Laughing Boy (15 page)

'We are thinking about my younger brother here; we are thinking about what he should do. We have come here to talk it over with him.'

They went on smoking. They were sombre bundles of shadow, in their blankets, with faces of people faintly seen. Wounded Face spat out a grain of tobacco. 'My nephew, we do not think it is good, this thing you are doing. We have talked about it a long time among ourselves. We know about that woman, that she—'

Laughing Boy raised his head. 'You have said those things once, uncle, and I have heard them. Do not say them again, those things. If you do, there will not be any talk. Tell yourself that I have heard them, and know what I think of them. They were said in Killed a Navajo's hogahn. I heard them there. Now go on from that.'

They talked, watching the end of their cigarettes, or with the right hand rubbing over the fingers of the left, as though to bring the words out, or touching each finger-tip in turn, with their eyes upon their hands, so that the even voices seemed utterly detached, the persons mere media for uttering thoughts formed at the back of nowhere.

'Perhaps you are mistaken, I think, but I do as you say. You are making unhappiness for yourself, you are making ugliness. You
are of The People, the good life for you is theirs. It is all very well now while your eyes and your ears and your nose are stopped up with love, but one day you will look around and see only things that do not fit you, alkali-water to drink. You will want your own things, and you will not be able to fit them, either, I think.

'It is all very well that you deceive the younger people with your clothes and hard goods and manners, but we can see that all the time you are apart. And you are just a light from her fire, just something she has made. She has acted and spoken well here, that one. She speaks above and below and before and behind, but she does not speak straight out forward, I think.'

'We live like other People.'

'Even your beginning was like Americans. You talked about it with each other, you two arranged it face to face. You had no shame. She caused that. Have you been married?'

'Yes.'

'Who sang?'

'Yellow Singer.'

'Did you look at him? No, I think. You looked at him with your eyes, so as not to fall over him when you walked past; did your mind see him? No, I think. If you think now about him, you will see him, perhaps. You will see what is left of a man when he leaves our way, when he walks in moccasins on the Americans' road. You have seen other People who live down there. Some of them are rich, but their hearts are empty. You have seen them without happiness or beauty in their hearts, because they have lost the Trail of Beauty. Now they have nothing to put in their hearts except whiskey.'

Slim Girl winced.

'Those people cannot dance in a chant and do any good. You would not want Yellow Singer to hold a chant over you, it would not bring you
hozoji.

'You say live like The People. Why do you live apart, then? Does she not like to be with The People, that woman?

'I have spoken.'

Laughing Boy made a gesture of brushing aside. His uncle threw his cigarette butt into the fire with an angry motion.

Walked Around leaned forward. 'What my brother says is good, but it is not all, what he has said. I have watched you, how you go about. This valley T'o Tlakai speaks to you with tongues, I think. When you look over to Chiz-na Hozolchi you hear singing, I think. You hasten to speak with your own people, you like to use your tongue for old names. You care more to talk about our sheep and our waterholes—your waterholes—than we do. You belong with us, and we want you. We want good for you. When you are gone, we know that you are away. That woman keeps you from us. Why does she do it? If she means good towards you and we mean good towards you, why should she be afraid of us? Perhaps because she wants to make you into something else, she does it. Perhaps because if you were among us you would see straight.

'She has no parents, no uncles, that she should build her hogahn near them. There are plenty of the Bitahni Clan here; let her come here. Come and live among us, your own people. Perhaps then, if she is not bad, we shall see that we are wrong, we shall learn to love her, my child.'

Clever, clever, you bitch!

Laughing Boy moved his hand again.

Wounded Face took up the word. 'You are young, you do not like to listen.'

His voice was level, but he was angry; there was tension in the hut. That was good; if they showed anger they would lose him forever.

'You do not intend to hear what we say.'

Mountain Singer interrupted him. 'His father taught him to hunt, to dance, and to work silver. His father knows him best of us all, I think. Grandfather, what is in your mind?'

This was more important than anything heretofore.

