Grandma Fleet walked, with only the aid of her cane, at an energetic pace; she seemed to be her old self again. Sister smiled; she had been worried about Grandma’s health, but all the old woman needed was a good rain. Grandma Fleet knelt in the damp sand with her digging stick and showed the girls how deep and how closely to plant the seeds. They planted all morning and part of the afternoon with only water from the spring and a few handfuls of dried pumpkin seeds to eat.
Again the swollen blue-violet clouds gathered in the afternoon, and as the rain fell, Grandma told the girls truly they were blessed.
“We are the last remnants of the Sand Lizard clan,” Grandma Fleet explained. “So many of us have died it’s no wonder clusters of rain clouds gather over the old gardens.” The Sand Lizard people of the old gardens were never as numerous as their cousins who lived and farmed along the river before the reservations were made. When Indigo asked why the Sand Lizard people stayed there, if it was easier to grow plants close to the big river, Grandma Fleet laughed. Sand Lizards did things differently than other people. Sand Lizards didn’t mind if others found them odd; that’s how they distinguished themselves from others. Farming was easy along the river but getting along with the authorities was not.
The Sand Lizards preferred to rely on the rain clouds and avoid confinement on a reservation. Yes, the other people laughed at the Sand Lizards, and it was true their kind was disappearing, but they were proud to be known for their contrary ways. Yes, the Sand Lizards were different! Long ago, when the Apaches used to raid the Sand Lizards’ villages, the Sand Lizards fought back fiercely until they were beating the Apache, but then, instead of fighting to the end to crush the Apaches and make them slaves the way the other tribes did, the Sand Lizard people used to stop fighting and let the Apaches get away. Other tribes called them crazy for this, but the Sand Lizards didn’t have much use for slaves; they were just more hungry mouths to feed, and slaves had to be watched all the time.
Yes, the Sand Lizards were different. They were stubborn; they refused to allow the churchmen to touch their children. The churchmen were liars; they claimed Jesus Christ died in a faraway country, long ago. They claimed to speak for Jesus Christ; they said Jesus didn’t want to see women’s bare breasts no matter how hot the summer day was; if the others wanted to pay such a high price to farm along the river, that was their choice.
Grandma Fleet said they did have a few cousins who lived on the reservation at Parker. The girls never met them because the authorities punished the reservation Indians for any contact they had with the renegades.
“If anything happens to me, you girls stay here. You belong here. Your mama knows she will find you here. Otherwise, how will she ever find you? If you need something, go ask our friend Mrs. Van Wagnen. Watch out or the authorities will catch you two and ship you off to school.”
The location of the old gardens and the spring was known to the authorities, but they still were safest there, because the journey from the river to the old gardens was difficult for the horses. Miles of deep sand that exhausted the horses were followed by fields of sharp black lava so hard that the horses’ shoes wore thin and broke. After they left the river, the horses were without water for two days. Now, as far as anyone knew, the old gardens were abandoned; even if someone did come, the cliff swallows would signal their approach by circling nervously around their nests. All sounds in the canyons were amplified by the sandstone formations. The flash of the sun off metal, the clinking sounds of bits, spurs, carbines, lids of canteens, and the coughs and sneezes of the men and the horses gave plenty of warning.
The sun broke through the clouds in the west and warmed them even as the last raindrops fell. How sweet the air smelled after the rain! Indigo was hungry. She raced Sister Salt down the winding trail, down between the sand dunes to the dugout house. They were at the house only long enough to get dried fruit and a bit of jerky. Grandma Fleet said once farmers finished the planting they might eat a bit of meat. Sister Salt pointed at the empty muslin sack folded neatly at the bottom of the storage jar; Indigo nodded. Next time Grandma sent them for more dried meat they would have to confess the greedy feast they enjoyed while she was gone.
Now that the seeds were planted, they slept in the dunes above the gardens to protect the seeds from rodents. In the heat of the day, when the birds and rodents were less active, they returned to the cool dark dugout house to rest until sundown. Once the seedlings were up, they pulled weeds in the coolness of the moonlight.
