The Night the White Deer Died (10 page)

“We had wars,” he started. “And it was thus and so that after the Great Mother gave us this place and this
mountain as our own, there were others who came from the south, way down where they had nothing but sand and dryness because they had displeased the Great Mother and that is all she would give them.”

And here even his body showed the scorn, the utter degradation of the others who came from the south and who had displeased the Great Mother, and Janet felt almost ill at the thought of them.

“And they came up north to take what was ours, because we had water and good soil and stood in good relation to the gods. Tscha! They were fools and thought they were warriors of such stature that they brought their women and children and even their dogs with little skids to carry their meager supplies and clothing.”

His movements dipped and whirled so that Janet could see the dogs and children and the little skids, poles going back alongside the dogs and the dust of their walking, and she squinted, looking out with her mind at the picture of them walking and coming.

“We met them in the big flats of desert out away from our corn so they could not ruin crops, because we did not know if they understood the saving of crops even in battle. And we heard later that they had told their women to be ready to live in the small rooms of the pueblo by nightfall.”

He minced to show the women laughing and dancing, and Janet caught herself smiling as she saw them—women from an age dead and gone centuries before she was born—getting ready to move into the pueblo.

“Ahh, there was fighting that day that the people from the south could not expect, could not believe. They came to kill, to conquer, and instead they died, and their women sang the death songs for many, many days.

“We took our women with us to the battlefield to show them the scorn we held for them, to show them how little they were. And we stood in ranks with lines straight, and the women in back, and we used the big clubs with the sharp points on the end, and we killed them as they came at us, killed them and threw them over our shoulders like meat for dogs, and the women in back stuck little knives in the backs of their heads to make sure they were dead and cut them to show what we thought of them as men, and when that day was done, the people from the south were no more, no more, and the crows were fat for a whole summer with what they had to eat.

“We threw their bodies down in the gully south of the pueblo and took their women and children into our tribe, and those people were no more, nothing but a stink in the afternoon.”

He stopped suddenly, and Janet could smell the blood and dust in the heat of that day, could hear the women screaming and wailing, could see the wild savagery of the battle, and a part of her was sickened by it and made sad by the women’s crying and the children without fathers because they’d been killed in the battle.

But another part was thrilled, was excited by the story of the battle, and she related to the winning side because she sat now with one of the warriors. And as she looked up, his age vanished and the time vanished so that what stood before her was not Billy Honcho, old man in buckskins, but a young brave.

Tall, he stood, shining with his leather clothes in the new morning light, fresh from a battle three hundred years old, fresh with ancient blood and victory and with strength and sureness showing in and around him like something alive, a glow of life, and she reached out from where she sat, let the blanket fall and reached out.

And Billy reached down and took her hand and held it for a second and released it, and there was much that went between them, whole
worlds
that went between them when they touched there in that cold, still morning on the edge of the partially frozen pond.

She loved him. Not so much him, and it was not so much gushy love, but she loved what he was when he told the story, loved not just what he was but what he should have been, loved what he
could
have been if the time had been right for him.

She loved him. Because he was the Indian in the dream, but he was more than that too; more than simply a dream person, because when he’d told the story of the battle, she had actually seen him change and become a warrior in the fight. And even now, after the story and battle were done and he stood
silent, he was still all that he should and could have been, and she loved him for that; and all the wine and all that other part of his life were gone—shed like old skin or waste. Gone.

And what was left she loved and more, it was more than just love—she was awed by the strength of him, the power that had taken him and made his nostrils flare and his eyes blow fire and youth, and it scared her a little. But only a little, and it was a good fear—almost a fear of herself and the kind of fear that kept her out of trouble.

They were silent the rest of the morning, silent as the sun came up and made them warm, and they sat, Billy down by the pond, Janet on the blanket, through the whole day, off and on dozing and getting warm, and in the middle of the afternoon Billy uncoiled and stood and turned, and his face was soft, but still young.

“It is time.”

She had been dreamily looking at his back and the pond, staring into her mind, and she stood with him. “Time for what?”

“You must take the pony and go back down the mountain. I will stay.”

No
, she thought, but it didn’t come out, didn’t make it to her mouth.
No
cut through her thoughts and seared across the middle of her brain; no this is wrong no don’t do this no you don’t have to stay on the mountain, no I love you no don’t stay because there is no need; no, no, no.…

“You do not move.” His tone admonished. “You have something to say?”

“I would rather you didn’t do this—didn’t stay.” Some part of her wanted to run to him, run screaming and hold him and cry, but some new part wouldn’t let her do it, made her reserved. She hated the new part, but understood it.