Two Bows spoke slowly. 'We have all seen his silver, her blankets. We have seen him dance. We know, therefore, how he is now. We know that, now, all is well with him.

'A man makes a design well because he feels it. When he makes some one else's design, you can tell. If he is to make some one else's design, he must feel it in himself first. You cannot point a pistol at a man and say, "Make heat-lightning and clouds with tracks-meeting under them, and make it beautiful."

'My son is thinking about a design for his life. Let him tell us, and if it is not good, perhaps we can show him.'

'You have spoken well, Grandfather.'

'Yes, you have spoken well.' It was Spotted Horse's only contribution.

They all shifted slightly, watching Laughing Boy. He spoke without hesitation, but selecting his words precisely.

'I had not spoken, because I thought all your minds were made up. Now I shall tell you. I heard what my uncle told me that time; I saw Yellow Singer and those others down there. I have thought about all those things. I have not just run in like a crazy horse. Everything has been new, and I have watched and thought.

'I have been with that woman many moons now. I tell you that I know that those bad things are not true. Hear me.

'It is true that our life is different, but we are not following the American trail. Do not think it, that thing. She is different. She does everything as we do, more than most school-girls; but she is different. You have seen our silver, our blankets; if you come to us you will see how everything is like that. It is beautiful. It is the Trail of Beauty. You will just have to believe me, it is something I never imagined, we have nothing here to compare with it, that life. We do only good things. Everything good that I have ever known, all at once, could not make me as happy as she and her way do.

'Look at me. I am older than when I left here, I know what I say. My mind is made up. I do not want you to be angry with me; I do not want you to be unhappy about me; I do not want you to tell me not to come back. You may not believe me, but I want you to wait.

'It does not matter. I know. I have spoken.'

 

VI

 

Her triumph was real and urgent, but now was no time for indulging it. She walked back to the fire circle as though, from her waiting place apart, she had just seen the counsellors returning. It was time to go to bed; she found her place on the sheepskins inside the hogahn. It was stuffy and warm in there save for a faint draft of air in under the blanket that closed the door and out the smoke-hole, and a coldness that seeped through the ground from outside, where the finger-tips of one hand had touched the floor.

That is how he feels, then. All mine. I can do anything.
Ya,
Wounded Face! Then, if I am so sure of him, why not come to live here? It is dangerous there. What a strange idea: when I am most sure I can do as I want, I give it up. Hunh! We have made almost a thousand dollars in ten months, counting the horses he has now. Everything is going perfectly. George eats out of my hand. I am strong.

She was becoming drowsy and making pictures. There was a story she remembered faintly, how Nayeinezgani did not kill the Hunger People. An allegory; her Slayer of Enemy Gods could not kill them, either. She could do away with them.

I have seen more than you and all you People, I know more. I shall lead you on the trail.

I, Slim Girl, Came With War.

I

 

They rode away from T'o Tlakai in gay company—Bay Horse and Bow's Son, Tall Brave from T'ies Napornss and his wife, and half a dozen others, men and women, returning towards T'o Tlikahn, Tsébitai, and Seinsaidesah. It had turned sharply cold, the ponies went well; they played and raced, showing off their jewelry and best clothes and horsemanship—all young people. Bay Horse smoked on a dead twig, blowing out clouds of breath.

'See my new magic! I take this twig, and it is a lighted cigarette.'

'
Ei-yei
, Grandfather; see if you can swallow all your smoke.'

They came to the foot of the slope leading to Gomulli T'o trading post.

A man said, 'Let us go buy some crackers and canned fruit.'

'It's too cold. Some coffee would be good, I think.'

'Maybe Yellow Mustache will give us some,' Laughing Boy said. 'Why did he not come to the dance?'

'Yellow Mustache is not there any longer; he has gone to Chiezb'utso. The man there now is called Narrow Nose.'

'What is he like?'

'He is no good. When we put things in pawn, he sells them before we can buy them back. He is small; inside himself he is small.'

'He tries to be smart with us, but he is not good at it. His word is not good.'

'He thinks we are fools. He ought to look at himself.'

