by Jon E. Lewis
In the bar Boyd sat by himself away from the general noise centering in the last booth on the wall opposite the bar toward the back of the saloon. Some road construction workers heavily persuaded each other that the wage was bigger in North Dakota or at the white horse dam job in Montana and that you could work endless hours but it was dangerous. The big fellow with the wrinkled forehead had skinned a cat on a high bluff where the push was so inclined that you had to be quick to save the rig and yourself from going over at the last minute. Boyd listened to their tales and jerked his head as he finished his beer and looked their way with his short curled smile. Through the room of noise he shouted to the heavy-stomached man with the wrinkled forehead that he could drive any earth mover made, and that he didn’t need to think that since he was such a big bastard he could talk so smart. But Curly didn’t hear him then because one of the others in the booth had started to tell of a job the summer before near Butte.
Buck and Reed came through the door and took stools next to Boyd. Boyd relayed their orders down the varnished bar to the bartender, and Reed went on about the job out at the pit, how he was thinking of moving his equipment to Cheyenne as soon as this country job was done.
Through the open door Buck could see several men he recognized from some other summers and he thought again of how he could get his mail without a direct address. They were sure to be on his trail. Boyd asked Reed if the job down at Cheyenne would be a big one and Reed didn’t answer so Boyd turned his head away from Reed and Buck and looked at the group in the rear booth where there was now an argument between the large frowning man with wrinkles in his forehead and another road worker, thinner and tall, who said that he could cut as fine a grade with a scraper and cat as the big frowner could with a patrol grader. The frowning man’s answer to this was to take his opponent by the khaki shirt and lift him quickly on top of the table spilling several glasses of beer. The noise was overflowing, even out on the street the knots of workers knew. Back of the bar under the long slender tubes of green vapor two hula-girl lamps wiggled their rubber bottoms and the bartender was debating his duty. Boyd slid off his stool and took it with him as he made across the floor to the battle. He had cracked it on the large man’s back twice before it was thrust back into his middle at the end of the third swing.
Outside on the bumper of the car with his face bleeding Boyd wiped his small hands on his pants’ legs smearing the blood in long stripes and crying. He sobbed in jerks as he tried to clean out between his sticky fingers. He told Buck that he always wanted to be a mason anyway, that that was a real trade, you didn’t have to worry about jobs and the right kind of money once you made it. But they wouldn’t let him train for it when he got out and there were always so many on the waiting list for apprentice that he couldn’t see it. Buck said that he had a good job down in Wichita but the goddamn foreman had it in for him because he broke three springs on the truck in one day on that bad road and he got fired. Boyd had calmed down and said that he intended to go south for the winter, maybe to Tucson or Albuquerque but he was sure as hell going to be south when the winter hit this place. And he didn’t see what Buck saw in Wichita. He could go anywhere anyway because he had a car that the back seat came out of and could be used to sleep in he said.
LESLIE MARMON SILKO
The Man to Send Rain Clouds
LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948–) was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in the Pueblo town of Old Laguna. Silko received her B.A. from the University of New Mexico, then briefly trained as a lawyer before turning to teaching and writing. Ceremony, her first novel, was published in 1977. A major contributor to the Native American literary and artistic renaissance, Silko has been awarded a Pushcart Prize for Poetry and the MacArthur Foundation Grant.
“The Man to Send Rain Clouds” is from 1969, and was Silko’s first published short story.
THEY FOUND HIM under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were faded light-blue so that he had been easy to find. The big cottonwood tree stood apart from a small grove of winterbare cottonwoods which grew in the wide, sandy, arroyo. He had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up and down the arroyo. Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, gathered the sheep and left them in the pen at the sheep camp before they returned to the cottonwood tree. Leon waited under the tree while Ken drove the truck through the deep sand to the edge of the arroyo. He squinted up at the sun and unzipped his jacket. It sure was hot for this time of year. But high and north-west the blue mountains were still deep in snow. Ken came sliding down the low, crumbling bank about fifty yards down, and he was bringing the red blanket.
Before they wrapped the old man, Leon took a piece of string out of his pocket and tied a small gray feather in the old man’s long white hair. Ken gave him the paint. Across the brown wrinkled forehead he drew a streak of white and along the high cheekbones he drew a strip of blue paint. He paused and watched Ken throw pinches of corn meal and pollen into the wind that fluttered the small gray feather. Then Leon painted with yellow under the old man’s broad nose, and finally, when he had painted green across the chin, he smiled.
“Send us rain clouds, Grandfather.” They laid the bundle in the back of the pickup and covered it with with a heavy tarp before they started back to the pueblo.
They turned off the highway onto the sandy pueblo road. Not long after they passed the store and post office they saw Father Paul’s car coming toward them. When he recognized their faces he slowed his car and waved for them to stop. The young priest rolled down the car window.
“Did you find old Teofilo?” he asked loudly.
Leon stopped the truck. “Good morning, Father. We were just out to the sheep camp. Everything is O.K. now.”
“Thank God for that. Teofilo is a very old man. You really shouldn’t allow him to stay at the sheep camp alone.”
“No, he won’t do that any more now.”
