The Night the White Deer Died (7 page)

“That was beautiful—a beautiful song. What is it all about?”

“Rain.” He said it short, nearly gruff. “It’s about rain—an old Navajo chant for rain to make the corn grow so they don’t have to use irrigation. It’s all about rain, water. Maybe so you got some sugar? This coffee would be better with sugar.”

She went to the cupboard and got sugar and made a face when he put four spoonfuls in the small cup and drank it hot and sticky-sweet, smacking his lips.

“I sing the song because it has much beauty in it
and makes me feel better when I don’t feel so good. Like now.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You got a dollar for Corky? I’m really hurtin’ for some wine.”

She shook her head. “No. No more dollars for wine.”

“What was all that singing?” Janet’s mother suddenly appeared at the kitchen doorway. “Oh, it was you. You’re up.”

Strangely Billy stood up when he saw her. “Yes. I’ll be out of here in a minute.…”

“You don’t have to do that.” She tossed a look to Janet. “Not really—I’d have kicked you out before if I objected to having you around.”

“Well, I don’t want to be in the way. Maybe so you got a dollar for some wine, and I’ll be getting out of your way.”

“No.”

“Billy!” Janet cut in. “I said no more money for wine.…”

“I’m going back to work. Remember our agreement, Janet.” Her mother left the room, and Billy sat once more at the table and finished the coffee and then he stood, abruptly, and started for the door.

“Where are you going?” Janet followed him.

“Out.”

“Yes, but out where? I mean why are you leaving so fast?” They were outside now, and he went through the gate without looking back, and she followed still, not sure why, until they got into the middle of the
street, and there he stopped and turned on her so that she practically stumbled into him.

“Why do you do this?”

His voice remained level, but she could detect a slight plaintive note in it, and it threw her so that for a moment she couldn’t answer, and when she did come up with something, it wasn’t much.

“I don’t know,” she said, and it was only half truth, but it was all she wanted to tell him.

“You follow me, and I am an old man, and you won’t give me money for wine, and you keep trying to make me eat and drink coffee and be good when I don’t want those things. Why do you do this?”

“I …” She shrugged. “It just happened, that’s all.”

“You came this morning and sat beside me at the back door of Corky’s liquor store and wouldn’t let me get happy drunk. You want me sober. Why is this? What does it mean to you if I am drunk or I am sober?”

There was nothing of anger in his voice, only the question, and she wondered if she should tell him about the dream, about all of it, but knew that she couldn’t. Not now, anyway.

“Once I had a wife named Easter,” he said, quickly smiling. “She was not too much but all right, all right, and stayed with me until she died of the disease that eats, and she was this way, always this way. Maybe so you’re doing the same thing as my wife Easter, and that’s not so good because you aren’t my wife.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, it’s not like that.…”

“Maybe so you’re just one of those little white girls that likes to meddle with Indians and make them do things or not do things because it makes you feel big?”

“No, Billy …”

“Then why do you do this?”

“It’s … oh,
I
don’t know. I just have to do it. Ever since that first morning when I was sitting on the park bench in the plaza and you got out of jail and came and sat next to me … and then this morning, when you came by with the kachina.” She was gushing but couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. “I just knew it was you, and that you’d be by the gate, and when you weren’t, I had to come looking for you, and if you really want a reason, I suppose it’s because I love you.…”

It was out before she could stop it, out and across the dirt into the heat of the midday before she could control it.

“Sort of. You know …” She added it lamely, tacked it on knowing it wouldn’t work, wouldn’t help. “The way people love all people, you know. That way.”

For a moment they stood in silence, and she looked down at her feet and saw that there was dust on the tops of her shoes, and she thought, how strange that there should be dust on
top
of my shoes. And for a little time that became the most important thing in her life, that dust, and she concentrated on it with all
her might but knew she was going to have to look up sooner or later.

And when she finally did look up, his eyes were on her evenly, with a look she couldn’t comprehend, had never seen before; it was a combination of pain and peace, that look, a kind of mixture of all the good and all the bad in the world, all evening out at the same time.

She wanted to say more, wanted to make it all right, but knew that anything she said would ruin something that was already damaged, so she kept her mouth shut, and he turned after a minute or a year or a life and walked off in the direction of the pueblo. She knew that she couldn’t follow, not this time, so she just stood and watched him move with that curious step-shuffle that made him look as if he were floating effortlessly over the ground.

And she wanted to call after him, wanted to say “Billy” because she knew now—knew that he was the brave in the dream because of the look she’d seen in his eyes, but she didn’t call; though her lips formed the word, no sound came, and she just watched until he was out of sight in the dust and heat.

9

For a week she neither saw nor heard Billy, and when ten days had passed with no contact and school had started in the new building north of town, up against the rugged mountains, there was too much in her life for her to think an awful lot about Billy.

