Gardens in the Dunes

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  The Bible was the only book Vedna could find to practice her reading. They had gone to school and learned to read when they lived in Winslow with their father. Their Chemehuevi clanspeople were troubled because their father wasn’t Chemehuevi; he had been from Laguna Pueblo, working on the railroad, and was already married with children when he met their mother. Still, he took them in after their mother died, but kept them away from Laguna in Winslow. Their father was killed in a railroad accident when they were thirteen, old enough to go back to their mother’s people on their own. Only one old auntie, their grandmother’s sister, welcomed them inside, and poor thing, she didn’t have much—a tiny stone house on the dry floodplain of tumbleweeds and river gravel south of Needles. The government took away her farmland on the river to lease out to white men. Maytha and Vedna liked to say they had only two living relatives in Arizona—their old auntie and Sister Salt!

  Later Sister had to lie down because her back ached from the baby’s constant turning. Candy looked in on her and was concerned about her discomfort; he didn’t want anything to harm his first child! His huge hands gently closed around both of her hands, and he kissed the top of her head. He was sorry he was so busy; he could see something was wrong. Nothing was wrong; she was only listening to the baby. Candy exhaled and glanced down at her belly; he had to take Wylie the evening receipts. He wanted to know how the baby could talk, how she could hear it when it was so tiny, but questions would have to wait until he got back.

  Wylie was waiting at his counting table in his tent; when he saw Candy at the door, he mopped the sweat from his face and adjusted the lantern to give off more light. Wylie had finished off the pumpkin pie Candy baked the day before; the pie pan and a fork and a few crumbs were pushed to one side. The night was hot without a breeze, and Wylie wore only a nightshirt, which barely covered his private parts; Candy glanced into the adjoining tent where Wylie slept but didn’t see any women in his bed.

  Wylie kept two sawed-off shotguns on the tent floor by his feet at all times; he rode his big walking horse with the shotguns in scabbards within easy reach. Candy watched him practice firing both guns from the hip at once; the stack of two-by-fours were blown into sawdust and sticks. The job of the site superintendent was to keep the contractors in line and keep the locals out of the way. Friction was bound to develop; the locals and their politicians sorely resented outsiders and federal projects, though they wanted the dams and levees.

  Wylie first hired Big Candy to cook for him on a river dredging project in Mississippi. There the locals pulled out survey stakes and the mules had to be guarded around the clock or they’d be blinded or crippled.

  After he counted and recounted Candy’s receipts and counted out his share, Wylie liked to open a fresh bottle of brandy and talk. Candy’s job was to listen and to keep a fresh pot of coffee brewed for the brandy. Wylie was generous with his brandy, and some nights, even with the black coffee, Candy caught himself falling asleep. If he noticed, Wylie never complained; he was a strange one all right. But he took to Candy’s cooking at once, and claimed he could detect whether someone was trustworthy after the person had cooked him one meal. Before he hired Candy, he said, he had four good cooks in his life: the cook who was with his parents for sixty years, and three others who cooked for him one after the other. It was annoying that each cook lasted only five years, but not surprising because of the amount of liquor they drank. Why were the best cooks such drunks?

  Candy shook his head; he wasn’t a drinker—he preferred to keep busy, making money. Not by stealing the boss’s money—Candy laughed at his own joke.

  “Let me cook you a meal so you can decide.”

  Wylie gave him the run of his tent kitchen and supplies, but they were miles up the Mississippi River in the middle of nowhere. It had been quite a test of his cooking skills, all right. What did Candy do? He went walking with a shotgun and a knapsack and two hours later returned with all he needed except for brown sugar, cream, and butter, which Wylie, at great expense, kept on hand. Wylie ate the baked pheasant basted in raspberry preserves, the baby peas in butter cream sauce, and told Candy he was hired even before he tasted the thick cream custard sprinkled with caramelized sugar.