On the highest dune, near the spring, Grandma Fleet dug herself a little pit house in the fine sand right below the mound where she planted the apricot seeds. At first Indigo and Sister Salt paid little attention because their grandmother liked to dig down into the sand to find the coolness; but then Grandma Fleet arranged willow branches in a latticework to hold more willow branches to form a roof over the dugout. Now Grandma Fleet no longer bothered to walk all the way back down the trail to sleep at the house; the girls passed the heat of the day alone in the old dugout house. Grandma insisted her burrow below the apricot seedlings was just as cool as the old house, and it saved her energy; the walk up the trail between the dunes was too difficult for her now.
“These baby apricot trees need me close by,” Grandma Fleet teased. “Look at them! Aren’t they lovely?” The dark green seedlings were knee high by the time the baby squash and baby beans were ready to eat.
Grandma stayed with the gardens, while they went to gather the prickly pear fruit, and later, the mesquite beans. Grandma showed them how to boil the prickly pear fruit into a thick, sweet paste which she dried in the sun. The mesquite beans had to be dried then roasted and stored carefully; otherwise, the little bugs would eat them. After the girls had finished their chores, they played games, made contests to see who could hit the target with a rock or stick from the greatest distance. They made targets out of precarious stacks of flat stones or with piles of kindling wood. They both squealed with delight at a direct hit as the stones or branches fell.
Sister Salt liked to slip away from Indigo when she wasn’t watching; then Sister Salt hid and waited until Indigo realized she was gone. Indigo learned to track her in the sand so Sister Salt used sagebrush to wipe away her footprints. She loved to crouch down just around a turn in the trail and jump out at Indigo to hear her scream. When it was too hot to play chase, plunging and rolling down the steepest slopes of the high dunes, they played their favorite guessing game—they called it Which Hand?—with a smooth pebble.
After the first beans and squash were harvested, Grandma Fleet left her shelter by the peach seedlings less and less often. The girls helped her walk through the gardens, where she surveyed the sunflowers, some small and pale yellow, others orange-yellow and much taller than they were; then she examined the brilliant red amaranth. The sunflowers and the amaranth were so robust they would have food all winter. The gardens were green with corn and bush beans; a few pods had already ripened and split, scattering beans on the sand. Sister Salt bent down to pick up the beans but Grandma Fleet shook her head firmly.
“Let them be,” she said. That way, the old gardens would reseed themselves and continue as they always had, regardless of what might happen.
“What could happen, Grandma?” Indigo’s question brought a groan of impatience from Sister Salt, who made a face at her, but Grandma laughed, then stopped to catch her breath. They had completed their walk past the garden terraces near the spring.
“Anything could happen to us, dear,” Grandma Fleet said as she hugged Indigo close to her side. “Don’t worry. Some hungry animal will eat what’s left of you and off you’ll go again, alive as ever, now part of the creature who ate you.
“I’ve been close to death a few times,” Grandma Fleet said as she slowly made her way up the path. “I was so surprised the first time I wasn’t even scared; after my first baby, your mother, was born, the bleeding would not stop.”
“Did it hurt?” Sister Salt asked.
“Oh
no, I felt no pain, that’s why I wasn’t scared. I thought dying hurt a great deal.”
“But you didn’t die,” Indigo said.
“No, the old medicine woman gave me juniper berry tea and told me, ‘You are needed here. We need you. This baby needs you.’ ” Grandma Fleet paused to catch her breath.
“The old woman scolded me while I drank the tea. ‘Don’t be lazy, young woman!’ ”
“Why did she say that, Grandma?” Indigo tried to imagine how one person scolded another for bleeding to death.
“Because dying is easy—it’s living that is painful.” Grandma Fleet started walking again, slowly, leaning on the girls to steady herself.
“To go on living when your body is pierced by pain, to go on breathing when every breath reminds you of your lost loved ones—to go on living is far more painful than death.”
Big tears began to roll down Indigo’s cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound. Their mother must be dead or she would have come back by now. What had eaten Mama? Was she crawling around as a worm or running as a coyote?
