Laughing Boy (3 page)

It is rude to call a man brother-in-law, and like most Navajos, he enjoyed using the term, and teaching it, to innocent foreigners. Americans were good fun. This one gave him a black cigar, cutting the end for him and holding out a match. It nearly killed him at the first whiff, only medicine-hogahn experience in swallowing smoke enabled him to keep a calm face.

'This is good!' He passed it over to his friend, who habitually inhaled deeply. 'It is like the magic tobacco Natinesthani gave the magician. We have nothing like this. Try it, elder brother.'

He tried it, cautiously at first, the tiniest puff, then a good lung-full that clutched his agonized insides like talons. Desperately he fought back tears and a choking cough, while Laughing Boy struggled with almost equal difficulty to keep a straight face. By a heroic effort he let the smoke out slowly. Then, with a sigh that disguised relief as critical enjoyment,

'Yes, little brother, that is very good tobacco.'

The tourist was fingering Laughing Boy's belts, pulling them around. The Indian thought of pulling in turn at his necktie, but decided it would be poor business.

'Ask him how much he wants for the one with the turquoise in it.'

'How much do you want for the one with the blues, Grandfather?' the guide asked.

'A horse, perhaps.' He puffed gingerly at the cigar which Jesting Squaw's Son passed back to him.

'I'll offer you a nickel, perhaps.'

Both laughed.

'You say, how much.'

The formal gambits were over. The guide cocked his head, pursed his lips, and looked critical and rather disgusted. 'I'll give you twenty-five dollars.'

'No, no.'

'How much, then?'

He took it off. 'This is a good belt. These stones are good. The silver is heavy; Mexican silver. That is good work. Seventy-five dollars.'

The guide grunted, and threw a pinch of sand on it in token of its worthlessness.

'What does he say he wants?'

'He says seventy-five.'

'What's it worth?'

'Up to about sixty, I guess. Them's good stones.'

'Get it for less if you can.'

Laughing Boy passed the cigar back. His friend, who knew a little English, whispered, 'He says sixty, I think, that he will pay.' He blew out on the cigar to use up as much as was possible.

Laughing Boy asked the guide, 'Where do you come from?'

'From Besh Senil. We are going to the Moqui.'

'
Ei-yei!
That's far! Why do you want to see the Moqui?'

'We want to see them dance with snakes.'

'They are crazy to do that. Our dances are better.'

'Perhaps. Well, this man says your belt is pretty good, and he will give you forty for it. No more.'

'No, seventy, no less.' He buckled it on again.

'Perhaps we can give you forty-five, but that is all.'

Laughing Boy took the cigar again. It was a long time burning down. He wondered if he would die and be brought to life again, like the magician who smoked with Natinesthani.

'What does the Indian want?' the tourist asked.

'He still says seventy; it's too much.'

'Get it if you can.'

Laughing Boy whispered, 'What are they saying, Grandfather?'

'I'm not sure. That one who speaks Navajo says "too much," I think. The pink one says "get it."'

The guide spoke to them. 'This man says he will give you fifty because he likes your belt. He cannot give any more.'

'No, I do not want to sell. He does not want to pay what it is worth, he is just talking about wanting it.' The cigar was done at last. He rose.

'Oh, give him what he wants!'

'How much, Grandfather? You say.'

'Sixty-five, perhaps.'

'He says sixty-five. Looks like he won't come down no lower.'

'Til take it.'

'He says he'll take it.'

Laughing Boy handed over the belt. 'Grandfather, do you know this paper money?'

Jesting Squaw's Son considered the bills. 'Yes, these with tracks here in the corners are fives. These with little sticks and the man with long hair and the ugly mouth on them are ones. This with the yellow back, I do not know it. I think it is no good.' He had been stung once on cigar coupons.

At last the sum was made up, with ones, fives, and the silver dollars which they preferred.

'Ask that man,' Laughing Boy told the guide, 'to give us another of those big, black cigarettes. They are good.'

The guide translated.

'My God! I thought it would make them sick. Here's one for each of them.'

'Good. Now, Grandfather, give me some cigarette papers.'

