Redeye

by Edgerton, Clyde

  Mr. Blankenship and Mr. Copeland were there, too. Them and Mrs. Merriwether, Zack, and me were all sitting at the end table under the cottonwoods, talking. I wished that Mr. Merriwether was there talking and getting all steamed up about the finds up in Eagle City. He told me I had the eye of a archaeologist.

  Mr. Blankenship had this to say about it: “I think we have stumbled upon something of greatest significance. First thing we’ve got to do is have a little showing of some of this beautiful pottery and relics in Mumford Rock and up in Garvey Springs and see if we can’t get some interest generated—some tourist interest generated. That, my friends, is the wave of the future. The Denver and Santa Fe Railroad is ready to hop into something like this, and I know all the right people there. And I know the Denver Historical Society is interested. There’s money waiting to be made. For everybody. Tourism. Show off stuff in Mumford Rock and Garvey Springs and then take people right up into them cliff dwellings. Get some Indians up in there. Show them making some pottery, shooting bows and arrows. Sell some Indian pone. Hell, easterners would give big money to get up in there. And foreigners. They’re doing it in Mexico.”

  “The Moqui villages down south ain’t that much different from the cliff dwellings,” says Zack. “Except the Moqui villages stink.”

  “There ain’t mummies in the Moqui villages down south,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Do you realize what your average man from New York City or Philadelphia would pay to see a mummy that’s been around since before the Egyptian pharaohs? And the Moqui ain’t making pottery like that pottery. That’s fine stuff. Where you ever seen pottery like that? And ain’t the Moqui getting tourists? There was a bunch through here last week from some university in Chicago. To study Indians. I tell you there is money to be made. Big money. And we’d be doing the world of culture and colleges and universities a great favor.”

  “You’d take that mummy to town?” asked Mr. Copeland.

  “Why not? It’s an archaeological find. It’s public property come from government lands.”

  “You better ask Merriwether about that.”

  “I’ve already talked to Merriwether.”

  “I mean about taking that mummy to town.”

  “He’ll come around. This’ll help him support his expeditions. He could use some financial support, wouldn’t you say so, Zack?”

  “I reckon,” said Zack.

  “He could use some financing, yes,” said Mrs. Merriwether.

  It was late in the day and the air and weather was beautiful and clean and clear. Cobb Pittman was off by hisself like he usually is, with Redeye. He was sitting, leaning against a fence post, eating. Mr. Blankenship went over and sat with him for a little bit, and motioned with his arms, a rabbit leg in his hand, telling about his ideas for the tourists, I guess. Then Mr. Pittman talked awhile.

  I was thinking it might not be a bad idea, especially if it would get some girl tourists out here, and I could be one of the guides. But I didn’t think Mr. Merriwether would cotton to it.

  Juanita kept bringing out food. Jose Hombre sang some more songs. Meantime, Andrew and Star had got their plates and gone back to sitting on the fence looking toward the Bright Owl.

  STAR

  Mr. Merriwether has a wide board nailed to the top of the corral fence so people can sit up there comfortably and watch the horse-breaking. You can turn around and look the other way for chicken pulls and horseshoes. And without my corset on I can easily get up there and sit down.

  In any case, on this wide board is where Andrew Collier and I sat yesterday evening during the supper party that Juanita, Libby, and I prepared for the men returning from the mesa. We prepared hot, succulent rabbit and vegetables.

  For dessert we had ice cream on top of hot peach pie—as delicious as anything I’ve ever eaten. Andrew brought mine to me from the porch and we continued sitting and talking as the sky glowed a deeper and deeper red. Mesa Largo itself seemed to turn black in the evening stillness.

