Dance the Eagle to Sleep

by Marge Piercy

  Little Ruthie, flat body tough as a root, came to dance with him. Their dance was playful and calisthenic. He would never touch her sexually, and she trusted him not to. Even more than her brother Ben, she had been hurt early in some way she could not put into words, frightened into wood that had only slowly turned into living sapling on the farm. Perhaps he would recruit her away from her chickens to his nursery school. Maybe she could bear to grow up gradually with the smallest children. She would leave him soon and dance off into trance, singing to herself. Now, her dark urchin eyes gleamed at him. She leaped and beat her hands on her hard belly and thighs, making a counter rhythm. Her hands made a flat drumming. She kicked up her heels and leaped toward his head.

  Sylvie came out, and for a long time they improvised together. She teased him, while he turned it into gesture. He flattered her, he bent his tall body over her and pivoted around her, but he would not come closer than polite dancing distance. At first she had been one of the girls that attracted him most, with her air of elegance even in the day’s work clothes, her air of wearing them with a difference—a few stitches taken in the right places, a different way of draping the cloth. What had pulled him at first made him indifferent now. She was not much changed. Probably she could still go back. She could fit out there. That was not interesting any longer. He liked signs of growth, even stress marks of change. She was still counting points for being wanted. He had been a good match for her when he had come. He had danced to make the circle watch. To force recognition.

  He dropped back into the circle to rest on its currents, watched pattern and signal and trance. When he finally stepped out again, he sought Ginny with his eyes and asked her to come to him. Her eyes smiled back at him, but she made a little gesture of sorry. A serious coupling? But she could indicate that dancing. She danced with no one tonight. Probably her damned period. He would dance a while, then step into the circle beside her and wait for a chance to draw her out. He still wanted to spend the night with her, he wanted to talk if nothing else, to lie beside her talking softly in the dark, and he needed a gentle way to convey that.

  Corey had been dancing all over the inner circle, starting groups of three and four and five, inclusive, pouring over, wanting to gather everybody to him in a loose gaggle. Joanna had been shuffling along stiffly in the outer circle. Now she stepped from the circle, stripped her clothes into a neat pile and painted herself deliberately but minimally. Then she came toward Shawn. She did not pause in the imperative wait to see if she were accepted, but came directly. Why did he feel cold and even a little naked? They had danced dozens of times. After all, she knew he would dance with her. After all, nothing. Her face was stiffened by an awkward smile.

  She moved awkwardly for her. She seemed to be choosing every small gesture, all her muscles locked tight. “What’s wrong?” he muttered.

  She did not answer. She moved close as if she meant to speak, but nothing came out of her mouth twisted up in that stiff smile. He understood all at once then and spent the next ten minutes pretending to himself that he did not. She loosened up and moved more easily but with that deliberation. She danced provocation, invitation, all with the strained intentness of decision. He could not move back from her. He could no longer pretend he did not understand. There was too much connection between them for him to get away with that. Her hair swung against his chest. The hair of her orange bush lightly brushed his thigh. He felt charged and helpless. He felt the circle around them and he felt naked. “Why?” he muttered to her.

  “Have to. To break through it. You know.”

  “I can’t.”

  She moved back a little and eyed him. “Oh, yes, you can” She was smiling that strange determined smile.

  He could not turn his eyes from her. He wanted to look at Corey—for help, advice—but he was afraid to look anyplace. Her decision burned at him. “Not here. Not with him here.”

  Her eyes held him, showing fear. “Think how bad it will be for me with anyone else.”

  He could not look away from her. He felt divided from his body, hugely naked. He took her hand and pulled her to stillness. “Get your clothes”

  They picked up their clothes, passing through the circle. He did not look at anyone, only at her back walking before him. They dressed. Then she followed him through the cold muddy night to his cabin.

  No one was there yet. He lifted the flap on his bunk and they crawled in. Sat down cross-legged at opposite ends. She kicked off her boots. Her feet were bare inside, with the soles black from dancing.