The guide forked up. As they shook hands all around, elaborately, Navajo fashion, the Americans' faces and voices seemed to grow very distant and uncertain. Riding away, Laughing Boy sighed deeply.

'Let us go to a quiet place. I want to be sick.'

'I too.'

Later, at sunset, they went to wash at the pool, dipping up liquid silver and lilac in their hands. They lay back against the rock watching the sun go down, the shadows and lights on the water, the distant fires and people moving. They had slept, they felt very empty, clean, and peaceful.

'Shall we try making a cigarette with that tobacco?'

'Not yet, I think. Go tend your horse. It is time to eat again.'

'I go. I hope there will be much gambling after this.'

I

 

The dance of the second night was much like that of the first, although perhaps a little less exuberant. He entered once more into the river of song, and was happy, yelling his head off, save that he kept on being conscious of that girl. While she was dancing, he would forget about her, but when he saw her looking for another partner, he would be uneasy until she had made her choice. He noticed that she did not dance with Red Man. Halfway between midnight and dawn, the women having departed, he fell out, to sleep by a fire.

They rode down to Ane'é Tseyi that day, where the dance of the final night would be held. He rode behind Jesting Squaw's Son's saddle, leading the mare. He hoped they would find a place with some grass for the animal, and reflected that in any case, now, he could afford to buy corn. The long, hot ride, hot sun, hot wind, unrelieved, weighed on them somewhat, combining with lack of sleep to make limbs sluggish and eyes heavy. It was a relief to ride into the narrow cañon of their destination, to rest in a strip of afternoon shade. Laughing Boy took the horses down to the windmill for water, and staked them out in a corner where uncropped spears of grass stood singly, each inches from the next, in brown sand. A beaten track toward an oak tree and a break in the rock caught his eye. A spring, perhaps.

He followed it. Behind the oak, currant bushes grew in a niche of red rock like the fold of a giant curtain. At the back was a full-grown, lofty fir. A spring, surely. Behind the fir a cleft opened at shoulder height into transparent shadow. The footholds were
worn to velvety roundness in the sandstone; at one side a pecked design showed that long before the Navajos had swooped upon the land, a people of an elder earth had known this entrance. Laughing Boy climbed lightly in.

It was a stone-lined pocket, scarce twenty feet across, narrower at the top. One went forward along a ledge at one side, shouldering against young aspens, then slid down a rock face into a curving bowl, with a seep at one lip from which silent water oozed over moss and cress into the bottom. Spears of grass grew in cracks. By the tiny pool of water in the bowl was a square of soft turf with imprints of moccasins. He squatted there, leaning back against the rock. Here was all shade and peace, soft, grey stone, dark, shadowed green, coolness, and the sweet smell of dampness. He dabbled his hands, wet his face, drank a little. He rolled a cigarette with crumpled cigar tobacco. This was good, this was beautiful.

Away above, the intolerant sky gleamed, and a corner of cloud was white fire. His eyes shifting lightly, the edge of the rocks above took on a glowing halo. He amused himself trying to fit it back again, to get the spot the cloud made back against the cloud, playing tricks with his half-closed eyelashes that made things seem vague.

'Ahalani!' The
two-toned greeting came from a voice like water.

He returned to himself with a start. Slim Girl stood poised on the edge of the bowl, above his shoulder, water-basket in hand.

'Ahalani, shicho.'
Dignified, casual.

'Move over, wrestler, I want to come down.'

He observed her small feet in their red, silver-buttoned buckskin, sure and light on the rocks as a goat's. She seemed to be hours descending. She was business-like about filling the basket, but she turned utilitarian motions into part of a dance. Now she knelt, not two feet from him, taking him in with the long, mischievous eyes that talked and laughed.

She is a butterfly, he thought, or a hummingbird. Why does she not go away? I will not go—run away from her. He thought, as he
tried to read her face, that her slimness was deceptive; strength came forth from her.

'Now, for ten cents, I go.'

He blinked. 'I save that to get rid of you to-night, perhaps.'

'I do not dance to-night. There is trouble, a bad thing. I come from far away.'

He thought he had better not ask questions. 'To-morrow there will be horse-racing, a chicken-pull, perhaps.'

