of the earth and earthen walls and the deep incisions of shade and the vague, violent procession of centaurs. So unintelligible the sharp sound of voices and hoofs, the odor of animals and sweat, so empty of meaning it all was, and yet so full of appearance. When he passed in front of her at a walk, on his way back, she was ready again to deceive. She smiled at him and looked away.

The white man was large and thickset, powerful and deliberate in his movements. The black horse started fast and ran easily, even as the white man leaned down from it. He got hold of the rooster and took it from the ground. Then he was upright in the saddle, suddenly, without once having shifted the center of his weight from the spine of the running horse. He reined in hard,
so that the animal tucked in its haunches and its hoofs plowed in the ground. Angela thrilled to see it handled so, as if the white man were its will and all its shivering force were drawn to his bow. A perfect commotion, full of symmetry and sound. And yet there was something out of place, some flaw in proportion or design, some unnatural thing. She keened to it, whatever it was, and an old fascination returned upon her. The black horse whirled. The white man looked down the Middle toward the other riders and held the rooster up and away in his left hand while its great wings beat the air. He started back on the dancing horse, slowly, along the south wall, and the townspeople gave him room. Then he faced her, and Angela saw that under his hat the pale yellow hair was thin and cut close to the scalp; the tight skin of the head was visible and pale and pink. The face was huge and mottled white and pink, and the thick, open lips were blue and violet. The flesh of the jowls was loose, and it rode on the bone of the jaws. There were no brows, and the small, round black glasses lay like pennies close together and flat against the enormous face. The albino was directly above her for one instant, huge and hideous at the extremity of the terrified bird. It was then her eyes were drawn to the heavy, bloodless hand at the throat of the bird. It was like marble or chert, equal in the composure of stone to the awful frenzy of the bird, and the bright red wattles of the bird lay still among the long blue nails, and the comb on the swollen heel of the hand. And then he was past. He rode in among the riders, and they, too, parted for him, watching to see whom he would choose, respectful, wary, and on edge. After a long time of playing the game, he rode beside Abel, turned suddenly upon him, and began to flail him with the rooster. Their horses wheeled, and the others drew off. Again and again the white man struck him, heavily, brutally, upon the chest and shoulders and head, and Abel threw up his hands, but the great bird fell upon them and beat them down. Abel was not used to the game, and the white man was too strong and quick for him. The roan mare lunged, but it was hemmed in against the
wall; the black horse lay close against it, keeping it off balance, coiled and wild in its eyes. The white man leaned and struck, back and forth, with only the mute malice of the act itself, careless, undetermined, almost composed in some final, preeminent sense. Then the bird was dead, and still he swung it down and across, and the neck of the bird was broken and the flesh torn open and the blood splashed everywhere about. The mare hopped and squatted and reared, and Abel hung on. The black horse stood its ground, cutting off every line of retreat, pressing upon the terrified mare. It was all a dream, a tumultuous shadow, and before it the fading red glare of the sun shone on bits of silver and panes of glass and softer on the glowing, absorbent walls of the town. The feathers and flesh and entrails of the bird were scattered about on the ground, and the dogs crept near and crouched, and it was finished. Here and there the townswomen threw water to finish it in sacrifice.

It is somehow in keeping, she thought afterward, this strange exhaustion of her whole being. She was bone weary, and her feet slipped down in the sand of the street, and it was nearly beyond her to walk. Like this, her body had been left to recover without her when once and for the first time, having wept, she had lain with a man; and it had been the same sacrificial hour of the day. She had been too tired for guilt and gladness, and she lay for a long time on the edge of sleep, empty of the least desire, in the warm current of her blood. Like this, though she could not then have known—the sheer black land above the orchards and the walls, the scarlet sky and the three-quarter moon.

 

Afterward, when Angela had gone back to the Benevides house, Father Olguin went upstairs to his room and said his office. A few minutes past eleven he came down again and made a fire in the kitchen stove and warmed a pot of coffee. He was tired, but as usual he could not sleep until it was morning. He required only a little sleep, and he always awoke with a strange sense of urgency. It was late at night that he liked best to use his mind, to read and
write with cigarettes and black coffee. Then, alone with himself, he could take stock of all his resources and prospects, and he could find his place among them. He had removed his soutane and put on a worn pair of canvas trousers and a sweat shirt that hung nearly to his knuckles and knees. It had grown cold in the downstairs, and he closed the kitchen door and sat down at the table. He had brought from his room a book which he had found not long after his arrival in the town among the parish records. The coffee and the heat of the fire warmed him. There was no sound in the house, save the seldom crackling of the fire, and he could hear outside the drone of the generator, not quite steady, and the yellow ceiling light of the kitchen swelled and failed to its pitch. For several minutes he savored the coffee and smoke and regarded the closed book absently, waiting for the long day to end inside of him. He stroked the stubble of beard at his throat and at last set the empty cup aside and crushed the cigarette out and lit another. A cockroach ran from the floor of the pantry in the corner of the room and stood suddenly very still for a moment where a part of the gray linoleum had been worn away and the wood of the floor was bare and brown. Then it was gone.