  “We don’t have to now, you know” he said. Almost whispering. The room was very quiet. Faintly they could hear the dance. “You made your point walking out with me. Everybody will think the thing, anyhow.”

  “Everybody but us. And Corey. We’ll know.”

  “Listen, it’s an act of desperation tonight—”

  “I didn’t come here to talk” She took off her clothes in the cramped space of the bunk.

  He got out to strip. Stood looking a minute at the fallen blanket. Still had a strong desire to hightail out of there. Could not leave her. If there ever had been a time when he felt less like balling, he could not remember it.

  They did not look at each other, but between them yanked back the covers and crawled into the narrow bunk. The sheets were cold and coarse. She put her arms tight around him and buried her face in his shoulder. They lay facing side by side. His prick hardened against her belly, but neither of them could move. A little spasm of tears ran from her hidden face across his arm. It seemed to him they lay for dreadful hours pressed front to front, her heart beating into him, her hair tickling his nose, her arms clasping him in frozen rage. His arm began to ache under her until he began to want to laugh or sneeze or do somersaults.

  Finally he did laugh and rolled her around the bed roughly, swung her on her back and buried his face between her thighs. Ay, the same Joanna, she was none too clean. She smelled like low tide on the mud flats. But she felt good enough, and her frozen languor broke. She began to make wet noises and wriggle against him and reach for his prick. When she felt more than ready, he swung around and climbed on. He held himself back and went slow and easy into her. It was hard for him to believe that they had done this before. He had never made it with Joanna, no, only with a strange fierce teenager who was hiding out—almost as much from him as from the forces of repression.

  If everything up to now that had happened between them since she stepped into the ring to challenge him had been awkward, desperate, abortive, just plain clumsy, their bodies actually fixed together seemed suddenly right. They both relaxed. She opened her eyes and smiled at him and sniffled her nose clear. He felt she had been right, maybe not in terms of Corey because who was he to judge that, but at least in terms of the two of them, that this was both natural and good. This was the natural expression of their caring. What they were doing had nothing in common with his own set of sexual tastes and predilections and explorations and habits: he would never have picked out Joanna except in desperate indifference. No, this was more friend than sex object, more saying than having.

  He wanted the fucking to be long and easy, a conversation rather than an explosion. He wanted to move permanently beyond shame and embarrassment and awkwardness with her. She came quickly and shallowly and seemed ready to quit. He would not. She had borrowed him to work out a problem of her own, but now the dialogue was between them.

  Was he competing? Was he trying to make his wide mark, in the old way? Maybe, maybe. But having her there, he could not let her go back again with as little impression as the first time they had tumbled together. He had a feeling that if what happened was not strong, not substantial, if it did not happen out to her toes and down to her bones, that she would turn on it. He did not want to be used. If she went back to Corey after having really been with him, she might go back with less defensiveness, with less sense of being in the wrong.

  After she had come, she wanted to slip away, to wait him out, and he had
to fight her stubbornly. She was not sensual. She did not melt into her sexuality. She did not easily open into cycles of more. She did not soften. He had to wrestle and wield and batter her into another cycle. She remained always aware and mistrustful under him, a little dubious. Even as she came fully at last, she cried out, “No! No!” and he could not convince himself she accepted the orgasm as more than a trick he was playing on her.

  He was aware as he slept that she dozed fitfully and lay awake most of the night. The bunk was narrow. Their bodies kept bumping and jarring. In the morning very early she crawled out.

  “Will you be okay?” he asked from where he lay.

  “Sure. Go back to sleep.”

  He got up annoyed, feeling grumpy and cheated of sleep. He had a great unwillingness to deal with people. He did not get out of his bunk till everyone else was dressed and gone. Therefore he missed breakfast and did without and felt grumpier. He had signed up for fence-walking detail to be out in the air, looking forward to a good hike. But sloughing through the mud exhausted him, and he felt cold and hungry and bored with his thoughts. From wanting to avoid everybody, he passed into feeling as if he were in exile. They would be talking about him, and here he was acting as if he were ashamed to face up. Corey would imagine he had run away. Joanna would think he was acting like a weakling. All morning the only people he saw were half a mile away, except for strange cars passing on the gravel road. He made fence repairs efficiently but without enjoyment. He came in for lunch sullen and bored with himself.

  Corey and Joanna were eating together across the room. He sat down quickly where he was. The soup was thin and peppery, as if the cook had tried to make up for a shortage of meat with an excess of seasoning. It sloshed in his empty stomach. People greeted him and went on arguing about whether it was possible to turn being in jail into a useful experience. He could not tell if he was being excluded or if he was excluding himself because of his silence and sullen face. He felt stupid with paranoia. What he wanted to do was to stare at Corey and Joanna, but he was afraid to be caught watching. He stole quick glances. Corey shoveling in soup, bent slurping over the bowl. Joanna sponging her bowl with bread. What did he expect to see? After all, they were together. That was what mattered.

  But had he doubted that? What he had to know was Corey’s attitude toward him. He did not see them get up. He only caught a last glimpse as they left the dining room by the door nearest their table. All afternoon he could not control his bad fantasies.

  He got back early for supper and was one of the first to sit down. Ginny came in just after. She waved but did not smile and went on to sit at another table. He was furious. It was, after all, her damn fault. If she knew how much he had wanted to spend the night with her, she would stop looking so superior and stolid. It would be a golden pleasure to pummel her for half an hour.

  Corey came in with Joanna behind and immediately sat down across from him. Joanna squeezed on the bench beside Corey and gave him a look that said, I don’t know. She looked tired but scrubbed. Her hair was still damp from washing. He felt she had been washing off her transgression and was immediately annoyed with himself. After all, she had needed a bath.

  Little Ruthie was passing on her way to find a late seat, when Corey reached out and caught her by the arm and made everyone slide over to fit her in. He put his arm around her and gave her a hug, and she returned a special sweet shy smile. She was tiny and she sat down tiny, coming up to Corey’s armpit. Corey leaned over to speak to her and she giggled and replied softly into her plate.

  Shawn was shocked. Then annoyed with himself again. She could not be younger than some of the groupies he had laid.

  “Don’t look so startled, Shawn.” Corey grinned at him. “There’s more than one way to spend a night. Don’t you know that yet? Maybe not. Beautiful Ruthie, what kind of a piece of chicken do you crave? Do you want a dark piece or a light piece? You should have a little dark piece, like yourself”

  “A wing.”

  “To fly on. Don’t you think Ruthie could fly? Two wings for a little bird”

  Corey ate heartily and gestured with a drumstick and sucked on the bones. He laughed and waved the drumstick and made jokes and dominated the table in both directions. He saw the wishbone in Joanna’s breast and took it away. “Who wants to fight wishes with me? Shawn? Come on”

  He insisted on making a big production, lining them up both standing one foot on the bench and matching arms over the table. Everyone stopped to watch. Shawn was out of sorts at the spectacle and exhausted with trying to figure out what Corey was up to. The bone was greasy and hard to break, but he was angry and with a violent twist of his wrist he broke off the center piece.

  “Shawn wins again! Okay, what did you wish, Champ?”

  “If he tells you, he won’t get it” Ruthie said.

  “If he tells me, maybe he will”

  Shawn slid back into his place on the bench. “I wished I knew what was going on in your head.”

  “That was a silly waste for a good clean wish. Think how easy it is to find that out by asking”

  “Suppose I ask?”

  “What’s going on in my head? Chicken. Ruthie with wings on flying to and fro around the barn. More chicken. Maybe more potatoes and gravy. Ruthie with wings on sitting in a tree. Joanna says she defines herself in negations. She says women are taught to define themselves in negations. She says she has added a new negation. Ruthie with wings on chasing butterflies in the old apple orchard. Ruthie knows about butterflies. She says the first ones that come are called Common Blues, and they’re small and the color of clear sky. She says, if you catch them the dust from their wings comes off in your hands and they can’t fly. She doesn’t believe in catching them”

  So went supper. Afterward there were meetings of various work committees. When Shawn left the house for his cabin and bed, Corey was still up arguing with Big Ned and Harley and New John, while Joanna nodded half asleep in a chair.

  The next day it rained: he spent most of the day playing music with a couple of the guys and Dolores. Corey and Joanna were in their room whenever he walked by. And the next day. And the next. The fourth day of the rain, Corey went off with a pack on his back to the cabin on the hill for fasting and meditation. Shawn felt like going back to bed when he heard that.

  He went in search of Joanna and found her in the laundry. “What’s happening?”

  She was wearing a sweater of Corey’s, old and bald at the elbows, big and shapeless on her. “I’m washing, can’t you see?”

  “What’s happening with Corey?”

  “Nothing! I don’t know” She knotted her hands in the sweater. Her face was flat with depression.

  “Can’t you talk to me?”

  “He’s trying. What more can I say? No, I don’t want to talk.”

  “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “He’s not mad at you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Is he mad at you?”

  “That would be against all his principles. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  “Aren’t you being cynical? I told you, he’s trying to accept it. He feels he will, but he’s having a reaction. So he’s gone up on the hill to try to work it through.”

  “What kind of a reaction?”

  “An unhappy reaction, what the hell do you think?”

  “Now don’t walk back and forth over me in boots, Joanna. What kind of reaction were you trying to produce?”

  “I just couldn’t take the absolute dependency. I just wanted to be my own person in the tribe. I just wanted not to be gobbled.”

  “Maybe it’ll work out yet, Jo. He hasn’t done any of the really bad things he might have. He isn’t trying to make us feel guilty or disloyal. He isn’t running around playing martyr.”

  “No … Maybe it’s worse.”

  “How?”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Remember how he went and hid in the streets w
hen you were being tested? He came back.”

  “It’s just that he can’t help it!” She turned away to the line of dripping clothes.

  “It all seems so damn unnecessary.”

  “I knew it would be better to do it at the dance. It would have been open and ritual. I think waiting for me all night was the worst part for him.”

  “But he’s spent the night with other girls.”

  “Yes. Isn’t it silly? Now let me wash. Go away and let me alone till he’s back. Okay?”

  How long would Corey have stayed on the hill? They never found out. He did not come down the next day. The next night Shawn was lying in his cot dozing but not totally out. He awoke at the first noise and sat up. Four a.m. It was the warning bell going off. He shouted to wake the others and grabbed his trousers, stepped into his boots and buttoned himself as he ran into the air. He stuck his head in the cabins he passed, shouting to wake the sleepers, and went on. He found Joanna already dressed and running from the house.

  She yelled, “It’s some kind of raid. The sentry called in. We’ve got to get everybody into the tunnels.”

  “Not everybody. We haven’t built enough new ones. One armed group should fall back toward the mountain. We should never concentrate all our people in one spot”

  “So how shall we divide people up?”

  “Send people to the tunnels as long as there’s room, but start good warriors and people with lots of experience falling back along the trail”

  “We’ve got to get Corey.”

  “We’ll pick him up as we move out. I’ll see you on the mountain.”

  No way to tell how many people were up by now or into the tunnels, in the general chaos. On the other hand, most of the Indians were used to passing orders and making decisions and clearing out in extreme confusion, in street fighting and raid situations, and none of the running around was aimless.

  Big Ned came racing toward him. “Taking some warriors in the truck. Going to try to go out by the south gate. If we can get through we’ll warn the city communes to disperse. We’ll meet you with transport on Beaver Road, where the old logging trail comes down.”