'And you have a fine horse to race, black, with a white star and a white sock.' He grunted astonishment. She smiled. 'You are a good jeweler, they say. You made that bow-guard. You sold Red Man's belt to the American, they say, for sixty-five dollars.'

'You are like an old wife, trying to find out about everything a man is doing.'

'No, I am not like an old wife.'

They looked at each other for a long time. No, she was not like an old wife. Blood pounded in his ears and his mouth was dry. He pulled at the end of his dead cigarette. At length,

'You should stay for the racing. There will be fine horses, a beautiful sight.'

'I shall stay, perhaps.'

Her rising, her ascent of the rock, were all one quick motion. She never looked back. He stayed, not exactly in thought, but experiencing a condition of mind and feeling. Loud laughter of women roused him, to pass them with averted eyes and go forth dazed into the sunlight.

 

II

 

The last night of the dance was a failure for Laughing Boy, for all its ritual. He tried to join the singing, but they were not the kind of songs he wanted; he tried to concentrate on the prayer that was being brought to a climax, but he wanted to pray by himself. He quit the dance, suddenly very much alone as he left the noise and the light behind him, strongly conscious of himself,
complete to himself. He followed a sheep trail up a break in one cañon wall, to the rim, then crossed the narrow mesa to where he could look down over the broad Ties Hatsosi Valley, a great pool of night, and far-distant, terraced horizon of mesas against the bright stars, cool, alone, with the sound of the drumming and music behind him, faint as memory. This also was a form of living.

He began to make up a new song, but lost interest in it, feeling too centred upon himself. He sat noticing little things, whisper of grass, turn of a leaf—little enough there is in the desert at night.

 

'Yota zhil-de tlin-sha-igahl...'

 

His song came upon him.

 

'A-a-a-ainé, ainé,
I ride my horse down from the high hills
To the valley,
a-a-a.
Now the hills are flat. Now my horse will not go
From your valley,
a-a-a.
Hainéya, ainé, o-o-o-o.'

 

Slim Girl sat down beside him. His song trailed off, embarrassed. They rested thus, without words, looking away into the night while contemplation flowed between them like a current. At length she raised one hand, so that the bracelets clinked.

'Sing that song.'

He sang without effort. This was no common woman, who ignored all convention. The long-drawn
'Hainéya, ainé, o-o-o-o,'
fell away into the lake of darkness; silence shut in on them again.

On the heels of his song he said, 'My eldest uncle is here. I am going to speak to him tomorrow.'

'I should not do that if I were you.'

He rolled a cigarette with careful movements, but forbore to light it. Again they sat watching the motionless stars above the shrouded earth. No least breeze stirred; there were no details to be seen in the cliffs or the valley, only the distant silhouettes against
the sky. A second time her hand rose and her bracelets clinked, as though speech unannounced would startle the universe.

'You are sure you are going to speak to your uncle, then?'

'Yes.' The second self that is a detached mentor in one's mind recognized that he would never have talked this way with any other woman. Etiquette had been left behind down in the narrowness of Ane'é Tseyi.

'Perhaps you will listen to what he says, I think; perhaps you will not. Perhaps your mind is made up now.'

'I am thinking about what I intend to do. I shall not change.'

'We shall see then. Good-bye.'

She rose like smoke. He called a startled 'Good-bye,' then began to follow at a distance. He stopped at the rim of the cañon, where the noise of singing that welled up from below passed him by as he stood watching her dark form, down to the bottom, along by the grove where his camp was, and beyond into the shadows.

He went back to the far edge of the mesa. He did not want to sleep, not ever again.

 

'Now with a god I walk,
Now I step across the summits of the mountains,
Now with a god I walk,
Striding across the foothills.
Now on the old age trail, now on the path of beauty wandering.
In beauty—
Hozoji, hozoji, hozoji, hozoji-i.'

 

The deep resonance of the prayer carried his exaltation through the land. Then he began to analyse her words, finding in them nothing save unconventionality, no promise, and his own he found laggard and dull. Was she playing with him, or did she mean all he read into her brevity? Was she thus with other men?