The Rock Child (20 page)

He is a virtuoso whistler, capable of rapid scales, trills, turns, volumes loud and soft, tones piercingly brilliant, gently soothing. Perhaps the ladies who thought Niccolò Paganini the devil for his fiendish skill on the strings of the violin would be as much astounded by my young half-blood friend. His effects are no less impressive when the natural limitations of his instrument, two lips, are considered. Less dazzling, they are more soulful
.

After two verses and choruses, Annabelle DeSelie sang the words of the song, and showed how earthbound and crude are words in expressing the nuances of the heart, compared to music alone. The story of the song is simple, even primitive: A man bound for California but dying of fever asks his brother to hold him, then says final words by turns to his wife and children, and expresses deep faith at finding a home in the arms of God. The words are merely sentimental, dipped deep in pathos. Yet the eloquence of the fiddle, banjo, and especially the whistling made all poignant, heart-rending, beautiful beyond description
.

I ask myself, To what end? A mixed-blood lad living in the wasteland of the American interior, enfranchised neither among white or red, quite homeless, far, far from the great cities where music is loved—where can such a young man give expression to his genius? This circumstance alone might undo the complacent English notion that the Divinity sets us providentially upon the Earth and thenceforth takes care of us. True, I have seen a few employments for musicians in the West: They may act as pianists or organists in church, fiddlers in camp, or performers on the piano or hurdy-gurdy in whorehouses. Which end for Asie,
I ask, would be more ghastly? Oh, one more employment: He might beat the drum and give voice to bizarre caterwauling at the dances of the native peoples. It is an appalling dilemma
.

We were lucky—the DeSelies also intended to stay over a day and rest their animals. We all looked forward to a second night of dancing and singing and general music-making, too.

After breakfast Sir Richard, he did me a great service. “You’re grand on that banjo. Would you like to have it?”

“Do one-legged ducks swim in circles?”

“Perhaps Reeshaw would take the Hawkin in exchange for it. If so, I’ll make you a gift of the muzzleloader. The music in camp will be worth it.”

Reeshaw was a woodsman, knew the rifle would feed his family, and traded me the banjo gladly.

Sir Richard’s gift made me feel tremendous. Sometimes I’d felt like Sir Richard was Sun Moon’s protection on this journey, and I didn’t have anything to do. Of course, music is not as practical as a good gun, as Reeshaw could tell you.

That afternoon Annabelle and me walked out along the creek together and talked. Truth to tell, we even held hands. In this small courting I felt the approval of Root and Reeshaw, or at least their tolerance. Maybe it was only because we would hitch up and head out tomorrow morning and never see the DeSelies again. But I thought there was more than that to it. The Saints kept their girls away from me because I am not white and delightsome. When I went to make a match, my choices would probably have been among half-breed women, or other Lamanites getting the benefit of Saintly rearing. If I’d been really good, I might eventually have had a chance at a white girl, but only from the poorer families.

Root and Reeshaw, though, were mixed-bloods themselves. Those Métis went way back, the way they told it. Reeshaw’s words were, Before the memories of the oldest grandfathers. Root said, Since the first Frenchmen came into the country hunting furs. A long time anyhow.
And all that time the white and red blood had been mixed, till no one knew or cared who had how much of what color. The Métis even made their own way of talking, their own way of being Catholic, their own way of hunting, their own way of dividing up land, according to Root and Reeshaw. Whether you courted full red, full white, or mixed didn’t mean a damn. (Except to some white women that came into the country later, said Root.) So Root and Reeshaw, I think, just looked at me as a man, not an Indian. It felt good.

Annabelle, she felt good and not good all at once. She looked scrumptious and smelt grand, just jimmy-joomy. When I looked close, even more when I touched her hand, I felt desire. Up to then I’d hardly even held hands with anybody, and nothing more atall. I was in my twenties and powerful hungry for a woman, as you might guess. Walking along, sitting on a log, talking, and all else I did with Annabelle that day, sure, I felt like slipping her clothes right off her body and slipping myself in. But I couldn’t get started.