  How that white man could eat so much and never get fat! Must have been something wrong inside Wylie for him to eat all the time and stay skinny. Candy began to try to fatten him up—it was a challenge; but over the years Wylie never gained a pound. Candy wanted to keep the boss healthy because he paid Candy so well, but more important, he understood fine cooking and showed great appreciation for Candy’s cooking no matter what new concoctions Candy devised.

  Until the wee hours of the morning and sometimes until dawn, Wylie did the talking. Generally he talked about food and cooking, and his recollection of the hundred best meals he ever ate. Candy was proud that high on Wylie’s best hundred list were meals cooked by him: deep-fried clam croquettes, venison filets marinated in wild cranberry sauce, baked catfish in wild plums.

  Candy thought maybe all the food Wylie ate was the reason Wylie didn’t need more than four hours’ sleep a night. Candy liked to sleep more than that and returned to his own tent for a few hours before he had to cook breakfast for Wylie. Over the years, they had developed an arrangement that gave Candy the business opportunities that someday would finance his own hotel and restaurant in Denver. At the rate they were clearing profits here, they’d both be able to retire after this job, although the big profits brought troubles of their own. Prescott and Needles businessmen who wanted to make money off the construction workers too were angered at the fees charged by Wylie to permit the wagonloads of whiskey and women onto the project site.

  Tonight something was up; in addition to the two sawed-off shotguns, Candy saw twelve-gauge shotguns propped in each corner of the tent. Tonight the boss didn’t talk about recipes; there was trouble between the state of California and the Arizona Territory over the diversion of the river to Los Angeles. Arizona farmers below the dam site were outraged to see water diverted to farms in California, and gathered in Yuma to burn down the federal courthouse. Rumors had the California state militia on alert, and the Arizona territorial militia preparing for a possible engagement with the California troops on their borderline, which was the Colorado River. Of course, Wylie knew it was all politics and money; lately he didn’t trust his two white bodyguards; to be rid of them, he sent them to guard the construction equipment day and night.

  Candy never thought those bodyguards were worth a damn anyway. What Wylie needed were some good dogs. Bodyguards could be bribed and bought off; good dogs would lay down their lives. Dogs could sniff out assassins and these Arizona bushwhackers a mile away. He didn’t want anything to happen to Wylie. Candy wrote “dogs” on the top of his list of items to get the next time he went to Yuma.

  Big Candy had never been friends with a white man before—only Indians and Mexicans and a few Asians. But he liked Wylie at once as he watched him eat the first meal Candy cooked for him. He liked the way Wylie’s eyes widened when he saw a special dish or dessert on the table; out here in the middle of nowhere, Candy was hard pressed to find even the most basic ingredients, but on other job sites in populated areas Candy took pride in finding local delicacies—fresh berries, mushrooms, or fresh oysters or clams. In hot weather Candy packed blocks of ice in sawdust under layers of damp burlap to surprise Wylie with thick sweet cream for butter and ice cream. For fifteen years now, they’d worked together, and their happiest times were the special meals—succulent rich delicacies Candy served him at the remote locations, construction sites miles from civilization, as they were here. So far here, Candy surprised Wylie with ice cream in June—he later joked it took a one-ton wagon of ice blocks from Prescott to make one big bowl of lemon ice cream. The lemons were off trees in Yuma, and the heavy sweet cream was from a Mormon farmer in Needles.

  To show his continued appreciation for Candy’s cooking, Wylie didn’t hesitate to let Candy make beer and run dice games and
cards on the side; now they both were ready to retire after this project. Wylie was going to Long Beach to live a gentleman’s life and he wanted Candy to come along—he only had to cook one fancy meal a week, and he could bring the Indian girl; Wylie didn’t care as long as Candy was there to cook.

  Candy only smiled and shook his head; before he went to Denver, he’d come to Los Angeles to help Wylie find a cook far better than he was. Candy’s dream was to own a hotel and restaurant in Denver near the Rocky Mountains, which he’d only seen in paintings and photographs.