  And in that red stillness I envisioned the face of Bishop Thorpe, his kind, pleading, deep eyes, his strength and bearing. He is, I have come to realize, not unlike a Confederate general. Of course, I had nothing to feel guilty about by sitting on a fence with Andrew Collier and talking about the weather and his recent trip onto the mesa. Yet . . . yet, inside me there was the feeling of being split somehow, a kind of foreboding of a decision to be made, and I was confused. On the one hand, I could not help but venture forth in the imagined arena where Andrew Collier might ask for my hand in marriage, followed by a triumphant trip to England for the ceremony and then perhaps world travel. Of course I would never confess this to anyone, but the thought, the feeling, the tiny light of hope was there. But then, on the other side of myself there was the pull of the tidy, organized, clean, and moral village of Beacon City, where I could learn a whole new way of life in God and the Saints—in a religion of today and yesterday, not just yesterday.

  I tried to help with cleanup, but Libby sent me back to the fence. “Enjoy Andrew for a little while,” she said. “He’s a very handsome young man.”

  Andrew and I talked about our families. I told him about Mother and Father and Aunt Sallie, and the troubles we had in Raleigh, and how Aunt Sallie married a legislator and has provided us with guidance and financial support. It struck me that this was discomforting for him—anything about money or North Carolina, I couldn’t tell which—so I determined not to mention anything financial again. I imagined it had something to do with social class, but I dared not guess, especially aloud.

  “Tell me about your family,” I said.

  “Oh, my father is an explorer, and, I suppose, an anthropologist of sorts.”

  “We studied anthropology at college.”

  “Oh, really? What college was that?”

  “Berryhill Woman’s College. My Aunt Sallie sent me and two of my cousins, and she’s planning to send my little sister when she’s old enough.”

  “And this was in North Carolina?”

  “Oh, yes. We have colleges there.”

  He laughed. A big laugh. “Oh, I didn’t mean that.”

  “Where has your father explored?” I asked him.

  “The Amazon for the most part. He’s now writing a book about riverbank civilization, and I’m hoping he will agree to my staying here for a while so that I might write about Mesa Largo and her holdings.” He looked out across the river to the mesa. “It’s a truly magnificent place.”

  “How long might you stay if he grants permission?” I didn’t want to be too forward, but I also knew I should not be . . . reticent.

  “I suppose six months or more, but I’m afraid this is perhaps not his idea of how I am to spend my time abroad.”

  “I’d like to go up into the mesa myself sometime,” I said.

  His tenor and manner began to change. He became very excited and told me things, enthralling little details about how the bottoms of the bowls are round, so that for them to be carried on the heads of the women a ring of yucca leaves had to be bound together and placed on the head and then the bowl sat on that so it wouldn’t slide off. What excited Andrew so much is that you can still see perspiration stains on those rings of yucca leaves, as if they were worn only a few days ago. And soot on the bottom of several bowls he found. You can scrape it off just like it had been burned on there yesterday, leaving you with this feeling of immediacy, of almost being there, he said. As if you could be one of them for a while.

  I noticed that supper was long over and that people were going home. I was embarrassed that I had sat so long in the same place, but I was far less embarrassed than I was gratified by the conversation, and before we parted, he asked me if he might call upon Uncle P.J. to ask for permission to visit me.

  “Stop by anytime,” I said, and he said oh, no, he must have a specific time. But I hesitated to establish a specific time and he hesitated to pressure me, so for the time being there is indefinity. His propriety is an English custom. They are so proper, but Andrew Coll
ier’s propriety grants him such a romantic air!

  Late that night, I finally went to sleep with visions of the reddening sky behind Mesa Largo and Andrew Collier’s blue eyes, proper posture, and charming smile.

  BUMPY

  After supper we all started in unloading the wagons into the museum. Mr. Merriwether had cleaned up the pottery before loading it and it looked good—to be so old. Besides pottery there was stone axeheads, arrowheads, spearheads, different kinds of scrapers, awls, beads strung together, some falling apart when you picked them up, arrows, yucca sandals, bundles and strips of yucca leaves, two snowshoes, pieces of cloth, feathers, and some very nice feather cloth, which Andrew, the English fellow, got real excited about. He knew things about some of this stuff that even Mr. Merriwether didn’t know—what it might be used for and all that. He also got Mr. Merriwether to use a trowel instead of a shovel—once they find something and need to dig around it, careful. He’s real interested in it all. Looks to me like he’s also real interested in Star. While him and her was helping us unload, they kept making sugar eyes at each other.