For one thing, even while I was flirting with Annabelle, pictures of Sun Moon kept popping into my head, and sounds of her voice. It drove me half-crazy, touching and feeling one woman while seeing and hearing another, like being two men in two places at once. In later years I heard of a split personality. That’s what I was that day.

A lot of times in my life one half of me has blundered into trouble, and later I’ve wondered where was the other half, the wiser, smarter, altogether better half. When we went wading in the creek, it turned into one of those times.

We were looking for minnows. They are favorites of mine. Instead of critters of matter like the rest of us, they look like little flashes of sunlight in the water. So delicate, so fast, so quicksilver.

“Let’s catch some,” said Annabelle. She took hold of her skirt and tucked the bottom up so the cloth ballooned down about halfway.

I’d never actually caught any. In the Pfeffer family we didn’t hold with hunting, fishing, or just roaming around in nature. I felt kinda afraid Annabelle would show me up at this catching ’em.

She did, too. She waded in calf-deep where she saw them, bent low, and put in her hands halfway down in the water. Then she stood still as anything you ever saw. That girl took a crazy-kid grin on her face and turned herself into a rock.

After a long while the minnows would start swimming around just like before—they’d accepted her as a log that fell into the creek or some
such. They began to pass right over her hand like it was a stick. She grinned even bigger and waited. Instead of being impatient, she seemed to wait longer than she needed to, just to show.

She moved swift as a hawk. Her hands shot straight on up, the minnow soared into the air above, and sparkling drops of water showered up with it. I could hardly see which gleam was minnow and which was droplet. Then both fell back into the creek, and the air was empty of all but sunlight.

“Crackajack,” says I, and clapped my hands sincerely. It was smart as a circus act.

“Let me show you how,” she says. So we did it together, side by side, touching hips sometimes and smiling like we had a secret. She did it twice more, and I loved seeing the fish fly. But they were quicker than me, and I came up empty.

“Let’s go over t’ere!” says she. We started splashing across the creek. Water might have been cold some times of years, coming out of the mountains to the southwest, but in summer it felt nice. Annabelle trotted ankle-deep to a log half in the water and started scrambling up. “Help me,” she says. I took her hand and supported her while she got onto her feet. “I want to stand all t’e way up,” she says, indicating her waist with her hands. I straddled the log and held her there.

She thrust her arms into the sky and let loose a call, long and lonely and beautiful. A loon call it was, she told me later, but I’d never been to the northern lake country and never heard a loon, before or since. She sounded to me like a mysterious and hauntingly beautiful bird that was looking for company. I wanted to call back, or whistle back, but I hesitated.

She shuffled to her right, got hold of a limb, and says, “Come on!”

I stood up next to her. She took my hand, let go the limb, raised her arms and mine to the sky, and stiff as a plank slowly toppled forward.

It was a hole. I came up flailing, and Annabelle was thrashing around beneath the surface.

I grabbed her under the back and the knees, turned, and hauled her up onto the sandy shore. I knelt and set her down but kept my arms underneath.

My feelings were doing loop-de-loops.
What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know
…?

Then I saw her thighs shiny wet, gleaming in the sun. Since she
wasn’t wearing any bloomers, I saw them right up to where they stopped being thighs and turned into something else. I looked at her eyes, laughing. I looked at her smile, sparkling. I looked at her nipples, poking up against her thin bodice.

I slipped my hands out from underneath and put both my hands on her breasts and caressed them through the cloth. “Not here,” she said, “over t’ere. I saw a place.”

She hopped up and ran off. With no idea where we were going, I panted along behind.

You know what my fantasies were. They went beyond the most direct thing you think of. Lying around in the raw, too, letting the sun warm our bodies. Making love again. Walking our fingers everywhere, stroking our palms everywhere. Making love again.

Still at a trot, she headed up a little hill. I followed, clutching at her. Just before we got to the bushes at the top, I caught her. I pulled her to me and kissed her hard, with all the twisties you can put in a kiss.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me on. It was a cave she was aiming at, a long, low slit in the bluff.

I stopped cold, and resisted her tug. Cold wriggled in my belly. My mind churned with premonition. My eyes worked the darkness of the cave. They said, “No, Porter Rockwell isn’t in there.” My throat squeezed and said, “Yes he is.”