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Sister Salt held her left arm and Indigo the right as Grandma inched her way down, down into her little dugout shelter by the apricot seedlings. Grandma Fleet settled down on her blanket with a loud sigh of pleasure and stretched herself out for a nap. She joked about sleeping so much and becoming lazy in her old age. Relaxed, with her eyes closed, Grandma Fleet talked about their dear ancestors, the rain clouds, until her words came slower and slower and she was snoring softly. Sister Salt felt her heart suddenly so full of love for Grandma, who always loved them, who always was there to care for them no matter what happened. Sister looked at the tiny figure on the old blankets breathing peacefully, and she realized, when the time came, Grandma Fleet intended to be buried there under her little apricot trees.
Indigo was the first one up the path that morning on her way to wash at the spring. As she passed Grandma Fleet’s shelter, she called out, “Good morning,” but was not alarmed when Grandma did not answer; in recent weeks Grandma slept later and later. Indigo was washing her face at the pool when Sister Salt came running and cried out Grandma was dead.
Indigo refused to help, but Grandma Fleet weighed hardly more than a big jackrabbit as Sister Salt gently shifted her body to wrap the blanket more securely. Indigo refused to scoop sand over the body. She sat flat on the sand, a distance away, with her back to her sister, too angry to cry, too angry to bury Grandma Fleet. All day Indigo sat on the same spot, with her back to the mound of sand, while Sister Salt tended the gardens as Grandma would have, pulling weeds around the squash and beans.
Late in the afternoon Sister Salt came slowly up the trail with gourd bowls in both hands. She placed the bowl full of squash and bean stew on the grave, then filled the other gourd bowl at the spring and arranged it next to the bowl of stew. She did not disturb Indigo but went back to get the remaining stew for her and Indigo to share.
At first Indigo refused to join her sister, who ate stew next to the mound of sand that covered Grandma Fleet. But the delicious odor of the stew finally won her over and Indigo, her eyes swollen and red, sullenly joined her sister. They ate in silence. Sister Salt watched the sun drop behind the sandstone cliffs and felt the breeze become cooler; the days were shorter though they were still quite warm, but the nights were already uncomfortable without a blanket.
Sister Salt continued to follow all of Grandma Fleet’s instructions: as the beans and corn ripened, she dried them in the sun, then stored them in the huge pottery storage jars buried in the sand floor of the dugout house.
Indigo refused to sleep anywhere but the shallow hole she scooped out beside Grandma Fleet’s grave. All day while Sister Salt toiled in the gardens, Indigo ignored her sister; Indigo had a favorite sandstone boulder next to the pool at the spring; here she spent most days, looking off into the distance, watching the trail to the big wash and the river because this was the trail Grandma Fleet used for her visit with Mrs. Van Wagnen, and when Mama returned, she would probably follow the same trail home.
As the days became shorter and the nights cooler, Indigo spent all day on the boulder, where the sun’s heat felt delicious. She carried on imaginary conversations with Mama and with Grandma Fleet to pass the time. She told them how she and Sister Salt worked to put away the harvest, and she imagined how this must please them and the words of praise they would give if they were there. Sometimes she made up stories to amuse herself; she imagined that a golden eagle mother flew down and lifted her by the back of her dress, off the boulder, high into the sky. From so high up Indigo saw the entire world. She saw the river but it looked like a child’s belt, thin and green on the edges and muddy red down the middle; the giant dunes glittered like big glass beads. Indigo searched for signs of the Messiah and his followers, but the mother eagle flew too high for Indigo to see human beings.
At night Indigo rolled herself tightly in her blankets and slept next to Grandma Fleet’s grave and the apricot seedlings. She was not afraid because Grandma Fleet was right there even if Indigo couldn’t see her, and she would protect Indigo from harm. Some nights Indigo heard voices by the spring, people speaking in happy tones with laughter; she knew she must not listen too closely or she might want to join them.
