Laughing Boy (14 page)

'I do not talk to those people. Some of them have their minds made up, some of them will not understand. I do not think you will know what I am talking about, but you understand me. I want you to know.

'I have been down Old Age River in the log, with sheet-lightning and rainbows and soft rain, and the gods on either side to guide me. The Eagles have put lightning snakes and sunbeams and rainbows under me; they have carried me through the hole in the sky. I have been through the little crack in the rocks with Red God and seen the homes of the Butterflies and the Mountain Sheep and the Divine Ones. I have heard the Four Singers on the Four Mountains. I mean that woman.

'It sounds like insane talk. It is not. It is not just because I am in love. It is not what I feel when I am near her, what happens to my blood when she touches me. I know about that. I have thought about that. It is what goes on there. It is all sorts of things, but you would have to live there to see it.

'I know the kind of thing my uncle says. It is not true. We are not acting out here, we are pretending. We have masks on, so they will not see our real faces. You have seen her blankets and my hard goods. Those are true. Those are just part of it.'

Jesting Squaw's Son answered, 'I have seen the blankets and the hard goods; they sing. I am happy about you.'

He felt better after that, he cared that his friend should know,
and, in contradistinction to the others, telling him did not lessen the rare quality of the thing described. He returned to the hogahns feeling better able to act his part.

He found the evening meal most enjoyable as he watched the good ways and mannerisms of his family. Among them he could make out a growing perplexity. What had that old man told them to expect? A word slipped from his brother to his younger uncle gave him the cue, filling his heart with glee. When he got a chance he whispered to Slim Girl,

'What my uncle said—they expected you to have no manners. They were waiting for you to act like an American, and give them something to talk about.'

He lolled back on the sheepskins, laughing inside himself. A smile shadowed the corners of his wife's mouth.

 

III

 

Slim Girl watched the ceremony with interest, feeling in a pronounced fashion the mixed emotion she had towards so much that was going on about her. It might be a weapon to destroy her, for the very reason that it was a summation and a visible expression of many things in her people's life that mattered to her. She had a sneaking suspicion that the family had gone to the expense of a full Night Chant largely because of the effect they thought it might have on the erring member.

It was sometimes absurd and sometimes quite beautiful. The masked dancers were grotesque, but there were moments by firelight when their shapeless heads and painted bodies, their rhythmic, intent movements, became grand and awe-inspiring. The long and repetitious prayers were often monotonous, chanted to dull, heavy music, but in the worst of them there were flashes of poetic feeling. Her American education had dulled her sensibility to the quick, compact imagery of a single statement, leaving to the hearer, the evocation of the picture intended that forms the basis of Navajo poetry. Still, she caught it sometimes,

 

'By red rocks the green corn grows,
Beautifully it grows...'

 

She saw it, and the terse implication that takes for granted all that the Indians feel about corn, contenting itself with merely calling forth that feeling.

She tried to think that these things were native and close to her, but found that she could only observe them objectively. She was foreign now. She could sympathize with their spirit, but not enter into it. A door had been closed to her, and at times, even standing here among the other spectators, in the heart of the Navajo country, she was swept again by a hopeless nostalgia for the country and the people, forever lost, of her dim childhood.

When she had been a very little girl, she had trembled with terror and awe at the sight of the very gods coming into the circle of people. Out in the darkness one heard their distant call, repeated as they came nearer, until with the fourth cry they entered the firelight. They danced and sang there, majestic and strange; then they vanished again to return to their homes in the sacred places. Now they were just Indians whom she knew, dressed up in a rather silly way. Like many unreligious people, she kept slipping into the idea that these worshippers were pretending to be taken in by the patently absurd. Most of the adult spectators had been through the Night Chant initiation; all of them knew that the gods were no more than men in masks; how could they be so reverent? What was her devout husband's ecstasy, or his devoutness, when he himself put on the painted rawhide bag trimmed with spruce and feathers, pretending to be Talking God?

She remembered the sacrament at school when she had been Christian. She had known that the wine came from the vineyard of an Italian who was a Catholic—something vaguely wicked—and that the bread was just bread. She knew the minister for a nice man whose wife rather bullied him. Yet she had believed that Christ's blood appeared in the wine, or something like that, and had been uplifted when she partook of it.

A Klamath girl had cried bitterly before her first communion. It
came out that she feared that eating Christ would make her conceive. In a legend of her own people, Raven had made a woman conceive that way. The minister had been very patient with her, and afterwards the other girls had made fun of her.

The casual way in which the minister handled the jug of wine when it came used to shock her, yet when he raised the chalice, his face would be inspired. He knew it was just the Italian's wine and himself, but he had not been pretending.

These Navajos were just like that. She couldn't make it seem reasonable to herself, but she understood it. And what effect would it have on Laughing Boy?

During the day she occupied herself with the women's work of preparing the semi-sacramental ceremonial foods. She knew very little, indeed, about the ancient ways of cooking, but her sisters-in-law taught her. They were prepared to like her. Her bad reputation had reached them only vaguely, and already they were discrediting it, so that she became to them some one somehow belonging to a larger world, said to be dangerous, hence superior. Now they found her ignorant in this matter, humble, and anxious to learn. She was normal, then, what their slight experience had taught them to expect of returned school-girls, who were always to be pitied. They were delighted to make her their protégée and have the feeling of taking this woman of the world under their wing. Her warm response was not all acting, either; it was not often that women of any race were friendly to her without reservations.

Their mother, she saw, was merely conscientiously fulfilling the ceremonial requirement that every one should feel kind towards every one else during the days of the dance. That atmosphere of
'hozoji'
pervaded the whole camp with a sweetness that was saved from being laughable by the deep devotion behind it. The time of trial was not yet. Slim Girl had some cause to be happy, and so fell in with the general frame of mind, finding a certain reality of meaning in the eternally repeated 'trail of beauty,' 'walking in beauty,' of the ceremony.

