Ceremony (32 page)

He woke up when the sky was dark gray, the transition from night already started. Blackbirds swarmed above the junipers; their noise increased with the dawn light and they fluttered and circled their roosting places restlessly. The moon had gone down, and only a few stars still blinked in the west. He slid out of the culvert slowly; his legs were stiff from being drawn up near his belly for warmth. He pulled the collar of his Levi jacket up around his chin and shoved his hands into his pockets. It was still dark along the ground and among the trees, but the sky was getting lighter, the blue gray streaked with red light, like a belly opening under a knife. A frail luminous glow pushed out between the edges of horizon and clouds.

He watched the shadows carefully, checking up and down the wood-hauling road that came down the broken shale ridge and intersected the Acoma road. There had been no vehicles all night, but he had to make sure they weren’t waiting somewhere for daylight. The tall yellow rice grass and the broken gray shale ridge were undisturbed by outlines of darker objects that did not belong with the junipers and yuccas. Nothing moved up there. To the west the yellow sandstone cliffs were beginning to catch the light. In the distance he saw the windmill where he and Josiah had chased the spotted cattle after they had wandered through the Acoma fence. Somewhere around there the first gray mule had eaten a poison weed and died; the bones would be scattered in the tall grass around the windmill. It was too early to think of bones, even old gray mule bones, but he realized that all along the valley the cliffs were full of shallow caves and overhangs with springs. But there were other caves too, deeper and darker. He turned away. The cloudy yellow sandstone of Enchanted Mesa was still smoky blue before dawn, and only a faint hint of yellow light touched the highest point of the mesa. All things seemed to converge there: roads and wagon trails, canyons with springs, cliff paintings and shrines, the memory of Josiah with his cattle; but the other was distinct and strong like the violet-flowered weed that killed the mule, and the black markings on the cliffs, deep caves along the valley the Spaniards followed to their attack on Acoma. Yet at that moment in the sunrise, it was all so beautiful, everything, from all directions, evenly, perfectly, balancing day with night, summer months with winter. The valley was enclosing this totality, like the mind holding all thoughts together in a single moment.

The strength came from here, from this feeling. It had always been there. He stood there with the sun on his face, and he thought maybe he might make it after all.

He walked north on the Acoma road until the culvert and windmill were out of sight. The sun was climbing, and he could hear warbling meadow birds and mourning doves calling from the tall grass beside the road. The sun was nearing its autumn place in the sky, each day dropping lower, leaving more and more of the sky undilute blue. Before he could hear it, he felt the presence of something else; maybe he felt it through the soles of his boots on the road: vibrations of a vehicle approaching from behind. He stopped and listened until he could hear it, still in the distance; and he started looking for places on the side of the road where he could hide. He argued with himself that he was safe again; he felt strong, and the dread of the night before was gone. But he remembered the Army doctors in their dark green Government cars, and he moved suddenly from the road into the juniper trees. He knelt and looked between the sparse bottom branches of the tree; it seemed like a long time, and his hands were full of cold sweat when the pickup truck finally appeared. It was moving very slowly, the engine whining in low gear. Leroy’s truck. Leroy and Harley. His stomach smoothed out and he felt loose. He was smiling and suddenly close to tears because they had come when he needed friends most. He stepped out from behind the juniper tree and waved both arms above his head.

Harley leaned out the window on one elbow. He was wearing a short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt with red and white flowers all over it, and he had a pair of dark glasses in his shirt pocket. Leroy was wearing an old Army shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders. Tayo knew why Harley was driving; Leroy was so drunk that when he opened the door for Tayo, the door handle pulled him off the seat and halfway to the ground. Leroy swayed on the running board, holding the door handle tight, until Tayo steadied him and helped him back inside.

“Thanks, buddy,” Leroy said, staring straight ahead, slouching down on the seat.

Harley reached into the big shopping bag and pulled out a can of beer. He handed Tayo the opener. “You’re just in time for our party,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Celebrating the day we enlisted. When was it you and Rocky signed up?”

Tayo shook his head; suddenly he felt thin and dizzy. He was exhausted; even shoving Leroy back into the truck had made him sweat and breathe hard.

“I don’t remember,” he said, forcing out the words. He was still holding the beer in one hand and the opener in the other. Harley’s breath smelled like wine; his eyes were bloodshot and now he was driving the truck fast, talking all the time.

