Redeye (22 page)

Grandma Copeland was crying, so Mrs. Copeland lifted the mummy and passed it down to her sitting there in her wheelchair and she took it in her lap facing her and slowly lowered her head until it was touching the mummy, and she started talking a kind of baby talk, but you couldn't understand it. Her voice was up real high and almost like singing.

“She thinks it's hers,” said Mrs. Copeland. “She lost four. She must think it's the one that lived a little while. One lived a little while, you know. Here, Grandma, let me put it back now. This is not your baby, Grandma. This here is a mummy.”

Mrs. Copeland was bending down, but when she tried to take it away, Grandma Copeland held on tight and let out this high wailing sound.

I was thinking if they didn't watch out they was going to pull it apart, and I was thinking how Mr. Merriwether had said we had to get it in a airtight glass case right away. I figured we couldn't put Grandma in there with it. Or maybe we could if Mr. Blankenship got in on it.

Later, Mrs. Copeland sent me after Star at her cabin and they took turns sitting with Grandma Copeland in the tree room with her holding the mummy in her lap. She would turn it one way and then the other like she was trying to get it comfortable. She tried once to get it out of the wrappings, but it was wrapped tight and
you couldn't get at it very good.

Mrs. Copeland said wait till Mr. Copeland got home and let him decide what to do since Grandma was
his
mama. I had Brother and Sister on the porch shelling peas when he come riding up in the buggy about sundown. He stopped by the saddle store for a few minutes and checked on things before he came on over to the house.

“We got another mummy out in the corpse room,” I said. “Mr. Merriwether brought it back and wants you to make a coffin with a glass top. It's a baby, and in better shape than the other one.”

“Grandma thinks it's alive,” said Brother. “She thinks it's her baby.”

“Pearl Jane,” said Mr. Copeland.

We could see in from the kitchen—Grandma and Mrs. Copeland in Grandma's room. Mrs. Copeland put her finger up to her lips, so we tiptoed in there. Grandma was in her rocking chair by the window, asleep, and at first I couldn't figure it out, but then I saw: Grandma Copeland's dress was unbuttoned up top and she was . . . she was
nursing
the mummy—or had been trying to. We just all stood there staring. Her head was back and she was snoring.

“She just went to sleep,” Mrs. Copeland whispered. “I'm afraid to take it or she might start hollering again.”

“Her name was Pearl Jane,” said Mr. Copeland. “Y'all stand back, let me do this.” He went over and picked up the baby real easy and Grandma Copeland didn't budge. He put it on the bed. “Bumpy, help me move this bed over against the wall so she won't
push it off.” We pushed the bed against the wall. “Y'all move on in the kitchen,” he said quiet-like.

“Mr. Merriwether wanted you to put it in a glass case,” I said.

“I can't do that right now. Can't you see that? Get in the kitchen.”

We heard him wake her up. “Mama,” he said, “Pearl Jane's in the bed now, and it's time for you to go to bed with her. She's sick. She ain't feeling good at all.”

And we could hear him getting her in the bed. Then he come to the door. “Has she eat supper?”

“Lord no. I forgot,” said Mrs. Copeland. “Here.” She got a ham biscuit off the side table and handed it to him.

Mr. Copeland gave her the bread and chewed up the ham for her, then Grandma laid down in bed beside the mummy and we all went in and said good night and she seemed just as calm as she could be, blinking her eyes up at us and gumming her food.

“I think she'll be all right now,” said Mr. Copeland. “Let's go eat.”

“How you gone to get it away from her?” I asked him on the way over to the house.

“Well, tonight when I go out there to set her on the pot, first thing I'll do is get the mummy and hide it, and then when I wake her up, or in the morning, I'll just say, ‘Pearl Jane has died, Mama,' and that I'm making a coffin for her. And if we have to, we'll have a little funeral service. Sing a song and so forth. I'll have to start on a baby coffin after supper. But I ain't got no glass top that will fit . . . well, yes, I've got those two big panes that didn't fit the hearse. What's for supper?”

“Sister,” said Mrs. Copeland, “go back and get them ham biscuits from the kitchen. We got corn, tomatoes, squash, and onions.” Then she stopped on the house steps. “P.J., I want you to add on a new kitchen. I ain't been able to use that kitchen but once this week. You ought to be able to do it if you're making so much money in Mortuary Science.”

“I'll start soon, in the next week or so. But I got to get on that little display coffin tonight so the mummy don't wrinkle no more.”

In four days I have been visited by three men.

Wednesday, Bishop Thorpe brought me a book while I was at the ranch with the girls. Mr. Blankenship came calling at my cabin yesterday, and today
Andrew Collier
happened to ride by, heading to the ranch after a visit to Denver.

It's almost as if a tornado has been through my mind.

Wednesday, I was sitting in the shade of the cottonwood trees with the girls, when I saw Bishop Thorpe riding in from a distance. I recognized him from far away immediately. He has a very straight back, an almost knightly bearing upon his fine horse. He also wears a tall black hat.

As he approached, I immediately knew, somehow, that he was
not
expecting me to answer his proposal. I knew this before either of us spoke. It was as if that kindness preceded him.

“I was hoping you would be here,” he said. “I'm riding into
town and decided to come the long way to leave you off a little book that I think you might enjoy. May I sit for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

“I'm not here to speak of marriage, Miss Copeland,” he said as he very adroitly sat himself upon the ground a short distance away, “but rather to bring you this. Would you please give this book to Miss Copeland?” he said to Elisabeth.

