Rook & Tooth and Claw (36 page)

“So what do I look like?” asked Miss Neagle, in the same coquettish way that Mrs Vaizey would have said it.

“You’re slim, very slim, like a dancer. Not like this lady at all. And you’re a very handsome woman indeed.”

“Well, you’re very complimentary,” said Miss Neagle. “And even if we never meet again—”

Jim’s grandfather smiled at her, and blew her a kiss. Jim said, “I don’t believe this, grandpa. You come here to give me a warning and you end up flirting with the spirit of the woman who used to live downstairs.”

“Jim, that’s not flirting. When people die they need comfort – more comfort than they ever needed when they
were alive. It’s bad enough for a woman to grow old and lose her looks, so that nobody notices her any more. What do you think it’s like when you die, and you can’t get any kind of response from anybody? You’re nothing; you’re invisible. You think that’s good for your morale? You don’t know how lucky I am that I have a grandson who can actually see me.”

He suddenly looked more serious. “Listen, Jim, this thing wants your blood and you’re going to have to do one of two things. Either you’re going to have to pack your bags and go someplace where it can’t follow you; or else you’re going to have to find a way of beating it.”

Miss Neagle said, “Today was the day you were supposed to die, Jim; and you’re not dead yet, are you? So if I were you I’d have courage.”

“I’m as good as dead,” Jim told her. “So long as that thing is still in this world, it’s going to be coming after me.”

“Then go,” said his grandfather. “It’s the only answer. Go.”

Jim suddenly realized why his grandfather had said that he was a failure. He
was
a failure. Whenever any kind of challenge appeared on the horizon, his answer had always been to turn on his heel and walk very quickly in the opposite direction. Jim wasn’t like that. Jim was his mother’s son, and his mother had always stood up for herself. She had refused to help his father when he had started up his marine insurance business, and taught herself to play the piano instead. “If you don’t get rich on your own, then you don’t deserve to be rich. But you do, and you will, and if I don’t learn to play the piano, what will all your rich friends listen to, when we we entertain them at dinner?”

Jim said, “No, grandpa. I’m going to stay. The Native Americans are always talking about tribal honor. Catherine’s
my student. She belongs to Special Class II. That’s enough of a tribe for me to feel honourable about.”

His grandfather looked at him for a long time, and then nodded. “That’s bravely spoken, Jim. It looks like all I can do is to wish you all the luck in this world; and a hundred times more in the next.”

“Goodbye, grandpa,” said Jim. “I won’t forget this, I promise you.”

His grandfather went to the open door and stepped out into the darkness. Jim followed him and watched him walking along the balcony. His image seemed gradually to fade, so that by the time he reached the steps the streetlights were shining right through him. He stopped, turned, and looked back at Jim, and gave him a wave. He hadn’t even taken one step downward before he vanished, and there was nothing in the night but streetlights and automobile horns and somebody laughing.

“Jim,” said Miss Neagle. “Come down for a beer.”

“I don’t think so, Valerie. I’m tired enough already.”

“But George can’t dance any of those Greek dances by himself.”

“All right,” Jim acquiesced. He guessed that anything would be better than lying on George’s couch listening to the icebox rattling all night – unable to sleep, and thinking about Susan’s head flying off.

Miss Neagle entwined her arm around his. “I was never sure about Greeks, you know. But then I met George, and I thought to myself, ‘What was good enough for Jackie must be good enough for me.’ You don’t happen to know the Greek for ‘I love your beard,’ do you?”

* * *

Before he went back to college the next morning he called Susan’s brother Bruce, who was a screenwriter who lived in Sherman Oaks.

“Susan’s staying in Arizona for a few more days.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, I thought I’d better tell you, just in case you were worried.”

“Why should I be worried? She’s a grown-up now, the last time I looked.”

“OK, then. But I thought I’d better tell you, that’s all.”

There was a pause. Then, “There’s nothing
wrong,
is there?”

“Wrong, what do you mean?”

“Well, Susan and me, we hardly ever speak to each other. We have a very different view of life, if you understand me. She thinks I’m a trashy materialist and I think she should try sailing round the world with one of her antique maps and see where
that
gets her.”