“Hey man, open it! Start drinking! We’re gonna have a party!”

Harley poked Leroy in the ribs with an elbow. “Open it for him!”

Leroy reached for the opener and beer can unsteadily. He jerked the opener out of Tayo’s hand and it fell on the floorboards.

“Ah shit!” Leroy slurred the words.

“I’ll get it.” The blood rushed to Tayo’s head and he felt around the floorboards blindly for the opener. He gave it to Leroy and sat back on the seat with his eyes closed, breathing hard.

“Hey! Are you sick or something?”

Tayo shook his head. Harley must have heard the rumors Emo had started.

“Just tired, that’s all.”

Harley didn’t slow down for the ruts or bumps, and the truck bounced hard. Leroy leaned hard against Tayo. “Goddamn it, Harley!” Leroy yelled. “I can’t open it when you drive that way!”

“Shit! You’re too drunk to open it! Here! Let me!” Harley let go of the steering wheel and grabbed the opener and beer can; he leaned over the steering wheel, steadying it with his chest while he punched open the can. Beer spurted out in a foamy spray. Harley shoved it into Tayo’s lap. He held his hand over it tight. His shirt and pants were soaked with beer. Leroy was laughing; there was beer dripping off his face. Harley had the accelerator all the way to the floor. The truck was swaying from one side of the road to the other, spinning up rocks and gravel that struck the underside of the truck.

“Hey! You gonna drink it or spill it?”

Leroy laughed while Tayo tried to get the can to his mouth without spilling it or being thrown against the dashboard. The foam was warm; it stung his tongue.

“You guys got a head start on me, don’t you?”

“We been at it all night,” Leroy said, blinking his eyes, trying to focus on Tayo’s face. “Driving around all night, huh, Harley, didn’t we?”

“Never listen to a drunk,” Harley said to Tayo. “This guy doesn’t remember nothing. We were in Gallup last night.”

Tayo tried to look at Harley’s face when he said that, but Harley was looking away, over his elbow out the window. He swallowed some more warm beer and tried to think calmly. The pickup had come from the south, down the Acoma road, so how could they have been in Gallup the night before unless they had taken the wagon road and come over the mesa the back way from McCartys? But they usually stayed on 66, where there was a bar every ten or fifteen miles, or “every six-pack,” as Harley liked to say. Harley and Leroy were his buddies. His friends. But he was feeling something terrible inside, and his heart was beating hard now, from what Leroy had said about “driving around all night”; they had come from the direction he had come, behind him, following him. He gripped the can tight, trying to squeeze away the shaking in his hands.

He finished the beer and threw the can out the window. He looked back and watched it bounce into the tall grass and tumbleweeds beside the road. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. He had to relax and get hold of these thoughts before they scattered in all directions like a herd of sheep. These guys were his friends.

Leroy fumbled with another beer. “Too damn drunk to open them any more! Have to sober up some before I can open any more.”

Tayo opened it for him. He opened one for himself and leaned back on the seat. Beer made the feeling recede and slowed down the beating of his heart. The truck’s motion and the beer were soothing; the steel and glass closed out everything. The sky, the land were distant then; trees and hills moved past the windshield glass like movie film. It would be easy to get lost in this place of theirs, where the past, even a few hours before, suddenly lost its impact and seemed like a vague dream compared to these sensations: the motion, vibrations of wheels against the road, the warmth of beer in the belly, and the steel cab snug around them. He would rest there, and not think about the night before. He needed to rest for a while, and not think about the story or the ceremony. Otherwise, it would make him crazy and even suspicious of his friends; and without friends he didn’t have a chance of completing the ceremony.

She had been right once already when she told him to leave the springs. So he would hang around with Harley and Leroy; everyone would understand that: riding around, drinking with his buddies. They wouldn’t be suspicious then; they wouldn’t think he was crazy. He’d just be another drunk Indian, that’s all.