Indigo arranged herself in her sand burrow so the leaves of the little apricot trees shaded her head from the early morning sun. She was amazed at how much the little trees grew each day as the weather became cooler and the saplings did not have to endure the heat to survive. Each day she saw the tender bright green of new growth on the ends of the little branches. Sometimes when she felt lazy, Indigo lay on her back in her burrow to stare up at the rich green apricot leaves against the bright blue sky. She loved the colors of sky blue and leaf green together; only a few desert flowers were as blue as the sky. Her thoughts wandered as she watched the sky; she wondered where Mama and the Messiah and his family were now. Mrs. Van Wagnen might have news of the Messiah’s whereabouts. Indigo wanted Sister Salt to take her to find the dancers.
Indigo felt better after she had the idea to visit Grandma’s Mormon friend; she immediately joined Sister Salt at the floodplain garden, where the pumpkins and winter squashes waited to be carried to the dugout house. Indigo made a game of the harvest: the pumpkins and their companions, the squashes, were fat babies that hadn’t learned to walk yet. Indigo carried them one by one, cradled in her arms, so that she would not damage them. When Sister Salt was out of sight, Indigo dressed the fat babies in skirts and hats she made from the big pumpkin leaves.
Indigo had not been inside the dugout house since Grandma Fleet died and she found that Sister Salt had moved everything around to make room for the shallow yucca baskets in which strips of pumpkin and squash were dried before they were stored in the back of the dugout house, up in the rafters. Every morning they carried the drying baskets outside to the sun, and each evening they brought them inside to protect them from rodents.
The rain was abundant that year and no hungry strangers appeared at the old gardens, and no Indian police watered thirsty mules at the spring. Still, the girls were ready in the event anyone came. Their plan was to run for palm grove canyon, where they’d stay until the danger was gone.
Indigo carried pumpkins and squash all day without stopping to rest; she ate handfuls of baby bean pods, and pumpkin flowers so sweet and tender that they melted in her mouth. From time to time she went to the spring to drink and wash off the sweat. The days were still quite warm, especially if one worked hard in the sun. Sister Salt didn’t say much, but Indigo heard her hum a happy tune as she finished. The big pottery storage jars were full, their sandstone lids secure as she covered them with sand for safekeeping in the back of the dugout room.
At sundown, when the air cooled off, Sister Salt built a fire on the hearth outside and boiled a delicious stew of corn, beans, chiles, and pumpkin to celebrate. The harvest was gathered and Sister Salt knew Grandma Fleet was proud of her
and Indigo too. After dinner, while the twilight was still bright, they ran laughing up the trail to the highest dune; they raced each other to the dune’s steepest side, where they plunged each after the other headfirst, rolling end over end, screaming joyously all the while. So much sand got in their hair that they had to take turns with the yucca brush. Later a big moon, not quite full, flooded the dunes with silver blue light that made the big datura blossoms glow as they perfumed the evening air.
They walked to the springs to fill the big water gourd, and on the way down Indigo rolled up her bedding from the sandy burrow next to Grandma’s grave and carried it back to the dugout house. They lay in their beds with the bright moonlight in the doorway, and they talked for a long time before they fell asleep. Indigo wondered what was taking Mama so long to get back to the old gardens; she wondered where the Messiah and his dancers were tonight.
Sister Salt talked about the train depot and the passengers who used to buy the baskets she sold; a year ago at this time they were all still together with Mama and Grandma Fleet in the lean-to by the river at Needles. Sister Salt wondered if the Paiute women still lived there; they might have heard some news of Mama or at least they might know where the Messiah and his dancers were. The Paiutes said Jesus traveled east across the ocean from time to time, but was careful not to show himself because of the danger from police and soldiers. If the Messiah and his followers crossed the ocean, it might be some time before they returned here. As Indigo drifted off to sleep, Sister Salt said, “We can travel as soon as cooler weather comes.”
With the harvest completed the girls were free to do as they pleased. The first few weeks they amused themselves with games of hide and seek and raced each other to the tops of the dunes. With a wad of rags, they even made a ball to kick. When they felt lazy, they played games—Which Hand Holds the Pebble? and Gamblers’ Sticks; the loser had to carry water or gather kindling alone. Indigo was ready to try something new every day, but Sister Salt began to feel impatient with the games.
Gardens in the Dunes Page 6