“Well, I’m glad you understand. I hope I’ll be seeing you at Mass this week. We missed you last Sunday. See if you can get old Teofilo to come with you.” The priest smiled and waved at them as they drove away.
Louise and Teresa were waiting. The table was set for lunch, and the coffee was boiling on the black iron stove. Leon looked at Louise and then at Teresa.
“We found him under a cottonwood tree in the big arroyo near sheep camp. I guess he sat down to rest in the shade and never got up again.” Leon walked toward the old man’s bed.
The red plaid shawl had been shaken and spread carefully over the bed, and a new brown flannel shirt and pair of stiff new Levis were arranged neatly beside the pillow. Louise held the screen door open while Leon and Ken carried in the red blanket. He looked small and shriveled, and after they dressed him in the new shirt and pants he seemed more shrunken.
It was noontime now because the church bells rang the Angelus. They ate the beans with hot bread, and nobody said anything until after Teresa poured the coffee.
Ken stood up and put on his jacket.
“I’ll see about the gravediggers. Only the top layer of soil is frozen. I think it can be ready before dark.”
Leon nodded his head and finished his coffee. After Ken had been gone for a while, the neighbors and clans people came quietly to embrace Teofilo’s family and to leave food on the table because the gravediggers would come to eat when they were finished.
The sky in the west was full of pale-yellow light. Louise stood outside with her hands in the pockets of Leon’s green army jacket that was too big for her. The funeral was over, and the old men had taken their candles and medicine bags and were gone. She waited until the body was laid into the pickup before she said anything to Leon. She touched his arm, and he noticed that her hands were still dusty from the corn meal that she had sprinkled around the old man. When she spoke, Leon could not hear her.
“What did you say? I didn’t hear you.”
“I said that I had been thinking about something.”
“About what?”
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“About the priest sprinkling holy water for Grandpa. So he won’t be thirsty.”
Leon stared at the new moccasins that Teofilo had made for the ceremonial dances in the summer. They were nearly hidden by the red blanket. It was getting colder, and the wind pushed gray dust down the narrow pueblo road. The sun was approaching the long mesa where it disappeared during the winter. Louise stood there shivering and watching his face. Then he zipped up his jacket and opened the truck door. “I’ll see if he’s there.”
His voice was distant, and Leon thought that his blue eyes looked tired.
‘It’s O.K. Father, we just want him to have plenty of water.”
The priest sank down into the green chair and picked up a glossy missionary magazine. He turned the colored pages full of lepers and pagans without looking at them.
“You know I can’t do that, Leon. There should have been the Last Rites and a funeral Mass at the very least.”
Leon put on his green cap and pulled the flaps down over his ears. “It’s getting late, Father. I’ve got to go.”
When Leon opened the door Father Paul stood up and said, “Wait.” He left the room and came back wearing a long brown overcoat. He followed Leon out the door and across the dim churchyard to the adobe steps in front of the church. They both stooped to fit through the low adobe entrance. And when they started down the hill to the graveyard only half of the sun was visible above the mesa.
The priest approached the grave slowly, wondering how they had managed to dig into the frozen ground; and then he remembered that this was New Mexico, and saw the pile of cold loose sand beside the hole. The people stood close to each other with little clouds of steam puffing from their faces. The priest looked at them and saw a pile of jackets, gloves, and scarves in the yellow, dry tumbleweeds that grew in the graveyard. He looked at the red blanket, not sure that Teofilo was so small, wondering if it wasn’t some perverse Indian trick or something they did in March to ensure a good harvest, wondering if maybe old Teofilo was actually at sheep camp corralling the sheep for the night.
Ken stopped the pickup at the church, and Leon got out; and then Ken drove down the hill to the graveyard where people were waiting. Leon knocked at the old carved door with its symbols of the Lamb. While he waited he looked up at the twin bells from the king of Spain with the last sunlight pouring around them in their tower.
The priest opened the door and smiled when he saw who it was. “Come in! What brings you here this evening?”
The priest walked toward the kitchen, and Leon stood with his cap in his hand, playing with the earflaps and examining the living room, the brown sofa, the green armchair, and the brass lamp that hung down from the ceiling by links of chain. The priest dragged a chair out of the kitchen and offered it to Leon.
“No thank you, Father. I only came to ask you if you would bring your holy water to the graveyard.”
The priest turned away from Leon and looked out the window at the patio full of shadows and the dining-room windows of the nuns’ cloister across the patio. The curtains were heavy, and the light from within faintly penetrated; it was impossible to see the nuns inside eating supper.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was dead? I could have brought the Last Rites anyway.”
Leon smiled. “It wasn’t necessary, Father.”
The priest stared down at his scuffed brown loafers and the worn hem of his cassock. “For a Christian burial it was necessary.”
But there he was, facing into a cold dry wind and squinting at the last sunlight, ready to bury a red wool blanket while the faces of his parishioners were in shadow with the last warmth of the sun on their backs. His fingers were stiff, and it took him a long time to twist the the lid off the holy water. Drops of water fell on the red blanket and soaked into dark icy spots. He sprinkled the grave and the water disappeared almost before it touched the dim, cold sand; it reminded him of something, and he tried to remember what it was because he thought if he could remember he might understand this. He sprinkled more water; he shook the container until it was empty, and the water fell through the light from sundown like August rain that fell while the sun was still shining, almost evaporating before it touched the wilted squash flowers.