Annabelle looked questioningly into my eyes. The warmth of her hand melted my fear, and desire defeated the fear of death. I laughed aloud.

We dived in, wrapped our arms around each other, giggling, and rolled until I ended up on top. I looked into her eyes. The moment had arrived.

A voice said gently, “Annabelle.”

Root’s voice.

We looked deeper into the cave and saw Root and Reeshaw. They were in about the same position as us. Only Reeshaw’s trousers was already down, and Root’s legs were showing up to you know where.

Never did I lose my enthusiasm for anything in such a hurry. I sat back, stood up, and clunked my head. Annabelle looked at me queer-like, stood up, and clunked her head. We took each other’s hands and pulled each other down, sitting, to keep it from happening again.

Reeshaw began to chuckle.

“Would you two wait for us outside?” asked Root.

Reeshaw was laughing but trying to keep it quiet.

We scurried like crabs to the entrance and halfway down the slope. Pretty quick they came out.

“You see cave,” he said, “t’ink maybe good place to …” He gave a Frenchy shrug. “Make love.” They looked at us, they looked at each other, and they plumb lost control laughing.

“Too late!” says Reeshaw between guffaws. He slapped his knees. Root did the same. They shook. They laughed. “Too late!” Reeshaw roared. “We walk, we see same, we t’ink same. Cave in use!”

“Sandy bottom of a cave,” Root said. She looked into Isabelle’s eyes. “Good idea, daughter.” They whooped again.

I blurted it out. “Sir, I’ll marry her. I will, I swear.” Wonderful what a fella will say when his legs are jumping to run, isn’t it?

Reeshaw gaped at me. Then at Annabelle. Then he shook his head at Root, eyes laughing. Then his hands were laughing, too, and chest, and belly. “
Marry!
” he exclaimed. “A dalliance in a cave, incomplete, and marry!” He pronounced it dah-lee-awnse. “Hoo-hoo-hah!”

Not only were they were both laughing, Annabelle was grinning at me. She slipped her arm through mine and gripped my hand warmly again.

“Me when young like you,” said Root, “I do my dalliances. If marry all, make husbands like army.”

They got lost in whooping again.

Sweet gizzards.

Sun Moon didn’t think it was so funny.

Nobody told her, of course, or told anyone, but she had eyes. The young DeSelie girl took Asie’s hand when she felt like it, smiled at him possessively, put her arm around his waist. He obviously liked it. Loved it. Worst of all, they had that moony look new lovers get.

New travelers had rolled into camp, and the people treated Asie and Annabelle as a couple. All the Americans were excited. Tonight the desert air would burst with music. Everyone would dance. Asie and Annabelle would dance together, their eyes so locked on one another that their gazes would be like ropes intertwining.

Sun Moon was disgusted. With him, with herself, with everyone.
Lingam
and
yoni
might be drawn to each other, but they were base energies,
mere appetites. Asie ought to be pouring his energy into something more important, like his drumming.

When Asie walked toward the creek with a bucket, Sun Moon followed him. She spoke to his back as he dipped the bucket for water. “You go with them? Stay with DeSelie woman?”

Asie straightened up and looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

“The DeSelie woman. You go with her? With them? Or you stay with us?”

Asie stepped around her with difficulty, pulled down on one side by the heavy bucket. “Sun Moon, you and I and Sir Richard are crossing the desert to Californy. That’s that.” He kept walking.

“I think…”

Asie set the bucket down and turned back. “I know what you think. It ain’t so.”

She looked into his face. She couldn’t help wondering,
Would it be so if I didn’t speak up? Were you thinking of it?
She blinked, and hoped the deep twilight kept him from seeing the hurt on her face.
Am I not as pretty? Do you hate my scar? Why would you take great trouble to help a foreigner like me?

Asie turned his back, hoisted the bucket, and lumbered off.

Sun Moon watched.
What am I doing? I feel jealous—I can’t deny the feeling—and why? I don’t want Asie for myself. I am desperate, desperate to remain celibate the rest of my life
.

She shrugged it off. Sometimes she didn’t understand herself. After meditation she didn’t understand better in her head, but she felt free of the negative feelings that got hold of her, like jealousy.