 

He woke up sweating. The sun was shining through the windshield, and the windows were rolled up. The truck was parked at the foot of a rocky little hill covered with cholla. Harley and Leroy were gone. The heat in the cab made him weak and sluggish. He rolled down the window and hung his head out. The beer vomit ran down the truck door into dry weeds. His head was pounding, and he was thirsty. He got out of the truck and could hardly stand up; the muscles of his legs were stiff. He looked around to see where Harley and Leroy were. The country was dry, and the hills were covered with dark lava rock. The earth was eroded to gray clay, and deep arroyos cut through the length of the valley between the mesas. These were the hills northwest of Cañoncito. He sat down on a big gray rock by a cholla. Grayish green salt bushes had taken over the areas between the crisscross of big arroyos. South, in the distance, he could see one big cottonwood tree, the only bright green in that valley. It was growing on the edge of the deepest arroyo, its web of roots exposed, held upright only by a single connecting root. The bank of the arroyo was undercut so deeply that a strong gust of wind would topple the big tree.

A dry hot wind glided up and down the canyon restlessly, shaking the salt bushes and sweeping dust over the tire tracks. His head hurt every time he took a step; shock waves of a foot against the ground registered on skull drums. He was looking for footprints. He listened, and there was nothing but the sound of the wind, like a hawk sweeping close to the ground, whirring wings of wind that called back years long past and the people lost in them, all returning briefly in a gust of wind. The feeling lasted only as long as the sound, but he wanted to go with them, to be swept away. It was difficult then to call up the feeling the stories had, the feeling of Ts’eh and old Betonie. It was easier to feel and to believe the rumors. Crazy. Crazy Indian. Seeing things. Imagining things.

The sun was hot and the sweat was crawling down his head like little black ants. Then he saw their footprints going up the hill; he could see the pebbles and rocks they had knocked loose and the dry grass crushed under boot heel prints.

Tayo was halfway to the top of the hill before he stopped; suddenly it hit him, in the belly, and spread to his chest in a single surge: he knew then that they were not his friends but had turned against him, and the knowledge left him hollow and dry inside, like the locust’s shell. He was not sure why he was crying, for the betrayal or because they were lost. Then he heard voices, low and steady tones from the top of the hill. He didn’t like the way his heart pounded, because it kept him from hearing, but his head was clear and his legs were solid. Fear made him remember important things. He moved down the hill, careful not to knock loose any rocks or step in the dry tumbleweeds. He knew why he had felt weak and sick; he knew why he had lost the feeling Ts’eh had given him, and why he had doubted the ceremony: this was their place, and he was vulnerable.

 

He lifted the hood of the truck and started pulling at the ignition wires, trying to remember how the guys overseas hot-wired Army jeeps. He reached under the truck seat and found a rusty screwdriver. The wires were a tangled bundle and his hands were shaking. His mouth was dry and his tongue stuck to his lips when he tried to moisten them. He looked up at the top of the hill, and then around at the sky and the canyon. The sun was moving down in the sky, but the heat still danced above the salt bushes in the canyon. He slipped the screwdriver into his hip pocket and started running.

When years before they had first come to the people living on the Cebolleta land grant, they had not said what kind of mineral it was. They were driving U.S. Government cars, and they paid the land-grant association five thousand dollars not to ask questions about the test holes they were drilling. The cloudy orange sandstone mesas and the canyons between them were dry that year; ever since the New Mexico territorial government took the northeast half of the grant, there had not been enough land to feed the cattle anyway. It was overgrazed; rain eroded big arroyos in the gray clay, and the salt bush took hold. There was nothing there the people could use anyway, no silver or gold. The drought had killed off most of the cattle by then, so it really didn’t matter if a square mile of land around the mine area was off limits, with high barbed-wire fences around it, and signs in both Spanish and English warning them to keep out.

Early in the spring of 1943, the mine began to flood with water from subterranean springs. They hauled in big pumps and compressors on flat-bed trucks from Albuquerque. The big trucks sank past their axles in the blow sand, and they hired men from Bibo and Moquino to dig around the tandem wheels and to attach tow chains from the trucks to the big tow truck that came. But later in the summer the mine flooded again, and this time no pumps or compressors were sent. They had enough of what they needed, and the mine was closed, but the barbed-wire fences and the guards remained until August 1945. By then they had other sources of uranium, and it was not top secret any more. Big gray vans came and hauled the machinery away. They left behind only the barbed-wire fences, the watchman’s shack, and the hole in the earth. Cebolleta people salvaged lumber and tin from the shack, but they had no use for the barbed wire any more; the last bony cattle wandering the dry canyons had died in choking summer duststorms.