The wind pulled at the priest’s brown Franciscan robe and swirled away the corn meal and pollen that had been sprinkled on the blanket. They lowered the bundle into the ground, and they didn’t bother to untie the stiff pieces of new rope that were tied around the ends of the blanket. The sun was gone, and over on the highway the eastbound lane was full of headlights. The priest walked away slowly.
Leon watched him climb the hill, and when he had disappeared within the tall, thick walls, Leon turned to look up at the high blue mountains in the deep snow that reflected a faint red light from the west. He felt good because it was finished, and he was happy about the sprinkling of the holy water; now the old man could send them big thunderclouds for sure.
WILLIAM KITTREDGE
The Waterfowl Tree
WILLIAM KITTREDGE (1932–) was born to a family of ranchers in the Warner Valley, Oregon. At the age of 35, he retired from ranching and enrolled in the Iowa Writers Workshop, before joining the English department at the University of Montana. With Steven Krauzer Kittredge co-wrote (as “ Owen Rountree”) the Cord Western novels, and under his own name is the author of, among other titles, the essay collection Owning It All, Hole in the Sky: A Memoir, the short story collections The Van Gogh Field and We Not In This Together, and the novel The Willow Field. In 2007 the LA Times awarded Kittredge the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.
THEY RAN INTO snow almost two hours before reaching the valley, the storm at twilight whipping in gusts across the narrow asphalt. The station wagon moved slowly through the oncoming darkness.
“A long haul,” his father said. “Eva will be wondering.”
The boy, tall and seventeen, his hands behind his neck, watched out the glazed and crusted side windows at the indeterminate light. This mention of the woman could be a signal, some special beginning.
“Is she pretty? he asked.
“Pretty enough for me. And that’s pretty enough.”
The man laughed and kept his eyes on the road. He was massive, a widower in his late fifties. “I’ve got too old for worrying about pretty,” he said. “All I want is gentle. When that’s all you want, you got to be getting old.”
In a little while, the man said, “ I remember hunting when I was a kid. It was different then, more birds for one thing, and you had to kill something with every shot.”
“How do you mean?” the boy asked.
“We were meat hunters. You spent money for shells, you brought home meat. I saw Teddy Spandau die on that account. Went off into open water chest deep, just trying to get some birds he shot. Cramped up and drowned. We hauled a boat down and fished him out that afternoon.”
The snow began to thin and the man pushed the car faster and concentrated on his driving.
“It was like this then,” he said. “Snowing, and ice a foot thick and below zero all day.”
The boy wished his father would go on talking about these far-away and unsuspected things. But the man, long estranged from this remote and misted valley of his childhood, sat hunched over the wheel, absorbed in the road and grimacing.
“I guess it was different in those days,” the boy said, wanting his father to keep talking.
“Quite a bit different,” the man answered. “A different life altogether.”
After this they drove in silence. It was completely dark when they came out of the storm, driving through the last drifting flakes into the light of a full moon and an intense and still cold that made the new snow crystallize and occasionally sparkle in the headlights.
“Freeze solid by morning,” the man said. “Be some new birds coming in.”
He stopped the car and switched off the headlights.
“Look there,” he said, pointing.
The boy cranked down
his window and looked across the distorted landscape of snow, blue and subdued in the moonlight. Far away he saw a high ridge shadowed in darkness.
“That’s the rim,” his father said. “We’ll be home directly.” The boy looked again at the black fault. How could this be home, this place under that looming wall?
“All my life,” the man said, “ in strange places, I’ve caught myself looking up and expecting to see that rim.”
The long attic room, unfinished, raftered under the peak roof, filled with soft darkness, illuminated by blue softness where moonlight shone through windows on either end. On the floor and inward sloping east wall he could see light reflected up from downstairs. The boy lay in the bundled warmth of a mummy bag on an iron cot and watched the light, imagined that he could see it slowly climb the wall as the moon dropped. The cold in this shed-like room above the barn was complete and still and frosted his breath when he moved.
“You’re young and tough,” his father had said. “You draw the outdoor room.”
They’d unloaded the boy’s suitcase and the new gear quickly in the darkness, tried to be quiet because the house across the road was completely dark. Then his father went ahead with a flashlight and they carried the gear up an old flight of stairs at the side of the barn and pushed through the ancient hanging door that opened into this long, barren room. After unrolling the sleeping bag on the cot, his father gripped him by the shoulder and shone the light in his face.
“You’ll be warm inside the bag,” the man said. “Take your coat in with you and sleep with your clothes on. That way they won’t be frozen in the morning. Stick the boots under you. We’ll get you up for breakfast.”
Then he turned and took the light and left the boy standing in the cold. What would greet his father in that dark house across the road? They’d come upon the place after rounding a curve in the gravel road that crossed the upper part of the valley. A bunch of trees and a house and a barn and some corrals; just that in the midst of unending fields of fenced snow.