  Mr. Merriwether had built a box for the mummy and she was on the bottom of one of the wagons. Everybody crowded around to look at her.

  “Looks like a man,” said Star.

  “Sí,” said Juanita, “because . . . es bery ugly.”

  “What’s her name?” somebody asked.

  “Rusty,” said Zack.

  “I think perhaps not,” said Andrew. “She needs something more . . . more civil, more civilized.”

  “Cleopatra,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Cleopatra.”

  So we got Cleopatra out and into the museum and up onto a table that was against the back wall. It was me, and Mr. Blankenship, Mr. Copeland, and one of the Mexicans took her in.

  When we got her settled in up on the table Mr. Blankenship says, “P.J., you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I don’t know, Billy.”

  “We don’t need to display any relics. But we definitely do need to display Cleopatra.”

  “For what?”

  “Tourists. To get the tourists in.”

  “You’d better talk to Merriwether about this tourist thing.”

  Zack came in, stood there a minute, looking at Cleopatra.

  “What do you think, Zack?” said Mr. Blankenship. “You think she’s a Mormon?”

  “Not now she ain’t.”

  “It’s too bad she can’t talk,” said Mr. Copeland.

  It was quiet like they was thinking.

  “The Mescadey think if you get struck by lightning after you’re dead it’ll bring you back to life,” said Zack. “I got a idea. I’m surprised you ain’t thought of it, Billy. You got so many ideas.”

  . . . and throughout the latter part of the century, there existed in the expanding, progressive little town of Mumford Rock, Colorado, that spirit of experimentation that would characterize all of America in those years. The steam engine, the cotton gin, the telephone, and other advancements representing a true philanthropic spirit, came at such a pace that the American mind could scarcely . . .

  “What kind of idea?”

  “Well, the Cheekwood brothers has got that electricity generator across town and they’ve been doing some experiments. Let’s get a electric wire and hook her up and shock her,” said Zack. “See if she comes back to life. I bet something like that ain’t ever been tried. Ask her anything you want to.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “No, it’s not,” said Mr. Blankenship. “You could use sign language.”

  “Not ridiculous that way. I mean ridiculous to think you can bring her back to life.”

  “I bet it ain’t been tried,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Lightning kills you if you’re alive. Maybe it works the opposite, too. Can you arrange it?” he asked Zack.

  “Well, they got that generator,” said Zack. “All we need do is take her in there and get them to hook her up.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “They said Newton was crazy,” said Mr. Blankenship.

  “Newton who?” said Mr. Copeland.

  “Newton. Sir Isaac Newton.”

  “Oh yeah, the one discovered electricity.”

  “That ain’t . . . Newton didn’t discover electricity.”

  “What’d he discover then?”

  “He discovered gravity.”

  “You planning to drop her off a building or something?”

  “No. No. I said, ‘They said Newton was crazy.’ That’s all I said.”

  “I’m saying ‘Stay on the subject.’”

  “You’re saying you didn’t know who the hell Sir Isaac Newton was,” said Mr. Blankenship, “and I’m saying you ought to know your American history.”

  “I think we ought to ask Merriwether,” said Mr. Copeland.

  ———

  “Where do you think we ought to put the wire?” asked Mr. Blankenship. We was all crowded around the mummy in the Cheekwood brothers’ shop, next morning. The electricity engine was running in a little built-on room to the shop and making a lot of noise so that we all had to talk real loud. The Cheekwood brothers are named Lucius and Septer and they was standing more or less behind Mr. Blankenship, Mr. Copeland, Zack, and me. They work for the Bland Botsford Mines and that’s who got the electricity into Mumford Rock. They’re rich because they found silver in the Dear Vein after everybody thought it was finished.