In a sentimental way she played at believing her people's religion, and indeed began to find some truth in its basic doctrine, but when she attempted to extend acceptance to the forms which she observed, her sense of the grotesque made it a farce. Meantime she was conquering these people; some were her friends already; her enemies were checked and nonplussed. The opening skirmishes, at least, were hers. She was moving ever more in the stream of Navajo life. She did have cause to be happy. The religion might remain meaningless to her, and probably always would, but the underlying concept of the active force of
'hozoji'
became real.

 

IV

 

The men who took part in the dance kept pretty well by themselves. For several days she did not speak to her husband. It was during the fifth afternoon that, seeing him go over where the sun warmed a rock to snatch some sleep, she followed and sat down beside him. She dreamed, watching his face. She loved him so much. There was that love, enough in itself, and then there was so much more. As she had hoped, after all, he was the means of returning to the good things of the Navajo, the good things of life. She could not lose him. What would happen when the dance was over, when it was time to leave, when old Wounded Face showed his hand? She was dependent on this man, her husband; she could not lose him.

She smoked and waited. At length he woke. She reached out and drew her fingers across the back of his hand.

'You must not do that.'

'Why not?'

'I am thinking about the Holy Things. I have to concern my mind only with them. You should not have come here.'

'Is it bad to think about me? Are your thoughts of me not—
hozoji
?' She smiled.

He remained grave. 'They are
hozoji,
but they are not all of it. When I think about the whole, I am thinking about you, too. I give thanks for you. But I must not just think about you and forget all the rest. Now, go away.'

I see.

She went softly. Two voices spoke within her; one, that this was the beginning of destruction; the other, that this meant nothing; indeed, that it was a good sign that her presence could disturb him so. Overriding both opinions was a feeling that, unless she was the whole for him, she could not be sure of holding him, and her imperiousness rebelled at being ever subordinate.

And still the ceremony was only half over. What would the remainder bring? She watched the changing rites. The ninth night passed, and the tenth day. She marvelled at the men's endurance; they had periods of rest, but there were night vigils, and for Mountain Singer, endless preparatory prayers. He did not seem tired; rather one would say that he drew rest and strength from his songs. She was sorry for the sick girl, a passive bundle of blankets inside the medicine hogahn, sadly in need of quiet and fresh air.

During that last day visitors began to arrive, until two or three hundred were camped in the valley. There was a slaughtering of sheep and wholesale boiling of coffee and tea. Slim Girl was kept gratefully busy helping in the preparations. The tenth night, with the rite of the Grandfather of the Gods, was the climax.

It was a fine spectacle, the many dancing figures in the firelight, their strange masks and the dull earth-colours, blue, red, white, yellow, black—a broad white zigzag across a black chest, a red figure on blue, outlined with white, standing out in the half-light of the fire. The dancers were never more intent, the chanting more ecstatic. There was real dramatic quality in the entrance of the Grandfather. She was interested, excited. These were her people, putting themselves in touch with eternal forces by means of voice, strength, rhythm, colour, design—everything they had to use. They were creating something strong and barbaric and suitable, and still beautiful.

 

'In beauty it is finished,
In beauty it is finished,
In beauty it is finished,
In beauty it is finished!'

 

 

V

 

The next day was one of let-down and much sleeping. By dusk, most of the visitors had ridden away. After supper, Laughing Boy's mother and uncles went over to one of the deserted summer hogahns. He finished his cigarette and followed. Wounded Face returned and spoke to Two Bows, who went back with him. Mountain Singer rode in, dismounted, and joined them.

So she was not to be allowed to fight for herself. None of the others at the fire paid any attention; not even casting an extra glance towards Slim Girl. She remembered vaguely that, when a marriage-contract was under discussion, it was the correct thing for the girl concerned to go well away from the house. She supposed that some such etiquette could be invoked to cover this occasion. It would have to do. She slipped out into the darkness, watching to see if her going caused any commentary of exchanged looks. Then she went swiftly away from the hogahns, past the corral, where she deliberately startled a herd-dog into barking.

She circled behind to come up on the summer hogahn, carefully now, thinking of the silent feet and quick ears of her people, feeling herself clumsy, her limbs managed by indirect control. She crouched in the shadow of the back wall, clutching her blanket about her for warmth, praying that her teeth would not chatter. She was clearly conscious of the beauty of the night, its stars and sharp cold, the smell of sage and sand, the faint rustle of leaves on the hogahn.

They were lighting a fire. When it was burning well, they gathered close to it, so that peering between the leaves and branches she saw them as dim, significant masses with their faces faintly shown, identifying them. Mountain Singer was in the place of honour, with his back to her; on his left sat Walked Around, Laughing Boy's mother; on his right was Spotted Horse. Wounded Face was next to him, facing Laughing Boy, and Two Bows sat a little bit back, near the door. She summed them up to herself, wishing she could be present to use her skill and have her share in
the approaching conflict. It was not fair. She wished she could see Mountain Singer's face; that old man's influence would be emphasized, now that he was just through conducting the chant, and her husband with serving him as acolyte. He was the leader of the Tahtchini Clan in this section; his importance was shown by his seat of honour in this conclave of people to whom he was only distantly related. Spotted Horse did not amount to much. Walked Around hated her, personally and with fear. Wounded Face was set against her for more general, but weighty reasons. As for Two Bows, she could not tell. He had a quality of understanding which might make him her friend or her most dangerous enemy. In any case, he was here only as a privileged outsider.

The fire began to make warmth, and tobacco was passed round. Nobody spoke for several minutes. Then Mountain Singer said: