Ceremony

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  The wind came up and caught the sleeves of Tayo’s shirt. He smelled wood smoke and sage in the old man’s clothes. He reached for the billfold in his hip pocket. “I want to pay you for the ceremony you did tonight.”

  Old Betonie shook his head. “This has been going on for a long long time now. It’s up to you. Don’t let them stop you. Don’t let them finish off this world.”

  The dry skin

  was still stuck

  to his body.

  But the effects

  of the witchery

  of the evil thing

  began to leave

  his body.

  The effects of the witchery

  of the evil thing

  in his surroundings

  began to turn away.

  It had gone a great distance

  It had gone below the North.

  The truck driver stopped at San Fidel to dump a load of diesel fuel. Tayo went inside the station to buy candy; he had not eaten since he had left Betonie and his helper up in the mountains. The room smelled like rubber from the loops of fan belts hanging from the ceiling. Cases of motor oil were stacked in front of the counter; the cans had a dull oil film on them. The desk behind the counter was covered with yellow and pink slips of paper, invoices and bills with a half cup of cold coffee sitting on top of them. Above the desk, on a calendar, a smiling blond girl, in a baton twirler’s shiny blue suit with white boots to her knees, had her arms flung around the neck of a palomino horse. She was holding a bottle of Coca-Cola in one hand. He stared at the calendar for a long time; the horse’s mane was bleached white, and there was no trace of dust on its coat. The hooves were waxed with dark polish, shining like metal. The woman’s eyes and the display of her teeth made him remember the glassy eyes of the stuffed bobcat above the bar in Bibo. The teeth were the same. He turned away from the calendar; he felt sick, like a walking shadow, faint and wispy, his sense of balance still swaying from the ride in the cab of the tank truck. All the windows of the candy machine had red sold-out flags in them.

  The station man came inside. He looked at Tayo suspiciously, as if he thought Tayo might be drunk, or in there to steal something. In his anger Tayo imagined movie images of himself turning the pockets of his jeans inside out, unbuttoning his shirt to prove he had stolen nothing. A confrontation would have been too easy, and he was not going to let them stop him; he asked the man where he could buy some candy.

  “Down the road,” he said, not looking up from the cash register. His milky white face was shaded with the stubble of a red beard. There were white hairs scattered among the red, and the skin across his forehead and at the corner of each eye was wrinkled as if he had been frowning for a long time. The backs of his hands were covered with curly reddish hair; the fingers were black and oily. He had never seen a white person so clearly before. He had to turn away. All those things old Betonie had told him were swirling inside his head, doing strange things; he wanted to laugh. He wanted to laugh at the station man who did not even know that his existence and the existence of all white people had been conceived by witchery.

  He told the truck driver he didn’t need to ride any farther. The sun was behind him and a warm dry wind from the south-west was blowing enough to cool the sweat on his forehead, and to dry out the wet cloth under the arms of his shirt. He walked down the ditch beside the highway, below the shoulder of the highway. He didn’t want any more rides. He wanted to walk until he recognized himself again. Grasshoppers buzzed out of the weeds ahead of him; they were fading to a dry yellow color, from their bright green color of spring. Their wings flashed reflections of sun when they jumped. He looked down at the weeds and grass. He stepped carefully, pushing the toe of his boot into the weeds first to make sure the grasshoppers were gone before he set his foot down into the crackling leathery stalks of dead sunflowers. Across the highway, behind the bar at Cerritos, there was a big corn field, but the plants were short and thin, and their leaves were faded yellow like the grasshoppers. There would be only a few cobs on each plant, and the kernels would be small and deformed. He wondered what the Mexicans at Cubero thought. Their cattle were thin too. What did they do? Drop down on their knees in the chapel, sweaty straw hats in their hands, to smell the candle wax and watch the flickering red and blue votive lights? Pray up to the plaster Jesus in rose-colored robes, his arms reaching out? “Help us, forgive us.”

  He heard a truck slowing down on the highway behind him. He turned around and saw Harley hanging out the window, waving at him. He swung the door open before the old green truck had come to a stop and stumbled out of the seat grinning, holding a bottle of Garden Deluxe Tokay in each hand. Harley patted him on the back and pushed him toward the truck. Tayo could see Leroy was driving, but there was someone else in the truck, someone sitting in the middle, between them.

  “Hey buddy—meet Helen Jean,” Harley said, and winked crookedly, as if he had been drinking for a while. She was wearing tight blue western pants and a frilly pink western blouse. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled and moved closer to Leroy. Leroy grinned at Tayo. She rubbed her leg against Leroy, but she was staring out the window while she did it, as if her mind were somewhere else. Leroy and Harley were happy; they had wine and two six-packs, and they didn’t watch her the way Tayo did. Her perfume was close and heavy; breathing it was like swallowing big red roses; it choked him. He turned his face to the fresh air rushing in the window.

  “Good thing you’re skinny, buddy. Otherwise we couldn’t shut the door!” Leroy shifted through the gears. The woman grinned at him because she was straddling the gear stick and he kept brushing against her thigh whenever he shifted gears. Harley nudged her in the ribs with an elbow and offered her the bottle.

  “Look at her! She drinks like a pro,” Harley said, delighted. “We found her in Gallup last night, didn’t we?”

  Leroy nodded. His eyes were bloodshot.

  Harley passed him the bottle. Tayo shook his head.

  “You want a beer?”

  Tayo shook his head and pointed to his stomach.

  “Sick? Hey Leroy, this guy says he’s sick! We know how to cure him, don’t we, Helen Jean?” She nodded. Tayo could see the lines at the corners of her eyes and a slight curve of flesh under her chin. Her hair was short and curled tight, and her eyelashes were stiff with mascara; she kept reaching into her tooled leather purse between her feet for her lipstick, rubbing it back and forth until her lips were thick and red. She wasn’t much older than they were.

  Tayo leaned out the window to make more room in the cab, but Harley, Helen Jean, and Leroy enjoyed squeezing close. He wanted to be still walking, but he knew them too well. It was no use to refuse a ride from them when they were drunk, because they’d follow him along the shoulder of the highway for ten miles in low gear until he got in with them. He wanted to catch a grasshopper and hold it close to his face, to look at its big flat eyes and shiny thin legs with stripes of black and brown like beadwork, making tiny intricate designs. The last time he held one, Rocky was with him, and they had staíned their finger tips brown with the tobacco juice the grasshoppers spit.

  “Hey!” Harley said. “What you watching?”

  “Grasshoppers.”

  She giggled.

  Harley shook his head and made him hold the wine bottle. “Here. You better have some. You’re in bad shape, isn’t he, Leroy? Watching grasshoppers when we’ve got Helen Jean here to watch, eh?” He laughed again.

  The bottle was sticky. It was almost empty. He watched the weeds in the ditch speeding by. In another month the grasshoppers would be dead; autumn wind and old age would chill them bone white, leaving their hollow shells to swirl with the dry leaves in the ditch.

  “Hey! You like my truck?”

  Tayo nodded.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “No money down! Pay at the first of the month!”

  “If they catch him!” Harley laughed.

  “Yeah! They have to catch me first!”
/>
  Harley bounced up and down on the seat laughing. “They owed it to us—we traded it for some of the land they stole from us!”

  Helen Jean didn’t smile, but she said, “Gypped you again! This thing isn’t even worth a half acre!”

  Tayo laughed then, too, because it was true. He could smell fumes from a loud busted muffler, and he was going to make a joke about how the white people sold junk pickups to Indians so they could drive around until they asphyxiated themselves; but it wasn’t that funny. Not really.

  They were getting close to Laguna, crossing the overpass by New Laguna; Leroy shifted into second gear for the hill.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Tayo said. “You can let me out any place along here.” He gave the wine bottle to Helen Jean. She steadied it between her thighs, and pulled the cork out again.

  “Easy, easy!” she said to Leroy. “You guys already spilled one bottle all over me.” She was either an Apache or a Ute. Her face was angular, and something about her nose and eyes reminded him of a hawk.

  Leroy slowed down and pulled off the right shoulder of the highway.

  “Hey! Wait! He’s going with us. Aren’t you, Tayo? Huh, buddy!” Harley had Tayo by the arm and was leaning close to him, breathing wine fumes in his face. Harley was sweating and his face was shiny. They had been his friends for a long time; they were the only ones left now. He hesitated and Harley saw it. He started whooping and slapping Tayo on the back; Leroy revved up the engine and threw it into low gear. The rear wheels spun sand and pebbles against the fenders, and the truck skidded and swerved back on the pavement. He did a speed shift into second gear and gunned it across the bridge, up the hill past Willie Creager’s garage. Helen Jean squealed and laughed because Leroy’s driving threw them hard against each other; Harley had his arms around her neck, bellowing out war whoops and laughs. The old truck was vibrating hard; the steering was loose and the front end wandered across the white line into the other lane, and each time a car was coming at them head-on before Leroy wrestled the wheel around and steered the truck over again. White people selling Indians junk cars and trucks reminded Tayo of the Army captain in the 1860s who made a gift of wool blankets to the Apaches: the entire stack of blankets was infected with smallpox. But he was laughing anyway, the bumps shaking laughter out of him, like feathers out of an old pillow, until he was limp and there were tears in his eyes.

  “We’ll give you a cure! We know how, don’t we?” Harley was bouncing on the seat, and he made the whole truck sway on its weak springs. Helen Jean squealed, and the bottle of wine she was holding splashed all over them. Tayo grabbed it and swallowed what was left in the bottle.

  “Drink it! Drink it! It’s good for you! You’ll get better! Get this man to the cold Coors hospital! Hurry up!”

  Leroy pressed the gas pedal to the floorboard, and the speedometer dial spun around and around before it fluttered at 65. The engine whined with the strain, and the heat-gauge needle was pointing at 212. Tayo could smell hot oil and rubber, but Leroy kept it wide open past Mesita.

  Up ahead, he could see where the highway dipped across an arroyo. But Leroy didn’t slow down, and the old truck bounced, and landed hard on the other side of the dip. Their heads hit the roof of the cab, and Harley said this was better than a carnival ride at the Laguna fiesta. Tayo sank down into sensations—the truck vibrating and bouncing down the road, the bodies squeezed around him tight, the smell of perfume and sweat and wine, and the rushing fresh air cooling the sweat. Everything made them laugh, until they were laughing at their own noises and laughter. He didn’t have to remember anything, he didn’t have to feel anything but this; and he wished the truck would never stop moving, that they could ride like that forever.

  Leroy parked the truck under the elm trees at the Y bar. Wine bottles and beer cans were scattered everywhere, broken and flattened by tires. Leroy turned off the key, but he left it in gear, so when he took his foot off the clutch, the truck lurched forward suddenly. Harley was helping Helen Jean get out, and the sudden lurch threw her against him. They both collapsed on the ground, laughing. The contents of her tooled leather purse with the rose designs had spilled all around her. She picked up her billfold, but they all got down on their hands and knees, crawling around to pick up little brass tubes of lipstick and her mirror and powder puff. Harley grabbed the mirror out of her hand and pranced around one of the elm trees, pretending to be “chickish muggy,” someone who swished around, exercising his back muscles as he walked.

  “Hey, Harley!” Tayo yelled. “You can’t fool us any more! We know you are one of those guys! Where’s your lipstick and nail polish?”

  Harley took mincing steps and dropped the mirror into Helen’s purse. “I’ll race you to a cold beer!” he said as he took off, running to the door of the bar.

  Harley and Leroy raced for the screen door, leaving Tayo behind with Helen Jean. She was giggling to herself, taking big steps and setting her feet down stiffly, as though she weren’t sure the ground would hold her. They stepped over a Navajo sleeping on the shady side of the wooden steps. The juke box was playing a Mexican polka and Harley was dancing around by himself. There were some Mexicans from the section gang drinking beer at a table in the corner and three Navajos slouching on stools at the bar. The Mexicans could see she was drunk, and they were already getting ideas about her.

  The way the men looked at her tensed Tayo’s hands into fists. He didn’t feel the fun or the laughter any more. His back was rigid; he sat down stiffly in the chair Leroy pulled out for him. Harley kept Helen Jean between himself and Tayo, and away from Leroy. He should have been worrying about the Mexicans in the corner, not Leroy. But Harley was up again, ordering a round of Coors, feeding quarters into the juke box as he punched the buttons for all the Hank Williams songs.

  Helen Jean was smiling coyly at one of the Mexicans. Tayo tried to focus his eyes in the dim light to see which one, but there was a buzzing inside his head that made his eyes lose focus. He swallowed more beer, trying to clear away the dull ache; and he decided then he was too tired to care what she did.

  “It wouldn’t have worked anyway,” Harley was saying in a loud voice; “between this beer belly of mine and her big belly, there would have been too much distance!” He laughed and looked at Helen Jean to see if she liked his story. She moved her eyes away quickly from the tall Mexican with long sideburns. She stared down at the table, smiling to herself.

  The Mexicans stood up; the tall one put his cap on slowly and pulled it to one side of his head seductively. He watched her steadily; he didn’t care if the Indians noticed. He nodded, and she smiled. Harley had the bottle tilted all the way, nursing the last drops of beer. He was too drunk and too happy to see what was happening. Leroy’s shirttail was coming loose from his jeans, and when he answered Harley he had trouble making the words come out.

  Helen Jean reached down by her feet for her purse. She hesitated and looked at Tayo. She giggled and said, “I have to go pee”; he nodded and finished off the beer. Harley and Leroy never even saw her go.

  She had been thinking about it that morning when they left Gallup. Something had reminded her; maybe it was the people in the bar talking about the Gallup Ceremonial coming in two weeks. She had left Towac about then, August, one year ago. Left the reservation for good to find a job. She hadn’t thought about it until then. Maybe it was because she was with these reservation Indians, out drinking with them and dancing in Gallup with all the other reservation Indians. Maybe someone had even talked about Towac.

  She took the money she had saved—money the missionary lady paid her for cooking—and she stopped by Emma’s to tell them good-bye. But the padlock was hooked through the hasp on the door, and it was locked, which meant Emma would be gone all day. Maybe to Cortez. So she left without seeing her little sisters, because she planned to come back on the bus, every weekend, to visit, and to bring money to help them out.

  These Laguna guys were about the worst she’d run into, especially tha
t guy they picked up walking along the highway; he acted funny. Too quiet, and not very friendly. She wanted to get away from them. They weren’t mean like the two Oklahoma guys who beat her up one afternoon in a parked car behind the El Fidel. Pawnees, they said. Normandy. Omaha Beach. They beat her up—took turns holding and hitting her. They yelled at her because they both wanted her; they had been buddies all through the war together, and she was trying to split them up, they said. These Lagunas wouldn’t beat her up, except she didn’t know for sure about the quiet one. But Harley and Leroy, they were okay. She just didn’t want to be driving around, way out in the sticks, with these reservation guys, even if they were war vets.

  It was just a feeling she’d had since that morning. Thinking about Ceremonial time coming again. She hadn’t sent any letters to Emma or the girls. She meant to do it; she had even written letters, in the evenings, on Stephanie’s pink stationery at the little table in the kitchen they all shared. But she saved the letters in unsealed envelopes, waiting for a couple of dollar bills to send along.

  It didn’t work out. Her roommates were nice, but they had to have rent money, and she had to buy her share of the food. All day one Saturday the girls gave each other curly permanent waves and plucked out their eyebrows, penciling a thin arc over each eye. Monday she borrowed Elaine’s blue dress, and she went down to the Kimo theater to apply for the job they advertised in the theater window. The man told her to wait in the lobby. It smelled like cold popcorn and burned-out cigarettes. She was too shy to ask him what the job was, or to tell him she knew how to type. She looked at the doors marked PRIVATE and OFFICE and tried to imagine what the desks looked like and what kind of typewriter they had. He didn’t smile or look at her directly. “You can start today,” he said, “but you might want to change your clothes.” She stood in front of him, afraid to ask what was wrong with her clothes. He turned and motioned for her to follow. At the end of the corridor he pulled open a door, and she saw a push broom, and a scrub bucket. “Oh,” she said. She always smiled when she was embarrassed. “How much do you pay?” “Seventy-five cents an hour,” he said, walking away.