The injections left him in a dreamy state for hours; he drifted in and out of consciousness, deliciously numb. The injections slowed his breathing but relaxed the bronchial spasms as well. Later as the injection’s effects waned, he felt quite lucid and energized. He kept a pencil and paper on the table at his bedside and made notes of ideas for the locations of the other mine shafts or questions to ask his friend Dr. Gates.
By then his thoughts were as vivid and detailed as dreams and he was content to sit back and think for hours on end. If he thought about the mine, immediately he envisioned a long glittering tunnel into the center of the crater, its walls embedded with black and white diamonds. At the end of the tunnel was the ore body of the meteorite itself, lustrous soft alloy of pure silver streaked with gold.
He and their company would be able to repay Hattie’s loans, and he could settle all he owed Susan and Colin. He recalled Susan the night of her ball in the rich sapphire blue silk brocade that cost hundreds. The mother lode of the meteor crater would put him back in good standing with them. Livorno, even Hattie and the separation, would scarcely matter beside the wall of silver and gold.
Now when he dreamed, not only was the Riverside property all his, but his father was alive in the dream, standing with him between rows of mature citron trees directly west of the house. But when he looked back, he saw only the terrace fountain and lily pond and the terrace garden walls, but the house and all other outbuildings were gone without a trace, as if they had been removed long ago.
He intended to discuss with Hattie the equipment purchases and the overdrafts in one of his lucid periods between the injections. He wanted her to know her loan to him was secured by the machinery and the leasehold. But when she came that afternoon, she was upset over Susan’s silence, and he had to reassure her.
Hattie was furious with the woman; what was wrong with her? She refused to be delayed with her plans any longer, and began packing the blankets and other supplies for the girls in sturdy tin trunks. Prices and quality were much better in Albuquerque, a much larger town than Needles. She bought a great many canned goods, and found dried apples and dried apricots, dried beans, and corn sold by the local farmers. When she had everything packed, she realized her luggage would completely fill a buggy. That night she slept more soundly than she had in weeks, and woke early for breakfast and a visit to the hospital before the afternoon train west.
Edward was confident he wasn’t dying, but he felt strange and not entirely in his body since the last treatment. Now as the effects of the injections began to wane, he experienced agitation from disquieting thoughts laced with regrets. He should have bribed the customs officers in Livorno before they embarked to Corsica. He should have concealed the citron slips more ingeniously.
What bothered him most was his memory of the piles of meteor irons he left behind in Tampico; he always intended to return to the town market to acquire those meteor irons from the hostile blue-faced woman. Oh the burn of regret lest someone knowledgeable see the neat pyramid stacks of the irons and buy them before he did! He drifted off on the Pará River once more, his head rested on gardenia blossoms in the big Negress’s lap in the canoe; when he looked up at her face it was sky blue.
Hattie saw the Australian doctor and the nurses outside Edward’s room and her heart sank. She did not make eye contact with the doctor and was about to enter the room when one of the nuns told her the priest was with him now to administer the Last Rites; Edward slipped into a coma during the night.
Hattie burst into tears and surprised herself with the grief she felt; she knew she was mourning the absence of Indigo as well as the loss of Edward, who was still a friend, after all. Dr. Gates hurried away down the hall as if he sensed her anger. That wretched Australian criminal! His quack treatments destroyed Edward’s health!
When the priest left, they allowed her to stay alone with him; his breathing was in slow labored gasps and she reached down to take his hand in hers and whispered, “Rest in peace.” Poor thing! Moments later his breath left him in three loud snores.
The nuns offered condolences and the priest offered to accompany her to the chapel, but Hattie firmly declined. She shocked them further when she announced Edward’s sister would make the funeral arrangements. She paid the hospital bill and left a bank draft with the hospital accountant to pay the undertaker to keep Edward’s coffin in the icehouse until Susan arrived.