  As soon as it was daylight, Wylie wanted Candy to find a hiding place—somewhere down along the riverbank—and rebury the floor safe. If there was trouble, the first place looters would look was under the floor of the tent. Wylie wouldn’t put any deed past the Prescott businessmen or the army, and Candy had to agree; during Candy’s hitch with the army he had seen drunken troops turn to looters while their officers looked on.

  Wylie was philosophical about the changes: they’d done very well here and already had the money they needed to retire. If the state militias clashed at the dam site and the army got involved, Wylie would continue to oversee the actual construction, but his control over the premises and his licenses to conduct business would be taken over by the military. After that, the outlook for Candy’s casino and brewery was not good; the military men were bound to favor the Arizona businessman with political connections in Washington.

  Candy told Sister Salt one evening after he cooked eggs and bacon for her they might not be here on the river for as long he first thought. He told her what Wylie said about the water feud and the troops taking over. He wanted to make their baby strong and happy, and though they did not discuss it, he knew their baby complained about the place and the food. Once the troops took over, he and she would go straight to California to the Indian school in Riverside and track down her little sister that way. Otherwise, they might wait in Parker forever before any letters ever came back from Washington.

  Sister Salt was lying down that evening when Maytha and Vedna surprised her; they had big grins on their faces because they’d just counted it all up and realized they’d made all the money they needed to buy land. Very soon they’d leave this noisy dump for good! They invited her to come with them—they weren’t going right away—in a month or two. Think about it. After they went back to their tent, her eyes filled with tears.

  I am the only one who will wait for you, dear little Indigo, she whispered that night before she went to sleep. Now both the baby and its father wanted to leave, and the twins were going too!

  In mid-July the rains came and the weather began to cool off. Rumors flew around the construction site, but there were no signs of the state militia or the federal troops. Cooler weather made Sister Salt restless; she began to dream about the old gardens, where Mama and Indigo were planting red amaranth and speckled yellow beans.

  The baby was big enough to be seen in her belly, so she only had sex with Big Candy now; otherwise the baby’s features might resemble other men’s. The cloth of her smock shifted just a bit as the baby kicked and turned; the baby wanted her to eat Sand Lizard food, not all this animal grease and cooked food. Big Candy wanted a big strong son and insisted she eat plenty of meat, and each night he brought back big platters of leftovers—beef rib roasts and stuffed pork loins and bowls piled high with orange yams and stewed okra. But now the odor of meat and its grease made her nauseous; she ate the okra and yams but pushed the meat aside.

  Why should I talk to you when you don’t feed me the food I need? The baby turned and turned but didn’t speak again; the baby worried her and she decided to confide in Maytha and Vedna. But when she went by the laundry, the washtubs were turned upside down and the fires were out, and the twins were nowhere to be found. They must have found a ride going north and went to visit their old auntie, who was ailing.

  She wished she’d gone with them; now they joked all the time about escaping that place; the earth of the dam towered above them in a sinister hump, they all agreed. The trampled earth of the dam site looked all the same, just as each day’s work around Big Candy’s casino tent and brewery took on a sameness. The construction workers who preferred to drink beer and gamble at Big Candy’s down along the river became regular customers. The men made the same remarks each time they saw Sister Salt—why had she stopped taking them to the willows to roll around on the sand? Why didn’t she come inside the casino tent to bring them luck with the dice? She learned to avoid the casino tent and so did Maytha and Vedna because the drunk gamblers who lost often turned nasty and blamed the women for spoiling their luck.

  It wasn’t too hot yet; a walk would do her good. She left behind the river for the sandy hills above to gather wild greens. The construction noises receded as she walked, so she kept going until she no longer heard anything but the wind and the meadowlarks in the rice grass. She had not planned to walk so far without her gourd canteen, but her legs kept going, and the farther she went the better she felt; even the baby stopped turning so much.