School was as strange as before, almost bizarre. She was the only Anglo, except for one grade-school child who belonged to one of the teachers, and many of the other kids shunned her for that reason. But about an equal number of them seemed attracted to her for the same reason, and getting settled into classes and school life again amounted to a confused muddle of trying to evaluate whether a new acquaintance was going to be a friend or an enemy.

And always there was Julio, hovering in the background, walking behind her on the way home, making the little sounds, giving her candy and once some wrist jewelry, which he would hand her and move away before somebody saw them together—always there was Julio.

In some ways she liked having Julio interested in her. He was a powerful figure in school and kept other boys from hassling her, kept her life relatively smooth when it could have been otherwise. But no other boy would talk to her with Julio in the vicinity, out of fear and respect, and when school had been going for nearly two weeks and she’d begun to feel a bit like a very exclusive leper, Janet had stopped Julio on the way home one afternoon and braced him.

“Look. You have to give me a break.” She’d caught him completely off guard as he was rounding a corner to follow her.

“What do you mean?” Immediately he took what Janet called The Stance—tall, half-angled away from her, brooding, arrogant, but poised and ready. “What kind of break?”

“I’m not your private girl or something,” she’d said, and was surprised to feel the anger come into her voice. She wasn’t really angry at him, but there it was—rising hotly to the surface. “You’ve got me locked into something I don’t want to be into.”

For a full minute he looked at her in offended silence. Then he turned and walked off, leaving her standing, and she wasn’t certain if he’d understood or not.

At any rate it made little difference, because by the time another week had gone by, it was quite evident that whether Julio allowed her freedom or not, the other boys wouldn’t dare ask her on a date. Julio quit
following her, quit making the sounds at her to get her attention so that she could look at him and be ignored, but it made no real change except that now
nobody
was around her.

Except the girls, of course, but it was difficult for her to be friendly with them to any great depth because their lives were so vastly different from hers.

Not bad, not good, the way her life was not bad, not good to them—just different. And the difference was so profound that she knew she could never change enough to become true friends with any of them, at least not for years.

And her mother was working very hard, too, now that the hot summer was over. The crisp nights and soft days of fall, with splashes of gold in the aspens as they dropped their leaves and the almost unbelievable beauty of high desert and low mountains as they turned their faces to winter had come into their lives so subtly that Janet couldn’t really remember ever having lived anywhere else. Nor wanting to—she was due to visit her father in California for Christmas, and as much as she loved her father, she was wondering if she could get out of it.

There was too much beauty here to leave, and even being basically alone—when her mother was deep into sculpting, nothing else existed—Janet was not unhappy.

The dog followed her always, though she still hadn’t named him, and in a strange way the small animal
filled that part of her life that would normally have been lonely or sad.

Even the dream had ceased coming, and she had to force herself to remember when it had last come or just how it went; some of the images in the dream, the doe and the pond, were blurred in her memory, and now and then she smiled when she remembered the significance she’d given the dream.

It was all so silly, she thought now, so little-girlish and silly. The whole thing, the dream and the way it had scared her for no reason and the way she would wake up drenched with perspiration, and the way the dream took her mind, made her part of it all, was all so ridiculous that she now wondered sometimes if perhaps she hadn’t been a little off, a little crazy.

Maybe she was having trouble changing from a girl to a woman, she thought one cool evening halfway through the month of November, when there was a taste of winter in the air—a tease—and she sat alone in the kitchen while the
chink-chink
of her mother’s hammer and chisel came from the studio room. But then she smiled and thought that all of
that
was silly, too, just like her strange infatuation with Billy had been, or the hot anger that came when she talked to Julio, or the fact that she was sitting now alone in her kitchen even
thinking
about all the silly things that had been bothering her. She was on top of things right then; right at that moment, she would think
later, she was in complete control of her life and herself.

It had been six weeks since she’d seen Billy. She was settled in school, and she’d quit having the dream. Later she would think of that moment and wonder why it couldn’t have lasted all her life, why it just couldn’t have gone on and on, with her in complete control of everything that mattered to her.

But of course it didn’t, the way nothing can ever be good forever and nothing can ever be bad forever.

Because it was that same evening that she went to bed early, feeling so good about everything. She’d left her window open, the window that looked out on the courtyard, so the cool of the night could come into her room and make the heavy blanket of native wool, which she liked so much, feel comfortable.

She loved to sleep cold, loved it because it made her fresh and alive in the morning, but this particular time she would always wonder about leaving the window open—wonder what had made her do it.

Because with the window closed she might not have heard anything, might not have known what was going on.…

It was long after she’d gone to sleep, long after she was snuggled deep under the blanket and heavily into sleep that the persistent sound started.

It was a new sound, a strange sound, but a beautiful sound, and it cut through her sleep the way a warm knife moves through butter, until she was awake, only
not really, and the sound was still there but still part of her sleep somehow, and even when she opened her eyes and looked up at the
vigas
, the sound continued.