Part Ten
THE LEVEL of the river rose a little higher each morning Indigo took the monkey and the parrot to forage for seeds and roots. The little black grandfather was teething and cried irritably at the least sound, so Indigo kept her pets away for a good part of the morning. At first the tamarisks and willows perked up from the extra water, but as the water began to cover the base of the trees, the leaves yellowed and died.
Once the watercress and other tender plants were submerged, they stayed higher on the sandy bank, where she let Rainbow down to walk with Linnaeus to browse among the sunflowers. She kept a close watch for hungry foxes, who looked for rabbits and water rats displaced by the rising water; a great many tortoises and water snakes hid in the tall grass above the water.
At first the girls all made fun of Indigo for speculating on how high the water would rise; they didn’t see the river every day. But the morning they all took buckets to bring water from the hydrant by the church, the twins and Sister stopped in their tracks when they saw how high the water had risen in such a short time. Even the little grandfather, tied piggyback on Sister’s back, gazed at the high water.
“It’s all going to be flooded,” Vedna said. “I didn’t believe it before.” They stood in silence a moment before Maytha whistled slowly and shook her head. The irrigated river bottom land was the best land, where the winter crops of beans and peas, already knee high, were about to be drowned.
At this rate, all the houses and the little church with the hydrant would be underwater too; then where would they get their drinking water? Maytha joked their land would become prime irrigated farmland soon. The sprouts in their dry garden were tiny compared to those in the river bottom fields. Vedna said this must be what the Bible meant about the least shall be first. Sister Salt looked at the houses, where people watched them but never came outdoors or spoke to them. She shook her head. When the land here was flooded, the people would hate them even more.
They hauled water all morning to fill the iron kettle and the two tin washtubs to boil for beer. After the water cooled to lukewarm, they added the yeast cakes just as Big Candy did. Vedna wondered aloud what became of him, chasing after that Gypsy. Sister Salt shrugged as if she couldn’t care less, but she wondered sometime too; the one she loved to dream about was Charlie, even if he was married in Tucson. Sometimes she caught herself daydreaming his wife got ill or had an accident and died; no, she didn’t want to get him that way. Probably he didn’t even remember her now.
Their house reeked of green beer; every available pot and pan was full of it; Sister and Indigo gathered dried gourds and cleaned them out for beer containers. Candy used glass bottles to get the fizz in the beer, but the glass sometimes exploded. At worst, the gourds only fizzed and foamed.
The twins went to visit their old aunt upriver and took some beer samples with them to give away. They were gone overnight; it was the first time the sisters were alone since Indigo returned. Indigo put the parrot and monkey to bed and joined Sister, who was outside nursing the baby and watching the stars. They shared Sister’s shawl over their legs; later there was a chill in the breeze that made them scoot closer together. Sister couldn’t resist tickling Indigo’s ribs, and she squealed and they both laughed. The little grandfather let go of Sister’s nipple and studied both their faces; he and Indigo were jealous of each other, which made Sister laugh. He was rounder now, with fat little wrists and ankles that would have pleased Big Candy. She still felt sad he didn’t give the little grandfather a chance. The baby was crawling now, and beginning to try to pull himself upright. He was a
serious baby who didn’t smile often but who cried only when he was angry; wet or hungry, he remained silent because he was a grandfather and not someone new.
Indigo wanted to make friends with him, and started to help Sister care for him. At first she only watched; each time Sister gently scooped the warm water over his legs and bottom in the shallow basin, he took deep breaths and held them. He screamed if Sister tried to put him in Indigo’s arms, so that day Indigo picked up Linnaeus, then cradled the monkey close to her face. The little grandfather watched, then screwed his face up in fury.
“Did you see that?” He knew Indigo was mocking him. Sister nodded. That was why she called him grandfather; they must not tease or mock him.