“Oh. Well, OK.”

He drove to college feeling strange, mainly because everything looked so normal and familiar. The morning smog hadn’t yet cleared and the day had a soft, blurry appearance, like an Impressionist painting. He parked in the faculty parking-lot and waited for his car to backfire, which it didn’t. He climbed out, and he had almost reached the main entrance when it let off a tremendous detonation that echoed all around the buildings.

Everybody in the staff room was eager to find out all about his trip to the reservations, but he found it very hard to talk about it. He kept repeating, “Sure, it was great. Fascinating. Susan loved it so much she decided to stay out there for a few more days.”

Richard Bercovici, the social studies lecturer, came up smelling strongly of pipe-tobacco. “What was your view of Navajo alcoholism? From what I’ve read, drunkenness is the blight of the reservations.”

Jim said, “I think, Richard – if you saw what I saw, you’d need a drink, too.”

At last, however, it was time for his first class, and
he walked with some relief along the corridor to Special Class II. Almost the whole class were already there, except for Jane Firman, who always had difficult periods, and Jim was sensitive enough not to ask where she was. Sue-Robin was finishing off painting her nails in pearlized pink and Sherma was noisily rustling a large brown grocery bag.

“Sherma? Any chance of hearing ourselves think?”

“I’m sorry, Mr Rook. I’m supposed to be baking applesauce cookies with Mrs Evers afterward and I think I forgot my raisins.”

Mark was sitting behind David Littwin, looking uncharacteristically pale and subdued – much to the frustration of his best friend Ricky, who kept trying to tell him stupid jokes. “‘Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a spaniel.’ ‘Well, just get up on the couch.’ ‘I can’t. I’m not allowed.’” Sharon was wearing a tight black dress with jet necklaces and black ribbons in her hair. When Jim came in, they both looked at him with the intensity of people who had shared a traumatic experience, and needed very badly to talk about it.

Jim said, “You’ll be pleased to hear that our short field trip to Arizona was extremely arduous and that you didn’t miss much except some spectacularly breathtaking scenery and some spectacularly disgusting food. We did however learn quite a lot about Navajo mythology and I’m very keen to discover what you were able to find out from your resources here.

“Unfortunately, Catherine White Bird decided to stay on for a while to – well, to visit some people she knew. So we’re missing her input, which is a pity. And we’re also missing Ms Randall, who wanted to stay for a while, too, so that she could—”

He hesitated, and saw Mark and Sharon looking at him and frowning. He hated lying – especially to his class –
but he knew that there was no alternative, not until the Changing Bear Maiden had been exorcized for good.

“– so that she could look for some historical maps, you know what she is about maps.”

Beattie McCordic put up her hand and said, “How did you find, like, the way that Navajo women are as opposed to the men? Do you think they’re as equal as we are – you knew, here in California – or not so equal?”

“Nobody’s as equal as you are, Beattie!” said Seymour Williams.

“Good literary reference,” said Jim. “What’s it from, Seymour?”

“What?” asked Seymour, in bewilderment.

“George Orwell’s
Animal Farm.
‘All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.’”

“Oh, right,” said Seymour, with a grin, and the whole class hooted in derision.

“Anyway, to answer your question, Beattie, from what I’ve seen the Navajo woman has a very different standing within her family to that of women in other parts of the country. Navajo men still seem to think that they’re the undisputed head of the household. That’s a traditional, historical view. But the reality is that there’s so much unemployment that it’s the women who hold the family unit together – the women who have the strength – the women who make the really fundamental day-to-day decisions.”

Mark said, “That may be, but you have to admit that it’s pretty tough trying to be a great warrior and hunter and everything when there’s nobody to fight and nothing to hunt. I mean, what are you going to do, maraud the 7-Eleven?”

“But let’s go back a bit and talk about their history and their mythology,” said Jim. “Some of them say that it’s the collapse of their magic that led to their present plight.
Did anybody manage to find out anything about Navajo legends?”

Sue-Robin said, “I found about a giant demon called Big Monster. He was half as tall as the tallest fir tree, and had an ugly face with blue and black stripes. He wore a suit of armour made from flint stones knitted together with all the guts and the sinews of the people that he killed.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Amanda.