  A distance up a dry wash she found a coyote melon vine snaking through the rice grass and thistles. At the first sweet taste of melon, she was overwhelmed by memories of the sweet yellow melons they shared the last autumn they were all together. The salt of her tears made her cheeks itch. They had been so happy together that sunny afternoon a few months before the crows and then the dancers came. That last afternoon, the melon’s sugar juice stuck their fingers together and they squealed with delight as they pulled them apart.

  She ate one melon and then another like a starving person until her hands and even strands of her hair were sticky; her stomach felt too full and unsettled. She sat with her arms across her belly protectively and waited for the cramp to pass. Grandma always warned them not to eat too much too fast! The baby must like this Sand Lizard food because it didn’t complain. She lay back on the fine sand to take a rest. The sky here was pure endless turquoise, and the air here smelled so clean, unmarred by the dust and smoke of the construction. The sun was moving lower in the sky but she didn’t want to turn back yet.

  What else was there growing wild in this sandy wash, ready to eat? She walked a distance farther up the wash and sure enough she found a stand of sunflowers, many still in bloom but others gone to seed. Her stomach felt uncomfortably full but at the same time she felt so hungry she crammed handfuls of dry seeds into her mouth, hulls and all. Ummmm! The flavor in her mouth was so rich and delightful she swallowed despite how full her stomach felt. She couldn’t spit them out and waste them!

  A short distance beyond the sunflowers she spotted the bright red fruit of a chile pepper plant; once someone must have had a garden here, and a few seeds replanted themselves just as they did at the old gardens. Oh how she wished she were there!

  She ate the sweet hot peppers one after the other, as if they might take her home if she ate enough of them. The heat of the peppers in her stomach eased the odd heaviness she felt; she knew she really should start back to the river before it got any hotter than it was. But all the food in her stomach made her feel heavy and sleepy; the heat was already strong, so she decided to take a nap in the shade of a big boulder and start back when the sun went down and it cooled off.

  She slept longer than she intended; the shadows were already long and the sun about to set. If she wasn’t back by dark, Big Candy and the twins might worry. She walked only the distance back down the wash, past the melon plant, when another cramp tightened around her belly and back until she knelt in the sand, doubled over from the pain.

  She thought it was only diarrhea until she saw the gouts of dark blood glisten on the sand between her feet. How strange that the blood’s color was identical to the dark red edge of the sky at sundown. All this blood! How much more blood did she have before she died, and the baby died too? She crawled to clean sand and lay on her side with her knees drawn to her belly; the blood felt warm and thick between her thighs and then it happened: she could not stop her body from co
ntracting and pushed to relieve herself, then realized something else had happened, some part of herself had been expelled. She could feel it pulsate but it beat faster than her heartbeat and she knew it was the baby Sand Lizard, born too soon.

  Twilight was fading into darkness as she gathered up the wet bundle still connected to her own body. She smelled blood as she cradled the dark sticky mass in her arms before she bit through the cord that connected them. He was a tiny shrunken old man who refused to stop sucking his own hand long enough to open his eyes. She tore her skirt and gently wrapped him, not too tightly, around and around until she’d made a cocoon with only a small opening above his face to keep him warm. She was still bleeding, and the cramping did not stop, and she thought, My Sand Lizard grandfather has come to take me home.

  The sand remained warm after darkness came, and she curled around the little black grandfather, who preferred his own fist to the nipples of her breasts. She did not lose consciousness, but she was so weak she felt the pull of the earth bring her to the ground, and she thought, So this is how we return to Mother Earth. She was happy to return because she missed Grandma Fleet so much.

  Toward morning the desert cooled off and she woke shivering in the darkness; the stars were bigger and brighter late at night when they thought no one was watching them. She looked overhead; the stars were closer and bigger now; how they flashed in arcs traveling from place to place. Though she shivered, still she took care not to move her arms or shift the bundle in her arms; she did not look down because she did not want to know if he was alive or dead. Was the bundle warm, or cold? It was so small she couldn’t be sure; carefully she pushed herself deeper into layers of sand that were still warm. Oh how soothing the warm sand was on her belly and the base of her spine! How sweet sleep was—let me sleep forever.