The twins returned the following evening with a dozen or more guests, mostly Chemehuevi relations but also Walapai and Havasupai friends. Sister and Indigo heard their laughter a half mile away the evening they showed up. They all sat on their blankets on the smooth-packed ground in front of the house; when it began to get chilly, the twins built a fire. They celebrated the new beer and their new friends. They told stories about the old days when the people drank cactus fruit wine in late July to contact the ancestors to rain down their love on them. They made jokes about the rising river, the government’s plan to drown all the Indians, and they all laughed and laughed until tears filled their eyes. The only good land left to them now was about to be taken away by the backwater of the dam.
The next morning their guests woke up in the front yard with ailments from drinking so much green beer. The girls cooked up the rabbits they’d snared with the last of the beans and used the last of the flour for tortillas to feed the guests breakfast. As they departed, their new friends promised to say good things about the beer to people with money or things to trade.
Later that day as they rinsed clean the beer gourds, Sister asked Indigo if they could sell her big trunk for money to get food and supplies to make more beer. That evening Indigo began to remove the few remaining clothes from the trunk, and her color pencils, notebooks, and gladiolus book. She had room in the two valises to keep what remained. She didn’t need the trunk any longer. It was a fine leather-and-wood brassbound trunk with compartments and many small drawers, which Indigo loved to open and close. She gave it a pat and hoped they could get a lot of food in trade for it.
In a few more weeks they’d have baby peas to eat; Indigo checked their garden every morning to see how many rabbits they’d snared. At the old gardens they used to sleep out with the plants to keep the rabbits away, but here snares seemed to be enough. That morning, though, as Indigo approached she saw at once something had eaten rows and rows of baby pea plants.
Maytha and Vedna shook their heads in unison when Indigo proposed she and her pets sleep down in the garden. This wasn’t the old Sand Lizard gardens, this was Road’s End, where wicked men prowled at night and jumped on sleeping women.
After their morning excursion along the river to look for tidbits, Indigo took the parrot and monkey to the garden. First they checked the rabbit snares; in the beginning they caught two and three rabbits a night, but as the river rose, rabbits were scarce. Birds became the main threat, so Indigo would bundle up her color pencils and notebook, some stale tortillas, and a gourd canteen of water, to guard the plants all day. Old Man Stick, the scarecrow they made out of twigs and horsetail hair, scared the newcomers for a while, but the resident birds perched on Old Man Stick.
Patiently she taught the monkey and parrot to leave alone the garden plants but to pull the weeds. She always stayed with them to be sure they didn’t get confused. Later when they got tired of weeding, they went to the little lean-to for shade and rest. She drew gladiolus flowers of all colors, and sunflowers, even datura flowers.
The gladiolus corms sent up bright green blades that grew far more quickly than the bean sprouts and peas. When Sister and the twins asked what those rows were, Indigo told them it was a surprise.
The water kept rising, creeping closer and closer to the best fields of tall beans and peas; the people banked the soil higher and higher to protect them. One morning when Indigo started down the trail toward the river, Rainbow began to squawk as if he spotted a hawk or eagle. She looked up at the sky first but saw nothing; but as she gazed all around she was shocked to see a bright sheet of water had flooded the riverside fields during the night. She ran back at once to tell the girls the news.
They left off the beer making to come look from the ridge; down below they watched as a group led by the Chemehuevi preacher approached the flooded fields to pray. “How high would the water rise?” Sister wondered out loud. The twins shook their heads. By the following week, more fields were flooded; all the people could do was pull up the wilted plants and boil them for lunch.
Steadily the water advanced, and began to threaten the church and the small, neat houses and gardens. The twins no longer made jokes about their cheap dry land becoming irrigated bottomland. Now Sister came along with the baby on her back when Indigo went to check on the water’s level. Off in the distance they watched the people help one another move their belongings to higher ground. Wagonloads of church pews and Bibles were unloaded on the old floodplain not far from the twins’ house.
The girls went down and pitched in to help unload the wagons. The people did not smile, but they did not object to the girls’ help. Sister leaned the little grandfather’s bundle against a big rock a safe distance away so he could watch her and the others. His black shining eyes took in everything and one look at him made Sister feel so happy—buoyant with overwhelming love she felt for him and so proud of his special qualities. She had never loved anyone so much before; she always wanted to know her ancestors, and now the little grandfather had come to be with her and to love her.