“It’s all right,” Jim told her. “It’s only a story.” Thinking, as he said it, of the way that John Three Names’ body had been pulled apart, and all his insides emptied onto the floor.

Sue-Robin said, “Big Monster was finally caught by two brave gods called the Twins. They tried to sneak up behind him while he was drinking a large lake, but he saw them reflected in the last drops of water. He shot two enormous arrows at them, but they caught hold of a rainbow and used it as a shield. Big Monster ran after them, but just as he was about to catch up with them, a bolt of lightning struck him dead. The Twins cut off his head and threw it to the east. It took root in the ground, and it’s still there today, called Cabezon Peak.”

“I found out about Big Monster, too,” said Titus, putting up his hand. “There’s a web site all about Native American mythology. It said that Big Monster wouldn’t have been killed by the lightning, but another demon had cut off all his hair, which left his head unprotected. The other demon was called … I wrote it down here someplace … Coyote.”

Jim felt the back of his neck prickle, as if an insect were crawling down it. “Coyote, huh? Did anybody else find out about Coyote?”

“Hey, I did,” said John Ng. “To me, he was one of the most interesting of all the Native American spirits, because there are spirits just like him in Japan and
Vietnam. He was very cunning and tricky, you know? And he really liked human women. He was always chasing after them and trying to get up their skirts. I found this Navajo song that goes: ‘
One day walking through a mountain pass, Coyote met a young woman. What have you in your pack, she said. Fish eggs. Can I have some? If you close your eyes and hold up your dress. She did as she was told. Higher, said Coyote and stepped out of his britches. Stand still so I can reach the place. I can’t there is something crawling between my legs. Don’t worry it’s a bee, I’ll get it. The woman dropped her dress. You weren’t fast enough. It stung me.’”

“Typical male,” put in Beattie. “Even when you’re demons you can’t keep your things to yourselves.”

Ricky Herman said, “Play another tune, Beattie.” But Jim interrupted and said, “Go on, John. What else did you find out about Coyote?”

“Well, he was different from all the other spirits because he had power over death. This happened because he loved this one woman so much that he agreed to die for her. The only thing was, he buried his lungs, his heart, his blood and his breath deep in the ground, so that he could dig them up again. He died four times for this woman and each time he came back to life again. So in the end the spirits of the underworld said that he would never have to return.”

“Presumably, then, he’s still alive today?”

“If you believe in spirits, I guess he is. But it says in
Navajo Legends
that he only managed to survive when the white men came by mating with a human woman. Every generation that goes by, he picks the most beautiful Navajo woman that he can find, and gives her a son; and that son is him, too, so that when he dies he’s still alive, if you get what I mean.

“In the old days he was so frightening to look at that he
used to wear a coyote skin on his back to disguise himself, which is why he was nicknamed Coyote. His real Navajo name is First One To Use Words For Force. These days, he looks like any ordinary man, except that he has to wear yellow glasses so that people can’t see that he has yellow eyes like a dog.”

Jim had a sudden flash of Dog Brother, sitting in his trailer. The feathers, the leather pants, the yellow spectacles. John Three Names had lied to him, because he must have known that he wouldn’t have taken Catherine to see him if he had suspected the truth.

Dog Brother wasn’t a man at all. Or rather, he was only half human. He hadn’t needed to find a wonder-worker to put a hex on Catherine. He hadn’t needed to call on Coyote. Dog Brother
was
Coyote.

Jim suddenly realised that John had stopped talking and was looking at him expectantly.

“Go on, John. I’m listening. You’ve done really well.”

John said, “Coyote is supposed to choose his wives on their fifteenth birthday. He cuts his hand and he cuts her hand, and they exchange blood.”

“Doesn’t he know about HIV?” asked Seymour.

“It’s a
legend,
for crying out loud,” said Ray. “Legends don’t get sick.”

“Superman gets sick when he’s exposed to Kryptonite,” Ricky objected.

“Yeah, but Superman is a comic character, not a legend. Besides, he wouldn’t get HIV because he isn’t gay.”

“He
looks
gay.”