“It is time.” He repeated, his voice flat. “I have done most things once. It is no good to do things twice. Down there,” he pointed with his face back in the direction of the pueblo, “there is only the wine. Only that.”

“But …”

“It is time.”

“I …”

“I know. I feel the same.” And a kind of torment slid into his words, a tremor, a smell of something unsure. “Do you think this thing is easy? Do not make it harder for me. It is time. Go. Now.”

She turned and walked back into the trees where he had tied the horses and untied the pony and climbed onto its back and rode out into the meadow and down in the direction of the pueblo and town because she knew it was something she had to do, had to leave him now, though it tore at her to do it.

She rode out across the meadow and started down the trail that led back to town and home, a fifteen-year-old girl with a mother who was divorced and with Julio who followed her and made the sounds in his
throat so she would turn and see him ignoring her. But at the last moment, just as the pony started on the down trail, she turned to look at Billy once more because she knew she would never see him again, and she loved him.

She loved him. For what he could have been, and she knew that he loved her the same way, for what they could have been. But when she turned to look, he had his back to her and was facing the pond and his shoulders were straight, and she knew he was waiting, waiting for his last battle, and that he wouldn’t be thinking about her. And she turned and rode down the mountain, and she did not look back again, did not once look back, though she cried and cried and was still crying so badly in grief for a love that was gone before it came, still crying so deeply and tearingly that when she rode into the courtyard of her home, she could not stop, could not get off the pony, and had to get help from her mother, who came out and half-carried, half-led her into the house and only patted her on the forehead and did not ask the reason for the crying.

After a time she slept, but it was not the kind of sleep that helps except temporarily, and she knew, even as she went to sleep, that she would probably spend the rest of her life trying not to think about Billy Honcho, which was something she wanted but did not want at the same time; and when she awakened in the night, because she was sinking, just sinking
forever all the way down, when she jerked awake she thought first of Billy, and she forced sleep to come again quickly because even the dream, which she knew was coming, even the dream was better than being awake.

It was the same dream, exactly.

The doe was white, and she dipped her muzzle to drink out of the milk-shimmering white of the pool, which shattered moonlight when her nose rippled the surface of the still water.

Drops of silver liquid spilled from her mouth when she raised her head from drinking, and it was all so beautiful and stark and white and still that Janet thought, Oh.

Just oh. And she reached out a hand in the dream to touch the deer, the way she might touch an especially soft and beautiful flower or a piece of delicate lace.

Then the brave appeared.

With the threat that somehow wasn’t a threat, he moved out of the brush and nocked an arrow to his bow and raised the bow and drew the arrow and looked down the shaft, aiming, so that light came from
his eyes and moved down the shaft of the arrow out across the pond to the neck of the deer. He was beautiful, too, though in a different way from the deer.

And even as she watched, he released the arrow, and it flew out of the bow down the light from his eyes and out across the still, white beauty of the pond. Like a white line in the moonlight it flew, making and leaving a line of cold fire; it streaked out of the bow and across the pond, and she could see it moving, almost slowly, but with infinite power and deadly intent from the bow and across the pond, leaving no shadow and no sound until it buried itself in the neck of the doe with a soft
thwup
sound.

The doe arched her neck and back up and over in an agonized torque, a fierce arc of pain and lost life, and she turned to her side and went down gently, the way a ballerina might sink in a death scene, and it was all done quietly so that even the light wasn’t disturbed. And when she was dead and down in the dream, bent and gone the way all things dead are bent and gone, Janet turned in the dream to look at the Indian and accuse him of this ugly thing, blame him; but when she turned, the Indian was gone. Or perhaps he had never been there and was all part of a dream within a dream.

Because in the dream when she turned to see the
fallen doe again, it was also gone, or perhaps had never been there; she couldn’t tell.

All that remained was the still white of the pool of water, which was part of the moonlight and part of the dream, and soon that, too, was gone, and there was nothing but sleep.…

GARY PAULSEN
is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor books:
The Winter Room
,
Hatchet
and
Dogsong
. His novel The Haymeadow received the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award. Among his newest Delacorte Press books are
The Beet Fields
,
Alida’s Song
(acompanion to
The Cookcamp
),
Soldier’s Heart
,
The Transall Saga
,
My Life in Dog Years
,
Sarny: A Life Remembered
(a companion to
Nightjohn
),
Brian’s Return
and
Brian’s Winter
(companions to
Hatchet
),
Father Water
,
Mother Woods: Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North Woods
and five books about Francis Tucket’s adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults, as well as picture books illustrated by his wife, the painter Ruth Wright Paulsen. Their most recent book is
Canoe Days
. The Paulsens live in New Mexico and on the Pacific Ocean.