  “What?” said Zack to Mr. Blankenship. The noise was pretty loud.

  “I said where do you think we ought to put the wire?”

  . . . for when man is called to his ultimate destiny, the bells of time beckon him . . .

  “Well,” said Zack, “how about up her amos.”

  “That’s the wrong word,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Me and P.J. learned all that in Denver.”

  “I’d say the place would be close to the heart,” said Lucius. “And it’s gone be three wires. You need to get it under the skin, close to the heart. The heart is where the life will come from. Here, let me get a awl.”

  “What?” Mr. Blankenship turned around.

  “Let me get a awl.”

  “What about her brain?” said Mr. Blankenship.

  “What about it?” said Lucius.

  “Seems to me that’s what you’d want to crank up.”

  Then Septer hands over a awl. “You boys get something ‘cranked up,’” he said, “and I’ll kiss a mule.”

  The generator was shaking the whole building. It was the first engine I’d ever knowed about and I was pretty interested in seeing it, but they all seemed more interested in shocking Cleopatra.

  They decided on the heart and made a hole in the leathery skin and stuck the wires through and then kind of stood back for Septer to turn the switch. “Everybody ready?” he said. We were all standing there—hadn’t had no breakfast really, just some cold tortillas and coffee from the ranch before we left. We left before light.

  “Ready as we’ll ever be. Let her rip.”

  “What?”

  “Let her rip.”

  Septer turned the handle and we all watched. Nothing happened except after about ten seconds smoke started coming out around the wires.

  “Turn it off,” Mr. Blankenship hollered.

  Septer turned the switch off. We thought.

  “I’d say she didn’t come back to life,” said Zack.

  “I’d say she’s on fire,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “You got any water in here?” Mr. Blankenship asked the brothers.

  “What?”

  “Water. Water.”

  “Bucket. Outside the door.”

  Mr. Blankenship went for the bucket. He came back in and we backed out of his way.

  She was burning pretty good, though you couldn’t see no flame yet. The smoke was picking right up and the wires was still in there. The skin was very dark and leathery. Her breasts were so flat and wrinkled that you couldn’t make out but one of her nippl
es, just a wide dark spot. Smoke kept coming up out of the hole. Mr. Blankenship poured water in it and POW, POP, POP, there was suddenly all these sparks and popping and smoke and then fire and we all jumped back and Zack hollered, “Is that switch off?”

  “Supposed to be,” said one of the brothers.

  “We had some problems with it,” said the other one.

  “Cut off the engine!” somebody said.

  One of the brothers opened the little door that led into the side shed holding the generator engine, got in there, and it stopped running. But by this time Cleopatra’s chest was sure enough on fire, popping and cracking.

  “Now pour it on,” said Mr. Blankenship to Zack, who had ended up with the bucket.

  “That made it worse.”

  “That’s cause the electricity was in it. Give me the damned bucket.”

  “You saw what it done.”

  “Give me the goddamned bucket.”

  Zack handed him the bucket and Mr. Blankenship poured water on her chest, first a little splash, then the rest of the bucket, making smoke, and a smell that was somewhere between cracklings and burnt rope.

  “If she won’t dead before, she is now,” I said.

  “That’s for sure,” said Zack. “Whose idea was this anyway?”

  “Your’n,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “Good God,” said the Cheekwood coming back out of the little room, “I ain’t ever seen nothing like that. Good God, look at that.”

  “When we dress her up you won’t see no difference at all,” said Mr. Blankenship. “No difference at all. We’ll just wrap up her chest good.”

  “What about that smell?” I said.

  “That there is a fairly lingering smell,” said Zack. “You’d better have some perfume in that grip of your’n, P.J.”

  “It’s not my grip. It’s our grip.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to get that thing on out of here as soon as we can,” said Septer. “That smell gets in the wood . . .”