Elisabeth brought me the book. It was a book of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Thank you.” I couldn't think of anything to say. “I . . . had an opportunity to talk to Harmony Beasley,” I said.

“Yes, she told me. She is a dear person, and a very strong woman. But let me get to the point of my visit. This book. Emerson's essays.”

“We studied those at Berryhill in North Carolina.”

“A college?”

“Yes, we have colleges in North Carolina.”

He didn't laugh the way Andrew Collier had.

“Emerson's teachings,” he said, “are very pertinent to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I quote—from Emerson: ‘The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?' Revelation. That's what we're about—this is such a clear enunciation of our reasoning about how God works his ways. Surely Emerson was a
Mormon and didn't know it. He recognized the fact that we could experience God in America, directly, without relying
only
on heritage and tradition. He was a great American, before his time. It's America we're talking about, Miss Copeland. America was founded in order to give Jesus a place to reign for one thousand years, and oh, Miss Copeland, I want you to reign with us when he comes back. There is not much time. There are wars and rumors of wars as we speak. You
know
how the Mormons are persecuted. You can sense it almost in the air. Jesus will not allow that to continue. God does not speak to Gentiles and non-Mormons today. Only to Mormons. I'm very happy about it, can't seem to be quiet about it. And, Miss Copeland”—he raised his hands—“I so much do not want to force this on you.”

It was as if he were charging, then retreating, staying just out of my reach. “Oh, no, Bishop Thorpe. You know, I'd never considered that Emerson's writings might be related to any religious group—other than the transcendentalists, and they weren't very religious, as I recall.”

“Those inspirational words were truly said for and about Mormons.”

“I can see that. It's just that . . . I don't know.”

“Miss Copeland, Miss Copeland. It is not my purpose or duty to be forceful in any way. I just need you to be exposed to the truth about our journey with God—the Saints' journey with God. It is a journey on which I hope you will join me. A year is . . . will a year give you sufficient time to decide?”

“Yes. Yes. I'm sure it will.”

He rose, stood towering above me, put on his hat, gave me a little bow. As he mounted his horse, he said, “This little stop made the detour more than worthwhile, and if you consent to my doing so, I would like to stop again on my trip into town next month. I will be glad to ask your uncle for permission.”

“Oh no. No, you don't need to ask Uncle P.J. I'm twenty-four years old.”

But, oh dear, before the Bishop left, he sat on his horse and told me a story. And I don't know why, but it had a strange effect on me. This is what he said: “There was once a Mormon who had a wife he loved more than all his others. When she came to him, she wore a rose in her long, long hair, and lay upon his breast and spread that long, long hair over his face. When she lay dying in childbirth, she instructed that if she died, her hair should be cut off. She further instructed that each summer on the anniversary of her death, her hair, with roses in it, should be brought to the husband and spread over his face just before he went to sleep. And that is what happened.” And it had happened, the Bishop said, to his father, and the wife was his mother, who had died giving birth to him. He said he felt compelled to tell me the story—that his father had told it to him and that until now he had never repeated it. It had the effect of drawing me nearer to him.

———

Next, Mr. Blankenship. I was at the creek washing clothes when he rode up yesterday. He stood on the creek bank and called to me. “You're not afraid to live out here all by yourself?”

“No sir, I certainly am not.”

“I was just passing by—on the way to the Merriwether Ranch—and thought I'd stop to see how you're getting along, anything you might be needing.”

“No, I'm very well stocked, thanks to Uncle P.J. and Aunt Ann. They've been so good to me. But I do appreciate the thought.”

I decided to go on up and sit on the porch with him for a spell. He seemed to be in no hurry and Mr. Blankenship is always full of news about everything including his and Uncle P.J.'s horrid business of embalming the deceased. He likes to sit, but only for a minute, and talk, and often brings the Merriwether girls an orange or banana.

Uncle P.J., of all things, has taken to collecting shirts and ties and coats and dresses for the dead. Brother and Sister got in them last week and dressed up and played dead in the tree room and then went out and played in a mud hole.

Once we seated ourselves on the porch, Mr. Blankenship planted the seeds for an adventure. As he turned his hat slowly in his hands, he spoke: “I've come to ask for your services, Miss Copeland, in conjunction with a business plan I have. It so happens that I am in close contact with the Denver and Santa Fe Railroad, you see, and they are beginning to promote tourism in the West. We're talking about a very lucrative business. My vision is this: If Merriwether can clear a way into the ruins, if I can get permission from the Indian agent, Greg Munsen, to take tourists into the mesa, and if we can transport proper accommodations into the mesa for—now listen—for women and children, and can
advertise the ruins of a lost civilization, then we will be educating our citizenry and making a bit of money at the same time.”

“Well, it sounds interesting,” I said. “How do I . . .?”

“With the trains coming in like they are, with the Indian wars won, with the eastern seaboard looking west, and the western seaboard looking east, I know this venture can be most productive. And I believe we can start as early as next spring. Once that happens, we have in effect built the Golden Road. Families will be close behind. All paying. This is my . . . well, it's my dream. And all you would have to do is enjoy our first tourist expedition to Mesa Largo and the cliff dwellings—at no cost to yourself. Do you follow my thinking?”

“Yes. I'd love to visit the ruins. I've told Mr. Merriwether that I'd love to.”

I was thrilled at the prospect and all the more so if Andrew Collier might be along on such a trip.

———

And today as I opened the gate to my yard, returning home from the ranch, along came none other than Andrew Collier, riding his horse from town. He was dusty and tired, having just returned from Denver.