When the wagons were unloaded, the girls politely excused themselves, but their neighbors ignored them. The twins walked in front and Sister and Indigo with the baby on her back followed. No one spoke. Just then they heard a man’s voice call out behind them: the wantonness and drunkenness of them and others had angered God so much he sent this flood!
They turned and suddenly were face-to-face with a short fat Chemehuevi gentleman in a black preacher’s suit and white shirt. The exertion of hurrying after them left him breathless and sweaty across his brow. While he mopped at his forehead and caught his breath he glared at them; they were not really Chemehuevis but Lagunas and didn’t belong there. They were damned, contaminated—a risk to all others.
The twins took off running and the girls followed; even with the baby on her back Sister was a strong runner; Indigo ran beside her. The preacher got winded and when he stopped, so did his congregation.
When they got back to the house, they were cheered to find the yard full of visitors camped for the night. The guests kept their word and spread news of the beer makers up and down the river. The new batch of beer was barely old enough to drink but they filled the gourds for the guests to sample. The guests shared the venison jerky and parched corn they’d brought along.
After the baby and the pets were put to bed, Indigo sat outside with the girls to listen around the campfire to the news the visitors brought. The backwaters from the dam were going to make a giant lake and everything, even this land here, would be flooded. No! other guests disagreed; the water would not come this far, but the Chemehuevi reservation superintendent was going to send the flooded-out families to live on the reservation at Parker. The night was clear and still but cool enough that everyone wrapped themselves in blankets and shawls around the fire.
Indigo didn’t like the smell or taste of the new beer, but Sister and the twins drank along with their guests wholeheartedly; Indigo liked to listen. As the midnight stars rose and fell, they talked and laughed about the old days before the aliens came with the fevers and killed so many. Some who drank too much beer started to cry for loved ones lost.
Indigo didn’t like to hear the crying and arguing that seemed to follow the beer; she was tired and about to excuse her
self to go to bed because she knew the monkey and parrot woke early and wanted to go browsing for breakfast. But Vedna brought out her Bible, so Indigo stayed up.
Vedna closed her eyes and turned the Bible around and around in her hands, then opened it with one finger and looked to see what passage her finger touched.
“And this house which Solomon built for the Lord was in length sixty cubits and in width twenty cubits and in height thirty cubits,” she read, then laughed out loud, and Maytha joined her. Soon the visitors joined, and they laughed because the twins barely kept a roof over their own heads, and the Bible asked them to build the Lord a big house. One of the visitors pointed out the last house built for the Lord there was up to its steeple in water, and they laughed some more.
Sister Salt waited for the laughter to pass, then she told them “a house” means a circle of stones, because spirits don’t need solid walls or roofs; but it must have two hearths, not one, to be the Lord’s house. The visitors all looked at her, but no one joked because Sister was serious. The circle of stones must be made at the same place as before on the riverbank below the big sandhill near Needles.
“Too bad for the Lord,” Maytha said. “We can’t go to Needles now. If we leave for even one night, the flooded people will call our place abandoned and move in.”
The conductor commented it was early for so much snow in Flagstaff. The tall pines were blanketed and Hattie shivered though the train compartment was warm. How pure and quiet the snow was, how inviting the forests and the great mountain peaks above the town. The conductor asked if Flagstaff was her stop, and seemed surprised to learn her stop was Needles.
Outside the station at Needles, Hattie saw the buggy and sullen young driver but ignored him and hired a porter with a handcart. The townspeople of Needles took notice of her return; though she’d been in Albuquerque more than six weeks, the stationmaster remembered her, and the hotel desk clerk recognized her and even asked if Mr. Palmer was going to join her later. She sensed at once the clerk was prying, and imagined them all—the stationmaster, the clerk, their wives—exchanging rumors and observations of a white woman traveling alone.
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