Laughing Boy broke into the chorus of information—'Wait a moment!'

He rode over to Jesting Squaw's Son and whispered in his ear. His friend smiled.

'I am thinking about coffee. I can make him give us all coffee free, I think. Who will bet?'

'I know you,' said Bay Horse, 'I won't.'

Bow's Son whispered to Slim Girl, 'He is like this. They are like this, those two, when they are together. They are not for nothing, their names.'

'I will bet two bits, just to make a bet,' Tall Brave said.

A stranger offered fifty cents. Laughing Boy gave each of them his stake.

'Now, you all go up to the post. Go in. Do not buy, not anything. None of you know me; if any one else is there tell him not to know me; but you all know my grandfather here. You, little sister,' he looked at his wife, 'stay here.'

They rode away while he advised with his friend. Then he explained to Slim Girl, and took her silver bridle. After a slow cigarette he said,

'When that shadow reaches that stick will be time, I think. I go.'

Gomulli T'o trading post stood on a flat, bare shoulder of sand and rock, a level space of half a dozen acres, rising to the west, falling to the east. There was a corral with sides six feet high, and the L-shaped one-story house of stone and adobe with a corrugated iron roof. Around it was nothing green, nothing varied, just sand and rocks, some tin cans, part of a rotted blue shirt. There was no relief. In summer the drenching sun searched out its barren walls; in winter the wind was bleak around it. It was just something dumped there, a thing made by man, contributing nothing, in the midst of majestic desolation. Beyond its level were red-brown cliffs, dull orange bald-rock, yellow sand, leading away to blend into a kind of purplish brown with blue clouds of mountains for background. This did not belong; it was crushed and empty.

Besides the ones belonging to his own party, Laughing Boy noted two other ponies hitched by the corral. He made his fast with a bow-knot, the animal being rather unenterprising and not
having learned how to untie them. He looped the reins over the saddle-horn and sauntered to the door of the store, trailing the bridle carelessly, and adjusting his recently acquired hat. It was a stiff-brimmed felt, with the crown undented and the string tied under the chin, Indian fashion, becoming him well. He gave it a wicked slant.

The store was a square room with a counter around three sides; in the fourth the door and a small window. Another door in the back led to the rest of the house. Now the room was rank with tobacco smoke and the heat of an iron stove. The Indians lounged along the counter, leaning on it with their elbows, talking or staring at the goods on the shelves. He recognized the owners of the two ponies—Stinks Like a Mexican, an old rogue with his hair cut short to the level of his ears, who had worked for the railroad, and Long Tooth, the policeman from T'ies Napornss.

He stood in the door.

Bow's Son regarded him blankly.

'Where to, tell?'

'To T'o Tlakai, for the dance.'

'The dance is over; we come from it.'

'Chiendi!'

'Where from, tell?' Tall Brave asked.

'Chiziai.'

'That's far!'

'Yes. You tell, where do you live?'

'T'ies Napornss.'

He drifted to the far end, where the trader sat, feet on the counter, chewing listlessly. The man was partly bald, with drooping, pepper-and-salt mustaches and a stupid, narrow face. He looked stingy and ignorant, not bad.

An unsuccessful dry farmer, he had bought a poor post, sight unseen, and come out to make quick money from the ignorant Indians. Somehow it didn't work. They fooled him and exasperated him until he strove frantically to outcheat them, and that didn't work either. He had no idea of how to attract their trade,
nor of how to circumvent their sharpness. It was always like this. Two men had been there since he opened the store in the morning, making one nickel purchase, and now none of these others wanted to buy. They just wanted to talk. They thought he was running a God-damned club.

Laughing Boy sprawled against the counter, clicking a quarter against his teeth. His face was vacuous while he studied the ranks of tin cans. This part came natural to him. He thought idly that it was six months since he had been in a store. It was too bad Yellow Mustache was gone. Yellow Mustache would have welcomed him, and probably given him some candy.

'What kind of candy have you?' He spoke in the baby-talk Navajo that they use with Americans.